I’ve been getting a number of queries from folks who want to know my response to the recent spate of “death by veganism” stories in the national press. I will get there, I promise — I’m just a bit burned out from writing about food and animal rights issues. Soon.
I’m not burned out writing about men.
If you watch sports, you may have seen the ESPN News ads (here’s one at Google Video). The premise of the commercial is that without the help of ESPN News, a fella may find himself “talking out of his ass” when discussing sports. The ads feature groups of men gathered together playing cards, or at a barbecue; one makes a demonstrably false assertion about sports (such as “They finally got the college football rankings right.”) The other men look at him with a mixture of pity and harsh judgment, and the camera closes in on the buttocks of the poor lad who made the horrible error of speaking in ignorance. ESPN News — with its 24/7 coverage of American sports — is offered as the best prophylaxis against what I suppose we ought to call “homosocial humiliation.”
As a sports fan and a gender studies prof, I appreciate the candor of the ESPN ads. They knowingly and honestly point to the way in which a great many men use their knowledge of sports as currency with their male peers. Being able to discuss football, baseball, NASCAR, basketball knowledgeably is surely one of the most ubiquitous markers of masculinity in contemporary society. Men who don’t know each other well often use “sports talk” as a way of maintaining conversation and avoiding awkward silence. Sports talk becomes a social lubricant for an extraordinary variety of men; it has the happy ancillary benefit of uniting men of different social backgrounds and ethnic groups. In contemporary American culture, is there any topic that so quickly binds and unites men (who might otherwise be divided by class status, race, and so forth) than an enthusiastic discussion of sports?
I love sports. But before I loved them for their own sake, I loved them for the way in which they brought me closer to the men I admired. When I was growing up, I had no greater hero than my cousin Scott, eight years my senior. When he was in his teens and I was a child, I tried to follow him everywhere, no doubt much to his annoyance. In June 1975, I had just turned eight and Scott was not quite sixteen. We were at my family ranch in Northern California to begin a long vacation, and Scott showed up one day clutching a small black and white television. (We had no permanent TV at the ranch in those days; now we’ve got the satellite dish and accompanying gadgets.)
As any Bay Area basketball fan will tell you, 1975 was the year the Golden State Warriors won their only NBA title to date. And Scott wanted to watch the final match at the Ranch. We huddled in one corner of the old house, watching the tiny, fuzzy images on the screen. I remember hearing names I had never heard before — Al Attles, Rick Barry. I remember Golden State won, beating the Washington Bullets (now Wizards). But mostly, I remember that I got to sit next to my hero Scott. I remember that Scott, normally taciturn, was quite vocal. I realized quickly that in order to get Scott to talk to me, I had to ask him questions about something that meant something to him. So I asked him about the Warriors, about basketball, about the game we were watching. Patiently and at far greater length than on any subject, Scott explained the NBA to me. And I was hooked.
For years and years in my childhood, sports were the way in which I connected with my male cousins (and my dear late Uncle Peter, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago.) I learned the rules of every major American sport by sitting next to them on the couch. And I learned that I could have a much better conversation with them if I read the sports page in the newspaper or listened to the sports report on the radio before a family gathering. I grasped quickly that being able to talk about sports was the admission price to the masculine community I craved.
As an adolescent and an adult, I discovered that I cared about sports in their own right. I learned that there were some sports I didn’t care for (baseball), and some about which I was downright passionate (college football). I discovered I had an interest in sports that weren’t particularly popular with other men (I folllow women’s college softball, and I keep very close tabs on high school and collegiate cross-country). I became a soccer fan, and find that when I am in England (or among soccer aficionados in the States), that knowledge serves me well. And I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t know much of anything at all about hockey or NASCAR, and don’t have any desire to learn. In other words, slowly but surely, what I enjoy watching and talking about has become increasingly my own and correspondingly less about connecting with other men.
