UM activist defends protesting gym 'segregation', speaking Mandarin

Editor’s note: The article has been updated to better reflect the criticism against Dhurganesswaran.

A student activist has defended himself against criticism over his press conference last month condemning plans to separate the Universiti Malaya (UM) campus gym’s operating hours for male and female students.

Dhurganeeswaran Veeran also defended his decision to speak in Mandarin, explaining that all but one reporter who attended the event were from the Chinese media and preferred that the event be held in Mandarin.

“We invited all media but only those from Mandarin newspapers came,” he said, adding that Free Malaysia Today was the only English-medium outlet that covered the event. 

Speaking to Malaysiakini, he added that he had spoken fluent Mandarin since his schooldays, so chose to do so given the audience that day.

His decision to speak in Mandarin that day was, however, not the main contention raised by social media users who criticised him after content farm MyNewsHub posted a video of the event originally produced by a Chinese outlet. 

In the video, Dhurganesswaran equated the gym segregation issue to “Islamic extremism” and blamed the university’s Islamic Student Association (PPIUM) for pushing such proposals, and making UM a “breeding ground for extremism”.

Many of his critics zeroed in on these remarks and questioned his intentions of making such comments against Islam in a language that is not widely used by Muslims in Malaysia. 

However, the final-year law student said he was unperturbed by the criticisms levelled against him on social media.

He said the university management had also reprimanded him regarding his views on the gym hours, Dhurgesswaran said.

“So far, I don’t feel anything. I just don’t think what I did was wrong,” he stressed.

Not always because of religion

Dhurganesswaran also offered another reason why segregated hours are unreasonable.

“Each student has their own schedule, so how do we allocate the gym session fairly?

“After the press conference, I met with the management and they, too, said the same thing,” he said.

Female-only gyms or segregated hours for sporting facilities is not a new occurrence and is practised in many facilities throughout the world for reasons unrelated to religion.

For example, last year, a study by Sport England, an organisation promoting sports in England, found 38 percent of women surveyed said they feared being judged while exercising while others cited safety as a concern when using co-ed gyms.

“So, a women’s gym is seen as a safer place for working out, allowing us to exercise exclusively in the company of other women with the same fears and insecurities as ourselves, where support and understanding comes as guaranteed,” Curves, an international chain of women-only gyms, said on its website.

Female-only gyms are also on the rise in the United States, with gyms offering different types of fitness classes which largely appeal to women, personal coaching, and equipment which take into account differing fitness needs for women. 

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