By Jacques Lesure
Things started off as they usually do. America’s biggest sporting event of the weekend, Wilder v Fury II, kicked off with dramatic racialized entries and shenanigans. It goes without saying that Wilder’s beatdown was hard to watch for a great deal of us who tuned into the premier rematch. Anyone who watched is unlikely to deny the level of gruesomeness that took place, which happened to be completely within the “acceptable” parameters of the sport. Wilder’s ear was cut open, his mouth pooled with blood, and he seemed to be in a daze that made his own camp uncomfortable, causing them to end the fight prematurely, much to the distaste of Wilder.
Surprisingly enough, the physical damages didn’t stand out as the most disturbing part of the night. Instead, it was his opponent Tyson Fury’s decision to stick his tongue out and lick the blood of Wilder while in close range that took that award. Boxing is already a high-risk and brutal physical activity but to intentionally consume the blood of another human opens up a new layer of varied possibilities that boxing organizations should consider in the interests of health and wellness. Aside from that, it was an egregious act of sexual violence that everyone was forced to process. Fury is a boxer, nowhere in the rules of professional boxing is licking your opponent deemed appropriate. Wilder did not consent to that form of potential contact.
From what I saw, most folks who were disturbed weren’t naming or pinpointing the source of their discomfort. I chose to process the assault through a lens of racialized sexual fantasy regarding Black bodies—in this case the Black male body. Some have deemed this perspective to be a reach, some have seriously considered it in their own analysis, while the vast majority of popular media platforms have avoided problematizing the licking at all and instead have reported it as barbaric matter-of-fact. However, even a cursory review of social media can reveal the context in which Wilder and other Black bodies in everyday life are situated in. Take for example this viral tweet intended to be amusing that captured the attention of thousands prior to the fight.
In this tweet, hyper-sexualization is presented as commonplace, the fetishization of his Black body is humorous, and anyone can participate in it. The replies, retweets, and likes housed a diverse range of racial, ethnic, and gendered people partaking in the same violence that complicate how I processed Wilder being sexually assaulted by Fury on live television in the middle of a boxing match.
Black Feminist Theorist Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Sexual Politics offers valuable insight to this particular case. “Historically, African American men were depicted primarily as bodies ruled by brute strength and natural instincts, characteristics that allegedly fostered deviant behaviors of promiscuity and violence.” (p.152)
Collins’ text also tells us there is no way in which his body can exist within the spectacle that is mass media, entertainment, and boxing without forms of sexualized violence. She asserted, “The combination of physicality over intellectual ability, a lack of restraint associated with incomplete socialization, and a predilection for violence has long been associated with African American men.” (p.152), which in many ways can inform us of the degree of sympathy that will ever be afforded to a Black male boxer. Those who turn a blind eye to boxing—and subsequently Wilder’s assault—due to the fact that much of the participation could be traced to notions of toxic masculinity and patriarchy should reconsider their commitment to Wilder as a victim.
Vincent Woodard has also contributed to our thinking around this related topic, his text, The Delectable Negro sought out to “explore connections between homoeroticism, cannibalism, and cultures of consumption in the context of American literature and US slave culture.” Woodard’s work is helpful in building a historical and psychoanalytical framework to interpret the symbolism and ritual around Wilder’s assault, as well as helping to understand the potential racialized intentions of Fury.
Woodard also warns us of our likelihood to over look this by saying that, “When we speak of the absence of historical examples of male rape, we are implicitly referring to a worldview in which the rape of black men had no cultural currency, had neither psychic nor political import.” (p.139)
This historical lack of cultural currency associated with Black men being raped has impacted how Wilder’s assault has been read. After all, the licking of Wilder’s blood-on-flesh was extraordinarily creative on the part of Fury. In a short period of about ten seconds, he animated Wilder’s Black body as containable and consumable. His actions connect back to the historical acts of sexual violence from slave masters, whereby “masters received a sexual high or erotic charge from consumptive acts. Power and sex intertwined, with the slave’s body and sex serving not only the purposes of pleasure and erotic fulfillment but also reinforcing the master’s authority, supremacy, and dominance.” (p.34)
Wilder’s sexual assault and violation was cinematic. The world watched and barely afforded a brand of sympathy and concern that centered the material experiences of Wilder as vulnerable, or victim. Instead, many processed the act through racialized battle narratives of victory and defeat, humorously citing “disrespect” and “Black History Month” as the origin of their disappointment.
Given all of this, we need language for Wilder and other Black male bodies. The #MeToo movement, which was founded in 2006 to support primarily Black women and girls survivors of sexual violence, has expressed a goal to “reframe and expand the global conversation around sexual violence to speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of survivors.”
There is a real potential in this expansion for acknowledging the sexual vulnerabilities of Black male bodies and how everyone including other Black folks are complicit. Often, if recognized at all, these vulnerabilities are trivialized and are often reinterpreted as Black men’s inherent sexual desires or benefits, which is indicative of the same victim-blaming many have collectively grown to combat through this important movement. There should be more than jokes to address Black men’s sexual vulnerability.
We should build critiques and everyday life-affirming practices that bring to light the true essence of the position of sexual vulnerability that Black male bodies occupy. We must understand that Black male bodies are not “privileged” by their position in this way. We need to name the sneaky ways that anti-Black sexual violence in a boxing match can pass as the everyday order of things. All of this has implications for how Black men that occupy a Black male bodies across sexuality understand their identity development, relationships to others, and their role in larger trending movements for healthy sexual freedom and liberation.
Reading Suggestions:
“Black Sexual Politics,” Patricia Hill Collins (2004)
“The Delectable Negro,” Vincent Woodard (2014)
“On Black Men,” David Marriot (2000)
Jacques P. Lesure is a Ph.D student and truth-teller at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the east side of Atlanta. Find more of his work at jplesure.com.
