For some reason there's a modern need to "define" everything so that it can be scientifically reproduced. The fact is the Greeks recognized man to man attraction as part of typical male competitiveness. Why would we be any different just because we live 2000 years later? Ancient Western cultures understood competitiveness and attraction as the normal thing that it is and they believed they were two sides of the same coin. And I believe that they are.

It's what's going on in shows like Ultimate Fighter--and maybe they know it, and maybe they don't. The guys bond with each other and are also attracted to fighting each other as part of that bonding. It's a guy thing. I've seen people compare male to male attraction (I resist calling it homosexuality anymore) to the female heterosexual brain or something. MALE TO MALE ATTRACTION / COMPETITIVENESS IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING FEMALE!!! It is not correct to put female sexual values on man to man attraction. It's what turns me totally off to the gay scene. Stop the bitching. Be a man.

Where modern analysis goes wrong is they still put an industrialized/modern heterosexual spin on their perspective. Yes, it's true that in ancient Greece, there were dirty old men who went after boys--much like Catholic priests always have.

But the majority of males in ancient Western cultures went to the palaestra (fight school) to bond with their male buddies by socializing, engaging in full body contact/fighting and showing off their maleness by doing all of this in the nude. They were raised to NOT feel any sense of shame for being born with testicles and penises. They celebrated being male by showing their physical willing aggression toward each other. They also celebrated being male by doing all of this totally naked so that their peers (including their opponents) would take note of their genitals as they fought. Ancient pre-screwed-up Judeo-Christian Western cultures were aware of the fact that male genitals after all had something at least to do with a male's willingness to fight. They had no sense of shame in that. These ancient cultures NEVER put a female spin on their natural male to male attraction. That is something that we do in our modern World.

Modern society suffers from a kind of Voyeurism/sense of shame for being male. I notice that in the way guys will be so afraid of getting naked in the locker room, or even wearing a towel around their waist in an all-male locker room to walk to the shower room. And the ultimate in voyeurism/being ashamed of being born male is the guys who have to shower in their underwear. I feel like telling the dumb fuck: dude you were born with balls, deal with it.

I'm really turned on by the fight school because you get to do real male stuff in there. The fight school experience is the celebration of natural male aggression. I disagree with people who think that it's an expression of anger. Guys in the fight school are NOT angry; they're some of the happiest, well adjusted guys I've ever met.

I hope that fighting with rules like pankration will someday be done naked like the Greeks, Celts, Germanics, Gauls, Romans, Egyptians, and others. Fighting is after all balls against balls.

Westerners--especially Americans--have such stupid hangups. It may be why advertising using sex works so well. It goes after that part of us that is so in denial.

Bill Weintraub

Re: balls against balls

3-26-2005

Thanks naked wrestling guy.

Naked Wrestler Boy is an olympic wrestler who's currently training in NHB-style fighting.

He's the author on this site of Cockfucking Man to Man;

The Ultimate in Man to Man;

aggression and the beauty of guys; and,

fighting is man;

and a very acute thinker on the relationship between male to male attraction and male to male aggression.

His observations bear directly on the debate about effeminacy and men who have sex with men.

For example, he says,

The fact is the Greeks recognized man to man attraction as part of typical male competitiveness...

I've seen people compare male to male attraction (I resist calling it homosexuality anymore) to the female heterosexual brain or something. MALE TO MALE ATTRACTION / COMPETITIVENESS IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING FEMALE!!! It is not correct to put female sexual values on man to man attraction. It's what turns me totally off to the gay scene. Stop the bitching. Be a man.

[The Greeks] celebrated being male by showing their physical willing aggression toward each other. They also celebrated being male by doing all of this totally naked so that their peers (including their opponents) would take note of their genitals as they fought. Ancient pre-screwed-up Judeo-Christian Western cultures were aware of the fact that male genitals after all had something at least to do with a male's willingness to fight. They had no sense of shame in that. These ancient cultures NEVER put a female spin on their natural male to male attraction. That is something that we do in our modern World.

"These ancient cultures NEVER put a female spin on their natural male to male attraction. That is something that we do in our modern World."

That's right, and "we" do it for reasons of sexual politics -- not because it has any basis in reality.

So:

Some gay-identified men become upset by our rejection of effeminacy because they see it as a rejection of the pervasive feminism of the last 100 years.

Are they right?

In part, yes.

