Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Ahem

thought the dangerous violence of sport was a universal

Historically, sports fans haven't [murdered each other en masse] either, unless you're thinking of examples I can't call to mind.

sounds like someone should read up about the culture around chariot racing and esp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots

I already linked to the Nika Riots! There were plenty of other less-fatal riots in ancient Rome, it's p well documented

maybe do a poll on which sport is the least full of maniacs waiting to explode. never noticed a lot of roid abuse in darts tbh.

them two triathlon brothers look pretty gimpy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQzj6pcHAac

Ogmor I already apologised for missing that link, have now read that page twice and still don't think it makes sense to see it as "sports fans murdering each other en masse" - the sport doesn't seem to be anything like the key factor in the riots or the murder.

Οὖτις I agree with you that sport can be a space in which violent and aggressive impulses can be let loose, or can be channelled in a more positive way.

Sport and violence discussion is interesting

Off the cuff, there are people I love who are very into sport and people I hate who are very into sport and it can be, the same sport, the same team, but has totally different significance to these different people. The sport culture itself seems to offer the good and the bad from the same stall because both sell?

I've said before I like darts - I also like listening to fans of e.g. oldham athletics football team go on, the team seems to go nowhere and that's the point? In other words the amateur knockabout eccentric side of sports seems fairly classic - a game, played by people, for fun - whereas the hissing, icy, belligerently 'pro' side of sports seems like a dud.

Not that darts doesn't have all the shouty trimmings of sponsored pro sport - of course it does - but the players are all pretty relatable in their buffoonery

Maybe sports as a healthy outlet for aggression is just a bit cart before the horses? Like I understand that it can and is used that way but it doesn't work unless you make kids aware that this aggression is ultimately destructive and something to be wary of in the first place.

I don't remember ever feeling as miserable as I did during team sports in PE class - there was a clear expectation that I should pull my weight and that my failures made me less of a man, which in turn made me worthy of ridicule, derision and homophobic slurs.

ilx probably going to have a very dim view of aggression as a thing in any form, I think that this is not necessarily an argument that would go unremarked across a wider sphere

Channelling aggression is not the only argument for sport (tho it's the context in which it came up here obv)

if you define aggression beyond the parameters of self-defence or assertiveness I think it's a moderately tough sell tbh

There is a lot of chicken/egg. Do sports always provide a release valve for preexisting aggression, or do they sometimes stir it up and create it where it wouldn't otherwise be?

For starters, we'll never know, because "though shalt be a sportser" is thrust on many American boys from birth. I'm not in a sporting family (to put it mildly) but still found that it was impossible to avoid football-themed onesies, pajamas, sheet sets. Every weekend, nearly every square inch of suburban grass is covered with preschoolers milling around a soccer ball. Many fathers do not give their sons a choice; they've already picked out a fandom and a sport and sometimes even a specific position. In much of our culture, woe to the boy who says "Uh, Dad? I'd actually rather be on the chess team."

Mandatory sports culture suffuses every high school, where you're required to go to the Pep Rally before the Big Game, in which the Anyhigh Whatevers are supposed to "stomp" and "punish" the Otherhigh Fightin' Thingies. Rah, rah, school spirit.

If the aggression and/or drive to excel is innate, why do the sportsers need a cheering crowd, banners in the hallway, constant "Go Team" exhortations? (And why, for the love of god, do we need to provide them with a dozen cute girls in short skirts, clapping and cheering them on to victory? To remind them of exactly why they need to crush the opposition?) Surely they could just use their inner reserves.

still don't think it makes sense to see it as "sports fans murdering each other en masse" - the sport doesn't seem to be anything like the key factor in the riots or the murder.

the sport is why they were where they were and the rivalry was why the ones who were killed were killed, idk how much more you could want really

this is not necessarily an argument that would go unremarked across a wider sphere

so what?

darra, I know it's not the only argument for sport - I'm not suggesting sports should be interrupted before this is sorted out! But it's the case that's being made for it itt.

Wide swathes of the wider sphere see aggression as awesome by definition, which is surely part of the problem being discussed here.

Yeah no argument with either rejoinder daniel

™Mandatory sports culture suffuses every high school, where you're required to go to the Pep Rally before the Big Game, in which the Anyhigh Whatevers are supposed to "stomp" and "punish" the Otherhigh Fightin' Thingies. Rah, rah, school spirit.

Again, how to extricate, idk- but this post screams AMERICA at me, not SPORT

it's definitely a different culture to ours

it was impossible to avoid football-themed onesies, pajamas, sheet sets

made me think how the range of default cheapo birthday card designs for sons and dads in the UK comes from the limited pool of Sport, Fishing, Cars and Beer

I mean I was getting birthday cards with photos of random unrecognisable lower tier football action on them long before I really knew whether I liked football or not

fair point darraghmac - I am speaking here from a USian context.

However, I suspect that even in Europe, athletes are exhorted to do well rather than poorly. I am told that Irish sports teams have fans who encourage them to win rather than lose.

Or is it all "Just try your best, lads! Just go out there and have fun!"?

mostly at school it is, I've never heard of pep rallies outside of the US tbh

Ha

We scald the poor fuckers whatever they do tbh

It is imo an entirely different context tbph and maybe again a subthread

I've had basically nothing whatsoever to do with sports ever in my life but I can say that probably 75% of the times I've been physically assaulted (with intent) in my life were in high school gym class while being forced to do sports.

Yeah, the whole Friday Night Lights pep rally stuff is definitley a US thing. But how good you are at sports (or how interested you are in them) is still super important in Europe*, especially in more rural areas. I'm sure if I'd have grown up in Lisbon or Porto I'd have had some friends in the "lol fuck sports" camp, and the sporties wouldn't have been quite as obnoxious about it.

