Three emails from Warrior Naked Wrestler aka NW:

Email one:

Check out the full exposure of the man pecs and nipples of this dude in this old school singlet.

Wearing that really attracted me to wrestling as a kid. I was also very self conscious of my maleness because of the way this type of gear showed off my male body: pecs, abs, shoulders, genitals.

It was both confusing and attractive. I was drawn to it and I was terrified of it. Wearing it made a dude look so ready for a fight. And it showed the manpackage at the same time.

Then you had to walk out onto a mat in front of everyone, and fight a guy wearing the same type of thing, who showed off the same stuff. It was totally enticing and terrifying at the same time.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Now the singlet required by FILA (international regulations for Freestyle--Olympic Rules--wrestling) is so uni-sex that it totally downplays the manliness of the aggression sport of wrestling.

For example: the singlet cannot expose the nipples on the wrestlers -- that's an international rule.

And there's a requirement for a "wrestler brief" underneath the singlet so the guys don't show their manballs and penises.

Just more anti-male stuff.

A friend of mine who was a Brazilian national champion went to a tournament in Arizona once and had to buy a brand new singlet that covered everything up, in order to compete. He could not believe it. The Brazilian singlets he had were really revealing, very low cut. He's VERY muscular and he looked REALLY awesome in them.

Because they showed off his maleness and his manliness: his pecs, his abs, his shoulders, his genitals.

But now the rules forbid that sort of singlet.

Yet wrestling -- and all fighting -- is about maleness and manliness and aggression.

It's about the manliness of aggression.

To deny that manliness -- is stupid.

Email two:

Here's another vintage wrestling singlet pic. This sort of singlet used to totally emphasize the natural male wrestler body.

It made wrestling TOTALLY enticing....while also making it terrifying to me for two reasons:

1) My Christian upbringing had, by the time I was a teen, made me uncomfortable with my male-ness. Young boys DO need more masculine males in their early youth. We had too many nuns and women teachers.

2) When I finally did wrestle, I was so attracted to the overt, impending full body contact with another dude wearing one of these singlets, that the thought of it could get my cock hard by imagining what the aggression and full body contact would be like.

To me there was a kind of sexual ecstasy to the thought of not holding back aggression in full body contact with another dude, my weight and size, on the mat, in front of the other boys.

In Wrestling there is male-sexually driven exuberance in victory. And in Wrestling there is frustration in losing of course. But there is never any shame in losing.

When you walk onto the mat, wrestle, and then walk off the mat...for a few shining moments, there are a few hundred or a few thousand eyeballs on you, your body, your muscles, your effort, your courage, your skill, and your balls.

Yeah wrestlers do check each other out. We're male.

Guys are cool.

Aggression is cool.

Email three:

Found this pic....

I remember posing like this as young as 10 years old. I would pretend I was showing off muscles to an opponent I was about to wrestle, and he was posing back.

I could flex my muscles super super hard doing that. I'd look at the beauty of my muscle strands, and my abs popping out.

I would think: It was SO cool being a guy--behind closed doors. Look at these muscles and boner...solid, rock hard, ready for anything. I would get really Psyched up and I could shoot cum in 10-15 seconds.

And then do it again.

I'd get a really solid boner from it and then have to Jack Off a couple times. I could never get enough of it.

Warriors like Muscles and Fighting.

Warriors like Muscles and Fighting.

Warriors like Muscles and Fighting.

That's what Warriors like.

And Warriors like having Hard Boners and Shooting Man-Cum.

How stupid to deny it.

Warriors fight for their country.

Warriors are Men.

Reply from

Bill Weintraub

Re: The Manliness of Aggression

9-5-10

Wow!!!

Thank you NW -- another dynamite post!

Full of important observations.

First of all, NW says that wrestling gear -- the old-style singlet -- which he wore as a youth

really attracted me to wrestling as a kid. I was also very self conscious of my maleness because of the way this type of gear showed off my male body: pecs, abs, shoulders, genitals. It was both confusing and attractive. I was drawn to it and I was terrified of it. Wearing it made a dude look so ready for a fight. And it showed the manpackage at the same time.

Then you had to walk out onto a mat in front of everyone, and fight a guy wearing the same type of thing, who showed off the same stuff. It was totally enticing and terrifying at the same time.

So -- the gear, which was revealing, attracted NW to wrestling as a kid.

It made him conscious and self-conscious of his MALE body -- pecs, abs, shoulders, genitals.

Which it was no doubt intended to do.

But because of the societal ambivalence around both same-sex and Fighting, NW was both "drawn to it and terrified of it":

Wearing it made a dude look so ready for a fight. And it showed the manpackage at the same time.

So -- the old-style singlet was EXPLICITY about Fighting and Man2Man.

NW:

Then you had to walk out onto a mat in front of everyone, and fight a guy wearing the same type of thing, who showed off the same stuff. It was totally enticing and terrifying at the same time.

In public then, "you had to walk out onto a mat, and fight a guy wearing the same type of thing, who showed off the same stuff."

The other guy was wearing the same type of singlet, which showed off the same MALE stuff: pecs, abs, shoulders, genitals.

In other words, the two guys were MALE EQUALS.

That's essential to the Male Contest, the AGON, the Struggle of Two EQUAL MEN to bring their MANHOOD to Perfection.

The MEN must be EQUALS.

They CAN'T be tops and bottoms or doms and subs.

They MUST be equals.

And the old-style singlets emphasized that male equality.

But in an increasingly heterosexualized society, in which any suggestion of male-male and Man2Man was suspect, those singlets were, for the young NW, both enticing and terrifying.

And those two attributes of enticement and terror have grown over the years, as heterosexualization and its false categories of sexual orientation have grown, so that now FILA -- the international governing body for sport wrestling -- demands that the wrestlers' bodies be covered in the male equivalent of a bhurka and that the markers for Maleness -- pecs, nips, abs, mancock and manballs -- be totally HIDDEN.

