Clearly it's got to be children first, together with the people who are looking after them, in any real emergency. Which in most situations would mean there might not be too many men on the boats, though there might well be a number of women left on the sinking ship.

Fortunately we're not quite in that situation yet. (Have we had a Mudcat-on-the-Titanic thread yet?)

Thread drift is clearly continuing. But to get back on course for a moment (pending imminent shipwreck no doubt) - the only reason for objecting to a sepoarte group is because it might be oppressive. Which means the real question of what is oppressive and what is not, and who determines this.

I think a good way of working out what's fair and what is not would be to have a mind experiment. List a range of imaginary groups, then decide involve these kind of problems, and then work back to decide what it is about them that makes this difference,

For example, in the folk world, I see no objection to a dance team of dancers restricted to men, but I would object to them refusing to allow women musicians; however I would not make the same objection (at this time) to a women's dance team which insisted on having only women musicians.

I would object to a dance team of either gender which would only accept "white English" dancers; but I would not object to a team from a settled immigrant community restricting its membership to members of that community.

I would not object to a session having rules about the tradition of music which it focussed on, provided there were opportunities for different types of music as well, maybe on different nights.

And I see no problems at all in having a HearMe for women singers only, and I wouldn't see any problems with one for men songers only, but both of these would belong in a side room.

And that'll do for now.