It is an issue of principle not one of gender.

One of the main attractions of The Mudcat is that it NOT exclusive. The first and especially the third posts to this thread make it quite clear what was being suggested. It was to EXCLUDE some people from participation. Whether there is any ""ill will" about such a suggestion seems to depend on if your sympathies lie with those being excluded or those being included.?

I would have felt just as strongly about the suggestion to exclude females from a session. But I suspect my voice would have be lost in the multitude of objections and accusations?

Surely it does not hurt to provoke further thinking on ideas that appear on the surface to be 'obvious solutions'? Once you start precedents it can be hard to deal with future suggestions. If you accept the suggestion to exclude men from a session, how could you then justify an objection to a call for a session that excluded certain racial groupings?

Is it not better just to accept the general principle of being inclusive and live with the downside of that?