Though I am feeling better, I am now so preoccupied with work and other things that I won’t be blogging again until Monday. Monday will mark the start of a new month, and I hope a return to regular blogging. After such a long hiatus, I will have to earn back a whole new crop of readers, I imagine!
Students, I assure you I am well and will be healthy for your classes next week. I’ll also have all of your midterms with me!
I’ve had to cancel another day’s worth of classes, as I am still dealing with one very upset tummy!
I always feel guilty cancelling classes without prior notice, even though I know that most students rejoice when they see the little "class cancelled" notices posted on the door! When I’ve got a scheduled cancellation, my students can make other plans, but I always hate thinking of students making a long trip to campus for nothing. I also hate thinking about what I will have to cut out of the syllabus as a result!
I’m getting better at being able to sit at the computer, and may be able to have another post up later today.
I’ve been putting up Thursday Short Poems for nigh on three years now, and though I tend to prefer contemporary poets, I haven’t had anything up by Hugo Williams. This is odd, if only because those of us graced with this finest of first names (particularly outside the Spanish-speaking world) are few and far between. As a matter of solidarity, I put up one of the better known of his poems — and my favorite. The theme reminds me of a time in my life when I did have moments akin to what Williams describes here, back when I was a somewhat different Hugo.
Her News
You paused for a moment and I heard you smoking
on the other end of the line.
I pictured your expression,
one eye screwed shut against the smoke
as you waited for my reaction.
I was waiting for it myself, a list of my own news
gone suddenly cold in my hand.
Supposing my wife found out, what would happen then?
Would I have to leave her and marry you now?
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad,
starting again with someone new, finding a new place,
pretending the best was yet to come.
It might even be fun,
playing the family man, walking around in the park
full of righteous indignation.
But no, I couldn’t go through all that again,
not without my own wife being there,
not without her getting cross about everything.
Perhaps she wouldn’t mind about the baby,
then we could buy a house in the country
and all move in together.
That sounded like a better idea.
Now that I’d been caught at last, a wave of relief
swept over me. I was just considering
a shed in the garden with a radio and a day bed,
when I remembered I hadn’t seen you for over a year.
"Congratulations," I said. "When’s it due?"
I spent about fifteen years of my life "getting caught at last" and having successive waves of relief sweep over me. How nice not to have those moments anymore — and yet, every once in a great while, I miss the drama…
I have managed to put a few photos up from our Colombia trip in this new album.
I had hoped that I would be able to make it back from Colombia without bringing back a nasty bug; in 2003, on our first visit, I came home with a dreadful case of giardia. I was fine yesterday in the first few hours after arriving home, but last night became violently ill. No hospital trip, just the usual unpleasantnesses. It’s only now, at just before 4:00PM, that I’m up and showered and feeling somewhat civilized.
To my students in my Wednesday classes, I apologize for another missed day. And to my readers, I promise to be posting again relatively soon.
Jen from Smith College (and host of Righteous Revolution) posts the following call:
A project I’m working on for a class (and which may end up being much further-reaching than the halls of Smith College, and longer-lasting than that of a final project):
Disclaimer: If submitting your story will in any way put you in danger, please do not attempt to do so until you can ensure your own safety.
I am in the process of creating a compilation blog to illustrate the various intersections of identity and societal influences that play a role in the differing experiences of domestic violence (including physical, sexual, emotional, or similar kinds of abuse). Instead of the largely white, heterosexual, middle-class stories of domestic violence that dominates the sphere of knowledge, this blog project will include a truly diverse array of experiences. Domestic violence is not limited to white/heterosexual/middle-class populations, and neither is this project.
I am therefore sending out a call for submissions. If you have been a victim of domestic violence (as defined, for the purposes of this project, above), or have been directly involved in another person’s experience of DV, and wish to speak out about your experiences, please email your submission to: speakup(dot)speakout(at)yahoo(dot)com
There are no style or length limitations. The one request I have is this: in order to aid in the reader’s (and my) understanding of your experience of DV, I would appreciate if you included your location in the world - e.g. a general geographic region, gender identity, sexual orientation, cultural background, etc. Feel free to include as few or as many locators as you wish.
The deadline for submissions is: Monday, May 1, 2006.
More detailed information about the project is available at the blog: Speaking Up, Speaking Out… Against Domestic Violence. If you have further questions, feel free to email me at the address listed above.
My understanding is that men are welcome to submit to this project, but please don’t use Jen’s project as a soap box for challenging the whole notion of domestic violence. Submissions need not all be from feminists, of course, but they ought not to openly hostile to feminism.
It’s been an exhausting but happy couple of weeks. Since I was last on campus, my wife and I have flown through seven different airports,spent quality time with both our families, and surprisingly enough, had the chance to sleep eight hours straight several nights in a row.
We spent the past week with my wife’s mother’s family on their remote, rural finca (ranch) in Cesar province in northwest Colombia. It was our third visit to Colombia together, and our first as a married couple. Since I’m tired and lightheaded this morning, I’ll offer some random thoughts. I hope to have photos up by the end of the week!
