Archive for August, 2005

Reflections on a community college career

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 8, 2005
in Memories, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 13 Comments

Jonathan Dresner sends me this link to a Jay Mathews piece in the Washington Post in praise of community colleges:  The Workhorse of Higher Education.

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been over eleven years since I was hired for a full-time position here at Pasadena City College.   I still remember the date of my first-level interview, April 8, 1994.  It was a Friday afternoon, and it was the day that Kurt Cobain’s death was announced; I was listening to KROQ (LA’s alternative-rock station) and heard the news just as I was pulling into the parking lot here at the school.  I was a moderate Nirvana fan, but couldn’t help but consider this tragic news to be a "bad omen".  I have no idea what I ended up saying during the interview, but within days I was called back for a "second-level" meeting with the committee, and on April 20, was offered the job.

I’ll never forget the reaction of my dissertation chair when I told him I was accepting a tenure-track post here at PCC.  "You’re a fool if you take it, Hugo", he said.  By ‘94, I was about half-way through my dissertation.  I was giving papers at medieval history conferences, and was enjoying the feeling of being "groomed" by my distinguished adviser.   In that same spring of 1994, my adviser told me I was "one or two years away" from successfully competing on the academic job market for a position at a four-year research institution.  He was very upset that I wasn’t willing to wait for a chance at a university job.  Frankly, our relationship was never quite the same after I came to teach at the community college.  He was very helpful as I finished my dissertation (with my teaching load at PCC, it took me until early 1999), and gave me a warm handshake at my doctoral hooding ceremony.  But he was clearly disappointed that I wasn’t willing to put research first.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I’ve never taken a class at a community college.  I knew plenty about community colleges growing up; my mother taught for three decades at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC).  But even as I saw how much she loved her work there, I also had a bit of prejudice against the system.  My high school teachers made it clear that the best and the brightest did not go to community colleges, and there was no question that there was (and I think still is) an unfortunate stigma in some circles related to "JCs."  I’m afraid I internalized that stigma even as I was proud of my mother’s work.   The summer after my junior year, I’m sorry to admit I even paid the much higher fees to take summer classes at UC rather than enroll in a community college. 

In graduate school, however, my goals shifted.  Though I liked research well enough, I loved my time as a teaching assistant.  (I still remember my first section, in the spring quarter of 1991; I was not quite 24, and so terrified I threw up before meeting my first class.)  I quickly realized that it was teaching that turned me on, not research.  I didn’t like musty old archives, and I sure as hell didn’t like working on long papers.  I enjoyed discussing ideas in seminars, but nothing was as "fun" as interacting with students in the classroom.  I began to think more and more about what my mother did for a living, and began to wonder if I wouldn’t be better off teaching somewhere where I could "just teach".

I’ve never seriously regretted coming to the community college.   If I had gone on to teach at a four-year institution, I could never have developed courses in "men and masculinity" and "American Lesbian and Gay history".    My Ph.D. field would have set far more narrow parameters for my academic career.  I would have been hired as a medievalist, and would have been expected to teach lower division survey courses and offer upper-division specialist classes until the end of my career.  At the community college, where I was hired simply to teach "history" (with no geographic or chronological modifying adjective preceding the term), I have been free to develop whatever courses strike my fancy.   At the community college, I have been allowed to grow as an academic.  Here, the fact that I was interested in one set of things at age 27 (when I was hired), and another now at 38, and perhaps still another at 49 — that’s not held against me!  Indeed, I’ve been encouraged to develop and explore new interests.

As for the students at the community college?  They challenge and they humble me.  The top 10% of students here are as good as — or better — than the students I T.A.ed for at UCLA.  The bottom 10% of students are immensely difficult to teach.  Unlike at a four-year university, at the community college one regularly encounters students who are forced to be here by their parents, who face the choice of staying in school or being kicked out of their homes.   I have the sullen, the stoned, and the moronic with which to contend — but they are a distinct minority, I’m happy to say.

