I ran twelve seasons in high school (we had winter track). I also competed in college, if briefly and not well. In my experience locker room chat generally goes like this, roughly in order of frequency:
* Getting our shit together so we can get to practice or get home. Most people don’t want to linger all day in a smelly room in their underwear.
* Talking about practice, or the meet coming up, or who needs a ride home
* School business. Who is busting kids’ balls this year, upcoming exams etc
* What is going on this weekend
* Who is dating whom, who got SO drunk, etc
* Girls you plan to ask out and what are you going to do if she says no (try a John Cusack routine? ask someone else?)
Generally sexual matters were a bit private to throw around in a locker room with half the school around you. When that stuff did come up everyone seemed well schooled in the idea of consent. If anyone had bragged about violating women like that I am confident someone would have called the cops. Of course we were a crappy school athletics-wise so we never had untouchable superstar athletes. Maybe things were different in Steubenville. All I can say is Trump’s nonsense does not sound like any locker room that I know or would want to be in. Apparently a whole lot of pro athletes feel the same.
WereBear
I have three brothers and numerous other Man Consultants, both straight and gay. Everyone agrees:
Trump went psychopath.
lamh36
Speaking of assholes
This is the guys some folk think should be the next Prez. Think about that…
Report: Trump Camp Wanted Bill Clinton Accusers To Sit In Family Box At Debateia @TPM
randy khan
I’m not as much of a locker aficionado as others, but I’ve certainly never heard anything like that. There are occasional discussions of the virtues (so to speak) of individual women and how nice it would be to spend some time close to them (so to speak), but nothing like this. As Tim says, if someone said something that implied a lack of consent, that would be shocking.
srv
Trump went to a real American school, like Andover or something.
Christmas isnt the only Holiday War:
FlipYrWhig
He doesn’t mean the sports team locker room, he means the gym class locker room. I think the Nancy O’Dell story is consistent with “locker room” talk: “I tried hard to get with her and she turned me down cold, bro.” So is the “lookit those legs, man” part. The other story, about grabbing and getting away with it, has probably been heard in locker rooms–and, because it’s consistent with sexual assault, privilege, and rape culture, is no longer a laughing matter, as it regrettably once was. Therein the problem.
WarMunchkin
I don’t know where this phrase “locker room talk” came from. In my experience, it’s been trying to dress as quickly as possible, while remaining absolutely silent and praying to every deity that you never have line of sight on another’s balls.
Pogonip
If the election were held today in West Deplorable, there would have to be a run-off; the signs are in a dead heat. I’ll be passing through East Deplorable today, will report back.
The site of a notorious puppy mill–the people are still there, but the dog-breeding operation was finally shut down–has a large Trump yard sign. I was surprised. Around here Hillary is generally thought of as the one who’s probably mean to puppies. (Disclaimer: I am sure both candidates do not approve of animal cruelty.)
Pogonip
@srv: I don’t care what they call it as long as I get the day off. I’m open-minded.
FlipYrWhig
@WarMunchkin: That’s the way the locker room felt to me, too. But big men on campus got to hold court instead.
schrodinger's cat
I am not a guy but locker room is not some social hub where I chit chat. At the pool or the gym, I am busy trying to work the combination lock, quick shower, change, and get out.
Chip Daniels
I visit construction sites in my job, and the rough coarse talk goes like this:
1. Comic insults to other guys mocking their penis size;
2. Comic insults about bowel movements;
3. Wry comments about wives henpecking/ nagging;
4. Griping about the boss;
5. Humble bragging about how hard we all work.
6. More dick jokes.
Mike J
@WarMunchkin:
Penn State.
Darkrose
Love that the first tweet there is from Sean Doolittle. He is a good guy. I don’t follow him though–I follow his girlfriend, who is amazing.
sunny raines
if you listen to today’s national dialogue regarding men and sexual abuse/assault you’d think every man is a pig and a predator. Although there are too many that are (one would be too many) it is not in fact the case that lumping all men that way is even remotely accurate. Good on athletes that denounce trump for promoting that lie.
Amir Khalid
Help me out here, good people. Donald Trump doesn’t seem like the sort to work out regularly. When was he ever in a locker room?
sunny raines
@WarMunchkin: ditto. Only perves hung out in locker rooms, which would explain trump engaging in his deviant brand of talk in locker rooms.
Gindy51
@Pogonip: You’d never know it given Trump’s male offspring…
Cacti
My own experience with “locker room talk” is that it usually involves:
1. Boasting of one’s sexual conquests (whether true or fabricated).
2. Discussing who would make a good sexual conquest.
Talk of committing second degree sexual assault to random women wasn’t anything I ever heard.
zzyzx
The problem with the locker room talk isn’t that it’s a lie that some crude and awful conversation happens there but that it is an attempt to normalize something that even the worst people I knew growing up didn’t say. It’s first saying that gloating about sexual assault is typical male behavior and then says that this means that sexual assault isn’t that big of a deal.
