So there’s at least one type of men’s only space in the UK; some gay club nights are men-only, and enforce this with registration/membership. Was a bit of a culture shock visiting from Ireland, where, as far as I know, this is not a thing (even the most male-oriented club nights _allow_ women, and there’ll usually be one or two; I’ve never known anyone to have a problem with this).

I’m unsure whether there’s a legal issue here (one thing that comes to mind is that I know the UK at least historically had weird laws about what constitutes public sex, so maybe excluding women allows them to legally have darkrooms or something?) or if it’s just cultural.