Archive for July, 2006

Unequal weapons on the pitch: a partial defense of Zidane — UPDATED and REPOSTED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 12, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Men and Masculinity, Race and Sports
. 27 Comments

A reader named Amber recovered this post via Bloglines.  Yay!  Thanks, Amber!  Comments are lost, however.

Like millions of other folks across the globe, I’ve spent the last three days reflecting on the extraordinary actions of Zinedine Zidane in Sunday’s World Cup Final.  I can’t imagine that there’s a reader in the blogosphere who hasn’t learned of the astonishing head-butt.  On Sunday, in the immediate aftermath of the match, I wrote:

I’ve been a sports fan since childhood, and in thirty years of watching every imaginable athletic activity (this was the seventh World Cup final I’ve seen on TV), I cannot think of any incident as shocking as Zinedine Zidane’s mindless, inexcusably violent head-butt in the latter stages of today’s match.  It’s as if in the midst of their last Super Bowl appearances, Joe Montana or John Elway were to have viciously kicked a poor defensive lineman in the groin.  I’ve never seen an athlete of such caliber completely lose his head in circumstances as vital and important as these.  It strikes me as one of the most self-destructive moments I’ve ever seen in sport.  No words — no matter how ugly or vicious — could have justified the violence and thoughtlessness of Zidane’s reaction.  I’m sad for how this will forever color his legacy.

But I wonder.  Zidane is set to speak today about what it was that the Italian player, Marco Materazzi, said that triggered the head-butt.  According to the lip-readers hired by the BBC, Materazzi told Zidane "you’re the son of a terrorist whore" (among other things) before Zidane turned on him.

We all know the old saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."  It’s quite possible that no other childish nursery rhyme is more fundamentally wrong-headed than that one!  And it’s also worth noting that the power of words to hurt is racially and sexually charged. 

In my fantasies, I am a great soccer player.  Now imagine that I was on the pitch on Sunday, not as clumsy Hugo Schwyzer, but as an athlete of Zidane’s caliber.  I am a white, Christian, heterosexual male.   What on earth could Materazzi say to me?  In the great arsenal of insults, Western culture doesn’t have derogatory language for white, Christian, heterosexual men.  The only way to get at me would be to feminize me (call me a "pussy") or "homosexualize" me (call me "queer"), but those would be terms that wouldn’t go to the core of my identity.   Materazzi’s power to injure with words would be considerably reduced. He could also call me the "son of a terrorist whore", but the epithet "terrorist" has no culturally significant meaning when attached to someone of my background.

When a white man and a man of color are playing on the pitch, no matter which European language they speak, the white man will have more "weapons in his verbal arsenal" than his rival.  Leaving aside gendered and sexualized insults, what power do the words "honky" and "cracker" and "redneck" have to hurt compared to, say, the word "nigger"?  If you call me a "cracker" (a term more accurately used to refer to poor rural whites), I’m going to laugh — there is no history of violence and hatred behind the word.  If I call a player of African descent the "n" word, I’m going to expect a different reaction — not because he has less self-control than I do but because of the extraordinary legacy attached to that term.

There isn’t a single term in English that you can use that attacks me for being who I am.   Put bluntly, the word "cunt" has more power to hurt than the insult "prick"; the word "nigger" more power to hurt than the word "honky", the word "faggot" more power to hurt than the word "straight."  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" — indeed, if I happen to be a privileged white male using Western European languages!

It is dangerous for whites, particularly white Christian men, to suggest that players like Zidane (who is of African descent and is a non-practicing Muslim) ought to be able to control their tempers better.  While all of us will be insulted at one time or another in our lives, it is absurd to suggest that all of us are equally vulnerable to racial, sexual, or religious slurs.  To be an African Muslim man, as Zidane is, renders one at the least doubly vulnerable to verbal attack.  And it is the height of arrogance for those of us who have never experienced these sorts of psychic injuries to demand constant self-control from those who have.

Mind you, in the end, I think Zidane deserved the red card.   Head-butting has no place on the pitch.  But I favor red cards for racial, religious, and gendered slurs as well — and if necessary, I favor giving them retroactively.  If FIFA can give a retroactive red card to Germany’s Torsten Frings for a punch he threw after the game with Argentina, they can certainly give one to Materazzi if his abuse is verified to have been racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious in nature.  When black players in Europe are pelted by banana peels or peanuts or monkey calls when theirs is the visiting team, award their side a penalty kick.   We need to be as strong and decisive in confronting verbal violence as we are in confronting head butts.  To do otherwise is to ignore the reality that words are genuine weapons, and in a racist culture, those weapons are unevenly distributed.

