Archive for September, 2004

The marriage gap

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 10, 2004
in Christianity, Faith, Feminism, Marriage and Politics
. 20 Comments

Another long one coming.

Since I was posting on divorce yesterday, I’ve got more marriage-related thoughts today. Camassia gets the hat tip for alerting me to this post from someone called Olde Oligarch. (UPDATE: Old Oligarch has removed most of the post in question, and he includes an explanation for his action.)

Oligarch on the voting gap between single and married women:

I am always struck by what must certainly be an absolute novelty of the twentieth century: we have a large and ever-growing class of single women, many of whom become completely established on their own in society and live into their 30s before they decide to find a mate and settle down. Is it any surprise when we find that, as a class, they are generally bad for society?

The blurb: “The “marriage gap” - the difference in the vote between married and unmarried women - is an astonishing 38 percentage points, according to aggregated USA TODAY/CNN/ Gallup Polls. In contrast, the famous “gender gap,” the difference in the vote between men and women, is just 11 points.”

To summarize: whether a woman votes Democrat or Republican turns out to be massively correlated to whether she’s married. Democrats are evil. Thus, the 20th century’s creation of a large class of single women is both symptom and propagating cause of social dissolution.

Bold emphasis is mine. (By the way, does anyone want to tell the old boy it’s the 21st century? I won’t if you won’t.) After this start, the archaic one offers this:

The article seems to suggest that the married or single state shapes your political psyche, but I bet the causal relationship is reversed. So either: the married state is increasingly populated by conservatives (seems patently false); or, when people want to marry, they find they also want things offered (at least marginally better) by the Republican party. Thus, contrary to the smug poster of the Reagan era, it’s really the Young Democrats in Love who are in for a head / heart (or ideology / experience) disconnect.

Or, could we stand the article on its head and say?:

Women with traditional values succeed much more often and remain in stable unions; thus the high correlation between traditional values and marriage.

Does this mean, by virtue of the same statistic:

Despite whatever desire to eventually marry they might have, being an ardent Democrat woman is a per se liability to settling down?

Or, to make it even more polemical, can we wonder:

Is being a single woman in your thirties basically a sign that you’ve been misled by an ideology that is not great for you as a woman (and certainly not as a mother), but hey, you can’t see that; or, if you can, it’s too late now, so you vote for the party that defined your status quo?

Oh my. Oh my. Where, oh where, do I start? I love what Camassia said:

Damn. With the future of society hanging in the balance, I’m going to be even more nervous on dates.

Obviously, I’m a thrice-divorced, newly engaged, pro-life, born-again, “Mennoscopalian”, liberal Democrat man. With those characteristics in place, I don’t know that I have much legitimacy on the subject of the marriage gap. Olde Oligarch is a Republican married man of indeterminate age (I have yet to read through his whole blog to learn more about him). Any exchange he and I have on this subject will come off sounding like two blind guys arguing about the relative virtues of Miro and Kandinsky, frankly, but here I go:

The marriage gap is rooted, I think, in the Republican veneration of the traditional nuclear family. There’s no evidence that a marriage gap existed among women in terms of their voting patterns before the Reagan presidency. And of course, the Reagan presidency marked the modern beginning of the ascendancy of religious conservatives within the Republican party, an ascendancy that has hit its zenith (one does hope, anyway) with the current presidential administration.

Implicitly and often explicitly, the Republican party idealizes a certain kind of “traditional family values.” Women in the party stand behind their men (three generations of Bush women, for example). More importantly, Republicans send the message that marriage and the family are the ultimate sources of economic security for women. In other words, gals, sooner or later you need to rely on a man. The “safety net” of public institutions provides women with the opportunity to succeed personally and economically without depending upon a man. The more our public safety net is dismantled, the more women will be forced to turn to men. I don’t think either party says this out loud, and I think this is a gross over-simplification. Then again, voters often make decisions based upon perception — and there is little question that the Republican obsession with insisting that the nuclear family is the cornerstone of civilization (as ahistorical a concept as one could ever find) is obviously going to be threatening to those folks, particularly women, who believe otherwise.

Despite my pro-life personal stance, I recognize that the abortion issue is a huge factor here. Though married women do get abortions (what percentage of abortions is open to debate), women who have husbands will, in general, have more financial and personal resources to cope with an unplanned pregnancy than those women who are unmarried. I know that the attempt to restrict access to legal abortion is perceived, often rightly, as an attempt to undermine the autonomy of all women — but single women in particular! Though few women if any could look forward to having an abortion, knowing that safe and legal abortion is available to them allows them a degree of reassurance that they can be autonomous sexual beings without having to fear the radical upheaval that an unplanned child born to a single mother surely brings.

Many, many single women in our society (and not a few married ones too) have been raised with the message: “Whatever you do, don’t rely on a man.” That’s not a message thought up by radical man-haters. It’s a message rooted in bitter personal experiences that countless women have endured. Too many women have grown up in families affected by male abandonment, alcoholism, infidelity, abuse, porn addiction, gambling problems, work-aholism, and a simple refusal to grow the bleep up. Too many women have heard from their mothers and older sisters about the dangers of “placing all your eggs in one basket.” Too many women, especially young ones, are keenly aware of just how reliable and trustworthy most young men are. And thus an ideology (and a political party) that venerate traditonal marriage is going to be very, very distasteful to many of them.

