Archive for March, 2006

A long rant on feminism, the internalized audience, and alcohol

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 23, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness and Feminism
. 52 Comments

Sorry, this is going to be long. But I’m not posting again today, so read it in sections if you like.

In women’s history class this week, we’re talking about the birth of the temperance movement and nineteenth-century feminism, as well as the sudden and stunning rise in alcohol consumption that America witnessed as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution.  In the first half of the nineteenth century, access to alcohol was to some extent sex-specific: many taverns excluded all women save prostitutes, and women who may have wanted to drink faced both economic and social barriers to doing so.

I often connect the problem of heavy drinking in the nineteenth century to the drinking and drug use we see among young — and not so young — people today.  Here’s what concerns me: so many of my female students (and even many of my youth group kids) use alcohol and drugs to give them a kind of what might be crassly called  "liquid feminism".  If one key feminist goal is to empower young women to be clear and forthright about their desires, then it’s fairly evident that some young women, more than a few, use alcohol as a tool to overcome their own doubts and fears and insecurities.  And that makes that kind of drinking a feminist issue.

Last November, I wrote about the crushing problem of the "internalized audience."  Let me quote three paragraphs from that long post:

The make-up of the audience varies little from young woman to young woman: mothers and fathers, friends and family members, teachers and pastors and peers.  Each member of the audience has his or her own set of expectations for how the girl ought to behave, and gradually, those expectations have crawled deep into the psyche.  Raised to be acutely sensitive to the wishes and values of others, most young women "internalize the audience" by adolescence if not before…

Thus I’m convinced that one of the most important feminist tasks is helping young — and not so young — women to quiet that internalized audience.  Quieting, mind you, is not the same as dismissing.  All of us, at times, can be comforted and strengthened by the memory of what some loved one or respected person has told us.  On occasion, it’s appropriate to ask:  "What would so-and-so say if they could see me now?  What advice would they give?"  We ought on occasion to consider the wishes and beliefs of our culture, our faith (if we have one) and our parents.  But though these ought to be factors in our decision-making about food, sex,and pleasure, they ought not to be the decisive ones.  Helping young women listen to their own desires, separate from those of the large and loud audience, is a key feminist goal.

To put it another way, I often argue that feminism is about helping young women to find both their authentic "yes" and their authentic "no".  By authentic, I mean that it is congruent with their deepest desires.   And wherever they may ultimately lie, we know this: these "deepest desires" lie beneath the surface longing to please parents and partners.   To put it crudely: many young women will encounter many young men who very much want them to say "yes."  Many of these young women will come from backgrounds where their cultural obligation is to say "no".   So whether she says "yes" or "no", her own desires may well have already been silenced by the overwhelming pressure to please one faction or another in the audience.  She will find it very difficult, it not impossible, to please everyone.

I stand by that post today.

What concerns me as a youth leader and a teacher is the huge number of young women who report using substances to quiet the internalized audience!  What so many teens discover is that alcohol presses — if only temporarily — the "mute" button on all of the competing voices in one’s head.  For some young women, alcohol and drugs enable them to say "yes" to what they really want to say "yes" to but don’t dare while sober; for others, alcohol may allow another’s "yes" to override their own drowned-out "no."  But what so many of my young people report is the consistent use of alcohol and drugs to live a double life: a life where, when "lit" by a drink or five, they are able to feel powerful, decisive, and in control, unhampered by doubt.  As we all know all too well, the consequences of using alcohol and drugs to overcome inhibitions, to become a short-lived "liquid feminist" who says and does what she wants, can often be disastrous.

We live in a culture that puts impossible pressures on so many young women: to be sexy but virginal, demure yet aggressive, autonomous and independent yet pleasing to men, beautiful but effortlessly so.   It’s hard enough for many adults to silence all of these nagging voices in their heads while sober, far more difficult for vulnerable teens and early twenty-somethings.  And chemicals offer such rapid relief, or at least the illusion of rapid relief!  Chemicals reconcile the irreconcilable; chemicals drown out the shouting, arguing, hectoring voices that so many women carry around in their heads every waking second.  And yet those same chemicals bring so much devastation and heartbreak.

One of the things I want for my students and youth groupers of either sex is the confidence to act on their own deep desires — while stone cold sober.  I want them to support each other while they do the work of silencing the nagging internalized audience –  without relying on booze or drugs to suppress those voices.  I have become convinced, in other words, that drinking and drug use is a feminist issue for a wide variety of reasons.  Obviously, intoxication can increase a woman’s risk of being sexually assaulted.  That and that alone makes the topic a vital one for those of us who care about the lives of women and girls.  But more subtly, in our modern culture alcohol and drugs become an escape from doing the overwhelmingly difficult work of figuring out what the hell it is you really want, and then having the courage to give voice to that want.

We’ve got to do more than lecture young women about the dangers of turning to "liquid feminism." If all we feminists and pro-feminists do is give lectures, after all, all we end up becoming is another damn voice in the head — and another reason for a young person to feel she’s not living up to other’s expectations for her!  That’s the last thing I want.  I’m convinced, however, that those of us who care about the next generation of feminists have to confront the issue of drinking and substance abuse among women and girls.  We have to see that it’s fundamentally tragic for our sisters and our daughters (maybe even our wives and mothers) to resort to alcohol and drugs in order to tell us what they really feel and what they really want.  On an individual level, "drinking to silence the voices" is fundamentally at odds with the most basic feminist ideals. 