UPDATE: Of course, there’s another theory (Bernard-Henry Levy partially made it in the Wall Street Journal, h/t Rusty Parts): Zidane was tired of being the hero, the great man carrying the weight of a world’s hopes, tired of always being elegant and beautiful.  His head-butt was a "I’m a man, just a man" moment — a refusal to play the role he had been assigned and a impassioned plea to be seen as a human being.  Levy writes:

Yes, a man, a true man, not one of these absurd monsters or synthetic stars who are made by the money of brand names in combination with the sighs of the globalized crowd. Achilles had his heel. Zidane will have had his—this magnificent and rebellious head that brought him, suddenly, back into the ranks of his human brothers.

That may not be far off, and it certainly arouses tremendous sympathy.

Male despair and mail-order brides

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 11, 2006
in Feminism, Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and Relationships
. 114 Comments

Catty sent me a link to this article that appeared in Harper’s last month, and that I understand has already been widely discussed on the ‘net: A Foreign Affair: On the Great Ukrainian Bride Hunt.  The author, Kristoffer Garin, spent a few weeks in the Ukraine with a number of American men eager to meet and marry the beautiful, traditional, submissive, much younger woman of their fantasies.

I’ve read this sort of piece before, and I’ve learned I have to be careful to watch my own emotional reaction.  Reading about the men (Garin is a compelling writer with a knack for succinct characterization), I oscillate between anger, contempt, and compassion.   I’ve thought hard about what it is that makes me so angry about these men in particular, and I’ve decided that it’s the colossal sense of entitlement.  Over and over again, the men Garin interviews claim that American women aren’t giving American men what is their birthright: submissive, pleasing, beautiful, infinitely understanding companionship.   In the Ukraine, a nation whose economy has forced countless young women into one form or another of prostitution, these men hope and expect to have the "natural order" of human relationships restored.  The Ukraine, in the fervid fantasies of the middle-aged and the socially inept, represents an idyllic pre-feminist culture where women "still know their place".  In a sense, traveling to Eastern Europe (or Southeast Asia, or South America, or wherever) is, in the hopes of these sad characters, an opportunity to live out their boyhood fantasies of time-travel.

My language is harsher than normal, because these men infuriate me.   For example, when Garin nearly blows his cover by questioning the men about their decisions, he gets this response:

“You’re bringing all your value premises and laying them over relationships,” the New Englander objected. “You’re thinking about how you view it as, not what she’s looking for.” He became angry. “Have you been married and divorced before?” he continued, apoplectic now, forcefully jabbing his finger in my direction to punctuate each thought. “No? So you know nothing."

Garin may not have been divorced, but I have.  Three times.   Three times I’ve started over, more or less from scratch.  Three times between 1992-2002 I found myself buying a basic set of pots and pans, a few pieces of furniture, a television.  Once, I calculated the total losses from my divorces (based on real estate prices and so-called "lost opportunity costs"); the sum comes to around half a million dollars.  No, I never had human children.  But in each of my three previous marriages, there were beloved dogs, and each time, my ex-wives kept them.  (There was never, ever, litigation — it just always seemed to make sense in the particular situations for these women to hold on to the pets.)  So, I’ve got at least some sense of what it is to go through a divorce.

In March 2005, I wrote about marriage, divorce, and taking responsibility.  I wrote then:

When faced with the end of a marriage, one has a choice.  One can get bogged down in blame and bitterness, or one can honestly face up to one’s own myriad mistakes and shortcomings.  One can point fingers, or one can take responsibility.  Too often, on the subject of women and divorce, I see the men’s rights advocates trapped in that blame and bitterness.  Too infrequently, I see self-criticism and a willingness to transform.  When I became convinced that it was I who was the architect of my own adversity, and not my wives, I took the first key step towards healing and growing up.

If that sounds condescending, I’m sorry.  But three divorces have earned me the right to speak on this subject.

And what makes me angry about the men visiting the Ukraine is that they are failing to do what I — and many other decent, thoughtful men I know — have done, and that is take their fair share of responsibility for their divorces.  That doesn’t mean denying that one’s ex-wives have a share of the blame as well; it does mean refusing to play the childish but seductive role of the misused and abused victim of an angry, selfish harridan. 

And yet, as exasperated as I get with the crude sense of entitlement I see in these men, as infuriated as I am by their misplaced rage at American women, as maddened as I am by their refusal to take responsibility for their past relationship failures and divorces, I also feel a genuine compassion for them as well.  Their loneliness is real and profound, and though they may not recognize that their wounds are largely self-inflicted, their pain is genuine and acute.  Garin describes the men following their first big "social" in the Ukraine:

By the time the social ended at 10:00 P.M., many of the men were positively radiant—the attention had transformed them, if only temporarily. The happy ones were positively brimming.