First off, almost as much as a good lefty likes me hates to admit it, even I can see how much Colombia has improved in recent years under the leadership of President Bush’s only true friend in South America, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The right-wing Uribe was elected in 2002 on a hardline platform of no compromise with Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers. Many feared a dramatic escalation of violence in what was already one of the most dangerous countries (if not the most dangerous) in the Western Hemisphere. But in many regions, security has clearly markedly improved.
My wife, my mother-in-law, and I all agree that things had improved noticeably in the mere 20 months since we were last in Colombia. The main highway that leads from Bucaramanga (the city with the nearest airport) north to the finca had been repaved and cleaned up. Most of the potholes that we saw in 2004 were filled in. The number of army checkpoints in Santander, Norte de Santander, and Cesar (the three provinces in which we spend most of our time on our Colombia trips) had been clearly reduced. Last time, we were ordered out of the car several times to have our papers checked and to be frisked for weapons. That didn’t happen once on this visit.
The small towns near my wife’s family’s finca all showed signs of increasing stability and prosperity. In Pelaya, Costilla, Aguachica, we saw new streetlights up, new paved roads, and fewer soldiers. We saw more new cars. (Speaking of cars, almost everyone in this region of Colombia drives Renaults; for years, they were the only brand available in the northwest provinces, and even now, they retain considerable loyalty.) We discovered too that people were more willing to discuss politics than they had been in the past; there was a clear reduction in the amount of palpable fear that folks seem to have. In the poor and simple farming communities in which we spent our time, we found surprising (to me) support for the hardline, conservative policies of Alvaro Uribe. Everyone in my wife’s family is planning to support him in his reelection bid next month, grateful as they are for his refusal to compromise with the narco-traffickers and the guerrillas who have tormented them.
I confess I grew up romanticizing left-wing revolutionaries and guerrilla groups. In the 1980s, as a teenage socialist, I became enchanted with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (It all started, of course, with a sublimely good Clash album). I became a fan of Fidel and Daniel Ortega and the FMLN; I had the ubiquitous ratty Che Guevara t-shirt. I loved the idea that not so far away from my comfortable home on the California coast, men and women were marching through the jungle, fighting the capitalist oppressors and liberating the poor campesinos. In more recent years, my adolescent radicalism faded into limousine liberalism, but I still made appreciative noises about armed Marxist insurgencies wherever they were in the Third World.
While I had daydreams of revolution, my wife’s family had many very real and very brutal experiences with the FARC (the left-wing guerrilla army that has been trying to take over Colombia for decades) and with the right-wing paramilitaries who combated them. For years, my wife’s uncle (who owns the little finca) was forced to pay protection money to the guerrillas. Indeed, when we visited in August 2004, the FARC was still quite active in the hills very near the family place. In order to guarantee our protection, my wife’s uncle paid the guerrillas a substantial "head tax" (in cattle) for each of us. This was to ensure our safety during our visit; had he not paid it, the guerrillas made it clear that we would risk being kidnapped. My wife’s family only told us about this head tax after we returned to the States — it was a sobering realization, and one of many that put an end to my fantasies about the moral superiority of armed insurgents.
And then there was Matteo, a skinny and lovable mutt who looked a lot like a lab/doberman/retriever mix. Matteo has been guarding the finca for years, and he has the bullet wound and the machete slashes to show for it. It’s funny how dense and sentimental we privileged types can be! I can listen to stories of people I’ve never met getting abducted and killed and be unfazed — but show me very real wounds on a very real animal and I become instantly enraged! Listening to the story of how Matteo survived a brutal slashing a year of two ago at the hands of the FARC left me shaking with anger and close to tears. And any last shred of sympathy for the cause or the tactics of the guerrillas vanished last week. And even more bizarrely, I come home rooting lustily for President Uribe to win a second term in office!
You see, since the president stepped up his military campaign against the insurgents (a campaign backed by considerable infusions of cash from the USA), my wife’s family — my family — has felt safer. No one asked for a head tax this time. No one has shot at Matteo in over a year. We walked the streets in broad daylight fearlessly, and my uncle-in-law didn’t have to sell a dozen cows to give us the right to do so. That’s worth something. Yes, I understand that Uribe’s human rights record is less than perfect; yes, I understand that the left-wing press on which I normally rely to form my world-view is deeply hostile towards him for a variety of reasons. But I’ve been to Colombia three times now, and I’ve seen very, very real progress for a great many very vulnerable and poor people — and whether the press in this country reports it or not, I’m going to believe what I’ve seen and experienced more than what I read.