I don’t believe that we ought to see the state as a parent figure. But I don’t think we ought to see strong nuclear families as the solution to all of society’s problems. I don’t think most young Democratic single women want the state to replace a husband (pace, Warren Farrell*). But they may also deeply resent politicians who insist that their biology ought to be their destiny. And whether intended or not, that seems to be the perception that an increasing number of women have of the Republican Party.

* Farrell, a men’s rights advocate, makes explicit a point that I think has become an unspoken part of the Republican Party platform. When he ran for governor of California during the recall election, he said:

When the state of California offers a mom more than the dad can provide if she does not marry the dad, it bribes the mom to “marry” the government—the state turns itself into the Government-as-Substitute Husband.

Sigh.

New statistics on “born again divorce”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 9, 2004
in Christianity and Marriage
. 29 Comments

Before you go anywhere else, go and visit Row Boat Veterans for Truth. (Hat tip: Cliopatriarch Ralph).

The Barna Research Group (an outfit that focuses on trends among evangelical Christians) issued the following press release yesterday (hat tip to Kendall Harmon):

…the likelihood of married adults getting divorced is identical among born again Christians and those who are not born again. The study also cited attitudinal data showing that most Americans reject the notion that divorce is a sin.

Well, that’s hardly news to folks who’ve been around contemporary evangelicalism. Still, it’s nice to be able to move from the anecdotal to the concrete. But these two paragraphs are the real kicker:

George Barna noted that one reason why the divorce statistic among non-Born again adults is not higher is that a larger proportion of that group cohabits, effectively side-stepping marriage – and divorce – altogether. “Among born again adults, 80% have been married, compared to just 69% among the non-born again segment. If the non-born again population were to marry at the same rate as the born again group, it is likely that their divorce statistic would be roughly 38% - marginally higher than that among the born again group, but still surprisingly similar in magnitude.”

Barna also noted that he analyzed the data according to the ages at which survey respondents were divorced and the age at which those who were Christian accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. “The data suggest that relatively few divorced Christians experienced their divorce before accepting Christ as their savior,” he explained. “If we eliminate those who became Christians after their divorce, the divorce figure among born again adults drops to 34% - statistically identical to the figure among non-Christians.” The researcher also indicated that a surprising number of Christians experienced divorces both before and after their conversion.

The bold emphases are mine. For years, conservative Christians have suggested that cohabiting before marriage undermines the chance of success of that future marriage. The first highlighted sentence suggests that may not be the case. Of course, as more and more folks in secular society choose not to get married at all, that refusal to tie the knot will have a salutary effect on the divorce rate! The second high-lighted sentence is more fascinating. If nothing else, it makes it clear that our churches are doing a fairly poor job of supporting the marriages of their congregants.

And look who’s getting the divorces!

The survey showed that divorce varied somewhat by a person’s denominational affiliation. Catholics were substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% versus 39%, respectively). Among the largest Protestant groups, those most likely to get divorced were Pentecostals (44%) while Presbyterians had the fewest divorces (28%).

Hah! No denomination is more “mainline” than the Presbyterians (though the Presbys are split seven ways to Sunday); no one can be more “born again” than a Pentecostal. That certainly challenges some of the received wisdom out there about the relative fidelity of evangelicals and mainlines to Scripture! And while the Catholics are doing better, a 25% divorce rate is hardly something to cheer.

Look, I’ve been divorced three times. Out of respect for my family, my former spouses, and above all, my current fiancee, I don’t go into details on a public blog about those marriages. I will say, however, that my third divorce did take place “post-conversion” for me. (My third wife came out of a Pentecostal tradition, coincidentally, having come to Jesus through the wonderful Chi Alpha ministry of the Assemblies of God. I remember being a little frightened the first time she mentioned “gettin’ slain in the spirit.”) That third divorce was more devastating than the others for many reasons I won’t go into, but one that I will: I just assumed that this was something that didn’t happen to “real” Christians. Like many new converts, I was remarkably naive.

When my third wife and I divorced, I was disappointed in how the church reacted. Our friends in the congregation recommended good marriage therapists. Others, hearing of the decision to part, made genuine and heartfelt expressions of sympathy. But not one person — even from the ranks of our most conservative friends — said “Heck, no, you’re not divorcing without a fight” No one in the church really tried to save our marriage. Look, I’m so in love with my fiancee today that I am grateful that things turned out as they did. But that doesn’t make divorce good, and that doesn’t mean that a church community shouldn’t do more in the face of bad marriages than merely express sympathy.

In the light of statistics like these, it is hard to believe that my conservative Christian brethren believe gay unions to be a greater threat to marriage than the epidemic of heterosexual divorce. Given the biblical strictures against divorce (quite explicit in the New Testament), Christians can only effectively argue against same-sex marriage from a place of complete fidelity to Scripture on all subjects relating to the union of man and wife. I know full well that many evangelical churches would welcome me and my fourth wife even as they would refuse to recognize the marriage of two of their gay members. Where is the justice in that?

Why is no one pushing a constitutional amendment to prevent the likes of me from tying the knot again? Aren’t folks like me the greater threat?