But in my relationships with men today, I still use sports as a way to build up a connection with fellas who might otherwise be guarded and unapproachable. And believe me, I’ve used this in many places. When my wife and I were honeymooning in South Africa a couple of years ago, we had a rather truculent tour guide for one portion of the trip. I discovered he was a cricket fan, and the next morning, I frantically scoured the newspapers for the latest cricket news. I didn’t want to impress him with my very limited understanding of that bizarre game, but I did want to be able to ask him intelligent questions. Once I started asking him about the Proteas (the South African national team), he lit up with pleasure. For the remainder of our time with him, he was especially warm and friendly towards me and my wife. I didn’t think of what I was doing as manipulative, because I wasn’t trying to “get” anything from him. I just wanted to build a bond with another man, and in this case, cricket was the way to do it.
It saddens me, of course, that so many men find it difficult to connect with each other over anything other than sports. It saddens me that those men who aren’t interested in sport are either forced to fake it (in which case, they risk being “revealed as an ass-talker”, the fate of which the ESPN ads warn), or they are simply frozen out of these vital male-bonding rituals. And of course, many women experience exactly the same thing. I know a great many women who love sports, and for some, their love of sports began as a way to grow closer to their fathers or older brothers. That’s not to say that many women don’t love sports in their own right, but it’s surely true that an exceptional number of girls realize early on in life that sitting on the couch with their dads watching baseball, hoops, or footy is an excellent way to connect with a man who is otherwise emotionally unavailable.
Though I use sports talk to connect with men (often in the hopes of subtly moving the conversation to deeper topics), I am also careful, when I’m in groups of guys, not to let sports talk become a yardstick for measuring masculinity. I try and be very good about sensing which men are and which men aren’t interested in talking about whether Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame, or the relative merits of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, or whether Tottenham’s acquisition of Gareth Bale can finally lift them to the Champions League. Too often, men use sports knowledge as a way of establishing a hierarchy, a rigid social structure in which those whose opinions that are grounded in “fact” and expressed most loudly trump those whose views seem less certain, whose insights are less clear.
I love sport. I like talking about sports — some of the time. And I very much want to help my brothers move beyond the use of sports talk as the primary way of forming bonds with each other. I’m saddened by how limiting that reliance on sports is; it’s ultimately a pretty thin glue to bond men together. I’ll still use sports talk as a way to disarm men (before I subtly foist my radical pro-feminist, evangelical Protestant, vegan animal rights agenda upon them), but I always remember that sport is a starting topic, not a finishing one. Sports talk can serve as a promising trailhead into much deeper, and much richer conversation. But it will only be that trailhead if we’re willing to push.
Update:
Here’s the confession (you know how much my Puritanical soul loves to wax eloquent on my myriad shortcomings). There are times, especially when I’m coming somewhere to speak to a group of anti-feminist men about feminism, that I enjoy surprising them with my enthusiastic willingness to talk sport. People who only know me by reputation — or from my blog — often expect someone who fulfills a stereotype, and the stereotype of pro-feminist men as effeminate (and hence not interested in sports) is fairly entrenched. To the extent that it’s fun to break stereotypes, that’s cool, but I must be very careful to not reinforce the notion that those men who are “sports-literate” are thus more deserving of being taken seriously by their peers.
Those are interesting thoughts re: women connecting with men through sports. I hadn’t thought about it exactly like this, but to this day, the sports I like best (football, baseball) are those favored by my two grandfathers, with whom I spent many hours watching them.
But I will also watch almost any kind of sport or competition happily. Golf, logrolling, you name it.
You’re not the only feminist to talk about sports: Punkass Marc talks about football or something (you can see my great interest in the subject).
I, for one, can’t really stand sports of any kind. Yeah, one could say that my complete ineptitude at sports is a major factor of my lack of interest…
But that picture changes completely for me whenever I’m able to go to Bali in time for their annual “battle-of-the-bands” contests (mabarung) during the island-wide arts festival. Just imagine: a stadium filled with cheering, clapping, jeering, screaming fans witnessing what amounts to a double-feature concert featuring the best exponents of Balinese traditional and contemporary “art music”.
Two excellent examples of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-ITWB_thw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orUftdTlDow
The audience hurls both praise and insults (I’ve heard people supporting opposing teams scream Mulih! (go home!) more than once at these competitions), and they will laugh upon hearing even the slightest mistake. And they’ll cheer for something daring and successful.
Now imagine that here: a full Madison Square Garden watching two acclaimed orchestras doing their renditions of Beethoven’s 5th… That’s not happening anytime soon.