At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, where the nascent American feminist movement first began to organize in a serious way, the delegates issued the famous Declaration of Sentiments.  One of the charges against "mankind" (what we today call the patriarchy) was this:

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Read positively, this first women’s rights manifesto is calling for three things: self-confidence, self-respect, and independence.  As modern feminists, we must be committed, as our fore-mothers in 1848 were committed (most of them, by the way, were firmly in the temperance movement) to instilling in our daughters those three precious attributes. One great enemy of those goals is, I think, the habitual use of substances in order to give the user the false impression that she does in fact have, if only for a moment, self-confidence and independence!  As any recovering alcoholic will tell you, booze lies.  Drugs lie.  And as the inheritors of that legacy of Seneca Falls, one of our goals, as lofty as it may seem, is to remove the tremendous cultural pressures that drive so many of our sisters and daughters to the false promises of liquid feminism.

Thursday Short Poem: Kaufman’s “Lot’s Wife”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 23, 2006
in Poetry
. 5 Comments

Almost a year ago, I offered this Leslie Goerner poem about Lot’s wife.  ‘Twas a very Christian poem, meditating on the difficulty of letting go of sin.  This week’s poem is on the same story, but from a very different angle.  Margaret Kaufman gives us another side to the story, but ultimately, I’m able to recognize my own human brokenness in both women’s visions of Lot’s wife and her fatal decision to look back.

Read both poems together; they stand together nicely.

Lot’s Wife

They had no time—the just man
hurried across the bridge,
followed God’s magistrate
along the black ridge.

His grieving wife lagged behind
as if she had no will,
arms heavy with useless things,
heart heavier still.

She couldn’t recall if she’d shut the door,
turned off the iron; worse guilt,
she’d left behind the baby pictures,
her mother’s ring, her wedding quilt.

One arm raised as if to gather
her whole life in that embrace,
tears blurring the view,
without much thought she turned her face,

became what she had shed. Who grieves
for this nameless woman, Lot’s reflective wife?
I grieve.
I know holding on can cost a life.

Keep at it!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 22, 2006
in Stuff
. 1 Comment

Just another reminder to keep the letters of support for Jane Doe coming.  Send them to ihiroe@yahoo.com  Coverage of the case by Sheelzebub here.

We want 500 letters, and we’re at a little bit more than 10% if that total.

“An issue of mentorship” –a thought or two about pro-feminist men and their feminist mentors

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 22, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Teaching
. 15 Comments

In her inimitable style, DarkDaughta (NWS) put up a terrific post yesterday on men in the feminist movement.  An excerpt:

When I think of how unsafe it is for men to make change just in their own lives, relationships, families, when I think of how little boys are reared, inculcated, abused, torn and shredded, their tender insides buffeted and harshly molded to make them perfect patriarchs primed to benefit from the dubitable perks of living as a male in a society that privileges men, my heart and spirit hurt.

It’s good stuff.  Ricia followed up at he place and with this comment at DarkDaughta’s:

i welcome anti-patriarchal men into the fold as ally’s without doubt and in good faith. and (here it comes…) view the hiccups that arise, and are bound to - as an issue of mentorship. so long as all are willing and no further to that.

And this got me thinking about what role women in the feminist movement play in mentoring pro-feminist men.

When I was at Cal in the 1980s, taking my first women’s studies courses, there were no men’s studies courses. I had no pro-feminist male professors.   Thus all of my early mentors were women.  (I mentioned my mother on Monday).  My classmates were mostly women, and in those early years, they mentored me.  I wasn’t a women’s studies major, but I hung out with lots of women who were.  They challenged me and pushed me, but nearly always welcomed me.  And of course, they urged me to work with other men — something  it would take me another decade to do.

Pro-feminist men have a difficult road to walk in relationship to the larger feminist movement.  On the one hand, we are by definition in solidarity with the movement’s goals of justice and equality for our mothers, sisters, wives, lovers, friends and daughters.  We are painfully aware of just how few other men share a public and persistent commitment to feminism.  Almost all of us who do this work have encountered ridicule (or, at best, a kind of studied disregard) from other men for our beliefs and our actions.  But because we are men, ultimately we are socialized differently from our female companions in the movement.  We have privileges they don’t have — and when it comes to certain legacies of what DarkDaughta calls the "patriarchy", we have some unique burdens as well, mostly around the crushing obligations to live up to an elusive masculine ideal.

Women in the movement can tell us their stories of what men have done to them.  They can teach us theory; pro-feminist men’s studies is rooted in feminist analysis.  And feminists can share with us their vision of what they would like men to be.  But sharing with us their goals for men is not the same as modeling for us how to live as pro-feminists!  Pro-feminist men can listen and learn a great deal from our feminist sisters, but they can’t show us by example how to become the men we are called to become. For that, we need role models who live in male flesh and have been acculturated as men.

