Tom DeBlass Told Men Not To DM Women At The Gym — The Real Issue Is Whether 'No Thanks' Gets Respected

Tom DeBlass has been in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for over three decades. He runs one of the most respected gyms on the East Coast. He's promoted more black belts than most instructors will count in a lifetime. When he says something, the BJJ internet listens.

So when DeBlass posted on Instagram that men have no business sliding into DMs after class — no "great job" messages, no "you did amazing tonight," no post-roll compliments to female training partners — the response was exactly what you'd expect. Nods. Shares. A string of fire emojis from the guys who've already memorized the approved reaction.

His instinct is right. Real harassment happens in jiu-jitsu gyms. A study of 193 female BJJ practitioners found 61.6% reported experiencing harassment connected to their training environment, with half identifying training partners as the source. Those numbers aren't a rumor. They're women reporting what happened to them. The research exists. The problem is documented. But DeBlass's message went sideways somewhere. And the well-meaning pile-on went with it.

The test he's running isn't the right test

DeBlass asks: do you message every new white belt after class? Do you tell every guy you roll with he did great? If not, why are you messaging women?

Sounds logical on its surface. But the test smuggles in a hidden assumption: that any message a man sends to a woman he trains with is automatically suspect, that intent doesn't matter, that the woman on the receiving end can't figure out what's welcome herself. It's a framing problem that runs deeper than a single Instagram post.

That's not protecting women. That's assuming they can't handle a DM. That's assuming they lack the judgment to decide what communication they want to receive and what they don't. That's assuming they need a man — even a well-intentioned gym owner with decades of credibility — to screen their inbox for them.

Your training partner can receive a "nice rolling with you" message and respond warmly, say nothing, or say "please don't text me outside the gym." All three options are available to her without Tom DeBlass drafting a blanket policy for the situation. She's an adult. She has agency. She can make decisions about her own boundaries.

DeBlass frames this as shielding women from predators. What it actually does — even if unintentionally — is treat women as a problem to be managed rather than people to be trusted. "Protect the women in your gym" is one sentence. "Control the situations women encounter" is a different sentence. They can look identical from the outside. The language matters. The framing matters. The assumption that sits underneath matters more than the rule itself.

One message from a training partner is not inherently threatening. One message is information. One message is an overture. One message is neutral until the person receiving it decides otherwise. A woman in BJJ gets choked, held down, and pressured on the mat every single day. She understands physical boundaries and how to communicate them. Why would we assume she loses that capability the moment she picks up her phone?

The real line is the word "no"

DeBlass got something right without quite landing on it: the difference between a normal message and harassment isn't the first message. It's what happens after.

A man sends "nice roll tonight," gets a friendly reply. Fine. A man sends it, gets silence, sends it again anyway. Brings it up at the gym. Acts weird when she partners with someone else. Adjusts his rolling intensity when she's not watching him. Finds reasons to be in her line of sight. That's the problem. Not the DM. The failure to read a signal and stop.

Harassment is a pattern that continues after a clear or implied "no." What makes gym environments hostile for women isn't that friendly messages exist. It's that men who ignore "no thanks" face almost no consequence for it. They keep coming. They keep pushing. They normalize discomfort as part of the training experience.

The harassment study had one line that matters more than the rest: victims changed class times or gyms twice as often as harassers were removed from the gym. Women are reorganizing their lives. The guys who caused it are still there, same time slot, same mat, same behavior. That's the problem. That's what the data actually shows. That's what needs to be fixed.

When a woman says no — directly or indirectly, verbally or through the absence of a response — and that boundary gets respected immediately and without resentment, there is no harassment. When the same no gets tested, ignored, reframed, or weaponized, that's when the gym becomes hostile. The first violation isn't the violation. It's the second one. It's the refusal to accept the answer.

Who DeBlass is actually talking to

There's a guy in every gym who knows exactly what he's doing. He targets new female students because they're uncertain about the social terrain — this strange world of chokes and close contact and unspoken norms. He's counting on that uncertainty. He's counting on her not knowing whether his attention is normal or excessive. He's counting on her not wanting to seem rude.

DeBlass's post lands on that guy's feed as affirmation: see, I don't DM women, I'm one of the good ones. Problem solved. Good guy box checked. He'll still engineer reasons to pair up with the same woman every class. He'll still find ways to make training a slow-motion campaign. He'll still position himself as her helper, her mentor, the guy who "really understands her potential." A policy about DMs doesn't touch any of that. A ban on messages doesn't address the behavior that actually creates the hostile environment.

Meanwhile, the guy who texted "great roll, thanks for going easy on my shoulder" to the woman he's been drilling with for eight months is now in the same category. That's not analysis. That's just proximity. That's just the blunt instrument of an overreaching rule sweeping across situations that don't need sweeping.

The predatory behavior in BJJ gyms isn't hidden in the DMs. It's visible every day. It's the way some men roll harder with women they're attracted to. It's the unnecessary correction of technique when the woman is doing it right. It's the setup of scenarios where they can be physically closer. It's the comments about how strong she's getting, with a particular tone underneath. It's the way they appear everywhere she is. These things live in the open. They're just normalized. They're just called "training."

A no-DM rule doesn't solve this because the real harassment wasn't happening primarily through messages. It was happening on the mat, in the moment, in the culture of the gym.

What would actually fix this

Gyms that take complaints in writing and apply consequences to the guy who's been training there for four years, not just whoever's easiest to let go. Coaches who act before a situation goes public. A culture where "no," said quietly to one person, stays closed and doesn't need to become a group conversation to be respected.

That's harder than a post. It means gym owners having uncomfortable conversations with paying members. It means risking revenue. It means trusting the woman who comes forward even when her account conflicts with the guy's version. It means sometimes being wrong about someone you've worked with for years. It means sitting with that mistake and fixing it anyway.

It means setting clear standards for conduct on the mat. It means teaching partners — really teaching them, not just assuming — what consent looks like in the context of rolling. It means creating an environment where a woman can say "I don't want to roll with that person today" without needing to justify it. It means accepting that sometimes people don't mesh and that's not a woman's problem to solve.

Tom DeBlass runs a real gym. He's probably had those conversations. His instinct — call it out, raise the standard — is right. The post just aimed at the wrong target. It solved a problem that wasn't the main problem.

The actual test

A friendly message is not the threat. The threat is the pattern that keeps going when it should stop. The threat is the guy who texts "nice roll," gets no response, and texts again three days later about something else. The threat is the coach who hears about uncomfortable rolling and does nothing. The threat is the gym culture that treats women as decoration rather than practitioners.

The test isn't whether you sent the DM. It's whether you heard the answer. It's whether you respected it. It's whether you changed your behavior based on it. It's whether the gym around you did the same. That's the test that matters. That's the one that actually protects people.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Tom DeBlass Calls Out How Women Are Treated In Jiu-Jitsu Gyms: 'Don't Be That Guy'
• BJJ Harassment Study: 60% Of Women Report Harassment In Training