Archive for March, 2005

Taking down the album, and another follow-up

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2005
in Older Men & Younger Women, Photos, Science, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

Dylan wrote beneath my Monday post on the fast that she was concerned about my publicly posting pictures of All Saints teens.  As she suggested might be the case, our church does indeed have a policy against publishing photographs of our teens, and I have hidden the album that had been up since Monday. (For the youth group kids, you can still email me and I’ll send them to you directly.)  Just when I think I know all there is to know about youth work, I find out something new.  Thanks, Dylan, for raising the issue! 

In the comments below this post we have gotten sidetracked into a discussion of what is "natural", and I’ve been forced to admit that when it comes to the discussion of the biological explanations for earlier adolescent development, I am at a loss. It’s also unfortunate, because I agree with what most of the commenters are saying, which is that we have to do as much as possible to address the social factors that lead to the early sexualization of adolescents.

It’s a busy day, and so I don’t have much time to work up a good post.   I am reminded, just from the comments section, of how many very young women experience being objectified by much older men.  The stories the commenters relate match those I hear from my students.  We have a culture that celebrates the erotic potential of those still in puberty, and sees children as appropriate fodder for male fantasy (and in the worst cases, male action.)  It’s absurd to place the blame on either girls’ bodies or the fashions they wear without challenging men to change the way in which they respond to the young and the vulnerable.

I don’t know how to work with pedophiles.  I’m not trained for it.  Those folks require a specialized kind of care that most men’s movement activists cannot provide.  But I do know how to work with "normal guys" who might find themselves responding with sexual arousal to teenage girls.  It’s these men, fellows whose conscience is alive and well, who can be reached.   It’s those men I’m interested in targeting and challenging.  I’m not asking them to deny their sexual responses; I’m asking them to channel those urges towards more appropriate outlets.  On a basic level, that means working to help men "de-eroticize"adolescents and helping them to respond enthusiastically (with arousal and desire) to adult women whose agency and maturity matches their own.  (Ideally, of course, that sexual energy — even in thought — would be devoted almost entirely to their partner.)  Beyond peer-to-peer mentoring and prayer, I don’t quite know how to accomplish that.  But I am damn sure it’s a worthy goal!

More another time.

Thursday search term update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2005
in Blogging
. 6 Comments

Folks have arrived here in the past hour with the following queries:

a man that wears a bra full-time

statistics on what cases men and women lawyers receive

habitat fuller sexual misconduct

olds sex without love

male adolescent erections when examined by a female doctor

poem about distance

calling England from the us

anorexia awareness day

college men’s porn addicton

espn hottest male

and three more people looking for chinchilla coats.  Sigh.  How come no one ever comes looking for Mennoscopalian pro-feminists?

Clarification

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2005
in Christianity, Feminism, Having children and Marriage
. 21 Comments

I have nothing positive to say about last night’s Colombia-USA friendly.  To be fair, the South Americans had their "B" team on the field, but apparently some of the top Yanks were absent as well.  The USA played superbly; in all my years of watching them, I’ve never seen the Americans so crisp and fast and focused.  Honestly, Colombia was lucky that the score wasn’t worse than 3-0, USA.  Still, we had fun, though it was a bit odd to have an international match played in a run-down old football stadium in far-off Fullerton.

Perhaps rightly, I’ve been taking some heat (particularly at Amanda’s place and from her commenters) over this sentence from Tuesday’s post:

I’ll catch some flak for this, but in my opinion one of the greatest gifts a  husband can give his wife is the freedom to choose to what degree she wishes to remain in the public sphere after they’ve had children.

Deja Pseu wrote:

Aside from the economic limitations and the inherent privilege indicated here, there’s the idea that a wife’s "freedom to choose" is something that resides with the husband, which is his to give or withhold. *That* bugs the living crap outta me.

Well, put that way, the idea causes me similar distress — and was not what I intended to convey.  Let me see if I can clarify.

Biology necessitates that women, rather than men, give birth.  (Even the most ardent anti-essentialists will presumably make that concession.)  Few would argue that the burden of pregnancy is borne equally by men and women.  Even after birth, assuming that a mother is interested in breast-feeding (among other things), she is better equipped biologically to care for her newborn.  As time passes, of course, her "advantages" (or burdens, depending on your perspective) decrease to the point where all of the tasks of nurturing and caring for a child might be equally well-performed by a father.

In more families than not, it is going to be preferable to have the mother work as the primary care-giver for very small children.  This may be because of cultural pressures; it may be because of innate preferences, it may be some combination of the two.  Each couple will have to work this out for themselves, of course.  Some may choose a counter-cultural approach in which the male partner assumes the primary care-giving role.  I certainly have no problem with that!

My concern is with the attitudes that so many men bring to fatherhood.  Far too many men — we don’t have to look far for this — still refuse to take an equal role in parenting their children and performing other domestic tasks. I think my generation of fellas is getting considerably better at this, but both hard evidence and anecdotal observation tends to suggest we males have a ways to go. 

But back to my inflammatory sentence.  Folks, I ought to have made it clear that my views came out of a Christian perspective.  As I’ve written before, I’m convinced that Ephesians 5:21 is the greatest sentence in Scripture on marriage:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

From the standpoint of radical mutual submission, marriage is the willing and voluntary surrender of one’s freedom to one’s spouse.  Spouses become, in a very real sense, guardians and defenders of each other, each with claims on the other’s time and effort and flesh.  Paul writes elsewhere:

The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

(It’s amazing how many folks, conservative Christians and secular progressives, fail to reflect on the radicalness of the second sentence in that passage.)

To me, this is about much more than the expectation of sexual fulfillment. It’s about a life of mutual self-sacrifice.  Frankly, looking at the way in which household chores and child-rearing duties have historically been divided, I don’t think we fellas have been pulling our weight.  We’ve demanded submission without offering it in return; we’ve asserted ownership rights over our wives without humbly offering our bodies and our lives in service in return.   Husbands and wives do guard each other’s freedom, I think — and we give each other a gift when we make it possible for the other to both be an effective parent and an active participant in the outside world. 

