More on Fight Clubs and Aggression

Since my first post on Fight Clubs, I found an interesting passage about fight clubs in the book "Why Gender Matters" by Leonard Sax, MD., Ph.D.

From page 69-70:

Fight Club
Reporters recently have picked up on a popular phenomenon sweeping the United States: backyard wrestling. Teenage boys assemble a wrestling ring with rope and plywood and mattresses. Like-minded boys meet to pummel each other. There are now over a thousand such organizations in the United States, with names like the Backyard Brawlers (New York), Backyard Hardcore Wrestling (Crawford, Colorado), and the Real Wrestling Federation (Ventura, California). “Yeah, sure, we’re getting hit in the head with chairs and getting cut and everything, and bleeding, but . . . we’re still having fun,” said Chris Jackson.

‘‘The pain they inflict actually bonds them to one another,~~ remarked NPR reporter Alix Spiegel with a touch of amazement in her voice. As you might expect, these impromptu wrestling matches do build friendships between boys. “Some of the kids are like brothers almost, you know?” said one participant. “I’ve become very close to some of them,” he continued. “It’s like that movie Fight Club. What can you say about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”

I’m not endorsing backyard wrestling. It’s unsupervised and dangerous. But it’s also exactly what you can expect some boys to do when other venues for aggressive sports are closed. I’ve already mentioned the fact that many schools now prohibit activities such as dodgeball and throwing snowballs. Across the United States the physical education curriculum is shifting away from traditional sports in favor of aerobic activities such as riding a stationary bicycle or jogging. Advocates of this shift point out that competitive sports have winners and losers, and often involve an aggressive component. Nobody’s a loser if you’re just riding a stationary bike. But people who make that argument don’t understand that many boys need the aggressive element found in sports such as basketball and soccer. The result of the shift away from competitive sports to aerobics is that boys who aren’t athletic enough to make the team now have no socially acceptable outlet for their aggressive impulses.


Also from "Why Gender Matters" on pages 64-65:

The basic premise underlying the arguments against dodgeball and throwing snowballs is: if you prevent kids from playing aggressive games, then kids will be less aggressive. In fact, there is no evidence that preventing kids from acting out their aggression in healthy ways will diminish or eliminate their aggressive impulses. Instead, prohibiting these activities may actually increase the likelihood that the suppressed aggression will manifest itself in less healthy ways. "You can try to drive out nature with a pitch fork yet nature will return,” according to the old Latin proverb. Research bears this out. According to psychologist and criminologist Edwin McGargee, three-quarters all murders are committed not by overtly aggressive people, but by quiet, seemingly well behaved men who have never found a safe or appropriate outlet for their aggression.

[Me: There is a certain irony here. Trying to make boys less aggressive can actually contribute to them becoming killers.]

The solution to taming a boy’s aggressive drive is NOT to squelch the drive every time it appears. Banning dodgeball from the schoolyard makes as much sense as Prohibition. Instead you want to transform the boy’s aggressive drive. Sublimate it into something constructive. Julie Collins, a counselor at a high school I visited, explains it this way: “You can’t turn a bully into a flower child. But you can turn a bully into a knight.”

Her motto: Affirm the knight.

Here is a true story that exemplifies Julie Collins’s principle. A small town in rural Illinois was being terrorized by a local gang of teenage thugs. Storekeepers who refused to pay tribute in the form of free drinks or other goodies saw their stores vandalized. One storekeeper made a wager that his clerk could beat the gang leader in a fight. The gang leader accepted the challenge.

Most of the town turned out to watch the fight. The storekeeper’s clerk and the gang leader fought each other, hitting and grunting and shoving, for what seemed like hours. Finally the clerk backed away and proposed that they call it a draw. “The fight ended in friendship,” we are told, and the clerk “not only earned the group’s respect but became their informal leader.” The name of the storekeeper’s clerk was Abraham Lincoln.

In 1831 the town organized a militia to fight in the Black Hawk War. The militia, comprised mainly of the young gang members, elected Lincoln to be their captain. They remained loyal to him throughout the next thirty years as he rose from storekeeper’s clerk to president of the United States.”

This archetypal-but-true story of the young Abe Lincoln resonates with ancient traditions of male friendship. “The youthful leader often establishes his authority by besting the strongest young tough in the neighborhood,” one writer observes. “King Arthur beats the undefeated Lancelot, and Robin Hood knocks Little John off a bridge with a blow from his staff.” I would add that this tradition is even more ancient than King Arthur and Robin Hood. It goes back to the very roots of the recorded history. The Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back roughly five thousand years, begins with a similar fight between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. As in all these stories, the two protagonists become close friends after the fight. Indeed, the fight somehow consecrates the friendship and makes it lifelong.

If you can't tell, I really like this book. It is written from the perspective of promoting single gender classrooms. My only criticism of the book is that it doesn't acknowledge any other educational options than public or private school. In fairness, since homeschoolers represent about 4% or less of school age children, making exceptions for homeschooling in his conclusions would have been minimally applicable.

Most of his recommendations apply very well to homeschoolers. After reading "Why Gender Matters", I feel better able to help my daughters interact with both boys and girls. The examples in the book of what is happening to the typical youth at school, make me very glad my children are not at school.



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Related Tags: fight clubs, Abraham Lincoln, Aggression, boys, parenting, school