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Forced Hetero-sexualization
and the death of Man Space
Posts
from
Forced Hetero-sexualization
and the death of Man Space
Forced Hetero-sexualization and the death of Man Space
7-11-2009
The gyms where I work are not the biggest or most lavish, but they're almost always empty and w/o that faggot/disco/pop music rammed into my ears. I found that I really like a quiet gym, with all the noises of working out...weights, weight machines.....Reminds me of the muscle grunt gym we had at my university. It was all guys, shirts were optional. You could smell the sweat and testosterone in the room. Guys were posing for each other between weight sets, to check out each other's progress. There were no work out fashions to worry about. It was a man space. It was cool.
Unfortunately it was only in use for a couple years while I was there. (It had been there for decades probably.) It was all at once replaced with a modern gym weight room building, like you see at 24hour. Once that happened, the dull, gray, wooden walled, musty-smelling, man-sweaty old fashioned weight room was closed up tight.
I think there was a transition time in the 80's where "working out" was suddenly "in." Arnold of course had a LOT to do with that. But up until then, "pumping iron" was kind of suspicious. "Why should you ever be into building up your male body---ESPECIALLY with and around other males. You might be one of those....YOU know!"
It was that way for me in high school. (I graduated in 1979.)
During the 80's working out became an "activity" that everyone could do. It was had always been there of course. But it suddenly became Mainstream. That was the difference. And as long as it was around girls (forced hetero-sexualization) it was OK.
Another thing that popped up in the 1980's forced hetero-sexualized weight room was a Dress Code. "Members" were no longer allowed to be shirtless in the weight room. THAT was new.
In fact I remember letters to the editor (wish I'd saved them) of the school paper by women at my university complaining about shirtless men not being proper and such. And suddenly sweat was something that had to be avoided, etc. Guys could not even take their shirts off to look at themselves in the mirrors, like they'd done for years in the old weight room.
In the old muscle grunt weight room, shirts were not only optional, but guys were posing and flexing in the mirrors with their upper bodies glistening with sweat in the dim light and body odor of the wooden room. The place also had a rubber mat smell from black 2x2 square rubber mats, at that time made of ground up tires....it's why you never wanted to go bare footed on that floor. You'd end up w/ tiny metal bits of stainless steel wire in your feet from the ground-up radial tires that the mats were made from. It was a real man place, and women were, of course allowed there, but Men were not ashamed of BEING men in that room.
The doing away with those men-only/almost-men-only gyms was part of what I call Forced Hetero-sexualization. That is, the forcing of Men and Women together in places like the weight room.
And more significantly, the forcing OUT of popularity and forcing out of ACCEPTANCE of males being socially permitted to mingle in a predominantly Male place like the weight room...shirtless and all with NO issues about man-sweat or shirtless men admiring each other's muscle tone, etc., sealed the fate of normal masculine males who happened to have NORMAL/NATURAL Eros for other males.
And it WAS expected that some guy you met up w/ regularly at that weight room, worked out with, flexed muscles with, and maybe ran some laps with, was some one you (YES) showered up naked with eventually, after working out. There was NO "I'll shower up at home fag shit." If you were a MAN, you both went over to the huge (NO shower dividers) all-male shower room, stripped naked, saw each other's packages, and walked buck naked into the showers.
We stood around a carousel of shower heads showering, facing each other. Facing each other's man balls and penises in the hot shower. We had LOUD echo-filled conversation in there. There was steam all over the room.
We were men.
And we were naked, muscled, proud of it, getting cleaned up...together. The nakedness as a group of young men, enhanced and re-enforced that masculinity. The shower room taught a young man what other men's genitals looked like, that not everyone was horse hung and it didn't matter, that some guys were cut, some guys were un-cut. You wondered why. But at least you knew what other guys' genitals looked like.
YES that did matter. It mattered a LOT.
In the shower room I saw what a muscled redhead looked like--fire crotch and all. I saw what a muscled black guy looked like--NO not every black guy is hung huge; and who cares?
I remember having an aha! moment:
Beauty.....Naked Male Beauty, takes on many forms and it is still Male Beauty. I was making Greek-like discoveries about male-ness then. And I had not even met Bill Weintraub yet. What I was stumbling upon was Universal Classic Knowledge of the Beauty of the Male.
(I did that a few times. I REALLY had to fight off my uncontrollable hard-on in those days.
UNFORTUNATELY, I became EXTREMELY homo-phobic in the 1980's because of that kind of experience.)
I think things are coming around more now, with the help of the net.
