New Problem Page for Gay Wrestlers

Wrestling for Gay Guys

New Problems

If, after reading Wrestling for Gay Guys, you are having problems
with your wrestling (or lack of it) you can write now
for Donald Black's personal help. Just click on: PLEASE HELP

More problems are solved in Donald Black's new book!!

Enjoy multiple orgasms without the use of poppers, banish any fear of "violence", stand up for yourself, express anger safely, assert yourself, see off bullies safely, be manipulated no more, be put upon no more, feel oppressed by society no more, banish depression, banish low self-esteem that causes masochism, become someone people will admire, find Mr Right at last, be punctual for appointments, become proud of your achievements and yourself. Become one of the new breed of gay men!! Liberated from that confining straitjacket!!!

Donald Black's startling new book
ESCAPE THE GAY STRAITJACKET is now on sale at www.gaystraitjacket.com and listed stockists.

What is "gay" wrestling?

Gay wrestling is rolling on the carpet pretending to wrestle with neither man showing his superiority over the other as this would be too humiliating for the loser. In this way each man is able to continue believing erroneously that he is a competent wrestler and in no need of going to a wrestling club regularly (at least once a week) in order to learn and perfect wrestling skills.

Why should he? as he believes he is a competent wrestler.

Dissatisfaction with what you have is often the stimulus to improvement.

Often gay wrestling is simply foreplay to sex for gay men who have repressed their anger and are therefore unable to be aggressive (which is an offshoot of anger).

Donald,
I will be honest in saying I have not ordered or read your book. I have however seen it advertised on line before. (It usually came up because I searched for topics on wrestling). I've always been intrigued by it . . . the contact, the struggle etc. But like one of your readers, I lack aggression in wrestling. I like the contact and the idea . . . but I tend to "back off". For that reason, I've never been drawn to submission wrestling, or competitive wrestling -- I just felt I did not have the "aggressive personality" for it. And I hate that. And unfortunately - the no-sex issue was another familiarity I related with when reading a comment from another person that wrote to you.

I've always disliked myself for being passive, and timid. In confrontations, I tend to "back down" and not stick up for myself. I have usually frightened away from "more aggressive natured" guys -- which by all means make me feel like less than a man. I have always felt like a "coward" because I don't stand up for myself. I fear physical confrontation.

I attended a self defense course recently - and on my first "guest visit" which allowed me to participate - I got paired with a higher level student. The drill involved blocking, kicking and punching. The guy was very aggressive in all his manoeuvres - and as usual, I found myself very threatened and backing away - even telling him to stop . . . he didn't. He continued to swing at me with me cowarding back until the instructor told him to stop. I left feeling "beaten up" and upset that I didn't have the kick-ass aggression he did to charge back at him. (Instead, I was scared of getting hurt).

Being in my late 30s, I'm concerned if aggression can be "taught" or "learned" or if it's just too late. I am considering the course because I want to feel confident, and strong, but mostly so I won't take any crap from anyone. I want the physical and aggressive drive the other guy had.

In your opinion, can that be "learned" . . . . or in all your studies, did you learn that some people are just in nature "less confrontational" than others?

I know you're very busy - I'd really appreciate if you could take the time to address this matter. It would be of great help and appreciation.

Thank You.
-- P --

Dear --P--,
Thanks for writing to me, and I think you will thank yourself for writing to me. I am glad you were honest with me as it would have been quite clear to me from what you say that you have not read my books. I discovered, many years ago, that, like you, I lacked "aggression". As I was into wrestling this was a problem. Fortunately, I went into group psychotherapy ten years later where, during the five years it took, I had the neurosis cured that caused my lack of aggression. Thirty years later I wrote Wrestling for Gay Guys and while researching that book I realised that aggression is an offshoot of anger and the neurosis I had suffered from had actually caused me to repress my anger and that was why I had also been unable to be aggressive. I realised, at the same time, that 90% of gay men suffer from the same neurosis, that they repress their anger (which is why they are "gay" meaning jolly), that they are also unable to be aggressive (and that is why they become "pansies").

If proof were needed that I was right it is well known that repressing anger causes a whole lot of other problems as a consequence and these classic symptoms of repressing anger, not surprisingly, are to be found everywhere on the gay scene, such as impotency (which is why so many gay men need to resort to "poppers" and bondage), the inability to find Mr Right, feelings of inferiority, feeling oppressed by society, feeling humiliated, depression, being bullied, being exploited, being manipulated, sadism, masochism, "bitching", bad relationships, brief romantic affairs, being late for appointments, an inability to stand up for oneself, and a fear of other (straight) men. To help other gay men cure all these problems I wrote Escape the Gay Straitjacket .