I’m not claiming to be an expert on marriage.  Three divorces leave me with little claim to expertise in maintaining successful relationships!  (The California legal system, on the other hand, is more familiar.)  But since my last divorce my sense of what marriage is has continued to grow and change.  I am convinced that both men and women are equally called to serve their partners.  And though each ought to surrender his or her freedom to the other, each ought to be willing to "give back" what has been given to them. It was in that spirit that I wrote the offending sentence, and in that spirit that I defend it.

I’m not sure that even the Christians among my readers, much less my secular feminist and Men’s Rights critics, will have much to agree with here.

Thursday Short Poem: Wilbur’s “Patriot’s Day”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2005
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

I’m posting another running-themed poem for Short Poem Thursday.  It’s a favorite of my mother’s as well.  I’ve mentioned before how much I like Richard Wilbur (he’s my second-favorite living American male poet after Merwin).  The Kelley he mentions is the famed Johnny Kelley, who ran the Boston Marathon (always run on Patriot’s Day Monday) 61 times, winning twice and finishing second on 7 different occasions.

Patriots’ Day
    
Restless that noble day, appeased by soft
Drinks and tobacco, littering the grass
While the flag snapped and brightened far aloft,
We waited for the marathon to pass,

We fathers and our little sons, let out
Of school and office to be put to shame.
Now from the street-side someone raised a shout,
And into view the first small runners came.

Dark in the glare, they seemed to thresh in place
Like preening flies upon a window sill,
Yet gained and grew, and at a cruel pace
Swept by us on their way to Heartbreak Hill -

Legs driving, fists at port, clenched faces, men,
And in amongst them, stamping on the sun,
Our champion Kelley, who would win again,
Rocked in his will, at rest within his run.

You’ve gotta love the image of "stamping on the sun."  And the last line works better read aloud if you make the word "rocked" into two syllables.  In my tougher workouts, I often remind myself to be at rest within my run.

Colombian football, menarche, and the need for fearless father figures

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 9, 2005
in Colombia, Family, Feminism, Sexuality and Youth
. 43 Comments

It’s another busy morning, and I’m running late.  My beloved and I went for our last bike ride before Saturday’s Solvang Century early today; I’m still thinking I may opt to just play it safe and ride the 50-miler.  I need to amp up my running as I get ready for June’s Rock n’ Roll marathon in San Diego.

Tonight, we’re off to Cal State Fullerton to watch the USA-Colombia soccer friendly.  My fiancee and I are taking her Colombian-born mother as a birthday present.  (Have I mentioned how much I love soccer?) We’ll all, naturally, be rooting for the South Americans.  I’ll be decked out in my Atletico Nacional kit.  My fiancee’s family is Afro-Colombian from the northern coastal regions of Colombia; AN is the favored team of the costenos…

In my post last night, I mentioned lecturing on the subject of menarche, or first menstruation.  (First off, folks, it’s a Greek word, not a French one. I run into people who say "menarsh" as if it’s French; it’s pronounced "men-archy".  Sheesh.)  The point that many body historians, chiefly Joan Brumberg, have made is that we cannot underestimate the importance of the drop in average age of menarche that took place over the course of the 20th century.  At the turn of the last century, American girls began to menstruate sometime between 16 and 17 (on average); today, they begin sometime between 11-12.  (There is some evidence that African-American and Latina girls begin earlier than white and Asian youth.)

Feminists rightly tend to see the sexual objectification of women as a cultural phenomenon rather than a biological inevitability.  Any feminist or pro-feminist worth her or his salt is quick to point out the deleterious effects of consumer culture and the media on girls’ self-esteem.  But we have to remember that social forces interact with biology — and the fact that American girls hit puberty an average of four to five years earlier than their great-grandmothers did has immense consequences for which the culture alone cannot be held responsible.  It’s obvious that 16 and 17 year-olds, in any culture, are going to be mentally more mature than 11 and 12 year-olds.   In an earlier time, physical adolescence was, I argue, far better matched to emotional development.

Obviously, different girls develop at different rates.  As most teens will tell you, it’s as upsetting to be "later" than all your friends as it is to be "earlier".   Teenagers of both sexes generally want to be right in the middle, and of course, statistically speaking, few are.  I often ask my students in women’s history courses about what it would be like if girls developed four to five years later than they do now.  Without exception, every one seems to agree that it would be marvelous indeed.  "We’d have so many more years to just be kids", they say; "We could stay innocent so much longer."  "My friendships with other girls would be so much better with so much less competition."  These are the sorts of comments I frequently hear in my classes.

Obviously, we can’t undo the biological changes of the past century easily.  (Though if we fed our kids less animal protein, it might be a start.)  But I do think we have to be prepared to accept that the self-esteem crisis among adolescent girls (so well-documented by Mary Pipher and others) is not merely a function of crushing and conflicting cultural messages.  (Though Heaven knows those messages do their damage.)  It is also a result of increasingly early puberty for which our sisters and daughters are naturally ill-prepared.   Thus I think a feminist concern for girls must be marked by particular attention to the impact of early puberty on girls who are much younger at menarche than it seems that nature intended.

Parents, educators, and youth workers need to be much more aggressive about resisting the sexualization of girls in early adolescence. (Of course, I’d be happy if we did a better job of fighting the objectification of women of all ages, but I am particularly concerned for the very young and vulnerable.) 

Fathers — and other male authority figures, like youth group leaders — also have a vital role to play.  Too often, I hear stories from young girls about fathers who began to distance themselves at the precise moment that they hit puberty.  (It’s an old story: when Dad sees his daughter developing breasts and hips, he is forced to confront the reality of his child’s sexuality. For too many men, that is so uncomfortable that they end up withdrawing their attention and affection — or, alternatively they end up becoming hyper-vigilant and critical.  Both approaches harm their daughters.)   Young girls desperately need older male figures (ideally, but not necessarily their fathers) who will give them immense amounts of love and non-sexual validation as they go through the early stages of puberty.  Good male figures will not, of course, respond sexually to these girls.  Neither will they seek to deny the changes their daughters are undergoing by frantically covering up and controlling them.  Above all, they won’t withdraw their love and affection because they are bewildered and overwhelmed by their daughter’s transformation.   Though pubescent girls need the love and support of older women every bit as much, I’m convinced the need for safe, nurturing, and fearless adult male support is absolutely vital. 

