Archive for June, 2006

Thursday Short Poem: Collins’ “Silence”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 8, 2006
in Poetry
. 8 Comments

As an all-too talkative ENFP, I don’t do silence well.  That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a poem on the subject, even as it reminds me how often my own words — both spoken and written — are inadequate, overwrought, self-indulgent, and unnecessary.

This Billy Collins poem was in the Guardian just this past weekend, but I’m putting it up today anyway.

Silence

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a motionless player on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house-
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.

Between the Already and the Not Yet: a long post on premarital sexuality and doing “everything but”.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 7, 2006
in Christianity, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexuality and Youth
. 45 Comments

I’m happy with this post.

You read student journals in a women’s studies class often enough, and teach sex ed in a church youth group for a few years, and you eventually get accustomed to hearing one familiar question over and over again: 

Is it okay to do everything "but"?

We’re talking about sex again, of course.  And in the current climate of highly politicized public discussions of abstinence and safer sex, there’s virtually no one who defends those millions of teens and young adults who are virgins, but regularly engage in other forms of sexual activity.   Few Christian conservatives condone oral sex or other genital activity that doesn’t involve vaginal penetration. Most of those who argue for abstinence argue for nothing more than light kissing, and some of the most enthusiastic purveyors of the purity message argue that even a peck on the lips ought to be saved for marriage.

On the other hand, the "pro-sex" crowd tends to make fun of those folks whom they scornfully call "technical" virgins.  I’ve often heard from my secular friends that it’s downright silly for a young person to do "everything but".  "If they’ve already gone so far as to have oral sex — or mutual masturbation — what point is there in continuing to hold back?  Aren’t they just being silly and legalistic?  Why not go ahead and get the whole thing over with — it’s not like you’re perfectly ‘pure’ anyway!"

This year, a couple of the kids in youth group asked (through anonymous notes) how we (the adults) felt about doing "everything but."  And this semester, as always, more than one student in my women’s studies class has volunteered that he or she is a virgin, but regularly does "other things."  Mind you, I don’t pry; folks tend to volunteer this information.  And here at PCC, the students most likely to tell me that they are doing everything but are my fellow Christians.  They are often anxious to know how I feel about their choice to take a middle ground position between absolute abstinence and actual vaginal intercourse.

Let me say this loud and clear: I believe that for some young people, "everything but" is the best possible sexual choice that they can make. 

It isn’t just Christian kids who are in the "everything but" club.  I know lots of young people in my youth group and here at PCC who have said that they are waiting to "lose" their virginity with someone they really love.  Theirs is not an issue of fidelity to religious teaching, but rather a touching fidelity to romantic ideals.  Instinctively, they grasp that vaginal intercourse is somehow qualitatively different from any other form of sexual expression.  Of course, for young women, vaginal intercourse is loaded with the fear of pregnancy, a fear that can be alleviated by "doing other things."  And while oral sex can spread sexually transmitted infections, it doesn’t happen as easily as it does with actual intercourse. 

Most young people are, as any youth leader knows, far more romantic and idealistic than they may at first appear.   Virginal girls and boys alike, in my experience, still imbue their "first time" with great emotional importance — time and again, even in this modern age, I hear young people talking about the prospect of intercourse with a mixture of desire and anxiety, anticipation and uncertainty, longing and worry, fear and trembling.  Even if they can’t always articulate why this one particular act is so special, they believe that it is.  Perhaps that belief is rooted in our biology, and perhaps in a culture that elevates heterosexual vaginal intercourse to a special place in the hierarchy of sexual behavior.  But regardless of where these kids get the idea, a heavy majority seem to believe that intercourse is a unique experience, and that they have an obligation to make the first time "special".

We have to learn to sit up before we can stand, stand before we can walk, and walk before we can run.  In the same way, I think healthy sexual development is one that unfolds in distinct, marked phases.  Young people do well to move, at their own speed and according to their own comfort level, towards greater and greater sexual intimacy.  When I write this, I am not defending the oft-remarked upon practice of very young girls offering oral sex to boys as a means of gaining popularity and of "soothing" rambunctious male libidos.  But this image of "blowjob culture" (where girls receive no pleasure in return) may be an exaggeration foisted upon us by a hysterical press.  Recent academic studies (read this article) suggest a high degree of reciprocity among adolescents who are engaging in oral sex.  That’s something I find very encouraging.

Whether one is a Christian or not, it seems sensible to say that healthy sexual activity is characterized by respect, mutuality, reciprocity, and a concern both for pleasure and the emotional consequences of what is shared.  Many, many young people are — for reasons that may be psychological, spiritual, emotional, or romantic — unready for vaginal intercourse.  At the same time they are hungry for intimacy and sexual expression.  Put more simply, they’re horny.  Doing "everything but" makes good sense for many of these young people.  It allows them to learn about sex and experience intense physical closeness without the unique emotional and physical vulnerability that comes with actual intercourse. For a great many young people, "everything but" is not only undeserving of ridicule, it’s a heck of a good idea.

But what about for Christians?  I teach Christian teens in a youth group, and I tend to get questions regularly about the morality of "everything but" from Christian high schoolers and college students.  Many of these kids feel trapped between a secular culture which often urges them to "get it over with" and a conservative religious world which sees all forms of pre-marital genital sexual activity as fundamentally sinful.  Many of these young Christians are in the "everything but" club, but they are often ambivalent and guilt-ridden about being there.

