Last year, I decided to start weight training. Rather insecure about the size of my biceps (non-existent) after a shameful arm-wrestle defeat, I was encouraged to discover that Jesus College's gym has Women’s and Non-Binary hours, for an hour every day. A sign advertises them by the door and it is impossible to miss: you have to push a button next to it to get in. And yet, when I went on a Monday at 10am, or Thursday at 2pm, there were nearly always men in there.

I did what I do best: moral panic. Was it unfair to be annoyed about this? Maybe, somehow, they hadn’t noticed the sign by the door. Maybe they’d been in the gym the hour before, and had lost track of time. Maybe it was a particularly busy day and this was their only chance to exercise. Maybe Jesus’ gym bros are actually all non-binary? (I can now confirm – the majority are not). I never felt in imminent danger, so was I overblowing the situation?

In short: no. Wrapped up in the inconvenience I might be causing those men by taking issue with a rule they were breaking, I ignored the fact they were actually causing an inconvenience to me. I didn’t feel actively threatened, but my experience of the gym had been indelibly affected. Intimidated by the presence of men a lot bigger, stronger and louder than me – whom I knew on some level, did not respect my right to that hour – I quit halfway through workouts I had planned, and left feeling frustrated with myself. Part of the pull of weight training, for me, was self protection: I wanted to know that I could push back against a man who barrelled into me in a club, or effectively sock him one if he threatened me in the street. And yet, with much irony, here men were, essentially barring me from training to do so.

“My experience of the gym had been indelibly affected”

The more conversations I’ve had, the more I’ve realised the extent of the issue. Most colleges have some version of ‘Marginalised Gender Gym Hours’, and most of the people I talked to considered them basically ineffective. They are hardly embedded in college ethos: in 2019, Varsity reported ‘intense opposition’ in a number of colleges. At the time, Medwards tried, and failed, to introduce one (surely its male staff members wouldn’t have minded?). Whilst these hours are widespread now, they don’t really work, and I don’t count that as progress.

As the Daily Mail so desperately wants us to know: ‘not all men’. I am aware. I know some of the men I see in the gym; I do not believe that they are dangerous. But, this is besides the point. Women’s and Non-Binary Gym Hours are about inclusion just as much as they are safety. They communicate that the gym is a space for all; that strength is not male-specific. The media’s treatment of Imane Khelif, following the recent Olympics, proves that we still struggle with women owning their physical power, and what a strong AFAB person can look like.

My experience is also a fraction of the issue. I have no major trauma which might deter me from a mixed gym, nor am I religious in a way that would. I am a cis woman, armed with a relative privilege and sense of safety not afforded to my trans and non-binary peers. The very presence of men in the gym during our hours, regardless of their intentions, excludes these groups from a space which is rightfully theirs.

It should never be the responsibility of women and non-binary people to challenge those who ignore their gym hours. We don’t want to, and shouldn’t have to, vouch for ourselves in the gym, the very reason these hours were instituted. Colleges and individuals need to take further steps to sustain the policies they supposedly endorse. To do otherwise renders the initial effort useless, and creates more discomfort for students than if the hours had never existed in the first place.