[Spinoza's Argument Against Freewill and the Freedoms of Thailand's Muay Thai]

If you want to get a broader sense of what a constructed, relative freedom of a Westerner through the cultivated training in the fighting art of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai might look like, consider Bourdieu's concepts of Habitus, Doxa and Hexis:

 

[Spinoza's Argument Against Freewill and the Freedoms of Thailand's Muay Thai]

 

 

The 17th century philosopher famously denied the freedom of the will. There was no separate, wholly independent power of choice or decision which cut us off from our histories or the world at large as we have lived in it, floating above it in a divinity of autonomy. We feel free when we make choices, but we are not free. This fundamental feeling of freedom that all of us experience is one of the most intractable obstacles for such a claim. It turns perhaps our most salient feature as thinking beings into an illusion. Can it really be that every single choice I've made has been done under a powerful illusion? Can the words I'm typing right now be caused by a myriad of things, almost all of which I'm blind to, and not by my fundamental choice, or series of choices, to type them?

This tension between our daily experiences of our selves makes of Spinoza's claim one of two things: It is either a powerful unveiling of the nature of our world, and of ourselves giving radical insight into the truths and powers behind our otherwise blind experience; or it is a kind of Science Fiction of theory, something Philosophy can be good at - an interesting and provoking model of the world which isn't really true at all, but is enjoyable or entertaining to try on and think about. When asked: Did you freely choose to say the words you just said? Spinoza's view tends to fall into Science Fiction for us. Of course I did. In this article I hope to appeal to the experiences of training in and fighting in Thailand's Muay Thai to illuminate just what Spinoza means by the denial of the freedom of the will, and why it is important for our lives.

I'm going to be page quoting at length from the book: Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization by Hasana Sharp in part because it is the book I'm reading now, and these thoughts flow from her discussion of Spinoza's position on Free Will. And also because she does a very nice job of presenting his claims and some of their consequences. I've been studying Spinoza and secondary works on him for 15 years and this is a really good one. If anyone has a hard time finding a copy of this book I can maybe help you, DM me.

The Determination of Speech and the Language of Muay Thai

One of the most dramatic targets of Spinoza's argument against the freedom of the will is the speech of human beings. The reason for this is that there seems nothing more quintessentially human than the act of speaking. It's supposedly what separates us out from the animal kingdom, and what people say helps us to determine, gauge or weigh who they are. What people say is important to us, and we also put a great deal of attention - at times - into deciding what to say. For many speech epitomizes the freedom of who we are. And Spinoza goes right at it. For him when we speak or write we are no more like madmen, drunks or gossips, people who feel that they are in control of what they are saying, but are not at all. Sober speech is just a difference of degree, not in kind, from drunk speech. "Sane" speech a difference in degree from insane speech. Intersubjective everyday speech a difference in degree from helpless gossip. Here he provides a foothold where experience can find itself in his claim that we are not in control of ourselves. When we reflect on what we've said or done when drunk we realize (often with shame) that we were not anywhere near as in control of ourselves as we thought at the time, when we were speaking freely or acting (too?) "freely". It felt radically free at the time, but in looking back it feels compulsed. We felt like we were choosing, but we were not. We can draw this analogy out toward times of extreme emotional duress, or mental illness, or in social situations were we get swept up in chains of gossip. Social media has taught us all new lessons about how the "social" dimension of news seems to give the news (and not news) a life of its own, riding along the compulsions of agreements and amplifications, all of which is done by agents who surely feel free - even radically free - in what they claim, but perhaps upon reflection at another point in history will show itself as compulsed. What Spinoza is after is actually this radical sense of freedom that is carried along with these speech acts, hoping to reveal them as actually their opposite. Drunk talk, the talk of mental illness, the social gossip talk are for him actually the model of ALL speech. All speech is conditioned, provoked and propelled by hidden causes, accompanied by a ghost feeling of freedom.

I think we do get somewhere with this analogy of the misleading feeling of freedom, but it still doesn't have enough traction to describe our everyday lives and the myriad of choices we make that seem to actually make up who we are, when not under the duress of a substance, an illness or waning character. The reason why we can tell, upon reflection, that we were not free in those more extreme circumstances is that we can compare them to our more sober, more plentiful moments. We can see the difference. But this is a difference in degree for Spinoza, not in kind.

Sylvie and I have used the analogy of language to describe the art of Thailand's Muay Thai. For many in the West when we come to Thailand and seriously learn the art of Muay Thai it's as if learning a language. It's words (strikes and blocks) as a fighting art, it's grammar (bodily ruup and tempos) are expressive things, especially because in Thailand fights are judged aesthetically, and not just in terms of damage done to opponents. Once you learn the basics of the language in order to become a proper Muay Thai fighter you have to learn to use them expressively, to express yourself, in the ring. There are hosts of styles and customs of performance that condition this expression, culturally, and like any language the meaning and role of modes of expression go quite deep into the ways of life of the Muay Thai kaimuay, and even of the people of Thailand, but ultimately, you are learning a signification system (a type of language), which physically can control the fight space, but also semiotically can signal or indicate that control, through gestures and postures. The body and the mind run in parallel in the Art of Muay Thai. If you want to look into the richness of this language, its cultural moorings and its study read my Trans-Freedoms Through Authentic Muay Thai Training in Thailand Understood Through Bourdieu's Habitus, Doxa and Hexis.

But let's get back to the basics of it. There is a very natural parallel I believe in the experiences of choosing words to say and choosing strikes to throw in a fighting art. When we are fluent in a language the "right" words will just come to us in an unconscious flow, just out of volition of speaking. This is an aim when learning to fight in a fighting art, and why the analogy of language can be an illuminating one. We want the strikes we have practiced to just come to us, at the right time, suitable for the conditions, just as words come to us in our mother tongue. When we look at the greatest fighters of Thailand, the Yodmuay of the 1980s and 1990s, they appear so seamless in their choices. In fact - importantly - they do not feel like choices at all. They fight with almost a condition of inevitability, through their style, rather than like a computer that has weighed a menu of options and then decided on one, the right one. They are poets. Most of us though, just want to speak the language, to use the strikes (and also checks, weight shifts, postures) practiced in a flowing way.

But this is what I'm pointing to. Everyone who has trained has the distinct experience that even though it is very clear in one's mind what one wants to do, you cannot do it. The volition is there, the action is not. This can simply be trying to throw a particular kind of kick on the bag and not being able to "get it". Or, it can be the frustration of trying to execute particular strikes, or plans or patterns while sparring. A little bit of pressure and all the volition in the world gets you nowhere. In fact, volition (trying really, really hard to do something) will often take you further from your goal of seamless action. This gap between volition and action is sometimes addressed in non-Thai versions of training by memorizing combinations, or certain footwork patterns. Under the auspices of the idea of "muscle memory" you rigorously train patterns over and over and over and learn to just DO them, regardless of context through commitment. You simplify the program and bite down. One can see how this approach can work to patch the problem, but one can also see how far it is from actual language use. I want to return to that fundamental frustration of the gap between volition and action. What is happening here in Spinozist terms?

