Archive for August, 2006

Tuesday odds and ends and links

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 22, 2006
in Links
. 8 Comments

It’s my last week of summer vacation, and I’ve set aside a bit of time to get some serious writing done today.  In keeping with my over-caffeinated, short attention-span, ENFP, Gemini personality, I tend to write in frantic thirty-minute bursts. I then leap up from my chair and pace around, frequently talking to my pencil, before sitting down at the keyboard again.

I’ll be back to regular blogging (and Thursday Poems, Friday Random Tens, and the rest of it) starting next week. Until then, I’ve got a few more "reprints" scheduled.  I note that my readership has dropped by half since I went on hiatus; a few hundred of you are still coming by, however, for which I am grateful.  Some of you aren’t even related to me.

Some links to those who are not on hiatus:

1.  My friend and former student, Kristie Vosper, has a blog. She’s also in ministry, and preached a sermon at First Pres Newhall on "Martha" this past Sunday.  You can listen to the sermon here — it’s good stuff, and I have it on right now.  I’ve always felt for Martha, irked at her sister’s counter-cultural (and feminist) refusal to work alongside her.

2.  The inimitable Jenell Paris has some excellent advice.  She’s right in wanting to ban one of the most offensive phrases in the scholarly vocabulary.

3.  Jill met Ramesh Ponnoru.

4.  A good long post on race, culture, and the children of interracial marriages by Rachel at Alas, A Blog.  Someone recently asked me what my wife and I would tell our children (when, deo volente, we have ‘em) about their ethnic heritage.  The long answer: Indigenous Colombian/Jewish/Nigerian/English/Croatian/German/Austrian/Scotch-Irish/Czech/Welsh/Spanish. Short answer: a beloved child of God and two adoring parents. 

It’s funny: my wife is only one-quarter African (what would, in a racist era, have been called a "quadroon"), but that’s the one-quarter that seems most fascinating to most folks.

5.  Via Feministing, the truly depressing story of Sarah, a twenty-nine year-old virgin who wants Jane Magazine to help her find the right man to sleep with for the first time.

6.   I am pleased that the legislature and the governor have agreed to raise the California minimum wage to $8.00.

7.  David at Sed Contra has a great post on breaking free of magazine subscription addiction.  He put up his list of what he and his partner subscribe to.  Here’s what comes to the Schwyzer household:

The Nation
The Economist
Newsweek
First Things
New York Review of Books
Vogue
The Week
Christianity Today
The Mennonite
Women’s Review of Books
Running Times
Marathon and Beyond
Yoga Journal
Sierra
California Educator (the union sends it to me, against my will)

Yes, many a copy goes into the bin unread.  I am not doing my part to reduce the amount of paper wasted in the world.

Oh, and my wife have fallen in love with a local artist: John August Swanson.  We’ve got some of his stuff on our walls now, and plan on getting more.

Reprint: Letters of rec and the “Lake Wobegon” effect

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 22, 2006
in Teaching
. 13 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I write perhaps thirty to fifty letters of recommendation a year.  I get more requests than that, mind you.  About a third of the folks I get requests from are students who have earned Bs or Cs in my classes, who have never come to see me in office hours, and about whom I know absolutely nothing other than that their work is competent.  I always tell these students — gently — that I don’t inflate their capabilities for the purpose of a letter, and thus will only be able to state some basic facts.  Indeed, I’ve been forced to write the following:

Mary McGillicuddy took my History X class in the fall of 2002.  She received a grade of C on her midterm, her term paper, and her final.  My records indicate that her attendance was regular. If you have any questions in regards to Ms. McGillicuddy, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I honestly am left without anything else to say!  I teach seven classes a semester (not counting intersessions); I have over 750 students a year.  Of those, only a small number will make the effort to have contact with me.  Relatively few will come in and talk about their ambitions, their goals, their ideas, their doubts, and so forth.

It’s immensely tempting to "inflate" letters of rec, just as it is tempting to "inflate" grades.  I have a colleague who has a template for letters of rec saved on his computer; he simply punches in the name of whichever student requests a letter, and a near-identical form is spit out.  (He has one for his "A" students; one for his "B" students — and he won’t write them for students who get grades below that.)  I’ve seen his "A" letter.  His template announces that every student is "unique", "remarkable", and (I love this), "well-positioned to become an exceptional scholar at X college."  I haven’t stooped that low yet, but with the demand being what it is, it sure is tempting.

