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'The Point': surfing, geography and a sensual life of men and masculinity
on the Gold Coast, Australia
Clifton Eversa
a
Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

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Gold Coast, Australia', Social & Cultural Geography, 10: 8, 893 908
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 Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 10, No. 8, December 2009

The Point: surfing, geography and a sensual life of

men and masculinity on the Gold Coast, Australia
Downloaded By: [University of Nottingham] At: 01:48 26 November 2010

Clifton Evers
Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Kensington,
Sydney, 2052, Australia, clifton.evers@unsw.edu.au

The beach has long been a privileged site in Australian culture, and surfers have become
icons of it. These men are often referred to as straight as steel, strong as granite, austere
and inviolate. Drawing on over three decades worth of surfing I unpack this hegemonic
understanding of men who surf, and reveal in its place the importance of feelings and
bodies to their lives. Through an analysis of going surfing I articulate the role feelings and
bodies play in how men belong, how they bond with their turf, come to understand
themselves as masculine, and how they learn to do masculinity.

Key words: masculinity, bodies, emotions, affects, surfing, Australia.

Introduction Irwin 1965; Ishiwata 2002; Lanagan 2002;

The code of the wave
At the seaside . . . a new world of sensations was
growing. (Alain Corbin in The Lure of the Sea
1994)
It has been popular to research surfings social
mores, representations, discourses, semiotics,
narratives, beliefs, and values (Beattie 2001;
Booth 1995, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2001b, 2003,
2004, 2008; Buckley 2002a, 2002b; Butts
2001; Canniford 2006; Cook 2000; Daskalos
2007; Farmer 1992; Finney and Houston 1996;
Fisher 2005; Fiske 1983; Flynn 1989; Ford and
Brown 2006; Henderson 2001; Hull 1976;
Lueras 1984; McGloin 2005; Olive 2007;
Ormrod 2002; Pearson 1979; Ponting 2001;
Rutsky 1999; Scott 2003; Stranger 1999, 2001;
Taylor 2006). These studies show that surfing
has a very particular cultural economy. It is,
indeed, a way of life.
Surf culture has long been a privileged site in
Australian society, and male surfers have
become Australian icons of it. They are referred
to as straight as steel, strong as granite, austere,
inviolate. But this dominant imaginary is
wrong.
My work (Evers 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008)
has been focused on how the lived experience
of surfing in Australia relates to masculinity,
bodies, and a sensual life. It is an attempt to
quite literally make sense of men who surf

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/09/080893-16 q 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14649360903305783
 894 Clifton Evers

and their experience of masculinity, where that
making sense is also to enliven the senses
(Abram 1997: 265).
In this article I turn the critical light on the
sensual life of men who surf at a surf location
on the Gold Coast, Australia. I argue that it is
through a sensual life that men who surf learn
and do masculinity.
Jack Pollard, in his book The Australian
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Stoke is an ongoing felt state of surfers, and it
varies according to intensity and duration.
I argue that through a study of the sensual
life of men who surf I can pull lived bodies
back into discussion of masculinity.1 Mascu-
linity is not simply something that is mapped
on to bodies, in which those biological
organisms are simply containers for the social.
Rather, masculinity is an attempt to rational-

Surfrider, was aware of what surfing bodies
could reveal when he claimed that
an expert can virtually read a surfers character
from the way he handles a wave. It is this feeling of
intense elation that ensnares a board rider and
unless you appreciate this you will never understand
surfers. If you want real emotional kicks, this is it.
(1963: 9)
I will begin the article by explaining my
specific focus on men who surf. In turn I
theoretically position my understanding of the
relationship between bodies, space, gender
and a sensual life. I will then provide a self-
reflexive analysis of a lived experience of
masculinity to explore this sensual life.
By positing my body as part of what it
researches I want to evidence shift from
research about bodies to research through
bodies. As the sociologist Michele Barrett
suggests, we need to involve bodies so that our
insights are imaginative, sensual even, in that
they speak to experience, which includes
the senses rather than simply cognition
(2000: 19).
In surfing, the sensual life that emerges from
these contingent constellations is called
stoke. If one is very stoked, they experience
a fully embodied feeling of satisfaction, joy,
and pride. You will tingle from your head to
your toes. But if a surfer takes my wave, it is
likely that I will not be stoked, and my face
will flush and temples will throb in anger.
ise, control, contain, and hide the dynamic
wave-like motion of the spatial, biological,
psychological and sociological assemblages
that are its lived context.
This article aims to ground masculinity and
make visible its uncertainty, permutations,
transformations, viscerality, imagination,
creativity, sensuousness, irrationality, and
movement. It will do this by deciphering a
contingent assemblage in action.
My hope is that by laying bare the
dynamism of this contingent assemblage it
will allow me to follow the line of thought on
masculinity and male bodies that is attempt-
ing to undermine understandings of, and
assumptions about, masculinity that classify
and limit possibilities, perpetuate a tendency
to universalise and idealise the male body,
promote the male body as a singular unified
construct, as well as produce unequal power
relations (Bordo 1999; Stephens and Lorent-
zen 2007).2 It is a question of trying to
understand experiences of masculinity and
male bodies in a way that can capture the
code of the wave, which is fluid, transform-
able, and always on the edge of collapse.
