Happy Friday!
I would love nothing more than to ignore Donald Trump, and help you to do the same, but I just can’t. He has driven me to both despair and distraction this week, following the release of a 2005 recording of him making sexually predatory remarks about women.
As Michelle Obama said in her barnstormer of a speech at a campaign event for Hillary Clinton on Thursday: “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“I feel it so personally, and I’m sure that many of you do too, particularly the women,” said Obama. ”The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. It is cruel. It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts.”
As Sarah Todd wrote for Quartz, Trump’s misogyny has forced feminists—including those campaigning for Clinton—into playing defense, rather than offense. And while Trump has certainly energized us, there are real disadvantages to an atmosphere that discourages critical discussion about Clinton’s own cabinet or policies, in favor of stating simply that we can’t have a bigoted, self-proclaimed sexual predator in our country’s highest office.
Obama beautifully acknowledged that fact, along with the feelings of rage, shame, and sadness many women and men have felt as a result of this week’s discourse. Then she galvanized those feelings into an actionable offensive play: Vote. (If you’re in New York, today is the last day to register!)
“This isn’t about politics,” she said. “It’s about basic human decency.”
In defense of actual locker room talk. By now you’re probably well aware that Trump attempted to shrug off his boasts of sexual assault as “locker room talk”—a term he employed several times during Sunday night’s debate, as if to suggest bragging about nonconsensual sexual encounters is just what guys do behind closed doors. (Athletes including LeBron James, Dahntay Jones, Sean Doolittle, and—most scathingly—Chris Kluwe spoke up to say, “Nope.”)
In doing so, Trump threw his entire gender under the bus—an affront to decent men everywhere, as Obama pointed out. But it’s also an affront to the locker room, and a misrepresentation of the things most of us talk about when we’re in a safe, private place—especially a single-sex one—where we can connect with our teammates, literal or figurative.
Sure, the locker room is a place to shower, change, and make the transition to whatever comes after the workout, but it’s also a place to be silly, unguarded, and speak without shame. (Trump has also bragged about invading such a space for women by barging in on Miss Universe contestants as they changed backstage.)
As Abby Hamlin, a former basketball player and the daughter of a basketball coach who “grew up in locker rooms,” wrote for the San Diego Tribune, the locker room is a sacred place “where resolve is learned. It’s where tears and sweat are indistinguishable.” It’s a place where we can talk honestly about our failures, our fears, and how we might do better in the future.
You know, locker room talk.
This week made me long for my own locker room—which is basically wherever my female friends are. When I was in college at the University of California Santa Barbara, the simple, strong friendships I had were a sanctuary of support, silliness, and utter safety.
I found myself returning mentally to that place a decade later, when tragedy struck my college campus. In April 2014, a 22-year-old man went on a misogynist rampage in UCSB’s student community of Isla Vista, killing seven people including himself.
The thing that restored my center then was the strength and comfort I found in the continued love and ongoing support of my girlfriends. That has been true again this week. Female friendship is a form of feminism. Tell the ladies in your life you appreciate them, and hold them tightly!
Actually, the guys too. This week we’ve seen the very obvious ways women are victims in a society that defines masculine strength as the absence of vulnerability, and views emotional expression (other than anger) as weakness.
But really, it’s a bad deal for men too. At the extreme end of the spectrum, we see it result in violence, abuse, and rising suicide rates. At the everyday end, it must just be plain difficult.
Professors such as Andrew Reiner and Michael Kimmel attempt to address that with college courses on masculinity—or in Kimmel’s case, “masculinities,” to acknowledge the concept’s multiple definitions. They explore how the “bro code”—essentially the aggressive, chest-thumping behavior Trump misidentified as “locker room talk”—is harmful not only to women and society at large, but to men themselves.
It’s a lot to untangle, but those of us with sons might start by letting them know it’s okay to display the range of emotions—maybe you caught this viral video of a martial arts instructor telling his student to go ahead and cry. It’s okay for grown-ups too.
WHAT?!? That was my reaction when Quartzy editor Indrani Sen walked into work on Tuesday and said, offhandedly, “Trump kicked the Bey-hive.” I was outraged and incredulous—and then I was just entertained.
Please take comic relief, if you haven’t already, in this video of a Trump advisor woodenly quoting Beyoncé’s “Formation” on CNN, in a much-mocked attempt to claim that enjoying the lyrics “When he f- me good I take his ass to Red Lobster,” is basically the same as bragging about sexual assault.
And, well, let’s get in Formation.
Have a great weekend!
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Comfort food. Wikileaks’ release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails—including his advice for cooking risotto—gave us occasion to debate the preferred method for preparing the Italian rice dish. People, including Quartz reporter Annalisa Merelli, have strong views on the topic, but everyone agrees on the desired result: a creamy rice that flows at a snail’s pace from a tilted plate. I’ve only known the Podesta-approved method of adding a ladle-full or so of broth to the rice at a time, constantly stirring. The very trustworthy J.Kenji López-Alt rinses and strains his rice before adding nearly all the liquid at the beginning. Pressure cooker fanatics dump all the liquid in at once. Your pick! You could use the last of your summer basil with this River Café-inspired recipe, or go golden with butternut squash and saffron. Let’s not get polarized over this.