Who Bears the Weight of Community PR in BJJ?

I hadn't planned to start writing again for a while...it can be easy to get caught up in feeling repetitive as a blogger  (and I still haven't figured out how I wanted to end the last series I did) but some hullabaloo over Dean Lister and some sexual pantomimes and Lister's responses and Lister's defenders has popped up, and I wanted to clear my head a bit.

I think it's important for me to say that there are very few things in life I see as one-off or isolated incidents. I believe that if that wasn't true before, the Internet (social media specifically), has made it so today. I believe that we really are all marketers now.

So I've been training...rolling up on 5 years soon, and I still remember my first class. It was taught by a black belt who I now consider a friend. I was in his class for a few years and our similar personalities and approaches in working with people made connecting very organic. I've said before that I knew we'd be buddies after only a couple of classes. 

I train at a gym where our greetings are pretty formal--we bow off and on the mats. You have to find, bow and shake the hands of all black belts on the mat when entering and leaving. That's never been difficult for me since I was brought up with some decently rigid rules around addressing those in different power positions. Needless to say, the bro-hugs that we used off the mat as greetings didn't fit in our academy's culture. I knew that, but still, once someone's a friend, even if there's a black belt around their waist, it can be easy to forget where you are. 

Well one day I saw him, drew my hand back, let out a "What's up!!" and went in for a hug...in front of Parrumpa. 

"You can't do that. Greet him like a black belt."

I knew he was right...for both the sake of the belt itself and the perception of the belt by others. See...I've heard Parrumpa say similar things to teammates before, usually starting at blue. By the time you have color around your waist, it's quite apparent that he's aware of what the perception of that color means. I was also reminded of my own talk with a higher belt who'd done something similar (to the video) with me once, and how my concern didn't come so much from personal offense, but from the resulting break in respect from white belts (and having to start from scratch in teaching them how to behave with female students) who had been quick to take social cues from behavior of higher ranked students.

And that, is where I think the disconnect in the Lister discussion falls. Dean and his supporters are arguing over the harmlessness of the incident itself, the woman's personal lack of issue with it and Lister's impeccable record as a competitor and instructor. Criticisms center around the perception of him giving a mock handjob to people who don't know the context. You gotta love false dichotomies.

I'll say both sides are right in their own contexts...but I also don't believe that all contexts are created equal. 

I spend a lot of time thinking of BJJ and the future and how it's perceived and by whom it's seen. The clip (now taken down) is obviously not an ad for a BJJ class, but still, this behavior (initially private, now public by way of the Internet) is definitely not a selling point...mostly because it's not special, unique to, or a characteristic of BJJ. Pretty much any sports-centered environment provides a space where hand jobs are considered funny and teasing is the norm. Relaxing for some people? Sure. A unique selling proposition for BJJ? Not in the least. 

And while I've heard people defend it as such, I know...I hope rather...that's not what anybody involved in the video was going for. I did have to ask myself though, why people (in this case, Dean Lister) are quick to double down on defending an "inside joke" that likely should have stayed indoors.

There's a saying in business that "you get what you measure". As Lister points out, he's created champions and has held seminars in over 40 countries. Little of his career reward or measurement centers around his public perception...BJJ has no big sponsors to threaten pulling out or PR firms coaching athletes. So in light of the current state of cash in BJJ, I get it. There is simply no reason, aside from personal values, to give respectful thought to the opinions of an "extreme minority".

I'm not going to quote Uncle Ben or rehash my thoughts on the complexity of the perception of stars in any community, but for me personally, this hurt a bit...the responses much more than the video. 

I still remember the first time I heard Lister on InsideBJJ and being immediately enamored with his polyglot status (I have a knee-jerk love for language people), honesty about his experiences as a child growing up as an outsider, and how he spoke and thought about BJJ. I'm in no way naive as to the humanity of humans, but I did, based on what I'd heard before, and a side conversation I'd recently had with him, expect deeper, if not only different responses.