Unpacking Locker Room Chats

Assault is depersonalized. Daily instances of abuse- catcalls, slut-shaming, groping- are so routinized that we don’t stop to take note of the number of times they happen. Once in a while, a headline gives you pause, but on the whole, harassment has become a fact of life. So when does assault become personal? When it involves you or someone you care about? When you look at someone you grew up with and realize that they are a perpetrator? When the severity of the crime crosses a certain threshold?

Daily instances of abuse- catcalls, slut-shaming, groping- are so routinized that we don’t stop to take note of the number of times they happen.

What I’m trying to say is, what made this locker room conversation different? What made it a source of outrage? Was it an outpouring of the anger we all hold at daily slights that we have learned to overlook? Or was it the number of women involved and the manner in which it was taken up? That’s something worth examining in itself, identifying as it does what we can tolerate and what we can’t in the realm of the unacceptable. I don’t have anything beyond conjecture to offer as to why this case became so important, nor am I trying to minimize its importance by asking why it did, I’m simply trying to understand why the outrage didn’t extend to instances similar to the boys’ locker room.

That’s something worth examining in itself, identifying as it does what we can tolerate and what we can’t in the realm of the unacceptable.

More importantly, where did the problem begin? I think it started much earlier than these chats. It goes back to a psycho-sexual education all of us receive, formally or informally, in our childhood. As children we’re taught to name all our body parts- arms, legs, thighs etc., but adults usually skip what lies between the legs, often designating it ‘shame shame’. How am I supposed to discuss someone touching me inappropriately when I don’t even know where they touched me? If what lies between my legs, whether I am designated as a boy or girl in a heterosexual world, is shameful, then I probably shouldn’t talk about it, right? From a young age, my genitals become a source of embarrassment, the natural is not normal anymore. Usually before we hit puberty, we become aware of the opposite sex in a manner that isn’t supposed to be spoken about (again, we’re talking in dominant heterosexual norms). It becomes the elephant in the room precisely because you shouldn’t talk about it- it’s what ‘could happen’ that creates the awkward psycho sexual awareness amongst boys and girls. It doesn’t go away and usually seeps into adulthood, making for awkward interactions where you’re trying to hide an awareness you keenly feel. The silence itself creates incidents like the boys’ locker room, as there is no space to discuss matters related to sex and sexuality, fueling these maladjusted outlets.

As children we’re taught to name all our body parts- arms, legs, thighs etc., but adults usually skip what lies between the legs, often designating it ‘shame shame’.

So whose fault is it? Families reinforce what schools teach, or rather what they don’t teach. As I said, there are rarely safe spaces to discuss matters related to sex, assault and sexuality. When broaching the subject is taboo, maladjustment is a given- no act is the result of a singular isolated individual, it is the product of a multi-institutional failure. Where do we begin to redress it? Schools may be the safest place, but as they exist at present they are no more than a reinforcement of dominant patriarchal norms. More often than not, the idea of discipline in schools is so pervasive that it is all encompassing- you are either a ‘good’ student or you’re a ‘bad’ student, there is no in-between. If we’re looking for a medium to encourage independent judgment in a safe environment, then surely the all pervasive idea of discipline in schools is the wrong way to go about this, reinforcing as it does sexist notions? So what we’re really looking for is a space to discuss sex, explain assault, how to practice safe sex without widening the curriculum to include a moralistic tint that becomes akin to shaming. How and where do you foster that space?

When broaching the subject is taboo, maladjustment is a given- no act is the result of a singular isolated individual, it is the product of a multi-institutional failure.

The waters become muddier when we talk about culpability. How exactly do you cultivate independent judgment- at what point can you blame faulty teaching and at what point can you blame the person? How do you hold someone accountable when there is no uniform metric, and maybe there can never be one? When it comes to assault and harassment, everything is contextually determined- how do you procedurally account for this? Maybe the reason why laws preventing against harassment are proving so ineffective is precisely this; the law is unsympathetic to subjectivity playing as it does into bias. This is a strength in some aspects, a failure in others, but it is a fact that we don’t account for when looking for redressal. Perhaps the only way to make a sustained change in that process is to continue to challenge the depersonalized aspects of the system by refusing to ignore daily harassment. By being less apathetic to our own harassment, maybe we can make it personal for someone else who will realize that just because something is routine doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. That is after all the biggest goal of consciousness raising in feminism, isn’t it?

By being less apathetic to our own harassment, maybe we can make it personal for someone else who will realize that just because something is routine doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.

Written by Pallavi Baraya