Contrast that with the Greek idea and ideal of "gymnastike" -- Nude training in Nude Fight Sport.

Nude Combat.

Which was core to their civilization.

And which results in "Kalokagathia" -- kalos + agathos = Nobility and Goodness.

And Andragathia = andros + agathos = Manly Excellence.

Brave Beauty.

As the great classicist Werner Jaeger says,

The athletes who appear in early Greek sculpture are the embodiments of the noblest gymnastic areté of a young man in the full power of health and training.

These "are the embodiments of the noblest gymnastic areté."

And they're also the embodiments, as we talked about in Combative and Aggressive, of Noble -- that is, Heroic -- Nude Testicular Masculinity.

These Athletes, these Fighting Men, represent Heroic Nude Testicular Masculinity in the exercise of "the noblest gymnastic areté."

Areté -- Excellence.

Noblest -- Gymnastic -- Areté.

Noblest -- Nude -- Excellence.

Note that Jaeger, like the Greeks, doesn't hesitate to combine not just Noble but Noblest -- with Gymnastic.

Gymnastic always means Nude and always signifies the Palaistra-Gymnasion, the place of *public* and *communal* Nude Training and therefore Nude Struggle -- Nude Fight.

So -- public Nude Struggle and Fight is regarded as Noble.

And not just Nude Struggle and Fight.

At one point, in describing the Lycurgan laws which governed Sparta, Plutarch says that if a Man had a friend who was Handsome and Noble, Virtuous and Brave, that Man might invite his Handsome and Virtuous friend to "fill his wife with noble sperm":

Thus if an older man with a young wife should take a liking to one of the well-bred young men, handsome and brave, and approve of him, he might well introduce him to her so as to fill her with noble sperm and then adopt the child as his own. Conversely a respectable man who admired someone else's wife noted for her lovely children and her good sense, might gain the husband's permission to sleep with her -- thereby planting in fruitful soil, so to speak, and producing fine children who would be linked to fine ancestors by blood and family.

~ Life of Lycurgus, translated by Talbot

It's difficult for us to think of sperm as noble.

But not for the Greeks.

To them, nudity is heroic, the genitals are awesome, sperm is noble.

Indeed, the ancient Greek word Talbot translates as "noble" -- which is without question the right choice -- also means generous and high-minded.

High-minded sperm?

Well, it's a Spartan idea -- that the Sperm bears not just the physical but the moral qualities of the Man.

Similarly, the public and communal Nude Struggle and Fight -- the Agon -- of the Palaistra-Gymnasion and the Games is Noble.

And not just Noble -- but most Noble, Noblest.

It's "the noblest gymnastic Areté".

The Noblest Nude-Fighterly Excellence-Virtue-Manliness.

Again, because all of Greek life is "agonal" -- it's about Aggression, Combat, Struggle, and Striving -- all in the service of Perfection.

And Perfection is Areté.

Why does Nudity matter?

Because the Nude Man has been stripped of anything extraneous to himself -- of anything extraneous to his Manhood:

The Games gave birth to yet another Greek idea, a whole attitude to life -- the attitude of a free man competing with his peers, naked, unfettered by any element foreign to his own body, conforming only to the rules of the game, with the sole aim of winning for himself an olive crown -- in other words a purely moral victory -- and the praise of his fellow men.

~ Andronikos, The Greek Museums, 186

So: the Nude Male, unfettered by any element foreign to his own body, is Free to seek a purely *moral* victory.

The Fight is pure, the Fight is unfettered, the Fight, the FreeFight, the ManFight, is Manhood against Manhood, and that alone.

Under heterosexualization, all that has been and is continuing to be, as Warrior NW points out, stripped from Men and from Fighting.

And it was that stripping away and denial of its natural masculinity which made wrestling for NW -- as a kid -- terrifying.

He was enticed by the remnants of natural masculinity which still adhered to the sport.

But he was terrified because of the extreme hatred of male-male and Man2Man -- and Fighting -- which dominated his youth.

And which he talks about in his second email:

1) My Christian upbringing had, by the time I was a teen, made me uncomfortable with my male-ness. Young boys DO need more masculine males in their early youth. We had too many nuns and women teachers.

"Young boys DO need more masculine males in their early youth."

Right.

And I would say throughout boyhood and adolescence.

Something Warrior Redd commented about in an email to me:

I honestly think we don't know what to do with boys in a society where the sexes compete. Boys and men are damned if they do and damned if they don't. The only people who can save boys are men. Women can help, but men have to voice boys' right to be boys and we adjust to teach boys as we've adjusted to teach girls.

"The only people who can save boys are men."

That's right.

Boys need to be raised by Men.

And by other, older, boys who are guided by Men.

As they were in Sparta.

Strong Men -- Warriors -- have to be a constant presence in the lives of boys and youths.

And those Men must, among other things, "voice boys' right to be boys."

And Men's right to be Men.

Which includes their right to both Fight and Love other Men.

As Redd says:

Bill, I contend that denying male-male relationships contributes to violence men perpetrate on women and children. I think that male-male relationships give men clout, if you will, with men who challenge them to be a man, a good man. As you noted in the thread married and the coming of OUT, "we also know that for some men, male-male may improve male-female." Only men help men develop masculinity and expend energy in fighting or some physical activity that affirms their masculinity.

Men like the company of men no matter how much our culture demonizes that inclination. Bill, I have not read enough to know much about why we go to the extreme and put all our emotional eggs into the basket of marriage. It seems that America particularly favors extremes even when detrimental, and we will kill ourselves to enforce such death. Strange.

"Only men help men develop masculinity and expend energy in fighting or some physical activity that affirms their masculinity."

Right.

Fighting affirms Masculinity.

It's the Manliness of Aggression.

A Manliness which Men can realize only through Fighting -- and Loving -- other Men.

"Men like the company of men no matter how much our culture demonizes that inclination."