The pecking order
This article is about, and written from, the
perspective of heterosexual Anglo men who
surf and their relationship to masculinity and a
sensual life. This is not a general picture of

surfing. Even though women, homosexual
men, other ethnicities, and the like are surfing
in increasing numbers they are still far
outnumbered by these men, and sit below
them on the pecking order in line-ups in
Australia.
In the vast majority of scholarship on surf
culture the perspective of surfing Others
women, ethnicities and sexualitiesare not
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expressed. The few exceptions are some work
on surfing media and gender (Henderson
2001; Ormrod 2002; Stedman 1997), a study
of Indonesian surfers (Leonard 2007), a
doctoral thesis on representations of Indigen-
ous Australian surfing (McGloin 2005), and
an article on the use of localismterritorial-
ism in surfingto resist colonisation in
Hawaii (Ishiwata 2002).
My intention on being specific in this study
is not to continue to silence other voices, but to
refuse to welcome, abuse, defend, include,
analyse, or measure others and thereby
construct them as passive objects. As anthro-
pologist Ghassan Hage suggests in his work on
racism, multiculturalism, and tolerance: I do
not give myself the right to worry over them
(1998: 17). To argue for inclusion or exclusion
of others experiences, no matter how sincere I
try to be, relies on the conviction that it is up to
me to direct the traffic, as it were (1998: 17).
That said, there may still be concern that I
am writing Others out of surfing with this
study of heterosexual Anglo men who surf.
While I engage with those different from
myself on a day-to-day basis, out in the line-
ups these mens discourses and worldview
dominate, and are whom I have built the most
powerful relationships with. My aim is not to
re-entrench this dominance but put the
mechanics of their lives on display so their
assumptions that lead to them sitting atop the
pecking order are open to critique and
challenge. For example, the generalised claim
Surfing, geography and a sensual life of men 895
women are too emotional and fragile to surf
big waves properly, while men are strong and
can overcome their emotions.
While men are aware of their bodies and
emotions out in the waves, they do not often
discuss them in relation to gender. This silence
and ability to render male corporeality and
emotional life as invisible is integral to the
power of masculinity (Stephens and Lorentzen
2007: 6). This means men are framed as
rational, civilised/cultured, and reason-
able, often at the expense of others who are
positioned as a negative opposition
unstable, unreasonable, uncivilised, irrational,
and over-emotional.
Homosociality
As I have outlined, this is a specific study. It is a
study of homosocial experiences. In her book
Between Men: English Literature and Male
Homosocial Desire, literary theorist Eve
Sedgwick calls the whole spectrum of social
bondsfriendship, mentorship, camaraderie,
brotherly unity, rivalry, economic exchange
between men as male homosocial desire
(1985: 1 3). This homosocial ordering of
mens lives means that for some men male-to-
male relationships take priority over male-to-
female relations.
This male homosocial desire may be the
desire for the company of other men, but it is
meant to be a strictly platonic and asexual
desire rooted strongly within the patriarchal
structure . . . of obligatory heterosexuality
(1985: 3) of which homophobia [becomes] a
necessary consequence (1985: 3). A cultural
system has developed in which male-to-male
desire is routed through triangular desire
involving an object. Sedgwick goes on to
explain that in the total scheme of things,
mens bonds with women are meant to be in a
 896 Clifton Evers
subordinate, complementary, and instrumen-
tal relation to bonds with other men (1985:
229).
The importance of homosocial desire for
male surfers in Australia is clearly evident in
the Nick Enright play A Property of the Clan
(1992), later made into a film called Black
Rock (1997). The storyline is based on real
events that happened at a popular surfing
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beach at Newcastle, Australia in the early
1990s. It is about a tragic rape and murder of
schoolgirl Leigh Leigh by young surfers at a
party, where a group of mates closed ranks
and did not speak out.
The fact that young men can be so torn
up and ostracised about dobbing on a mate,
shows how strong male-to-male bonding in
surf culture in Australia is. It also shows how
sexual experiences with girls can actually
come a distant second-place to mateship with
the boys. Further, in the grand scheme of
things the girl does not really matter to the
storyline of the play. It is the intimate
mateshiphomosocial desirebetween the
men that keeps the narrative ticking over.
Similarly, when hanging out at the beach or
in the waves, talk about sexual conquest
women comes up often, or we talk about
surfing, sport, surfing, cars, surfing, work,
surfing, politics, or surfing. What this way of
talking does is interrupt any possible homo-
erotic interpretations of homosocial assem-
blages. Men use women, objects, and activities
to fuel and enable bonds with other men. You
are allowed to be with the boys, but not to
desire them.