The number of pro-feminist men who live out their commitments to justice and equality in both public and private is relatively small.  There are few places where men can easily find supportive communities of other men who share both an interest in activism and in personal transformation.  The young guys I know who are struggling to be good feminists in private and public rarely have strong older male mentors whose example is worthy of emulating. 

I cannot begin to express the sense of urgency I feel in my own life as a result!  I’m hardly the only pro-feminist male women’s studies professor — but I’m the only one the vast majority of my students have ever met, and I may be the only self-proclaimed male feminist they will encounter for the next few years.  Thus I feel a special obligation to talk about how I live out my pro-feminism in my private life as well as in my public commitments — largely because I want to show that it is possible to live as a man and resist the dominant cultural messages about what men ought to be.  This is particularly important for someone who describes himself as an evangelical Christian pro-feminist, which puts me in a fairly unique niche.  So I spend a lot of time asking myself, "If my students could see me now, what would they think?  When I’m alone with my wife, or alone with my computer, or hanging out with my running buddies, do my actions and words match what I preach and teach?"  Sometimes, I need to pray a lot for the strength to live with wholeness and congruence! 

(My prayers tend to be profane, passionate, and vaguely incoherent:  "Dear God, grant me the strength to match my language and my life.  Help me not to fuck this up.  And if I do fuck up, Lord, help me to get right back on the path and not wallow in all of that shit.")

I have many male friends today.  But in my feminist walk, I still rely on female colleagues and mentors.  I need my feminist sisters, some younger than myself, to challenge me and and help me to see where I am blind.  I could not do the work I do or live the life I lead without a great deal of regular input and gentle criticism from my feminist allies.  This does not mean that I need to be mothered or directed like a little boy!  It does mean that if I am committed to justice and equality and liberation for women and men, I have to listen to those who share those convictions and those goals. And always, I have to remain teachable.

Nota bene:

I will be enforcing the thread drift rule forcefully  in the comments section.  Do not use the comments below this post to question the whole feminist movement.  Focus on the specific topic of my post, please.

“Lana lacks humility”: a note on sexism and letters of rec

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 22, 2006
in Ethnicity, Feminism, Modesty and Teaching
. 34 Comments

Boxing lessons continue to go well.  We started work on the upper cut today; doing it with the left is difficult — I can’t quite master the hip movement that accompanies it yet. My body feels completely recovered from the marathon — I’m lucky that I usually can get back to my normal exercise routine in 48-72 hours after a long race.  Some folks have told me that’s a sign of good conditioning, while others grumble that it means I didn’t push myself hard enough.  I worry, at times, that it’s the latter.  But I was in a suitable amount of anguish in the latter stages of Sunday’s LA Marathon, and though I was slow, I did make a reasonable effort.

Anyhow, a student named "Lana" came to see me yesterday.  Lana took a couple of my classes last year, and distinguished herself as a truly outstanding student.  Lana immigrated to this country from Russia just a few years ago in her early teens, but her mastery of English has become nearly flawless and her accent is only slight.  She’s applying for transfer to a couple of very fine colleges, and asked me to write a letter of recommendation.  I wrote a glowing and enthusiastic one.

Lana came to seem me yesterday about another professor’s letter of rec.  One of my colleagues in another department wrote a letter praising Lana’s abilities, but after a brief recitation of her accomplishments and intelligence, added, "Unfortunately, Lana lacks humility."  He gave Lana a copy of the letter — after having mailed the originals off to the schools to which she is applying.

Lana was understandably upset, and wanted to talk about several things.  Was it appropriate, she wondered, for this professor to put this in his letter?  Should she write him a note about it?  And perhaps equally important, did I think that what he said was true?

By the time Lana was done telling me the story, I was quite cross with my colleague.  First of all, the issue of "humility" itself, which seemed charged with sexism and ethnic bias.  Lana is about 20.  She’s an immigrant from a family that came here with virtually nothing not so many years ago.  She’s also a young woman, and she’s ambitious and eager to succeed.  She’s not a grade-grubber; she earned her As easily.  But she’s got big dreams and she’s not shy about sharing them when prompted to do so.  She will raise her hand to ask questions, will challenge a professor with whom she disagrees (she took me on more than once!)

My colleague, like myself, is a middle-aged white native-born Christian male with tenure.  His views on politics are notoriously conservative, as are, apparently, his views on young women and their deportment.  What he calls "lack of humility" is code for what I’m fairly confident he sees as Lana’s unfeminine ambition, her willingness to speak up for herself, her eagerness for a better and more prosperous life for herself and her family.  (She’s also Russian, and without getting into ethnic stereotypes, I can say — having had a whole mess of wonderful students from that society — that theirs is definitely not a culture in which modesty and quiet self-deprecation are celebrated virtues for either sex!)  I cannot imagine that my colleague would have written the same comment about a male student.  I suspect, though I admit I have no evidence for this, that if he writing about "Dmitri" instead of "Lana", he might praise him as "driven and outspoken and ambitious".

So I told Lana I didn’t think she "lacked humility" in any meaningful or important sense. I also told her that I felt it was a whoppingly inappropriate comment to put in an academic letter of recommendation.  She’s not applying for a job as an etiquette teacher; she’s applying to competitive colleges where she wants to earn a degree in business.  Even if she did lack humility, I told her its absence will likely prove an asset to her in her future professional work!