I’ve heard this tendency to inflate called the "Lake Wobegon" effect, after Garrison Keillor’s famous fictional Wisconsin town where "all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average."

For my "A" students, I try and craft the letters in such a way so that the reader will see clearly that I am NOT using a template.  I also know that if I consistently inflate my comments (by making every student "outstanding", "remarkable", and "unusually promising"), the value of my recommendations will decline considerably.   For example, as much as it hurts my heart to do so, I write 10-15 letters to USC alone every year.  Over the course of my career, if I continually over-estimate my students’ abilities, the folks at ‘SC aren’t going to give me much credence when I do write about a genuinely terrific candidate for admission.

For that reason, I always try and rank my students in my letters.  On those rare occasions when I am able to say that "Joanie Jetson ranked among the best students in the class", I’ve said something that I think is more meaningful.  To be "excellent" and "outstanding" means, of course, to "excell" compared to others and to "stand out" from one’s competition.  Thus I always think it helpful to make at least some remark as to where my student ranks.  If a C student still wants a letter from me, I comply with something along the following lines:

Ms. Jetson showed no less ability than the majority of her classmates.

Yup, I actually said exactly that recently.

To my current and former students who read this blog, take comfort in the fact that my praise is genuine.

Originally posted November 15, 2004

Reprint: Male privilege, rumors, harassment, and grad school

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 21, 2006
in Feminism
. 6 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

Ralph Luker at Cliopatria linked to this post from Crazy Ph.D: Sex, Collegiality, and the Academic Conference.  Reading it brought back memories of just how powerful my male privilege was in grad school.  Dr. Crazy writes about many things in her post, but especially about the complex and dangerous interplay between sexuality and power when one is a young, female graduate student.  She relates some real incidents from her past (in safe, oblique terms), and then muses:

The point here, though, is that I think as a woman and a feminist and an academic it’s difficult to know what to do. Because the likelihood is that at some point or another one will be propositioned, or at the very least pursued in a way that is not professional. And any response can have potentially negative consequences, not only in relation to the person who propositions one but in relation to the ways that other people react. For example, I TA’d for a professor who is married to Famous Important Scholar in my field. She got her job at the university where I did my Ph.D. in no small part due to the fact that she is married to FIS. And, to top this off, she had been FIS’s graduate student. Do you know how much I respect her - even though she has a great book and is not an idiot? NOT AT ALL. I feel like she is where she is because of who she’s f*cking. And to me, that’s not playing by the rules. I don’t think she deserves the job she’s got, and I think it’s bullsh*t in this job market that somebody would get a job in that fashion.

And then:

…I fear that if I introduce myself to an Important Man that somehow I’m going to be read as trying to use the fact that I’m young, attractive, whatever to trick him into some sort of professional assistance. Or maybe I’m afraid that I do use my appearance/age in that way, and I think it’s wrong?

Good questions.

UCLA has one of the largest — if not the largest — history graduate programs in the country.  My first year of grad school (1989), I was one of fifteen medievalists chasing the Ph.D.  We were almost all white, but evenly divided between men and women.  Since I also did a field in early modern Europe, I spent lots of time hanging out with "early modernists", who were disproportionately female.  Over the years, as we sat in seminars together and studied medieval paleography together and TA’d together, we became a fairly tight-knit bunch.  And I saw first-hand how many of my female colleagues in grad school struggled with the issues that Dr. Crazy outlined.

Like most grad students, I hero-worshipped the Famous Important Scholars in my field.  (I wrote about that here.)  Until I opted at the last minute to do a field in medieval philosophy with Marilyn Adams, all of my mentors were men.  It goes without saying that there was never any sexual tension with any of these FiSs!   These men often met privately with me — with their office doors closed.  I was glad the doors were closed, as I did not want my fellow grad students hearing me confess my own fears and doubts about my intellectual abilities (something I shared with alarming regularity).  I also didn’t want anyone to hear a certain (now retired) paleographer lament my ignorance of early monastic manuscript hand. 

