Looks at can of worms. Decides not to open. Looks again. Can’t resist
My wife is a dues paying member of a chain of gyms called “Ladies’ Choice.” A gym that I cannot join, no matter how much I’m willing to pay, merely by virtue that I was born a pitcher instead of a catcher.
The company she works for is probably 75% female, and that includes the upper echelons (sp?) of management. And, to add, it’s not some mom and pop operation.
The conversation between the treadmills is, according to Mrs. Stof, mostly business. Phrases traded between treadmills, again according to Mrs. Stof, include, “that bastard,” “that cocksucker,” “that sunovabitch,” “motherfucking bastard/cocksucker/sunovabitch.”
It seems to me inserts key old-fashioned-spam-wise and peels back lid on cano’worms that we have a newfangled version of the old-fashioned double standard. Or in other words, why is it OK for women to have a place to do business and bitch about men without men around, but it’s not OK for men to be men (witness the earlier Pit thread about the Brittney girls) and do business and bitch about women without women around? I’d particularly like to hear from women who want equality rather than special treatment. Because after all, “we just want to be equal” is =\ “it’s time for payback.”
Damn. That lid rolled all the way off around the key. There ain’t no way I’m putting that back on. Shall I hit submit?
I have no problem with some guy filing suit for entrance to Ladies Choice because he has been excluded from business opportunities. It would make an interesting case. I also have no emotional investment in any of the decisions that have been handed down. I suspect that if the forcibly opened clubs were being used to deliberately “hide” from women, the men who were trying to exclude women simply found other ways to do it.
I’m not sure the court decisions were correct; only noted how the cases were decided.
Do these women-only athletic clubs provide services beyond athletics and exercises? If so, what services do they provide? My (hazy) memory of the clubs that were forced open was that they provided a lot more services than a gym and a dining room, but I don’t hobnob with that social set, so I don’t know the particulars.
Now, the fact that no man has filed such a suit could indicate
[ul][li]that no guy has realized how much business he has lost through exclusion,[/li][li]that there is no serious business to be had, there,[/li][li]that the sort of ordering of reports and griping about the competition (or, more likely, the neighboring departments) is not the sort of “business discussion” that actually drives the economy,[/li]or
[li]that no guy want to be the first to demand entrance to a women’s club.[/ul][/li]The lawsuits that were pressed in the 1980s made the case that the women were being denied business opportunities. Whether or not those court cases were decided correctly, to maintain consistency, men would need to show that the women-only clubs were also inhibiting similar opportunities.
As for doing deals while they sweat, even the mixed clubs can (and sometimes do) have segregated facilities–and all of them of which I have heard have separate showers.
Intuitively, I know this is the case, that business is conducted, but I have no proof one way or the other. And furthermore, what difference does it make? They can do business anywhere they want. Women can conspire behind men’s backs, too.
I’m not quite offended, just a little disturbed, that you would insinuate that women cannot do business the way men do it because they don’t get hooked up by their buddies. That’s just a bit demeaning, don’t you think?
Telling rich men that they can’t talk about business or trade stocks, or sell property because there aren’t women around to bid on it is absurd as well.
I marvel at the sheer chutzpah of people who determine what others can do simply for vague, unprovable, and unenforceable reasons. If they do allow women to participate at Augusta National, and then they find out that nothing is happening, it will be yet another case of women wanting to do something just because they’re excluded, kinda like Shannon Faulkner at the Citadel.
There’s a difference between doing business and bitching about work and coworkers. It’s unlikely that the males in your wifes field are placed at a disadvantage because her health club is the place to bring clients or to network,unless you’re wife’s field (not just her company) is dominated by women at the top (and if it is, please tell me which it is, because I’ve never heard of one)
BTW tom~, my memory is hazy too, but I seem to recall that in some cases, the business benefits of a membership at the clubs that were sued were so well-recognized that the member’s employer paid for it.
Something I find strange- according to the Augusta Chronicle story, women are apparently allowed to play (under what conditions, the story didn’t say. Perhaps as the wife or guest of a member). So apparently the issue is not associating with women,just allowing them membership.
I am not asserting any specific thing, myself. A case was brought against one or more private clubs in the 1980s that I thought resulted in an order that they had to open their membership. I cannot now find that case. (It is possible, for example, that the clubs won in front of the Supremes, but then changed their by-laws after the bad publicity. I’m still looking for the case.)
There was no judgment that all men’s clubs had to be open (thus, making the claim that “women can have private clubs and men cannot” is an error–there remain a number of all-male private clubs in the country), but some number of clubs with a demonstrated association with business dealings were told to change.