While we certainly don't reject the "equal-rights-for-women" aspect of feminism, we do reject the "masculinity-is-evil" aspect of much gender feminist thought.

Which in turn has a gay-male-chauvinist aspect:

Gay-identified men have been taught to think of themselves as superior to straight-identified men because as gay men they're allegedly intergendered and thus in touch with their inner woman.

Problem: gay men aren't intergendered and there is no inner woman.

Gay men may, under cultural pressure, invent -- that is, culturally construct or imagine -- such a woman, but that doesn't mean "she" exists.

Men who have sex with men are men.

Nakedwrestler: "MALE TO MALE ATTRACTION / COMPETITIVENESS IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING FEMALE!!!"

Right.

A man having sex with another man is not the same as a man being female.

Some men may choose, under oppression, to interpret their sexuality as "feminine" or "effeminate."

But it is not.

Sex between men is a quintessentially male activity.

Forcing the act into a male-female model or paradigm distorts and debases both the act and the actors.

Which is why anal penetration is such a mess.

It's not just the feces, and it's not just the disease.

It's the fundamental violation of masculinity inherent in the act.

Which brings us back to what another wrestler said of anal on this board:

There's no male connection, no bond, just raw lust. It's not sex or love, it's violence and power. The problem is implied in the politically-coerced masculine/feminine roles.

Right.

The roles are *politically* coerced.

Left to themselves, men will be men.

The majority of males in ancient Western cultures went to the palaestra (fight school) to bond with their male buddies by socializing, engaging in full body contact/fighting and showing off their maleness by doing all of this in the nude. They were raised to NOT feel any sense of shame for being born with testicles and penises. They celebrated being male by showing their physical willing aggression toward each other. They also celebrated being male by doing all of this totally naked so that their peers (including their opponents) would take note of their genitals as they fought. Ancient pre-screwed-up Judeo-Christian Western cultures were aware of the fact that male genitals after all had something at least to do with a male's willingness to fight. They had no sense of shame in that. These ancient cultures NEVER put a female spin on their natural male to male attraction. That is something that we do in our modern World.

"They were raised to NOT feel any sense of shame for being born with testicles and penises."

Right.

In fact, they were taught to be proud of being born with testicles and penises.

That's one of the reasons they thought it was so important to be nude.

To them, being nude was being whole and complete.

As it is to us.

That's why it's so jarring to see a man in a communal shower at the gym wearing a bathing suit:

He's denying a crucial and fundamental part of himself -- literally, his manhood.

"They celebrated being male by showing their physical willing aggression toward each other. They also celebrated being male by doing all of this totally naked so that their peers (including their opponents) would take note of their genitals as they fought."

Right.

Because they understood that their genitals were intrinsic to their maleness, and insisted therefore, with that particularly Greek clarity, that those genitals should be seen by their fellow men.

And not just seen.

But felt.

If you wrestle a guy nude, you're going to feel his genitals.

And he'll feel yours.

Every Greek male wrestled nude.

These guys experienced each other -- saw, felt, smelled -- each other as whole men in one of the most intimate and aggressive male-male acts: nude wrestling.

In sum:

Human beings are a *sexually* dimorphic species.

Translation: There are significant physical and behavioral differences between men and women.

Men and women are, in certain crucial and inescapable ways, different.

That does not mean the women cannot or should not have full economic and political equality with men.

But sexually, men and women are different.

A sexual subculture which seeks to deny that difference cannot stand.

In The Man2Man Alliance, we celebrate male to male attraction, male to male aggression, male to male sex.

Not male to pseudo-female attraction or sex.

But Male to Male and Man to Man.

That's the meaning of Heroic Homosex, and the significance of Heroic Love.

Which, as the Greeks understood, because it is at once aggressive and loving and eternal, is male bonding in its noblest form.

In a subsequent email, nakedwrestler said to me

I found wrestling attractive after high school because I recognized aggression as something that I needed back in my life. I was attracted to the fact that wrestlers would usually shake hands after a match and become buddies so to speak. I thought that was cool. The need for aggression and respect and bonding was in me then, even though I had not fully defined those concepts for myself then. Looking back on it, I now know that combat sports are definitely one of the doorways males need to go through to be complete men. It's just the way it is.

"The need for aggression and respect and bonding was in me ... I now know that combat sports are one of the doorways males need to go through to be complete men."

That's right.

Combat sports are one of the doorways males need to go through to be complete men.

For, as C.S. Lewis said, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."