Single-sex company has a value of its own, and a club is where adults may choose it

The argument

A second argument holds that the company of one sex is something many people want for part of their lives, and that wanting it is neither unusual nor sinister. Proponents point to how widely single-sex settings are provided and valued: in sport, in worship, in schooling, on hospital wards, in changing rooms, and in support groups formed so that people can speak frankly among others in the same position. Nobody treats the existence of these as an attack on whoever is not in them. What the club form adds, proponents argue, is that it is voluntary, bounded and paid for by those who want it. It occupies no public space, draws on no public funds, and makes no claim on anyone who is not a member. A person who disapproves of it is free never to enter it, and nothing in their life changes because it exists. On this view the club is simply the arrangement by which adults who want some of their leisure in the company of their own sex go about getting it, which is what the other single-sex settings are too. The conclusion is about even-handedness. Proponents argue that a society permitting single-sex association generally, and in some cases funding and encouraging it, cannot coherently forbid it in this one instance without deciding that men in particular may not have what is thought reasonable for everyone else. An even rule either permits single-sex association or forbids it, rather than permitting it wherever it is approved of and forbidding it where it is not.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents answer that the comparison holds only where the single-sex setting serves a purpose that mixing would defeat: bodily privacy, fair competition, or a space to discuss experiences particular to a group. A dining and drinking club serves no such purpose, so the exclusion is the point rather than a by-product of something else. They add that evenness does not mean identical rules for groups differently placed, since excluding the historically excluded and excluding those who did the excluding are not the same act.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Each setting listed is justified by something mixing would defeat, whether bodily privacy, fair competition, or frank discussion of experiences particular to a group. A dining club has no such justification to point to. [Rejecting P2] Voluntary and bounded understates the reach. A club whose members hold institutional power is not sealed off from those outside, who feel its effects without having chosen anything. [Rejecting P3] Evenness does not require identical rules for differently situated groups. Treating exclusion by the historically excluded and exclusion of them as the same act is what produces the appearance of inconsistency. [Rejecting C] The conclusion inherits the weakness of the comparison, since the same terms can only apply if the cases are alike in the respect that matters, and that has not been shown.