Archive for May, 2006

A follow up on student crushes: what NOT to do

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 8, 2006
in Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Sexuality, Student crushes and Teaching
. 25 Comments

I continue to get lots of hits from people looking for information about "teacher crushes."  This March 24 post has become my second most popular post ever, trailing only the vaguely related series of posts I wrote last year on older men, younger women relationships. (One, Two, Three).

In both recent comments and e-mails, I’ve been asked to expand further on the subject of how teachers and professors ought to respond when they realize they are the object of various kinds of crushes.  (Jazz posts a troubling personal anecdote here).  In the original post, I wrote:

If we take advantage of student crushes… we make a huge mistake.  We assume that the real interest was in us rather than in how we were able to make our students feel and how we were able to make them think.   The best way to think about student crushes is to take them as a sign that you’re probably doing your job pretty damn well.

I realize I may need to be more specific.

I will say without shame that validation is one of the many reasons why I love teaching.  Yes, I love my subjects (women’s history, the rise of the West, what have you).  Yes, I believe I am serving Clio by introducing as many students as I can to her mysteries, her charms, and her joys.  But while I believe passionately in what I’m doing, I’m also aware that my own ego does get involved.  I do want my students to think I’m compelling and interesting; I want them to learn, but I also want them to enjoy learning, and to enjoy learning from me.  Part of me sees teaching as service — and another part of me teaches for validation and affirmation.  I’m careful not to pander to get the latter, but when it comes my way in various forms, I won’t deny that I feel pretty good!

But it’s one thing to feel proud and pleased when a student tells you (after you’ve turned in the grades) how much they enjoyed your class.  It’s another thing to consciously encourage the kind of crushes that I wrote about in my previous post on the subject.  While some crushes are indeed sexual or romantic in nature, most are, as I wrote before more about the student than the teacher: Students don’t get crushes on me because they want to go to bed with me or be my girlfriend or boyfriend; they get crushes on me because I’ve got a quality that they want to bring out in themselves.

So obviously, we who teach make a disastrous mistake when we confuse a student’s infatuation with us as their professors with their longing for us as actual human beings.  As I told my friend and colleague "Darrren", students don’t get crushes on the real "Darren" — they get crushes on "Professor Smith", who is this exalted being they’ve placed on a pedestal.  If Darren acts to encourage a student crush, or allows it to become expressed in action, he is likely to find (among other things) that his own fall from the pedestal will be swift and brutal!

For most of us (let’s hope) our students don’t see us when we’re sick, whiny, tired.   Like actors on a stage, we (presumably) perform at our best most of the time, concealing the reality of our frailties and our inadequacies from those whom we are teaching. For many of us in academia who were "geeks" and "nerds" in our own younger years, the sense of power and satisfaction we can derive from holding a class spellbound is tremendous — and very, very seductive.  And as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong in deriving real pleasure from teaching well and knowing you’re admired and heard.

But there is no greater sin in our profession than to use an individual student’s crush in order to gain validation outside the classroom.  Given that we’ve established that some crushes tend to be more sexual and others more intellectual, it’s understandable that some profs may feel a tremendous curiosity about what exactly it is that a student who appears to be "crushing" really wants.  Time and again, I’ve seen professors make the dangerous mistake of subtly encouraging a crush — not because they intend to have an actual affair with a student, but because they are hungry for more and more validation.  They may hope to entice the student into sharing more about his or her feelings, all for the satisfaction of feeling more powerful and desirable.

Students don’t seem to get crushes on me as often as they used to.  Some of this is because I am older, and some of it is no doubt due to the reality that my boundaries are much better than they were a decade ago.  When I was a novice teacher, I did consciously encourage student crushes because they felt so damned good!  I loved the little notes and the "googly" eyes I would get — and I found myself enjoying the attention way too much.  It was several years into my career before I became aware of just how manipulative and unprofessional I was being; I am happy to say that I have radically changed how I interact with students.

As I wrote about in my original post, I’ve mentored a couple of younger or newer male colleagues here at PCC and elsewhere.  Now that I’ve got over a dozen years of full-time teaching under my belt, I feel as if I’ve had a healthy amount of experience on which to draw. I made a lot of mistakes in my early years in this profession, and have learned from them.  I’d like to be able to find a way — perhaps through published articles or workshops — to reach more folks in my position.  As with the older men, younger women issue, the subject of student crushes strikes a nearly universal nerve; I’m amazed at how many folks have shared their stories with me since I put up that original post.  And I’m concerned that far too many of us who teach are wholly unprepared when we find ourselves the object of these crushes, and whether intentionally or not, may do very real damage when we respond in the wrong way.

Some further thoughts on Good Sex

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 8, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Sexuality and Youth ministry
. 9 Comments

I’m going through one of those seasons of my life where, for any number of reasons, my interest in working out has diminished.  My body needs rest from time to time, I suppose.  Plan of the week: more sleep, less boxing, less running.  I know I’ll lose some fitness, but my body will be much happier. 

In the comments below last week’s post on "purity balls", we have a brief debate about Christian sex ed curricula.  My commenter Glendenb is a fan of the Unitarian Universalist program Our Whole Lives, which is designed to offer sex education for everyone from children to adults in a series of age-specific modules.  It’s a program I know well, as we seriously considered adopting it at All Saints Pasadena back in 2002.

At the time that we were talking about sex ed curricula for the church, I was on the Vestry (the governing board in an Episcopal Church) and active on the Children, Youth, and Families committee.  I was also very clearly the "token evangelical", and more often than not, I was prone to impulsive provocation.  One issue I felt — and still feel — strongly about was sex education for teens, and I pushed for the adoption of a very different curriculum for our kids: Good Sex.  Here’s how the publisher’s web site describes the Good Sex program:

A plethora of self-contained but connected segments are organized in seven major sections:

1. Plumbing and Wiring: From androgens to zoologists *  Sex includes body, mind, emotions, spirit, and relationships *

2.  Sexual Identity: How people think about sexuality * What we think about our sexuality affects everything – body, mind, emotions, spirit, and relationships *

3.  Intimacy: Dating and non-sexual closeness * Sex does not equal intimacy and intimacy does not equal sex.  Intimacy equals intimacy.

4.  Desire: The difference between appetites and needs * Learning the limits of our obligation to sexual desires and grounds for self-discipline without denying the goodness of sex *

5.  Sex:  Sex isn’t everything, and sex isn’t nothing — so what is it? * Building sexual hope and understanding, and diffusing sexual tension *

6.  Responsibility: Our sexual responsibilities to God and each other * The Basic Speed Law governs our sexual choices for the rest of our lives *

7.  Do-Overs: Mercy, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration from God * Help and encouragement for new beginnings (students) * Help in identifying and serving kids who are sexually broken (leaders)

Each of the many segments within these seven sections encompasses two or more of the following elements: * God’s Story — Bible passages and open-ended, learning-centered questions for discussion * True Story — readings, short monologues, video, audio, on location opportunities to give information, stimulate thought, or ignite questions * Our Story — reflection, small group discussion, large group talkbacks, debate, play, agree/disagree voting, storytelling and more * My Story — writing, drawing, praying, worship, storytelling, seeking and giving help

Through the use of video, an extensive leader’s guide, and a student book called What Almost Nobody Will Tell You About Sex, the Good Sex curriculum is an upfront, truthful, process-centered resource that invites students to consider, understand, and surrender their sexuality to the God who loves them and who made them sexual beings.

The church agreed to buy the book and the leader’s guide, and several of us on the committee evaluated it.  In the end, for a variety of reasons, the church decided not to adopt any particular sex ed curriculum, rejecting both the very liberal "Our Whole Lives" and the far more conservative "Good Sex."  Instead, we who were youth ministers were invited to create our own model, one that borrowed from both curricula (and from others) and which reflected input from various constituency groups in the parish.

Now, teaching sex ed in a liberal parish isn’t easy (something I’ve blogged about before).  I don’t make it any easier by vacillating in my views.  Here’s what I wrote just last spring:

It’s easy to teach teens certainties, but harder to get them to embrace those certainties.  When I was in my more evangelical phase, I pushed for a more directed sex ed curriculum at All Saints. While I was not prepared to advance an "abstinence until marriage" agenda, I was close to doing so.  I don’t see my job that way anymore.  As I’ve grown less comfortable with at least some certainties, I’ve grown more comfortable with ambiguity. More important, I’ve come to understand that even teenagers — yes, teenagers — have the capacity to wrestle successfully with ambiguity!

I think the church has many jobs when it comes to teaching kids about sexuality.  One, certainly, is to help sift through the many destructive messages that kids get from the culture, especially those messages which place our youth of both sexes in impossible double binds.   The church must always be counter-cultural, even though a progressive church like All Saints would define "counter-cultural" differently than our brethren on the right.  Conservative churches consider abstinence to be counter-cultural; we at All Saints tend to think that being "counter-cultural" is about what George Regas suggests, teaching that good sex is connected to the "building of a good society"where not only is every person valued and respected, but our individual desires are not shamed.

Last year, my evangelical phase was waning; now it would appear to be waxing once more.  This doesn’t mean that I gave the kids a completely different message in 2006 than I did in 2005, mind you!  I haven’t tried to organize an abstinence campaign, and I won’t.  But in the past year, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with kids who are struggling with the serious and painful emotional and physical consequences of impulsive sexual decision-making.  Though some of "my teens" clearly can "wrestle with ambiguity", it’s clear to me that others, through no fault of their own, are (at say, 15) developmentally totally unready to cope with the very real fall-out from sex.

I reread the "Good Sex" curriculum recently, and was moved by the remarkable way in which it accomplishes two seemingly contradictory goals: on the one hand, the program makes the clear and  compelling case that God has a specific plan for human sexuality; on the other hand, it manages to avoid using "scare and shame" tactics to urge teens to live into that plan.  I don’t like traditionally liberal sex ed curricula because they downplay the importance of Scripture and church teaching in sexual decision-making; I dislike most modern abstinence programs because too often, they preach the head-spinning message of "sex is dirty, save it for someone you love."  (That’s when they aren’t terrifying kids with wildly exaggerated statistics about STIs and HIV.)  I like Good Sex (and rely on it informally in my leadership role) because it gently calls kids to restraint while loving unconditionally those who choose not to live into a traditional biblical understanding of sexuality.  That’s a tough needle to thread, but I’m trying to do it — and Good Sex is a huge help.

Until Monday

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 5, 2006
in Politics
. 5 Comments

No time for posting today.  I’ll be back online Monday, perhaps with some more thoughts on various sex education curricula.

The one thing I have tried to have time for today is the local election result from England; I’m disturbed by the success of the far-right and pleased by the success of the Greens.

It is certainly time for Tony Blair to go.  It was nine years ago this week that Labour swept to power; I watched the feed from ITN live on CSPAN in this country, and celebrated madly.  New Labour has had its successes, but it has also badly disappointed many on the left.   As one who holds UK citizenship, I follow events eagerly in my "other country", and long for a new leader for Britain.

Father-daughter balls, coverture, and the double standard

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 4, 2006
in Christianity, Faith, Family, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Sexuality
. 42 Comments

I’m fascinated to read (thanks to Jessica at Feministing) about the new trend of Father-Daughter Purity Balls.

The Father Daughter Purity Ball is a memorable ceremony for daughters to pledge commitments to purity and their fathers to pledge commitments to protect their girls. Because we cherish our daughters as regal princesses—for 1 Peter 3:4 says they are “precious in the sight of God”—we want to treat them as royalty.

Now mind you, I’m all for dads spending lots and lots of time with their children.  I do believe that fathers have a vital role to play in shaping their daughters’ world view and self-concept.  I’m all for father-daughter events of many varieties.  But this disturbs me.

I’m particularly troubled by the language of the pledge that fathers sign:

I, [daughter’s name]’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

Jessica is also troubled by this.  The language of "covering" is especially problematic. It’s not particularly congruent with the New Testament, but it is very much the language of the old English legal principle of "coverture", in which the rights of a wife or a daughter would be hidden or "covered" by those of her husband or father.  Coverture, in one form or another, thrived in English common law from the middle ages until the advent of feminism.  It may be traditional, but it isn’t rooted in Scripture.

It is impossible to imagine a father signing a contract in which he promises to provide a "covering" for his adolescent son!  I know of no father-son ritual that is comparable in our culture.  Of course, from a Scriptural standpoint, male virginity is just as valuable as female virginity.  What sets authentic Christianity at odds with most other traditional cultures is that sexual purity was, from the earliest church, seen as equally important for both sexes.   A wise and prayerful father, therefore, should be as concerned with his son’s purity as with his daughter’s.  The prospect of pre-marital sex for his son should trouble him as much as for his daughter.  Though his son has no hymen, his spiritual well-being is as threatened by pre-marital sex as a daughter’s.  To say otherwise is to step outside of the radically egalitarian understanding of purity we see in Paul.

Look, I’m no fan of mindless abstinence campaigns.  Though I’m sympathetic — for religious and psychological reasons — to the notion that most adolescents should postpone sexual activity until they are older, I dislike the often frantic tone of much of the "True Love Waits" message.  But I have absolutely no patience with those elements within conservative Christian culture that suggest that female virginity is somehow more important than male purity.   It is traditional non-Christian culture that establishes the pernicious double standard; at every turn, authentic Christian teaching rejects that inconsistency and calls both men and women to holiness.  And wise fathers and mothers will not hold their children to different standards based upon their sex.

I will say, of course, that I like the bit in the pledge about holding oneself accountable.  I’m all for purity, integrity, accountability.  What I’m not prepared to do is to suggest that a father’s personal fidelity gives him a special license to protect his daughter in a way that he does not also protect his son.

Thursday Short Poem: “Talking to Grief”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 4, 2006
in Poetry
. 2 Comments

This poem is very important to me right now.  When I’m in pain, I tend to distract myself, become numb, put on the stiff upper lip…  all mistakes, in the end.  This Denise Levertov poem nails it nicely.

Talking to Grief

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

Myths and discourses: talking about love in a feminist classroom, part one

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 3, 2006
in Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Men and Masculinity, Relationships and Teaching
. 16 Comments

In my women’s studies class, we’ve been talking about myths and discourses.  Yesterday, working off of one of my favorite texts, Lynn Phillips’ Flirting with Danger, we talked about the omnipresent tension between the "Love Hurts" and the "Love Conquers All" discourses.

According to Phillips, professor of psychology and gender studies at the New School, the "love hurts" discourse — spread by popular culture, by parents, and by peers,

lets young women know that they should not expect too much from men in their relationships… By casting women’s disappointment and mistreatment as inevitable in hetero-relations, this discourse simultaneously normalizes men’s misbehaviors.  Inherent in this discourse is the expectation that women must compromise themselves and their needs in order to compensate for men’s apathy, neediness, or misconduct.

The "love hurts" discourse remains omnipresent in our culture; it is a rare young woman who hasn’t been warned of the pains and perils of love (and of male betrayal) by the time she enters adolescence.   The key thing about the discourse that I find so troubling is that it reinforces the "myth of male weakness" — the notion that men will inevitably disappoint, betray, and hurt the women who love them because "all men are dogs" and can’t help themselves.  The "love hurts" discourse reminds women, over and over again, that "after all, he’s just a man", and the pain that  loving him causes is inevitable. 

My students typically respond to discussions of this discourse with a mix of recognition and cynicism.  Most admit that they were raised to believe that loving men would be painful and disappointing; most were told by older sisters or mothers about the perils and pitfalls of love and the inevitability of male betrayal. But so many of my students, perhaps particularly those from traditional backgrounds, don’t see the discourse as a cultural construct — they see it as an accurate description of hetero-relations.  They don’t believe male weakness is a myth; in their guts and in their hearts, they do believe that men are weaker, less trustworthy, and almost inevitably certain to hurt the women in their lives.

Of course, the cynicism surrounding the "love hurts" discourse is opposed by the equally prevalent "love conquers all" discourse.    Love conquers all suggests that in the end, the greatest source of joy and fulfillment in a woman’s life will come in relationship with a man:

Posing hetero-relationships (and ultimately marriage) as central to women’s well-being, this discourse suggests that every woman needs a man in order to find true fulfillment.

Mothers and sisters, fashion magazines and pop songs all spread this second competing discourse.  Virtually all of my students were raised with this one.  Even if their parents urged them "to get a good education so you won’t have to rely on a man", they received the constant message that it was in romantic relationship, rather than career or spiritual work, that one would find the secret to enduring happiness. 

While the "love hurts" discourse creates a fear of men and an expectation of hurt, the "love conquers all" discourse insists that regardless of the risks, young women must open themselves up to the chance for love and relationship if they are to have lasting joy.   The "love hurts" discourse reminds young women that "most men are dogs", but the "love conquers all" discourse calls upon young women to always hold out hope that they will meet the exception to the rule, however unlikely that may be.  The two discourses, taken together, aren’t really so much contradictory as awkwardly complementary: the first is not so much a recommendation to avoid love altogether, just a reminder that it is a woman’s lot to suffer in love.  The second promises that all of that suffering, all of that waiting, all of that disappointment, will someday be worth it.  "Someday, my prince will come…"

From a feminist standpoint, it’s absolutely vital that we explore the deeply entrenched beliefs about love and relationships with which so many young women are raised.  Whether we like it or not, fantasizing about and worrying about relationships with boys and men absorbs an extraordinary amount of time in the lives of high school and college aged women.  We can issue standard bromides about "focusing on yourself" until we’re blue in the face, but these will have little effect in the face of the overwhelming power of these discourses. If we are concerned about the well-being of young (and not so young women), we need to incorporate discussions of our cultural beliefs about love and romance, pain and male weakness, in to our broader feminist work.   

When we don’t have these discussions, too many young aspiring feminists end up feeling bad about themselves because of the amount of time and energy thoughts of love and romance take up in their heads.  Too often, I hear from students: "I’m not a really good feminist because I worry too much about my relationship with my boyfriend."   When feminists urge young women to de-prioritize love and relationship (something we often urge for good reason), we frequently end up making the very young women we are trying to help feel guilty, inadequate, and weak!  Rather, we would do well to do as Lynn Phillips does — and as I try and do in my classes — and devote time and energy in a feminist space to exploring our powerful, persistent, and ultimately deeply damaging myths and discourses about love, sexuality, and relationships with men.

I’ll have a further post on this topic up soon.

Losing money, feeling good

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 2, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Links, People and Sexuality
. 4 Comments

In the file called "People whom I alternately loathe and admire" is the irrepressible Dov Charney, the CEO of American Apparel.  His reckless personal behavior and the over-sexualized ad campaigns for his company have long troubled me; his commitment to social justice and to decent working conditions for his employees have been inspiring.  Some of us are complicated people, after all — and in the case of Dov Charney, I won’t let the good he does obscure the tawdry details of his all-too-public personal behavior in the workplace, and I won’t let the reality of his transgresssions obscure his tremendously positive example to other garment manufacturers.  I like my villains to have a heroic side, and my heroes to have a nasty underbelly.

Dov Charney lost $400,000 yesterday, and couldn’t be happier about it. The Times story is here.

A Tuesday morning musing on God, desire, affirmation and redemption

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 2, 2006
in Christianity, Faith, Sexuality, Teaching and Youth
. 8 Comments

I can report that the attendance in my Monday classes was slightly below normal yesterday,  but not significantly so.

I’ve been catching up on other people’s blogs as best I can, and came across this marvelous post last week from the sublime Jenell Paris: Jesus our Redeemer, or Jesus our Affirmer? In her usual eloquent and humble way, Jenell identifies what I know to be one of the chief weaknesses of the liberal Christian theology to which I often subscribe: the conviction that Christ came to tell us all how good we are, how we don’t need change, and how our desires are wonderfully congruent with God’s plan. 

But what I really like is this bit:

In my life, God has helped me discipline my desires more than to fulfill them or express them. In recent years, my deepest desire has been to mother my three sons who are deceased. I don’t know why God wouldn’t save them, and why I am left here to live however many more years without them. I will live the rest of my life incomplete as a mother, longing for something I can’t have. Now, by ‘discipline’, I mean to teach/instruct/shape/form. Left to my own devices, my desires would implode and make me bitter and sad. I believe that God helps me redirect my frustrated desire into parenting my living children, loving other people’s children (my students), and just generally redirecting my maternal energy outward to bless others, instead of inward to harm myself. I don’t get to live the life I want, and it is very painful to me on a daily basis. I no longer expect God to give me what I want, or to fulfill my longing for intimacy, love, and family in the way I thought those things would happen.

I’m not making generalizations about how Christians of same-sex attraction should live their lives. But nothing in this life is too difficult, if God helps us. Increasingly, celibacy (to pick the most extreme example) is rejected as draconian, authoritarian, and loveless. But we can create communities in which the unthinkable becomes thinkable. If, in fact, the Bible restricts sexual activity to the extent that it seems to, then we need to discipline our desires accordingly. As a married woman, that means talking with friends about the selfishness, hostility, distance, pettiness, fear, and whatever else afflicts sexuality in my marriage. For single people, married people in different circumstances than mine, people with complex sexual attractions, people with unsettled genders…the discipline of desire — molding our desires into patterns of holy living — plays out in many ways. I just don’t think we should close off any possibility, however countercultural it may be.

The bold emphases are mine.

Jenell is writing for her fellow Christians, not necessarily for the whole world.   After all, if you don’t accept the authority of the Bible, then you don’t need to consider its implications for your private life.   Christians can’t ask folks who don’t share our faith to live by the standards of our faith.

Recently, I was meeting with a young Christian student, a woman who is struggling with uncertainty about her faith and her commitment to pre-marital abstinence.  She came to me not merely as a professor, but also as a fellow believer.  And because she invited me to do so, I spoke with her in explicitly Christian terms.   And though I didn’t say it nearly as well as Jenell did, I made the same case: that with God’s help, the impossibly difficult (staying abstinent) becomes possible.  It’s not an argument I would make with a non-Christian student, of course!   I don’t weigh in uninvited on the private lives of any of my students, mind you — but when I’m asked directly for my advice and opinion, I offer it.  And I always tailor that advice to the student’s own faith (or absence thereof), which means that two different students could potentially walk out of my office with two radically different views of what it was that Hugo Schwyzer believes about sexual morality and behavior.

My post about masturbation on March 29 was written from an explicitly Christian perspective.  Many of my non-Christian readers took issue with my stance (that masturbation and fantasy fall short of the mark).  But I made no case that masturbation is wrong from a non-spiritual viewpoint.  To put it in another way, if I weren’t a Christian, I’d think the exact opposite about the subject!  (And when I wasn’t, I did indeed think very differently.)

To get back to Jenell’s post, I too have discovered that God is not in the business of simply giving me what I want.  Though I have never been through what Jenell has been through, I know what she means when she says: Left to my own devices, my desires would implode and make me bitter and sad. My desires are not hers.  But I’ve been left to my own devices for much of my life, and my desires not only imploded into private sadness, they exploded publicly and brought pain and suffering to a great many other people.  Doing what felt right and following my impulses left me feeling extraordinarily guilty — not just because I had offended God, but because I had caused very real hurt to very real people.

As a youth leader at a progressive Episcopalian parish, I have to find a way to match God’s call to radical sacrifice (the way of the cross) with my church’s prophetic insistence that not only are all welcome, but all sexual orientations are worthy of affirmation.  Now, I think it is possible to live biblically and sacrificially in a genitally-expressive sexual relationship with another person of one’s same sex.  I see sacrifice in the lives of many gay and lesbian couples at All Saints; it would be an absurdity to suggest that those of us who believe God affirms same-sex marriage must believe He also affirms every imaginable form of sexual behavior.  It is possible to call people to holiness and restriction even while professing that marriage is not just for one man and one woman.

But the fact that it is possible doesn’t mean it is easy, especially in youth work.  My teens don’t always grasp this basic paradox: God’s radical acceptance of who we are is balanced by His constant call to transformation.  He affirms us "where we are" and challenges us to change, both at the same time.  The wise old folks around All Saints Pasadena know that — but sometimes, the vital second part of the message (the bit about transformation, reformation, conversion) gets lost in the first part (the bit about acceptance, welcome, and affirmation). 

We’re headed into the final week of our "Sex at All Saints" series with the high school youth group.  And I realize, as always, that I have an easier time with the feel-good message of radical, total, acceptance than I do with the message about discipleship, restriction, and taking up the cross.  In my own life, mind you, I’ve worked very hard (with God’s help) to begin to live a life of discipleship and personal sacrifice.  But I’m still occasionally reluctant to challenge my teenagers to that kind of holiness. 

My prayer this week is that I will have that courage, and that I will balance the Good News of God’s affirming love with the ultimately more important message of redemption.

Some thoughts on gang bangs and “proving it”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 1, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Body, GLBTQ, Men and Masculinity and Sexuality
. 11 Comments

Abyss2hope at Alas, A Blog has a short post up about the Duke rape case and homosocial bonding.  The post has a link to this Washington Blade story, a story which begins:

A criminal psychologist said Collin Finnerty, the Duke University lacrosse player charged with rape and assault, could be attempting to prove his masculinity.

"Masculinity is something that has to be proven," she said. "It is not innate or natural. It’s something young men have to establish, and they have to establish it publicly.

(Bold emphasis mine).

In the field of "men and masculinity studies", there’s an extraordinary amount of material written about the problem of "proving it".  In virtually every young American man’s life, establishing one’s masculine credentials in the eyes of male peers is one of the most difficult, most constant — and most self-defining — activities of childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.  In both fiction and autobiography, countless men have recorded the sad, brave, appalling, frightening, disgusting, daring, and frequently unsuccessful measures they took, alone or collectively, to "prove" that they were men.

A book I use regularly in my Men and Masculinity class is Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront their Manhood, edited by Ray Gonzalez.  One of the essays in the book is by Rudolfo Anaya, who describes this phenomenon — and the way in which women are used — perfectly:

Little boys like to brag about the length of their penises, or they have contests to see who can piss the farthest.  Acting out "I’m bigger, I’m better", the game begins to have a built-in power aspect. Later, boys will brag about having scored with a girl, and in the boast is contained a hint of the power they have exercised.  Those who haven’t yet scored have less power.  They’re virgins in the game.  Those who don’t see girls as the goal to be conquered have even less power.  A hierarchy of needs and behavior begins to define the male role and the power inherent in it.

Bold emphasis mine.

Another writer in the same collection, Ilan Stavans, makes a similar point about the vital function sex with women plays in establishing manhood.

Like most of my friends, I lost my virginity to a prostitute… An older acquaintance was responsible for arranging the date, when a small group of us would meet an experienced harlot at a whorehouse.  It goes without saying that none of the girls in my class were similarly "tutored": They would most likely become women in the arms of someone they loved, or thought they loved.  But love or even the slightest degree of attraction was not involved in our venture.  Losing our virginity was actually a dual mission: to ejaculate inside the hooker and then, more importantly, to tell of the entire adventure afterward.  The telling of the story — the matador defeating the bull, the conqueror’s display of power — was more crucial than the carnal sensation itself.

Again, bold emphasis is mine.

This last bit from Stavans popped into my head weeks ago in relation to the Duke case.  (Though many have focused on the fact that the victim in North Carolina is black, few have pointed out that she’s also several years older than those who are accused of raping her.  That fits a classic story line too, a subject for another post.)  When my students read Anaya and Stavans, most of them end up nodding their heads vigorously.  In their own lives, or the lives of the men they know, they see so clearly how hetero-relations have been almost hopelessly infected by the overwhelming need that so many guys have to "prove it" — using a woman’s body to do so.

The thrill of the gang bang — or gang rape, which is different — is not the sex: it’s the audience.  Pardon the vulgarity: but the real payoff is not to fuck, but to be seen fucking.  Homosociality (the overwhelming need to prove oneself in the eyes of one’s own sex) all too often trumps authentic sexual desire, or becomes so hopelessly entangled with innate sexual desire that many men have trouble distinguishing what they a priori want and enjoy from what behavior will bring them the pleasure of greater status in the eyes of men.  In other words, like Stavans, they derive more lasting pleasure from sharing with other men their conquest narrative than they do from the sexual experience itself!  That’s one of the most universal — and ugliest — aspects of modern American masculinity.

Some thoughts on crisis pregnancy centers and telling the truth

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 1, 2006
in Abortion, Body, Christianity, Ethnicity, Faith and Feminism
. 35 Comments

It’s May Day, the start of a new week and a new month.  I’m hoping it will also usher in the return of  regular blogging from Hugo. 

