Fighting.

I'm just going to come out and say it: part of being a man... is learning how to take a punch.

Not just learning to fight-- to throw a fist, to not tuck your thumb in like they do in movies-- it's learning how to be hurt... and still fight.

A friend of mine is taking a class about masculinity and found herself confused by MMA-- Mixed Martial Arts. Specifically, children taking the form as a sport.

I wrestled in highschool and let me tell you, I was terrible at it. It took me years, infact until the very first fight I had as an adult, before I realized why I was so terrible....

There just wasn't a lot of bite in that little dog. Also, I was wrestling outside of my weightclass and had shitty stamina but... I just didn't want it. I didn't want to hurt, I didn't want to pin, I didn't want to win. I just wanted to be in the sport my friends were in.

I needed to take a good punch.

I had fought before-- mostly, I'd been bullied. Punched in the chest, pushed, wrestled to the ground-- but it wasn't until I was 23 that I took a punch; a good, solid punch in the face.

I was riding my bike in a busy part of the city I lived in, in a place with many bars at the very douchiest time of the evening... bar time.

Three guys hassled me for my bike. Wanted to "borrow" it. And one decided to throw a punch. It struck my cheek, it gave me brief stars and it... didn't hurt too much at all.

The next day, I went to work with a swollen lip, a black eye and a smile. I didn't win that fight but damn... I fought three men, all taller than me, and in the end... they ran off. And I still had my bike. I got in my licks. And I still had my pride.

People had gathered to watch the fight. When I got up, I got nods and a few compliments. I lost that fight... but I didn't run. I wasn't afraid.

The moment you realize you can get punched in the face is the moment you stop fearing other people. It's the moment you realize that pain is temporary but shame is forever. It's the moment you realize... you don't have to hit the hardest, you just have to be willing to keep on swinging... even against three opponents.

I haven't been in a lot of fights. Once, I had a bad drunken bender where I felt the need to pick a fight with a much bigger opponent... he flattened my face into a parking lot, broke my tooth and left me a scar that has only just faded away, 5 years later.

But I got really good, solid hit on him-- a 6 foot and change, 200 something pound man-- and I took him off his feet and unsettled his jaw. And when I came home, it was to surprise my room mate, smiling blood and laughing at the while.

I just needed to know I could still take a punch.

I never like to fight people smaller than me. A friend once got sucker-punch outside of a bar and my friends went into action-- it was a mass brawl, them against us and the guy in question wasn't a close friend-- but that didn't matter. They touched one of ours and we, as men, are obliged to respond in kind.

I grab a hold of one kid near, a skinny one, slammed him to the ground, realized I could beat the shit out of him and said, fist raised, "stay the fuck down or I will put you down."

He stayed down.

We knew our place. He knew I could hurt him. I knew I could hurt him. And neither of us, in all the confusion, all the mess, had the will to bloody his nose. He was some skinny kid who didn't want to be fighting in the first place. And he was watching his friends get the shit beaten out of them.

I got drunk on one St Patrick's day, went out to a bar and decided it would be intelligent to grab a random girl's ass-- to harass her.

I had a girlfriend at the time, which made the move even stupider. After it was done and I realized how much I needed to grow up, I went to apologize to her-- and her boyfriend punched me in the face.

Stars... and I was on the ground, being wrestled. As they started pulling us apart and I finally got clear enough to get my own hit in, I... stopped.

I had touched this guy's girlfriends ass. Maybe I deserved to get punched in the face.

I didn't even take a shot. I laughed it off. I found my glasses, ducked the cops who were called in, and met my friends in the next bar....

I wasn't afraid to lose to this guy. I wasn't afraid to be beaten. It was a righteous pain I was feeling, with blood on my cheek. I deserved it. And besides... the pain never really is as bad as the fear of the pain.

It's fear that's the problem and it's the fear that is why taking a punch is part of being a man.

Men measure one another. When we walk streets, when we meet new people, some part of our primitive brains measure shoulders and height, watch for muscle and quickness... we all wonder, "if I needed to, could I kick this guy's ass?"

