There are female Masonic groups my wife belongs to.

In having a safe space for men we can have meaningful personal conversations and grow as men, where members may not feel comfortable having those conversations in mixed company.

If there are shared experiences and commonalities among members, it unites us and creates espirit de corps.

Those are operative stone Masons. We use their tools as symbols to teach moral lessons.

A man of adult age who believes in some sort of God from any belief system or religion.

Sometimes the ritual books are in a code or cipher that is only known to the members.

Freemason here. Feel free to ask me anything.

We are a global fraternity who encourages self growth, provides fellowship for members and raises money for charity.

Because we have secret initiation ceremonies, some people assume anything secret is nefarious. And because some Founding Fathers in the US were Freemasons some assume that means we control the government and other nonsense.

In fact one of our core tenets is equality, not individual power and controlling others. And each Grand Lodge is sovereign to themselves. There is no controlling inner circle at the top. We rotate leaders. Next year I will be Master (Chapter President) of my lodge for one year and then hand it over to someone else.

There is a recent thread with good info here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/freemasonry/comments/yg0igu/why_is_freemasonry_conceived_by_some_individuals