Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

i was thinking along those lines too, xpost to djp's point. you could prob just as easily argue that sport is keeping our violent instincts at bay as fuelling them, imo.

although if you want to argue that the Crusaders main complaint was that Muslims were fans of the wrong book uh ok (kind of neatly elides all the non-ideological reasons behind religious wars - which were often predicated on economic, political, and cultural factors as much as handy ideological ones but then I've always found atheists' arguments for how "religion is the cause of 99% of wars" sort of arguments also patently disingenuous)

xp

example for ghetto metaphor - women play sports too and afaict enjoy it
they just don't get paid as much

lol fair enough LL

xp

i was thinking along those lines too, xpost to djp's point. you could prob just as easily argue that sport is keeping our violent instincts at bay as fuelling them, imo.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, November 17, 2017 10:08 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the interaction of fitba and sectarianism in the west of scotland is an interesting case study. the glasgow derby often made a scapegoat but imo theres a compelling argument that it functions to sublimate and redirect deep-seated ethno-politico-religious animosity rather than engender it per se.

it is quite different imo. music and literary worlds not inherently based on the premise of physical competition and winners/losers

Anyways, to avoid the sidetrack discussion, sport was offered explicitly as a possible positive channel for a posited or whatever excess proclivity towards aggression or requirement for competition or physical trial amongst yr young males (NB everyone should do all sorts of physical activities always and learn themselves as a physical and present immediate being be it sport/contact or not but maybe we can presume that it's the most commonly accepted method followed by young men or where they are most commonly funnelled)

As you offering literature as an alternative or comparator for any particular reason? I can't see it serving a purpose along these lines!

this may be tragic but i reckon sport is a release valve for all sorts of potentially negative or even dangerous things, patriotism, anger, depression, loneliness. i guess for men in particular, tho it seems to me the drug of sport is becoming more and more popular with almost everyone post-social media.

it's no surprise that like the more modern sports podcasts i listen to are talking about men's mental health more and more, again it's a bit sad that a lot of men seemingly need to hear a famous sports star talk about depression or seeing a therapist to legitimise that but i guess it does go against the idea that sport is (just) a melting pot of negativity and hatred.

xpost to jim - i don't consider myself at risk of joining the ira anytime soon but i know i often feel sport is a sort of safe way of loving your country for 90 minutes at a time, even though i seldom have such feelings about ireland in any other sense once the final whistle goes.

Trying to catch up: Yes/both vs no/neither C or D? Chicken, meet egg.

When people get all rhapsodic about Little League or Pop Warner or whatever and its ability to magically channel all the inevitable negativity of boys into a constructive collaborative team endeavor.... yadda yadda. Great if it works for you or worked for you. Honestly.

However, it also helps to reinforce a zero-sum mindset in which half the people participating "won," and half the people participating "lost," and this colors every subsequent discussion. That is the way every encounter ends: and every bit of luck, effort, spirit, talent, practice, and execution collapses into a binary: W or L.

Similarly, people get all glurgey about the Olympics, spirit of humankind, coming together in friendship, celebrating the best in us, festival of peaceful striving, etc. etc.

And it is also mimic warfare, where "we are #1" is not a standalone statement; it requires that someone else be #2, 3, 4, and so on. All manner of jingoistic nationalist fever-dreams make themselves felt at Olympics time, so can you please spare me the gauzy soft-focus narratives of Striving Against the Odds.

Sport(s) is/are/can be a healthy release valve (as LocalGarda says) for the allegedly inevitable aggressive and competitive urges inherent in our young people. Especially those rambunctious boys with all their Anger Issues and Daddy Issues. It is, I suppose, one of the safer possible outlets for aggression, physical dominance, regionalism, and nationalism. Okay.

At the same time, cultures that prioritize zero-sum competitive success tend to downplay collaborative, cooperative, non-zero-sum activities.

Even the arts constantly attract systems of ranking and competition and I'm-up/you're-down-ism. The Grammy goes to Artist X, instead of Artist why, even though they both made awesome records and there's room for both. A whole genre of game shows exists specifically to tell people there is a hierarchy, and most people are at the bottom of it. In an ideal world, the arts could be comprehended as a rampantly, deliriously chaotic garden of multiple, innumerable, infinite winners.

the meaningless of sport combined with how much you can make it mean is prob the greatest thing about it

xpost

xps you can argue football riots amongst regionally or sectarianally (word?) or class or whatever division of any type your 'opposing fans' identify with are as much to do with actual football as the crusades are to do with the Bible

I mean, it's not unarguable like

the meaningless of sport combined with how much you can make it mean is prob the greatest thing about it

xpost

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, November 17, 2017 10:14 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a great way of putting it

'd say our inherent capacity for violence predates a great deal.

xpost to deems

i think that's as much about being american as it is about being male

look at Italy, look at Poland right now, it's everywhere

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

the particularity of poland re: sports and masculinity is interesting. hooliganism is super popular there and hooligan groups are partly responsible for the rise of right-wing nationalism in the country, and it's really a full-fledged culture: from petty stuff like grafitti wars where they grafitti swastikas against historically jewish teams, to organized criminal activity like drug trade + fighting cops for sport. it's this nexus where sports + hypermasculinity + (proto-)fascism converge. not saying that football is responsible for the far-right marches recently, because a lot of the right-wing drift has mostly to do with how strong conservative catholicism is there (also true of italy)