New search terms list and the Thursday short poem a few hours early — Philip Larkin

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 8, 2004
in Blogging and Poetry
. 2 Comments

Here are some of the latest search terms to bring folks here since 4:00 today:

I want a famous face softball player Jennie Finch still has fans, I guess
getting into the porn business Repent, and consider equity markets or missions
Barack Obama pics How hard can they be to find, people?
sexual abandonment Paul advises against it in 1 Corinthians
Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife When did I post about her?
Christian clothes Most of us wear ‘em, but Episcopalians are inclusive of those who don’t
Young thong See Abercrombie and Fitch
Physical touch Church of God sex Somewhere, a lawyer is salivating
visible thong What’s with the thongs?
lance armstrong’s divo Is that a mistyping of Tivo or Devo?
jennifer knapp gay You’re a bit late for that Christian music rumor, friend. So 2003.
exposed flesh chinchilla Oh, now I’m upset. Go to the vet. Now.

And the short poem for this week is from the late Phillip Larkin, most famous for this poem and this family values classic . But I always have loved this one:

Best Society


When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it’s just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It’s clear you’re not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

I know, I usually test as an extrovert on personality scales (little ENFJ that I am). But locked within me, I have an inner, introverted misanthrope. I confess, I loved this poem far more when I was younger than I do now (I first read it as a sophomore in college when I lived with two roommates who snored.) But though he may have been a first-rate curmudgeon, Larkin got something right with this one.

Men’s history and one big fat mea culpa about abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 8, 2004
in Abortion, Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 20 Comments

From the introduction to Michael Kimmel’s “Manhood in America” (temporarily out of print, darn it, but still in xeroxed form), used in my “Men and Masculinity” class:

The history of American manhood is many histories at once…. (it is) a history of fears, frustration, and failure. At the grandest social level and the most intimate realms of personal life, for individuals and institutions, American men have been haunted by fears that they are not powerful, strong, rich, or successful enough. And many of our actions, on both the public and the private stages, have been efforts to ward off these demons, to silence these fears… there have been certain patterns to these actions: American men try to control themselves; they project their fear on to others, and when feeling too pressured, they attempt an escape. (Bold emphasis is mine).

We’ll be working with the theme of that paragraph today in class — and all semester long.

I like Kimmel’s analysis. Really, I think it’s as good a summation of what bedevils American men as any I’ve read. (To be fair, there is much Kimmel says in praise of American manhood).

I just posted below that I wasn’t going to say anything more about abortion. Well, let me amend that slightly. Just as I was typing out the quotation from Kimmel above, I began to think about how this male focus on control and projection plays a part in the abortion wars. It is almost axiomatic among contemporary feminists that the pro-life movement is interested in more than saving the unborn; many argue that the real agenda of most anti-abortion activists is to control women. Specifically, many feminists have argued that men are profoundly threatened by women’s reproductive autonomy, an autonomy that is historically quite recent. Thus, argue mainstream pro-choice feminists, the pro-life movement reflects the male desire to restore things to an earlier order, when women were of necessity more vulnerable and dependent upon men. And if women are vulnerable and dependent, they are thus less threatening to the angst-ridden, status-obsessed males of which Kimmel writes.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week on this blog and elsewhere saying “NO! I’m not like that! A desire to outlaw abortion is not the same as wishing to restore women to dependency! I want women to be independent and autonomous actors — just not at the price of what I regard as innocent life.” Basically, that’s what I’ve been saying. And I’ve been getting frustrated because not many folks are buying it.

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t explained things well, but I don’t think that’s at the root of it. When I take a step back and quiet my own emotions, I look at my own syllabus for my course on masculinity and remind myself of what this country’s history of misogyny and chauvinism has really been. Men (especially white men like me) have, over the course of some four centuries, taken their fears and anxieties about themselves and projected them on to others — especially men of color, homosexuals, and all women. We have used reproductive policy not so much to protect tiny babies as to to limit the options for their mothers. (Look at any of the traditional arguments against legalizing contraception, used as late as the 1960s, and that becomes evident). Given that history — a history that I know intellectually like the back of my hand — how can I expect my voice as a man to be heard separate from that history?

I want to protect the unborn because I believe the unborn are as worthy of dignity and protection as any other human being. I oppose abortion for the same reasons that I cling to pacifism (even when it’s hard, like after Beslan) and oppose the death penalty and euthanasia. By using phrases like “consistent life” and “seamless garment”, I’ve tried to link my opposition to abortion to a panoply of other issues. But I realize today that I’m a fool if I think that I can expect my sisters with whom I am engaged in debate to see abortion as “just another issue of non-violence.”

In this climate, a man who argues against abortion rights — as I do — does so in the context of centuries of history. I cannot reasonably expect folks to differentiate between my desire to protect the unborn and a legacy of controlling women’s lives in the names of those very same unborn. I wish that it were otherwise. I wish that my arguments could be heard separate from my sex, separate from my upbringing, separate from my identity. But I’m just good enough of a historian to know better.

I remain committed to ending abortion. Small monthly contributions will continue to flow from my checking account to Feminists for Life. But as I reread Michael Kimmel this morning — and reread some of the thoughtful, impassioned remarks here and at other blogs in response to my posts about abortion — I’ve realized that now is not the time for the likes of me to speak on this issue. There are other battles to be fought.

In writing this week and last on abortion, I made the mistake of forgetting the very history I teach every semester. I am sorry to anyone I have offended by doing so, and I am humbled.

I’m also hungry, and ready for my morning snack.

Okay, now I’ve had my morning snack. And I wonder, given that I teach men’s history and women’s history, why did I come to the conclusion I did today as a result of reading Michael Kimmel, and not a woman? Or am I thinking too much?

