Archive for May, 2004

Still another longish rant on feminism and adolescent sexual mores

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 30, 2004
in Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexuality and Youth
. 25 Comments

I am delighted that Jonathan Dresner and Ralph Luker, the Arch-Cliopatriarchs, do the job of sifting through the New York Times for me. Jonathan alerts me today to a lengthy piece in this Sunday’s New York Times magazine: Friends, Friends with Benefits, and the Local Mall. It’s another reasonably readable analysis of the sad and confused state of adolescent dating and mating patterns.

As I wrote last Monday, today’s youth are increasingly likely to conclude that serious relationships are an impediment to (rather than a vehicle for) one’s personal growth. Today’s article, by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, seems to concur:

Most of the high-school students I spent time with said they expected to meet the right person, fall in love and marry — eventually. It’s just that high school, many insist, isn’t the place to worry about that. High school is about keeping your options open. Relationships are about closing them. As these teenagers see it, marriage and monogamy will seamlessly replace their youthful hookup careers sometime in their mid- to late 20’s — or, as one high-school boy from Rhode Island told me online, when ”we turn 30 and no one hot wants us anymore.”

Brian, a 16-year-old friend of Jesse’s, put it this way: ”Being in a real relationship just complicates everything. You feel obligated to be all, like, couply. And that gets really boring after a while. When you’re friends with benefits, you go over, hook up, then play video games or something. It rocks.”

I’m sure it does rock, Brian. For the boys. Relationships that meet girls’ emotional needs are a relic:

”It would be so weird if a guy came up to me and said, ‘Irene, I’d like to take you out on a date,”’ said Irene, a tall, outgoing senior. ”I’d probably laugh at him. It would be sweet, but it would be so weird!”

Irene and her friends are not nerds. They are attractive and well liked, and most have had at least one romantic relationship. If that experience taught them anything, it’s that high school is no place for romantic relationships. They’re complicated, messy and invariably painful. Hooking up, when done ”right,” is exciting, sexually validating and efficient.

Of course, this is a disaster for the girls, even though they are loathe to admit it:

Many teenagers told me they were hurt by hookups — usually because they expected or hoped for more. But they often blamed themselves for letting their emotions get the best of them. The hookups weren’t the problem. They were the problem.

When Irene was 15, she hooked up for a while with a boy (”We basically became friends with benefits,” she says) who never came around to asking her out officially, as Irene secretly hoped he would. In the end, she was devastated. ”Since then, I’ve become really good at keeping my emotions in check,” she says. ”I can hook up with a guy and not fall for him.”

Pardon me, Irene, if I don’t see that as a triumph. Neither does Pasadena’s own Dr. Drew Pinsky:

Dr. Drew Pinsky, co-host of ”Loveline,” a popular, nationally syndicated radio program that has some two million listeners and that was featured on MTV, doesn’t buy it. ”It’s all bravado,” he says. ”Teens are unwittingly swept up in the social mores of the moment, and it’s certainly not some alternative they’re choosing to keep from getting hurt emotionally. The fact is, girls don’t enjoy hookups nearly as much as boys, no matter what they say at the time. They’re only doing it because that’s what the boys want.”

I’ve long been a fan of Dr. Drew, who has found an engaging way to promote counter-cultural values of love and responsibility in the midst of an increasingly callous and exploitative adolescent world. What we are failing to grasp is that in many ways, the sexual revolution has resulted in a dramatic victory for teenage boys. If you could show this article to teenagers in, say, 1954, and ask them whether they would want to live in 2004, which sex do you think would show more enthusiasm at the prospect? I have no doubt that most boys of that era would be salivating with delight at the thought, while most (perhaps not all) of their female peers would be horrified.

I’m grateful that ours is a more honest culture than that of fifty — or even twenty-five — years ago. I’m grateful that we can have candid discussions about human sexuality that were not possible two generations ago. But I am convinced to my core that the current state of sexual mores among the young represents not a triumph for feminist principles, but a triumph for predatory masculinity. Even as young women become the majority on most college campuses, the scarcity of men perpetuates a “hooking-up” culture because young men are confident that they (in the harsh but truthful expression of another era) don’t have to “buy the cow” (make commitments) because they can “get the milk” (sexual gratification) for free.

I grieve for the Irenes. I grieve for the girls who give up on their romantic dreams before they are old enough to drive a car, and who pride themselves on becoming “really good at keeping their emotions in check.” That’s not progress, folks. It sure as hell isn’t any kind of feminism with which I wish to be associated. It makes me very angry, and very sad.

Confusing Principle with Hatred

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 29, 2004
in People and Stuff
. 10 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, the new issue of First Things arrived. A splendid article is already on-line: Conciliating Hatred by Steven D. Smith. He’s writing about the recent role of the “center-right” judges on the Supreme Court, namely O’Connor and Kennedy. Smith notes that these two justices see themselves as perenially “call[ing] the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.”

