Dear Gair Rhydd...

Wrote to the student newspaper gair rhydd today. (btw, that link is practically useless, there's nothing there. I plan to offer up my services next semester and help get them sorted.)

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In issue #752, they said (after I'd corrected some of their typos)...

"Inequality in leisure facilities"

After a long history of living in a male dominated society it appears that Cardiff is harbouring its very own little matriarchy.

gair rhydd has discovered that Cardiff's only municipal swimming pool, the Maindy swimming baths, is offering a service which can be described as none other than sexist. They hold women-only pool sessions on numerous evenings; however, when questioned it was found that they had absolutely no plans to extend this service to men-only pool sessions. They justify this decision by acknowldeging that women often feel insecure about their bodies and would rather swim in a single sex atmosphere.

On the surface, this policy may appear reasonable; it provides women with a chance to escape uncomfortable male gazes when clad in relatively little. However, when you reassess the situation, you can see that their policy is basically sexist.

In a society where image is everything it is ignorant to believe that men are not susceptible to the same insecurities as women. The incidence of male anorexia has grown rapidly in the last few years providiing evidence for the simple truth that beneath a layer of masculinity and testosterone, men may be just as anxious about their bodies as women, especially considering how 'laddish' young women's attitudes have become. In light of this, offering male-only swimming sessions does not seem such a ridiculous idea.

Of course our patriarchal society does not judge male appearance as brutally as it does women's; their status can be defined in terms of occupation, activities and possessions while women are still evaluated soley on their exterior. Still, women seem to have no problem with this; you only have to go to a meat market nightclub on a Saturday night to see hundreds of women quite happy to flaunt their assets by adopting the minimalist approach to clothing.

The other reason given for this disgraceful inequality is that Muslim women wish to use the pool and cannot do so in front of men. Well, I'm sorry, but this is a Christian country and we should stop pandering to the 'rights' of ethnic minorities at the expense of the indigenous male population who have paid their council tax and would like to be able to use the pool also. Equal oppurtunities is fine, but preferential treatment based on religion is wrong. After all, should one of us go to a Muslim country, we would be unable to have a few beers, which is an important part of our culture. You see, the multicultural ideal only goes one way, and most of us are fed up to the back teeth of it.

If they feel so strongly that they need separation of the sexes, maybe local Islamic organisations could build their own private swimming pool without any assistance from the taxpayer?

In conclusion, with the rise of equal oppurtunities, surely this preference of women over men must be regarded as outrageous prejudice?

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I said....

Dear gair rhydd,

Whilst I agree, with reservations, that the swimming pool's policy is highly questionable, there are many arguments contained in this article that I find highly objectionable.

I agree that it is unreasonable to assume that men will automatically feel more secure about their bodies, but female insecurity is far more frequent on a scale that this article fails to recognise. Male anorexia may well be on the rise, but they still account for a bare 6% of cases in eating disorder clinics. Men are generally considerably overweight before developing the full disorder as well, whereas women are usually within 90% of ideal body weight prior to illness. The occurence of female eating disorders truly dwarfs that of male, and the argument for the practicality of men-only sessions is thus severely weakened.

I'd also like to point out that women at your average "meat market nightclub" are hardly representative of the entire gender. You say "women are still evaluated soley on their exterior." I do not believe the situation to be quite so dior. Maybe I'm deluding myself on the matter, but in any case your following statement that "women seem to have no problem with this" is even more outrageous. I don't know which women you've been talking to, but I know few women, or even men, that would be pleased by such a situation were it to prove a serious actuality. Maybe this is indeed your problem, and you struggle to find women to talk to. Hard to believe, what with your self-righteous, somewhat sexist and blatantly racist views.

Considering you are attempting to condemn what you term a "disgraceful inequality," you seem remarkably comfortable skipping right over the more general appearance-based discrimination you believe the world to be based upon. Obviously the supposed subjugation of half the world's population based on gender and appearance is immaterial when compared to the overwhelming sufferance endured at the inconceivably inconsiderate timetabling of the municipal swimming pool.

Your support and indignation on the topic of equal oppurtunities would seem to be incredibly selective. Your disregard of the 'rights' of ethnic minorities borders on offensive. The impression of your views gathered from these few paragraphs is that equal oppurtunities is all very well as long as it is not at all inconvenient to the average white Christian male. In particular, I am alarmed by your suggestion that we should not bother to accommodate others' customs on the basis that, were we to visit a Muslim country, they would not bother to accommodate ours. Forgive me if I am uninformed on the issue, but I was not aware we were attempting to model our society on a group of countries possessing some of the worst human rights records in existence.

I'm disappointed. I thought we were supposed to be better than that.

Yours, Jas.

Posted by Missiedith at December 1, 2003 5:39 PM