Right -- as NW makes abundantly clear in this memoir and in his many others on this Man2Man Alliance site.

No matter how demonized true Man2Man may be -- demonized by the religious right and by the analist left -- Men like and need the company of other Men.

That need cannot be denied, nor can it be infinitely suppressed.

Let's get back to NW:

1) My Christian upbringing had, by the time I was a teen, made me uncomfortable with my male-ness. Young boys DO need more masculine males in their early youth. We had too many nuns and women teachers.

2) When I finally did wrestle, I was so attracted to the overt, impending full body contact with another dude wearing one of these singlets, that the thought of it could get my cock hard by imagining what the aggression and full body contact would be like.

To me there was a kind of sexual ecstasy to the thought of not holding back aggression in full body contact with another dude, my weight and size, on the mat, in front of the other boys.

"there was a kind of sexual ecstasy to the thought of not holding back aggression in full body contact with another dude, my weight and size, on the mat, in front of the other boys."

That's one of the most important statements -- and NW's made a lot of important statements on this site -- yet that's one of the most important statements NW has ever made.

"there was a kind of sexual ecstasy to the thought of not holding back aggression in full body contact with another dude, my weight and size, on the mat, in front of the other boys."

And it connects with a previous statement he made about aggression and the beauty of guys:

Aggression and the beauty of guys who asserted that aggression was what first attracted me to wrestling and fighting. Watching lean sweaty boxers on TV trying to dominate each other through aggression directed at each other turned me on.

They were beautiful and they were aggressive. I was even more attracted to wrestling because of the full body contact. It allowed the fighters to totally physically connect to each other in the struggle for dominance.

So: in their aggressive struggle for dominance, lean sweaty boxers are beautiful.

Wrestling is even more attractive because of the *full body contact*.

It allows the fighters to totally physically connect to each other -- in the struggle for dominance.

Which is ultimately, a struggle for perfection.

Of course the guys who NW saw on TV, couldn't -- and contemporary guys -- can't -- totally physically connect because they're forced to wear clothes of some sort while they fight.

But we'll come back to that issue.

For now, let's return to the statement NW made in this current email -- and I'm going to paraphrase:

There's a kind of sexual ecstasy to not holding back aggression in full body contact with another Man, your weight and size, in the ring, in front of other Men.

Not holding back aggression in full body contact with another Man -- in the ring -- in front of other Men.

And you know guys, if you haven't done this you're not going to understand it, but for males raised in a heterosexualized society, as NW and I were, the opportunity to NOT hold back aggression in full body contact with another male -- is life-changing.

Because suddenly you realize what it means to be a MAN.

Something which has been kept hidden from you all your life.

And there it is -- revealed -- in unbridled aggression in full body contact with another Man.

So -- here's a link to a youtube fight video.

And I don't usually put those sorts of links up -- because they're distracting.

But I'm putting this up link for a couple of reasons --

The first being that you can plainly see in the video the lean, sweaty aggression of boxing combined with the almost-full body contact of submission wrestling.

Also lean, aggressive, and sweaty.

And the second being that this particular fight is a good example -- though almost any MMA fight is a good example -- of *Not Holding Back Aggression* in full body contact with another Man, in the ring, in front of other Men.

Now, like I said, these videos are distracting.

But here's the way around that -- and remember, you can always go back to the link and be as distracted as you want to be.

But for now, this is what I strongly recommend:

1. When you click on the link, you'll see a black rectangle -- which is where the video displays.

   Just underneath the righthand corner of that rectangle -- on the far right -- is a little icon with four arrows pointing outward.

   
   
   

   Click on those four arrows.

   When you do, the video will expand to fill your entire monitor.

   And you want that.

   Because youtube puts a lot of links, and other junk, beside and underneath the vid.

   And those are distracting.

   Which they're meant to be.

   So -- just enlarge the vid so it fills your screen and concentrates your mind.

2. Turn off or mute the sound -- and the mute button is the second from the left -- under the video proper.
   

   So -- turn off or mute the sound.

   Because this vid has commentary and a really mindless post-fight interview.

   Don't listen to those -- their purpose is to dilute the experience.

   As NW says:

   I don't like the interview thing right after the fight...as if the guy just finished a round of golf. The dude has been in a fight. Testosterone and adrenaline are pumping through his whole body, and it's made him hot, sweaty and pumped up. Then they want to have some conversation with him for the TV cameras like it was no big deal.

So -- click on the link, expand the vid, and turn off the sound.

Once again, here's the link to the fight vid.

The Fight itself is very brief -- only a little more than 90 seconds.

And then there's the interview.

Click on the link, expand the screen, turn off the sound, and just watch.

And then, of course, when it's done, simply close that page -- and you'll automatically be taken back to this page.

So, once again, go to the link, expand the screen, and mute the sound.

Including during the interview:

Keep the sound off, and just watch the victor's body language.

That's the important part.

Because, as I said to NW, the purpose of the commentary and interview is to take the Fight and "rationalize" it -- that is, to break it down into little bits and thus make it into something "reasonable" for the American consumer.

Thus also commercializing it.

Turning it into something to be consumed.

So -- as NW says:

I don't like the interview thing right after the fight...as if the guy just finished a round of golf. The dude has been in a fight. Testosterone and adrenaline are pumping through his whole body, and it's made him hot, sweaty and pumped up. Then they want to have some conversation with him for the TV cameras like it was no big deal.

But it is a big deal.

"The dude has been in a Fight."

Right.

The Man has been in a Fight.

What you've just seen isn't rational and it isn't little.

Although it's true that mind is involved in that the Fighters are highly trained and highly skilled, what you've actually seen is a HUGE display of skin-on-skin PASSION from two almost-naked MEN.

Passionate, Nude, Aggressive, Manliness.

The Manliness of Aggression.

The Passionate Manliness of Aggression.

Your culture -- your heterosexualized culture -- doesn't want you to think about that.

In any way, shape, or form.

