Last week’s The Peak article “SFU’s fitness centre should remove its women-only hours” ignores the many reasons that the women-only hours are necessary in gyms.
The article argues for gender equality, which is a noble aspiration: it would be great if our society recognized men and women as completely equal, and they were expected to act more or less exactly the same. Gender is not that simple, though. It comes with a history that rsults in males and females raised in different ways with vastly different expectations. This makes some women feel uncomfortable around men, especially while wearing workout clothes.
To ask for all women to immediately feel comfortable in a gym environment is ignoring the fact that not a lot of women do. Because they don’t, and because they experience much less privilege than men do in our society, women who feel uncomfortable in the gym deserve women-only hours.
Like the author of last week’s article, I also visit the SFU gym regularly, and I also see men being polite and helpful to women there. Further, I also see the majority of men being polite and helpful almost everywhere. Does this mean that I know what it feels like to be a woman? Nope. It’s not even related.
It takes a whole lot of empathy to imagine being one in an environment traditionally dominated by males, and imagine the many societal pressures women feel there.
Some cultural differences also make women feel uncomfortable about men in a gym setting. For instance, I work at a pool that has a women-only swim time, which is used mostly by a group of Islamic women. They will not get changed into bathing suits until every man has left the area.
To ask for all women to immediately feel comfortable in a gym environment is ignoring the fact that not a lot of women do.
It’s not always easy for men to leave so quickly on Sunday nights, but we can’t just tell them, “hey, you know, men and women are equal, and we can all swim together, don’t worry so much.” Even if I believe that, and even if I believe that I’m a pretty nice guy and I know lots of nice guys, telling them so won’t instantly make these people constantly feel comfortable around men.
I agree that gender equality is the tops, and I agree that men and women aren’t so different, psychologically and physiologically. But my belief doesn’t mean that every woman at SFU will always feel comfortable while I am present.
What it does mean is that I need to recognize many men, such as myself, have never even had to worry about finding a gym separated by gender or sex.
Of course, this isn’t true for all men. But guys, let’s keep our empathy hats on: we’re talking about women.
Our student funds pay for many different projects and groups, not all of which we have to agree with to make them necessary. When it comes to the women-only time, I would gladly pay for something that makes a large group of the SFU population feel more comfortable in a threatening domain.
Yes, an hour and a half is an absurdly, unreasonably huge amount of time, and early Saturday morning is an extremely, cataclysmically convenient exercise time slot in the week.
But I think we can manage.