Liberals have generally been pleased with O’Connor and Kennedy. After last year’s Lawrence v. Texas decision, building on Romer v. Evans, most gay activists I know now regard Anthony Kennedy as their single favorite justice. But what troubles Smith is that O’Connor and Kennedy are increasingly unwilling to see those who oppose their opinions (on homosexuality and abortion in particular) as motivated by anything other than animus or outright hatred. In 1996, Kennedy wrote of the Colorado law struck down in Romer:

Laws of the kind now before us (are) born of animosity toward the class of persons affected…

Smith is troubled as much by this aspect of the Kennedy/O’Connor consensus as by their actual decisions:

…even in the midst of a chaos of moral perspectives, virtually everyone will agree that it is wrong to act on the basis of hatred. Consequently, it is utterly predictable that advocates would seek to defend their moral judgments against those who do not share them by attributing their opposition to hatred. There is ample cause to worry about a cultural climate in which ascriptions of hatred become a main staple of moral discourse. But in our modern situation, this may well be the only kind of argument that is compatible with virtually everyone’s moral premises.

So it is readily understandable that the Supreme Court would adopt the evil-motives strategy as its preferred mode of justification for striking down measures of which it disapproves. But how does this strategy comport with the apparent desire of at least some Justices to act as national conciliator—to be the center that holds things together?

It seems evident that the Court’s technique is not well calculated to promote mutual understanding. Let’s look first at its effect on the losing litigants is such cases. With its evil-motives discourse, the Court makes it clear to citizens who support an invalidated measure—such as the Colorado Amendment 2 struck down in Romer—not only that they have lost but also that they have masked and misrepresented their real motive, which, as the Court has discovered, is hatred.

The expressed moral convictions and prudential concerns of these citizens are thus disparaged without any serious engagement or attempt at genuine understanding. Such understanding might jeopardize the ascription of merely hateful motives. It would be inconvenient, after all, to have to acknowledge that the people disfavored by a judicial decision are not actually as bad as the Court for its beneficial purposes needs them to be. (Bold is Hugo’s)

It’s a strong argument. I was thrilled by the Romer and Lawrence decisions, but I recognize that many who grieved those same decisions were not motivated by hatred of gays and lesbians, but by reasoned principles of theology, history, and natural law. Of course, many on the right are homophobic bigots — but most aren’t, and to insist that all opposition to full inclusion of GLBTQQ folk in American society is motivated by hatred is foolish and wrong.

If I stand for nothing else in the blogosphere, it is the essential truth that good men and women, motivated by the highest of human and spiritual impulses, can in good faith come to radically different conclusions about human identity, behavior, and morality. And even as we disagree vehemently with each other, we must find a way to honor the basic decency and character of our opponents. We must do this even when our own allies accuse us of weakness and apostasy.

Reasons to Rejoice

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 28, 2004
in Blogging, Christianity, Fun, GLBTQ, Having children, Marriage and Sports
. 9 Comments

What are you grateful for tonight? I’m grateful that our chinchilla is well, that I have a new car coming, and that I am finally online with my cable modem from home. Oh yes, and I am running again, healed from that loathsome and tenacious respiratory infection.

There are other reasons to rejoice: XRLQ and wife are to have a baby boy; send your congrats to the erascible and erudite unpronounceable one.

The Cal Golden Bears softball team is in the semifinals of the College World Series; I caught a bit of the game today.

In my post on confirmands at All Saints, I mentioned that Bishop Jon Bruno of Los Angeles was planning to perform his first same-sex blessing since becoming bishop on May 16. It happened as planned; here is the account.

Bishop Bruno invited Malcolm and Mark to stand in full view of family and friends to declare their covenant to one another : promises to live together in love, to be faithful to one another, to support one another so that they might grow into maturity of faith in Jesus Christ and to do all in their power to make their life together a witness to the love of God in the world.

The bishop then instructed the couple to clasp each other’s hand so that he could wrap them with a beige silk scarf presented by Mark’s brother, John, and painted by Malcolm’s mother, Beatrice, half a century ago. The bishop pointed out the painted image on the scarf – a flock of cranes – and noted it symbolized good health, prosperity and the uniting of two families. After tying the scarf in a knot around their hands, Malcolm and Mark took turns pledging their love for one another.

The invited guests prayed for the couple and gave their promises to celebrate with them and stand by them in times of trouble and distress. Then, all, many with tears of joy in their eyes, raised their hands and joined the bishop in the blessing the union of these two loving and gracious men. How could they not?

Not all are rejoicing. Kendall Harmon is concerned as to definitions:

Sure sounds like a wedding to me. But it isn’t one we are told. No legal implications either. So we are clear on what it is not (or are we really?) What is it then? Can you do something this significant without even an agreed upon term for what it actually is? Without any meaningful development of a basically coherent theology for it?

Well, liberals are very clear on what we think it should be: a wedding. A wedding legally, spiritually, and theologically indistinguishable from a heterosexual wedding. The problem for me, as a liberal with deeply evangelical impulses, is that most of the best theology is on the other side. Liberal theologians end up using Enlightenment rhetoric about liberty and rights as often as they cite Scripture. The left has completely captured my heart. Unfortunately, the right has my head. Yet as a complete and utter ENFJ, I’m going to put my heart first. As my second-favorite poet, Auden said:

and always, though truth and love
can never really differ, when they seem to,
the subaltern should be truth.

Chinchilla in recovery

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 28, 2004
in Chinchillas and Photos
. 0 Comments

P1010041

Given that the previous photo at the side of this blog was over a year old, it has been updated with one taken this past birthday. And here is one of Matty — post shock — on my head, as is her wont. Click to enlarge us.

We just took got back from a trip to the vet; Matilde’s weight dropped this week from 588 to 571 grams. So the force-feeding can’t stop just yet. Still, all signs look very good.