I haven’t decided yet whether to confront my colleague. If we were friends, I’d be on him in two seconds flat (after, of course, getting Lana’s permission to discuss the matter with him.)  Yesterday, I wrote about my penchant for politeness — and while it’s true I value civility, if someone’s upset one of "my kids" (either a student at PCC or a teen at All Saints), I’ll be in the offender’s face lickety-split.  But Lana expressed no interest in having me talk to him, and I don’t know him well at all.  Besides, the damage, such as it is, has already been done.  I did my best to reassure Lana that I believed in her unconditionally, and that I believe that most college admissions officers will not take the line about humility seriously.

On a related note, I always tell a student up front if I can’t write a glowing letter of recommendation.  If I’ve got reason to doubt a student’s character or academic potential, I tell them as soon as they ask me to write a letter.  That way, they can decide in advance whether or not they want me to be one of their recommenders.  I also always give a copy of the letter to my student, even if he or she has waived access to it.  I don’t ever say things behind people’s backs I wouldn’t say to their faces, and that goes for evaluations as well as for private gossip.  I think that’s a good rule for my colleagues to consider.

Former students, write in!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 21, 2006
in Stuff, Teaching and Vanity
. 5 Comments

This week, out of the blue, several former students have emailed me or dropped by — one guy I hadn’t seen in three years or so, another woman I hadn’t seen in six; two brothers I had had way back in 1997.  So if you’re a former student of mine, leave a comment, or shoot me an e-mail.  Believe it or not, I remember far more of you than you would imagine and I wonder about you far more often than you could ever suspect.

At the risk of sounding prideful, when one has played a small part in planting seeds, one likes to see how they’ve bloomed.  Where are you?  What are you doing?  What triumphs, disappointments, setbacks and breakthroughs are you having?  Have you reproduced?  Moved to Uruguay?  Become a Zoroastrian?  Have you decided that I was full of you-know-what?  He-who-pontificated in front of you wants to know.

Current students who are lurking are invited to out themselves here too.

A long reflection on gentlemanliness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 21, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Class, Faith, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Pacifism
. 55 Comments

I’m still reflecting on the aftermath of last week’s major blogosphere debate about feminism, civility,and commenting rules.  No, I’m not going to revisit that issue specifically.

Rather, I’m thinking about the number of folks who’ve taken me to task for my attachment to notions of courtesy and civility.  Last week, over in this thread at Feministe, I wrote:

To me, civility is not about ideology. It’s about tactics. I judge people less by what they believe, and more by the tools they employ to convey those beliefs. Or, to put it another way, I care less about the “ends” and more about the “means”.

And a whole bunch of folks took issue with that.  Not surprisingly, I was initially very defensive — which was a mistake.  I eventually bowed out of the entire thread.  But in reading the challenges to my position, especially from DarkDaughta (NWS), I’ve been forced to ask myself a basic question to which I already know the answer:

To what extent does my passionate attachment to being "nice" really reflect my faith, and to what extent is it a reflection of my privilege as a middle-class white man with tenure?

Years ago, my theological wanderings led me to the Mennonites.  I became an enthusiastic Anabaptist (heck, I’m always an enthusiastic something).  I loved the Anabaptist/Mennonite commitment to social justice and to non-violence.  In the aftermath of September 11, I found the radical witness of the peace churches to be particularly compelling.  But I found, later rather than sooner, that I was making a serious error:

I tend to confuse Jesus’ call to be a peacemaker with my family’s admonition to always be "nice". 

I was raised to be what my family called a "gentleman".  In my family, it meant a "gentle man", with gentle in the modern sense of polite and kind, not in the older sense of aristocratic birth.  (Though some folks in my family did, in my childhood, have some attachment to the idea that gentlemen were also listed in the Social Register and belonged to the Right Clubs.  I’m not in either the Social Register or the Bohemian Club, though both were important to me when I was much younger).  My grandmother always said "A gentleman makes everyone around him feel comfortable."  And for years and years, I’ve worked so hard to live up to that ideal!  And when I became a Christian, I thought that one of the things I had found in my relationship with Jesus was a new power to become even nicer, and make my family even prouder.

But as better Christians than I tend to discover early on, Jesus is not "nice."  As C.S. Lewis says of Aslan, his Christ-figure in the Narnia books, "He’s not a tame lion!"  Jesus was non-violent, it’s true — and peacemaking was at the center of His mission on earth.  But Jesus never compromises the truth in order to save people’s feelings.  He may have said "turn the other cheek", but he also overturns the money-changer’s tables in the temple.  That was very, very, impolite of Him.

Jesus models a new way of relating to the powers and principalities that be.  Unlike the Zealots, He will not endorse violence against other human beings.  But His non-violence is not passive, and it isn’t "nice".  He makes people uncomfortable over and over again; He is not a proper gentleman. A proper gentleman of the sort I aspired to be would have had lunch with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Romans and the Zealots, and told them all that they were awfully nice people and that God loved them just the way they were, and couldn’t they all be just a bit more civil to each other? Pretty please?