In the same classroom, I teach the extraordinary, the mediocre, and the dim.  I have students who can write breathtaking prose that puts me to shame sitting next to students who cannot form an entire coherent English sentence.  I have seen some of my students transfer on to the likes of Berkeley, NYU, Georgetown and Pomona College — and have seen them thrive there.  I have had students pass out drunk in my classroom.  I have had mothers who couldn’t get childcare hold (and nurse) infants with one hand while taking notes with another.  Twice in my career, I’ve had the police come into my classroom and take a student out in cuffs.  I’ve had students disappear in the middle of the semester because they’ve been deployed to Iraq.  And I’ve heard countless stories of tragedy and persistence and endurance.  I’ve had former students become teachers, lawyers, and now, community college professors; whatever they have become, their periodic notes and e-mails cheer me immensely.

If you had asked me a decade ago whether I would want one of my kids to go a community college, I would have said "absolutely not."  Even in my early years of teaching here at PCC, I still struggled with a certain elitism that stigmatized the two-year college experience.  I am happy to say I’ve let go of that indefensible snobbishness; I would be happy today if one of my children chose to attend a community college before heading off to a four-year institution.   Thousands of students have smashed my misconceptions about what it means to be a student at a place like this, and those same students have made me tremendously grateful to teach at such an extraordinary institution.  We at the community college are the ladder into the middle class; we are the school of second (and thirty-seventh) chances; we are the school that delivers remarkably quality for very little investment.

There’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Big Fat Blog

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 5, 2005
in Athletics and Fitness and Politics
. 30 Comments

Through Ampersand, I learned this week about Big Fat Blog.  BFB has been around for a while, and has become a community of over 1200 folks working for fat acceptance:

We are for the equal treatment of fat people in all walks of life. That means that we’re all going to pick apart what the media says and stick it under a microscope; some of this criticism will be negative. But we’re in turn going to celebrate the positive news, from the web and beyond, involving fat people and size acceptance. That means we’re going to come together and use the web as a springboard for real social change.

I’ll be the first to admit I have profoundly mixed feelings about the "fat acceptance" movement.  On the one hand, I want everyone, regardless of size, to feel comfortable in their own skin.  I’ve watched friends and family members struggle with obesity,and I’ve witnessed the toll it’s taken on their self-esteem.  I’ve overheard far too many cruel remarks directed towards those whom I love and care for, and I’m anxious to join with folks in the struggle for a more tolerant and appreciative culture.

On the other hand, I’m eager to find a way to accept and affirm heavy people without accepting and affirming poor lifestyle choices that usually (not always) contribute to obesity.  I’m prepared to accept that many fat (I’m using the word because the fat acceptance movement seems to prefer direct language to euphemisms like "heavy") people don’t eat more poorly than the rest of us.  Obviously, genetics plays a part, as do other medical conditions.  But it seems unlikely that the majority of overweight folks in this country are the victims of their own malfunctioning metabolisms.  Poor diet and lack of exercise are obviously causally linked to obesity, and obesity has genuine health costs — even if those costs are frequently exaggerated.  But even if we assume that most fat people are fat because of over-eating and poor exercise — and that’s a big if, no pun intended — that doesn’t justify discrimination.   

I’ve struggled for years and years with addictive eating habits and compulsive exercising.  I do spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about my body and seeking to control it.  Yet my neuroses are sanctioned and rewarded by the culture because they lead me to have a body that more closely approximates a contemporary ideal.   I frequently have responded to stress by exercising until I’m too tired to think.  (I’ve gotten better at that over the years). Others I know respond to similar levels of stress by eating and eating.  My body bears the signs of my neuroses, so do the bodies of my "fat" friends and family.  They get heavier; I get a resting heart rate of 42 - which is nice, but I also get deteriorating knees and aching joints.     I’m not at all convinced that my approach is, ultimately, any emotionally healthier than theirs, but I do receive considerably more praise for it.

I’m a great believer in good nutrition and fitness.   I’m also aware that folks can be fit — and eat reasonably well — and come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  (I’ve seen some surprisingly heavy ultra-runners in my day!)  As Big Fat Blog and others in the movement make clear, it’s a much better idea to push the "Fit at any Size" concept than it is to shame folks who are larger than what we currently claim to be "healthy."  When my beloved and I have children, we’ll teach them good nutrition and we’ll make sure they’re active.  (God only knows what she and I will do if they decide they don’t like sports.  Heavens forfend).  But we’ll also be careful not to confuse good health with trimness, and we’ll be especially careful to avoid giving our kids the impression that we expect them to have one particular kind of body.  Whatever shape they end up with, we’ll love on them unconditionally.

Because I’m an amateur athlete, I spend most of my time with other people who share my passions.  Almost all of my close friends of both sexes work out regularly, and most are runners, bikers, or triathletes.  Though some have been fit since childhood, many (like me) were once quite heavier.  I’d be lying if I said we didn’t all have some degree of fat-phobia.  Yes, we want to do well athletically, but we also worry a great deal about our bodies.  But does fear of becoming fat automatically translate into hostility towards fat people?  I don’t think so, not in my case or with my friends.  Some of us are sufficiently self-aware not to project our own self-loathing on to others.  At the same time, I know that many of us see fat people as reminders of what we ourselves worry about becoming.   In that sense, fat-prejudice is harder to overcome than others.  Even the best intentioned among us may find our anxieties "triggered" by being around heavier people.   Of course, that’s "our" problem, not "theirs", as our neuroses are no justification for discrimination.

I’ve still got a lot to work through.  But I’m blogrolling Big Fat Blog,and I’m very interested in learning more.

New policy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 5, 2005
in Blogging and Men and Masculinity
. 48 Comments

I’ve made the decision to ban Mr. Bad and several other Men’s Rights Advocates from this blog.  I’ve found the collective tone of their comments to be so unpleasant that I see no good reason why I ought to continue to allow them to participate.

Free speech is an important principle.  But a blog is, in a sense,  private.  I’ll tolerate all sorts of folks on the street, but I see no reason to invite each and every one of them to dinner!  This is my home, and it has my name on it.  Everything that is posted here, both in the main posts and in the comments, needs to be civil.  Yes, I know full well that some outside the MRA camp have been deeply unpleasant, but it is the MRAs who have most consistently hijacked the discussions here.

As an historian and the son and grandson of Jewish refugees from Central Europe, I am particularly offended by the term "feminazi."  No one, ever, ever, ever, ought to compare feminism (or any other non-violent doctrine) to Nazism, even in jest.  To even suggest that men today suffer in ways equivalent to Jewish suffering in the 1930s and 40s is so beyond the pale of acceptability that it alone is grounds for being banned from this blog.

Mind you, I believe everyone ought to have the right to post whatever they like on their own blogs.  I’m a bit of a first-amendment zealot, actually.  But my blog does not exist as a public forum; it is a place where I present anecdotes and musings, and others are invited to respond.  The Men’s Rights Movement has plenty of sites for the spewing of anger and vitriol.  I’ve tried very hard to make this a place where folks can "come together", but I’m afraid I can’t do so any longer.

For the time being, I’ll simply be deleting any future comments from MRAs.  You fellas have my e-mail, you can blast away at me there.  But not here.

New texts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 4, 2005
in Feminism, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 9 Comments

I’m going to take a break from writing about feminism, autonomy, faith, and my own narcissism.  (Rejoice, readers!)

I thought I might share a bit of my new and revised syllabus for my Women in American Society course.  I often write about my teaching, but rarely share the details of what it is I ask my students to do. 

I’ve tinkered with my syllabus many times over the years.  Here’s the brief intro statement I’m now using; it’s been revised many times.

This is not a conventional history course.  We will study the lives of American women in historical perspective, focusing not so much on the achievements of a few great figures, but rather upon the lives of “ordinary” people.  This course will cover the history of attitudes towards gender and sexuality from the arrival of Europeans in the seventeenth century to the present. We will also examine the historical background to contemporary social issues (such as abortion, sexual harassment, anorexia/bulimia, wage disparity, pornography, the women’s movement and so forth).   Particular attention will be paid to the historical construction of ideas about the female body.

We will attempt to construct a more inclusive understanding of the past, and we will discuss a variety of different definitions of what it means to be a “feminist”.   Above all, we will ask critical questions about how our culture views (and has viewed) women. 

Given the amount of space I have for a short introduction, it seems to cover the basics.

I’ve changed my texts many times.  My basic text this semester is a new one:  Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents.  It’s a substantial volume, but it’s blend of primary and secondary source material is as good as anything I’ve seen.    After all, I want my students to be able to read Anne Bradstreet’s 17th century poems and Kathleen Hanna’s Riot Grrl Manifesto, as well as to be given an overview of the narrative history of the women’s movement.

I’m keeping one text as a holdover from previous semesters, and it’s one I’ve used since it first appeared: Joan Brumberg’s brilliant, indispensable, magisterial The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls.  I’ve written before  about the usefulness of the book, and given its brevity and its scope, it’s without question the most popular text I’ve ever assigned.

Another new text I’m using is Lynn Phillips’ Flirting with Danger: Young Women’s Reflections on Sexuality and Domination.  The title makes it sound racier than it is, but it is a riveting, compelling read.  It’s based on dozens of interviews that Phillips conducted in the late 1990s with an ethnically and economically diverse group of young female college students.  Though there is much within its pages about sex, Phillips’ book is really more about just how complex heterosexual relationships have become in our supposedly "post-feminist" modern era.    She identifies two particularly troubling discourses that are alive and thriving: the notion that female pleasure is never, ultimately, without penalty and the notion that males cannot, ultimately, be held accountable for their sexual behavior (the "bad girl" and "boys will be boys" phenomena.)  It’s a disturbing, gripping text — and one that I’m confident will create much opportunity for discussion.

I don’t teach straight from the books,of course.  But I do think that in gender studies courses in particular, good texts can have an enormous impact on the success of the class.  All three of these books are written from a feminist perspective, as they ought to be.  They don’t merely describe the past (or the present), they analyze and ultimately prescribe solutions.  At its best, I think, good feminist teaching invites students to join the authors of their texts and their professors in that task of describing, analyzing, and prescribing.  Ultimately, of course, the goal is to encourage young women — and young men — to rethink their understanding of gender and sexuality, and to empower (yes, overused verb) them to make different decisions within their private and public lives.

I’ll report on how these new texts go over.

Thursday Short Poem: Raine’s “Martian”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 4, 2005
in Poetry
. 3 Comments

I’ll admit I hadn’t heard of England’s Craig Raine until I finished reading Ian McEwan’s marvelous new book, Saturday.  In his acknowledgements, McEwan thanks Raine for allowing him to borrow a few lines and attribute them to one of the characters in Saturday.  I started looking up Raine’s stuff, and this brilliant piece was one of the first I read.

Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings –

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside –
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves –
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Oh, that last sentence is superb — and haunting.

Narcissism and hypocrisy, or the essence of blogging

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 3, 2005
in Athletics and Fitness, Faith and Feminism
. 27 Comments

I didn’t expect to make it in to the office today, but lo and behold, I did.

Reading through the comments below this post (and reading the comments at Lauren’s place), it seems I’ve struck a nerve.  Sally seems particularly annoyed:

I’ve got to say, there’s something slightly galling about being lectured to about sacrificing bodily autonomy by someone who is extraordinarily invested in controlling his own body. Hugo’s relationship to his own body doesn’t seem to be defined by sacrifice: this is someone who has invested massive resources in improving his marathon time and who goes to great lengths to make his body the shape that he finds attractive. It’s not just that Hugo can’t imagine pregnancy. I don’t think he can really imagine the experience of having a body that isn’t subject to his control. And honestly, until Hugo has had the experience of sacrificing, either willingly or unwillingly, some bodily autonomy, I don’t want to hear it. Given what Hugo has told us about himself, the whole "as a Christian, I believe my body does not belong to me alone," thing rings a bit false. How exactly does that manifest itself?

I read that comment an hour ago, and have (while working on various other projects) reflected on it since.  I don’t think Sally’s being mean; in fact, I think she’s on to something.

It’s almost axiomatic in the gender studies world (and plenty of other places) that you can’t easily separate the message from the messenger.  In other words, when we who teach or lead hold forth on a subject like feminism, or faith, or sacrifice, our listeners and readers will look to see how well our language matches the reality of our lives.   And Sally points out that when I write from a pro-life Christian feminist perspective, and call for sacrifice, it doesn’t seem as if I’ve been doing much sacrificing.  Indeed, as she notes, I’ve written off about my own deep concern with my body and its athletic endeavors. 