Saying goodbye to the truck

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 27, 2004
in Fun, Memories, Men and Masculinity, Relationships and Vanity
. 9 Comments

First off, everyone needs to go and read Father Jake on the subject of “Pacifism for Violent SOBs.” Best post of the week.

Sometime in the next couple of days, I expect to turn in the Toyota Tundra 4×4 that I’ve been leasing for some four years now. The Tundra, for those unfamiliar, is a full-sized 8-cylinder pickup truck that gets (on a good day) fourteen miles to the gallon. I’ll bet that most of my readers who don’t know me are surprised I have a thing for pickup trucks. (An activist I know from Men Can Stop Rape, Jonathan Stillerman, has a good piece on men and trucks; read it here.)

I’ve had the truck since November, 1999. At that time, I confess I was dating (briefly) a young woman who seemed, for lack of a better phrase, “somewhat nonplussed” by what she regarded as my insufficiently masculine demeanor. In other words, she wanted a more macho guy. (Running marathons didn’t count; she wanted, I realized too late, a lumberjack). Thus, when I leased the truck, I was — in part — trying to impress her. But I was also fulfilling a fantasy that I’d had since my childhood: driving a pickup. Most of the holidays and summers of my childhood were spent on a ranch in the hills northeast of San Jose, California. I spent my days up there following around (and idolizing) ranch hands and caretakers, men who drove old Fords and Chevys, smoked Marlboro Reds and drank Olympia beer. I loved the way the trucks smelled of cigarette smoke, hay, motor oil and, yes, horse manure. Climbing into the cab of a truck driven by Ed, or George, or Brad (the man’s men of my youth), I felt big. I felt good. And I wanted a truck.

In retrospect, it’s surprising that I waited until I was 32 to get my first pickup. My first car was a used ‘83 Honda Accord; the second, a leased Toyota Corolla. Getting hooked on leasing has kept me within the Toyota family for over a decade, simply because the incentives to keep leasing are so great. But when I turned in my previous car that November day almost five years ago, I asked to take a test drive in a brand-new, shiny red Tundra pickup. I started it up, and before I had pulled out of the dealership, I knew I was hooked. I felt big again. The girl was only briefly impressed; we broke up six weeks later. The truck, replete with wood trim, leather seats, and on-demand four-wheel drive has been mine ever since. So too have the lease payments. And in all that time, I’ve used the four-wheel drive exactly once.

It’s been difficult to show up to Pasadena Mennonite Church in a four-wheel drive pickup with leather seats and walnut paneling. It’s difficult to rhapsodize about the virtues of simple living and conservation when you’re getting 14 miles to the gallon with a ridiculously over-powered V8 engine. It’s turned into a bit of a “white (or fire-engine red) elephant” in my life, and a source of bemusement to my family and friends.

I’m likely to lease a Toyota Solara this time around. Still a fun car, but far more economical and far less bulky. Yes, I suppose like a good progressive, I should be eager to lease a hybrid (like the Toyota Prius), but I confess I am unwilling as of yet to downsize to quite so small a car. But at least I’ve gotten the pickup — and the attendant fantasies of my childhood — out of my system.

UPDATE: Through some very nice connections that my girlfriend has, I found a 2004 red Solara SLE; it’s being dropped off tonight. The truck will be gone within the hour.

Teens and justice; the minimum wage

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 27, 2004
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Politics, Race, Working and Youth
. 3 Comments

Thanks to Dry Bones Dance, I went to this article in yesterday’s LA Times; it tells the inspiring story of the teenage daughters of immigrant garment workers in Oakland, and the revolution in ergonomics that they brought about.

For nearly a decade, Kwei Fong Lin tolerated numbness in her forearms. Like a great many Chinese immigrants who work in this city’s cramped and poorly equipped garment factories, her neck and back ached from long days spent hunched over a sewing machine while perched on rickety folding chairs, stools or even crates.

“We just took the pain as it came,” the 52-year-old Hong Kong native said in Cantonese. But an unlikely revolution has taken root here. Today, dozens of women work in relative comfort while seated on customized ergonomic chairs. Most surprising in an industry synonymous with powerless and mistreated workers: The women made it happen. They did it with the help of a group of teenage girls tired of seeing their seamstress mothers suffer…

Christy put it well:

You know, if they’d put stories like this in Seventeen, young women in this country might discover that they have more to contribute to the world than their fashion statement. It’s amazing how fighting for justice makes the size of your hips or your breasts seem a little less important.

In somewhat related news, the California Assembly passed a bill yesterday to increase the minimum wage to $7.75 an hour. It will surely pass the senate; Governor Schwarzenegger’s position is unknown. What I do know is that so many of my tired and stressed community college students work for that minimum wage in restaurants and retail businesses. I know how carefully they count their pennies (three of my best students are sharing one textbook to save money). And I know what a difference an extra dollar an hour could make in their lives.

More on Pro-Life Democrats and the right not to be offended

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 26, 2004
in Abortion, Christianity and Politics
. 8 Comments

Next month’s Sojourners magazine has an excellent op-ed by editor Jim Wallis on the Democratic party’s reckless refusal to acknowledge its own pro-life supporters. Here’s an extended quotation from Wallis, with the bold emphases being my own:

Many Democrats fail to comprehend how fundamental the conviction on “the sacredness of human life” is for millions of Christians, especially Catholics and evangelicals, including those who are strongly committed on other issues of justice and peace and those who wouldn’t criminalize abortion even as they oppose it. Liberal political correctness, which includes a rigid litmus test of being “pro-choice,” really breaks down here. And the conventional liberal political wisdom that people who are conservative on abortion are conservative on everything else is just wrong. Christians who are economic populists, peacemaking internationalists, and committed feminists can also be “pro-life.” The roots of this conviction are deeply biblical and, for many, consistent with a commitment to nonviolence as a gospel way of life.