Homosociality is meant to be distin-
guished from homosexual, and can be
characterised by intense homophobia. Male-
only bonding will often involve homophobic
jokes and references that work to distance
homoerotic desire. There is an ever-present
overt homophobia in surfing spaces.
When men who surf hang out together at
beachside car parks there are unwritten hetero-
normative expectations and rules protecting
one from homo-eroticism. These car parks are
full of men dressed in rubber, half naked, and
flexing glistening wet muscles. But when
getting into and out of my wetsuit in the open
I am not allowed to watch others change by
threat of abuse and violence. For the semi-
naked surfer it is as feminist theorist
Elspeth Probyn describes in relation to the
gym changing room, there are always a
welter of codes about how and where to look
(2001: 21).
Masculinity and bodies
Studies on the relationship between bodies,
sensual life, and masculinity have focused on
mens narratives (Connell 2000; Shamir and
Travis 2002). I am more interested in how
masculinity, bodies and a sensual life are lived
(Lilleaas 2007; Seidler 2007). This sensual life
is how men bond with certain spaces and each
other, come to understand themselves as
masculine, go surfing, and learn to do
masculinity. It is a desire to get into the nitty
gritty of the lives of men who surf. The
differences between what men who surf say,
and what they do and feel in the heat of the
moment, can be very marked.
Bodies can reveal much when we take note
of them in action. I find that experiences will
often contradict what I expect or what is
narrated after the fact in interviews I have
conducted. Rather than position the mind as
where the subject learns about gender I want
to accommodate the moments where bodies
learn masculinity in a way that is not just
instrumental. A surfer feels waves, and rides
with them. I surf with my body as an affective
entity, not simply as an instrument.
 Surfing, geography and a sensual life of men
My work follows the lead of philosopher
Elizabeth Grosz (1994) who suggests figuring
the body as an affective assemblageaffecting
and being affected. Grosz points out that such
assemblages are the way that (fragments) of
bodies come together with or align themselves
to other things (1994: 120).
Bodies are a point of spatial, psychological,
biological and sociological exchange whereby
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the interrelationship of the elements cannot be
reduced to those elements. These assemblages
always move, rearrange and connect with
other things to form new bodies. I understand
these assemblages in the sense that they are
turning points, and points of inflection,
bottlenecks, knots, foyers, and centres, points
of fusion, condensation and boiling . . .
sensitive points (Deleuze 1992: 2).
Bodies are not simply inscribed, disciplined,
or trained by historical, social and cultural
exigencies. Nature is not subordinate to the
social or social to nature, as there is no clear
separation between them.
Marcel Mauss (1973), an anthropologist
and sociologist during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century argues that the social
should not be theorised as some original and
substantial foundation keeping itself in the
background, but as a constellation of actions
and events whose relationships and ingredi-
ants we must strive to reveal at the level of
what actually unfolds and happens (Karsenti
1998).
Masculinity emerges from a dynamic and
contingent assemblage. Following on from a
study of how bodies perceive, think and sense,
by the philosopher Brian Massumi (2002),
I use the word emergence in a way that
implies dynamism and not a binary of nature
and culture. Massumi reaches an understand-
ing of emergence that treats it as a flow where
nature and culture blur as they actualise
through action.
897
Gendered discourses are used to sort out,
code, over-write, clear up, or get straight what
is emerging at any given moment. Our sex and
gender are end points, and not starting
points.3 For example, when a body falls from
a surfboard it can escape classifications such as
masculine/feminine or male/female because it
blurs into a falling body. This assemblage
blurs as body and seaweed and wave energy
and sand and seaweed and fibreglass and
sunlight and foam and wetsuit and fear and . . .
Gendered discourses actually have to catch
up to work out if it is a male or female body,
and masculine or feminine experience.
Crucially, this emergence of experiences of
masculinity happens somewhere. Probyn
(2003) asks us to look at the differing
relationships that play upon and within us as
we move through differing spaces. Probyn
argues for considering subjectivity and space
as relational matters (2003: 112).
Robert Preston-Whyte explains that ana-
lyses of surfers seldom consider their
relationship with the ever-changing wave
environment as it conforms to wind, weather
and modifications in coastal morphology
(2002: 308). By looking at how surfers interact
with coastlines, sea floors, and beaches in
South Africa, he argued that sea floors, jetties,
and rock walls shape particular waves, and in
turn influence social arrangements and surfer
experiences.
