Search results

@dawn16 Oh my favorite debunked myth is that heavy weightlifting is somehow equivalent to oh-so-manly heavy physical labor (which people love to pretend women didn't/don't do). I saw a video of a gym rat once explaining that he was fully unable to lift the metal that skinny construction workers...

@lenka Thanks for sharing! To an extent, popular sports advice reminds me of how popular sex advice used to center this idealized male figure dominating a woman then bragging to his friends about his sexual prowess, and sidelining other bodies as having "weaker" and "worse" versions of that sex...

@bcubed When I see a man doing a pull up easily I remind myself the same higher center of mass means he can't do the chair challenge easily 😂 it's silly but it helps defuse that competitive feeling by reminding me how silly it all is

@carltonh If it's helpful at all I saw a female tiktoker talk about how she wasn't able to do pull ups until she switched to Calisthenics training. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRW7YvNN/

@dawn16 Patriarchy in action, setting men against each other and performing their masculinity by "controlling their woman". That's why patriarchal masculinity is so easily threatened by things as small as "wife taller than husband" or "woman able to lift".

@fair2light My mother's best friend has fibromyalgia and her gym reps are absolutely wild to see because she uses it to help with pain control, I'm always so impressed by her! That's the real difference I like in women's gyms, not necessarily the "presence of women per se" but the shift away...

@onekrissy1 Yessss exactly you nailed it. Growing up sports were portrayed to me as a form of Equal Competition and a point of physical pride over others. Like, your country "winning" at a sport over other countries. It's been helpful to be like "that's nonsense this is all just fun" 😂

@jalp2016 Yup that's what I'm saying - the difference between us is that you've never experienced your brother's strength being used to socially justify you being LEGALLY inferior. I've experienced that as a woman being compared to men. So my situation is a bit different than you and your brother.

@jalp2016 It's more like - if you grew up being taught "because your brother is taller and older and stronger that means he's more man than you and that manhood justifies him having legal superiority over you", and in layer years even when you don't believe that you still get triggered by...

@lam Glad you don't relate. My issue isn't that men are stronger, my issue is that I was raised to think this justified specific gender roles that I'm trying to leave behind, and I didn't realize how much I still associated sports with that justification until it made me feel bad.

@helenafive I'm queer actually and I have genderqueer friends, so I can sympathize to the difficulty of figuring out "do I just not want to be a woman or do I not want to be a woman under patriarchy". Idk if it helps to hear my perspective but the whole reason I was surprised by my thoughts...

@monty58 There are 100% family and cultural issues affecting me. I grew up with a narrative that cis men's genitals and superior strength justify their gender roles, and these physical aspects are why young women have to be afraid of being raped by men and ending up pregnant. It's taken me a...

@melody7 Sure. "The Brutal Legacy of the Muscular Christian Movement", an article explaining how games went from being something considered vulgar and lower class to being how upper class European men demonstrated their "sportmanship" and thus superiority over women, the lower classes, and the...

@yowan Absolutely it's so hard to let go of that competitive mindset taught in school. I'm a historian so it's been very helpful to actually pick up books about the history of modern sports and how all this competition, misogny, fatphobia, racism, etc came to be involved with them. E.g. the...

@jvosteen Definitely going to talk about it with my therapist! She's great at helping me identify when I don't realize I'm being triggered by something from the past.

@pedro038 You're so lucky you had a supportive dad!

@lizav This feels extremely familiar, specifically how social institutions are built to support male sports but so few are built to support women's sports. Thanks for sharing your experience, this is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to hear about. And maybe you have asthma!!!

@sameertyagi Uhhhhh I'm rather concerned you've never had to think about patriarchal narratives considering the widespread sexual abuse in the army + how famous the US army is for sexual abuse in deployment, but 🤐

@ladydimples Even my very traditional mother used to tell me the same thing - "men are built to be strong right now but women are built to endure". I'm glad you reminded me of that and how the "competition" mindset also reeks of internalized ableism.

@jaxon13 Yup I was raised in a conservative household and society with a lot of policing + sexualization of women's bodies and sports. Because of that, I was expecting to maybe feel "sexual" when undressing to exercise, or to feel hyper-aware of the male gaze. But I didn't feel that way -...