And there are literally millions of votes at stake in this liberal miscalculation. Virtually everywhere I go, I encounter moderate and progressive Christians who find it painfully difficult to vote Democratic given the party’s rigid, ideological stance on this critical moral issue, a stance they regard as “pro-abortion.” Except for this major and, in some cases, insurmountable obstacle, these voters would be casting Democratic ballots.

Ironically, the Republicans, who actively and successfully court the votes of Christians on abortion, are much more ecumenical in their own toleration of a variety of views within their own party. For example, fellow Republicans have not enforced anti-abortion orthodoxies on their rising new star, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose pro-choice views seem not to be a problem. Indeed, there is now a long list of pro-choice Republicans whose support the party seems to regard as crucial to its success. The Republican Party takes a very strong anti-abortion stance in its party platforms but then allows for a wide variety of opinions based on either conscience or pragmatic political calculations.

But to be a “pro-life” Democrat is to be a very lonely political creature in America.

Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.

On a different note, we here at Pasadena City College have recently been visited by a small group of evangelists carrying banners in our quad with slogans such as “Repent Now” and “Homosexuality = Sin”. One of my very earnest and sweet young progressive students handed me a leaflet today after class; I quote the following troubling excerpt:

For the last couple of weeks, PCC has become a target for some hateful people. Holding up a sign that says Homosexuality is Sin is a clear example of Homophobia and should not be tolerated. Homophobia is a form of oppression towards a minority group. Any minority group on campus should be able to feel safe and not have to hear offensive comments by people who are not even students of our campus.

Our “Students for Social Justice” and our “United Rainbow Alliance” group are rallying folks to speak out against those carrying the banners. I’m fine with that. As a Christian progressive, I find the vulgarity of the banners and the bullhorns an embarrassment. But I’m tired of the assumption that a “right not to be offended” exists on a college campus. I’m tired of having physical safety (something the college is obligated to provide) confused with emotional safety (something the college has no business even attempting to guarantee).

Conservative Christian students are regularly made to feel “unsafe” in the free-wheeling environment of a secular Southern California campus, but I haven’t noticed any effort by my own advisees in Campus Crusade for Christ to ban or silence the United Rainbow Alliance. I wish that this leaflet were an anomaly, but I am afraid that it isn’t — increasingly, “progressive” student groups are asking the administrations on college campuses to “protect” them from “having to hear offensive comments.”

I teach gay and lesbian history. I advise Campus Crusade. I’ve worked with secular Queer student groups (their preferred term); I’ve worked with doctrinally conservative evangelicals. And frankly, though my politics are more in synch with the former, I find that at least on this campus, the latter group is more willing to bear the burden of living in a pluralistic society. My young Christians expect to be mocked for their faith, which they see as central to their identity. Some — not all — of my young Queer activists expect to be protected from being challenged on their sexuality, which they see as equally central to their identity. And while I desperately want a civil discourse on this campus, I am increasingly tired of explaining the rules for that discourse. Then again, I suppose that’s what teachers are supposed to do.

Battles and more Birthdays

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 26, 2004
in Chinchillas, Christianity, Fun and Politics
. 1 Comment

Matilde continues to show signs of improvement. Though she is only slowly returning to her normal pellets, this morning she enthusiastically ate half an almond and a “craisin”. She also climbed on to our heads (a favorite chinnie trick). We are increasingly hopeful of a full recovery from last Friday’s electrocution.

Today is my gal’s 29th birthday; we went out for an elegant breakfast this morning. Her main birthday present was a pair of tickets to see Elton John in Las Vegas this summer (with airfare). I admit, giving the gift of concert tickets (especially to an artist one loves) is fairly self-serving. I’m happy to say, however, that she is very excited.

Ralph Luker has a terrific post this morning over at Cliopatria. Entitled “What Battle Have you Fought? What Victory Have you Won?”, it is a direct challenge to the secular left to recognize and honor the fact that no struggle for justice in American history has ever succeeded without strong support from organized religion. Ralph writes:

To my colleagues of the secular Left, I’d ask two simple questions: What battle have you fought? What victory have you won? I’m an American historian and I’d stake my professional reputation, such as it is, on the claim that no work of progress has been achieved in American history without major support from our religious communities. From founding organizing colonies to fighting a Revolution; from abolishing slavery to enfranchising women; from the civil rights movement to the feminist revolution, these things could not have been achieved without major support from our religious communities.

With what I am coming to see as his characteristic eloquence, Ralph gives us a healthy corrective this morning.

Marian devotion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 25, 2004
in Chinchillas and Christianity
. 5 Comments

First off, what happened to all the blogspot blogs today? Or is it just my computer refusing to load them?

Secondly, Matilde continues to make improvement, though she remains weak. We have a doctor’s visit scheduled for Friday, but may well bring her in earlier if we feel events warrant. She is very loving and “needy” lately, which is touching beyond words. We’re trying to lavish her with love while avoiding tiring her out, which is not an easy balance to maintain. I’ve been reading a lot about chinnie health on various websites, and am reasonably encouraged. Still, all pet owners out there know how anxious we can get about our little ones!

