The idea in masonry is that by having something of your own and doing something for yourself, you have something you can actually share and replenish. It's also an art you practice and you grow as a man as a result, so it's not like the binge drinking to make up for lost time I see married people get up to when they are apart. This idea of escaping family is from people who have internalized narratives from sitcoms and are playing a role instead of engaging life directly. You're a man, you do things because you like them, and there is no explanation required. If you can't leave the house for a few hours at night once in a while, you're mismanaging your life and relationships.
> Masons. Where these do exist, they've been gender integrated.
Not true of the Regular Freemasons at any rate - "The attitude of most regular Anglo-American grand lodges remains that women Freemasons are not legitimate Masons" (Wikipedia).
Order of the Eastern Star, a craft for women, is in concordance with most of regular masonry I believe, but some continental european lodges that are mixed, particularly those in France (and I believe Italy) are not accepted as regular masonic organizations. There are a variety of organizations that claim to be masonic or deriving legitimacy from masonic origins or traditions, but they are not acknowledged by the legitimate grand lodges. Some of the graduation rituals for engineering schools are very masonic, as are some fraternity initiations. I haven't done a PhD, but I hear some of those have related ritual as well.
The reason those organizations are not recognized is because they are at cross purposes. OES is to masonry as the girl scouts were to boy scouts.
Just what are men gatekeeping when they associate with each other without women, other than maybe their own attention? If you want better men, they need to learn it from each other.
but OES is not masonry, or is it? if it is, then it should also be allowed to use that name.
i am not against male only groups, i just don't like male (or female) only groups claiming a domain for themselves. if there are male only masonry groups, there should also be female or mixed masonry groups. just like we have male and female and mixed soccer groups or other sports. nobody should be saying that women are not allowed to do something as such an activity is reserved for men. (and the reverse)
boy scouts and girl scouts are explicitly recognizing each other as two different forms of the same activity. saying that girl scouts are not recognized as boy scouts makes no sense. both are scouts (even in countries where the girls call themselves guides)
but you said above that mixed lodges are not recognized. that makes no sense to me, unless they deviate from the ideal of masonry in other ways than just gender. unrecognized scout groups do exist too, for various reasons. the gender of their members is not one of them.
It's not gender, it's sex, and the organizations are different because sexes are different. The things that make men better men don't necessarily make women better women, and vice versa. This idea of men and women being social constructs, as opposed to some sexless personhood eunuch with gendered attributes being a social construct, is not consistent with an objective reality. The idea behind these organizations is they are for men and women in support of a social fabric that provides peace and stability, and not say, permanent revolution and chaos.
Fraternal clubs: Elks, Rotary, Oddfellows, Masons. Where these do exist, they've been gender integrated.
Sports leagues: bowling, softball, golf.
Hanging out at the bar.
You can argue that these had their downsides, but they did provide that connection