"Locker Room Talk"

Growing up in the Detroit area and stepping right out of High School into "blue collar" jobs, gives me a great perspective on coarse, crude, "locker room" discussions between men. Driving truck on and off for nearly 45 years AND working in the retail automobile business also gave great insight into how "unrefined men" talked about women.

I spent several years working in warehouses and driving a "day cab"......... a truck without a sleeper that did fairly local deliveries......... as well as working in bush camps operating heavy equipment. Many afternoons and most payday afternoons, were spent in the local watering holes where we could cash our paycheck, drink a few beers, eat a hamburger and engage in "boy talk". I never once in my life heard any man talk about forcing himself on a woman in any sort of sexual or "romantic" way.  What I did hear and what definitely IS said, from men like this (I was one of them then), in these circumstances, were phrases like: "I would love to throw her face down on this table and.....", or, descriptive types of every sort of sexual act imaginable. As a reality check, there was always that one, or several guys who would say something like, "Oh yea, her wildest dream is to have some sweaty, beer belly ravage her on a bar table".  Of course there was and IS a majority who completely refrain from this conversation entirely.

In other words, while many men will talk a big game, that game.... one they will never get to play anyway..... it is predicated on the woman's imaginary consent. NO ONE EVER TALKED IN A WAY THAT JUST AGGRESSIVELY TOOK WHAT THEY IMAGINED, let alone trying to take it in reality!

These are not "basket of deplorable" men that are irredeemable. You would see these guys in church, at the grocery store with their families and at Kiwanis Club picnics. Yet they would talk a huge game "in front of the boys", then go home and behave themselves! It lets off steam and frustration. Women do it too. Fantasy helps deal with the real world. The difference is that they always assumed consent in their fantasies!

So when those rocket scientists guiding Donald Trump have him and surrogates diminishing the violent, disgusting and illegal comments about real actions of sexual assault, admitted on tape by their candidate, referred to as "locker room talk", they are enabling sexual violence against women & encouraging those out there that are truly deplorable to "go right ahead", Trump does! REAL MEN DO NOT TALK ABOUT SEXUALLY ASSAULTING WOMEN AGAINST THEIR WILL! We didn't in Detroit and we don't in America!

As more women emerge, emboldened at last by "safety in numbers" against humiliation, to tell their stories, we are seeing the picture of a dysfunctional man who has felt for decades that he is above societal norms, as well as the law.  Acting and thinking in this manner, he would never have been hired to work in one of those Detroit warehouses! Why would anyone consider hiring him to be our President?