In certain parts of Italy like Florence, they play a very violent form of soccer.  Big beefy men with equally large tattoos fight for soccer balls by beating their opponents senseless

Nana and his friends have endless stories. There was the player whose ankle shattered at the bottom of a dog pile. The one who went into a coma after being punched in the back of the head. The guy whose ear was bitten off in the middle of a scrum. In one game, Nana had his shaved scalp cut open the way a letter opener slices an envelope.

Brutality is everywhere.... “Trying to knock other players out of the game is a very basic strategy,” said Fabrizio Valleri, a forward for the white team.

Uh-oh.  The white team!  I hope Media Matters isn't reading anything into this!

Valleri did not mean he hoped to literally render someone unconscious — though that does happen. He meant teams often try to injure an opponent to the point where he cannot continue. And as the game progressed, it seemed more and more likely that that would occur.

Scuffles broke out in every corner. Men coated in sand swung wildly. Medics rushed from the sideline to wrap bandages and swab abrasions. One player doubled over after taking a cracking shot to the ribs. Another player’s stitches, which were supposed to be holding together a wound sustained in the semifinals, burst open, allowing blood to stream down his face. At one point, a forward for the Bianchi gallivanted into the Verdi’s defensive area and was met with a punishing tackle, chest to chest. The colliding bodies made the sound of a cowboy cracking a whip across a horse’s back.

None of them could say why, exactly, they were sitting on dilapidated benches beside a raggedy field, could not put into words what, exactly, made them spend four months preparing to play, at most, two games that almost always required some form of medical attention afterward. “When I played for the first time, the sensation I had was one of truly being a man,” [said one player.]

So why am I writing about this?  As a man, the idea of this kind of violence repels me.  But there is plenty of violence, real and otherwise, that appeals to men: on television shows, in first-person shooter computer games, in movies, and even in "regular" sports like soccer and football.  This is merely violence on a more extreme level, and on a more real level.  The people enjoying this, by the way, are not merely the players, but all the spectators as well.

Do you think there are some men who just instinctively feel the need for a more physical way of releasing their aggressive urges?  If so, do you think society is going too far in letting them satisfy their bloodlust in this way?

And if women are supposed to be the same as men, why don't they equally enjoy FPS computer games and violent movies?  If men enjoy these sorts of things more, doesn't it also make sense that there may be other things, like computer programming and electrical engineering, that men may also enjoy more without having to label entire industries sexist?

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.