Like many endurance athletes, I tend to be fond of the language of sacrifice!  Runners talk a lot about self-discipline, self-control,and the capacity to suffer.  We talk about pushing our bodies beyond our limits; we talk about commitment and dedication and self-denial.  It’s romantic language, of course!  Ask anyone involved in the endurance running (or cycling, or triathlete) community.    Whatever the mundanities of our day-to-day lives, we construct heroic narratives for ourselves as we run up and down mountains, shave minutes off our race times, and lower our body fat percentage.

But of course, what infuriates Sally is that none of this is real sacrifice in the sense that I wrote about yesterday.  Running ultra-marathons may involve a great deal of pain, but it is a chosen pain.  It’s also a pain that generates relatively little good for the world.  The fact that I run and lift weights doesn’t make the world a more peaceful, loving place — though I can say with authority that burning off all that excess anxiety helps make individual athletes into more peaceful and loving people!  Still, there’s no question that all of these endeavors are about maintaining and extending control, not surrendering it.

So, bottom line, I’m a bit of hypocrite.  My contradictions pile on top of each other, and some times, I read what I’ve written and say "Damn, Hugo, can you really write that with a straight face?  Have you no shame?"  But here’s the point: does the fact that I haven’t managed to really live out what I’m preaching completely undercut my arguments?   Must the truth of the message hinge on the integrity of the messenger? Would an argument about sacrifice and surrendering autonomy have more authority if it came from a working-class woman of color than from me?  Perhaps so — in which case I’d be delighted to provide links to the writings of those whose ideals match my own, but whose life experience is also more congruent with what it is that they preach.

Do you know why I love blogging?  Because in the blogosphere, the lines between the public and the private become blurred.  Because this is my blog, and I’m the only one paying for it ($8.95 a month with Typepad), I am free to include an extraordinary number of self-absorbed musings!  In the classroom, my job is to keep myself from becoming a distraction.  It’s vital that my students focus on the material, not on the teacher.  But I have no such compunctions here on this blog.   Yes, I keep some things private even here (for the sake of my family and fiancee), but I’m not going to be afraid to reveal the depths of my own sinful self-involvement!

To return to the point of the post, it’s true that I call myself a Christian feminist. It might be more accurate to say that "Christian" and "feminist" represent my aspirations rather than my day-to-day reality.  And it’s true that I am enchanted with the idea of living sacrificially, of pouring myself out for the sake of others.  Whether I like that idea so much because it’s what God really wants, or because it’s a flatteringly romantic image, I don’t know!   And it’s also true that I lead a very comfortable middle-class, childless existence.  Yes, I tithe to charity, as of now, a full ten percent — but I also am quite happy writing those donations off on my taxes.  Even in my giving, I’m quite aware of what I’m getting.

All of this navel-gazing is a luxury. It’s one I’m especially prone to in the summer, when I’m not teaching seven classes a week and spending many hours as a volunteer youth leader.  Come a month from now, and I’ll be surrounded by young people who will force me to give of myself, force me to think less of my own body and my own wants, and compel me to give a great deal of  my time and my attention and my energy to their needs.  That’s going to be very healthy for me. 

In the meantime, folks, I’m afraid that the self-absorption level — and the concomitant hypocrisy — is going to be pretty high ’round these parts.

Still more search terms!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 2, 2005
in Fun
. Closed

I don’t think I’ll be posting tomorrow, but I will be back on Thursday (with a new short poem to boot).

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a list of search terms folks use to find this blog, so here goes.  All of these are since midnight:

reflections on loving one another (I’d love to think I’ve provided some here…)
boys and girls holding hands  (I’m all for it)
risky men underwear  (Well, the riskiest fellas I know go commando)
jealousy sexual past  (Therapy and prayer help, but ya gotta get over it)
hugo male model  (I’m too old, too pale, with too many scars, but thanks)
camilla cheats on prince charles  (I don’t believe it!)
don’t ask don’t tell history   (Bad idea in the military, better idea in marriage)
slang chinchilla  (Hey! Matilde speaks the Queen’s English, as well as perfect Castillian!)
society’s views on teenage girls dating older men (gosh, I only post on that bi-weekly)
pasadena christian teachers  (Don’t tell!)
how hard to qualify for boston  (hard enough to break my heart by 2 minutes, 51 seconds)
consensual relationships pasadena city college  (I’ll take a smidgen of credit for the policy)
episcopal youth groups sex ed  (it’s rather disturbing that I’m #1 at Google for this query)

Thanks for all the civil and interesting comments below.  See you Thursday.