Taking a break from one topic

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 8, 2004
in Abortion and Blogging
. 4 Comments

Though I welcome comments here about abortion (and may comment elsewhere on the subject), I’m going to take a break from posting on the topic for a while. The first reason is the obvious one: writing about abortion is emotionally exhausting for me in a way that no other topic can be. The second reason is that I’m still uncertain what purpose it serves to debate other folks in cyberspace. The dialogue that’s taken place here, at Mouse Words, and at Alas, a Blog (among other places) has set a high standard for civility. It’s nice that we can all get along, even when the positions that others take exasperate and bewilder us. But at some point, maintaining cheerful civility becomes very tiring. One option is to resort to hostility, and that’s an option I’m utterly unwilling to take. The other is to take a break, and that’s the direction I’m inclined to head at this time.

Lord knows, there are plenty of other things to write about.

Listen, kitten…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 7, 2004
in Blogging, Chinchillas, Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 2 Comments

feminist

Really, I originally just put in a link to this (I found it at Sofia’s place; a great new addition to the blog roll) but given everything I’ve been posting about all week, I had to put the darned thing up. Pro-life, pro-feminist males have to be able to laugh at themselves.

It is oppressively hot outside here in Southern California. I’m headed for home to make certain that our air conditioning is keeping Matilde the chinchilla in her customary comfort. One thing about chinnies — they die above 75 degrees; makes for very high electric bills in the summer. When I left this morning, she was cool and happy, but we put frozen water bottles in her cage just to make her extra comfy.

Criminalizing abortion?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 7, 2004
in Abortion, Aggression and violence and Christianity
. 15 Comments

In the post immediately below, I responded to some aspects of Ampersand’s post about pro-lifers and feminism. I didn’t get a chance to get to what may have been the most difficult part of his post, the aspect with which I have wrestled a great deal: can a pro-life feminist advocate the criminalization of abortion?

Ampersand writes:

Hugo asks, why not embrace both the supply and demand-side methods of reducing abortion, rather than making a choice? Hugo’s position only makes sense if he believes that banning abortion would harm nobody to any significant degree. And if you accept that premise, then Hugo is correct: It makes perfect sense to ban abortion if the ban harms no one and might do some good by preventing some abortions (even if the number of abortions prevented is low).

But how could anyone think that banning abortion does no harm?

It’s clear that banning abortion would do harm. Some women (and their doctors) will have to be thrown in prison to enforce such a law. Some women (most likely poor women) will be hurt or killed by botched illegal abortions. Some working- and middle-class women will be forced to spend their life savings getting a safe, legal abortion in another country. And some women will be forced to give birth against their will, giving up control of their fertility (not just whether or not to have children, but also how many children to have and when in their mother’s life plans they’ll be born) and often being forced to give up life dreams and career plans. All women will have less freedom than before.

There is a substantial price to pay for banning abortion. And even if we accept -for the sake of argument - that reducing abortion is a noble and important goal, all the evidence indicates that banning abortion is a very ineffective way of reducing abortion.

I think this is a bit of a false choice. I can only support a ban if it hurts no one? All restrictions on abortion hurt someone; some women are no doubt discomfited by the lack of availability of third-trimester terminations.

First of all, where is the evidence that if abortion is made illegal, women will be hurt or killed by botched abortions? I’m not saying it won’t happen, but since Ampersand is a stickler for evidence, I’m curious as to where the statistics are to back up these various claims. Arguments from America’s past are not in and of themselves sufficient predictors of the future, as much as it pains me as an historian to say that! What about the possibility that a dramatic reduction in access to abortion will result in more women keeping their babies? Especially if — as leftist pro-lifers insist — anti -abortion legislation be accompanied by considerable aid to help single (and married) women either afford to keep their children or give them up for adoption.

But the best reason to support a ban is the conviction that abortion is the destruction of innocent, vulnerable human life. The fact that murders occur despite the fact that homicide is illegal is a poor argument for legalizing homicide. Closer to the point, the fact that men have always paid women to have sex with them is a poor argument for legalizing prostitution. Laws exist to protect the vulnerable regardless of the difficulty of enforcing them.

We are at an impasse here, albeit one we can discuss politely. If one believes — as almost all pro-lifers do — that life begins at conception, and the life of a child at one week or three months or three years is equally valuable, than one would be hard-pressed to justify not working to overturn the law that made the killing of any of those children possible. If one believes that an embryo in these early stages is just a mass of cells that is merely a potential life, than restrictions on abortion are an absurd and unwarranted intrusion into a woman’s privacy. But I’m at a loss as to how it is that I can be expected to continue to believe that abortion is murder while still insisting that it remain legal. As a strategy, pro-choicers will be better off trying to convince folks like me that an embryo is not deserving of personhood. And that will be an uphill battle, just as it is for me when I engage in dialogue with folks on the other side of the issue.

I don’t think that the primary focus of a pro-life strategy should be the criminalization of abortion. I’m interested in changing hearts and minds and behaviors. I’m interested in voluntary rather than forced conversions. And frankly, criminalizing abortion outside the context of a massive cultural change in attitudes towards life isn’t going to work to end the practice. I don’t write or lobby legislators to enact more abortion restrictions, though I support such restrictions. I’d rather give money to campaigns to change hearts and minds, campaigns like those of Feminists for Life. Yes, that means I will make common cause with Christian right-wingers with whom I share a faith and a common language, but whose troglodytic politics annoy the heck out of me on other issues. So too, I will make common cause with secular left-wing feminists on issues ranging from domestic violence to pay equity to war to Title IX to welfare.

I think I’ve infuriated everyone now. Yikes.

