We're not. We're exercising too.
Just a few pointers:
That ponytail doesn't make you look virile. It makes you look virulent, and does nothing to hide the fact that the front of your head is bald.
The tan makes you look like an old piece of leather. Or a tortoise. You take your pick.
The t-shirt saying 'If I'm right 98% of the time, who cares about the rest' says it all. You're right about that.
I wasn't staring at you in admiration, I was staring at you to see if I could shame you into looking away. Yay! It worked, but you just shifted your gaze to the next female across.
If I never look at you again, it's not because I fear Your Awsumness, it's because from now on, you don't exist. No biggie.
Have a nice day.
(Oh my, this was the first LOLcat I found this morning. How apt.)
18 comments:
And they wonder why women want women-only gyms.
In burkhas.
Oh god! I think the only think I dislike worse at gyms is the trapped-with-a-talker middle-aged man who talks at you throughout a whole cycle class--and you can't escape because you're both on stationary bikes.
Re the staring at the breast caper: I used to introduce them separately to the idiot in question. Which surprisingly always worked. And is it because their genitals are so HUGE that men on buses (or indeed any shared seat) have to sit with their legs apart taking up a seat and a half.
Love peter pan kitteh - thank you
Yuk. Yet another reason to avoid gymnasiums - or should that be gymnasia. Gah! Latin plurals. Anyway, you get my drift.
Yes, good grief. The only reason I don't go to an all-women gym is that I wouldn't go to it, because it would be off my flight-path. This gym suits me great, because it's at my local shops and on the way to work.
There are a number of annoying males, and I don't know why they are more annoying than the females.
There's also Mr Stretch, who wears those short shorts that flare, then does acrobatic leg stretches right next to the fitballs, so that you have to walk close to him averting your eyes from the undy exhibition to get a ball. Last week I threw the ball past him into the corner. I think he knows I don't like going too close to him now.
Actually, that middle statement was utterly ridiculous wasn't it? The story of Mr STretch illustrates why they are more annoying.
There's also some nice men who keep to themselves. I'm very fond (in a non-personal way) of one who has obviously had a stroke or something and is stomping his way back to health on the treadmill so heavily that it moves forward a metre every time. The staff just wait until he's left and then quietly move it back.
I know that man! I asked him if a friend had bought the shirt for him!
And I know that other man, the stretchy one who is about 100 and looks 50 with a Physsy spray on tan, right?
Yairs. The first one has too many shades of the Albatross about him for me to cut him any slack ;)
No, Kerryn, nobody wonders why you want women-only gyms, men least of all. Take the experience of one Californian establishment. Forced by 'equality' laws to admit females the consequences were by no means untypical.
They began to be felt when 'powerful, independent wimmin' said they were 'threatened' by the presence of the men they had demanded the right to join on the treadmill, men they were now accusing of ‘looking at our breasts’. Management responded. A schedule was organized and rotated built around separate times of day for each sex. Sadly the poor dears continued to feel ‘uncomfortable’. Weren’t there very often men on the premises even as women were arriving? It wasn’t good enough, so with further threats of legal action hanging over management’s heads things were changed yet again, this time allocating each sex different days of the week – two days for women, three for men.
But women said two days a week wasn’t enough. Why couldn’t THEY have three? The arrangement was clearly 'sexist'. It was 'unfair' and, being ‘unfair to women’, probably illegal. Once again everyone rolled over. The club altered its bookings procedure to allow only 2 days for men thereafter, 3 for women.
That was when they said the days themselves might not be the right ones, and that a more flexible schedule could and should be implemented, built around ‘the needs of modern women’. They didn’t want trouble of course, but they would certainly press their case if the club forced them to go to law….Result? Another victory – but this time complete. Desperate to avoid further trouble the club announced it would accept only women members in future.
Why do you behave so contemptibly? In certain areas of life men prefer mixing with other men, just as women seek to preserve certain aspects of life for the company of other women, and since you are not diminished or harmed in any way by exclusion your only reason for manipulating circumstances in this way is a desire to take away men’s pleasure, and to do so because the law says you can. You are motivated by spite, and you are spiteful because you, as a sex, are weak and conniving and cowardly.
That is why you insist everyone believe the opposite. Feminism is not about ‘equality’. It is about gaining the upper hand. And just as spite is not a good or sufficient reason for making any request, since there are no grounds for it, there should be none for compliance.
I wonder if this post (I must be a ‘misogynist’ - right?) will even last the day? QED.
As the character of Cooper says in the film Dog Soldiers: 'New woman. Same old shite.'
Good morning Antony
I was wondering if i was going to attract some heat from this post... I'm not going to take the comment off, but if it starts a thread that disintegrates into pure (I first typed 'pyre', which also fits) nastiness, I'll close commenting on the post.
I'm sure Kerryn will have a response to this sometime.
Personally, I have no problem with men & women exercising together as long as they behave civilly to each other. I don't find ogling a particularly civil act; I'm a people-watcher, but I don't do it so obviously that it makes the watched feel uncomfortable.
There is also a sign in the gym asking 'people' to refrain from loud conversations that might make others uncomfortable and excessive grunting as they lift weights. I might ask them to include excessive ogling as well.
Golly. That was a bit of an over reaction. All you were saying was that you didn't want people ogling your breasts while you excercise. This would be equally offensive from anyone of any sex. Just happened that in this case, it was a man.