Courses to "learn aggression" will not succeed until the basic neurosis that causes the problem is cured and both my books will tell you how to cure the basic neurosis. If you want to get rid of all the problems you mention in your letter and the qualities you don't like about yourself you should rush out and buy both my books and start a new life by reading them straight away!

Let me know how you get on!

Yours sincerely,
Donald Black

Thanks Donald,
I related to a lot of the "negative" aspects you mentioned caused by the neurosis. I will order the books. Hopefully they will help me make some sense of all this "crap".

You were right -- I do have a LOT of resentment and anger that I have always held inside - anger towards my church, my family, society and myself. I find myself blaming all of them -- for my unhappiness.

I don't see how any young person can grow up healthy - when they are told what they're feeling is sick.

I don't see how they can grow up to be strong, when the only role models they see are weak.

I don't see how they can feel to be a part of society, when they see others like them being shunned.

And I don't see how they can ever develop a christian relationship, if they're told God wants nothing to do with them.

I don't see how they can grow up loving themselves, when they're only taught to hate themselves.

Is there any question there is so much anger??

Anyway -- thank you for your time in writing back -- I appreciate it.

PAUL

Dear Paul,
Thanks for replying to my letter.

Yes, I know how you feel. Most gay men have problems growing up but when you add religion to the mixture it makes it much, much worse. On pages 24-25 of Escape the Gay Straitjacket I relate the very sad case of Bobby Griffith who sounds like he was very much in the same situation as you are. And one doesn't know how many more guys there are like him. Bobby Griffith committed suicide because the church and his family were pressing him to become "normal". He recorded in his diary the turmoil he was going through.

Anger can be a powerful force for good and once you have learned how to overcome the neurosis that prevents you from using your anger and are able to use your anger as a force for good you will become more able to stand up for yourself and to prevent yourself being manipulated, and that in itself will enable you to become proud of yourself at last. And that will turn your whole life around. Being pushed around by others makes one ashamed of oneself but being able to take control of your life will make you satisfied with and proud of your own strength.

If you have a credit card you can buy the books direct from the Power Books websites and they will be sent to you airmail under plain cover. Wrestling for Gay Guys (which you have of course already visited) is http://www.pb.clara.net/wfgg.htm and Escape the Gay Straitjacket is www.gaystraitjacket.com Escape the Gay Straitjacket won't be in the US until December and then in only selected bookstores. A list of stockists has been added as for the WFGG website.

Do let me know how you get on. And don't hesitate to write to me again if I can be of further help.

Yours sincerely,
Donald

I have bought your book and dipped into it. I was a bit surprised at some of the psychological things you brought up.
      My problem is that I run a gay wrestling club and I find that many of the guys who come to learn to wrestle are frightened of getting hurt and this is what eventually drives them away. I mean, you can get hurt walking down the street! But they don't seem to see it that way. How can I persuade them to stay long enough to find out how much fun wrestling is?

Thank you for writing to me about your problem. Yes, actually, table tennis is a sport that has many more injuries than wrestling does as the sudden changes in direction that table tennis players darting about make, put stresses on the body that cause injuries like sprained ankles and often result in players slipping or falling, causing bones to be broken.

In a nutshell, what causes your problem is this:

Research has shown that the parents of 90% of gay men often long for a daughter during the pregnancy of the to- become-gay son and are disappointed when a son is born. In spite of this the parents seem to continue to see him as the hoped-for daughter and tacitly, or sometimes not so tacitly, steer him away from masculine pursuits or pastimes that they see as inappropriate for a daughter.

This leaves the gay son feeling that wrestling is somehow something he is "not allowed" to do. If he tries to take up wrestling he keeps it secret from his parents and that results in a classic guilt complex.

How this works is: because he feels he is "not allowed" to wrestle, by actually wrestling, he feels that he is doing something wrong. This causes anxiety because he is afraid he will be found out and if he is found out he will be punished. This is going on in his subconscious mind so he is not aware of it. All that he is aware of is the anxiety he starts to feel about wrestling and, because of the anxiety he feels, he thinks this must be caused because wrestling must be dangerous. Why else would his parents be trying to keep him away from it?