Of course, organizations like Consistent Life get “all the issues right”. But those of us who support the “seamless garment” philosophy of life are so numerically insignificant as to be irrelevant — unless we make common cause with both left and right on an issue-by-issue basis.

This is a hard issue for me to write about. As it does for many people, writing about abortion brings up intense emotion. As I’ve written before, I spent years on the pro-choice side, giving my time and energy to pro-choice causes. I have enormous respect for the goodness and sincerity of folks on the other side of this issue. If I had not “come to Christ”, as it were, my views on abortion would surely be where they were a decade ago. But my politics are built on my theology, as inadequate as both no doubt are, not the other way around.

Still more on pro-life feminism: a response

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 7, 2004
in Abortion and Feminism
. 21 Comments

Ampersand at Alas, a Blog posted an interesting challenge to the whole notion of “pro-life feminism” over the weekend. (Make sure to read the comments section as well).

Ours has been a civil exchange, and that tone has been kept up in the comments section. Still, civility only gets us so far — it enables a dialogue to take place, but it doesn’t guarantee that the dialogue will be constructive. On some basic issues, the gulf between our respective positions is too great to bridge. For example, in the comments section beneath his post, Ampersand wrote:

In my view, a fetus for most of the pregnancy (before it develops an effectively functioning cerebral cortex) has no inherant value of its own. It is like any other mindless object.

However, mindless objects do have value when people project that value onto them. So, for instance, a piece of paper with some black ink on it has no inherant value of its own. But if that piece of paper happens to be the original Walt Kelley drawing that my Aunt Gerry gave me, then I find it very precious.

Presumably, you’d say that a piece of paper is a piece of paper, whether it’s the Kelly drawing or some incoherant ink scribbles I made to see if a pen had ink in it. After all, in both cases it consists of pulped, bleached wood with some black in on it. It’s the same in either case, right?

I disagree. We don’t live in an objective universe; we live in a subjective human society, where the value of most objects is the subjective value placed on them by their owners. So I say a fetus has no inherant value of its own; but when I see that a particular fetus is loved and treasured by its eager parents, then I think that particular fetus does have value.

Of course, pro-lifers see value in all fetuses. However, just because you see value in something, it doesn’t follow that you do (or should) have the legal right to control that something’s destiny.

Well, I appreciate Ampersand’s candor. I’m at a loss as to how to respond. I confess (as he might well suspect) I wince when I see what I regard as living human beings compared to pieces of paper! (I’m fairly certain that the comparison was not intended to be offensive). I’m obviously troubled by the notion that the fact that a child is loved makes him or her more valuable. This seems to be parental narcisissm of a high order: My child has no intrinsic worth; rather, it derives its worth from my perception of it. Jeepers.

Of course, pro-choice feminists make a colossal distinction (one hopes) between a pre-born child and a child out of the womb, living independently. Few such folks (again, one hopes) would argue that a child who has been born still derives his or her value from his or her parents’ affections! But like most pro-life folks, I am convinced that life does begin at conception, and it is at the beginning of life that our value and worth begins. (And of course, this is the position of most pro-lifers).

Most of the commenters at Alas, a Blog seem convinced that a pro-lifer (never mind a male pro-lifer) cannot be a feminist in any meaningful sense of the latter term. Alsis38 made a representative remark:

As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as a pro-life feminist. You can be a feminist who hates the concept of abortion and would never want one, for sure. But if you are out there trying to cut off women’s access to legal abortion (as the pro-life movement has been doing with great success for the last twenty-odd years), or applauding those who do, you are not a feminist.

Some things, I don’t have very nuanced feelings about, and that’s one of them.

This is a “small tent” vision of feminism indeed! It’s also an ahistorical vision. Feminism in this country, by even the most conservative definition, has at least a 150-year history (we tend to date it to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848). It’s only in the last 35 years or so that abortion rights have suddenly (and to my mind disastrously) emerged as the sine qua non of feminism in our culture. As Feminists for Life points out over and over again, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton both opposed abortion. (And not merely out of a desire to protect women from bad doctors, but also to preserve the lives of innocent children).

Pro-life feminists are feminists because they support equal rights for women in the political, economic, cultural, social, and sexual spheres of life. (Obviously, I can’t speak for all pro-life feminists; we are a diverse lot indeed). For all of the accomplishments of the last 100 years, we still have a long way to go. Pay equity is STILL (infuriatingly) an issue. The feminization of poverty is a growing, rather than a declining problem. The sexual exploitation of girls and women worldwide through porn and sex trafficking is also a major threat to women’s health and dignity. I am concerned about major issues like these, and minor ones too (like why my college gives benefits to male football players — like subsidized housing — that are unavailable to my female soccer and softball players.) But apparently, no matter how “correct” my stances may be on every other issue, to oppose abortion (or more precisely, to favor legal restrictions on abortion as one tactic in that struggle) is to lose any chance of being considered a feminist.

Look, I know as a man I need considerable humility here. It’s not my body, after all, that carries children. And I won’t lose access to legal abortion for myself. It’s incumbent on male feminists (especially pro-life ones) to be careful to listen to the anguish, the anger, and the fear that surrounds this issue. It’s imperative that we understand just how important the notions of “autonomy” and “choice” are. Most pro-lifers tend to be dismissive of those words, but I’m not. They are meaningful, immensely so. It is with a deep sense of humility that pro-lifer feminists declare that they favor limits on personal autonomy and choice at the moment that these lead to the destruction of human life.