Coastlines and weather patterns are always
in a state of flux. Waves wash up and wash
away. This means as a man who surfs I cannot
hold on to a certain subject position, adopt or
reject the possibility of movement. Each wave
ridden is a wave ridden for the first time, each
wave a wave interpreted afresh. Sometimes I
combine some moves with others, highlight moves,
modify moves, transform moves entirely or invent
them as though for the first time. We make use of
 898 Clifton Evers
anaphora (by repeating a bottom turn, over and
over, each time differently extending it), dissonance
(by ducking for a pitching lip where non offers
itself), metre (by making five moves on each wave,
stressing the third move by rhyming the second and
fifth. (Leonard 1997: 18)
Most surfers fall short of explicit calculations
when it comes time to decide what to do. It
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becomes a case of tacit decision-making borne
of an embodied learning, or a social learning
embodied as second nature or intuitive, and
so forgotten. Decisions are made on what are
sometimes called knacks or hunches that
feed off this non-rational and non-cognitive
learning. It is as Gisli Palsson explains in
relation to Icelandic fishing captains:
Sometimes one tries to follow some plan, based on
ones experience from the day before or the recent
past. And then a new day arrives, with new kinds of
circumstances, and it simply becomes impossible to
follow a plan. (1994: 919)
I have surfed all my life, so my familiarity with
movement means my research does not
involve looking for types of male bodies and
patterns of masculinities.4 Instead, I prefer to
map masculinity in a way that pays attention
to what emerges from what is said and done
now, here and nowhere else (Probyn 1996).
By taking this approach, it is possible to
reveal how men who surf are not given or
stable in any way, even though they tend to
ascribe to essentialist readings of gender. It is a
view of the game from the point of view of the
player, and an attempt to get a feel for the
game.
I understand masculinity as felt geographical
assemblagesa spatial, biological, sociologi-
cal, psychological emergence. While an emer-
gence of surfing and masculinity involves
social regimes of instruction, expectation, and
discipline, there is also a situated bodily
and sensory awareness, knowledge, and
imagination.
I may have an idea of how a wave could be
ridden. But the wave, weather and bathymetry
rarely assemble as expected. This dynamic
ecology forces its way into my embodied
memories, enthusiasms, expectations, ges-
tures, and imagination by way of sight, taste,
smell, touch, hearing, and balance. Ecologies
never allow proprioceptic, kinaesthetic and
sensual awareness to settle. This means that
emergences of masculinity and surfing are full
of improvisation, potentials, and the new, and
not just repetition and prediction.
Surfers ride with waves, not simply on them.
They are part of our bodies and our bodies are
part of them. It can reach the point where I do
not know where I begin and the wave ends.
I have a body that surfs (Evers 2004, 2005,
2006). My perception negotiates an attune-
ment with my own rhythms and the rhythms
of the things themselves, their own tones,
textures, and timing (Lefebvre 2004). The
ecology penetrates any assemblage, and is not
a backdrop.
Further to this, [H]umans and non-humans
are always in it together (Muecke 2006: 1).
While the ecology involves me, it is more than
human. Dolphins, storms, driftwood, jellyfish,
dolphins, birds, fish, turtles, surfboards, shells,
seaweed, and the like surf here too (Satchell
2006). A wave is
more than water. It carries a whole universe inside it.
What is tossed up from the sea chums with the debris
of the land as the inundation gains momentum.
Shells, jellyfish, driftwood. (Capp 1996: 4)
The ecology is more than my intelligible
point of view. It requires me to feel out
attachments that are more often than not
beyond rational thought.

Sometimes my mates and I talk of being in
balance with the universes equilibrium, tap-
ping into the source, and being here and now
(Taylor 2006). This talk frames our
relationship to the surf as spiritual and
metaphysical, and ensures our experience is
within the masculine realm of the mind and
culture. I have a habit of turning nature into
the natural.
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[T]he natural is what culture makes of nature. In
other words, the natural is a cultural product, and
nature exists only as a conceptual opposition to
culture. (Fiske 1983: 121)
Men who surf colonise their relationship with
the ecology with rationality, and produce it as
masculine.
However, each emergence or surf session is
more than rationality. They involve a different
bundle of environmental, social, and sensory
values each time. This means when my mates
talk about their rides they focus on how they
feel good, feel shameful, feel proud, feel
terrifying, feel disgusting, and so on. They do
not talk about what they were thinking at the
time. What occurs is a shift in balance from a
cognitive attunement to an affective
attunement.
The registering of the world as an affective
modality means that the men can come to rely
on their bodies to tell them if something has
changed, or needs to change. Their bodies
shiver, heat up, cool down, agitate, cry, shake,
and the like when cultural rules and social
norms deeply embedded in their bodies have
been disturbed, or new conditions are unsui-
table or challenging. It is why they can feel
angry, fearful, joyful, excited, disgusted,
proud, ashamed, and so on before they can
explain why.
Surfing, geography and a sensual life of men 899
Style
To accommodate the affective awareness men
who surf refer to the importance of style. I
understand this to be an embodied, sensual
and spatial expression.5
While not about surfing, Iain Borden (2001:
120) considers how skateboarders bodies
intermingle with roads, park benches, and
cement as they skate. He proposes that style is
a fluid manner of connecting, an economy of
motion. Force, grace, and fluidity make
up style, qualities that go beyond a set of
physical acts (2001: 121).
Style is where a body is not a personally
remembered physical co-ordination but my
body affecting and being affected during
assemblages. My style is always evolving,
taking on elements and discarding them.
I combine some moves with others, modify
moves, transform moves entirely, or invent
them as though for the first time (Leonard
1997: 20).