Thus the interview.

The purpose of the interview is to take your mind and your consciousness away from the naked manly passion and aggression which you've just witnessed.

Your culture doesn't want you to dwell on that.

As Warrior Redd has said:

Tattooed, half naked men undeterred by their flesh-on-flesh competition has disturbed sissified so-called heterosexuals.

Right.

"tattooed, half naked men undettered by" -- that is, not afraid of -- "their flesh-on-flesh competition has disturbed" our sissified culture.

To which I would add:

Tattooed, half naked men NOT holding back in their flesh-on-flesh competition has disturbed our sissified culture.

Which is your culture.

Your culture doesn't want you to dwell on these half naked Men who are undettered by and not holding back in their passionate and aggressive flesh-on-flesh competition.

Again, the purpose of the interview is to take your mind and your consciousness away from the naked manly passion and aggression which you've just witnessed.

Your culture doesn't want you to dwell on that.

But WE do.

Because that's the reality.

What you've seen is a PASSIONATE display of Manly Aggression.

Your culture doesn't want you to think about that.

NW:

Yet wrestling -- and all fighting -- is about maleness and manliness and aggression.

It's about the manliness of aggression.

To deny that manliness -- is stupid.

Right.

To deny the manliness, and the manliness of aggression, is stupid.

Yet your culture seeks to deny the maleness and manliness of aggression -- by covering the Fighters' groins with pieces of black cloth.

It's as we discussed in Combative and Aggressive.

Being determines consciousness.

If the male genitals are always kept covered, as though they're something to be ashamed of, that becomes your consciousness:

The male genitals are bad.

And if the Passion of Manly Aggression is covered up by an interview, that too becomes your consciousness -- what I've just seen isn't passionate.

But it is Passionate, and it is about Maleness, and Manliness, and the Manliness of Aggression.

And the purpose of that Passionate Manly Aggression is, as Jaeger says, the Perfection of Manhood.

These are two Men struggling to bring their Manhood to Perfection.

Here are some screenshots from the video.

As you look at them, think back to what you've just seen;

seen in terms of the NOT holding back of Aggression in full body contact with another Man.

And then here you see the loser acknowledging the victor.

And if you look closely on the video, you'll see that the winner attempts to acknowledge the loser too.

It's not the manhug with which these fights often end, but it is an acknowledgement.

And then the winner accepts the crowd's adulation.

As NW says,

In Fighting there is male-sexually driven exuberance in victory. And in Fighting there is frustration in losing of course. But there is never any shame in losing.

It's a victory just to have fought in the cage.

Now -- let's get back to NW's core point, which is

There's a kind of sexual ecstasy to not holding back aggression in full body contact with another Man, your weight and size, in the ring, in front of the other Men.

In our culture, such an experience is marginalized, and rare.

To the Greeks, it was a commonplace.

Greek males grew up Wrestling and Fighting each other Nude in front of other Greek MEN.

And it was Nude.

There were no little pieces of black cloth hiding their mancocks and manballs.

An ancient Greek fighter would have been acutely aware of his genitals and those of his opponent.

In Boxing, at the least, they would have been seen.

But in Wrestling and Pankration -- they would have been felt.

And so far as we can tell, Wrestling was the most universal of the three Fight Sports.

Which means that EVERY GREEK MALE would have had a tactile sense, a body and muscle memory, of what other males' genitals felt like on his body -- and what his genitals felt like on their bodies -- while they were full-out Fighting.

Something which, I would think, virtually no "civilized" male today -- has ever experienced.

Sure, there's porn --

But -- and try to understand this -- that's NOT the same as FULL-OUT FIGHTING.

Fantasy is not reality.

Yet ancient Greek Men had a real, life-long, almost cradle-to-grave, experience of Fighting each other Nude -- and feeling each other's Nude Genitals on each other's Nude Male bodies -- in front of other Greek Men.

Many of whom were themselves -- Nude.

And one of whom -- would become their Lover.

NW says "there's a kind of sexual ecstasy" to the experience.

That would not have been news to the Greeks:

A victorious athlete and Nike join in crowning a Herm

For them, male sexuality and male aggression were inextricably intertwined.

The Fight School was also the locus of male-male courtship.

The tutelary or guardian deities of the Fight School were Herakles for Strength, Hermes for Wisdom, the Herm for Male Sexuality, Eros for Male-Male Love, and Kastor and Polydeukes, for Male-Male Devotion.

And that sums up, in many ways, the way the Greeks thought:

A Man should be Strong, a Man should be Wise, a Man should be in awe of, proud of, and reverent towards his Sacred Sexuality; and a Man should devote part of that Sacred Sexuality to a Love relationship with another Man, a Man to whom he's completely Faithful.

Herakles

Hermes

Herm

Eros

Kastor and Polydeukes

And again -- and there's no way, I suspect, to adequately emphasize this -- but for the Greeks, Male-Male Fighting and Male-Male Loving were bound together.

Our culture thinks of them as poles apart.

THEY ARE NOT.

To the contrary.

They are bound together.

Which is why the most intellectually productive culture the world has ever known put the locus of both Male Fighting and Male Loving in the same place -- the Fight School.

It was there that Greek youths were educated in both Fighting and Loving.

Not Loving in the sexual sense.

But in the romantic sense.

It's no accident that of the three Platonic dialogues most concerned with male-male Eros, one, the Lysis, takes place in a Palaistra.

Because it was in the Palaistrai-Gymnasia that Sokrates spent most of his time as a teacher.

As Werner Jaeger explains:

Socrates did not talk in the timeless abstract world of the lecture-hall. He belonged to the busy life of the Athenian athletic school, the gymnasium, where he was soon a regular and indispensable visitor like the trainer and the doctor. Of course those who took part in those conversations of his which were famous throughout Athens did not necessarily stand about in the athlete's usual Spartan nakedness, although they may often have done so. But it was not by mere chance that the dramatic duels of thought on which Socrates spent his life took place in the gymnasium. There was a profound symbolic resemblance between Socrates' conversations and the act of stripping to be examined by the doctor or trainer before entering the ring for a contest. Plato makes Socrates himself draw this parallel several times.