It’s funny. Many of the same folks who think a Catholic can be pro-choice and still take communion DON”T think a feminist can be pro-life. It’s all well and good for other folks to be forced to have big tents, but hey, we feminists have our standards! That saddens me. Look, I teach the history of the reproductive rights movement every semester. (And I’ll bet I know the life story of Margaret Sanger and the text of the Griswold v. Connecticut decision as well as any of my pro-choice colleagues!) When I teach, I don’t betray my pro-life position — that would be crossing a very dangerous line, especially in a classroom likely to be filled with abortion survivors. Indeed, I’ve had pro-life Christian students come to argue with me because from my lectures, they assume I must be pro-choice!

There are other aspects of Ampersand’s post I need to respond to as well. Folks have also raised issues of race and class that ought to be addressed. But it’s Tuesday morning after a holiday weekend, and I’ve got too much to do.

But let me recommend a helpful link for pro-life women’s issues. Check out the back issues of the now-defunct Journal for Feminism and Nonviolence Studies. I recommend this article in particular: Pro-Life Philosophy and Feminism, by Anne Maloney, a philosophy prof at the College of Saint Catherine.

Biking and Beslan, and trying to stay a pacifist - UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 3, 2004
in Pacifism
. 19 Comments

I’m home from a midday bike ride, and at a bit of a loss as to what I ought to blog about.

With the contemporary culture of constant news (something to which I am surely addicted), it’s rare for me to be deeply affected by a news event. But something about the horrific terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, has really shaken me. What really disturbed me was the story in this morning’s LA Times about a young mother of two small children, Zalina Dzandarova . She and her son and daughter were held hostage in the Beslan school overnight Wednesday, but yesterday Dzandarova was allowed to leave — but with only one child. She took her two year-old son, leaving her six year-old daughter (whose fate is still unknown) sobbing in continued captivity.

“Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said: ‘You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.’ I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said: ‘If you don’t go now, you don’t go at all. You stay here with your children … and we will shoot all of you.’ ”

She couldn’t save both of them. She could only die with both of them — or save one of them and herself.

“I didn’t have time to think what I was doing,” she said. “I pressed Alan even stronger to myself, and I went out, and I heard all the time how my daughter was crying and calling for me behind my back. I thought my heart would break into pieces there and then.”

Dzandarova cried as she talked. Her tears fell on Alan, who was sleeping. Even when his mother shook quietly with sobs as she cradled him, he didn’t awaken.

I haven’t cried over a news story in quite a while. I did today. I’m not a parent, but I’m sure that countless parents of more than one child, upon reading this story, are wondering what they would do if given a forced “Sophie’s Choice” as Dzandarova was. And I wonder if Christian ethicists have any clear position on what one ought to do in such a situation. Part of me imagines I would want us all to die together, clinging to the notion that no matter what, our family would not be separated. Another part of me knows that as parents, the lives of our children are paramount, and we must save them by any means necessary. And of course, I wonder how Zelina’s daughter will cope with her mother’s decision, if by some miracle little Alana emerges from this wretched holocaust alive.

Though I’ve returned to the Episcopal Church, I still hold in my heart to many basic principles of Anabaptist theology — pacifism, obviously, chief among them. Yet without the support of other Mennonites who share that conviction that non-violence is a moral absolute, I’m finding it hard to imagine how a pacifist can adequately respond to the Beslan horror. Because I am thinking more and more about becoming a father, I am becoming more and more aware that Christian pacifism is a doctrine far more easily held by the childless! And so today, as I cried for Zelina and Alana and little Alan, I also found rage-filled fantasies racing into my imagination, as I thought of what I would personally enjoy doing to the Chechen terrorists who had done this beastly thing. I wanted blood today, in a way I haven’t wanted blood before — not even on September 11, which was the last time I can recall feeling anything like this anger. And so today, even as I continue to believe that Christ calls me to pacifism, I can feel at my core just how utterly counter-intuitive a doctrine and a path non-violence really is. And I wonder if my commitment to pacifism will survive the birth of my first child.

As I rode my bike through Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Arcadia, and San Marino today, I thought about Zelina and her children. At least, they were foremost in my thoughts when I began the ride. But I’m still a novice bicyclist, still riding in old running shoes with cages on the pedals. I’ve only just figured out how to use all three chain rings with which my Trek 5000 is equipped. And though trail running has its hazards (bears, rattlesnakes, rocks, disorientation), there is something deeply unsettling about learning to bicycle on busy urban thoroughfares. So by the time I was half-way through the ride, my thoughts had left Beslan and Zelina and the countless other victims, and had turned to my sore bottom and the dangers of distracted drivers. And then I got home, turned on CNN again, and felt the sorrow — and yes, the visceral and inarticulate rage — wash over me once more.

I’m taking the rest of the weekend off from blogging; I’ll be back on Tuesday. Happy Labor day to all.

Saturday Update:

Little Alana did emerge from the devastation of the Beslan school alive and has been reunited with her mother, the LA Times reports today. It’s hard to rejoice about much in the aftermath of this slaughter of the innocents, but I confess I was more than usually eager to read the paper today to find out this particular bit of news. That family in particular, and all others in their community, are in my prayers today. Though today, for some reason, the words of my prayer seem vacuous.

And I now have a Shimano pedal system on my bike, and have graduated from cages. Now if I can just master the art of “clipping and unclipping” without breaking an ankle.

And my beloved Golden Bears were victorious in their season opener.

Off to shop for tile.

