And that's what I want -- Man Against Man, Warrior Against Warrior, Phallus Against Phallus -- Manhood against Manhood.

Again:

Manhood -- it's about Manhood.

And, most importantly, Manhood Against Manhood.

Because to me, and as I said in Hyacinthine Love, which was my first published article, way back in 1999, Sex between Men should be Combative:

To me [as a boy and an adolescent,] it seemed inevitable that two men wrestling would end up in a front-to-front, full-body embrace, grappling strenuously while furiously rubbing their hard cocks one against the other, the way I now rubbed mine against an old bathrobe bundled up beneath me to give the illusion of a partner; and, I thought, the force and heat of those two warrior cocks rubbing together would become so great that, in the fierce instant before they both came, they would seem to merge into one. Like every child of that era, I was bombarded by images of combat: of cowboys against Indians, yes, but more important to me of Allies against Wehrmacht, partisans against Germans, Russians against the West. Wouldn't sex and strife combine, I wondered, to produce heroes who were lovers, and lovers who were heroes?...

From these elements, over time, I developed a rich fantasy life, in which wrestling or fighting with another boy would lead to our stripping down and making love, a hard, combative love in which our cocks would strive to prove who was master, a contest both athletic and erotic that would last up until that all-consuming ecstatic moment when our differences were subsumed in an ocean of thick, white cum and we emerged, exalted and transformed, into a magical, mythical, radiant land, where, eternal comrades, we would live and love forever.

So -- from the git-go, that is from childhood on, my conception of sex between Men has been Combative and Aggressive.

It's affiliative too, I should point out -- heroes become lovers, lovers become heroes -- and eternal comrades who live and LOVE forever.

Nonetheless, the sex is Combative and Aggressive.

Because that's what Men are -- they're Combative, they're Aggressive.

And you're making Love with a Man -- right?

If you're making Love with a Man -- you want the Man to be a Man.

Aggressive and Combative.

And it has to be *mutually* Aggressive, and *mutually* Combative, for it to be mutually MAN.

Because when you deprive the Man of his aggression, his Fighting Spirit, as we've much discussed, you deprive him of his Manhood.

And who wants to be with a male -- who's lacking in Manhood?

Sometimes guys ask me about oral --

like anal, another so-called sex act which isn't directly and mutually genital.

Oral's a problem because it too often falls into one guy "servicing" another guy, which is just dom-sub, butch-bitch.

Why would I or any other Man do that?

If it's mutually oral, so-called 69, that's okay to a point, because at least it's mutually genital -- but then and still the direct and combative elements are lost.

Which for me -- is not only boring, but completely misses the point about what MAN2MAN is actually about:

It's MAN2MAN, COCK2COCK, BALLS2BALLS.

MAN against MAN, COCK against COCK, BALLS against BALLS.

Indeed, in We are Men. We have Balls. Warrior NW says

Fighting IS about balls against balls.

Balls make you Fight. Fight makes the Man.

So, as Warrior NW keeps telling you, your BALLS are the source of both your sexuality AND your AGGRESSION.

And that's what makes you a Man.

And let me talk for a few moments about Balls against Balls in my own life.

As you could see from the excerpt from Hyacinthine Love, and as I've been emphasizing throughout this post, my concept of sex between Men was always Combative and Aggressive.

One of my adolescent fantasies, which began when I was thirteen, was of me Fighting another boy -- a noble and heroic boy -- wearing only jockstraps, jockstraps that had been cut so that our Balls were hanging out of them.

So our cocks were in our jocks, while our Balls were hanging free.

Which meant that our Balls were crashing and smashing together as we Fought.

Then I would hump the other guy, our cocks still in our jocks, so that the sex was pure Balls on Balls.

And even after we came, I imagined, our sperm would go on Fighting in the pools formed by our abs and pecs.

That was a very powerful fantasy for me.

I say it was a fantasy.

Yet, it was a fantasy, an imagining, which had somehow reached back and connected with the ancient reality of Heroic, Nude, Testicular, Aggressive and Combative, Masculinity.

Important question:

Where did this fantasy come from?