Waves always travel differently. They pitch
faster or slower, curl awkwardly, edged with a
multiplicity of smaller waves (Serres 1995:
33). Style highlights how bodies are part of a
dynamic sensual existence, where we do not
know what a body can do (Spinoza in Deleuze
1992: 50).
The sensual life of men who surf acts as a
motivational system (Tomkins 1963). The
amplification brought on by their senses signals
that an emergence that is already taking place
matters, and so they pay attentioncon-
sciously and unconsciouslyto it and engage
accordingly. Men who surf will then organise
this emergence by favouring the social to sort
out and qualify what is going on, or has
happened.
Bodies recollect earlier sensual experiences.
Collections of these experiences become a
 900 Clifton Evers
style. This style is a loosely organised biologi-
cal, sociological, and psychological recollec-
tion, and is the ability to connect the memory of
past connections and disconnections with a
new emergence. Bodies are a way of thinking.
There is always an ongoing adaptation as
bodies move across space and time. But while
there is always movement, changing configur-
ations, and adaptation, ones style does not
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move freely. Many elements insist on directing
the traffic in any space, such as deeply
embodied social codes and mores (Bourdieu
1984). Douglas Booth (2003) shows in his
comprehensive historical analyses how sur-
fers styles are influenced by the weight of
histories carrying gendered, cultural, compe-
tition, media, commercial, cultural, and
technological influences, enthusiasms, and
expectations.
To evidence how I arrived at my theoretical
understanding of the relationship between
space, sensual life, bodies, and masculinity as
style I will now provide a description of a
contingent assemblage at The Point, on the
Gold Coast, Australia. My aim is to show how
a sensual life of masculinity and surfing is
experienced as they emerge.
The Point
A cyclone spins off the coast. Powerful swells
stagger, punch drunk from the wind, down the
flanks of The Point. This is a boulder-strewn
headland. The waves peel off sandbanks
formed by the boulders, and fed by silt from
a creek to the south. The waves can peel for
hundreds of metres. The Point is a revered
place where an ancient volcano, known as
Wollumbinstorm gathererto the local
Aborigines, has seeped into the ocean, steady-
ing the flow of sand. The result has been the
arrangement of silica to produce excellent
bathymetry for the production of well-shaped
waves.
The Point has its own moods, ecology, local
surfers, cultures, histories, and wave-shape.
What has become clear to me is that the space
my subjectivity emerges with is a lived
cartography of the coast (Satchell 2006).
This lived cartography is the synthetic coming
together of ocean swells, the sun, sand, rock,
coral, anthropogenic life, and so on. I am
embedded in The Points seasonal, regional,
specific, resident and migratory ecological
patterns (Satchell 2006). This emergence is
clear evidence of Probyns awareness of the
spatial imperative of subjectivity I understand
that to become a man who surfs I am involved
in a complex spatial emergence of the
biological, sociological, and psychological
assemblage.
I wait all year for the season of cyclones that
will light up The Point. I grew up surfing
here, and have felt many cyclones. If my skin
drips with sweat and I am itchy there is a
lacklustre onshore north-east wind blowing,
and only a slight chance of weak swell. This
weather makes me irritable. My body loves the
days when turbulent cyclone winds blow.
Swell will follow. It is an acute embodied sense
of connectivity.
The sun is the first piece of the
map connecting me to synthetic geography. It
not only burns my skin when surfing, but
initiates cyclones. Cyclonic winds are the
result of the thermal mixing of the atmosphere
due to the sun. A turbinate union is created,
sometimes spinning at hundreds of kilometres
per hour. Speeding wind creates friction with
the water. The resulting ripples collect other
small waves that grow bigger and become
organised as they radiate outward. This
process is known as radial dispersion.
The waves propagate in succession with a
message of what happened, the strength of
 Surfing, geography and a sensual life of men
the wind, the amount of time they were
exposed to it, the fetch of the storm, its
direction, and its death (Serres 1995). The
waves feel the bathymetry, refracting as they
pass over it. Helped or hindered by the surge
of the tide they bend into The Point.
On this day I watch the surf from the picnic
benches halfway up the point. A close-knit
crew mill about, we all grew up surfing here.
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The shame, danger, relief, stoke and pride
experienced while surfing here has had the
effect of bonding together a certain group of
men. The surf sessions we experience here are
a mixed assortment of touch, smell, sight,
sound, and taste that spill all over each other
(Leonard 1997). It is as Grosz (1994) notes:
the bonding is an affective assemblage.
Men in this local crew do not bond simply
because they all surf or live in a particular
area. Nor do they have some essential essence
of masculinity inside each of them that draws
them together. They are bonded by the fear,
joy, pride, and so on that their bodies go
through together. Our experiences develop felt
connections between our bodies. It reaches the
point where my mates blood is the same as
mine. The brotherly love that you feel is
physicalas long as the touching stays in the
right places. Homophobia is rife during
homosocial emergences (Sedgwick 1985).
