An influencer has gone viral on TikTok after sharing a video of a "feral" man apparently staring at her while she worked out in the gym.
It seems that every other day there is a headline about men leeching on women in the gym. Very often, these stories are enough to make anybody's skin crawl, as women have found themselves having to wear baggier clothing or, in one case, even pretending to have a hickey just to keep men away from them.
Quite simply, men need to do better and leave women alone when they're just trying to work out. The gym should be a safe space for everybody.
However, a recent video that is gaining traction on social media has left people jumping to the defense of the guy, after a woman accused him of making her feel "uncomfortable".
Taking to TikTok, influencer @jessica.frndz shared a clip with her 620,000+ followers, in which, she could be seen lifting weights.
Throughout the start of the video, she says into her mic that a "stupid piece of f***ing s**t" was staring at her, as a guy in the background could be seen casually glancing over in her direction. "Feral," she says repeatedly.
Jessica captioned her video: "It’s so disturbing and sad I can’t enjoy a simple workout without being uncomfortable."
At one point, the man then approaches her in an apparent attempt to help Jessica set up her weights, to which she tells him: "You don't have to do that. It's okay."
Following their interaction, Jessica overlays several messages onto her video, which read: "What if I just rip his pp out of its socket so he could never reproduce again", "This is why I don't want kids", and "He's going to jail staring at an underage 21 year old".
In a matter of days, the video amassed more than 746,000 views.
However, people online haven't exactly been on Jessica's side. In fact, after a flood of comments defending the man in the video, she has since opted to turn comments off.
In fact, Jessica's video was even shared by popular fitness influencer Joey Swole, who shared his thoughts on what her video showed.
Joey captioned his reaction: "Women are harassed in gyms and it needs to stop, but you are not one of them. An act of kindness or a glance does not make you a victim."
People have also taken to Twitter to demand that Jessica gives the man an apology.
"That man deserves an apology, and you need to stay away from any gym," one person tweeted.
Further explaining the situation to her Twitter followers, Jessica wrote: "I am not looking for views of clicks. I just posted this to spread awareness on how disturbing being stared at can make a woman feel. I don’t think it’s bad to look at someone once and be like oh that’s a pretty girl but I personally put my headphones on."
"I can see how this makes me look like I have an inflated ego but I am an attractive girl in a beauty standard sense and I get extremely sexually harassed online and it makes trusting random strangers that approach me trigger my trauma which is why I respond this way," she added.
Following the backlash, Jessica has said in a recent tweet: "I will be coming out with a response to this whole gym situation in a few days. I'm sorry."
Of course, this isn't the only time where a man has been innocent in the eyes of social media users. Who could forget the time a woman accused a blind man of staring at her as she worked out?
