Conversation that took place this week between pretty much every straight couple in America:<\/p>\n
Wife: So, do men really talk like that?<\/p>\n
Husband: (Warily) Like what?<\/p>\n
W: You know \u2014 locker room talk.<\/p>\n
H: (A little indignant) Well, they don\u2019t talk like that.<\/p>\n
W: (With avid curiosity) What, then? What do they say?<\/p>\n
H: (Like a person who just recalled an urgent appointment or possibly has just noticed the house is on fire) Just stuff. It\u2019s stupid. But not that.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s reminiscent of a scene in an old novel when a respectable matron eagerly asks her husband what the inside of a whorehouse looked like. I forget what his answer was \u2014 something along the lines of, \u201cMy dear, you are not yourself. I fear you must take a tonic and rest in a darkened room.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to go all gender warrior on y\u2019all, but this may have been a pivotal point.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably not the watershed-moment-we-keep-experiencing in this presidential election, which has experienced so many \u201cpivotal points\u201d now that our noggins are spinning like that child\u2019s in \u201cThe Exorcist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather, it was a kind of cultural barometer reading, a moment when we all wondered: How ugly are we, really? Is this how most people would behave if they were assured they could get away with it (or that they\u2019d never run for president)?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an awkward question. Nobody wants to be asked outright: What is the crudest, most embarrassing thing you ever said in private? Or worse: Would you grope, kiss and paw people you found attractive \u2014 people who did not want such attention _ if you were confident there would be no repercussions?<\/p>\n
A lot of us \u2014 women in particular \u2014 may be fishing for some kind of reassurance that GOP presidential candidate (!) Donald Trump\u2019s abusive, objectifying behavior and language are an aberration. We want to believe that they are not \u2014 as the candidate himself apparently believes \u2014 a benchmark for how all men would behave if only they were rich enough, powerful enough, sufficiently (in their minds) bulletproof.<\/p>\n
Well, people are different. The rock-bottom basement level might be lower for my elevator than for yours. But I strongly believe that Trump\u2019s grotesque, predatory behavior and attitudes toward women represent a small, socially stunted minority and not, as some would have it, a jocular guys\u2019-club norm.<\/p>\n
I threw the question out, like hopeful chum upon the waters, to more than 2,000 Facebook friends.<\/p>\n
There were dozens of answers from a range of people, including bikers, lawyers, baseball moms, former football pros, self-styled feminists, conservative-leaning men, and women who have had roughly the same conversation cited above this week.<\/p>\n
Their answers were interesting and varied, but the common threads were these: People (particularly younger males) talk big, and not always in terms they\u2019d want their grandmas to hear. They taunt one another (what many Texans call \u201cwoofin\u201d).<\/p>\n
Almost no one had ever even heard a locker-room-type discussion about sexual assault, or even uninvited sexual boorishness \u2014 not just because it\u2019s \u201coff limits,\u201d but because it\u2019s repulsive and doesn\u2019t come to mind.<\/p>\n
A few comments:<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one ever bragged about forcing sexual advances on anyone,\u201d one man wrote. \u201cIf anyone did, you walked away from him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung boys have always talked about sex and such in locker rooms. Sexual assault \u2014 no.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c14 years in NFL locker rooms … NEVER anything like DT said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been considered unmanly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c50 years or more in men\u2019s locker rooms, gyms, biker bars, construction sites. Guys can be crude, but I have never heard those words spoken that way from anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell a guy\u2019s character by how he talks \u2018around the guys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
One woman told me she has worked for three decades around music tour roadies \u2014 a notoriously rowdy crowd: \u201cTalking about a woman\u2019s looks was fairly routine. Talking about assaulting them was never part of the conversation. Never.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting to note that while news coverage of the reaction to reports of Trump\u2019s questionable behavior has generally skewed toward the response among women, plenty of men seem to be genuinely insulted by the candidate\u2019s increasingly frantic efforts to brush all this off as just dudes being dudes.<\/p>\n
\u201cTHAT locker room is a figment of (Trump\u2019s) imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
This guy sounded angry: \u201cIt\u2019s a lie,\u201d he said. \u201cReal men do not assault women or talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what actor Tom Hanks _ a wealthy celebrity who might reasonably be expected to enjoy more privilege and entitlement than the average Joe \u2014 had to say:<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I\u2019m offended as a man. I\u2019m not offended as a husband or a father,\u201d he said in an interview with Time. \u201cI\u2019m offended as a guy. That\u2019s just not right. It\u2019s not right at work, it\u2019s not right in the locker room. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s appalled, as we all should be \u2014 as women, as men, as Americans, as people. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jacquielynn Floyd is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News. Readers may email her at jfloyd@dallasnews.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Conversation that took place this week between pretty much every straight couple in America: Wife: So, do men really talk like that? Husband: (Warily) Like what? W: You know \u2014 locker room talk. H: (A little indignant) Well, they don\u2019t talk like that. W: (With avid curiosity) What, then? What do they say? H: (Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14561"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}