The internet?

"Gay" porn?

No.

It was that year of grace 1961, and not only was there no internet, but there was no "gay" porn to speak of.

There were a few black-and-white mags with titles like "Physique Pictorial," which featured guys in posing straps and occasionally nude.

But as a thirteen-year-old I had no idea such things existed, let alone have any access to them.

So it wasn't the internet and it wasn't porn.

Now -- NW often mentions that the testicles are the source of testosterone, which is what makes us Men Fight.

Did I know that way back in 1961?

NO WAY!

Because not only was there no internet and no porn, but there was no "sex education."

As I say in Hyacinthine Love, it was like being raised by wolves.

My parents never talked to me about sex.

The guys, literally in the back alley, explained a little bit -- but not much -- and certainly nothing about testosterone and the testicles.

So -- these BALLS against BALLS Fight fantasies were coming from somewhere deep within *me*.

Interestingly, many years ago, the Swiss psychoanalyst C G Jung posited that human beings possess a "collective unconscious" -- which is not mystical, but biologically based -- we're born with it, in other words --

and that this unconscious is the source of such ideas and ideals as the Warrior Archetype.

Nowadays, it's fashionable to pooh-pooh Jung, and say that the similarities between cultures are due to "cultural diffusion" -- that is, the slow spread of ideas via trade and other contact.

Which may be.

But my BALLS against BALLS fantasies had nothing to do with cultural diffusion.

They were arising pure and pristine from within myself.

My Masculine self.

It was my own male and innate understanding of the essentially Combative and Aggressive nature of Men, and my own instinctual relating of that to the testicles, which produced those fantasies and gave them so much power in my life.

About 40 years later, I started corresponding with NW via this site, and I could see that a lot of his thinking centered on BALLS against BALLS.

Nor can NW's ideas be attributed to cultural diffusion -- again, his ideas are self-generated.

They come from within.

Certainly his training first as a Wrestler and then in Mixed Martial Arts itself has influenced his thinking.

But, if you read posts like aggression and the beauty of guys, you can see that those ideas were with him, as they were with me, from the beginning:

Aggression and the beauty of guys who asserted that aggression was what first attracted me to wrestling and fighting.

Aggression and the beauty of guys who assert that aggression -- which is a function of their Balls.

And that's important.

Because if these ideas and archetypes about Balls and Fighting and Sex come from deep within MEN -- they're neither ideas nor archetypes which Men can simply abandon -- without suffering deep and lasting damage.

As NW says:

Fighting IS about balls against balls.

Balls make you Fight. Fight makes the Man.

So, as NW keeps telling you, your BALLS are the source of both your sexuality AND your AGGRESSION.

And that's what makes you a Man:

A Victorious Boxer stands next to a Herm, a symbol of Male Sexuality

For those who are new to the site, Herms were frankly phallic statues -- this is a Herm --

which were found in every Palaistra / Fight School in the ancient world.

Palaistra: Herm on left, Boxer on right

Like the Warrior God, Herms too were worshipped -- worshipped at the Fight School -- and worshipped as a symbol of Male Sexuality, of Man's Creative Power, of Man's Aggressive Power.

A victorious athlete and Nike join in crowning a Herm

Manly Aggression, Manly Sexuality.

The ancients understood the relationship between the two.

And that relationship is profound.

So -- at some point -- we don't know exactly when -- the Greeks started, in their great religious-athletic festivals, Wrestling and Fighting (and competing in track and field) -- Nude.

Probably somewhere about 776 BC.

And it's instructive that it's the Spartans who were believed to have invented nude exercise:

The Spartans were the first to exercise gymnoi [nude] and to disrobe in public and rub themselves with olive oil after they had exercised while gymnoi.

~ Thucydides

And of course the Spartans were nude for more than just exercise -- much of the Agogé and subsequent life was spent in the nude at Sparta.

But, it wasn't just Sparta -- as we'll see, most Greek Men were nude most of the time.

Including when they were Wrestling and Fighting, whether just in training, or in competition at their great religious-athletic festivals -- the Games.