Colombia is still not a safe country by the standards of the prosperous global North. It still has a high murder rate, and the guerrillas and narco-traffickers remain active in certain parts of the country. But it is clearly getting safer, and is starting to become the sort of place adventurous American tourists could consider visiting more often. Last night, we flew home on COPA Airlines, flying from Bogota to Panama City and then home to LAX. Very few Americans on the first leg of the flight leaving Colombia, but tons on the second leg back from Central America; lots of sunburned folks heading home from a week in Panama or Costa Rica or on the islands of the southern Caribbean. Colombia, of course, is the closest South American country to the West Coast of the USA — it’s only an hour’s worth of flying time beyond Costa Rica. It also offers infinitely more biological and anthropological and cultural diversity than the small Central American nations that have become popular with US tourists; Colombia has the mountains, the beaches, the lowlands and the dazzling metropolises. What it doesn’t have is a reputation as a top tourist destination (outside, perhaps, of the walled city of Cartagena.) If things keep getting safer and more secure, that might change.
Well, I’m home. It’s just past 7:00 in the morning, and I’m back in the office on campus cruising along on three hours sleep. Our flight home from Colombia did not land at LAX until midnight last night, and by the time we’d gotten home and settled in for bed, it was close to three.
I’ll post more about our trip in a bit. I came home to more than 100 email messages (after I deleted the spam), and that will take some time to wade through. I’ll also try and go through some of the comments, as it seems that things may have gotten out of hand again. I can say this: mentioning the name of the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case will get you instantly and permanently banned. Turning the comments below this post into a discussion of the ethics of naming the victims in rape cases will also earn my ire, and at the very least, such comments will be rapidly deleted.
It’s good to be back.
Well, folks, this blog and I are heading on to spring vacation. I am eager to recharge, and I feel as if I’ve been getting repetitive lately around here. I’m going to take two weeks off, my wife and I are going to do some traveling, and I’ll have a full report when I’m back. Look for posting to resume on Tuesday, April 25.
I’ll be away from the computer at times, so emails may not be promptly returned. I’ll check in from time to time.
Be courteous and kind in my comments section, and a wonderful Passover and Happy Easter to everyone.
Over at Bitch Ph.D. there’s a post on feminist men and flirting. It’s attracted lots of interesting comments. Here’s from the original post:
In general, it seems to me that while flirting is difficult for everyone, that feminist women–made confident in part because of feminism–have it better, right now, than sensitive-to-feminism men. (We are not discussing jerky guys, or jerky girls, although I have theories about them too, but no time to elaborate. Perhaps later in comments.) There are lots of accessible models for sex-positive feminism; but I see fewer (none?) for sex-positive masculinity. I think that men who like women, and who don’t want to buy into the all-too-prevalent role of the fratty guy or the "nice guy" don’t really know how to proceed, especially given that we still, unfortunately, tend to assume that it’s the male’s resposibility to initiate. And even for a woman who is willing to initiate, the diffidence of men who aren’t sure what their role is can be offputting. So how do genuinely nice men and feminist women hook up?
Well, gosh. I don’t really flirt these days with anyone other than my wife. But it hasn’t been that long since I was "out there", as it were, so I’ll offer some quick thoughts on the topic. At the risk of getting my pro-feminist Christian credentials pulled yet again,let me say that when single, I never had any qualms about flirting in at least some fairly traditional ways. Good flirtation always struck me as being about finding clever ways to say to someone "I notice you". I remember having an argument about this with a male feminist friend of mine. He argued that the kind of "noticing" I was talking about (a subtle response to mutual attraction) was really just about reinforcing old gender roles. "I’ve seen you flirt", he told me, and "it’s hard to tell you’re a feminist when you do it."
Yes, he really said that. And I really burst out laughing. I’m sorry, there’s a feminist way to flirt? Or better yet, a pro-feminist way not to flirt? Now I’m not "sex-positive" in the usual use of the term (I hold fairly conservative views on sexual behavior, am virulently anti-porn, etc). But I was always very "flirt-positive", even though I now generally direct that flirtation towards one person! What I told my friend — and what I tell the young men I work with — is that there is nothing shameful about being sexually attracted to women. Furthermore, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with using traditional flirting methods to express that attraction; where feminism kicks in is in reminding young men that a clear signal to cease and desist needs to be respected at once. But the idea that a pro-feminist man will only be attracted to a woman’s mind without some appreciation of physical attraction is entirely absurd.
So how do genuinely nice men and feminist women hook up? One of Bitch’s commenters said she’d never found it to be a problem, and was now wondering why. And I suppose I’ll have to agree, and say it was never a problem for me either. (Some who know me and love me anyway would point out that I haven’t always been that nice a man). But I know it is a problem for some of the young pro-feminist men I work with. Flirting, like so many other things, is a difficult art to describe in words. In my life, so much of it seemed based on tone, inflection, eye contact, and physical chemistry. But one thing is clear — good flirting always involves confidence and fun; feminism always involves mutual respect and good listening. I’m quite confident all of that can go together nicely!
In the thread below yesterday’s post about chivalry , there’s some discussion of the notion of "respect." Writing about the apparent victim in the Duke rape case, Mr. Bad writes:
My respect is mine to give to those who earn it, not their’s to demand from me as if it is their right to force me to give it to them. And I suspect that many men feel the same way. Thus, because women have learned to act less respectably - and at times outright disrespectful - men (rightly) refuse to give them their respect, and IMO won’t do so unless and until women begin to once again earn men’s respect.
