We’ve heard a lot from men in the past few weeks about “locker room talk:” these articles mostly consist of sweeping, almost romanticized statements that no, Trump’s locker room— implicitly defined as any space men occupy that is closed off to women—is not the one they know and love. And that may be true. But I believe these great, inspiring articles written by collegiate, professional, and recreational male athletes all over the country fail to adequately address the issue at hand— that sexual assault and sexual harassment are real and more prevalent than one may think, and they exist and affect people’s lives outside this locker room. And after reading one of these neat yet sometimes incredibly vague statements condemning Mr. Trump’s behavior, the reader may be misled to believe that sexual assault and harassment are at least on the decline, just a thing of the past, something which male athletes do not talk about when in the locker room, nor participate in outside the locker room.
It’s wonderful to read that a team usually doesn’t speak poorly about women— but if this were always true, if it accurately represented the general consensus between the two groups, Trump’s vulgar statements shouldn’t necessitate a publicly distributed article dedicated to negating the contrary. So what’s the real story? Why does it seem like one of the most ubiquitous yet covered up issues in the country, the world, is now just being smoothed over again, and that general decency should overpower the faults that undermine it? We expect athletes to be respectful— especially towards their friends— so why state the obvious? It seems as though male athletes, or all-male groups, excusing themselves from Trump’s locker room are merely deflecting the reality of sexual harassment and assault, just as Trump deflected his admittance to sexual assault by categorizing his statements as “locker room banter.”
Why are these statements so vague, anyway? Over the past week and a half, I’ve read many times that, “In the locker room, we talk about the women in our lives.” We assume this is a positive comment, and I’m sure it is. But stating that you talk to your friends about the person you love, a woman or not, doesn’t begin to address the issue of sexual harassment— it’s a given (hopefully). A broad statement such as this one serves as a place-marker— if it is at all tied to the real issue of sexual abuse, it would essentially mean that every time a man talking with other men behind closed doors chooses not to allude to his own sexual abuse of a person he cares about, it’s a triumph, and the problem is on its way to being solved. Instead of explaining an idealized, exterior reputation by regurgitating many positive experiences in the locker room and covering up the negatives as simply “imperfections” or “rarities,” I urge men in this position, who want to see change and who want to fix the issue from the inside-out, to get down to the dirty details, since the negatives alone actually comprise the issue of sexual harassment and assault.
What are these dirty details? I’ll never know what men talk about when they think women are absent, but I’m exposed to many of these “imperfections” nonetheless. These dirty details, the negative statements, made seemingly as a joke, and definitely outside the locker room— such as, a man turning to a female classmate to say, “I won’t give you a beer because you never let me have sex with you without a condom,”; a guy turning to his teammate and saying “I really want to f**k ___” before her and her friends have fully left the room; or even perhaps a Facebook poll created by one, not so vague, varsity male athlete that invited some of his teammates and one female to place a vote on who they would each rather “smash,” Prince Harry or the one female in the group—are not addressed, when they are in fact largely the focus of the issue itself. The word used to refer to such instances in public— “imperfections” — does not accurately contain the breadth of transgressions against decency that actually exist: unintentionally or not, it only blankets the issue of sexual violence and creates an armored facade of a mainly good reputation, seemingly impenetrable to those who have felt the effects of the bad, and further suppressing the possibility for change. Why is disavowing specific, clearly atrocious statements made by a presidential candidate taking priority over, or taking place of, disavowing specific, clearly atrocious statements made by your own teammate?
There will always be outliers on a team that keep sexual abuse alive— and Donald Trump is that outlier in politics. Who’s that outlier on your team, if he may exist? You can easily reject Donald Trump’s words, but can you as easily reject those of your own teammate? Spend your efforts where results lie— don’t just salvage your reputation from Trump’s definition of a locker room while writing off your own team’s maybe rare but incredibly demeaning faults as simply “imperfections.” Let this surge in dialogue enable you to confront the issue at a meaningful scale and personally urge your teammates, or men that surround you, who contribute to these imperfections to not just stop, but wholly realize the repercussions of their actions on those affected. If you can publicly take full responsibility for the good, you must also publicly take full responsibility for the bad.
We know Mr. Trump possesses an uncanny knack for diverting attention from the real issue— here that sexual abuse is prevalent even among the most powerful in our society— to what he has framed it as— just an attack on the character of men who use locker rooms, an attack of the character of men behind closed doors. To refocus, a large part of the issue is that sexual harassment and assault exist also outside of that all male space, and it is rarely truthfully confronted. This article is not intended to divide— it is intended to serve first as a reality check to whomever may blanket sexual harassment and assault, coming from those that are affected by sexual harassment and assault without ever entering this all male space, then to incite honest, accurate, realistic conversations surrounding the issue so that we can begin to fix it. What do communities like the one at Amherst College represent on paper, and how does that differ from what actually goes on every day? Amherst is a great place to be—it’s a place where in academics, we are led to think critically in order to find and know the truth for ourselves. Here, the way we act collectively constitutes this truth; therefore, this truth is constantly on the verge of a change. If we feel in any moment the truth doesn’t accurately reflect the reality in which we hope to exist, we have the opportunity to alter it for the better. As we all know, everyone must honestly admit to and understand the extent to which something is wrong before we can begin to repair. We expect you to respect us; use your time not to reaffirm that you do but to change those around you who don’t. It’s On Us, isn’t it?