Sorry Trump but this one is on you. I’m not taking the hit for your illegal and immoral acts.
Kay
WTF is wrong with these people? Are they actually afraid of a failed real estate developer and reality tv show star? We know some media outlets have financial interests in Trump, but that’s two out of tens of them- CNN and NBC.
God forbid we ever get an actual charismatic but insane leader. Our defenses seem to be extraordinarily weak. He rolls right over them every day. Half the time they’re nodding along.
Bill
I was saying this all weekend. I spend a lot of time in locker rooms. Particularly in the winter months when the weather drives me inside for exercise. But I have never heard anyone say: “Know what’s awesome? Sexual assault. I do it all the time.”
The idea that “men just talk this way,” is offensive and wrong. Sexual predators talk this way.
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid: When he was in school, which is why it’s so juvenile. He has the emotional maturity of a 7 year old and the sexual fantasies of an 11 year old. That’s why it’s all about walking in on people getting undressed and comparing strangers’ breast sizes.
artem1s
isn’t the ‘locker room’ really ‘club house’ banter? think old dead white men sitting in the steam room (sorry about that visual) after a round of golf and one too many on the ninth hole? When in his life did Donald have any experience with an athletic, team sport? Not for 50 years anyway. He’s talking about segregated clubs.
raven
@Amir Khalid: The fat fucking draft dodger played some ball
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
That’s what I was thinking. Doesn’t look to me like the Donald has seen the inside of a locker room in a good 50 years.
raven
The fat fucking draft dodger played some ball
Trump arrived at the New York Military Academy in 1959 and graduated in 1964, and in that short period of time rose through the ranks of the academy becoming one of the highest ranked cadets and winning several awards.
Trump was a standout athlete in soccer, football, and baseball. Trump’s roommate Arthur Schoenewaldt believes that Trump was so good at baseball that he could have played professionally saying, “He was intelligent, he presented himself well, he was athletic. I even heard from some of the coaches and stuff he could have played professional baseball.”
Eric U.
I went to a crappy school athletics-wise, but the football players all seemed to think they were something special. OTOH, I have never heard anything like what Trump said among any group of men. I have also heard that fighter pilots talk like Trump did. Not in my experience. I knew some people that went to the infamous tailhook meetings, maybe there was similar talk there. But then again, somewhere in my collection of horrible things I collected during my military career is a list of Air Force people who weren’t going to get promoted due to that.
JMG
@artem1s: I’ve been in more golf club locker rooms than I can count (love the game, so sue me). Here’s what men talk about. 1. Golf. 2. Golf…10. Other Sports. 157. Business. Others Receiving Votes After Top 1000. Sex.
FlipYrWhig
@artem1s: Frat house banter. IIRC his son was a member of the date-rape frat at UPenn (my sister overlapped with him and remembers bad buzz around his name).
Tokyokie
I remember hearing crap along those lines — although not to the extent of boasting about sexual assault as Trump did — 45 years ago when I was in a high school locker room with football jocks. (I didn’t play football, but I ran cross-country, and we used the same locker room.) It sounded like juvenile braggadocio to me then, and I tried to tune it out. But in retrospect, I cut those guys some slack, because they were 16-17 years old at the time, and I’m sure many of them have come to learn not to say such things aloud even if they may still think them.
Trump, on the other hand, was 59 when he made his remarks, indicating that he hasn’t matured emotionally since his high school days.
gvg
@Amir Khalid: Probably in middle and high school. Gym class used to be mandatory in public schools and I think most private ones too. Last decade or so it has changed as legislatures passed laws about how much more students had to be taught academically and extras like gym and band and art got dropped. This has also possibly made worse our newer society trend of obesity. Everyone had to do gym class when I was a student. Most people hated it. Seemed to allow bullying too much to me and honestly that may in fact be why Trump called it locker room. Not the athletics, the chance to bully. My memory is social status was one of the factors. so was meanness and they could be different people or the same. I would say that gym teachers tended to be bully’s or clueless too. Today’s other teacher are much more proactive in preventing bullying so maybe the class would be different but I am not sure it really exists anymore. Sports are tending toward after school clubs or options now.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
I was a jock, too, AND military, and when the topic of girls came up the notion of “overcoming resistance” NEVER came up in in our most fever-pitched adolescent bullshit. Most of the time, you kept quiet so that nobody else horned in on your good deal.
You might quietly mention if something awesome happened to somebody you were a close friend with, but you didn’t spread it around, and you tried to stay respectful because you didn’t want to face the wrath of the girl and all her friends.
My school and neighborhood background was all-male HS, working class Catholic.
Had anybody said the shit that Trump said, we’d have been appalled.
He’s like a guy who would roofie a girl and then brag about it. So Beta.
FlipYrWhig
@raven: That may be the only recorded mention that Donald Trump, at school, had a friend.
wenchacha
OT: Ryan tells GOP Lawmakers he won’t defend Trump. Conference call happening right now, Ryan tells GOP candidates to save themselves.