It’s odd — as I read those two sentences, I felt the pinpricks that signal the beginning of tears.  I’ve known what it’s like to feel inept, unwanted, and, as Morrissey sang in my youth, "sixteen, clumsy, and shy."  I’ve also known the euphoria that comes when suddenly, perhaps for the first time, someone to whom you are deeply attracted pays you real and sincere attention.  After years and years of secretly believing that you are undesirable and unloveable, to realize that you are wanted is intoxicating and transforming.   Just for a moment, reading the Harper’s piece, my heart ached for these sad and lonely men.  Beneath their misogyny, their rigid traditionalism, their anger, their misplaced sense of entitlement, beneath all of their crap lie  vulnerable and hurting hearts of boys who never got to feel like the handsome prince.  Without excusing their actions, I can genuinely empathize with that sadness, that woundedness, and that desperation.

Some thoughts on women’s ordination, liberal Episcopalians, and the growth of Pentecostalism: a reply to Charlotte Allen

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 10, 2006
in Christianity and Feminism
. 27 Comments

Welcome to the many readers visiting from Inside Higher Ed, which kindly linked to this post in defense of tenure.

I’m quoted briefly in an article in the Daily News on the World Cup; the reporter sat next to me at the big-screen party in the Egyptian Theater.  He was kind not to mention the expletives I shouted when it initially appeared the referee wasn’t going to red-card Zidane.

My student Mermade asks for my thoughts on this op-ed from yesterday’s LA Times:  Liberal Christianity is Paying for its Sins.  Written by Charlotte Allen, the Catholicism editor for Beliefnet, the article is a rather snarky condemnation of contemporary progressive movements in the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. This paragraph left me spluttering over my morning coffee:

It doesn’t help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents’ commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women’s ordination.

I understand that Allen is a Catholic, but the whopping ignorance of the last sentence cannot stand.  The two largest American Pentecostal denominations are the Assemblies of God and Foursquare.  Both are growing and vital, and both ordain women (Aimee Semple MacPherson founded the latter here in Los Angeles.)  Indeed, the Azusa Street Revival that led to the explosive emergence of modern Pentecostalism had heavy female leadership.   Allen makes a mistake I often see from my Catholic and conservative Reformed friends: she assumes that a willingness to ordain women is inextricably tied to theological liberalism.  She couldn’t be more wrong, and the experience of countless women leaders in Foursquare and good ol’ AG proves that a belief in the gifts of the Spirit, Scriptural inerrancy, cultural conservatism, and the ordination of women are entirely compatible.

Last time I checked, the women-ordaining Pentecostals were growing at a much faster rate in the Third World than the Roman Catholic Church. 

It’s also worth noting — something Allen either ignores or doesn’t know — that throughout the Christian world, women are more likely to attend church than men.  That has nothing to do with the particular theology of the church, but with a wide variety of other factors.  A great deal of research suggests that in the developing world, women are much more likely than men to be drawn to small, vibrant Pentecostal churches that offer a close, intense personal relationship with Christ.  (One analysis from a Catholic perspective is here, albeit in PDF file).  So while it may be true that men aren’t attending church as often as women, there is no evidence that this phenomenon is linked to progressive theology.  Allen makes a serious error in suggesting it does.

The other points in her op-ed are equally risible.  Is there bickering on the religious left?  You bet.  But to suggest, as she does, that "disarray and schism" are somehow now unique to Christian progressives is absurd.  If there’s a truth in Christian history, it’s this: "schism happens."  It happens to absolutely every church sooner or later, for any number of reasons.  There’s a reason anyone who knows anything about our faith and ecclesiology laughs at this joke.

I support the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions; neither position is, to my mind, fundamentally contradictory with Scripture.  As an evangelical, however, I am troubled by the weak Christology and the penchant for silly names for the Trinity that are in vogue among some of my more progressive friends.  But while Allen is surely correct that we in the progressive wing of the Episcopal Church have seen a decline in our numbers in recent decades, she ought also to note that over that same time period, her own Roman Catholic Church has lost millions of adherents in North and South America to small, growing, Pentecostal churches that generally do ordain women.   She sees the speck in the liberal eye very clearly, but Charlotte ignores the log in her own.

Some Sunday Soccer Thoughts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 9, 2006
in Aggression and violence and Sports
. 9 Comments

A rare Sunday post to report that my wife and I are utterly worn out after watching the World Cup final with 250 other folks at a public party at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.  We went with my wife’s best friend, who is entirely of Calabrian descent and a passionate Italy fan, and so we all rooted for the Azzurri. 