The Athenian of those days was more at home in the gymnasium than between the narrow four walls of the house where he slept and ate. There, in the clear light of the Greek sky, young and old daily assembled to keep their bodies fit. The intervals of rest were taken up with conversation. No doubt it was often mere gossip; and yet the most famous philosophical schools in the world -- the Academy and the Lyceum -- bear the names of well-known Athenian athletic grounds. Anyone who had something of general interest to say which could not properly be said in the assembly or the law-court went and said it to his friends and acquaintances in the gymnasium. . . .

Standing in Spartan Nakedness --
probably in the undressing room --
of a Palaistra

So:

Notice that Jaeger makes an explicit connection between "the athlete's usual Spartan nakedness" and Sokrates' "dramatic duels of thought."

That nakedness in the presence of other Men, which was connected both to male athletics -- mainly Fighting -- and male sexuality -- was also integral to how Greek Men thought about, viewed, and valued -- the world.

Because nakedness was expressive of both freedom and equality.

Youths of Fighting Age take part in a choral Martial Dance

So: For Men in archaic and classical Greece -- and for a good time thereafter -- the Palaistra-Gymnasion was tremendously important.

For there they were educated intellectually and physically -- and emotionally as well.

The Greeks believed that the education and care of the body was as important as the education and care of the mind.

Therefore Greek education was divided into two equal parts: Music, by which they meant the education of the mind; and Gymnastic -- the education of the body.

The Martial Dance combined Music and Gymnastic

As we discussed in Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men, and as Jaeger just said, the Palaistra became the place of both forms of education.

And it was built around the skammata, the Fight Pits.

Here's a description of the ideal Palaistra from Ancient Greek Athletics, a book by Stephen Miller, professor of classical archaeology at UC Berkeley:

Vetruvius [an ancient architect] begins his specifications for the ideal palaistra with a large central courtyard, open to the sky and surrounded by roofed colonnades. The ancient name of this area was self-descriptive: peristyle (surrounded by columns). Although he does not say so, we know that this area would have been filled with skammata, the pits where boxers, wrestlers, and pankratiasts practiced. Indeed, the word palaistra was derived from pale (wrestling), and the connection of the building with wrestling was always understood.

Next Vetruvius prescribes single colonnades on three sides, with a double colonnade on the north to protect the room behind from storms and sun. Behind the single colonnades he set exedrai (bays) with seats where classes would be held in philosophy, rhetoric, and other disciplines. One wall of the exedra would be open, and this opening usually would have columns to support a roof. There are many of these in the palaistra at Olympia, some with benches attached to the three solid walls (see rooms VI, VIII, XVIII), and some without (see rooms V, VII, XVII). These introduce us to the fundamental feature of the palaistra-gymnasion; it is a place where the mind as well as the body is exercised and trained.

In the middle of the north side of the courtyard, behind the double colonnade, Vetruvius recommends setting an especially large exedra with seats. This is the ephebeion, where the ephebes -- the young men training to become citizens -- receive their lessons about the heritage and traditions of their homeland [city-state].

So guys -- just as the classrooms of the ancient Palaistra were wrapped around the Fight Pits --

so must you wrap your minds around this very basic fact:

That Nude Fight Sport was at the very heart of ancient Greek civilization and culture.

Here again is Jaeger talking about Sokrates at the Palaistra-Gymnasion:

[T]hose who took part in those conversations of [Sokrates'] which were famous throughout Athens did not necessarily stand about in the athlete's usual Spartan nakedness, although they may often have done so. But it was not by mere chance that the dramatic duels of thought on which Socrates spent his life took place in the gymnasium. There was a profound symbolic resemblance between Socrates' conversations and the act of stripping to be examined by the doctor or trainer before entering the ring for a contest. Plato makes Socrates himself draw this parallel several times.

"There was a profound symbolic resemblance between Socrates' conversations and the act of stripping to be examined by the doctor or trainer before entering the ring for a contest."

Jaeger says the resemblance was between Socrates' conversations and the act of stripping to be examined *before* entering the ring.

And I understand why he says that.

However:

I would say there was a profound symbolic resemblance between Socrates' conversations and the Fight itself.

Which of course was Fought "stripped" -- Nude.

Because Sokrates sought first to help his friends, as he called them, strip their minds of what I would call extraneous cultural bullshit; and once their minds had been stripped of that bullshit, once they were once again standing metaphorically and perhaps actually too "in the athlete's usual Spartan nakedness" -- that is to say, in Naked and unashamed Humanity -- Sokrates then tried to help them find the immutable and eternal Truths which must underlie and underpin our lives as Human Beings.

Such Truths must be Moral Truths -- because we are Moral Beings.

So -- in Professor Andronikos' formulation, the idea of the Agon was a "free man competing with his peers, naked, unfettered by any element foreign to his own body."

I would argue that Sokrates in turn sought to free the Man of, leave him unfettered by, any element foreign to his own Humanity, his Moral Humanity.

Indeed, I think that's indisputable.

That's what he was trying to do.

That effort often put Sokrates in conflict with the dominant culture of his day.

Because, just for starters, it led him to look critically upon many of the material and political achievements which the Athenians held dear.

And that critical stance led in turn to his execution by the Athenian state in 399 BC on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth.

An execution which the state and the people of Athens soon came to regret.

For what Sokrates was about was what all of Greek culture was about:

Stripping Naked in Body and Soul so as to Fight Passionately to achieve Perfection.

Which is also The Good.

Jaeger:

Remember that the Greek for 'good' [agathos] does not merely have the narrow ethical sense we give it, but is the adjective corresponding to the noun areté, and so means 'excellent' in any way. From that point of view ethics is only a special case of the effort made by all things to achieve perfection.

