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Written by By Soroush Seifi, Contributor
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
“The ranks that you wear on your uniforms represent the chain of command. “The soldiers with the higher ranks will give you orders. You must obey orders. This system is
a hierarchy. The tradition and history of the ranks is as follows: each mark on your rank represents a penis! A private has one penis, a corporal has two and a sergeant has three, ” said one of my Basic Military Qualifications instructors with a grin on his face. I was training to be a soldier in the Canadian Forces and I did not appreciate what these
words represented at the time. In the instructor’s example, the symbolism of domination and patriarchy were clear. In fact, these words, in a way, defined the five years of my experience as a soldier. The military is an institution that unfortunately uses violence as a means of action in world affairs.
The earliest forms of ranks used in organized violence were invented by the Persian Empire nearly 2,500 years ago. Memories from my schooldays in Iran, the birthplace of this system of domination, remind me of a patriarchal system where my father, school principals and male teachers were like officers. My peers and I were treated like a platoon of soldiers. In the year 2009, hierarchal violence has found a home in North American culture. I believe that violence is used to support the fictitious concept of “manhood.” Furthermore, sports and entertainment play the largest roles in defining “men.” Aggressive sports such as martial arts, boxing and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) act as the breeding ground for the social construction, and public desensitization, of violence. The culture of “girls play with dolls and boys play with cars” and the invention of
the gender box further promote the need for violence as means of proving one’s socially constructed gender and rank in society.
Specific sports and entertainment industries seem to mold boys into “men” and teach them that acts of violence act as arguments for the size of their penis; they slowly become simplified UFC fighters, martial arts masters or boxing “generals” or “top soldiers.” More importantly, media coverage of professional fighting normalizes violence amongst viewers. A few months ago, I was having pizza in a usually calm and friendly neighbourhood in Toronto. That night, a UFC fight was being televised next door to the pizzeria. While I was eating, I witnessed two fights among viewers outside of the bar. These fights were later followed by an incident where a drunken man, having watched the UFC fight,
attacked me physically. When he arrived at the store, he used racial slurs to refer to my presence there. I was criticizing him in a gentle tone when the young man attacked
me with rage. “I did not call you a sand-nigger!” he yelled at me. He started to throw punches. I defended myself, stopping him from getting any closer by blocking his path with a chair, and he started apologizing. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what happened.
I didn’t want to hit you and say those things,” he said. For a moment it seemed as if the man had lost his presence of mind and had allowed the fight that he had just witnessed
on TV to come out of the screen and play out in his own life. Not much has changed in the last 2,500 years, when kings used violence to show off their power to other emperors. Today, UFC fighters enter similar battles, engaging each other on bloodstained stages. The motivations remain the same: penis against penis – people showing off their “manhood” without realizing that this concept is a social construction that has only been invented by other human beings in order to control and regulate the masses. When we
separate people into two groups – men and women – instead of accepting the gradient of sex and gender, we create dilemmas: we have trouble fitting in and begin dominating one another, pulling up ranks in society.
It is difficult to guess the number of Da Vincis, Van Goghs and Thomas Edisons we’ve lost to violence. One of the easiest ways to sidestep this loss is to stop the promotion of
violence through sports such as UFC fighting. We, as human beings, need each other and a positive, inclusive worldview to grow. Each one of us is similar to a library: an increase in the amount of aggressive behaviour and physical violence in society endangers all of us. Violence separates us. The loss of one is a loss to all humanity alike.
Written by By Soroush Seifi, Contributor
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
“The ranks that you wear on your uniforms represent the chain of command. “The soldiers with the higher ranks will give you orders. You must obey orders. This system is
a hierarchy. The tradition and history of the ranks is as follows: each mark on your rank represents a penis! A private has one penis, a corporal has two and a sergeant has three, ” said one of my Basic Military Qualifications instructors with a grin on his face. I was training to be a soldier in the Canadian Forces and I did not appreciate what these
words represented at the time. In the instructor’s example, the symbolism of domination and patriarchy were clear. In fact, these words, in a way, defined the five years of my experience as a soldier. The military is an institution that unfortunately uses violence as a means of action in world affairs.
The earliest forms of ranks used in organized violence were invented by the Persian Empire nearly 2,500 years ago. Memories from my schooldays in Iran, the birthplace of this system of domination, remind me of a patriarchal system where my father, school principals and male teachers were like officers. My peers and I were treated like a platoon of soldiers. In the year 2009, hierarchal violence has found a home in North American culture. I believe that violence is used to support the fictitious concept of “manhood.” Furthermore, sports and entertainment play the largest roles in defining “men.” Aggressive sports such as martial arts, boxing and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) act as the breeding ground for the social construction, and public desensitization, of violence. The culture of “girls play with dolls and boys play with cars” and the invention of
the gender box further promote the need for violence as means of proving one’s socially constructed gender and rank in society.
Specific sports and entertainment industries seem to mold boys into “men” and teach them that acts of violence act as arguments for the size of their penis; they slowly become simplified UFC fighters, martial arts masters or boxing “generals” or “top soldiers.” More importantly, media coverage of professional fighting normalizes violence amongst viewers. A few months ago, I was having pizza in a usually calm and friendly neighbourhood in Toronto. That night, a UFC fight was being televised next door to the pizzeria. While I was eating, I witnessed two fights among viewers outside of the bar. These fights were later followed by an incident where a drunken man, having watched the UFC fight,
attacked me physically. When he arrived at the store, he used racial slurs to refer to my presence there. I was criticizing him in a gentle tone when the young man attacked
me with rage. “I did not call you a sand-nigger!” he yelled at me. He started to throw punches. I defended myself, stopping him from getting any closer by blocking his path with a chair, and he started apologizing. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what happened.
I didn’t want to hit you and say those things,” he said. For a moment it seemed as if the man had lost his presence of mind and had allowed the fight that he had just witnessed
on TV to come out of the screen and play out in his own life. Not much has changed in the last 2,500 years, when kings used violence to show off their power to other emperors. Today, UFC fighters enter similar battles, engaging each other on bloodstained stages. The motivations remain the same: penis against penis – people showing off their “manhood” without realizing that this concept is a social construction that has only been invented by other human beings in order to control and regulate the masses. When we
separate people into two groups – men and women – instead of accepting the gradient of sex and gender, we create dilemmas: we have trouble fitting in and begin dominating one another, pulling up ranks in society.
It is difficult to guess the number of Da Vincis, Van Goghs and Thomas Edisons we’ve lost to violence. One of the easiest ways to sidestep this loss is to stop the promotion of
violence through sports such as UFC fighting. We, as human beings, need each other and a positive, inclusive worldview to grow. Each one of us is similar to a library: an increase in the amount of aggressive behaviour and physical violence in society endangers all of us. Violence separates us. The loss of one is a loss to all humanity alike.
