To think "manhood" doesn't really need any one to stand up for it?

[TerraNovice]

Read this article and can't believe that anyone is promoting such a pile of bollocks. This guy actually sued a sports centre because they had a "women's hour" at their gym and think feminism is to blame for all the evils of the world. He has now written a book about how mean the "shehadists" are to poor widdle him.

www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2015/01/02/meet-guy-standing-manhood/

The Guardian article is poorly written. The suggestion that the Council is offering male only health advice at work places has no relevance to the fact he has lost hours on gym membership for which he paid.

I have no idea how gyms work but if he signed up and paid for unlimited access during the hours it is open then his complaint is fair. If the gym wasn't to be available at certain times that should have been made clear before he paid, not changed afterwards.

I don't have any objection to the gym offering women only sessions (aside from the potential difficulty it might throw up if a pre-op trans woman wants to attend. There may well be "real" women who object). But the package being offered to men would then clearly be you pay £ x for as many hours as you want when the facility isn't available and it's not available between these hours.

I think men, white men are discriminated against a fair bit.

As an example, my employer (a fire and rescue service) actively seeks to employ women and ethnic minorities, especially as firefighters. So we have a situation where women especially are being employed because they are women (and shit firefighters - can't reach the ladders, lower entry levels for strength etc) when there are people far better qualified for the job. It's happening all over the country, not just where I am.

They have open days for women, and ethnic minorities, but none for white men. Why?

It does not follow that having an open day for these groups means they will walk in to a job over other suitable candidates.

All it is doing is giving these groups the chance to think about applying for a career they would not otherwise have considered.

I have no idea how gyms work but if he signed up and paid for unlimited access during the hours it is open then his complaint is fair. If the gym wasn't to be available at certain times that should have been made clear before he paid, not changed afterwards.

This is true.

I think men, white men are discriminated against a fair bit

Yes because look at all the women and people of ethnic minorities in positions of power in this country...

The Council have been as, if not more ridiculous as him. How many work hours have been wasted and needless legal costs incurred in arguing with him?

It could have been solved in 10 minutes with a calculator to apportion the cost of the hours he paid for but can't use.

But then he wouldn't have been able to write a book about how feminism is LITERALLY killing men. (Caps use is his, not mine.)

I can see his point actually.

I don't really see the need for a women's hour at a gym. According to the man in question, the gym justified the women's hour in terms of allowing women to avoid harassment. Totally ignores the fact that women can harass other women.

I think it would be much better if gyms had clearly written harassment reporting procedures, so that all the patrons of either gender knew who to talk to if they felt they were being harassed, and knew that their complaint would be taken seriously. I've signed up to a few gyms and can't recall ever being shown one.

I can also understand why some men feel they get a raw deal from feminism, or at least some of the things that famous feminists say. I've see women say some awful things about men that simply wouldn't be tolerated if men said them about women, or women said them about other women. Taking the example from his article, can you imagine the poo storm if Giles Coren had said he'd rather die then have a daughter?

Indeed he wouldn't. He might have found some other issue to fixate on.

However if I were a Council tax payer in this Council authority I might be considering a Freedom of Information request on just how much this avoidable fiasco cost.

I can't really see what the objection is to women only sessions (never having been in a gym I assumed that happened anyway) as long as that is made clear when you sign up.

I find it a bit disturbing that this bloke has taken that one incident with the gym and turned into a crusade against feminism. Some of the arguments he comes up with in that article are, quite frankly, bonkers.

I can see his point about the gym, he's a dick about it, but it isn't fair to charge full price for restricted hours. I think a better course of action would be better security. If someone complains of harassment a member get a warning, if it happens again, they're banned and membership canceled no refund. Everything else though, feminism is not "LITERALLY killing men".

Personally, I've never been talked to let alone harassed at a gym. Most people I've run into do everything humanly possible to avoid eye contact or avoiding social interaction outside of "Are you using this?". I don't think the gyms have women's hours here, but we do have women only gyms and women only classes while open hours are for everyone. The difference is, with women only classes, the women are paying extra for a reserved room and workout, which I think is a fair system.

