Books

Bullies and Jerks

Searching for soul in violent games.

By Richard Warnica, 3 Aug 2007, TheTyee.ca

Rugby (back to the first)

Why do we fight?

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I am, from top to bottom, a wholly underwhelming spectacle of man. Twenty-six years old, a hair above six feet, with a small undulating layer of fat that circles my thin stomach. I have bony arms and twiggy bird-like wrists and a lower body completely out of proportion with the upper. I'm not a specimen or a stud, or really, to be honest, much of anything approaching athletic.

Still though, I can play. Or, to be more precise, I don't stop playing.

I have, for most of the last 10 years and for a scattershot mix of schools and clubs, played a man's version of a boy's game; a game based on violent collisions, on size and speed and skill under pressure: none of which, needless to say, I have much of. But I have earned my spot on some good and some very bad rugby teams over the years mostly by being willing to get up and go again. To take all the stomping, the punching, the torn tendons, and stitched up eyes, the clicking ankles and stiffening knees and to show up again on Tuesday ready to train. It is, by any logical calculation of risks and benefits, a stupid thing to do.

So why do I do it? I'm not exactly sure.

Collision sports -- sports that, from football, to boxing, to mixed martial arts and rugby, rely on not getting out of the way -- are different from other games. And what connects the men and women who play them, I think, is an underlying unease about why we do it. And even more so, about whom we do it with.

That is, I suspect, why there are so many stories about the fraternity of rugby or the spiritual nature of the martial arts. Because if there isn't some deeper meaning, some spiritual or social pay off, then it's just violence: just an exercise to beat down your fellows without consequence. For some, no doubt, that's enough. They are on every successful team (and, I imagine, in every successful dojo or boxing club) a couple of bullies and assholes: people for whom the base pleasure of bashing a stranger's clavicle is the perfect pastime. But for the rest, for the (I hope) majority, there's still that big gaping "why?"

'Me Chi and Bruce Lee' by Brian Preston

Victoria writer Brian Preston comes at this question from outside the fraternity of violent games. A pot smoking, middle-aged scribe with a beer-belly and an unblemished record of physical cowardice, Preston makes an unlikely candidate to explore the world of body-as-a-temple obsessives and combat fanatics. But it works. What you do get with Preston is a sense of anthropological distance from the subject. When he asks the big "why," he does so without baggage, without the need to justify his own scars and past glories.

Me Chi and Bruce Lee is ostensibly about Kung Fu (or wushu) and it comes laid out along two interweaving paths. The first is Preston's own physical journey and it's a short one. Preston's study of Kung Fu limps through a couple fractured ribs and a busted up shoulder, before he retreats to gentler pursuits. On the books second path, however, the writer delves a little deeper. As Preston is undergoing his own pratfall-filled exploration of the martial arts, he also takes the reader on an ambling journey through the history of those same arts.

At the start of the book, you could describe Preston's outlook on martial arts as skeptical but optimistic. His first Master, a Victoria Kung Fu instructor named Sifu Bob, along with his master's master, a chunky white monk named Don, impress upon the writer that despite the many bastardizations and exploitations, Chinese martial arts are in their origins and core about the spirit, about conquering the mind. And while Preston doesn't exactly lose that by the end, he definitely does find that in most cases and places, it's the bastardizations that have won the day.

Preston's final sortie into the martial arts world connects him to the now ubiquitously popular Mixed Martial Arts and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). And while Preston seems to genuinely like and admire his guide in this world, a Washington state fighter and anarchist, he ends up pretty disgusted with the world itself. At an event in Las Vegas where his guide, Jeff Monson, is on the undercard, Preston comes away with some unfortunate realizations: that outside the headliners, the fighters are exploited, making peanuts to sacrifice their own bodies for others' millions. And the crowd, while the crowd's not there for the art, they just want to see a beating.