I’ve talked about this issue with a few of my friends who are fathers of daughters.  We’re thinking of doing a workshop someday for Dads of Daughters at All Saints on just this topic.

I must prepare for class.  Viva Colombia!

A short post wherein Hugo reveals his Luddite tendencies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2005
in Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 36 Comments

Warning:  this post may be less restrained than some (and I might even swear).  I’m not unhappy, just in a kind of ornery mood.  (It might be because I’m sitting here in my sweat.  I went running at the Rose Bowl tonight for over an hour, came home and found that a water main had broken up the street.  No shower for me.  If it isn’t fixed soon, I’ll have to make a late night trip to the gym in order to bathe.)

Today, we had our monthly noon Social Sciences Division faculty meeting.  As usual, I stayed quiet, though I perked up a bit during a brief discussion of the new Internet filters.  (All of my colleagues are adamantly opposed.)

But then we launched into another discussion about creating "smart classrooms."  This has nothing to do with real teaching, mind you.  A "smart classroom" is one filled with all sorts of technological gizmos:  DVD players, wireless Internet access, various modern projectors, and lots of something called Power Point.  I am now convinced I am the only tenured professor in America under 40 who has no idea what Power Point is.  To me, it sounds like a basketball term (wasn’t Magic Johnson kind of a "power point" guard at 6′9"?).  Anyhow, my colleagues all seem to be busy showing videos (or DVDs) and creating fancy Power Point projects for their classes.  It all sounds dreadfully dull, and I’m just not interested.

I show — maybe — one or two videos a year.  When I first started teaching, I showed a lot of them — largely because I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough to say.  Now, God help me and my students, I have plenty to say.  I know damn well that my students spend enough time interacting with technology outside school; the last thing they need is to sit mutely in front of a TV screen.  I’m not saying that videos don’t have their place — in an art history class, I would imagine that they would be essential, but too often I think they (and all the other fancy-shmancy stuff) are just cover-ups for mediocre teaching.

I am sick and tired of having folks with doctorates in education (Lord help us) tell me that "lecturing is an outdated teaching style."  Well, it’s still a damned effective teaching style if it’s done well.  I put a lot of time and energy into crafting articulate, interesting, lectures, largely because I believe that for most students, it remains the most effective and memorable way to learn.   I do invite discussion and debate in some of my classes, and I welcome questions — but I cling tenaciously to the old-school notion that my job is to be an interesting, compelling, and provocative deliverer of information.   (And along the way, raise up young feminists and pro-feminists.)

The content of the information varies:  today, at 8:50AM, I lectured on the 20th century  drop in age of menarche (from over 16 to under 12), and its impact on American girlhood.   At 10:25, I lectured on the concept of arete and the relationship between Hector and Andromache.  And at 1:00PM, it was time for Charles II, James II, and the Glorious Revolution.  (Ya gotta love the community colleges with the breadth and diversity of the teaching loads!)  Especially with the first topic, I invited questions and discussion.  It’s vital that mine not be the only voice heard in the classroom, especially in the gender studies courses.  But though it was an interactive forum, mine was still the dominant voice.  I’m not ashamed of that, though from the sort of exasperating edu-speak I hear from some of my well-meaning colleagues, I am apparently hopelessly out-of-date.

One thing that would improve college teaching immensely would be mandatory drama and speech classes for all new faculty.  Forget the expensive technology.  Teach them how to use their voices, how to modulate their tones, how to string together an exciting narrative without notes.  Teach them to make the passion that is surely inside them manifest in their words and in their movements.  Teach them the forgotten art of the genuinely engaging lecture.  Twelve years of college teaching (and over 120 classes taught in that time), as well as thousands of student evaluations, have made it clear to me that students really prefer a professor who is willing to bring his passion and energy into the classroom.

This is not to say that good teachers can’t be both great lecturers and skilled employers of the latest technology.  I have a few colleagues — a very few — whom I know to be both.  But I do know that the college culture is one where innovation and novelty tend to be prized more than the ability to teach effectively using the same methods used for centuries.   No one writes grants to get money to teach professors how to tell good stories using their memories and their voices alone.  I think that’s a pity.  I, as the son and grandson of teachers, delight in knowing that I use little or nothing that those who came before me would not have used.  I take inordinate, perhaps excessive, pride in that.

I expect to spend another 25 years teaching, perhaps more.  I am always interested in developing new classes and discussing new ideas.  But I have yet to see the need to show many videos, or to have a smart classroom, or to put up Power Point whatevers for my students.  Don’t wire my classroom.  Give me a cup of coffee, put chalk in my hand, put me in front of a blackboard, and let me do my damn job.

UPDATE:  I’m not going to delete any of this rant (what else is a blog for if not ranting), but I do want to apologize to my readers who might have Ed.D degrees.  I am sure there are many lovely, thoughtful, interesting people out there with those letters after their name — I just have not had the good fortune to yet meet any.

And the water is running.  Hugo can bathe.  Matilde’s squeals of relief resound through the home.

“Shut down your wife”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2005
in Having children and Marriage
. 60 Comments

Good satire is alternatingly infuriating and enlightening.  This week’s case in point is this playful piece by Michael Lewis from Sunday’s Los Angeles Times: How to Put your Wife Out of Business.  Excerpt:

There was a brief time, from about 1985 to 1991, when high-powered males demonstrated their status by marrying equally high-powered females with high-paying jobs. That time has passed. The surest way for a man to exhibit his social status — the finest bourgeois bling — is to find the most highly paid woman you can, working in the most high-profile job, and shut her down.

Jeepers.  Even in jest, Lewis is going for a nerve. He offers his own experience as an example:

What men need, really, are role models. Other men who have done it and lived to tell the tale. Consider, for example, me. I hope I don’t need to remind the reader, but I will anyway: When we met, my wife — Tabitha Soren — was a hotshot. She walked from her offices at MTV into Times Square and people shrieked her name and bayed for her autograph. She made pots of money. She couldn’t swing a dead cat in the television business without hitting a job offer. And now — behold! Two children later, she has happily abandoned fame and fortune and is making a second "career" as a fine-art photographer.

Bonus points for those readers who remember Tabitha Soren.  I certainly do.

There’s some considerable truth in what Lewis writes, in that most of us can think of a great many examples of successful women who, usually in their thirties, choose to focus on motherhood and homemaking while opting out of their careers.  I come from a large family; I’ve got half a dozen female cousins in their thirties or early forties to whom I am very close.  All are college-educated, most had considerable success early on in their twenties.  All have had children in the past decade, and have chosen to focus their time and their energy on their families.  If they do work outside the home, they do so in a part-time or volunteer capacity.

The problem with Lewis is that even in satire, he denies his wife (and other "shut-down" women) their own agency.   (He’s got other problems, like crass class-ism, but we’ll let that be for now.)  For Lewis, opting out of the business world is not presented as something his wife (or other successful women) chose because motherhood and homemaking spoke to their real desires; rather, it is something that he (and other successful men) made possible through their own power and financial resources.   The wives’s choices are thus contingent on their husband’s high status, rather than on the wives’s genuine desire to place "family first."   Lewis is right about the end result, but vastly over-inflates men’s role in it.

Judging from the experiences of family and friends (and societal trends at large), it would be hard to deny that there are a great many successful women who choose to leave high-status jobs (at least temporarily)  in order to focus on their families.  But anti-feminists make a mistake when they assume that these women have somehow magically "seen the light" by abandoning careers for domestic bliss.  Rather, many of my female friends and family seem conscious of a kind of seasonality to their lives and to their reproductive choices.  As they aged, their priorities shifted.   But those priorities will surely shift again as their children grow and become more autonomous.  Let me assure you that my dear female cousins who are homemakers at 35 have no intention of remaining clear of public life indefinitely!   Once one has had a child, one is surely a parent forever.  But the amount of time and energy parenting requires does, thankfully, seem to decrease somewhat as children mature and grow more autonomous.

I’ll catch some flak for this, but in my opinion one of the greatest gifts a  husband can give his wife is the freedom to choose to what degree she wishes to remain in the public sphere after they’ve had children.   Obviously, if she’d like to continue to work outside the home, that will mean that he will have to take over a corresponding amount of domestic work.  (Unless they are wealthy enough to afford outside help.)  Her ability to continue to pursue her goals is contingent on his willingness to change diapers, do dishes, and take over child-rearing responsibilities.  Some couples may be quite happy with a very traditional arrangement, with husband as "breadwinner" and wife as "domestic engineer".  Others, motivated by desire or necessity, may find it essential to have two incomes even while their children are small.  The man’s job, as far as I am concerned, is to do more than provide materially for his wife.  It is to make it possible for her to decide just how committed to her career she would like to be after motherhood.

Self-indulgent meme

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 7, 2005
in Blogging, Fun and Vanity
. 10 Comments

I generally don’t like memes, but this one (from Eve via Camassia) is really a fun idea: list ten things you’ve done that your readers probably haven’t.  Nine of these are things I’ve done in the past 12 months.  So here goes:

1.  Appeared on the Glenn Sacks show.

2.  Had an IV after finishing a 50K.

3.  Get pulled out of a car at gunpoint by adolescent soldiers in the middle of nowhere, Cesar province, Colombia.

4.  Begin writing children’s stories about chinchillas.  (One special one in particular).

5. Donate money to both Planned Parenthood and Feminists for Life in the same calendar year.

6.  Get Kate Winslet confused with Cate Blanchett while watching the Oscars.  (Really.)

7.  Get on a transatlantic flight under my own power, and leave slumped in a wheelchair.

8.  Serve as faculty adviser for Campus Crusade for Christ while attending a liberal Episcopal Church and teaching gender studies.

9. Serve as foreperson of a jury,and rather than convict, do everything possible to hang the jury (hey, I had reasonable doubt.)

10. Publicly declare a commitment to vegetarianism, and fall off the wagon with a carne asade burrito three days later.

More on filters and abandoning a course on porn

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 7, 2005
in Addiction and mental illness, Faith, Porn and Teaching
. 12 Comments

I’ve been reading through the comments below my post on the "filtered professor", and I remain conflicted about the wisdom of colleges and universities barring academics from accessing certain sites.  I’m grateful that the college allows us to ask for specific sites to be unblocked, and I’m confident that I could defend any of my requests if I needed to.  If there were no way to get sites unblocked, then I would have much more of a problem with this filtering business.  Ultimately, I really liked what Jenell had to say:

There are few instances in which porn or gambling would be useful for academic work. It happens much more frequently that professors become addicted, or feed addictions, in ways that jeopardize their jobs. I think the filtering helps protect our jobs, and protect us from ourselves, at least at work. It might be a bit paternalistic, but I don’t mind.

I think this may be where faith comes into play.  Jenell works in a Christian college; I am a Christian teaching at a secular institution.  My faith (and my experience) tells me that human beings are weak and vulnerable to certain temptations.   For most folks, porn is unlikely to be a research interest, and much more likely to be an unhealthy obsession.  I suspect the same is true for gambling.  Internet porn and gambling (or gaming) are thus more likely to be accessed to feed addiction than for research — even on a college campus.  Again, I think provision must be made for those few instances where there might be legitimate reason for us to access one of these sites.  But while I think we ought to have the academic freedom to ask for an override, I do think we are up to the challenge of having to ask.   If our reasons are legitimate, we should have no qualms about requesting access to a blocked site.

