As a teenage male, I was very attracted to boxing. My dad, an athlete himself, always motivated me and my siblings to practice some level of physical activity. When I sought permission to box, my mom\u2019s response was, \u201cYou want to pay so people can punch your face?\u201d I was sure that my father would give me permission, though, and that his affection for athletics would convince my mom. His response: \u201cThe goal of athletics can never be to cause physical harm to another human being or animal.\u201d <\/p>\n
No, I couldn\u2019t box.<\/p>\n
I know today that you can practice boxing safely without ever punching another human being. But at that time and in our neighborhood, this was not an option. I know that being able to defend and protect yourself or others is important and requires training and hard work, including accepting that you will cause or receive physical harm. I also know that almost all kinds of sports can cause injuries to yourself, your teammates, or your opponents. However, in other sports, physical injuries are typically an unintended consequence and not the goal.<\/p>\n
So I ask, which understanding of social life<\/a> and human dignity would allow that people enter a \u201ccage\u201d and beat each other bloody? We call this type of fighting a sport today, but when the explicit aim is systematic trauma<\/a>, the distinction between athleticism<\/a> and spectacle collapses. We have evolved enough to know that bloodshed is not bravery. We have laws against assault in the street. Why, then, do we celebrate it when it is televised and sold (not to mention, often scripted and choreographed)?<\/p>\n If dignity means anything, it must mean that no human being is a tool for another\u2019s entertainment\u2014especially not through measured violence. When we pay to watch faces swell and bones crack, we are not celebrating the human spirit. We are paying for permission to forget that the person in the cage is someone\u2019s child, someone\u2019s father, someone\u2019s self\u2014reduced to a gladiator for our weekend thrill.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not pretend that consent erases the ethical question. Consent explains the contract, but does not justify the culture. The question isn\u2019t whether they agreed but why we feel entitled to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a teenage male, I was very attracted to boxing. My dad, an athlete himself, always motivated me…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-748652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}