'Tent Boxing' by Wayne McLennan

Tent Boxing is a much more narrow, more personal exploration of the themes of camaraderie and organized violence than is Preston's book. But while the author, Wayne McLennan, comes at the subject from a more experienced place than does Preston, he's still after the same question: Why? Why at 50-years-old, with a wife and a successful business and a brain one bad hit away from permanent damage would a man spend a summer baking in the Queensland heat, going from town to town with a carnival tent full of fighters taking cheap paydays to box puffed up half-drunk locals?

McLennan himself is a former semi-pro-fighter, a guy who knows what to do with his fists, and who, unlike Preston has had more than a few chances to use them. As a kid growing up in rural Australia, the highlight of Preston's summers was the agricultural fair. And the highlight of the fair was the boxing tent, where inside a team of pugilists would challenge the local boys and men. McLennan, though, never got the chance. By the time he was old enough to fight, most Australian states, including his, had banned the practice. That's how, in a round about way, he found himself some 35 years later, back in the tent, not as a fighter (except for one ill thought out occasion) but as a general dog's body and hanger-on.

It's hard not to notice the differences between the fighters McLennan and Preston follow. In the UFC, the contestants are predominantly white and middle class -- they fight because they want to. In the tent, or at least the tent McLennan latches on to, it's different. The boxers who make up his troupe are poor and are aboriginal. Most take little pleasure in fighting. But they are comfortable in the life: the paychecks and steady meals, the lazy days and camaraderie of the carnival.

For McLennan that's the answer: the "why" is the life and the friends:

"I'd come back searching for a place, my people, and I'd found them. I had in the past always left Australia feeling I didn't quite belong. The life of my old mates had become too different.../ [But o]n the show ground there were no settlers. People danced through the day to the rhythms of an erratic piper. It was the regularity that frightened me: like a layer of coal dust settling on your lungs day after day, until you can't breath anymore."

I enjoyed Tent Boxing. But the conclusions felt a little hollow. McLennan leaves the life after a single season, back to Europe, back to his business and his wife. For the fighters, though, it's not so simple. None leave the game hurt, really, but none seem really helped by it either. And McLennan's own need to punch and be punched remains by book's end an unanswered question.

'Muddied Oafs: The Soul of Rugby' by Richard Beard

Neither McLennan nor Preston come at their topics with the same unabashed love as does Richard Beard. Beard, like me, is a rugby man, an almost lifelong student of the game. And in Muddied Oafs he explores the soul of a sport that leads men to bash themselves silly. But while Beard's own feelings for rugby are clear, a sense of unease still permeates the book. For one, Beard worries that the stereotype of the "rugger bugger," the over-muscled, under-brained bar-trashing womanizing cad, may be a little too close to true. He fears, essentially, that the bullies and the assholes are the mainstream, not the fringe, that the myth that has sustained him through decades of pain and misery is just that, a myth.

Beard's version of the rugby creed boils down to this: "that this game and this game only makes us Saturday by Saturday into stronger and more admirable men." It's pretty much the same myth that envelopes all the collision sports, whether Kung Fu, boxing or rugby: that violence, and the courage to face it and shake hands afterwards, builds those qualities we consider manly. (Never mind the legions of women who play any of them.) It's an ethos Beard finds strained in many of the spots on his journey. But even in the dwindling clubs in Scotland and the dying college game at Oxford and the wholly professional get up at the senior levels, Beard still finds enough to confirm at least some version of his original thesis: rugby may not necessarily build good men, but there are plenty of good men in rugby.

The idea of rugby as a creator and exemplar of manliness is one I've observed from an odd spot for the past two years. My current club participates in an organized and physical (if low level) league. But at the same time it contradicts one of the cardinal unspoken rules of the fraternity of manliness: it openly accepts and encourages the participation of homosexuals. Gay or gay-friendly rugby isn't all that new. There are clubs on at least three continents and even a world cup. But it is, I think, destabilizing. For many who play the violent games, their "why" is that it proves them to be a certain kind of man, that, in essence, only men of a particular breed are capable of doing what they do. Needless to say that for many, men who like men are not on that list.