I’ve realized something this week that I don’t like about myself.  I call myself a pro-feminist and a Christian.  But too often, when my ideology and my faith come into conflict with my desire to be a charming people-pleaser who "makes everyone feel comfortable", my childhood aspirations of gentlemanliness trump my political and spiritual convictions.  So I end up more attached to my blog as a place where everyone can get along than as a place where the intersection of faith, feminism, and sexual mores can be thoughtfully — and honestly — explored. 

If I’m serious about my Christian faith, I will, to paraphrase Desmond Tutu, genuflect before the image of Christ that I see in all living things.  I will love God’s creatures as I love myself.  But I must find a way to be a bit more Christ-like, and that means I must be better about confronting evil rather than trying to accommodate it.  My pacifist principles mean that I must never hit those whose views are hateful.  But pacifism does not ask me to charm them, particularly when my own motives for being charming are less about changing the hearts and minds of those with whom I am in debate and more about cultivating a satisfying image of myself as perennially pleasant, irenic, and gentlemanly.

One spiritual advisor of mine always says, "Hugo, if you’re not pissing somebody off you’re not doing your work."  I hate it when he says that.  But I know he’s right.  If I’m going to walk with Jesus as I claim to want to do, if I’m going to be an effective advocate for pro-feminist principles, I have to be willing to let go of my childlike desire to be likable and inoffensive. I need to see that my very ability to remain aloof from the struggle is a consequence of my privilege rather than my commitment to Christ. 

And while I don’t need to start bopping people on the head (or even wielding a whip like my Lord in the temple), I could be of a hell of a lot more service if I let go of my incredibly strong infatuation with civility, courtliness, and being thought a "heckuva nice guy."

Not saying anything…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 20, 2006
in Age, Body, Feminism, Marriage, Modesty, Sexuality and Youth
. 9 Comments

Now, I’m not accusing anyone of anything.

But read this from conservative family pundit Jennifer Roback Morse’s column today on Townhall:

The average age of first menstruation is now 12.5, down from 16.2 in the nineteenth century. But the age at first marriage is 25.2  We aren’t ready for economic independence until our late twenties.

That means that we may have a gap of 10 to 15 years between the time we are biologically ready and the time we are economically ready. All those raging hormones are trying to get us to reproduce. That gap between the age at first menses and the age at first marriage creates, shall we say, a certain tension in society.

And what I wrote on March 10:

Yesterday in my women’s history class, we began making our way through Joan Brumberg’s The Body Project.  I’ve been using the book for years and years, and it’s a huge hit with my students each semester.

It is Brumberg who first drew my attention to statistics about menarche, marriage, and the loss of virginity.  She points out that a century ago, girls menstruated for the first time at an average age of 16 and got married at an average age of around 21.  Today, girls menstruate at an average age of just under 12 and get married for the first time at just over 25.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  A century ago, the time between the onset of puberty and marriage was but five years; today it’s close to fifteen. If a contemporary young woman is trying to "wait" until marriage to lose her virginity, she is waiting — in a very real sense — three times as long as women did in her great-great grandmother’s era!

I mean, it’s not a universally made point — actually, not many of us make it ever, and I can’t find it anywhere in anything else Roback Morse has written before.   

Just a co-inky-dink?

Whaddya think?

“Does it matter where the gay youth leaders sleep?” A sensitive question about youth ministry in the inclusive church

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 20, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, GLBTQ and Youth ministry
. 77 Comments

Today in my gay and lesbian history class, we briefly got on to the topic of the terrible stereotype about gays, lesbians, and pedophilia.   Most of my students are familiar with the unfounded cultural fear that associates homosexuality with the sexual abuse of children.  But talking about it today brought back flashbacks to an old experience I had when I was first working as a youth leader at All Saints Pasadena a number of years ago.

One of the first time I went on retreat with the kids, I was one of four adult leaders headed off to Big Bear for the weekend. There were two male and two female leaders, and about a dozen kids of each sex.   The other male youth leader, "Oscar", was an openly gay man and a loved and trusted member of the All Saints community.  (He’s no longer with All Saints).  The two female youth leaders were straight.  As is common on such retreats, the boys shared a communal shower area, and dressed and undressed in front of each other.  Boys and girls were not allowed in the other sex’s cabin without adults present.  Before I went into the girls’ cabin, I would knock and wait for the all-clear.  (Replete with the usual "Everybody decent?" query, followed by mildly profane and silly responses!)

When we got back from the trip, I had a conversation with a parent.  (Yes, I know All Saints people read this blog — no, you can’t possibly guess who I’m talking about.  This was five or six years ago; don’t try.)  This man (I’ll call him "Jim"), the father of one of the boys in my cabin, was irate that Oscar had been on the trip.  His angry challenge rocked me.  Jim said:

"Hugo, I have a daughter who will be old enough for a retreat in a couple of years.  Now, I know you, Hugo, and I like you.  But I would not be okay with you sleeping in the girls’ cabin with her and using the girls’ bathroom with her.  I’m sure you wouldn’t want to, either!  But Hugo, how come I’m supposed to be okay with a gay man sharing space with my son?  Why is it okay for Oscar to be in the boys cabin, but not okay for you to be in the girls cabin?