The New Testament does not talk about "everything but."  Oral sex, mutual masturbation, and heavy make-out sessions are not addressed in the Gospels or the Epistles — or, for that matter, in the early writings of the church.  It’s safe to say that the mainstream position of Christian teaching is to say that actual virginity prior to marriage represents "God’s best".  But whether that "best" allows other forms of sexual activity, or only light kissing, or only hand-holding, we can’t say.  There are plenty of folks in the Christian world making a small fortune peddling their own theories as to what exactly constitutes "purity", but the Scripture they quote in defense of those theories is, to put it mildly, vague and unconvincing!

A wonderful student of mine and I were talking several years ago.  She was in an "everything but" relationship with her boyfriend, and he wanted to have intercourse — and she wasn’t sure.  A devout Christian and an enormously sensitive and compassionate person, she wanted to know whether there was any point in "waiting" once she’d already done "everything but."  I said yes, there was.  Speaking off the top of my head, I told her that she might think of God’s plan for her this way:

God wants you to have three things inside of you over the course of your life: the Holy Spirit, your husband’s body, and your child.    No matter what else you do, there’s something radically different — in a theological sense — about intercourse.  I think that for you, God’s best may be having just you take just those three inside of you.

Later on, I wondered if that didn’t sound silly.  But the young woman to whom I spoke these words is still a friend, and she reminded me quite recently  of how important those words had been to her some five years ago.  She’s not yet married, but to the best of my knowledge, is still a virgin. 

I pass no judgment on those young people, Christian or not, who choose to have sexual intercourse before marriage.  (I lost my seat in judgment city decades ago, and for good reason.)  I honor those young people who believe that God has called them to an especially restrictive understanding of purity.  I’ve been to weddings and watched a couple kiss — for the first time ever — after they were pronounced man and wife.  I celebrate that choice!  But I don’t think that it makes good sense to suggest that there’s nothing valuable about taking the middle ground position of "everything but."  For a great many young people, "doing everything but" offers a chance to explore and grow emotionally and sexually while remaining true to their spiritual and romantic commitments.  Rather than ridiculing it, all of us who call ourselves older and wiser would do well to consider the possibility that "everything but" may represent not a foolish and indefensible compromise, but a healthy and spiritually mature middle ground.

As Christians, we are told over and over again, to quote someone whose name escapes me, that we "live in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet."  That’s a nice way of thinking about the return of our Savior King, but it also is a nice way of acknowledging what it is to live between the onset of sexual feelings and one’s wedding day.  "Everything but" is, I think, often a laudable response to that tension.

Wednesday mornin’ notes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 7, 2006
in Music, Politics and Youth
. 6 Comments

Given that I needed to get up at 4:30AM to go boxing, I was perhaps foolish in staying up late to follow the California primary returns on line.  In general, I’ve got to say I’m disappointed.   While the candidates I supported in the Democratic primary for state-wide office all won, I was saddened by the defeat of the two initiatives that would have increased funding for libraries and provided for universal preschool.  I’m also disappointed to learn, thanks to the estimable Dan Weintraub, that in six state senate primaries where pro-business moderate Democrats faced off with labor-backed progressives, the moderates won all but one.  Though the Dems will surely retain control of the state legislature after the November election, this means a clear move towards the right.

Community colleges had mixed results with bond proposals.

Somehow I made it through boxing with energy to spare, and feel invigorated and alive despite just four and a half hours sleep — again.

I’ve been listening to the new Dixie Chicks cd and loving it; yes, my Chick fandom long predates their public criticisms of President Bush.  I don’t let politics affect my musical choices.  While my favorite living artist is the solidly progressive PETA spokeswoman, Emmylou Harris, I’m also happy to listen to those whose views are firmly to the right.

Speaking of music, my wife and I went to a choir concert at a local high school last night; one of the girls from my youth group was singing.  It was an interesting and daring set of choices for a high school choir: Faure, Shostakovich, Robert Muczynski, and, of all the darned things, Geddy Lee.  The kids sang a rather sweet version of the former Rush frontman’s "Tears."  I doubt any of the teenagers at South Pasadena High even have heard of Rush, but back when I was in high school, they were enormously popular with a certain set of kids to which I didn’t belong.  I never liked so-called progressive rock: in high school I was too fond of British and American punk (from the Clash to the Circle Jerks to Jodie Foster’s Army).

Oh, and the new Carnival of the Feminists is up.  Go now.

A more serious post coming up!

Some thoughts on pro-feminism, young men, and always taking women’s emotional temperature

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 6, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Relationships, Sexuality and Youth
. 94 Comments

It’s election day in California, my endorsements here.

I had a visit last week from a fella who was in my women’s studies class a couple of semesters ago, and is now a student in another one of my courses.  I’ll call him "Pete"; he’s a regular reader of this blog and gave me permission to blog about our conversation.

Pete came to my office to ask me about pro-feminism.  He’s 20, bright, articulate, handsome, a native of Pasadena of Greek descent.  I’ll try and paraphrase what he said and asked:

I’m really struggling with whether or not I want to be a feminist man.  I get that injustice and inequality exist, but at the same time, I don’t know why I have to get involved in this now, when I’m so young. Didn’t you, Hugo, take a long time to match your language and your life?

Darn it all, Pete reads this blog.  And he’s right — when I was 20, I claimed to be a male feminist, but my feminism was shallow to the core.  It’s tough to challenge young men to be at their age what I most certainly wasn’t until much, much later!