"the meaningless of sport combined with how much you can make it mean" - cf. "the reason academic politics are so vicious is that the stakes are so small"

xp to lg well yeah I mean that's the thread kinda but throwing sport under a bus is.....I don't wanna say it's maybe what you'd expect a ilx poster to do while advocating we all do music instead.....but ....

women play sports too and afaict enjoy it

you brought up music and literature, not me, smart guy

xp

True but iirc twas you isolated sports as a realm that involved these bahaviours

But lookit

Behaviours that make you go bah before you ask

At the same time, cultures that prioritize zero-sum competitive success tend to downplay collaborative, cooperative, non-zero-sum activities.

― loretta swit happens (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, November 17, 2017 10:14 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like almost every modern nation, even the most communitarian countries

we've reached a point in the discussion where the philosopher is beating himself now

True but iirc twas you isolated sports as a realm that involved these bahaviours

no. please learn to read. someone else brought up sports as a good example of an outlet/channel for turning violent and aggressive behavior towards non-violent and non-aggressive activities.

to which I pointed out that sports are historically very violent. which is a fact.

So is everything

ps can't read did sports at school

turning violent and aggressive behavior towards non-violent and non-aggressive activities.

― Οὖτις, Friday, November 17, 2017 10:31 AM (twenty-one seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i never said sport is non-violent and non-aggressive

you should take your own advice

Lads

I bumped a sports thread fyi

can't believe i'm quoting my god damn self now on ilx

some kids really do need an outlet for their anger/energy and sports is a good way to release it, especially as a referee is more or less monitoring their aggression. if done properly there are consequences for a boy overdoing it. the lack of supervision that leads to something serious is not inherent to sports. it's the responsibility of the coach, trainer, and/or parents. sports is not meant to mellow out aggressive boys or cure aggression. it's just one component

having said that, minor hockey, as an example, is restricting fighting more and more since i was a kid and they are teaching kids more about technique/finesse and overall good sportsmanship

― i n f i n i t y (∞), Friday, November 17, 2017 9:38 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp to lg well yeah I mean that's the thread kinda but throwing sport under a bus is.....I don't wanna say it's maybe what you'd expect a ilx poster to do while advocating we all do music instead.....but ....

oh yeah, i was agreeing with you by pointing that out.

Historically, opposing groups of music fans have not murdered each other en masse.

Historically, sports fans haven't either, unless you're thinking of examples I can't call to mind.

I grew up in the age of mods vs rockers, teds vs punks, that's fairly analogous to football hooliganism as far as I can tell.

I posted some links

Jack Nicholson went mental with a croquet mallet that one time

On the other hand Mick Jagger stabbed that black guy so we might be level here

lot of writers done jail time. Dostoevsky, Wilde, Jeffrey Archer

xp you did - missed that, sorry. To be fair, only the last of the three, all of which sound unbelievably awful in their different ways, seems to represent sports fans killing each other en masse.

sunday is international men's day, fyi

but then you've gotta factor in all the people who've killed themselves because Morrissey told them too

lotta people got shivved during the "Rite of Spring" riots

Stevie Gerrard kicking the shit out of that DJ probably goes down as a score draw

The only problem with sport is that people follow male-only teams or male competitors to a vastly disproportionate level & thus valourise sport as above all a clash of men, which is p patriarchal

I watched some women's cricket this morning otoh so I am pure and great j/k j/k obviously I watch way, way more men's stuff and have a Charlton men's season ticket and watch men's cricket and men's snooker and men's everything more than women's equivalent and the culture might change towards equality but the change is p glacial even with the tangible progress of the last couple decades

*makes j/k off motion*

obv the ideal is mixed teams on merit. one day perhaps

would like to devise a sport that gives men and women equal chances to be successful when pitted against each other. it's the great sport-theory challenge of our day

xp Yeah Marlowe got offed in a South London poetry beef irc.

Astor Place riots probably a more apposite example of non-sports crowds put to deadly ends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_Place_Riot

ANYWAY I agree that all of these things totally suck but it doesn't make any sense to me to see mass-spectator sport based violence as anything other than a symptom of the broader problem of violence under discussion.

xp. i enjoy women's sport. i go to women's fitba sometimes, would do so more often if there were a professional team where i live. but (not to be facts don't care about your feelings) sexual dimorphism in humans is an actual thing that exists and the nature of most sports means that male sport will tend to be more interesting to watch.

integrate curling imo

would like to devise a sport that gives men and women equal chances to be successful when pitted against each other

Quidditch iirc

xps. good things about women's sport - specifically football - less bro'y crowd, families, women, queer people. less money so less sponsorship crap everywhere. less money so less cheating - i.e. PEDs which are definitely a feature of men's soccer don't seem to have trickled down.

Did you mean hurling mookie

i did not

Benefit of doubt rescinded

Hurling Mookie = underrated 90s jam band