Woman attacked by man for swimming "too fast".

[acatcalledjohn]

Another woman attacked by a man for simply existing. I'm glad she's spoken out about it but it's depressing she has to. Previously she was punched in the stomach because apparently swimming faster than a man is "bullying behaviour".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/swimming-pool-west-london-attack-b1875453.html

[livingwitheds1984]

Yes, it's scary.

I swim very fast, but I stick to the slow lane unless it's empty because I don't feel safe swimming with the aggressive men who swim in the other lanes.

Slow lane people are nice!

[ferretface]

Splashy is relative imo, I'm a former club swimmer and honestly had never occurred to me to care about anyone's splashes, if you're doing the full version of each stroke your own head is in and out of the water in some form. I couldn't get annoyed at anyone doing butterfly etc even though it's an inevitably splashy stroke.

On thread topic: i've also experienced mansplaining about swimming despite definitely being a faster swimmer than the person trying to correct me I thought that was bad enough, never mind being assaulted!!

[MarieIVanArkleStinks]

Yep, all sounds depressingly, tediously familiar. I swim at a club for at least one or two miles per week. These are also my experiences (and I've been crashed into once or twice, albeit I haven't, thank heavens, been held underwater. WTH is the matter with people)?

These are my experiences:

Patriarchy chicken is much more prominent in swimming pools than on the street. They (men) will crash straight into you without thinking twice about it, and have done on more than one occasion when I refused to move, because apparently they didn't believe that I wouldn't.

There's a difference between being a fast swimmer and displacing more water than the QE2. There are plenty of regular (extremely good) male swimmers who manage not to do this. But the ones who do it are almost exclusively men.

I've had two men in the past 7 years try to 'mansplain' to me how to swim better. Neither were any great shakes themselves, whereas I'm a former competitive swimmer. This is despite the fact that I wear swimmer's earplugs, which these I simply point to, shake my head, and leave in.

They get very upset if you overtake. A bit like those slow drivers who hold you up then speed up as you overtake so you can't pull in. Then you set off on your next length while they bend double at the side, trying to regain their breath. In fact, the whole thing is a lot like those drivers (Goofy) who turn into absolute monsters behind the wheel of a car. Chlorinated water seems to have the same effect.

As soon as I get in the main sauna, which seems to be predominantly used by blokes, they'll engage me in conversation and be as friendly as pie.

It's weird.

[Zerogravity]

Unfortunately there are lots of men like this. One often tells me to move out of the fast lane even though (well, actually because) I am swimming faster than him. A lot of men are so sensitive about women doing anything better than them. It is really quite shocking the first time you come across it though and, of course, physically attacking is a whole new level.

[ScreamingMeMe]

From The Sunday Times:

YOUR ONLINE COMMENTS
Women reveal the dark side of a swim at the local pool

Rob Nash
Sunday July 11 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Jospehine Perry, a sports psychologist and keen triathlete, wrote last week that she had been held underwater by a man at her local pool. Sadly, readers were not surprised. Amelia Primavera reported: “I swim 3-4 times a week and experience some level of male aggression most of the time. I swim reasonably fast, but some male swimmer inevitably decides he is faster, tries to overtake, often knocking me off course or clipping me, and then slows down the moment he is ahead.” BellaFenella recalled: “I was knocked unconscious by a man who was swimming the wrong way in a public pool in the late 1980s. I had to be hauled out by the lifeguard. I haven’t put my head underwater in a public pool since.” The transgressions went beyond “lane rage”, as EllBee revealed: “I swim in a lido, and recently a man was deliberately standing right on the edge of the pool, exposing himself to female swimmers while he was drying and changing.” Likewise Kristina Smith: “I remember being groped in a swimming pool as a teenager and I haven’t swum on my own in a pool ever since. I just realised that I have only been in a pool when I have had my husband or my son there too.” And it’s not even confined to pools: Louise Baker has “stopped triathlon training in swimming in lane pools because of male aggression but then experienced aggressive males in wetsuits swimming over me in open-water lakes.” “Imagine being such a powder puff that you attack a woman for swimming faster than you,” scoffed Hawaii 5-0.

