Of football, sex and why men love sports

PHOTO | JUAN MABROMATA Argentina's forward Lionel Messi gives the thumbs up during a training session at "Cidade do Galo", their base camp in Vespasiano, near Belo Horizonte, some 470 Km north of Rio de Janeiro, on June 16, 2014 .  AFP

In Summary

• The World Cup has presented the opportunity to direct enquiry into what I have always suspected to be true of football and, by extension, all male dominated games.
• What is happening in Brazil is what happens in most male games, including rugby, which is even more notorious.
• If you are likened to Messi, Ronaldo or Eto’o then you are like a bullfighter. You come with special attributes: virile, powerful, tough, lady killer and a womaniser (this is a highly positive virtue!).

By EGARA KABAJI
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It is that season again. Men are no longer available for their spouses. The season of football is here with us.

 

The fact that this year’s World Cup matches are aired at odd hours does not make things any better.

The cacophony of noises as the footballers burst and penetrate the defences of their opponents is almost analogous to those associated with intimate pleasure.

We have now created a special category of widows; the football widows, whose men are buried in coitus in Brazil.

The World Cup has presented the opportunity to direct enquiry into what I have always suspected to be true of football and, by extension, all male dominated games. My fundamental argument is that all male dominated games are not innocent indulgences.

They can never be. At best, they are contests of masculinities purely for satisfaction of primordial male sexual instincts.

Why am I convinced that the pleasure that both fans and footballers derive from football is sexual in nature? I have always held unto Alan Dunde to explain this thought. Writing about male games in his phenomenal book, From Game to War, the renowned American psychoanalyst tells us that all male games and sports are essentially variations on one theme.

The theme involves an all-male preserve in which one male demonstrates his virility or his masculinity, at the expense of a male opponent. One proves his maleness by feminising the opponent.

Do you now know why the game between Nigeria and Iran was not interesting to the fans of both teams? None of the teams managed to get to the end zone of the other.

It was a barren game; unsatisfying and unproductive coitus.

Back home, you only have to listen to the songs sung by AFC Leopards or Gor Mahia fans to understand the symbolism suggested, which is aimed at feminising the opponent.

The songs and insults chanted by fans point at the hidden desires and wishes of the masculine mind.

What is happening in Brazil is what happens in most male games, including rugby, which is even more notorious.

Another equally peculiar male dominated game in Kenya is bullfighting. This is a popular pastime among the people of Western Kenya and, to a lesser extent, pastoralist communities in Kenya. The Kenyan fighting bulls are symbolic male proxies that outdo one another in a violent contest as the owners watch in self-fulfilling gratification of orgasmic magnitude.

Lovers of this game, just like lovers of football, believe that not supporting any particular team is a stain of extreme depravity and unmanliness only expected, perhaps, of those ‘castrated’ and feminised. To fit in a conversation of males in a social place, you have to identify with a team which you appropriate to yourself.

Through football and all other male dominated games such as bullfighting, masculine values are generated and disseminated. The folklore produced is largely misogynistic in nature and seems to suggest that being peaceable and uninterested in sexual conquest is a demonstration un-masculine behaviour.

Masculinity does not, however, exist except in contrast to femininity. Football is, therefore, a male contest that tests the degree to which one has achieved the masculine ideal. In this semiotic opposition of masculinity and femininity, the phallus appears to be the master signifier, and femininity is symbolically defined by lack of a phallus.

My humble submission is that our indulgence in football is a psychological replay of the childhood boys’ contests. As Luce Irigarey has argued elsewhere, it offers nothing but imperatives dictated by male rivalry.

The ‘strongest’ man is the one who has the most resilient, the biggest phallus or even the one who pees furthest! Football therefore falls in the category of cultural ritual games characterised by controlled violence just as in intimate encounters accompanied by both physical and verbal spats.

Our favourite footballers are masculine symbols per excellence. They provide our languages with raw materials for metaphoric postulations on the nature of life and how it should be lived. Raila Odinga would attest to this for he demonstrates his over reliance on football imagery in his politics.

If you are likened to Messi, Ronaldo or Eto’o then you are like a bullfighter. You come with special attributes: virile, powerful, tough, lady killer and a womaniser (this is a highly positive virtue!).

It shouldn’t surprise you when some rural women boast that they are married to bulls. A man fondly referred to as a bull is not only feared but also revered.

A common saying in our cultures states that one can only talk ill of such a man out of his earshot. A politician who is recognised as a bull is accorded respect and is always given an opportunity to address people in any gathering. A sick man on the verge of death will be told; “a bull dies with grass in its mouth.” Through this statement, the sick man is asked to engage in an intimate relationship order to prove that sickness has not feminised him.

You may not know what goes into preparation for a football match for both players and their managers. The resemblance with preparation for bullfighting is striking.

On the night before the game, in almost all cultures, the footballer and the owner of the bull is obligated to abstain from sex. Bonny Khalwale, the Kakamega Senator, can attest to this. It is believed that if the owner of the bull or footballer indulges in sex, then they invite defeat.

In football, the footballer is said to lose his strength. Sigmund Freud was, after all, right to argue men set up taboos and rules of avoidance because of a generalised dread and fear of women.

Men create taboos because they are afraid of being weakened by woman or tainted with her femininity.

The best way man expresses his fears is through myths and rituals like male games. It is, therefore, possible to construe taboos related to women as a product of dread and as a protective device to hegemonic masculinity.

Like the case with bullfighting, football fans appropriate ownership of these teams so it becomes a case of “our phallus” versus “their phallus.” The songs despise and feminise the opponents while others are infused with sex symbols glorifying the virility of the teams.

The songs they sing reinforce the idealised image of masculinity in relation to images of femininity. The hegemonic ideal of masculinity is that of a man who is a risk-taker, tough, aggressive, rational and powerful.

The mood of controlled frenzy as we watch football is given form by the shouts loaded with phallic signals, insinuations of sexuality and the almost pervasive body jerks that we are all fully aware of. Beware, as you spend your time watching football, you are, at a fantastic level, engaged in what you may not want to describe in your usual direct way.

Prof Kabaji is the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Planning, Research and Innovation at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) egarakabaji@yahoo.comw