Thirdly, Neil placed a great article on abortion and conscience inside of my comments on the post below; do read it.

I was asked by Jeremy about Marian devotion. Essentially, Marian devotion is simply the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It does not involve the worship of Mary, as worship is rightly given only to God. It does involve, however, a profound sense of connection between the believer and the mother of Jesus. Mary is both a role model and a source of mystical comfort. Though the Mennonite life is often called the nachfolge Christi (the following of Christ), I’ve never felt that precluded a special sense that sometimes, we can grow closer to God through Mary. Indeed, Mary is the only figure in the New Testament whom we can see living out the nachfolge Christi without reservation or doubt.

I used to be convinced that Marian devotion was only for those who could not truly see Jesus as embodying radical love and compassion. From a gender studies standpoint, I wondered — please don’t laugh — if my own rigid ideas about masculinity (and even internalized homophobia) were what led me to Mary, out of a reluctance to see Jesus as tender and nurturing and loving. I can say with confidence now that “Jesus is my lover”; I can also say that I feel oddly called to His mother even now. Perhaps it’s just the vestiges of the intense, mysterious experiences that came with a late adolescent conversion (and tactile memories of rosary beads beneath my fingers). And if my “plain-living” fellow Anabaptists put a few statues of the Pieta around their sanctuaries, I wouldn’t mind a bit.

Communion and Abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 25, 2004
in Abortion, Christianity, People and Politics
. 16 Comments

I’ve been reluctant to post about the recent flare-up regarding Catholic politicians and communion. The reason is simple: even now, I still feel deeply conflicted about Rome. As a result, this is not going to be a well-thought out post.

I converted to Catholicism as an undergraduate, and even considered the priesthood during a lengthy late adolescent spiritual and emotional crisis. (For a variety of reasons, I felt called to the Dominicans. But that’s definitely another post). After my first marriage (a Catholic one) ended in divorce well over a decade ago, I chose to worship elsewhere. Never once did I consider annulment. (Again, another post, but annulment always struck me as the ultimate example of adding “insult to injury”; if you’ve made a mistake, step up and admit it, and don’t try to make it “go away”. I’m not proud of three divorces, but by God, they happened, I knew what I was doing, and I take full responsibility for them.) In the past dozen years, I’ve taken Roman Catholic communion only once: in a tiny church on the outskirts of Florence, on a moment of impulse. I respect the right of the church to limit who can come to the altar, and thus I choose to break bread and worship elsewhere. I honor the Catholic Church too much to demand the right that I be included in the eucharist.

I’m planning on voting for John Kerry in November. But his language on abortion troubles me. Like many, I am bothered by the phrase Kerry and other pro-choice Catholics use: “I am personally opposed to abortion, but I support abortion rights.” What pro-lifers want to know, John, is what that “personal opposition” really is and in what is it rooted? As William F. Buckley asked (and heaven help me, I’ll never quote WFB again here): Where is he exhibiting his pride in what he stands for? Whom has he counseled against abortion? A nun somewhere, out of earshot? On what theological, spiritual, and medical grounds is Kerry even “personally opposed”? If fetuses aren’t people, why is this procedure different from any other routine medical procedure?

But the issue at hand is communion, not abortion itself. Several Catholic bishops have suggested that pro-choice Catholic politicians, Kerry chief among them, be barred from communion. (One, Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, went much farther by barring those who vote for pro-choice candidates, but has received little support). Many liberals, both in and out of the church, are concerned about a perceived double standard. Why are conservative Catholics not barred from the altar for supporting the death penalty, something that the pope and the overwhelming majority of bishops have consistently opposed? Why is abortion elevated above all other issues?

In February’s First Things, Richard Neuhaus answers for the church:

On capital punishment, Catholic politicians may in good conscience, and with great respect for the Pope’s statements on the subject, have different prudential judgments about what the Catechism describes as “the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime.” There is no such question about the moral obligation to protect innocent human life. Meanwhile, it will continue to be the case that a frightened young woman who procures an abortion is automatically excommunicate, while politicians who aid, abet, and encourage her in such great evil remain in apparently untroubled communion with the Church.

It’s a bit sly (what else would you expect from a Catholic neo-con like Neuhaus), but it has some merit: for the past century (though not much longer) the Holy See, the councils, and the magisterium have spoken out with one voice against abortion. The church, despite the clear convictions of John Paul II, has no such unanimity on capital punishment, or, for that matter, the war on Iraq. From a theological and moral standpoint within the Catholic tradition, the church’s decision to raise abortion above all other issues is defensible because opposition to abortion has become a uniquely essential doctrine.

I want the church (the universal one, not just Rome) to be a prophetic voice in our culture. I want our churches to challenge our politicians and our people, not just on abortion, but on poverty, war, and global justice. Though I am opposed to abortion, I don’t regard it as a greater moral evil than war or capital punishment (I am intensely wary of “ranking” sins, be they individual or societal). I wish the United Methodist Church could challenge President Bush as firmly as some Catholic bishops have challenged John Kerry! The communion table cannot be just another corner of the public square to which all are legally entitled to come regardless of their beliefs and their actions. Though I choose to worship in a community that practices open communion, I honor the Catholic position that proclaims that table fellowship can only happen where true unity exists.