RSA
@FlipYrWhig:
That was my thought (though I wasn’t in a fraternity).
Not a good defense, of course, because Trump would have been saying, “It’s just the way some guys who do this sort of thing talk.”
FridayNext
@Amir Khalid:
Country club golf locker room would be my guess.
As a two sport letterman and avowed gym rat most of my life, I did hear this type of talk in the locker room. That is, over and above talking about who men would like to date/have sex with or bragging (true or false) about who they did have sex with some boys did talk in terms of forcing themselves on girls. It always came from the football team on the other side of the locker room. I even recall a specific coach joining in once in awhile. We on the volleyball team knew it was disgusting even then, but then we weren’t the over privileged, sun shines out their ass, football team. (This is one reason I chose an undergraduate school that did not have a football team) Since graduating high school the only locker room talk I can recall involves sports, stocks, or politics/current events. But most people just keep to themselves.
Anyone who thinks talking this way is normal for men, even in a locker room, need to have a higher standard for the men in their lives.
FlipYrWhig
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: The roofie mention is apropos. His whole history screams “date rape,” only he grew up in a world with no name for date rape, and he hasn’t bothered to learn the new rules that arose in the past half century.
Feebog
Another former track and cross-country guy here. We usually were too worn out to do anything but shower, dress and drag our asses home. I do remember on conversation where someone described getting to second base with a date. That’s about it. I’m sure a lot of banter goes between certain types of men in all kinds of settings. I doubt very much that many are bragging about sexual assault.
NobodySpecial
Perhaps he’s spent too much time in locker rooms with Ben Roethlisberger and Darren Sharper.
piratedan
@Kay: I don’t think that they’re scared of him… I think they’re scared of the people who support him. The folks that own multiple gun safes for their arsenals. The alt-right guys (and gals) who infest twitter and have a such a handle on hate. Their ranks swollen by those folks that have been faux news and Rush fucking Limbaugh for decades. THAT’S who they’re scared of.
FlipYrWhig
@RSA: Exactly. “All the guys who talk about date rape sound like this!” Just like how everyone at his rallies loves him and supports him. He has a dim awareness that outside of his sphere there are different opinions about things, and he doesn’t let that awareness trouble him, because as far as he’s concerned those people are inferior.
Tokyokie
@Eric U.: Football players everywhere in the U.S. are treated as though they are something special. At my school, a friend who won state swimming titles in two individual events and a relay (the maximum number of events in which he could compete) and then won the state 2-mile title in track was passed over for athlete of the year honors in favor of a mediocre defensive back.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@FlipYrWhig:
A perfect song for Donnie – Sublime’s Date Rape
RareSanity
I have been in football locker rooms, basically from the 8th grade through college as a player, and recently as a coach. I have never heard anyone brag about sexual assault the way Trump did.
We are usually breaking each other’s balls on various subjects, social and sports alike. There’s lots of talking about who’s hot and who’s not regarding women, but very little talk about actual sexual activities…other than the occasional, “Did you get some last night?” Details are almost never discussed unless it was something completely outrageous, like a threesome…so you can imagine the rarity of these types of discussions.
…and this is in football locker rooms. It’s doesn’t get more locker room-y than a football locker room. Just based on the general personality of guys that play football, and the sheer number of players on a football team.
Hoodie
Unfortunately, although it’s rare, I have heard stuff like Trump’s in locker rooms and on construction sites. The guys saying it were all assholes, and some of them also did shit like beat up their wives and girlfriends. I sure as hell would never dream of electing them to anything. The reality distortion field caused by our media is so bad that we think that merely because something exists somewhere within ten sigma of a human behavioral mean implies that it isn’t disqualifying for a job that is supposed to be occupied by our best. As Van Jones said, Trump implied he committed sexual assault, and we’re supposed to take his word that he was just kidding.
GregB
@wenchacha:
Run away, run away!
FlipYrWhig
@Feebog: 50 years ago, when he was last in a locker room, I think it was more common to brag about what you managed to touch when she was fighting you off. Think of the prom scenes in Back to the Future or The Simpsons. Trump is bragging about being Biff or Artie Ziff.
Peale
@Amir Khalid: I doubt the germaphobe has been in a gym for years. He seems like the type who has a home gym that hasn’t been used. He probably installed it with a reminder to his wife that she wasn’t supposed to get fat.
Iowa Old Lady
I’ve never been in a men’s locker room, so I’m speaking on faith here, but I don’t believe all men talk that way. The idea that they do is intimidating in itself because it claims that when women aren’t around, all men boast about assaulting them and turn them into bodies that the men judge and own the rights to. God help us if that’s the norm.
FlipYrWhig
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s far more frat house than locker room. Which is also why a lot of us didn’t join frats.
Schlemazel
My youngest was a frat bro. I asked him about this sort of thing along with questions about drinking because I worried about both when he joined. His frat had an anti-rape speech given at the start of the year and reminders before any party at the house. They had designated brothers who saw to it that guests made it home safely. I asked him about the comments & he said nobody he knew ever said anything like that and would have been disciplined by the house had it happened.