Autonomy and sacrifice: a brief musing on Christian feminism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 2, 2005
in Christianity and Feminism
. 103 Comments

Some good questions and comments below yesterday’s post.  Lauren writes:

Part of feminism is the belief in full autonomy for women, and as such, full autonomy over the body.

Jennifer asks:

Hugo, there’s a lot of talk about "autonomy," but can you reflect on that more as a Christian? Many seem to be using it as a primary value for feminism - control over one’s body - but what does that mean for us Christian feminists?

This is, of course,  where pro-life and pro-choice feminists usually discover the roots of their disagreement.  For most secular feminists, autonomy is, as Lauren implies, the sine qua non of the women’s movement.   After all, if one does not have mastery of one’s own flesh, the right to vote and the right to equal pay seem like poor compensations for so great a loss of personal freedom!  On a variety of levels, this focus on autonomy, particularly body autonomy, makes sense.   It speaks to our sense that the most basic freedom of all is not just the freedom to do with one’s body as one wills, but to not have done to one’s body what one doesn’t want to have done!  In that sense, autonomy is almost always ultimately defined negatively; it is the right to say "no" to unwanted sex, to unwanted beatings, to unwanted pregnancies.

Christian feminism is not, or at least shouldn’t be, dismissive of autonomy as a important value.  But from a Christian perspective, personal freedom is never the highest good.  As Christians, we understand ourselves to be souls as well as bodies, and we understand ourselves to be souls and bodies who live in community with others, not in isolation.  Thus from a Christian perspective, autonomy must be balanced by a sense of responsibility to the entire living community.  Our bodies don’t belong just to us; they belong to God and they are, as Paul writes in Romans 12, to be a "living and holy sacrifice."

Both Christian feminists and secular feminists are rightly suspicious of the language of sacrifice, especially as it applies to women’s bodies!  But while a secular feminist might say, "Damn it, women have made enough sacrifices with their flesh, it’s time they enjoyed some pleasure and some autonomy", Christian feminists would be interested in further examining what a "living and holy sacrifice" ought to mean.  After all, one huge problem is that the church has often tolerated (and even reinforced) a body double standard, according to which men were simply not asked to make the same kind of physical sacrifices that women were asked to make. Too often, when it comes to the body, the church has been like that group of men in John 8, eager to stone a woman to death for adultery (the only Commandment, of course, one cannot violate by oneself).  Jesus refuses to accept a cultural standard that demands more of women than of men, insisting that the Law on adultery  be applied radically equally to both men and women, or not be applied at all.   From a Christian feminist perspective, the goal is equal sacrifice, equal commitment, from both men and from women.

Christian feminists have fought hard for full inclusion for women in the life of the church.  Christian feminists have also fought for the dignity of women outside of the church, particularly those women who are systematically brutalized by violence and poverty and lack of opportunity.  On countless issues ranging from domestic violence to pornography to female genital mutilation to protection from sexual harassment, Christian feminists can stand shoulder to shoulder with their secular sisters.  But when it comes to the question of who owns our bodies, there we will find some serious but civil disagreement.   

As a Christian, I believe my body does not belong to me alone.  It is a gift from God, and I honor Him when I use my body according to His will, not my own.  In addition, I believe my body exists to serve.   My intellect, my physical strength, my sexuality — all of these ought to be offered in service to my fellow living creatures.  I must always balance my own natural desires with that sense of obligation to God and to the global community.  That obligation is borne by both men and women, of course — but it is also an obligation that, thanks to biology, will be borne differently.    I’m not sure men are called to make a sacrifice comparable to carrying a child to term; I don’t know that any experience in the life of a man is genuinely similar to coping with an unwanted pregnancy.    Therefore, it is with great reluctance that I use words like "responsibility" and "sacrifice" and "obligation" when talking to women!  At the same time, my faith tells me that all of us, men and women alike, are embodied souls who are called to use our bodies for a greater Good.

