No ‘party’ for single men

It’s 10 pm on salary day and Jane is just prepping herself for a party. She heads to a posh club in SoBo (Ones that she can only afford on salary night). The mood at the club seems right and the setting electric, as she gets a peek on what’s going on inside. She is all but inside, before a bouncer, who asks her who she’s with, stops her. On getting to know that she’s alone, he tells her she can only party if she’s in the company of a ‘man’ and that it’s against club rules to allow single women to party inside. As Jane starts walking back she spots a single girl entering the club. When she confronts the bouncer, he tells her off with a number of excuses, all of which subtly implies that she either didn’t come in a BMW, or wasn’t dressed to signify that she was wealthy.

Sound a bit outrageous Now, flip the story and turn ‘Jane’ into a ‘John’. While it may still sound outrageous, what you get is the treatment that most men you spot at parties have been subjected to at one point or the other. It’s called ‘stag entry’ and comes with restrictions that counterparts of the other gender are not subjected to. It’s so common that its par for the course; only, it shouldn’t be!

The Article 15 (2) of the country’s constitution guarantees: ‘No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, SEX, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to-access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment’.

But clubs violate this rule on a daily basis. Take the case of Siddharth, who was denied entry at Colaba Social, one of the posh pubs in the city for being a ‘stag’. “I had shifted back to Mumbai recently after many years and really wanted to try out the Colaba Social because I had heard a lot of good things about it. So after work, me and my friend decided to head there with the intention of having a couple of drinks and head out to Marine Drive later. We drove to Social and the Valet took our car. But as we were about to entry, the bouncer stopped us and said how many of were there. We had heard about stag entry rules, so we said two of us, but we are expecting a few friends (with girls among them) to join us. The bouncer used three word to categorically deny us entry: ‘No stag entry’ before attending to other entrants. Before we headed there, we thought we gain entry by coaxing the bouncer a little. But on being brushed off like that we felt like protesting a little. But in a posh place like that, protesting after being denied entry can seem extremely embarrassing and I assume that is why most people don’t raise questions against the practise and take it as a rule,” says Siddharth, narrating his experience.

But is it a hard and fast rule We asked the bouncers themselves and the answer was a categorical ‘no’. Sachin, a bouncer for the past four years at several major clubs in Bandra and South Mumbai says, “The thing is it is a top down hierarchy and whatever the senior or manager says becomes a rule. I have never seen a club which has written rules saying that stags are not allowed and I also have never seen one, where exceptions have not been made.”

Curious to know more, we asked him how this process of filtering actually works. To which Sachin replies, “’Dekh ke pata chal jata hai’, (You can tell just by looking) whether a person can be let inside or not. We look at things like whether the person has a history of creating trouble once inside or how much he spends once inside. The kind of car they come in or the clothes they are wearing also counts.”

So what about when someone questions back when denied entry “Mostly we tell them that it is a private party. In some cases, we tell them that they have to pay such and such cover charge and quote exorbitant rates such as, say Rs 2000. If someone is ready to pay that we do let them in. But there is no rule as such. If someone is known to cause problems inside or is overly aggressive we don’t let them inside,” adds Sachin Attesting to the existence of this practice, a personal manager at a nightclub in the city says, “it’s mostly the job of a senior waiter to keep note of those who regularly come and how much they spend. So while unknown stags are mostly not allowed inside, we always make an exception for people that we know and who regularly spend well. What it also depends on is the balance within the club at the present time. If there are already too many single guys within the club, we may decide to discourage stag entry. The onus of whom to let in and who not to rests mostly on us, because after the bouncers, we are ultimately held accountable for any problems that may occur.”

While it may seem morally unsound, we go on to the big question: Is it legal to do so Lawyer Preeti Sukthanker believes that it is. She explains, “It’s the same principle as a ladies compartment on a train. Trains are for public use and yet there are compartments where men are not allowed. The reasoning for this is the presumption that it aids safety and lends itself to larger public good. The bottomline is, while Article 15 (2) states that one cannot be denied entry to a place of public entertainment on basis of gender, a distinction can be made if such a distinction is for public good.”

However, Preeti further adds that there is a caveat for making this distinction. “It can be made if and only if it aids public good,” she explains. Now, coming to the stag entry issue, Preeti adds that while there might be a contention that allowing single men might create problems for safety, going by their (clubs, pubs and bars) own experience that single men may tend to drink more, get into fights and so on, if the primary reason isn’t security, it wouldn’t be a solid contention. The problem is that security isn’t the primary concern, as attested to by workers in pub themselves; rather it is marketing and sales. Sachin, who has refused entry for many stags as a bouncer explains, “The owners or managers want to maintain a gender balance so that the club attracts more customers. So even if someone doesn’t look suspicious, we still don’t allow him in if there are already too many men inside.”

In such a case, the contention of security doesn’t seem solid. And Preeti adds, “When the primary goal for denying entry to stags is marketing or sales, a court wouldn’t uphold the distinction. So it definitely becomes a practice of questionable legality.”

However, notwithstanding the legality of the practise, the problem that remains is simply this: It has never been questioned and hence continues to be legal.