It was not a beautiful match, but a watchable one nonetheless.   Unlike many football fans, I’ve always accepted that penalty kicks are part and parcel of the game; perhaps it comes from my love of American football, where games are frequently settled by field goals.   On the whole, the better team won — France did not deserve to be awarded the penalty that they were given in the opening minutes, and Italy’s goal was a splendid and fair one.  The play of the entire Italian defense was sublime. On the other hand, Thierry Henry positively sparkled and the Italian offense disappeared in the last hour of the match. 

I will say that this was the first time since 1982 (when Germany beat France in the semis) that a World Cup penalty shootout has gone my way.   England’s exits via shootout in 1998 and 2006 were both heartbreaking, and I wept for Roberto Baggio when he famously missed his penalty here in Pasadena in the 1994 final.  Today it seems that the footie deities have issued divine compensation.  Early prediction: England beats Argentina on penalties in the 2010 WC final in South Africa.  One can hope.

I’ve been a sports fan since childhood, and in thirty years of watching every imaginable athletic activity (this was the seventh World Cup final I’ve seen on TV), I cannot think of any incident as shocking as Zinedine Zidane’s mindless, inexcusably violent head-butt in the latter stages of today’s match.  It’s as if in the midst of their last Super Bowl appearances, Joe Montana or John Elway were to have viciously kicked a poor defensive lineman in the groin.  I’ve never seen an athlete of such caliber completely lose his head in circumstances as vital and important as these.  It strikes me as one of the most self-destructive moments I’ve ever seen in sport.  No words — no matter how ugly or vicious — could have justified the violence and thoughtlessness of Zidane’s reaction.  I’m sad for how this will forever color his legacy.

Another thought: I think the USA ought to remind everyone that they were the only team in Germany 2006 not to lose to Italy.  I have no great love for American soccer, but in hindsight, the American heroics on June 17, where they drew the Italians despite being down to only nine players, were indeed impressive.

My heart is already turning towards another Premiership season (with my heart firmly at St James’ Park) and Euro 2008.  Here’s to Wales and Scotland both qualifying, and to England pulling out a famous victory.

It’s been a hell of a month.  When this World Cup began on June 9, my father and my Matilde were still alive; in the thirty days since this tournament began, I’ve lost them both.  I’ve watched a lot of soccer through my tears these past few weeks, and in years to come, thoughts of Germany 2006 will always be tinged with the memory of great loss.

Biology and bladders, excuses and explanations: why I’m tired of hearing about testosterone

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 7, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Modesty and Sexuality
. 191 Comments

It’s blazingly hot.  After several weeks of light exercise as I coped with grief over Matilde and my father, I’m easing back into regular working out.  I’ve boxed and Pilate-ed today, and am ready for a long, steamy run up some local mountain tomorrow morning.  And somehow, I need to work in time to watch tennis, cycling, and World Cup.  Viva Italia and all that.

The comments below Wednesday’s post on the "sausage casing girls" article are revisiting familiar territory: the interplay of women’s dress and men’s "hardwiring".   "Perplexed", for example, writing about men’s ability to control the urge to stare at women’s bodies, says

I think it’s more about a hardwired response in men - it’s an arresting sight - something men are compelled to view, often against their better judgement.

Just yesterday, I was talking to one of the guys I know well at my boxing gym.  He’s just about my age, and is very, uh, single.  He’s fond of rhapsodizing about the virtues of promiscuity, repeating over and over again that it’s "natural" for a man to want many partners and to become dissatisfied with monogamy.  My boxer friend, like Perplexed and countless other folks, insists that male sexual behavior is rooted less in culture and more in biology.  Rarely do any of these fellows have a sophisticated understanding of physiology, but they often will make noises about testosterone, the Y chromosome or some other aspect of our DNA.  Regardless of the biological details they reference, the point is always the same: men are "hardwired" to stare, ogle, lust uncontrollably, cheat, what-have-you.  Call it the "all men are dogs" or the "I can’t help it, it’s my nature" excuse. 

I’m not a scientist.  I have only a college-educated layperson’s understanding of hormones and genetics.  But I have no intention in debating science with those whose understanding of the field is more sophisticated than my own.  I may have a hubristic streak, but I know my limits!  For the sake of discussion, I’ll concede that testosterone and the Y chromosome have a real impact on male sexual desire.  I won’t question the hard-wiring.

What I do question as a pro-feminist man is whether our "nature" is ever an excuse for poor behavior. It’s one thing to acknowledge the very real presence of physiological factors that influence our wants; another thing altogether to suggest that men have little or no control over how they respond to those influences!   What I find so exasperating is that so many men confuse an explanation for an excuse, denying their own ability (or that of the "average man") to resist and control those impulses.