Now the drinking thing on the other hand . . .
Major Major Major Major
I liked how Ryan said he won’t be defending Trump “for the next 29 days.”
hovercraft
@GregB:
The rats are fleeing the sinking ship of Trump. Nick Confessori of the NY Times says the campaign is over. Rick Tyler says the Trump campaign is not running to win, they are setting themselves up for four years of being in opposition to President Clinton, the opposition she will encounter will make the last six seem like childsplay. So impeachment January 21 st?
Lee
@Cacti:
From the ages of 18-24 (in early 80’s) I was in probably the most testosterone fueled environment imaginable (USMC & The Aggie Band).
That was pretty much how the ‘locker room’ talk went. As well as how drunk we got the last time & how drunk we were going to get the next time.
hovercraft
@Peale:
I sus pect she has at least weekly if not daily weigh ins.
Schlemazel
@Iowa Old Lady:
I have known guys who talk something like that, although without the thought that they can just get away with it. They are rare but there are some. I make sure not to spend any time with those guys.
Flying home from a job with another engineer one time & he started to tell me about his visit with a hooker. I told him I was not interested and we should talk about something else. Naturally, when we got to the airport his wife & kids were waiting to greet him.
Frankensteinbeck
@piratedan: and @Kay:
In this case, I don’t think many American news folks think the threat to jail Hillary is weird or out of line. They’ve been pushing the ‘Is she a criminal?’ angle for years, and to them it seems like a natural and only a bit excessive outgrowth of that debate.
WereBear
@Major Major Major Major: Oh, yeah. He’s just crawling with principles.
Ruviana
@WarMunchkin: I’ll just leave this right here.
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft: There’s been a push, which I don’t think got very far, to impeach Clinton before she takes office. The theory is that it’s possible to impeach former executive-branch officers, and there seems to be some historical precedent.
different-church-lady
@WereBear: small point of order: sociopath. I doubt he’d actually kill anyone, but it’s quite clear he does not comprehend nor care about any of the rules of civil human interaction.
Tom Levenson
I’m an old guy who goes for 3 or so gym sessions a week so as not to be as screwed as my in-laws were when they got really old. I go to a townie gym — in Allston, for your Hub types — the cheapest possible ($21 a month). It’s a completely functional gym that is one of the few truly race/class/gender diverse places I regularly encounter in Boston. Everyone there from the heavily tatted young would-be muscle beach types to folks in their seventies or so gamely pushing iron to keep limber.
In the men’s locker room there are three conversations: workout tips; griping about work (especially between co-workers); Boston sports teams.
Never heard anything else, from anyone, of any age. (The most muscle-bound “manly man” young guys are the most focused on fine technical details about workouts. The kinesthesiology/exercise science knowledge on display is often formidable.)
Tokyokie
@Feebog: I remember once during a cross-country workout, the one in which the coach split the team into two groups and had us run timed miles with one group starting when the other group finished, after about the fifth or sixth mile (we probably did eight of them), a couple of us were holding out knees and gasping for breath, when a couple of offensive linemen standing around munching on cups of ice while waiting for their turn in a drill shouted, “Look at the cross-country p—–s!”
I looked at my teammate, and we both shook our heads in dismay. The cross-country team was mostly little skinny guys — logging 50-75 miles of running a week makes you that way — but there wasn’t one kid on the team who couldn’t get through a football workout. Sure, we’d get the crap beaten out of us, but so what? Distance running is all about overcoming pain, so we were accustomed to it. But there wasn’t a single guy playing football who could have completed one of our workouts. (The one in which the coach would load us into his car, drop us at the state line, and tell us to run the 17 miles or so back would have resulted in several of them never being seen again.) Big talk, little follow-through ability. Pretty much standard Republicans.
Timurid
Trump threatened to imprison his opponent, and people are still talking about how he ‘won,’ ‘tied’ or ‘didn’t lose too badly?’
That one moment qualifies as an automatic loss; they should have given him the hook, vaudeville style, right then and there.
The Villagers pivoting back to the horse race today are:
a) White supremacists
b) Misogynists
c) High on bath salts
d) Cthulhu cultists eager for the End
e) All of the above
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
It’s the norm if the locker room is full of Trump and his fellow Biffs, those are the only people who would think they are entitled dod with womens bodies as they wish.
Schlemazel
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
The MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES also had a song about date rape in the 90s where the perp ends up suffering in prison. I do not remember the name of it but my oldest was a fan of the band & I heard it a few times
Brachiator
From a Guardian story, 9 minutes ago.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Do you think Donald will understand what Ryan is saying with that number?
Larkspur
@artem1s:
Hee. I was thinking more like “tree-house banter”, with the sign that says “no girlz allowd” and a group of boys drinking some pilfered peppermint schnapps and making shit up, each of them secretly feeling both titillated and gross. Or maybe it’s at a particularly nasty fraternity rumpus room.
raven
@RareSanity: How ya doing??????
