i have never been in a men<u+2019>s locker room, but the news in recent weeks has offered a lesson in what to expect. first it was donald trump, who passed off the debasing remarks he was caught on tape making about women as mere <u+201c>locker room talk.<u+201d> now it<u+2019>s the harvard men<u+2019>s soccer team that was found to have crudely sexualized members of the women<u+2019>s team, systematically and continually over many years. once again, there are some who pass this behavior off as the stuff of <u+201c>locker rooms.<u+201d> like who, you might ask? the new york times, for one. the news at harvard broke late last week, when the university canceled the rest of the men<u+2019>s soccer season after discovering that team members had been rating their female counterparts based on various physical characteristics, using a numerical scale and lewd sexual terms. team members called it their <u+201c>scouting report,<u+201d> and they circulated it online as a google doc. the swift punishment from the university came after an investigation found that the practice originated several years ago but continued into this season. the times wrote a solid story on friday, datelined cambridge, with all the appropriate context and framing. on the home page and in print, it ran under the headline: <u+201c>locker room talk becomes the talk of harvard.<u+201d> that headline caught the attention of several readers, and for good reason. stephen benson, of melbourne, fla., put it well. this story was not about a casual comment tossed off without thinking. these were written, detailed descriptions of women<u+2019>s bodies and sexual positions. they were written by men who had been accepted to the premier university in the country. to call it locker room talk is to dismiss it as trump has with his own recorded comments. it minimizes the men<u+2019>s actions and demeans the women<u+2019>s experience that resulted. i couldn<u+2019>t agree more. calling it locker room talk, by most any standard usage, is a way of diminishing the offensive language or behavior of those being drawn into question. that<u+2019>s precisely why trump rushed to use the phrase, and it<u+2019>s why others reach for the term too: it signifies that the behavior in question is normal, harmless and nothing to fret over. i asked charles knittle, the editor who wrote the headline, what his thinking was in choosing this expression. here is his rather elaborate reasoning: my task in this headline was to convey a snapshot of the story that summarized what happened and suggested why we thought it was worth the front page. obviously, i did not succeed completely or unanimously. but i actually think it was a very good headline. it took the phrase that donald trump used to dismiss and rationalize his own vulgar and patronizing speech and moved it out of billy bush<u+2019>s bus and onto the campus in cambridge. it conveyed the message that this kind of arrogant and misogynistic attitude is not confined to the entertainment world but extends well into our supposed american elite. and knittle added: the headline was couched in the diplomacy of page 1, but its point was to cry out against the very complacency and dismissiveness that your letter writer is accusing us of. but i still think its point was clear: the phrase <u+2018>locker room talk<u+2019> became a pejorative in the american vernacular as soon as the trump tape exposed it. got that? perhaps if headlines came with footnotes, more readers would be wise to the times<u+2019>s reinterpretation of the term. until then, we<u+2019>re left with current usage, which to my mind is pretty clear: when someone refers to men<u+2019>s behavior as <u+201c>locker room talk<u+201d> it is a means of relegating it to the harmless, the playful, that which should not be taken too seriously by those who might claim offense. if the men<u+2019>s soccer team<u+2019>s actions were simply viewed as <u+201c>locker room talk<u+201d> by harvard officials, i suspect they wouldn<u+2019>t have shut the team out of a chance to win its division title and go to the n.c.a.a. tournament. a chance to publicly and bluntly scold them. six members of the women<u+2019>s soccer team wrote an op-ed in the harvard crimson about the event, and they use this go-to phrase, setting it off in quotations. here<u+2019>s one part: <u+201c> <u+2018>locker room talk<u+2019> is not an excuse because this is not limited to athletic teams. the whole world is the locker room.<u+201d> under new york times usage, it indeed seems to be. follow the public editor on twitter @spaydl and reach her by email at public@nytimes.com .
why <u+2018>locker room talk<u+2019> is no excuse
liz spayd