And they continued that tradition of nudity in competition at the Games until 391 AD, when the Great and Catholic Emperor Theodosius I closed the Games -- permanently.

So that nudity in Fight Sport lasted more than a thousand years.

As I said, Greek Men also did other things nude -- they apparently did ordinary work, such as carpentry and farming -- nude --

And they very often fought in battle nude -- that is, with their male genitals exposed.

Even when they were wearing helmets to protect their heads and greaves to protect their lower legs and even breastplates to protect their upper torsos --

they still left their genitals exposed.

We have so many vase paintings and statues depicting that -- that there can be no doubt of it.

So the male genitals were exposed -- because they're SUPPOSED TO BE.

A man's balls are supposed to hang free, like any other male mammal's balls.

~ NW

As NW says,

Male sexuality is displayed on the OUTSIDE of the body. It's just the way it is.

It's the way it is.

But people have a choice.

They can conceal those genitals.

Or they can HONOR them -- by leaving them visible and exposed.

And at some point the Greeks figured out that it was better for the male genitals to be visible and exposed and HONORED --

than to be hidden.

They realized that Life was better when Men were Nude.

And that Fighting was better -- when Men were Nude.

And around the same time they came to that realization -- their entire civilization took off.

In a huge flowering of culture among what was actually a very small group of people-- a flowering known to historians as "the Greek miracle."

Male nudity -- and male nudity in Fight Sport -- which was tremendously important to the Greeks -- was not incidental to the Greek miracle.

It was intrinsic.

So -- in The Warrior Altruism of the Warrior God, I talked about how the Greeks incorporated the word "machos" -- fighter or fighting -- into proper names.

Names like Therimachos -- brutal fighter -- and Aristomachos -- best fighter -- and Thrasymachos -- bold fighter -- and Andromachos -- man fighter.

And there are a ton of these names:

Lampromachos = brilliant fighter

Nikomachos = victory fighter

Timomachos = honor fighter

Kleomachos = glory fighter

Pasimachos = all fighter

Protomachos = first fighter

Hippomachos = horse fighter

Eurymachos = wide-ranging fighter

Hagesimachos = leading fighter

Promachos = for fighter

Antimachos = against fighter

Telemachos = purposeful fighter

Kleitomachos = renowned fighter

Ischomachos = staunch fighter

Etc.

And there are also Greek names which incorporate one of the Greek words for the male genitals: "medes."

So there's a Spartan Hero named Eumedes = Good Male Genitals.

There's Ganymedes = Delighting in Male Genitals -- and Ganymedes is Zeus's immortal beloved.

There's Nikomedes = Victorious Male Genitals.

Kleomedes = Glorious Male Genitals.

Polymedes = Rich in Male Genitals.

How could they do that?

Name a kid "good cock and balls"?

or "delighting in dick and nuts"?

or "victorious crank and sack"?

The answer is that they could do it because they saw the male genitals as being worthy not of shame, but of reverence and awe.

And they were right.

And having decided that the male genitals were deserving of reverence and awe, and having decided that Men should be Nude and displaying their male genitals as much as possible --

They created a huge amount of art depicting nude Men.

With, in particular, full, healthy, and robust ball sacs -- testicles.

These works of art were found everywhere in Greek and then Roman cities.

They were dominant.

It was a dominant culture of Nude, Testicular, Masculinity:

I repeat:

The Greeks and then the Romans lived in a dominant culture of Nude, Testicular, Masculinity.

And that culture, as every culture does, produced cultural messages --

in this case, cultural messages about the value of Nude, Testicular, Masculinity --

in the form of art -- statues and paintings.

These cultural messages reinforced the cultural reality -- that Men Fought -- and, much of the time, Lived -- Nude.

And that to do so was Good -- and more than Good -- it was HEROIC.

The images that you see, then, are images of Heroic, Nude, Testicular, Masculinity.

The Testicular part is important -- it's not incidental.

Remember: Eu-medes -- Good Male Genitals.

Gany-medes -- Delighting in Male Genitals.

Niko-medes -- Victorious Male Genitals.

Kleo-medes -- Glorious Male Genitals.