According to this thesis, strippers and other sex workers don’t respect themselves — and thus are not entitled to expect respect from others.
I’m going to leave aside the rape case itself, and focus on what saddens me about Mr. Bad’s argument. What he’s saying is not new; I’ve heard it from both men and women for years now. To many folks, there’s something neat and compelling about the notion that respect is reciprocal and must be earned. In theory if not in practice, we are still a culture that despises the notion that anyone is "entitled" to anything merely by virtue of being a person; our ersatz Calvinism is instinctively attracted to the idea that everything — even the right to be seen as fully and completely human — is something that we have to work for.
One of my base convictions (the sort that don’t change every week) is that this particular attitude is fundamentally wrong, particularly on a spiritual and religious level. Nowhere in Scripture, not even in Proverbs, does it say "Respect those who respect themselves". Scripture is full of examples, however, of folks who make the mistake Mr. Bad makes, of dividing the world into the deserving and the undeserving . Again and again in the Gospel story, the Pharisees are appalled by Jesus’ penchant for seeing the "unclean" as full and complete human beings. In particular, Jesus models an important new way for men to relate to the very sort of women who were the first century equivalent of sex workers. In his refusal to condemn the woman caught in adultery, in his tenderness to the five-times-married woman at the well, Jesus shows us a radical standard for ethical behavior towards women whom the rest of society would have described as "not worthy of respect".
Even those who do not embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior are frequently inclined to acknowledge Him as a great moral teacher. It’s a pity that one aspect of his moral teaching – his radical insistence that the "impure", the "dirty", the marginalized are as loved as anyone else — is so often ignored! I’m quite certain that most Pharisee men would have treated their virginal and demure sisters with the utmost respect even as they prepared to stone to death a woman who had stepped outside of the acceptable moral framework. But Jesus makes it clear that respect and love are not earned — they are our due as human beings, gifts of God to all of us.
This notion that respect is due to all of us, not merely to those who respect themselves, is not an exclusively Christian one. Indeed, it’s a principle that I think most feminists can, should, and often do embrace. From its origins to the present, feminists have critiqued the cultural dichotomies that divide women into "nice girls" and "sluts", into "respectable" and "fallen" women. Feminism insists that women’s sexuality not be a barrier to embracing women as full and complete human beings. This doesn’t mean that some feminists aren’t critical of sex work! I long for a world where sexual behavior is no longer commodified, where no woman feels compelled to sell visual or tactile access to her body in order to feed her children. (Heck, I’d discipline the lacrosse team at Duke merely for having hired a stripper, regardless of whether or not they assaulted her.) But the fact that I find the sex industry to be repugnant doesn’t mean I hold those who make their living in that profession with contempt. I can separate the work from the worker — the former is deserving of my outrage and my sadness, the latter of my respect and my love as my sister. I can separate the two without mental gymnastics; I’d expect most folks to be able to do the same.
When stories like the Duke rape case arouse our passions and our sense of justice, it’s easy to lose sight of the notion that respect is not earned. When I read the emails of one member of the Duke lacrosse team, Ryan, who wrote: i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the walk and proceding to cut their skin off while cumming in my Duke issue spandex, I find it momentarily difficult to see this young man as my brother! It disgusts me, it enrages me, it saddens me. He has done much to suggest he is not "worthy" of respect. He doesn’t respect women (to put it mildly), so why should he and those like him be deserving of it, particularly from feminists? But Ryan is as much my brother as the victim in this case is my sister. That doesn’t mean that I see stripping and rape as morally equivalent, mind you! But it does mean that I don’t see respect and compassion as in any way contingent upon other’s personal conduct.
I am sorry that some of my fellow feminists have chosen to go after the prep school that Ryan attended. News flash, folks: strippers are people entitled to respect regardless of their profession. White males who go to private schools are also people entitled to respect regardless of their wealth. The fact that she strips for a living doesn’t also justify our stripping a woman of her dignity; the fact that they attended elite private schools doesn’t allow us to condemn all fortunate young white men. We can get angry at the sex industry for reinforcing negative stereotypes about women; we can get angry at private schools that occasionally reinforce a notion of irresponsibility and privilege. But that doesn’t allow us, even in our anger, to return to tired old stereotypes.
This morning, at 5:15, I walked into my boxing gym for my Monday workout. First question out of my trainer’s mouth: "What do you think about the Gospel of Judas?" I rolled my eyes; it’s only the thirty-eighth time someone has asked me about it this week. I wanted to talk about the Mayweather fight; instead, I gave a ten-minute primer on the gnostics (the sect which produced the Judas Gospel) while trying to shadow-box.
If I had had more skills in languages, I would have done early Christian history for my doctorate. Susanne Elm at Berkeley turned me on to it (I was in the first seminar she ever taught at Cal), and Scott Bartchy at UCLA had me convinced that there was no more interesting field to work in. But I allowed myself to be scared off by the languages; we already had to become competent in Latin, German, and Anglo-Norman French for the Ph.D. in medieval history — if I’d wanted to do early Christianity, I’d have had to add Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and either Syriac or Coptic. I wimped out.
