In the recent thread asking how weird one of us would seem if we could travel back in time to 1900, one person mentioned that fisticuffs was more generally accepted back then. I’m sort of curious about this issue. I grew up and went to public schools that were, at the time, definitely middle class or upper middle class. Fights were extrememely rare, on the order on one a semester. College, of course, was even more so.
On the other hand, some people seem to have gone to public schools where everybody fights, all the time. A new transfer invariably has to fight to establish hiimself, and there is an aggressive culture of fitting in or else, e.g. don’t carry an umbrella even though its raining buckets, because that’ll brand you as a sissy (think Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski). If you look at biker gangs, notorious for punching (and beating shit out) first and asking questions, if any, later, they seem to have their origins in working class vets returning from WWII
The thread also reminded me of an episode Bukowski reports in Ham On Rye. While he was studying writing at LACC, he meets an old acquaintance from high school who marvels at how tough he has become. At one point Bukowski tells him not to tell anyone or he’ll “cream” him. Cream him! I haven’t heard the word cream used that way since fourth grade. It made me wonder if there really was a time when college students were prone to fighting like that.
So, in the past was personal fistfighting really more accepted or expected generally, or is it just a matter of perception?
My very subjective impression over the last few decades (not since 1900 - I am not that old ) was that minor physical violence (such as a hard shove) has moved from the ‘disagreeable social interaction’ domain into the ‘criminal offence’ domain.
Wouldn’t crime statistics give some clue? If the OP’s assumption is true, I suppose the category ‘criminal assault, no weapon used, no serious injury’ would go up over the years, either in absolute numbers or compared to the number of armed assaults.
I remarked on the Dope (years ago) that one of the more surprising things in a 1930s Gary Cooper film I had seen recently was that the hero (Cooper) started smacking people around because they spoke to him in a way that he felt was less than completely polite–“He’d get arrested today, if he even thought about hitting someone with as little provocation as that.” I wondered if the hero was supposed to be psychopathic, before I realize that that was normal behavior in the 1930s.
As a mom of 2 boys, 11 and 14, I hear about physical altercations on a daily basis. While most altercations are just shoving and “talking smack”, I believe that this is still commonplace amongst adolescents. It’s a way of establishing hierarchy, I suppose.
I think that it does become unacceptable after we “grow up”.
My father, however, still has a mentality that if someone is doing wrong, a man should physically do something to take care of the situation. He’s in his mid-60’s.
I agree it seems like standards requiring nonviolence seem to have gotten stricter over the last few decades, but also think this judgement can’t help but be somewhat subjective and weak. Moreover, each of us is moving through age demographics that are less likely to be physically violent. There aren’t many muggers in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
On a longer scale, historians sometimes point out that what sometimes seems like pretty superficial foolishness on the part of monarchs and other leaders in previous centuries may stem in part from their often being in their teens, twenties, and thirties, because so many more people were dead by the ages at which our leaders today are just getting elected to top office.
The schools became stricter on fights just while I was going to school. While in middle school, fighting would lead to On Campus Suspension. By the time I graduated, if you fought, you had to go to some even worse suspension in the next town. (I don’t know what was so special about this suspension that it was in another school.) I hear now in my old school the police are called. Conversely, I also heard that back in the 70’s, if two people had a disagreement, they could go to the gym and box it out. It’s just anecdotal evidence but I’m pretty convinced.
I wouldn’t expect crime statistics to shed much light, as as always, the statistical difference could be quite confounded by an increase in reporting of crime, rather than an actual increase in incidence. Ironically, if weaponless assault has become less socially acceptable over the years (as I suspect it has) the numbers of reported incidents is likely to increase, while the actual number of incidents decreases.
Well, of course you’re right - but if it is part of how humans interact, I would rather my kids be aware of the possibility…life isn’t fair and all…
As for the OP - I wonder how something like duelling would inform this conversation? Back in the day it was illegal, right? But it was still done - what does that tell us about acceptable levels of violence in upper-class society?
Other examples of physicality that has gone by the wayside:
Initiations into clubs - e.g., fraternities and sororities
Corporal punishment - getting spanked, the belt or a rap on the knuckles
I’d call it both. (I won’t say public school is for everyone, although I do think I lot of modern parents coddle their kids - but that doesn’t have anything to do with where the kids go to school.)
I went to public school. I never saw fights, but I was in one or two in elementary school. (I’ll admit it was my fault. I’d rather not discuss it. Let’s leave it at I was immature and had a temper.) But being bullied teaches you how to deal with bullies, how to deal with the consequences, and how to deal with authority.
Son: Dad, I got in a fight at school today. Father (grinning): Did you win?
That reaction is typical of a lot of people of my dad’s generation. They would assume that the other kid was the aggressor, and that their own kid was defending himself. If their kid beat the other kid, then congratulations were in order.
I have seen this scene play out as recently as the 1980s, on the Cosby Show.
Another underlying assumption was that the school officials would sort out the cause of the fight, and punish the guilty, and protect the innocent. Can’t assume that, today. The school officials can’t take sides. Too many overprotective, overly litigious parents.
This varies from culture to culture. For example, cultures of ‘honor’ where individuals use violence to maintain personal reputation will have higher rates of physical fighting to settle differences. These cultures tend to be descended from people who made their living possessing livestock. Since the livestock could be stolen (unlike with farmers and land), it paid more for men (and some women) to be more aggressive in dealing with people who overstepped cultural bounds or seemed to be of a threat to one’s resources.
A modern example of this in the United States is the Southern culture of honor compared to the North. This excellent book explains why this culture developed, what maintains it (the people aren’t too happy about it but can’t end it themselves), and how these cultural differences result in different physical reactions in Northern versus Southern men in situations where personal honor is in conflict.
Since this ‘culture of honor’ negatively impacts the participants, it makes sense that the people stuck in these culture patterns shift out of them whenever possible.
Depends if you get jumped and are defending yourself or are out looking for trouble. I’ve been in several altercations. Didn’t start a one and would have gladly avoided them all. I’m glad for you that you grew up in an environment that didn’t require you to be in that situation.
Well, right, but I don’t think the MCs, to use the more neutral term, started out with the intent of being a violent, meth-dealing gang. Rather, judging from Sonny Barger’s memoir, the tendency toward physical violence seems to have been something which most or all members of the club brought to it. It was a fighting culture, and one which I suppose is hard for anyone not familiar with it to imagine. Barger reported how in the late 1950s they would get into bar brawls with groups of Okie cowboys and farmers–and then, after the fighting, the bikers and the Okies would all spend a congenial evening listening to the country music band and getting plastered together.
I have been physically assaulted before, I was ok but my ex was put in the hospital with a broken jaw. There were more of them then there were the two of us so we really didn’t have much chance and no choice in the matter.
This thread struck me as being more about people more or less ‘agreeing’ to fight and not random violence. Though I would still call macho bullshit on the first and on the perpetrators of the second.
) was that minor physical violence (such as a hard shove) has moved from the ‘disagreeable social interaction’ domain into the ‘criminal offence’ domain.