Your Locker Room Is Rehearsing Something

This post from @lewiswedlock on IG stopped my scroll dead in its tracks. Not because it was some new revelation, but because it was so simple in its labeling “locker room talk” for what it actually is.

Way too often we hear players—and sometimes even their coaches—excuse the spewing of awful beliefs as acceptable simply because it happened behind the dingy walls of a team room. These first two slides refuse to grant that exemption.

"Public utterance."

"...under the guise of banter."

Those two phrases perfectly capture what we've participated in and, too often, allowed inside the supposedly "safe spaces" of sport. As if the walls of a locker room somehow sanitize the toxicity of the conversation. As if changing the location changes the impact.

There's another belief hiding underneath the phrase "locker room talk" that deserves challenging.

It assumes young men say awful things while taking off their shoulder pads or hanging up their practice jerseys, then somehow leave those beliefs behind in the same sweaty pile of gear.

I don't buy that.

If they're rehearsing misogyny together in the locker room, there's a good chance those same beliefs travel with them into classrooms, relationships, parties, group chats, and every other community they enter after they leave the gym.That's why I think we have to stop treating locker room language as the problem.

It's evidence of the problem.

The language points us toward the beliefs underneath it.

TeamsOfMen exists to help coaches do more than simply mute racist or misogynistic language inside their programs. The work is helping players recognize, challenge, and ultimately unlearn the beliefs that produced those words in the first place.

Because if all we've accomplished is quieter misogyny, we haven't accomplished much at all.

Coaches Prompts

• What's one phrase you've heard so often that you've stopped noticing it?

• When you correct language, do you also explore the belief underneath it?

• What conversations have you dismissed because "that's just locker room talk"?

Players Prompts

• Why do people say things in a locker room they'd never say in class?

• Does joking about something make the belief disappear—or normalize it?

• If your words reveal your thinking, what are your words teaching your teammates?