Sexism in the Gym: From Manspreading to Mansplaining
I moved to Tucson with my husband in 2022. It was supposed to be a temporary stop before we shuffled off to Portugal to kiss the US goodbye. Two apartments and almost three years later, we were still there, working from home, running on the trails, and cross-training in our apartment gym.
My Rocky Relationship with the Gym
Before moving to Tucson, we lived in a cozy two-bedroom apartment in Portland, OR, that came equipped with a small gym on the first floor as one of the amenities (something I was not accustomed to, since the last time I lived in an apartment was in Seattle in the 1990s, when I was at an income level where I was lucky if my old building came with a coin-operated laundry facility in the basement and a regular cockroach extermination). At the time I chose our Portland apartment, one of my top priorities, aside from needing the rent to fit into our budget, was that it had a gym. I was going through some emotional challenges, and working out was how I kept sane.
In the mid-90s, I briefly worked at a Gold’s Gym on Capitol Hill. It was a big-box gym that had Smash Mouth on repeat as gym rats waited at the gate at 5:55 AM to be let in for their pre-work body sculpting. The dudes I worked with consumed dry cans of tuna for lunch, which allowed them to impress with veiny, fake-n-bake-tanned biceps exposed by neon muscle Ts.
As a twenty-something Gen Xer, while I had taken dance classes in art school, after graduating I was more interested in seeing Maktub and drinking lemon drops than being fit. The gym was just a job for me. And the (mostly) men who worked out at the gym were in a category I would have referred to as lunkheads—not to be judgy (but, yes, I was very judgy). Simply put, the gym was not for me.
Finding My Fitness Groove
It wasn’t until I was married and in my 30s that I started longing for a way to move my body again after my fitness dry spell. I started by doing prenatal yoga and water aerobics when I was pregnant with my son. Then walking regularly with my son in his stroller. Then running by myself when my son started high school. Then I finally headed back to the gym for strength training after I started acquiring some running injuries. But the gym was just seen as a boring last resort. That is, until I found my lady-gym.
My lady-gym was known to others as Northwest Women’s Fitness. It was an all-women’s gym, which I loved because it felt like a safe space for working out. It didn’t have the meat-market vibe that other gyms had, I didn’t have to feel intimidated by big dude egos as I learned the equipment, I could wear my sports bra and shorts and not feel exposed, I could do lower-impact workouts and not feel looked down on, there was a very diverse range of member ages, it had classes like Zumba with a kick-ass teacher who taught it more like hip-hop, and it didn’t smell like sweaty gym socks. Plus, it had a heated eucalyptus room with a SAD light, which I dubbed the happy room.
But, as many of you know, the weather in Portland, especially in winter, could be a deterrent for venturing outside. And I was really built to be a desert dweller. So, after I moved into my Portland apartment, instead of bundling up and loading myself into the car on those cold and rainy days, I would just pop downstairs and get a workout (similar to one I would do at my lady-gym) done in the comfort of my apartment building. The only downside to the apartment gym was that I had to share it, once again, with men. Luckily, most of the regular men who worked out there were older and/or friendly types who kept to themselves for the most part. And one of the posted rules on the wall was that you couldn’t drop the weights, which may have seemed silly, but it worked to prevent meatheads from attending because they couldn’t hulk out. It wasn’t my “lady gym,” but it was the next best thing.
The Tucson Upgrade
I liked the convenience of my Portland apartment gym so much that I made having a gym a priority when we were looking for apartments in Tucson. We ended up renting our Tucson apartment based on the price, location, view, and because it had two spectacular floors’ worth of gym. It included much more equipment than I had access to in my Portland apartment building—so much gym for me to love! And it meant that no matter the weather situation, I could rely on that luxury amenity to keep me fit and emotionally balanced. But the catch was that I, again, had to share it with men. And that time there was no sign warning gym-goers not to drop the weights.
In spite of only being in the Tucson apartment building for about two months, I had been a regular at the gym. I worked out there almost every day since I got the lay of the land. And I used almost every piece of equipment, alternating between cardio and strength training days. From years of working out in a variety of gyms in the US and beyond, I was just as comfortable flogging the ground with the battle rope as I was doing weighted squats or running three miles on the treadmill. As a regular at the apartment gym, I was also very familiar with the other regulars—one male regular in particular.
Enter Juan
The regular I was referring to (let’s call him Juan) had a gym practice that was quite grand in expression. Like me, he had a routine. But his routine looked very different.
Juan entered the apartment gym on the lower level, and that was where he set up shop. First, he claimed one of the lockers to hold his deflated ball (your guess is as good as mine…), some clothes, a small bag, and his water bottle. Then he moved diagonally in a straight shot across the room to obtain the aerobic step, which he hefted over to the power rack, where he dropped a sweat rag and took over both arms. He placed the aerobic step on the ground in between the arms and did a variety of upper-body pulley exercises. The sound of the weights dropping filled the room. After that exertion, he strolled across the room to the window at the far end and looked out. From there, he worked the triangle choreography back to his locker to grab a sip of water from his water bottle. Then it was back around a slight corner past the water cooler and towel shelf to the power rack for another set, followed by some weighted calf lifts with the aerobic step. And because the leg curl machine was just three feet in front of the power rack, sometimes Juan would extend his active domain to include the use of the leg curl machine.
Working the gym this way, Juan was able to claim almost half of the workout area downstairs in such a manner as a dog would pee in all the corners to claim its territory. He was also exerting his control over the area by requiring all other gym-goers to not only ask if he was done with one piece of equipment, but four. And sometimes he would also lay out a yoga mat in between his window perch and locker to add a fifth element (which, in the past, I had just pushed aside with my foot instead of asking if he was done).
