Archive for March, 2005

Sugar and bodies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 31, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Body and Youth ministry
. 12 Comments

I’ll confess I have felt a little out of sorts all week, and I’m fully aware that sugar is the culprit.  From Saturday (the day of my Dad’s birthday party), through Easter Sunday and on till last night, I’ve been surrounded by cakes and cookies and an abundance of candy.  I share on the blog (and in a passing reference in class) my love for peeps — and students bring me still more peeps.  And I eat them. I promise myself only one box of peeps — and then I eat three in one sitting. 

I’ve felt weak and light-headed for several days; today I need to restrict a bit and stay away from the sweet stuff.  Thanks to the holiday, I won’t be near the temptations that linger in my departmental "party room", and that is a blessing.

Last night in youth group, we talked about body image. Experience with youth groups and college students has taught me that there is no more difficult topic to raise with young people than weight and appearance.  It’s relatively easy, by comparison, to talk about drugs and sex.  Most kids are able to distance themselves (somewhat) from a discussion on drugs and alcohol; the teens love the weeks where we engage in frank, open dialogue about sexuality.  But talking about the body is much harder.  After all, we live in a culture which demands physical perfection of the very young, both boys and girls.  It would be a rare teen indeed (I have yet to meet one) who could go through adolescence entirely immune from those pressures.

We talked at some length last night about where it is our kids learn about the "ideal body."  Some simply said the "media" or "peers", others named specific magazines, television shows, and celebrities.  (America’s Next Top Model seems to be the culprit de jour in fostering this anxiety.)  We talked about the bodies they long to have.  (The most commonly named women’s bodies that our teen girls desired: Mary-Kate Olson, Paris Hilton, and Cristina Aguilera.  For the boys, it was Vin Diesel and — shock of all shocks to me — Sylvester Stallone!  The age discrepancy between the boys’ and girls’ ideals was hard to miss.  I’m not too happy with the Mary-Kate reference either).

The more dangerous (and yet rewarding) activity is to ask all of the kids, boys and girls alike, to share a little about what they like and don’t like about their own bodies.  It’s tempting to want to forego the discussion of what they dislike about themselves.  After all, why on earth would youth leaders want their kids to be more focused on their own perceived shortcomings than they already are?  Shouldn’t we getting them to focus less, not more, on their own bodies?  But there is value, tremendous value, in hearing that other teens, including those who are perceived by their peers as very attractive, struggle with the same anxieties and fears as everyone else.  The sheer universality of the self-doubt, a problem that transcends race and sex, is often very comforting to teens.  It’s vital that kids hear how other kids perceive themselves.   As they listen, they realize that most of their peers don’t think of their own bodies the way their peers do.  And of course, the hope is that if they realize that their friends have wildly distorted self-image, they will understand that perhaps their own perception of their bodily flaws is equally distorted.

Still, it’s not the sort of topic that can be neatly wrapped up in two hours.  Next week, we do some follow up, with some affirmation exercises that (one hopes) leaves the kids feeling far more encouraged about their bodies and their ability to resist cultural influences. 

It’s a busy day, lots of errands to run on this day off.  More later.

Thursday Short Poem: Goerner’s “Redemption”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 31, 2005
in Poetry
. 3 Comments

I remembered this poem from an old issue of First Things, and loved it from the moment I read it.  Leslie Goerner’s "Redemption" has some of my favorite lines in all of recent religious poetry.

Redemption

The angels offered reprieve,
escape for Lot’s entire household
including almost–sons who having witnessed
a divine defense of honor
dared to scoff at certain doom.

Commanded in that final moment to depart,
Lot himself paused,
needed to be tugged away
from his destruction—
man caught up in doubts and compromise
the hand of grace dislodged for him; for us.

What did Lot’s wife hope to see
when on that moving day her eyes slid back
to the town where she had raised a family,
exchanged the recipes of substitution . . .

Perhaps she turned to douse with tears
the fire of a hearth where friendship dawdled
near the shame she’d entertained:
in her heart, still burning,
embers of a tolerance

for sin we too have hosted—

her final heedless turning hardened
into destination.

Me?  I love that image of needing to be

tugged away
from his destruction—
man caught up in doubts and compromise
the hand of grace dislodged for him; for us…

If that isn’t the perfect description for the ongoing process of conversion, I sure as heck don’t know what is.

Divorce, blame, and taking responsibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 30, 2005
in Feminism, Marriage, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 86 Comments

I do often check in on various men’s rights discussion boards, and as regular readers know, I’m "honored" to be a not-infrequent target of MRA opprobrium.  I don’t take the nastiness too seriously, mind you; on only one occasion did I allow some unpleasantness to get under my skin.

But I’ve noticed something about my critics.  Many assume that I’ve never been married, though some note my frequent mentions of my fiancee.  As someone named "woof" implies in this thread, some of the MRAs suspect that I might change my pro-feminist tune if I actually went through a divorce. Woof writes:

Can’t wait to see how he does in his divorce.

It seems, anecdotally, that a great many Men’s Rights Advocates are embittered survivors of divorce.  Michael Flood, the marvelous Australian pro-feminist author, notes:

The men in men’s rights groups are typically in their forties and fifties, often divorced or separated, and nearly always heterosexual. In both general men’s rights groups and fathers’ rights groups, participants often are very angry, bitter and hurting (with good reason, they would say), and they often have gone through deeply painful marriage breakups and custody battles.