What a Spinozist would say is that when you for instance freeze under the pressure of sparring, or throw a punch when you probably should be defending, you are under the power of causes you are not aware off. You are being forced into postures or tempos or reactions through your histories as a person, and (instinctively) genetically as an animal. Lineages of causes running out in every direction into the past are shaping you into those reactions. Determining you. When you learn a fighting art you are exposing yourself to new causal chains, new determinations which can over-write those histories and causes. But...importantly for Spinoza, this can only be done if the pleasures of coherence that you experience as an organism, from the training in the new art, are more powerful (joyful) than those of past histories, those causal chains. This is to say, the fluency in the language has to cash out as a greater experience of causal determination, as joy, than the sum of your past histories as a person and a being.

Spinoza and Freedom

I'm going to now go through the Hasana Sharp page quotations, with some notes:

above: For this analysis I'm going to substitute the general idea of choosing strikes in Muay Thai for choosing speech. We have an expectation when sparring or fighting that we should just freely be able to throw the strikes (or in more advanced fighting assume the composures) that we have in our mind and have trained. One of the more powerful dimensions of Spinoza's Philosophy is his parallelism, whereby he asserts that bodies exert causal force on other bodies, and that ideas exert causal force on other ideas, in parallel. In sparring/fighting this parallelism can be vital. Bodies are causally clashing, exerting force upon each other, but also ideas are bumping into each other as well. Warfare is as much mental as it is physical. Spinoza tells us that we are largely ignorant of what is even causing us to be under a certain disposition, or to be doing certain things rather than others. One reason I believe people are drawn to fighting itself is because it dramatically amplifies this regular uncertainty of everyday life, bringing forward. Learning to control oneself under adversity, and express oneself, feels like it is life valued work.

above. It is important that in understanding the why and how we throw a strike to not overvalue the experience of volition. This will lead to frustration. If we picture ourselves as fundamentally unfree beings, that is to say, largely conditioned and driven by unseen or unconscious causes, volition itself is not the lever point of action. Anyone learning a fighting art will understand this. The answer isn't "will harder!". Instead its about curating the realm of causes that shape you, and enriching the rootedness in the causal chains you would like to be subject to.

above. One of the beauties of Spinoza's approach is that he will fundamentally direct our attention to the affects (which encompasses: feelings, bodily feelings, emotions) we experience when doing something. Our experiences. What gives us to do one thing or another is a complex web of affects that chain down into our histories as a person. One of the most interesting applications of this proposed truth that it isn't our will power that chooses things, but rather how we have become accustomed to feel, is that in our training of Muay Thai or any fighting art, how we feel about the technique (let's say) is far, far more important than how it is technically executed. You can for instance machine part out a technique, but it will never fluidly enter into the matrix of decisions under pressure if you regularly feel bad (for instance self-critical) about that technique. You will seldom be able to "choose" it. I wrote about this a bit in: Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training. As mentioned on other occasions, correction (and the corresponding Western fear of building "bad habits") plays very little role in the instruction of Thailand's kaimuay Muay Thai. The reason for this is that the fighting art of Muay Thai is principally affective training, in the Spinozsist sense. Bodies are not being trained to assume positions and make movements while the authoritarian Mind then directs the trained body around, as in Western Cartesian Dualism (or to be directed by a governor coach). Instead the fighter is trained affectively to feel the fight.

above. This is really important. We sometimes do not realize just how much the Cartesian world model influences us through its essential split between the world of bodies and that of Mind. I mean, come on now, he was just a Philosopher nobody reads hundreds of years ago. But he's with us all to this day. Descartes articulated a view of the body and the mind which made of the passions of the body an obstacle of mental control. This is to say, the affects of the body are seen as the enemy of the Mind, things to be tamed, tamped down, quieted, so the Mind can just steer the whole thing. As Sharp sums up Spinoza's break from Descartes (who preceded him by a generation): "Self-cultivation is not antipathetic." You don't stop feeling things so you can be in control. The reason why I'm pointing this out so acutely is that this is a radical misunderstanding of many Westerners attempting to fight beautifully in Muay Thai (and possibly other fighting arts). They hear all the time from Thai trainers: "Sabai, Sabai". Relax, be at ease. Western tension is notorious in the rings of Thailand. To the Thai eye it just shows a lack of control. Westerners will war with themselves, trying to get themselves to relax. The reason why they don't understand "relax" is that they are all Cartesians. They believe if they can just drain the swamp of themselves of all feeling and emotion, the chain of ideas that domino through their heads, if they can just stop feeling things, then the Mind can be free to simply direct the emptied body. Like getting your dog to stop barking at the door bell, and listen to you. But Spinoza will tell you, this isn't how it works. You cannot negatively remove a powerful affect. You cannot subtract it from existence. You cannot antipathetize freedom. It's because the Mind and the Body are one thing. The Mind does not hover over an obedient (or rebellious) body. Instead Spinoza will tell you that the only that that can overcome a powerful affect is a MORE powerful affect. If you are in fear and tense, only a more powerful feeling can move the body and mind to a more free state. Muay Thai and its training is about the development of those feelings, those affects. This is a theoretical division in the metaphysics of Philosophy which has immediate bearing on the practice and development of fighting skills, in the ring.

above. This is how strikes are "chosen" in the fluency of the art. They are chosen because they flow from the determinations of a cultivated realm of causes, they come out of the necessity of the shape of who you are. It's not because you've emptied yourself of feeling, and your lording Mind is expertly judging what to do. (Video breakdowns of fight footage, as interesting as they are, actually do a disservice when they present the rationalization of choices in segmented parts. I've seen one well-known breakdownist even state something along the lines of "never do anything without a rational reason for it".) In fact, there is a name for this determined, necessity state of causes: Flow State. Sylvie and I talk about Flow State in our Podcast: Muay Thai Bones Podcast #9 - Orca, Sak Yant, Long Guard, Flow. Spinozist self-cultivation starts with the basic acknowledgement that we never wholly and radically act freely, and so relative freedom consists in attending to the realm of causes that shape you, creating physical and mental boundaries around the things that determine you. You are shaping yourself, and how you will naturally respond, though the conditioning of your influences and practice. You can only as a fighter - and a person - express things beyond you, so determining those things becomes an act of self-cultivation. Sylvie and I have talked about how the legend Dieselnoi will emphasize very small things like: How you go back to your corner, or how you come off of pads. How you take a drink of water. How you breathe when fatigued. The muay of legends is found in these very small things, because these are affective states. Affect is where the rubber meets the road in fighting. Not in the mechanics of the body.

