Bill Weintraub:

The judge understands that violence is part of the human condition, and that "To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."

"Deforming" he says.

To shield children from exposure to violence "would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."

No kidding.

And please note that the Times reporter says the judge is "not known as a First Amendment [free speech] liberal."

But he clearly understands the role of violence in human life.

And the importance of teaching children about violence.

This Times article brought to mind an email I'd received from Naked Wrestler some weeks back, in which he talked about the importance of schoolyard fights in shaping masculinity.

This is something my foreign friend has also commented on.

Let's take a look at the Naked Dude's comments first.

For those of you who don't know him, Naked Wrestler aka NW is a former collegiate wrestler who has competed at the Gay Games and is now training in UFC-style submission fighting.

He's the author of aggression and the beauty of guys and many other posts on this Man2Man Alliance site.

Naked Wrestler:

Fighting has always been part of the Human Condition.

Back in the day when boys and men were Naturally Male, there was usually a group instinct/Psychology to boys/men fighting inside a circle of other males. They all understood when to "break it up" and bring it to a close. And that instinct/psychology was passed on from generation to generation as boys spent time around older boys and men. It's just one reason that males need man time.

Guys CAN, and DO, figure it out.

Today, with the massive feminist/manhate/everything-male-is-bad mentality, males don't know IF or WHEN to stand up, step in, and essentially take physical charge of the situation. (After all, taking charge might offend some feminists or women somewhere!)

This is exactly what happened at Virginia Tech. The only one who had the instinct in him to react in the affirmative was the old Jewish man, who coincidentally had survived the "super fight" of WW2 and the German Holocaust. He paid for it with his life; Freedom isn't free.

If the girly-men and girly-boys of today's America were hit with a situation like WW2 or Pearl Harbor they probably would not react as decisively as that past generation did then. (Also, this male instinct of aggression/fighting/assertiveness has nothing to do with a boy's sexual orientation. Natural Male Instinct is separate from Sexual Orientation. It's wrong to mingle the two concepts.)

Once a victor is decided in a fight (that is, a scuffle on the street or school yard, or cage fight)--and this all becomes obvious from knowing about fight sports, and why learning fight sports is so good for a male--then it's time to put the fight to a stop.

At the fights hosted by our Fight School and the fights on UFC the referee looks for ANY sign that the defensive man is not able to put up a fight anymore or even defend himself. That is exactly when the referee ends the match. Not a second sooner or a second later.

In the early days of Theater Film, boys learned these "rules" by watching James Cagney and Mickey Rooney films in the 20's and 30's.

In the 50's and into the 60's boys learned that sort of thing from TV fights (Gunsmoke, High Chaparral, Big Valley, Bonanza, Rat Patrol and others). It was implied that it was important to keep the fight "fair." All through the 50's, 60's, 70's schoolyard fights were consequently/coincidentally a Normal Right of Passage for Boys at school. There was no talk of bullying or guns at school. You just had fights on the playground or after school. And boys knew how to "break it up."

And life was good then.

Guys CAN, and DO, figure it out.

Fight schools are bringing this male logic back to life.

Fighting is Good.

Naked Wrestler

Bill Weintraub:

Thank you NW.

So the first thing NW says is

Back in the day when boys and men were Naturally Male, there was usually a group instinct/Psychology to boys/men fighting inside a circle of other males. They all understood when to "break it up" and bring it to a close. And that instinct/psychology was passed on from generation to generation as boys spent time around older boys and men. It's just one reason that males need man time.

Right.

What NW is talking about here is the development of Natural Masculinity in all-male groups in boyhood and adolesence.

And he's making essentially the same point that my foreign friend makes in Natural Masculinity and Phallic Bonding:

That to become Men, males need to be part of masculine male groups and to interact extensively with other boys and Men.

Masculine male groups and bonds play an extremely important role in the development of physical, mental, emotional and social aspects of natural masculinity. As such they are an important part of the positive environment that all masculine identified boys should have. An otherwise masculine identified man who is deprived of membership in a masculine male group / bond during his growing years will be less than 1/4th naturally masculine than if he had such an opportunity. Masculine identified boys have a natural tendency to seek to join male-only groups, and it's their natural right.

