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Therein lies the paradox. What do I, an apparently straight male, not much of a sports fan to begin with, find so appealing about what may be the gayest-looking competition on the planet?
Mr. Van Cherry isn't around to answer this question. So I turn to an expert on sports psychology, Professor Arnd Kruger of Germany's Georg-August-University. Is oiling up and wrestling other muscular men in your underwear inherently homoerotic?
"Not necessarily," says Kruger. Many if not most "vernacular sports" — those played in traditional societies — focus on endurance or raw virility rather than skill. Wrestling is a throwback to the days when sports included yanking your opponent's scrotum until he screamed, or holding your head underwater longer than your competitors, or even the "Black Knight" component of summertime jousting competitions, in which knights would see who could keep the lid of their helmets shut longer. But these apparently "manly" sports aren't necessarily any more sexual than other kinds.
"There are some sports that demand more of the male hormone testosterone than others," Kruger says. "On the other hand, there are some sports that by the symbolism of the activity have sexual connotations, e.g. shooting. I don't think [kabaddi] has more homoerotic connotation than rugby, wrestling, Sumo, Lucha Canaria, the wrestling matches of the Nuba, etc."
Of course, that isn't saying much. Wrestling is the sport that looks more like fucking than any other, the sport in which homophobes and appreciative gay fans find themselves thrust into uncomfortable proximity.
"I prefer the dusty grime of a boy fresh from the wrestling ring," enthused the ancient Greek poet Strato, expressing much the same sentiment that gender-bending WWE wrestlers such as Goldust and Adrian Adonis used two thousand years later to unnerve their opponents. Similar WWE characters, such as stereotypically-flaming twins Lenny and Lodi, were yanked after the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation threatened legal action.
While such characters may be WWE screenwriter's attempt at stirring
| There was no better way to avenge yourself on the jock who called you "faggot" than to imply (behind his back, of course) that his sport was an expression of his repressed sexual desires. |
the outrage of its ten-year-old fans, the same sport has spawned its own genre of erotica, as well as numerous gay fan sites. Nor is the phenomenon limited to the WWE. Even "legitimate" wrestling's most famous modern figure, Gorgeous George, intentionally cultivated questions about his sexuality, as a way of humiliating his opponents and drawing in fans.
In junior-high school, though, humiliation worked the other way around. There was no better way to avenge yourself on the jock who called you "faggot" than to imply (behind his back, of course) that his sport was an expression of his repressed sexual desires. Many NBA fans were right to denounce retired NBA player Tim Hardaway, after he recently announced on Miami radio,"I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic." But to suggest that Hardaway's homophobia is just a means of concealing his homosexuality, or that of his fellow players, is itself homophobic.
Still, in a country with so few openly gay athletes, denouncing the openly homophobic ones is one of the few forms of political catharsis there is. So it goes with my instinctive reaction to kabaddi. Kruger tells me that if the sport seems gay to me, it's my fault.
"You should be aware that something you might find homoerotic or laden with sexuality might be just your peculiar American perspective," Kruger says.
Indeed, I am not much relieved to
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| A kabaddi match between Sikh immigrants in Southern California. The ancient Indian sport is catching on with Canadian cops and American soldiers as well. |
find out who shares my peculiar American perspective. "One of our very higher ranking police officers sent an email [to the Toronto Police kabaddi team] asking what's with you guys stripping down to your underwear," recalls Gregory Cote, director of Kabaddi Cops. "There are a lot of snickers in the locker room and talk away from the players, whether about they're being gay or sucking up to a certain ethnicity. Cops are a cynical bunch."
Less cynical is Ginda Ghakal, a twenty-one-year-old Indian-born kabaddi player from Northern California. He doesn't see anything homoerotic about kabaddi — and if I do, he says, it's just a cultural misunderstanding.
"I wrestled in high school, and everyone thought we were gay. Here we're more protective. In India straight men hold hands." About men holding hands in public, Ghalal concedes, "It's a little weird for me, even."
I know what Ghalal means. While traveling in India, I myself have felt uncomfortable when a male friend grabbed my hand to help me cross the street. But it was a different sort of embarrassment than that which I felt on the wrestling mat in Mr. Van Cherry's class, back when getting called a fag left me wondering all day whether indeed I was one. My discomfort in India owed primarily to the fact that I was traveling in a country where homosexuality was illegal. To learn that hand-holding was just considered hand-holding, to be able to defer to another culture's standards when my own are so conflicted, was a nice surprise.
That, perhaps, is the answer to my question. Part of what makes kabaddi so appealing is that it is a sport whose fans (unlike those of the WWE, for instance) could care less about how gay it looks. In Bangladesh, another country where homosexuality is illegal, the national sport is kabaddi. America is both more and less advanced in its sexual politics. We are slowly coming to accept the idea that the NBA and the NFL aren't the bastions of straightness that our fathers and coaches told us they were. I doubt we'll look into the dugout and see the players of our national pastime holding hands any time soon. Unless, of course, they decide to take up kabaddi.
n°
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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A recent graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Justin Clark has written for L.A. Weekly, Psychology Today, Black Book, Architecture, Fuse, and The Fader, among other publications. He is currently researching a history of the American child prodigy, and writing a mystery novel set in Los Angeles.
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©2007 Justin Clark and Nerve.com |
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