|
May
Boys will be Boys or 'why men love to
Fight'
I had twenty-five boys at the fight club tonight -
twenty-five boys and one girl, and she certainly
did stand out.
It's amazing how starkly obvious the gender
differences are in a ring environment. In the
general flow of life in an industrialised society
men and women are mixed and merged together in
their daily routines, doing the same sorts of work,
taking on the same sorts of responsibilities, etc.
- barely distinguishable. But in the environment of
the ring something different is going on. Here men
are taking off their shirts, flexing their muscles,
and getting physical with 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 the combatants echo
back to a time when women and men knew who they
were and what was expected of them as members of
their gender. The fight club is a sort of physical
probe into the collective subconscious - giving
embodiment to that repressed memory of a culture
where women fed and nurtured the community while
men fought to defend it.
That is why fighting is such a natural form of
initiation rite for young men. We modern
Australians are in desperate need of an initiation
rite for our young people. Our nation continues to
be swept by waves of adolescent boys who never
become men. They develop adult male bodies, but
they are bodies that have never been nourished with
the ideals of a mature community - ideals that are
needed if those bodies are to be put to good
use.
I do seriously believe that our community would
be greatly served if every teenage boy, when he
reached the age of say 16 or 17 was obliged to
train for a fight.
That fight training would then be conducted by
the boy's father and by the older males in the
family as well as by other selected men in the
community. When the day of the fight came, the men
would gather together with all the boys who had
been in training and tell them stories - stories of
the great Australian men that have gone before
them; the men who stormed the beaches at Gallipoli,
the men who opened up the land for agriculture and
industry, the great Aboriginal warriors who fought
and died resisting the white invasion. Then the
boys would be dressed in their fight gear and led
to the side of the ring where the adult men would
push the lads out into the centre. There they would
be forced to rely upon their own resources for
three rounds, after which they would be welcomed
back as men, and then perhaps taken to the tattoo
parlor to have etched into their skin the date of
their fight 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 great
one. We come close to it every time I lead a boy to
the ring for the first time, with his dad at my
side working his corner. We?ve had some wonderful
moments like that - great fights fought by great
boys who show all the signs of going on to become
great men.
I claim that we've had a 100% success rate in
terms of guys whom I've got involved in amateur
contests getting out of the trouble they've been
in. By the time we get them to the side of the ring
they've stopped using drugs, they're no longer in
trouble with the law, they're not causing trouble
at school, etc. Of course the difficulty is in
getting them that far, and that's where we could do
with more support from friends and family and less
interference from the politically correct.
I am conscious of the fact that the focus of my
work here is with boys rather than with girls, but
I do believe that the crisis we are experiencing in
our community is with boys. It is mostly boys who
are doing drugs. It is boys who are doing the break
and enters and rolls. It is boys who are getting
into trouble with the law, and boys who are
committing suicide. Of course none of this though
should undermine the significance of initiation
rites for girls, nor the significant effect that
ring fighting can have in a girl's life.
We do indeed have the occasional fighting woman
join us, but she is a special kind of woman - one
who is able to go toe to toe with the men, who can
take as well as give a solid punch in the nose, and
who can thus demand the respect of the men.
In my time as a fight trainer I've had the
privilege of training up one of my girls, Wendy, to
win the Australian lightweight title in kickboxing.
She was a special sort of girl though. You don't
get many like Wendy. For the most part, the girls
just come and sit near the side of the ring and
look on wide-eyed while their men beat their chests
and flail away at each other.
What about this girl who's joined us for the
first time tonight. Could she be another Wendy? Not
likely. She doesn't look the part at all. She's a
slender Vietnamese girl, with a sassy hairstyle and
a T-shirt that prominently displays the words 'Too
busy to Fuck?"
I told her that if she wanted to train with us
at all that she'd have to change into a different
shirt. I offered her one of our club T-shirts - the
ones with "Christianity with Punch" displayed on
the back. She was predictably reluctant to wear it,
but she put it on eventually. Once we had her in a
different T-shirt she faded from view as the centre
of everybody's attention. Even so, I suspect that
the fine performance the boys put on tonight was in
part inspired by a desire to impress our visitor.
You can?t escape the sexual dynamics in this
game.
A friend of mine in the army told me that,
despite all the talk about equality of the sexes in
the forces, the Australian army was still refusing
to allow women into the front line, and with good
reason. He said that the Israeli experience had
been well documented (Israel being one of the only
countries to put women in the front line) and that
they were experiencing enormous problems. He said
that for one thing, the statistics showed that men
would always go back for a woman who had been shot,
even if she was dead, and even if it put the rest
of the squad in serious danger. He also said that
the effect on morale of the death of a woman in the
front line was far more serious than the effect of
the deaths of any number of men (and morale is
considered to be a third of any army's fighting
strength)! Gender differences just do not seem to
be able to be ignored in a war zone.
I'm a great supporter of women in the fighting
arts, and indeed I've been in trouble with our
state government on more than one occasion because
of my role in promoting, training, and officiating
in fight contests between females (which is still
illegal in NSW). But I don't do this because I
think that there's no difference between men and
women in the ring. In the office there might not be
any relevant difference, and in the pulpit I can't
see or hear any, but in the ring - in that most
fundamental and most primitive arena of human
encounter - women are women, and men better bloody
not be.
©2011, Rev. David B.
Smith
* * *
Never contend with a man who has nothing to
lose. - Baltasar Gracian
Rev.
David B. Smith is a Parish priest, community
worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author of
Sex,
the Ring & the Eucharist: Reflections on
life, ministry & fighting in the
inner-city and a
father of three. Get a free preview copy of Father
Dave, the 'Fighting Father's book when you sign up
for his free newsletter at www.fatherdave.org
or dave@fatherdave.org
Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|
