The newest battle lines in the gender war have been drawn, and the ultimate success or failure of the Men’s Rights Movement may well depend upon the manner in which men engage this battle. Hotels in Florida, Michigan and Minnesota are now offering “women only” floors. The floors (which command a higher fee than integrated floors) offer enhanced services and amenities such as spas, chocolates and in-room wet bars. In one hotel, women find a copy of the book “If Women Ruled the World” (I can answer that). Also offered are single sex lounges. Some of these lounges feature (of all things) “Monday Night Football,” where presumably women can enjoy the game without fearing attack from their men-folk, driven into the violent rages feminists have long alleged football engenders.

Indeed, security is offered as a justification for segregated arrangements. Susan Dennon, Director of sales for the Amerisuites hotel in Ft. Lauderdale says "A safe environment is our biggest concern, I know when I traveled alone, I wanted to be where you can't be seen from the street." Convenience is also an issue, particularly for women who must bear the burdensome cross of attractiveness – “...they can enjoy a drink without worrying about men hitting on them.” The idea is also a big hit from a business standpoint – one hotel exec stated that the floors had run at 95% capacity since they opened. Although the idea is new in the U.S. (hotels in Germany and France have offered these services for some time), it is catching on fast.

It is at this point unclear whether men will be allowed on the floors to fight fires, fix plumbing gone awry, or fix broken or malfunctioning appliances.

It isn’t hard to be outraged by this, or the arrogant chutzpah on display. “Jim Crow” laws have long since found to be unconstitutional, and these days two little boys can scarcely hang a “No Gurls Aloud” sign from their tree fort without being set upon by hordes of feminist lawyers intent upon grinding all vestiges of invidious, omnipresent “patriarchy” under the heels of their open toed shoes. Even arch-feminist lawyer Gloria Allred was surprised. Allred, whom Time Magazine called "one of the nation's most effective advocates of family rights and feminist causes," wondered “… if we want to go back to the days when men used similar arguments to defend facilities set aside for only them…What’s next?” she asked. “Are we going to have a whites-only floor for Ku Klux Klan members who have racial stereotypes about minorities and don’t want to be near them?”...Women say they feel more secure on a floor that is off-limits to men, but Allred said that “goes back to stereotyping of men: Men as sexual predators, women as fragile, needing to be protected. We don’t need to go back to the '50s where we had this kind of stereotyping.”

Many would have thought a statement from Gloria Allred actually espousing something like real equality under the law would be the first sign of the apocalypse, and so might be quick to applaud her uncharacteristic even-handedness and common sense insight into the implications of such facilities. But it is important we recognize that this is the very attitude that got government into the business of telling people what they could and could not do with their private property and with whom they could freely associate in the first place. Such intrusion has had dire implications for the rights of all people in western society, and men in particular.

Equality will not be achieved by challenging such arrangements, but by encouraging them. An owner of a private business has every right to dictate the terms of his business with the public including what members of the public he intends to do business with. The intrusion of the federal government into the private business between proprietor and customer, employer-employee indeed, husband and wife - has led to the environment that allows feminists to work their mischief. If women want a women only floor, hotel, club, sports organization or business, they have every right to do that. Men should consider ventures such as this a “green light” to segregate their own organizations as they see fit, and leave it to feminist groups to object (as they surely will, with no trace of irony). By putting the onus back upon women to seek federal redress of the alleged inequity of such organizations, feminists invite unwelcome attention to their sacred cows.

But if men give in to the reactionary impulse to sue, and attempt to close down these business ventures, consider the possible outcomes – if such a suit fails and results in a formal ruling that “a compelling government issue” is served by allowing women only (but not men only) facilities, men are in a worse position than they were when they started. The law will have attached its imprimatur to discrimination, and not for the first time.

If in the alternative, such a suit or other action succeeds and these women-only facilities are found to be unconstitutional, what have men gained? At the street level, only a return to status quo, and if that were acceptable there would be no Men’s Rights Movement. At the government level, men will have fueled the fires of the system that has betrayed us by our participation and in the eyes of the public, stooped to the most basic form of political “me-too-ism.”

Such “me-too-ism” is a perfectly appropriate defense if one is sued, such as by feminists apoplectic about a “men only” venture similar to the women-only hotel floors; it is a disastrous offense, in that it validates the very government intrusion that has led us to this point in history, and reduces us to the level of another victim group, begging the nanny state to assuage our grievances by bringing others down. We have no right to complain about the degraded state of our rights if in seeking redress we adopt the Marxist tactic of achieving equality by means of “hatchet, axe and saw,” rather than encouraging a system where all can flourish free from government interference in peaceful, private transactions.

The position of men’s rights activists should unquestionably be absolute defense of private property rights, rights businesses offering “women-only” facilities are well within.