You could actually perceive women-only gyms and scholarships as a response to events such as this. How would you react to being told your presence caused bad behavior, and so you'd been disallowed? Why, you'd create a space from whence you couldn't be removed--by making yourself the only entity. However, that's not to say it is an ideal solution. Also, I've never really understood that aphorism, "Can't have your cake and eat it." WTF was the point of giving me the damn cake if I can't eat it?

The adage actually makes more sense if you reverse it: "You can't eat your cake and have it too."

That is, once you've eat the cake, you can no longer hold it in your hands. It's (generally) used to refer to a situation where one stance or course of action (naturally) precludes another.

Once you eat your cake, you no longer have it. Hence, you can't have your cake and eat it.

I suppose that's a temporal difference...you had it, then you ate it. It appears that both things are possible, given sufficient duration and stomach.

Reasons matter. Women-only gyms don’t style themselves as protecting men from women.

The reason for both is "women and men cannot do activity X together because of negative results for the women", they are both styling themselves as protecting women from men.

So I think I agree with you, but the actual wording is "who gets to make the decision matters" rather than "reasons matter".

I don't disagree entirely, women-only stuff usually pisses me off as well - I didn't mean to defend only one gender, I meant to imply that discrimination sucks either way. Just yesterday, Cory Doctorow deleted my comment on BoingBoing because I implied that this comic (http://boingboing.net/2011/07/24/sexism-flamewars-explained-...) is stupid and inflammatory.

That said, there are milder scenarios for discrimination and there are severe ones. This one is severe in its stupidity.

There are women who actually want to attend the LAN party (as evidenced by the fact that they used to be allowed, were present, and "caused problems"). Are there really men who really want to get into Curves? If that demographic exists, then sure: open the gyms!

But honestly, it seems like you're just nitpicking here because you don't want chicks at your LAN party. Some of us find that pretty hateful.

Nah, I'm nitpicking because I truly believe in equality. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

If a "women's" gym is the closest to his house and has the equipment he uses (e.g. I didn't know treadmills were gender-specific) then why shouldn't a man go? His money's the same as anyone else's.

The women's gym only exists because the atmosphere at the "open" gym is misogynistic. It's just a workaround. The real solution is to make the "open" gym friendlier. Then having a men-only or women-only gym would be stranger.

Just curious, but what do you think about Japan's women-only subway cars?