Men in an Aerobics Class

[DaveW58]

I have been going to 3 aerobics classes a week for over 25 years along with 2 other men.
There are about 40 ladies who attend the classes on a regular basis.
A few weeks ago 2 black ladies joined and they have complained to the council about the men being there on the grounds that it is against their religion to be in shorts etc with men around.
What annoyed the majority of the members was we are generally on the front row and these ladies had attended 3 of the classes before realising we were there.
Suddenly the council has made 2 of the evenings ladies only and want to charge the men the same monthly fee.
The Council as stated there are other classes we can attend with our membership cards 5 miles away.
A few of the ladies have complained and have said they will not be going to the class as a result of the men being excluded.
I think they liked to have a laugh at us sometimes as we generally in what they call the mischievious front row and some of them know us from school as being rubbish at sports like football and we do make a lot of mistakes with the aerobics.
I am just wandering if the Council is within it's rights to change the classes to ladies only.

Dave

[joko]

i would demand to be fair that they make male only classes...i know its not what you want, but if they think they will have to start having to pay for use of a room and an instructor 3 nights a week for just 3 men, they may change their tune.

to be honest though, i think perhaps they should have some single sex classes... we have separate loos, we have have separate swimming, and lots of things so why not this? i would imagine for some people theyd prefer not to excercise in front of the opposite sex

[MartinBev58]

Hi Joko

My local council does have some single sex classes between 9am and 5pm on weekdays. I do not know how many attend these classes but I know 2 have closed due to lack of demand.
They did try 1 single sex class in the evening and it had to close due to lack of attendance.
Oddly enough it was substituted by a mixed aerobics class a few months later at the same time and the class is still going about a year later.
I did hear that all of the ladies who wanted the single sex class complained that they could not attend the same evening but they can not put on several classes for 1 or 2 people to attend unless these people want to pay say £50 per class.
As far as I know these ladies do not come to the centre now.
Oddly I went between Christmas and New Year in error to a ladies only class.
The cashier did not normally work at that time and issued me a ticket and the instructor who did not normally take that class just thought the class had changed for the Christmas period.
I walked in to the class and one of the ladies did say I was very brave coming into this class. She did not know me but there were other ladies who I knew and I thought nothing of it.
After the class a male member of staff came up to me and said I had been into a ladies only class and a few of the ladies overheard.
One just said if I had the bottle to walk into a ladies class to do aerobics they were not going to stop me and they all laughed.
They even sugested a new name for the class ''Ladies Aerobics and Martin''.
I have been told a survey has been completed and none of the ladies want a specific ladies class at the centre and consideration is being given to make all classes mixed.

Martin

[Tim123]

Another wonderful example of people claiming descrimination because they are being treated the same. Shame on the council.