Locker room talk

It's a universal law.  Whenever some bloke says something crass, gross or sexist, another will rush to downplay it as 'locker room talk'.  In the past, it's been Trump.  Yesterday it was Barry Soper.  

It's kind of weird, invoking locker rooms.  The astute observer will note that Bridges wasn't in one - even if the fact escaped the man himself.  A work function is not a locker room: the difference is subtle but important.  Because locker rooms are places where people change.  If you find you're peeling off your clothes in front of the National party caucus, it's a cue to pause and take stock of your life.  

That aside, what's with the locker room thing anyway?  What is it about locker rooms that's meant to make men offensive, or make that offensiveness OK? 

Because it doesn't seem to apply to other genders.

Here are the kinds of things I've said in a locker room:

• Hard work finding a park today!
• Nice weather, isn't it?
• I beg your pardon.  My shoe is under your gym bag.  

Things I have not said in a locker room include:

• Hey, stranger!  Can I treat you to an unsolicited anecdote about my genitals?  

It's almost as if locker rooms are a metaphor for something.  It's the idea that if you put blokes together, out of sight, they descend into animals.  Somehow they can't help it - so best that the rest of us learn to laugh it off.  Boys will be boys.

This locker room thing, it's just one more version of a very old stereotype.  It denigrates the men who don't behave that way, and lets off the hook the ones who do.  This stereotype is tired.  As the mum of sons, so am I.  

Boys and men aren't animals.  For the sake of every gender, let's stop talking about them that way.