Sounds just like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting
( "What you hear here, let it stay here")
Boys and men love these 'secret' societies. Even the Boy Scouts has its arcane practices and mumbo jumbo.
Women, on the other hand, have more sense. Women are just one
big secret society, with shared, universal, experiences and common interests, all hidden in a language and in ritual known only to the sisters (and unknown to men )
whatever the women's background, social status, race, native tongue or nationality: " The Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin " [Kipling].
These clubs are seldom, if ever, dangerous or even influential, though boys (a.k.a. 'men') love to have them. Conservative Party (Rightist politically) men may join the Carlton Club in London. Every Conservative Party Member of Parliament with hopes of high office should be a member. It refuses to admit women as full members. You may imagine their discomfort when Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister; they had to declare her a member, uniquely equal to the men, ex officio, but they still wouldn't then admit, and haven't since admitted, women to equal membership. Did Mrs T care ? No. She was voted into power over the whole nation by the sisterhood of women and they had more sense than to care about such nonsense; whatever humouring of men they might indulge in and whatever their outward sympathies;so in the poll booth they voted for her, a woman with a woman's understanding of reality, in short, one of them
.