From what I can tell, his assessment of the MRA demographic is fairly accurate, though it seems that some of the most vitriolic of MRAs are much younger. (Or perhaps their anger merely seems adolescent.   They also seem — though I have no proof of this –to be overwhelmingly white.)

I’ve been through three divorces.  They took place at different times in my life; the first was at 25 and the third at 35.  I won’t blog about the reasons why these marriages ended, out of respect for all parties involved, especially my current fiancee.  I will say this, however, because I think it’s important:  none of my divorces made me angry at women!

Divorce is many things: painful, sad, overwhelming, liberating.   It’s like nothing else I’ve ever gone through, and going through it more than once does not, I assure you, make it any easier.  Praise Jesus, my ex-wives and I never had children (at least not the two-legged variety).  Surely, kids would have added a whole new dimension of heartache.  But the fact that the marriages were brief and childless does not mean that their endings were not immensely painful.  And it doesn’t mean that I walked through those divorces without anger. 

But there’s a world of difference between being angry at an individual and being angry at an entire sex, or the entire culture!  It’s perfectly normal to be angry in the process of divorce, though it’s vitally important to process through that anger as quickly as possible.   Without getting into details, my last divorce was incredibly expensive to me financially, especially in terms of "lost opportunity cost" and a series of real estate transactions.  For a very brief period, I was furious about the money — and the property — I had lost.  Then I figured that even a six-figure sum was a small price to pay for what that marriage and that divorce taught me about myself.   

Divorce can be "good" when the individuals involved take their own separate responsibility for the failure of the marriage.  All of my ex-wives had their "part" in our divorces, but it isn’t my job (and it isn’t spiritually healthy) for me to brood on their shortcomings.  My job, as a man and as a Christian, was to focus only on where I fell short (and trust me, I fell very short of the mark of a "good husband.")  I plunged back into therapy after my last divorce.  I prayed and did a great deal of spiritual work.  I did my best, and am still trying to do my best, to face up to my own "baggage" and "filth" and get rid of it.  The pain was tremendous — but the work was incredibly freeing, and as a consequence, I’m in a spiritual and emotional position to marry again. 

I don’t think divorce is a good thing, in general.  But I do think that for some people, it can be a catalyst for positive personal transformation.  My three failed marriages forced me to confront things about myself I might never have otherwise confronted.  Sometimes only a spouse can point out to you the extent of your own brokenness.  All three of my exes, especially the last, did a fine job of calling my attention to my own sinfulness.  For that, I’m so damned grateful!   I don’t talk to any of my ex-wives today, and that’s surely for the best.  But wherever they are, I wish them health and happiness and joy — and I thank them for what I learned from them.   The agony of our divorces made me stronger, wiser, and a heck of a lot more compassionate.

I am convinced that my fiancee and I will make our marriage last.  I am more in love with her than I have ever been with any woman.  More importantly, thanks to God’s grace and the work I have had to do to clear up my personal wreckage, I humbly believe I have the tools to be an extraordinarily devoted husband.

When faced with the end of a marriage, one has a choice.  One can get bogged down in blame and bitterness, or one can honestly face up to one’s own myriad mistakes and shortcomings.  One can point fingers, or one can take responsibility.  Too often, on the subject of women and divorce, I see the men’s rights advocates trapped in that blame and bitterness.  Too infrequently, I see self-criticism and a willingness to transform.  When I became convinced that it was I who was the architect of my own adversity, and not my wives, I took the first key step towards healing and growing up.

If that sounds condescending, I’m sorry.  But three divorces have earned me the right to speak on this subject.

Action in different kinds of courts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 30, 2005
in Feminism, Politics, Sexual harassment and Sports
. 23 Comments

First off, I’m delighted the Supreme Court ruled yesterday to protect Title IX "whistleblowers".  It’s a big victory for advocates of women’s sports, and I am happy to say that for once, the Bush Administration was on the "right side" of this fight.  Here’s the press release from the National Women’s Law Center.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education represents a huge win for women, girls and civil rights protections in general, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) said today. In this critically important Title IX retaliation case, the Court decided that individuals who protest sex discrimination may sue to challenge retaliation if their schools punish them as a result. 

This decision is a slam dunk victory for everyone who cares about equal opportunity,” said Marcia D. Greenberger, NWLC Co-President. “The Court has confirmed that people cannot be punished for standing up for their rights. This protection is not just critical for Title IX, but also for other bedrock civil rights laws.

More commentary here at Inside Higher Ed.

Sweet.  I watched coverage of both women’s games yesterday, and was pleased with the results.  I have to confess, as a good Golden Bear, I always root for Stanford to lose.

Cesar Chavez

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 29, 2005
in Christianity, Class, Faith, People and Working
. 1 Comment

The college will be closed this Thursday for Cesar Chavez day.  It’s the only paid California state holiday that isn’t also a federal holiday.  (It’s also a holiday in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.  Perhaps folks in those states can tell me if their colleges and schools close?)

A brief biography is here.