Here's how the showers were arranged in the men's locker room at my university. Sometimes there would be hundreds of naked buffed guys in there washing up. It was cool.
Also by Naked Wrestler:
aggression and the beauty of guys;
Becoming ONE in the FIGHT: The Intimacy of Aggression;
our American forced Hetero-sexualized society;
Fighting is part of the Human Condition;
Wrestling Rides -- Get to know your man;
MANPHOBIA -- Fired for being into UFC;
The Ultimate in Man to Man; and
Plus replies to many posts, including
touching penises when hugging; and
Go Shirtless: In support of a brother!!
Re: Forced Hetero-sexualization and the death of Man Space
8-14-09
I noticed this too. Growing up in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, I noticed that my schools never had dividers between urinals and always had communal showers. The restaurants never had dividers in the men's room either. The drive-in theater even had a trough-style urinal. And while the swimming pool required suits, the showers were communal, and the urinal was a trough. Most people of my friends preferred the river anyway.
I worked out because I was on the basketball team. I don't think a single guy ever hit on me, even though they could see my dick in the shower. I could go into the men's room a desirable twelve-year-old boy and leave with my virginity intact. Shocking. Even more amazing, still twelve years old, when I would dance at a powwow, white tourists, most of them female, would leer at me. Far more women did than the DSM would suggest are pedophiles, and many of these women had families. True pedophiles are usually the ones you'd least expect. There's a legacy in Indian country of missionaries who molested native children, even going so far as to force girls to have abortions. And claiming it would've been normal 200 years ago.
So, with that background in mind, let me talk about man space in general. It's simple enough: All I need for clothing is maybe seven climate-appropriate outfits so I can do laundry once a week. All I need for recreation is some sports equipment and a used car. And so on. By contrast, marketing has always targeted women. Naturally, this means that marketing droids are going to say that men need to be 'domesticated', that we need to be hyperconsumers who never buy any domestic food, have OVER 9000-inch TVs, and have more outfits than our wives or girlfriends. It's not enough for us to appreciate art we must appreciate the art produced by the mainstream media. If we don't, you can expect that your man will abduct you and your daughters and have you all circumcised like in Kenya! Or kill you because he SUSPECTS infidelity like in Saudi Arabia! This is wrong on so many levels.
Let's examine those levels. Female circumcision, while terrible, has become a straw man for pseudo-feminists. Not least because when I took anthropology for a semester, Maasai men circumcised boys. And Maasai women circumcised girls. If they want to talk about sexual violence perpetrated by men on women, there are plenty of examples around the world. Men who view their wives as possessions are the worst, so why encourage this crass consumption? Secondly, many cultures do define masculinity, but not in a way that promotes sexism. Like, I'm Lakota. Women were the only ones with real property rights. Men lived in what Marx called "primitive communism". Does that sound like it would lead to sexual violence? No! The bifurcation of "metrosexuals" is a bourgeois lie! I blame Oprah. The final level of wrongness is the slippery slope.
Do I like how I feel after a good workout? Yes. Does being naked make me ashamed? No. Does the occasional erection make me ashamed? No big deal; it's alk that testosterone. And I'm promoting
insulin-sensitivity, further boosting my testosterone. And if I didn't
work out, I'd put on some weight, and adipose tissue turns
testosterone into estradiol. So all in all, I should expect more
erections. This is all first-year pre-med shit. Do I work out enough
to be a bodybuilder? No. I simply train for function. Like most
athletes. If it makes me more attractive to girls, or to guys, so be
it.
Also by Warrior John:
Re: Forced Hetero-sexualization and the death of Man Space
8-23-2009
Thanks John.
Recently I helped to setup the 30-year reunion at my high school. While at the school I had to wander down shower-room memory lane. I went to check out the Boys Locker Room. The door was open so I walked in.
Here is the shower room where NW got buck naked every day, as required by the rules, and showered down w/ the other naturally buffed 1970's high school boys in my class...
Back then showering naked after the PE class was a required right-of-passage forced upon us young males. If you refused, you got thrown into the shower room WITH clothes on, by the other boys, with the total approval of the PE coach. It was a male thing you accepted. You did NOT want to be perceived as a smelly fag who could not get naked and shower. It was not written anywhere; it just WAS that way.
There is a roll-around rack sitting on a platform that used to be a row of lockers. Sometimes we had to stand naked in rows while getting some lecture from the coach. The naked dude in front of you could get a young buck to start getting a hard-on. THAT you didn't want. Trying to NOT get a hard on in that locker room was one of the toughest things I remember.
It was very military in there. We did what we were told.
Now...I miss those days.
NW
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