DARWIN, AUSTRALIA — Anyone who’s ever watched women swarm over male strippers knows that they get away with all kinds of physical contact that men would be tossed out of the club for even considering. Someone on the Australian Territory Liquor Commission must be aware of this, because it just gave the thumbs down to letting women get both drunk and up close during a proposed nightclub “hen’s night” event.According to ABC News, the Territory Liquor Commission concluded that the chance of booze-fueled babes getting out of control during the Monsoons club event was high enough to justify maintaining the so-called “one metre rule” that keeps patrons and performers apart.

Deeming the twice-monthly soirees to be “too raunchy” for infamous party town Darwin, the commission was unmoved by insistences that the evening’s participatory adult entertainment would be kinder and gentler due to its high estrogen count.

Calling the current restrictions “reasonable and appropriate,” the commission rejected the club’s request to temporarily set aside the distance limitation so that it could “hold fortnightly Hen’s Parties, where people could come on stage and participate in the show in a non-sexual way.”

Promising to keep the contact civilized and “not allow sexual intercourse, oral sex or any other sexual contact between the performer and a patron or any other person” did not sway the opinions of the commissioners, who were clearly unconvinced that a participatory audience of intoxicated women would be better behaved than intoxicated men.

As the commission summed up the matter, “The fact that this request for variation is for occasions where the audience will be essentially female is of no consequence, as in reality, patron behavior at such events where alcohol is available is similar for male, female and mixed audiences.”

Welcome to gender equality, drunken ladies of Darwin.