I was thrilled when, a few years ago, the California state legislature chose to make Chavez’s birthday a paid, mandatory holiday.  It’s not that I just wanted another day off, though like many who have lived abroad, I think Americans take entirely too few holidays.  It’s that Chavez is such a remarkable figure on so many levels.  Growing up on the Monterey Peninsula, not far from the Salinas Valley growing region, I grew up with lots of Chavez and United Farm Workers lore.  I went to school with the children of wealthy growers, many of whom said the most appalling things about Chavez and those on whose behalf he worked tirelessly throughout his life.  (Trust me, in Monterey County, there are plenty of affluent folks in agri-business who still loathe Chavez and the UFW. For them, the paid holiday is "political correctness run amok.")

But Chavez is personally important to me.   In 1987, he was one of the reasons I became a Catholic.  (He wasn’t the only reason: a great undergraduate seminar on patristic theology, where I read Augustine and Origen and Chrysostom, had an influence as well.)  But I wanted a church where social justice concerns mixed with a deep faith, and that was what I found at the Newman Center in Berkeley.  I was living in a co-op, and most of my friends were left-wing Latino Catholics (one of whom was regularly interning with the marvelous folks at California Rural Legal Assistance.)  Before I’d even heard of the Mennonites, and before I became an Episcopalian, I became enchanted with this blend of radical activism and Catholic piety.  My friends talked worshipfully of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta (whom I went to see speak on a couple of occasions.)   I haven’t read much about Chavez’s faith, but here’s a link to an article on the subject.  It jives with what my friends told me.

In 1988, Chavez went on a 36-day fast (at age 61) to protest unjust conditions in the table grape industry.  He made an explicit connection between the religious and social dimensions of fasting:

It is a fast for the purification of my own body, mind, and soul. The fast is also a heartfelt prayer for purification and strengthening for all those who work beside me in the farmworker movement. The fast is also an act of penance for those in positions of moral authority and for all men and women activists who know what is right and just, who know that they could and should do more. The fast is finally a declaration of non­cooperation with supermarkets who promote and sell and profit from California table grapes.

I fasted in solidarity with him.  For one day.  I knew I "could and should do more", and what I did at that time (I was at the height of my Catholicity) was pray the rosary for Chavez every day.  Even though I haven’t prayed the rosary in many years, whenever I think about it, I think about doing it for Cesar Chavez and for his cause.

And when I talk to folks about Cesar Chavez, I always emphasize his faith.  It’s a huge mistake to see him outside of the context of his passionate devotion to Christ and His church, just as it is a mistake to see Dr. King outside of the context of his commitment to Jesus.   And I’m hoping that my students reflect on why it is that they don’t have class on Thursday.

More on why I stay at All Saints

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 29, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena and Christianity
. 23 Comments

It’s early on a Tuesday morning, I’m almost done with a batch of grading, and looking forward to today’s lectures: birth control history at 8:50, Roman origins (and a summary of the Aeneid narrative) at 10:25, and "the Terror" and the Thermidorean Reaction at 1:00PM.  Reasonably familiar topics all, for a superficial generalist like myself, but it’s always helpful to brush up a bit.

I’m going to try and follow-up on yesterday’s post a bit.  In the comments, Swan asked:

…my question to Hugo is: Why do you stay with this "church" instead of going to a church with true Christian teaching AND where great things are done?
Do you think God will bring change to All Saints back to true Christianity through you?

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a woman who is very active in ministry at Pasadena’s conservative evangelical mega-church, Lake Avenue.  Lake is not affirming of women in the pastorate, but they don’t bar women from taking all sorts of other vital leadership roles.   She told me that on occasion, both at Lake and at other evangelical institutions, she was often the only woman in the room during leadership meetings who was not either a secretary or married to one of the pastors.  I asked her about this, and she immediately said "Better one token woman in leadership than no woman at all."  From what I gathered, she does believe men and women should hold equal roles in ministry, and yet she chooses to stay in a non-affirming church because she believes her witness to be vital.  She also knows that even if she is denied the pulpit, she can have considerable influence in other areas.  I honor her decision, and it is similar to my thinking about All Saints Pasadena.

As long-time readers of this blog know, I was once on the Vestry at All Saints.  I resigned in October 2002 and transferred my membership to Pasadena Mennonite Church.   I felt spiritually alienated from my fellow Vestry members (all of whom were lovely, delightful people, by the way).  I was tired of feeling like I was part of "the liberal Democratic party at prayer" rather than a counter-cultural, radical church.  The fact that our Vestry meetings were often catered wine and cheese affairs bothered me, especially when our plates and glasses were cleared by the church’s entirely Latino custodial staff.  (Combine my theology with my white guilt, and you see the problem.)  Above all, I was troubled by All Saints’ reluctance to proclaim Jesus as Lord, as Savior, as something more than just a wise leader of a first-century peace and justice movement. 

Mennonite theology was a perfect fit.  Well, sort of.   My experience with the Mennonites was illuminating and humbling.   I was enchanted with notions of pacifism, simplicity, and radical servanthood.  Then I realized just how demanding those things are in practice.   While I loved the often spirit-filled worship at PMC, and the emphasis on both Jesus and justice, I found myself (not surprisingly) troubled by the lack of diversity, particularly on sexual issues.  Without getting into details, I found that the gulf between my own experience and the life experience of most of those in leadership in PMC was vast.  (Hardly anyone at PMC had ever divorced, much less three times.)   At first, I found the congregational reluctance to discuss issues of sexuality to be refreshing (sometimes, it seems that’s all that ever gets talked about at All Saints!)  But as time changed, I found the universal and uncritical assumption about married heterosexuality to be overwhelming.  I found that my own values and those of the congregation were at odds. 

