I heard him in the boarding area announcing to other passengers that he was traveling to the NCAA wrestling tournament. He was just the kind of bored extrovert that I really was hoping would not be seated next to me on the flight because here’s the thing: I had a long day. It was a really good day in that I got to work with one of my favorite colleagues, and we made a ton of progress on some projects. But I was all talked out and flights are for decompression and contemplation (to borrow an alliteration from Stranger Things).

I knew the pattern with travelers like this. They sit down next to you, trying hard to make eye contact. Next they make a comment about flying, intended to make you react by either laughing or sharing a collective frustration. Then the real opener: They exhale, pretend to settle in, and ask you an inconsequential question about yourself, often “is this home or are you going home.” It’s hard not to answer. No one wants to ignore another person, because doing so would be rude. But if you do answer, they will ask you one more question about yourself before taking the opening to talk about themselves. Because you, young lady, were clearly put in the seat next to them to entertain them and listen attentively to their life story or whatever they want to prattle on about because it is fascinating.

“Wow. It’s almost like this has happened to your before, Joah,” Sam said with a smile. I plunked myself down in front of him, having stashed my suitcase and said that I had a real winner of a story from my trip.

“Yeah, I’ve got a spreadsheet of the risk indicators. I give it to all my interns before their first work trip. We’ve modeled this data. It’s predictive power is compelling. So I see this guy — no hear him — in the boarding area and think, ‘Oh, please don’t sit next to me.’ Well, wouldn’t you know. I’m in the middle seat, and guess who has to climb into the window? Yep, Mr. Wrestling.”

It started almost immediately. He had to engage both me and the guy in the aisle to get settled. His ass had barely hit the seat before he had turned at a 90 degree angle to face me and said, “So, are you going home?”

“Yes,” I answered with as little affect and eye contact as possible.

“I’m going to the NCAA Wrestling Tournament. Pittsburgh is hosting it this year.”

I sort of nodded and gave a minimal smile of acknowledgment.

“So, what male sports do you like?” he asked in an incredibly enthusiastic voice.

I was confused. I must not have heard him correctly. But there was a small part of my brain that was buzzing with a low level of aggression. “Male sports?” I asked with a truly inquisitive tone. Surely, I misunderstood.

“Yeah. What male sports do you like?”

That low level of buzzing aggression transformed into a swarm of giant yak-killing hornets. I turned to stare the extrovert in the eyes, and said somewhat loudly and with a very clear tone, “Male sports?”

“Yeah, don’t you like men?”

I stared at him for an uncomfortable moment before breaking into my best sardonic smile. “Not at the moment.” Normally, I’m a top-of-the-stairs comeback girl (when the moment is well past), but today the Empress was with me.

He suddenly discovered that airlines publish a really fascinating piece of literature commonly known as “Sky Mall” and began reading it.

It had been a long time since I had had to put up with that genre of comment. I had found gyms with pro-strength cultures that we supportive of men and women’s PRs, and it had been quite a few years since I’d had a “don’t get too big” or “you don’t look too big but some of those women” commentary.

I tried to stop seething on the plane because this jackass did not deserve my irritation — I should have been brainstorming and summarizing my thoughts from my time with my awesome colleague. But my mind wandered back to when I was a kid at my neighborhood YMCA. One of the men hushed a couple of women who were there lifting because they were talking to each other and laughing. “We don’t do chit-chat in here, ladies,” he said.

The women were quiet for the rest of their workout. It was so inappropriate. These were adults who all paid the same membership fees. If the women wanted to talk and laugh, that was equally as fair game as the chatter about last night’s game that the guys were engaged in. I was angry, but at 14 still hadn’t outgrown my programming that you did not challenge male voices of authority. But I remember realizing how much these men resented our presence in “their” space.

By then I had also noticed that none of the adult women would not enter the weight room unless they had other women with them or were part of a women’s strength training class. My mom and I would go in with my Dad in the evening, and no one would bother us, largely because we had our male escort, but also because we were usually in “get it done” mode. My mom had added strength training to her marathon training to stave off potential injuries, and I was lifting because my dad opened the door, and I liked the training.

Another memory surfaced as I continued to try to chill out in my tiny airline seat. I spent one summer basically living at the gym, obsessing over basketball and hitting the weights because I had boundless teenager energy. I think because my Dad had taught me how to bench and squat, I felt comfortable going into the weight area on my own to do these things.

I had been lifting for a while then and was benching on my own. Some guy came over and started advising me on how to do it and insisted on spotting me. He had set up on the other bench but kept coming over to my space even though I hadn’t asked for help. He was patronizing but not rude, and he asserted himself so my adolescent hormonal rage didn’t kick in — my deference for authority did. I kept working up in weights. And working up. And working up. And suddenly not only was he not spotting me, but he wasn’t benching anymore and was off in a corner. He vanished precisely after I knocked out a very solid set about 10 lbs heavier than he was doing — and then added more weight.

Yes, I paid attention to how much he was lifting. How could I not when he asked me three times before that set if I could really do that much?

I very proudly went home and told my dad this story and really enjoyed his delight in it. I equally enjoyed Sam’s laugh when I told him my “I’m not putting up with this shit from you” comeback to Mr. Wrestling who wanted me to entertain him for the flight.

My experiences at the YMCA and on that flight weren’t anomalies. Growing up, men felt very comfortable commenting on my body and informing me of whether I was at an acceptable level of muscularity for a woman. My experiences are not unique, and female athletes, especially those of us in strength sports, have plenty of stories like this.

I do think that our younger generation of men are not such tools, and my opinion on this is informed unscientifically by the guys at the gyms I hang out at. On the one hand, this is arguably a biased sample — maybe I’ve found all the cool dudes who are into strength and find women’s strength cool rather than threatening. But I’m just not willing to believe I have found the only awesome dudes out there. I do want to believe that younger generations are off to a better start and that as a whole we are all becoming more open-minded. If I measure progress by how much time passes between idiotic comments, the frequency is much lower now than when I was younger. I also have some really positive experiences of being treated like a peer and a teammate. Earlier this year, I was back at Tyson’s Playground, where I used to train regularly. The Thing — one of my favorite training partners — came over and said with a great deal of enthusiasm, “Joah, you got big! Your traps were popping out when you were deadlifting!” Muscle development is something we all strive for in strength sports, and he was genuinely excited that my training had been coming along so well.

I think in the past men were taught to see women’s strength as detracting from theirs. Not only was femininity supposed to be the negative opposite of masculinity, but women’s physical strength was perceived as threatening and detracting from men’s strength. I hope that this negative perception is diminishing. The Thing certainly is a great example pointing to this change — I got fist-pumps for gaining muscle. My friend seemed to have internalized that strength is limitless. A woman’s strength doesn’t detract from a man’s strength. We’re just all stronger. Strength is an additive force. When all of us get stronger on the bench, our collective bench total just gets higher. Period.