PS. For anyone who’s thinking of going to Bali this summer for the festival, here’s the schedule, complete with mabarung (called competitions or parades here):
http://www.baliartsfestival.com/#schedule
While the ad may be off putting and troubling to you, is there some chance that other men are using sports as a ‘gateway’ conversation for other things, like you do? I’m a woman who loves sports (probably originally as a way to connect with my dad, but it’s brought so much more for us as well), and I have friends who hate my politics, don’t watch TV and (the supreme sin in Canada), don’t enjoy hockey. So I had other ways to break through to these friends—maybe clothes, books, a shared political commitment, or even a shared enjoyment of a certain type of humour. All one’s friends and colleagues cannot share all passions—we’re not marching in lockstep through this life like workers on a socialist poster. We’re individuals, and sometimes the only thing that keeps us together and makes this life bearable is sharing something simple like sports.
I can have a passionate conversation with someone on the Maple Leafs, and realize that I am never going to connect with this person on a deeper level or I can feel instant sisterhood and friendship with someone after a short conversation about fashion or shoes or the Amazing Race.
However I agree that a man who has nothing else in his life but sports, like the woman who has no other opinions/interests than say…pick something (children/quilting/etc) is sad.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Hugo, and not a statement of “Patriarchal Oppression.(tm)”
Gonz, I don’t think talking about sports is inherently oppressive. On the other hand, I think the ways in which men use sports talk to demonstrate superiority is inherently troublesome, and it’s problematic when men can’t get past a narrow focus on sport.
Do you ever listen to Jim Rome? I’ve been a huge and reluctant fan of his for fifteen years; he does wonders for the English language. But his “jungle” atmosphere perfectly captures the hyper-masculine, anxious posturing about sports. His insistence that everyone “have a take” (a point of view expressed firmly and knowledgeably, generally accompanied by insults directed at fans of opposing teams) sets his mostly male listeners to see sportstalk itself as a competitive event.
It’s great stuff, and I love it. But it can be horrifying.
“Being able to discuss football, baseball, NASCAR, basketball knowledgeably is surely one of the most ubiquitous markers of masculinity in contemporary society. Men who don’t know each other well often use “sports talk” as a way of maintaining conversation and avoiding awkward silence.” - Hugo
I guess I missed the boat there, because as someone who’s been called (strangely enough) by a few men and women as “too masculine” for some—make that as you will—I care little to nothing about most sports.
Except combat. Then, we’re talking.
UFC, Cage Rage, PrideFC, K-1, Muay Thai, WCL, Grappler’s Quest, and even boxing, then you got my attention. Of course, being a sparing partner for professional fighters of all those kinds of fighting (yes, I’ve actively done anything from Thai boxing, submission fighting, dirty boxing, wrestling, and a mix of all of them together at once—which is basically MMA) makes my interest go way up.
I’ve never harped on you, Hugo, for being a pacifist and doing boxing drills for cardio, but I’d still curious about your own personal outlook concerning your love for “the game” and still being ambivalent about it because of it’s violent edge. As I’ve said before it would be an intriguing blog discussion, plus I’m curious as to what percentage of your readership thinks about self-defense measures and anything they’ve done, loosely speaking, from a more martial arts perspective.
(And I’d love to do a friendly sparring session with Gonzo, just to see what his game face is like, haha).
Then there are the folk for whom sport is a deeper conversation in itself. I think, for example, of the author Roger Kahn, who has written beautiful books on baseball (Good Enough to Dream, The Boys of Summer, and my personal favorite, his memoir about his relationship with his father and account of covering the 1952 World Series as a 22-year old reporter, Memories of Summer). You may not like baseball, but these are beautiful, beautiful books in their own right.
Add my favorite classics book about sport, Greek Athletics and the Genesis of Sport, by David Sansone. He argues that all sport is a religious act exactly the same as animal sacrifice. Even if it does not convince you, it will change your attitude about sport forever, and it will make you think differently about modern religion, too.
The Michael Chabon book Summerland considers baseball and mythology in a whimsical novel with a 12-year old protagonist. I have written that I think Chabon knows very little about mythology and less about baseball, but it’s a fun read anyway.