Juan’s use of the gym was akin to “manspreading.” It was a display of male privilege and arrogance. Jamie Utt talked about this in his Everyday Feminism article titled “From Manspreading to Mansplaining: Six Ways Men Dominate the Space Around Them.” In it, Utt stated, “Manspreading in public isn’t inherently sexist. But when it’s taken in the context of power and oppression and all of the other ways that we consciously and subconsciously assert our entitlement into public space, it’s suddenly something entirely sexist.” When he talked about oppression in relation to sexism, Utt was referring to the fact that women are an oppressed class of people.
The Day Juan Went a Step Further
One day a few weeks ago, Juan took his manspreading performance a step further.
Around 4:30 PM, I stepped into the apartment gym on the lower level and started my routine. When I first came in, I noticed there were a couple of other regulars there (the doctor lady on the treadmill and Mr. Lookyloo on the elliptical). Then I noticed that Juan was there too, exactly where I expected him, “peeing” in the corner with the power rack.
I started my workout with some leg swings and weighted squats. Then I decided to bravely head over to the leg curl machine, even though the space felt like it had already been claimed by Juan. I pretended not to notice him and started to adjust the seat forward to fit my five-foot-five frame. I did this by pushing with my foot because it wasn’t easy to pull forward with just my hands—it caught. Before I knew it, Juan stepped over to me and explained how I should be adjusting the seat. “Hold it by the post and pull it,” he said, miming how this should be done.
I was startled when he stepped into the small space he had left me to take it upon himself to mansplain to me. But that was what he did, and I was irked. So I looked at him briefly, then looked away while I said, “This is what works for me. I’ve got it. Thanks.” The regulars on the cardio equipment turned briefly to see what the hubbub was about. After that strained interaction, Juan backed away.
But I was left wondering, first of all, what had made him think he needed to tell me how to do anything in the gym. If I had been another man, would he have popped over to tell me how to use a piece of equipment? Didn’t he know that if I needed his help I would have asked? Why didn’t he just mind his own business?
Then I was actually frustrated with myself for saying “thank you.” Yes, indeed—thank you for intruding on my workout and not only assuming that I didn’t know what I was doing, but taking it upon yourself to correct me. That made me think more about how, in our patriarchal society, women have been trained to be polite good girls even when being talked down to, objectified, or otherwise emotionally abused by men. It also made me think about how I had recently finished reading the book Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell. In it, Montell talked about how before the word “mansplaining” was coined in a comment on LiveJournal, women didn’t have a word to accurately describe the action of a man taking it upon himself to explain something to a woman with the assumption that she was ignorant about the subject. (Montell, pp. 284–285)
Why “Mansplaining” Matters
I appreciated the brilliance of the word “mansplaining.” I was glad to finally have a succinct way of describing that experience because, like most women, I could now apply it to so many situations in my life to help me make sense of my reality. And I was glad that the seemingly male contributors and voters on Urban Dictionary that Montell referenced in her book didn’t sway Merriam-Webster with their misinformation about what the definition really was (e.g., “feminist [sic] talking down to men just because they can”). This is the definition of mansplaining according to Merriam-Webster: “to explain something to a woman in a condescending way that assumes she has no knowledge about the topic.”
What We Can All Do Differently
In analyzing the mansplaining gym situation I encountered, I came up with some ideas for both men and women to consider when using these public spaces:
For Men
It shouldn’t be assumed that women aren’t knowledgeable about how to do something in the gym just because they are doing it differently than you would. There can be an assumption being made based on the male default. In regard to participation in the gym, this is when women are expected to do things (like learn, talk, move, use equipment, etc.) the same way as men. This is a system of gender bias that treats women as the “other” and by nature can make us feel “less than.”
Empathy is a powerful practice to use in any situation. Applying empathy when entering a space with disempowered people helps to create an environment of equity. Consider the following:
According to the article “Women’s Workout Equipment Doesn’t Exist” in Medium by the Blue Moon Blogger, women don’t feel confident and feel “they don’t belong in the gym. In a study conducted by Sport England, 75% of women think they will be judged on their appearance and ability in the gym.”
Additionally, in the book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez writes that “there is plenty of data showing that women have, on average, smaller hands than men, and yet we continue to design equipment around the average male hand as if one-size-fits-men is the same as one-size-fits-all.” (Criado Perez, p. 157) That is truly the case for gym equipment. If women are using equipment differently or less than men, one of the reasons can simply be that it was not designed for our physique.
If you see someone in the gym who truly looks like they are struggling and might need help, you could ask them before making assumptions and stepping in with advice. But first, consider whether you would offer help if they were a man.
For Women
In a world where women continue to be objectified by men, we become dehumanized and thought of as the “weaker sex” (as the saying goes). Knowing this, I would not have said “thank you.” There was no reason why I should have had to be appreciative of unsolicited and unwanted advice when I was minding my own business and crushing it in my own way. And you shouldn’t have to, either.
It’s 100% okay to enter the gym space knowing that it has been made available for everyone, you included. You are paying for the use, one way or the other, and you deserve to be made to feel welcome. You also deserve to have your share of the space.
The equipment in the gym is for everyone to use, and at whatever their level of ability. If you have questions about some of the equipment, you could ask another gym user if they seem available. Or you could probably just figure it out on your own—you’re just that rockin’. But if a man comes over to tell you how to do something without your request, you don’t have to be polite. You don’t even have to smile.
Works Cited
Criado Perez, Caroline. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Abrams Press, 2019.
Montell, Amanda. Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. HarperCollins Publishers, 2020.