But I never, ever, worried that I would be "hit on" by any of these men.  I worshipped them.  I followed them around.  I hung on their every word.  I read their books and articles assiduously.  And I knew that when they looked at me, they were looking at Hugo — not at my breasts or my legs.  I was relieved when they shut the office door,  because that meant that I could have some one-on-one time with these men whom I so admired and for whose praise I was so hungry.

Would that my female colleagues had all had the same experience!   One young woman in my same year (I’ll call her Stacy) formed a close relationship with a much older professor of mine (long since retired, I’ll call him Professor Y.)   In the early 1990s, Stacy and I both served as his research assistants.  (He had lots of grant money, happily enough).   Professor Y was divorced.  Stacy did not have a boyfriend.  Stacy and I both worked closely with Professor Y.  As often happens, we didn’t just do research with him.  We went to lunch with him.  We went to the car wash with him (heck, I TOOK his car to the car wash twice.)  And because we were working on different projects for Professor Y, Stacy and I rarely met with him simultaneously.

No one ever suggested that Professor Y and I were having an affair.  When other students saw Professor Y and me having coffee and a danish together on campus, no one — to my knowledge — questioned why he and I were spending time alone together.  The same was not true for Stacy.  The rumors started early, and were vicious.  Someone reported seeing them leave campus together in his car.  Others said they saw them walking together, leaning against each other, in the sculpture garden.   What I could do safely with Professor Y, Stacy couldn’t — not without becoming the subject of nasty innuendo.  When Stacy was given a coveted TAship the following year (so was I, for the record), many folks questioned whether she had legitimately earned it.  Stacy heard these rumors, and was hurt by them.  Personally, I think she had a huge intellectual crush on Y.  Then again, I suppose I did too.  I don’t think they were sleeping together, but I suppose I’ll never know.  What I do know is that the rumors were part of what contributed to Stacy dropping out of grad school after receiving her master’s degree. 

In the early modern field, there was a very famous specialist in Italian renaissance history.  He had quite a reputation as a lecher.  At one time, one of our graduate advisers regularly warned incoming female early modernists against working with him, despite his stellar publishing record.  I spent a quarter as his research assistant, and found him an unpleasant, exasperatingly unclear taskmaster.  Any thoughts I had of doing a minor field in Renaissance history vanished after 10 weeks working for him.  But the worst I had to endure was his perpetual tardiness and his abrupt personality.   I knew two women in the early modern program who claimed that he had propositioned them.  There were rumors that other women had had affairs with him.  No one formally complained, even though by the early 1990s, everyone knew about sexual harassment procedures.

I talked to one of the women who had been propositioned by this Renaissance man.  She told me that she was afraid that if she filed a sexual harassment complaint, all of her other male professors would shun her.  "They’ll be so afraid I’ll charge them, they won’t work with me", she said.   In the intimate world of grad student-professor relationships, a reputation as someone who files charges would be the kiss of death for her career.  I wish I could I have assured her that things would be otherwise, but I suspect she was right.

There’s no question that my maleness smoothed my graduate school career.  My male mentors would have had little trouble seeing me as younger (perhaps slightly more neurotic) versions of themselves.   I could go out to lunch with them and meet behind closed doors with them, safe in the knowledge that the attention I would receive was purely intellectual and professional in nature.  I was free not only from unwanted sexualization, I was free from the gossip of my colleagues.   That kind of freedom gave me a confidence that carried me through the long years of grad school all the way up to completing my Ph.D. 

Originally published April 20, 2005.

Home, and some pictures.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 19, 2006
in Traveling
. 3 Comments

Though the blogging hiatus will continue another nine days, a quick note to say that my beloved and I are home from a brief and happy vacation with family in Northern and Central California.  After bonding with many relatives and old friends, we wisely grabbed a romantic day and night just for ourselves in Big Sur.  I’ve got about 19 new pictures up in this album.  Among other things, I display my pool football skills, lamentable as they are, as well as my peculiar fashion sense.

