Ballet of Violence

luckyshadow:

balletofviolence:jnadiger:balletofviolence:jnadiger:

…

It creates a space where people can act on dark and violent urges in a space of CONSENT, which makes it explicitly not violent.  It makes for an interesting dichotomy.  I love hitting people in the face, but I hate hurting people.  So when do I get to act on my desire to punch another human in the face?

When they LOVE it!  When they’ve agreed to it.  When they consent to it.

At the same time, this guy didn’t go into the ring consenting to get kissed before the fight by his opponent. He didn’t agree with this action.

As a female, if another fighter - guy or girl - did this to me, I’d probably have the same reaction. Hell, I’d have the same reaction outside of training or a fight, and I don’t believe there is too much wrong with that.

If someone invades your personal space when you are not expecting, or allowing, it, a reaction like above is a very valid response. In this case, adrenaline was already pumping, they were already getting ready to fight, I’m not sure many other people would have reacted differently.

I guess I need to agree to disagree with you, but I believe the “fight” was handled correctly. Neither guy acted correctly, so a disqualification to one party or the other wouldn’t be a fair response.

ETA: I do agree his verbal response was uncalled for.

I understand where your reasoning comes from, but I think you’re conflating two very different problems.

I agree with you that women frequently have their personal space and consent completely disregarded in a way that straight men rarely or never do.  Or at least, with men, it is not frequent enough to represent a trend of objectification, harassment, and/or assault. A taunt like this directed at a woman (whether it lands or not) is something meaningfully different for a ton of women because it represents a trend of harassment that frequently gets disregarded.  I would never begrudge anyone a violent response to such behavior in this context. Secretly, I would encourage it.

But lets be clear, this is not the situation here.  The blown kiss is a common taunt among male fighters that relies on the presupposition of the homophobia of its recipients to have any effect.  Sometimes the kiss lands, but it’s rarely the intent (and most of the time, it’s irrelevant).  The sexual suggestiveness of even a blown kiss is usually sufficient to incite an emotional response that will give them some kind of advantage.  Much like when male youth call each other gay, they are not actually making a claim about the target’s sexuality, they are using the presupposition of homophobia for social positioning.  Heath Herring did not punch Nakao in the face because “oh shit, he violated my personal space, and that is uncalled for”.  Nakao’s taunt was not a come-on, nor a threat, nor representative of systematic harassment.  Heath Herring punched him in the face because “oh shit, I just got kissed on the mouth by a man!  Does that make me gay?  If I punch him in the face it proves I’m not gay.”  In that sense, his verbal response is inseparable from the physical one, both representing a deep rooted homophobia (his problem) that he opted to take out on someone else.  That is unacceptable.  To chide the verbal response and not the physical one misses the problem entirely.

I agree with you that many people would have responded the same way given similar circumstances.  Many people do.  One doesn’t have to look very far to find evidence of homophobic violence in general, and violence against homosexuals in particular.  People are murdered and tortured for this shit.  And this is in the States, in Canada, in Europe, our so-called bastions for egalitarianism and human rights.  This shit is not just happening in some far off, distant land.  It’s probably happening someplace close to you.  It is fucked up in every case.

As for the ruling, I cannot find no other instance of a commission or promotion disqualifying a participant over a taunt, nor for the kiss taunt in particular.  There was absolutely no precedent for this taunt to be considered a foul.  K-1 made the decision to overturn Herring’s DQ Loss because it was under the eyes of many hundreds thousands (possibly into the millions) of eyes of a Japanese New Year’s Eve combative sporting event at the absolute height of its popularity in that part of the world.  They were either protecting their boy, Herring, The Texas Crazy Horse (a huge draw in Japan in the mid aughts) or they were acting on their own homophobia, where kissing another man on the mouth constitutes a foul. Given the fact that they’ve never punished that taunt before, it’s possible they considered the KO an appropriate response.