Effective Aggressiveness and Inconsistencies in the Bijuridical Treatment of Aggressive Behaviour: Mixed Martial Arts, Bullying, and Sociolegal Quandaries

This paper seeks to address effective aggressiveness and the treatment of aggressive behaviour in the context of MMA in comparison to the balance of the formal Canadian legal landscape. I choose anti-bullying legislation, and its treatment of aggressive behaviour, as a counterexample to the treatment of aggressive behaviour within the MMA regulatory framework. By intertextually linking and superimposing these two categories of legislation, a critical lens drawing on institutional ethnography is applied. This is done to question and deconstruct the differential treatment of aggressive behaviour and the rationale behind the legislative mixed message sent. This lens also allows me to show the importance of a more thorough analysis and understanding of the imported internal frameworks of regulated activities that are candidates for decriminalization through amendments to Canada’s Criminal Code intended to ensure the Criminal Code is current to today’s reality. The quandary faced within the fabric of the MMA community regarding its own treatment of aggressive behaviour, where it is both reified as well as castigated through anti-bullying advocacy, will also be examined.