Review of Chapter 6 of Sport and Crime

 Chapter 6 Cultural Criminology, Sport and Transgression

The chapter opens with Ferrell et al’s (2008) discussion in cultural criminology of informal fighting which opens that invitation to cultural criminology. But Millward et al note that the connection directly to sport is not made. This chapter rides the contradictory ambiguous line between sport and violence. This is fully in line with my work.

Millward et al examine the history of cultural criminology. My own journey involves studying sociology and popular culture as an Open University student on courses imbued with the work of Stuart Hall and feel all of my criminology has taken account of cultures.

This culminated in my PhD on joyriding set in the context of the wider ‘car culture’. I did not use the term ‘edgework’ but did cite Lyng and Mitchell (1995). Millward et al focus on work on BASE jumpers and I make something of parkour and its move from outlaw status to ‘sport’ considered for the Olympics.

Millward et al go onto consider Mixed Martial Arts and even Bare-Knuckle Boxing. Clearly these tread that ambiguous line between legitimate and illegitimate violence (see also Dale Spencer and Karen Corteen’s chapters in Power Played on MMA and wrestling respectively.

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!

A brief reflection on homosociality in boxing and MMA

As some of you might have noticed this is not just a review of Deborah Jump’s excellent The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance but often a restatement of some of my own work. Indeed an attempt to clarify in my own mind some of these issues. Please join in on here or twitter. This little inter-round ‘ring girl’(?) does not relate to any particular chapter but to the theme of homosociality which I detect throughout but goes unnamed as far as I can determine currently.

I offer no definition of my own other than to say I disliked the all male grammar school I attended, much of the all male Scouts and rugby. I see I only used the term once in my PhD, in a discussion on the extent of homophobia amongst the boys and young men.

A quick look on Google Scholar for ‘homosociality boxing’ through up a number of items and I was intrigued by the following.

Bird’s (1996) WELCOME TO THE MEN'S CLUB Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity is clearly a starting point.  She notes:

The men who described themselves as less competitive (or noncompetitive), on the other hand, explained that they considered the intensity with which other men engaged in competitions (especially sports) as relatively unimportant for them- selves. At the same time, however, these men recognized the expectations of masculinity to be competitive. One man explained, Guys don't know what it means not to be competitive. Even those men who tell you that competition is silly know they have to [compete]. It's like otherwise you're gonna get walked.

Silly me, I’m doing it now.

I very much like Ungar’s recent PhD on The Boxing Discourse in Late Georgian England, 1780-1820: A Study in Civic Humanism, Gender, Class and Race which makes extensive use of the term. His understanding of the hegemonic seems to accord with my own. For instance, ‘Politeness was “French” and foreign; boxing was “English” (p74). 

Stenius (2015) also addresses homosociality in The Body in Pain and Pleasure An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts.

Doubly interesting is Jennifer Ruth Lewis-Vidler PhD on Traveller, Boxer and Fascist: The Identities of Joe Beckett which deploys the concept liberally and has material on Tyson Fury.

Round 5 - our first contender, Frank (chapter 3)

Frank’s narrative is the soteriological one of salvation through boxing, from identifying as a gang member to identifying as a boxer to the extent that he takes pleasure that people came use ‘Boxer’ as his name rather than Frank.

He is 31 and has boxed since he was 12. As a young black man he had little trust in people from the Feds to Deborah herself, initially. His first experience was of boxing with others, who like him, had been excluded from school. He knew that some of them couldn’t take the physical demands. Which reminds me of Cloward and Ohlin on illegitimate opportunities for crime/deviance not always presenting themselves. No boxing gym was available to me, nor would likely have succeeded, in my troubled teenage years. Becoming a discontented civil servant and then maverick academic has had mixed success in building my sense of self. Very much an ongoing project. Retirement requires a new narrative as we’ll see later in Eric’s story. Yes, I’ve peeked ahead.