[rumred]

God it's depressing. I always wondered if men were trying to race me in the pool but thought I was being over sensitive. Clearly I wasn't. I do the crawl and it seems to irk a lot of men. Because I'm v short sighted I don't have to see their faces but I do notice them changing their stroke and trying to out swim me. I ignore. I've been very lucky not to be abused, probably because I like a rest between every few lengths.
I've been far less lucky driving. A few very scary experiences with angry men over the years. I suppose if you believe women are inferior you will get riled by the shameless hussies who don't perform their feminine role

[velvetyfeet]

Awful. I had to leave the last swimming pool I was a member at because this massive man (and I mention massive because it made him even more intimidating)kept following me around.
I told him I was married, had dc wasn't interested but he'd say no no don't worry it's not like that I just want to chat snd continue to swim wherever I was.I didn't want to chat. In fact I'd had a breakdown and needed time off of everything and I couldn't even relax in the pool. I didn't want to speak to anyone tbh.

The worst bit was, he was there all the time, I'd turn up at 9am and he was there or 7pm and he was there.

Eventually when sitting in the sauna this man followed me in and I did not feel comfortable I moved out of there into the other sauna and he moved with me, I then was beginning to feel uneasy so I went back into the jacuzzi and he joined me.
I left the club after that.

[Time40]

God, what a lot of horrible stories!

Just to add a bit of lightness and hope ... I've been swimming regularly at one particular pool for 28 years, with never a nasty incident or a moment's trouble.

[quixote9]

Good god. I had no idea this sort of thing happened. I'm the world's worst swimmer. The walkers in the slowest lane go faster than I do. But I love it as exercise or fun at the beach. And I can't even imagine the mindset that gets bent out of shape because they have to let someone faster go by.

That such small dicks exist throws a whole different light on athletic trans exclusion/inclusion thingummy being discussed on the other board. Maybe it's not just that men don't give a stuff if women are squeezed out of sport. Maybe it's that they're glad to see males (everybody knows what sex they are) beating women.

[Delphinium20]

@SnoopyLights that's just awful. I'm so sorry. How terrifying.

[SnoopyLights]

I don't swim, but a man in the street did once push me as I passed him walking on the pavement.

He then tried to say I'd bumped into him, but I felt his hand on the back of my shoulder and he pushed me.

He then followed me, shouting at me, about how bitches like me should look where we're going and how he walked down that street every day (so clearly owned it).

It must have been bloody terrifying to be grabbed and held underwater. I hope they find him and he gets prosecuted as well as banned from the pool.

[GrandColombier]

To the PP, triathlons can get a bit chaotic in the swim due to lots of people swimming the same course at the same time. There is some tactical 'incidents'(looking at you Brownlees) but the majority it's just a case of proximity.

For me, open water swimming is not comparable and there is no excuse for this in lane swimming. But although i have not experienced it as bad as Josie, like many others i have come across many a guy try to race when i have the audacity to over take.

[Neondisco]

I can't even deal with the mess of the independent website. But I can imagine the article

Men are very aggressive in the pool.

[Kotatsu]

Ozanj - ahhh so I was missing something - I'd seen somewhere selling the mini-crashmats and talking about how they were portable for bouldering and thought that was the point, not the whole climbing bit. Thanks.

To be honest, the second annoyance after the splashy club is a couple of the ladies who definitely overdo the talc (or something - it's not a standard perfume smell, but that cloying one that I would associate with my nan), but it's by no means all of them, and I'll definitely forgive them because they are also extremely polite about sharing a lane.

[AntiWorkBrigade]

Probably goes without saying, but the comments on that article are bloody depressing. I didn’t realise the i’s readers were just one small step up from YouTube commenters.

Not sure which I found worse - the mocking this woman for being afraid and blaming her for causing it or the apropos-of-nothing comment about women leaving perfume trails in the pool. The latter winding me up simultaneously because the reader obviously sees women as an undifferentiated mass and because of the implication that irritating behaviour might merit a physical attack. Perhaps he read the article as a story about an unpleasant thing a man had suffered while swimming?

[Ekofisk]

One of DS’s fellow club swimmers was often a lazy trainer and a right sod to pass - DS said if you tapped his foot then he’d just let fly with a stream of wee.

[MzHz]

@Fullofglee

MzHz
There is a MASSIVE problem with life guards failing to manage Lane etiquette

It's not the lifeguards job to get grow adults to behave themselves they aren't bloody nannies, their job is to over see the safety of the swimmers in the pool and ensure no one gets into trouble in the water drowning. Not managing a bloody lane.

Actually lifeguards are expected to suggest if people are in the wrong Lane for the speed of the others.

Blatant crap like walking in lanes or breast stroking in a fast Lane when your name does contain the name Peaty, even use of fins are safety issues

But I agree, 90% of these lifeguards are teens and v young adults and just don’t have the confidence to comment - and when you see what crap people in retail etc out up with, I do understand but it’s not right .

