Though opinions vary as to how often chinnies should have dust baths, we opt for three times a week. She climbs into what was once a nice salad bowl, and flips and flips and flips. She gets this dreamy-eyed look once she’s been in for a while.
She is, praise God, fully recovered from the electrocution of one month ago.
Bill Clinton is the only American president whose hand I have shaken. (That opportunity came in Pauley Pavilion at UCLA in 1994; I also shook his hand elsewhere on the campus in June 1992, when he was still a mere candidate). I voted for him in 1992, and for the last dozen years or so, have been utterly fascinated by him. With his autobiography due out this week, I’ve been thinking about him quite a bit.
Let me first say that my own attitude towards our 42nd president has shifted, and shifted again, over the years. My fondness for Clinton began when, during the 1992 campaign, I listened to his speeches and admired his oratory. He has never been a consistently good speaker. Some of his speeches were dry, meandering, and clearly disorganized, as if he hadn’t devoted sufficient time to preparing them. But when he was “on” — my goodness, no president in my memory could touch him! (That includes Ronald Reagan — the late 40th president always seemed to communicate well, and he had a gift for the one-liner, but Clinton could send shivers down my spine in a way that Reagan, even at his best, never could).
But I have to confess that what I have always loved most about Clinton is the hatred he aroused in conservatives. It’s often been said that “you can judge a man by the caliber of his enemies”. If that is true (and I am not sure that it always is), then from a liberal perspective, Clinton must be regarded as one of our greatest statesmen. Indeed, it was the venom of his enemies that kept me loyal to him through most of the 1990s! If he inspired such intense dislike amongst folks like Kenneth Starr and the editors of the National Review, he had to have considerable virtues! Indeed, even when I was deeply disappointed in his actions (like his signing of Welfare Reform and the Defense of Marriage Act), I comforted myself with the reassurance that if conservatives hated him so much, there had to be some wonderfully decent quality about his policies that I was missing! Had Clinton not been so hated by Republicans, I don’t think he would have been able to move the Democratic Party so far towards the right! He used his enemies to rally the left around him, even when we were deeply upset with his actions. It was brilliant politics, and in my case, it worked.
But I’ll let other folks talk about his policies and his politics. Clinton has also been a watershed figure in the history of the evolution of American masculinity. I remember in 1992, on election night, he and running mate Al Gore got up on a stage in Little Rock and hugged. Not a side hug, but a big, jubilant bear hug. They even bounced up and down while doing it. I was thrilled — because it was the first time I had seen an American president (or president-elect) demonstrate such strong physical affection for another man. I saw it as a triumph for the generation that came of age in the 1960s, the first generation of men in which public displays of affection between men could at least (sometimes) be acceptable. (Though I’ve got plenty of Scotch-Irish Calvinists in my gene pool, I’ve never regarded reticence as much of a virtue.)
Clinton not only could embrace men, he seemed to treat women as equals. To the centrist left in the early 1990s, Hillary was as much of a hero (if not more so) than her husband. (In some quarters, of course, she remains every bit as much a hero as she was a dozen years ago). I was delighted to see the first couple embody a new paradigm for marriage. It was clear to me that Clinton was a man unintimidated by women who had minds of their own. His marriage, his appointments of the likes of Janet Reno, Madeline Albright, and Ruth Ginsburg; these made clear that Bill Clinton was in a very real sense our first “feminist president”. But as the decade wore on, other names began to appear besides those of Hillary, Reno, Albright, and Ginsburg. Slowly, names like Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and ultimately, Monica Lewinsky became unavoidable parts of the news. As a liberal, I tried very hard to be outraged at the right for their attacks on the president’s character. The impeachment proceedings seemed to me to be outrageously partisan. But as angry as I was at Clinton’s critics, I slowly (agonizingly, actually) came to see that Bill Clinton was the architect of his own adversity. Time and time again, his lack of self-control had handed the right-wing an opportunity to derail any hopes of implementing a progressive agenda. (I admit, by the time the Lewinsky scandal broke, I had little hope of seeing Bill implement anything resembling a progressive agenda — but loyalty dies hard sometimes.)
I came to the conclusion that Bill Clinton was, in many ways, like a lot of modern American men: he was only capable of treating women with respect when he was not sexually attracted to them. I’m obviously psychologizing here, but I am fairly certain Bill did not lust for Reno, Albright, or Ginsburg! In the absence of sexual attraction, he could see these women as people — and thus cheerfully appoint them to high office and rely upon their counsel. Intellectually, he was very much a feminist. But if you’ll forgive the purple prose, like so many men, Clinton’s feminist principles foundered upon the rocks of his libido. He not only objectified Monica Lewinsky, he treated her shabbily; his behavior with Paula Jones was similarly puerile and offensive. (I am aware that there are other issues at play here like education, age, and class — but let’s leave those aside.)
What I’ve come to see as so important — from a gender studies perspective — about the Clinton story is what it reveals to us about the problem of compartmentalization. To be a feminist man must be about more than mentally assenting to the idea of women’s economic, political, and social equality. It has to be about more even than working to secure that equality for women. Male feminism has to be embodied in every compartment of one’s relationship with women. It must exist in the bedroom as well as the boardroom, if you will. Most men struggle with objectifying women sexually. Some of that struggle is rooted in biology, some in culture. But though my socialist and progressive friends may disagree with me, I have come to see the struggle to live a life of sexual integrity as a more important aspect of male feminism than anything else. Of course, giving women equal pay matters. Giving women access to political and economic power matters. But what good is it for a man to join the fight for women’s equality unless he has first devoted his energies to reconciling his sexuality to his sense of justice? Indeed, given how gargantuan and destructive the global sex trade has become, one could argue that transforming male sexuality is unquestionably the central task for male feminists.
