The very fact that we are contemplating rushing athletic laborers back onto their various playing surfaces is the logical consequence of the prevailing dehumanizing and instrumental disposition of both capital and fans (AKA consumers) to sports work. 1/

Athletic labor, through the physical and emotional sacrifices structurally demanded of it, produces a commodity (spectacle) with lucrative exchange value via a coveted use value: meaning/pleasure/human connection in the context of a relentlessly alienating set of social relations

In capitalist sport, the athletic laborer has always been a vessel for capital via meaning precisely because their bodies are inherently understood as disposable.

There is no distance at all between the sacrifice of the football player to years of cumulative head impacts and the subjection of the soccer or basketball star to contagion. We have been conditioned to accept (even *relish*) both as the modest price of our gratification.

This is perfectly consistent with the governing logic and existing occupational health and safety conditions of the MMA industry, for instance https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Down pointing backhand index" aria-label="Emoji: Down pointing backhand index">

The fundamental dehumanization and subjection to harm of the athletic laborer is a structural condition of *all* high-performance spectator sports, however, not just those we view as violent in a traditional sense. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Down pointing backhand index" aria-label="Emoji: Down pointing backhand index"> https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1247394463212646400?s=20">https://twitter.com/mattdpear...