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At Harvard, officially-recognized groups cannot use race/gender/sexual-orietation/religion as a qualification for membership. So, yes, a white person can join t

At Harvard, officially-recognized groups cannot use race/gender/sexual-orietation/religion as a qualification for membership. So, yes, a white person can join the Black Student Association. And yes, a male can join Women in Business. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are allowed to exist. But I, myself, think their gender segregation is gross. There are male and female sports teams for the same reason heavyweight and lightweight boxers compete separately: we recognize that there's a meaningful difference in type of bodies and so we segment them into different groups for competition. But not that the reason for separation, here, is not gender; it's types of bodies.

orionblastar 10y ago
Can't you make the claim that type of bodies differ because of gender, and thus just like sports teams, student groups can decide who joins because of type of body. It's not sports, it is social meetings and debates and all of that. Sort of a loophole in your argument.
- jackson1372 10y ago
  My argument is not: there should never be clubs that are, in fact, single gender. My argument is: gender itself shouldn't be used as a criterion for group membership.
  - orionblastar 10y ago
    Well that's different. Groups go by other requirements than gender. For example MENSA people with low IQs can't join it. Fraternities and Sororities require a certain GPA, ACT, and SAT scores. Computer Clubs usually have a test to see if a member knows enough to join it. Some say these tests favor one gender and screen out the other gender. Did you know that in computer science there is only 17% of students that are female? In the 1950s and 1960s it was mostly women in comp sci and programming. For some reason women just gave up Computer Science and Programming and young men took over because there was a void to fill. Personal computers made owning a computer more affordable and thus learning how to program cheaper as well. Of course if you follow the news, we are having debates over which bathroom to use for transgender people and then some people are neither male nor female so what to do for that? Maybe a unisex bathroom for a third bathroom choice? I think the same thing is happening to student social clubs now. STEM clubs are mostly male because not enough females take STEM classes and there is no gender requirement for STEM classes but they end up mostly male anyway.

orionblastar 10y ago

Can't you make the claim that type of bodies differ because of gender, and thus just like sports teams, student groups can decide who joins because of type of body. It's not sports, it is social meetings and debates and all of that. Sort of a loophole in your argument.

jackson1372 10y ago
My argument is not: there should never be clubs that are, in fact, single gender. My argument is: gender itself shouldn't be used as a criterion for group membership.
- orionblastar 10y ago
  Well that's different. Groups go by other requirements than gender. For example MENSA people with low IQs can't join it. Fraternities and Sororities require a certain GPA, ACT, and SAT scores. Computer Clubs usually have a test to see if a member knows enough to join it. Some say these tests favor one gender and screen out the other gender. Did you know that in computer science there is only 17% of students that are female? In the 1950s and 1960s it was mostly women in comp sci and programming. For some reason women just gave up Computer Science and Programming and young men took over because there was a void to fill. Personal computers made owning a computer more affordable and thus learning how to program cheaper as well. Of course if you follow the news, we are having debates over which bathroom to use for transgender people and then some people are neither male nor female so what to do for that? Maybe a unisex bathroom for a third bathroom choice? I think the same thing is happening to student social clubs now. STEM clubs are mostly male because not enough females take STEM classes and there is no gender requirement for STEM classes but they end up mostly male anyway.