The thing is,Pete continued, I don’t think girls want feminist guys!  You know that whole thing where girls aren’t into nice guys but would rather have bad boys?  It’s like they say they want one thing, but in reality they want another.  If I want to meet girls and have fun, I have a lot more success when I don’t try and be pro-feminist.  I mean, why should I be more feminist than the women around me?

I hear this from guys like Pete a great deal.  I had a female friend in college who was an ardent feminist, yet admitted that she wasn’t sexually drawn to most pro-feminist men.  "Jackie" acknowledged an inconsistency that I’ve come to see in a number of other younger feminist women — an intellectual desire to be in an egalitarian relationship, but a strong physical and emotional attraction to men who were more dominant and, to put it mildly, much less feminist.   Jackie always said she wanted to marry a pro-feminist man someday, but until then, she was going to have her fun with men she referred to as "dangerous assholes who turn me on." 

When I was in college, I knew a lot of women like Jackie.  They haven’t disappeared from the ranks of the younger generation, either.  This is what Pete was complaining about — among his peers, he found relatively few women who seemed to want feminist men, and more who seemed drawn to the alpha male "bad boy."  Pete told me that he had the capacity to be either at any time, but it seemed pointless to work on being a feminist when living up to pro-feminist principles didn’t seem to him to be an effective strategy for connecting with women.  Pete asked:

Why shouldn’t I wait to be a pro-feminist man until I’m older, when women will appreciate it?  Why shouldn’t I be a player now, and have my fun?

I laughed gently, and reminded Pete of Augustine’s famous plea:  "Give me continence, Lord, but not yet!"  Pete got it, and chuckled too.

Of course, I did tell Pete that the purpose of becoming a pro-feminist man is not to please women or to "get" women into bed.  Indeed, doing so only reinforces the worst stereotypes about male feminists!   I know countless folks who suspect that pro-feminist men are simply "wolves in sheep’s clothing", looking for a new and effective strategy for seducing women.  Indeed, when pro-feminist men aren’t being told that we’re gay, or filled with self-hatred, we’re frequently accused of being predatory frauds.  I reminded Pete that I hadn’t tried to sell pro-feminism as a "tool" for using and exploiting women.

What I did suggest to Pete was that he consider the possibility that what was really attractive to women wasn’t necessarily the "bad boy", but the confident man.  One of the worst stereotypes of pro-feminist men — one that may have a small grain of truth — is that many pro-feminist guys are timid.  My cousin Dinah put it beautifully years ago:  "I really hate it when nice guys are always trying to take my emotional temperature! It’s like, stop asking me what I want all the time and be an equal partner in decision making!"

In the early stages of embracing pro-feminism, too many young men (including my younger self) tend to walk on eggshells around women.  These young men are idealistic, and intensely eager to reject traditional male privilege and modes of behavior.  But the end result, all too often, is a most unattractive kind of indecisiveness!   I went through a period in my own life where I figured my job as a pro-feminist was to always, always, always, ask a woman what she wanted.  "Where do you want to go to dinner?"   "Are you feeling okay?"  "Is there anything I can do for you?"  "Would you like to talk about it?"  While showing concern for another person’s feelings is appropriate, it’s all too easy for insecure "newbie" pro-feminist men to drive women stark raving bonkers by, as cousin Dinah said, constantly trying to take a woman’s emotional temperature.   Constant, anxious solicitousness is not, um, sexy.

The most difficult thing about being a young pro-feminist man isn’t just practicing one’s feminist principles in all aspects of one’s life, though that sure as heck is difficult enough.  I told Pete last week that I’d found that the most difficult thing to do was to become clear on the difference between an attractive and compelling confidence and a privileged arrogance.  Pro-feminism is not about turning men into eager and attentive servants or rescuing knights in shining armor. It’s possible to learn to renounce male privilege while retaining a strong, bold, sense of oneself.  Sometimes, in other words, a pro-feminist man can make decisions.  As Jackie put it, "I don’t want a man to always ask me where I want to go to dinner — sometimes I want a man confident enough to pick the damn restaurant on his own."

In the end, I told Pete, there’s more to life as a man than choosing between being a wimp or a jerk!  Pro-feminism, at its best, is not "wimpy."  Indeed, it’s intensely courageous, as it involves the conscious and public refusal to live up to what our culture traditionally demands of men.  It also demands that men stand up to other men, challenging their sexism even when no women are around.  As most young guys will tell you, there aren’t many things that are scarier than speaking up against misogyny when in an all-male group.  Any young man who can do that is doing something exceptionally brave and impressive.

Pro-feminism asks men to ask hard questions of themselves and the culture. It asks young men to hold themselves accountable; it asks young men to see women as human beings.  But it doesn’t ask young men to be anxious people-pleasers.  People-pleasing, after all, is cowardly and manipulative.  An aspiring pro-feminist man still gets to express his desires and his wants; he doesn’t get to keep a sense of entitlement that tells him that women exist only to meet those desires and wants.

I don’t know how much Pete got out of our conversation, but when he left, he said "Hugo, thanks.  I know I’m going to be a pro-feminist — soon.  But not just yet."  I laughed and told him "One day at a time, buddy, one day at a time."

Stand up for Yves Magloe: a note on mental illness and discrimination

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 5, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness and Pasadena City College
. 18 Comments

In the California Community College system, as in most other places in American higher education, it isn’t easy to fire a professor with tenure.  There are only a handful of justifications for doing so: a felony conviction is one, and "abandonment" is another.  In my thirteen years of teaching here at PCC, the last eight as a tenured instructor, I haven’t seen any of my colleagues dismissed.  Until now.

I don’t know most of my fellow professors in other departments on campus.  I certainly didn’t know Yves Magloe, a professor who taught in the languages division for several years — the last few with tenure.  Last fall, Magloe (who suffers from bipolar disorder) experienced a severe episode of depression.  According to our campus paper:

In November 2005, Magloe, an ESL instructor, who takes medication to manage a bipolar condition, suffered a manic episode. "I lost control and it was part of the pathology," said Magloe "When I lost control I stopped taking my medication, and that made things worse."

"I was sick and that is all there is to it," said Magloe, who was hospitalized for little less than a month. "People get ill and the [administration] has been unsympathetic."

As a full time faculty member, Magloe needed to report to human resources that he would be taking personal time off. He went to human resources in 2005 before the end of the fall semester and filled out some of the necessary paper work, which he did not complete. When Magloe took time off human resources then took it as "abandonment."

"He fell through the cracks," said associate professor of English Brock Klein. "I tried to talk to him, but due to his mental health he was not able to make any type of difficult decisions."

The college isn’t commenting, but the union and the faculty are up in arms.  I would have been up in arms, but such is the provincialism of this department that I only learned of what had happened to Professor Magloe when I read the campus newspaper last week.

I make no secret of the fact that I’ve had some serious troubles of my own.  In my first four years at PCC, I was hospitalized three times.  Without getting into specific details, I was struggling with both mental illness and addiction; on two occasions those struggles almost cost me my life.  Twice I was hospitalized for an extended period in a private locked mental hospital; it was in the last of these places that I experienced the spiritual epiphany that I touched on last Thursday.

What made me different from Yves Magloe was not the severity of my condition or the length of my hospitalization (though part of two of my hospitalizations took place during summer vacations).  What made me different was that friends of mine were able to notify my division dean and others about my problem.  As a result, extended leave was requested on my behalf.  Magloe apparently did not have anyone available to do that for him.  Today, I am still tenured and teaching happily — and years removed from the time when I wrestled with demons.  Magloe, on the other hand, is facing poverty, about to have his medical benefits cut off.

I don’t see myself as a crusader for mental health issues, but every once in a while, when something like this happens, I am reminded of how tragic our continued societal double standard is.  If Magloe had missed class with heart trouble, and been unable to contact his department, he would not have been terminated.  If he had been struggling against cancer, or injured in a car crash, no one would have considered him to have "abandoned" his post.  But where mental illness is concerned, a powerful misunderstanding remains.  Someone suffering from bipolar disorder (or other similar problems) is judged accountable for his missed time in a way that someone suffering from a more obvious physiological injury is not.  I don’t know the law well enough to know if it’s illegal to do what our Human Resources department has done, but it sure as hell is immoral!  And it sends a terrible message to those folks in the community who are battling — or who have loved ones who are battling — the very serious problem of mental illness.

You can email the college president, James Kossler, here.

You can email the head of human resources, Jorge Aguiniga, here.

Contact the board of trustees by going here.

A note on priestly betrayal and youth work

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 5, 2006
in Christianity, Faith, Men and Masculinity, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 14 Comments

I’m very tired this morning.  I had a lousy workout at my boxing gym; I walked in the door at 5:15AM and it was already hot and steamy inside.  Working out indoors without air conditioning is one of my least favorite activities.  Pepe (my trainer) kept saying "Elbows in, Hugo!" and "Crisper, sharper!", but I just wasn’t feeling it.  I promised him I’d be more fiery on Wednesday.

The Happy Feminist and Amber at Prettier than Napoleon both respond to my OKOP/NOKOP post on Friday, and I’m grateful for their links.  So far, none of my family members have grumbled to me about sharing these acronyms with the general public.

Kendall Harmon and several other bloggers have been discussing the case of John Bennison, an Episcopal priest who has a long history of sexual misconduct that his bishops have covered up.  Bennison — who was once on staff at a church I know very well, All Saints by the Sea in Montecito — apparently had affairs with girls in the youth group he led.   He and his wife also allegedly brought one teen from a youth group home to bed.

I like what *Christopher has to say about the role of the laity in holding priests and bishops accountable:

We laity too often enable, turn a blind eye, refuse to step into our Baptismal responsibility at such times and face the blinding light of day when one of our leaders may have harmed the Body and broken trust. We fail to live out the processes put in place to fairly investigate allegations, insiting upon them, even demanding them, if necessary irrespective of the office in question: lay leader, deacon, priest, bishop, patriarch/pope. Our allowing ourselves to be infantilized within the Body is dangerous to the healthy functioning of the Body. It’s time to step up and grow up into our Baptismal responsibility, and face the fact that sometimes, our leaders fail us. That is a part of life and of being a Christian. So is working through the mess.

I get very angry at men like John Bennison for a couple of reasons.  One, I’m angry and sad that he clearly hurt and betrayed so many people who trusted him.  I’m angry because of the damage and chaos he brought into the lives of the young women he abused.  Two, I’m angry — in a childish way that *Christopher rebukes — because I feel personally betrayed every time a priest breaks his vows.  As well as I know many of them, I do put priests and pastors (in all denominations) up on pedestals, even when I know better.  I expect the men and women whom God has called to be shepherds to take care of the flock, not use and abuse the most vulnerable of the lambs.   All sexual abuse makes me angry, but I can’t help but feel especially betrayed when it comes at the hands of those who have taken Holy Orders.

But I am angry for a third reason:  men like John Bennison make youth ministry that much harder for men like me.  I’m particularly struck by this case because Bennison is an Episcopal minister who had a special gift for working with teens.  By all accounts, he abused that gift and the trust placed in him in an egregious way — and he did so on more than one occasion.  As a male volunteer youth leader working with teens, I’m deeply aware of how much trust is placed in me by my church community, by my youth, and by their families.  It is a sacred responsibility I’ve got, and one I take with enormous seriousness.

Every time a case like that of Rev. Bennison unfolds, it makes my job — and the job of all of us who do youth ministry, especially men — that much harder.    When they aren’t calling me gay, effeminate, or filled with self-loathing, some of the MRAs suggest I have an unnatural attraction to adolescents.  As nasty as that insinuation is, it’s one that’s thrown increasingly often at those of us who do youth ministry.   Cases like the Bennison one reinforce the terrible public perception that adult men like me who work with teenagers are surely driven not by love or faith but by some perverse sexual pathology.

Of course, I don’t need to prove myself to the critics in the blogosphere.  I do need to prove myself, over and over again, to my church and to the lambs with whose care and nurturing I am — on Wednesdays and Sundays from September to June — entrusted.  I try very hard to be transparent in my work.  But I also can’t let the fears of the culture control what I do.  I wrote a post about this issue almost exactly two years ago called Boys, Girls, Hugs.  I said then:

In our current climate of hysteria, we in the church need to struggle to find a balance. We must of course protect our young people from exploitation and abuse. We must do everything we can to create a safe place within our church communities for our teens. But a place where every gesture of physical affection is seen as dangerous is an inherently unsafe environment! Our young women need to be reminded, over and over again, that they are loved and cared for non-sexually; in that effort, a hug is worth ten thousand words. Our young men need to be reminded, over and over again, that here, at least one night a week during youth group, they don’t have to be "tough guys." They need men in their lives who will love them without judging them or assessing their fragile masculinities. 

We had our last official gathering of the year last Wednesday night: a big barbecue for junior and senior high teens and their families.  There were lots of hamburgers, hot dogs, and hugs.  I must have hugged every kid (and their parents) at least four times.  There were lots of enthusiastic and heartfelt "I love yous" exchanged; I say that phrase to "my kids" often and with absolute, unwavering sincerity.  But the hugs were public and my words easily overheard.  Doing youth ministry right requires the courage to allow intimacy to flourish, and it requires the responsibility to let that intimacy happen transparently.

I’m praying for John Bennison and those whose trust he betrayed.  I’m praying also that my rage at him will subside.  Yes, what he and others have done makes it harder for genuinely safe and loving men to do youth ministry well.  But rather than despair, those of us are privileged to do this work just have to redouble our efforts to win trust, hold ourselves and each other accountable, and above all, to not let fear drive a wedge between ourselves and the young people who need loving adults in their lives.

“OKOP”, “NOKOP” and Oscar: a long post about class, family, and pride

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 2, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Memories, OKOP/NOKOP and Race
. 23 Comments

Here on the blog, I’ve touched on issues of race before: just over two months ago, my post "The Happy WASP Boy" generated some fairly heated responses. With tongue only partially planted in cheek, I wrote then:

But here’s the thing I’ve realized in my life:  though there is much that is vacuous and materialistic about North American middle-class culture, that has damn all to do with skin color or ethnic heritage!  I grew up with a father who was a European war refugee and a mother who came from an "old" California family of German, English,and Scots-Irish ancestry.  I spent most of my time with my mother’s side of the family, and they formed my values and my world view. 

Yes, we’re WASPs.  If you want to stereotype one aspect of us, we’re a Brooks Brothers wearing, Bloody Mary drinking, Buick Roadmaster station-wagon driving, fraternity and sorority joining, tennis-playing, mayonnaise and meat loaf eating, Junior League cookbook owning, monogrammed thank-you note writing, Town and Country magazine reading, English horseback riding, debutante ball attending, Social Register listed, pastel polo-shirt or sweater set clad clan.  Without apologies.

There was a lot of discussion in the comments, and it was pointed out to me by several people that my characterization of my family was less about skin color and more about class.  I think I was aware of that when I wrote the post, but honestly, felt awkward about writing about my family and my background in terms of class.  Where I come from, class is hinted at but never discussed: just in blogging about my family in these posts, I’ve violated some rules.  There are certain topics that aren’t to be talked about too openly, and issues of class and money are among them.

When we were cynical teenagers, my brother and I came up with the terms OKOP and NOKOP.  OKOP stood for "Our Kind of People"; NOKOP (obviously) for "Not Our Kind of People."  We used the words ironically, expressing our chagrin at what we saw as the subtle elitism and snobbery of many members of our extended clan.  My cousins of my generation picked up the terms, and at times, the line between the sincere and the ironic use of the acronyms became blurred.  Someone would bring home a girlfriend to meet the family, and she would tie her sweater around her waist instead of draping it over her shoulders.  "So NOKOP", we’d mouth to each other over the family dinner table.   I once brought a friend to a Fourth of July party who wore a "Porn Star" baseball cap.    "She’s nice", said one cousin, "but a bit NOKOP, don’t you think?"  What began as an expression to poke fun at certain elements of class consciousness in our clan became instead a way of reinforcing those same elements.   That’s what happens, I suppose.