Jonathan Dresner sent me a link to some Saturday letters in the New York Times on the subject. I liked what Ed Manier of Notre Dame wrote, largely because it happens to be, almost word for word, the official Mennonite position on abortion:

The effort to recriminalize abortion mistakenly assumes that secular legislation can presuppose or compel openness to divine grace.

And Jonathan was particularly struck by what a Beth Ciopelletti wrote:

A Catholic politician can believe in church teaching on abortion while opposing laws to enforce that teaching. What if outlawing abortions made things worse?

Teaching the beauty and sacredness of life is having success in decreasing the number of abortions performed. This could be a wiser choice than the political one.

Lots to think about. Meanwhile, I confess that every once in a while, I’ve been known to sneak into an empty Catholic church or two and kneel before the BVM. If only my beloved Mennonites would embrace Marian devotion, my theological life would be easier!

Remembering Gloria Anzaldua

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 24, 2004
in Ethnicity, Feminism, GLBTQ, People, Poetry and Teaching
. 2 Comments

Gloria Anzaldua, a pioneering figure in Chicana feminism and queer studies, died last week of complications from diabetes. An obituary can be found here.

In the field of Chicana literature and history, Anzaldua was a giant. In 1981, wiith Cherrie Moraga (from whom I took classes at Cal), she edited This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. In 1987, she published La Frontera/Borderlands.

The title poem included the memorable searing lines:

Cuando vives en la frontera
people walk through you, wind steals your voice,
you’re a burra, buey, scapegoat
forerunner of a new race,
half and half - both woman and man, neither-
a new gender;

To live in the Borderlands means to
put chile in the borscht
eat whole wheat tortillas
speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent;
be stopped by la migra at the border check points…

The obit in the Times drily notes:

The author’s intensely personal style broke the conventions of scholarly writing and kept her outside the mainstream of academia, a position that Anzaldua, who published widely in alternative journals, did not seem to regret.

I know that my own desire to infuse the classroom with personal narratives was rooted in my own response to Chicana/Latina feminist writers and academics like Anzaldua, Moraga, Ana Castillo, and Norma Alarcon. More than their “white” sisters, they refused to de-legitimate emotion and personal experience. In 1990, Anzaldua wrote:

What is considered theory in the dominant academic community is not necessarily what counts as theory for women-of-color. Theory produces effects that change people and the way they perceive the world. Thus we need teorías that will enable us to interpret what happens in the world, that will explain how and why we relate to certain people in specific ways, that will reflect what goes on between inner, outer and peripheral ‘I’s within a person and between the personal ‘I’s and the collective ‘we’ of our ethnic communities. Necesitamos teorías that will rewrite history using race, class, gender and ethnicity as categories of analysis, theories that cross borders, that blur boundaries-new kinds of theories with new theorizing methods. We need theories that will points out ways to maneuver between our particular experiences and the necessity of forming our own categories and theoretical models for the patterns we uncover. We need theories that examine the implications of situations and look at what’s behind them. And we need to find practical application for those theories. We need to de-academize theory and to connect the community to the academy. ‘High’ theory does not translate well when one’s intention is to communicate to masses of people made up of different audiences. We need to give up the notion that there is a ‘correct’ way to write theory.

It’s a big loss.

“Keeping score”, learning to “hit it”, and settling for second best

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 24, 2004
in Feminism, Relationships, Sexuality and Youth
. 14 Comments

David at Sed Contra links to this article from Friday’s Washington Post: “Score Card: For Some Young Women, Love Is a Numbers Game.”

It begins thus:

Some young women keep it in their head, others in a drawer of their bedside table. One even preserves it on a spreadsheet in her laptop.

We’re talking about “the number,” that sum of sex partners that college women either have had or hope to goodness they can avoid reaching. In the highly sexualized atmosphere of campus, a number gives them something to compare and dish about with their close girlfriends.

It’s not a particularly enlightening article, and I note that the students surveyed in the article seemed to be mostly white, middle-class girls at northeastern four-year universities. But what I did find striking was that the article makes an explicit connection between long-term career plans and an increase in promiscuity:

The search for the one man who will lead them to forsake all others is a process that will take longer for many young women than it did for their mothers. With college, graduate school, study abroad, or job changes ahead of them, “it doesn’t make sense to start a serious relationship in college,” says Susan Harrison, a senior at Brown University who keeps a mental list of her partners.

Anticipating these years on their own, the women begin indulging in short-term flings while worrying about bumping their number up beyond an acceptable limit.

The number of women who head off to college in search of what was once called the “MRS degree” has dropped sharply, and perhaps that is a good thing. What troubles me is the conviction that serious relationships are an impediment to (rather than a vehicle for) one’s personal growth. One thing I hear over and over and over from my best and brightest female students is “I don’t have time for a serious relationship”. What I always gently ask them is: “When do you think you will have time? When you finish with grad school? When you are half-way up the corporate ladder?” In this intensely competitive society, when is — exactly — a “convenient” time for a relationship? I often ask them what the ideal age is to have their first child; more than half now say “over 30″. (They are astonishingly confident about their own ability to get “pregnant on demand”, no matter how old they are. They can’t conceive — pun intended — of the fertility problems that come with postponing children. Ah, youth.)

