http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/editor ... -good-idea
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.
There has been backlash to this suggestion, with some opponents claiming the initiative is sexist. Yet it’s a bit odd that the grievance is being raised; after all, the school’s pool already has women-only swim times. It’s the same principle.
There is an inherent value in encouraging more people to get interested in fitness. While body image isn’t just a women’s issue, it does affect more women than men: according to a 2014 parliamentary committee report, for instance, roughly 80 per cent of all eating disorders are found in girls or women.
Contrary to what opponents argue, this gym proposal is not sexism or segregation. It’s a perfectly reasonable accommodation, a minimal imposition in order to make a diverse community comfortable. True, it isn’t the role of a university fitness facility to insert itself into societal debates about religion and gender roles. But it is its role to encourage fitness and ensure that as many people as possible are participating. This measure would help.
We should be leery of enforced religious modesty, but also recognize that religious modesty isn’t necessarily coerced. Young university-educated women are likely to be making their own choices on such matters. And other young women may simply prefer not to be working out with the entire men’s basketball team hefting weights around them. (There’s a reason private women-only fitness facilities, such as Curves, exist.) Opponents of this proposal should be asking what they’re doing that is making their fellow classmates uncomfortable at the gym.
Other universities, with more than one gym, have resolved the issue fairly easily. At Carleton, there’s only one, however. But reserved times work for the pool, so they can work here as well.
And if this proposal gets more young women – of any faith or culture – to spend time on fitness, it’s worth the small compromise involved.
Emphasis mine.
Worth noting even the words under the photo
Sydney is the program coordinator at CU Students Association Womyn's Centre and they are campaigning for a women-only hour at the gym. Response has been mostly positive, but some posters were torn down and vandalized.
So, basically, we have, at Carleton University, the Womyn's Centre making a perfectly reasonable demand, having positive responses, but then being attacked and harassed by unknown misogynists: pretty coward, isn't it?
Personally I think that that the Womyn's Centre demand is not just only perfectly reasonable but it should be the standard policy within universities: a women-only hour at the gym, each day. I even think that it would be a very good idea for every gym, not just only within universities.
What do you think NSGs?
