Bill Weintraub

Re: The Weight Room

3-25-2007

Thank you Naked Guy.

Naked Wrestler aka NW's story is taken up again in aggression and the beauty of guys.

And there's a complete list of his articles at the end of this message thread.

The 1950s, 60s, and 70s were without question the most homophobic era in American history and almost certainly in the history of the world.

Weights and weight training had actually been around since the 19th century.

There were a number of noted strongmen, like Sandow, and I doubt that "physical culture" in that era was associated with "homosexuality."

Here are a couple photos from At Ease, and you can see that there were weights on American ships during WW II.

So, most likely, the association of weight-lifting with homosexuality took off in the 1950s through magazines like Athletic Model Guild:

And peaked in the 1970s, when unfortunately for NW, he was in high school.

Now I want to come back to what NW said about the game Sock-Um -- because that's really the crux of the matter:

It WAS a male sport, it was about aggression and it was shirtless, sweaty and sometimes it was bloody. I liked it a LOT. Experiencing masculinity and aggression felt like life was really worth living and going after.

When I went home after school everyday I would often feel unworthy of my maleness for being sexually turned on by the thought of the enjoyment of aggression among the other young males back at school PE class...

Basically what we see here are two conflicting ideas about manliness and masculinity, and which are emblematic of the conflict between NATURAL Masculinity and social masculinity.

Natural Masculinity, remember, flows naturally from the male's sense of himself as a Man, from his aggression, and from his natural and normal same-sex desires.

Those are the components of Natural Masculinity.

The "same-sex desire" part is NOT limited to "gay" men.

Here's my foreign friend:

My experiences of working with young men for the past 10 years plus my experiences of living in a traditional society show that male sexual desire for men cannot be tied down to a minority group. Rather it is a universal male phenomenon, especially strong amongst masculine gendered men --- unlike what the west propagates. It also seems that the male phobia against such bonds in America is mostly socially engineered and partly a media hype.

I think male sexual bonds are an important part of masculinity that must be made available to all men (and not just a specific group) --- especially in their youth --- and with suiting masculine pride. Depriving men of this amounts to robbing them of their true natural masculinity.

So: Same-sex desire is part of being a MAN.

A Naturally Masculine Man.

Again, the three components of Natural Masculinity are

1. a sense of yourself as a Man;

2. aggression;

3. same-sex desire.

And we hear those expressed very neatly by NW in this first paragraph:

It WAS a male sport, it was about aggression and it was shirtless, sweaty and sometimes it was bloody. I liked it a LOT. Experiencing masculinity and aggression felt like life was really worth living and going after.

It left him elated.

But:

When I went home after school everyday I would often feel unworthy of my maleness for being sexually turned on by the thought of the enjoyment of aggression among the other young males back at school PE class...

NW's good feelings about his masculine self -- his feelings of elation brought on by his Natural Masculinity -- were essentially destroyed by the definitions contained within his society's version of "social masculinity."

"Social masculinity," unlike Natural Masculinity, does NOT flow naturally from the male's sense of being a man, but is rather imposed upon him by his society or culture.

In our culture, a man must never be sexually turned on, as NW was, by other men or by his enjoyment of aggression among those men.

In our culture, a man's sex drive must be aimed solely at women.

NW:

I had been told (and it was constantly alluded to) that your boner should spring up instantly at the thought of girls' tits, and the thought of fucking and being around females constantly.

"I had been TOLD..."

It's not that boys will not experience arousal around girls on their own.

It's that the exclusive emphasis and engineered peer pressure around that arousal distorts the lives of the boys -- and the girls -- and results, as my foreign friend says, in boys saying NO to boys and Yes to girls; when they'd rather say YES to boys, and No to girls.

That is a consequence of "social masculinity."

Not Natural Masculinity.

Social masculinity, as my foreign friend says, induces a socially engineered phobia around same-sex desires.

And you see that clearly in the reaction of NW and his classmates to the coach's little speech about gay people and weight-lifting:

No boy spoke a word in that room that morning.

When he was done, EVERYONE filed out of there, without a word. You didn't want to be associated with faggot weights, and faggot weight rooms.

That pretty much killed the desire for any of us to go to that room, ever.

You didn't want to be thought of as one of the Gay People in the weight room.

The paradox is, that as the ancients knew, forcing sex into a hetero mold has the effect of effeminizing males.

Which is why they didn't do it.

We can see what happens when the male's masculinity is allowed to develop naturally by looking at people like the Spartans and their agoge, in which boys lived together in small groups and began forming erotic bonds with each other in early adolescence.

Encouraged to do so by their elders.

Those bonds did not stop them from marrying later in life, and fathering children.

Nor did those bonds prevent them from loving their wives.

But they were without question more completely Masculine and Naturally Masculine than are boys and men like NW who have been forced, throughout their lives, to suppress their Natural masculinity.

So the distinction between

NATURAL MASCULINITY

and

Social Masculinity

is not merely very important.

It's crucial.

Please please please -- for your own sake -- try to understand it.

Our society's definition of social masculinity -- with its emphasis on exclusive heterosex, its denigration of homosex, and its essentially consumerist version and vision of masculinity which you can see reflected in exhortations to drink Coors beer and drive Dodge trucks -- is tremendously destructive.

That's not what masculinity is.

And that's why we're in so much trouble.

Because Masculinity is defined as something that it isn't.

And any discussion of true, Natural Masculinity, is censored and silenced.

Remember what my foreign friend says:

[Male sexual desire for other men] is a universal male phenomenon, especially strong amongst masculine gendered men --- unlike what the west propagates. It also seems that the male phobia against such bonds in America is mostly socially engineered and partly a media hype.