above. One of the mysteries that Westerners encounter in Thailand is why aggression is so devalued in the Muay Thai ring. Aggression can be the crown jewel of western fighting. It's what Western audiences come to the screen to see. Aggression and its slippery slope step-brother anger. The reason why aggression reads so differently in Thailand is that Thais are Spinozists in the matter. (To be real about it, Spinozism has great parallel with Stoicism, and Stoicism maps quite well onto Buddhism. And Thailand and Muay Thai is Buddhistic.) The anger-prone, aggression filled fighter is the madman, the drunk, the gossip of physical action. He or she is not in control of his or her body or mind. Because traditional Muay Thai is an affective fighting art control and cultivation of oneself is of utmost priority. All the techniques and semiotics are about control: controlling your opponent, controlling the fight space and controlling oneself. And watching an angered fighter is like watching a drunk man. (This is something that is starting to change as Western internationalist values find greater footing withing Thailand's Muay Thai.)

above. The Western Man (gendered purposively) has evolved into the atomized Man, conceptually cut off from others at an ideal level. Ideas of Freedom and Willing are born out of a sense of the Self which is a single unit, defined and steered in solitary. There is a citadelled concept of Self and Power in the Western tradition which imagines that power consists of NOT being affected. It is a castle of the Self. We picture certain fighters this way too. Everything bounces off of them, or nothing touches them. Spinoza on the other hand takes the exact opposite stance towards power. Power he defines as the ability to be affected. The problem with something like anger, or bodily tension isn't that you are being TOO affected. Its that you are cut off from being affected by reserves of power and influence which can free you. If you are tense, you cannot see that your opponent has shifted his weight onto his back foot. You cannot be affected by that. You cannot see it. The answer though isn't in draining out the tension so that you are less affected. It's being affected by more, increasing your capacity to be affected. As a fighter, this is where the shapes and disciplines of the 120 year old fighting art that is traditional Muay Thai, as an affective development, open up dimensions of perception and affect otherwise closed to you. As a fighter you want to have those causes coursing through you, as your opponent attempts to take you out of your game. You want stronger affects to be moving through your actions. You want to be more connected, not less. This is the reason why every Muay Thai fight begins with the ceremonial reattachment of yourself to those who trained you, and also your ancestors who preserve you. This is not just a symbolization of customary respect. It's the acknowledgement and stimulation of the resources of what you bring with you into the ring. It's all the things that will flow with you. It's your power to be affected. You are not an atom.

The Priority of Defense in the Freedom of The Fighter

The Spinozist-Thai approach to fighting excellence calls forward the priority of Defense. In our analogy of language we made the easy comparison of strikes to words. We do often experience the quality of a fighter in terms of vocabulary of strikes, and video study perhaps makes this even more the case. Strikes still feel like volitional expressions of the character of a person, like words chosen. But if we take the quintessential ground of human power to be the capacity to be affected - and Spinoza qualifies the experience of being affected by more and more things as one of Joy...and fewer and fewer things as one of Sadness - we start to see what the role of Defense in the art and freedom of the fighter. When an opponent is striking you the are attempting to affect you. The hoped consequence of that affectation is that you are diminished by it. Your world metaphysically and pragmatically will shrink. If its a simple jab that is landing over and over suddenly all you can see is that jab...a bit too late. Your capacity to be affected by greater and numerically larger forces becomes diminished. In Spinoza's terms, your power to be affected is reduced, you will experience a kind of deflation, a sadness. Tunnel vision. Our lives are filled with it. The one thing that occupies our mind. It can be a jab that keeps landing, or a bill that isn't paid yet, or what your boss thinks of you. Your world becomes small. In traditional Muay Thai the reason why Defense holds so much esteem is that it is the primary art of cordoning off your opponent's ability to affect you. You control their ability to add their beat to your tempo. Yes, you can offensively put the beat back on them, or pressure them with beats that will shrink their world instead of yours, but the self-possesed art of cultivation lies in Defense. Defensive prowess clears the space so that all the causes of the art you have trained in can then fill it. It puts things more on your terms, and the terms of your antecedents. There is a Buddhist saying that comes to mind in regard to the protection of the Self. You can cover the whole world in leather, or you can wear a pair of leather shoes. Defensive prowess is like wearing a pair of leather shoes, so you can more freely walk about.

There is another level to Defensive excellence and the illusion of choice to this as well, that we learned from Sylvie training with the legendary Muay Femeu artist Karuhat. As you are defending and taking control over the fight space through deflections, repositioning, tempo changes, and parries, you are also developing a map of your opponent's possibilities. He became expert at reading his opponent's weight shifts and body postures to the degree that he could see the limited choices that an opponent would have, often beyond their own perception of them. This circles us back to the illusions of volition and control which Spinoza attempts to strip from us. Your opponent may very well feel that they have a great variety of strikes available to them, but from his position in the ring and the where his weight is distributed Karuhat may see that he has only three, of which one is most likely. He is actually further into your causal chain than you are. He reads your determinations more clearly than you do. When sparring with him it comes off as mind-reading. He is kicking you where you want to go, almost before you have decided to do it. You walk into his strikes. I believe he does this first though defensive prowess, eliminating your ability to affect him, which then opens up his ability to read (be affected by) your own determinations. He is fighting IN the matrix. The matrix of determinations of what is experienced as "choice". You can even see this in his fights against very skilled opponents. He'll float a check and almost bizarrely his opponent will THEN kick it. This is the next layer of Spinozist truth as a fighting art. If we are never free, in the sense that we experience that we are, the conditions of our relative freedom come through seeing and experiencing our determinations, and the determinations of others. And ultimately, in cultivating our determinations themselves, connecting ourselves to greater and greater matrices of cause.

 

[How to improve women’s experiences in gyms?]

3 hours ago, emma said:

You've reminded me that I have an unpublished blog post written about a similar topic, so I'll get on and finish that!

I look forward to reading this Emma!

[How to improve women’s experiences in gyms?]

One of the more difficult and hidden aspects of gender gym dynamics that I've noticed is that because Muay Thai gyms are almost always male coded spaces it can be that there is a limited amount of social capital that women receive. That is to say, some women will get a desired amount of attention - the quality or kind of this attention may vary by gym - but because this is set up as inherently scarce, women will be even unconsciously forced into competing over that scarcity. This means that other women in the gym who may be more natural allies, making one feel more comfortable or at home, persons of support, inspiration or encouragement, actually become your competitors over "being authentic" or "being treated like a fighter" or even just "the coach pays attention to me". One woman may feel that the gym is pretty fair and supportive of women, because she's competed over the limited resource and won it, but other women may not. I'm not really sure what the answer to this is, other than being really sensitive to the idea that there may be hidden limitations of social capital.

It can be very difficult, because a lot of what coaches can do is set up a scarcity in the first place, to motivate students. "I'll pay attention to you if you do it right", "I'll pay attention to you if you work really hard" "I'll pay attention to you if you show toughness". This leads to some very earnest women over-performing, or out-performing males in a space. They want to earn their rightful place in a male coded environment. But, this scarcity which should be a equally distributed scarcity also really easily can become quite gendered. That is to say: it's much more scarce for women than it is for men. In some gyms men will just take for granted something that women end up competing with other women for. Men compete with each other and will tend to bond. Women may experience competition with other women differently. Sylvie's talked about this female competition in the gym space a few times.