* This also unsatisfying shorthand I'm sure, things probably quite different in Poland than they are in Belgium or whatever, but whaddyagonnado

leaving the USA and moving to France with children in school, you notice the differences in sports culture. there's nothing like the organized sports of usa here for school kids, where schools compete against other schools and all's organized by the schools, with excused absences for athletes, cheerleaders, pep rallies, practices everyday, etc. Schools tend to have an organization for kids who want to swim or play tennis etc but it's all done in house, not against other schools. Otherwise you join a club outside of school. I think this is pretty standard in Europe.

of course people here can go wild for OM or PSG but imo (having lived in both Marseille and Paris for year+) it's not like college or professional sports fandom in the USA (like in the home of the FITIN' IRISH where the entire town shuts down for gameday and the population doubles for the day)

re. sports, I've long thought that when our glorious revolution of universal basic income comes, that the government should organize lots of sports leagues so that people can spend their time goofing around playing whatever. sure, include video games, no problem. not gonna force people to join but this seems plainly better than just having nothing to do (cf opioid crisis)

basically mixed pétanque will be our salvation

Très bien

the rivalry was why the ones who were killed were killed

The rivalry was the way in which the rioters were divided, not *why* they were killed, at least according to my reading of the page you linked: they were killed because they rebelled against Justinian. If your argument is that sport can, and often is, be put to horrible ends in the exercise of power, I agree with you. If your argument is that in that case sports was the cause of the massacre - why those people were massacred - I wouldn't: that would be letting Justinian and his troops off the hook.

leaving the USA and moving to France with children in school, you notice the differences in sports culture. there's nothing like the organized sports of usa here for school kids, where schools compete against other schools and all's organized by the schools, with excused absences for athletes, cheerleaders, pep rallies, practices everyday, etc. Schools tend to have an organization for kids who want to swim or play tennis etc but it's all done in house, not against other schools. Otherwise you join a club outside of school.

This is also how it is in American schools below high school, fwiw. I think our middle school might have one or two teams? Cross country, maybe basketball? But that's it. Kids who want to play sports in competition (tennis, soccer, baseball, hockey, whatever) do it in leagues outside of school.

xp sure, but justinian was a blue, and it was only blues who were allowed to leave (& in the end the sporting rivalry trumped anti-justinian sentiment amongst the blues). obviously there's a lot going on there, but sport provided the structure & crucible for it all to go down the way it did.

as I write there's a mob of feyenoord fans being kettled in the middle of manchester, singing incredibly loudly and seemingly drunk at 2pm. there have been a few incidents of fans trashing the city centre in recent years (Rangers take the prize). it's not letting alcohol off the hook to point out the common link of footer

You don't need to go back to the reign of Justinian to find examples of European sports riots.

policing obviously a huge issue too wrt fan violence, I'm not justifying kettling at all

ultimately flags and badges were invented for armies to rally around and sport has military connections almost as far back as it exists

but the sensible conversation is about strands and trends and histories and in lots of respects reaching back to Justinian or medieval archery or the Bodyline tour or the weird pro-bullying culture in American High Schools (the extent of my actual knowledge of that being as far as it's expressed in US movies and TV shows but hey let's run with it) is a very tangential way of thinking about the modern sports-entertainment complex and its massive presence across multiple cultures and economies.

and the meaning of sport to different individuals and communities, to different polities and cultures, to the innate (? nothing's innate but let's run with it) ludic instinct in human beings

sport can be, has been and is weaponized. can't think of a cultural artefact that this doesn't apply to.

> there have been a few incidents of fans trashing the city centre in recent years

around here (QPR) it seems to manifest itself as stickers stuck on bus stops and lamp posts.

Not sure if this is significant, but sports culture in UK private schools appears to be closer to the US culture? At least as far as schools play competitively with other schools, boys who are good at sport get special recognition ("colours"), rugby is a real man's game, rugger lads bully nerdy kids in the same way as "jocks"?

plenty of state primary schools have inter-school competitions

ah the post I was taking that from was referring to France not UK, fair enough.

tbf my state primary didn't have inter-school competitions, but that was 30 years ago so

yeah I only vaguely remember this; I was too busy playing wargames, which are ofc a more male pursuit than sport

Football brings twenty thousand ppl into a city centre

Calling the ensuing chaos 'sports related' isn't imo meaningful

Again, attack music concerts on same ground or call it the effect of crowds

eh not really the same imo since there is no competition involved in a crowd all gathered to see a musical performance

honestly in the post Gamergate post Reddit post doxxing post alt right etc etc as I've said before the Internet's great lesson was that given a chance nerds would act worse than jocks

xxp there's only a few hundred afaict. music fans haven't trashed the city centre. this is nonsense

How soon we forget the epic 2004 throwdown of Luna fans vs. Ok Go fans in Pittsburgh, both concerts were letting out at the same time and harsh words were exchanged about the quality of production on Pup Tent.

As many as two dudes got their glasses slightly scuffed in the ensuing melee.

Big gigs over here routinely involve more trouble than much better attended sporting events- I'm thinking specifically the events in the phoenix park (which is not usually an event venue)

LL's point is fair, you have to manage opposing fans in many sports so there's a heightened risk there

Here it's the norm to have mixed seating at rugby and gaa events and even soccer doesn't seem to need this type of management. Very rarely any trouble.

Ogmor you'll offer your Manchester events, fair enough. Maybe there's a major cultural divide between even there and here.

i wish i could say that musical performances are free from hostility but that wouldn't be true. they're just not the same as sporting events.

irish sports seem so charming and wholesome compared to football & english sport culture, chatted about this to a (completely unsporty) friend who moved to dublin about how much more appealing it is