I wasn’t born knowing how to control my bladder.  It’s natural for me to pee on myself whenever the need occurs; it’s what I did for the first two years of my life (and, intermittently, a bit beyond, but that’s another story!)  I drink lots and lots of caffeine these days; my bladder gets full quite often.  The urge to pee isn’t in my imagination — it’s a biological reality!  But from an early age, I was taught that there was an appropriate time, place, and manner for relieving myself.  As a child, I was taught that I could master the very real, very powerful, demands of my body.  I often go out to coffee with friends and colleagues, and sometimes they buy me very big ("Venti") drinks.  It is natural that within under an hour after consuming all that liquid, I need to pee very badly.  But it would be absurd if I blamed my friends, or Starbucks, for "making me need to pee";  I’d be laughed at if I wet myself and then claimed I had no control over my bladder.  I am convinced that when my commenters suggest that men "can’t help but stare" at a woman’s exposed breasts or legs or bottom, they’re making just as indefensible an argument.

In my avocational work with teen girls and boys in youth groups, I never, ever try and talk them out of the reality of sexual desire.  (Indeed, one important task of progressive youth work is acknowledging the biological reality of female lust, a subject that tends to unnerve a surprising number of young and not-so-young folks.)  I’m happy to have "my kids" share what they’ve learned in science classes about hormones and chromosomes and their influence in our lives.  Hear me on this, readers: a feminist theory of male accountability and an honest understanding of biology are not incompatible!  But once we affirm the very real power of human desire, we work to refute the myth that desire alone justifies action.  Even at sixteen, in the midst of the tempest of puberty, sexual self-control is as real a possibility for young men and women as control over urination.  The difference is that they’ve been taught from near-infancy that the latter is a biological impulse they can master, while far too many young boys are taught that it is women who are responsible for managing male desire.

It would be absurd to deny that many young men are aroused by the sight of an attractive woman wearing revealing clothing.  What pro-feminists deny is that women are somehow responsible for male arousal.  A girl in a mini-skirt is no more responsible for her classmate’s lust than the barista at Starbucks is for my full bladder!  I have as much control over where my eyes linger as I do over what I choose to drink; whatever physiological reactions I experience as the result of either activity (drinking coffee, ogling) are my responsibility and mine alone. While in other fora we can have long and interesting discussions about dress codes and "appropriateness", pro-feminist men ought to be adamant that whatever the imperious demands of our flesh, the human will is stronger still.

Friday Random Ten: You didn’t really miss it edition

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 7, 2006
in Friday Random Ten
. 1 Comment

For the first time in weeks, an FRT.  Though my wife and I share an Itunes account, I download much more than she does; every one of these is mine.  This may be my favorite mix I’ve ever had come up, as I love every one of these songs.  (Well, #4 just reminds me of the summer of 1999 when I was in the best shape of my life, and otherwise is not a gem in my collection — but the other nine make me very happy indeed.)

1.  "A Change is Gonna Come", Sam Cooke
2.  "Gaudeamus Igitur", Mario Lanza (from "The Student Prince", one of my favorite musicals ever)
3.  "Alone and Forsaken", Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler
4.  "Steal my Sunshine", Len
5.  "Driftwood", Travis
6.  "New York, New York", Ryan Adams
7.  "Sexuality", Billy Bragg
8.  "Thief", Third Day
9.  "Sloop John B", Beach Boys
10. "Tuesday’s Gone", Lynyrd Skynyrd

I’ve heard that FRTs are going out of fashion.  But it’s the only blogging meme I regularly indulge in, and I’m going to stick with it.

It could almost be true…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 6, 2006
in Sexuality and Teaching
. 1 Comment

And one more for the day, this one courtesy of Cliopatria and the sublime Margaret Soltan:

Professor Coerced to Sleep with Student for Good Course Evaluation

FAYETTEVILLE, AR—Alan Gilchrist, an associate professor of English literature at the University of Arkansas infamous for his tough grading standards and dry lecturing style, was coerced into sleeping with an undergraduate on Monday in order to earn a good course evaluation. "My tenure’s on the line here, so I allowed a student to take advantage of me," said an emotional Gilchrist of the experience, which he hopes will earn him at least six "very much enjoyed" responses on the eight-item evaluation form. "I told myself it would be just this once, and that it would be over soon, and that it wouldn’t be that bad, but I was used. And I can’t stop showering." Sources said that the unidentified student is one of the most popular and charismatic on campus, raising questions about possible abuse of power.’

It’s a very good joke, and nicely spoofs two things at once: our contemporary culture of anxiety about student-teacher relationships and the near-hysteria over teaching evaluations.  I’ve reflected a lot about both, and it’s nice to be able to laugh.