Frank’s initial access to a gym was blocked by postcode rivalries. A gym in every ‘hood needed obviously. He is now settled in one gym where he trains others and earns his living as a bouncer. Shaw and Haysom (2016) found organised crime connections between bouncers and boxing in South Africa, a ‘bouncer mafia’. For a bouncer boxing also serves as the necessary bodywork (a recurring issue throughout book). An investment of, ‘physical capital’ (p51).

Prompted by Frank she notes, of all the men, ‘that their definition of respect meant the ability to intimidate and command fear’ (p52). In this search for respect Anderson’s Code of the Street is key. And supporting Cloward and Ohlin’s view Frank has this to say about his opportunities, ‘Prison, death or shit jobs’ (p56). Perhaps part of the code of the streets is to think that there are jobs that are not shit. But in good news for the social control theorists Frank felt he’d found a ‘new crew’ (p56).

On the way back to the gym after one long interview in a nearby cafe Deborah and Frank came across a group of drunken youths who Frank felt were ‘eyeballing’ them. The moment passed so  Frank refrained from, “‘fuckin’ them up”. It is not clear if this is just standard male paranoia or Frank’s own locally situated one but influenced by Mulvey I’d want to explore why, for many men, being looked at is like being screwed. His big body is meant to say don’t look at me as I am terrifying. But it also says I’m terrified that you’ll penetrate me and that’ll make me the punk. Perversely I have written more in this queer vein elsewhere.

In that work I said this:

Reiss likes to keep his animals in separate cages in the name of sociology. As he says: ‘From a sociological point of view, the peer–queer transaction occurs between two major types of deviators – ‘delinquent’ and ‘queers’(1968/61: 375)’. He sets out exceptions to the norms of the ‘peers’ and has this to say about their identity:

Boys are very averse to being thought of in a queer role or engaging in acts of fellation. The act of fellation is defined as a ‘queer’ act. [. . .] Boys who accept the female role in sexual transactions occupy the lowest status position amongst delinquents. They are ‘punks’. (1968/61: 377)

This despite such exceptions to these norms as Danny S., leader of the Black Aces ‘a fighting gang’ who tells Reiss: ‘we all get blowed by this queer . . . we don’t get any money then . . . it’s more a drinking party’ (1968: 376). Or this on their experiences with a boxing instructor from the State Training School:‘He’s got a cabin up there on the creek and he blows us. But mostly we just drink and have a real good time’ (1968: 376).

Which lead me to say over twenty years ago:

Today we might want to go beyond interaction to the ‘interpenetration’ of these worlds, to examine what such sexual activity meant for them and how their views of homosexuality might be challenged by a boxing gay.

And back to the homosocial Frank admits being a bouncer, working on the door, pays the bills but like the gym it’s where, ‘the boys hang out’ (p60).

Round 4 (chapter 2)

Round 4 presents some challenges but not ad hominem ones

This chapter expands on much of what went before rendering some of my comments above redundant. She expands on the history, and notes, ‘boxing clubs have a long history of engaging young men’ (p17). I agree it is not just grant-seeking behaviour but often altruistic or enthusiast led. Some of my motor projects were like that but once established the need for funds sometimes required redrafting aims and objectives or nomenclature to secure funding (sometimes whilst carrying on as before).

Much use of Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process and mention of ‘muscular christianity’ (p21)!

We then move into the sport and masculinity literature with Sabo’s Jock: sports & male identity and much Connell.  She argues, and I completely agree, sport is, ‘a perfect starting point for investigation how individuals actively construct meaning around gender, power and masculinity’ (p24). Let’s hope this work and that of a few others will kick this off.

I am taken with her brief use of Dutton’s The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Physical Development (who looked at bodybuilders and strippers) to say, ‘the masculine body moved from symbol of beauty to symbol of power’ (p25) as she also uses Fussell’s book on bodybuilding (p30). No citation to hand (if you know of one please let me know) but I’ve always thought (my personal male perspective?) that bodybuilders and male strippers, however muscly, are like male models, ‘to-be-looked-at’ and therefore seen to be passive like women subject to the male gaze and not active male gazers. Whereas the scrawniest of boxers or mixed martial artists may be granted the title, ‘manly’.

