Boys will be boys (or why men need to fight)
Website design By BotEap.comTonight I had twenty-five boys in fight club, twenty-five boys and one girl, and she certainly stood out.
It’s amazing how apparent gender differences are in a ring setting. In the general flow of life in an industrialized society, men and women mix and blend in their daily routines, doing the same kind of work, taking on the same kinds of responsibilities, etc. – Barely distinguishable. But in the ring environment something different is happening. Here the men take off their shirts, flex their muscles and physically touch each other in a very primitive and very heterosexual way. Here we play roughly with each other, in a way that inevitably excludes most women and children.
There is something very basic but very beautiful about the ring. The cries of combatants date back to a time when women and men knew who they were and what was expected of them as members of their gender. Fight club is a kind of physical probe into the collective subconscious, fleshing out that repressed memory of a culture where women fed and nurtured the community while men fought to defend it.
That is why wrestling is such a natural form of initiation rite for young men. We modern Australians are in desperate need of a rite of passage for our youngsters. Our nation continues to be swept by waves of teenagers who never grow into men. They develop adult male bodies, but they are bodies that have never been nurtured with the ideals of a mature community, ideals that are needed for those bodies to be put to good use.
I really think our community would benefit greatly if every teenager, when they reached the age of, say, 16 or 17, were forced to train for a fight.
That wrestling training would be carried out by the boy’s father and the older men of the family, as well as other selected men from the community. When fight day came, the men would get together with all the boys they had been training and tell them stories, stories of the great Australian men who came before them; the men who stormed the beaches of Gallipoli, the men who opened up the land for agriculture and industry, the great Aboriginal warriors who fought and died resisting white invasion. The boys were then dressed in their wrestling gear and led to the side of the ring where the grown men pushed the boys into the center. There they would be forced to rely on their own resources for three rounds, after which they would be welcomed as men and then perhaps taken to the tattoo parlor to have the date of their fight etched into their skin and perhaps some emblem of courage. and integrity that had been chosen for them.
It’s all a dream, of course, but it’s a big dream. We get closer to that every time I take a kid into the ring for the first time, with his dad next to me working in his corner. We’ve had some wonderful moments like that: great fights fought by great guys showing all the signs of becoming great men.
I claim we’ve had a 100% success rate in terms of guys getting me into amateur contests to get them out of the trouble they’ve gotten themselves into. By the time we get them to ringside, they’ve stopped using drugs, they’re out of trouble with the law, they’re out of trouble at school, etc. Of course, the difficulty is in taking them that far, and that’s where we could do it with more support from friends and family and less interference from the politically correct.
I am aware of the fact that the focus of my work here is with boys and not girls, but I think the crisis that we are experiencing in our community is with boys. It is mostly boys who use drugs. It’s the guys who are making the break and he goes in and rolls. It is the children who get into trouble with the law and the children who commit suicide. Of course, none of this should undermine the importance of initiation rites for girls, nor the significant effect that fighting in the ring can have on a girl’s life.
Indeed, we are occasionally joined by a female fighter, but she is a special kind of woman, one who is able to go toe-to-toe with men, who can take and deliver a solid punch to the nose, and who can so demanded the respect of men.
In my time as a fight trainer, I had the privilege of training one of my girls, Wendy, to win the Australian lightweight kickboxing title. However, she was a special girl. There aren’t many like Wendy. For the most part, the girls just come and sit near the side of the ring and watch with wide eyes as their men beat their chests and punch each other.
What about this girl who joined us for the first time tonight? Could it be another Wendy? Not likely. She doesn’t look the part at all. She is a slender Vietnamese girl, with a sassy hairdo and a t-shirt that prominently displays the words “Too Busy To Fuck.”
I told him that if he wanted to train with us, he would have to change into a different jersey. I offered him one of our club shirts, the ones with ‘Christianity with Punch’ on the back. As expected, she was reluctant to put it on, but she finally put it on. Once we had her in a different shirt, she disappeared into the spotlight. Still, I suspect the boys’ excellent performance tonight was partly inspired by a desire to impress our visitor. You can’t escape the sexual dynamics in this game.
A friend of mine in the military told me that despite all the talk of gender equality in the forces, the Australian Army still refused to allow women on the front lines, and rightly so. He said that the Israeli experience had been well documented (Israel is one of the few countries that put women on the front lines) and that they were experiencing enormous problems. He said that, for one thing, the statistics showed that men would always come back for a woman who had been shot, even if she was dead, and even if she put the rest of the team in grave danger. He also said that the effect on morale of the death of one woman on the front line was much more serious than the effect of the death of any number of men (and morale is considered one-third of the fighting strength of any one man!) army)! Gender differences just don’t seem like they can be ignored in a war zone.
I’m a huge supporter of women in the wrestling arts and have actually been in trouble with our state government on more than one occasion due to my role in promoting, training and running women’s wrestling contests (which it is still illegal in New South Wales). But I don’t do this because I think there is no difference between men and women in the ring. In the office there may be no relevant difference, and in the pulpit I can neither see nor hear one, but in the ring, in that most fundamental and primitive arena of human encounter, women are women, and men had better not. be.