We have tattoos announcing belonging. The
pain of the tattoo etches belonging into our
bodily memories. There are special hand-
shakes. Feelings pass easily through gnarled
hands to recall past experiences we have
shared. Even with eye contact stoke [joy] can
fly through the air. Masculinity is built on
intimacya sensual life.
When a boy first begins to surf in an area he
will be expected to take some rubbishing
until his body earns its right to belong. If he
steps out-of-line he is mocked, abused, or even
beaten up. This process of bastardisation is
901
called grommet abuse. Violence, shame,
disgust, and the like are used to police what
bodies are allowed to connect with, and what
they are not. As much as the social and cultural
mores and discourses Booth (2003) highlights.
As a boy hangs out with the older blokes he
begins to move and behave like them through
the gradual, often unconscious, absorption of
their knowledge through continual exposure.
I surfed most with Scat. He only surfs the
waves of The Point. His hands dangle, his back
arcs and chin raises during bottom turns, and
his body torque is severe during high-speed
turns. People say my surfing is a modification
of his.
The sensual awareness of what is happening
positions men who surf as bodies-in-relation.
This inter-affective experience is how they
learn to behave, come to belong, and know
what is happening through their bodies.
Learning how to do masculinity is not just
through the mind but also through the bodys
sensual repertoire.
Not only did I pick up on how to surf, I also
learned how to do masculinity: posture, ways
of moving, and the like. My body learned
what is masculine and appropriate. I was
reprimanded and called a poofter or girl if
my bodily movements were fragile, uncertain,
delicate, timid, soft, and self-conscious. Male
bodies are rooted in discourses that pass on
expectations and enthusiasms that are about
being assertive, hard, strong, bold, competi-
tive, dominant, rough, and the like.
One day as a grommetyoung surferI got
a pat on the back from a revered older surfer to
let me know I belong. It can feel like you are
getting a knighthood. Men use touch, looks,
nods and so on to transfer respect, trust, pride,
and so on.
Men who surf spend years earning their
right to belong to The Point. The confused
beating of your heart has to become familiar.
 902 Clifton Evers
Body strength and stamina grow. Each
collision and strained breath teaches oxygen
efficiency, and turns lungs into surfers lungs.
Wipeouts rip at flesh and contort the body into
strange positions. White water washes, reefs
rip, swells sweep. Each surf and watery
collision is another battering a body has
endured, and tied them to The Point.
This sensual emergence with other bodies at
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The Point turns it into our turf. Since blokes
are not supposed to be associated with the
domesticated home, public spaces are colo-
nised as we assemble with them. Surfers have a
long tradition of spray-painting Locals Only
on footpaths and rock walls to let people
know that particular beaches and pieces of
turf are theirs.6 Surf spots are carved
up through a social, biological and spatial
know-how. This know-how, and the policing
of its concomitant territory, is a process surfers
call localism (Daskalos 2007; Evers 2006,
2008; Grant 2007; Scott 2003).
As I wax my surfboard one of the boys has
just got out of the water, and complains about
the session. I do not hear the conversation
clearly though. The bone in my ear canal has
started growing and in time will block the hole.
It is from the cold morning offshore breezes
blowing into the ear, and is called Surfers ear
(Mudge 1992). It compliments my pterygiums.
This is where the skin begins to grow over the
eye to protect it from strong sunlight. Rather
than join in the conversation I focus on my
surfboard. It is an extension of what I have felt
while surfing. The board ceases to be an object
as its form dissolves into my touch. Object and
self blur during assemblages and emergences,
and transform each other.
We climb over the boulders to the entry
spot. I slip and fall. Even though I have
travelled this route thousands of times The
Point changes. Waves and tide move boulders,
and slim grows and dies. There is the rock with
the barnacles that put the scar on my face. We
are part of moving assemblages, rather than
being the agent of movement.
Before paddling out my mates and I
exchange a few words about the swell.
Looks about twelve feet now, one of the
boys exclaims. I answer with a jutting chin and
a nonchalant claim that it is only about eight
feet. It is considered important not to over-
emphasise wave height because this commu-
nicates fear and inexperience.
Some surfers judge wave height from crest
to trough as a wave rears up. Others measure
wave height on what pioneering big wave rider
Buzzy Trent calls increments of fear. A
twenty feet wave measured trough to crest by
a layperson will be called ten feet by
experienced surfers whose bodies have
adapted to the swirling of adrenaline and
fear. Bodies recollect earlier sensual experi-
ences, and have the ability to connect the
memory of past connections and disconnec-
tions with a new emergencestyle.
A nervous energy flows through our bodies
as we wait to paddle out. My mates worry
about the contagiousness of the fear, and move
away. Affects can leap from one body to
another to evoke tenderness, incite shame,
ignite rage, excite fear, and so on (Gibbs 2002).
But I cannot stop the fear, only manage it.
The control of affects is always illusionary.
Men may learn how to control emotions, such
as learning not to cry, but they cannot intend
to feel love or fear or anger . . . or turn them
off at will (Tomkins 1963: 62). Emotional
training due to gendered expectations can
mean men appear stoic, even though they are
not really. To stop affects would be like trying
to stop breathing. You can hold your breath in
an attempt to wrestle control of your body
back, but the bodys breathing reflex will
eventually demand its place in what is
happening.
