I Also Support Hazing

Admittedly, I've always been the "wildcard" of my friend group. Heck, even before I had sentient, tangible friends I would do things like "psychologically haze" the imaginary members of my social circles via gaslighting, ego-fragmentation, Abilify, and other fun tricks. Classic dude antics. Common man stuff. However, in a strange twist of fate, as I grew up I realized that playing those kinds of cognitive pranks on real people had adverse effects which caused me to be shunned by peers, teammates, and family members. Going into my senior year of high school, on the brink of becoming a full-blown outcast, I knew I had one last chance to prove myself as "one of the boys" before graduating and skipping town for college. So I did what anyone would do in my situation and joined the cross country team. It seemed like the most logical plan at the time, considering I was a little too aggressive for soccer, a little too narrow for football, and a little too Y'd for girl's volleyball.

I distinctly remember the first day of practice. It was a particularly humid summer afternoon, and as we were in the middle of doing calisthenics, one of the less-endowed underclassman's scrotum started visibly peeking out of his skimpy running shorts like a Chinese dwarf hamster poking its head out of the Erlenmeyer flask you stuffed it in as a kid when you were playing "mad scientist" with your imaginary lab partner. True '90s kids know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I'll never forget the pure, unbridled joy and exhilaration I felt when the older, cooler fellas on the squad all ganged up to pick on him, and I, for once, wasn't the victim of the teasing and mockery. I was ecstatic. Some of the fellas resorted to low hanging fruits like poking fun at the prune-like texture and appearance of that boy's underdeveloped testicles, and others stooped to more subtle farces like kindly telling him to fix his shorts while attempting to make him feel more comfortable about the embarrassing situation. It was at that moment, as I joined in on the fun and repetitively poked that geeky twerp's defenseless ball sack with a cicada-infested tree branch like a seasoned LARPer, I realized that hazing was actually the best thing to ever happen to me. In fact, it saved my life.

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Let me be crystal clear: The organizations that have ritually used hazing (fraternities, athletic teams, ISIS, the seminary, etc.) don't do it just to belittle anyone that wants to join their group. That's silly. We do it as a way to cope with our own insecurities and inferiority complexes while simultaneously feeling more masculine and authoritative for freely degrading other males without the fear of retaliation. How else would teen boys learn to respect their superiors if it's not by gargling the lukewarm Natural Light that was marinating in their unwashed anuses or getting impaled in the genitalia by a Sycamore stick? Despite the vocal minority of critics who desperately try to denounce it, hazing is an integral part of becoming a member of any manhood or brotherhood.

What do you think happened to that little cross country runner that was mercilessly hazed by me and the fellas on that infamous summer day? Do you think it scarred him for the rest of high school and had a permanent impact on his reputation? Well, yes, but it also turned him into a better man with better values. In fact, he ended up evolving into an elite long distance runner with the stamina of a Pronghorn antelope and the balls of a large breed Cocker Spaniel. But more importantly, he ended up becoming one of the most prominent supporters and advocates of hazing on the internet.