TOO

Or: The Missteps of Gym Candy Calvin

 Hello, hello, a hundred hellos! 

It’s Tuesday, folks, and let’s start by giving a great bear-hug-welcome to our newest paid subscriber, David M., who took a chance on this little-publication-that-could before even becoming a free subscriber. Wow, that’s a vote of confidence if I’ve ever seen one!

Thank you so much for your support! It means the world to me. Look out for a little something traveling snail mail to you as a thank you. 

If you want to know WHAT THIS SNAIL MAIL ITEM IS, then consider becoming a paid subscriber and you’ll GET ONE TOO!

Housekeeping item 2: Thank you to everyone who has responded to the Google Form-- I forgot to put the link in last week’s issue, so this became a weird little trust-exercise between me and the Facebook algorithm. 

My goal is to get to 100 responses. We are not even close yet! The best part is I’ll never know what you actually responded with because it’s all anonymous; it’s two questions and you can give as detailed or short an answer as you’d like. 

https://forms.gle/xw6q4S9jPmYTW6Ts7

AND If you haven’t yet, please subscribe! 

Want to help but don’t know how?

This helps!

…or this!

Let’s get cracking.

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It’s story time, children!   

Chapter 1: The Little Tricep Girl

Once upon a time, in a faraway gym in Southeast Portland, there was a Woman. Kind of heart, jamming to throwback rock from the early aughts, armed with her Poise pad for incontinence and brand new yoga pants, she was engaged in a friendly battle of tricep pulls. Feeling inspired by the Linkin Park banger that had just come on, she began her third rep of twenty; still sweating from her three mile run and enjoying the feeling of Getting Stronger.   

(Hi, it’s me. I’m the woman). 

NARRATOR: Our She-ro has recently been going to the gym to get in touch with her new body after having grown and birthed two children. In other words, our She-ro is a Boss Bitch, who is toned AF. She is so toned, in fact, and her stamina so great, she can out-run and out-struggle a toddler protesting getting into their pajamas after a cup of full-sugar hot chocolate. 

This woman, jamming and repping with the best of them, sensed two men come up behind her and stand there. Despite the added distraction of having to ignore their presence, she still finished her set. When she was done, one of the men tried to catch her eye. She ignored them still. They bent in close to her. She took out her ear bud and fought the urge to say “What?” too rudely. (She didn’t want to be insulting to this stranger who just interrupted her flow. Heaven forbid). 

“Can I give you some pointers?” this Gym Bro asked. 

NARRATOR: This man was buff. I mean, BUFF. Yoked. Swole, in a “I’m no stranger to injections,” kind of way. His friend, similarly-jacked, stood off to the side, watching this interaction and also standing much too close to our She-ro. 

Still, this woman, when faced with the pressures of her socialization to Never Be Rude at Any Cost, told herself  that she was Blowing Her Annoyance Out of Proportion. 

“Sure,” she responded with a smile. 

The buff man, the Gym Bro, gave her “pointers” on how to isolate her triceps and “scoop with her shoulder blades” even though that’s what she was already doing. He also told her to “STICK OUT YOUR CHEST, LIKE THIS.” 

NARRATOR:  And then, Dear Reader, honest to God, hand on heart, when this man stuck out his chest, HIS OWN PECS SMACKED THE BOTTOM OF HIS CHIN. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. 

Making a small joke about how she didn’t think she could “do it like that,” the Gym Bro missed the sardonic tone in her comment and then took the liberty to touch our She-ro’s back and push her chest forward. 

Although she was uncomfortable, she still fought through the uncomfortableness that began shifting into fear. Alarm bells were ringing in her head, but she ignored them. Because SHE CANNOT BE RUDE! SHE IS TOTALLY MISUNDERSTANDING THIS SITUATION! THIS GUY IS A NICE GYM BRO, JUST TRYING TO HELP! 

He finally went away. She did one rep how he taught her, so he could feel good about himself and know she was a good little girl who could follow directions, and then she ran into the locker room. 

She did not touch the weights for a week. 

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You may be reading this, thinking it’s ridiculous how I did not tell this man to Fuck Off™, and you’d be right. I am ashamed of myself for it. I am ashamed that I did not live on the outside how I live inside: fearless, brave, self-possessed. Poised. (Incontinence joke).   

These situations, though, happen for women every single day, and actually our passivity is sometimes a safety mechanism. Laughing at an old man’s crude joke, letting Roid Roy tell me “how to do it” at the gym: it’s easier to be submissive in the moment than to risk angering a man and therefore risk physical harm. 

Also, when a brain goes into fight or flight mode, you lose your ability to critically think. (You still, amazingly, have the ability to squash your own initial reaction because this is how you have been trained-- to always second guess your own feelings). 

