I recall my ex-husband, whenever he was engaged in any kind of physical labor he would grunt loudly and stare at me, as if to say “Look at how hard I am working.” It was like he wanted me to pity him or something for not pacing himself. I remember when we moved into our apartment, he would attempt to carry way more than is reasonable for anyone, then get all tired on the stairs and grunt loudly while starring at me and talk about how tough it all was. I ended up moving in most of our stuff myself because I took small loads and paced myself, while he sweated in the moving van loudly grunting.

It’s so strange, like he took on more than he could handle out of masculinity, and then wore himself out, and then grunted the whole time as if I owed him comfort for all of it. It honestly just sounds stupid, like dude, when are you going to learn how to exert your self in a healthy manner? It was almost as if being irresponsible with his body and exercise made him more manly and I was suppose to be impressed. Well newsflash, it’s not impressive.

I wonder if it goes back to this toxic masculinity/patriarchy where men’s comfort is put above women’s safety. Women are less likely to be prescribed pain medication when in the hospital than men are. Women are expected to endanger our bodies with hormones to avoid pregnancy when men find condoms reduce their sexual pleasure. Men’s hormonal birth control studies were taken off the market for side affects, which were literally the same side effects of female birth control. So men’s comfort is put in a high place, yet men are expected to be strong, and buff and to exercise a lot. So when a man EXERTS HIMSELF, aww what a manly sacrifice he must be making by compromising his comfort to be strong. Wow, we must all worship him for doing such a great thing. What a gift he has given all of us for attempting to exercise, we should all appreciate and be turned on by his attempts at manliness and he will make sure we know about it by grunting loudly.

But women, we are no strangers to pain! Yet somehow we are suppose to be week. I mean, we give birth, that hurts, so therefore we should be able to put up with pain all the time. But we must do so quietly, because we are girls and women and grunting isn’t nice, it’s loud and it takes up space and implies we might develop strength or muscles and that just isn’t cute, pretty or little and non-imposing on others space.

A couple years ago at my martial arts school, which is female dominated (90'% women, 10% men), this one man showed up who would attend open sparring, but not stay for the sparring class afterwards. He would always go really hard at the sparring, then overdue himself because he lacked the cardio strength. Afterwards he would always be sitting on the bench being super dramatic (grunting and breathing) about how hard he had worked and how spent he was and how he wasn’t okay. Everyone just kind of ignored him. I mean really, it’s his responsibility to pace himself and go at the right pace, no one else can do that for him, if you don’t have the cardio yet then slow it up. And apparently he was too good for the actual sparring class to attend, just the open practice. He eventually left, I always wondered if it was because no one paid attention to him and his manly efforts of not knowing his current limits.