I can see his point about the gym, he's a dick about it, but it isn't fair to charge full price for restricted hours

Why was he "a dick about it"?. The gym entered into a contract which it unilaterally wanted to change with no compensation.

Saying he is a "dick" for being annoyed about this supports his argument.

The gym owners handled this very badly.

Phaedra
"Eventually, like a stand-off at the O.K. Corral, I upped my game and got a local solicitor on the case. Not because I was overly keen on actually using those 440 hours, but more on principle."

He's suing over hours he never wanted in the first place. He just wanted to stamp his feet like a petulant child.

Oh and...

"a reality check for more everyday ‘shehadists’ who think they’re on some sort of social or sexual pedestal as a result of their gender"

"suggested that all men are borderline sex pests in the company of Primark-clad women using fitness machines incorrectly " -

Saying women are too incompetent to use the fitness equipment in the first place and comparing feminists to terrorism? How is that not being an asshole?

He's being an arse.

The gym do need to address the issue of harassment rather than sidestepping the issue by creating women only times. I think some gyms can be really intimidating for women. I've been harassed at the gym and I'm not even a member! I was just sitting in the cafe bit minding my own business .

The gym could have nipped it in the bud from the beginning. The incompetence displayed in how they dealt with him is more of a concern than his silly book.

Almost all of what he says is rubbish. He has a valid point re the remark by Giles Coren.

And Bulbasur your post referred to his behaviour re the gym , not what followed on. He was not being a being a dick about that.

If the gym cancelled the women only sessions would they be dicks too if they complained?

He's a dick, but actually the gym changed the T&C in a material way after he paid for a certain level of access, so he was absolutely in the right on that one.

The gym needs to clamp down on harassment if that was the issue, not use segregation as a lazy way of saying they've dealt with it.

"Excuse me, that guy's harassing me"
"Well come to women's hour then"

Aeons ago, my local pool introduced women's sessions because there were a lot of would-be swimmers whose culture prohibited being undressed (even a bit) in a mixed-sex environment. The women's sessions were well attended.

The men made a fuss so, to keep things even, the pool introduced matching men's sessions. These very quickly became "men's sessions which women swimmers could also attend". I was curious, so went along to one. All the men were naked. They were mostly posing around the edges of the pool, with their dangly bits floating proudly on the surface.

This, to me, illustrates why women need closed sessions and men don't :)

Actually Gallic that says to me that there may be a valid reason for male only sessions if men want to swim naked.

Being comfortable when naked is regularly held up here as a virtue so if there's a demand by men for that why not?

No, sure, but few of them were using the pool for swimming. It was billed as a lane session. Had the men been clear about [a] nudism, and [b] mixed-sex showing off, it wouldn't have been a men's session or a swimming session.

I later wondered whether the management had made it available to women (after agreeing it with the men) due to misappropriation of the session as a gay pulling parlour. I don't know where you live, Phaedra, but I've cheerfully attended naked swimming in Germany which had no sleazy overtones. Unfortunately that tends not to be the case here.

Phaedra

If this is his attitude right now, I have a hard time believing he was perfectly reasonable with the gym in handling it.

You can be simultaneously correct and still a dick. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

He seems to have given the Council 3 reasonable suggestions to resolve the complaint none of which it accepted.

Plus the guy works for the Daily Mail, so is probably pump primed to be sexist. Bear in mind also that he didn't sue a private gym, but Camden Council. Councils in London tend to run women only sessions so that women who come from cultures where women are not allowed to be with unrelated men can access them. Which is quite important. They run gyms etc as part of public health initiatives. I doubt very much that his contract with them said he had unlimited access to the gym, and he didn't even want to use the gym during the woman's hour anyway. He just wanted to make a rather spiteful point.

It's likely there are women who will only attend the gym or pool during the women's only hours therefore they are actually subsidising his use of the gym during all the non-gym times.

Unless the gym is drop on only, most people will not be getting the exact value they paid for. That's the business model for gyms and they don't have the facilities for every member to work out all the time. Even in their busiest periods, only a small portion of members are there. They couldn't make a profit otherwise.

This guy is just being a big standard MRA who can't handle even the smallest encroachment on his sense of entitlement to maximum participation and maximum access to facilities at all time.