The display of the Male Genitals -- and in particular the Testicles -- was essential.

Masculinity, Nudity -- including the Testicles -- and Heroism -- the Heroism of the Warrior-Athlete -- were inextricably linked in these images.

As they were in real life.

NW often speaks of Fighting and Freedom, and the relationship between Nude Fighting and Freedom.

He's correct.

In the ancient world, Nude, Testicular, Masculinity was the matrix and generator of Heroism -- Heroism in the service of Freedom.

You may think I'm overstating the Testicular part -- but I'm not -- and neither is NW.

It takes Balls to be a Warrior says NW.

The ancients agreed, and presented that reality in their art -- in image after image after image.

Question:

How many of these images sending that cultural message -- images in the form of statues, wall paintings, vase paintings, mosaics, etc. -- were there?

Answer: so many, that to us, it's virtually unimaginable.

Frequent readers of our pages see many of the same images repeated over and over again.

That's because only a relatively few of these images survived.

But we have literary evidence as to just how many there were.

For example, Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece, written around 170 AD, describes Olympia, home of the Olympic Games.

He first describes the various temples and shrines and their statuary and other decoration -- he describes that first because religion was his first interest.

And then he gets to the statues of Olympic victors.

He begins by telling us that the Roman emperor Nero, who ruled from 54 to 68 AD, had "taken" -- stolen is the better word -- five hundred -- yes, that's a five and two zeros -- of the best statues from Olympia to Rome.

But he proceeds to give brief descriptions of those statues which are left.

He emphasizes that he's not describing all the statues -- but only those which are of interest due either to their subject -- that is, the victor -- or the sculptor himself.

His description goes on for page after page after page -- fifty-two pages in my edition.

How many statues does he describe?

It's pointless to count, because he says this isn't an exhaustive list.

However, figuring an average of five per page, that's more than two hundred and fifty.

Assuming that there were another two hundred and fifty statues that he didn't think were worth mentioning, that would mean that ca 50 AD, there had been at least a thousand statues at Olympia -- alone.

You should take a look at Pausanias.

His book should be in any library, but it may also be available on Google Books under the title Guide to Southern Greece, edited by Peter Levi -- Book VI.

Because what he's describing is a veritable forest of statues -- virtually all of nude, male, athletes.

A forest.

Of Heroic, Nude, MEN.

This guy, for example, was an Olympic victor:

Note the testicles:

Then try to imagine living in a culture in which these sorts of adulatory and hortatory images -- were everywhere.

Along with Herms and other Phallic symbols.

Phallic Temple

Along with images like this one

An erect satyr holds a Warrior's helmet and greaves

which make clear the connection between male sexuality and male aggression.

So -- there were forests of Heroic, Male, Nude statues.

And how do we know, by the way, that Pausanias was telling the truth?

Because, even though the statues are gone -- destroyed -- many of their inscribed bases are still there.

For example, I often show you this statue, of a nude, male, victor in boxing -- the most dangerous of the three Fight Sports:

Look at the base of the statue -- it's inscribed with the guy's name, and where he won his victory.

A great many of these bases have been recovered at Olympia, saying exactly and precisely what Pausanias said -- they said.

But the statues themselves are gone.

Completely and utterly destroyed.

Yet try to remember that there were literally thousands of statues like this one -- showing nude, male victors in Fight Sport -- and not just in Olympia, but in every Greek city state.

For example, this is a statue of a very famous Olympic victor named Arrachion.

The statue is very old, and it's a miracle as much of it as has survived -- as has.

It was found in a small city-state named Phigalia -- EXACTLY were Pausanias had said it would be.

So every little town or city-state had statues like these -- not just of local boys who'd made good at the Olympics, but of guys who'd won in one or more of the literally hundreds of local festivals.

There were thousands upon thousands of these statues in the ancient world.

Plus wall paintings, and vase paintings, and reliefs, and mosaics, etc

-- all sending cultural messages of Heroic, Nude, Testicular, Masculinity -- to Men.

I said that these messages were both adulatory -- These guys are great! -- and hortatory -- You can be great too!

