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Two death penality cases in the US have shocked the world: one for being botched and the other for possibly being made public.

What is the male equivalent of “whore,” anyway? I’ve watched plenty of men spend hours at the gym staring at themselves.

Last week, Shane Gillis stood on the SNL stage and told the audience, “I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?” The room responded with a mixture of laughter and groans. He carried on regardless, describing brightly coloured, tight-fitting shorts and joking that men weren’t allowed to look at women wearing them, because they might be filming something for social media. Hilarious. Truly. I’ll wait while the women in your life finish laughing. I had to Google who Gillis was, which says something about how little I’d missed. What I found was a long record of controversial remarks, including his 2019 sacking from SNL over a racist slur. So, the network gave a man with that history the opening monologue, and he used it to critique women’s gym shorts. Progress, apparently. Then came the commentary. The online response was a cesspool of misogyny, and the argument was depressingly familiar: women know exactly what they’re doing. Especially in the scrunch-bum tights. Especially at the gym. They want to be looked at, so really, who’s to blame for being called a whore? I’ve trained in an all-women’s gym. No men, no audience, and women still wore the same activewear you see everywhere. Funny, that. It turns out they were wearing it because it’s comfortable and it works. Here’s what I find fascinating. Some of the same people now explaining that women in tight gym gear are asking for it were, a couple of weeks ago, enthusiastically defending Sydney Sweeney’s near-naked shoot with strategically placed sports equipment. So, a woman is a whore for wearing shorts to the gym, but a woman posing almost nude with a barbell is art, or marketing, or a free-speech issue? The rule is not about clothing. The rule is that women’s bodies belong to the commentary, whatever they do with them. I’ve also seen the argument that this is feminism gone too far. Yes, that’s right. The suffragettes were apparently meant to stop at the vote, and the right to choose what we wear to a spin class was a step too far. Let’s try it the other way around. Men have breasts too. They have nipples for the same biological reasons as women, and men are the ones who sexualised them. So why do I have to look at shirtless men running, lifting and flexing in the gym mirrors? It’s offensive. Clearly, they must be whores. They should put a top on and show some self-respect, otherwise they deserve what they get. See how that works? It’s ridiculous, and it’s meant to be. That is exactly how ridiculous it sounds when it’s aimed at women. What is the male equivalent of “whore,” anyway? I’ve watched plenty of men spend hours at the gym staring at themselves, filming themselves and flexing to feel better about themselves. I don’t look at them and sexualise their bodies, because I’m there to work out and get on with my life. Maybe they should try the same. Dan Levy said it better than most. The Schitt’s Creek star responded in his own Instagram video: “Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.” He added that “more men need to be standing up in opposition” to comments like these because “it’s complacency that has created the environment” in which women are sexually assaulted. “Men need to be defending women more. This is not a women’s issue. This is an everybody issue.” He’s right. Men commit the overwhelming majority of sexual violence against women and children, and somehow the conversation still lands on what the woman was wearing. If a woman is at the gym in a sports top and the tightest leggings she owns, that’s her choice. If a man can’t stop himself looking and sexualising every situation, that’s his problem, and it says far more about him than it does about her. Historically and across most cultures, women have been expected to be pure, untarnished and free of previous male attention. Men have not. The result is that women are scrutinised for supposedly promiscuous behaviour while men mostly aren’t, and a whole vocabulary of insults has grown up to police the difference. “Whore” isn’t a neutral word. It carries centuries of shame, and it only ever points one way. Now women are sharing their workouts in whatever they like, partly as pushback. Some men, and plenty of women, are calling them names. Others are telling them to wear tracksuit pants and a T-shirt. And a few, inevitably, are saying relax, it was only a joke. A joke isn’t just a joke when it’s recycled over and over. It has been the same punchline for generations, and we’ve heard it. Shane Gillis should get some new material– in comedy, and to cover himself up. Share this Gymmisogynysexismwomen's bodies by Rita Nasr 1 day ago ## Stay Smart! 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