So: Male-male sexual desire "is a universal male phenomenon, especially strong amongst masculine gendered men"

Which is what NW is.

He's a masculine-identified guy who enjoys natural and normal male aggression -- particularly fight sports.

"It also seems that the male phobia against such [same-sex] bonds in America is mostly socially engineered and partly a media hype."

That's correct.

We can see the media hype in everything from movies and TV to, like I said, ads for Coors and Dodge Ram trucks.

The socially-engineered part is complex and subtle -- sometimes; other times, it's blatant, as it was when NW's coach talked about weight-lifting being for queers.

But either way, the "male phobia against such bonds in America is mostly socially engineered" -- that is to say, it's a reflection of SOCIAL Masculinity.

And has nothing to do, other than destructively, with

NATURAL MASCULINITY.

IT IS CRITICAL FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND THESE DISTINCTIONS AND THE ROLE THEY'VE PLAYED IN YOUR LIVES.

Otherwise, NONE OF YOU, whether you're gay-identified, or straight-identified, will ever be FREE.

You will be SLAVES all of your lives.

Men used to be born free.

Today males are born enslaved, and only through hard work throughout their lifetimes can they hope to free themselves to be MEN.

Here's Frances:

There's something unsettling to me about the idea of a sub-culture. That implies hiddenness, other. Homosex seems to be part and parcel of warriordom. If you want the warrior, you take the homosex. If you don't want the homosex, as our culture most emphatically does not, well then don't expect any warriors. I have a feeling that the real hidden message that they can never speak is really "we don't want the warriors." Frot takes away the fear of effeminancy, and the blessed scourge of disease which are such potent tools to warn off boys from even thinking about bonding with another boy, in the deep way that the ancients understood, and that the analists mock. Gay culture is the best tool ever invented against warriordom.

As usual, Frances is right in every particular.

"Sub-culture implies hiddenness, other."

Exactly.

"If you want the warrior, you take the homosex. ... the real hidden message that they can never speak is really 'we don't want the warriors.' "

That's right.

Our society doesn't want Warriors.

Because Warriors can't be controlled.

"Frot takes away the fear of effeminancy, and the blessed scourge of disease which are such potent tools to warn off boys from even thinking about bonding with another boy, in the deep way that the ancients understood, and that the analists mock. Gay culture is the best tool ever invented against warriordom."

That's right.

The ancients understood the importance of the bonds between men.

And they understood that only free men could freely bond.

So Spartan men were free.

Was there a social component to their definition of masculinity?

Sure -- because there almost always is.

But the way Spartan male -- and female -- life was set up, boys got to live with other boys and youths from the ages of 7 to 30 -- and during that time, they were encouraged to be involved in two quintessentially NATURALLY MASCULINE activities -- aggression / fighting; and forming an erotic bond with another Warrior.

Spartan females by the way, were also encouraged to be athletic and to some degree aggressive.

They had the right to inherit property -- something which Aristotle, who believed that women were inherently inferior to men, harshly condemned in his description of the Spartan constitution.

And Spartan women we feel certain were allowed and encouraged to form romantic relationships with each other.

We hear about that in Plutarch; but another place we can see it is in the poetry of Alcman, a 7th century BC Spartan poet who wrote choral pieces for both boys and girls.

These are lyrics which would have been sung or chanted on holidays and during initiation rites.

Most of what little has survived are the pieces for girls, and they're clearly homo-erotic:

For abundance of purple is not sufficient for protection, nor intricate snake of solid gold, no, nor Lydian headband, pride of dark-eyed girls, nor the hair of Nanno, nor again godlike Areta nor Thylacis and Cleësithera; nor will you go to Aenesimbrota's and say, 'If only Astaphis were mine, if only Philylla were to look my way and Damareta and lovely Ianthemis'; no, Hagesichora wears me out [with love]."

~fr. 1, vv. 64-77; trans. Campbell.

"...I were to see whether perchance she were to love me. If only she came nearer and took my soft hand, immediately I would become her suppliant."

~ fr. 3, vv. 79-81; trans. Campbell

Fact is, as one feminist commented, that the Spartan aristocratic communists treated women a lot better than the Athenian democratic oligarchs.

What about the guys?

There's a lot of early Greek lyric poetry devoted to guys, but Alcman's didn't survive.

I bet it was hot.

Nevertheless, what we see is a society in which Men live in homosocial groups virtually their entire lives, and in all-male groups which are set up around

Warrior aggression

Warrior love

That's what the agoge was.

And when it was over, as Forrest points out, the guys spent the rest of their lives focused on their all-male messes, with whom they ate, trained, fought, and just hung out.

That's typical of the way Men lived for millenia.

As Forrest also points out.

I thank NW for his post.

The sad thing is, that it's taken NW YEARS to get back to where he was when he played Sock-Um as a kid:

It WAS a male sport, it was about aggression and it was shirtless, sweaty and sometimes it was bloody. I liked it a LOT. Experiencing masculinity and aggression felt like life was really worth living and going after.

Today, he's been able to find those experiences in mixed martial arts / UFC-style fighting.

But it's taken him many many years -- 30, to be exact -- to get back to where he was.

And NW's unusual in this group, in that he's actually made the effort to do that.

The rest of you don't, and then wonder why you're so unhappy all the time.

Don't you?

Here's a suggestion:

Listen to what I'm telling you; and

FIGHT BACK

Bill Weintraub

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

Also by Naked Wrestler:

aggression and the beauty of guys;

The Warrior Male;

Full Mount Fight;

Men being Men;

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!!