A Workout in Enduring Misogyny

I work in a gym, perhaps better referred to as a microcosm of the Manosphere itself. It is a space designed to foster misogyny and male ego fulfilment; the wet dream of any hopeful wanting to live up to the macho ideals paraded in front of us all on-screen for decades, and enforced by centuries of patriarchy. It is a space in which men traditionally grow and women shrink, and the mindset this encourages has become glaringly clear to me in recent months.

I must be clear that this article is not dismissively aimed at the entirety of the male species, but rather at a specific type of man that I have personally interacted with. The core of the issue is the ideal of masculinity that is venerated and bought into by certain individuals, in a world so influenced by social media superficiality. The gym cultivates this kind of pedestal worship of the gleaming, glistening muscled figure with an excess of testosterone, and it is towards those men that are gullible enough to revel in that kind of power that I direct my anger.

And I am angry, because recently not more than a day can pass in the gym without me having to challenge a man’s opinion or educate him on the basic values of modern society that I (naïvely) took for granted. In just one weekend, I have had to fend off claims that being lesbian “just isn’t right”; argue that the role of a woman is not, in fact, to be subordinate to a man and bear his children; and explain that a woman has the right to her own career not just because her husband will “allow her to work if she really wants”, but because men and women are equal. I have rebutted inappropriate advances from gym members and staff, and I have had to overexplain and repeat myself because “no” seems to have no authority when it comes from a woman. I have been belittled and mansplained to about my job that I am more than qualified to do, and I have even been told to “do myself a favour” and ask my colleagues about a particular gym member who wanted me to think differently of him after I turned down his proposal to swap Instagrams. Because surely, obviously, a woman’s independent opinion is not valid. I am sick and tired of having these ridiculously hateful conversations. I have never in my life experienced such an onslaught of misogyny. But is it any surprise that this happens specifically in a gym?
 
These male gym-goers strive to make themselves bigger; to grow their muscles so they can take up more space and get stronger and faster and more easily command power and respect. They grunt and they sweat and they shout and they scream and they puff up their chests in front of the mirror, preening themselves and inflated by their overwhelming sense of being a man. It is what they have learnt from films, from their dads, and in the absence of wars and in the off-season of the football they create their own anguish and let off steam by tearing their bodies apart. Constantly in pursuit of an impossible ideal, this is an incredibly toxic mentality, and has resulted in a diet and body image culture that is damaging for men of all ages.

Women, on the other hand, have always been told to make ourselves smaller, to shrink our waists and our thighs and our minds; to tone our arms and tone down our opinions; to waste away into space to make room for these ever-expanding male muscles. Subservience is built into women’s diet culture, into the very fabric of our societal beauty norms and expectations. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, so get on the treadmill and take yourself down a few sizes. If we keep on sapping our flesh of fat, we are forced into a starving subservience of an energy deficit. Admittedly, this mentality is changing. I have seen my female friends lift heavier and run faster than these men I see in the gym. And they do so without a glimmer of a grimace, and certainly without grunting, without making a big fuss, and without telling me that a woman can only reach her greatest potential as a housebound caregiver.

Photo by Mark Chan for The Student.