Locker Room Talk

We’ve all experienced it in one form or another. Whether personally, via rumors, or through your favorite prime time teenage drama, we all know what the boys’ locker room is famous for: sex talk. The space may not necessarily be a literal locker room, but just any teenage male dominated space, such as the weight lifting room C.J. Pascoe observes in her book Dude, You’re a Fag. The weight lifting room is a place where a male student can not only demonstrate their physical aptitude, but attempt to prove themselves the most sexually accomplished as well. The boys tell eccentric and increasingly violent tails of their exploits, they repeatedly account stories that did not accentuate any sort of pleasure, either given or received, but instead bragged about their ability to make their female partners bleed, or in some cases defecate. One student, Rich, proudly recalled a time he had caused an ex-girlfriend to cry and bleed. He bragged that he “popped her wall”, leading her to have “to have stitches.” Another boy told a story about a friend, who had anal sex with “a drunk chick”, who proceeded to “shit all over the place.” These anecdotes were met mostly with laugher, occasionally with moans, and often with a few mutterings of “gross.” These accounts are more than just harmless teenage boys bonding exuberantly over being sexually active teenage boys; they are meant to draw attention to a boy’s ability to have control over a woman’s body. They purposefully emphasize what they did to their partners, how they forced them to bleed, how they caused them to lose control of their bowels, of their bodies. They didn’t really discuss having sex with their girlfriends, or any pleasure. This violent emphasis is how the students demonstrate their sexual domination over women to their male peers.