(Note: some of the actual images being discussed to be added in the next few days - I've been having trouble getting them to load into the right places!)
In this Blog, I have been attempting to get you all to DISCUSS through the Comments what you felt was the ideal masculine man: what he looked like and what he acted like. I started by asking about the idealized PHYSICAL image of males, with limited success. This posting is a continuation of my last one, where I promised to post some pictures of “ideal men”. Well, THAT got a LITTLE bit complicated!
I believe that even straight men have an idea in their head of what a MASCULINE man looks like, as opposed to a man who they think of as NOT "MANLY". (The second image is probably clearer to them.) What they think is "masculine" might be buried pretty deep in their minds, or it simply might be the example of a certain man from their childhood, like their father or the coach of their football team. Perhaps it is how they tried to look and act when they were in their early adolescent years, and being “manly” would have been important to fit in. (Remember high school? In MY school, if you wore white socks on Wednesday, it meant that you were a “fag”, and it was hissed to you all day (by the girls as well as the guys). I am not too sure most of the guys knew what a "fag" WAS - they just used the word as an insult.)
I suspect that most straight men probably just never consciously explored the idea of an ideal masculine man, either out of fear of appearing “gay” if they talked about it, or internalized homophobic fears - commonly called “homosexual panic“ (a lot more common than you think, fellows. Take it from a man with a Masters in Social Work); or just because they never gave the concept any thought at all.
Gay and bisexual men (and straight women) have of course, given the concept some thought. Often A LOT of thought. I find it interest that many Gay men have more than one “type” - more than one ideal of manhood and masculinity, at least as far as physical appearance goes. Many of us also have an ideal of how we would like men we would consider having sex with to act, at least in public. The range of physical appearance that I have heard Gay men describe would surprise many: not just the “Village People” or the gym pumped young models on the Gay magazines; but that is a subject for another posting. The ideals of behavior have an equally wide range, from the hyper-masculine macho-man, to gentle guys who serve their communities in peace, to somewhat feminine men. This would also make a topic for another posting.
THIS posting is about the idealized physical image of masculinity. When I began to look for images of masculinity for the promised posting on idealized images of men I did something simple: I used one of the common search engines (to be honest, I don’t remember which one), put in “MASCULINITY”, and searched for “IMAGES” and selected the option to allow for “Adult Content“. (I never tried it with other search engines - that might be an interesting experiment!)
I was struck by the vast variety of images I found. Some were downright BIZARRE; these were mostly "works of art".
Artwork: "Masculinity"
"TRUE Christian Masculinity"
Many were book covers, many of books with a common fundamentalist Christian theme about “TRUE Masculinity“ as seen by their preacher, or for scholarly textbooks. A third category had to do with entertainment - singers, plays, movies. Then there was a fourth group: men at physical labor. These were most often photographs or art of working class men.
Some were excellent quality photos from the WPA during the Depression (Google “WPA” if you are not familiar with it- I’m not going to explain it.) I would include in this class those posed photos of fighters being weighed as they hold up their fist at each other; or portraits of other sports figures, including the ones who choose to pose for magazines like “Playgirl“. (Do any of the men who pose for that magazine actually believe that the majority of readers are women?)
Others in this category were posed photos meant to be titillating for gay men, since many middle class and upper class gay men have fantasies about rough working class men. Surprisingly, some of these images could be seen as excellent art photographs, too. One beautiful photograph is of a body builder pulling on a massive wrench on a nut in the center of a gigantic circular piece of machinery in a powerhouse (it was in the name of the photo). The leg towards the camera is bent to hide his genitals; muscular as he is, he is obviously struggling with the wrench since his muscles are bulging. The circular piece of machinery exactly frames the figure. Only the most prudish would call it pornographic; I would call it a life study art photo of the male figure. It is actually based loosely on a famous WPA photo of a "Power House Mechanic", just slightly more artistic in it's composition.
WPA photo: The Power House Mechanic
There is also a painting based on this same photo, except the figure is nude. In fact, there seems to be an entire group of gay artists creating tasteful nudes based on well known art photos or photo-journalist's photos.
