A battle of the sexes is hotting up in north London where one angry resident is suing his gym for sex discrimination.
Peter Lloyd is gaining global support in his fight against Camden council because he says women-only sessions result in a ban on “all men and boys for 442 hours every year – simply because they are male”.
Lloyd, a journalist who covers men’s issues for the Daily Mail, says he is the victim of an ideological “group of agenda-driven feminists” and that “Kentish Town Sports Centre has a social responsibility to encourage equality as well as physical health” under legislation that he describes as “Harriet Harman’s Equality Act”. Yes, three years after she left office, it seems Harman’s feminist disciples are still waging a war on men in north London by denying them access to a gym for over an hour a day!
But does Peter Lloyd have a point? The chair of Camden’s Equality Taskforce, Naomi Eisenstadt, says that the 11-year gap in life expectancy between the borough’s richest and poorest men is one of the starkest local inequalities she’s seen. So why is the council favouring women and preventing men from using the gym whenever they want to? Isn’t that a little bit sexist?
What people like Lloyd, who argue against women-only services, fail to realise is that being pro-women doesn’t make you anti-men. When a service is dominated by one gender it can act as a barrier that prevents others from accessing local facilities that should be open to all.
The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation says that women may be conscious about how they look when exercising and can be put off from exercising in male-dominated spaces like gyms. Running women-only sessions is one way gyms can attract more women. It’s also true that men are less likely to access services that are dominated by women.
In Camden, more men are overweight than women but 72% of people using NHS weight-loss services are female. According to recent studies, men can be put off by female-dominated groups and find it difficult to speak openly about their weight in front of women. In contrast, the camaraderie, blokey banter and competitive team spirit of an all-male group seems to get markedly better results, with those attending men-only slimming classes losing twice as much weight as men in mixed groups.
Providing effective services for everyone isn’t about insisting on a men-only service every time such a service is provided for women. That would be like insisting that all men are screened for breast cancer just because women are. It may help a tiny minority of men but it isn’t proportionate to need.
In providing women-only gym sessions, Camden council is trying to respond to the needs of its female residents. The council’s partners at NHS Camden are also trying to respond to the needs of male residents by targeting health promotion campaigns at workplaces that mostly employ men. So far, nobody is suing them for sexism.
To simply dismiss initiatives like these as the workings of a “group of agenda-driven feminists” as Lloyd does is anti-political correctness gone mad. There are times when men and women can both benefit from gender-specific services and there is no question that there are still far more services targeted at women than men. But rather than attacking initiatives for women, the men’s movement needs to learn from the achievements of the women’s movement and take action to develop better services for men.
One such service is the male suicide charity, Calm, that Peter Lloyd has chosen as the benefactor of any financial gain he makes from suing Camden council. Men’s rights activists around the world have been making donations to help Lloyd in his fight against women-only gym sessions. If these activists want to make a real difference for men and boys, they’d be better off giving their money to an existing men-only service like Calm and leaving women in Camden alone to enjoy some man-free gym time.
Source: Read Full Article