LOCKER-ROOM TALK 8| Sexposé
Vanessa Brown, Sexposé
BY VANESSA BROWN • Tim Sayle can count on one hand the number of times he’s talked to his friends about the sex he’s had with his girlfriend of five years. The 24-year-old Centennial College student recalled a time when a friend was talking about his sex life, wanting details in return. Sayle equates locker-room talk – men telling stories of their sexual proclivities – with insecurity. “Maybe they think they have something to prove,” he said. “I want to prove that I can write a good song, or make a good film; I don’t need to prove that I can have sex with a girl.” Deborah Tannen has studied the way males interact with each other, and turned her observations into the best-selling book You Just Don’t Understand! Women and Men in Conversation. The Washington, D.C.-based linguist said many men boast about sex, instead of divulging their feelings about it, because that is what they learned when they were younger. The way boys talk to each other when forming friendships carries over into adulthood. “Talking about what’s going on in your relationship is not something that boys have done since they were kids, so they don’t miss it when they don’t do it,” Tannen said. “There wouldn’t be any purpose in doing it (now) with friends.” Citing research done in the 1980s by UCLA anthropologist Marjorie Harness Goodwin, Tannen said girls form friendships with other girls by talking – mainly by telling secrets – whereas boys negotiate friendships through action. Tannen said a boy’s best friend “is the one you do everything with. If there’s a fight, he’ll be on my side.” But not all men fit the mould, she notes. “Obviously there are men who do feel close if they tell about their problems with women to their friends,” she said. “Percentage-wise, it’s less common for men than women to feel that that makes you closer.” David Wayne, 20, is single and lives in Richmond Hill. When he is talking with his friends about women, he says the conversation stays mostly on the surface. “I guess guys do open up sometimes, but it’s never too serious,” he said. “I’ll tell my buddies (sex) positions and if it’s good or not.”
In You Just Don’t Understand!, Tannen writes that men will engage more in conversations that serve a purpose, whereas women grow up equating friendship with emotional dialogue. “He deplores chit-chat and believes that talk should have significant content, be interesting and meaningful,” she wrote about one male. “Opposed in principle to, and simply unpractised in, making small talk, he is at a loss when there is no ‘big talk’ available.” While girls concentrate more on how secret-sharing will bring them closer to a friend, boys have been found to be driven by status and accomplishment. Wayne said that sex talk in his hockey locker room is not as prevalent as some believe. When he and his teammates do talk about women, it is mostly self-serving. “Some people say, ‘I took down a girl last night,’ or, ‘I got a kill last night,’” he explained. A man’s need to avoid emotional detail by boasting to his friends has roots in the power struggle that develops between male friends. Tannen said men equate secretsharing with vulnerability; expressing their true feelings about a sexual dalliance the night before could result in a loss of power and dominance over their friends. Wayne and Sayle both agree that boasting occurs more in a group setting than in one-on-one situations. “The way it’s described for boys is that they have to take centre stage by the way they’re talking, so that they’ll have high status in the group,” Tannen said. “I think the tendency to boast has a ritual aspect to it. It’s a kind of verbal play. You try to top each other… It’s that one-up, one-down power dynamic that you’re focusing on.” Last year, Sayle’s sister walked in on him receiving oral sex. Not knowing how to deal with his embarrassment, he told a trusted friend. In return, his friend said it had happened to him before too. Tannen said men seek closeness in their friendships with other men, albeit in a different way than women. Sharing embarrassing stories in a joking manner is “a different way of getting that, ‘I know, the same thing happened to me.’” “What can look like wholly different ways of doing things,” she said, “can often be different ways of doing the same thing.”