I’ve spent too much of my life as a "grass is greener on the other side" kind of guy.  I’ve hopped from marriage to marriage, from church to church, from political view to political view, from fashion to fashion.   I’ve gained a superficial acquaintance with a great many things, which allows me to converse reasonably knowledgeably with Pentecostals about getting "slain in the Spirit", with Catholic conservatives about my brief membership in Communion and Liberation,  and with folks in the fetish community about unusual kinds of body piercings.  But I’ve never put down roots anywhere, with anyone, except — by default — here at PCC, where I’ve taught for over a decade.

In 2004, I came back to All Saints and got engaged to my fiancee.  I’ve done a lot of work, work too personal to be blogged, on changing myself to become the kind of man who will be a devoted, patient, stable husband (and Lord willing, a father.)  My fiancee and I have a relationship of trust and devotion, proved over time and through trial, that has been unlike anything I’ve ever known.  As I learn what it means to be someone’s partner, someone’s soulmate, for the first time, I’m also learning what it means to stay in community.  I came back to All Saints not because I thought it was perfect but because it was home.  I realized that my search for the "just right" church would mean an endless, tiresome wandering.  It would mean leaving when things got boring or tough.   I’ve been there, done that, and moved on.  That kind of endless searching, so typical for folks today (especially here in SoCal), gets old. 

I’m staying at All Saints even when it infuriates me.  I stay because I love the church and its people.  I love them as a family that nurtures me and challenges me, even when I disagree with them.  I’m staying because of the youth group, filled as it is with all sorts of interesting boys and girls whom I adore and who help me to practice radical love and acceptance.  I’m staying because, to paraphrase my Lake Avenue friend, "Better one evangelical at All Saints than no evangelical at all." I don’t think I’m going to lead some kind of great revival at All Saints.  But as long as I am allowed to serve the youth, as long as I am allowed at the eucharistic table, I’m going to stay and worship and pray and fellowship in this flagship church of progressive Anglicanism.  I’m not going to be silent in my criticisms, but I’m not going to stalk off because the teaching from the pulpit doesn’t fit my own worldview.  I’m going to stay, and let my roots sink into the soil a bit.  I need a place to call home, however imperfect it may be.  And no place has ever welcomed me,  a very great sinner, like All Saints has. 

Making choices

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 28, 2005
in Teaching
. 15 Comments

I just had a rather unhappy young man in my office hours; I’ll call him Jeremy.   Jeremy is one of the brightest students in my ancient history course; he asks interesting questions and has done well on the one test we’ve had so far.  He’s a likeable fellow.

Jeremy is not happy with the way I teach my class.  He wants battles and politics, while my lectures are filled with social and cultural history.  Covering the Greeks, I spent as much time on Sappho as on the Peloponnesian War, and more time on Aristotle than on Pericles.   I make it clear to my students that I am more interested in the history of ideas than in the history of wars.  I’ve got sixteen weeks to get from prehistory to the Reformation — and that means lots of things are going to get left out.

Jeremy said, plaintively, "I think the siege of Potidea is more important than Sappho."  I told him I sympathized with, but did not share, his perspective.  I told him I’d love to be able to cover everything in sixteen weeks, but that time constraints force me to make what are entirely subjective (but ultimately defensible) decisions.  And I choose to emphasize religious, social and cultural history at the expense of military, political, and economic narratives.   In teaching the past, there’s so much more to say than can ever be said in one class or one semester.  Good teachers prioritize, sifting and picking and choosing and deciding.  Some things get lost.  And in my class, you’re going to miss out on many a battle, but you’re going to get plenty on women and plenty on the divine.  And I’ll happily defend those judgment calls.

Small annoyance

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 28, 2005
in Feminism and Sports
. 5 Comments

I’m annoyed with the Los Angeles Times and other sports-news outlets, all of which are reporting that Coach Rick Pitino of Louisville has become "the first NCAA basketball coach to reach the Final Four with three schools" (Louisville, Kentucky, and Providence.)

Sigh.  Vivian Stringer of Rutgers achieved that distinction years ago, leading Cheyney State to the women’s Final Four in 1982, Iowa in 1993, and Rutgers in 2000.  Is it too much to ask that folks put the adjective "men’s" before the plaudits for Pitino?

Peeps and a simple-minded attachment to atonement theory

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 28, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, Movies and Politics
. 35 Comments

I’m sitting in my office on this Easter Monday morning a stack of ungraded journals by my side.  We spent Saturday and Sunday with my father up in Santa Barbara, marking both his 70th and the resurrection of our Lord.  In honor of these two important events, I ate far more than was necessary, and I have that vaguely queasy feeling in my tummy this morning.

It’s not Easter without an egg hunt, and my beloved and I hid three dozen plastic eggs around my father’s garden yesterday morning.  The rest of the family hunted with varying degrees of enthusiasm, with relatively few complaints from the shorter folk about my nasty propensity to wedge the goodies high up in trees.  Once all 36 eggs had been found, our group shared the bounty together.  It was discovered that few save your reporter were fond of marshmallow peeps.  Thus I ate far more than my share, and this might explain my shakiness this morning.

I am also proud to report that, egged on by my sister, a number of us (including my father), braved the frigid waters of the Pacific off Henry’s Beach yesterday afternoon.   I felt very proud.