Matt McIrvin
@Timurid: Since he and his associates have been threatening to imprison his opponent at least as far back as the Republican convention, people have gotten used to it.
trollhattan
@hovercraft:
Ken Starr is looking for work so yeah, afraid so.
JMG
@Tokyokie: None of those football players were wrestlers, I’ll bet. I loved wrestling, but oh God how I hated the running we had to do. Up and down four flights of stairs 10 times BEFORE practice. Multi mile runs on nice days.
Eric U.
the Penn State rape fraternity, Kappa Delta Rho probably had talk like Trump’s. So that is the only context where you could hear it.
Kay
See, that’s a real apology. Well done.
hovercraft
@Matt McIrvin:
Well then since we are all about creating new precedents, impeaching the AG, an IRS Commissioner, why not impeach a President elect. It won’t show anyone that you’re a sore loser, who isn’t willing to allow the will of the people to stand. They really don’t believe in democracy.
Brachiator
@Timurid:
I am so used to displays of Clinton hate that this did not seem like a big deal to me.
I fully expect the Republicans to demand that a special prosecutor be appointed after Hillary wins. The attempt to persecute her will never end.
Hoodie
@different-church-lady: I’d say Trump’s boasts regarding sexual assault toe the line between sociopath and psychopath. It’s one thing to use your charm to manipulate women into sleeping with you. You might be a cad, but using force is way beyond that. Trump tries to equate his behavior with Bill Clinton’s because he doesn’t understand the difference.
Kay
I’m not athletic but my husband is and I used to tease him about what I assumed would be “locker room talk”and he told me men don’t talk about women in locker rooms- they talk about themselves. He, for example, talks about a recurring tendon problem he has. Incessantly, apparently :)
Pretty dull.
hovercraft
@Timurid:
That’s the same scale they used to score Mike Pence’s “win”, he was calm and Presidential, except for the fact that he lied about everything.
Anoniminous
NBC/SurveyMonkey released a poll taken 10/2-10/9 with 23,329 respondents (!), MOE 1%:
Clinton: 51%
Trump: 44%
HuffPo Poll of Polls has:
Clinton: 48.1%
Trump: 41.8%
RaflW
Comedian Rob Delaney has an excellent new ActBlue croudfund ask up.
Here’s an excerpt:
He’s picked 18 candidates who are opposing the above assholes. Some of them are people who overlap with the BJ group-ActBlue that went over 50K recently (congrats to us!). I just chipped in to Rob’s page. You might want to.
Bill
Paul Ryan won’t defend or campaign for Trump ahead of election
This seems like a big deal.
But notably not a withdrawal of his endorsement.
Betty Cracker
Remember after the last debate when Trump was patting himself on the back for not mentioning Bill Clinton’s lurid past because of the presence of Chelsea? Kellyanne Connor actually went on record about how “presidential” that was, for Trump to show such “great restraint” (even though he uncorked it in the spin room after Hillz kicked his ass). Last night, Trump not only dumped that shit all over Chelsea’s mom in Chelsea’s presence, he tried to orchestrate a confrontation between Bill Clinton and his accusers as Bill and Chelsea walked into the debate venue. I don’t expect anyone to call Trump or his minions out on that contradiction.
patrick II
I was in various locker rooms nearly daily for twelve years, and then became an adult and worked out at the gym once a week for another thirty and I never heard talk like that. Of course I did not hung out at the same gym where Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Billy Bush hang out so I can’t say it never happens.
dmsilev
Yikes:
hovercraft
@Anoniminous:
Among Likely Voters
Clinton 46
Trump 35
Johnson 9
Stein 2
hovercraft
Congressional Preference
Democrats 49
Republican 42
Guess we know why Ryan is cutting him loose, this is the largest lead all year.
dmsilev
@hovercraft: Two different NBC polls. The SurveyMonkey one is a week-long poll, but the NBC/WSJ one with the double-digit Clinton lead is this past weekend only, so entirely post-pu$$y.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Even his attacks are sexist. He sees Bill Clinton as the worthy opponent. He’s so fucked up and backward as far as women he’s competing with the wrong person.
GregB
Trump’s tape constitutes typical locker room banter if you are golfing with Ben Roethlesburger, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski.
PPCLI
@Kay: I checked out Peters’ twitter page and campaign website. There is absolutely no hint of any kind that he is actually a Republican. Lots of blue in his campaign signs too. Running away from the party it would appear.
Though I’m sure that there is absolutely no doubt that if he gets into Congress he will be the usual party-line vote for abortion-banning, Planned Parenthood de-funding, all Benghazi/emails all the time investigations, “lock her up”, and the Koch agenda, he currently regards the party as a PR liability.
@editgrl
So after all this, all Ryan can say is that he doesn’t support Trump… Thus providing appropriate app for the p&&&y term.
hovercraft
@dmsilev:
Yeah, and it doesn’t contain any fallout from the parade of the fallen women. I’m not calling them fallen because of anything that happened back in the 90’s , it’s them allowing themselves to be paraded in front of the nation that is their fall. If they have legitimate complaints go to the DA.
