Rise of the Dalplex Sauna Bro

To survive the dark and hostile Halifax winter, I began frequenting the Dalplex sauna. Although, “frequenting” doesn’t quite encapsulate my obsession. I embraced the sauna. I disappear for hours at a time, alternating between the intoxicating heat of the tiny cedar sauna and the frigid, revitalizing water of the cold showers. I once went for 18 days straight. 

My assignment stress evaporated, my productivity anxiety was vanquished and the encroaching winter malaise was effectively euthanized. I was in a state of bliss. But nearly three weeks into my revitalizing escapades, I discovered that things were not as they seemed. 

The saunas in the facility are located in the locker rooms shared by the pool and field house, but only in the gendered change rooms. The universal locker room does not have a sauna. In hindsight, this pervasive shadow of the gender binary that hung over my sauna time was an omen. 

Speaking from my experience in the men’s locker room, it became clear that the sauna can attract a very particular type of person. There were several challenging Dalplex sauna cultural barriers I struggled to overcome, particularly those manifesting from the spirit, the spectre and the phantom of Joe Rogan — a popular and controversial American podcaster. 

At first, the signs of Rogan’s influence on the Dalplex sauna were relatively benign. Dudes in basketball shorts talking too loud and characters playing podcasts without headphones, punctuated by the odd conversation between finance students talking about supplements and workouts. 

While irritating, this was tolerable. But the environment turned sinister when things got political. 

There was, to an often unbelievable extent, dick swinging, petty masculinity, misinformed political arguments and rampant misogyny. Rogan’s popularity among young men, as well as his views on wellness, politics and women, seems to have permeated the cedar planks of the tiny locker room sauna. 

I have no choice but to sigh and declare: Joe Rogan has ruined the sauna.

To counteract the Roganites, there is a man who visits the sauna seemingly multiple times a day, for he is nearly always there when I am. He strolls back and forth along the tiled floor, naked, and will argue about whatever politics you desire. 

I’ll admit, it’s hard not to look at him and see the modern culmination of the Socratic tradition. This Socrates of the sauna is a staunch liberal and defends his politics against an onslaught of young men who echo Rogan’s rhetoric. Socrates will pick up whatever gauntlet they throw down, usually some equivalent of, “How do you think the Greenland situation will play out?” or “What do you think of what’s going on in Minneapolis?” He reacts with outrage, they provoke him further until he provokes them, and their arguments echo back-and-forth until the discourse has elevated to a shouting match. 

When Socrates criticizes Donald Trump for being a sexual predator who hurts women, a mustachioed man in scarlet boxers says, “But the Democrats also hurt women when they let men compete in women’s sports,” an argument Rogan champions. Rogan’s political orientation, lifestyle and misogyny have resulted in a thoroughly dedicated fan base of young men who populate the Dalplex sauna. 

The worst part of Dalhousie’s sauna culture is when a group of young men ask one another if they’re on the “slut grind.” As it turns out, they’re “taking a break from the sluts” because apparently they’re sick of “banging whores,” because all of the women around here, according to them, are “whores.” 

As reprehensible as this language is, its omnipresent use in one of the only gender-segregated spaces on campus is not only disturbing but dangerous. Not all conversations in the sauna are of this character, but there is a definite demographic of men in their late teens and early 20s who employ this harmful language. It’s a sad state of affairs, marked by the ever-looming shadow of Joseph James Rogan Jr.

The young, misogynist community appears to be an insular circle, a manifestation of the manosphere, and most of us would prefer that the sauna not be treated as an incubator for the expression of such damaging ideology. Far-right, incel and misogynistic ideologies aren’t new, but it’s terrifying and depressing that these men feel comfortable openly perpetuating them the second they enter spaces segregated from those their ideologies oppress, specifically at a relatively progressive university, in a relatively progressive city. 

There is something perversely bizarre about sitting in the dark, surrounded by nude or barely dressed men, everyone slick as freshly caught fish, while your heart rate elevates at the mention of the Minneapolis, Minn. protests (“that officer had a right to defend himself”) or at the appalling nature of the language that is used to describe women. 

The sauna is not a place to vent anger, it’s not a place to use dangerous and demeaning language, it’s a place to chill out. From the bare asses on benches and the political shouting matches to the outright disturbing misogynistic language employed by some young men, the Dalplex sauna is in a torn and tragic state. It makes me wonder if this is what the bathhouses of Ancient Greece would have been like. 

It’s a space not defined, but at times certainly marked, by a dangerous kind of intolerance.