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In the previous chapter, I highlighted the psycho-emotional disablism participants were subject to in the gym and how these negative experiences could act as barriers to

exercise participation. Rather than deter participants from continuing to exercise in this space, the negative emotions they associated with the gym (anger, hurt, frustration) instilled in them a desire to continue attending. This desire was not only to improve their own health and well- being, but a need to ensure others were not subject to the same discriminatory practices they had experienced:

Brenda: “What I’d gone through made me so angry that every time I came back from the gym having seen and experienced those boys making jokes, sniggering, telling me to do things that would hurt me I just felt so emotionally drained from keeping my mouth shut. Then something just snapped and I decided I was the only one suffering from being silent so I decided the next time they were horrible I would say something. I went in with a new purpose and was almost looking for something to fight about (laughs).”

ER: “What happened the first time you did something?”

Brenda: “Well, there’s a lovely lady in a wheelchair who has cerebral palsy and she likes walking on the treadmill. I used to help her from her chair on the treadmill but they’re right at the front window. I don’t think they liked her being there right at the front in the big glass window because one day they put her on another machine away from the window saying she didn’t need to use it. Anyway, he put her on this machine as he said that it would be better for her. I said “if you don’t want to do the running machine that’s entirely up to you but if you do want to do it and you’ve been doing it for 3 years and it’s helped you why would you want to lose that skill and the muscles

113 that you must have doing that?” When I spoke to him (gym instructor) about it he didn’t even look me in the face about it and walked away.”

ER: “Wow. How did you feel doing that? Standing up to him I mean.”

Brenda: “I didn't get the response I wanted but I felt brilliant having said something. Like a weight had been lifted and I didn’t have that angry ball in your chest feeling when I left. That just cemented for me that it wasn't a case of wanting to fight back it was a case of needing to fight back. So, yeah, from then on I was fighting for the little guy!” (Brenda, ME and fibromyalgia, 56)

It has been argued that we are feeling bodies and act on how we feel (Burkitt, 2014; Cromby, 2015). In other words, the various sensations and desires felt in our bodies can compel us to certain identities. Contextually, participants were compelled to embody an activist identity as a result of the feelings they had within themselves. For example, Susan described an instance where the anger she felt seeing a disabled person being trained poorly ‘boiled over’ to a point where she decided to take a stand:

Susan: “I was working out with Tom (Susan’s partner) and he said “oh my God, look at that.” I turned round and the personal trainers were with this chap in the wheelchair and Tom was saying “they’re asking him to do things that are just nigh-on impossible and it’s just pointless. It is pointless. And it’s bloody dangerous!” I heard what they were saying to this poor guy and it made me feel sick to my stomach. I’d experienced these sorts of things myself but seeing it happen to something else I just couldn’t stand it anymore, I boiled over and I stormed over there and basically shouted at them.”

114 Susan: “I don’t really remember. Something about they don’t know how to do their jobs and being useless (laughs). I just remember feeling the sickness in my stomach go and the look on the guys face of being somewhere between astonishment and relief and the PT’s faces being in shock and Tom’s face in absolute, total shock (laughs). But I guess that for me was the turning point that I knew I needed to do something and take a stand against these PTs. I couldn’t see anyone speaking for us apart from us so why not me? (laughs).” (Susan, SCI, 34)

A key reason for participants desire to become gym instructors was an embodied, socialized and relational force; affect. The ‘affective turn’ in psychology investigates how an individual’s emotions and feelings contribute to an understanding of how they experience a phenomena and why they act in certain ways (Clough & Halley, 2007). Feelings and affect are dynamic, purposeful and constitutive of becoming and change; they guide us to certain paths and compel us to certain identities (Cromby, 2012; Cromby 2015). Accordingly, the testimonies of Brenda and Susan highlight the role affect played in participants’ desire to actively resist disablism in the gym. Both women discussed their acts of resistance as being triggered from ‘within’; from an affective place where what they were seeing made them “feel sick” or “a red hot ball of rage”. For each participant, these feelings reached a point where they were compelled to act. These feelings (nausea and anger) could be described as

affective somatic markers which guide behaviour and inform action (Damasio, Everitt &

Bishop 1996). In other words, rather than cognitive processes which some literature highlights as a trigger for decision making (e.g. Schwenk, 1988), for participants in this research they were called to act against the disablism in the gym because of how they felt.

The decision to act on these affective influences became a turning point in participants’ life narratives. Turning points are experiences in which someone undergoes a substantial change (McAdams, 1993). They are usually triggered by negative events in which one

115 understands something new about oneself or faces a decision about a different path to take in life (McLean & Pratt, 2006). Indeed, Thorne, McLean and Lawrence (2004) found that more negative events are associated with more meaning and are therefore more likely to be a reason why an individual chooses to act in a certain way. In this research, participants’ meanings of disablism and the feelings they associated with this oppressive act compelled them to act in a way which actively resisted disablism. Soon, however, these isolated incidences of activism and helping others did not satisfy participants. Instead they were eager to challenge disablism on a wider scale.