Model: Herb Ritt
However, the majority of these “hard working blue collar men” photos were of handsome, extremely well built young men doing manual labor with out a shirt and with strategically placed dirt smudges on their face and bodies, often in extreme cut off jeans which would be seen as dangerous on any real work site. (When I was younger, I DID physical labor for awhile. The one time I wore cut off shorts to work (it was 100 degrees), I was told off by my foreman, and DID end up injuring myself.) The tools they carry are wrong for the work they are supposed to doing, but are usually phallic. Often, the photos were part of a series where the model continued to work, but with increasing less clothes, until he is naked and erect. Many of the models are familiar from other pieces of porn.
There was a fifth group which I will get to in another posting. I SHOULD mention at this point that there were SOME images which were neutral as to category: these were just close up portraits of men‘s faces, with no clue as to who they are or what they are doing. There was also a group of photos and paintings of just pipes (the smoking kind) which I just found totally puzzling.
As I began to save a variety of images to my computer (both photographic and artwork), I realized that other than those five fairly small categories, a majority of the images could be said to deal with violence in one form or another.
Some of the images, mostly artwork, were from anti-violence projects. Most of these projects are designed to teach young men and boys to break the cycle of domestic violence, or to change the concept that many teen males have from the media that females are their “property“. (I cannot leave out projects aimed at domestic violence in the LGBT community, although I found no images from any of these.) Some images are from important projects to fight growing teen violence within certain ethnic communities where violent outbursts and confrontational attitudes are seen as demonstrations of manhood. Such projects are usually aimed at the youth of an individual ethnic community, so that the language can be that of the community. Sadly, these were a small percentage of the anti-violence images. There are far too few of such projects.
The majority of the rest of the images of violence fell into a few simple categories.
Actual violence: scenes of war, street or bar fighting, and other violent acts designed to demonstrate dominance over other men, or over women. Even a feeling of transient dominance over a world in which they feel they have no control.
The young vandal at "work"
There was one strange series of unposed “art photographs” (from the website of an art gallery) of a young man, actually an older boy, busily engaged in vandalizing an abandoned building with such fury that he actually injured himself. The last photo was of him showing off the wounds. "Bar Fight in Hoboken"
The "Angry Policeman" &; ONE of his guns
The same photographer who did the picture series of the young vandal above also did a series of a policeman, both in his uniform in is police car and his off duty collection of firearms. The series was called “Angry Policeman”. (see left)
This leads me to the second category.
“Potential” violence: pictures of military men and police; boxers or other sports fighters posing before a fight in a pose prepared for a fight; non-military or police men and boys holding weapons (often assault rifles); photographs of just weapons (remember, this was in response to a Internet engine search for images of “MASCULINITY“); civilians dressed in military clothing and posing in a threatening pose. Unfortunately, this included far to many pictures of popular entertainers waving weapons.
“Ritualized violence“: if you have never realized that most sports are in some way or another a ritualized form of violence, WAKE UP!
True, we have come a long way from the Mayan ritual ball game, where (it is believed) the losing team would be sacrificed. Some sports are obvious as ritualized violence, such as American football, soccer, rugby and even chess. (Chess is, after all - a miniature war.) The taking of territory, or the invasion of territory in order to “take the enemy flag” (sink a basket or make a goal or touchdown) makes the game a ritual war. The degree of physical violence used in doing that varies, but the testosterone of the men playing surges, and even if violent activity is not part of playing the actual game, violent outbursts between players, or even both teams, are not rare. Haven't you ever seen both baseball teams empty onto the field in a mass fistfight?
I need not mention ice hockey, where during battles over invading the other team’s “territory” to get the puck in the goal, the professional players often erupt into fistfights on the ice during games, to a roar of the crowd not heard since the Roman Coliseum. I have heard hockey fans who I know complain that a game they had watched had too few fights, or that the officials had stopped the fights too fast, or that there wasn’t enough blood! To these fans (of both genders, by the way) the point of ice hockey is the violence - both the ritualized war of invading each teams territory and the actual busting of noses. I have seen this enthusiasm for bloody hockey games used for humor on a number of situation comedies on TV.
Certain sports, often ones associated in the West with the wealthy and privileged, have their roots in training young men as warriors in other, subjugated cultures. These include polo and lacrosse. Neither are of European origins, but have been adopted and adapted by the conquering white men.