Enter v. envelop, and playing with the language

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 2, 2004
in Feminism, GLBTQ, Race, Sexual ethics and transformation and Teaching
. 18 Comments

I promise I’ll be back to church-focused blogging soon. But I have feminism on my mind still.

(By the way, check out Lauren’s post on the Kobe Bryant dismissal. Good stuff).

For those who are curious, here’s a little something I do:

In my women’s history classes, we always begin with working through sexist and racist language. After all, we need to acknowledge the ways in which our words subtly and not-so-subtly reinforce gender inequities. I try and illustrate that in several ways, but I’ll just share a couple of the most effective ones.

We spend a few minutes talking about insults, particularly race and sex-based insults. I then ask my students to insult me based upon my race, class, gender, faith, and sexual orientation. I’m obviously a white male from an educated middle-class background. I tell them I’m a heterosexual Episcopalian. What word do they have that really targets me? Students throw out “cracker” and “redneck”, but quickly realize that those are terms for a specific class of whites. My mostly non-white, female students, are frustrated that there are no words in English at their disposal to hurt me for “who I am”.

I then ask them to imagine that I am an immigrant lesbian of color. Without saying the words out loud, I ask them to count in their heads how many hateful words they have in their arsenal to “hurt” such a person. The students start to shake their heads ruefully. They start to “get it.” I’m fond of saying at this point that the old line

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words can never hurt me.

can be said far more authentically by straight white Christian males than by anyone else! Folks who look like me, make love like me, and believe as I do have created a language that in both formal and slang speech has few weapons to single us out, except by calling us what we are not.

Later on, we always talk about sex ed books; you know, the sort everyone has in health class. I do something that I first saw done by a feminist professor of anthropology I had at Cal in 1986; I write two words on the board:

penetrate
enter

I pause, and ask if these are the words they’ve been taught are appropriate non-slang terms for sexual intercourse. They nod in agreement. I then write two more words:

engulf
envelop

And I just let them absorb it, watching the grins start to spread across the classroom (along with a few blushing faces). I always ask if any of them have ever seen a sex ed textbook that used those latter two verbs; I’ve never had an affirmative answer. They don’t even need to be asked about the importance of the distinction between the two sets of simple, descriptive terms.

Look, these are both pedagogical gimmicks. But it sure helps to get the dialogue started.

Thursday short poem — Collins Best Cigarette, and some reflections on nicotine

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

I’m very excited about all of the new blogs I’ve discovered this week in the evolving discussion of men and feminism (see below). My list of regular reads is rapidly expanding. But it’s Thursday, and it’s time to post the short poem.

Like many kids of my generation, I was raised around cigarette smoke. As a child in the 1970s, it seemed as if every adult I knew puffed away more or less constantly. I remember, as a boy of eight or so, arguing with other children over the relative merits of the brands our parents smoked. (My mother and father, at this point, both smoked “Vantage”).

When I was six, ten year-old Erin Trosky (who lived across the street) inducted me into the sacred mysteries of nicotine. I brought a pack of my mother’s cigarettes that I had taken, Erin brought the matches; we shared one with her little brother Noah while hiding in one of our many little “forts” (in a cypress tree) not far from the beach in Carmel. It was an awful experience, and I was very disappointed.

Oddly, I never really caught the smoking “bug.” I went through phases, of course. My senior year of high school, Indonesian clove cigarettes were all the rage. (We called them “cracks”, a bastardization of the Indonesian word kretek). I was a heavy consumer of those for, oh, about five months. It was what my friends smoked, and I wanted to be like them, so I bought pack after pack of Djarum brand — half of which I gave away. Even now, the smell of clove cigarettes takes me right back to 1985.

For one period in my life, I was a moderately heavy smoker. In the summer of 1996, after the end of my second marriage, I turned to Marlboro Reds and Parliaments. I generally bought only those two brands, and I bought them in equal numbers. I only smoked heavily for about nine months, until the spring of 1997 (which, not coincidentally, was when I first became serious about running). And I wasn’t much of a smoker compared to full-fledged addicts — I rarely got over one pack a day. In a particularly nervous and unhappy time in my life, however, those cigarettes were immensely soothing. (And this boy needed soothing. Not only was I reeling from a very ugly divorce, I was writing my dissertation and teaching seven classes. 1996 was tough.) As I have an addictive personality and physiology, it was miraculous that I was able to give them up so easily.

Billy Collins (a former Poet Laureate) has become one of America’s most popular poets in recent years — but his popularity in no way undermines his immense talent. Looking through some of my favorites of his last night, I came across this one, his “Best Cigarette”. It takes me back instantly to my brief but intense love affair with nicotine; it also takes me back to childhood memories of my mother, father, and the omnipresent smell of smoke.

Best Cigarette

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

A longish reflection on pro-feminism and teaching women’s studies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 1, 2004
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Teaching
. 8 Comments

I’ll be meeting my students in my Monday/Wednesday women’s history class in an hour or so. As I prep for my first class, I’m still thinking about the topic of men and feminism, prompted by the exchanges described in my post immediately below.

I’m thinking in particular about this link to Wicked Muse, whom I discovered through Trish Wilson. WM writes:

Do I believe that men can be feminists? Actually, I don’t.