Reprint: Filters, and sorting through the “triangle of desires”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 19, 2006
in Sexuality
. 4 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

We had a good discussion this morning in women’s history about something that for years I’ve been calling the "triangle of desires."  We’ve been talking about changing sexual behavior in the 1920s and 30s as a result of cultural and technological innovations like the automobile, the movies, and the greater availability of contraception.  Using my favorite text, Joan Brumberg’s The Body Project, we’ve been talking about the ways in which young women in the 1920s — and today — struggle with conflicting and contradictory messages about their sexuality.  Brumberg uses the diary of a woman she calls "Yvonne Blue"; Yvonne wrote at length about her adolescent sexual experiences in the late 20s and early 30s:

Despite her honesty with herself about the pleasures of petting, Yvonne was not totally at ease with her emerging sexuality.  Although petting was commonplace among adolescents of her age and class, she still worried about her reputation, because she knew that she had a lower opinion of other girls whenever she found out about their sexual exploits…  Because Victorian notions of propriety still had some resonance for her, Yvonne felt the need to clarify in her diary just how far she had gone.  "I’m still technically a ‘nice girl’", she wrote, but she vacillated between feeling guilty and happy about the experiences she had.  "Once in awhile I feel slightly ashamed of myself for indulging in the greatest American sport but something must be the matter with me because while I think it’s wrong I really, really can’t feel that it is". (Emphasis in original).

Yvonne wrote that in 1930.  Three quarters of a century later, I saw more than a few young women nodding their heads in vigorous agreement when I asked whether Yvonne’s words could have been written by young women today.  Several of them admitted that like Yvonne, they too had a "lower opinion of other girls" who had "gone too far".   Others admitted that like Yvonne, they felt both shame and pleasure together, and often had difficulty reconciling the two.

The phrase "triangle of desires" describes, I think, the experience of many young people, especially women, when it comes to sexual decision-making.  Triangles have three points.  Young women, in Yvonne’s era and now, may often struggle with three different sets of desires making different demands upon them. For one, they’ve got the desires of their male partner (presuming heterosexuality) with which to contend.  In a culture where we expect young women to set the limits of sexual activity, many girls are trying very hard to manage and control the desires of their boyfriends.  At the same time, these young women have their own very real desires, both sexual and emotional.  Those wants and needs may, or may not, be in synch with the fellows with whom they are sharing a bed — or a back seat. And of course she’s also internalized the third point on the triangle, the desires of what I call "the them": her parents, her church, her peers and so forth.   Trying to enjoy oneself when one has all of these conflicting messages racing through one’s head can be, I suggest, immensely difficult!

I am not saying that all young women experience this "triangulation of desires."  I’m also not suggesting that young men don’t experience something at least somewhat similar.  But I do think that in a culture that, since the 1920s at least, has suggested that the ideal women is both "sexy" and "virginal", both a "nice girl" and "exciting", a cruel double bind has left countless young women struggling with feeling overwhelmed and ashamed.   Is it any wonder that a great many young women, both in the 1920s and now, report that alcohol plays a vital role in sexual decision making?  When the backseat (or the bedroom) is crowded with so many different and competing voices, all making impossible and contradictory demands, a certain level of intoxication can provide a welcome and blessed — if only temporary — relief.

Though I talked about this with my students today in terms of the shifting moral landscape of the 1920s, I’m going to work this in to some future discussions with my kids at youth group.  I want them to acknowledge that an ethic that simply emphasizes "doing what you want" isn’t very helpful when so many of us carry within us these competing and conflicting longings.  I realize that though I am not prepared to argue for abstinence (yet), I’m prepared to say that my kids, both boys and girls, deserve to experience sex without being overwhelmed by various and contradictory voices vying for their attention.  They deserve to have sexual experiences where both parties are fully present (meaning not intoxicated) and where they aren’t haunted by the spectres of disapproving grandmothers or pastors or classmates. 

One of my married students pointed out today that even as a married woman having married sex, she still sometimes felt guilty, still wondering what her grandmother would think!   The stories I’ve heard over the years suggest that her experience is very, very common.  (Gosh, the expression on the faces of some of the girls whom I know to be advocating abstinence when they heard her share that — priceless!)  It’s important to remember that waiting till marriage is not a magic bullet that destroys sexual guilt and shame and self-doubt; our psyches don’t recover easily from the traditional message of "sex is dirty, save it for someone you love"!"  The abstinence-only crowd doesn’t explain that postponing sex in many cases simply postpones (rather than eradicates) these feelings of shame and inadequacy.