[emphasis mine]

"ethics is only a special case of the effort made by all things to achieve perfection."

Perfection, then, is another word for Areté; Areté is another word for The Good; and that which is Good must also be True.

While that which is True must also be Good.

Which means that this Manly Struggle for Perfection is both Good and True:

As is this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

So and again:

Sokrates was about what all of Greek culture was about:

Stripping Naked in Body and Soul so as to Fight Passionately to achieve Perfection.

And that's what we must be about too.

We must strip ourselves of all the extraneous bullshit and materialist junk in which our culture of greed and growth has sought to smother and ensnare us --

so as to be Free -- to Fight Passionately -- to again find our Naked and Moral Humanity.

Our Moral Manhood.

That said, let's come back to NW's third email:

Found this pic....

I remember posing like this as young as 10 years old. I would pretend I was showing off muscles to an opponent I was about to wrestle, and he was posing back. I could flex my muscles super super hard doing that. I'd look at the beauty of my muscle strands, and my abs popping out.

I would think: It was SO cool being a guy--behind closed doors. Look at these muscles and boner...solid, rock hard, ready for anything.

I would get really Psyched up and I could shoot cum in 10-15 seconds. And then do it again.

I'd get a really solid boner from it and then have to Jack Off a couple times. I could never get enough of it.

Warriors like Muscles and Fighting. And Warriors like having Hard Boners and Shooting Man-Cum.

How stupid to deny it.

Warriors fight for their country.

Warriors are Men.

So: NW, like most Men, has been entranced by his maleness since puberty.

Guys are into Masculinity -- what we can call guy-ness.

And not just in cartoons:

Guys are into Guy-ness -- Masculinity --

Their own -- and that of other guys.

NW:

I'd look at the beauty of my muscle strands, and my abs popping out.

I would think: It was SO cool being a guy--behind closed doors. Look at these muscles and boner...solid, rock hard, ready for anything.

I would get really Psyched up and I could shoot cum in 10-15 seconds.

And then do it again.

I'd get a really solid boner from it and then have to Jack Off a couple times.

I could never get enough of it.

Right.

Guys can never get enough of Masculinity.

It's a constant and total high for them.

As is Fighting.

And ManSex.

As NW says:

Warriors like Muscles and Fighting.

And Warriors like having Hard Boners and Shooting Man-Cum.

How stupid to deny it.

Right.

It makes no sense to deny it.

Just as it makes no sense to deny the Manliness of Aggression.

Nor what NW calls the male-sexually driven ecstasy and exuberance of that Manly Aggression:

To me there was a kind of sexual ecstasy to the thought of not holding back aggression in full body contact with another dude, my weight and size, on the mat, in front of the other boys.

In Wrestling there is male-sexually driven exuberance in victory.

And in Wrestling there is frustration in losing of course. But there is never any shame in losing.

When you walk onto the mat, wrestle, and then walk off the mat...for a few shining moments, there are a few hundred or a few thousand eyeballs on you, your body, your muscles, your effort, your courage, your skill, and your balls.

"you, your body, your muscles, your effort, your courage, your skill, and your balls"

For a few shining moments . . .

Beautifully said.

Thank you NW.

You're a true Warrior.

Now --

Some of you may think it strange that I can move, in this reply, from a discussion of Sokrates and Moral Humanity, to a discussion of Warrior NW's love of Aggression and the Beauty of Guys at the primal level of Muscles, Fighting, Boners, and Man-Cum.

But -- in all my many conversations with NW, he's never expressed an interest in materialism or the artifacts of greed.

What's motivated and most moved him in his life has been the Fight.

The ManFight.

Aggression and the beauty of guys who assert that aggression in wrestling and fighting.

In ManFight.

For NW, ManFight is clearly the expression of the Masculine Principle.

Which is a Divine Principle.

Immutable and Eternal.

Masculinity is a Divine Principle.

Just as Manhood is a Divine Gift.

And if Masculinity is a Divine Principle, and ManFight is its expression, then ManFight too must be a Divine Principle.

Which is to say:

Masculine Struggle, Manly Aggression in the service of Manly Strife, must also be Divine Principles.

Masculinity, Manly Struggle and Strife, and Manhood, then, exist at a divine level.

And in Perfection.

As Nobility and Goodness, Courage and Valour, Brave Beauty.

Again, these are immutable and eternal principles.

But they have an earthly existence too.

As Muscles, Fighting, Boners, ManBlood, ManCum.

What's clear to me is that the Fight -- the ManFight, the Nude ManFight -- is at the center of the Warrior Universe, the Warrior Kosmos.

Which is an intensely moral Kosmos.

Virtuous and Valorous.

Ares -- Areté.

War God -- Virtue.

Ares -- War God -- Virtue

Vir -- Virilis -- Virtus

Man -- Manliness -- Virtue

Remember Liddell:

From the same root [ARES] comes areté [virtue] ...the first notion of goodness being that of manhood, bravery in war; cf. Lat. virtus.

Areté -- Virtus.

Excellence, Manhood, Courage -- Virtue.

If Masculinity is a Divine Principle, which it is, then the War God, who holds what the Spartans called the skapton or sceptre of Manhood -- who rules the realm of Manhood, who is Manhood -- the War God is the personification of that principle.

The War God is the personification of Masculinity.

Specifically, Masculinity-in-Struggle.

Aggressive Masculinity.

Manly Aggression.

The War God is the personification of the Manliness of Aggression.

The War God is the personification of Manfight.

As he is the personification of Manhood.

The War God is Manhood.

Manhood is the Warrior God.

And, therefore, it's from the War God -- the God of ManFight -- that Men receive the Divine Gift of Manhood.

Manhood is a moral gift.

The War God bestows Manhood upon the Brave.

And withholds it from the cowardly.

The Spartans, who devised for their city-state what Plato calls a Timocracy, a Rule of Honor -- and Honor to them was itself divine -- just as sperm was noble, so was Honor divine -- the Spartans punished cowardice in a number of ways.