Still, I have a soft spot for early Christian history (especially the heresies). And I’m happy that all of this talk about the Judas Gospel has people interested in the question of how the Bible was put together, as well as the fine old heresies like gnosticism. When I get around to lecturing about Irenaus of Lyons in my 1A class, more folks should pay attention this year.
I’ve always disliked gnosticism, for the same reason I don’t like the Cathars of medieval Europe. As someone who spends a lot of time reflecting on the body, I’ve always been viscerally (literally) opposed to those heresies that argue that our bodies are prisons. Gnosticism teaches, of course, that our bodies are the creation not of God but of a less perfect demiurge. Depending on which gnostic school you’re talking about, we are to practice one kind or another of bodily self-mortification in order to work at overcoming our flesh.
I dislike gnosticism because I’m prone to the heresy myself. As someone who has struggled with an eating disorder as well as great sexual shame, I’ve been tempted by the belief that my body is fundamentally bad. In my younger years, I mused ruefully about how virtuous I would be if my body didn’t have such imperious and overwhelming demands! My experiences with anorexia and self-mutilation saw me behave in ways that would have been familiar to some of the more extreme gnostics, who saw body mortification as one way of coping with our wretched imprisonment within the flesh.
The gnostics generally don’t believe Jesus had a physical body, or if He did, as in the Gospel of Judas, that He couldn’t wait to be rid of it. But Christian orthodoxy teaches that Jesus not only had a body, He delighted in it. When he’s anointed with oil, or when he asks for food after his resurrection, He is not showing us a man who loathed his own flesh! He may have been willing to die for us on the cross, but that didn’t mean that He saw pain as a fundamental Good, or that he saw physical pleasure as wicked. His life reminds us that we are not just spiritual beings — we are also physical beings, and our bodies and their potential for pleasure are gifts from God.
It is a sin to indulge one’s body at another’s expense. It’s also a sin to constantly deny the body out of self-loathing. The spiritual life is one of balance: we are called to delight in our flesh and use our flesh to bring delight to others. We are also called to use our bodies responsibly, even sacrificially, never allowing our need for gratification to trump our obligations to the larger community. Our right to pleasure as created beings exists side-by-side with the call to love others unconditionally. When we place our own physical wants for food or sex ahead of the needs of the world, we misuse God’s creation. But when we loathe our physicality, we reject a great and wonderful gift. The gnostic temptation is to see the flesh as wicked, and only the spirit as good. The Christian task is to see both as gifts of an all-loving God.
I may be among the last of the feminist bloggers to take on the now-infamous Duke Lacrosse Team Rape Case. If you’ve managed to avoid hearing about it, start here and then make your way through the femosphere. There’s lots of good commentary out there. What is not in dispute is that an African-American exotic dancer was hired by members of Duke’s lacrosse team to perform at a party. What is in dispute is whether or not she was raped.
It’s not available for free, but both Amanda and Jill have excerpted extensive sections from a David Brooks column in the New York Times on the subject of the Duke lads and the notion of chivalry. Brooks is apparently worried that a focus on "identity politics" (discussing the privileged white members of the lacrosse team and the fact that the dancer is an African-American single mom) is obscuring what he sees as the real issue: the loss of manners, chivalry, and self-restraint. Brooks writes:
The educators who used this vocabulary several decades ago understood that when you concentrate young men, they have a tropism toward barbarism. That’s why these educators cared less about academics than about instilling a formula for character building. The formula, then called chivalry, consisted first of manners, habits and self-imposed restraints to prevent the downward slide.
Furthermore, it was believed that each of us had a godlike and a demonic side, and that decent people perpetually strengthened the muscles of their virtuous side in order to restrain the deathless sinner within. If you read commencement addresses from, say, the 1920’s, you can actually see college presidents exhorting their students to battle the beast within — a sentiment that if uttered by a contemporary administrator would cause the audience to gape and the earth to fall off its axis
Today that old code of obsolete chivalry is gone, as is a whole vocabulary on how young people should think about character.
Jill and Amanda do an excellent job of taking the Brooks piece apart, and I suggest reading both posts in their entirety.
I want to focus on another aspect of the whole discussion, one that Brooks raises indirectly but which continues to come up in contemporary laments about poor male behavior: the notion that feminism is directly responsible for the loutish, irresponsible, and often violent behavior of today’s young men.
According to this thesis (supported by romantic illusions about the past), women’s vulnerability is inextricably linked to male responsibility. In the "good old days" (whenever they were), women had fewer rights, opportunities, and protections. Economically, physically, and sexually, women relied more on the protection of men. This vulnerability forced men to "step up" and act as courtly protectors of their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Chivalry was a necessary construct to protect fragile women and girls from violent and predatory men. The thesis has all the usual attractions of the complementarian lie: that women and men are created for radically different purposes, and society functions best when each sex stays within the strictly defined boxes that God and nature have prescribed for them.