I’ll confess, I was totally unprepared for the question.  Jim didn’t want to approach All Saints staff; he was not interested in filing a formal complaint.  But he knew me well enough as a friend to express his concern, and he wanted an answer.  I told him that I couldn’t think of a good response off the top of my head, and I told him I’d get back to him. He made me promise not to raise the issue with All Saints staff (or with Oscar), and I agreed.

I spent a week running the scenario by everyone I knew who wasn’t associated with the church. Some of my more liberal friends were indignant that the question was even asked: "Screw the father! It doesn’t deserve a response, it’s pure bigotry!"  Some of my conservative friends were delighted that I was in this quandary, convinced that I couldn’t come up with a justification for why Oscar belonged with us in the boys cabin.  (Several of them pointed out that I had run into one of the reasons why the Scouts still ban openly gay leaders from working with their boys).  Most people weren’t much help, frankly.

But I wanted to get back to Jim, and I called him the following week. Here’s more or less what I said:

"Jim, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I thought coming up with a good answer would be easier than it has been.  And I want you to know that I believe you’re coming from a place of love and concern, not from bigotry.  But I’ve thought about this for a while, and I believe that we can make the case that gay men and lesbian women can be superb youth leaders, and be in the same close proximity to youth of their same gender as straight leaders.

The reason we put the male youth leaders with the boys and female youth leaders with the girls isn’t because of sexuality, at least not mainly.   A gay male youth leader is still a man; a lesbian youth leader is still a woman.  We divide up the sexes for the comfort and safety of the kids, because when it comes to teenagers, we believe it’s important to have separate space for things like showering and sleeping.  Sexual desire isn’t the issue, Jim; it’s really just a matter of biology. Gay men use the men’s restroom, and no one has a problem with that!"

Jim came right back:

You’re dodging, Hugo.  When I was in youth group, we changed in front of each other.  Do you ever see the boys in their underwear or naked?

"I suppose sometimes, yes."

Do you think, Hugo, if you saw the girls naked or in their underwear, you might be aroused or uncomfortable?

"Jim! No!  Totally inappropriate question, and I would never put myself in that situation!  EVER!"

Exactly, Hugo! You may not want to go there, buddy, but bear with me: why would you never, ever be in that situation, but you expect Oscar to be?  We’re all human beings.  Are you so confident that your devotion to ministry would conquer your sexual desires?  Do you think it’s possible a gay man might get turned on by being around undressed teenage boys?  Yes or no?

I conceded it was possible.  "But even so, I know Oscar.  He’s got terrific boundaries and a heart for youth ministry.  He would never, ever, ever, cross that line."

That’s great, Hugo; I’m glad you stand up for your friends.  But not all parents know Oscar the way you do.  Should we just take your word for it?  Do you know what Oscar really thinks when he sees my son in the shower?

At this point, I began to get flustered and I lost my cool.  My eagerness to defend Oscar overtook me, and I said some things in anger.  I’m sorry to say that the conversation ended badly.  And frankly, I’ve revisited this debate many times.  I know from experience that gay men and lesbians can be wonderful and safe youth leaders.  But I’ve never found the words to effectively convince concerned parents and others who ask the same sort of questions Jim asked.

In my heart, I’m convinced that the biological sex of the youth leader should be the sole determinant of which cabin he or she sleeps in.  I don’t believe that the potential for sexual arousal is the primary reason why straight male youth leaders aren’t put in the girl’s bunkhouses — though I acknowledge that not everyone agrees with me.  But I’m not yet doing as good a job as I could be of addressing the concerns of those folks, like Jim, who see a serious problem.

So, readers, open question time:

If you were in my position, and belonged to an affirming church, what would you say to a parent like Jim? 

While it’s not necessary for you to support an inclusive and welcoming position on  homosexuality in order to comment, please avoid using hurtful or stereotypical language to refer to gays and lesbians.  Civility in tone and content is mandatory.  Let’s also remember that in youth ministry, trust and accountabilty are everything — so the answers we give to people like Jim need to be couched in loving and respectful language.

“My life doesn’t just revolve around you”: a note of gratitude for a feminist mom

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 20, 2006
in Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 17 Comments

I’ve been posting quite a bit about families and obligation lately.

My mother called on Saturday to tell me that she liked my "daring to disappoint" post from last Tuesday.   She gave me her permission to post the following.

My parents divorced when I was six; my brother and I were raised by a single mother.  (Our father visited regularly, and theirs was — thank God — a civil and even cordial separation.)  It was not easy being a single mom to two very young sons.  We might have lived in Carmel, but money was tight at times, and my mother had to cope with all of the anxieties and doubts that come in the aftermath of a divorce, separation, and the assumption of sole permanent custody.

But as we talked about on Saturday, my mother also gave a great gift to my brother and me: she always made it clear that she wasn’t sacrificing her life for us.   From the time we were small, our mother always took time for herself.  She had her poetry group, her work with the League of Women Voters, and other social and community activities in which we were not involved.  Now mind you, she was a loving and devoted mom!  My brother and I grew up knowing we were cherished and protected and cared for.  But we also knew that our mother did not exist merely to meet our needs — she had a mind of her own, wants of her own, and she was going to make time for herself as well as for her sons.