My "why" then, in the end, may not be all that different from Beard's. I do think that rugby, or for that matter many of the physical sports, can help make me a better man. But they do so only as long as they help create newer, better definitions of manliness. Because for many, and maybe even most, violent sports are just that: an excuse to make sport out of violence; to learn new ways to crack noses and twist limbs; to justify and revel in the angry physical instincts suppressed in day to day life. But for others, there's more. There's a test of the body and a chance to define a part of one's self, to create a definition at odds with how others see you. Whether there's more of the latter than the former is an open question. But there are, I imagine, in the UFC and the boxing tent and the rugby pitch, some of all types.

[Tyee]

Richard Warnica is a senior editor at The Tyee.

9 Comments:

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  • nightbloom

    4 years ago

    Interesting article. The

    Interesting article. The role of organized team sports and gender identity is intriguing.

    I think that team sports spring from a very basic set of ingrained tendencies. Without over-emphasizing the influence of biology, I see team sports as a spin-off behaviour rooted in the evolved division of labour between the genders, and the male group-hunter role for which humans have been genetically selected, and from which other basic male-identified (and near-universal) social institutions like military systems and clerical hierarchies are also derived. This doesn’t mean that some women can’t be naturals at it, only that men are hard-wired for this kind of spontaneous social behaviour outside of the family crèche (resulting in social structures outside of hearth & home….and hence the spontaneous development of hierarchal social institutions), and that the behaviour is normative for most men, though not universal. Team sports is a near-universal rite of passage and initiation for boys – unathletic boys are almost by definition socially excluded boys.

    I also think that a central component of team sports and military induction alike is the incessant (and typically quite cruel) mutual testing that takes place among men in this environment. The weak link is sniffed out and tested mercilessly. You don't want him fighting beside you. I saw this many times during the introductory weeks of my GMT (General Military Training), where grown men were reduced to tears (and occasionally even to loss of bladder control) in front of their peers and then hounded & ridiculed until either the tears stopped or they left the group (losing their careers, comrades, aspirations and self-esteem in one cruel swoop and getting no sympathy for it whatsoever). Conversely, treating women similarly brings out an automatic and deeply visceral “protection response”. The message: men must be able to suck it up and sacrifice their needs for the group, otherwise they are needy and therefore are usurping the archetypally “womanly” role at the centre of the group attention-giving mechanism. Male expendability, not just male power, is the basis of patriarchal-hierarchal socialization and institution-building. I also believe that this – not ideology - is the emotive basis for homophobia against gay men. On a visceral level, gay men are perceived to be usurping a role within the group/family crèche which hetero-normativity reserves exclusively for women; they are perceived to be not conforming to the rules of male expendability and therefore are seen on a visceral level as the weak link within the male group. The testing/culling instinct kicks in. This is a mis-firing of an instinctual response (one of many in modern life...like road-rage, but with more systemic implications), but it's nevertheless where I believe this tendency among our hetero-boyz originates.

    Again, interesting review article.

  • James Burns

    4 years ago

    Biology and culture

    There is a difference between cultural and biological evolution. The two are intertwined, but important divisions of labour really only came about with advent of civilization for humans. There certainly are differences in the physical capabilities of males and females, but the differences aren't nearly as pronounced as in other apes, particularly the differences in the great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos (bonobos being the closest to human gender differences of that group).

    People, including scientists, have often made the rather large error of equating great ape behaviour with early human behaviour. The worst has come from social darwinists who dress their ideology up as pseudo-science. The social darwinists tend to adopt what is essentially a fascist ideology. Their divisions of labour feature a glorified warrior caste. And the whole point of creating such cultural notions is to concentrate power. A warrior caste that follows a rigid hierarchy can be used as a tool by a few (usually men) to employ both the threat of and actual use of violence to hold power over a much larger group. The funny thing is these are all notions. They definitely are not biological imperatives. They require ignorance on the part of the populations over alternatives, combined with what is essentially propaganda that glorifies the cultural model. One thing humans are very good at with our large brains is adapting to our environment. Adaption is the biological imperative of the first order. It takes precedence over trying something new. Survival usually depends on it. But ironically that makes humans very susceptible to propaganda. Because if you can make our brains believe our survival depends on a particular set of behaviours, we will follow those behaviours whether they really are in our interests or primarily in the interests of a small group spreading the propaganda.

