I first noticed the phenomenon you address about a high school locker room. We have a phrase now, “locker room talk,” to describe conversations among men that are demeaning to women.
It appeared to me that the boys who engaged in the most locker room talk got the most dates with the most girls. I constructed in my own mind a theory that their actions did not match their talk in the locker room.
On a couple of occasions, it appeared to me that my theory was bunk. One guy was stroking a girl’s crotch (through clothing) in front of several people. Another was describing a tattoo the girl he had brought to a party had recently acquired when she came into the room.
C’mere, he said, and when she did he turned her around and pulled her jeans down to show everybody the tat. She squirmed a bit and left the room immediately when he let her go. I thought she was embarrassed but I didn’t know her well enough to talk to her about it. I was of an age that was more female skin than I was accustomed to seeing and honestly I would have been embarrassed to talk to her unless I knew her really well.
Fast forward thirty years and my first wife has just left me after remembering she was gay. It came to her that she was not thrown out of the convent over theological differences — which was what she told me — but rather because she was caught in flagrante with another nun.
I didn’t care if she had a girlfriend and I delayed filing for divorce for almost two years hoping she would change her mind. I feel the need to make that explanation how my first marriage ended before I tell about all the whining I did between marriages.
I was by that time a judge with the longest family violence docket in the county because the cases were awful and my habit was always to do my most distasteful work first. During the time I was not married, I was struck by the parade of attractive women trying to rescue men who had beaten them, often repeatedly.
When feeling sorry for myself, I reflected on the fact that not only have I never taken out anger that way, I’ve never even had to consciously stop myself.
Of course, I could not approach any woman who had business in my court but when I was — in my personal life — lonely, which I was after being out of dating for 11 years, it was painful to watch these women pursue violent jerks.
Within a year after acquiring that docket, I got myself up to speed in the social science research such that I understood the dynamic I saw play out again and again. And I was able to get back in the dating game (something I found difficult because I didn’t do bars or discos and I did not want to pretend just to meet somebody).
So it all came out well for me. I ended up married to the love of my live. But I will never forget how watching those women chase their batterers made me feel like I had put my loneliness in a box and they packed it in ice. The rational part of me knew I would not be alone forever, but I’m just reporting how it felt.
In both the high school case and the adult case I was not considering putting up a nice front to seek feminine companionship. I was just observing guys doing stuff I would not do even if my failure to act that way left me without dates. And they seemed to have no trouble attracting girls or women.
In the high school case, I just watched the behavior go by and honestly was a bit awed that she put up with it but I would never be tempted to yank a girl’s pants down to make myself look cool.
In the adult case, I had to involve myself because it was my job. More judges are assassinated over family law cases than over criminal cases. But I put my orders between the batterer and the battered and I enforced my orders.