What my mother wanted to do, and succeeded in doing, was liberating us from the horrible pressure of living our lives to pay back a mom who had "sacrificed everything for us."  My mom had seen too many parents devote everything they had to their children, with their only joys coming from their kids’ successes.  She had seen some of those kids grow up into anxious and guilt-ridden adults, who were continually haunted by a sense that their mothers and fathers (more often their mothers) had given up so damned much for them.  There are few burdens more awful, she felt, than having to live a life that justifies all of your parent’s sacrifices!

My mother was and is a feminist.  As I’ve written before, we grew up with Ms. Magazine and books by Germaine Greer and Kate Millett on the coffee table.  But my mother’s greatest feminist lesson was this: she made it clear that we could not expect women to drop everything for us.  Relationships mattered, families mattered, love mattered — but personal happiness mattered too!  My mother knew that someday her sons would be in relationships with women, and she knew enough to know that how she met our needs as small boys would be reflected in many of our choices when we became boyfriends, lovers, and husbands.   So she showed us two things:

1.  She loved us very, very much and always would

2.  Her happiness was not solely contingent upon us

I grew up with absolute certainty about both of these things, and it was and is one of the greatest gifts my mother could have given me.  My mother never, ever, gave us the awful speech far too many of my students get: "After all I’ve done for you, you owe it to me to…"  I’ve seen friends of mine who still struggle as adults to overcome the tremendous guilt they feel, knowing how much their parents sacrificed for them.  And while I honor that their parents did make sacrifices, I urge these same friends to not pass on this dreadful legacy to their children.  This doesn’t mean abandoning your kids, mind you — it’s perfectly possible to shower your children with love and give them a sense of security while simultaneously making it clear to them from an early age that your happiness does not hinge on what they do!

So my belief in the importance of women’s autonomy and personal freedom — even as wives and mothers — came to me early in life.  A first-born son growing up in a household without a father (amateur psychologists, have at it!), I was very close to my mother.  I still am.  And my adult feminism is linked in no small way to the lessons she taught me.  Motherhood, I learned, is a role — but it need not be an all-consuming identity.  The fact that my mother had a life outside of her children gave me the confidence to live out my life without fear that I would destroy her if I made mistakes or deviated from a planned path.  Her commitment to her own happiness allowed me to make a similar commitment to my own — and for that, I will forever be tremendously grateful.

Hugo is slow, and crying doesn’t help

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 19, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness and Vanity
. 11 Comments

Well, that wasn’t much fun.

Today’s race was my fourth Los Angeles Marathon, my first since 2001– and by a considerable margin, my slowest.  (I finished in a 3:57, and had to trot to break 4 hours at the end.  In 2001, I ran a 3:30:45 at LA.) ) Age and weight gain have slowed me down, as has the fact that my friends and I do most of our running in the mountains, on more forgiving dirt.  We only did one long training run on pavement, and we all suffered today on the hard and cruel asphalt.  I ran the first fifteen miles with a good friend of mine, but she began to cramp and had to drop.  I passed two more of my normally much faster buddies as the race wore on.  I had several long periods of walking, plus one extended potty break.  The fact that most of the hills are in the second half, and that the sun was quite bright, didn’t help matters…

Though my favorite races have clearly become the mountain marathons and 50Ks, I admit I love running through the various communities of Los Angeles.  The folks whose view of LA has been formed by "Crash" (sorry to harp on this again) ought to have been out running today; more than 20,000 ethnically diverse runners running through a huge variety of neighborhoods, cheered on by passionate and warm crowds.  We had Korean drummers drumming, we had gospel music on Crenshaw, we had Native American dancers, we had salsa and rancheras blaring.  I heard "si se puede" over and over again, and was encouraged to press on in a dozen other languages.   

When I’m tired and in pain, I get sentimental — and twice in the second half of the race, the enthusiasm of my fellow runners and of the large and diverse crowds made me puddle up.  I started to cry at a water stop around mile 21, and some folks must have thought I was in physical agony.  I waved off their concern, but had to stop and compose myself.  Somehow, all of these people out in the bright sun just to cheer on perfect strangers seemed so wonderful and kind, it overwhelmed me. 

Los Angeles is my adopted home town, and I love it with every fibre of my being.  But as my friends and I decided after the race, we’re done with these darned paved big city races. It’s back into the mountains for us, and we’ll all be happier running on dirt.

After the race, I was so tired I took a little nap in the middle of the street.  My wife snapped this picture just as I was getting up.  Click to enlarge.

Done_2

More on family obligation and autonomy tomorrow.  And it was nice to come home to this bit of news about hoops, women’s progress — and women’s prowess.

Update:  It must have been a slow day or something.  I ended up just missing out on finishing in the top 10% (finishing 2076 out of 20,043), despite a sub-par performance — and I was easily in the top fifth of my age group.  I’d be prouder, but I think that big-city marathons attract a lot of walkers!  And big props to my running buddy Jannifer Heiner, who was the 45h overall woman in a time of 3:27. She had to wait for the rest of her miserable friends to stagger in.

