Everyday sexism

My yoga teacher is a man who I love and respect very much. While we have been on lockdown he has been running online classes, and at the end of the last class of the week we all have the option to meet after the class for a quick chat. One person- a woman- asked why she was having difficulty breathing in- the answer offered by my teacher was that woman have breasts and therefore the weight of this extra tissue may impact women’s ability to breath in. I immediately felt something shoot through my body- and started to protest. I’m a professional oboist and teacher and teach people to play- my clients have included ages from 7-83 all gender identities and body shapes and sizes. I have never encountered any gender difference in breathing problems. And I wanted to say that buy my connection went and I didn’t get the chance to speak. I was also really angry and I couldn’t tell why. I realised afterwards why I was so angry. It was because of the casual- unconscious sexism that was taking place in the group. Yet again- our female bodies were being used and weaponised against us and being evoked as a reason why the female body is considered as inferior to the male body. Our breasts were being evoked as the reason why we can’t breathe as well as men. And our bodies weaponised as the thing that limits us and holds us back- that literally stops our bodies from functioning as they ‘should’. I am still blown away by this sexism. I can’t believe it. And I’m very angry. I have written to my yoga teacher, and although I didn’t name his reason as sexism directly I phrased it differently. I think because I want to make him understand that there are bodies- and all bodies and identities are existing along a continuum. I think if I go in there guns blazing calling “SEXIST”- he won’t listen to the valuable points that I make in my email or consider that gender has nothing to do with breath or breathing ability. Plus I am not angry with him- but with the sexist culture that leads to this kind of thinking. I want to challenge his thinking in a different way and start to open his thinking . I have invited him to respond and I really hope I can start a conversation with him here on this. I include a segment here. “I was trying to say about breathing in the call and I want to say it here because I feel it’s important. In 20 years of teaching people oboe all ages and playing professionally (and internationally meeting people from different cultures) I have noticed no gender divide when it comes to the ease of the in breath or out breath. My clients have ranged from the youngest 7yrs to my oldest client who is 83 and everyone in between with all body shapes and sizes too including breast tissue shape and size of both male and female identifying clients. Some of my clients with the most extraordinary breathing capacity in the body in terms of intake of breath and power to control and manipulate that breath have also been clients with large amounts of breast tissue. Other who have had no breast tissue at all have struggled to intake their breath and I’ve had to work closely with them to re-educate their bodies and breathing system. Indeed this is one of the things that attracted me to learning to teach yoga is that it provides incredibly powerful tools for re-educating people in their breathwork and I can better support my oboe clients and other clients who are musicians in general as well as myself. Men have breast tissue too and for all people male or female their breast tissue is configured in a different way along a continuum. I have met men with enormous amounts of breast tissue – some of that has been formed and sculpted by hours in the gym- and others formed into what we might think of as a more ‘female’ formation, and what about people who are transgender or mid-reassignment or those who identify as non-gender binary? Clearly breast tissue will indeed play a role in breathing flow because the body is a dynamic and tensegrous system but this is not gender divided along easy clear cut lines. That has not been my experience at all. ” My teacher is an intelligent and deeply thinking and feeling wonderful person I know that I can have a conversation with him here. I know that he will not have considered the implications of his reasoning- this really is an example of an unconscious invalidation writ large. So for me it is about challenging that- and opening a dialogue. And while I can’t let that sexism go unchallenged without direct action, I also need to call it out as sexism here too and especially because it is they type of sexism that we women experience everyday and that can just slide by. Sadly we need to be vigilant so that we don’t let these things go by- and so we don’t allow sexist beliefs about out bodies to shape our lives. Sadly we need to do that work because the world is sexist and is against us. We need that vigilance so we can take care and spot it when it’s there and not be subject to it. That’s why I’ve written this post. It is possible that the woman in my yoga class may now be thinking consciously that maybe her breasts are the thing that stops her breathing in- and she can’t do anything about that. And even if she isn’t thinking about it- the message is there and the damage is done. And it’s sexist and not true. This is an example of how everyday sexism is extraordinarily damaging to us. To our health and wellbeing. And how it can happen without us even realising it in a gentle chat after a yoga class.