To be a Christian feminist is not always easy.  To our conservative fellow believers and secular feminists alike, we are walking contradictions.  The overwhelming pressure is to do as they have done, and simply accept that which we believe to be a false dichotomy between faith and feminism.  I’m just not going to do it, friends.  As difficult as it may be to do from time to time, I’m going to hold on to both autonomy and sacrifice as fundamentally important values, balancing them together in tension.

Accuracy and “super liberalness”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 1, 2005
in Politics and Teaching
. 6 Comments

I’ve just spent a few minutes perusing the Campus Report Online site, run by the folks of Accuracy in Academia.  I haven’t had the chance to visit CRO before, and I can’t say I’m impressed.

Long on rhetoric and short on substance, I note that the executive director of AinA, Malcolm Kline, even stoops to using student comments on Ratemyprofessors.com to research one professor who has earned the wrath of the right, Arlene Scala of William Paterson University.  Kline quotes from a few of Scala’s reviews which mention her "super liberalness"; he provides no additional comment.  Given the notoriously unreliable nature of online professor ratings (as I’ve pointed out, non-students can rate profs they’ve never met), it’s disappointing but not surprising that Accuracy in Academia would rely upon them to attack a professor for her progressive politics.

Malcolm, surely you can do better than that.  While it’s true that many professors bring their politics into the classroom, some at the expense of good teaching, it’s also true that an extraordinary number of disgruntled students (usually unhappy about their own poor performance) have learned that charging "bias" is one of the more effective tools of retaliation!  At the very least, a group that has "accuracy" in its title ought to be more responsible about the sources they use.

Husbands, wives, male feminists

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 1, 2005
in Christianity, Faith, Marriage, Men and Masculinity and Men's Movement
. 42 Comments

It’s the first of the month, and there are bills to pay and various paperwork items to complete around the office.  The home computer remains in the shop, so I must blog and work from the campus.  It’s odd to be on a nearly empty college campus; my footsteps echo in the hallways and I can have the finest parking space in the faculty lot no matter what time I arrive.  Four weeks from today, when the fall semester opens, all of that will be very, very different. 

I still have a number of spots left open in my History 24F "Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History Class"; all of my other classes are full.  (My women’s studies course is always the first to close, and I’m pleased with how consistently high the demand is for it.  My department chair has asked me to consider teaching two or three sections of women’s history per semester, but that would be simply too much work.  With all the assigned journals and papers, no one would get the attention they deserve.)    It is difficult to get some folks to take a course in Lesbian and Gay history; some students have said that they are afraid of what others will think of them if they enroll.  (The course title will be on their transcript, after all).  For that reason, I’m rather shameless about flattering the courage of those who do enroll.  I know very well that even in 2005, a great many of my students on this majority-minority campus come from homes where their parents would be apoplectic if they knew their son or daughter were taking a course in "queer studies".  Thus all the more reason to openly applaud those brave enough to take the course, and to risk the opprobrium and ridicule that, based on what I’ve heard from former students, is all too real.

Last week, Hannah at Feministing linked to this LA Times opinion piece by Crispin Sartwell, a political scientist at Pennsylvania’s Dickinson College:  I Married  A Feminist.   The op-ed is ostensibly about John Roberts and his wife, but it’s really about feminisms and marriage. 

Sartwell makes it clear that as in many families, he and his wife (Marion Winik, who has apparently retained her maiden name) disagree around the breakfast table:

I am a married man, and if I know anything from day-to-day experience, it is that you cannot infer a man’s politics from those of his wife.

This truth came home to me again in a discussion about the politics of Jane Sullivan Roberts, the spouse of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. Over breakfast, I mentioned that Ms. Roberts has been active in a group called Feminists for Life.

I don’t think you can be a feminist and try to force women to have babies they don’t want," my wife, Marion Winik, said.

That claim succinctly expresses why many believe that abortion rights are central to feminism: Freedom entails control over one’s own body. The idea that the state ought to control female reproduction is therefore an odious violation of the autonomy feminism seeks to uphold.

That’s what Marion thinks. But for me, the matter is considerably more complicated.