I did enjoy the long Good Friday service at All Saints.  Three hours is a bit long to sit in church, I realize, but I was struck by how many people were only able to attend for a portion of the liturgy.  I’m hoping that they all had work or family commitments that kept them from sitting vigil for three hours; I wouldn’t like to think that most of my fellow Episcopalians just don’t have the endurance to remain focused for that long. 

I think it’s hard for progressive Christians to focus on Good Friday.   The desire to rush ahead to Easter morning is overwhelming.  This seemed especially true for our rector, my friend Ed Bacon, during his brief homily on Friday afternoon.  Let me say for the record that I do love Ed.  He’s one of the reasons I came to All Saints, and I do think he often preaches prophetically (I know, an overused adverb among liberal Christians, but hey, it’s accurate).  Still, I’m sorry that he chose the course he did in his short sermon.  He began with an attack on traditional Christian atonement theory and last year’s Mel Gibson movie, saying that he had found the Passion of the Christ to be, and I quote very much in context, "disgusting."  Ed wasn’t just angry at the violence of the film (which I found a bit overwhelming myself) but the theology behind it.  Like most contemporary liberal Christians, Ed finds the idea that Jesus died to "pay for our sins" to be offensive, and he let us know that in the strongest possible terms. Even more unfortunately, my friend Ed then connected atonement theory to the rising power of what he called the "far right-wing theocracy", offering the recently piece of Terri Schiavo legislation as evidence.  (If you’re having trouble following that, trust me, so was I in the pew.)

Sometimes it’s very hard to be a theologically conservative evangelical with a left-wing world view.  As I listened to Ed last week, I squirmed uncomfortably.  When I first became a Christian, the defining feature of my spiritual experience was the stunning, overwhelming awareness that Jesus had died for me.   One of my cousins, who is very religiously conservative, told me, just before I accepted Christ,  that she had been praying for me daily for more than a decade.  She told me "Hugo, when Jesus was dying on the cross, He was thinking about you."  The first time she told me that, I excused myself from a family party, went into the bathroom, and burst into tears. 

My belief in the atonement was reinforced through prayer and simple experiences. I knew how to poke holes in atonement theory.  Heck, I had to slog through St Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo in Latin when I was in grad school, and wrote a typically snide paper about the influence of feudal law on theology.  I can spout all the feminist critiques of the theory as well, about the problems of "blood sacrifice theology" and the "sacramentalization of violence."   Been there, read that, said that.  But I’ve got to say, in my heart, I’m a very, very childlike guy.  To put it bluntly, my own theology owes more to the likes of Jennifer Knapp and Lee Strobel than it does to a Niebuhr, a Yoder, or a Duns Scotus!   I may have Ph.D. after my name, but my faith is, I admit with a wince, remarkably anti-intellectual. 

I first came to love Jesus because He died for me, not because some progressive preacher told me that he "successfully embodied a radical new ethic of inclusiveness and community"!.   The notion that Jesus was just a man who lived a remarkable life of peace-making and justice, a wonderful role model and no more — that’s not a faith that changes lives. It sure as heck wouldn’t have changed mine. 

I’m aware that this "Jesus died for me" theology is, when unaccompanied by the call to action,  self-centered to the point of narcissism.   And yet without it,  I know that I don’t have the power to do whatever small good things I am able to do.  Whatever small amount of good work I am able to do with my students and with my youth group stems from the absolute certainty that Jesus shed His blood for me, as He shed His blood for countless others.  Despite the violence of Mel Gibson’s movie, I loved it because it made me newly, viscerally aware of the suffering Christ endured for me.  I did cry, quite a bit, and I walked out of that theater feeling humbled and loved and extraordinarily grateful.    The pope may or may not have said "It is as it was" in response to seeing the film — but for me, when I saw it, it was all that I had imagined and more.  It added powerfully to my Easter experience last year, and will continue to do so for years to come.  But it didn’t contradict my commitment to the idea that Jesus wants us to do justice in this life!  And I see no reason why the theology of the atonement ought to be associated with conservative positions on a whole host of economic and social issues.

One of the reasons I like this blog is because I can put into writing what I am unable to defend intellectually.  I’m not interested in offering up an apologetic treatise on the atonement theory. I’m simply sharing how vitally important it is to me, and how painful it is to have this central facet of my simple faith attacked in the church that I love.   

By the way, if you’re willing to pay a small fee, the best defense of the atonement theory against its critics comes from another man I am proud to call a friend, Fuller Seminary President Richard Mouw.  Mouw, incidentally, was once a former student of my father’s at the University of Alberta…

I must get to some grading.

‘Till Monday

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 25, 2005
in Blogging
. 3 Comments

Lots of good comments to respond to, but that will all have to wait until next week.  Today is Good Friday, and not a day for blogging.  We’ll spend three hours this afternoon at the Vigil at All Saints, and be happily (and prayerfully) incommunicado over the weekend.

Happy Easter, Happy Purim, and so forth.

Blog changes, tampax, and teaching the body

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2005
in Body, Feminism, Sexuality and Teaching
. 39 Comments

I’ve been tinkering this week with the layout of the blog.  Let me know if this is an improvement or not.

I spent an hour and fifteen minutes in Tuesday’s Women’s Studies class lecturing  on masturbation, menstruation, and tampons.  (If that don’t got your attention, don’t know what will!)

