As I lay awake during another fitful night with my resentment of the world clawing us collectively backwards, my thoughts have come to locker rooms. No, I don’t think locker rooms are “The Cause”. No single phenomenon led to electoral defeat. But locker rooms are sticking in my head tonight as a sort of microcosm of where we are.
I think there is a thread line from dismissal of a candidate’s sexual assault on women as “Locker room talk” through to using locker room fears against trans people. At least in my own experience, locker rooms are a frightening place. And I say that as a het white male. I’ve walked down dark streets at night without thought which I know many women wouldn’t do for fear of assault. But locker rooms are frightening not because of people who are outside of mainstream norms, but because of those who would punish people for being different. When I remember the worst toxic masculinity I experienced as a youth, my mind goes to locker rooms.
Locker rooms are a place where we become more vulnerable. We are stripping off clothing in front of other people who we normally would never dream of doing so. They are frequently cramped with small lockers forcing me to get closer to others at a distance I don’t like fully clothed, let alone with nothing but a towel around my waste. They are both revealing and hidden at the same time. For those inside, there is no place to hide yet the outside world can’t see in. It lacks privacy and safety all at once. Our world goes to such lengths to enforce clothing standards in so many of our public areas yet in the locker room we are expected to bare all.
Growing up in public schools, locker rooms brought me into close proximity with mean idiots I intentionally ignored in the rest of my daily life. As a bright student myself, none of these individuals were present in my academic classes such as AP calculus. They also didn’t select choir as an elective. I was afraid of them in the halls as a freshman, but after being away for my junior year in Germany they had no clue what to make of me when I was a senior and we just ignored each other. That I played a varsity sport (soccer) gave me a little social currency that deflected most of their attention. I didn’t hide from them as a senior. I simply never saw them as I walked past them and they didn’t know what I was enough to do anything about me, so they ignored me.
The worst locker room was when we had swimming. For normal PE, I could quickly change and be in and out to minimize my exposure. I also wouldn’t need to get fully naked. While it would have been nice to fully change clothes, keeping the same underwear on was preferable to getting fully naked in front of others. This obviously doesn’t work with swimming and the toweling off needed to be accomplished ASAP (and best done as much as possible outside the locker room with your suit on before going in). I hated the PE teachers who would force us to shower as it brought the exposure to the maximum. Again, I’m saying this all as a het white guy. For those who were different in any way the experience was much worse than mine.
The forced proximity and vulnerability combined with a lack of adult supervision resulted in the ability for the abusive individuals to express themselves in ways they couldn’t elsewhere. Near the teachers, they couldn’t swear, pick on those weaker than themselves, or make inappropriate sexist comments. I imagine they may have loved locker rooms and the freedom they enjoyed at the expense of others. They were free to be their asshole selves unless a fellow student stood up to them. And standing up to them would lead to a fight. It generally wasn’t worth it to start a fight over language. I never saw physical abuse so I don’t know how I would have reacted. The verbal abuse I ignored.
The “locker room talk” I would also ignore. But of course it wouldn’t be fun for them if they couldn’t also make others uncomfortable while doing so. Inevitably they would ask others outside of their friend group if they agreed with whatever sexual appraisal of some poor female they were talking about. It was a difficult situation. Many answers would draw unwanted attention. If asked if I would F someone in particular was always challenging. To answer no would draw homophobic derision and to answer yes would feed their game. To answer enthusiastically would draw you into their circle where they would test you with more questions to see if you were sufficiently like them. I’m trying to remember specific answers but the best avenues would be a dismissive change of subject answer that would put them the right amount of off balance that they couldn’t make fun of you about it but also wouldn’t provoke a fighting response. Again, the quicker the clothing change the less chance of getting questioned as is.
And so the mean idiots of the locker room have now been voted into power in our country. After leaving high school and getting into college I had left them behind for a time. While the “grown up” versions were clearly still around in the greater community, our society for the most part contained their worst expressions in open areas. You would still run into it in some settings. I saw a version of it this summer working an in-between gig in the transportation sector. Upon getting on the comms it was explained to me by the lead that the group says all sorts inappropriate things to each other and that it was what they do. But they wouldn’t do it in front of management. They didn’t end up doing it much around me, either. But not being a locker room it was harder for them to intimidate me. They didn’t think of themselves as being “mean” to me. In relative terms we were quite friendly. I carefully steered topics to safe ones. And we even eventually argued in a friendly way on occasion (as recounted in a previous DKos post by me). But some of them had that desire to be “free” to be inappropriate.
So the use of anti-Trans messaging around fear in locker rooms has a certain amount of irony for me. The people with the MOST fear in the locker rooms (at least the mens room) are not the MAGA, but those who are different. I can’t speak to the dynamic of the women's room. But I have enough trans friends to know my fear of locker rooms is but a shadow of the terror they experienced. But the MAGA know that locker rooms generate fear. They know people can be triggered by it because they’ve experienced it. They know the fear is there because they brought it in the first place. Or perhaps its where they learned to terrorize others.
You all already know that we now live in a society where conservatives who talk about “freedom” really mean “freedom to abuse others”. Part of my consternation with this election is that the locker room asshats won. In 2016, it could be written off as not enough people paying attention. But this time people choose to be ruled by those who want the freedom to intimidate others. In 2016 the grab em was dismissed by the right as just locker room talk. But what they really meant was they wanted to be free to “locker room talk” everywhere (just the right people, of course). 2024 was a choice by many that the abusive people have got it right. The abusive people will deliver a better world for them.
I’m just still struggling that the worst people of my childhood are the ones who won. The way to remove fear from the locker rooms would be to provide a safe and sufficient space for each person to be safely alone when they are vulnerable. Instead some use them to continue spreading fear.