Of course, feminism made the fatal mistake of empowering women. In the last forty or fifty years, women have gained a plethora of rights; women have access to birth control, to education, to economic opportunity. As women have become more powerful and independent, the thesis goes, men began to question not only old chivalric codes, but the whole need for self-restraint. Why should men continue to protect women when women insist on being able to take care of themselves? The greatest benefit of the "old ways" was that a man could have his ego and his self-esteem boosted by knowing that he was needed by the fragile, delicate, vulnerable women in his life who relied absolutely on his strength and self-control. But the more freedom and autonomy that women gain, the less men feel needed and the less compunction they feel to control the "tropism towards barbarism" that Brooks refers to. Thus when women are raped by individuals or groups of men who care nothing for their dignity and their humanity, the feminist movement is only reaping what it sowed.
First of all, this myth is based on a historical lie. There was never a time when "chivalrous" gentlemen treated all women equally. From the era of courtly love in the middle ages to the antebellum South, gentlemen had very different codes of conduct with women of lower classes than they did with their own. In other words, there never was a time when a working class woman of color would have been well-treated by a large group of privileged young white men.
But from the standpoint of those of us who love and care about men, there’s another equally insidious lie in this theory that male responsibility is contingent upon female vulnerability. It is deeply, profoundly and tragically cynical about men and the ways in which we become full and complete human beings. Now, I’m not denying that men have violent and lustful impulses (though the extraordinary number of women who report similar desires suggests more and more that this sort of behavior is not only linked to male biology). And I’m not denying that in the not-so-distant past, men were encouraged to exercise self-control in order to protect vulnerable and fragile women. What I am denying is what Brooks seems to be implying: that if we want better behaved men, women will need to surrender some of their hard-won rights and freedoms.
A pro-feminist strategy for male accountability cannot be based on appealing to men to return to some sort of ancient code of chivalric conduct. It can’t be based on tired Jungian narratives in which every man gets to think of himself as a "knight in shining armor" protecting "damsels in distress." Mind you, I think there’s a lot of value in reclaiming old stories and myths; obviously, they speak powerfully to young people. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with challenging young men to be brave, even "heroic"; as is clear from my earlier posts, I think there’s a lot of good in teaching self-restraint and consideration for others. But those laudable lessons of self-restraint must be separated from disastrous messages about female vulnerability. Women of all occupations and ethnic backgrounds deserve respect, not because they are fragile women but because they are human beings made in the image of God. Indeed, other men deserve that same degree of courtesy and compassion, not because of or in spite of their sex, but because of their inherent value and worth as human beings.
I’m absolutely with David Brooks that we should be teaching character everywhere. In the schools, in the churches, on the playgrounds, in the media. By character, I mean integrity and compassion: the integrity to match one’s private behavior behind closed doors with one’s public pronouncements; the compassion to see all living things as valuable and deserving of care, not of exploitation. That’s not a message for men only, or for women, but one we all need to hear over and over and over again.
Pro-feminism and Christianity stand together on this. We both reject the notion that "boys will be boys", and we reject the notion that violent/lustful/destructive behavior is women’s job to control or redirect. Though Scripture is filled with stories of men who struggled with their nature (David chief among them), it is also filled with stories of men who are powerful role models for kindness, generosity, self-restraint and selflessness. This Passover and Easter week, I think particularly of the "two Josephs" I love so well: the Old Testament Joseph, who in the story of Potiphar’s wife shows us that a man can exercise sexual self-control, and the New Testament Joseph, who faithfully and lovingly marries a woman pregnant with a child that he knows is not his own. Neither man bases his behavior on the actions of the women in his life; both live lives of love and self-restraint based on fidelity to God and their commitment to other human beings. Joseph and Joseph are reminders of what all men are called to, and they are reminders of what it is that we can lovingly but firmly demand from our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons.
I am an imperfect human being. But my duty to love my wife more than I love myself, and my duty to all of my brothers and sisters in the human family, is not based on my perception that they all need my masculine protection. It is based on a fundamental understanding of the dignity and worth of creation. That understanding, not some tired old class-based chivalric code, is what the lads at Duke apparently lacked.
Two big posts on a Friday — not normal. Can you tell I’m procrastinating? On what, you ask? Real writing, of course, the kind that gets submitted.
The posts about eating disorders, culture, and weight continue to abound. I had my two offerings up earlier this week. Jill and Piny already had fine ones up; Ampersand has been very busy on the subject and has more today. All take issue, and rightly so, with this post last Sunday from Anthony at Cosmic Tap which included these whopping paragraphs, words already fisked and refuted by Amp, Jill, and Piny:
So, please, ladies - the girl who has the body the rest of you wish you had is not anorexic. The girl who delicately refuses the eighteen-ounce wedge of deep-fried cheesecake the rest of you dive into after dinner is not anorexic. The girl who is obsessed with fitting back into those size 1 jeans is not anorexic. She’s just thinner than you, knows how to say no to herself, and it makes you jealous.
