“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.”
One of my Basic Military Qualifications instructors mentioned these words with a grin on his face. I was becoming a young soldier in the Canadian Forces and I did not at the time appreciate what these words represented. 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 current day world affairs. Further reading about this organization committing and the creation of armed forces is of personal interest to me.
The earliest forms of ranks used in organized violence were invented by the Persian Empire nearly 2500 years ago.
My memories from my schooldays in Iran which is the birthplace for this system of domination remind me of a patriarchal system where my father, school principles, and male teachers were like officers. I along with other students in that society were treated as a platoon of soldiers.
In the year 2009, hierarchal violence continues to be promoted through North American culture. It takes our time in various spheres of life.
I believe that violence is promoted as a way of proving – in my opinion – one’s fictitious concept of “manhood.” Furthermore, sports and entertainment is the largest centre for creating “men.” Aggressive sports complexes such as martial arts, boxing, and UFC are a 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 of violence as means of proving one’s socially constructed gender and rank in society.
Specific sports and entertainment industries seem to regulate and promote “men” to commit acts of violence to show off their penis and become a kind of UFC, martial arts, or boxing “General” or “Top Soldier.” More importantly, the vast media coverage of professional fighting normalizes violence amongst viewers.
As an example, I can write about my experience an evening, a few months ago when I was having pizza in a usually calm and friendly neighbourhood in Toronto. That night, a UFC fight was televised next door to the Pizzeria. During the twenty minutes that I was having pizza, I witnessed two fights amongst 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 criticized him in a friendly tone and that was 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. After I had defended myself by stopping him from getting closer via a chair, he started apologizing and saying that, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened, I didn’t want to hit you, and say those things.”
It seemed that for a moment, 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.
In addition, witnessing various violent news coverage, generalizations and simplifications of world affairs, coupled with a sport culture of UFC where people actually hit one another in a socially accepted manner had all confused the man enough to allow him to act beyond his own personal morals for a few moments and this was apparent in his heart-felt apology.
From 2500 years ago where organized violence in the name of various Empires was promoted by kings who wanted to show off their power to other emperors, to this day of the UFC fighters who go to battle, engaging each other on the bloodstained stages, clearly, not much has changed! The motivations remain the same: penis against penis.
People showing off their “man-hood” without realizing that this concept is a social construction that itself has only been invented by other human beings in order to control and regulate the masses.
The discourse of separating people in two groups – men and women – instead of accepting the gradient of sex and gender creates known dilemmas such as our attempts to fit in, dominate one another, and pulling up ranks in society.
It has been argued that fighters would lose their jobs without a sport like UFC. In my opinion however, it is not in the best interest of six billion people on this planet to accept lines of profession that promote physical conflict. Other lines of profession offer these athletes other ways of survival. A good analogy would be a meaningless suggestion that it is only natural for “hit-men” or murderers who are paid to kill, to continue their line of work because they are good at this job!
It is difficult to guess the number of future Da Vinci(s), Van Gogh(s), or Thomas Edison(s) that our world can lose to violence. In my opinion however, one of the best steps to avoid this loss is to stop the promotion of violence through sports such as UFC.
We as human beings need one another’s positive and inclusive ideas and knowledge for further growth and comfort. 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. As social creatures, we need one another; violence separates us; the loss of one is a loss to all humanity akin!