[Shallow Depth of Field To Bring Out Psychology in Muay Thai Situational Photography]

More shallow depth of field, psychological work here, this time depicting the close proximity of boxing pressure:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/133054865/The-Qualities-of-Boxing

[What is going on in Thailand in terms of fight availability ?]

3 hours ago, Anonymous said:

I would like to fight locally especially in the issan region or if I cant get match ups there then in the south at some local stadiums there. When I ask people if there are fights in Thailand right now they say yes but, when I look, it only seems that big promotions are hosting fights. I would really to know what's going on before I fly out so if any of you have answers I would love to hear. 

Things can really change quickly in Thailand, and with COVID Omicron on the move we could see serious shutdown by the time you get here in February, if it proves to be as virilient as some are saying. Thailand has shown that it acts pretty quickly against Muay Thai when overall health concerns are at stake (even though tourism economic pressures have been honored lately). It's enough to say, you have to factor it in. We know of very, very few traditional 5 round fights available right now. Some local cards with kids in Pattaya have happened, Lampang in the North has had a repeating card, but that's all I've heard of. As to Isaan, or in the South you'd need a gym with connections, so they would be the one to ask. I don't believe Southern local fights are happening though, as Phettalung was having some COVID troubles. Chiang Mai just started having 3 round cards with westerners on them, at Kawilla Stadium, but the regular shows that were very dependable are not happening at this point. Most of the cards that are happening are televised 3 round entertainment fights like Hardcore, Superchamp and Lumpinee GoSport. These aren't super high level fights really, but maybe beyond your skill? I don't know. As with any fights, its your gym that would be booking you, so they are the ones to really know. There's not a lot going on right now though.

[Westerners Have Been Frustrated With Thai Backwards Fighting For Over 230 Years]

I do appreciate the How To Save Muay Thai Through Marketing ideas, there are a lot of good points to be thought about. Just to confess, because I'm not connected to the realm of an Elon Musk or even a Chartri and unlikely to be involved in any kind of coordinated marketing initiative I am more interested in the idea that perhaps there is a clash of cultures here, that involves us all, and that some of the threatened aspects of Thailand's Muay Thai may be expressive of some very old differences. The Art of the Retreating Fighter I suspect not only unlocks entirely different levels of fight skill, but also speaks to a different way of fighting, fighting from a different place. The reason why I'm interested in this is that it involves a sense of personal attachment, the ways in which we each, directly, connect up to what we are watching. It's how we view and value things. If we are thinking to ourselves that even today's stadium Muay Thai - an admittedly diluted version of what Muay Thai has been - is still expressing some of these perhaps profound differences in culture and meaningful skill, the way that we watch these fights changes. We are possibly watching the slow extinction of vital differences, and rooting for their survival. And there is also a kind of ethical dimension to it all, if we appeal to analogies of biodiversity. I've made the argument before that the great fighters of Thailand are something like Old Growth forest. They are produced in an ecosystem whose complexity runs out in every direction. Yes, we can chop down Old Growth trees and use them in all sorts of ways. It's marvelous wood. It's grown in ecosystems that exist nowhere else in the world. But...if we just start growing a different sort of tree, we don't tend the Old Growth forest and replant those slow growth trees and nurture the forest, if the market harvests the hardwood and does not regrow it (ONE right now is harvesting the evolved skillsets and reputations of fighters ONE could not produce itself, for instance, to soup up the quality of its product), then we are wading into thoughts and concerns over the preservation of culture, culture through the art of fighting. Is Thailand's Muay Thai slowly being monocropped a bit? Is the brother in the ring? These questions kind of condition our own attachment to the art and sport.

Is there something of a cultural struggle going on here? Something that has gone on for 200 years? To me that's a fascinating question. To return to analogies of botany: Is aggro-fighting something of an invasive species? Does backwards, timing-oriented counter-fighting represent a line in the sand?

[How to improve women’s experiences in gyms?]

2 hours ago, CSIBMOD said:

A (male) business partner and I are hoping to open a gym in the near future. I’m hoping that this discussion will help inform the culture we create as well as improve the approach of current gyms.

What are things you are already thinking about as substantial changes? As this comes from your experience it would be interesting to hear what you are already envisioning.

[Westerners Have Been Frustrated With Thai Backwards Fighting For Over 230 Years]

10 minutes ago, Tyler from Florida said:

I don't disagree there's a decent portion of combat sport enthusiasts who appreciate the more technical aspects but I do think they're a minority in the grand scheme.

I don't think there is any chance at all that Thailand's Muay Thai will ever appeal to the majority, even if it radically changed into kickboxing...which itself is a very minor sport. I think its survivability will always depend on passionate enthusiasts. So the question is: how do we get more enthusiasts with greater passion. If it fundamentally changes what it is, its unique qualities, skill sets and history, the chance of having passionate enthusiasts over time will I suspect will drop. "Just like kickboxing, but with elbows!" isn't going to get Muay Thai very far in this world.

[Westerners Have Been Frustrated With Thai Backwards Fighting For Over 230 Years]

12 hours ago, Tyler from Florida said:

I think muay Thai's traditional lack of appeal to westerners comes from a fundamental ignorance of it. I'm not really sure how you reconcile that though. Western fight fans are only becoming more inclined to sheer violence in my opinion, and less likely to go out of their way to learn or appreciate intricacies of another combat sport.

I do see that there is a broad-base smash-em fight audience, but one of the most entrenched and celebrated combat sports is western boxing, and western boxing has had many stars of the sport appreciated for their defense, their style, their superiority over the space (and not just sheer aggression). In fact, western boxing can mirror the same Muay Femeu preference over Muay Khao (forward fighting). Ali, both Sugar Rays, Mayweather, Lomachenko, even Roy Jone Jr, these are not smashers. At the very least western boxing provides a model for this kind of appreciation, it's not like this is some alien planet stuff. Also, BJJ has been pretty widely embraced by the UFC crowd, one of the least "immediately comprehensible" arts there is. Instead, everyone got into understanding it, training in it, learning the chess of it. Sure people complained about lay-and-pray, but the context of Western fight entertainment isn't ALL Rollerball. There are past and present histories of comprehension of many of the things that make the Muay Thai of Thailand special.

[New Rulings for Non-Engagement, Omnoi's Take]

2 hours ago, Tyler from Florida said:

If they're still getting paid even after being thrown out, I believe that would be the main problem.

