Round 7 - Leroy’s dad and grandfather (and Panto villain JRM introduced to make a point) (chapter 5)

Leroy also boxed professionally, as had his father, but was less dismissive of the amateurs at the gym than most. He sees himself only as ‘street smart’ so his physicality is his only source of negotiable ‘capital’. His father and grandfather were both abusive and largely, or often, absent. Many boxers see such abuse as inherited. He still desired a,‘different scenario for my little lad’ (p92). 

Leroy lived in a pub for while on a rough estate where his dad’s hard reputation was needed and she records him saying, ‘we had a dog, a pitbull, and that used to be involved in the fights (p86)’. Walking to school one might be robbed or see ‘cars blown up’ (p89). Is this dogfights or the dog weighing in on human ones? Either way some reference to Maria Kasperson on dangerous dogs or Simon Harding on status dogs or even the mentions I make of cock and dog fighting might have been made.

Leroy had originally not wanted to be a boxer having seen his father come home ‘broken’ (p87) and I’m reminded of the accusation that the boxing impresario Don King, a successfully rehabilitated ex-convict, was someone who ‘for 15 cents will put boys in the ring and girls on the street’ (in Johnson and Long, 2008:122). I conclude in my book that boxing is like sex work in its use of the body.

At his first school his father’s fearsome reputation had some cachet but on a move to a more middle class school it held against him with teachers, perhaps sharing the belief in the heritability of violence, and fellow pupils unimpressed. I take this as an opportunity to point out differing and fluid hierarchies of masculinity contending to be hegemonic. For instance, Jacob Rhys Mogg’s posh languid style is often seen as effete (feminine) but he is rich, successful and has the balls to father many children. His lying on the benches of the Commons is a form of ‘trash’ talk. The violence he and his colleagues can unleash is structural not visceral. An ideologically-rendered invisible but toxic masculinity. Neither Deborah or I are going to be invited to do an ethnography of Eton as cause/cure of rampant villainy.

We are told Leroy’s sister ‘felt less pressure … in defending the family name’ (p95)but guess a concern would have been shown should she dishonour it. We are reminded of Sennett and Cobb, 1973) on the hidden injuries of class men like Leroy suffer. Their comments throughout about the place of women in society suggest they may also subscribe to a belief in the looming injuries of feminism. There is only one indexed mention of feminism (p23) and none of racism!