Justice! Good news about Yves Magloe!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 6, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Pasadena City College, People and Teaching
. 2 Comments

Though the details are still sketchy, I am told by reliable sources this morning that Pasadena City College has agreed to reinstate Yves Magloe, my colleague who was fired last year after a mental breakdown.   My understanding is that he will receive back pay as well.  Apparently, when confronted with the likelihood of losing in court — and losing badly — the administration came to its senses and reinstated Yves.

Background here and here.

More news soon.

Standing on the island of tenure: a response to Stephen Balch

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 6, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 13 Comments

It’s taken me a long time to get around to it, but I do want to respond to this Stephen Balch piece that appeared at the National Review more than three weeks ago:

The otherwise poignant Inside Higher Education story about Professor Yves Magloe, dismissed from Pasadena City College as a result of misunderstandings arising from his bipolar condition, contains a tangential but revealing comment. Another Pasadena faculty member, Hugo Schwyzer, reflecting on his role as one of Magloe’s defenders, notes apropos tenure, that it allowed him "to be an advocate without risk."

Most academics and observers of academe view tenure in its putative role of allowing professors to speak freely about issues of general controversy. Tenure does, of course, sometimes facilitate such freedom. But as a device promoting wide-ranging intellectual discourse it has clearly been a failure. Debate in almost every other intellectual marketplace—including the mass media for all its tilt and spin—is far more open and diverse despite tenure’s absence. Either the protections of tenure are overwhelmed by other stultifying factors, or it actually promotes stasis, conformity, and group-think.

Well, I suppose I’m pleased that Balch can find poignancy in the Magloe case (which, by the way, has gone to litigation.  The original story is here).

I’m mystified, but not surprised, by Balch’s assertion that as a device promoting wide-ranging intellectual discourse it (tenure) has clearly been a failure.   In the case at hand, I talked about the protections of tenure that allowed me to reveal my own struggles with mental illness in my early years as a professor, and to make the point — loudly — that organic mental illness and excellent, responsible teaching were not mutually exclusive.   Balch seems to think this is somehow evidence of tenure’s failure rather than its success.

In my professional life, I see the tremendous value of tenure.  Were it not for the protections of tenure, would I have dared develop and offer a highly successful course on Lesbian and Gay American History?   I’m sure it does me no credit to say that I wouldn’t, and my readers can feel free to call me a coward (y’all have called me worse).  But with a spouse and a mortgage and all of the other middle-class encumbrances, I’m keenly aware of my responsibilities to provide for my family. I also remember that my initial decision to teach the course (back in 2001) was unpopular with a number of my colleagues and at least two of the trustees who oversee the college; if I hadn’t had the protection of tenure but instead had been working on some sort of rolling contract, it’s not a stretch to suggest that in the aftermath of offering the course, that contract might not have been renewed.

The best image I have for tenure is that of an island on which to stand.  Tenure gives me the firm ground beneath my feet that enables me to take genuine scholarly and pedagogical risks. I can innovate in the classroom, offer new courses in gender studies — and, obviously, I can blog under my own name.  The academic blogosphere is filled with grad students and the untenured who, wisely, choose to blog using clever pseudonyms.  This blog is called "Hugo Schwyzer" both because I’m not smart enough to come up with a better title, and because I can be public about my identity without risk of repercussion within the academic community in which I work.

In the case of Yves Magloe, a colleague who was unjustly fired for his struggles with bipolar disorder, tenure did indeed allow me to be, as I said in the article Balch quotes, "an advocate without risk."  If I hadn’t had tenure, I might have quietly seethed at the injustice of terminating a man in the midst of a serious manic episode.  I might even have signed a petition protesting the college’s action.  But I would I have come forward, as others have now done, and "outed" myself as a professor who also has struggled with mental illness?  No, I wouldn’t have.  If I were a better and braver person with fewer obligations and responsibilities, perhaps I might have done so.  But in an uncertain academic job market, in a world where prejudice against folks with backgrounds of mental illness is still pervasive, to let my colleagues, the administration, the trustees, my students, and the blogosphere all know that I have been hospitalized half a dozen times following breakdowns would be a genuinely self-destructive and foolish act.  To share the same information — and the same promise of the possibility of full recovery and symptom management — with tenure was infinitely easier.  It was less brave, of course.  I plead guilty to a distinct lack of heroism!

Does tenure protect some "dead wood" here at Pasadena City College?   Sure.  I can think of a few, a very few, of my colleagues who are clearly passing the time until they are eligible for a nice pension.  Their efforts are, to put it mildly, disappointing.  But for every professor who sees tenure as some sort of comfortable hammock in which to relax and avoid serious research or impassioned teaching, I can think of three who stand on tenure as on an island, using its firm support as a platform to teach prophetically.  Tenure affords us the chance to be even more zealous in our commitment to our students and their learning.  In my case, I’m a far better professor since I got tenured compared to the young, green, and decidedly irresponsible fellow I was a decade or so ago.

