At Weight Not Hate, Deadlifting Is for Every Body

Anchor Powerlifting owner Holli Mann likes to joke that she’s “building an army for the current situation at hand”: the situation being Trump 2.0, the army being the jacked folks who train at her gyms in Durham and Greensboro.

Indeed, watching some of Mann’s would-be soldiers throw down on a Sunday in September, the display is formidable: Autumn Kaunitz, a lifter in a sports bra and pink running shorts, picks up a 440-pound barbell like it’s nothing. Soon after, two people in matching purple tees tandem-lift over 900 pounds.

This is the third annual “Weight Not Hate,” a Pride-themed deadlifting event in Durham Central Park benefiting the LGBTQ Youth Center of Durham. The event raised nearly $1,300.

It’s not a competition, though most of the 25-odd participants still came with a cutthroat spirit, just one aimed at themselves. Joe Muglia is going for a personal record of 345 pounds. Micky Jordan, a lifter in a leather fringe vest, has a humbler goal: getting the bar off the ground three times. 

A few juxtapositions are at play at the event. Deadlifting, a feat usually associated with a narrow kind of masculinity, is being performed here by people of every stripe. Also: Red-faced, full-body exertion is playing out in a remarkably chill environment; when Jordan wavers on their second lift, the crowd shouts “That’s OK! That’s OK!”

This blend of grit and ease is part of what Mann wanted to cultivate when she founded Anchor in 2019: She wanted to offer an alternative to the “bro culture” of mainstream gyms.

“There’s a lot of machismo type of behaviors that just make people feel uncomfortable” at more commercialized gyms, Mann said. “I’ve had people say that they feel like people are staring at them, and there’s just this general air of ‘You don’t belong here.’”

Anchor started as a pop-up with classes for women and femmes, then expanded to add classes for other demographics before opening a brick-and-mortar gym in Durham in 2021, followed by an outpost in Greensboro.

Reaching young people, in particular, has been central to the project.

“If I had had something like powerlifting when I was younger, I probably wouldn’t have thought so much about what my body looked like,” Mann said, “and I would have probably cared more about what it was capable of.”

In raising money for the LGBTQ Youth Center, Weight Not Hate is a way for Mann to extend that mission beyond her gym’s walls.

Mann notes that gatherings like Weight Not Hate also feel necessary given the moment: In recent years, a number of powerlifting federations have moved to ban transgender athletes, and events like this carve out space.

Also, lots of queer people are into lifting, so an event that brings the two together just makes sense.

There are a number of reasons that LGBTQ folks are particularly represented in the powerlifting niche of fitness. Lifting can be gender-affirming for trans people. It’s also not a type of fitness that’s oriented around shedding weight or making yourself smaller—goals that can be tied up in more heteronormative ideals of how a body should look. And lifting has a distinct power to strengthen the bond between you and your own body—a practice of self-reliance that goes hand in hand with being queer, when much of life means operating in systems that weren’t built for you and learning to build something with yourself instead.

“It gives you a sense of awareness and acceptance of your body that nothing—I’ve not found anything that does it quite like lifting,” Mann said. “It almost makes the body very objective.”

Even from the sidelines, you get imbued with some of that same total embodiment. We’re humans, all the straining and self-expression on display seems to spell out; we’re humans and we get a kick out of testing the outer limits of our strength and adorning ourselves with little flourishes of self.

Lifter Margaret Craig is dressed in rainbow tights, a rainbow tutu, and a rainbow wig. She’s not part of the LGBTQ community herself, but her child is nonbinary—she calls them over to confirm this—so she’s here as an ally. 

Craig learned about Weight Not Hate through a powerlifting class she’s in for postmenopausal women.

“We’re stronger than we were when we were 25,” Craig said.

Before going up for her final lift at the event, she works chalk into her palms and briefly puts her hands together in prayer. Then she rips 245 pounds off the ground, a new personal record.

For everyone here, the plainest function of lifting is, of course, building physical strength. But that strength also translates to a mental fortitude: self-confidence that steadies a person through aging or transitioning or moving through hard change, or, for some, a sense of safety in a moment when jokes about building an army roll off the tongue.

“There is a sense of ‘Things are bad, let’s get strong,’” said Deena Fulton, a lifter with purpley-blue hair. “There’s something about seeing myself get stronger and stronger as time goes on that makes it a little easier to walk through the world.”

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