Boys, Girls, Boxing

Boys and Girls: Nature vs Nurture

Of all the preposterous piffle perpetrated at overly left-leaning universities, one that stood out as starkly ridiculous to me was the following.

There are no innate differences between males and females, save for minor aesthetic biological difference (which the most radical nutjobs claim are socially determined too).

Differences in everything from career preferences to aptitudes and interests to hobbies to strength are socially constructed, manufactured by our society, totally contingent on nurture rather than rooted in nature.

I’m not saying there are not large elements of maleness and femaleness that are cultural more than biological.

What I am saying is that there are irreducible biological differences between boys and girls which find emergent expressions in individual behaviours and social norms.

Talking Boys, Talking Girls

The specific tendency of boys I want to give you an example of is this one.

How men deal with stuff.

I’m being broad-brush, so forgive my painting over individuality and idiosyncrasy. There is an entire literature on male-female differences if you care to look into it, but you need only lean into life experience to draw these general conclusions – key word, general.

Women talk more than boys.

Women find it easier to talk than boys.

Women talk face to face, men shoulder to shoulder.

Women will meet primarily to talk, often without a set precedent, job or activity.

Men will meet primarily for a job or activity, and the talk follows from that.

Women can talk in a group at 110mph, finishing each other’s sentences, allowing various tangents to veer off before being reweaved in a way that makes men’s heads spin.

Men talk in more direct manner, more thing-oriented than people-oriented, and are more slow and steady, certainly less giggles and emotional content to their chat.

Men are often awkward and fumbling with respect to their emotions, even if they are relatively open; the whole idea of talking for talking’s sake doesn’t come naturally to them, talk often needs sort of intense bonding activity behind it.

Boys and Boxing

Which leads me neatly to the following.

I train with a man we’ll call Albert, a sterling young fellow of a good family and education, with an infectiously glorious energy and intense work ethic.

We’ve been a-boxing together for many months now, and he has improved immensely.

A few weeks back, Albert arrived with puffy tired eyes and an uncharacteristically flat tone to his voice.

We started training, worked up a sweat, and I mentioned that I was feeling tired myself, gently trying to elicit a response.

Albert was functioning on precious little sleep, he tells me, and broke up with his girlfriend yesterday.

Incidentally, I say to Albert, I’m the same, precious little sleep and a recent break-up.

In-between rounds on the pads, we continue talking. Albert said he’s been doubling down on exercise, working hard at football, honouring our session training together, all despite feeling tired and deflated.

Then we spar.

I’m well ahead of Albert by way of weight and experience, but he threw and threw and threw, walking through jabs and bodyshots, never stopping.

It was intense, emotional, and inspiring.

Aesthetically, scrappy and brutal, but beautiful. 

Fatigue can make cowards of men, but the deeper into that dark place you go, the brighter the light on the other side.

We stop, basking in that very light, my nose popped and bleeding, Albert’s eye blue and swelling, and we embrace each other and say well done.

Men who lack these intense bonding experiences, especially men without fathers and brothers and positive male role models, keep their baggage inside of them, wearing down on their being – a kind of emotional attrition. 

I am blessed to see, receive and facilitate this haymaker healing so often.

I know plenty of girls who enjoy such a bust-up too, but I feel this is a more pressingly innate and necessary aspect to a man’s being.

The good it can do – the positive harnessing and release of energy so potent and irreducible – is incalculable. Boxing and other such intense outlets save society from where else that energy might be misdirected.

Pure catharsis, physical and emotional release, a sense of achievement, extirpation, exhilaration, and bonds forged and reinforced. 

Huzzah.