In other city-states, Xenophon tells us, a coward was simply called a coward.

But at Sparta, a coward was punished through exclusion.

He couldn't take part in the choral singing which was such an important part of life at Sparta.

He couldn't attend any of the festivals, such as the Hyakinthia or that of the Naked Youth.

His daughters were unmarriageable.

In the streets he had to make way for other Men, and if he was sitting down, he had to give up his seat, even to a younger Man.

He wasn't allowed to be cheerful -- if he was, he was beaten by the other Men -- just for that.

Of course he was excluded from the Mens' Messes.

But most significant, I think, is this:

He couldn't Wrestle.

For, says Xenophon, "in Lakedaimon everyone would be ashamed to have a coward with him at the mess or to be matched with him in a wrestling bout."

And that's not surprising.

As we've seen, the purpose of the Agon -- and Wrestling was, for the Greeks, the primal Agon, the Agonia -- the purpose of the Agon was the Perfection of Manhood through one Man's, one agonist's, strenuous physical struggle to overcome his opponent, his antagonist -- who struggled strenuously to overcome him.

It was two MEN -- Agonist and Antagonist -- Fighter and Fighter -- Struggling to Perfect *their* MANHOOD.

But the coward no longer had Manhood.

Because he'd rejected that divine gift, and once rejected it was withdrawn and never again offered.

So there was no point to wrestling him.

No man, no manhood, no point.

Of course Manhood in the physical sense of the male genitals was sacred to the Greeks.

Thus the Greek names Eu-medes -- Good Male Genitals; and Niko-Medes -- Victorious Male Genitals; and Kleo-medes -- Glorious Male Genitals.

But Manhood was also Valour.

Which to the Greeks was a moral quality.

A divine quality.

And which suffused the Warrior Kosmos.

And it's to a fuller discussion of that intensely moral Warrior Kosmos -- to which we will inevitably turn.

For as we've seen, the Warrior Kosmos has both an earthly realm, a realm of Aggression and the Beauty of Guys, of Muscles, Fighting, Boners, ManBlood, and ManCum --

a realm of Brave Beauty.

And a divine realm, a super-natural realm, a spiritual realm -- a realm of immutable and eternal Truth, a realm of Valour and Virtue, of Nobility and Heroism, of Never-ending Manly Struggle and Masculine Strife --

a realm, too, of Brave Beauty.

Indeed, the divine realm isn't simply a realm of Brave Beauty -- it's the source of Brave Beauty.

Just as it's the source of all the other Virtuous attributes of the earthly realm of the Warrior Kosmos.

So:

This is what survives of a statue erected to an Olympic victor in Pankration -- which means All-Strength and which we call Mixed Martial Arts -- named Arrhachion.

This statue was found buried in the agora of Phigalia -- his native city.

Arrhachion was twice a victor in Pankration at the Olympics.

But in 564 BC, on his third try at the Olympics, he won while losing his life.

As Pausanias, writing ca 170 AD, explains:

At the 54th Olympiad [564 BC], [Arrhachion] won a third time, partly because of the fairness of the judges, and partly because of his own areté. As he was fighting with the last remaining of his opponents for the olive, his opponent, whoever he was, got a grip first and held Arrhachion with his legs squeezed around Arrhachion's midsection and his hands squeezing around his neck at the same time. Meanwhile, Arrhachion dislocated a toe on his opponent's foot but was strangled and expired. At the same instant Arrhachion's opponent gave up because of the pain in his toe. The judges proclaimed Arrhachion the victor and crowned his corpse.

~ translated by Miller.

Now, this same anecdote, albeit with slightly different details, is told by a later author, Philostratos, ca 240 AD, who says he's describing a painting of the event:

Arrhachion's opponent, who had already a grip around his waist, thought to kill him and put an arm around his neck and choked off his breath. At the same time he slipped his legs inside Arrhachion's groin and wrapped his legs around Arrhachion's knees, and pulled back until the sleep of death began to creep over Arrhachion's senses. But Arrhachion was not done yet, for as his opponent began to relax the pressure of his legs, Arrhachion kicked away his own right foot and fell heavily to the left, holding his opponent at the groin with his left knee still holding his opponent's foot firm. So violent was the fall that the opponent's left ankle was wrenched from the socket. For Arrhachion's soul, though it leaves his body feeble, still gives his body strength for this purpose.

The one who is strangling Arrhachion is painted to look like a corpse as he signals with his hand that he is giving up. But Arrhachion is painted to look as are all victors: His blood is in full flower, and sweat still glistens, and he smiles like a living man who sees his victory.

~ translated by Miller.

So we can see several things here.

One is that Pausanias, as any Greek would, attributes Arrhachion's victory to his areté -- his virtue, his valour, his excellence, his manhood, his striving for perfection.

And that Philostratos says that, in the painting, Arrhachion's opponent looks like a corpse as he raises his hand in defeat.

But that Arrhachion is painted to look like a Victor: "His blood is in full flower, and sweat still glistens, and he smiles like a living man who sees his victory."

So Arrachion's victory takes place in both the earthly realm of the Warrior Kosmos, which is a realm of constant change and transition -- that is to say, a realm of birth, life, and death; and the divine realm of the Warrior Kosmos, which is eternal and immutable, and in which Arrhachion's blood is eternally in full flower, sweat glistens, and he smiles like a Man who sees his victory.

For, as Philostratos notes, Arrhachion has gone "to the Land of the Blessed with the dust still on him."

The Land of the Blessed -- or, more often, the Isles of the Blessed -- is where the Virtuous spend eternity.

And Arrhachion is Virtuous -- he possesses true Areté -- he's Excellent in every way because of his Pankratiatic or "All-Strength" Striving, his Strenuous Struggles, to Perfect his Manhood.