And parents - please realize that it is the countercultural idea of self-control and self-denial, backed by the occasional dramatic image, that catalyzes enough fear for us to think anorexia poses some threat to our youth. Much like the War On Some Drugs, however – the threat it poses is to our way of thinking, not our health. It is far, far more dangerous to let your spoiled kids eat what they want.
More broadly, the idea of anorexia threatens our view of our bodies, our consumption-obsessed culture, and our deeply held personal ideas about how much nourishment we “need” (read: “deserve.”) Perpetuating the myth of anorexia helps us demonize denial as some kind of blasphemy, rather than looking at our own dinner plates or in the mirror and asking: am I fat? (Probable answer: yes.)
Yikes. By confusing healthy moderation with the self-hatred and dysmorphia associated with anorexia, Anthony does real harm here.
That said, all of this talk about self-denial and food has got me thinking. Specifically, I’m aware of how my own relationship with food has changed and improved enormously over the course of my lifetime. Thumbnail sketch: I was a skinny child who ate whatever he wanted, and then a chubby teenager who continued to eat whatever he wanted despite the change in his metabolism. I carried quite a few "extra" until I was in grad school, when an eating disorder suddenly emerged with a vengeance. Weight fell off me as I practiced radical restriction; I got myself down below 145 (this is 180 pounds) and was widely rumored to have AIDS. After bottoming out in late 1992, I began a slow return to normal eating.
But what I’ve been doing for the past decade is exercising. A lot. And though I love, love, love to work out, I also love that all of this exercise allows me to eat more. In my head, "denying" myself food when I’m hungry seems sinful, self-destructive, and pointless. But if I’m running, lifting, boxing, biking, and Pilates-ing — well, then I can eat a lot more without concomitant guilt. When I’m in workout mode, I’ll put away 4000-5000 calories a day, easily. (Considerably more on "long run Saturdays".) Most of it is healthy stuff, mind you, but I eat to satiety most of the time. I keep my body fit not so much by restricting what goes in, but by increasing my output. It’s always easier for me to do more than to do less.
Of course, as a Christian environmentalist, I sometimes wonder about all of this consuming I do. When I go out for three-hour trail runs, frantically eat and shower, and then race off to do an intense hour on the mat and the reformer at Pilates class, only to pump in thousands and thousands of more calories, am I being a good steward of the earth’s resources? The more I work out, the more I eat,and I eat a lot of things that come in packaging that can’t be easily recycled. (For example, most days I’ll eat 3-4 Clif Bars in between meals.) The less I work out, the less I eat, the less consuming I do. It’s a sign of my relative wealth that I can have pastimes that deplete me physically!
On the other hand, working out so much leaves me calm and relaxed and able to focus on others. Anyone who’s known me knows how anxious and tense I get when I haven’t run in a few days. Intense exercise drains away so many of my fears, and it also drains away so many of my negative and destructive impulses. At the same time, it gives me more vigor. Thus I can tell myself that all of this working out actually equips me to be of greater service to others. And given that I volunteer many hours a week, I can’t help but think immodestly are benefiting from my increased energy and increased focus.
Anyhow, on to my point: so often, we falsely present the issue of weight as an issue of self-control. Well, folks, I out-eat most people! I don’t stop at "one" of much of anything most of the time. I have very, very little will to restrict when faced with tempting foods. Yet no one ever accuses me of a lack of self-control, because I frantically burn off whatever I put in! My body seems to be that of a disciplined person, even though my behavior in the buffet line is anything but. Plenty of overweight folks eat far less than I do. Perhaps they don’t have a tenured teaching job with a flexible schedule that allows plenty of time for exercise; perhaps they aren’t childless and middle class. Do my privileges make me better? Or do they just obscure my lack of self-control? Why do so many people tell me how impressed they are by my fitness schedule? What is so laudatory about narcissism, anxiety, and disposable income?
So yeah, I’m addicted to exercise. That’s a foible, folks — not a virtue. The fact that I have a resting heart rate of 42 and a body fat percentage in single digits is about three things: good genes, spare time, and an addictive personality hopelessly hooked on endorphins. But my addictiveness and my good fortune are not particularly praiseworthy.
Lots of talk in the feminist blogosphere lately about "real men" and insecurity. On Wednesday, Jill posted about a much-discussed MSN article in which a group of fellas discuss whether or not successful women intimidate them. Yesterday, Amanda joined in. And a few days ago, Ann Althouse took on the lamentable Harvey Mansfield, who has written a new screed entitled "Manliness".
I haven’t gotten around to reading Mansfield, but I don’t like the excerpts I’ve read. In her review of his book, Christina Hoff Sommers writes:
First of all, he thinks we should clearly distinguish between the public realm and private life. In public we should pursue, as best we can, a policy of gender neutrality. He firmly believes that the law should guarantee equal opportunity to men and women. However, "our expectations should be that men will grasp the opportunity more readily and more wholeheartedly than women."