 Surfing, geography and a sensual life of men
My body twitches, eyes dart, and muscles
tingle. Even though I am afraid I know I have
to go out, the shame would be unbearable if I
did not. In a study of the role of shame, Probyn
(2005) writes of how shame is used to set
up how one is supposed to act. The shame
experienced when people fail to perform as
they are supposed to forces them to confront
their capabilities. Shame can even overcome
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concern about risk and possible collateral
damage to ones family and friends if some-
thing does go very wrong, like injury or death.
The waves now tower and flutter before
exploding. I leap into a mass of churning water.
And paddle hard. A large wave rears up. I catch
it with the help of the backwash off the rocks. It
is important for ones body to know what to do
and where to take off. It establishes your place
high in the surfing hierarchy. Local status is
determined by a series of proofs, knowing a
place geographically and acting in certain
ways (Garbutt 2006).
As the swell pushes up on to the sandbank it
hits the shallows and the lip surges out. As a
born and bred Point surfer I mould my body to
fit the curve of water. With practice the
learned, kinaesthetic skill of surfing becomes
an automatic, almost instinctual series of (quite
complex) movements (Ford and Brown 2006:
161). The body is a way of thinking, and
facilitates our awareness of what is emerging at
any time, and how we negotiate the qualitative
transformations during any emergence.
Next wave I wipe-out. I gasp, and am
pushed down into the quiet of the depths. My
skin goes tight in shock, and lip splits from the
pressure of the implosion. Blood mixes with
seawater, of which it is more or less
interchangeable (Humphrey 2000). Again, an
assemblage is evidenced. The liquid rolls,
shakes and exhausts me. My body is rag-
dolled. Nobody can see my fear and panic as I
struggle for air underwater.
903
The underwater world with its sea life and
energies pops, hisses, and crackles as it makes
its way into my body. It is a soundscape,
where this is a human nature relationship of
sounds that help us to recognise our place in
relation to our surroundings in time and space
(Kato 2006; Schafer 1995). This is an affective
attunement and signal of where we are
positioned during an emergence.
The ocean refuses to let me go and keeps me
in the depths. My body takes over. My heart
rate slows down, and my lungs conserve air.
The Point eventually shows me the way to the
top by way of bubbles and floating seaweed.
Surfing is more-than-human.
The wipe-out is an ambiguous space that is
an overwhelming sensation of the mixing of
flesh, white-water, surfboard, shells, seaweed,
feelings, and so on. It offers up a moment of
pure style. Sensations and connection are
imposed, and beyond my control. Rationality
and masculinity are not essential partners. The
confusing ambiguity of the wipe out reveals
how experiences of masculinity and bodies can
capture the code of waveswhich are always
fluid, sensuous, and transformable.
Conclusion
No two styles or emergence are ever the same.
Dominant discourses very often attempt to
restrict or hide the openings and closings,
transformations, adaptations, and the like.
Even within what appear to be hegemonic
representation or practice of masculinity such
as surfing big waves, difference, uncertainty,
confusion, ambiguity, and a sensual life also
happen. Men who surf do not go out and
conquer nature to affirm their masculinity, as
much as they like to articulate themselves
through such a warrior myth. In fact, they
become part of contingent geographical
 904 Clifton Evers
assemblages that re-arrange their sensual life.
It is why surfing means so much.
People might think that surfings a limited thing, but
surfings not limited . . . Youre all the time learning
how to do things, discovering better ways of surfing
and more ways of enjoying it. (Farrelly with
McGregor 1968: 23)
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Mens sensual life is the point of awareness of
the body forming and reforming itself some-
where. Bodies are creative and inventive, if we
listen to their sensual life. Things can always
be different, just like the waves we ride. There
is always variety, if we look close enough.
Feelings like fear, shame, interest, joy, excite-
ment, and so on are never the same twice. For
example, one can be more or less scared, but
never the same scared.
This mapping of an emergence of surfing,
space, feelings, the social, and bodies stresses the
uncontrollable, excessive, irrational, disruptive
movements that discourses on masculinity
attempt to hide. It also highlights the restriction,
blockages and sealing off that is involved in the
act of defining masculinity, categorising it,
nailing it down, or getting it straight.
To position the male body in space catches it
in some sort of cultural freeze frame rather
than appreciate that it is open and connectable,
susceptible to constant modification (Massumi
2002: 3). Think surfing male bodythink blur.
Think bodies, space and the social in their own
potential to varybodies that surf.
Acknowledgements
I thank Elspeth Probyn, Katarina Olausson,
and my colleagues at the Journalism and
Media Research Centre, University of New
South Wales (Catharine Lumby, Gerard
Goggin, David McKnight, Kath Albury, and
Kate Crawford).
Notes
1 By a lived body, I am referring to an active process, in
which there is no unified biological body that is
composed of permanent things and separate to the
social. There is no definite boundary to determine
where the body begins and external nature ends.