I don’t think she uses the term homosocial (not in index) but much of this seems to be about the problem of being largely in the company of men without being seen to be gay. I think we are are on the same page here as she quotes Messner thus, ‘being out there with the guys - being friends … [having] some kind of closeness’ (p27). She goes on to use him to argue that the ‘less skilled, less competitive boys’ could become alienated from the sport that might have shored up their masculinity. My joyriders were not sporty (other than illegal motorsporty) and tended to the ectomorphic rather than the traditional mesomorphic athlete/criminal.

Have to pull out this quote as I take it to be important:

I am still convinced that combat sports sport provides an arena in which men can deny vulnerability, disavow anxiety and thus distance themselves from the intimate feminine other and subsequent marginalised male (p32)

But add that video-games and e-sport now offering ways to fight and joyride digitally and even these may involve virtual and real offending. Gamergate gives no hope that these nerdier/wimpy men (hypomasculine?) are ready for disavowal. We shall see if she can flesh out the ‘how’ of this.

See I’m cited (p35) in the section on sport as pro-social along with the cheerleaders for sport and social control theorists. Thought I’d done a better job than that of covering the field from biological to post-modern takes on sport and crime as cause/cure. Rightly lots of Nichols (2007) and Meek (2018) and others but reviewing the literature Deborah finds, ‘little evidence that participation in sport offered new peer networks’ (p38) and, ‘the argument that an attachment to role models in the form of trainers or coaches immediately reduces delinquency is a common misconception’ (p39).  Agreed.

On sport as potential cause we have Trimbur (2009:263) noting, ‘One can be an accomplished drug salesman and Golden Gloves champion’ (p40) and Kreager (2007:708) ‘attests’ (p41), ‘by applying lessons learned from sports, athletes may perceive violence and intimidation as acceptable means of achieving of-field goals’. And boxers and participants in other ‘power sports’ may have a higher probability of being involved in violence (Edreson and Olweus, 2005).

Round 3 - in which we may trade some blows (chapter 1)

I promised to float butterfly-like and not be bee-like but I do have to start with the title of this chapter, ‘Boxing as Sports Criminology’. I admit to being miffed. I called my book Sports Criminology, this blog Sports Criminology and regularly tweet using that hashtag so not to get a mention here is gutting.

In my book I dance about the term never really settling (that butterfly again) but think I conclude, against the book’s own title, that there is no such thing as sports criminology just a big playing field called criminology in which sport and the ludic should be taken seriously. Mind you I also argue against green and queer criminologies on the same basis but include both as perspectives in my own work. However, my efforts to break down inter- and intra- disciplinary barriers are usually ignored.

A more dispassionate complaint is that I don’t think she actually engages with the term in the chapter or elsewhere. She discusses both the sport of boxing and criminology but never brings them together. Later in the chapter she uses a word I’ve never come across ‘decussate’ (p14) in another context. Perhaps she has brought the lines of sport and criminology together on the page to form > <  but not yet an X?

In her potted history we jump from ancient Greece to the 2012 Olympic Games with the perceived ‘civilising influence’ (p5) of boxing to the fore. She doesn’t use the term ‘muscular christianity’ and neither does Petty Officer Second Class Ian McCoy, of the U.S. Navy (a serendipitous discovery of mine) who only recently argued that 'Boxing Can Boost the Navy’s Fighting Spirit'.

Specifically he says:

Boxing is the essence of the fighting man (my emphasis) the value is not that in the skill that is acquired though that too has real value for hand to hand combat, but because it quickly acclimates the body and mind to the violence and shock so foreign to modern day youth, yet so absolutely essential to fighting men (my emphasis) the history of boxing is essentially the story of the molding of the combative or fighting instinct of man into a moral substitute for war.

Yet the Navy Institute who host this website illustrate the article with a picture of two women fighting!