    What is clear from the fossil record, is that humans have evolved in the direction of less gender difference rather than more. The reason for this is likely due to the fact that individual humans had to function more in the role of a "jack-of-all-trades" through the bulk of our evolution. Small tribes of humans had to have some ability to absorb the loss of individual members (although any loss could be catastrophic to the whole group given the small numbers, and that is reflected in our behaviour to protect those emotionally closest to us). Too much physical specialization, given our small numbers, would likely have been negatively selected against in evolutionary terms, because our primary adaption, our brains, allowed humans to function in very different environments, from deserts to coastlines to lush tropical forests to the arctic. Whereas the other great apes could be much more highly specialized, because they live in a much more stable unchanging environment of tropical rain forest.
    (cont'd)

  • James Burns

    4 years ago

    Biology and culture (2)

    (cont'd)
    But to get back to why violence and violent sports are popular. It's not too hard to guess. Violence would have been a regular feature of early human life, both from other predators, and from human hunting. The need to do violence is an evolutionary survival adaption, just like sex. At the same time violence is a very dangerous behaviour, so there is a clear push-pull. We have to be capable of it and engage in it, but we also try to avoid it. So the enjoyment and the discomfort around violent sports makes perfect sense.

    How specialized it would have been along gender lines is difficult to say. But it is fairly safe to say that it almost certainly wouldn't have been as specialized as it is in our current cultural models. Women are clearly capable of violence just as extreme as men. Where violence is concerned, they can do everything men can do, and they are only marginally less effective if they have the same levels of experience and training. People tend to forget that what makes humans so exceptional at violence is our brains, not our strength or speed attributes. In fact, the latter suck in comparison to other large predators.

    As for NB's postulations, they're almost all cultural. The protection response occurs in humans equally for men and women. You only have to listen to military veterans talking about how they felt about their combat buddies to find evidence of that. The military is a highly ritualized and artificial cultural instrument designed to overcome most of our biological survival instincts, while exploiting a few others (notably our brains ability to adapt to an imposed environment). Evolutionarily men aren't expendable, the loss of any adult member of a small tribe of humans could be potentially catastrophic for the whole group. Nor do homosexuals usurp any "role" in early human group structure. Roles are primarily cultural in origin. Homosexuals violate culturally imposed gender roles, not evolutionary biology. If anything homosexuality is an evolutionary adaption that helps decrease sexual competition in small groups of humans that could lead to violence. Homosexuality likely would have been taken in stride as a normal behaviour within those groups. How else could homosexuality have possibly survived otherwise? In a tribe of 10 or 20 you can't hide it. The modern tendency among hetero males to engage in violence toward homosexuals is a culturally encouraged "norm". Homosexuality is far more acceptable today, not because we changed our biology, but because we changed our culture.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Interesting James Burns

    On the homosexual/violence dichotomy there is some interesting evidence from freshwater crayfish.

    Among competing males there is apparently a lot of violence which, if it goes too far, converts in many cases to male/male copulation. The theory is that this behavior somehow short-circuits the tendency for dominant males to kill too many other males in the normal course of events.

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fake-Homosexual-Sex-to-Ease-Aggression-41485.shtml

  • bikerbill

    4 years ago

    Violence in sports

    I'm not sure rugby should be associated with violence. Surely violence is intent to harm or hurt? Richard Warnica implies rugby is about "learning new ways to crack noses and twist limbs" but it isn't in my experience. I think everyone I know would stop playing immediately if that was the case. There would be injuries every minute of the game if players were solely trying to hurt each other rather than play the game. You won't see a rugby player feigning injury to the referee like a soccer player, because thats not what the game is about.

    The few people I have encountered using the game to carry out this kind of behaviour were quickly ejected from any team, either officially or through social sanction - there is much more respect for the calm focussed player who "takes the knocks", ignores any intimidation and keeps focussed on their game.