A lived body recognises how there are occasions of
experience that are not rooted in some unified ego in
which I can claim a body as my own. The lived body
never proceeds as some identical state as new elements
and relationships intervene.
2 The gender structure that continues to dominate
Australian society is a sex/gender ideology that
categorises bodies according to what they aremale
and femaleand collapses sex into gender, with the
concomitant expectations that follow from this
distinction and model. Also, as philosopher Judith
Butler has written, the cultural associations of mind
with masculinity and body with femininity are well
documented within the field of philosophy and
feminism. As a result, any uncritical reproduction of
the mind/body distinction ought to be rethought for
the implicit gender hierarchy that the distinction has
conventionally produced, maintained and rational-
ized (1990: 33).
3 The body is not simply a part of historical, social, and
cultural exigencies in which its biology basically
remains the same. The historical, social, and cultural
produce nature itself. The body is not pregiven but is
an embodied history. The boys bodies are constructed
as being male, not female. [T]he subject is always a
sexed subject (Gatens 1996: 182).
4 For over twenty years R.W. Connell has looked at
masculinity and male relationship in Australia. In a
chapter entitled An Iron Man: The Body and Some
Contradictions of Hegemonic Masculinity, Connells
(1990) analysis centres on an Australian male lifesaver
talking about his emotional experiences. According to
Connell men are influenced by social discourses and
institutionslike the military, schools and sportsthat
lead to the development of a hegemonic masculinity
that has other masculinities arrayed around it (2000:
2). One of the key concepts to come out of Connells
work is the argument for a diversity of masculinities.
This concept was developed to account for the shifting
relations of dominance and marginalisation between
 Surfing, geography and a sensual life of men
groups of men. The dominant pattern of masculinity is
forceful, unemotional and competitive. Connell pro-
vides an overview of different social settings to
understand out how certain patterns of masculinity
endure and change, and how bodies move into and out
of them (2000: 20).
5 Dick Hebdiges Subculture: The Meaning of Style
(1979) is a good reference point for discussing style at
work. Hebdige argues that subcultures constitute
expressive forms that disturb and block dominant
systems of representations. According to Hebdige style
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is a collection of gestures, speech, fashion, rituals,
modes of confrontation, and so on that become maps
of meaning, or a system of signification. Through an
analysis of subcultures in the 1960s, such as punks,
rude boys, and skinheads, Hebdige demonstrates how
style works as a signifying process. While Hebdige
addresses how style is a process of signification he does
not really unpack the action of style. Rather than
understanding style as just expressing a semiotic
system, we can also appreciate how style has an em-
bodied immanence, and involves constant rearrange-
ment and negotiation. Style is always evolving, taking
on elements and discarding them.
6 Mind you, by expressing our mastery over the turf we
forget that The Point and its traditional custodians
were colonised. The Indigenous population of
Australian surfing locations have experienced physi-
cal, social, and cultural displacement in order that we
can feel like locals (McGloin 2005). However, some
traditional custodians use localism to resist colonisa-
tion, such as in Hawaii and Bali (Ishiwata 2002;
Leonard 2007).
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Abstract translations
Le Point: le surf, la geographie, et une vie sensuelle
des hommes et masculinite sur la Gold Coast en
Australie
Pendant longtemps la plage etait un site privilegie
dans la culture australienne, et les surfeurs en sont
devenus ses icones. Ces hommes sont souvent parles
detre droit comme acier, fort comme granite,
austere et inviole. En utilisant plus que trois
decennies du surf, je deballe cet comprehension
hegemonique des hommes qui surfent, et je revele
dans sa place limportance des sentiments et des
corps dans leurs vies. Au travers dune analyse
daller surfer je mets dans perspective le role que les
 908 Clifton Evers
sentiments et les corps jouent sur comment les
hommes appartiennent, comment ils sattachent a
leur turf, arriver a comprendre eux-memes comme
masculines, et comment ils apprennent a faire
masculinite.
Mots-clefs: masculinite, corps, emotions, affects, le
surf, Australie.
El Punto: surfing, geografa y una vida sensual de
hombres y masculinidad en la Costa de Oro,
Downloaded By: [University of Nottingham] At: 01:48 26 November 2010
Australia
Desde mucho la playa ha sido un sitio privilegiado en
la cultura australiana, y los surfistas han llegado a ser
sus iconos. Se reverencian estos hombres como tan
derechos como el acero, tan fuertes como el granito,
austeros y intactos. Deshago este entendimiento
hegemonico de los hombres quienes hacen surf,
utilizando mas que treinta anos de experiencia
haciendo surf, y desvelo la importancia de emo-
ciones y cuerpos en sus vidas. A traves un analisis de
hacer surf, articulo el papel de emociones y cuerpos
en como los hombres se pertenecen, como se
establecen con su terruno, llegan a entender s
mismos como masculinos, y como aprenden hacer
masculinidad.
Palabras claves: masculinidad, cuerpos, emociones,
afectos, surfing, Australia.