As I’ve written before, much of my Women’s History course focuses on shifting attitudes towards American women’s bodies.  Tuesday, we spent a fair amount of time reviewing the 19th century panic about women’s sexuality (spurred by the medical "discovery" of the clitoris by the medical profession). I blogged a year ago about some of the unhappy consequences of this panic over young women’s masturbation.

We then connected to this to the history of, of all things, the tampon.  The modern tampon was patented in 1931 by a Dr. Earle Haas, who later sold the patent to what would become the Tampax company.  The first commercially marketed tampons appeared on the market five years later.

What does this have to do with women’s sexuality?  One thing is at least anecdotally evident:  cultural background and openness about sexuality seems to play a critical role in whether or not young women begin to use tampons soon after menarche.  My Asian and Latina students (who comprise two-thirds of my female students) are extremely unlikely to have been encouraged to use tampons when they began to menstruate.  Most tell stories of mothers who insisted on pads, often claiming that the tampon was only to be used by women who had lost their virginity.  One gal shared that she began to use tampons when she was on the her high school dance team where the uniforms made them essential; she told of the horrified and amazed reactions of her friends, who were entirely Hispanic.  At the same time, "white girls" seemed much more likely to use tampons in early to mid-adolescence.  Many of these students are stunned when they hear the myths that their classmates from more culturally conservative backgrounds were raised with. 

This jives with the info in this 2000 Wall Street Journal article.  According to company figures:

While about 70% of women in the U.S., Canada and much of Western Europe use tampons, usage falls to the single digits in a handful of countries such as Japan and Spain, and it’s not even measurable in much of the world. Just 2% of women in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, use tampons.

Those figures seem to match the ethnic disparity I see in my classroom. 

Religious and cultural taboos are a hurdle: There is a persistent myth in many countries, for example, that if a girl uses a tampon, she might lose her virginity. "Everywhere we go, women say `this is not for senoritas,’ " says Silvia Davila, P&G’s marketing director for Tampax Latin America. They’re using the Spanish word for unmarried women as a modest expression for young virgins.

This concern crops up in countries that are predominantly Catholic, executives say. In Italy, for instance, just 4% of women use tampons. The Roman Catholic Church says it has no official position on tampons. Nonetheless, some priests have spoken out against the product, associating it with birth control and sexual activities that are forbidden by the Church. Indeed, Tampax faced objections from priests in the U.S. when it introduced tampons in 1936.

In many countries, women aren’t accustomed to spending on themselves, particularly for something they’ll throw out — and that costs a bit more than pads. Women must also understand their bodies to use a tampon. P&G is finding that in countries where school health education is limited, that understanding is hard won. P&G marketers say they often find open boxes of tampons in stores — a sign, P&G says, that women were curious about the product but unsure as to how it worked. (Bold emphasis is mine).

What I argue in my course is that tampon acceptance is linked to broader issues of acceptance of women’s bodies.  The real threat of the tampon is not that it will take a girl’s virginity!  Rather, it’s that a woman who learns how to use it must of necessity gain some knowledge of how she works "down there."    Denying young girls access to tampons is a small but tangible way of keeping them ignorant of their own bodies. In that sense, I argue, cultural hostility to tampons can be linked to cultural hostility to female masturbation.   When a woman uses a tampon, she rejects the idea that her body is something of whose processes she ought to be unaware; when she masturbates, she discovers not only pleasure, she discovers that her body truly belongs to her.

I’m always careful to check in on the comfort level my students have when we talk about these things.  Discussion of masturbation and menstruation, clitorises and tampons can be overwhelming in any setting, even more so with a male college professor leading the class.  But by God, it’s necessary!  One young woman wrote in her journal this week:  "It was a very interesting discussion.  I didn’t know we had a clitoris, or knew it was a word.   I think it’s a good thing to talk about."  (Emphasis mine.)  She’s not the first to write something like that.  Remember, these are college students, but they come from many different backgrounds and many parts of the world.

I try and choose my words carefully.  I don’t make assumptions or give direction to my students as to what they ought to do.  What kind of sanitary products to use, and whether to masturbate or not, are, of course highly personal decisions that should be made without professorial suggestion. Choosing a tampon over a pad is not an inherently feminist act.  One could also be a feminist and choose not to masturbate for spiritual reasons, a point I acknowledge. But ignorance and shame are never, ever congruent with the spirit of feminism.  They are the twin evils that we are struggling against.

But whatever our spiritual orientations, it’s vital in gender studies that we teach the history of the body.   It’s equally vital that we challenge our students’ cultural and sexual assumptions, even if, on occasion, we need to acknowledge some embarrassment when we do so.  (I always say it’s okay to laugh and it’s okay to blush.)  Above all, I want my students to continue the conversations that we begin in class with their friends and with their family members.  On topics so sensitive (pun intended), the best discussions will happen in more intimate settings than the classroom.  It’s my fervent hope that what we do in the class will stimulate many good cross-generational, cross-ethnic talks among women — and men.

The relief of the verdict in the OC Rape Case

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2005
in Aggression and violence, Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexual harassment, Sexuality and Youth
. 6 Comments

Sheelzebub has been doing a fine job of blogging the retrial in the now-infamous Orange County gang-rape case.  I haven’t posted about it, but I was quite relieved yesterday when I heard that the three defendants were convicted of sexual assault.  (For the background and history of this case, see the Orange County Weekly’s archive of stories.  It’s grim and tawdry reading, I’m afraid.)