But even if they do get the MBA at 28, marry Mr. Right at 30, and have the baby at 32, how on earth do they expect the arrival of a child in one’s 30s (when they are just starting, with luck, to “make it” in their chosen profession) to be any less inconvenient? They have a ready answer: “I want to wait to have a child because I want the financial resources to be able to take care of a child on my own.” And almost invariably, they add “And I don’t want to depend on a man.” Bingo. There’s the rub.

I have enraged a few folks in my classes and in the blogosphere by suggesting that much (not all) of the modern feminist movement has its roots in a “profound disappointment in men.” That does not mean that if men were perfectly reliable, every woman would be thrilled to pursue a life of happy Victorian domesticity! But it does mean that an enduring legacy of irresponsible male behavior (modeled with particular gusto by certain baby boomer men) has led an entire generation of women to conclude that trusting a man is a particularly bad investment.

Getting back to the whole “keeping score” business, to give one’s body to one man is to take an enormous emotional risk. To give one’s body to ten — or twenty or more — and to see oneself as a “player” in one’s own right: that is to render oneself emotionally numb, and hence invulnerable (the best article on this I’ve seen is the marvelous “Hooking up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right”, available in PDF file right here.) The current phrase my high schoolers use to describe random sexual encounters is “hit it and quit it”. (The feminist in me has been very unhappy with the recent adoption of the verb “to hit” to describe sexual activity; then again, given the state of the situation between the sexes, it may be apropos). My female students, like the hip-hop artists they seem to idolize, love to talk boldly about “hitting it”; the sense of power they seem to feel when they use that masculine and aggressive language is palpable! I may be wrong, but whenever I read or hear this kind of talk, the phrase “whistling in the graveyard” comes to mind. Even in this relatively breezy Washington Post piece, I can feel the anxiety and the uncertainty dripping through the words of these young women. I am absolutely convinced that when my younger sisters compile their lists and brag about their conquests, that they are doing so because they have made a conscious or unconscious decision to settle for second best.

I can tell you this much, I’m looking forward to reading what these young women have to say about their lives and their choices twenty or thirty years from now. For their sakes, I hope that when the bravado vanishes and the numbness wears off, the regrets will be few.

Chinnie trouble

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 24, 2004
in Chinchillas
. 8 Comments

My birthday got off to quite a calamitous start. Friday night, I came home from my small group meeting, and promptly took Matilde the chinchilla out to play. As I was lying on the bedroom floor, engrossed in (of all things) National Geographic magazine, I lost sight of her for a moment. The next thing I knew, I heard a thump and a strange whine; Matilde had chewed through the electrical cord for the clock radio by our bedside and had shocked herself badly. She was lying limp on the floor, still connected to the cord, and I had to gently pry her teeth away from the wires (receiving a nasty shock myself). At first, she was barely breathing, but within minutes, as I caressed her desperately, Matilde (or Matty, as we like to call her) began very gingerly to move herself.

My girlfriend was still out, and so I bundled my poor chin into a paper grocery sack (we don’t have a carrier for her), and raced off to the pet hospital (after calling three places to find a vet on duty at that hour who knew something about chinchillas). By the time we got down to South Pasadena and the medical center, Matilde was furiously trying to climb out of the sack, which I took as an excellent sign. My girlfriend arrived not long thereafter, and we were both able to meet with the vet and receive some reassurance. Midnight and the start of my 38th year of life found us sitting in front of Matilde’s oxygen tank (a necessary step after electrocution, apparently), trying to comfort her and each other.

Matilde came home on Saturday, and is still quite weak and a bit groggy. She has flashes of playfulness, but tires easily. She is eating very little, and we are worried that we may have to take her back into the hospital if she doesn’t come back on her food soon. We also are forced to give her medication several times a day, and she loathes the process.

It was an anxious weekend, and I am still more than a little stressed at the start of the week. If I get this frantic about a chinchilla, I can only imagine how I will respond to a child! In any event, lots of grading to do this week — it’s our last full week of classes, and thus blogging may indeed be light.

Birthdays and a lengthy Friday musing on my old women’s studies textbook

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 21, 2004
in Age, Athletics and Fitness, Body, Books, Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 16 Comments

I had hoped to have broadband internet service at home by today; alas, I miscommunicated with my cable company, and it is to be installed next Friday afternoon. Hence, no blogging until Monday.

Today is Candace’s birthday, please wish her many happy returns; tomorrow is mine. The question I have is whether I can still consider 37 to be my “mid-thirties”. I suspect not.

For my birthday, I would like to be able to run again. I had my third visit to the doctor in two weeks about my chronic coughing. It is getting better, but not nearly as fast as I would like. I’m back on another course of Prednisone, which makes me desperately hungry and keeps me awake at night. Still, I’m coughing less and less each day, and feel certain that with just a bit more rest, I will be back to a nice training schedule. I’m thinking about doing the Chicago Marathon in the autumn.

Anne has a fine post on “The Body and the Boys”; she touches on the rise of eating disorders and make-up consumption among American men. Anne asks:

Should we, in fact, be hailing the advent of cosmetics for boys as another step in gender-bending? Are we erasing the confines of traditional sex roles and allowing humanity to redefine itself as “people” where gender is a facet of the person but not the overriding, controlling factor?

And then does a nice job of capturing the complexity of the answer:

Idealistically, I approve of the idea of people being “free” to act as they wish (short of harming another) and to express themselves as individuals.

Realistically, we’re not to be trusted with that kind of freedom and, in fact, most of us wouldn’t be at all happy that way. Not only are most people herd animals, happiest within the confines of a society where they understand the rules and feel accepted and secure, but most of us wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with that kind of freedom. It would cause untold stress for most of us to be nearly required to act differently than those around us.

