The Problem with “Locker Room Talk”
We all remember the election of 2016, and more specifically, we all remember the tape that came out of Donald Trump in the locker room from years before. In the tape, he was heard telling his friend not to worry about what a girl wants, and to instead just “grab them by the p***y.”
There were three very concrete sides that people took following this issue, and they are as follows:
- They found it offensive.
- They found it irrelevant.
- They found it excusable.
We will be focusing on the third stance taken, most importantly the phrase that some Trump supporters and media threw around, “Oh, it’s just locker room talk.”
Opinions aside, I believe that there are two very real problems with this phrase.
- The phrase “locker room talk” brings to mind some very real stereotypes, mainly athletes, and mainly male athletes. To dismiss the topics that this group of people talks about as essentially meaningless is to infer that all athletes are inherently stupid and that their words somehow mean less than the words of nerds, like me. I would argue that this indifference and judgment is just as harmful as any other type of ism- instead of racism or sexism, we are dealing with athlete-ism. Despite that being a word that I made up, any statement that implies a set of people is less intelligent than another cannot be tolerated in a country that claims to hold equality as a core value.
- Implying that because the statement was said in a somewhat private area it somehow cannot be picked apart is extremely dangerous. This excuses violence, and unfortunately, we have some obvious connections in this particular case. At the end of the day, the same men and women who ridicule the difficulties of personal choices when it comes to sexuality and diminish the experience of survivors are the same people that create those survivors. Saying something behind closed doors does not diminish its meaning, and in fact, can lead to very real consequences. Just as studies have shown video game players less inclined to object to the kinds of violence they play out on screen in real life, how can we not see that laughing about real issues can lead to them being ignored out in the world?
Maybe you found the statement our President made offensive, maybe you thought it was irrelevant, and maybe you found it excusable. I’m not telling you you’re wrong.
But he didn’t talk about a touchdown or a tackle or a three-pointer.
This was not locker room talk.
This cannot be locker room talk.