Feminists have long complained that rape victims are forced to defend their character in court.  I’d like to be able to tell my students and my youth group kids that the days when defense attorneys asked rape victims if they were "asking for it" or were "sluts" are long over. Alas, as the many stories in the OC Weekly make clear, the teenage survivor in this case was subjected to the most appalling personal attacks by the defense attorneys.  Last summer, in the first trial in this case, the slurs worked; 11 of 12 jurors voted to acquit the three rapists.  This time, the prosecution took on a more aggressive pro-feminist sensibility, one that argued explicitly for the rights of all women, including the promiscuous and the addicted.  I am so happy to say today that this time, the jury rejected the defense attacks and chose to defend all victims of rape, regardless of their sexual histories.

No one denies that Jane Doe (who was 16 at the time of the gang-rape) was and is a troubled young woman.  She has stipulated to her own history of promiscuity and addiction, and she currently faces charges of methamphetamine possession.  Faced with the overwhelming evidence provided by the videotape of the rape, attorneys for the three men accused of the assault made Jane Doe’s past (and her integrity) the central issue in this case.  They called her every name in the book, and dwelt with disturbing eagerness on her sexual history.  Happily it didn’t work, and much of the credit must go to the prosecution, which wittingly or no, struck a real blow for women’s rights. 

Here’s a powerful description of part of the closing argument in the case:

…prosecutor Chuck Middleton, the chief assistant DA, made his final remarks to jurors. He displayed a simple chart that read:

Prostitute
Teacher
Stripper
Mother
Daughter
Lawyer
Nun
Slut
Virgin
Sister
Porn Star

”All these people have the same rights no matter what their sexual history is,” said Middleton. “Each of them can be a sexual-assault victim under the law which governs this case. Even if payment had been exchanged for sex, all bets are off once that person passes out and cannot consciously consider whether she wants to have sex or withdraw consent. The law does not allow the assumption that a woman’s sexual history renders her body an object which can be used and abused for another person’s sexual, criminal gratification.

For using that chart, Middleton gets to be my pro-feminist male hero of the week.

I’ve worked with some fairly troubled teenage girls.  I’ve known some who, by their own admission, have led lives not dissimilar from Jane Doe’s.  Some have endured similar assaults, but were left with only physical pain and foggy memories, but no videotaped proof of what was done to them.  I can think of one young woman in particular whom I know quite well.  I’ll call her "Kala." She’s 16, the same age as the survivor in this case.  Kala’s got a "reputation", one that may be somewhat exaggerated by her "friends", but as she herself admits quite openly, is also partially deserved.  Her problems with substances and with boys have led to more than one intervention, but Kala has not yet pulled out of her downward spiral.    And yet all of Kala’s poor choices, and all the names thrown at her, do not for a minute rob her of her right to be seen as a human being, a child of God, worthy of dignity and protection.  Knowing what Kala gets up to, many of the adults in her life fear for her, aware that we can only do so much to protect her.  We know that what happened to Jane Doe can happen to her.  But if it were (God forbid) to happen to her, we also know that her poor judgment would not for a minute mitigate the guilt of those who would abuse her if she were incapacitated and defenseless.  In a small way, this verdict makes me feel that the Kalas of the world are just a bit safer today.

What cheers me most about the verdict is that it sends the message that all young women, even those who are derided as "tramps" and "sluts", are worthy of the law’s protection.  The wise jurors in this case, guided by a strong (and in many ways, pro-feminist) prosecution chose to defend the dignity of all women, even those whose sexual decision-making offends popular sensibilities.  I’m very pleased.

Thursday Short Poem — Zagajewski’s Self-Portrait

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2005
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

I had fully expected to put up a poem with an Easter theme this week.  I read through several candidates, but none had appeal.  But I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad, whose 70th birthday party will be on Saturday.  My Austrian-born, English-raised father is today one of my dearest friends and heroes.  I love him very much, and cannot imagine teaching the course I do on men and masculinity without his loving influence.  (Just as my mother inspired me on my pro-feminist journey.) 

I think of my Dad when I think of this poem because he is  a gentle, cello-playing philosopher with a fondness for coins and art museums — all themes that Adam Zagajewski (can you tell I love Polish poets?) touches upon in this gorgeous Self Portrait.

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers–but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor’s profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I’m no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars 


and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife’s face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don’t know.
I’m truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that–so far–
belongs to me.

A haiku for Bobby Knight

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 23, 2005
in People, Poetry and Sports
. 12 Comments

I am frustratingly busy on this Wednesday afternoon with various papers and journals to grade.  I only have time to confess that in a most surprising way, I am a huge fan of Texas Tech Red Raider (and former Indiana) head coach Bobby Knight.  I’ve been an admirer for over twenty years; I was hooked after I watched his Hoosiers win the 1987 national title.  For all his anger and "old school" methods, he has a remarkable charm and humanity that I find endearing. 

As strange as it may sound from a pro-feminist gender studies liberal, if I had a son, I’d be thrilled to send him off to play for Coach Knight.   Is it because I secretly am enchanted with the harsh discipline and mystique of gruff masculinity that surrounds him?  Possibly.  Or maybe I just appreciate a man of so many apparent contradictions, a man whose cantankerousness is matched by his legendary generosity, whose bile is matched by his brilliance.

