Why are men always bloody muscling in?

[Ozgirl75]

I go to a women’s gym. It’s lovely. Friendly, calm, no one hogging machines etc. All the trainers, in fact all the staff are women.
Customers are mainly older women, middle aged mums (me), lesbians, Muslim women and students. A nice mixture.
We do a HIIT class every day, run by a variety of the female trainers there. Today - a man turned up to take the class, actually the husband of the owner.

The class was fine, he was fine, perfectly pleasant middle aged man, but it was like WTF, out of every gym you could work in (and there are about 6 in our town), you choose to come to the women’s only gym. Like, WHY would you think you would be welcome?
And the women change, subtly when a man is around. Women were mentioning in an apologetic way how sweaty they were, no one mentions it normally as that’s kind of the point. Just irritating.
Anyway, I’ve made my points in an email but it’s difficult when it’s the owner’s husband.

Man helping his wife's business out is a bastard. Read all about it!

Not a bastard, but this pair really haven't thought it through. It will damage his wife's business if some of the clients who for many and various reasons want a female-only gym decide not to renew.

Now he has run a few sessions himself, and he's not been aware of any problems; but he did wonder if anyone would object to his presence.

Have you asked them - ideally in a way that they don't feel under any pressure to say it's fine if it isn't. Chances are in this scenario it is fine - your DH sounds nice and considerate - presumably he'd be happier too if he knew everyone was happy?

'Not a bastard, but this pair really haven't thought it through. It will damage his wife's business if some of the clients who for many and various reasons want a female-only gym decide not to renew.'

The point is, it's her business. I assume he hadn't been seen before this incident. I agree, it may damage her business going forward if this puts women off. And I agree that these types of classes should readily be available- run for and by women. What is frankly bollocks is the OP's immediate assumption that this is all his doing as part of exercising his male privilege. There is no way of knowing that. It is an assumption lead by bias. And she posted it on fwr because she'd be told so in very blunt terms by certain other boards on MN.