Now you're going to instigate an end to society as we know it.
Crumbs, Ampy. You have a lot to answer for.
I just started Crossfit. Its bloody tough (and expensive) but I'm really enjoying it. You learn how to lift weights properly, climb ropes and really push yourself. Everyone is really cool, no macho crap and they cheer you on to finish the Workout of the Day. Fist bumps all around. Grunting and dropping weights is not only encouraged but unavoidable.
Antony....What was the name of this gym? I've googled but can't find anything.
@AMPERSAND DUCK – Thank you for allowing the post. I understand fears that what I have said may attract abuse. Surely, however, if it does, the proper response is to remove the abuse? You are scarcely bound by some half-assed public service remit I realize. Then again isn’t free speech offensive speech by definition?
We would hardly need legal safeguards for it if it were not. People ban opinions they disagree with, and for no better reason than they disagree with them.
I'd amend slightly my somewhat blunt assessment of the female nature if I may. The chief characteristics are stated. What I did not state was the value of these in evolutionary terms and, since they are hard to over-estimate, they should be borne in mind. All I meant to imply was that man (a collective noun and not an insult) operates within a universal framework and is subject to the same laws, that men and women are complimentary, not identical, and that in short differential physiology implies differential psychology. Biology is not destiny among individuals it is true. Across groups the idea is almost impossible to defend, which may be why we demonize it.
I couldn’t agree more about how unpleasant it is to be ogled, at least when not suited to convenience (the interstices between this circumstance and where absence itself becomes a cause for complaint being where plastic surgeons make their living presumably). But as you again imply this is very much a matter of good manners.
It shouldn’t need a sign. It shouldn’t need a law either. Once upon time people knew how impolite it was to stare. Hardly anyone is brought up to observe the social niceties in our exciting new society, however, nor indeed feel any obligation to observe them where they even recognize their existence, and having chosen a ‘rights’ culture to substitute for an older way of doing things that served us quite well the irony of this sort of thing becoming a cause for complaint should not be lost on us.
Put up your sign. A contest between ‘women’s rights’ and the more generic ‘human rights’ should be interesting (if the gym owner’s a man I fancy he’ll be too cowed to let the latter trump the former). There’s probably only one way to resolve the matter you know. As comedian Harry Hill is wont to say: ‘Fight!’
@CAT DRAWINGS – I strive to demonstrate why Kerryn’s high moral tone is unjustified. You respond by defending, or appearing to, an original post I never actually attacked (see comments on good manners above)? Is this devious female logic or am I missing something?
Appealing to the innocence or otherwise of a complaint is a little disingenuous too I might add, and leavening the loaf by including the possibility of being ogled by another woman scarcely any less so. You know perfectly well the war against men does not include women, especially not homosexual women, whose untouchable position in the pantheon of modern (modernity’s?) victims might make even the site-owner think twice about lodging an objection (not least if she harboured religious opinions of interest to newspapers).
Again the mind boggles: ’women’s rights’ or ‘homosexual women’s rights’? Over to you Harry… Opinion betrays a particular cast of mind. Kerryn’s include gender politics. I was responding to that, nothing else.
@Cozalcoatl – It must be ten years at least since I read the article, well before national newspapers finished uploading their archives. English broadsheets in particular took time to adjust to life online. The piece was sympathetic to feminism. I just can’t remember who wrote it nor even where it appeared (try the Telegraph).
I’m aware your wish to find out more could be an attempt to distract from the irresistible counter-argument it presents by casting doubt on the story’s provenance – and my integrity – but I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust me. I'm telling the truth. The story may have been invention of course. The account I’ve given of what I read is not.
The gender-shifting gym sounds like an urban legend to me.
I must admit it doesn't appear to be listed by Snopes.
Funny that Antony assumes I am female.
I was once at the gym where an older man was hanging around (quite literally, no underwear and no jock strap), until I went to the management and complained that this freak was exposing himself. They asked him to leave, but I think he should have been arrested. It was really disgusting.
Keep your eyes of my tits. Simple, really.
Morning ladies...
@Cat Drawings - A reasonable enough inference unless you have the recreational interests of a minor Bond villain: inference you understand - not proof. I'm sorry if I was wrong, but how am I to know anyway? You again fail to answer my point I see. Definitely female..... :)
@Peter - Exactly how much 'news' is made up in the press and on TV I am only now coming to understand, so you may have a point but are not necessarily right in this case. The article was years ago, remember, probably before newspapers fully uploaded their archive.
As to Snopes go here (one of many such pages): http://www.usacarry.com/forums/off-topic/12469-snopes-exposed.html. Using Snopes is like a Russian communist checking Pravda for human rights abuses.
@three-hundred-and-sixty-five - dare I ask if you are female? If so you might be interested (and you can check this) in a ten-year USCL study on gender psychology. When college-age girls were shown pictures of elderly men whose appearance suggested considerable material wealth a huge majority (70% if memory serves, though it may not) said they'd consider a relationship with them. The same man, in his seventies, got a much less favourable response when the photographs indicated a poor-to-middle-class background. Around 80% of college-age boys, by contrast, said they would consider marrying a barmaid or waitress just so long as she was sexually desirable (bless 'em).
Ask the old geezer what he does for a living next time you see him. You never know.... ('Shoo, Shoo - go away you...you MAN you...!)
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