You too can be a Hero among your fellow Nude, Tescticular, Masculine Men.

That's a very different message from the sort that males hear today.

Let me talk about just two more of these statues -- two that are near and dear to my heart, two of the Warrior God Ares -- today known as the Ludovisi and Borghese Ares.

This is the Ludovisi Ares:

The Ludovisi Ares is considered to be a "very fine" Roman copy of a Greek original from around the time of Alexander the Great.

And of all the statues of Ares which have survived, it does seem to me the best -- particularly because the God is bodily and genitally intact.

He's not a disembodied head, and though there are Renaissance additions to the statue -- the sword hilt isn't original, and the nose may not be either --

most of the statue is still there.

Including, as I said, his genitals -- his penis and a big fat set of balls nestled against his thigh:

And that's how the ancients would have conceived of him -- as a Warrior, complete and whole, including his Manhood in the genital sense.

Then there's the Borghese Ares:

The Borghese Ares may or may not be a Roman copy of a Greek original -- that is to say, it may be purely Roman.

But -- let me be clear with you guys:

Even a Roman image is better than no image.

Because culturally, it's very close to Greek.

Now, as it happens, I own a very cheap copy of the Borghese Ares, which I bought years ago.

It's not a great copy, but it's relatively large -- about 2 1/2 feet high -- and of course it's genitally intact.

Right now it's on the table where I eat.

And hanging out with it is very powerful.

So -- there's an old Marxist dictum -- "Being determines consciousness."

NW keeps emphasizing how important male nudity is -- and he's right.

As he said:

Guys want to wrestle with, fight with, and compete against guys. A male can only TEST his manhood against another male. And that aggression and urge to test male-ness is derived from being born with testicles and penises.

We are Men. We have balls.

Male sexuality is displayed on the OUTSIDE of the body. It's just the way it is.

NW is right.

In the ancient world, Men were surrounded by images like the Ludovisi and Borghese Ares.

With their male sexuality -- which is also the source of their male aggression -- displayed -- as it should be.

That was their "being" -- the male genitals and male sexuality openly and proudly displayed.

And so it became their "consciousness" -- surrounded by depictions of Heroic, Aggressive, Nude, Testicular, Men -- Heroic Nudity became their consciousness and shaped the way they lived their lives, and the way they evaluated other men's lives.

Male Nudity was Good.

Heroic Male Nudity was Good.

Male Aggression was Good.

Heroic Male Aggression was Good.

Heroic Nude Male Aggression was Good.

That was their consciousness.

I often show you images of contemporary MMA fighters.

The problem with the images of the MMA fighters is that their male sexuality is hidden under layers of synthetic fabric and logos.

That hiding implies that there's something wrong with their male sexuality -- and their male aggression.

But there isn't anything wrong with it.

Nevertheless, Being determines consciousness.

When society forces us to hide our male genitals -- that hiding becomes our consciousness.

When society forces us to disown our male aggression -- that disowning becomes our consciousness.

So long as the male genitals are hidden -- there's a problem.

As a boy, I understood -- as did NW -- that this was a problem.

Earlier I mentioned my adolescent fantasy of a combative Balls against Balls love-making.

This fantasy, which began when I was thirteen, was of me Fighting another boy -- a noble and heroic boy -- wearing only jockstraps, jockstraps that had been cut so that our Balls were hanging out of them.

So our cocks were in our jocks, while our Balls were hanging free.

Which meant that our Balls were crashing and smashing together as we Fought.

Then I would hump the other guy, that other warrior, that other hero, our cocks still in our jocks, so that the sex was pure Balls on Balls.

And even after we came, I imagined, our sperm would go on Fighting in the pools formed by our abs and pecs.

That was a very powerful fantasy for me.

I say it was a fantasy.

Yet, it was a fantasy, an imagining, which had somehow reached back and connected with the ancient reality of Heroic, Nude, Testicular, Combative and Aggressive, Masculinity.

Bill Weintraub

July 25, 2010

© All material Copyright 2010 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Related articles:

Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not a Condition

The Right to Fight