After the fact, I played out the following scenarios. I pictured: 

Embarrassment: an anvil comes from the ceiling and drops down on me 

Justice: an anvil comes from the ceiling and drops down on him

Fairness: two anvils come from the ceiling; one drops on him, one drops on his friend 

Equality: an anvil comes from the sky and drops on every man in the gym 

Nihilism: an anvil comes from the sky and drops on everyone, everywhere, ending human kind. It doesn’t matter. 

But most of all, I picture:

Anger: Instead of submission, I respond with the perfect comeback. A real zinger. One that makes him recognize his inherent sexism and his inappropriate behavior, one that makes him feel like shit about himself (but just a little bit). He then goes home, calls all of the women he’s ever wronged, and apologizes. He shaves his head, becomes a vegetarian, and moves to a convent where he spends the rest of his life serving women, convincing them they, inherently, are Goddesses, and should not worship at the feet of a God. 

(Why is this so distinctly human, this quality to only think of the perfect thing to say after the fact? Now I’m living with the shame of what happened at the gym, but also the shame of not having said the perfect thing at the right time. It’s a shame sandwich with no middle, no delicious peanut butter and jelly to soften the blow).  

Chapter 2: The Anger of a Thousand Suns 

He got to puff out his chest, literally and figuratively. This Gym Bro got to take control of me, in my own space. I am so trained in the school of politeness, that I Just Let It Happen. In the moment, I questioned my OWN reaction, because I didn’t want to risk overreacting and insulting him as opposed to worrying about how I, myself, would feel after the interaction. 

Juicy John went home, sat on a syringe, drank a protein shake, and went to bed. He woke up the next day thinking about how he’s such a great guy--or maybe not even thinking of the interaction at all, because he doesn’t have to. This entire thing makes me angry. 

I’m angry at myself. 

I’m angry at him.

I’m angry at the ways we socialize young girls and women. 

I’m angry because my anger as a woman is seen as UNBECOMING.  

I’m angry because I used to, and still, care about this. 

I’m angry at myself. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

(I was once told, by a devout Christian a grade above me in high school, that I would “be a lot more liked if I wasn’t so angry all the time.”) 

And every woman reading this will know that this small-scale example happens every day; when it comes to the ways in which women are *allowed* to show up, to take up space in our own lives and own communities. 

I am indignant that I did not get “justice” in this situation (sans anvil), and although it is a small example, this is not trivial. 

The same methodology of thinking by Gym Bro (that I was and should be open to his opinion of me; that he had the right to interrupt my workout and share his thoughts) is the exact same line of thinking that leads to femicide. 

If a man approaches me in a dark parking lot, he is doing the exact same thing as Gym Bro. “Intent” to harm is not a factor, because the reasons men approach women are the same, whatever the outcome. It’s an assumption that my space isn’t important to you because it doesn’t need to be, and that you have every right to treat me as an object, not a person. 

Men: it’s thinking, and knowing (so much so that sometimes you are not even CONSCIOUS you are doing this unless you do a hell of a lot of therapy to uproot these beliefs) that you, as a man, belong in any space. That you belong in my space. That you have the right to “just offer” some “friendly pointers.” 

This macho-patriarchal ideology is just as harmful to men as it is to women, because men, you are being robbed of living authentically. 

This ideology is the exact same line of thinking that breeds anger in incels. This is what leads to spousal abuse.

And a consequence of this, is women having to think about their own safety, because men are not even aware enough of it--and sometimes actively seek to dominate it--to ensure our own bodily autonomy. Which is a BASIC. HUMAN. RIGHT.

In other words, we have to be the ones to walk with keys between our knuckles (If you know, you know). 

This is also the foundation behind and the ideation/anger/hatred of women for being “TOO”: too loud, too opinionated, too intelligent. When we are “TOO,” we take up too much space. We are outcast. When we are “TOO,” we are shunned, harmed, we are killed. 

As a society, we LOVE to shit on women who are above 35 and unmarried, calling them spinsters/cat ladies, saying they are TOO ugly, TOO fat, TOO old to “love”. Abusers (remember that one guy…what was his name? Donald Trump?) love to deny that they would sexually harass women who are “unattractive,” as if being “unattractive” makes you somehow sub-subhuman. Abuse is rooted in control, not attraction. 

The male counterpart of “Cat Lady” is “perpetual bachelor.” *Somehow* this term doesn’t have the same malice behind it. Hmm. 

Let’s say Gym Bro was just trying to be friendly. His aim was simply to “help” and I am blowing this out of proportion. Or even that his touch was wrong, but his attempt to teach me was not.

No. The entire interaction was bullshit, and not ok.

