That’s correct. “Locker room talk” is something women believe men do because they themselves engage in it, but most men (the vast, vast majority) do not. However, it’s common for women! So it’s all projection.
I was in the army for five years. I never witnessed any “locker room” talk at all. The closest I ever heard was something like, “Rebecca was hot! I hope she likes me.” Or something of that nature. Most of it was so vanilla and anodyne. And unlike in high school, in the army I was popular and well-liked. So it wasn’t like I was being excluded, etc.
I was in academia for 9 years and witnessed a lot of really disgusting locker room talk by men, while me and other women were present actually. And I have never had a female friend tell me anything about their sex lives. The only thing comparable thing women talk about in my experience is complain at length about their period and share gruesome birth experiences. So experiences vary. 🙂
Interesting that you experienced so much in academia, and I experienced basically none with five years in the army. Oh, I did hear someone call a fellow soldier “dead sexy” once in a barracks bathroom. (We’d just come from swimming and she was in a bikini.)
That seems totally harmless to me. Maybe it is because soldiers feel less like they have to prove their manliness by saying gross things, while academics might feel un-manly? It’s possible because there is a lot of self-doubt and second guessing under the surface. Especially if they are at the stage of PhD / Postdoc and not professor. Some anthropologist should do a study about this. 🙂
I think there is something to do that idea. I was in paratrooper units, and there seemed to be a lot less showing off and posturing than in dudes who had never proved themselves in any way.
I guess I’ve heard ‘locker room’ talk a few times, including once at a streetcar stop in Warsaw (late teen/early twenties American bros assuming no one around them could understand).
The thing is…. it’s utterly devoid of….. eroticism and is usually entirely performative in nature and you could change out the sex terms for terms about fixing cars and it would sound the same.
The closest equivalent I can think of might be fishing stories where exaggeration for comic effect is the goal.
A secondary effect is to gross out women (in a mostly non-malicious way). I can’t seriously any guy engaging in it around women for any other reason and again, you could switch out the sex terms for something like shark attacks and have the same effect (and I have heard performative conversations by men intended to gross people out about other topics… one memorable example had to do with animal slaughter gone wrong in South America).
I hadn’t thought of that explanation for it. I think that’s probably not the reason women engage in it, though. It seems more for exchange of information and also for boasting and occasionally for putting their boyfriend/husband down as well, depending on their mood and the happiness of the relationship.
How is it non-malicious to gross women out? I totally hated hearing about anal sex during coffee break at 9 in the morning & in the end it was one of the factors that made me leave academia. Not a specific incident but the idea to have to hear stuff like that on a normal work day until I retire. To me there was something really hostile about it. And I have not experienced this at my other work places (finance and high school — students never say things like that in front of me). I also have never heard as much racist crap like when I was in academia. I felt like I was surrounded by sociopaths sometimes.