The fallout has only just begun.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@JMG:
One of my sports was field events for track – shot, disc, javelin. Fucking coaches actually made us meatheads run, as in hurdles and relays every practice. Pissed me off because that WASN’T my natural milieu, which was pounding headfirst into people or doing something meatheaded.
Feebog
@Tokyokie:
Yeah, similar experiences here. We would jog about 2 miles up into the hills above our high school (it’s all wall to wall homes now) to where Coach Godfrey had laid out a course. And then we would run it, forwards then backwards. We ran meets at a local college. Just before the finish was a huge incline that seemed to go on forever. The Coach’s strategy was to make the top of that incline the finish line, so we would literally sprint up that hill, patting the asses of our rivals as we passed them. The rest was downhill with a lever 200 yard finish, so you just let the slope take you to the real finish line. Good Times.
RareSanity
@raven: Hey raven…I’m horrified after last night, but otherwise doing well.
How’s the recovery?
Kay
@PPCLI:
Compare that simple, honest apology with Pence. Pence, who palms himself off as some kind of moral leader.
I heard Huckabee’s daughter last night- she’s a GOP grifter now- and she whined that Christians don’t have to be perfect.
That may be true but they probably can’t be the worst people in any set of 100, either.
hovercraft
So is Merrick Garland getting ready for his confirmation hearings?
Brachiator
Guardian story
This has been a crazy ass election.
Thanks Trump
ETA. Apparently, we should expect more leaked emails in an attempt to weaken Hillary.
RaflW
You know what I heard a lot of in locker rooms as a kid? Gay bashing.
It was terrifying.
Its one of the reasons, I think, that when pollsters and pundits talk about how men react to Trump vs women, I nearly always find myself aligned with the women. I was never sexually assaulted, but I was terrorized and victimized by homophobic bullies.
I’m a pretty healthy adult now, but I do think I re-live some of the trauma during campaigns like this. I am actually someone who rarely swears in daily life. But I’ve been a cussing maniac for weeks re: Trump. I think I revert to some of my middle-school years and the fucking awful shit I endured.
Anoniminous
@hovercraft:
Just saw that. I’d take the Johnson numbers with a whole bunch of salt. The Trump numbers are in Insta-Death territory for the GOP. If they hold the House becomes highly likely to flip statistically although everything will play out in the Congressional Districts is anybody’s guess.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
I would love to see someone ask Uday and Qusay why their father decided to stop being a gentleman, or did Chelsea stop being a lady?
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
If the Senate took this nomination up before they recess on December 16, it would be stunning.
Fair Economist
@Bill: Paul Ryan isn’t just being two-faced. He’s got so many faces he’d need a four-dimensional head to attach them all.
Keith G
There was a lot of crude, sexually specific talk (and songs) in the high school football locker room that I was a part of in the 1970s – also levels of hazing that would make a current administrator faint. I was a bit detached from the worst of it as I started out being a bit young for a varsity starter (a sophomore with a late birthday) and I was quietly very gay. That was a long time ago in a bit of a rough area. Trump’s behavior in inexcusable.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
They skimmed them, and they don’t contain any more transcripts. So now they are digging around for any nuggets, but apparently there are no bombshells.
tsquared2001
@Kay: When the kerfuffle started over the NC bathroom bill and the bill supporters were bitching about showering after practice or games with “those people”, I knew then that NOT ONE of those fuckers had ever been in HS locker room.
First – you do not shower at school. That shit only happens in Hollywood teen exploitation movies.
Second – if you’re not bitching about a test, you are bitching about your parents or how the coach ain’t giving you any clock.
Anecdata and I was quite the nerd but I also grew up with three older tremendously sexist brothers and no, what Donny says and does is not regular behavior. Well, not for any real man.
hovercraft
Bill Kristol is mad at the GOP is being cowardly by not dumping Trump to save the party. He is also disappointed in Mike Pence for not quitting the ticket. Michael Gerson and Kristol are feeling betrayed and they want everyone to save the party from a wave, which they think is now possible, because waves never manifest until a few weeks before the election. Gerson wants evengelicals to stand up and reject Trump for the good of the party.
RaflW
@Brachiator: I’m assuming the senate will do as little work as possible to try to remain invisible to the electorate.
I’ve been amazed at how everyone, me included, has just piled on Ryan, and the ultimate dickish Republican obstructionist asshole has vanished. I guess turtling works. Which, as you can tell, pisses me off.
lofgren
I think “locker room talk” is just a metaphor for any male-only space. In my experience, talk amongst men when they feel safe that women will not overhear or intrude does get quite a bit more blue faster than talk in mixed-gender spaces. I recall exactly one instance of talk like Trump’s, though, and it made every guy in the room uncomfortable. We didn’t know quite how to respond. Ultimately we moved off the topic of sexual assault as quickly as possible. This was decades ago and the incident still comes up among my male friends who were there sometimes, and we still don’t know what we should have done.
