Locker Room "banter"

I was encouraged to say more about this topic after posting online about how to address “locker room banter”. Politics aside, this is what the country has spent a week discussing:

Donald Trump: You know and I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach.

Unknown: She used to be great. She’s still very beautiful.

Trump: I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f*** her. She was married.

Unknown: That’s huge news.

Trump. No, no, Nancy. This was— And I moved on her very heavily in fact. I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture. I took her out furniture. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big, phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.

[The men spot Arianne Zucker waiting for them outside the bus]

Bush: Sheesh, your girl’s hot as shit. In the purple.

Trump: Whoa! Yes! Whoa!

Unknown: Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man!

Trump: Look at you. You are a pussy.

[crosstalk as the bus doors open and close - Trump is still on the bus]

Trump: Maybe it’s a different one.

Bush: It better not be the publicist. No, it’s her. It’s —

Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful - I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab them by the pu**y. You can do anything.

This exchange was recorded in 2005. People have been horrified for the most part, but some people don’t think it’s a big deal. Mr. Trump disregards it as “locker room banter” meaning this is how guys talk when they’re alone.  They brag about grabbing women, they move on women “like a bitch, and try to fuck them.”  Perhaps some men do talk this way… hopefully only a few compared to the majority of the population. It is not the norm, it is by definition, deviant behavior.

Athletes in locker rooms are expressing horror. Women with sons are expressing horror, young sons are expressing horror. Women, girls, are sharing stories of daily sexual assaults, the kind that is considered “minor” and “not reportable.” In passing, on the crowded street, or bus, elevator, party. Since age 9, 12, 15… and continuing until they became “too old” or “fat” to be bothered with. But for the most part, they want to know how to make this stop.

One of the things I do in my profession is train on the topic of “Primary Perpetration Prevention.” There is also secondary and Tertiary prevention but my focus right now is primary – preventing abuse, mainly sexual, from ever taking place. And yes, we start when humans are small and impressionable. Why? Because research tells us that adults who sexually abuse began doing it as children and/or teens. And they start by doing it to other children because there is a difference in power, strength, age or ability. However, no-one did any research on the sexual abuse of children by children earlier than the mid 1980s – adults were convinced that children just did not have sexuality let alone a proclivity to abuse, given the right circumstances. A team of psychologists at the Kempe Center in Denver developed a program in the mid 1990s to work with adolescent offenders with largely positive results. Young minds can learn three important skills: Communication, Empathy and Accountability. I was trained to be a trainer on these topics by one of the authors, Gail Ryan, MA, in 2009 who is now retired. I want to carry on her legacy.

Very basically – communication is the ability to send and receive messages. Ideally they learn to do this is a healthy family setting. Not all kids grow up in nurturing and safe homes. They learn to keep secrets.

Empathy is the ability to read and understand the emotions of other people (or even animals). Children without empathy will not understand when they have hurt someone’s feelings, or identify someone’s feelings.

Accountability is the accurate attribution of wrongdoing. If you make a mistake, own it and make amends. There is a consequence to a behavior vs getting away with it.

This morning I posted this on Facebook, my private personal page:

If you are ever in a locker room, and you hear somebody talking about grabbing women (etc) and another person laughing along here's what you could say to make a difference:
"I heard you say that you grabbed a woman etc. and I feel very uncomfortable and/or angry and I'm sure that woman was uncomfortable and/or angry; What you were describing is abusive and illegal and it needs to stop."
#notokay

The structure of the response is what I teach adults to use. First – communicate that you HEARD it and or SAW it with your own ears and eyes. Often someone who is offending and keeping secrets will “gaslight” you with, “I didn’t do that/say that, you saw wrong, it wasn’t me.” No, stand firm. You know what you heard and saw.

Then you talk about your feelings and or the feelings of the person who is being harmed – uncomfortable, hurt, mad, in pain, point out tears and sadness if it is present. They need to be helped to identify emotions and hopefully feel them. This is obviously much easier with young people.

Accountability can simply be a prohibition. Research also tells us that young people do not know which behaviors are illegal. Telling someone their behavior is illegal can make it end right there. Many of us grew up in a family where getting a pinch on the bottom is cute and funny. But most of us who don’t like it were able to say, “I don’t like that,” and it stops. Because when you respect the body and wishes of another, that’s what you do. So the final part of the above intervention tells the people to stop.

I am not going to tell you that this is easy to do. What if you are at a party and you witness someone being harmed? You are in a dangerous situation, no doubt. However, a room full of bystanders is just as culpable as the perpetrator. You must intervene or get help. Someone I know said saying these things could cost them in their individual sub-cultures (work?). I suggested these were people they were better off without. Humans can be held to a higher standard and should be. Women are your mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, wives. We deserve to be safe, to walk down the street feeling no leery eyes on us, no rude comments (even if they try to convince us they are compliments), no hands grabbing us, from a friend or a stranger. Men can help to make this kind of world a reality by speaking up routinely, until it doesn’t feel scary. Practice makes perfect.

My next training is through Foster Source – a foster parent support organization. The training is in Greeley, CO on November 19 from 9-11:30. There is a lot more than the above but even if just the above can make a difference, please use it.