no boys allowed in the room!!!!

i'm glad to get all of these different perspectives -- i had never really thought about it from the bar owner's pov. i guess i should remember who's in charge of/pays for the building, right?

also yeah warehouse things are different -- mostly because they're not establishments with ads and permits and whatnot, right? this is a bar/venue est 2007 or so, a place where someone somewhere expects to make a profit. i had never thought about the priorities of that person before. our priorities are at odds, hence my frustration.

I rarely go to shows any more because of the sheer number of hours you have to stand around for. I don't mind so much if there are a couple of support acts but if I just want to watch the/any band I rarely have any idea what time that will actually be. Worse still are gigs that are 'club nights' leaving the main show til really late - I went to one such one in SF and by about midnight the main act wasn't on or due to go on for ages and it was a week night and I just left through sheer exhaustion.

Yeah it might be weird but I'm grateful for the whole British pubs shutting early thing now because it makes gigs usually finish at a sensible hour.

When they relaxed the opening hour laws a few years ago there was a brief burst of enthusiasm where every pub and venue applied for a late licence and the support bands wouldn't go on until 10 and it was no good for people who had a last bus to catch (me then) or are not good without sleep (me now), but soon everyone got bored of jumping through the late licence hoops I guess and now local gigs are actually p. good at wrapping up by 11:15, which works for me

though there's still often the thing where the publicity says "doors 8" and you arrive at 8:30 and the doors are shut and you have to prop yourself in a corner downstairs avoiding eye contact and trying not to go upstairs every 5 minutes just in case you're missing something (you're not, you'd hear it through the ceiling). and then you finally get let in and you realise there's still nothing to do and now there are no seats and it's too dark to read the local listings mag for the tenth time. that's bad enough for 20 minutes, 90+ is horrible.

I used to go to shows at this lousy dive called Don Pedro's in Bk and the listings wd be for 9 and no one would play before 11. Because I usually have a book with me, I think I sat on their couch and read for an hour and smoked the rest of the time away and learned not to get there until 11. This was only on weekends bc I had a day job, but they probably ran the same way the rest of the time.

Also I went to shows there and elsewhere for a really long time alone and no one ever talked to me even though I saw the same ppl pretty regularly--I assume the girls weren't interested in me because I wasn't one of them (thin, fashiony, a certain kind of '70s garage glam or sexy punk vibe on display). And the boys weren't interested because I wasn't one of the accepted girls, nor thin, fashiony, sexy, or likely to have a substance abuse/self-loathing problem that would lead me to put out. Felt awkward but liked the music, kept going anyway. Years later, the wheels of social circles spun into place and I connected with a lot of those ppl through mutual friends and realized I didn't like any of them anyway. :)

I'm sorry for your lousy night, LL! Although your telling of it is good and funny, thank you.

Yeah, I mean, the whole "late licensing hours" thing really doesn't work in Britain if the public transport doesn't fulfil its end of it. There are always complaints if gigs overrun and people have to leave before the last train/bus. NYC's insane gig hours are supported by a 24 hour public transport system. The rest of the US, I guess you're supposed to provide your own transport (which I guess makes selling drinks harder if everyone is driving, so I guess that's why they make people sit around for hours first.) There is no point in having a gig that goes on until 1am when everyone leaves at 11.30 to catch the train home.

I used to just take a sketchbook everywhere when I went to gigs with unpredictable start times. I went through a pile of sketchbooks yesterday and was astonished to find so many drawings done while waiting for gigs that I had completely forgotten about. (Kinda shitty when drunk people sit at your table and spill beer all over your drawings, though.)

Hey grlz thred
I don't even try to go to concerts anymore for the reasons listed; I am a punctual L7 with a real lame bedtime.

I thought I would share a funny thing that happened on my vacation to visit my sister, her husband and baby in Tejas – the baby was getting a baby blessing (a Mormon thing).

She'd invited some family to the blessing and lunch after, as well as ~8 married couples, their friends, some of whom had babies, too.

There was a buffet-style lunch – I sat on a loveseat to eat but noticed a couple needed a seat so I invited them to take the loveseat. The husband opted to go to the living room and the wife to the kitchen table, which is when I realized every single couple had done that. "Sorry, I didn't realize men and women weren't allowed to sit together!" I said, and everyone laughed HARD, the kind of hard laugh that comes when everyone is a little scandalized. I stayed in the living room because that much testosterone in one place needs to be broken up by some estrogen, and: they definitely didn't want me there. I would try to participate in their conversation, which was all about Star Wars, so EASY to contribute to, and I was totally ignored. *BLINK BLINK PAUSE* It was amazing and the provocateur side of me enjoyed making everyone so patently uncomfortable simply by sharing innocuous opinions about Lando Calrissian.