If any man in your life is claiming that guys talk like this all the time when they are unmonitored by women, that man is an asshole.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
Some of these women went to legal authorities previously. But now it’s more about politics than anything else.
WereBear
Not when they are spinning scenarios that Trump is how they get their boy Pence into the White House. And then god will “take care of” Trump. And then party like the Spanish Inquisition!
hueyplong
@ Brachiator
@ Bill
All that Ryan story means is that he will now refuse to answer any media questions about Trump. It’s a shutdown of awkward questions and nothing more. Well, it’s one more thing. It’s an invitation to all GOP candidates to do the same.
It will probably work with the media. But not with the Flying Monkeys.
No matter how big our appetites for schadenfreude, I’m afraid we might be about to become a bunch of M. Creosotes.
NorthLeft12
I have never heard men [old, young, teenagers] talk like this in my life, in any locker room setting, bar, strip club, work environment, etc. The “worst” that I have ever heard was some individuals bragging about consensual sex, which mostly was greeted with hoots of derision, and an extended description of what others believed actually happened. i.e. nothing.
That doesn’t mean it has never happened but I really resent Trump and his posse trying to make adultery, sexual harassment, and sexual assault “normal” practices by men everywhere.
Kenneth Kohl
@raven: Raven #24; I just have a hard time believing that…
Brachiator
@RaflW:
True enough. But if Republicans fear that Clinton will appoint ultra liberal judges, this is one of the few opportunities they will have to check her.
Otherwise, they will have to oppose her nominees for her entire term.
Lizzy L
Is there a particular Congresscritter you would like to see LOSE? (Mine is Darrell Issa. Want him GONE.) Send her/his opponent some money. Yeah, she’s got this, but we need to get her a functional Congress, instead of these Republican knuckleheads! GOTV GOTV GOTV
raven
@Kenneth Kohl:Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four for College, One for Bad Feet
“Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health.
He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10.
“
hueyplong
My locker room time (sadly) spans most of the 1970s. Nobody spoke like Trump in that video. To the extent anyone bragged about “conquests,” consent was an essential element in the tale, mainly because the point of the story was how much of a chick magnet the braggart was. And no one believed the braggarts because the guys known to have actual success were nearly always pretty closed-mouthed about it. It was considered a point of gender pride that only the females dished detail (however false that may have been, because we really had no idea what was happening in the other locker room).
Sorry to say that I agree with others that gay-bashing was a pretty common component back in the day.
Mr. Trifflestuff
The Frontline documentary, The Choice, about this year’s presidential election choice documents the early lives of both candidates. It spends some time talking about Trump’s time at an all boys military boarding school and how, with lack of exposure to actual females, they relied on late 1950’s / early 1960’s issues of Playboy to teach them about women and how to relate to them.
I don’t think he’s ever gotten past that. It’s not just a 1950’s view of women as subservient, it’s that, but with the further reduction that women aren’t anymore more than a collection of naughty body parts to be desired, acquired, and dominated.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
The Guardian is reporting on a Huma Abedin email which disses Chelsea as a spoiled brat. Even if no bombshells, this stuff is meant to chip away at Clinton and cause embarrassment.
raven
@Eric U.: Tailhook had nothing to do with the Air Force
RaflW
@tsquared2001:
I’m over the hill (50!), so what do I know about today’s kids. If what you say is right (and I have heard that from a few friends who are parents), it’s interesting. When I was in middle and high school, the boy’s locker room for gym class was a nightmare shower room with like 20 shower heads and boys lined up to go in.
RaflW
@Brachiator:
Pretty sure that is Turtle’s plan if he remains majority leader.
Brachiator
@hueyplong:
Trump himself will provide enough awkward questions between now and the election.
But Ryan’s stance will also anger the GOP base. In the long run, this provides nourishment for the next Trump.
Gindy51
@Eric U.: Husband was a aircraft carrier pilot (USMC) he said he’d never head any man talk like that INCLUDING at Tailhook. He wasn’t at the “infamous” Tailhook as he’d already quit and was in the reserves in the infantry. He never heard those guys speak like Trump either.
chopper
@dmsilev:
dang, that’s brutal. just wait for the next tapes of trump to start droppin’
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
I know, and there were actual investigation with the GOP breathing donw their necks. If there was a case it would have been brought. I don’t discount the fact that often times it boils down to he said she said, but whatever happened was between Bill and the women, Hillary didn’t do anything, so they should leave her alone and not allow a creep to use them like this.
Brachiator
@RaflW:
This is a very risky strategy. The odds are good that there will be another vacancy. A seven member Supreme Court would make a hell of an issue for the mid term elections.
tsquared2001
@RaflW: I am ahead of you on that race down the hill so maybe it has changed but every HS locker room I was in was filthy. My teammates would ROAST the custodian on the regular.