I still like and admire Bill Clinton. His virtues are almost as obvious as his flaws, his talent as massive as his appetites. But though a decade ago, I saw his as a role model, today I see him as a splendid object lesson. My goal as a feminist man is not merely to treat women as my political, economic and social equals, nor even to help other men treat women in that same way. With the help of many mentors and friends of both sexes, my goal for myself is to live a life of what progressive theologian Marvin Ellison calls “Erotic Justice”. Erotic justice means refusing to reduce another human being to the status of an object which exists for one’s own pleasure. For so many men, discipling the libido is one of the hardest struggles of their lives. A commitment to erotic justice is a commitment to engage in that disciplining, even when it is immensely difficult. Erotic justice is not, however, just exercising self-control. It is the conscious effort to transform one’s sexuality so that it loses its capacity to wound, to alienate, to objectify. It does not mean the end of erotic excitement — it is just the insistence that the truly erotic is incompatible with injustice. To put it mildly, it’s a long journey.
Bill Clinton used the language of gender justice, and on one level, he practiced it. On another level, he fell massively short. In those successes and those failiures, he was like many of us. But for me, his failures have become a source of inspiration and a challenge, not just for my personal life but also in my academic and avocational work with teens. For that aspect of his legacy, as well as for that wonderful and historic hug he gave Al Gore on that sweet November night in 1992, I am grateful.
News from the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches that made me happy:
1. The American Catholic Bishops have refused to bar pro-choice Catholic politicians from receiving communion, despite a vigorous reiteration of the Church’s teachings on life:
U.S. bishops issued a stinging rebuke yesterday to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion, but turned aside calls to bar them from receiving communion.
“To make such intrinsically evil actions legal is itself wrong,” the bishops wrote in a long-awaited statement.
“Those who formulate law therefore have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil.”
It puts the onus on individual Catholics to determine whether they’re fit to receive communion.
The inveterate compromiser in me likes this. The hard right had clearly been hoping for an outright ban on pro-choicers taking communion, the left will be made uncomfortable by the language of “evil actions.” But I think the bishops nailed this one perfectly.
2. The Diocese of Vermont (Episcopal Church) is developing formal rites for blessing civil unions (as opposed to “same sex blessings”, an admittedly difficult distinction for some to make.) What is striking is how clear the Bishop of Vermont, Thomas Ely, is that these new rites should be equivalent to heterosexual marriage:
…same-sex couples are permitted to exchange rings, and only minor word changes are made in the liturgy, such as couples vowing to take their spouses “to be my partner in life,” rather than “to be my husband/wife.” Couples also are to sign a “declaration of intention” that closely mirrors that signed before marriage ceremonies.
“We incorporate parallel components to the matrimony ceremony for every single aspect of the union ceremony,” Ely said.
Conservative Anglican groups, already angry over the consecration of the Rev. V. Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first openly gay bishop last fall, have warned of a schism and denounced such developments as precipitating a crisis in the church.
In regards to that last paragraph, when are the conservatives going to stop “warning” about a schism? As an old friend of mine used to put it, are they “going to step up and pat the pony, or should we go to the rodeo down the road?” There’s a “boy who cried wolf” element to these perennial warnings of schism…
Yesterday afternoon, just after posting my post below, I got a phone call from a most unlikely fellow. The man on the other end is a very well-known, theologically conservative Pentecostal pastor here in Southern California. Recently, he has “come out of the closet”, scandalizing his congregation. He’s on some kind of leave right now, but he called me because he had — through mutual friends in the Metropolitan Community Church – heard about the courses I teach in gay and lesbian history. He’d also heard I’m a Christian. We had quite a nice chat, and he’s going to come up to Pasadena for a meeting with me soon. As he put it, “I know all about the sex; now I want to know about the history.” I’m really flattered, and looking forward to working with him. He’s got a lot on his plate, but he knows two things: he still loves Jesus with all his heart and soul, and he’s a gay man down to that soul. I doubt I’ll be able to report in detail in this blog about our meetings (for the sake of his privacy), but if I can pass along how our meeting goes without harm, I’ll do so.
I’m still thinking about touch and hugs, and though this will be my fourth post this week on the subject, I just can’t seem to stop. This will be the last one. I think.
There is no question that statistically, men are far more likely to sexually abuse children and teens than women are. (I have no idea what percentage of sex offenders are women, but I imagine it is a relatively small figure). There is also no question that in our culture, the primary care-givers for children and teens are women. Our elementary school teachers are overwhelmingly female; increasingly, our high school teachers are as well. And though there are plenty of men in youth ministry, it does seem to me (anecdotally, again) that far more women than men are interested in working with teens, especially long-term. (Lots of young men start out in the church working with teens, but their real goal is usually a pastorate).
We know how desperately our boys and young men need strong male role models. But even as churches and other institutions looks to increase the number of men (especially in their 20s and 30s) in children’s and youth ministry we create a climate of suspicion that looks upon every male youth worker as a potential predator. That’s strong language, of course. But I cannot tell you how often I’ve been asked what my “real agenda” is for teaching women’s studies and working with teenagers!