My sister later explained that every time they have their friends over, the women hang out in the kitchen, and the guys in the living room, no matter what. Also, that it's kind of a cultural thing for Mormons to not have mixed gender friends, especially between married couples. Her husband is pretty gregarious and open-minded (or he wouldn't like me so well), but after he got married, some of my sister's female friends simply refused to converse with him. "Is it from being overly jealous?" I asked. "More like...overly cautious or careful," she said.

I found it all pretty fascinating!

I am a big repper for mixed gender friendships but lately I have fewer and fewer and it is from jealousy issues. I can't hang out with a guy without his girlfriend having a meltdown. It's annoying. It doesn't have to be that way and hasn't in the past but it is the current situation for sure.

i applaud your provocateurship and willingness to confront this inane phenomenon. I have had friends give me the "better safe than sorry/caution" line of reasoning and it never sounds any better than it did the first time.

as for the other thing, i've never inspired a jealous tantrum, but i am for sure cautious about taking up someone else's husband's/father's time/energy. as i know well, my friends' company is not always mine to have. that said, i've lost friendships over the years that i think may be attributable to the above line of thinking, which makes me feel like people think i'm some kind of predator. and i am not!

"Sorry, I didn't realize men and women weren't allowed to sit together!" I said, and everyone laughed HARD, the kind of hard laugh that comes when everyone is a little scandalized.

Scandalous handmaidens of Satan have all the fun.

Scandalous handmaidens of Satan have all the fun.

<3 !

It was amazing and the provocateur side of me enjoyed making everyone so patently uncomfortable simply by sharing innocuous opinions about Lando Calrissian.

<3 <3 !!

which makes me feel like people think i'm some kind of predator. and i am not!

Yeah I know! It's wacky. All my friends were boys growing up. Not so now. It's good that I have lots of female friends now but sad that mixed gender friendships can be such a briar patch. OTOH you have some good points.

None of my friends were boys growing up -- I didn't know any til 8th gr, and didn't have a purely platonic and real friendship with a boy until i was 19 and met my friend d, who is still my super close friend today. my mr and i both have close friends of the opposite gender/sex/whatever and it has never gotten in the way of any of our lives. to think that people are so scared of it that they physically separate from one another socially is just -- it's a bleak way to look at humanity and a punishment to endure for the rest of your life. it's also a clear sign that we have absolutely nothing in common.

That last point is key to me: When I find myself in a environment where men and women separate (this is almost always split between a domestic chore space and a leisure/tv space, WELL WHADDYA KNOW), I know that I have to get out of there before the inevitable patriarchy-induced meltdown.

also there was a portlandia skit that was kinda like that bc the men and women were separated only the women were all like "you're rockin that look" and the men were all "and here dear sir jolly good lol" and it was insufferable
i didn't realize until recently that carrie brownstein studied sociolinguistics

Um, not to be the lone voice of dissent here, but aren't we in a... um, gender segregated space right here?

(I'm not disagreeing that the situation Crabbits describes sounds pretty ridiculous. Just saying that gender segregation isn't always due to... patriarchy.)

Yeah I appreciated that my brother-in-law at least TRIES to treat the women who visit his house like equals, even if they reject it! He said he gave up after many times of trying to integrate. I liked that he was willing to teach me how to play Ticket to Ride or hang out with me as an equal. But maybe because I am family and 'safe.' Or maybe because I am already going to hell – a joke I made many times, e.g. when I ate their coffee and tea flavored chocolates for them. It got the best, most conflicted laughter.

xp lol

good point BB!

Upon finding out that he had started working in the same part of town I did, I said to a male friend, "Oh, we should grab lunch sometime!" and his fiancée, whom I had just met, having been friends with the male friend for awhile, said, "You don't just ask my fiancé if he wants to go to lunch!" I got where she was coming from because there was some weird dynamics wherein the male boyfriend was still carrying a torch for one of my close friends (which, god, everybody just grow up already) so she was pretty insecure about the relationship but it hadn't even occurred to me that I was getting near a line much less crossing one when I asked. Hell, Jeff was there, too.

She stopped talking to me entirely after I declined to fly back to NC from Chicago during my first semester of law school to attend her bachelorette weekend, which was taking place in a cabin and would have involved only me, the friend for whom groom carried a torch, and her sister. But she and the dude are married with a daughter and seem really happy so I think it all worked out for everybody.

xp - i will add that my friendships that i assumed ended because of the fear-based line of thinking could also be that the person was super sick of me! i will never know.