Which means that Arrhachion's victory in the earthly realm is an expression of values transmitted to him from the eternal realm of the Warrior Kosmos;

and he returns to that eternal realm as an eternal symbol of Warrior Valour.

The people of Phigalia thought so highly of Arrhachion that they preserved his statue, most likely burying it some eight hundred years after it was first erected, to protect it from barbarians and Christians.

The head is gone, and the body is roughed up, but the "aidoia" -- the genitals -- the earthly symbol of Arrhachion's eternal Manhood -- are still there.

So: Arrhachion was a real person who existed and thrived in the earthly realm of the Warrior Kosmos -- and who then, because of his acts of Manly Virtue -- specifically his acts of Manly Aggression, his not holding back in those acts of Manly Aggression -- achieved eternal existence in the spiritual realm of the Warrior Kosmos.

Let's look at one more work of art.

This is a sculpture known as the Dying Warrior from the pediment of a temple in Aigina.

And here's a close-up view:

Notice how prominent the testicles are.

That's not an accident.

It was a conscious choice by the sculptor.

A sculptor who lived in a culture of Heroic Nude Testicular Masculinity.

A culture of Brave Beauty.

Now, remember what Jaeger said:

The athletes who appear in early Greek sculpture are the embodiments of the noblest gymnastic areté of a young man in the full power of health and training.

Of course our dying Warrior isn't, by ancient Greek standards, a young man.

He's a Man.

But he's still very clearly the embodiment of Areté.

And that's what gives the sculpture its incredible power.

The subject is not simply a male nude.

Rather, he's a Nude Male who embodies every Excellence, every Virtue.

He personifies Manhood.

Manhood in both the physical and spiritual sense.

Which means that his destination, after death, is the Isles of the Blessed.

So while we see him in the earthly realm, the Greeks understood that in life he partook of the divine and that he would soon exist in the divine realm as well.

Once again, the divine realm is the ultimate source of all Warrior Virtue -- of all Brave Beauty.

Brave Beauty was core to ancient Greek culture.

In our culture, and other than on these pages, the concept of Brave Beauty doesn't really exist.

There are certainly guys who exhibit Brave Beauty -- but on the whole they're marginalized.

That has to change.

"Warriors like muscles and fighting," says NW.

"How stupid to deny it."

He's right.

Wrestling -- and all Fighting -- is about maleness and manliness and aggression.

It's about the manliness of aggression.

To deny that manliness -- is stupid.

Once again, NW's right.

To deny the Manliness of Aggression is stupid.

And such denial is deadly -- for Men.

I named the four parts of this post

XXXX

XXXX

XXXX

So -- let's connect the dots.

Warriors like Muscles and Fighting.

The Fighting -- the ManFight -- is an Agon; and within the rules, the Agon is about Not holding back Aggression.

Which for Men is an ecstatic experience.

The Agon is Aggression -- Not held back.

The Aggression is expressed, the Agon-ManFight is Fought, In Spartan Nakedness.

Spartan Nakedness -- not just nudity, but *Spartan* nakedness, which is an expression of a philosophy of equality and austerity.

And such ManFight is core to the Warrior Kosmos -- and to what we may call Moral Manhood.

Virtuous Virility.

For the sake of our sacred Warriordom and our own holy Warriorhood, we need not to deny but to embrace the Manliness of Aggression -- and to understand its essential place at the center of the Warrior Kosmos.

XXXX

XXXX

XXXX

Once again I thank Warrior NW.

Who's a true Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

September 5, 2010

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

Afterword from Warrior NW:

Here are a few pics of a Beautiful Germanic Redhead Fighter.

I've always thought he looked like a stud. Small, Lean, Tight. Ready to land his fists on any guy's face. Ready to shed blood. You know he's taken face hits. It makes him a Man.

I can get a boner and shoot a load just thinking about wrestling that dude, buck naked, for a takedown, imagining looking at his abs, pecs and firecrotch. Cock-to-Cock.

He is a Manly hot dude, with some real fight-testicles...

Redheads always have beautiful Manly pink ballsacks. It's like some precious trophy between their legs, always there, hidden away from the light, and everyone's eyes. I always get a hardon around them if I'm in the gang-shower room at the gym.

On rare occasions, I'll spring a boner in the showers, next to a redhead with pink balls and a beautiful uncut cock.

I've seen guys like that cum and cum and cum.

I imagine this guy is that awesome. AND he fights.

This dude has excellent DNA for breeding.

Bill Weintraub:

A sentiment with which Plato agrees, as he says in The Republic:

I think that our braver and better youth, besides their other honours and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with women given them; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible.

Guys, Naked Wrestler, aka NW, has wrestled and trained in mixed martial arts, and has many very important posts on our Man2Man Alliance sites, including:

aggression and the beauty of guys;

The Warrior Male;

Total Masculinity;

The Right to Fight;

We Are Men. We Have Balls.
Balls Make You Fight. Fight Makes The Man.;

Fighter Beauty, or, A True Test of Toughness;

It takes Balls to be a Warrior;

my first shirtless wrestling opponent;

to be One with the Man I wrestle;

Forced Hetero-sexualization and the death of Man Space;

Full Mount Fight;

The Masculinity Zone;

Becoming ONE in the FIGHT: The Intimacy of Aggression;

Fighting and Freedom;

Take You On at the Pond;

our American forced Hetero-sexualized society;

Fighting is part of the Human Condition;

Men being Men;

The Masculine Male;

The Weight Room;

Wrestling Rides -- Get to know your man;

Hip Control in Pankration.

The MAN Area II

MAN SPACE;

MANBALLS;

the Man area;

balls and the man;

Fighting is good;

Freeballing is good;

Fighting is Man. Man is Good;

MANPHOBIA -- Fired for being into UFC;

balls against balls;

Fighting is Man;

The Ultimate in Man to Man; and

Cockfuckin Man to Man.

Plus replies to many posts, including

touching penises when hugging; and

Go Shirtless: In support of a brother!!