I like her conclusion but am rather uncomfortable with the way it’s phrased.

But Anne has got me thinking about contemporary feminist theory and practice, and about my own early experiences as a student in women’s studies classes in the mid-1980s. It was then and is still axiomatic in the secular world of gender studies that traditional sex roles are prisons from which both men and women must be liberated as quickly as possible. The “brave new world” of interchangeable sexual identities can’t arrive fast enough. When I took women’s studies back in the 80s, this was the sort of thing we all swallowed eagerly:

“The sexual division of labor — until recently, universal — need not, and in my opinion, should not, survive in industrial society. Prolonged child care ceases to be a basis for female subordination when artificial birth control, spaced births, small families, patent feeding, and communal nurseries allow it to be shared by men. Automation and cybernation remove most of the heavy work for which women are less well equipped than men. The exploitation of women that came with the rise of the state and of class society will presumably disappear in post-state, classless society — for which the technological and scientific basis already exists.”

This charming amalgam of Aldous Huxley and Karl Marx comes from my first undergrad text book in women’s studies: Women: A Feminist Perspective (1984 edition) by Jo Freeman. I still cling to it loyally. (Most modern feminist texts don’t seem to talk about cybernation anymore; perhaps we have stopped believing robots are the solution.)

And we also imbibed this sort of thing (from the same textbook):

The varied sex-role assignments given to men and women in different cultures suggest that the basic characteristics of men and women are not biologically determined; rather, they are based on cultural definitions of sex-appropriate behavior. Since we have no reason to assume that the biological makeup of men and women in other societies differs from that of men and women in the United States in any basic way, the observed differences betwen these cultures and our own in sex-related behavior seems to be culturally determined.

And then, near the end of the text, this ringing declaration:

“Women now face the challenge of balancing their socialization to gratify the needs of others with the new imperatives to put their own needs first — in both family and at work.“

The first quotation notes the means by which societal transformation will take place, the second explains that “nature” is not an impediment to those changes, and the third explains the movement’s ultimate goal (at least as it existed within upper middle-class secular academic feminism in the 1980s). Obviously, not all feminists then or now see putting women’s “own needs first” as the central tenet of the movement, but this last quotation is broadly representative of 1980s majority opinion.

I realize I’m asking the reader to unpack a lot very quickly. But for my own part, I remain troubled by any movement that sees communal nurseries and patent feeding (lots of infant formula, I presume, instead of that awful breast milk) as superior to devoted care from one mother and her own flesh. And I’m alienated by the description of a life of service and of nurturing as merely “gratifying the needs of others”.

I’m grateful that in recent years, gender studies has begun to move away from its earlier reliance on socialization and culture as the explanation for all sexual difference. Increasingly, thankfully, the role of biology (what some of us subversively like to call natural and intelligent design) is being given its due. But gender studies departments are staffed by folks who came of age with texts like Freeman’s, and not all have rethought their allegiance to the gods of individual autonomy, personal choice, and the glory of putting one’s “own needs first.”

Counting the Cost

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 20, 2004
in Blogging, Christianity, GLBTQ, War and Youth
. 9 Comments

That fellow Craig from the Gilligan’s Island show isn’t taking no for an answer. He just left another message on my answering machine at work.

And before I forget, let me plug a new (to me) blog: David Morrison’s Sed Contra. He’s a Typepad guy, and here is his unique “about me” description:

David Morrison is the author of this web log and the book Beyond Gay, which Our Sunday Visitor press published in 1999 and which is still in print.

He is also the found and moderator of Courage Online, an online support community for men and women living with some degree of same sex attraction who wish to do so chastely.

Throughout his career so far David has written on human rights issues, population issues, pro-life issues and chastity issues. In addition to this web log and the writing for his day job, David speaks and writes on chastity and identity issues.

It’s been a while since I’ve waded into the complex world of “ex-gay” and “beyond gay” ministries and counseling. I’ve had a great many friends and acquaintances on all sides of that fascinating issue, and I think I need to work up a post on all that soon.

David Morrison has obviously counted the cost of discipleship. Speaking of counting the cost, the Mennonite Weekly Review has this story about Kidron, Ohio’s Central Christian School:

Amid a wave of patriotism surrounding the war in Iraq, Central Christian School’s practice of not playing the national anthem at sporting events apparently has exacted a high toll.

In the past year, dozens of students have withdrawn. Next fall, resulting layoffs will shrink the school’s staff.

Superintendent Frederic Miller said in the past year the Ohio Mennonite Conference school has lost about 50 students, primarily because of its adherence to Mennonite peace teachings.

This is not an isolated incident:

At Iowa Mennonite School near Kalona, Iowa, Principal Wilbur Yoder said the school has been stripped of its right to host state sports tournaments because of complaints about the anthem not being played there. Yoder said the school hosted a boys’ basketball tournament earlier this year, but only because it had been asked to do so before the anthem issue arose.

Next year, he said, this is sure to change.

If you want to donate (Central Christian is doing heavy fundraising to save staff positions and make up for the drop in enrollment) the link at which to do so is here.

Whether you donate or not, read the whole article. It got my pacifist knickers in a fine old twist, but it made me damned proud to be a Mennonite (even if most Mennonites don’t put “damn” on their blogs).