Sartwell takes the same position I’ve taken, and that is essentially that there are multiple "feminisms".  All feminists are characterized by a belief in justice and equality for women, but different strands of the movement define justice and equality differently.  More to the point, even within feminist history there is no absolute unanimity on the subject of abortion rights, something Sartwell (and those at Feminists for Life) constantly point out.

Pro-choice critics of this "big-tent" picture of feminism often accuse folks like Sartwell and me of being so inclusive in our definition that we’re watering down essential feminist principles, especially the ones about the sanctity of personal autonomy.  I understand that concern, and I realize that at least in my own case, my desire to be radically inclusive of everyone tends to trump, with remarkable regularity, any other principle.  "Making everyone feel welcome", whether in a women’s studies class or at the altar for eucharist, is of such paramount importance to me that I am quite unwilling to challenge anyone who proclaims himself or herself a "feminist" or a "Christian."   

At Feministing, there’s some good discussion in the comments section about Sartwell’s piece.  Amanda makes the following point with her customary incisiveness:

Can you be pro-life and a feminist? I don’t know. But I do know that I strongly dislike reading a man write an article where he attempts to override his wife’s definition of feminism. Jesus Christ, talk about missing the point.

This leads the Feministing discussion directly into a discussion of men, women, marriage and feminism.  Do read all the comments through.

The question raised is an obvious one: when and how ought men to speak on feminism, both with their partners and in a public forum?  Can one be a pro-feminist man and hold opinions about feminism that are at odds with the majority of women in the mainstream feminist movement?

In one sense, to borrow a phrase from Amanda, I have a dog in this hunt: I’ve been teaching women’s studies at this college for over a decade.  Just last week, I cheered the appointment of David Allen as chair of the UW women’s studies department, and I’ve defended "my right" to teach the subject as well.

But even though I believe passionately that men can and should teach women’s studies courses, I also believe we must do so with a profound sense of humility.  Ultimately, no matter how strongly we sympathize with our sisters, no matter how committed we are to women’s liberation and equality, we can never claim to be equally affected by the issues we are discussing.   If Roe v. Wade is overturned, I will have not suffered any loss to my personal autonomy.   Regardless of whether or not I am pro-choice or pro-life, I am incapable of truly understanding — on a visceral and emotional level — what it means to live as a woman in a body that many believe ought to have its natural processes regulated by the state.  That’s not a personal failure on my part, and it’s not something for which I feel compelled to apologize.  But while men can be deeply interested in women’s issues (I am) we cannot claim personal expertise in what it means to live as an embodied woman.

Of course, there’s more to feminism and women’s studies than personal experience.  I may never have menstruated, but I can teach my female students about the history of sanitary products.  I will surely never get pregnant, but I can give a narrative history of the expansion of reproductive rights as effectively as anyone else.  Personal experience is not a vital qualification for effective teaching, even in gender studies, but humility is.  What is the essence of that humility?  A willingness to recognize that male biology grants us the freedom from being pregnant, and that privilege inevitably blinds even the most sensitive and compassionate among us to the reality of what it means to carry a child inside of us — particularly an unwanted one.  And what I think Amanda and others found lacking in Sartwell’s op-ed was that sense of humility that ought to be in place whenever a man discusses an issue that is primarily about what happens inside women’s bodies.  (To be fair to Sartwell, while he makes it clear that he married a feminist, he doesn’t claim to be a feminist or a pro-feminist; to me that’s an important distinction.)

Though I am a pro-feminist man, I am quite willing to disagree with my feminist sisters about any number of feminist issues. I do think one can be a pro-feminist, progressive evangelical Christian pro-life man without being crushed by contradictions!  But I’m also aware that when I disagree, it is my job to do so humbly. It is my job to make it clear — in the classroom or at the breakfast table — that I speak not as a disembodied intellect (there’s no such thing) but as a man. I’d like to think I’m a compassionate, thoughtful fellow.  I know that I have a very good grasp of the story of the women’s movement and of contemporary feminist literature.  But professional expertise is not a complete substitute for personal experience.  Hence, I must always be scrupulous about acknowledging my maleness.  That doesn’t mean apologizing for having a penis!  But it does mean recognizing that biology does shape our world view, and those of us who are biologically protected from the reality of an unwanted pregnancy must be very, very careful when we share our thoughts with those for whom that unwanted pregnancy is a real possibility.