I often find travel shows on television where the intrepid traveler has come upon some group of horsemen on the steppes of central Asia, such as Mongols, playing a form of polo where they use an animal’s head as the ball. (The animal is often that night’s feast.) Often, the narrator will inform the audience that his guide told him that in ancient times, it was the head of the leader of the fallen enemy which was used, and that the game is still played as a form of military training. The modern game came to Victorian England from India during their long occupation, and got “cleaned up” a bit by their gentlemen cavalry officers, who had found it an excellent way of keeping in shape and of training their horses for battle. However, thy decided that having a bloody sheep head landing in the lap of the new white frock of Her Ladyship, the Viceroy’s wife, as she watched the troops in their new entertainment would have been “overly upsetting” for the "delicate sensitivities" of "the "fairer sex" (not to say messy), so a ball of some sort, about the same size of that head, was substituted. The game is still the exclusive “turf” of the wealthy and nobility; the young Princes of England are avid players, as was their father. Let’s face it; any game that requires a specially trained horse and a massive field to play is NOT going to played by the poor!
Lacrosse is another matter. According to an article in Wikipedia: (the emphasis is mine): “Lacrosse originated with the Native Americans of the United States and Canada, mainly among the Huron and Iroquois Tribes. In many Native American societies/tribes, the ball sport was often part of religious ritual, played to resolve conflicts, heal the sick, develop strong, virile men and prepare for war…“
“Lacrosse played a significant role in the community and religious life of tribes across the continent… was characterized by deep spiritual involvement, befitting the spirit of combat in which it was undertaken. Those who took part did so in the role of warriors, with the goal of bringing glory and honor to themselves and their tribes. The game was said to be played ‘for the Creator’ or was referred to as ‘The Creator's Game‘.”
The original game could go on for days, and involve hundreds of participants. The modern version of the game was created in 1856 by a Canadian dentist, who greatly modified the game first described by a French Jesuit missionary in 1637. The game became very popular in Canada.
However, in the United States, it was played mostly by “upper crust” schools until fairly recently because it requires a very big field, often not available in cities except to the wealthy. In recent years it has become more popular in middle class suburbs, and “the better” parochial schools (I know that the “best“ - or at least most difficult to get into - Catholic boy‘s high school in Brooklyn has a team. I see the members in their team jackets on the subway.). One can imagine the decision making of the good Fathers at the Catholic High School and the suburban school boards in deciding to introduce the game at their high school: “The varsity league games would introduce our young men to other young men from those private school uptown / nearby exclusive boarding schools. Introduce them on the playing filed to rich young men who they may make friends with, and who may help them advance in the future.” A gross miscalculation. Opposing teams get separate locker rooms so never really meet, and are more likely to spend whatever time they ARE exposed to each other venting their surging waves of teen testosterone in mutual insults referred to in athletics as “trash talk”.
Most of the tradition track and field sports began as military training for Greeks and Romans; wrestling as a sport evolved from training for hand to hand combat with knives by the Greeks; javelins evolved from spears.... you get the point.
Some other sports developed as ways to keep young warriors in shape during peace time, or to help them blow off steam and keep them from starting to fight with each other. Some evolved into other track and field sports, but sometimes young, well trained warriors had the need to settle their arguments in a more militaristic way, especially when the concept of “personal honor“ developed. The training forms for sword fighting for battle evolved in more modern times into the ritual form of individual battle “for honor”, which often was satisfied with the simple drawing of blood: dueling with an evolved, narrow sword which was less deadly - but still could result in death if a sword pierced the heart or a major organ.
.
The various forms of dueling was a more ritualized, “more civilized” form of the bloody bashing of faces by two men to settle an argument - a “gentlemen‘s solution". It had many rules. FENCING (the only competitive sport other than bowling in which I have ever been involved), even though often deadly in it’s early days, is the even further evolved ritualized form of the need for two males to pair off and prove which one is superior by killing each other. There was a time when the participants in a sword duel could agree beforehand through their “seconds” that the drawing of “first blood” would “satisfy honor” and settle their disagreement. Other times only a serious wound or death would satisfy the participants.
Today fencing involves points, which vary according to where the foil touches. (Men and women cannot fence competitively, since their “point zones” are different.) When guns came along, fencing with bare swords evolved into dueling with pistols.