So as I am wont to do, I wrote a haiku for him which I originally posted on Annika’s website.

Rage now, Red Raider
Prolong winter’s game to spring
Glory o’ercomes bile.

I originally had it as overcomes, somehow thinking that that word had but two syllables; Annika suggested the archaic "o’ercomes" as a compromise.  I could also use "conquers" instead.

I really need to get back to grading.

Liberty, Falwell, and the embarrassment of being in the same body

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 23, 2005
in Body, Christianity, Politics and Sports
. 24 Comments

Once again, it poured on Pasadena yesterday afternoon.  My hopes for a leisurely run at the Rose Bowl dashed, I decided to run on the treadmill at the gym.  (Sometimes, the thought of running in a downpour is more appealing than others.)  I was reminded at once of why I loathe doing cardio workouts indoors.  The first factor to overcome is the tremendous boredom; 40 minutes on a treadmill feels like 2 hours on the trails.  My short attention span needs new and different things to look at; at 24 Hour Fitness, all I could do was watch the local news broadcast on the club’s giant televisions and marvel at just how poorly the show was captioned for the hearing-impaired. 

I’m also someone who sweats profusely, and I run in constant anxiety that with every stride, I am spraying those nice folks trying to work out around me.  Sigh. I’ll be out on the road this afternoon, come rain or hail or shine.

I did make it home in time to see the second half of the women’s basketball game between DePaul and Liberty University.  I confess, I was rooting madly for the Liberty Flames.  I love underdogs, and Liberty was seeded 13th in their regional while DePaul was seeded 5th.  On the other hand, as ESPN’s cameras reminded us constantly, Liberty is Jerry Falwell’s university.   Falwell sat near his team, beaming as his Flames pulled off the exciting upset.

As a self-described progressive evangelical, I’ve had to do a lot of praying for Brother Jerry over the years.  I don’t know why, but I find him harder to like than any other figure on the Christian Right, Pat Robertson included.   Perhaps based on the history of my own faith journey, I am more sympathetic to Pentecostals like Robertson than strict Baptists like Falwell; there’s something about charismatics that suggests fallibility and humanity.  (The stories of the internecine battles between Falwell and Robertson are legendary; they are uneasy allies at best.)  Falwell always strikes me as unappealingly smug.

Still, there’s little denying the remarkable job he has done at Liberty (which he founded in 1971), building it single-handedly into a medium-sized university with a slowly rising reputation.  Mind you, Liberty is a long way from being considered in the same breath with the older, smaller stars of evangelical higher education like Calvin, Wheaton, and Westmont.  Then again, Liberty has a far more aggressive mission than those more intellectually-inclined campuses.  Liberty’s doctrinal statement is far more theologically conservative than at other Christian schools, reflecting the far right-wing of the Baptist tradition.  And in a list of Liberty’s distinctives, Falwell makes it clear that Liberty has a very obvious political agenda.  He writes that his school is different from all others because it has:

An uncompromising doctrinal statement, based upon an inerrant Bible, a Christian worldview beginning with belief in biblical Creationism, an eschatological belief in the pre-millennial, pre-tribulational coming of Christ for all of His Church, dedication to world evangelization, an absolute repudiation of “political correctness,” a strong commitment to political conservatism, total rejection of socialism, and firm support for America’s economic system of free enterprise.

Yup, the Gospel rings with the defense of America’s economic system of free enterprise.  It’s just that the silly folks at other evangelical seminaries (not to mention the Catholics and the Mainlines) haven’t been able to do the proper textual exegesis to discover what Brother Jerry and his students know in their hearts to be true.

But I know that part of me likes to poke fun at Falwell because frankly, he embarrasses me.  As an evangelical surrounded by folks more liberal on theological and cultural issues than myself, I find myself constantly lumped together with him.  (If I had a dollar for every time a non-believer has said, "Hugo, now you’re sounding like Falwell", I could afford, well, a nice dinner out for my fiancee and myself.)  I don’t like his style, I don’t like his politics, and I think he misreads Scripture and gives other evangelicals a bad name in the public sphere.  But I also recognize that this embarrassment is, at least partially, my own sinful pride at work.  I don’t want other folks to think I’m at all like Jerry Falwell because I think my views are subtler, more compassionate, more evolved, and frankly, more congruent with the spirit of Christ than his.  That’s arrogance and hubris, and it’s something I need to cop to and for which I need to repent.  Paul tells us that the body of Christ is a unit made up of many parts.  The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you."  And though it is hard for me to believe sometimes, progressive Christians cannot say to a Jerry Falwell, we don’t need you.  Sometimes I have my own uncharitable suspicions as to which part of the body of Christ Falwell represents, but I know that he and I and our churches share the same God, often pray the same prayers, and are struggling to discern divine will in our lives.

So as part of my repentance, I rooted hard for the Flames.  They played magnificently, led by the tremendously talented 6′8" senior center, Katie Feenstra.  (Is it awful of me to worry about how a young woman that tall, and presumably without a huge income, affords nice clothes in her size?)  Feenstra dominated DePaul, and I predict will give #1-ranked LSU fits in the next round of the tournament.   Though I doubt that Liberty will be able to beat the best team in the nation, despite (and perhaps now because of) my own issues with their chancellor and founder, I’ll be rooting madly for the Flames in the Sweet Sixteen.