Much of her fieldwork was done during the period around the 2012 Olympic Games and over six months she, ‘situated myself as a boxer’ (p6). She also reveals her history as a youth justice practitioner in reparation and rehabilitation. My own decision to study joyriding came from my Home Office days visiting probation led motor projects.

She moves on to discuss boxing gyms as sites of research and notes Wacquant (2004), Woodward (2007), Ingen (2011), and Trimbur (2013).  She notes growth in numbers of registered boxers including increased numbers of women. Intriguingly she also mentions Page McBee’s (2018) account of becoming the first trans man to box competitively at Madison Square Gardens. Obviously much sports politics now concentrating on trans women but this case obviously touches on what it is to be a man as the sub-title screams, Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man. If I gave him the wool would he make me one? I hope to here more on these gender and sexuality matters.

She picks out Anthony Joshua’s trajectory ‘From Drug Offences to Heavyweight Stardom’ (Daily Telegraph, 6 April 2016) as typical of the boxing saved me from jail narrative that sometimes serves as the only evaluation of the sport as a potential crime prevention/desistance measure. My version of this appears in chapter 7 of my book and references, by way of balance, Aaron King’s '10 best boxers who went to prison’. 4 years on I realise I’d wanted to explore Traveller boxers and wonder if this will arise. Tyson Fury is currently hitting the headlines in both sport and crime categories.

Before moving on to discuss her methods she asserts, ‘boxing and football came to be symbolic representations of working-class masculinity’ which prompts two thoughts. First to agree but then to want to separate boxing out as so much more involving - more total a way of life for some. Six months for her but longer for her subjects. Secondly to note the issue of a specific class-based masculinity because elsewhere in common with many she tends to elide masculinities into the ‘hegemonic’. Perhaps because I don’t own it as my masculinity or because of my exposure to Stuart Hall’s take on Gramsci adumbrated through OU courses I see even the hegemonic as contested. My nerdy wordy masculinity wouldn’t cut in the gym but on this blog maybe.

Methodology nerds only get a few paragraphs about narrative interviewing and citations of the work of her supervisor David Gadd on the importance of the psychosocial. Her question is ‘Tell me the story of how you became a boxer’ (p10) but I still want to know, beyond the few clues she gives, also how she came to want to do a PhD on boxing. On the question of the psychosocial also glad to see the External Examiner of my PhD Tony Jefferson cited.

She then moves on to various theories of desistance and the age-curve question. She then foreshadows her individual chapters on Frank, Eric and Leroy. Frank ‘saw violence as a way to accrue respect and command obedience and Eric sought to build, ‘a carapace of muscle’ (p14). This reminded me of some women’s narratives of weight gain to protect them from the male gaze or expectations of femininity. Leroy was seen to be trying to deal with ‘the hidden injuries of class’ (p14) (Sennett and Cobb, 1973).

Boxing we are rather dramatically we are told offers, ‘a distraction from the atrocities that these men may have faced’! We shall see.

Review of Deborah Jump's 'The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance - round 2 (introduction)

Leaving James’s auto-picaresque tales we come to Deborah’s introduction and an update from ringside. Deb has tweeted me that she played rugby and trained to black belt in wushu kung fu. Given more space this might have featured in the ethnography chapters on Frank, Eric and Leroy.  I think more space should be made for reflexivity in criminology generally and am disappointed it doesn’t get to feature here.

Glad to see she emphasises the violence of boxing and the need to ‘challenge masculine discourses in present within the gym’ that, ‘can compound violent attitudes and male domination’ (p1). Specifically she argues, ‘that the enclave of the gym and the majority of its members are actually compatible with violent criminogenic attitudes’ (p2). She sets out her intention to outline boxing and gyms as a suitable site for sociological research. Her theoretical base is in psychosocial approaches to desistance in which boxing is the ‘hook for change’ (Giordano et al, 2002).

