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| Photo from bleacherreport.com |
by Susan Palmes-Dennis
For more a month now, the phrase “locker room talk” is trending across social media no thanks to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who used it as an excuse to justify his boorish remarks and behavior towards the women in an interview long ago.
Back in the day and even now I think locker-room talk is more associated with players who talk with fellow players and reporters after a grueling game.
So it wasn't unusual for players like Cleveland Cavaliers star Lebron James to react unfavorably on Trump's remarks of “locker room talk” by saying that not all male players look down on women like Trump did.
The men who do engage in locker room talk don't confine themselves to women and sex. More often than not, they do reminisce about the good old days when times were simpler though they also talk about women.
Whatever they share during those locker room talks stay in the locker room and aren't shared with anyone else unlike what Trump and Bush did.
Thanks to Trump, the locker-room talk had been given much attention and may have replaced the “water cooler talk” prevalent in the office which is basically office gossip with less prurient content.
Allow me to address this locker room talk issue not in a political context but in relation to women. I talked with Zachariah Allen, a preacher and life coach and one-time sports coach and this is what he said about it.
“Locker-room talk is true. It happens because people, men particularly, like to express themselves freely,” he said. Allen said locker room talk can range from women, to jobs, race and other hot button related topics.
Allen, who graduated from the University of South Alabama, said locker-room talk should also be explained in light of the speaker's persona or in this case Trump, who had developed a reputation as a ladies man.
Allen referred to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's explanation who said there is private and public persona. If a person is a public personality, anything he or she utters falls within the purview of public scrutiny.
If the remarks were made in private, there's little chance of it coming out in public. If Trump was aware that his remarks were made in an interview that would come out in public, then he couldn't explain it away as locker room talk because it reflected his own mindset, Allen said.
When men do talk about women, usually it involves their wives or their girlfriends or women they found attractive in the office whom they made a pass at or asked on a date and such conversations happen in the locker room, Allen said.
“I know some people would say it does not happen and they're not being truthful because it does. It is normal for anybody who have views on women and it's not just confined among coaches, players, teachers, students and every time there is an opportunity to objectify women, that's when locker-room talk happens,” Allen said.
Allen admitted that in his younger days he joined in locker-room talk “I have been coaching and I have heard things. You can change but your views sometimes don’t change and if you are put on the same position you would do it again,” he said.
As men get older, they see younger women as a challenge and when people see older men marrying or dating younger women, Allen said people presume they do that for sex.
When an old man gives gifts to a younger woman, Allen said it is understood that the man wants sex. When Donald Trump apologized after a video showed him talking about forcibly kissing and groping women in public, he explained that it was just locker-room talk.
But women also engage in locker room talk and that's what I'll try to explain in the next article.
(Susan Palmes-Dennis is a veteran journalist from Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental, Northern Mindanao in the Philippines and is now employed in one of the school systems in the Carolinas.
Read her blogs on susanpalmesstraightfrom the Carolinas.com and at http://www.blogher.com/myprofile/spdennis54. These and other articles also appear at http://www.sunstar.com.ph/author/2582/susan-palmes-dennis.
You can also connect with her through her email susanap.dennis@yahoo.com as well as her Pinterest account at http://www.pinterest.com/pin/41025046580074350/) and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Straight-from-the-Carolinas-/494156950678063)