The problem is, much more money is (potentially) made through gambling, than through fighter pay. Not only is there a social obligation to those who gamble on you, which is more important than a fight purse, the money involved is also greater. And, your gym itself is likely gambling. You fight for your gym, not for individual gain. If a fighter is dancing off it's because their gym has signaled for them to do so. It isn't an individual decision. For instance we were told that a recent kid fight resulted in 100,000 baht tip out for the win.

[Westerners Have Been Frustrated With Thai Backwards Fighting For Over 230 Years]

Yes, there are arguments for the foward-ization of Thailand's Muay Thai that involve urging that it takes its place in the broader spectrum of what the world wants, commercially. As an art and sport it benefits being loved and appreciated internationally, and to a great degree that does involve becoming readable by those who do not necessarily understand it. Recent unifying responses to Phuket's tourism difficulties during COVID understandably involve the call to make fights much more enjoyable to people who do not know anything about Muay Thai. And this readability is no doubt an essential part of the wider trend to present Muay Thai much more in the vein of International Kickboxing, whether that be IFMA's internationalization of the sport in hope for Olympic inclusion (which would be a huge development it Muay Thai's history) or ONE Championship's powerful marketing of Thai superstars under largely kickboxing aesthetics. The readability of the sport and art indeed is essential to its survive-ability, one would have to embrace. And this necessarily involves to some degree turning it into the familiar, ie, the less sophisticated. This is perhaps the world we live in, the facts on the ground.

But, there is also a much longer view in terms of Muay Thai economics which involves cultural heritage. People come to Thailand because the training and the fighting is like nowhere else in the world. That difference, the ability of others to come to Thailand and experience THAT difference, is a very deep reservoir of cultural importance. It's what brings people from all over the world here. Sylvie writes in "The Art and Psychology of the 5th Round in Thailand" that it took her over 100 fights in the country to even understand how to fight a 5th round properly. This is a historic number of fights in Thailand for a westerner, an almost unheard of 100 fights in the country perhaps achieved by only one other westerner. 100 times, and she was just coming to understand it in all its complexities and skill sets. This sophistication is quite far from a sport that maximizes entertainment value to a tourist who has bought a local stadium ticket because they had heard that Thailand has something called "Muay Thai" and it would be fun to see it. (There is another commercial argument that Muay Thai's differences could present a tourism draw if made readable.) Western fighters have passionately traveled to train and live in Thailand to encounter the very foreignness of Thailand's Muay Thai, but increasingly actually encounter promotions of fighting very much like those they left back home, as Thais are asked to fight in an un-Thai way, shelving skill sets they have developed under a richer grammar and tradition of fighting. If we are talking about the survive-ability of Muay Thai as an economic entity the urge for readability must also be balanced by the deep value of its otherness. It's un-readability: That you encounter things in Thailand that you cannot encounter anywhere else in the world; that you come in contact with ways of doing things, learning things, and fighting, that exist nowhere else; that the passionate commitment of Westerners who have fallen in love with the uniqueness of Thailand's fighting history carries with it also a powerful incentive towards economic value, regarding Thailand as special. It cannot just be that "eyeballs" in a media entertainment space rife with competition constitute the measure of viability and value. Might it be that in five years time when a Westerner comes to train and fight in Thailand for 6 months or a year they only can find 3 round fights which deny retreat and counter tactics, and the full stand up grappling art of clinch? Is not that Westerner coming to Thailand seeing in the mirror him or herself? Is not their brother in the ring?

 

[Westerners Have Been Frustrated With Thai Backwards Fighting For Over 230 Years]

 

Woven Into The History - from 1788, the first account of a westerner fighting a Siamese (Thai)

above, the earliest recorded fight between a Westerner and a Thai (Siamese) - from Peter Vail's work

Over the last few years I've posted the above account sporadically, musing about just how far back the backwards, counter-fighting ethic of Thailand's Muay Thai may go. It's a remarkable keyhole into a time of Muay Thai (then the Boran of Siam) that has very little historical record, so it it tempting to savor every element, every detail, as if a perfectly preserved skeleton of an extinct animal has been found. We just don't know what fighting styles were like back then. This is an event that takes place in 1788, more than 230 years ago. French brothers visit the court and are involved in the very first recorded sport combat fight between farang (farang originally referred to the French) and Thai (Siamese). Engagements - and even influences - with foreign fighters must have been quite regular throughout the previous centuries, going back to when the Kingdom Ayutthaya was a powerful "Venice of the East" trade center in South East Asia (1350 to 1767), filled with mercenary forces rumored to reach even 1,000,000 men, and even before that when mercantile Siam interacted with the 600 year Srivijaya "thalassocratic empire" which spread marital knowledge throughout the trading South reaching all the way back to the 7th century see this thread here: Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian fighting styles surely wove themselves into the development of Thailand's combat treasure chest.

 

The account at top though is our fallen dinosaur bit of directly attested report. What may be so interesting about this 1788 account is that it isn't so much an account of a fight as it seems to be of a fundamental misunderstanding and confusion between cultures. It's a likely confusion about what proven masculinity and manhood is. And beneath that, it's a confusion over what retreat and dis-engagement signifies between combatants. The reason the French brother jumps into the ring to stop the retreat of the (likely smaller bodied) Siamese fighter is the feeling that the fight just wasn't fair, or being conducted under the unwritten rules of just what "fighting" is. Looking through our telescope back in time it's hard for me to not feel that today's promotional demand "Just stand and bang!" is not very far from what brought the fighter's brother into the ring. Perhaps he felt the Siamese fighter was somehow clowning his brother, retreating and counter-striking him, elusively evading what perhaps sound like grappling attempts by a large man (intent to break the collarbone in a single smashing blow suggests a size difference).

All hell breaks loose as the French brothers seek to rectify their honor and have a proper fight, and the Siamese guards jump in and give a beat down at the loss of man-on-man decorum. But, it's just fascinating that many of the same forces at work today, attempting to bend Thailand's Muay Thai into a much more aggressive, much more clashing "stand and bang" combat style (for commercial and new generation popularity reasons), were right there when that brother jumped into the ring. When MAX Muay Thai brought the new "entertainment Muay Thai" to Thailand they wrote into the actual fighter instructions in Thai "if you go backwards you will lose" (by my recollection), simply because retreat when you have the lead has been endemic to the grammar of Thailand's Muay Thai for decades now --- and as this historical account temptingly suggests --- perhaps has roots that go back for centuries. The "if you go backwards you will lose" is programmatically the brother jumping into the ring to save the honor of his brother. The MAX Muay Thai entertainment program, which has been copied in new forms in other promotions, was admittedly designed to level the playing field vs Westerners and produce wins by Westerners. It is the brother in the ring, standing behind the retreating fighter. I've seen Thai fighters that we know well with a deft style of retreat and counter struggle both mentally and physically under the new form of entertainment fighting.

It's startling to see the same basic misunderstanding of what a fight is, between two cultures, play out 230 years apart.

