The first thing I learned in karate class was how to yell (right now you have a scary image of me in karate garb in your head, but rest assured, after reaching the purple belt, I quit). My instructor taught us that the “hee-yah” we took so much pleasure in screaming from the very depths of ourselves was just as much apart of our form as the “sparring stance” and other postures we had to master. Throughout my journey fitness classes, dance aerobics to kickboxing, the yell remained an essential part of the activity. The instructors encouraged an audible display of strength. It was an expression of all the energy bubbling over inside as our kicks got higher, our punches got stronger, and our sweat gushed out more profusely. Like a teapot that’s bursting with steam, our exuberant shouts were a release of all that we couldn’t hold onto as we put our entire selves into the workout.
My 30-50 minute courses can’t touch a 3-round tennis match with a ten foot pole in terms of intensity. When I watch a tennis match, the energy plunges right through the television screen and arrests me on my couch. Apparently for some tennis spectators (who are probably all white and mostly male) that display of energy and force has become a nuisance.
They want to do away with “the grunts.” Now I don’t watch male tennis matches often, so I’m not sure how much audio is included in these matches, but women are the dominant face of the “grunt-issue” in the current news coverage. In one case, player Victoria Azarenka’s audio was measured for decibel strength and time length. Really? People want to control the sounds that other people make when they’re engaged in an extreme level of physical performance? And yet watching an NBA game is almost the equivalent of being in a strip-club when you match the sounds.
I don’t think this is about sounds being annoying, its about powerful women annoying the hell out of the folks who cling to a patriarchal ideal of the world, and seek to position people according to that hierarchy. Men on top, women…barely there. The naughty sense of pleasure I got from screaming at the top of my lungs as a pre-teen is similar to what I felt as a junior and senior in college. Little girls, like most children, are still expected to be seen, not heard. And women, are expected to take up even less space in the world. From our physical body mass to our use of the air when exercising our very own vocal chords, women are supposed to occupy a male gaze. Anything that disrupts that gaze, any use of extra space that might distort someone else’s vision of us, is deemed unacceptable.
Some tournaments already come down harshly on what (black, female) players where. What’s next, spectators trying to control how much players can sweat because they think it looks gross?
Clearly those in places of privilege have a hard time identifying who and what they can and can’t control, the sounds that people make being one of them. But sense we’re all dishing out pet-peeves, here’s three “sounds” I could certainly live without:
1) The greedy grunt Rick Ross makes every 5 seconds
2) The whistle’s, “oo-wee’s,” and curses I typically hear from men when walking
down a street (regardless of what I’m hearing)
3) The gunshots from cops who, in the course of “just doing their jobs,” murder
black men, women, and little boys and girls.
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