One of the most subtle yet intensive stories of westerners coming to train and devote their lives to Muay Thai, in the decidedly hypermasculine art, is the way the body is laid bare on an armature of historical patriarchal values, under the auspices of merit. Muay Thai floats on twin pillars, one being the pedagogy of masculinity, a rite of passage into a masculinized identity, and the other, in the ecstatic art of a panhedonic appraise of agonistic ascension, an older, more though dimension beneath the first. Women throw themselves over this funeral pyre with mixed results.