The Counter In Retreat

We are in a different combat sport world now than in 1788. Instead of Westerners coming to the South East Asian court attempting to establish trade relations and test out fighting skills, the Western (and really Internationalist/globalist) view of fighting has grown into a vast commercial enterprise, and a dominant cultural art form. MMA - and small in its shadow, Kickboxing - has established "what a fight is" largely under the come-forward model. Thailand's traditional counter-fighting, retreating excellence falls outside of that model. When talking to Arjan Surat of the Thai National Team about the new 3 round entertainment fighting the Old School legendary trainer complained. "There is no timing". It is what Thais call muaymua, confused or clouded fighting. Little is distinct other than the clash. I've written about how the Thai narratively scored shape of the fight involves actually a different Sense of Time, agrarian Time, but what Arjan Surat is of course talking about the much more universally lauded timing of strikes, and the ability to play with and manipulate the fight space. In Thailand when the fighter is retreating, often with the lead, he/she is stretching out the time windows, he/she is playing with the space. Delay is being created and being woven into the tempo of the fight. Delay is the silence between notes (to quote Lisa Simpson). This is part of a much more nuanced and rich awareness of fighting, almost a musicality of striking tempos. Because Thailand's Muay Thai traditionally, as a Buddhistically informed art, is about dominance over the fight space and much less about sheer displays of aggression, the quality of fight awareness, the sophistication of strikes rises amid forced lulls and displacement through defensive tactics drawing time out, so there is room for them to unfold. Retreating and countering makes up a constitutive element in the very grammar of Thailand's Muay Thai. If you take retreat and countering out, as a form of dominance, you might as well also remove adjectives and adverbs from the language of English. It is the texture and quality of the fighting itself, what it is capable of expressing, at least historically so. Go no further than imagining how the much acclaimed GOAT Samart Payakaroon would struggle and show less of himself if he wasn't able to retreat, by rule. If you want a real sense of the sophistication of this look at my study of his defeat of the forward fighting Namphon, a dominance composed almost entirely of knee-shields.

This isn't so much a piece against the new entertainment forms of Muay Thai which bend it toward forward fighting arts. These pressures and changes may very well be necessary to the survival of Muay Thai in the scheme of commercial fighting business in a global market. It's instead to say that as we change elements of Thailand's Muay Thai in this particular direction we are purpose tugging on a rope of struggle that perhaps goes back over 200 years, fundamentally how The West and Thailand perceive what fighting is. The frustration of Westerners in the ring vs retreating Thais has a record that goes that far back. As we change the very form of fighting in contests between Westerners (and others) and Thais, as we put the proverbial brother in the ring and prevent retreat, we should at least be aware that we are touching upon essential elements of what fighting is to Thailand. This isn't to say that Thai fighters only retreat. In fact they have had some of the greatest stalking pressure fighters in the world. (More on this: Why You Can't Take the Boring Out of Muay Thai). The reason why Thai fighters are so very good at stalking and pressuring is because the retreating, countering fighters they have honed their skills against actually have a scorecard advantage. Retreating and countering, clinch (the "boring" parts) make up the vocabulary of its excellence. It's an arms race. In some ways Thai aggression is second to none, but it grows in a context. And yes, past generations of the sport have been more aggressive through rounds, to be sure, and this is something the sport indeed needs to rectify, but it is to at least say, in a broad way, that there is a cultural tug-of-war going on here that goes down into the roots of what Thai fighting is, and has been for perhaps centuries. And if we collapse that timing, we smash those interaction windows of engagement, and place that brother in the ring, we might be unraveling some of the most significant differences that Thailand's Muay Thai presents to the world, as an art of value.

 

 

[New Rulings for Non-Engagement, Omnoi's Take]

14 hours ago, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu said:

(I totally see this. If you have no way to win, this cancels all bets.)

I'm not sure how those cheering on the "throw them out" rule don't see that the rule actually can create even LESS engagement. Maybe there is a missing piece of information, but if I'm a fighter going into the 5th round and down big in the odds, there is almost every incentive not to engage and purposively try to get the fight called off, especially if there is sizeable money bet on me. Everyone who bet on me, including my own gym, would keep their money. The losing fighter wins when a fight is called off.

This puts the fighter with a big lead in a very difficult position as well.

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

50 minutes ago, Asger said:

Thank you very much for your thorough and dedicated thoughts on this Kevin, it is honestly an honor to have you put so much work into your response. I have taken to heart many of your points, and while I still stand by my points through a charitable reading, some of the blindspots of the presentation have become clearer aswell as the work that I need to put into resolving some of those issues if I get to work further on this. Especially the points on the cultural and historical thai connotations, which you are obviously much more privy to than I, as well as the greek Apollo and Dionysus other than just as conceived by Nietzsche. It really has been great getting all your considerations, and I'm thrilled that you, despite the theoretical issues we discussed, think that this was something nice.

You made a very powerful and inspiring presentation of Muay Thai. The combination of performance/example, the ability to present so much of what makes Muay Thai unique among fighting arts, from the ground up to an audience that does not know it, and the great broad brushes of Philosophical thought all came together in just a beautiful public expression of Muay Thai. You should be really proud of everything you pulled off. It was really cool.

[Big Fight Card of Young Talent Featuring Jojo Derjat vs Naksu TopGuard Gym]

Related news, Lumpinee opening up its stadium to younger/smaller fighters in an attempt foster greater awareness and skill in the young fighters of Thailand:

 

[Big Fight Card of Young Talent Featuring Jojo Derjat vs Naksu TopGuard Gym]

There are probably two things that are the hope for Thailand's traditional form of Muay Thai as many promotions bend toward "entertainment" and tourist-oriented fighting. The first is higher level provincial fighting which is usually fought under and older, more traditional aesthetic involving long clinch exchanges, old school scoring, and (usually) even matched opponents. The second is young Thai fighters, coming up. If young Thai fighters aren't invested in and systematically supported, if we lose a half generation or more of Muay Thai excellence the Muay Thai of Thailand itself is at risk. As complex as questions of child fighting are - and they are - the reason why Thailand has the best fighters in the world is because they have the best young fighters in the world. Cards like this under traditional rules are what that is made of.

This fight featured two gyms that are part of that old world. Arjan Surat runs an extremely Old School gym in Bangkok and does everything the old way. It's kaimuay Muay Thai. His name in building champions is legendary and spans decades. Rambaa is just an ex-fighter who runs a small gym in Pattaya, training almost entirely kids on a very slim budget, most of them without charging. Big gyms and powers come and sweep up his fighters once they show promise. He just keeps building more great fighters. It feels special to have Arjan Surat and Rambaa's fighters face each other.

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

I also think that we may run into some problems if we just define Thai hypermasculinity by the appeal to violence. In the West hypermasculinity is often strongly coded by shows of violence. I imagine you've read it but Sylvie's and my article Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail is really good on this, taking the start from Peter Vail's chapter. We have to say that not only is the "nak leng" (prone to violence gangster tough) Thai hypermasculinity, but also so is the "monk". Both are exaggerated masculine ideals. And that's where the Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu battle plays out. Two models of hypermasculinity.