Though he mentions it only in passing, it follows from his position that our schools should be more respectful and accepting of male spiritedness; they must stop trying to feminize boys. A healthy society should not war against human nature. It should, he says, "reemploy masculinity." That means it has to civilize it and give it things to do. No civilization can achieve greatness if it does not allow room for obstreperous males.
In the private sphere, his advice is vivé la difference! A woman should not expect a manly man to be as committed to domesticity as she is; nor should she assume that he is as emotionally adept as her female friends. Manly men are romantic rather than sensitive. They need a lot of help from females to ascend to the higher ethical levels of manhood, and Mansfield urges women to encourage them in ways respectful of their male pride.
(Emphasis mine). In what I’m told is a compelling fashion, Mansfield is not just defending the essentialist notion that "men just are the way they are." He’s doing something else that is much more insidious: insisting that women must serve as men’s catalysts for transformation into ethical, thoughtful human beings. This is complementarianism (the notion that the two sexes have predetermined, specific roles to play in human relationship) at its worst. It burdens women with the task of making men better. It liberates men from taking responsibility for taking the primary leadership role in nurturing younger men into ethical, responsible adulthood. And it implies, none too subtly, that destructive and violent men become that way because of women’s failures, not because of their own personal choices as males.
As a Christian pro-feminist man, few things make me angrier than the periodic re-emergence of the ugly "myth of male weakness." Those who praise traditional manhood celebrate certain qualities: courage, initiative, wildness, aggression, honor. But at the same time, the essentialists and the complementarians are convinced that "real" men are incapable of emotional sophistication. We’re "verbally challenged" when it comes to describing our own inner psychic terrain, and we’re destined to be blind to the subliminal clues that our sisters "naturally" pick up on. We’re also more vulnerable to temptations to sexual infidelity and violence. Women would do well to help guard us against temptation (because we are so weak), even as they tremble in excitement at our brave and heroic deeds. In Mansfield’s world, we men are these strangely incomplete creatures: at once dynamic and helpless; courageous in the face of gunfire but hopelessly overwhelmed by the demands of a simple conversation.
My pro-feminist side cries foul, because I’m tired of the line that male transformation is a woman’s job. Even Robert Bly (whose writings about manliness created the mytho-poetic men’s movement almost two decades ago) acknowledged that raising up boys into responsible, complete, adult men was primarily the job of other men. If Sommers is capturing Mansfield accurately, he’s letting us off the hook. Rather, it’s our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters who must push us and prod us towards the "higher ethical levels of manhood", since obviously, our fathers, brothers, and male role models lack the emotional vocabulary to do so.
My Christian side cries foul as well, even more loudly. As Christians, men and women alike, we are called to become ever more and more like Christ. We all know the Epistle:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Paul didn’t write:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. With the constant pressure and encouragement of women in my life, I became a man; I put childish ways behind me only because my mommy and my wife helped me ascend to the higher ethical levels of manhood.
Men and women alike are called to be "new creations" in Christ. As Genesis makes clear, rigid gender roles with their strict complementarianism are a holdover from the Fall, but in Christ all things are made new. To me, that has always meant that as a believer, I can never, ever, ever, ever, say "I’m just a man, I can’t help being the way I am." Christ destroys our old nature, including our fearful adherence to narrowly defined categories like "manliness" and "womanliness". In the refining fire of His love we become the complete, whole, human beings we were intended to be. It’s not an instant event, but rather an ongoing process. Paul encourages us:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
One of the ugliest patterns of this sinful world is the idea that men "are the way they are", spectacularly capable of many things but utterly incapable of others! As a Christian and a pro-feminist, I don’t get to say "I’m not good at washing dishes" or "I’m not good at talking about my feelings". I can say "Lord, help me to grow in You, and help me to do what I was told was not possible." The last thing I need is to accept that my masculine identity will forever render me incapable of gentleness, nurturing, emotional perceptiveness. In relationship with Christ and my brothers and sisters in Him, I can become the full and complete human being He wants me to be — ambitious, brave, honorable, kind; a boxer and an earner and an adept changer of diapers and dispenser of hugs. It is not a woman’s task to tame me or transform me — it is something that I do with God, and for which He and I alone are fully responsible.
My acculturation as a man, my testosterone, my Y chromosome — none of these are obstacles to full and complete personhood. Of course, it’s much more comfortable to retreat to gender essentialism, because it lets me and every other man off the hook for anything much in the way of personal growth. I’m not saying its easy to overcome one’s biological impulses or one’s socialization. I am saying it is possible, because I’ve seen it done and I’m doing it. I am saying it is desirable, because when both men and women are allowed to embrace their full humanity, our world will be a more joyful, fairer, happier place. And for those of us who follow Christ, I am saying it is part and parcel of our conversion to let go of all of our sinful attachments to the idea that we just "are the way we are." What we are is broken, folks — and gender-based limitations are one whoppingly glaring sign of that brokenness.
UPDATE: Cross-posted at The Scroll, the group blog of Christians For Bibilcal Equality, where I will be cross-posting often from now on. Also, Ilyka Damen comments at length on this post; check it out.
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