BLADES OF BIGOTRY

In my experience, the chat in the women’s locker room is about how you performed or hope to perform in whatever sport you’re changing for. Or it might be the same kind of thing that you talk about over a coffee or in a bar.

In other words, it’s not typically treated as an opportunity to be condescending about the people not in the room with you.

How I wish the U.S. men’s gold-winning Olympic hockey team locker room looked more like Ted Lasso’s AFC Richmond soccer team’s on the hit Apple TV show. In that (unfortunately) fictional locker room, they generally try to support each other in their sport and in their personal lives – sort of how I described women’s locker rooms. Instead, we saw the team laugh along with President Trump about the apparently ridiculous prospect of inviting the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team -- who also won a gold medal -- to Washington for a special congratulations.

Let’s be clear about that: the women’s team achieved exactly the same thing as the men’s team, but for some reason it was hilarious that Trump would treat them the same as the men’s team. Why is that?

As women athletes know all too well, their performance is treated as less than men’s in every way. Spectator engagement is often lower, media attention is lower, and excellence is overlooked or diminished. Yet, this year at the Winter Olympics in Milan, women won six gold medals to the men’s four, and 17 overall (compared to 12 for men). And women winning more gold medals is not a fluke; it’s a trend.

Of course not everyone on the men’s team laughed. Some cheered for the women in the moment, and the men’s team has been very supportive of the women’s team -- publicly.

In an interview after the ordeal, Jack Hughes, who scored the winning goal for the U.S., said, “People are so negative about things. I think everyone in that locker room knows how much we support [the women’s team], how proud we are of them. The same way we feel about them, they feel about us.”

It’s wonderful to see members of the men’s team supporting the women’s team. However, solving misogyny is going to take so much more than saying nice things to the press. Most people, Trump excluded, would not openly sneer at women’s achievements, and yet we still live in a society where women are subjugated. That’s why women everywhere were so angry when they saw the locker room video. It confirmed what we already knew to be true: most men might be nice to our faces, but we either can’t trust them to speak up for us, or to be truthful with us. It feels as if most of them really do think we deserve less.

Women are paid less than men; reproductive rights that dramatically and permanently alter our entire lives are denied; our voting rights are at risk; our health is, at best, disregarded and at worst deliberately ignored; and we are still judged more by what we look like rather than what we have to say or what we can do – on the ice, as well as in an office or factory or assembly line. That’s just the start. It’s no wonder that, according to the UN, 50,000 girls and women worldwide were killed by an intimate partner in 2024. We are seen as less practically everywhere you look.

The efforts of feminists worldwide have helped to turn the tide, but the job won’t be complete until men refuse to accept this kind of “locker room talk” every single time. As long as they allow each other to diminish women, we are forced to continue to live in a society that believes it’s what we deserve.

Rather than a few relatively quiet cheers for the women’s team while Trump was on the line, what if Hughes and others had spoken up in that moment? What if they’d stopped the President and said, “We’re so proud of the women’s team, too. They accomplished just as much as we did, and we hope we can celebrate together.”

What if?

Monica Cardenas writes the Bad Mothers Substack and hosts its sister podcast.

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