The masculinity of men flows from their group. It's like their natural masculinity combines and gets manifold when masculine identified men unite. The camaraderie, mutual understanding, support, playing together, learning the ways of the world as a male, dealing with roughs and toughs of life together --- they all help to develop the natural masculinity that exists within him.

So: "the masculinity of men flows from their group."

And the group, says my foreign friend, must be all-male:

Masculine identified boys have a natural tendency to seek to join male-only groups, and it's their natural right.

In these all-male groups, say my foreign friend, males learn to deal "with the roughs and toughs of life together."

Which is what NW said -- the boys are taught when to fight and how long to fight.

This is something essential to boys and the development of Men which every Warrior society has understood.

For example, as we discussed in the 300 message thread, the Spartans encouraged boys to fight, going so far in later adolescence / early adulthood as to divide them up into rival groups.

Here's classicist W.G. Forrest:

at the age of twenty or thereabouts, the young man ... [was] allotted to one of two large teams to encourage rivalry in bravery, such rivalry that 'members of each team fall to fighting each other whenever they meet'.

The quote is from The Spartan Constitution by Xenophon, who goes on to note that

all passers-by [who are full-fledged adult Spartans -- the Men known as Homoioi, Equals, Spartiates] have the right to separate the combatants. Anyone who defies the man attempting to separate them is brought before the ephors by the Trainer-in-Chief. They levy a stiff fine in their desire to establish the principle that anger must never prevail over respect for the law.

So there are limits set to these fights, which are enforced if need be by the ephors -- who were, as we saw, elected officials with great authority.

(The Trainer-in-Chief, by the way, was called the Paidonomus, which can be translated as "boy-herdsman" or, more poetically, Herder of the Bull Calves)

And the Paidonomus is simply doing what both my foreign friend and NW recognize must be done: he's making sure the bull calves grow up to be Men through an appropriate experience of the roughs and toughs of life TOGETHER.

NW goes on to say:

Guys CAN, and DO, figure it out.

Today, with the massive feminist/manhate/everything-male-is-bad mentality, males don't know IF or WHEN to stand up, step in, and essentially take physical charge of the situation. (After all, taking charge might offend some feminists or women somewhere!)

That's correct.

The "everything-male-is-bad mentality," which now permeates our society and pop culture, has made any sort of fighting suspect.

In addition, society has become so litigious that school authorities and adults are leery of either letting a fight go forward or of intervening.

NW:

This is exactly what happened at Virginia Tech. The only one who had the instinct in him to react in the affirmative was the old Jewish man, who coincidentally had survived the "super fight" of WW2 and the German Holocaust. He paid for it with his life; Freedom isn't free.

If the girly-men and girly-boys of today's America were hit with a situation like WW2 or Pearl Harbor they probably would not react as decisively as that past generation did then.

As we can see with 9/11, when people were encouraged to "go shopping" in response.

Fact is, we no longer have a citizen-army.

We have a volunteer force, and soldiering is viewed as a profession.

Rather than a societal obligation and sacred duty.

In addition, in Iraq, our government has made use of a huge number of mercenaries, many of whom are people who are trained by our military at relatively low pay, leave the service, and sign-up to do what is essentially the same thing at much higher pay through a private company.

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where, in a famous passage, Gibbon talks of the difference between soldiers motivated by principle and those by loot:

The civil wars of modern Europe [Gibbon was writing in 1776] have been distinquished, not only by the fierce animosity, but likewise by the obstinate perseverance, of the contending factions. They have generally been justified by some principle, or, at least, coloured by some pretext, of religion, freedom, or loyalty. The leaders were nobles of independent property and hereditary influence. The troops fought like men interested in a decision of the quarrel; and as military spirit and party zeal were strongly distilled throughout the whole community, a vanquished chief was immediately supplied with new adherents, eager to shed their blood in the same cause.

But the Romans, after the fall of the republic, combated only for the choice of masters. Under the standard of a popular candidate for empire, a few enlisted from affection, some from fear, many from interest, none from principle. The legions, uninflamed by party zeal, were allured into civil war by liberal donatives [gifts of money], and still more liberal promises. A defeat, by disabling the chief from the performance of his engagements, dissolved the mercenary allegiance of his followers; and left them to consult their own safety, by a timely desertion of an unsuccessful cause.

