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What Trump is saying by invoking the phrase “locker room” over and over again is that when guys are in the showers and whirlpools, sitting around naked except for damp towels over their nether regions, this is their alpha code, their mode of male-only hormonal-based communication, and it’s therefore excusable. He’s saying that this is how rich and powerful manly men commonly talk and think about women when they are alone in their natural animal state and not obliged to put on a mask by the rules of mixed society. After all, he claims, Bill Clinton has said worse to him on the golf course, and done worse things to women.

As long as men don’t actually act on this sexual “banter,” Trump says, it’s harmless. It’s merely embarrassing to be caught talking like a werewolf. We’re supposed to accept this as another example of Trump’s celebrated virtue of saying what so many people are fearful of voicing.

He has told us the truth about men when no one else will.

The characterizing of this as commonplace is doubly creepy because it suggests that sexual obsession is the immutable trait of successful maleness. And that under the skin of every stud is a serial ogler, if not a groper. All of which is as demeaning to men — especially athletes — as it is to women.

But what exactly constitutes “locker room talk,” anyway? What are the parameters of this secret dog whistle of conversation? The fact is, it doesn’t exist. Trump’s fantasy of a locker room is contradicted and proved ridiculous the minute you actually step into a real one. There are a range of characters and voices in that all-male haven.