I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t adjuncts and tenure-track profs across this country who are doing great things.  It’s clear that for a few, the absence of professional security does not hamper either their research or their teaching.  Tenure is not the sine qua non of academic excellence.  But tenure is not without merit, either.  The firm island it provides enables those of us who are perhaps not naturally bold to create, innovate, push to the margins.  It enables us to speak truth to power, and to intervene in gross injustices (like the Yves Magloe firing) without fear that we may be next. 

In the final analysis, my faith in God and His love for me is my surest protection.  But in my day-to-day life as a teacher and a colleague, the safety of tenure is a key component in helping me become the best faculty member and mentor I can possibly be.

Thursday Short Poem: Gluck’s “Celestial Music”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 6, 2006
in Poetry
. 2 Comments

I often find Louise Gluck to be challenging, and this week’s choice for the Thursday Short Poem is no exception.  Death is a common theme of hers, whether she deals with it overtly or obliquely; death and nature and God have been much on my mind lately.  This is one of those "must read aloud to understand" poems — and trust me, it works.

Celestial Music

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she’s unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I’m always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I’m like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We’re walking
On the same road, except it’s winter now;
She’s telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I’m afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It’s this moment we’re trying to explain, the fact
That we’re at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move.
She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It’s this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

“What was she thinking?” A long post on feminism and the “sausage-casing girls”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 5, 2006
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Modesty, Sexuality and Vanity
. 40 Comments

Robin Abcarian had a rather snarky piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times about what she calls the "Sausage Casing Girls", those young women who dress in styles entirely too small and tight to fit their bodies: Letting It All Hang Out.  It begins:

THE Sausage Casing Girls are everywhere this summer, their muffin tops hanging over their hip-skimming jeans, clothes shrink-wrapped around fleshy bodies that look as if they’ve been stuffed — like forcemeat — into teensy tops and skintight pants.

I don’t know about you, but I became instantly defensive and wary after that sentence.

Still, Abcarian does touch on something important:

One is tempted to applaud the Sausage Casing Girls; after all, Southern California is an epicenter of body consciousness, and here they are thumbing their noses at the idea that they must be whippets or Lindsay Lohans to wear the current styles, which for the last several seasons have been exaggeratedly body-hugging and skin-revealing. Perhaps all that self-esteem building has finally paid off.

But this phenomenon does not appear entirely to be about self-acceptance and the conscious abandonment of repressive physical ideals. It is far more complicated than that. Yes, there are plenty of young women who can confidently say that they are happy with their less-than-svelte shapes — and that is to be applauded. But there are many others who in the rush to be fashionable are unable to admit that they are larger than they wish to be, or that their bodies just don’t look good in the clothes they are choosing. Instead of reveling in their big, beautiful bodies, many girls instead are deep in denial, pouring themselves into clothes that are putting them in a python squeeze.

I hear this sort of discussion all the time from my students and my youth group teens.  Call it the "What was she thinking?" phenomenon, after the question that so many young women pose when they see a peer wearing clothes that, to their mind, are much too small for her body.   On this blog, I’ve regularly made the case that "Sisterhood is easier in winter", and yesterday’s Abcarian article is a fine case study of that unfortunate truism.  When the weather turns warmer and clothing styles become more revealing, many women do become more energetic in the "verbal policing" of the clothing choices of their peers!

Whether she’s aware of it or not, Abcarian is engaged in a classic behavior: substituting supposedly objective judgment about aesthetics for the less socially acceptable (but still ubiquitous) condemnation of fat and revealing clothing.  In other words, the progressive Los Angeles Times wouldn’t print a similarly long article in which the author decried miniskirts and tube tops as fashion choices for adolescents; that sort of op-ed might only be found in a conservative magazine.  But the Times is perfectly happy to run a long piece which, in only somewhat sympathetic language, asks again that nasty sotto-voce question: "who does she think she is to think she can get away with that?"  For Abcarian, aesthetic ridicule ("muffin tops?") is an acceptable form of criticism because it’s rooted in supposedly value-neutral fashion sensibilities in a way that moral criticism is not.

Abcarian is right, however, about the dearth of choices that so many young women have for summer fashions.  Tight and revealing clothing, modeled by the likes of Paris Hilton, is easily found in malls and stores from Nordstrom to Wal-Mart.  And it’s certainly true that the social pressure to dress according to these fashions — combined with the sheer unavailability of other choices — means that a great many girls and young women will find themselves squirming and pulling and tugging to get their bodies into clothes that seem, objectively, to be too danged small.