Should he hurt himself slightly while wrestling this then becomes the proof to him that wrestling is dangerous and he is right to feel anxious about participating in it himself. And so he gives it up to stop the anxiety he is feeling about a "dangerous" sport like wrestling.

The solution is really very simple when one knows that this is the problem. You need to explain to him how his subconscious mind is working and persuade him to tell his parents that he is wrestling. Once the fact that he is wrestling is out in the open he can no longer be "found out". This breaks the thought processes in his subconscious and so the anxiety just disappears and he can at last start to enjoy his wrestling.

Many gay men have a fear of "violence" that can also play a part in their fear of wrestling, but this is all explained fully in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of my book Wrestling for Gay Guys. Dip a little deeper! Or better, get your club members to read the book for themselves!

Before I wrote the book I used to spend five minutes of the tea break during our wrestling workouts in my club to explain to my wrestlers how our subconscious minds work!

I had realised it was the only way I could stop them becoming "frightened" of wrestling and keep them coming to my club. At the time some resented it, but twenty years later they have come to agree with the points in my book, and some have thanked me for those "chats" over tea that helped them sort out, they have said, not only their wrestling but also the rest of their lives.

Please don't you take twenty years to realise the truth of it as you can lose an awful lot of prospective wrestlers in twenty years!!! They will also tell (and alarm) their friends and stop them trying to wrestle, too.

I am a psychologist with my speciality in gay and lesbian psychology and have just come across your book which I read with no little interest.
      Although I found parts of it interesting, especially MATT's drawings, I was quite troubled by your psychoanalytic assumptions which are based on rather dated research that makes it appear as though gay sexuality is somehow "sick" and that that is caused by problems in childhood.

I think you want to seriously consider whether this is doing gays any good. Perhaps you ought to rewrite it and reprint it in a more acceptable form.

Well, thank you for your letter that reveals so much of yourself!

The "psychoanalytic assumptions" you refer to are based, as I say repeatedly in my book, on research undertaken, not by just one person, but by I-haven't- counted-how-many researchers (but I quote lists of their names) who interviewed I-don't-know-how-many respondents. In one case, for instance, two researchers (Frederick L. Whitam & Robin M.R. Mathy) interviewed gay men in Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines and the U.S.A. All these researchers have arrived at broadly the same conclusions about the nature of male homosexuality.

What I have done is merely to bring all the different research findings together and show how they link together.
This was necessary to show how gay men can overcome the problems I, and others, have when trying to take up wrestling. You conveniently ignore the fact that the "psychoanalytic assumptions" have actually helped to cure people's problems so, ipso facto, can hardly be wrong!

But just in case anyone should think that all this research is purely academic, I have shown that the wrestlers in my gay club unwittingly corroborated the evidence established by all these researchers. And since writing the book many, many readers tell me that I have come to all the right conclusions, and that they agree with me.

But, what will surprise you, a psychologist, is that you, too, have unwittingly corroborated the evidence!
      Your trying to depreciate all this evidence by calling it "dated" will not cut much ice with me. Can all these researchers, working independently, come to similar conclusions and all be wrong?
Without stronger evidence to support your case what you are trying to do is nothing less than to manipulate me to your own ends.
      I am sorry to tell you this because I know you won't like it but, to have become such a manipulative person, you must surely have learned to handle people in this way from having been handled in this way yourself by your parents. This, as Dr Eric Berne described, is how "scripts" are handed down from parent to child (see pages 50, 51, 109 & 112 of Wrestling for Gay Guys) and how neuroses can be inherited.
      Now, as I have also explained (pages 19, 107 & 121) anger is nature's way of preventing us from being manipulated so, to have been manipulated by your parents, you must first have repressed, or been made to repress, your own anger.
      Repressing anger always results in worse consequences (as, see the letter from the man who did not want me to punch him on the other problem page on this website.)
      This, as I describe in Wrestling for Gay Guys is the neurosis that most gay men suffer from, that causes them to feel inferior which results in low self-esteem, sexual impotence, drug abuse (poppers), bitching, being prone to bad relationships and so on. The list is endless. This is what I call the gay straitjacket. It ends up leaving gay men weak and ineffective and unable to express aggression.
      From what you have said in your letter it can be deduced that you suffer from the same neurosis, too, although you want me without good reason to re-write my book to say that it is not so!
      Q.E.D.

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