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View submission: Weekly Free Talk Friday Thread!
There's some overlapping social structures that happen to create these commonly occurring hazing rituals.
I was taught that one of the key ways that I should bond with other boys was rough play. I was made to fight my brother at a very early age and my pain was consistently minimized by people around me. I started minimizing my own pain too. So when I get into places like middles school, high school, army, I've had years of experience minimizing my own discomfort.
I'll take a quick break here to say that I value how I can set aside my pain when I need to. I'm a dad and sometimes I think it's more important to see to my kids pain than my own when we bonk our heads together. But dynamic was taught to me at my expense and to *always* minimize my pain. It took a while to relearn this dynamic and to create space when I'm in pain if I need it.
There's almost a tradition of pain enduring in some of these environments. And that can feel nice even if it's unhealthy. If there's a tradition hazing new people into your sports team, maybe this only happens when you finally score a goal or make that amazing play. I have been hazed before *and liked it* because it often came with an *acceptance that was very rare to me*. At the time I didn't recognize this as abuse because again, I have spent a lifetime minimizing my own discomfort.
"man, I just learned this guy can throw a punch" was both a compliment and a statement of acceptance said to me when i was in middle school after a fight with a friend. It is a very confusing feeling to look back with nostalgia when I've be given acceptance when I've just had to fight multiple friends.
I've been taught that this is a normal way that I gain acceptance and closeness with other men. It's fucked. And it's such a consistent system because boys are still taught that hurting each other is a way to bond with other boys. I think this hazing is coercion. I think it is often demeaning or even sexually demeaning.
Making me fight other people for acceptance wasn't about my growth, my needs or my care. It was about the reasonable consequences in a culture that has pushed me to dehumanize myself and other men. Or that my acceptance as a men has to be earned. It's just another example in a long line of examples that taught my me pain is a resource to trade for other benefits.
It is often demeaning, dangerous, and it promotes the idea that there is some inherent hierarchy in men and that we all start in a place of no-worth men. It allows the room for men to take joy in hurting other men or that our joy should come at the expense of other men.
And it's a very significant reason it was hard for me to socialize in a healthy way.
There's nothing here!