I think the difficulty comes when we try to graft that historical duality onto let's say Greek mythology and Apollo & Dionysus, or even (Western) ideals of male and female.

The graphic we made from that article:

 

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

I think a really interesting place to start, and the metaphysically strongest foothold is your original appeal to Apollo as distinct, and the sense that (his/the) figure involves the movement from the inchoate (which in at least many societies is chthonic with female associations, though not categorically so). In at least the traditional aesthetics of Golden Age Muay Thai there is a powerful emphasis on distinction, readability, visibility, and even in contemporary Muay Thai you find the criticism of a fighter as muaymua which means indistinct, clouded. A very aggressive, flailing or windmilling fighter is fighting in an unreadable way. Muaymua. You find this in the importance of ruup, which you mentioned, which is ultimately taking the body as a sign, displaying posture, physical control, dignity, etc. A fighter who is off-balance, or who is bent over, or generally lacks readability has lost their ruup. This runs parallel to Buddhistic ideals of self-control. A fighter who cannot control their emotions also can't control their body-signification. This plays into your appeals to Heidegger's truth-event, art as visibility - though I personally feel that Heidegger got alethea somewhat wrong - which helps us understand that in a Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu (metaphysical) battle, both fighters are seeking to make themselves visible & readable. Distinct. I do think it is fair to say that Muay Femeu is further along the distinction spectrum, at least it does not risk lack of clarity quite as much in its style, as it often pays more attention to rhythm and timing (musical aspects of distinction and readability). And the burden falls upon the Muay Khao fighter to show distinction in his/her pressure fighting. Muay Khao legends are very insistent on this with Sylvie when they have instructed her. Do not rush. Find the rhythm, the beat. Make your strikes (which often are at close range) readable. Also, in this battle, the warfare that the Muay Khao fighter brings is to break the illusions of the Muay Femeu fighter's clarity and signified composure. You see this, for instance, in the two big fights that Samart lost (Dieselnoi and Wangchannoi). Once the spell is broken there is very little left. The Muay Khao fighter seeks to break ruup.

But, I think it's a very complex thing to attempt to graft historical male and female expressions onto the inchoate>distinctness metaphysical spectrum, and arrive some beyond-history place. Yes, males (Patriarchy) have been placed at the top of most symbolic hierarchies, but Thailand itself in the 1920s-1950s adopted Western modes of gender distinction, specifically to appear more civilized, less deserving of colonization, more in step with "modernity". Siam was known to commonly not have strong visual distinctions between the genders. Westerners found this inchoate. You can see how historically contingent the application of distinction and gender may be. Also involved in Thailand is the basic tension between cosmopolitan (royal) distinction along those adopted and developed lines, and rural, provincial distinction which may have run along very different tastes and aesthetics. A male body of Bangkok princely signification may vie semiotically with the male body of Buriram signification. It's no easy thing to try and isolate some historical, yet transcendent "female" in this mixed history. In fact it seems like it is probably wrong to do so, or at least highly projective of one's own cultural history and presumptions. 

The "ontology" that you appeal to in traditional Muay Thai, which is to say the ontology of win and loss, itself is conditioned and constructed historically. It relies on culturally developed aesthetics. Even if we grant that these aesthetics developed to reward distinctness over incoherence, the significations of that distinctness, what counts for distinctness, is to a large degree historically contingent. Thais say standing up straight is clear ruup, in Caipoeira it's the crouch. Also complexifying the distinctness measure, even or especially a great Muay Femeu fighter fights with deception and incoherence as a tool. Obscurity isn't only a weakness, it cloaks sudden readability. In some regard both Muay Khao and Muay Femeu are aesthetically mixing incoherence and clarity for effectiveness under that culturally expressive rule set.

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

4 minutes ago, Asger said:

Kevin I think we are saying the same thing - my point was that if you were to rationalize gender metaphysically, you would have to put muay femeu and muay khao on those poles, and what goes to show through muay thai and the Butler/Heidegger reading is that it is impossible to make that dichotomy as some kind of gendersubstance. What I'm attempting is a critique of patriarchal gender dichotomies through it's own reasoning.

Okay. But you are the one who included "female" on one half of the bracket. It was your schema. You may be saying that this dichotomy cannot hold, but even at the level of description it doesn't seem to describe the cultural facts on the ground, to start with. But maybe I'm not following you. I just don't see why a starting place would be Muay Khao = female, unless one is just trying to set up a dichotomy that will then be deconstructed. Are we starting with something like: Muay Khao is rural, rural is of the land, the land is often seen as female in cultures? Or, why isn't Samart "Dionysian"? He is ornate. He is gender fluid (in some ways), He is theatrical. I guess I'm just having trouble with the starting point, which is a male vs female division. But I will admit I might not be following it clearly.

I do really enjoy and even love the broad strokes of your thought. And the presentation with all the performance/example is really beautiful stuff. So good. I do love the way you have brought diverse ideas and theories together. It's very good.

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

[again, I see you have responded to the above while writing, I'll just post this blind.]

I should say, I think that these contradictions in representation, the difficulty in just popping most Muay Femeu fighters into a "male" box, and Muay Khao fighters into a "female" box, actually comes from the attempt to move from what maybe we'd call ethnography (?) to metaphysics. The contradictions actually, don't mean that it's wrong to attempt the theorizing, but rather than that politics and ideology complexify the entire problem. You touch on this in your presentation when you suggest that provincial males might see the aristocratic boys as sissies (ie, unmanly). That entire inversion of what is manly is at tension here. But, being very broad about it...the "critique" of urban sophistication is that it is "feminine" and the critique of rural strength is that it is "animalistic" or "stupid" (not that it is feminine). Any approach would have to incorporate these poles I think.

 

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

20 minutes ago, Asger said:

The violence that is inherent to muay thai is its dionysian aspect.

Just to respond in pieces, even this I don't completely follow. Apollo had the epithet "The far-shooter" referring to not only his attack from distance (with the bow), but also as the god of plagues. You could not see where the arrow of his violence was striking from. It would just be on you. When attempting to separate out halve (or poles), it works much better if they are clear and distinct. Also, there is a lot of Dionysus that wasn't violent. Dionysus was merry, he was ornate.

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which is why Dieselnoi can laugh at Samart for hitting like a girl. But imagine if Dieselnoi had lost to Samart, if he had been humiliated in the way muay femeu humiliates muay khao as a dumb beast with no grace nor brains, would he also have added to insult that Samart hits like a girl?