    I think the reason rugby is so appealing (to men and women) is because it presents a unique challenge to the individual. An equal combination of physical, mental and social performance is essential to do well and for the team to win. That's why such cameradery develops in my opinion. The focus of the game is never the opposition, it's always your own team and your own contribution to the team and your fellow players.

  • nightbloom

    4 years ago

    Interpretations of this

    Interpretations of this debate will always oscillate between gradients of biological determinism and social construction. I fear purists of the latter school will have to cede some ground as the debate progresses. Sure, we can find anecdotal evidence of particular women manifesting modes of violence normally identified with men...but what is normative for the group? That is key here. Violence - organized collectively, or sponeously individual in nature - is the expression of something bigger, which is why I include other examples, such as the rise of clerical hierarchies. The point of interest is the behaviour of men in groups, which seems to lead to the spontaneous formation of social institutions outside of (and independent from) the family, and which are driven by a collective synergy enabling creation (and destruction). Power is part of it...just as protecting and nourishing the hearth & home is part of it too. Patriarchy's a bitch, but it has its good days.

    Male expendability as a cultural and biological mechanism is sufficiently compelling to warrant more than summary dismissal. It, too, is part of something bigger, and has been examined seriously by scientists and social scientists alike. It's role in evolution is also the focus of serious debate.

    All this to say that I think the next generation is going to have to re-think a lot of the 'conclusions' which have been reached prematurely over the past few decades in the social sciences. We certainly don't know it all yet.

    But to bring it back full circle, I'm totally flummoxed by this emission by the author:

    Quote:
    I do think that rugby, or for that matter many of the physical sports, can help make me a better man. But they do so only as long as they help create newer, better definitions of manliness.

    Any idea what he means? The second sentence characterizes the preceding one in a manner that is almost self-loathing of his own gender. Or is this just another test which men must meaure up to, another way of culling the male group? Why don't men measure up, and will they ever, and anyways what is this "newer" and "better" definition...? Can rugby actually create a new generation of acquiescent metrosexual liberal males out there on the pitch? And more importantly to the survival of both species and culture: will they be able to get a date?

  • nightbloom

    4 years ago

    Quote:...there is much more

    Quote:
    ...there is much more respect for the calm focussed player who "takes the knocks", ignores any intimidation and keeps focussed on their game.

    Exactly my point. He sucks it up, takes a beating, sublimates the pain and remains focused on the team objective. This is what he must do to stay in the game, on the team, and in the group.

    Rugby can get pretty nasty, you have to admit. Plenty of hits occur below the proverbial belt. I don't think there's a team contact-sport where this isn't implicitly part of the deal, from hockey to water polo.

  • nightbloom

    4 years ago

    James - as an addendum, I

    James - as an addendum, I can recommend anything by this guy:

    http://anthro.rutgers.edu/faculty/tiger/biography/
    Lionel Tiger is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University

    He's one of the old exiled demigods of the Culture Wars, who has since been vindicated. His seminal "Men in Groups" earned him banishment from the liberal-left academic syllabus. He's what Allan Bloom is (was) to lit crit and Roger Kimball to art history: indispensable to any post-graduate looking to de-program him(her)self from our underwhelming and politically hijacked humanities curriculum.

    It's not about choosing sides, it's about seeking balance, and restoring genuine tolerance for politically unpalatable but scientifically valid viewpoints.

  • nightbloom

    4 years ago

    Okay, looks like everyone's

    Okay, looks like everyone's gone, and I'm just talking myself. Final word from me on this:

    There are two 'must reads' for anyone seeking an accessible and readable counter-balance to post-modern gender theory and its uni-directional criticism:

    1. Men in Groups by Dr. Lionel Tiger
    (which pioneers the ground breaking theory of Male Bonding...his other books include The Imperial Animal and The Decline of Males and The Pursuit of Pleasure)

    2. The Myth of Male Power by Dr. Warren Farrell
    (an innovative application of Third Wave Feminist models of criticism from the male perspective, with paradigm-shifting results...this book provoked a notorious local incident and concern over excessive p.c. censorship several years ago when it became the only book ever to be banned from the kiosks of the Vancouver Folk Festival).

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