{"id":8485,"date":"2016-10-10T14:04:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T19:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=8485"},"modified":"2017-02-02T08:27:30","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T14:27:30","slug":"some-thoughts-on-locker-room-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2016\/10\/10\/some-thoughts-on-locker-room-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on \u201cLocker Room Talk\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

During last night\u2019s debate presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled down on his 2005 conversation<\/a> with Billy Bush about \u201cgrabbing\u201d women \u201cby the pussy,\u201d making moves on one woman \u201clike a bitch,\u201d and the apparent pride he takes in sexually assaulting women: \u201cI just start kissing them. It\u2019s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don\u2019t even wait.\u201d Answering moderator Anderson Cooper\u2019s question, Trump claimed<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s locker room talk \u2013 it\u2019s one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

From 2003-2005, right around the same time Trump bragged about his skill at sexual assault, I was studying <\/a>how teenage boys at a northern California high school, River High, talked about girls and sex. Indeed, much of what they said sounded just like the \u201clocker room talk\u201d Trump refers to. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n

In talking about their plans for Winter Ball Josh told Reggie, \u201cI\u2019ll be fucking pissed if I don\u2019t get some.\u201d Reggie advised him \u201cThat\u2019s why you take a girl whose gonna do something. I got Jack Daniels!\u201d Josh countered, \u201cI got a big bag of marijuana\u2026the sooner I get her drunk the sooner I get laid.\u201d Reggie triumphantly bragged, \u201cI can get laid any time, anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerome complained that he was not \u201cgonna get laid at Winter Ball.\u201d Josh admonished “That\u2019s why you gotta go for the younger ones fool! Like 12 years old!” Josh then claimed he was \u201cso good\u201d at sex that he couldn\u2019t \u201ccontrol the girl from thrashing around on the bed and hurting herself on the headboard.\u201d<\/p>\n

In weightlifting class, Pedro proceeded to act out his previous night\u2019s sexual adventures, \u201cDude I had sex with my girlfriend last night. She tied me to the bed! I was like damn!\u201d Josh chimed in, shaking his head knowingly, \u201cnever let a girl tie you up.\u201d Pedro laughed and continued to say proudly \u201cI did her so hard when I was done she was bleeding. I tore her walls!\u201d<\/p>\n

In autoshop Jay talked about a girl he thought was \u201chella ugly\u201d but had \u201ctitties:\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s a bitch. I might take her out to the street races and leave her there so she can get raped.\u201d All the other boys in auto-shop, as usual, responded in laughter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Trump framed this sort of sex talk as \u201cjust words<\/a>,\u201d as \u201cthings that people say,\u201d this sort of talk undergirds what feminist scholars call \u201crape culture<\/a>\u201d in which symbolic violence, especially humorous symbolic violence, dehumanizes women, reducing them to sexual objects. It is precisely the joking quality of many of these instances that make them so hard to see as serious endorsements of violence against women. The line between talk and action, however, is much less clear than Trump claims. For instance, Jay, the boy who talked about raping the \u201chella ugly\u201d girl who was a \u201cbitch\u201d but had \u201ctitties\u201d regularly harassed the only girl in his autoshop class:<\/p>\n

One afternoon Jay walked up to Tammy and stood behind her deeply inhaling, his nose not even an inch away from her hair. Clearly uncomfortable with this, she moved to the side. He asked her if she was planning to attend WyoTech (Wyoming Technical College, a mechanic school). She responded \u201cyes.\u201d He said \u201cI\u2019m going too! You and me. We\u2019re gonna be in a room together.\u201d He closed his eyes and started thrusting his hips back and forth and softly moaning as if to indicate that he was having sex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Girls at River High suffered from this kind of physical sexual \u201cjoking\u201d on a regular basis:<\/p>\n

Walking between government and drama classes, Keith yelled \u201cGET RAPED! GET RAPED!\u201d as he rhythmically jabbed a girl in the crotch with his drumstick. She yelled at him to stop and tried to kick him in the crotch with her foot. He dodged and started yelling \u201cCROTCH! CROTCH!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Locker room talk is not \u201cjust words.\u201d It is not funny. It is not harmless. And it is certainly not limited to the locker room. This kind of sex talk is a central part of normative masculinity in the global West. It is a way in which some men simultaneously endorse and dodge such endorsement of sexual assault. It is a way in which violence against women and women\u2019s bodies are rendered \u201cjust jokes\u201d or \u201cguy talk.\u201d In fact, the girls in my study were often used by young men as props in their competition for status and recognition from one another.<\/p>\n

As feminist scholar Adrienne Rich powerfully argued<\/a>, heterosexuality not only describes sexual desires, practices and orientations; it is also a \u201cpolitical institution.\u201d The \u201cenforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male right of physical, economic and emotional access\u201d is a central component of gender inequality. The locker room talk examples of \u201cmythic-story telling<\/a>\u201d in which boys and men tell humorous larger than life tales about their sexual adventures, their bodies, and girls\u2019 bodies are an important way in which men maintain sexual dominance over women. And dominance is central to contemporary American masculinity \u2013 dominance over other men, dominance over other countries, dominance over one\u2019s political opponent, and yes, dominance over women.<\/p>\n

So, sure, let\u2019s use Donald\u2019s locker room metaphor. But let\u2019s also remember that Donald was not actually in a locker room when he claimed to have participated in sexual violence and assault to barter for status with another man. He was on a tour bus. He could have just as easily been in a board room, the men\u2019s restroom at a corporate law firm, a strip club, a fraternity, an internet forum, a workplace, a school, a family picnic. Having people claim that he \u201cdid not really mean\u201d what he said, or that those comments are inconsistent with \u201cthe man they know\u201d does not actually undo the power of the words. Trump\u2019s \u201clocker room talk\u201d is more than locker room talk; it\u2019s an interactional ritual in which boys and men participate. They do it to establish status amongst one another. And just like the high school boys I studied, women often play the \u201crole\u201d of prop in this dramatic performance.<\/p>\n

So, yes, it may very well have been \u201cjust locker room talk.\u201d But there\u2019s actually a science of locker room talk, Mr. Trump. And it suggests that your \u201ctalk\u201d is and was related to institutionalized forms of inequality that make life dangerous for girls and women (and, yes certain men). These \u201cjokes\u201d and \u201cwords\u201d are not unique to one time or place and they are not without consequence; rather they are part of, and indeed central to, persistent gendered inequality and violence.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

*A big thank you to Sarah Diefendorf <\/a>and Tristan Bridges<\/a> for their feedback on this essay.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During last night\u2019s debate presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled down on his 2005 conversation with Billy Bush about \u201cgrabbing\u201d women \u201cby the pussy,\u201d making moves on one woman \u201clike a bitch,\u201d and the apparent pride he takes in sexually assaulting women: \u201cI just start kissing them. It\u2019s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don\u2019t even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25814],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manly-musings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8487,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8485\/revisions\/8487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}