1) When people are told to “stop blowing things out of proportion,” this is evidence that this type of sexism exists in the first place. You are telling me that the issue is my reaction. When the issue becomes “her reaction” instead of “his comment,” this is sexist, and dangerous. 

And 2) Steroid Steve’s intention doesn’t actually matter in the slightest. 

HER feeling of safety and security > HIS intention

This is the major problem we are facing in the world today: that the receivers of racist, sexist, and homophobic messages and actions are simply expected to shoulder the burden of it. The victim’s feelings and perceptions are ignored in the name of the perpetrator’s intent. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“I was only joking.” 

“Don’t take it so seriously.”  

Take this further: 

“She was asking for it.” 

“She shouldn’t have been out that late.” 

“She shouldn’t have been drinking.” 

“She shouldn’t have been wearing that.” 

These are all sides of the same coin. These phrases put the burden on the victim and penalize their reaction as opposed to the original action. In this, the victim’s humanity is demeaned. When you say “she was asking for it,” you place her humanity below his action. When you say “he was just trying to be nice,” you place her feelings below his.

All together, now: 

 

 Just because you don’t intend it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

→ Just because you don’t intend to be -ist/-ic, doesn’t mean you aren’t being racist, sexist, homophobic. ←

When the Black Lives Matter movement gained traction, I heard a consistent echo from the deep caves of white men and women: 

“I’m not racist. Not me!”  

A lot of people are too uncomfortable with the idea of their own racism/sexism/homophobia (whether active or passive) or their part in these systems, that they choose to just ignore, ignore, ignore. They don’t know how to sit with the uncomfortableness that arises from the realization that “I, in fact, could be part of the problem.”

Instead of doing the work to explore how we are the purveyor of these things, we white people love to turn a blind eye. Instead of asking “What ways could this be true? How am I?,” or even just listening to Black men and women who live this reality every day, the reaction tends to be: “No, not me! Never!”

And these systems are allowed to continue to exist, to oppress.  

Unintentional racism is STILL RACISM. 

Unintentional sexism is STILL SEXISM. 

Unintentional homophobia-- referring to a wedding as a “gay wedding,” or the “my gay best friend!” trope-- is STILL HOMOPHOBIA. 

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My experience at the gym, or the thousand others I’ve had in my lifetime of 33 years, or the billions of ways women are treated this way just because we simply EXIST… these are the ways we are forced to move in the world. These are the interactions we are forced to deal with because we have the gall to step foot out our own front doors (and many women are not safe from this in their own homes, either).  

And what really twists the knife is that men think they not only have the right to invade our space, but that we must be polite and grateful for it when they do. If I had said “No, you cannot give me pointers,” and gone back to Chester Bennington-- or even just flat out ignored his request--he would have walked away having classified me as a bitch. Not a Bitch, capital B, but a bitch: the worst thing for a woman to be. A dog. 

“Bitches” are Bosses. 

“bitches” are subhuman because they are not pleasing to men. 

Here’s a little experiment: who moves first in an aisle or crosswalk? 

Two women: both of them move. 

Two men: there is a battle for the death-- WHO WILL PREVAIL??!! Lol, no, one man will move. 

But. BUT! 

When someone who is female is heading toward someone who is male: the woman will move. 

I have shouldered many a businessman in a crosswalk, and the look of surprise (and then sometimes disgust) when my shoulder hits their chest is proof that they expected that I would be the one to move an inch to the left, not them. It throws them off guard, and they think “what a C. U. Next Tuesday! Why’s she so angry?” I’m not angry, I’m just walking, just as you are.

Take this conversation further into any aspect of identity; when this stage expands to trans, femme or masc presenting, gay, bisexual, skin with more melanin, “too” old, “too” young-- the mentality that others, particularly white people and men, can exist unaware of the ideas of “space” is dangerous and deadly.  

So, food for thought this week, dear ones: 

Walk in a crosswalk, walk in a grocery store aisle. If you are male, be aware of the ways in which you expect others to move around YOUR space. If you are female, be aware of the ways in which you move around OTHERS’ space. 

You deserve to take up space. You deserve to be here. You deserve this because you are a human being, no matter how you choose to dress, no matter whom you love, no matter how you present to the world. 

I love you. 

So, while The F Word will be on a holiday break next week, I wish you a week full of TOOs. BE TOO LOUD. TOO OPINIONATED. TOO JOYFUL. 

We don’t have to “reclaim” our humanity, because even though they pretend it doesn’t exist, they can never take it from us. They can take our lives, but not our humanity, not our right to exist.

So revel in your joy this week. It’s how we proclaim our human-ness.

…And maybe shoulder someone in the aisle if they won’t move over. 

Love, light, and TOOs, 

Steph x