I teach courses that touch on sexual history.  (Women in American Society; Men and Masculinity; Beauty, the Body, and the American Tradition; Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History.)  At one point, a couple of years ago, I thought seriously about doing a course on the history of pornography.  Such courses do exist in many departments, ranging from history to film to women’s studies programs.   I developed a syllabus, looked at some source texts, and was very close to teaching it under the rubric of a Humanities class.  (Believe me, there are plenty of texts out there; go to Amazon and type in "pornography history" as your key words.  Plenty comes up, and I’ve read some of it.)  Ultimately, after talking with some folks close to me, and praying about it, I decided not to do the course.

I am not saying we shouldn’t have courses on pornography at colleges and universities.  But I am saying that I have come to respect the immensely addictive power of porn.   We know well what porn has done to the lives of many men and not a few women.  While some people may have healthy relationships with visual erotica, a great many folks do not.  As a teacher, I have an obligation to challenge my students.  But I am not willing to expose them to that which could, in some way, harm them.   The chances that exposing my students to porn could help create a new addiction (or encourage a pre-existing one) is too great for me to take.  The likelihood that all thirty or forty students in a class of mine are going to be immune to porn addiction is pretty damn low. 

Of course, one could teach a class on porn without showing any porn, but that would be fairly dull and difficult. The research topics would invariably lead students to do outside work with pornography, many armed with the academic legitimacy that my course would give them.  For some, it would simply be an interesting experience that left no enduring mark.  But for others, it is all but certain that I would be sanctioning what for them would become very unhealthy behavior.  And I’m just not willing to do that.

For the record, if one of my colleagues were to teach a course on porn here at the college, I would share these same concerns with him or her.  If he or she still wished to teach the course, I would advocate that they be allowed to access any sites they felt necessary in order to teach the class.  The fact that I’m not willing to do teach such a class, and am troubled by the whole idea of doing so, doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t enthusiastically support a colleague if he or she were brave enough to take it on.

Fasting Recap

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 7, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, Food and Youth ministry
. 12 Comments

This was our first year doing a thirty-hour fast for Episcopal Relief and Development.   The previous four years, we’d done World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine.  If it had been up to me, I’d have been happy to continue to work for World Vision, but a number of folks at All Saints felt (with some justification) that our relief efforts ought to be directed towards our denomination’s own relief agency.  I suppose that in a time of crisis for the Anglican Communion, it’s all the more important that progressive churches take a major stand in supporting specifically Anglican relief work.  It’s vital that folks see that we at All Saints are not simply interested in fighting for gay and lesbian equality; we are as concerned with the cry of the poor, both here and abroad, as are our more traditionalist brothers and sisters.  (Note: I didn’t say more concerned, I said as concerned.)

Our teens don’t really care about the politics of picking a relief agency.  They cared about counting the money.  (This time, they didn’t quite get enough to shave any youth leader’s head; last year, as faithful readers will recall, they did.)  They care about going without food, too!  I’m happy to report that we had less complaining about hunger than in some years past.  Through trial and error, those of us who have been doing this for a while know that the key to avoiding the whining is to provide lots of fun, structured activities for the kids. 

Every year, we play a game that we invented at All Saints by marrying two traditional youth activities together: Spin the Compliment/Spin the Web.  It’s a variation on the old "Spin the Bottle" game.   Kids are in a circle, and take turns spinning a bottle.  The person who spins gets to offer a sincere compliment to the person at whom the bottle ends up pointing when it stops.  What makes it more interesting is that we also have a huge ball of yarn; the complimenter throws the ball to the complimentee, holding on to a strand while he or she does so.  As the bottle keeps spinning, and more and more folks get complimented, we begin to all be tied together in a web.  We had 28 kids and 3 adults in the game on Friday night; by the end, we were all tied together in a web of praise and affirmation, all inter-connected.  It feels great to stand up together, still holding on to our strands,and feel each and every other person’s contribution to the web. 

Saturday morning, we fed the homeless at Union Station.  I was proud of the kids for cooking up huge breakfasts of eggs and sausage, all the while knowing that they couldn’t have a bite to eat for many hours to come.  At one point, a number of our kids (who are in our youth choir at All Saints) began an impromptu serenade; several of Union Station’s clients joined in on the first and last verse of Amazing Grace.  (I always laugh when we sing that at All Saints, since the number of folks at our church whose theology matches that hymn can be counted on one hand.  It’s like hearing Ave Maria in a Baptist church, which I once did at a family wedding in Vicksburg, Mississippi.)

Besides the great bonding time with the kids, the spiritual highlight of the weekend was walking the labyrinth.  (Pictures in the album.)  All these years, and I’ve never walked the labyrinth as an act of spiritual devotion.  We did it around 3:00PM; by that time, we’d all been without food for 27 hours or so.  To slowly and meditatively make the twists and turns of the labyrinth, while acutely cognizant of one’s own hunger and need for God — that was an amazing experience!  We worried the kids wouldn’t have the patience for it; instead, they walked it with such care and mindfulness that the adults were amazed.  A couple of our youth cried openly from emotion; I teared up as well.  I’m certainly going to make this a regular spiritual practice.

I know that many conservative Christians read this blog.  I need them to know that we at All Saints Pasadena are also capable of self-discipline and self-sacrifice.  Our youth, like yours, are being raised with a commitment to follow Jesus and to feed His lambs.  Though it may appear to traditionalists that we have hopelessly capitulated to the worst aspects of contemporary American culture, I assure you that there are few things more counter-cultural than asking teenagers to give up food and comfort for thirty hours in the name of Christ.

It’s good to be able to eat today.

The filtered professor

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2005
in Pasadena City College, Porn and Teaching
. 14 Comments

Miracle of all miracles, I made the 12.5 mile round trip run from the Hahamongna Watershed parking lot to the top of the Ken Burton trail in dry weather. (Sorry, folks, those place names surely mean nothing to almost all of my readers.)   It poured as I was driving to the run, and poured on my way home — but I got two hours of full reprieve, and for that I am immensely grateful.   It was warm enough to run shirtless, but cool enough to get by on just 20 ounces of water.  Can’t beat that.

