Several student groups at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, are demanding that the school institute a policy banning men from the gym for an hour each day.
In a piece for the Ottawa Citizen, titled: “Suck it up, Carleton–women-only gym time is a good idea,” the editorial board writes:
Imagine you’re going to the university gym for the first time, perhaps after making a New Year’s resolution to get yourself in shape. You don’t know much about how to use the equipment, and when you walk in, the entire football team is there lifting weights. It’s probably intimidating.
Now, consider what this might feel like for a young woman. Or how it would feel for a young woman who’s also religiously observant, and wearing conspicuously modest clothing.
If you can put yourself in this person’s runners, you’ll have a sense of why the Carleton University Students’ Association, the Muslim Students’ Association, the Graduate Students’ Association and a residence association are asking that the gym at Carleton University reserve one hour per day for women only.
So…several men working out together makes the gym too scary for women and religious minorities. How many men? Undefined. Any specific intimidating behavior? Undefined. There does seem to be particular animosity directed toward athletes working out together. In addition to mentioning the football team in the opening paragraph, the writer takes a dig at the basketball team near the end of the piece:
“…other young women may simply prefer not to be working out with the entire men’s basketball team hefting weights around them.”
It doesn’t end there. The writer then places the onus on the men of Carleton University to figure out what they’re doing wrong at the gym:
“Opponents of this proposal should be asking what they’re doing that is making their fellow classmates uncomfortable at the gym.”
Perhaps the proponents of the ban should be asking themselves why seeing several men working out in a group intimidates them.
If this is about intimidation, why not take it a step further, granting block times to every subset of student who could possibly be intimidated by another? An hour for women, an hour for the morbidly obese, an hour for lanky, non-muscular men. That way, everyone can feel warm and fuzzy when they go to the gym.
Or students can–as the title of the Ottawa Citizen piece suggests–just suck it up.