48 and counting!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 18, 2006
in Stuff
. Closed

Catty emails me to say that as of this afternoon, she’s received 48 letters of support for Jane Doe; keep ‘em coming! Here’s the email to use: ihiroe@yahoo.com

Rituals

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 18, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Food, Sports and Vanity
. 5 Comments

I’m in the midst of my pre-marathon rituals.  Eating, drinking, laying out my running gear.  Deciding whether to run shirtless or not (I will if the temps will climb above 55 degrees, even if I frighten small children); deciding which socks to wear.  Packing my gels and deciding whether to wear a water belt.

Every serious marathoner I’ve ever known becomes a creature of ritual sooner or later, and after a  great many distance events, I make sure mine include the following:

1.  No caffeine after 2:30PM the day before a race.  That means I can still work on my coffee until then.  After that, water, water, water.

2.  Bagels, bagels, bagels.

3.  A one mile run.

4.  Thirty pushups, forty crunches.  Nothing else.

5.  Anxious worrying about faint twinges in my muscles.

6.  My wife marking up my race bib with encouraging messages for me to read when the going gets tough.

7.  Listening to the Leontyne Price recording of "He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands", over and over again

Today, I’m also watching college basketball.  And flipping back and forth between the men’s and women’s tournaments.  Two fundamentally different but equally compelling ways of approaching the sport are on display with the men’s and women’s games, and as a fan, I appreciate both.  I’ve picked the Duke men and the Oklahoma women to win it all, but I really just enjoy all of the drama.  And it’s keeping me distracted.

Living in community and walking the “lonesome valley”: a response to Vacula

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 18, 2006
in Christianity, Faith, Feminism and Teaching
. 2 Comments

First off, Barb at Lucky White Girl has put together an impromptu carnival of all of the recent posts on privilege in the blogosphere.  Well worth a read, and not just because she is quite kind to me.

In a comment below yesterday’s first post about crunchy cons, Vacula writes:

Hugo, I’m a little disturbed by this sentence: "If, however, the ancient moral truths are Submission and endless Self-denial, then I can’t sign on to that" and some of the tone in your recent discussions on your young female students.

As a Christian, I know you value the mutual submission required in Ephesians 5:21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." You imply, feeding right into the "patriarchal" interpretation of Ephesians five, that submission and complete self-denial are the same thing. Submission is a communal, social value. We all submit to laws in order to make everyone more safe. In your discussions of "sisterhood" you talk about submitting some individual choices (as in clothing, etc.) in order to express your value for the others in your community.

Ah, blog in haste, repent in leisure.

Here’s what I meant to write, and didn’t:

"If, however, the ancient moral truths are unilateral female Submission and endless Self-denial, then I can’t sign on to that".  I was referring not to the mutual submission of Ephesians 5:21, but to those who see Paul’s teachings on the family beginning with 5:22. 

One of the most fascinating things about feminism — and faith — for me is the complex relationship between communal obligations and one’s personal rights.  The ethic I am trying to espouse balances the two.  And of course, students from traditional backgrounds need to hear more about autonomy and personal pleasure; students who are comfortable indulging themselves need to hear more about responsibility and about living in community.  I’m trying to hold two values in tension simultaneously — and as a result, I’m going to swing back and forth towards emphasizing one set over another, depending on the audience I’m addressing.

Good teaching, I think, involves challenging folks to move out of their comfort zones.  When I’m engaged in conversation with students from secular, liberal backgrounds — the sort of students who are keenly aware of their "rights" and their "individuality", then I challenge them with notions of communal responsibility.  These are the students who need to consider the possibility that we are at our best when we live in loving, supportive communities that challenge us and call us to account.  On the other hand, most of my students at PCC come from much more traditional backgrounds where individual happiness (particularly for women) is always subordinated to duty.  These young women need to hear the other side of the message — a message that emphasizes the right of self-definition, the right to joy.

In the final analysis, I’m trying to walk a tightrope.  I honor many of the strengths and virtues of traditional families; your comment, Vacula, points eloquently to some of those strengths.  At the same time, unlike my social conservative friends, I don’t see the traditional family as the repository of all that is good, true and beautiful.  In the end, to paraphrase the words of the first spiritual I ever learned, we’ve all  "got to walk the lonesome valley, and we walk it by ourselves." 

The walk through the "lonesome valley" is a metaphor for death, but in some ways, also for our whole lives .  I want my students to be able to be good sisters and daughters and mothers, good brothers and fathers and sons — but I want them to see their own happiness as being of equal value to the needs of the family.  I want them to see that they have twin — and at times, contradictory — obligations: to self and to community, and I want them to get started on the difficult task of honoring them both.

In my attempt to be a loving provocateur in the classroom and on this blog, at times I err on one side or the other.  Mea culpa.

Quote of the day

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 17, 2006
in Men and Masculinity, Politics and Quoting
. 26 Comments

The thought of having a few penised anti-patriarchal allies directing their power and privilege at other men on behalf of political wimmin gives me tingles.

Not trying to start another flame war — heavens forfend — but someone’s got me thinking. 

Whoops — some images on this site may not be work-safe.  Also, any comments on that post need to be on topic and civil.  She raises some important points that I’m mulling,and I think some of my readers might appreciate.