It created pecking orders, hierarchies. It is in every man that stands too close to another, it's in every loud voice that dominates a room-- it is dominance, one of the primary ways by which we judge ourselves and others in the social world.

All based on primal, animal fear. Fear of pain. Fear of danger.

And every punch you take is another reminder that pain... really isn't so bad, after all.

Sometimes, it feels good. Freeing. Righteous.

At some point in American history, we all became very, very afraid. We stopped letting our kids play tag. We stopped letting them skin their knees. We stopped wanting them to get hurt.

My friend wonders about MMA. She finds it brutal. I don't blame her, for one who isn't versed in it it does look brutal-- the special MMA gloves are smaller than boxing gloves, leading to less bruising and more blood. (That said, boxing gloves cause more overall damage, with less bruising and more internal damages, than bare-knuckle street fight). Brazilian Ju Jitsu, which is the basis of most MMA besides dirty boxing and kick boxing, is a subtle martial art which involves fighting for position and a lot of patience.

What everyone wants to see, is people getting punched and kicked. What people get, is... two men rolling around on the ground, doing things neither of us understand. A chess match, five moves in, where no one but the players and diehards know if someone actually moved their rook.

It's bloody and fisty and new and that scares people. But so is boxing. And wrestling? Did you know that people deliberately shove two fingers into the assholes of their opponents when no one is looking? It's not a nice sport, Olympics or no. Football? The NFL is only this year revising rules for kick-off returns--- because they're so generally dangerous. Paralyzingly dangerous.

Contact sports are not safe... and sometimes, unsafe might just be good.

Because if there were anything I could change about my childhood that I had any control of, it would be to get into more fights.

I wish that my 11 year old self would've been punched in the face more. And that he would've... kept on getting his licks.

Because while I accept, and sometimes even like, the man he grew up to be... I sometimes pine for the man he could have been.

The man who wasn't afraid.

Kanye, you Monster (or, does Mr West need psychotherapy?)

Kanye certainly has a penchant for unfortunate imagery (what with his constant twitter barrages and endless self-publicity, I think I can safely say the world is on a first-name basis with Mr. West).

And I love him for it.

It takes a true Byronic Hero to name an album “My Beautiful Dark, Twisted Fantasy,” direct its first video, Run Away, singing “Let’s have a toast for the douche-bags! Let’s have a toast for the assholes!” and fill it to the brim with the kind of revealing, reflective and ridiculous imagery that plays Pavlov’s bell to thousands of drooling pop culture critics and arm-chair Freudians.

What’s that, Kanye? You want to fuck a bird? You’d like to keep a woman as a pet? You enjoy long walks in woods and learned helplessness? You ultimately acknowledge that your manic, self-centered, border-line-delusional behavior drives love away while simultaneously blaming your lover for not wanting to exist solely for singing out melodies of praise from your ego’s gilded bird cage?

Oh Kanye, you card. You are the height of too-muchery.

So imagine my delight and discomfort in learning that the best traditional rap track off of his new album had a brand new video. And imagine my wincing squeal win, having pressed play, the very first image I receive is women in high-heels hanging from the ceiling.

Merry Christmas, bored feminist bloggers, from Kanye West- sorry the gift came late.




Before we even begin this difficult discussion/dissection, I will allow that this video is the artistic vision of multiple sources. Moreover, I will admit that I am not of the school of thought that finds that every line, word, character and image speaks to a deeper truth about the artist his or herself. Myself a writer, I would hate to think that the behavior of my characters became a reflection of my inner demons and unspoken hatreds to critical readers.

That said, come on. Kanye BEGS for this kind of attention. A man with diamond studs surgically inserted into his teeth has a lot to say even when he’s saying nothing.

The key to watching a video like this is to watch it with the song off. Without the distraction of the lyrics or melody, you have the image in its purest form- and it’s a doosey.



