Archive for July, 2004

Vaccines, Hot Modesty, and more on Lance

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion and Modesty
. 0 Comments

I’m off to run errands, including getting vaccinated before our trip to Colombia next week. I need shots for yellow fever and hepatitis A, as well as pills for typhoid. (Mom, if you’re reading this, take a deep breath and relax!)

But in addition to posting more about coming home to the Episcopal Church immediately below, I wanted to take note of a couple of things.

Jonathan Dresner, fellow Cliopatriarch, sends me a link to this New York Times story on Mormons in Illinois; it includes the brief mention of a t-shirt slogan that connects to my entry on t-shirts earlier this week. In Nauvoo, one can buy shirts that proclaim “Modest Girls are the Hottest Girls.” You’ve really got to love that. Jonathan asks in an e-mail:

Is it me, or is the attempt to associate modesty with hyper-sexuality self-defeating?

I’m with you, brother, I’m with you. But what I like best about the t-shirt is that it addresses a fundamental truth (the erotics of the concealed) with an obvious contradiction — advertising that truth so blatantly undercuts all of its real power. Really, one could spend hours working through the layers of meaning here.

Please do go and read the latest updates on Sam Carrasco’s battle with leukemia here. Even as he undergoes surgery, Sam is waging battles with his parents about food — he wants his McDonalds. I think we can take that as a good sign.

Go and read Jen Lemen this morning, because no one I’ve found in the blogosphere has her mastery of prose. Sample from today’s post:

autumn is coming, i remind myself. which always quickly brings me around to christmas. this is a clear defining moment of the planning personality type. that the hottest day in july can fill you with sadness that summer will fade. that the thought, the mere thought of summer fading, can fill you pure delight that christmas will come again at last! just thinking about cranberry breads and clove pierced oranges makes you sigh.

And any number of people have been asking about how I reconcile my admiration for Lance Armstrong with his troubled personal life. I tend to go on and on about personal responsibility and masculinity. And Lance is away from his three small children for much of the year, divorced from their mother, and living with a rock star (Sheryl Crow). I know that I can’t possibly know all the details of what transpired in his marriage to the mother of his children. (I hear from many sources that his wife left him, rather than the other way around.) Judging other folks’ divorces is dangerous, not because we ought never make judgments, but because if there is one thing almost impossible to truly understand, it is other people’s marriages. Do I believe that all things considered, it is better for a father to stay married to the mother of his children, and be devoted to her and to them? Of course. Do I wish Lance’s children had been with him on the podium in Paris? Of course.

But I don’t need my sports heroes to be perfect. I don’t look to a Lance Armstrong to show me how to live in every aspect of my life, because that is both an abdication of my responsibility and an imposition of an impossible burden on his shoulders. He’s a remarkable athlete and an inspiring figure, and I can admire him and still surmise that beneath all of that dedication and talent and brilliance is just another flawed human being like everyone else. I honor his commitment to excellence, his commitment to survival, and his decision to spend so much time and energy on inspiring others to battle cancer. Surely, those are reasons enough to honor a man, even if in his private life, he falls short of the mark.

Okay. Off to get a haircut, to the gym, and to the market. And to get those shots.

Follow-up on leaving the Mennonites

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2004
in Christianity
. 7 Comments

Well, I certainly do need a follow-up on yesterday’s rather abrupt post about my imminent departure from Pasadena Mennonite Church. The several excellent comments below that post have challenged me.

Rereading yesterday’s post, it certainly sounded as if I was leaving the Mennonites simply because I found myself challenged socially and culturally. My words, a day later, seem a bit glib and somewhat elitist. Let me try and clarify:

Certain principles of Anabaptist theology, such as pacifism, simplicity,and the call to personal holiness have tremendous appeal for me still. (Even as I have found it difficult, at times, to defend pacifism adequately against its more thoughtful theological critics!) There is something about “what it means to be a Christian” that Mennonites “get” on a very deep level, especially in terms of practical tools for living “as the church.”

I also want to make it clear that I am not looking for a church that will just validate me in terms of “where I am” at the present moment. I want and need to be pushed and to be challenged. Indeed, in different ways, coming home to the Episcopal Church will mean that I (as an evangelical in terms of my personal relationship with Christ) will be pushed very, very hard indeed.

But the fact that I am to be married next year for the fourth time is a tough thing for many folks to deal with. (Let me say, parenthetically, that my fiancee is an amazingly brave woman to take on a thrice-divorced 37 year-old; she knows, however, that I am doing the necessary spiritual and psychological work.) On a personal level, my friends at the Mennonite Church have been tremendously supportive of my own journey and my relationship with my fiancee. (I intend to keep those friendships alive and thriving, mind you.) But on an institutional level, I find that my past has closed certain doors to me within the Mennonite Church, and I confess that that has been quite troubling and upsetting at times. I am not going to go into greater detail on my blog, but those who are familiar with Mennonite theology can likely see the problem.

Even while spending the last two years worshipping in the Mennonite church, I have continued to volunteer as a youth leader and confirmation class teacher at All Saints Episcopal Church. The congregation at Pasadena Mennonite is so young that there are virtually no teenagers (though there are a healthy number of toddlers!) All Saints has dozens of teens with whom I am in relationship and whom I love; I am quite clear on the fact that I am called to work with adolescents in a vounteer capacity. But it’s been hard to explain to the kids at All Saints why I don’t worship there on Sundays! And it’s been very hard to teach a confirmation class at one church when I have been part of another community that doesn’t believe in confirmation, but rather in adult baptism!

I’ve learned through lots of church shopping that there “is no perfect church”. I’ve learned that church-hopping is dangerous, especially when it involves packing up and leaving whenever things get tough. I know my own capacity for endless self-reinvention and redefinition plays a part as well! Like many of my fellow Southern Californians, my own personal spiritual narrative is one characterized by restlessness. Sooner or later, I know, we have to find a place to call home. I called All Saints home for years. I left it in the aftermath of 9/11 because I wanted something more radical, more prophetic, more counter-cultural. I found what I was looking for, but I also found challenges I didn’t anticipate. And I also missed the Anglican liturgy more than I had imagined I would. And I’ve made the decision to come back to the Episcopal Church.

At times on this blog, I go back and forth between the nakedly confessional and the deliberately opaque. This medium is funny that way, I suppose. I’ve carved out a niche for myself as a “consistent-life ethic Anabaptist Democrat with a chinchilla”, and that has given me, at least in my own mind, a unique presence in the blogosphere. I still have the chinchilla, I’m still a registered Democrat, and I still hold quite strongly to the consistent-life ethic. But just as it is being rent asunder by divisive debates over human sexuality and theology, I am choosing to come home to the Anglican Communion, ultimately, both because it “works for me” and because I truly have come to believe that it is within that communion that I can best be of service to my Lord and Savior. I may be wrong, but for now, here is where I choose to stand.

Living in Community, and leaving the Mennonites

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 29, 2004
in Christianity
. 9 Comments

One of my favorite young Christian writers is Bethany Torode, whose essays I have often recommended without reservation. She’s got a new one up at Boundless this month, entitled “Searching for Community.” Given that Bethany grew up in an intentional Christian community, she has some authority on the subject. I was struck by this excerpt:

A lot of people are drawn to communities — whether churches, university groups, missions, or actual communes — for the wrong reasons. Some want to become leaders and control others (though they usually aren’t aware of it). Others think community will solve their financial or marital difficulties. Many have personal identity issues they need to work through before joining — issues such as the need to save people, the need to be seen as giving or the need to be affirmed by others.

Community can become a placebo for dealing with these issues. Often a person channels his energies into creating external utopia in an effort to run from his inner confusion. Then, ironically, the quest for community results in the neglect of spiritual and family life. Community is good, but the home is the primary community, the primary ministry. If your soul, spouse and children aren’t given the attention they need, community on a wider scale will inevitably disintegrate.

That’s important to remember.

I’ve always liked living in groups. I loved living in a co-operative house in Berkeley from my sophomore through senior years. (I was even house president for a year). My first year in grad school at UCLA, I chose to live in a co-op again. I loved having people around me all the time. Of course, I’m an ENFJ, so it made sense from a personality standpoint. Really, what I liked best about cooperative living was the guarantee, as I figured out very quickly, that I would never, ever have to be lonely. But I was doing just what Torode warns of in the excerpt above: “creating external utopia” (the co-ops, with their left-wing politics and consensus-based politics, were quite utopian in a secular sense) “in an effort to run from (my) inner confusion”.

Growing up a child of divorce, I was well aware that nuclear families could and did split. I was always enchanted — and to some extent still am — with the ideal of communal living as an alternative. With lots and lots of people around, I reasoned, one would never have to depend too much on one other human being. If one relationship (either a friendship or a love affair) failed within the community, there were always more people around to serve as a distraction. I liked that. A lot.

Let me go off on a tangent here. One of the reasons I was so interested in joining the Mennonites was that the Mennonites emphasized group discernment and discipleship, as well as accountability to the entire community. Not surprisingly, that has led to considerable discomfort. I wrote weeks ago that I was thinking about leaving the Mennonite Church to return to regular worship at All Saints Episcopal Church. (Technically, I never let my membership at the latter lapse, as I am still a pledger and active in youth ministry.) I like Mennonite theology a lot. I like the Mennonites I’ve met and worshipped with a great deal. But my own life and background are, to put it mildly, unusual for a Mennonite (even a convert). I’ve only met two divorced Mennonites; none with multiple divorces. Socially, that gulf has been much more difficult to overcome than I imagined. As much as I hate to admit it, every fiber of my being is more at home among upper middle-class liberal Episcopalians than it is among the terrific folks I’ve met within Mennonite Church USA.

Within the next few months, I will leave Pasadena Mennonite Church and return to All Saints. I’ve been reflecting on this for a long time, and praying earnestly as well. I’m glad I tried the Mennonite community; there is much there I still profoundly admire. I hope to keep many of the friends I’ve made at Pasadena Mennonite Church. I’ll still hold on to some of the tenets of Anabaptism. But I’m returning to the Episcopal fold.

Thursday Short Poem #4 — Sharon Olds

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 29, 2004
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

It’s hard not to be captivated by the compellingly confessional style of Berkeley’s own Sharon Olds. I’ve always liked her stuff, but after reading through a bunch of my favorites, I picked this one:

The Abandoned Newborn

When they found you, you were not breathing.
It was ten degrees below freezing, and you were
wrapped only in plastic. They lifted you
up out of the litter basket, as one
lifts a baby out of the crib after nap
and they unswaddled you from the Sloan’s shopping bag.
As far as you were concerned it was all over,
you were feeling nothing, everything had stopped
some time ago,
and they bent over you and forced the short
knife-blade of breath back
down into your chest, over and
over, until you began to feel
the pain of life again. They took you
from silence and darkness right back
through birth, the gasping, the bright lights, they
achieved their miracle: on the second
day of the new year they brought you
back to being a boy whose parents
left him in a garbage can,
and everyone in the Emergency Room
wept to see your very small body
moving again. I saw you on the news,
the discs of the electrocardiogram
blazing like medals on your body, your hair
thick and ruffed as the head of a weed, your
large intelligent forehead dully
glowing in the hospital TV light, your
mouth pushed out as if you are angry, and
something on your upper lip, a
dried glaze from your nose,
and I thought how you are the most American baby,
child of all of us through your very
American parents, and through the two young medics,
Lee Merklin and Frank Jennings,
who brought you around and gave you their names,
forced you to resume the hard
American task you had laid down so young,
and though I see the broken glass on your path, the
shit, the statistics — you will be a man who
wraps his child in plastic and leaves it in the trash — I
see the light too as you saw it
forced a second time in silver ice between your lids, I am
full of joy to see your new face among us,
Lee Frank Merklin Jennings I am
standing here in dumb American praise for your life.

Olds writes about childbirth, sex, death, illness, adolescence, old age — always with an unerring ability to describe what it is to live a life in the flesh. No one writes the body the way she does.

Hurrah for Barack Obama

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 28, 2004
in Faith, People and Politics
. 10 Comments

I’m kicking myself that I missed Barack Obama’s speech last night; the transcript is here. When and if (and I think it is when) he runs for president, he has my vote. Perhaps with Gavin Newsom as his veep… I can dream, can’t I?

Really, I’ll love him forever for this already-famous segment:

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

Take that, all you pundits who seem so certain God has no place in the Democratic Party! (The bold emphasis is mine.) Unless some really ugly skeleton pops out of his closet, in the next senator from Illinois, a political star has surely been born. And all God’s people said, “amen.”

Enough for today.

Waterparks. And the T-Shirt.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 27, 2004
in Abortion, Clothing and Fashion and Feminism
. 15 Comments

Am home and tired after a day at the water park. What an extraordinary place a water park is. So much water. So much sun. So many diverse people in various states of undress. I went on one particular ride and ended up with a great deal of water up my nose.

Annika and XRLQ have been blogging today about this Planned Parenthood t-shirt (Candace noted it in the comments below.)

The shirt’s logo is simple: “I Had an Abortion.” The language at PPFA’s site describing the shirt:

Planned Parenthood is proud to offer yet another t-shirt in our new social fashion line: “I Had an Abortion” fitted T-shirts are now available. These soft and comfortable fitted tees assert a powerful message in support of women’s rights.

Though my view of the t-shirt is not all that different from Annika’s or XRLQ’s, I’m going to try and take this in a different direction. And, for the record, let me reassert my reasonably solid pro-life bona fides. (I’m a monthly sustaining contributor to Feminists for Life).

It was about 1997 or 1998 when I began to see the most remarkable slogans showing up on the fitted t-shirts of my female students: “Porn Star“. “Juicy.” “Real American Bitch.” “I Just Slept with your Boyfriend” (I’ve seen gay men where these too, but I see ‘em more often on women; I’ve seen other verbs besides “slept” as well.) “Too Hot to Handle“. “You Know you Wanna Touch.” There are probably others (you can mention them in the comments section) but those have lingered in my memory. I associate all this with the banal and infuriating “girl power” movement; largely a creation of advertisers, it sold young women a message of empowerment through shock and sexuality. Adolescents love to upset adults; this adult initially found it difficult to know how to deal with female students whose t-shirts read “You Know you Wanna Touch”. (I do a splendid job of affecting blindness in such situations nowadays.)

What I disliked about these shirts was not so much their brazenness as their rank commercialism. Nothing genuinely radical, edgy, or dangerous is sold at Abercrombie and Fitch or Urban Outfitters (two known sources of said shirts; no doubt, there are others.) Newsflash, kiddies: The fact that it horrifies your parents doesn’t make it any less a product of the very same corporate America in which your parents are investing. What these places sell is the cleverly marketed opportunity to outrage the older generation while simultaneously offering a superficially feminist message. The message is “Only a bold, strong, brave young woman who doesn’t care about conforming to stereotypes would wear a shirt like this. Thus if you wear this shirt, you bear witness to your fiery, indominatable, wild grrl soul.” Please. What you bear witness to, darlin’, is nothing more than your own socially constructed insecurity, and any sensible person over 25 is abundantly aware of that.

I write all this because this all came to mind the moment I saw this Planned Parenthood shirt. On one level, giving PPFA the benefit of the doubt, the shirt makes sense. A truly effective pro-choice strategy involves breaking the link between guilt and shame on one hand and one’s own abortion on the other. Just as the t-shirts I refer to above advertise the wearer’s sexual confidence, so too does this shirt advertise the wearer’s refusal to feel remorse for what, after all, was an important and empowering choice. (Perhaps I shall start to see the “I Just Slept with Your Boyfriend” shirts in the autumn semester, and then the “I Had an Abortion” shirts in the spring. The wearer could thus keep us all updated, and, helpfully, indicate the all-too-frequent consequence of out-of-wedlock sex.) Planned Parenthood is borrowing from the cynical strategies of good corporate citizens like Abercrombie and Fitch. Just as A&F and other t-shirt manufacturers used an image of bold sexual assertiveness to market clothes, so Planned Parenthood is using a message of unrepentant, unremorseful pride in abortion both to market t-shirts and to trivialize the emotional consequences of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. If the stigma of abortion can be removed, than the pro-choice movement can win a major battle.

As I write this, I am imagining every woman in America who ever had an abortion wearing the shirt on the same day. I am sure Planned Parenthood would love that, hoping that it would send a powerful message about the absolute necessity of defending women’s access to that particular procedure. I’d like to go further, and have other t-shirts printed up for my sex: “I got a woman pregnant, and refused to marry her. She had an abortion.” Or: “I told her I’d pull out in time. She just had an abortion.” What grim fun we could have thinking up still more slogans. By the time we had put t-shirts on every man and woman and teen in this country to whom they could apply, we’d have an awful lot of folks dressed in soft and comfortable fitted tees. But knowing who has had an abortion, and who has been responsible for one, doesn’t change the basic truth of what abortion is.

In Las Vegas on Sunday, while leaving our hotel, I saw a pretty girl of about 15 standing with her parents. She had on a brand-new hot pink tight t-shirt. It read “Real American Bad Girl.” She was looking around the way young teenagers will, trying to affect a sophisticated world-weariness while obviously eager to see who was looking at her. Her outfit proclaimed: I’m hot and bold and devil-may-care. Her stance proclaimed: I just want some attention, please look at me, please like me, please tell me I’m okay. I knew better than to believe the words emblazoned across her chest.

When I see girls like that wearing these shirts with overtly sexual messages, I know damn well that the vast majority of them don’t want random sex; they want validation. And when, some day soon, I see a woman on the street with the new Planned Parenthood t-shirt, I will be absolutely certain down to the core of my being that she too, regardless of her age, is looking for validation that her choice was okay. But that validation is not mine to give.

All of these posts about Amy Richards here and elsewhere have humbled me. I’ve been reminded, yet again, of how different this issue of abortion is from all other issues. Nothing else, not even same-sex marriage, inflames passions and exposes divisions like this one. Add in a hotly contended political season like this one, and it becomes difficult not to give into blustering self-righteousness. In 1992, I walked precincts for NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) on behalf of Bill Clinton and Barbara Boxer. The folks I walked with were good, loving, kind people who had thought long and hard about the abortion issue. In more recent years, I’ve met with and walked with folks from a variety of pro-life groups. Though there were many social and religious differences between the two groups, the sincerity and decency of both sides was very, very clear to me. In this week of the Democratic convention, as we come closer and closer to this pivotal election, and as we write about some fairly emotional stuff, I say again, people, let’s be committed to seeing the best in our opponents, even as we hold strong to what we think we know to be right.

End of rant. Matilde is ready for her dust bath.

Why Kerry?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 27, 2004
in Abortion, People and Politics
. 10 Comments

Not much time to post today. My fiancee’s teenage nieces are in town, as is her 16 year-old younger brother; I’m taking all three of them today to Raging Waters, a nearby water park.

I got an email the other day from a reader, asking me how I as a pro-lifer could defend a vote for Kerry. The answer is in the question! To me, being pro-life is always about being more than anti-abortion. Opposition to abortion is merely one facet of a larger set of positions on issues ranging from war to just policing to the death penalty to euthanasia. On my more inclusive days, it even includes opposition to factory farming. No party in this country is going to offer me a candidate who takes a broad, consistent-life ethic position on all the issues. (Though Dennis Kucinich, pre-2002, came close; as regular readers know, he was strongly pro-life on all issues until he ran for president. He’s even a vegan!)

President Bush’s position on abortion is indeed closer to mine than Senator Kerry’s. (Though I confess I am a bit confused as to what Senator Kerry’s position is — it does seem to change). But on every other major issue that I can think of, Kerry’s views are closer to a consistent-life ethic than the president’s. Note that I said “closer”; the Democratic Party is a long way from where I would like it to be, but it is a good deal nearer to the goal than the GOP.

I have gay and lesbian friends who vote Republican. (Think the Boi from Troy). I don’t call them fools for staying within the GOP and trying to change their party; I honor their willingness to fight for change from within. I’m a pro-life Democrat, willing to stay and fight for similar changes within my party. It may be a long time comin’, but I am patient. In the meantime, I’ll be voting for and giving money to the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.

Okay, off to slather on sunscreen and cavort in the smog, heat, and chlorine of Raging Waters.

Monday morning, Elton John, and thoughts on Las Vegas

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 26, 2004
in Addiction and mental illness, Class, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Marriage, Modesty, Music, Race, Sexuality and Traveling
. 9 Comments

First off, thank you to all who issued congratulations in response to my news about the engagement. I am very excited. Though a few folks have asked for details about she who will become Mrs. Schwyzer, I am committed to protecting her identity in the blogosphere. I am very public, obviously, blogging under my full name. (Tenure allows me to do so, and I see no reason for a nom de plume.) But I don’t want anything I write and post to reflect on my gal; she has her own life and her own privacy. As tempting as it is to do so, I’m not going to share details of our engagement and our wedding plans on the Internet. Some things, I think, can stay personal.

The weather in Las Vegas was searingly hot — 108 degrees on Saturday. Elton John’s show was terrific, but also disconcerting. I know he was playing in Las Vegas, but the video monitors behind him kept displaying bare-breasted strippers; during his rendition of “The Bitch is Back”, a Pamela Anderson look-alike writhed around a pole. During other songs, huge inflatable breasts appeared, suspended from the ceiling. Confetti streamed from the “nipples.” I didn’t find it funny; I found it troubling. The objectification and fetishization of women’s bodies is expected in “sin city”, but I didn’t expect it from one of my musical heroes. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s beyond me why Linda Ronstadt was thrown out of a casino for making a political reference, while no one sees the exploitation of young women in those very same casinos as problematic! It will be a while before I feel the need to go back to Las Vegas.

As we walked through the oppressive heat along the strip, young men and women (every one of them with a Latino face, looking like a recent arrival) tried to thrust leaflets advertising strippers and prostitutes into our hands. What on earth must they think as they do this? All I could see was one group of exploited folks (migrant workers) risking heat exhaustion to promote the services of another group of the similarly exploited (female sex workers), all for the enjoyment of predominantly white, middle-class tourists. The outfits the cocktail servers (who aren’t formally sex workers) wore in the casinos were (to my mind anyway) stunningly revealing to the point of leaving me discomfited and embarrassed. I know damn well just how hard and cold so many of these young women must have to become in order to endure the harrassment they surely must receive. The whole thing was absolutely obscene.

I’ll confess I have a strong censorious streak within me. Perhaps it comes from my own past experience of living near the opposite end of the moral scale. But what viscerally upsets me about Las Vegas is the commodification of human fragility, something of which I am keenly and constantly aware. The cocktail waitresses brought sexuality and alcohol to the customers at the slots and the gaming tables, creating what seemed to me to be an unholy trifecta of addiction. Gambling offers false and illusory hope to folks of all social classes, but most obviously to those whose own circumstances are marginal. It’s instantly addictive, as I was reminded. Mennonites aren’t supposed to gamble, but I put plenty of money into quarter slots, letting the excitement overwhelm me. The thrill of winning something — even a few dollars — was stunningly strong. It wasn’t just the smell of cigarette smoke in the casinos that left me feeling unclean; it was the sense (quite strong on this Monday morning) that I had participated in (and relished) an activity that at its core isn’t really fun at all. Playing the slots touched something dark and grasping inside of Hugo. Like most bad things, the pleasure was fleeting and the regret enduring.

What saddened me most was the many, many small children I saw in Las Vegas. Some were even in the casinos, oblivious to the signs insisting that one had to be 21 to gamble. (That was a rule more honored in the breach than in the observance, judging from the teens I saw at the slots in the Aladdin and the Paris casinos). The local newspaper told me that tourism in Vegas was expected to hit an all-time high in 2004, as were profits from the hotels and casinos on the Strip. My fiancee (how happy to write that) and I contributed our share. The hotel was very comfortable, the food splendid, the music of Elton John sublime. I did have a good weekend. (To be with my gal to celebrate our engagement would have made a weekend in Barstow seem equally delightful, of course). But I’m damn sure our children aren’t going to Las Vegas while they are under our care, and our visits back will be few and far between.

Friday notes, and one key bit of news

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 23, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Christianity, Faith, Links, Marriage and People
. 35 Comments

It’s Friday, and my summer school classes are at an end. Five weeks off lie ahead.

Something I didn’t know: One of Lance Armstrong’s most trusted and reliable teammates on the US Postal team, Floyd Landis, is a Mennonite who grew up in a household strict enough to ban TV and short pants. Here’s the story. Landis came heartbreakingly close to winning yesterday’s stage, and Armstrong did everything he could to make that possible. As always, keep up with the Tour news here. In any event, I am hunting on the Internet for other famous Mennonite athletes. Suggestions are welcome.

In not unrelated news, I have gone out and bought myself a road bike. This one. It will take me a while to get to know how to use it, but given the kind of mileage I am putting on my knees as a distance runner, it’s time to do some heavy-duty cross-training.

Some links for today:

Amy came across a disturbing article that raised real questions for her about men, sexuality, and trustworthiness — her words are challenging me (in a good way) this morning.

Rudy Carrasco has updates on his son Sam; Jen Lemen has organized a Friends for Sam group that everyone can join for free here.

Annie at After Abortion has news of a research project seeking women who have been coerced into abortions — submissions are apparently still very much welcome. On a similar note, David at Sed Contra takes apart this challenging Barbara Ehrenreich op-ed entitled “Owning up to Abortion.”

Christy at Dry Bones Dance spent the past few weeks in the former Yugoslavia; her very readable travel reports are highly recommended.

That’s it for today, folks. My girlfriend and I are off to Las Vegas for the weekend; we’ll see Elton John in concert and enjoy the desert heat. Family will be providing chinchilla-sitting services.

And the real news is this: my girlfriend (whose anonymity I protect on this blog) isn’t really my girlfriend any longer. Wednesday afternoon, I asked her to marry me. She said yes.

No, we aren’t getting married in Vegas this weekend! But we are to get married next summer. I am blessed beyond all measure, and very, very happy today.

One more on Amy Richards, and “Choice for Men”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 22, 2004
in Abortion, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, People and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 24 Comments

I’ve got a post percolating in my brain (by request, no less) on the subject of contemporary Christian men and their attitudes towards independent women. It will take a while to flesh out.

I’ve been thinking still more about men and abortion. Trish got me thinking with her post in response to my posts on Amy Richards. In Trish’s final paragraph, she mentioned one particular men’s rights outfit with which I wasn’t familiar: Choice4Men, which seems to exist largely as an internet discussion group. She used C4M as an example of where many men might be in terms of the "men’s rights in abortion" movement. Trish wrote:

As far as calling for men’s rights in abortion, a quick reality check to that line of thought lies in looking at the misogynistic men’s rights group Choice4Men and the backlash men’s rights in abortion movement. This movement calls for men’s rights to overshadow a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body. These men wish to control women’s reproductive freedom, for their own benefit. The movement is about avoiding responsibility when men should take it and complaining about being "forced into daddyhood."

So I went and visited Choice for Men today, and got very sad. And angry. (Those emotions seem to constitute a theme this week!) I read through some of their letters and messages, and agree thoroughly they are misogynistic to the core, not to mention remarkably whiny. If you go to their site, you can read their statement of principles; I’ll just quote the first two:

Choice4Men is about the right to choose to be a parent. Or not.
Choice4Men is about men who have been trapped into parenting without consent.

C4M is worried about men who have impregnated women who have chosen to keep the child, despite the fact that the man involved had no desire to become a father. (Hence the "trapped into parenting" line). I can’t say I have even an iota of sympathy for these fellows.

I’ve been blunt this week. (Folks who believe in astrology would say it’s because we’re in Leo.) So let me continue to be straightforward:

Every man who ejaculates inside a woman, whether or not contraception is used, is signalling his willingness to become a father. If men are not ready and willing to raise a child conceived through an act of sex, they are morally responsible for refraining from sex. (I’ll let my sisters make a similar case for women. I’m in enough trouble on that side of the fence already). A man who opposes abortion ought to be certain of his partner’s feelings before he engages in sexual intercourse with her, lest she get pregnant and choose to abort the child that he may well wish to care for. A pro-life man whose girlfriend chooses abortion can hardly blame her for her "choice". Similarly, a man who has no wish to become a father has no right to complain when biology works as nature intended.

This is not to say that I think sex should be purely for procreation, nor even that sex ought always be confined to marriage. But those who believe that heterosexual intercourse can be fully divorced from procreation do so at the risk of both their own heartache and the destruction of innocent life. I have no desire to "control women" by making them breeding machines. But I see no reason why feminism must be linked to the right to have sexual intercourse without responsibility. The mystery and thrill and excitement and wonder and intimacy of sexual intercourse are ultimately linked to its procreativity, even when the folks engaged in it are unready and unwilling to become parents. We need to get this message across to our sons as well as to our daughters.

I still think what Amy Richards did was evil. That doesn’t mean I am unsympathetic to her! Reading all the comments at various places (including here at my blog), I have a real sense of how overwhelmed she surely must have been. I’m choosing to be charitable and believe that she did what she thought best for her surviving child. But I can understand and sympathize with the reasons for the choice while simultaneously condemning the choice! Compassion does not equal support; empathy does not equal endorsement.

I have no sympathy for the guys at Choice4Men. Not only do I find their irresponsibility appalling, I find their sense of their own victimhood to be repellant. (Maybe it’s my upbringing, but there’s something about men who complain about mistreatment at the hands of women that turns my stomach.) But the boys at C4M and Amy Richards have something in common: they are convinced that they are entitled to enjoy sexual intercourse without accepting its inevitable attendant consequences. The former wish to change the laws in order to avoid their responsibilities, the latter used medicine to terminate hers.

I’m praying for the whole damn lot of them.

Thursday short poem #3: Carl Dennis

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 21, 2004
in Poetry
. 2 Comments

I am getting lots and lots of hits as a result of Google searches for Amy Richards, and this is the top result at the moment for those folks who take issue with her choice. The debate has been very stimulating for me, I’ve read a lot of blogs I don’t normally read, and I’ve been humbled by the depth of feeling on all sides. I grieve just how vast the gulf is between the two core positions on this issue, and while continuing to stand against abortion, I am ever more eager to listen to and reach out to the other side. Given that the other side includes friends and family dear to me, it’s got to be done.

After a long time of languishing in “Flappy Bird” status, I am happy to report:

Given my guardianship of Matilde, this is most appropriate.

Anyhow, on to the Thursday short poem. It’s by Carl Dennis, an American poet who has only become well known in the last four years. This one really resonated with me the first time I read it last year, and I’ve come back to it again and again, even if the theology isn’t exactly “sound”!

The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

It’s good stuff.

“Relying on a man”; autonomy, interdependence — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 21, 2004
in Abortion, Class, Family, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and People
. 26 Comments

Long and meandering post a-comin’. Try and separate the wheat from the chaff!

My two posts on Amy Richards are still collecting lots of thoughtful responses. I’m getting lots of visitors this morning from a new (to me) blog, After Abortion. Go give ‘em a look.

The best critique of what I’ve written is over at Trish Wilson’s place. Thoughtfully and politely, and with courageous self-disclosure, Trish takes on several of my points. I don’t agree with her on many things, but I am glad our exchange on such a profoundly emotional issue is so civil. Let’s keep that tone!

In the comments section after her terrific post, a reader named AmarettiXL writes:

I’m the (single parent) daughter of a married woman who always advised me to never rely on a man. Many women advise their daughters in this way; so what? I’m not so dense as to see why some men get their shorts in a bunch upon hearing this phrase, but to them all I can say is…it’s not about you! It’s about making sure one’s daughter grows up with the ability to support herself if and when needed. Look through the financial-advice columns (Suze Orman, Michelle Singletary, etc); there’s still plenty of women out there in the so-called post-feminist world who don’t know a damn thing about their own family finances! I don’t want my daughter growing up to be one of them, so she’ll be getting the same advice from me. The message isn’t “men are deadbeats” the message is “take care of yourself”. Clear?

And a reader of mine, blackcoffeeblues, asks a similar question:

Just a quick question, Hugo…so do you mean to say that the teaching of women to not “rely on a man” is negative thing? I’m not challenging you, I’m must asking for a little more Hugo-thought on the statement.

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that the phrase “Don’t rely on a man” troubles me. But it upsets me primarily because I know that it is the unreliability of men that has made that phrase such an essential part of so many young women’s upbringing. Here is where I part company with most of the feminist movement: I continue to believe that feminism, at its core, is a logical response to a legacy of irresponsible, reckless, and disappointing male behavior. No, I don’t mean that if all men were just more reliable, faithful, dependable and moral than all women would be happy to be barefoot and pregnant! As a Christian, however, I believe that all human beings are made for relationship with one another. We are meant to lead lives that are neither dependent nor radically autonomous, but interdependent.

What do I mean by these terms? Dependency is a relationship rooted in inequality. A small child is dependent upon its parents. My chinchilla is dependent upon me and my girlfriend. It is certainly possible to be emotionally and spiritually dependent upon one’s spouse; that generally isn’t healthy. (Not that I am holding myself up as some expert on marriage). Autonomy is the attempt to lead a life of near-total self-reliance and self-determination. Autonomy has a lot of allure in our culture. Problem is, it doesn’t work for most people. To lead a radically independent life requires financial resources only available to a relative handful of educated, mostly white, Westerners. And even the richest and most independent person will begin life by having their diapers changed — and they are fairly likely to spend the final days of their life in that same condition. Real autonomy is a chimera, but a seductive one. And it is only appealing in the long run to adolescents and to those whose emotional wounds have left them perpetual teenagers.

Interdependence is living in complementary relationship. Mutual sacrifice, mutual reliance. Pregnancy is not easy. The extreme vulnerability of women during the later stages of pregnancy bears witness to the obvious need to depend on another human being for protection. (Yes, I’m “arguing from design”, a rhetorical tactic that most secular feminists absolutely despise. But so help me, it’s at the very core of my faith.) Interdependent folks know how to care for themselves, but they also know how to let another person care for them. They are capable of trusting another person, of being radically vulnerable to someone else (presumably, their spouse). On a practical level, that means being willing to merge your finances with another human being, all the while knowing how to take care of your money should disaster strike and you find yourself without your partner.

If God blesses me with a daughter someday, I will raise her to (to borrow a phrase out of context from Ronald Reagan) “trust, but verify.” To lead a successful and happy life, I believe we must be open to the likelihood that the highest form of joy is to be found in community, and for most folks, particularly within family; in love, marriage, and children. That does not mean that other, more solitary pursuits do not have value — merely that for both men and women, the longings of our own bodies and our own hearts suggest that the vast majority of us desire enduring connection with others above all else.

Okay, I’m getting carried away.

We live in a culture that is remarkably tolerant of bad male behavior. I am not asking women to start trusting men first; I am asking my brothers to start changing their behavior! One of the first things we guys need to do is to listen to women, particularly our sisters in the feminist movement. Men have to be willing to hear the stories of the betrayal, abuse, harassment, objectification, de-valuing and dismissal that so many women have experienced at the hands of men. When women don’t return my casual smiles on the street, when they avoid eye contact with my male friends, I don’t complain. I know that defensiveness is a logical learned response to a predatory male culture. I also think that most liberal feminism, the sort that worships “choice”, is also a logical learned response to bad male behavior. What woman wouldn’t want to maximize her own freedom, given that so many men in her life have behaved so badly towards her? We men have to hear that! And we have to be strong enough to prove that we are different. And we have to be strong enough to do our own inner work that leads us to be willing to be different!

One other aspect of the argument to touch on. In her last paragraph, Trish writes:

In his second post, Hugo brought up two things that I believe are irrelevant to Richards’ abortion - the man’s choice and Richards’ description of growing up without a father. He suspects, without any real proof, that Richards’ mother likely told her to never rely on a man because he says that’s what the young women of single mothers that he has met have told him. Again, I didn’t take Richards’ description of her home life the way he did. I didn’t take her “I never missed not having him” as an emphatic “never” the way he did. I saw it as a simple statement of fact, not a hidden code that she regretted being “fatherless.” I know that family values ideologues would have jumped all over her statements as “proof” that she is damaged goods because she “grew up fatherless” when there is absolutely no proof of any such thing. It came across to me as if Hugo was trying to find something lacking in her family background that would explain, to his satisfaction, why she would choose to have such an abortion and to discuss it the way she did. Those comments from him seemed to be more about him and less about Richards. I took her opening paragraph to say that she already recognized the hardships that went with raising children alone, since she saw families from all walks of life, including her friends who were raising their nieces and nephews because their sisters became pregnant out of wedlock. Richards saw the difficulties of single parenting and she did not have any romantic notions about it.

Trish is certainly right about my desire to “psychologize” Amy Richards. And I think we’ve arrived at one of those moments where secular and religious folks may find themselves at an impasse. I don’t believe that any fatherless child can go through life without experiencing dramatic repercussions. I don’t think that is possible spiritually or psychologically (and I do have most psychologists on my side). And thus I do think that any woman who claims that her relationship (or lack thereof) with her father has no bearing whatsoever on her relationships with other men is in denial. Period. And I remain convinced, even without knowing the details of the story, that it is highly likely that her father’s absence is deeply connected to the fact that as an unmarried woman of 34, she chose to abort two of the three children that she and her partner had conceived.

The number one thing I as a man can do to end abortion is to teach responsibility to my younger brothers. I must role model for them the sort of behavior that will lead them to become the sort of men who will earn the radical trust of the women in their lives. That will damn sure cut the abortion rate in this country.

Rant over. By the way, Lance Armstrong was magnificent this morning!

UPDATE: Amanda at Mouse Words is not quite as kind to me as Trish; she takes vigorous issue with my posts on Amy Richards. I liked these bits:

This guy made me angry. I should avoid anti-choice people, particularly men, since the very fact that they think they have a right to use the force of the law to make women comply to their wishes means that they believe on one level or another that women’s bodies are naturally subject to men’s authority… really, sometimes I’m even pissier with guys who think of themselves as liberal and progressive and feminist even but then start shooting sparks when women actually exert some of the autonomy that’s been so long in coming… Trish is really nice to this guy–I want to kick him.

Fortunately, Amanda lives in Austin.

Honestly, I’m feeling snide

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 20, 2004
in Music and Politics
. 21 Comments

Things are busy. Finals are Thursday in my summer class. We leave for Colombia in just over two weeks. After the emotion of the last three posts, I don’t have much to blog about today.

Those who argue that political conservatives are generally more civil than progressives need to explain what happened to Linda Ronstadt in Las Vegas. After Ronstadt dedicated a song to Michael Moore,

some Aladdin guests spilled drinks, tore down posters and demanded their money back, said casino spokeswoman Sara Gorgon.

“We had quite a scene at the box office,” she said.

Let’s see. The country music anti-war left includes Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Allison Krauss, the Dixie Chicks, Steve Earle and Linda Ronstadt. The country music pro-war right includes Toby Keith and Darryl Worley. I wonder whose music will be more enduring.

I did enjoy this article that ran in both the Los Angeles Times and on Common Dreams. Entilted “Red State America Against Itself”, it explores the ways in which Republicans have become adept at using culture to encourage the American working class to vote against their own economic interests:

The corporate world — for reasons having a great deal to do with its corporateness — blankets the nation with a cultural style designed to offend and to pretend-subvert: sassy teens in Skechers flout the Man; hipsters dressed in T-shirts reading “FCUK” snicker at the suits who just don’t get it. It’s meant to be offensive, and Kansas is duly offended. The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars’ taxes.

Gosh, that’s as good a paragraph of political and cultural analysis as I’ve read all year. But then again, I’ve never been to Kansas. Growing up, I was surrounded by affluent, pro-choice, moderate Republicans who were fiscally conservative and socially centrist. I have numerous friends and relations who fit that description. In terms of lifestyle, most of them have far more in common with “coastal Democratic elites” than with the GOP’s Bible Belt base. But they are grateful, oh so grateful, for the votes and the money that Midwestern and Southern social conservatives give to the party. My Republican friends and family generally don’t want to see the cultural policies of the religious right actually implemented, of course, but they do appreciate how necessary those policies are for “rallying the troops.” Above all, they recognize how a focus on an aggressive foreign policy and on “family values” allows wealthy country-club Republicans to convince the residents of the “fly-over states” that they share a common interest.

Sigh.

The perils of advice, and professorial self-doubt

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 19, 2004
in Class and Teaching
. 19 Comments

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education online edition has this rather sobering First Person essay by a Prof. Thomas Benton: An Adviser Without Advice. He writes of running into one of his brightest and best recent graduates working as a cashier at Target:

My former student scanned and bagged the objects as if she was running on a treadmill. She recognized me, and I tried to return her nervous smile. We each asked how the other was doing and said “good.” I swiped my card, and she gave me a receipt. There were bored people all around, and the whole conversation was understood in a few embarrassed glances.

“Good to see you,” I said, leaving. “Yeah, you too, professor,” she said, flatly. I saw her feigned cheerfulness droop a little as she turned to the next customer.

Benton reflects on what he told her when she came to him, a few years earlier, for professional advice:

I should have been looking out for her. She came to me for advice. I told her something like this: “A liberal-arts degree is the best preparation for life in general, but it helps if you also have some specific, marketable skills.” I had persuaded myself that I knew what I was talking about. I supported and reinforced her choices. And my vanity was gratified by the thought that I was helping her.

Okay, that is scary! I could have written that paragraph verbatim a thousand times over. I’ll quote his final section at length; bold emphases are mine:

All I have is an instinctive belief in the value of a liberal education without regard to its practical use. I am increasingly sure that it is wrong to encourage students (and indirectly ourselves) to justify the work and expense of education as a prelude to lucrative career opportunities. Yet I know that when so many students undertake so much debt to go to college, the link between education and future income becomes unavoidable.

It seems inevitable, though we are not yet willing to admit it, that a liberal education is becoming a practical impossibility for most young people. Or liberal education earns the justified reputation of something undertaken at one’s peril. Students know they have to make a living before they can appreciate Kierkegaard. They don’t have time to question their beliefs; they are too busy getting their academic tickets punched.

I understand that outlook, but students do not seem to know that even the practical choice is fraught with as much risk as following one’s heart. They seem unaware of how much their drive for “success” is a construction of consumerist pressures. Perhaps careerist choices carry even more risk, since you ultimately give up what you love for the sake of some opportunity that may not exist by the time you are ready to meet it.

Of course, this kind of pontification can only come from a position of privilege. I can remember all too vividly the fear of sinking into chronic underemployment and relative poverty, of feeling for the rest of my life the special scorn that socially mobile societies reserve for the people who haven’t “made it.” You’re a loser and nobody cares how it happened.

But what can I offer to my students besides the general advice to follow their talents wherever they lead? “Follow your bliss” and “find your vocation.” Those remarks seem as banal and unhelpful now as when they were uttered by the wiser advisers of my youth.

Most of my students at Pasadena City College are from working-class backgrounds. To put it bluntly, I am not. Most of my students are not white. I rather obviously am. Most of my students are first-generation college graduates, while I am the son of two Berkeley Ph.Ds. My kind and fortunate parents paid for my college education; I never had a nickel’s worth of student loans. I teach at a community college, but (and this is hard to admit) I would have been deeply ashamed if I had “had” to attend such an institution out of high school. Slowly, painfully, I am unlearning my snobbery, my elitism, and my privilege, but I confess that it is still a work in progress. (I can say I would not be crushed if a child of mine went to a JC for their first two years, but in all honesty, I would be a bit disappointed). With all that in mind, what from my own experience can I possibly offer to my students? As much as I want to be one, how can I be a satisfactory role model for them?

In the past decade, I have had maybe 70 or 80 students whom I have mentored. They have come to office hours and made special appointments, and they have come time and time again for career advice. Many want to become professors themselves someday. I offer the same sort of airy encouragements that Mr. Benton offered. Indeed, not a semester goes by that I don’t actually say: “Study what you love; the money will follow.” Though it has all the depth of a Hallmark card, my students nod their heads appreciatively, confident perhaps that if Dr. Hugo believes it is true, than so it must be. As I do in my teaching, I substitute outer enthusiasm for inner certainty. I can always muster the former. It’s not that I lie to them about their abilities! Rather, I find that I deliberately misrepresent the difficulties of getting tenure-track jobs in higher education. It’s easier to be relentlessly optimistic.

I do have a few former students teaching now at the college level. All are adjuncts so far, waiting and hoping for the appearance of a miraculous tenure-track job. But I’ve run into my share of former students at Target and elsewhere; they’ve graduated from four-year institutions, often with history degrees. I love running into my former students and hearing their stories. But I’ve seen — or imagined that I have seen — embarrassment in the eyes of several of them, as if they worry that somehow they have let me down by working at Starbucks fulltime rather than taking out still more loans to go and get a Ph.D. And I wonder, as Benton wonders, whether all of that encouragement and advice does any good.

Year in and year out, I tell my students that their lives will be better and richer because they know about Alexander, about Antony, about Arius the Heretic. They will be better citizens of the world because they know about Luther, Leibniz, and Lloyd-George. But I went straight from high school to college, and never worked for money while in school. When my classes were over for the day at Cal, I could wander over to Strawberry Glade and read a book and think about life; I could sit in coffee shops and pontificate my day away. My students race off from my classes to their jobs and their families. And then they come to me, asking me to mentor them! I am honored and flattered; it satisfies both my vanity and my longing to help. I am so grateful for the genuine close friendships I have formed with many students over the years. But so often, so often, I wonder: What good am I, what good are we historians, if we don’t have more tangible, practible advice to offer?

More on Amy Richards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 19, 2004
in Abortion, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and People
. 19 Comments

My goodness, I should post on Sundays more often! 20 comments on my Amy Richards bit immediately below, and some 400 visitors in the past 15 hours.

I found the Amy Richards abortion story by accident, just browsing the NY Times online. Apparently, at the same time that I was blogging about it, arch-conservative Michelle Malkin was weighing in on the subject. (XRLQ links to her; she’s not exactly a regular read.) Other folks are blogging about it too.

I really do appreciate the many thoughtful comments below my post (and how nice to see that the Angry Clam is back on the beat!) This one from blackcoffeeblues was particularly accurate:

And, perhaps, those of us who are watching Rudy and Sam and are sympathizing with the difficulties that this loving family are going through, are more sensitive to the cold, harsh reality of another persons life decision and more quick to be critical and judgemental than usual.

For the record, folks, I write my posts very quickly. I give ‘em the once over for spelling and grammar and punctuation, and then put them up. I write impulsively. Yesterday’s post was not intended as a thoughtful essay on abortion politics; it was the product of an emotional, visceral reaction on my part. Make no mistake, if the story is true (and we have every reason to believe that it is), I still think that what Amy Richards did was morally reprehensible. But having had some time to reflect, and to read the thoughtful comments everyone left, I am prepared to offer some more temperate words.

I went back and read Amy’s piece in the Times again. And this time, I focused on the first two sentences:

I grew up in a working-class family in Pennsylvania not knowing my father. I have never missed not having him.

For some reason, that’s what is stopping me short this morning. The emphatic “never” in the second sentence defies everything we know about child and adolescent psychology and human nature itself! Amy never once wished she had had a father? Help me out here, folks… does anyone believe her? I don’t know Amy Richards but I wonder if the callousness of her decision is in some way linked to her own complete obtuseness about her own childhood.

I think everything that comes in the rest of her shocking, stomach-churning essay has to be read in the context of those opening lines. I do believe that abortion and male irresponsibility are inseparable. Amy’s experience of childhood poverty was tied to the absence of a father who could provide for her family. For her and for many women, what it means to be poor is to have a child without an adult man in the home. (She admits as much in her third line: what I probably would have gained was economic security and with that societal security.)

Many of my female students who were raised by single moms were told one thing over and over and over again: Never rely on a man. Many of the mothers of my students got pregnant while still in their teens (I have a number of students whose mothers are younger than I am). I suspect that Amy’s mom gave her that same stern message, and she clearly took it to heart. I wish we knew whether the boyfriend in the story (Peter) offered to marry her. (Oh, I could blog a lot about the Peters of the world. I’ll deal with him in an upcoming post. But if I saw three beating hearts on a sonagram, you’d have to take me away in handcuffs. Perhaps this is just grandiosity, but I’d like to think that I would have fought far harder for those kids. I suspect the Amys of the world pick the Peters carefully. He is a compliant fellow indeed.) But it’s not at all clear that Amy would have accepted his offer and kept all three of her babies even if he had! One child was the most she could have and still be able to maintain her precious autonomy; three children would leave her utterly dependent upon a man. And I suspect that to Amy, nothing could be more self-destructive and foolish than to rely upon a man. Abortion thus becomes a key tool in her fight for dignity and self-preservation. In her first paragraph, she writes of her fear of poverty: What would it take for me to just slip? An unplanned multiple pregnancy makes that fear tangible; but to stick with her metaphor, as for so many women, it is abortion that helps Amy regain her footing. Access to abortion gives women the opportunity to retain complete agency in their lives; for a woman raised as Amy was, that agency is precious enough to be worth stopping two beating hearts.

In the calmer world of this Monday morning, I am still angry at Amy Richards. But I am also angry at a legacy of male betrayal, irresponsibility, and abandonment. I’ve been saying for years that the struggle for abortion rights is rooted in (among other things) a profound disappointment in men. That disappointment and distrust becomes multi-generational. I believe in working to end abortion by a variety of means, including legal restrictions. But as a man, I know that increasing male accountability is a critical component of the struggle to end abortion. And surely, greater male responsibility is something we can all agree on.