Can the Girls Have the Club Back, Please?

Sorina Condon
1 day ago
5 min read

Why does nightlife feel like it no longer belongs to the girls? I hesitated to publish this piece because conversations about men and dating online are often flattened into “women hate men” discourse. That isn’t what this is. Any respectful man is just as uncomfortable with the constant harassment women experience.

What started as a joke about the absurdity of certain men on a night out became a much bigger question: Why does nightlife suddenly feel so different for women?

The Night I Realized It Wasn’t Just Me

When I was a teenager, a whopping two years ago, I had this perception that nightlife would look something like the scenes I watched in angsty 2000s dramas like Gossip Girl or The O.C., filled with spontaneity, crowded house parties, and the kind of chaotic, glamorous freedom that made those shows feel so intoxicating.

Reality quickly hit. The girls’ night out I had imagined was not as glamorous after all. It was overpriced drinks, phones out recording, men fighting to get behind the DJ or onto platforms as they flicked their wrists as though conducting the crowd below them, sweat dripping onto everyone.

I didn’t fully realize how exhausting this had become until I went to a drag event at a nightclub in Paris. It was one of those rare nights where my friends and I could just have fun and dance without a group of guys hovering around us, harassing one of us with questions, commenting on our bodies, or acting like buying us a drink meant we owed them something in return.

The Online Conversation

I realized I wasn't the only one feeling this way when videos about “men on platforms” began flooding my For You page. One TikTok posted by creator @teagsintoronto simply shows rows of men dancing on elevated platforms in a Nashville club while she and her friend stare into the camera in disbelief. The on-screen caption reads, “The epidemic of men being on the platforms in the club is out of control,” while the caption underneath simply pleads: “Get OFF.”

The #MenOnPlatforms hashtag has since been filled with women documenting remarkably similar experiences in cities around the world.

Who Is Nightlife Built For?

The trending hashtag made me wonder if the problem was less about men being in these spaces and more about who these spaces have been designed for. One of the clearest explanations came from nightlife promoter and TikTok creator Sebastian (@southbeachseb3.00), who has worked in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. Responding to the growing conversation online, he argued that nightlife is declining “because men want to be the baddies.”

He argues that promoter tables, once intended to create a social atmosphere, have increasingly become spaces where large groups of men occupy the room themselves.

“Now you're taking up space… You're making it uncomfortable. There's no space. You're standing up on top of the couch.”

The atmosphere has started to feel less like a place for socializing and more like a space where people are constantly performing and showing off.

The Drink Timer Mentality

Rather than viewing buying a drink as the beginning of a conversation, he argues that some men treat it as an investment, expecting an immediate return. “You spent $15 on a drink and it's like a timer starts in [their] head.” Women, he says, recognize that entitlement almost immediately. “They can see it. They can sense it.”

Friend Testimonial

Sebastian’s observations reminded me of a story one friend, who asked to remain anonymous, shared about a guy she used to date. It perfectly captured how much value some men place on simply occupying space.

“Last year, I was going to a frat party with a guy I used to date at a small college where there wasn't much else to do. The house was packed, with everyone squeezed into one or two rooms. Around the edges were raised platforms where a lot of girls were standing, mostly to get out of the crowd and actually see what was going on. The guy pulled me up onto one of the platforms with him, and I immediately noticed it was almost entirely girls up there, except for him. Maybe a minute later, one of the frat guys came over and told him to get down. He was so annoyed and started complaining to his friend in the fraternity, asking why he had been kicked off. He straight up just said, ‘Only hot girls are allowed up there.’”

What stuck with me wasn’t that he was asked to get down. It was how offended he was at being excluded from a space that, for once, wasn't centered around him.

Peggy Gou

A few weeks later, I found myself waiting nearly twelve hours to see Peggy Gou perform in Paris. The moment she came onstage, groups of men pushed through the crowd to film themselves and the performance, turning what had been a respectful audience into another competition for visibility. Once again, I spent more time navigating men than enjoying the music. It felt less like they were getting closer for the music and more like they were trying to get their cameras closer to the scene.

That feeling isn't unique to nightlife. In a 2024 editorial introducing a special issue of Gender & Development on gender and public space, Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola and her colleagues argue that women often experience public spaces differently because they are forced to constantly negotiate safety, harassment, and access. Nightlife may simply be another version of that broader reality.

What Gen Z Believes (Ipsos)

Nightlife alone cannot explain changing attitudes toward gender. The conversation I was seeing online about gender didn't stop at nightlife. Around the same time, I started seeing headlines about new research on Gen Z and changing attitudes toward gender roles.

An Ipsos survey conducted across 29 countries in partnership with King’s College London found that 31% of Gen Z men agreed that “a wife should always obey her husband,” while one in three believed husbands should have the final say in important decisions. At the same time, the report found that many young men also expressed admiration for successful women. Professor Heejung Chung, a professor of sociology and social policy at King’s College London, describes this contradiction as a “duality” of contemporary gender attitudes.

I am not arguing that women should stop going out, nor am I suggesting every man contributes to this culture. I'm asking why so many women across cities, countries, and cultures seem to be telling notably similar stories.

Maybe the girls’ night out was never about excluding men. Maybe it was about having one space where women could dance, celebrate, and exist without constantly negotiating male attention. Nightlife doesn't create gender norms. It reflects them.

The issue isn't that men are present in nightlife. They've always been. It's that many women feel nightlife has shifted from a place where they participated to one where they are expected to perform, accommodate, or avoid.

Sources

Ipsos & King's College London. International Women's Day Survey (2026).

Chung, Heejung. Commentary on the Ipsos survey findings.

Gqola, P. D., Perera, I., Phadke, S., Shahrokni, N., Zaragocin, S., Satija, S., & Ghosh, A. (2024). Gender and Public Space. Gender & Development, 32(1–2).

TikTok by @teagsintoronto.

TikTok by @southbeachesb3.00 (Sebastian).