Spectator Sports Turns Men Into Boys

It’s a lifestyle which seems vaguely manly,
but in reality is passive and effeminate.

by Bonnie
(henrymakow.com

My poor immigrant grandfather came to the US from Czechoslovakia and worked like a slave in Appalachian coal mines in the 1920s. He was not able to help his six sons assimilate into American life, so they had to fend for themselves. They were not very different from most American males who are missing father figures.

A worker in the construction trades, my dad could not adjust to the American male bonding ritual, the small talk banter about last night’s GAME. He thought American men were boys who suffered from arrested development due to watching sports.

As a wife and mother, I have to agree. American sports culture is an unwarranted daily celebration. It keeps life on a superficial level and distracts men from dealing with problems in their family, neighborhoods, and community.

Sports keeps men focused on winning, losing, and keeping score. The winner takes all. This leads to black and white thinking, and to avoiding the many grey areas of life. Either/or thinking is BOYISH, and infects every relationship, even with women.

For example, women do not want to be GAMED by men. We can spot a trickster a mile away. Quality women want honest relationships. Unfortunately, “sports thinking” corrupts many women as well.

It is an unlucky boy who has a “sports Dad” to teach him the latest stats! Early in life, our little man will identify as a Lakers, Broncos, Yankees, or a Tiger Woods fan. Upon maturity, he will add in the corporation that feeds him. But rarely will Dad help him identify with his own innate personal qualities, or experience them in the context of a family, a neighborhood, a church.

Is he the handy one? the socialite? the philosopher? the one who relates well to kids? These things seem too quaint; he would rather play games with technology.

Too much sports thinking narrows a man to a competitor who never learns empathy or compassion. He prefers fantasy to real life and persistently engages in magical thinking.

Men are supposed to take risks, and men are supposed to do physical things, but they are also supposed to outgrow sports.

When starting out these days, men don’t want their own business, they seek JOBS. They are discouraged from manual labor and sit at desks. Once they bring home the paycheck, they spend their time with sons on a sofa, safely expelling pent-up testosterone. It’s a lifestyle which seems vaguely manly, but in reality is passive and effeminate.

Men are supposed to be the head of the family, the movers and shakers in the community.

A man should know his strengths and weaknesses, whom he will trust and whom he won’t. Men need to grow into adults who make judgments and solve problems. Instead, our man pursues a higher salary, keeps trying to “win” with a better score.

Upon marrying, he is unprepared for the real relationship his wife demands. Give-and-take equals failure. When the children come, he leaves intuitive things to her, and now they are both prey for “experts,” politicians, and teachers.

HOUSEWIFE

And me? They called me a “slacker,” but I stayed home for the kids. My better half did most of his fathering from an easy chair.

Does today’s man even know it’s role reversal for women to be in charge of the children, deciding issues of discipline, or representing the family to the school and the community?

How is it a man feels he has “contributed” simply because he changed a diaper or went to a Little League game? There’s that GAME business again. Games are supposed to be a rehearsal for the real thing, yet a life centered on spectator sport lacks reality.

A woman may not even understand why she is fed up and leaving, spewing vengeance and cleaning out your bank account – the pressure on today’s woman is tremendous.

As for my Dad, he lived in an era before IRAs, an effeminate invention excessively focused on security.

Once he accumulated excess capital, he bought LAND. My mother was bewildered, but she had the wisdom to follow him out to the countryside. She watched him plan and build a home just the way she wanted it. They chopped wood and raised chickens and grew tomatoes. It doesn’t get any more real than that. He had enough children to easily take care of him in his retirement.

The more exposure my father had to the culture over the course of his lifetime, the more my father essentially refused to assimilate into American life.