My family used to do the post-prandial separation in which women hung out in the kitchen and did dishes while the men went into the living room to watch TV but my grandmother is too old for that shit now and she hangs out with the men. That was 100% due to patriarchy but at the same time, some of my most cherished memories of my family happened during the women's time doing dishes in the kitchen.

But and I'm just being an ornery bugger here, you could argue that this gender segregated space IS due to patriarchy insofar as the fact that we feel a need for the thread is because we want a "safe space" to talk about things without worrying about menfolk chiming in or shutting us down, so the whole need for the dynamic is rooted in patriarchy.

Here is my and my friend group from HS – we made albums and movies together, and had all kinds of fun. I miss them dearly:

https://scontent-a-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/10150769_10152002227011428_5996624387758037761_n.jpg

Weirdly my best friends were 2 gals and also mutual friends with these guys, but they thought the guys had immature interests and stupid activities, so I hung out with them separately. I didn't get it even then!

...The fact that we wanted a women-only space on ilx during the era of the primacy of would smash threads and rape joeks WAS because of patriarchy. I must be misunderstanding you because you are way way smarter than me and this doesn't seem confusing.

xp oh I see carl got there already (she usually does).

We got Ticket to Ride a couple of months ago! It's good!

"More like...overly cautious or careful,"

Relevant:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlIjrwmIUAA5V3y.jpg

"One minute they were playing tennis together; before I knew what had happened, they were off hiking the Appalachian Trail"

I realized in church the men and women go to separate classes after sacrament meeting (which is not interactive)
So not a lot of chances to make mixed gender friends
Their church is organized so it never happens

xp I liked Ticket to Ride a lot; it was the first 'board game nerd' game I ever enjoyed

Me too! I liked it so much I paid for the iphone version of TTR and TTR Europe.

Mr veg lived in a house full of women post-college, 90% of his group of friends are still women now. A year or two after we were first married he went to Seattle with his ex-girlfriend (who is a mutual friend). She was in a lesbian relationship at the time, but even the fact that she was his ex, I didn't even think twice about it because they've been friends forever and that's first and foremost how I think of her. But when they were gone I happened to mention their trip to Mom and she did that raised-eyebrow tone of voice that I hate and and then I really resented having to even think about their relationship in such an 'expected' way.

I have quite a few male friends, have gone over to their houses for football games or wrestlemania PPV's and had a few beers while the wives stay in the other part of the house and no-one's ever given me side-eye for it. But I have had situations where people have pointed out that whole Male/Female thing and being 'unseemly' to be on frienship terms with a Man who is Married when I am Married myself. Like, the only person making this a problem is the person seeing the problem and it's NOT A PROBLEM SO SHUT UP.

It's always an awful thing to have it pointed out to you, like it suddenly occurs to you that oh this is a penis/vagina thing which hadn't even crossed your mind until then and it always skeevs me out to suddenly have to think about this male friend in THAT way
*screeching brakes*

Mr Veg thinks of his circle of friends as Friends, not as Women, and I think of my male friends as Friends and not Men...I forget that not everyone does that, and it's a real bummer when it comes up.

the parties i went to growing up were always gender-segregated in the way Abbs describes her sister's party being. (it was a Muslim community.) it was the way things were and i was used to it, and like Jenny i have fond memories of the women's part of the party. but i remember when Muslim friends of mine started to get married right out of college, things got weird. the assumption that i should drop friendships with dudes when they got engaged...i was really slow to pick up on it. i remember feeling like what even is the point of being all devout and chaste if you assume everybody's up to no good as soon as they get around the opposite sex...or as soon as they get around the members of the opposite sex who are not their wives/fiancees. it also seemed faintly absurd to me the first time i was cast as some Jezebel--it was plainly not my identity. i feel like that was the moment where it began to dawn on me that staying religious was not going to work out for me as an adult woman.

being 'unseemly' to be on frienship terms with a Man who is Married when I am Married myself.

Yeah idgi, if 'safety' is a concern you'd think this is the 'safest' possible arrangement? everyone's already committed by law to one person, so who even has to worry, right? otoh the time I got raped I was married and it was when I had a married guy friend over but that's an anomaly.

it had nothing to do with any of us being married

having said that, my boyfriend is a big flirt and is still good friends with most of his exes and i would be lying if i said i didn't indulge in stereotypical jealousies from time to time. maybe it is my crazed religious upbringing outing! on the whole i think it has been good for me to confront some of that jealousy.

yeah see I think with Mr Veg he isn't really all that flirtatious, he just is fun to talk to. if that makes sense. Engaging without being all that 'knowing', I guess is the best way to put it. And that's one of the first things that made me fall in love with him, so for me the fact that he has all these other cool women that we hang out with is more like an affirmation that he IS an awesome dude to hang out with

xxxp

Oy.

