Boxing and Masculinity (eBook)

Introduction:

Boxing as tradition, rebellion, combat, and competition

Boxing and Masculinity supports tradition and rebellion, two chambers of the beating heart of boxing. For much of its long history, boxing has been seen as resistant to authority and social norms. It has been regarded as lawless and barbaric. Boxing is a martial art, a discipline that celebrates combat and competition. Essential to warrior culture, combat and competition form the other chambers of the heart that powers this great sport.

Boxing was never genteel, even as a sport for aristocrats in the eighteenth century. Boxing seems especially out of synch with the kinder, gentler world taking shape for men today. With his boxing brothers, the fighting man pushes back against the conformity demanded by big tech and by the government, seen in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that political mandates and media censorship have diminished individual freedom, boxing seems more rebellious and anti-social than ever.

Numerous studies have established the harm caused by the government-ordered shutdowns of 2020. Yet progressives continue to defend these measures, which were often no more than well-intentioned failures. We know that those states with the toughest restrictions incurred the worst damage (in Works Cited, see Kerpen, Moore, and Mulligan). Yet we are not permitted to ask about the origins of the pandemic or about the long-term consequences of pandemic-related policies. Big tech justifies the government’s demands, silences critics, and censors discussion. Ours is not to question why. Instead, we are supposed to put up and shut up.

The politics of big tech and of the nation’s Democratic leaders, amplified by mainstream media, are overwhelmingly leftist and progressive, which is also to say feminist. Polls taken in 2022 showed that more women than men favor restricting free speech (although surprising numbers of men also do; see Carender).

Progressives interpret strength in others as aggression aimed at them. They want to silence independent men and soften the masculine so that it resembles the feminine. Progressives boast about their own resistance but expect compliance from others. They demand that men shun strength, accept pacifism, and retire to the safe space of the man-cave. They don’t want us to square off in the ring, which has never been a safe space.

Boxers are independent men, and independent men know that the chief benefit of strength is deterrence, especially deterrence of coercion. Independent men don’t live in fear. We aren’t afraid to be challenged and don’t need to hide out. We know that strength earns respect.

Squaring off in the ring is a constructive and creative way to express yourself as a man, and that should always be the goal. Squaring off in the ring is also an effective way to resist conformity and social control, another worthy aim. If you want to fight for yourself in a world that wants to keep you in your place—that is, if you want to deter those who want to manipulate you—then you should take up boxing. Boxing can’t do much to change the world, but it can do a lot to build strength and independence, one man at a time. That can only make the world better and safer.

Boxing is traditional, and so are calls for rebellion. For a pragmatic view of conflict we have no greater authority than Thomas Jefferson. Writing to James Madison in 1787, Jefferson weighed democracy against monarchy. He defined democracy as a form of government in which “the will of every one has a just influence.” He allowed that it could be turbulent, but he accepted a little turbulence as the price of liberty and happiness. Turbulence “is productive of good,” he wrote. “It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” His view has been traced to the Roman historian Sallust, who linked freedom to danger and associated peace with slavery (Sallust died about 35 BC). Like Jefferson, Sallust preferred the risks of freedom. I agree. It’s time for a little rebellion.

I jumped into boxing a few years ago. Through my experience in the ring, I discovered what it meant to be a whole man outside it. A man is whole when his body and brain work together to express his full masculine potential. In The Fighter’s Mind, Sam Sheridan writes that fighting creates a sense of worth, “makes you a better person,” and “can make you whole” (pp. 282-83). Wholeness and a stronger sense of your worth are within reach when you start to box—to fight, to get into the ring and spar, not just do cardio-intensive workouts in a boxing class. I wrote Boxing and Masculinity to encourage you to discover how fighting can build strength and promote manly virtue through tradition, rebellion, combat, and competition. They form the whole heart of warrior culture, and boxing needs each one of them.

This book traces my mental and physical journey through boxing classes, boxing gyms, and sparring matches. Boxing helped me stretch my limits. I started at 63. The sooner you start, the faster you will grow. Be prepared, for it may be an uphill battle, both against your body and against popular opinion, which is dominated by big tech and the government. Your body won’t always want to work hard, but you can fix that. Your brain will have to respond to social and political objections to boxing, and that is much harder to do. It is unusual, today, to find anybody discussing the positive side of fighting or defending the traditions that help men live well, but that’s what I do here. I view boxing as the key to a happier life.

This book has five parts. The first surveys modern disdain for masculinity and suggests how men can position themselves to exploit this contempt. The second part explores sports psychology and exercise science, connecting new views of athletics to new views of masculinity. In the third, theory meets practice as I describe environments in which I learned about boxing, from fitness studios to boxing gyms.

The fourth section looks at the side effects of boxing, including ideas about boxing as an agent of change and as a form of self-expression. Boxing has a distinguished history as both a professional and an amateur sport. With a focus on the long and honorable warrior tradition of guts and glory, I connect boxing to forms of competition that were prized by gladiators, knights, and other warriors who are often cited by boxers as role models. Those warriors measured their accomplishments according to scales of masculinity. These scales included honor as well as strength and assessed fair play and sportsmanship. Boxers need scales of masculinity too.

In section four I also assess fear, safety, and related concerns that you might have before you climb into the ring. If you are age 40 or over, get a medical exam before starting to box. Insist on a stress test and echocardiogram, not just a doctor’s quick listen to your ticker. Countless otherwise-fit men have congested arteries that routine physicals do not detect and, unfortunately, that doctors do not suspect (Neugeboren). For a man who is 40 or over, it is possible to look and act too healthy, as I found out myself.

In the fifth section I look at the boxing art of George Bellows (1882-1925), perhaps the most famous painter of boxing scenes in America. Bellows saw boxing as anti-heroic and ignoble. He belonged to a world that was losing its understanding of what honor meant (Bowman). I include a chapter about Jack Dempsey (1895-1983), an all-American icon memorably seen in Bellows’s painting, “Dempsey and Firpo.” A writer as well as a fighter, Dempsey wrote a useful book about learning to box.

Choose to compete

Every section of this book emphasizes the benefits of competition. In 2016, in Modern Masculinity: A Guide for Men, I urged men to embrace competition. Our culture regards competition among men with disapproval and dismisses combat sports as mindless violence. As Jack Donovan points out, men are encouraged to enjoy athletics as a form of entertainment and to substitute video games for physical activity (Fire in the Dark, p. 168). Tucked away in man-caves (an insulting, patronizing term), men are supposed to sit back and relax, not to exert themselves, and certainly not to fight. Man-caves are about isolation, retreat, and hiding out. It is no wonder that many writers today see men as stuck. Even reading becomes a dead end. It seems to be enough to pick up a book about self-improvement. We don’t actually—“actually” means “pertaining to action”—have to get around to improving ourselves.

Don’t wait until you feel ready. Get started immediately. The more you plan, the less likely you are to act. Start boxing, and turn your manhood into a work in progress. Search for a new and better you. You will realize more of your masculine potential when you start to fight.

Tradition tells us that fighting is natural to males. That’s an argument made by the great Jesuit scholar Walter J. Ong. In Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness, Ong argues that fighting goes beyond violent conflict. It has “a more generalized sense,” which is “to put forth an effort against odds” (p. 42). You put forth effort against odds when you defend something that you believe in, starting with your freedom and independence. Dictionaries remind us that to fight is “to contend, strive for victory,...