[Ozanj]

@Kotatsu

Ozanj - sorry to side-chat, but I've only just come across bouldering - is it really basically jumping off rocks with a mini crashmat? Or am I missing something?

Reading all this I'm feeling lucky - my swimming pool is fairly civilised - I pootle along in the slow lane with the old ladies, the middle lanes generally have the blokes who don't want to be in the slow lanes with us oldies, and the fast lane has the really good ones of both sexes, with (from what I see) no drama.

Closest I notice is that women do tend to clump in the lanes and leave the blokes to it if we can..

The only time there's real trouble is there seems to be a swimming club one morning, and theres a lot of them, and they're all a bit splashy (but also all far to good for the slow lanes, so I'm still fine :D)

It’s climbing without rope, so using your strength and agility. Women are better at it naturally than men because we tend to be lighter, use our whole bodies when climbing and are more flexible. So we can often do even the spiderman type routes (where you climb upside down essentially) a bit more easily. Unfortunately many men don’t understand that and view it as a blot to their masculinity when we manage a route they can’t.

You are meant to fall safely onto the crashmat if you can’t climb as it’s safer than trying to climb down and slipping as the handholds can really hurt.

[Brefugee]

Where seeing someone dragged underwater by her foot and held there is supremely un concerning from a safety angle? That's a bit... Wet? (sorry)

In the UK whereas chucking people out for jumping in from the side (or bombing) is a whistle and "oi! Out !"?

[Fullofglee]

MzHz
There is a MASSIVE problem with life guards failing to manage Lane etiquette

It's not the lifeguards job to get grow adults to behave themselves they aren't bloody nannies, their job is to over see the safety of the swimmers in the pool and ensure no one gets into trouble in the water drowning. Not managing a bloody lane.

[Kotatsu]

Ozanj - sorry to side-chat, but I've only just come across bouldering - is it really basically jumping off rocks with a mini crashmat? Or am I missing something?

Reading all this I'm feeling lucky - my swimming pool is fairly civilised - I pootle along in the slow lane with the old ladies, the middle lanes generally have the blokes who don't want to be in the slow lanes with us oldies, and the fast lane has the really good ones of both sexes, with (from what I see) no drama.

Closest I notice is that women do tend to clump in the lanes and leave the blokes to it if we can..

The only time there's real trouble is there seems to be a swimming club one morning, and theres a lot of them, and they're all a bit splashy (but also all far to good for the slow lanes, so I'm still fine :D)

[Delphinium20]

@MondayYogurt

Haven't RTFT but any women triathletes here to comment? I've heard the swim section is brutal with punches and kicks.

Yes. I mentioned that earlier-my swim heat got plowed over, we were grabbed and pushed under. I stopped competing in open waters as a result (I was amateur heat but it was a wide competition), but still, I'm sure I'd have done it again had I not been treated like that).

[Ozanj]

This has happened to me in bouldering. Dickhead tried to kick me in the face to knock me to the ground from 8 ft up because I managed a route he couldn’t. I jumped off and he hit and broke his foot on a handhold. You can’t make this shit up.

[Lunde]

This has also happened to my at a physiotherapy warm water pool where you had book specific times. It was only a 17 metre pool and you were meant do your physio programme at one of 6 adult separate training stations. It was the only exercise I could do following a life changing accident which left me in risk of losing my leg if I suffered further injury. Out of the water I was encased in a thigh to ankle cast and used a wheelchair or rollator.

• There was one man who didn't like to work at his work station and would alternate jogging and swimming through everyone's work stations. He hit me (and others) many times doing full powered back stroke. I complained but it wasn't taken seriously
• I was also kicked by a man at the next station - he deliberately kicked into my station area yet we were the only 2 in the pool so he had many other places to choose.
• then I went to the disability session at another pool when they had 25% for swimming and 75% for physio training (they also had lane swimming twice a day) where there were some very aggressive men who insisted on training backstroke and butterfly in the physio area

[crosshatching]

I've had various encounters but not as serious as this over the years. It's never a problem with 'proper' experienced male swimmers, it's always as a pp above said gym people who think their strength automatically translates to speed when it doesn't. Water is a great leveller and it comes as a big surprise to a lot of men.

That said I went swimming last night, I was in the middle lane with an older gentleman and had to overtake him a few times. As I kicked off I could see him trying to say something to me and decided to swim a few underwater strokes anticipating a telling off. When he finally caught up with me he asked if we could just take half the lane each 'as you're so much faster than me and if anyone else comes we'll sort something else out'. It was so pleasant and surprising.