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   HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 23:21:57 JST HebrideanHecate

   I absolutely agree, everyone is entitled to their own space for tailored needs.

   https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/05/the-mens-shed-movement-should-stay-men-only/

   The UK branch of the Men’s Sheds Association (UKMSA) recently appointed Caroline Ellis as its new CEO. As a former senior director of LGBT charity Stonewall, she is a curious choice to lead an organisation that was founded to provide meet-ups and social hubs for older men struggling with loneliness after retiring.

   After all, Ellis doesn’t seem all that interested in the Men’s Sheds Association as, well, an association for men. This is hardly a surprise. In 2014, Ellis played a significant role in turning Stonewall from a gay-rights charity into a trans-rights lobby group. She now seems to be doing something similarly destructive for the UKMSA. Indeed, she has wasted no time in emphasising the importance of ‘inclusion’ and calling for mixed-sex and women’s sheds. This is despite the fact that the shed movement, which began in Australia in the 1980s, before making its way to Britain in the early 2010s, was always intended to be for men and men alone.

   But this is nothing to celebrate for men or women. Indeed, high-profile feminists responded critically to a recent BBC article on a Men’s Sheds branch in Loughborough, which had become mixed sex. Philosopher Kathleen Stock pointed out that Men’s Sheds ought to be for men, before quipping that there was no need for women to have broken the ‘plywood ceiling’. Sall Grover, creator of female-only app Giggle, also voiced her support for male-only spaces, as did former Tory MP Miriam Cates, to widespread agreement from women online.

   • Embed this notice
     KeepTakingTheSoma (keeptakingthesoma@spinster.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 23:26:26 JST KeepTakingTheSoma

     in reply to
     @HebrideanHecate These are the professional *in charge of something* class; usually within the charity/industrial complex.
     They can't do much and have few skills, but they're good at being middle-class do-gooders and they can't manage on a minimum wage job. To be honest, they probably couldn't cut it at Lidl's or cleaning.
     When they go into an organisation, they often bugger it up if they are ideologically captured. Then they either fail upward or take a trip around the revolving door to bugger up elsewhere.
   • Embed this notice
     @polarisera reposted your post (polarisera@spinster.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 05-Jun-2025 23:28:33 JST @polarisera reposted your post

     in reply to

     • KeepTakingTheSoma

     @KeepTakingTheSoma @HebrideanHecate Purity and Psychopathy, a match made in hell.

     KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.