Surely, we are a culture that is profoundly frightened by what we believe are certain truths about male sexuality. Our films, our talks shows, our “real-life courtroom dramas” (Kobe Bryant), the Clinton-Lewinsky fiasco all reinforce the notion that, as so many of my teens of both sexes put it: “all men are dogs“. The assumption that most men are, at some level, fundamentally predatory is increasingly widespread. In the absence of strong men of character to serve as role models, our young people have no option but to believe that, as another of my students put it: “all men are weak; women are the ones who hold the world together.” Of course, it is personal experience as well as the media that reinforces this notion. When I ask my youngsters in youth group to share stories of betrayal at the hands of adults (a topic we approach with great care), the largest number of stories revolve around male weakness — alcoholism, infidelity, addiction, molestation. Men, it seems, are guilty until proven innocent.
I have hit the point in my life and in my volunteer ministry where I am willing to prove myself innocent. I can rail against the “unfairness” of judging me by the poor behavior of other men, but in this culture, that’s fruitless. As men, we do have to accept the fact that collectively, we have given good reason why it is that we ought not to be trusted — above all in the sexual realm. We can bemoan the injustice of paying for the sins of others, or we can shoulder the burden that our brothers have created for us (and that perhaps, in our own lives, we have helped to create). What that means practically is that I am committed to meeting suspicion with patience, openness, and accountability. I’m no longer hurt when folks don’t trust me just because I’m a man — I accept now that they have every reason not to.
I want a world where women smile fearlessly at men on the street. Where my female students stroll alone into parking lots at night in confidence. Where I can relate on my blog that I hug and kiss my teenage charges without raising any anxiety in the minds of readers. But the reason we don’t have that world is not because the world is unreasonable; it’s because the world is very reasonably responding to the sad reality of bad male sexual behavior. I can sulk about it, but that won’t help. What we men need to do is be willing to absorb scrutiny, answer questions, and hold ourselves and our brothers accountable. All the while, when it comes to relating to women and children, we have to balance good judgment with the Christian imperative to love boldly and recklessly. Despite the anxiety generated by the Kobes and the Clintons and the Catholic abuse scandal, we men have to be willing to with young people. Indeed, the Kobes and the Clintons make that work all the more imperative.
So, ask me your questions. Put me through your background checks. Confront me if I step across a line. You see, I’m going to hug, kiss, listen to, nourish, nurture, joke with, challenge, respect, and love on your kids with everything I’ve got. All things considered, you have the right to doubt why a grown man would want to do all that. But be open to the possibility that I — and so many men like me — are not what you fear we are. Be open to the very real possibility that on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons and countless other times, we could be as Christ to your child. Hubris? Maybe. But with every fibre of my being, I believe that being Christ to kids is what youth ministry should always be about.
This disorganized rant is done. Want to read a splendid and well-organized piece? Check out Andi’s long post on Buddhism and abortion. It’s terrific.
Oh, and I’m considering leaving Pasadena Mennonite Church. More on the reasons why soon.
In doing all this blogging and reflecting on boundaries, I came across this via Google: the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s STANDARDS OF MINISTERIAL BEHAVIOR AND BOUNDARIES: For Priests, Deacons, Religious, Pastoral Ministers,Administrators, Staff and Volunteers.
It’s a heartbreaking document, though utterly understandable in light of the the current abuse scandal in the Church. Still, this part absolutely appalled me:
Pastoral Counselors and Spiritual Directors:
g. are to avoid physical contact of any kind (i.e., touching, hugging, holding hands) between themselves and the persons they counsel. Such actions can be misconstrued and should be avoided. Church Personnel should be mindful that not all members of the congregation are comfortable with physical touching and that hand-shake conduct should ordinarily suffice.
The rest of the document actually makes sense, but this just devastated me. I have no doubt that other places in both the Catholic and Protestant worlds have implemented similar, mad rules.
Hugs from pastors have meant the world to me. I remember when I was going through my last divorce, my priest at All Saints — Scott, a man in his mid-forties, the same one who had performed our wedding — hugged me and held me in his office the day I moved out of the house my ex and I shared. (I had meant to blog about this before when I posted about men , but I didn’t.)
It was an amazing pastoral experience. I was 35, I felt absolutely alone, and right then and there, I needed this man to be as Christ to me. And he was. As we finished our counseling session, he held me tight for at least thirty seconds, and I teared up. I felt safe and I felt loved. If Scott had given me a handshake, I would have responded with a firm grip and, in my gut, I would have felt betrayed. I didn’t ask for the hug — he knew me well enough to know it was what I needed. I didn’t feel sexual, I am pretty damn sure he didn’t feel sexual, and it changed my whole day. Heck, it changed my whole month. That night, when I fell asleep in my dingy new bachelor apartment for the first time, I remembered Scott’s hug and I felt safe. I know the difference between a priest and Jesus, but on that awful Friday two years ago, Scott was Jesus to me.
Look, I’m not ignorant of the climate in which we work today. But if I can’t be held by my pastor, then I’m in the wrong church. And if I can’t hug and hold those kids with whom I am in a pastoral relationship, then I’m in the wrong church.
Just for reflection, here is a link to what you get at Bible Gateway when you type in the key words “Jesus, Touch“. Good thing our Lord wasn’t in the archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Just loved this exchange:
THE ONLY PROB WITH HIS CLASS, IS THAT HE PREF TAKING ABOUT EVERY STUDENTS PROBLEMS/INSTEAD OF LEC…I MEAN HOW BORING TO HEAR OTHERS PROB…EVEN HAD A BORING JOURNAL! NO LEC ON HISTORY WHAT SO EVER!!! HE NEEDS TO GET OFF HIS HIGH HOURSE….
To which another student issued this fine reply:
To the person below. Maybe if you knew how to spell “Horse” correctly you would have gotten a better grade.
I’m in the office, writing quizzes, eagerly awaiting updates from the England-Switzerland Euro 2004 match about to take place in Portugal. I know my girlfriend is equally interested in the outcome of the later game, Croatia-France.
I was sent a link to this interesting interview with Mohja Kahf, a professor of comp lit at the University of Arkansas and an observant Muslim woman. She’s also a blogger, and writes what can only be described as a rather racy blog on Islam and sexuality. The interview itself is at Nerve.com, a site that may be offensive to some, but it’s worth linking to.
What I found interesting was Kahf’s take on modesty and sexuality, a topic that generated a lot of heat when I posted about it last month. Here’s an excerpt from the Nerve interview:
Q: Do Muslim women seek to change their role?
A: I don’t claim to speak for all Muslim women, but I think huge numbers of Muslim women feel that the problem is not Islam but how men have interpreted and practiced it. But there are even larger numbers of conservative Muslim women who want to live in a world where Islam is practiced conventionally. The main proponents of barriers in mosques are women.
Q: Why?
A: Because they just feel more comfortable back there, behind them. We can lie down, we can breast-feed our children, and we don’t have to be seen by the men. Conservative women are very comfortable with where Islam is. They feel that Islam gives them a lot of authority and respect. It’s like if you go to a church and everyone knows who you are. You don’t want to rock the boat. You get a lot of respect wearing the hijab [headscarf], for example.
Q: Do you wear one?
A: I’ve worn one since I was twelve. But starting about five years ago, I wear it and I don’t wear it. I wear it out of pride in my heritage, but I don’t wear it in the required Islamic way anymore.
Q:Do women feel sexier when they take it off ?
A:Women who are covered up feel very sexy, let me tell you.
Q: Really?
A: (laughs) Yes! There is such a sense of feeling enveloped and private, like sitting by a cozy fire. Like no one else has access to this warmth, no one else can see you. No one can see your thong underwear hiking up your back! (laughs) There are boundaries clearly demarcated between inside and outside, private and public, and for many women and men that is more conducive to a healthy sex life. (Emphasis Hugo’s)
From Professor Kahf’s blog, I clicked over to the Muslim Wakeup internet site, and found lots of good things about what’s happening in progressive Islam these days. Given that the phrase “progressive Islam” is almost as much of an oxymoron these days as “socialist evangelical”, I thought it was definitely worth the visit. Check it out.
Oh, and I am feeling fine after yesterday’s little accident. I’ve also crawled out of the little whole of self pity into which I had briefly disappeared.
Having posted twice about hugs, I need one. (My gal will be home soon, and the chinchilla has already provided a very nice cuddle).
I got in a minor car accident today in my brand-spankin’ new Toyota Solara. While I was on my way home on crowded Hill Avenue here in Pasadena, a minivan made a sudden swerve into my lane, sending me into a third lane where I was smacked hard by a pickup truck. The minivan’s driver slowed, stared at me for a good long while, and then (inexplicably and maddeningly) sped off. The driver of the pickup and I pulled over to the side of the road, shook hands, and exchanged our pertinent information. Happily, a kind witness appeared, brandishing the license number of the minivan and assuring me that the accident had not been my fault. (The witness was named Harvey; blessings on Harvey tonight!)
I’ve spent the last two hours dealing with my insurance company and with filing a police report. It’s a minor thing, really. Though the right front side of my car is badly damaged, it will be repaired perfectly, I’m sure. I have rental reimbursement for the time it’s in the shop. No one was hurt. But after two hours of being cheerful and patient and competent (lots of joking about with the warm and sympathetic police officer who took the report), I am home. I’m hungry, tired, and frankly feel like bursting into tears. Sometimes, being a grown-up is hard.
Still, if getting into a minor traffic accident is my worst problem today — and it is — who can say I am not blessed?
I’ve had some great comments on yesterday’s post about hugs; I’m very grateful. Jenell responded with an interesting post of her own. (And for the umpteenth time, let me say that I envy her graceful writing style — dang, she’s good!) Here’s a lengthy excerpt:
Hugo writes about touch between males and between adult males and young females at his church. He’s also a professor…what are the boundaries at school? Or in a special-ed classroom? Or on a playground? Or with other peoples’ kids? Or other places?
I started touching students more this year, in part because of all the healing touch and affection I received this year. I use public and private space as an important boundary. I touch students on the arm, head, or shoulder in class or in the hallway. I use touch to emphasize my words - to be affirming, encouraging, or in greeting. I don’t touch without words. I hug female students in the hallway frequently. I don’t hug men, except at graduation (in front of their families and other profs). Hugging male students seems way too risky - I’ve had flirting and sexually-related manipulative behavior coming from men from time to time and I don’t want to inadvertently encourage it. I don’t touch women or men in private settings - if I go for a walk with a student, if my office door is closed, etc. I also don’t ever close my office door when talking with male students - I close it for women if they’re crying or if they ask for it to be shut. If men ask for it to be shut, I still leave it open a crack.
It is sad that touch is oversexualized. In our culture, any person represents a potential sexual encounter - youth, children, male, female, married… anyone. It’s hard to form relationships when you must first ascertain the other persons’ sexual intentions. And it’s obviously tragic that we have to teach our children to be wary of whether or not they are being viewed sexually by others.
I like that bit about using touch to emphasize words. In any event, Jenell raises some excellent questions. Let me see if I can tackle a few of the practical ones:
In terms of my boundaries as a professor, they are obviously very different from my boundaries as a youth leader. Those are two very different areas of my life, and I am trying to meet two very different sets of needs. I don’t generally hug my students at the college. I do so only when it is initiated by the student, usually at the end of the semester as a “goodbye” ritual. In my capacity as a professor, my first job is to teach, not to provide emotional support. That doesn’t mean that I can’t form friendships with my students, and it doesn’t rule out serving as a nurturing mentor — but it is different than caring for high schoolers. I have had students (usually female) cry in my office,and I have kept the door shut (my office opens directly on to a very busy hallway). I know it’s taking a risk, but I have to weigh that risk against the importance of respecting the needs of an individual student. Fortunately, I share my office with another professor, and he is usually around when students are visiting.
I agree with Jenell that in our culture, any person represents a potential sexual encounter - youth, children, male, female, married… anyone. I agree with her as well that this is “sad… obviously tragic”. With that in mind, I have come to believe that the key thing that those of us who work with young people need to do is commit ourselves to being deliberately counter-cultural when it comes to touch. This doesn’t mean ignoring the power of sexuality. It means not allowing our fear of sexuality to hold us back from reaching out to those who need it. We have to find non-exploitative ways to hold each other — and hold each other across lines of sex, age, and status. Obviously, that’s risky stuff.
(On a related note, several of our volunteers who work with youth at our church are openly gay or lesbian. We have regularly sent gay male adult volunteers on overnight trips with our youth, and they sleep in the same bunk house as the boys and I do. I can think of a lesbian couple who have done marvelous work with our junior high-schoolers. Our kids don’t bat a single eyelash, because they have been raised in an intensely inclusive culture. Heck, many of them have a gay or lesbian parent! To my knowledge, in the five years I’ve been working with the youth program, no parent has ever complained. But if we were to set up rigid gender-based boundaries, who on earth should our gay men be told to hug? Boys? Girls? Neither? Which bunkhouse should we put the lesbian youth leader in? This gets pretty ridiculous pretty quickly.)
The way to mitigate risk is to set boundaries, and to have touch happen publicly. In my youth group, just about everyone hugs everyone at the end of the Wednesday night meeting. These aren’t those ridiculous “side hugs” either, they are full-on embraces. Now, not everyone is required to hug, and some kids do shy away — at first. But once trust has been developed, we have to kick them out of the meeting room because otherwise they’d be hugging us and each other all night! I work under the supervision of a woman priest who heads our youth program at All Saints. When I’m hugging a girl, that priest is generally in the room. That’s common sense. I have hugged boys when we’ve been alone. I have wiped away countless tears, had my shirts soaked with snot, and I’ve kissed a whole bunch of ‘em (boys and girls) on their foreheads. I’ve done it, I’ve done it publicly, and I absolutely trust both my own motives and the motives of those whom I embrace. More to the point, I know all of the parents of my youth — and they’ve seen me with their kids. I’m not trying to say that I’m unique or special! I’m trying to say that I’ve earned the trust of those around me, I have accountability to the staff and to the parents of our high schoolers, and it’s only because that trust and that accountability is in place that I have the privilege of being able to express love through physical touch.
I am not blind to the reality of sexual abuse. I am not blind to the reality that most of that sexual abuse has been perpetrated by men in positions of trust and authority. I am not blind to the fact that so many young women have stories of inappropriately sexual contact with adult men whom they were supposed to be able to trust. And I’m not blind to the reality of human frailty — including my own. But the way I see it, I’ve got three choices:
1. Get out of youth work altogether;
2. Continue in youth work, but set rigid boundaries that only reinforce the notion that touch is dangerous and something to be feared;
3. Continue in youth work, and with prayer and mentoring and with the support of others to hold me accountable, touch and hug and hold and wipe away tears and snot.
Trusting in God and grace and the wisdom of those around me, I’m taking option three.
I consider myself blessed to have grown up in a physically affectionate family. Not only was I regularly hugged and kissed by my mother, but I still hug and kiss my father whenever I see him. (I am grateful that my father, born in Austria, grew up in a relatively demonstrative culture.) As a schoolboy, however, I learned quickly that any sign of physical affection between men (other than during a sporting event, and even then, of a very limited and specific nature) was associated with homosexuality and effeminacy. I didn’t hug a man to whom I wasn’t related until I went to college.
Now, of course, I work as a volunteer youth minister at the local Episcopal church. During the past five years, I’ve worked with a couple of hundred high school-age youth. It’s given me a lot of time to think about gender and physical affection. If there’s one thing I’m committed to, it’s modeling appropriate but loving physical contact with my kids of both sexes. That isn’t always easy to do. Not surprisingly, I have had to confront my own acculturation when it comes to physical affection with young men.
First off, we live in a society that is absolutely obsessed with issues of sexual abuse. This obsession is particularly apparent in our churches and our youth ministries; the past three years have brought devastating news of molestation and abuse in every denomination (though our Catholic brethren seem to have taken the brunt of the hit). In this climate, all men who choose to work with youth are open to suspicion. Some of what is being done in response is good and necessary: stricter background checks, for example. But much of what has happened has not been useful, and some of it has even been counter-productive. I have a friend who works in youth ministry at a Presbyterian church nearby, and he says he has been told that the church’s policy is to never have any youth minister touch a kid in any way at any time. No hugs, no pats on the back, nothing. He’s looking for a new church.
Working with adolescents has taught me just how starved most of them are for safe physical affection, especially the boys. And over time, with input from those on staff at the church, I have developed my own guidelines for my own behavior. What it boils down to is this: I am an inveterate hugger. I hug everyone. Kids, adults, men, women, boys, girls, chinchillas, the ficus tree in the corner. That sounds more compulsive than it is. I have to be constantly, keenly aware of body language. I don’t foist hugs on anyone. Nor do I treat hugs as inconsequential, like Hugo’s version of a casual handshake. What I’m trying to do doesn’t always work perfectly, but it does seem to work most of the time. I’m trying to create a culture in our youth group where non-sexual physical intimacy feels safe and reassuring and validating. That takes a lot of time. Some kids came for six months before I could hug them. Some hugged me the moment they met me. Even in a nurturing and safe environment, there will be different levels of comfort with physical affection.
Many of the girls, of course, have little experience of non-sexual affection from men. If I hear one more story from a teen girl about how her father stopped hugging her when she began to develop, I’m going to scream. (I’m not a father, of course, but I’m just mystified by that phenomenon, which, anecdotally, seems to be epidemic). Many of them, though very young, have already been objectified and harassed by men my age or older. They are in desperate need of truly safe adult men — men who are neither responsive to their sexuality nor terrified of it. For the record, as a matter of common sense, I am never alone with teenage girls at the church. Ever. I also regularly “check in” with my fellow volunteers and with the church staff, asking them to be willing to challenge me should I ever even appear to behave inappropriately. But none of that stops me, when the barriers have been broken down, from hugging.
I don’t hug boys the same way I hug girls. For the most part, with the boys, “horseplay” is the safest environment for physical affection. We do a lot of that at All Saints Church. Mind you, I don’t get down on the ground and wrestle with the kids! But the playful pretend punches, the slaps on the back — all of these can be imbued with very real caring and affection. When I was a high schooler, I wasn’t ready to be held by older men — but I sure as hell wanted their attention, and I did want their caring and affection. A quick squeeze of the shoulder was about all I could take, but damn, did I want that squeeze of the shoulder from men I looked up to! I try and remember that. (I should note that some high school boys do like to hug just as much as the girls do, especially once they realize that ours is a safe environment).
In our current climate of hysteria, we in the church need to struggle to find a balance. We must of course protect our young people from exploitation and abuse. We must do everything we can to create a safe place within our church communities for our teens. But a place where every gesture of physical affection is seen as dangerous is an inherently unsafe environment! Our young women need to be reminded, over and over again, that they are loved and cared for non-sexually; in that effort, a hug is worth ten thousand words. Our young men need to be reminded, over and over again, that here, at least one night a week during youth group, they don’t have to be “tough guys.” They need men in their lives who will love them without judging them or assessing their fragile masculinities.
I have to admit, it’s a bit scary to post about this. I know that many, many women out there — and some men — have devastating stories of betrayal at the hands of male authority figures. I know that many of them know just how awful it can be when what was supposed to be a “safe” hug or touch becomes something far different. I try to never lose sight of that reality. But it is also because I am so aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse that I insist on touching the youth with whom I work. I do so not to show my disregard for common sense, but as an act of defiance against a culture that declares all affection to be suspicious. I do it because the kids need it. I do it because we all need it. And I do it because Jesus did it.
Not that it is receiving much coverage in this country, but the Euro 2004 football (soccer) tournament is underway; this morning, we paid the absurd price of $19.95 to watch the BBC feed of the Croatia-Switzerland match live on pay-per-view television. My girlfriend is a passionate Croatia supporter, and was crushed by her team’s poor play (though they did escape with a tie). I am sure I scored bonus points with the Lord this morning, as I chose to go to church rather than stay and watch the second match of the day, which featured England vs. France. (The French won). Given that neither Wales nor Austria (my two favorite sides) qualified for Euro 2004, I am happy to support the Croats this year.
The LA Times runs a rather predictable story about religious faith and the presidential campaign today: Sunday Division Has a New Equation. It runs on the front page, but for the most part, repeats the now customary fare about how church-goers lean Republican while non-church goers lean Democratic.. Still, it is interesting to read that some folks are willing to make some striking moral comparisons between this administration and the last:
Julie Murphy, 45, and Mary Teschendorf, 46, both mothers of three who attend church about twice a month, reflect a different sort of conflict. Murphy voted for Bush in 2000. Her friend did not. But they share the premise of many religious conservatives — and Bush — that many of America’s problems today are rooted in the erosion of moral values.
“Traditional values are not practiced; people are not around for their children. It all comes down to making a dollar,” Murphy said.
But both women express suspicion about Bush’s use of religious themes and say that the president showed moral failings equivalent to Clinton’s in the Lewinsky scandal when he led the nation into war on what they now think were false premises.
I know most of my conservative friends think that the Times is slanted heavily to the left. (I can’t say that I see it myself). But I am heartened by the thought that many church-going believers are willing to make a direct connection between President Clinton’s dissemblings in the Monical Lewinsky scandal and our current president’s possible misrepresentation of the facts about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. It’s a comparison I’ve heard from many of my fellow Mennonites who were appalled by Clinton (and who actually supported his impeachment), but until now, I haven’t read of anyone who voted for Bush in 2000 making that same connection.
On Friday, I gave money to the John Kerry campaign. It wasn’t a large sum, and it wasn’t easy to do. (I gave far more happily to Dennis Kucinich earlier this year). So much about mainstream Democratic party politics bothers me so! On a personal level, I identify far more with President Bush’s faith than with Senator Kerry’s. I like the infusion of biblical language into our political discourse; heck, I want more of it, not less. But though I continue to trust that President Bush is a good Christian, I have become convinced that on issues of war, peace, and economic justice, his actions are out of sync with his professed values. Though many on the religious left have linked to this six-month old article before, let me finish this post with the words of Sojourner editor Jim Wallis, who makes the best case for a vote against Bush:
President Bush uses religious language more than any president in U.S. history, and some of his key speechwriters come right out of the evangelical community. Sometimes he draws on biblical language, other times old gospel hymns that cause deep resonance among the faithful in his own electoral base. The problem is that the quotes from the Bible and hymnals are too often either taken out of context or, worse yet, employed in ways quite different from their original meaning. For example, in the 2003 State of the Union, the president evoked an easily recognized and quite famous line from an old gospel hymn. Speaking of America’s deepest problems, Bush said, “The need is great. Yet there’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” But that’s not what the song is about. The hymn says there is “power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb” (emphasis added). The hymn is about the power of Christ in salvation, not the power of “the American people,” or any people, or any country. Bush’s citation was a complete misuse.
On the first anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush said at Ellis Island, “This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind…. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it.” Those last two sentences are straight out of John’s gospel. But in the gospel the light shining in the darkness is the Word of God, and the light is the light of Christ. It’s not about America and its values. Even his favorite hymn, “A Charge to Keep,” speaks of that charge as “a God to glorify”—not to “do everything we can to protect the American homeland,” as Bush has named our charge to keep.
Bush seems to make this mistake over and over again—confusing nation, church, and God. The resulting theology is more American civil religion than Christian faith.
Fridays are the mornings I sleep late. I had told myself, however, that I was going to get up and watch all of Reagan’s funeral. But alas, it didn’t happen. I lay in bed like a bump on a log until well past 8:00AM. By the time Matilde the chinchilla was done with her morning playtime in the bathroom (and really, few things are as heavenly as that) I was just able to turn on the TV in time to catch the words of Bush I. I did linger to listen to everything the current president had to say.
Once Bush II (is it disrespectful to call him that?) was through, a rather slow version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic began. It certainly is a popular tune with this administration! They played it over and over again on Wednesday, when Reagan’s casket was taken from the caisson into the capitol rotunda, and they played it at the end of the national memorial service on September 14, 2001. It’s an interesting choice, especially since until recently, it was still considered by some Southerners to be a divisive tune. (I actually know folks from down South who consider the lyrics deeply offensive, but that’s another post).
I’ll agree, it’s a heck of a “battle hymn”! As a child, I hated singing the National Anthem (too difficult). “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” was too obviously “God Save the Queen”. “America, the Beautiful” was utterly uninspiring to a small boy. But gosh, how I loved to sing the “Battle Hymn” in Mr. Purdy’s music class at Carmel River School, and happily, he liked to have us sing it. It always made me feel like marching off somewhere and doing something grand and good! And even as a child, I loved the final verse (back in the day when you could sing this in a public school):
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Just the rhythm of it made me wriggle with excitement when I was ten! But as an adult, I’ve always been entranced by the final couplet. Really, it’s a nice statement of pacifist theology:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
The lyrics call “us” to be an army that imitates Christ. It doesn’t say, “As he killed men to make them holy, let us kill to make men free”! If Jesus was a non-violent sacrifice for all humankind, then the nachfolge Christi also requires non-violent sacrifice. Mennonites, like most Christian pacifists, have a long history (see the Martyr’s Mirror) of being willing to die for a cause, just not being willing to kill for a cause. There’s a colossal distinction; it’s one that Julia Ward Howe seems to have made, but not one that our modern culture is willing to make.
Indeed, the only sword wielded in the Battle Hymn is God’s “terrible swift one”. And it would be dangerous, biblically and theologically, to assume that the sword of the state is a mere proxy for the sword of God. Really, I’ve often felt we in the peace church tradition should be singing the Battle Hymn more often, as it reflects our theology better than it does that of our Reformed and Catholic brethren!
Also on the subject of pacifism, Christy had a great post yesterday. I liked this:
I’m not a pacifist because I believe that the world is sunshine and doughnuts, and if we could all just feel the love, everything would be groovy. I’m a pacifist because I believe the world is hard and unfair, violence disproportionately affects the poor and powerless, and I am all too aware of my own violent tendencies. Rather than being a passive thing, being a pacifist should be about actively trying to be a peace-maker in my daily life.
Being anti-war is easy. Peace-making is hard. I suck at it sometimes, but I’m pretty sure I would be much worse at it if I wasn’t even trying. There is no peace without justice, so peace-making has to be about trying to create spaces where both I and the structures around me are treating people with the respect that all image-bearers of God deserve.
I believe that the means are the ends, so I can’t build something good based on anger or fear or disrespect or trying to shove a particular political platform down anybody’s throat. Most of us have come to our particular opinions through our lived experience, not logical arguments, so talking myself hoarse probably won’t change anybody’s mind…
By the way, the classicists out there will have to back me up on this, but the root of “pacifism” is utterly unrelated to the root of “passive.”
Passive, if I remember my Latin, comes from passus sum – “to suffer” (as in the Passion)
Pacifism comes from pax facere – “to make peace” (very active).
Forgive the pedantry.
Well, it was a disorganized rant indeed, and it’s in need of a follow-up. However, I suspect I will still end up frustrating quite a few critics with this:
A number of commenters on my post below about consent and enthusiasm have noted that I fail to make the all-important distinction between legal and moral definitions of rape. I know full well that many of y’all out there are better schooled in the law than I, and indeed, my post was not intended to shed any new light on the legal understanding of rape. Lawrence Krubner says:
Surely female enthusiasm is not a standard that can be legally enforced? What would the standard be? There is, of course, a difference between morals and law - we can say that morally men should only have sex with women who are enthusiastic, but legally we have to provide a benchmark that courts can enforce. The “yes” and “no” thing has it problems, but is a clear enough standard for men to understand and courts to enforce.
That’s fair. But my interest as a teacher is primarily in preventing rape and sexual assault in the first place. And though I have no interest in challenging the prevailing standard surrounding the definition of rape as a crime, I am interested in reducing the frequency of what I would call “unwanted sexual contact” that falls below the threshold of legal rape. When a woman says “yes” (but wishes she could say “no”), I don’t think she’s been raped in a legal sense. (Unless her “yes” was obviously coerced). But I do think she has been violated in a very real sense, and I don’t think that the responsibility for that violation is hers alone, regardless of her age.
Saying that men don’t like to hear this (look at the gender break-down in the comments section!) is an understatement. What my male students say to me, with frustration — and sometimes anger — usually goes like this: “I’m a nice guy, Hugo. I know that no means no. Now you’re telling me that yes can mean no, too? Sheesh! You’re putting too much responsibility on us! But beneath this frustration is legitimate fear and guilt. Most young men are afraid that their partners are, to one degree or another, feigning enthusiasm in order to please them. It’s humiliating, and for men who care for the women in their lives, it’s painful to realize that they have hurt those whom they love. Most young men assume that women were socialized just as they were, with the same right to verbalize their wants and desires. Most young men are utterly unaware (often willfully unaware) of just how powerful the social forces are that condition young women to be pleasing, compliant, and quiet. On that subject, since she put it in my comments section, let me quote Andi, who speaks with far more personal authority than I:
It’s a terrifying and frustrating thing realize that, for all the educating I did/do for other people, for all the times I’ve stood up for other women, I still can’t do it for myself. I’ve described it as “deer in headlights.” Every bone in my body knows I should say no–to my boss, to my friends, to the stranger, to my partner–for all sorts of reasons, usually not related to sex. But I don’t. My brain, stuck in a frenzy of “I should say no, I can’t do this, this is ridiculous, I don’t want to/I should’t have to, this is unfair” etc., spins its wheels while my tongue, trained to acquiescence, condemns me again: “Yes. No problem. I can do that.” (Emphases are Hugo’s)
Of course women have some responsibility to overcome their socialization. Adults are not always victims, to some extent they are also volunteers. But the personal stories of countless bright, courageous women make it clear that overcoming that socialization to please and to placate is not easily done. As Andi said so perfectly:
The hardest thing to do is untrain yourself. Even if you know what you should do, women of my generation are caught in a particularily painful place: knowing what we are doing to ourselves, and yet still being unable to undo our own habits.
What men have the moral (not legal) responsibility to do is to understand just how powerful that socialization has been in the lives of the women they love, and how often they (men) have been the unwitting beneficiaries thereof. I’m naive enough to believe that once men are aware of this, they can no longer in good conscience continue to act as they have before. What real man (a loaded term, but it has its uses) wants a woman in his life who sees his sexual desire as something to be soothed and managed? Long before they become sexually active, young women in our society are taught to develop strategies to deflect, manage, or soothe male desire. But until men become better regulators of their own desires, they cannot expect women to single-handedly stop using these (somewhat) manipulative (but understandable) strategies!
The solution here is, I think, a moral and a behavioral one. In a culture of promiscuity and hook-ups, it is simply impossible for two young people to have the emotional “togetherness”, trust, and confidence to have an honest conversation about what they really, really want. Vocalizing one’s wants in an explicit fashion is rarely easy, and when one is with someone one doesn’t know well, it’s going to be impossible for all but a few. Only when two people “know” each other (in the epistemological sense of the word), are they truly prepared to “know” each other (in the biblical sense). And that takes patience, self-restraint, and commitment — and to say those three virtues are uncelebrated in our contemporary sexual discourse would be another massive understatement.
Lastly, Lawrence Krubner’s final point about enthusiasm is an instructive one:
…enthusiasm is a pointless thing to aspire to if your concerns are more moral than legal - women who were sexually abused at a young age sometimes become wildly promiscious - catch then at age 20 and you will see wild enthusiasm for sex, but are they engaging in sex for the right motives?
Enthusiasm is not merely the outer manifestation of inner desire or excitement. The etymology, it seems, comes from the Greek enthousiazein: “God-breathed”, or “God in us”. That maybe a little bit too religious for some, so here is how I have come to phrase it: “When your head, your heart, your mouth, your body, and your spirit all want the same thing — that’s enthusiasm!” And until we know each other’s head, heart, mouth, body, and spirit — then folks, we just ain’t ready.
I’m ploughing through papers on a busy day. But I’m struck by what one student wrote on Rate my Professors:
He turns history into fairy tales and lets you learn…
Boy, is that a back-handed compliment! Now I know I’m going to be booted off Cliopatria any second. And what’s worse, I’ve also just admitted that I check that rating site with some regularity. Vanity, thy name is…
There are some good comments on the post below, some of which I feel compelled to respond to — and will do so when I (eventually) have the time.
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