HOMOPHOBIA FEEDING OUR BOXER POOL?
Unbeaten Ciso Morales
New York, NY– What would you do if you were repeatedly accused of being gay? Some people come out of the closet, while others honestly declare their heterosexual preferences. Others still keep silent and tell the snooping parties to mind their own business. Upcoming Philippine fighter Ciso “Kid Terrible” Morales (14-0, 8 KOs) discovered he had enough talent to start a boxing career. Morales took to the largest newspaper in his country, the Manila Bulletin, to tell the world that boxing turned his life of ambiguous sexuality around. “Those who called me gay before are now my closest friends and they now show me some respect,” he beams. So what to make of a morality tale where our sport is the means to gay liberation (in the sense of boxers being liberated from being called gay)?
SHADY JOURNALISM FROM MANILA BULLETIN
The snippet in the Manila Bulletin is a curious nugget of journalism. For one, its author, Dennis Principe, seems not to do much probing in Morales’ professional life. The fact that Morales is fighting for the WBO bantamweight title on Valentine’s Day is little more than a footnote at the end of the piece. Did Principe take the time to contact a boxer and talk to him only about that one time someone called him gay when he was little? No talk of strategy or his thoughts on his upcoming fight? Principe is probably not a sports writer, so it would be unfair to expect an in-depth analysis of the upcoming matchup with Fernando Montiel (39-2-2, 29 KOs), but there is something amiss about the amount of effort it takes to contact a fighter for a story in the Philippine equivalent of the New York Times for something so trivial.
GAY BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
As for Morales’ gay problem itself, it is a strange way to introduce yourself to the public. Perhaps it is an attempt to endear himself with a hyper-masculine boxing audience, but wouldn’t those individuals care more about his style than such a mundane aspect of his young life, anyway? There are two main possibilities about what circumstances created this story: either this is a PR faux pas on Morales’ part to try and create talk about him (which, if I’m writing about him, may not be all that much of a faux pas), or he gave a lengthy interview including these comments that was heavily edited for maximum interest to the audience of the Bulletin. Either way, he isn’t the first or the last fighter to take up the sport to take on bullies, nor is he the first fighter accused of liking to do a little more to other men than beat them up. “Gay” is a common slur in the underbelly of the boxing community, though it is becoming decreasingly common among professional fighters. Lennox Lewis (41-2-1, 32 KOs) famously became incensed with Hasim Rahman (45-7-2, 36 KOs) for “starting with that gay stuff,” and, most famously, Emile Griffith (85-24-2, 23 KOs) killed opponent Beny “Kid” Paret (35-12-3, 10 KOs) in the ring in large part do to the latter’s persistent taunts centered around Griffith’s sexuality. But Lewis was alert enough to imply Rahman was undignified for his language, and the Griffith case was nearly a half century ago (and Griffith did end up coming out). Not to mention that being accused of homosexuality wasn’t what attracted either of these fighters to the sport to begin with. They were boxers who, in the middle of his career, faced the accusation. Neither of them were known as “they guy people used to call gay” straight out of the stable.
INSULTED BY DECLARATIVE, KIND OF BENIGN STATEMENT
Another fascinating thing about Morales’ comments on the matter is that he does not go into details of the names he was called, other than “gay”. Perhaps this is a factor of the nature of Tagalog (which I don’t speak; please leave me a comment if you do and have a linguistic answer to this), where the insult does not translate into anything more offensive than “gay.” There is no evidence he was called a promiscuous gay, or an AIDS-ridden one, or a drag queen, or anything more specific than having an interest in other guys. Perhaps it is self-censorship when describing his experiences in public. In any case, the accusation seemed grave enough to make him turn to a proactive solution, rather than simply denying it and adding a simply “not that there’s anything wrong with that” and moving on with his life.
SAME OL’ SAME OL’ IN THE SPORT
Of course this is the norm in most cultures, and of course it is the norm in boxing. Stories of young men taking up the sport to enhance their defensive abilities against schoolyard enemies are ubiquitous. There are two very prominent worrisome aspects of this story. The first is that love of the sport is being given the passengers’ seat to the vague concept of “defending manhood.” While many in the sport will argue that the beauty of boxing is precisely to watch fighters defend their manhood (in the traditional, gender-related sense, not the Harvey Mansfield asexual definition of manliness exemplified by Margaret Thatcher), this kind of speech should not be condoned in any sport in 2010. To see it in the pages of a major international newspaper, in an article that does not speak to the abilities and professional experiences of the fighter at hand, is a disarming fall back into the dismal realities of acceptance in the boxing community.