It's not easy being a man. Shaving, ties, extreme vulnerability to knees – negotiating the minefield is tricky.
And it seems life is only set to get harder for we of the hirsute sex. Society has now begun to attack the very core our identity as men: the locker room. Our sanctuary, our refuge, our personal cathedral, is under siege by forces who simply don't understand what the locker room means to us, and why we spend so much of our time – some studies estimate up to 14 hours per day on average – in locker rooms around the country.
More News Videos
Trump apologises for 'locker room talk'
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he is "not proud" of his lewd remarks about women after video emerged.
Now look, it's not that I condone the comments of Donald Trump. Of course I don't. They were reprehensible and unacceptable and obviously I condemn them unequivocally. But on the other hand, have you considered that maybe they weren't all that bad?
I mean, at least consider it. Bear in mind that these comments were "locker room banter". And unless you've been in a locker room, you really don't understand what that means.
![We need these safe spaces to have important conversations on manly topics.](/web/20161017152423im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/1/o/q/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs1kt7.png/1476410924803.png)
Yes, when men are in a locker room, amid the sweat and the steam and the sound of snapping wet towels ringing in the air, sometimes our language becomes a little unguarded. We're men. We talk man-talk. It gets a little loose. It gets a little wild. It gets a little – yes, I'll say it – manly.
But that doesn't mean we're being disrespectful. You just have to know how to interpret the lingua locker. Too many people have leapt on the phrase "grab her pussy" and twisted it to mean something offensive. But when you're in the locker room, saying "grab her pussy" is the time-honoured way of demonstrating how much you respect a woman. Among the locker-room fraternity, a woman whose pussy you'll grab is a woman of value, a woman of substance.
In the locker room we tell each other "I'd grab her pussy" the way that, outside the locker room, we would say, "I admire her fiercely independent spirit." Just the same as we say, "I'd like to kiss her without her permission" when we mean, "Her drive to succeed in a traditionally male-dominated field is inspirational."
We're always saying things like that, in the locker room. In fact, the most common topic of conversation in locker rooms is women whom we admire. We are constantly swapping stories about our feminist heroes. Like for example, the other day I was in the locker room with some of my "bros", and I was telling them about my female co-workers.
"I want to grope every single one of them and probably rub up against them in a lift," I said. And all my bros understood what I was saying: that the professionalism of my female colleagues is impeccable and I learn more from them every day. Sadly, nowadays wording such a powerful statement in support of women's rights this way can easily get you labelled a "misogynist".
But look: I'm a man. I'm resilient. I'm strong and tough and muscular and leathery. I can take being dubbed a sexist just because I express my concern about the pay gap via assessments of the authenticity of waitresses' breasts (only when I'm among other men, of course).
What I can't take is having my locker room taken away. I can't take being robbed of those carefree hours spent banging the locker doors as loudly as we can in order to scare off the locker ghosts so we can begin our daily Man Meetings – serious discussions of masculine policy in which we decide the direction of manhood for that day.
For the uninitiated, these meetings are conducted completely in the nude, and policy disagreements are resolved in the manliest way possible – via measurements. Whenever any of us disagree, we simply whip out the measuring tape, and the longer man wins. I know it sounds arcane to those who've never been in a locker room, but this is the way it's been done for generations, ever since the locker room was invented by Nikola Tesla as a means of storing underpants in bulk.
I don't want to lose Tesla's legacy, any more than I want to lose the wonderful games we play in locker rooms throughout the world. Games that bond us together as men and teach us teamwork, perseverance, and motor skills. Games like Swallow The Towel, Shave The Grandfather, and Catch The Secret Racist. These are the games that teach us HOW to be men.
Every man remembers how, when he turns thirteen, the Male Elders of his community take him into the locker room, paint his face with the blood of a freshly-slaughtered eland, and force him to play a best-of-five-sets match of Testicle Tennis against the Lockerkeeper (the mysterious masked man who lives in every locker room and distributes talcum powder when you least expect it).
If the lad can push the Lockerkeeper to five sets of TT, he is officially a Man and is allowed to wear Lynx. If he can beat the Lockerkeeper, he is given a pair of barbecue tongs and permitted to handle various meats. If he is thrashed by the Lockerkeeper, he must remain a boy until his next birthday and spend the entire year serving the rest of the locker room cocktails and carpaccio.
It's those boys I worry about. The youngsters who no longer have a clear path to manhood because the broader community has lashed out in ignorance against the locker room. These boys may grow up not even knowing what Testicle Tennis is, let alone how to play a backhand topspin drop volley at a crucial moment.
I think of a Lost Generation of boys, who've never known the joy of gathering amidst the lockers for a late-night session of toe-wrestling, or spent a week living inside a locker, feasting on the mushrooms within and learning the eldritch language of the locker-nymphs.
I fear for these boys who may enter into their first sexual experience without first having practised their moves on the Burlap Woman that every locker room stocks for educational purposes.
Don't sell these boys short by killing the tradition of the locker room. Don't rob us of the banter. Don't rob us of the camaraderie. Don't rob us of the security of our safe space. Men need to be able to be men, without fear or shame – and without the locker room and its joyous nightly cat-burnings, I don't see how we can.
It's true what they say: a man without a locker room is like… well, probably a woman. And obviously none of us want that.
0 comments
New User? Sign up