Kellie-Jay Keen: The locker room has a lot to answer for

Kellie-Jay Keen has been talking to American young men with gender dysphoria – and their parents – to discover how the toxic masculinity which dominates their schools is driving these sensitive boys to want to be girls. 

Naively, until recently, I had always assumed that the type of hormone-charged, misogynists-in-training teen locker room, as depicted in US dramas, was a myth. Surely those heterosexual citadels of testosterone, where, free from adult supervision, young jocks preened, posed, bragged and preyed upon the weak, were just a fantasy. Perhaps because I had never spent much time in them, I optimistically believed this Lord of the Flies representation to be a vast exaggeration.

And then Donald Trump managed to weasel his way out of pussy-gate by blaming his ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ comments on locker room talk. He was forgiven because that’s just how men behave in the locker room. It is just boys being boys. Or is it? What if you are not one of those boys?

What if you are different, neurodiverse, shy, awkward, struggling to make male peer bonds? You then become one of the boys that the locker room boys prey on. In which case the locker room becomes a metaphor for the type of toxic masculinity that weighs heavy on any boy and teen who doesn’t conform to the macho stereotype.

Last week I was asked to join a group of American parents whose children were all identifying as trans. The stories they told were heartbreaking and while the circumstances were different for each family, there were unavoidable similarities.

Most of the parents on the Zoom call were liberals. Classic, genuine liberals who didn’t just say ‘live and let live’, they actually meant it. More virtue, less signal. 

Their boys were mostly neurodiverse and as such struggled to make positive male peer bonds at school. They were othered. They were the locker room fodder for the boys in their school who conformed to type. They felt different, isolated, and alienated.

These boys ‘can’t perform maleness in the way other boys can’ and so they retreat from the stereotypical masculinity they encounter in the locker room. Ultimately, they look for another answer, and often find it in a culture that tells them they will be happier being female. 

There were the ‘gentle types who feel uncertain of where they fit in the world’, as psychotherapist and writer Stella O’Malley, described.

“Society has become so heavily gendered that they don’t see many models that they can identify with; they don’t see gentle, considerate, thoughtful boys in the media,” she said.

These boys ‘can’t perform maleness in the way other boys can’ and so they retreat from the stereotypical masculinity they encounter in the locker room. Ultimately, they look for another answer, and often find it in a culture that tells them they will be happier being female. 

The parents I spoke to all described how their sons did not ‘fit in’ from a young age, both academically and socially. Their boys, they said, were gifted and sometimes placed in classes with much older children, which arguably exposed them to an even greater concentration of toxic masculinity. This is, thankfully, not something we do in the UK. 

I interviewed James and his son Marcus, 16. They had a warm relationship and a palpable bond. James was a caring father, sensitive and eager to listen and understand his son. They talked about the difficulties they encountered in obtaining a diagnosis of autism, on the basis that Marcus was so clever he was able to mask his autism. Like other boys, he had been plagued with anxiety and depression from a very young age.

I asked Marcus what made him think he had gender dysphoria. He described some of the locker room behaviours that he detested in other boys. One-upmanship, bullying, ridicule of others, homophobia.

The consistent bullying did not only come from peers. Teachers joined in or turned a blind eye. All the while Marcus didn’t confide in his parents and became increasingly isolated, until he decided to opt out of boyhood altogether, because boyhood had rejected him. 

James explained: “One of the things I should point out about Marcus and this question of how other boys are, is that because of the bullying he experienced in early years, kindergarten and first grade he really, really didn’t want to be anywhere with other boys without adult supervision ever. And he went many, many years without ever actually being alone with other boys.”

The consistent bullying did not only come from peers. Teachers joined in or turned a blind eye. All the while Marcus didn’t confide in his parents and became increasingly isolated, until he decided to opt out of boyhood altogether, because boyhood had rejected him. 

Having opted out of their boyhood, another common theme to these stories I found was the willingness of those around them to champion the choice these boys had made. This included schools and therapists. The support and encouragement was often given against parental will or, simply, without consent. Female peers were particularly loud cheerleaders. One of the moms I spoke to, Sarah, said she thought her son’s therapist was helping him get to the bottom of his distress, only to discover he was making everything much worse and driving a wedge between them both.  

Each parent reported that they were blindsided by their son’s gender announcements. Sammie, for example, explained her son just said it when he was 14. She has refused to engage with his desire to self-identify as a female. Her son, like Marcus, can intellectualise the feelings he has, and she has found rational and calm conversations have helped her get through to him, but she has a long way to go.

It’s important to understand that while these boys are not suffering from one flashpoint of trauma, they do appear to have been consistently traumatised throughout childhood by a system that allows low-level stereotypical male bullying to fester. The result is that individuals who do not conform to the stereotypically masculine ideal are not male enough. They are sub-male, their place is the whipping boys to boost the self-esteem of the alpha males. 

In my opinion, much of this seems steeped in homophobia. I’m frankly shocked it is ignored. Meanwhile schools adopt aggressive anti-bullying policies to push through trans inclusion under the guise of gender diversity, forcing children into “gendered” boxes much more rigidly that I recall in my school days.

During my discussion I talked to Stella who runs the Gender Dysphoria Support Network. She explained how the parents who approach her for help are devastated. Often their friends and families don’t understand what has happened and so the parents feel very isolated. She told me it was not like other mental health issues such as eating disorders, as in those contexts families and friends can provide a vital chain of support.

“In the context of gender dysphoria, well-meaning adults can often cause more harm than good,” she said. “We set up the Gender Dysphoria Support Network to provide support for parents who feel isolated and need to build some new supports for themselves.”

The locker room has a lot to answer for. These boys and their families deserve help, it’s no good saving our reputations by remaining quiet whilst the “virtue” vultures circle.

Kellie-Jay Keen is the founder of Standing For Women. Female activist and tireless campaigner for the rights of women and children. Kellie-Jay first rose to prominence in 2018 after she paid for a billboard display in Liverpool during the Labour Party’s annual conference, bearing the Google definition of the word ‘Women’.