Sexual Harassment Happens Everywhere — Even At The Gym

When someone goes to the gym, it's supposed to be time for them to focus on themselves. To get in a workout and feel good in their body. Which is why one gym goer was completely unaware when a man was taking photos of her as she stretched, as Bustle reports.

Fortunately for her, another woman was paying attention and called the guy out. As a way to thank her and to warn other women that yes, people really do things like this, the woman posted the whole story to the TwoXChromosomes page on Reddit under her username meow1958.

"I was at the gym, leaning in to a hip flexor stretch and unaware of what was going on around me. After all, I go to the gym for myself, not to worry about other people," she wrote. "Suddenly a lady was walking up the stairs and yelled 'Stop It! Take away his phone!' and pointed behind me."

She turned around and saw the guy, with his phone out and open to the camera app, standing behind her. An employee came over to tell him that he can't take pictures, though it turned out that he had been taking photos of several people at the gym.

"I don't know what his intentions were, but I appreciate this woman so much for speaking up when something didn't feel right," she wrote. "She was brave and bold and stood up for me when I didn't even know I needed it."

As one commenter suggested, the guy may have been taking photos for his personal version of r/gymbabes, a Reddit page that has thankfully been removed but was once a space for people to post the stealthy photos they take of others (mostly women) at the gym.

It's just another reminder that sexual harassment really can happen anywhere. It should be never be the responsibility of women like this to watch out for creepy guys at the gym (seriously, can a girl just enjoy a workout?), but it's an unfortunate reality that there might be someone creeping on your body from afar. And that makes what the woman who called him out so heroic.

Instead of sitting back and letting sexual harassment happen, she spoke up. She made the woman who was being harassed feel safer. The gym needs more people like her.