The motor projects I studied tended to assume the benefits (homeopathic?) of giving access to cars to those convicted of, or ‘at risk’ of, car crime offending. Theories of change evaluation was underdeveloped then and I handed out Home Office Probation Service Division grants on accounts, rough throughput figures, claims of reduced offending and occasional visits. Specific worked out theories of change seem to go beyond mere ‘hooking’ and we’ll see if these get mentioned explicitly later. They seem to be implicit in her argument so far. Thus she argues, ‘it is easy to fill boxing gyms with recalcitrant youth and walk away, hoping for for a more disciplined and respectful one to walk out’ (p2). Or again, she suggests, ‘we look more closely at the mechanisms’ (p3). I’d probably want to quote  some Nick Tilley here. How do we test the idea that diluted violence can cure violence?

She talks rightly of the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ (p3) but I know from my HO days (late ’80 to mid ‘90s) handing out grants of the pressure on organisations to have a good narrative and celebrity backers that may shade any proper evaluation. Moreover that might then have to be turned on its head if the grant regime changes. I had a budget to spend I admit I sometimes gave them hints.

Review of Deborah Jump's 'The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance - round 1 (foreword)

I welcome this book, in part for selfish reasons but very much in its own right. My selfish reasons relate to my hope that this book shows I was right to try to tie sports sociology and law to a critical criminology (and tip of the hat to Andrew Millie and Policy Press for believing it too). In my book I suggest antecedents and like to see this and the work of Kennedy and Silva as potential descendants.

As this review is not for a journal I don't have to stick to a word limit or format. It also means I can be quicker. I propose to shamelessly deploy boxing and other sporting metaphors throughout.

Too great a use of social media and my own mental capacities mean that a short form suits me: let's call them rounds. I'll make a few jabs, possibly essay a combination, cover then withdraw, have my second towel me down before getting back off my stool.

So seconds out round 1.

Stepping into the ring I find Jump has tagged James Treadwell in (see Corteen on wrestling).

'Protect yourself at all times' opens his foreword and immediately he fesses up to his own fandom of and participation in the 'Sweet Science' and lifelong familiarity with boxing gyms.

I did not. My sporting life was schoolyard soccer, rugby and judo before settling on running. Rugby carried on into my late 20s and I failed to 'protect myself' (no shin pads or gum shield then) but got more black eyes from occasional squash! My most martial activity was the judo. A small club with respect for each other and the Japanese origin of the sport. I fought young women and old men. Luckily groundwork didn't cause too much embarrassment from intimacy issues but I can now, in a Proustian moment, recall the alcohol-scented breath of one older man. The 30 seconds holding down required for ippon seemed an age.

I mention my, and James’s, sporting life because I'm not sure we find out Deborah's but we shall see.

James goes on to demonstrate the community of boxing globally and across criminal and non-criminal worlds. Like many men I can talk sport and for my PhD on joyriding and car culture, though no petrolhead, had to talk ‘car’. I kept my green reservations to myself in fieldwork and I'm sure I'd not mention Mayweather's domestic violence history or Pacquiao's tax affairs if talking to Australian gangsters.

Though I can talk sport, I’m not enthusiastic about all sport: motor racing for green reasons and boxing because I’m a pussy! Having established his hardman credentials James praises Deborah, seeing in her, ‘a once-in-a-lifetime prospect every coach seeks’. Clearly a Million Dollar Book.

Most significantly he concludes, ‘Jump never falls into the trap of seeing boxing as a panacea for all social ills’, which is reassuring but I will also be looking to see how she deals with the opposite assertion that all sport is male violence and a cause of further violence - often against women and marginalised and demonised communities.

I hope to float like a dilettante butterfly but not sting like a provoked bee.

Obviously a deficiency of my approach is that I may pick up on a point in one round only to find that the counter-punch comes in the next. But I also hope that people may engage. I may have to change my stance, become a southpaw even.

Consider this sparring.

Fight Club - a prison of masculinity?

First rule of Fight Club is broken by former Prison Officer at HMYOI Feltham in blowing the whistle about fights organised by Officers amongst inmates.

