Growing Up As A Boarder, Bleacher Boy from Çukurova

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

I studied as a boarder. For five years! And like all boarders, I have been proud of it. It felt like an institution for personal growth, maturation. I rid myself of being a "mama's boy" thanks to that place. I became a "man". I was 11 years old in my first year. I used to leave home in tears, my mom would wave from the balcony at the corner. And I would go to school dejected. Then I got used to it. I too became a part of that "jungle". A Lord of the Flies sort of promotion!

There were all kinds of male violence there, always intent on crushing the weak... The kids who didn't know about masturbation for instance would be mocked. If those who claimed to know it were under "suspicion", they would be forced to masturbate. The ones who kept to themselves would be given a hard time until they revolted. It wasn't anything like Dead Poets Society. It was a private school, but there was no poetry as such ...

The last weeks of school would be free-for-all days of torturing the lower grades. Binding those who sleep at night to their bunk beds, breaking the lock and the locker of those who hid the food that was sent from their hometown... There were also the supposedly stealthy "harassments" of the boarder girls. Adolescent games with lots of pushing and shoving. I sweat as I recall them!

The ones who were persecuted the most were "German-Turks". There were plenty of them at school, they would listen to arabesque music, the girls were extra self-confident and compared to "us" the normal ones, they were "lowbrows" and "killjoys". Their accent, music, clothing, everything about them was considered old-fashioned and they would be subjected to many forms of physical and nonphysical violence.

Then we the boys discovered sports. Before and after the study hour, between lunch and dinner... Every free moment was an excuse to run after the ball. Matches between classes, matches between day students and boarders, etc.

Those who couldn't play were considered losers. If you are so bad that you can't play basketball or soccer, then you are nothing! That's why even the most untalented would give it a go. They would at least be rough, give a kick, or shoulder. It was ok if they couldn't dribble but they couldn't afford to be soft!

I am a small guy. But I was lucky during that period of puberty for I had an early growth spurt and started getting taller before everyone else. That's why I wasn't one of the shortest ones. The shortest, the thinnest, the fattest, the tallest... They suffered the most. They were all subjects of mockery and psychological violence.

I should do right by this column and be honest here. I committed violence too. I remember there was a boy I always treated really bad because he had no talent and was pulling the team down in the dormitory tournament.

Once I even charged at him with the crudeness of growing up in Çukurova . I thought he was a mummy's boy, an apartment kid. I feel embarrassed now as I remember the details.

Then, the construction of our summer house ended, and we started to go to Mersin every year. The boarding school ended as well and the period of "being from Adana" started. A group of boys. We are playing soccer, going to the soccer games, fighting and ogling at the girls. The filthiest period of puberty and of becoming a man. Ugly years under the invasion of pimples and the stench of masturbation. An unnecessary state of red-blooded young maleness and swagger which I could not get over until my university years...

The stories that I am telling here are memories from a theoretically more "decent" boarding school and adolescence. After all I had graduated from a college in İstanbul. But even that was in no way an exception. The prevailing culture of boyhood when we were growing up was more or less like that.

Just think about the "mob" that fills the bleachers today, always tending towards violence, in a mood to lynch someone when they come together, and unable to speak without using foul language.

They are the very part of this culture of becoming man. A mass which does not get in contact with women, socializes only through sports, hangs out only with those who resemble themselves, and hates everything that is different. Those who cannot speak by themselves, but think that bullying with cheers is a show of "character"...

And add to them the adolescents who have and have not grown-up, those who simply cannot leave childhood behind, who attribute a meaning to that adolescent inside them, who think that soccer is their "private" thing and define the bleachers as their legitimate sphere of machismo.

Add to that the constantly recurring talk of the proverbial "manhood".

The gravity of the situation expands even further. Class or identity is of no relevance anymore. All these grown-up people, these educated men ranging from artists to teachers reproduce this machismo over and over again. This is the dark face of the "circle of friends" which is glorified as the bleacher culture!

When I look back, yes, I am still proud of having been a boarding student. I think this is the puberty and manhood syndrome which I cannot figure out either.

There is a very thin line between defining my boarding school as a place of reaching maturity and viewing it as a center of testosterone. I hope that I can now clearly tell on which side I stand.

I hope that I did not tyrannize many people back then. Because it was not a time of "everyone was like that but, I was different". Everyone was the same thing!

In fact, that is exactly what we need to change. We must destroy that shell, that identity. It is difficult to get anywhere without questioning these displays of manhood inherited from yesterday and without criticizing puberty and soccer as the centers of constant reproduction of sexism, over and over again.

If not then, isn't it high time to do this now? (BE/ŞA/APA/SD/TK/IG)

* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses

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