Last summer I was picking up my son from baseball camp and met his former coach, who is a divinity student. He is also a macho guy who played ball in his time, and we had a conversation like this.
Me: “How was your week?”
Him: “Okay. I had a couple of funerals. That sucked.”
Me: “I’m sorry.”
Him: “Yeah. But it’s all good. It keeps you grounded.”
Me: “Just like baseball. Life. Death. Everything.”
Him: “I know. I’m writing a curriculum about that.”
If you’re someone who’s a deep thinker and you have no one with whom to talk about sports in a deep way, you’re missing something. Anyway, I like it.
If you are so inclined, click on the DF above and Google site search for baseball or sports and you will get a lot more thoughts in this same vein.
Hmmm - Maybe we could get you some Armor, and add that to your CV, there, SR.
I’m old, fat, and slow now… :D
I think sports are sort of like any hobby - there’s a certain subculture around them, and being involved can help make people feel good and included, but like any subculture a lot of people feel a need to establish just who is “out” of the group.
I’ve witnessed similar attitudes to the stereotypical “talking about sports” attitudes discussing everything from Dungeons & Dragons to politics to independant music.
Gonz, good question about the pacifism/martial arts thing. My wife is a much more serious boxer/kick-boxer than I, but I still do dig the boxing drills. And I love watching the “sweet science” almost as much as I love watching “the beautiful game” of soccer; this does raise conflicts with pacifism (and veganism, given what the balls and gloves are often made of). I guess I’ve avoided posting specifically on it…
We bought a dresser once at a yard sale, and one of the guys running the sale offered to drive it over to our place in his truck. As we were moving it, I mentioned I had just moved here from Pennsylvania, and he asked “oh, so you’re an Eagles fan, then?” I said “no,” and that pretty much killed the conversation.
Stentor: That’s sad, really… sigh…
I should qualify my last statement: I am a big fan of (traditional) sumo wrestling - it’s really custom-tailored to my extremely short attention span when it comes to sporting events, and it’s backed by a tradition full of pageantry.
“Gonz, good question about the pacifism/martial arts thing. My wife is a much more serious boxer/kick-boxer than I, but I still do dig the boxing drills. And I love watching the “sweet science” almost as much as I love watching “the beautiful game” of soccer; this does raise conflicts with pacifism (and veganism, given what the balls and gloves are often made of). I guess I’ve avoided posting specifically on it…” — Hugo
Hehe, that was me, actually. And yeah, there are occasional debates on online forums about what the martial arts really mean, and the ethics of it entails. I’ve read a few personal stories about how certain individuals went back to more defense styles because they didn’t like the idea of having the ability to kill someone, and it bothered them. Many Budo stylists are prone to be reluctant to engage someone unless they had to, and I’m always intrigued by the moral injuctions surrounding that outside the usual “You’ll get jailed for doing X” argument. Unfortunately, the quality of many forums are quite uneven, to say the least.
I don’t think they would have developed the complete mindset, but I’m know that more than one of them involved blade arts such as Kali and Silat—I’m no expert on either (and there is significant cross over), but I trained in them an equivalent of a year, and it was an eye-opener. Even their unarmed systems, strictly speaking, are a treatise on dirty fighting and many official cage matches make specific techniques illegal. And for the longest time, Vale Tudo in South America was the equivalent to those dreaded underground matches.
(Although occasionally it happens someone really gets smashed, mostly on accident, but sometimes on purpose—I remember Wesley Sims stomping Frank Mir in the face in the UFC a couple of years ago and was immediately disqualified—the reason being that it’s THAT destructive from someone that knows how to kick hard, and on asphalt . . . yeeesh!).
As for boxing, there’s a few things I could say, but I suppose I didn’t try to make a career out of it because of the all of the stories I’ve read about possible neurological injuries. Then again, I’ve trained in Muay Thai off and on since 2003 among other things, and that can be just as dangerous. Not everyone walks out of the ring afterwards.
“Hmmm - Maybe we could get you some Armor, and add that to your CV, there, SR.
I’m old, fat, and slow now… :D” — Gonzman
Ha, I might still take you up on that offer. Let the armchair pseudo-cynics cry about LARPing all they want, that might be pretty damn fun.