That’s not a defense of promiscuity, either.  What we continue to need is more dialogue, among women, among men, and between the sexes, about issues of desire and responsibility.  We need to do a better job of making young men stewards of their own sexuality, just as we need to do a better job of allowing young women to experience their sexuality without shame.

Is this what I’m supposed to be doing in a college classroom?  In a youth group?  Judging by the responses I get, and the interest it generates, I suspect it is.  I surely hope so.  But Christ almighty, sometimes it feels like a hell of a lot of responsibility.  Then again, I volunteered with enthusiasm.

I’ve rambled enough.  I’m off.

Originally posted May 10, 2005

Reprint: Boys, Girls, Hugs

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 18, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Men and Masculinity, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 4 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I consider myself blessed to have grown up in a physically affectionate family. Not only was I regularly hugged and kissed by my mother, but I still hug and kiss my father whenever I see him. (I am grateful that my father, born in Austria, grew up in a relatively demonstrative culture.) As a schoolboy, however, I learned quickly that any sign of physical affection between men (other than during a sporting event, and even then, of a very limited and specific nature) was associated with homosexuality and effeminacy. I didn’t hug a man to whom I wasn’t related until I went to college.

Now, of course, I work as a volunteer youth minister at the local Episcopal church. During the past five years, I’ve worked with a couple of hundred high school-age youth. It’s given me a lot of time to think about gender and physical affection. If there’s one thing I’m committed to, it’s modeling appropriate but loving physical contact with my kids of both sexes. That isn’t always easy to do. Not surprisingly, I have had to confront my own acculturation when it comes to physical affection with young men.

First off, we live in a society that is absolutely obsessed with issues of sexual abuse. This obsession is particularly apparent in our churches and our youth ministries; the past three years have brought devastating news of molestation and abuse in every denomination (though our Catholic brethren seem to have taken the brunt of the hit). In this climate, all men who choose to work with youth are open to suspicion. Some of what is being done in response is good and necessary: stricter background checks, for example. But much of what has happened has not been useful, and some of it has even been counter-productive. I have a friend who works in youth ministry at a Presbyterian church nearby, and he says he has been told that the church’s policy is to never have any youth minister touch a kid in any way at any time. No hugs, no pats on the back, nothing. He’s looking for a new church.

Working with adolescents has taught me just how starved most of them are for safe physical affection, especially the boys. And over time, with input from those on staff at the church, I have developed my own guidelines for my own behavior. What it boils down to is this: I am an inveterate hugger. I hug everyone. Kids, adults, men, women, boys, girls, chinchillas, the ficus tree in the corner. That sounds more compulsive than it is. I have to be constantly, keenly aware of body language. I don’t foist hugs on anyone. Nor do I treat hugs as inconsequential, like Hugo’s version of a casual handshake. What I’m trying to do doesn’t always work perfectly, but it does seem to work most of the time. I’m trying to create a culture in our youth group where non-sexual physical intimacy feels safe and reassuring and validating. That takes a lot of time. Some kids came for six months before I could hug them. Some hugged me the moment they met me. Even in a nurturing and safe environment, there will be different levels of comfort with physical affection.

Many of the girls, of course, have little experience of non-sexual affection from men. If I hear one more story from a teen girl about how her father stopped hugging her when she began to develop, I’m going to scream. (I’m not a father, of course, but I’m just mystified by that phenomenon, which, anecdotally, seems to be epidemic). Many of them, though very young, have already been objectified and harassed by men my age or older. They are in desperate need of truly safe adult men — men who are neither responsive to their sexuality nor terrified of it. For the record, as a matter of common sense, I am never alone with teenage girls at the church. Ever. I also regularly "check in" with my fellow volunteers and with the church staff, asking them to be willing to challenge me should I ever even appear to behave inappropriately. But none of that stops me, when the barriers have been broken down, from hugging.

I don’t hug boys the same way I hug girls. For the most part, with the boys, "horseplay" is the safest environment for physical affection. We do a lot of that at All Saints Church. Mind you, I don’t get down on the ground and wrestle with the kids! But the playful pretend punches, the slaps on the back — all of these can be imbued with very real caring and affection. When I was a high schooler, I wasn’t ready to be held by older men — but I sure as hell wanted their attention, and I did want their caring and affection. A quick squeeze of the shoulder was about all I could take, but damn, did I want that squeeze of the shoulder from men I looked up to! I try and remember that. (I should note that some high school boys do like to hug just as much as the girls do, especially once they realize that ours is a safe environment).