Here’s her reasoning:

I think men who truly support the movement by trying to do something beyond offering lip-service (perhaps in an attempt to ingratiate themselves and/or feel less guilty) are wonderful and I welcome them with open arms. Things are only going to get better by working together, which is one point I agree with Matt on. However, in a society where labels are all important, as much as we eschew them at times, I think the feminist label needs to be left for women to grasp, either to help keep them afloat or to hold high in defiance. If you’re a man and support the cause, I daresay we love you. Men like you are rare… much too rare. The support is appreciated, no doubt, but I, for one, would feel much more comfortable if at least the symbol of the movement was left to us rather than it being yet one more thing co-opted, which is just one step from having it taken away.

“This is my wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, aunt, daughter, niece, neighbor, friend and she’s a feminist. I support her and her cause 100%.”

“Am I pro-feminist? Damn right I am.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot more masculine and sexy than hearing a guy say, “I’m a feminist.”

Perhaps it all comes down to semantics.

Amen, Wicked Muse, amen. I’m with you, sister (especially the bit I placed in bold).

Because I teach men’s studies as well as women’s history, I’m a bit leery about using the term “pro-feminist” man. In the field of men and masculinity, “pro-feminist” refers to one specific wing of the men’s movement, represented best by the folks at NOMAS (National Organization for Men Against Sexism, and obviously an acronym that forms the Spanish phrase “no more.”) The NOMAS definition of what makes a “pro-feminist” is here. Here’s an excerpt:

Whatever psychological burdens men have to overcome, women are still the most universal and direct victims of our patriarchy. Our organization takes a highly visible and energetic position in support of women’s struggle for equality.

Our movement was born directly out of, and is continually nourished by, feminism. Even if we could not see any pragmatic ways in which we, as men, could benefit from an end to traditional patriarchy (and we can see many), most of us would strongly support women’s struggle, simply because it is so unquestionably just and right. Our support for women’s rights and specific women’s issues is therefore vigorous and unmistakable.

I know that some feminists out there might flinch at the use of the word “victim” in the first sentence, but it’s hard to quibble with the sincerity and guilelessness of the men of NOMAS.

The problem is, there are many others in the men’s movement who approach men’s issues from a radically different perspective. (I had a long post summarizing the other three major groups in the men’s movement; here it is). I’ve spent a bit of time with the mytho-poetic men’s movement, which I think has some tremendously valuable insights that the folks in organizations like NOMAS often miss. For the mytho-poetics, the the term pro-feminist implies a man who rejects the essential archetypal differences between male and female that are so central to what the MP movement embraces. (My mytho-poetic friends are all very big on Jung, to put it mildly). Thus, when I am talking to men in the men’s movement, I avoid pigeon-holing myself with the term “pro-feminist”; when I am working with women’s groups, I happily use the term.

But laying aside the issue of semantics, what are the obligations of a feminist/pro-feminist man? Here’s where I break with Matt Stoller, whose words sparked the whole controversy that’s raging around the blogosphere. Matt, who seems a fine progressive fellow, wrote the following in the comments section:

More to the point, feminism doesn’t belong to women, and until you realize that we’re in this together, the more marginalized you will continue to be.

Well, as usual, I’ve got a “yes” and a “no” to that — and the “no” is much bigger. Yes, we are “all in this together”, and if Matt is in favor of building coalitions (and from reading his blog, I’m sure he is), then he’s absolutely right. But as a man who has been studying women’s history for almost 20 years and teaching it for nine, I am damned clear on the fact that at both the beginning and the end of the day, feminism does belong to women. Men can intellectually assent to the principles of feminism. More importantly, we can lead our public (and crucially, our private) lives in ways that reflect our spoken principles rather than contradicting them. As WM put it above, we can support but we cannot co-opt.

How then can I teach women’s history from a feminist perspective? First off, I don’t try and “unsex” myself in the classroom. (Gosh, what a mental picture that calls to mind. Anyhoo…) I acknowledge up front that I will bring my maleness into my teaching. I don’t pretend that the gender of the instructor is irrelevant. I even use my sex as a teaching tool — I point out every semester that in the minds of some, having a woman’s history course taught by a man legitimates the subject! I wish it were not so, but I know that my sex immunizes me against the charge of being a “frustrated, angry, man-hating feminazi.” (I know full well those words have been used against my fine female colleagues who also teach women’s history). Rather than take advantage of this unearned legitimacy, I try and use it to explore my students’ attitudes towards feminism, challenging them to look at their own overt and subliminal assumptions about women in authority.

Of course, some of my students are convinced I’m as gay as a bunny.

I also make it clear that while I can provide a narrative history of the women’s rights movement, I can’t take even a small leadership role within that movement. I can cheer, support, encourage, and even advise — but ultimately, leadership of the women’s movement must come from women. Feminism is not merely about respecting women, it is about honoring women’s capacity to be full and complete human beings. Given the long history of men’s domination over women, and given how many women are at least somewhat comfortable with being led by men, it is critical that men who do teach women’s studies or work near the feminist movement make certain that leadership roles are held only by women. I don’t think being a teacher is exactly the same thing as being an activist (though obviously, in gender work, there is some overlap). Academics have an obligation to a gender-transcending objectivity that requires that we open teaching opportunities to all those competent and willing to teach. At the same time, we men who work in this field must actively resist our own acculturation that tells us that we can and should “take charge”. It’s not easy, but it is essential.

And even more importantly, we men who aspire to be feminists (or pro-feminists) must constantly, constantly, be willing not only to listen to women but to hear them. We must listen not as guilt-ridden boys or as patronizing father figures, but as brothers who love their sisters as fellow human beings and as equals. It’s a hell of a lot of work, and by God, it’s worth it.