The women we have here are highly sexualized. Ugly faces abound but, even when a woman in a wolf-monster or zombie, she’s still showing an awesome rack. Dead models lounge on couches, posed with the suggestion of necro-lesbianism (Rule 34); the aforementioned hanging women are all model-sized, leggy, high-heeled and in lingerie. This heady mix of violence and sex is juxtaposed with the glamour of the male rappers: Rick Ross, doning a Hefner robe and smoking a cigar; Jay Z in his trade-mark glasses, suited-up and swaggering; Kanye himself, open-shirted while the flesh-starved hands of (I presume) zombie fans claw his clothes off…. The men, the height of power. The women, more than submissive- corpses. Dolls to be played with, as Kanye shows in one scene.

An eagle-eyed observer would note that there are scenes with live women in this video. Saving Nicki Minaj’s self-flagellating sado-masochism (oh I went there), we begin with a pale male model-type bringing dragged, shirtless, across a floor- to be impaled by the living woman, with a heel.

The high-heel has a special place in the fetishistic circles. It is both an artifact of female sexuality and female submission. It is dominant while binding, something meant to pleasingly shape the female calve and add a few inches height even as it painfully cramps toes and alters one’s gait. In the modern world, only the corset can match it for schizoid sexuality.

So, on the one hand, there is a woman who is alive and killing, just as the men are presumed to be. The sexual power is in her hand (er, shoe). On the other hand, the murder is done with a phallic fetish object that seems to be aimed at the victim’s heart. Choose your own symbolic interpretation of that one, folks. And my (admittedly limited) experience with the sort of men who go to professional Dominatrix’s is that, even in submission they are a demanding lot. In the end, the woman is still very much an object.



Which brings us to my favorite verse, Nicki Minaj: the only female with a legitimately powerful (though, again, highly sexualized) role and who is she dominating? Another women. Not just another women, infact: she dominates herself.

Minaj is a bit of a mystery, in the hip hop world. A mix-tape diva, she was known for taking on multiple personalities on her verses and having a style that moved more towards diary than braggadocio. Many fans were disappointed by her debut album, Pink Friday, for being more mainstream than expected- the diary had given away to a younger, more energetic Lil Kim.

One could almost see this scene, made for a song that dropped before her album did, in those heady days when Minaj was the one to have guesting crazy verses on your rap albums, as an acknowledgement of her lessened personal presence in the making of Pink Friday. Here she beats the other side of her multiple personality, self-hurt in video-form, beating herself over selling out. This, on Monster, is the beast we expected and did not find much of on Pink Friday. Don’t worry, fans, she hates herself for it too.

Or I’m bullshitting. Either way, a woman on woman lap-dance is pretty hot. Perhaps Minaj could have been suited-up, ala Jay Z, interrogating a shirtless male model in a gimp mask? It’s another artistic choice but, ultimately, more teasing lesbianism- the most frequent and juvenile of male sexual fantasies- wins the day.

So, what are we left with? Women as objects, fetishized heart-breakers, wonderful background furniture or lesbian fantasy. Typical frightened teenage boy stuff.



Ouch.

It’s kind of hard to make a case for Yeezy on this one.
Erasing media portrayals of women and sexualized violence has long been the strongest column of the last feminist crusade. It’s hard to argue against domestic abuse, rising sexual assault rates and the blasé hilarity that is Snooki getting punched out in a bar.



When the criticism comes (and it will, oh lord it will), the question is how will Kanye respond? He can be wonderfully tongue-in-cheek (though one never really knows if it’s self-aware, self-delusion or self-loathing). A man who names his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy using cover-art of what looks like an African caricature drinking a beer while fucking a white harpy has to have a few aces up his sleeve. Perhaps this plays into his hand, as a pop culture creator and critic?
Perhaps the only woman who can truly understand Kanye West… is Lady GaGa (The Fame Monster and the Monster? Imagine the gossip columns!).

I’ll just wait for the fire-works here with my bag of pop-corn.

Here's the video: