To follow up on Eugene’s Thursday post, here is what I wrote about the issue in Chapter 11 of You Can’t Say That!:
Approximately two million American women belong to women-only health clubs. Some women, such as those with religious objections to wearing revealing clothes in front of men, and abuse survivors who find it traumatic to display their bodies in front of unfamiliar men, use these clubs by necessity. Other women join these clubs to avoid unwanted male attention while they exercise. Still others, including overweight women and women who have had mastectomies, feel much less self-conscious exercising in an all-female environment. The owner of one women