It’s amazing how apparent gender differences are in a ring setting. In the general flow of life in an industrialized society, men and women mix and blend in their daily routines, doing the same kind of work, taking on the same kinds of responsibilities, etc. – Barely distinguishable. But in the ring environment something different is happening. Here the men take off their shirts, flex their muscles and physically touch each other in a very primitive and very heterosexual way. Here we play roughly with each other, in a way that inevitably excludes most women and children.
There is something very basic but very beautiful about the ring. The cries of combatants date back to a time when women and men knew who they were and what was expected of them as members of their gender. Fight club is a kind of physical probe into the collective subconscious, fleshing out that repressed memory of a culture where women fed and nurtured the community while men fought to defend it.
That is why wrestling is such a natural form of initiation rite for young men. We modern Australians are in desperate need of a rite of passage for our youngsters. Our nation continues to be swept by waves of teenagers who never grow into men. They develop adult male bodies, but they are bodies that have never been nurtured with the ideals of a mature community, ideals that are needed for those bodies to be put to good use.
I really think our community would benefit greatly if every teenager, when they reached the age of, say, 16 or 17, were forced to train for a fight.
That wrestling training would be carried out by the boy’s father and the older men of the family, as well as other selected men from the community. When fight day came, the men would get together with all the boys they had been training and tell them stories, stories of the great Australian men who came before them; the men who stormed the beaches of Gallipoli, the men who opened up the land for agriculture and industry, the great Aboriginal warriors who fought and died resisting white invasion. The boys were then dressed in their wrestling gear and led to the side of the ring where the grown men pushed the boys into the center. There they would be forced to rely on their own resources for three rounds, after which they would be welcomed as men and then perhaps taken to the tattoo parlor to have the date of their fight etched into their skin and perhaps some emblem of courage. and integrity that had been chosen for them.
It’s all a dream, of course, but it’s a big dream. We get closer to that every time I take a kid into the ring for the first time, with his dad next to me working in his corner. We’ve had some wonderful moments like that: great fights fought by great guys showing all the signs of becoming great men.
I claim we’ve had a 100% success rate in terms of guys getting me into amateur contests to get them out of the trouble they’ve gotten themselves into. By the time we get them to ringside, they’ve stopped using drugs, they’re out of trouble with the law, they’re out of trouble at school, etc. Of course, the difficulty is in taking them that far, and that’s where we could do it with more support from friends and family and less interference from the politically correct.
I am aware of the fact that the focus of my work here is with boys and not girls, but I think the crisis that we are experiencing in our community is with boys. It is mostly boys who use drugs. It’s the guys who are making the break and he goes in and rolls. It is the children who get into trouble with the law and the children who commit suicide. Of course, none of this should undermine the importance of initiation rites for girls, nor the significant effect that fighting in the ring can have on a girl’s life.
Indeed, we are occasionally joined by a female fighter, but she is a special kind of woman, one who is able to go toe-to-toe with men, who can take and deliver a solid punch to the nose, and who can so demanded the respect of men.
In my time as a fight trainer, I had the privilege of training one of my girls, Wendy, to win the Australian lightweight kickboxing title. However, she was a special girl. There aren’t many like Wendy. For the most part, the girls just come and sit near the side of the ring and watch with wide eyes as their men beat their chests and punch each other.
What about this girl who joined us for the first time tonight? Could it be another Wendy? Not likely. She doesn’t look the part at all. She is a slender Vietnamese girl, with a sassy hairdo and a t-shirt that prominently displays the words “Too Busy To Fuck.”
I told him that if he wanted to train with us, he would have to change into a different jersey. I offered him one of our club shirts, the ones with ‘Christianity with Punch’ on the back. As expected, she was reluctant to put it on, but she finally put it on. Once we had her in a different shirt, she disappeared into the spotlight. Still, I suspect the boys’ excellent performance tonight was partly inspired by a desire to impress our visitor. You can’t escape the sexual dynamics in this game.
A friend of mine in the military told me that despite all the talk of gender equality in the forces, the Australian Army still refused to allow women on the front lines, and rightly so. He said that the Israeli experience had been well documented (Israel is one of the few countries that put women on the front lines) and that they were experiencing enormous problems. He said that, for one thing, the statistics showed that men would always come back for a woman who had been shot, even if she was dead, and even if she put the rest of the team in grave danger. He also said that the effect on morale of the death of one woman on the front line was much more serious than the effect of the death of any number of men (and morale is considered one-third of the fighting strength of any one man!) army)! Gender differences just don’t seem like they can be ignored in a war zone.
I’m a huge supporter of women in the wrestling arts and have actually been in trouble with our state government on more than one occasion due to my role in promoting, training and running women’s wrestling contests (which it is still illegal in New South Wales). But I don’t do this because I think there is no difference between men and women in the ring. In the office there may be no relevant difference, and in the pulpit I can neither see nor hear one, but in the ring, in that most fundamental and primitive arena of human encounter, women are women, and men had better not. be.