"a few enlisted from affection, some from fear, many from interest, none from principle."

"many from interest -- none from principle."

It's a damning statement.

That's the problem of a privatized military.

Which quickly becomes a force motivated only by self-interest.

For example, a recent article on recruitment into our all volunteer force noted that

the military has started offering higher enlistment bonuses. The Army met its recruitment goal in July after failing to do so the previous two months, and part of the success has been attributed to a new "quick ship" bonus of $20,000 for those recruits who can report to basic training by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

[emphases mine]

The US is calling these payments "bonuses," while the Romans called them "donatives," but make no mistake: they're the same deal.

The soldier -- and the army -- is being bought.

Just like the legions.

Gibbon: "The legions, uninflamed by party zeal, were allured into civil war by liberal donatives [gifts of money], and still more liberal promises [of more money]."

Which is exactly what our military is now doing.

The result -- in Rome -- "a few enlisted from affection, some from fear, many from interest, none from principle."

We're not entirely there yet; we still have people, like Pat Tillman, who enlist from principle.

But we're getting there.

The Spartans, by contrast, taught their Warriors to be devoted to Sparta.

And to work and fight for the good of Sparta.

Not themsevles.

NW:

(Also, this male instinct of aggression/fighting/assertiveness has nothing to do with a boy's sexual orientation. Natural Male Instinct is separate from Sexual Orientation. It's wrong to mingle the 2 concepts.)

That's right, and it's a very important point.

Sexual orientation, as I've been discussing at some length recently, is a cultural construct -- an idea, and a false idea at that -- with very little relationship to the real world.

The Male's Natural Instinct to Fight -- what we call the Males' Natural Fighting Instinct -- is, by contrast, biological.

It's real.

And that's why we pay so much attention to it.

NW says, in that regard, that "this male instinct of aggression/fighting/assertiveness" has nothing to do with a boy's sexual orientation"; and that's absolutely correct.

But our society refuses to recognize that plain fact, and instead conflates "masculinity" with "heterosexuality."

That's a huge problem, because again, it confuses something which is biologically rooted and real -- Masculinity -- with a cultural construct -- "heterosexuality."

A construct developed by and put forward incessantly by the forces of heterosexualization.

In reality, as NW has said, it's not what makes your dick hard that makes you a man -- it's your willingess to fight.

And indeed, every culture save our own, has recognized that plain fact.

The hallmark of Masculinity is Fighting Spirit.

And, in most cultures, there's a recognition that the Man's Fighting Spirit will also cause him to have an attraction to another Man.

In other words, there's a recognition that male-male aggression and male-male attraction are inter-related.

Our society has completey destroyed and negated that recognition by confining all males who are honest about their same-sex feelings to the gay ghetto, a space occupied, as my foreign friend has said, by the negativised and mutilated remnants of same-sex affection:

The heterosexual society cares only for women. It sees men only as a problematic group that comes in the way of what is called women's rights.

Gay men are one of the most ardent supporters of heterosexualisation. They represent the dust bin created by the heterosexualised society to contain the mutilated/ negativised remnants of male-male sex that survives after the intense oppression of them in the mainstream...

Gay men (when I say gay men I mean feminine identified males who like men) derive immense power from the heterosexual society. In fact they owe the heterosexual society their existence.

...

If there is no heterosexual society there would be no homosexuals. And no heterosexuals either. Male-male sex is isolated only because in the western society, its spaces and its customs are completely heterosexualised (i.e. made mixed gender with pressures to be heterosexual). But heterosexual spaces are themselves unnatural --- and it was only through financial and technological power brought by industrialisation that the western society could create such an artificial unnatural heterosexual environment.

So: what heterosexualization has done has been to take MAN -- a unitary creature -- and split him into "heterosexual" and "homosexual."

ALL of society has been effeminized in the sense that Men and Masculinity are viewed, as my friend says, as problematic; and aggression or fighting spirit, which is the hallmark of the Man, as even more so.

In that situation, males who are assigned or who assume a "homosexual identity" are expected to be passive and non-aggressive; while "heterosexual" males are encouraged to view all aggression as violence, and as something to be eschewed.

