Men's Group

Last edited Thu Sep 5, 2013, 07:53 AM - Edit history (3)

We all have our own preferences. Each guy should respect the other's preference.

for those of us who like sports, we get to put up with the holier than thou, nose stuck firmly in the air types who think watching sports is beneath them and a sign of the degradation of society or something...

I have never had this bad attitude in my life. I've never felt superior to any school athlete I ever encountered as I was growing up. Not even the jerks. Sports have always been a part of the mosaic of human expression. (How do you like that for a trite statement?) They will always be around, just like the fine arts. I respect the effort and self-discipline that is involved in developing athletic skill, which to me is comparable to all the dedication that is necessary for one to become a concert pianist. I would not be interested in attending a piano concert anymore than I would a sporting event such as a football game, but that wouldn't mean I don't respect the efforts of the participants in both events. Lack of interest does not imply lack of respect.

I will say, though, that the types you speak of hardly have any power over others (except, perhaps, in a college classroom or an online forum where it's easy to be rude and personally attack others). The sports crowd, on the other hand, seem to have a great deal of power for obvious reasons. Picture, if you will, in your mind the situation of a scrawny or fat nonathletic boy in a mandatory boys' P.E. class that is centered around sports to the complete exclusion of exercise programs for the nonathletic kids. He has no power at all. Every school day he dreads the approach of the period when he will have P.E. He likely will be subjected to humiliation and bullying, and nobody will care.

As I said, I've never had this attitude in my life. But I was subjected to ridiculous stereotyping. For example: In the mid-1960s when I was an eighth-grader, my parents sent me to a clinical psychologist because I was being bullied (verbally) at school and my grades had fallen. The psychologist -- who, unfortunately, turned out to be abysmally incompetent -- decided in his infinite wisdom that I should take judo lessons. He sent me to a dojo that was run by a former university football player. He was the embodiment of machismo. The coldest man I've ever known. I learned what machismo was before I even heard the word. I always felt like an outsider in his dojo; and when he promoted me to brown belt (a promotion I clearly did not deserve), I felt like he was patronizing me as that scrawny nonathlete in his class. By the time I was a junior in high school, I decided this nonsense had gone on long enough and quit, expecting an angry protest from him but hearing none.

I looked him up eight years later. He expressed certain peculiar views of his own that explained a lot. First, he claimed that he had saved me from homosexuality! You see, he stereotyped me. Since I was physically weak, had no interest in sports, didn't stand up to bullies (because they all were physically stronger than I was), surely I must have homosexual tendencies. You know the old line. I supposedly was some kind of sissy, whatever that is. He also said that only athletes and men in certain blue-collar vocations were "real men." He even denigrated Dr. Sakharov, claiming that he really wasn't all that courageous because he had the support of the "international media." (Say what?) And even though he was an instructor in the marital arts, he had no problem with bullying! He said the guy who's bullied by his boss can always kick the family dog when he gets home from work. What a noble philosophy! (For whatever it's worth, this guy happens to be a Republican.)

It's not so hard to understand why I detest machismo with every fiber of my being. I respect the true masculinity that was manifested by Sakharov and Wallenberg, when they sought to help the oppressed. Those men in this country who spoke out against Jim Crow during the 1950s and early 1960s were cut from the same cloth, as far as I'm concerned. I dare say machismo has no respect for such men.

I hate to say this, but machismo seems to be so common among athletes and coaches. Just to give another example (and I could give others), just a few years ago a childhood friend of mine who had played on his high school's football team informed me that most of his teammates had considered all the nonathletic guys at their school to be inferior. (This childhood friend of mine wasn't playing the "sour grapes" routine. He's still a big football fan today.) Another friend of mine who played on the same team recently told me that he never saw a more insecure group of guys in his life. He said they were constantly "proving" their masculinity over and over again, usually at the expense of guys who weren't athletes.

I realize there are exceptions to this. For example, trumad and several other DU members I know of who have decidedly athletic backgrounds clearly reject machismo. They are men I admire. I honor them. I wish I had known someone like trumad when I was in high school.

I'm firmly convinced that there has been a social animus against nonathletic boys for generations going back to the Thirteen Colonies. You know, bookish men are supposed to be effete, blah blah blah. I suggest you read The Feminized Male, which was written by a New York City sociology professor named Patricia Cayo Sexton (who passed away last year). She rails against nonathletic boys and men, whom she deems to be "feminized," and makes some of the most absurd statements I've ever heard. The book is seething with hatred. (Hey, she detested nonathletic academic men; so, why in the world did she choose to become a Professor?! ) She was on the political left, but this diatribe reads like it was written by Ann Coulter or Phylis Schlafly. It reads like racist or anti-Semitic hate literature, except the targets are nonathletic guys. If you don't believe me, read it for yourself.

As a heterosexual, I don't know whether being gay makes one predisposed to disliking sports anyway. Sounds rather unlikely...and it hasn't been my experience .

It's a dumb claim that historically has been made by those seeking to demean gays with negative stereotypes. There are more gay athletes than we realize. Some stay in the closet. Incidentally, several years ago I once came across an interesting blog at a particular gay website -- outsports, I believe (if I remember the name correctly). Just as there are sports fans on one side and sports haters and critics of the culture on the other side among straight guys, the same rift exists to the same degree among gays, apparently.

End of this rant, an incredibly long post.

Peace.