I touched on some of these issues when I reviewed Rosie Meek’s work on Sport in Prison.  This is what I said about boxing:

For every boxer who claims that without the sport he would have ended in prison (for instance Luis Collazo) we might find lists of the ten best boxers who ended up in prison.  And yet we also have Prison Fight a charity which claims world connections but seems only to be Thai-based and uses Thai boxing as rehabilitation and holds out the possibility of amnesty; but to my untutored eye it looks exploitative.

Yet boxing rates only 3 mentions in Meek's book: one to note that in her survey boxing was the favoured activity for inmates though banned at the time (p109); that it had recently been approved for use with non-violent offenders (p33) and that it was now offered in a number of establishments (p28). 

In ITV’s Bring Back Borstal the ‘boys’ play a game of Rugby Union against a local team and go on cross country runs - shades of the book and film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - but they do not box.  Several fights break out and a punch ball takes a hammering in Episode 3 to allow one young man to ‘let off some steam'.  In Meek’s mentions and more generally it is not clear whether boxing training - i.e. pad work, speed ball, skipping or running - is meant or more serious sparring or even a boxing match - with headguards and gumshields.  Organisations like Boxing Academy and Fight for Peace use ‘boxing training’.

So it is interesting to come across Deborah Jump’s article in the Howard League’s Early Career Network Bulletin 26 based on her PhD ethnography in a boxing gym which concludes:

… this article discusses and elaborates on existing assumptions in sporting and desistance literature, and argues that while relevant, diversionary activities and sport-based programmes that incapacitate are only one element in the theory of change. In conclusion, I have argued that boxing actually traps men in an attendant culture of respect that requires them to respond in aggressive ways to maintain an image of both masculinity and respect. This attendant culture, that is transposable between gym and street, can override the pro-social incapacitating elements that the gym can offer, and reinforces the logic and discourses that evokes and traps men in habits of responding to violence. Therefore, in terms of future policy and practice, new directions need to be sought.

I agree and believe it chimes with my work on motor projects for my PhD where masculinity was an issue too.  Whilst I drive a car - and have done for over 40 years - I’m no ‘petrolhead’ and incline to the ‘green’.  However, I sort of concluded that motor projects for joyriders - where they get to fix and race cars - made sense within a ‘car culture’.  That is not that they ‘work’ but that the logic is interesting.

So boxing for violent men also makes sense in our current culture and is a targeted ‘bait’ for desistance work for some.  Boxing has been more acceptably mainstream in the past and my only experience of it is in boxing training - and Deborah’s article is illustrated with her in boxing attire, pose and surroundings - but as a former rugby union player cannot claim to be as non-violent as I’d wish.

If I understand Deborah correctly then I believe we are both saying that crime associated with troubling and troublesome masculinities can be ameliorated by working with that masculinity but that in the longer term work on masculinity needs doing.

How do we get men to talk about rape? Might the issue of consent in sport be a way in?

For very good campaigning reasons many feminists argue that ‘rape is rape’.  Despite being a supporter of feminism, I cannot, as a criminologist, accept that any crime is exactly the same as any other crime.  Moreover, I understand, and am uncomfortable with, arguments like MacKinnon’s (Feminism Unmodified ) that under the patriarchy all heterosex is non-consensual.  Here I want to illustrate differences in crimes and attitudes to them through a discussion of assault by men on other men; mostly in sport.

The link is the tricky one of consent, where sports law texts find themselves quoting the Spanner case (R v Brown) which involved sado-maschistic practices. That case necessarily has much discussion of boxing and fights in the street in seeking to discuss consent before finding against the men.  Reflecting on the case Carol Smart compared consent in rape and homosexual acts noting that women’s ‘no’ is taken for ‘yes’ and homosexual men’s ‘yes’ for ‘no’.

But to sporting consent.  This post is inspired by the recent case of Ben Flowers and a reminder from Christopher Matthews of the violence in Ice Hockey which reminded me of the violence of professional wrestling which Corteen and Corteen cover.  I rely on Matt Rogers for the facts and some of the law and can recommend his extensive analysis of ‘implied sporting consent’. 