Thus fighting of any kind, including schoolyard fights, becomes highly suspect.

And after a while, males forget even the most basic rules of fighting.

NW:

Once a victor is decided in a fight (that is, a scuffle on the street or school yard, or cage fight)--and this all becomes obvious from knowing about fight sports, and why learning fight sports is so good for a male--then it's time to put the fight to a stop.

At the fights hosted by our Fight School and the fights on UFC the referee looks for ANY sign that the defensive man is not able to put up a fight anymore or even defend himself. That is exactly when the referee ends the match. Not a second sooner or a second later.

Right.

And as Naked Wrestler, has explained, there's an additional safety valve built into mixed martial arts / free fighting / UFC-style called the Tap Out.

Any Man who cannot continue simply taps out.

And the Fight is over -- immediately.

In the early days of Theater Film, boys learned these "rules" by watching James Cagney and Mickey Rooney films in the 20's and 30's.

In the 50's and into the 60's boys learned that sort of thing from TV fights (Gunsmoke, High Chaparral, Big Valley, Bonanza, Rat Patrol and others). It was implied that it was important to keep the fight "fair." All through the 50's, 60's, 70's schoolyard fights were consequently/coincidentally a Normal Right of Passage for Boys at school. There was no talk of bullying or guns at school. You just had fights on the playground or after school. And boys knew how to "break it up."

And life was good then.

Guys CAN, and DO, figure it out.

Fight schools are bringing this male logic back to life.

Fighting is Good.

Fighting is Good -- that's right.

Now, NW says, "schoolyard fights were a Normal Right of Passage for Boys at school."

And he's used the word "Right" rather than "Rite."

And I like that because we have to understand that these fights are both:

They're a Rite of Passage -- one of the many ways a boy becomes a Man;

and they're a Right of Passage because boys must have the Right to Fight in order to successfully complete the passage to full Manhood.

When you deprive the male of his Right to Fight;

you deprive him of his Right to be a Man --

by taking from him a crucial experience -- a Rite of Passage.

Now, Judge Posner, who was quoted in the Times article, said,

To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.

He was of course, talking about violence experienced at second or third hand.

Not actual fighting.

But to me, we can take what he said and substitute the word "fighting" for "violent descriptions and images,:" and come out with a valid statement:

To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to fighting would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.

And in point of fact I think that's what's happened.

In what is a quixotic attempt to "protect" our youth, young males have been shielded from fighting, and the result has been deforming -- and it has left them unequipped to deal with the world as we know it.

The Spartans had a better idea.

They made sure that their youth experienced fighting, within limits imposed by the group leader and by adults.

And the result was Men who were fully equipped to deal with the demands of citizenship and the preservation of a constitutional state.

As we discussed in the 300 message thread, that state got into trouble when its training regimen was relaxed and when luxuries were allowed to corrupt the citizenry.

Eventually, two reforming kings attempted to lead the Spartans back to their first prinicples, as enuciated by Lycurgus in his "Eu-nomia" or "Good-rule."

Both kings failed, and Rome eventually conquered all of Greece, including Sparta.

But during the first attempt, by King Agis, the young men of Sparta stripped naked before him to demonstrate their enthusiasm for his call to a return to the old ways of Manhood and Warriorhood.

They had reason both to strip and to be enthusiastic.

This is what a Spartan poet said at the time of the original Lycurgan revolution in the 7th century BC:

The spear-points of young men blossom there
and Justice is done in open air
the stuff of Gallant Enterprise.

"The spear-points of young men" is a frankly and unabashedly phallic image -- like his valour plain to see, the phrase cheerfully conflates male nudity with virtue, valour, and the public good.

Which is why Plutarch said that when Agis proposed returning to the Lycurgan way,

The younger men responded quickly, and more eagerly than he had expected: as a group they stripped to show their mettle, as if their clothes represented a way of life which they were all discarding in the cause of liberty.

Liberty and male nudity -- and public male nudity as a communal value and concomitant of Freddom -- that's what these Fighting Spartans had.

Warriorhood.

That's something worth having again.

Thank you Naked Wrestler.

You're a true Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

September 7, 2007

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.