Yeah, echoing all of that--my parents were obsessed with that "appearance of impropriety" stuff and never being alone in a room with someone of the opposite sex. I wasn't allowed to have male friends over at the house (not that I had any but the one time I almost did, I got in trouble for inviting him in). I think I dismissed it as a weird grown-up thing and was therefore surprised when in college, my work manager's wife publicly accused me of trying to break up her marriage by being friends with her husband (who did have a crush on me and ended up cheating on her and leaving her, but I was COMPLETELY unaware of any of that).

In short I guess I'm saying I think we're all on our own in deciding how to navigate this one in our lifetimes.

Sometimes women seek out the company of other women because of patriarchy, or because they are actively excluded or dissuaded from inhabiting "male" spaces.

And sometimes women seek out the company of other women because the company of other women is inherently pleasurable.

That's a separate issue from a lot of what is being discussed here: the pressure of coupled women to drop male friendships, etc. But I don't have much to say about that.

I've told this story before but my mother once made me go with her to our church on a weekday so she could rehearse for a vocal solo with a male accompanist IN THE SANCTUARY OF AN UNLOCKED CHURCH. Even though it's a public place, they couldn't be "alone together" there. And my dad made me go sit in his office while he met with a (female) draftsperson to work on an engineering drawing outside business hours, despite being right in front of a giant picture window that was visible from one of the busiest streets in town. That was fine with me, I just wanted uninterrupted time to read, but I was like, you guys, this is ridiculous.

Then again my town was small enough that someone really might notice that your car and so-and-so's car were parked in the same parking lot together.

A lot of my friends growing up were boys (from church) and no-one really cared what we did until one time one guy's family had mentioned to him that another family member had been accused of inappropriate behaviour of some kind when alone with a girl so maybe it would be best not to be alone in a room together to avoid any danger of that (behaviour or allegations of). I guess we hung out in a group most of the time anyway so can't remember if we took much notice.

And sometimes women seek out the company of other women because the company of other women is inherently pleasurable.

This reminds me, I went back to reading The Beauty Myth and finally got through the Culture chapter (which was kind of "duh") and the Religion chapter (which was a little less mainstream but not exceptional) and into the Sex chapter, which immediately went into my brain and hit REBOOT and I still haven't taken in half of it. But right now I'm reminded of:

But we long to be loved the way we were, if we were lucky, as children: every toe touched, each limb exclaimed upon with delight, because it was ours alone, incomparable. As adults, we seek that release from the scale of comparison in romantic love: In the eyes of one's true love, even the most jaded wish to believe, each of us will be "the most beautiful woman," because we will be truly seen and known for ourselves. The beauty myth, though, gives us the opposite prospect ... by having to "present" herself to her lover as "beautiful," the woman remains not fully known. ... Insofar as he will never know her [when she is not "beautified"], the man will never fully know her; and insofar as she cannot trust him to love her with her "beauty" in eclipse, she can never fully trust him.

Sometimes you just want to be encircled with being seen and known and loved with no effort wasted on worrying about beauty or comparison, and in this world for most of us that means a circle of women.

oh yah, reminds me of my fave onion article:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/female-friends-spend-raucous-night-validating-the,27446/

growing up around a lot of mormons -- all i can say is that mormons are weird.

probably my closest male friend in high school was someone I had been in a playgroup with when we were 2-3 yrs old, so my parents found him completely non-threatening, because their strongest memory of him was fighting with me about who got to wear the kitty tail when we were 3.

girls rule!
boyz drool!

Shoes for LL:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a9593937ff753acc762ba1c09ab7b4de/tumblr_mwh9opGeFW1so7nuho1_400.jpg

There was a link to a website with more info about these shoes, but the link leads to nowhere. So they are mystery shoes, but they remind me of you.

those shoes rule

Yeah that is some amazing footwear!!

yeah holy crap they are rad

hanging out with women is inherently pleasureable. Nowadays I find my male friendships fading away, and new ones hard to foster - it seems if I am not a sex object to said man, there's no interest on his side in a friendship. If I AM a sex object, he wants to be friends... but will sext me out of the blue at some juncture.

so this year, i got a radical punk dayplanner that includes a "mystrual calendar" - and it turns out my cycle is pretty damn regular -- but only 26 days, as opposed to 28 -- this was after an episode late last year when i was convinced i might be knocked up because my period was late but i had merely forgotten when i had last it

*mynstrual not mystrual

I track mine on Monthly Info. I have a 27 day cycle with a standard deviation of two days!