Flowers received a six month ban from Rugby League Football (RFL) at the hands of the its match-review panel.  It represents potentially missing 13 games and is the most severe option open to the panel.  Interestingly the Sky sport website offers a feedback poll on the question. 

This is how matters stood on 3 November 2014. 

More interestingly the question might have been should his actions have been subject to police action - perhaps, there and then.  It would seem that Greater Manchester Police propose not to disturb the RFL’s jurisdiction but are investigating threats of summary informal justice on social media against Flowers.

As a one-time Rugby Union player, and more occasional informal soccer player, and largely TV viewer I’m aware of the cultures of such sports.  I believe I’ve received more violence than given in my sporting career but make no claims to sainthood.  The odd kick in the face is the price of entry for an open water swim triathlon.  I’ve received some and must have unintentionally given some.

We might construct a continuum of consensual violence for different sports with Ice Hockey and Professional Wrestling at one end where illegal moves - often punches - are expected and tennis or golf at the other end.  Indeed the crowd would be disappointed if violence did not occur at Ice Hockey or Pro Wrestling.  In boxing structured violence is de rigur but hitting below the belt, mauling or fighting at the weigh in (think Haye v Chisora in what the BBC call a ‘brawl’) is penalised as is ‘not trying’ British Board of Boxing Control rule 3.38 (g).

The audience for boxing goes for the formal violence of the sport but may be happy to see some additional informal violence, may even participate in some (on behalf of their man).  Rugby and football crowds often enjoy a little ‘handbags’ (the feminised disavowal of the violence is interesting). Ed Smith suggests that wider society has fallen out of love with boxing as we have become less tolerant of violence (an Elisian thought?).  He muses on whether American football might decline in popularity because of on- and off- pitch violence.  Perhaps we might ask the same of Ice Hockey and Pro Wrestling and has a distaste for cheats - the simulation of fouls etc - reduced the popularity of soccer?

The shadow of simulation (and an implicit censure of soccer?) fell over Rugby Union recently in the suggestion that recent interpretations by officials of violent incidents would lead to diving.  As the Mail Online Headline has it:

RFU laws offer open invitation to game's divers as rugby is in danger of introducing football-style 'simulation' to con officials

Blair Gowan of London Irish is said to have punched Leicester Tiger’s Jamie Gibson in the face but received no yellow card.  Leicester’s complaint to the RFU was met with the answer that the player had not gone to the floor or needed treatment and that the penalty awarded was sufficient punishment.  The concern is that, knowing this rugby players will go to ground and pretend to be hurt (and here is a Samoan player attempting to do just that).  Note that for Rugby Union and in the  Ben Flowers’ case a punch is not a punch but in soccer it would be irrespective of effect.  And on the street it would be too.

Glenn Hoddle made exactly such a point in discussing Luis Suarez’s dental incontinence.  He suggested prison.  Clearly biting is beyond any implied consent and is seen to be unmanly, even childish.  This reminds us that in addition to the law of the land, the code of the game there are gender codes at work too.

The London Irish captain’s take on the punch was:

It’s rugby. If you pull up every incident like that and make a thing about it the game is going to go soft.

Soccer seems to have survived the ‘softness’ of banning hacking in 1863.

But to turn to Sport and Rape we might find MacKinnon in Ched Evans’s corner when she notes:  

Since rape is difficult to talk about, but men need to talk about it perhaps discussion of consent in sport might be a way in.  Just as a rapist may feel he was doing what any man would do so the on-pitch punch thrower may feel he too is only doing what any man might do.  Indeed he may have been the victim of punches in the past, including the immediately preceding past.

I am not so naive to imagine that by changing the way we talk about things will change matters but perhaps the sports authorities and media might use terms like victim and offender in these circumstances.  Should sport point out to players explicitly the issue of consent before each match?

Stepping on to the pitch does not mean you consent to being punched.  Stepping out does not mean you consent to rape and harassment - see Shoshana Roberts.