THE DECLINE OF THE ALL-MALE CLUB: Men Without Women: Is There A Male Friendship Crisis?

The disappearance began in 1970 when the National Organization for Women decided that the pinnacle of equality was drinking on a floor covered in sawdust. They sued to force the doors open at McSorley’s Old Ale House, a New York City icon that existed for 116 years as an all-male establishment, and won. The battle culminated in 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right to equality trumped freedom of association and forced the Rotary Club to accept women. Only thirteen cities in the United States have more than four all-male clubs and, with social organizations nearly extinct, feminists have set their sights on the most masculine and tightly-knit club of all: the infantry. . . .

We congregate once a week at an undisclosed cigar bar, the last bastion of male territory (you can guess the sex of the person leading the charge against these establishments). The night begins with the same regulars, but every once in a while a woman joins us. The nature of conversation changes the second she arrives. The jokes become tamer, the social observations bland, and bar etiquette—paying cash for small tabs, never forcing a waiter to line-item drinks and food for a dozen people, not discarding $15 cigars after three puffs—goes out the window. The proverbial sawdust on the floor turns to egg shells: We’ve banished male attendees for less, but no one knows how to say no to a woman.

“That’s right, I’m crashing guy’s night,” a female friend gleefully announced when she arrived several months ago. As the marathon meeting wore on, her countenance ranged from unwilling dental patient to suicidal dentist. She soldiered on, relating at every turn of the conversation how much she was learning by “crashing guy’s night.” She left, the sighs of relief visible in the haze.

“I don’t understand why you’d put yourself in a situation you know doesn’t make you happy for the sake of preventing someone else’s good time,” a friend later said. “I feel like women just like ruining our things. It makes me miserable.”