Abcarian is also right about the huge psychological impact that sizes have on self-esteem, even when virtually everyone recognizes that the numbers used in women’s clothing are arbitrary and unreliable:

"Everyone wants to buy a small size, even if it looks terrible," said psychologist Nancy Etcoff, who directs the Program in Aesthetics and Well Being in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. "There is shame in buying sizes that are above 8, which some think is already a big size."

Etcoff said that one of her patients, a 16-year-old girl, was traumatized in front of friends when one held up a pair of her size 7/8 jeans and said, "You wear these? I could get two of me in here."

Both Abcarian and Etcoff suggest that young women’s attachment to numerical sizes is so strong that they will "deny reality" in order to fit into the size they think they ought to be.   After all, though the article doesn’t point this out, young women tend to self-describe using sizes: "I’m a 2" or "I’m an 8". You don’t hear those gals saying, "I generally wear a 6"; instead they frequently say "I am a 6."  The size becomes more than a measure of hips, waist, and inseam; it becomes a key component of identity itself. If a young woman wants to think of herself as a "4", for example, then, as Abcarian and those she interviews suggest, she may do everything in her power to squeeze into a "4" rather than wear a larger size.  The psychological cost of admitting that the smaller size doesn’t fit is simply, apparently, too high to pay.  Physical discomfort and the risk of public ridicule are thus less important than maintaining one’s self-concept as a 2,4,6,14, what-have-you.

So what’s the feminist answer to this problem?  Is it a problem at all? 

As a pro-feminist, I’m aware of the uneasy relationship between feminism and fashion.  There’s a tendency within the loosely organized feminist community to never criticize a woman’s clothing decisions.   The very notion that there might be an objective standard of beauty is one of which feminism is traditionally very critical; we who work in this field are understandably reluctant to judge women’s personal fashion choices.  We tend to save our criticism for the fashion industry and the media, while remaining deeply respectful of the personal sartorial decisions of women.  Hence my anger at the rather nasty (to my mind) way that Abcarian’s article begins.

But feminism does care about women’s physical and psychic comfort.    While we might dispute whether or not certain jeans styles are more appealing than others, we can easily agree that physical comfort for women is a fundamental feminist good.  We ought also to agree that body acceptance and good self-image are also laudable and important goals.  There isn’t a quick-fix solution that can provide young women with these comforts.  Simply encouraging young women to "cover up" and resist the imperatives of Teen Vogue doesn’t get very far.   It’s one thing to ask a thirty year-old woman to opt out of the "beauty myth"; another thing altogether for older folks to ask sixteen year-olds desperate for attention to also opt out and refuse to "play the game."  When we do that, we tend to come across as patronizing old people who "just don’t get" how intense the pressure to be fashionable and desirable truly is.

The first phase of the solution is clear: non-judgmental conversation.  Young women, perhaps particularly the so-called "sausage-casing girls", are not nearly as in the dark about what they look like as Abcarian imagines.  A few may be brimming with genuine self-confidence, but others are anxious and defensive and wary of condemnation, or worse, ridicule.  No matter how well-meaning older folks might be, saying "Honey, that just doesn’t look good on you" is only likely to reinforce that anxiety and defensiveness.  Giving young women an opportunity to open up, safely and without risk of judgment, is key.  Let them begin, as they surely will, by talking about "other girls" and their fashion decisions.  If the environment is safe enough, the conversation can gently turn to a young woman’s own self-image.

There’s a lot in the Abcarian article to discuss and unpack. As feminists, we must be careful to direct the brunt of our criticism not at young women but at the cultural and economic institutions that form and shape their ideals and their self-image.  At the same time, we must work with these young women to help them resist and respond to deeply unhealthy messages about their bodies. And we’ve got to find a way of doing that that will be heard and received.  That will mean doing what Abcarian could not do: suspending our own culturally-shaped aesthetic sensibilities, biting back our own well-meaning criticism, and actively listening to the concerns, desires, and fears of the young women with whose bodies we are apparently all so concerned.

I’m back

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 5, 2006
in Father
. 3 Comments

My father’s service on Sunday afternoon was a very moving and, if this is the right word, satisfying occasion.  Judging from the guest books and the seating capacity at the Santa Barbara Unitarian Society, we had 350 people in attendance.  My father would have been amazed and pleased. 

True to my father’s wishes, the service was filled with music — the ceremony finished with the nearly fifteen-minute long slow movement from Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, one of my father’s favorite pieces.  Three of his dear friends played it, and moved those who were not already weeping to entirely appropriate tears. 

I’m still behind on many things — I have thank-you notes for flowers and food to write, for example, and student papers from last semester to send off — and that will all happen soon.  As it is, I’m easing back into things and feeling pretty good this Wednesday morning.