Mnemosyne
@sunny raines:
That’s kind of the weird thing about conservatives, especially religious conservatives — they really do think that every man is a potential sexual predator who is barely kept in check by the law and/or religious morality.
That’s why they constantly accuse feminists of hating men and assuming that every man is a rapist — more conservative projection.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I don’t think that Hillary did anything wrong in defending her husband. And it is Hillary running for president, not Bill.
It is sad that these women are looking to Trump to be their defender. But I am not going to say what they should do.
Villago Delenda Est
@lofgren: This.
I spent two years in an infantry battalion during my time in the Army. Infantrymen take recreational sex most seriously, and they’re not afraid at all to be lewd in discussing it. This is, after all, the Army. But bragging about forcing yourself on a woman was totally beyond the pale, and if one dared to do so, one would be in a world of hurt with your fellow soldiers, for two reasons: one, sexual assault is bad, two, you’re a loser if you can’t get consent and have to force yourself.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: The “tailhook” is what is on the end underbelly of a fighter or fighter-bomber (under the tail) to catch a cable on the deck of an aircraft carrier to prevent the plane from rolling right on into the ocean on landing.
It’s a Navy thing, and raven certainly knows that!
NorthLeft12
My high school had showers, but were only used after swimming classes or by some of the members of teams after an especially hard practice in warm weather. Mostly, we just wanted to get the hell out of there and get home.
Bullying and gay bashing [usually one and the same] was a staple of the gym class experience. I despised that atmosphere and the teachers and school admin that turned a blind eye towards it. This was in the early seventies.
I have never been back to my high school since my last exam there, and ran into only a few fellow classmates [besides my older brother] over the last thirty-one years.
Geeno
@Chip Daniels: Best locker room exchange I ever heard —
Guy 1 is walking past Guy 2 who is at the urinal. Guy 1 says, in a thinly veiled small penis reference, “Standing awfully close to that urinal aren’t you?”. Guy 2, without missing a beat, “I’m pretending it’s your mouth.”
Geeno
@Chip Daniels: Best locker room exchange I ever heard —
Guy 1 is walking past Guy 2 who is at the urinal. Guy 1 says, in a thinly veiled small penis reference, “Standing awfully close to that urinal aren’t you?”. Guy 2, without missing a beat, “I’m pretending it’s your mouth.”
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
One thing I’ve heard is that young guys (high school to college) will talk about girls until they actually get a girlfriend, and once they have a girlfriend, talking about her is off limits. A guy who tries to talk about how hot another guy’s girlfriend (or wife) is, is a guy who’s looking to start a fight.
Ruviana
@Mnemosyne: They think that women are the temptresses and if men are out of control it’s because of women “causing a brother to stumble.”
Mnemosyne
@Ruviana:
Yes, but they also think that men are disgusting pigs, because the things that they think “cause men to stumble” are a glimpse of a girl’s knee or elbow. That’s why those poor Quiverfull girls end up walking around in turtlenecks and ankle-length skirts in the summer — if a boy gets a glimpse of a girl’s ankle, that boy can’t be responsible for his actions!
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: It really is a system to groom both abuser and abusee.
Kilgore Trout
@Kay: I’m visiting my mom in L.A. and the L.A. Times has it in the subhead of the paper edition.
PS happy 90th mom!
singfoom
I don’t spend a lot of times in a gym now as an adult, but I did previously when my workplace had a gym in the basement. That said, I’ve never heard anyone in any gym context from middle school => college and as an adult talk about assaulting anyone of either gender.
The idiots seem to be hung up on the language and not the fact that Drumpf was talking about doing things with not just a lack of consent but actually forcing himself upon someone. But, I repeat myself. I don’t think this is going away because too many people in the world realize “that’s just locker room talk” is a completely worthless dodge that doesn’t even address the core issue. I imagine many villagers will buy it though.
Lee
@Gindy51:
I agree. We talked about the sex we had. The sex we wanted to have. How much we drank & how much we were going to drink.
We did not brag about sexual assault.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I had a buddy who was an A6 driver. And, as you know, the more common use of Tailhook is about the association and it’s parties.
Gelfling 545
@Brachiator: I find this hard to believe. Who would write about the boss’s kid on a work email account?
JR in WV
@Mike J:
Good one! That’ll leave a mark !!
JR in WV
@tsquared2001:
I showered in Jr High and High School after gym form 6 years. I graduated in 1968, went to college 6 weeks after graduation to get the hell out of dodge.
Then I spent several years in the US Navy as a Deck Ape, the only real sailors left in the technological Navy. The Jarheads (Marines) assigned to our ship lived in the same berthing compartment I was in.
I still never heard guys talking about sexual assault – ever. Never. Talking about can you pick up a girl in a bar on Saturday night, very unlikely, but sure, a topic of conversation. How to grope her? No. Never.
Trump is a sociopath who should never be allowed alone with a female of any sort. Did you see his daughters recede from him as he tried to kiss them? That’s a tell ! They don’t trust their own father !!