I was able to complete my refueling just after 12 noon.  I shall make sure that tomorrow night, when our 30-Hour fast with the kids comes to an end, that I am the last to be served.  That ought to make it fair.

Yesterday’s Pasadena City College Courier reports on the new Internet filters that have been installed on our faculty computers.  Amusingly enough, the student computers in the library and other computing labs have unfiltered access to the Internet.

In an attempt to curb recreational use of the Internet, a filtering
system has been installed on staff and faculty computers to eliminate
visits to pornographic, adult gaming and adult gambling sites.


Computers used by students and computers in the library are not affected by the filter.

Okay, I give.  What’s the difference between adult gaming and adult gambling?  I thought "gaming" was just a euphemism for gambling.  Did the reporter make an error, or are they really two entirely different things? 


"We’re trying to define to what extent Internet use is permissible,"
Hardash said. "We do not wish to block their ability to do their job."


In September, the college began monitoring staff and faculty activity
online to determine the amount of time spent visiting websites not used
for institutional or administrative purposes. Filtering was turned on
in November to block a narrow portion of websites, said Dale Pittman,
director of management information services.

Teachers who wish to gain access to a blocked site for educational
purposes will be able to talk to a division dean, Hardash said.

Although an acceptable use policy regarding the Internet is in place
for faculty and staff, the college wanted to do everything it could to
avoid inappropriate use of publicly funded computers, according to Dr.
James Kossler, college president.

Once the software was installed, "we saw there were abuses," said Kossler.

Note:  we were never told that our Internet use was being monitored, though I just assumed it was.  One of the reasons why I tell my students to contact me via Hotmail and not via the campus e-mail is I don’t want an administrator snooping about.

 
However, faculty members are concerned about restricting certain websites, said Kay Dabelow, president of the Academic Senate. (And the senior historian at PCC and a good friend).

"The faculty technology committee felt that a blocking of Internet
sites on faculty computers represented a violation of academic freedom
and recommended to the senate board that the board take a position
opposing such blockage," Dabelow said. "The matter has also been
referred to the senate academic freedom and professional ethics committee, which will also make
its recommendation to the senate board."

Honestly, I’m of two minds about this.  If I put on my "civil libertarian union member" hat, I’m with Dabelow.    Though I understand the desire to want to block porn and gambling sites, part of me resents the notion that the college doesn’t consider its own faculty capable of exercising discretion when using campus computers.  I’m especially troubled by the fact that non-teachers (those who design these filters) have decided for themselves what does and does not have an academic purpose.

But frankly, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m leaning towards siding with the administration on this one.   It is conceivable that porn and gaming sites might have a proper academic use, particularly for someone (like myself) who teaches courses on gender and sexuality.  But the filter we have is very good about distinguishing real porn from sites that deal with sexuality from a more humane,  non-commercial perspective.  (For example, two feminist publications I often read,  Bitch and Bust,  aren’t  blocked — something I was pleased to discover.  Playboy, on the other hand, is.  Smart filter.)  I’m also happy that we are able to access blocked sites by making direct requests to the administration.  I’ve done so for one site, and within 48 hours received access to it.  I did not have to explain my rationale, beyond saying it was needed for my work.

As much as I celebrate the freedom of tenure (and when I teach courses like Lesbian and Gay history, which I will in the fall, I use that freedom for all its worth), I recognize that even tenured faculty live in communities.  We aren’t utterly autonomous — what we do in our campus offices on campus machines is not merely our own private business.  Porn and gambling sites have, in most cases, little connection to what we do as professors.   For those in our community who struggle with porn or gambling addiction, the fact that access is now blocked may well be a relief.  In some sense, the work computer becomes a safer place.  The chance of inadvertent embarrassment or even a sexual harassment problem is also minimized. 

When I first joined the PCC faculty in 1994, there wasn’t much on the Internet that was of use to most folks.  My first couple of years, I logged on for e-mail and nothing else.  It was only about 1997 that I began to explore the wide range of possibilities on-line, and found that the web was a terrific resource (and a great way to spend idle time.)  But I am aware that the Internet has its darker side as well, and I suspect that for some, that darker side can be immensely seductive.

Heck, I welcome the administration — or anyone else — to monitor my on-campus Internet use.  You’ll find out I read a couple of dozen blogs a day, return an extraordinary number of student e-mails, and am obsessed with chinchillas.  You’ll also find that I’m interested in issues of evangelical faith and human sexuality, and I haven’t the slightest embarrassment about the sites I visit in pursuit of that latter interest.   

Busy Friday

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2005
in Athletics and Fitness, Books, Christianity and Food
. 8 Comments

I’ve got little time for blogging this morning:  at 12 noon today, I must stop eating to begin participating in All Saints’ 30-Hour Fast Relief for Episcopal Relief and Development. (This will be my fifth such fast since 2001).  The first six hours, for kids and adults, are "on your honor"; from 6:00Pm tonight until 6:00PM Saturday, we will be together.  Tonight we’ll stay up late at the church, pray and play games, have a pajama fashion show (there MIGHT be pictures), and sleep on the hard floor of the youth room at the church.  Tomorrow, in our hunger and our discomfort, we’ll be off to Union Station to feed folks.  I’m very much looking forward to it.

But between now and then, I need to get in a 10-miler in the rain, and of course, I’ll need to replenish with food afterwards.  If all of that is going to happen by noon, I best be running soon.

Oh, and last night, I finally started reading Eugene Peterson’s Message Remix version of the Bible.  Where have I been that it took me this long?  I started with Romans (where else would I go), and was absolutely transfixed with emotion.  I can’t wait to do more devotionals with it.

Courtly love and double standards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 3, 2005
in Christianity, Faith, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Modesty and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 77 Comments

First off, read this post from Lauren about hair.  Off you go and read it now.

Longer post from me:

The comments on this post from last week about accountability have shifted to the topic of bad male behavior, particularly the sort that takes place when no other fellow is around.  Mythago recently wrote:

Chivalry has always been about good manners towards ‘ladies,’ not to women, period. It’s as true in the modern day as it was when The Art of Courtly Love was written.