Of course, we’ve become a much more diverse family over the years.  Half-a-dozen of us are in interracial marriages with people from a wide variety of social backgrounds.   A great many of us don’t care about the things an older generation cared about; only a handful of my cousins still worry about who’s in the Social Register and keeping up expensive club memberships.  And well over half of us vote solidly Democratic — something that would have horrified our great-grandparents’ generation.  (My mother’s father and his brother were the only members of their entire family who voted for FDR).

For years and years, I struggled to come to terms with whether or not I wanted to embrace or reject certain aspects of my "class background."  At Berkeley, I learned quickly that others were allowed to say with pride that they were the first in the family to go to university — but I couldn’t say "I’m a fourth-generation Golden Bear" without being greeted with rolled eyes and epithets like "f-ing snob".  Those of us who were from "old families" (a favorite euphemism of the upper-middle classes) learned to conceal it — or openly disparage it.  When I lived in a co-op at Cal (I had become the first male member of my mother’s family in a century not to pledge a fraternity), I knew one other gal in the house who came from a similar background to my own.  We both made a conscious choice to make fun of our privileges.  We wore our Che Guevara t-shirts and wallowed in white guilt like pigs in a trough.

My sophomore year in Ridge House, I had a roommate named "Oscar."  Oscar was from a Mexican-American family in the Central Valley; he was the first in his family to go to college.  Oscar was active in MEChA, as well as the society for Hispanic Engineers and Scientists (two organizations that didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but that’s another story.)  He talked with great pride about his family and what it was like to grow up the son of agricultural laborers, spending half his childhood in Michoacan and the other half in rural Fresno County. But I didn’t want to talk about growing up spending my childhood in places like Santa Barbara and Piedmont and Carmel by-the-Sea.  Where Oscar was proud of his family, I was ashamed of what I believed at the time to be unmerited good fortune and privilege. 

Oscar was a smart lad and a good friend; we went to church together.  One day he asked me: "Hugo, why are you so ashamed of who you are?"  I protested that I wasn’t, and he persisted: "You walk around apologizing for being a white boy from Carmel all the time.  It’s getting really old.  Your family is part of who you are, and you should be proud of your roots.  Period.  Even if you can’t pronounce your own name right."  (He insisted on calling me "Ooogo", rather than the English "Hugh-go" or the German "Hoo-go.")

I told Oscar it wasn’t that easy.   I said:  "People admire you for coming from where you’ve come from — they don’t feel that same way about white guys whose great-grandfathers went here.  It’s like I haven’t earned being here."   Oscar laughed and laughed:  "Shit, Oooogo, sometimes I worry everyone thinks I got in here because of affirmative action; you’re worrying you got in here because of your relatives’ influence.   We both doubt ourselves because of our backgrounds, as different as we are — that’s just classic!"  I laughed with him.   

And then I shared with him the terms "NOKOP" and "OKOP", and I believe I made his whole semester.    As soon as I explained the terms to him, he rolled on the floor in hysterics, gasping in two languages.  The English consisted of "Oh, you f-ing white people, you f-ing white people, I love you soooo much". As if this wasn’t bizarre enough, Oscar then picked up the phone in our room and called up a series of his friends from MEChA, telling them about me and NOKOP and OKOP. And if you were around Oscar or his friends in the 1986-87 academic year, you would have heard them using the acronyms constantly, often in exaggerated accents modeled on Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island: "Ernie, you ridiculous pocho imbecile, that outfit is soooo NOKOP."

Oscar met my parents and my aunt on one occasion, and was gracious as could be.  Though he and his friends enjoyed ribbing me, he was also sending me a very positive message: I shouldn’t take myself or my family so damned seriously.  Oscar taught me that my "white guilt" and my "working class chic" were both affectations that only reinforced my image as an earnest, clueless, elitist.   More than anyone else, Oscar believed that we are simultaneously products of our family background and our own unique choices.  He urged me to always separate the two, and he taught me that shame and guilt ought only be associated with the latter, never the former.  "Your family’s your family, man", he’d say; "Love them, be proud of them, and don’t pretend they aren’t who they are."

I haven’t heard from Oscar in over a decade; last time we talked, he was back in grad school pursuing a second Ph.D. — and I had just started teaching at PCC.   As he always did, he brought up NOKOP and OKOP.   The last time we talked, I had just gotten my nipples pierced (it was an impulse) and I shared the rather painful news with him.  He shrieked with laughter; "Ooogo, even I KNOW that has to be soooo NOKOP."  I agreed that indeed it was, and that my family would not take it well.   "Man", Oscar snorted, "you’re going to be all right."

I rarely use NOKOP or OKOP except in jest any more; neither do my cousins.  I don’t worry about whether or not my name is in the Social Register, and I’d rather tithe to God than pay dues to the Valley Hunt or the Jonathan Club.  But I don’t pretend, either, that those things were not at least a part of my heritage; I don’t deny my background any more.   My family taught me early on not to boast or brag — OKOP don’t draw attention to themselves.  But Oscar taught me that there is no virtue in being embarrassed by one’s heritage, and he taught me that constant apologies were just another sign of privilege.  Living in happy gratitude for one’s heritage –  with the assurance that one is neither above or beneath any other person because of that heritage — is what he urged. And it’s Oscar’s words I still try and follow these days.

Friday afternoon notes and links

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 2, 2006
in Christianity, Feminism, Links, Poetry, Politics and Sports
. 3 Comments

It’s a warm and hazy early Friday afternoon.  This morning I boxed and Pilate-ed, and then my wife and I went off and voted early (via touchscreen).  It was our first time using the new "paper-verified" Diebold voting machines.  You don’t get to take a receipt, mind you, but at least you know a paper record does actually exist and your vote doesn’t simply vanish into cyberspace.  (My California endorsements here.)

I tried to stay up late to watch the women’s college world series but finally conked out — the last game went past 2:00AM Oklahoma time, and past midnight Cali time.  I did see the thrilling Northwestern-Alabama contest; Lorie (a devoted Wildcat alumna), ought to be very happy.

Lynn and Allison both respond to yesterday’s post about a poem and a brief but wonderful period of celibacy in my life.

Amp has a good post up about male privilege and clothing.

Feminarian has a long but powerful post about Christian Theology and Interfaith Cooperation. Feminarian is at nearby Fuller Seminary, and she does a nice job of pushing gently against the evangelical certainties of some of her fellow members of what is still in many ways a very conservative community.

And Jeff has started a new group blog: Feminist Allies.  It’s designed to be a forum for the discussion of issues around male (pro) feminists.  He writes:

I don’t want my concern for myself and for other feminist men to overshadow what I consider to be the ‘greater’ concerns of feminism, some of which are somewhat gender-neutral, and some of which have a lot more to do with women than with men. But at the same time: Men who are feminists have to navigate those waters. They have to face the difficulties imposed by embracing that particular identity. And I don’t think the difficulties ought to be swept under the rug. In some ways, I don’t think that they can be swept under the rug, at least not for the men who have to deal with them. To the extent that I identify as a feminist man, I have to deal with the negatives (and the positives!) of that identity. Is there some inherent harm in finding/creating a community to help us all do those things?

No harm at all — it’s an excellent idea, and I wish the project well.

Friday Random Ten: Spring Fling Randomness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 2, 2006
in Friday Random Ten
. 2 Comments

Doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is the ONE song that belongs to my wife… the other nine are mine.  #2, #5, and #9 are special favorites.  When I get to heaven, Prince and Emmylou will be performing every night.

1.  "Romeo and Juliet", Indigo Girls
2.  "When You Were Mine", Prince
3.  "Traveling Again", Dar Williams
4.  "Boys on the Radio", Hole
5.  "Strong Hand" (For June), Emmylou Harris
6.  "Hallelujah", Ryan Adams
7.  "Malibu", Hole
8.  "Se me Perdico La Cadenita", La Sonora Dinamita
9.  "Cowboy, Take Me Away", Dixie Chicks
10.  "Runaway Train", Rosanne Cash

Um, the gender balance in this FRT seems a bit skewed too…

More on Washika’s poem and some further thoughts on celibacy: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 1, 2006
in Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Poetry and Sexuality
. 29 Comments

I’d like to expand a bit on the topic raised by this morning’s short poem, Lady Ki No Washika’s "No".

When writing about my past, I choose my words carefully.  So many people I know and love read this blog, as do folks from church, my youth group, and my college classes.  Much of my private life is thus obscured, and rightly so.  Yet I think I can share a little bit that may prove useful, or if nothing else, may explain why this morning’s poem means so much to me.  As I wrote this morning, Washika’s little poem was vitally important to me a number of years ago when I went through an extended period of celibacy.

In late June of 1998, I had hit a kind of emotional, physical, and spiritual bottom.  My family was frantically worried about me, my friends had largely pulled away from me, I had spent time in handcuffs — and extended time in hospitals.  While in the last of these hospitals, someone asked me "Hugo, do you have any idea how to be alone?  I don’t mean single — can you really be alone with yourself?"  I admitted that no, I really didn’t know how to do that.  I had already burned through a couple of marriages, and was, for lack of a better time, compulsively dating.  I was a walking, talking, incarnation of toxic neediness!   In the year or two leading up to that watershed summer, I had been going out several nights a week with lots of different people, addictively hungry for connection.  The whole process had left me alienated, lonely, and miserable; it had also made me a bit of a pariah. 

In that long hot summer of 1998 — the summer of Bill and Monica, the summer of the World Cup in France — I came home to God.  It’s an easy phrase to write, and it doesn’t come close to capturing the extraordinary turbulence and excitement of that time of conversion and transformation.   I can only say that I prayed as I had never prayed before, to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in, and I was given peace beyond any expectation.  It was an amazing time, one I hope I will never forget.  "Born again" is such a trite, overused expression — and yet truly, that’s what it felt like.

One of my earliest spiritual directors told me that in addition to a variety of spiritual activities, I needed to be celibate.  He defined celibacy as not only no sexual activity, but also no dating, flirting, or what he liked to call "intriguing" (I love that verb) with women.  I asked how long this period was supposed to last, and he gave me the typical spiritual director answer: "You’ll know.  For now, just do this a day at a time."

(I had spent a brief period of time in my undergraduate years considering whether or not I had a vocation — a story I ought to post.  As I prayed and wondered about becoming a Dominican, I also kept hanging up on the issue of celibacy. I felt called by God to his Church — and at the same time, was terrified of giving up what I saw as the sine qua non of a happy life.  My fear of celibacy played the decisive role in my abandoning the process of joining the Church.)

Thinking about what my director was asking me to do, I realized that I had spent years and years chasing the next exciting relationship.  As much as I liked "going out" with various women, what I really loved was the fantasy  that that night’s date might be "the one", the one who was going to make me content and happy. I was always just one woman away from contentment!  Just the prospect of someone new filled me with tremendous anticipation.  I lived for years and years oscillating between hope and disappointment, idealization and disillusionment, neediness and loneliness.  It’s not a happy way to live, and I know plenty of men and women who’ve lived that way — and some who still do.

Before 1998, I had never consciously made a decision not to date or be in relationship.  There had been times when I didn’t have anyone in my life, but it wasn’t for lack of trying!   In that summer, I found out just how "addicted" I was to novelty, to the illusion of intimacy, to instant chemical connection, to promise.  I also found that God’s grace was stronger than all of that. Much to my surprise (but not to my spiritual director’s), I found that I had the power to live differently. My behavior changed, and then my thinking followed.  I discovered that in celibacy, I had an extraordinary amount of free time to do many new things!

It was during that summer that I first started running at a high level.  I had been running for a few years, but had never hired a coach and done serious track work.  With the money I was saving by not going out night after night, I could easily afford to hire a coach to direct my training. (That’s why all of my PR times came within the next nine months or so!)  I started going to church again, of course, and found that I had the time to volunteer for many things.  As many people in similar situations have found out, once I got out of my own self-obsession, I became infinitely more useful to others — not to mention happier with myself!  If I hadn’t made the conscious choice to be radically celibate,and if God hadn’t given me the strength to live into that commitment,  none of this would ever have happened.

As the weeks and months wore on, and the "newness" of my conversion experience began to wear off, the commitment to no dating/flirting/intriguing became more difficult to maintain.  It’s at this point that I found the Washika "No" poem.    It was one of two poems I recited to myself over and over again that summer and fall. I memorized it, and repeated it to myself as I ran.  (The other lines I used came in the form of this famous final couplet from Auden’s In Memory of Yeats: In the desert of the heart/ Let the healing fountains start/ In the prison of his days /Teach the free man how to praise.).   I knew what it was to trade an hour’s pleasure for a fiercer loneliness; living out that infernal exchange had made me (and many who cared for me) abjectly miserable.  Somehow, Washika’s words got through to me on a soul level when nothing else would.  Perhaps it was the title of the poem itself: "No."  Such a simple word, often a child’s first word, but before 1998, my least favorite word in the whole language and the word I found hardest to say.  This poem was an important part of my learning to say it.  Folks, I don’t just put up poetry because I like it — poetry has helped save my life, again and again and again. 

Of course, my advisor/sponsor was right: the time of celibacy did come to an end after many months, and it came to an end in a positive way.  Though I still had much growing and learning ahead of me, in the eight summers since that conversion time, I have lived very differently.  Today, my extraordinary wife and I have the sort of marriage I could never even have imagined having years ago.  Though I still have my petty neuroses, and God still is working in my life, I’m no longer the bundle of neediness (beneath a carefully crafted exterior) that I was in my pre-conversion days.  Of all the tools I used in those early days and weeks after I chose to live and live well, none save for prayer was more important than the discipline of celibacy.  It was only by completely quieting that aspect of my life that I got still enough to listen to God; it was only by learning that I could live without romance and sex that I learned how to have both of them in the same person in a joyous, life-affirming, enduring way.

Frankly, I think all of us need a celibate "time out" at some point in our lives.  Yes, I know most folks associate celibacy with refraining from physical sex.  But it’s more than that; you can be a virgin and addicted to flirting and intriguing, in love with love, hungry for validation.  Whatever your level of sexual experience, making a conscious decision to close down that area of your life — if only for a few months — can provide extraordinary rewards.  It did for me.

Poetry helped.

UPDATE:  Two readers, Glitch and Miracula, make some interesting points below this post that call into question my unfortunate (and not uncommon) tendency to generalize from my own experience.

And remembering the summer of 1998, I recall that both my running coach and my spiritual director ended up telling me the same thing.  Though the former meant it in terms of sport and the latter in terms of spiritual growth, what they said was absolutely applicable. It’s as close as I get to having a mantra for self-improvement:

If you want what you’ve never had, you have to become what you’ve never been.  To become what you’ve never been, you’re gonna have to do what you’ve never done.

I can’t tell you how often I think of that phrase.  "Doing" celibacy — like doing 10×800 intervals on the track — was doing what I had never done to become what I’d never been in order to get what I’d never had.

Thursday very Short Poem: Washika’s “No”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 1, 2006
in Poetry
. 10 Comments

There’s a personal story behind my love for this medieval Japanese poem by Lady Ki No Washika.  I found it in the Los Angeles Times Book Review back in the late summer of 1998.  This was a time in my life where, after a very turbulent couple of years, I had taken a temporary vow of celibacy.  I was spending time with friends, working out, and busy coming back to God.  I found myself struggling many times — it is axiomatic that when we make these vows, tempting offers tend to come along at once!  This poem comforted me instantly, because those last four lines ran so unbelievably true — they summed up in 22 words what had been up to then my entire sexual history. 

I had this poem on my refrigerator for months.

No

It’s not because I’m now too old,
More wizened than you guess..

If I say no, it’s only
Because I fear that yes
Would bring me nothing, in the end,
But a fiercer loneliness.