Legislator’s remarks provide boys a lesson
Balancing Act
Michigan Advance reporter Allison Donahue launched an important dialogue recently when she wrote a first-person article about state Sen. Peter Lucido telling a room full of high school boys they “could have a lot of fun” with her.
Now it’s on the rest of us to keep the dialogue going.
Donahue, 22, wrote that she was waiting outside the Michigan Senate chamber to interview Lucido, a Republican from Shelby Township, when the Senate session ended Jan 14. Lucido told her he would catch up with her when he finished talking to a group of students from his alma mater, De La Salle Collegiate, an all-boys Catholic high school.
“As I turned to walk away, he asked, ‘You’ve heard of De La Salle, right?’ ” she wrote. “I told him I hadn’t. ‘It’s an all boys’ school,’ he told me. ‘You should hang around! You could have a lot of fun with these boys, or they could have a lot of fun with you.’ ”
The boys laughed. “I walked away knowing that I had been the punchline of their ‘locker room’ talk,” she wrote. “Except it wasn’t the locker room; it was the Senate chamber. And this isn’t high school. It’s my career.”
A week after that incident, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat, filed a sexual harassment allegation against Lucido. Lucido denies the allegation.
But let’s stay on Donahue’s story for a bit.
Peggy Orenstein’s fantastic new book, “Boys and Sex: Young Men on Hookups,
Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity,” illuminates the expectations, fears and feelings that 16- to 22-yearold males have about sex and intimacy.
Orenstein sounded an alarm — in the form of a tweet — when she read Donahue’s account.
“Great opportunity (as if there isn’t always one) to have a little talk with boys in your life about the nature of ‘locker room talk’ and — even if they would NEVER — how they might stand up to it in their own lives,” Orenstein tweeted.
I love that idea. I called her to hear more.
“(Donahue) did such a fantastic job of articulating how those sorts of comments affect women and
how corrosive they are,” Orenstein said.
Indeed.
“The situation made me embarrassed,” Donahue wrote. “It made me feel small and it made me want to walk away from the Capitol and tell my editor that Lucido wasn’t available to comment.
“But I’ve stayed quiet before,” she continued.
“I’ve been the subject of locker room talk before, and laughed it off with all the boys in the room. I’ve been convinced not to report an instance of sexual assault because of the trouble the man would get into, and I never said anything. There have been too many moments, big and small, that I wish I would have told someone or spoken up about. I’m not saying this is the same situation and I’m not saying I’m a victim in this. But the 15-year-old girl in me, who didn’t know how to advocate for herself then, was telling me to do it now.”
Brave, important words. “What I’m hearing less of,” Orenstein said, “is what happens when you are the boy standing there when another guy — an authority figure, a peer — says something like that. I think it’s a real opportunity to have a conversation with boys about what your role is, or what your role could be, when you’re hearing that kind of locker room talk.”
Several young men confided in Orenstein, during the 100-plus interviews she completed for her book, that they feel uncomfortable and embarrassed when they hear their friends or peers degrading girls and women. She said a student- athlete approached her during her book signing at New Trier High School recently and asked her advice on speaking up when his teammates — with whom he needs to maintain a tight, cohesive, cooperative unit — say things that make his stomach churn.
Often, she said, boys feel utterly alone — in being bothered by degrading comments and in figuring out what to say in the moment. Parents, coaches and other grown-ups can help them feel less so.
“They need, of course, to understand the impact of those statements,” Orenstein said. “That it’s not just talk. That talk has an impact. But they also need to understand how the culture of silence that boys find themselves in supports and perpetuates the environment in which men make those comments. And you can help them think about ways they can interrupt those comments.”
Ask the boys in your life if they hear comments about girls and women that feel degrading and disrespectful. Ask them whether they want to brainstorm some responses to have handy if and when those comments do come up. Ask them if they worry about being stigmatized or targeted if they speak up.
“It gives them a sense of support,” Orenstein said, “and it also might open up a conversation where they say, ‘This has been happening and my coach does it too.’ Or, ‘We’ve been working on this on my team and it’s really helping.’ ”
You don’t know where they stand unless you ask. And they don’t know where you stand unless you tell.
I hate that Donahue was treated like a punchline and a plaything. I love that she found the courage to write about it. And now the rest of us get to make sure her story doesn’t just sit there in vain.
It’s on all of us to create a culture where a comment like Lucido’s would be met with stunned silence — or derision — not laughter. That’s the only way that sort of dinosaur thinking becomes extinct.