She’s right about the Art of Courtly Love.  Andreas Capellanus, who wrote that famous medieval tract, argued for immense patience in pursuing women of gentle birth.  As for peasants:

"If you love a peasant woman, praise her and force her–peasants don’t respond to gentle wooing."

So much for seeing all women as one’s sisters in Christ!  Capellanus makes it clear that the pursuit of courtly love is likely to be immensely frustrating for a man — which is why peasant women make such a convenient outlet for pent-up sexual desire.

Mythago is right when she suggests that nine centuries after Capellanus wrote his tract, the attitudes within it survive.  Many of the male commenters on my recent posts about responsibility and propriety have implied that good manners are essentially reciprocal.  Their thesis?  If a woman dresses appropriately, she is deserving of respect in return.  If she doesn’t respect herself or her community, then she forfeits her right to be respected.  In other words, "nice" girls, "demure" girls, have the right not to be objectified and openly lusted for; "bad" women (you know, the bra-less ones, the ones in short skirts), deserve the wolfish stares from their brothers and resentment from their sisters.

I find that attitude sad and infuriating.   I was raised to believe, and still do believe, that the whole point of good manners is that they aren’t reciprocal!  Any fool can be polite to those whom he perceives as deserving of that courtesy; I was taught to believe that a gentleman insists on seeing the humanity even in those who are doing their damnedest to disguise it.  Christ says in Matthew 5:

43“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

Surely, that’s applicable to how men of character, decency, and faith ought to see all women.  At the risk of blasphemy, let me rewrite that passage in a way that (with all humility) I think is consistent with His intent:

You have heard it said, "Respect decent women, but condemn those who appear promiscuous."  But I tell you, respect and honor even those who do not seem worthy in your eyes.  If you merely respect those whose demeanor demands it, what reward will you get?  Do not most men manage to do that?  And if you are only courteous to your sisters who do not arouse you, what are you doing more than others?

Mythago goes on:

I’ve worked as a stripper, and it’s very illuminating to see how some men act when they perceive that there are no "nice girls" around and therefore they are free to be as sexist and obnoxious as they please.

I don’t have a lot of experience in strip clubs, but I’ve known many women who’ve worked in one facet or another of the "adult industry", from porn to stripping to prostitution.  Most have said what Mythago says here.  Most report seeing plenty of husbands and fathers and other "nice guys" who feel perfectly at ease saying the most appalling things to the sex workers whose services they are purchasing.  Indeed, perhaps because they are behaving so "nicely" to "deserving" women, they feel free to be as obnoxious as they like to their sisters who work in the adult industry.

As both a pro-feminist man and a Christian, I loathe the idea of categorizing women as "nice girls" and "sluts."  My worth as a man of faith will be measured by how I treat all women, particularly, perhaps, by how I treat those whom society says I am entitled to objectify!   

As Christians, we know that Christ often appears to us in disguise.  In Matthew 25, we are told that when we feed the the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the sick, we are in fact caring for Him.   Doing these corporal works of mercy is not easy.  The homeless often smell bad.  They can be frightening.  They repulse and scare us.  But Christians must override their senses and their fear and their disgust and embrace those who seem unembraceable.  To hug such people is to overcome one’s natural urge to withdraw.  And I am convinced it is exactly so with men, women, and sexuality.   I think it possible that Christ is also to be found in the sex worker, in the scantily-clad classmate, in the pages of the porn magazine! Just as I’ve learned to touch and hug the homeless (even when they reek of urine and alcohol and the street), I know that I — and other men — are called to overcome our natural urge to lust and see "unrespectable" women as our sisters, made in His image, worthy of far better than to be used for our own pleasure and release. 

This Saturday, I’ll be taking the All Saints kids to feed the homeless, something we do fairly regularly.  In my own extroverted way, I’ll be doing my best to talk to the clients we’ll meet.  From years of experience, I know what some of them will look like and smell like.  I will want to keep my distance, feeding them with a forced smile while trying to avoid body contact.  Instead, Lord willing, I will gently and politely draw close to them.  I will shake hands and give hugs (if the latter are welcomed), and I will pray the same prayer over and over again:  "God, show me this person not as I see him, but as you see him."  It’s the exact same prayer I was taught to use to overcome the equally human desire to objectify and lust.  And I can assure you from experience that it works.

I could have posted this in less explicitly Christian terms.  But to be honest, it is only my faith in Christ that puts me in the homeless shelter.  It is only my faith in Christ that lets me, one day at a time, renew the "covenant with my eyes" that lets me see all women as my sisters. It isn’t easy, and I am so far from perfect it’s not even funny.  But if I can do this, any man can.  And in the interests of justice, I think we all ought to be giving it one hell of a try.

Auden’s Friday’s Child

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

I’m sure I’ve put up more Auden poems than anything else on Short Poem Thursday.  This one is a particular favorite, even though it is not a particularly easy one.

Friday’s Child

     He told us we were free to choose
     But, children as we were, we thought—
     "Paternal Love will only use
     Force in the last resort

     On those too bumptious to repent."
     Accustomed to religious dread,
     It never crossed our minds He meant
     Exactly what He said.

     Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves,
     But it seems idle to discuss
     If anger or compassion leaves
     The bigger bangs to us.

     What reverence is rightly paid
     To a Divinity so odd
     He lets the Adam whom He made
     Perform the Acts of God?

     It might be jolly if we felt
     Awe at this Universal Man
     (When kings were local, people knelt);
     Some try to, but who can?

     The self-observed observing Mind
     We meet when we observe at all
     Is not alariming or unkind
     But utterly banal.

     Though instruments at Its command
     Make wish and counterwish come true,
     It clearly cannot understand
     What It can clearly do.

     Since the analogies are rot
     Our senses based belief upon,
     We have no means of learning what
     Is really going on,

     And must put up with having learned
     All proofs or disproofs that we tender
     Of His existence are returned
     Unopened to the sender.

     Now, did He really break the seal
     And rise again? We dare not say;
     But conscious unbelievers feel
     Quite sure of Judgement Day.

     Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,
     As dead as we shall ever be,
     Speaks of some total gain or loss,
     And you and I are free

     To guess from the insulted face
     Just what Appearances He saves
     By suffering in a public place
     A death reserved for slaves.

I love the line: It never crossed our minds He meant
     Exactly what He said.  Sigh.

Walking in the spirit

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 2, 2005
in Christianity, Faith, Music and Vanity
. 9 Comments

Erica has a post up today about growing up Pentecostal.  An excerpt:

It has never been cool to be Pentecostal.  I don’t mean not cool in that i’m ok and so are you, it’s cool sense;  but in the traditional  –cool: adj. hip,  rendering one the service of gaining cultural credibility and approval– sense. Pentecostalism has yet to be the flavor of any month (in the contiguous United States that is).  Being pentecostal gets one the opposite of credibility…So I am going to own up to my own spiritual history –  I am so Pentecostal you can’t imagine it.  And what you are imagining, those people on that channel, is so far away from what I am talking about that I don’t want you to try. 

I had a brief but intense flirtation with Pentecostalism several years ago that has left an enduring mark upon me.  I know that regular readers of this blog must be wondering what avenue Hugo hasn’t walked down!  I’ll admit, my spiritual autobiography is very "Los Angeles" in its tremendous diversity and, I confess, in its flexibility and superficiality. 

When I rededicated my life to Christ in 1998, I began by going to the Episcopal Church, which had been familiar to me since my childhood.  Though my parents were not believers, the few church-going people we knew well were all Episcopalians, and my mother had always said it was a "reasonable" church.  She had not been happy when I was baptized and confirmed as a Roman Catholic in college.  (I took the confirmation name "Thomas", for the Doubter as well as for saints More, Becket, and Aquinas.)  When I left Holy Mother Church in the aftermath of my first divorce, many in my family were relieved.

When I came back to Christ, I found that while I loved the liturgy and the politics at All Saints, I was hungry for something more intense, something more passionate, something more certain.  I knew I wasn’t going back to Rome.  (With multiple divorces on my track record, that thought was out of the question.)  And evangelicalism, particularly Pentecostalism, scared the hell out of me. All I knew about Pentecostals was what I had seen on television, and I knew darned well that these were "not our kind of people."   My snobbery and my fear kept me away from the intensely personal worship that my spirit craved.

What changed me was, of all things, a Jennifer Knapp record.  In 1999, she had appeared on the Lilith Fair tour — the only Christian artist to do so.  In early 2000, browsing on Amazon, I came across her debut CD "Kansas", and bought it on impulse.  I was 32, almost 33, and far too old to be so impacted by a popular music recording by a gal considerably younger than I.  But I ended up listening to that CD daily for a month, often crying while doing so. (In time, I bought her other CDs and still treasure them all).  I loved how nakedly personal her music was, how present Jesus seemed to her, and in her lyrics I found what I was missing in the Episcopal Church.

At the same time, I was seeing a woman at Fuller Seminary who had come out of the Assemblies of God tradition (AG is, I think, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world.)  In her younger days, she had been a campus minister with AG’s college branch, Chi Alpha.  I’m very good about not blogging about my past relationships, but I will say that this one pushed me to do what I would otherwise surely never have done: explore a branch of the body of Christ that I would never otherwise have explored.

My most intense experiences with Pentecostalism came, of all places, in Italy.  I spent the fall semester 2000 teaching in Florence. For three and a half months, I lived in a little flat by myself.  I didn’t speak much Italian (I was teaching American students in English), and felt quite isolated.  I ended up joining a small English-speaking group of students from across Europe and America who met a couple of times a week in a church basement.   Though a couple of the Americans came out of the Reformed tradition (including one remarkable gal whose father was a major leader in the very conservative Orthodox Presbyterian Church), most were charismatics.  And the worship we had in those months was like nothing else I’ve ever, ever known.  I heard tongues for the first time, which sounded nothing like what I had expected.  I felt and experienced things I simply cannot put into words.  The closest I can come is to say that it was only in charismatic worship that I have ever felt that Jesus was literally right there in the room with me. Miracles would happen, healing would take place, and it would all happen NOW.  The Catholics and the Anglicans taught me to pray to God; the Pentecostals taught me that God could literally overwhelm me and consume me and leave me sweating and crying and laughing all at once. 

If I hadn’t been so far from home, I don’t know that I would have taken the risk to so completely abandon everything I had ever been taught.  I still regard those months in Italy as a spiritual watershed in my life, because it was only then, at the age of 33, that I first felt what it was like to be totally immersed in Jesus.  I worshiped a bit around the edges of some Pentecostal communities when I came back from Florence, even as I grew more active at All Saints.  I went to the occasional Calvary Chapel service, and hung out with AG folks for a while. I even spent some time with the gay Pentecostals at Christ Chapel of the Valley — and let me assure you that that that is one spirit-filled community!

During my two-year sojourn with the Mennonites, I worshiped with a number of folks who had come out of the charismatic/Pentecostal tradition.  Though Pasadena Mennonite Church was decidedly NOT a place where the "gifts of the spirit" were publicly manifest, there were plenty of hands in the air during worship.  It was a nice reminder of what it was that I had known for a brief but intense period of my life.

Today, when I am hanging out with liberal Episcopalians, I hear many a slur directed towards Pentecostals.   Jokes about Jimmy Swaggart, and complaints about how charismatics skew American impressions of Christianity are common.  Most of these remarks are really class-based; most Episcopalians assume (with a small degree of accuracy) that Pentecostals are less well-educated, less affluent, and less culturally sophisticated than those who attend All Saints Pasadena.  As gently as I can, I try to speak up when my friends at All Saints misrepresent or ridicule the intense faith of their brothers and sisters in Christ.   (My often passionate defense of charismatic conservatives tends to surprise a lot of my fellow Episcopalians.)

My past, my present, and my politics kept me from staying a Pentecostal — but dear God in heaven, I am grateful for what I learned when I walked and prayed with those who knew Jesus on such intimate terms.