I honestly think he would. This is the regular "critique" of Muay Femeu from Muay Khao. You've heard fighters lose fights and complain that the opponent didn't even hurt them. Having been around Dieselnoi this is definitely something he would have said (joking), and in fact probably has said of other Samart victorious performances. The feeling can be that the performative bias in aesthetics, from the Muay Khao perspective, actually tips the scales TOO far. Chamuakphet (a Muay Khao fighter) who beat Samart, answered the question of how he lost to him in a later fight when Samart was bigger "I just couldn't catch him" smiling, showing with his hand how Samart moved this way and that. It was honest praise, but it also probably also meant "He just ran from me" (with all the associations that running has). I do think there is a sense that Samart can (unfairly or unmanishly?) run due to the rules, from the Muay Khao perspective. This isn't to say that he isn't lauded and glorified for his smooth beautiful Muay, even by those that lost to him. Just that this "unmanly" dimension is something that haunts all Muay Femeu fighters, as a critique within the subculture, just as all Muay Khao fighters are haunted by the accusation that they are "low IQ" or "just strength".

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is the better man the civilised man or the beastman? So muay thai is fundamentally a ritualized fight between the man of man and the animality of man, and this dichotomy (as shown by Sherry Ortner) has historically been genderized. 

That's a very flimsy bridge to lay all of the gendered dimension we are working with here, I would say. I mean the entire import of the analysis is "masculinity". It feels like a very fast move to go from "animality of man" to "female". I mean, one can make the argument, but if one did, you'd have to account for the very powerful ways in which the "animality of man" is actually experienced as male in the culture, and expresses masculinity. You can't just say Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator is "female" because "nature is often gendered". I mean, these are icons of masculinity in the culture. At least a mode of masculinity. 

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

[while writing this I got a notification that you posted in answer to what I've written above, so maybe you've addressed some of these thoughts. I'll post them just the same, as the path of my thought.]

To add...I do think some of the things you are saying about Apollonian clarity, or manifestation DO map onto really important visual principles of clear and distinct strikes, or ruup. For sure. This is really good stuff. But, I just can't get over the inner-contradiction of adding that final male/female dichotomy to your schema. There are just so many instances were the Muay Femeu fighter fighter has strong Dionysian overtones of the "female", at least in terms of hypermasculnity as feminine...and, so many instances where Thais experience Muay Khao fighters as quite manly. Which is to say, the way the gender is read in the culture doesn't seem to map well, or perhaps cleanly, onto a basic male vs female divide.

Here are some photographic evidence.

Samson Isaan in some ways is a prototypical Muay Khao fighter (which you would argue is fundamentally, dichotimously "female". He's named after the region of rural Muay Khao and after a Western tradition strong man. He basically is "He-man farmboy". But you would place him on the female side of the ledger.

A lot of classic Muay Khao fighters have just this kind of image, as seen above.

On the other hand many Muay Femeu fighters have the opposite image. Perhaps none personified it more than Samart. The (dangerous) pretty boy. He launched a music career after his boxing career that was keeping with his model good looks:

Samart you would have as dichtotimously "male" as opposed to Samson's "female". It feels like there is a pretty big stretch here, taking us far from how masculine and feminine is read in the culture itself. I can see how one can theorize oneself in this direction, defining "male" and "female" in terms that differ from how they are culturally expressed, but it does feel like something really important - and probably layered and complex - is at stake here.

This photo (above) is my the quintessential Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao dichotomy. Samart (the matador) putting his fraternal arm around Namphon (the bull) who he has bloodied. Who is the "male" and who the "female" in this photo? It feels like the categories would be forced. Instead of a gender dynamic (pretty boy vs the bloodied ruffian), this seems much more readable along the dichtomy I proposed, and I think you read, which creates a spectrum of human<<>>animal.

Here is another interesting photo which places Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu side by side. Dieselnoi and Samart (with Jackie Chan in between). It seems strained to put female on the left, and male on the right.

[Muay Thai and Masculinity: A talk]

17 hours ago, Asger said:

Hello everyone, finally got the video, hope you enjoy and looking forward to hear what you think! 

Thanks for posting this, and all the work you put into it, and the English subs. So good, full of thought and the presentation is awesome. My very first response would be that I don't really follow why "Muay Khao" would iconically, or symbollicaly represent the female/feminine in your dichotomy (other than grouping it together with Western equations of Nature with Mother). The reason I raise this question is that in many respects Muay Khao is regarded as more "masculine" or at least manly, in the rugged/tough stereotype. It's the cowboy or rural toughman. On the other hand Muay Femeu stereotypes bend toward the feminine. As Muay Khao Dieselnoi has joked of his femeu friend Samart, "he hits like a girl" (if I recall). The femeu fighter in Thailand, when pushed to the extreme, can be seen as ornate (stylized, almost feminized) and lacking in substance, with many qualities that have been attributed to Dionysus. Not a "real man", if we are really speaking in broad terms, merely performing. Whereas many of the great Muay Khao fighters of Thailand have been some of the most masculine, he-man, hard-hitting/kneeing figures of the sport.

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male/muay femeu/apollonian/culture vs. female/muay khao/dionysian/nature

Maybe I'm not reading your basic dichotomy clearly, but that would be my first question. It feels like you are grafting across cultures and contexts in way that may not fit Thai context?

[Sylvie's Two Vlogs 11 Years Apart: The Drive to Expose Your Flaws To Everyone and the Heart of Muay Thai]

Two things may have persisted through all these years. Sylvie just has always patchworked her training approach. At the time of the the first video she's taking the train down from Fort Montgomery where we lived in a little rented house next to a National Park, to train in Manhattan. We were just piecing training together because there was no real path to where she wanted to get as a fighter, no "Point A to point B, just do all the work, listen to all the right people and you'll get there" path. 11 years on we are in the exact same place. There is no point A to point B path. She's much, much further down a path of her own invention, to be sure, tinkering steps forward up a rock wall, but everything unstable that she faced 11 years ago is still right there. She's training sometimes at her old gym, sometimes alone working on self-curation, daily in sparring at another gym, privately with Yodkhunpon, and all the intermittent training in filming legends and great krus in the Library. But, from at least my perception, nothing has changed at all in this. She is not being carried by a process, or by powerful others, and in this sense is exposed. There is no safe port. And because her process involves sharing her flaws with others - unlike every other fighter I've ever seen, where it is regular to hide your flaw and amplify your best qualities - this exposure is hard to carry. The other aspect that has persisted is that because she's a true disruptor in the sport, doing things outside of the expectations and ways of others who are invested quite differently, there is a constant social current she is swimming against. In the first video she's talking about YouTube criticism, but more this is just push back against who she is. So many have come to support her over the last decade, and lent their voices & resources to make the path possible, but still there is, and may always be a detractor audience, which in part comes from the fact that she's still doing things that nobody else does. In the second vlog she's matured into her place in the sport, taken root in herself...to some small degree, but personally the same pressures of resistance press upon her. The road is no easier at this point, than it was 11 years ago. In fact in many ways its even more difficult...but, what has changed and deepened is the richness of what she has built up inside, with 268 fights and a decade of sharing her flaws with others for over a decade. She has more substance and standing and belief in what she is doing. This is what I see.