BOXING: There is no way to even pretend that there is a ritualized aspect to boxing as violence (along with it’s newer, more extreme variations). As long as there have been human beings, males have found reasons to bash in each other’s faces. It’s part of our more primitive ape heritage.
Boxing was a sport in the Greek Olympics, where the line between ritual and violence WAS blurred. The wrestling and boxing was supposed to be for the glory of the gods, and not to settle personal disputes, or those of one’s home city. Boxing was one of the “sports” gladiators used to entertain the crowds in Rome, often in a death match; sometimes in a group brawl for “the last man standing”; something which has begun to return, at least in some semi-legal venues.
While men have always gathered to watch two enemies try to bash each others brains in and bet on the outcome, as a formal sport, boxing has it’s modern origins as an underground entertainment in early Victorian times which was enjoyed by both the poor and the slumming upper class “gentlemen“. Clandestine matches were arranged between big, strong men who had no reason to fight except for the money offered by the organizers.
The English Prizefighting Championship, 1811
Victorian gentlemen would go “slumming” often: to houses of prostitution, to sleazy shows, to low class bars to enjoy carousing with the "lower classes", and to underground blood sport like cockfighting and illegal boxing. They often brought their older teen sons along as a sign that they were accepting them as “men“, and almost equals. These young men would often describe the less obscene entertainments to younger brothers home from “public schools” like Eton. The Victorians were obsessed with rules, so more rules were made for boxing, especially when young upper class men began to imitate the sport which was considered so very manly, and began to get hurt. It is a sublime irony that it was the Marquis of Queensbury, the father of Oscar Wilde’s young lover, who created the 12 basic rules for professional boxing which we still have, including the weight divisions we have today. He also introduced the basic boxing glove.
In the 20th Century, an increasing number of rules were added to protect boxers from permanent injury in “civilized” countries. This did not end these injuries, and even some ring related deaths, but the number decreased - and the fans grew bored with “the sweet science”.
In recent years, the sport of boxing is devolving back to more dangerous and exciting “extreme” forms. Some are so violent that they are not allowed in most “civilized” countries; the poorer countries where the bouts are held and filmed welcome the tourism. Watch come of the “Mixed Martial Arts” matches on TV - they almost always take place in the Philippines, or other exotic [and poor] Pacific Islands, or Latin America. One of the most violent forms of “martial arts” comes from the ghettos of Brazil. In many of these newer formats, the gloves have become almost a ritual item; in some, only mouth guards are used for protection. These fighting forms fall under the category of “Mixed Martial Arts”. Where the fighters can use techniques from any recognized form of fighting, the referees are very lenient about the few rules.
There has been an interesting new development in the last few days here in New York State in the area of blood sports.
The cash strapped state government, (which has some of the strictest boxing regulations, resulting in fewer championship fights in New York), has for some time been debating allowing “Mixed Martial Arts” in the state, or at least in certain part o the state. Now the Governor has proposed licensing KICKBOXING in parts of the state as a way to raise money without raising taxes, since it is legal in so few places in the United States. The argument is that not only would there be income from the taxes on the admission and high, one time licensing fees, but money generated by increased tourism. The fact that it is one of the more dangerous forms of martial arts doesn’t seem to be part of the calculations.Perhaps we will soon see our state Legislature approve bare knuckle boxing as a revenue booster. Since most of the fighters you see on TV in "Mixed Martial Arts" matches are either poor men from racial minorities or Third World Countries, or what they used to call in the South “poor white trash”, one can assume that a few bloody public deaths among such fighters would be seen as “regrettable” (and perhaps even entertaining and exciting) by the wealthy "gentlemen" legislators who pay almost no taxes anyway due to loopholes, but seen as worth the risk to these "throw away, worthless" but beautiful to look at men for the increased State income as long as:
A: it will cost them nothing and keep the people from noticing that the are not paying their fair share of taxes, and
B: THEIR precious sons will not be at risk of death, brain damage, or permanent maiming.
Let’s face it. Man has again become a group of apes hooting, howling apes as two of the tribe bash each other bloody, risking death. Only the "prize" is no longer the exclusive mating rights and dominance over the males in the troop - it is money.
CHALLENGE:
If you know of any MAJOR sport that originated or spread in a totally peaceful way (with no symbolic "taking of territory" or "capturing the flag" make a “COMMENT” and explain the origins.
To be continued….