Today is, of course, the national "Day Without an Immigrant".  It’s too early to tell whether large numbers of students here at PCC (the student body is made up largely of immigrants and their children) will participate by boycotting classes.  Given that I missed three out of four of my teaching days last week, and that I am far behind in the syllabus, I have no intention of cancelling class or of devoting lecture time to the subject. I’ll let readers know if my attendance is affected.

Amanda at Pandagon has an article on crisis pregnancy centers published at Alternet: Exposing Anti-Choice Abortion Clinics.  She sent me a link to it, and I’d like to take this opportunity to break my long-imposed hiatus from discussing abortion issues on this blog.

I’ve been struggling for years with my own feelings about abortion.  More than on any other issue, my faith and my feminism, my heart and my mind lead me to contradictory conclusions.  When I talk about it, I end up waffling and equivocating.  Unlike some Catholic Democratic senators, I’m not frantically trying to please two diametrically opposed groups; I know damn well my agonizing ends up annoying and, ultimately, alienating both pro-life and pro-choice activists.   I’d be far better off pretending that my views were more solidly on one side rather than another, and thus at least assuring myself of some allies!

I’m not yet ready to weigh in on the larger issue of whether or not abortion should be legal.  But I can write a bit about how troubled I have always been by the topic that Amanda addresses today: the deceptive tactics used by so many "crisis pregnancy centers." Here’s the website for Austin Life Care:

LifeCare Pregnancy Services is a non-profit pregnancy center committed to providing women and men with accurate, up-to-date information in order to make informed decisions about pregnancy, sexual health, and relationships.

Unlike Amanda, I’m very sympathetic to the goals of these crisis pregnancy centers.  Frankly, I’d like to see a great many more young women keep their babies and put them up for adoption, or commit to raising them themselves.  It’s why I’ve always supported greater private and public financial support for programs and institutions which make it more socially acceptable and economically viable for the young and the unintentionally pregnant to commit to raising their children.  Of course, I break completely with my friends in the pro-life camp over the issue of stigmatizing unwed motherhood!  I’ve always thought that ostracizing unwed mothers while opposing abortion was a disastrous contradiction; I know very well how shame is often a strong impetus to choose to terminate a pregnancy "before others find out."

While abortion remains legal and accessible, I feel strongly about supporting those organizations that offer alternatives to women who are interested in carrying a child to term and either arranging for an adoption or keeping their baby themselves.  There is surely a place in the market for groups that seek to reduce demand for abortion by making these alternatives more financially viable.  But I feel strongly that those of us who offer alternatives to abortion must be absolutely frank with our potential clients and their unborn children.  Pretending to offer abortion referrals, for example, is a heinous and indefensible abuse of the trust of women at a particularly vulnerable time in their lives.  I have never been able to support the work of those crisis centers that do not offer full and complete disclosure of their goals and agenda up front.

I know that many of my pro-life friends believe that when it comes to preventing abortion, ends are justified by means.  If the only way to get a baby saved is to pass off your clinic as one that actually offers abortion, they argue, it’s worth doing.  But as Christians (and almost everyone in the crisis pregnancy movement is Christian), we must remember that to follow Jesus is to match our language and our lives.  The means we use to accomplish any goal must be radically congruent with the ends we seek.  If we want to reach women with the truth that there are alternatives to abortion, we must be worthy of their trust.  How can a young, pregnant girl considering abortion trust an agency that misled her to get her in the door in the first place?  If we are going to commit — as we should — to helping young women discover options that honor life, we must do so candidly and openly.

If I were running a crisis pregnancy center, I’d use a slogan like this:

Confused about abortion?  Looking for alternatives? Crisis Pregnancy Center of Hicksville is here for you.  We are committed to you and to  your unborn baby.  Let us help you to find a way to make a choice that can give both you and your child the opportunity for a lifetime of happiness and possibility.

That, I think, would be honest and straightforward.  My pro-choice friends might still not like the insistence that every fetus is a human person worthy of life, but they would surely have far greater respect for us if we in the consistent-life camp would insist on truth in advertising in everything we do.