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.

I have to admit, it’s a bit scary to post about this. I know that many, many women out there — and some men — have devastating stories of betrayal at the hands of male authority figures. I know that many of them know just how awful it can be when what was supposed to be a "safe" hug or touch becomes something far different. I try to never lose sight of that reality. But it is also because I am so aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse that I insist on touching the youth with whom I work. I do so not to show my disregard for common sense, but as an act of defiance against a culture that declares all affection to be suspicious. I do it because the kids need it. I do it because we all need it. And I do it because Jesus did it.

Originally posted June 15, 2004

Reprint: Daughters and Fathers, Girls and Men

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 16, 2006
in Family, Men's Movement, Older Men & Younger Women, Sexuality and Youth
. 3 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I’m not in the habit of quoting from advice columns.  Still, I do read them regularly, and Carolyn Hax of "Tell Me About It" is perhaps my favorite these days.  I was struck by this one that appeared in today’s Times, but which I can only find online here:

Dear Carolyn: I’m a 15-year-old girl and have a twin brother. I really love my Dad, but he has little interest in doing things with me. He spends lots of time with my brother every weekend, taking him to ballgames and playing golf and tennis with him, and they go on camping trips in the summer, but he never invites me. I recently got up the courage to tell him that I would sometimes like to be included, but he said that a father and son need bonding time, and that I should be spending more "mother/daughter" time with my mother.

I’m really more interested in doing the kinds of things my Dad and brother do together, and my mother is not interested in them. And we do spend plenty of "mother/daughter" time anyway. He is a good father, and I don’t think he understands how much this hurts. My brother has all kinds of souvenirs in our room from the things they have done together, which are a constant reminder to me. How can I make my Dad understand that spending time together is just as important to me as it is to my brother? — Left Out

Hax doesn’t say it, so I will:  this man needs to get in touch with the wonderful Dads and Daughters.  Pronto.

In my dual roles as gender-studies professor and youth leader, I’m a great advocate of adult men (fathers and others) spending time with boys.   Here is where I am in complete agreement with the Men’s Rights Advocates; indeed, a belief in the importance of good fathers and strong adult male mentors in boys’ lives is one of the few points that can unite the entire men’s movement.  "Left Out" has a father who seems to have embraced that part of his job, her dad even uses the phrase "bonding time" to describe what he and his son are doing together.   The assumption, which "Left Out" rejects, is that this kind of bonding is most important between parents and their children of the same sex.

To some extent, this attitude carries over into youth group work.  I’ve often worried that I’m being unfair in the amount of time and availability I have for the guys at All Saints compared to their female peers.  For example, I’m willing to give my cell phone number out to any boy who asks for it.  (And I’ve had to stress, many a time, that they are NOT to call after 9:00PM, a point some have a hard time grasping!) I’ve got a couple of guys with whom I meet (alone) semi-regularly for lunch or coffee.  Except in emergencies, I don’t give that number out to girls, nor do I meet with them alone.  Some of this is in keeping with church policy, some of this a result of boundaries that I have in place because they just seem to "make sense."

As I’ve written before, we live in a culture that, with some justification, distrusts adult men who want to spend time with adolescent girls.  (I suppose in the wake of recent scandals, we are beginning to distrust men who want to spend time with any child, regardless of sex.)  As a youth leader, it’s easy for me to justify spending more time with the boys because, I sometimes assume, they are more in need of a male role model than their female counterparts.  I know I’m sometimes guilty of the very kind of gender essentialism that "Left Out" rejects when she writes:  I’m really more interested in doing the kinds of things my Dad and brother do together..

Spending time with youth can’t be a zero-sum game — we can’t assume that just because boys desperately need male role models that young girls don’t.   Somehow, we in youth work have to find a way to balance the need for public accountability and safety with the very important goal of having safe, strong, loving men play active roles in the lives of girls.

Obviously, youth leaders and fathers have different roles in the lives of young people.   No matter how devoted we in youth work are, we are no substitute for good and loving parents.  But just like fathers and mothers, we have an obligation to nurture and care for all of our kids, not just those who share our sex.  In a world where adult men are regularly viewed as predatory or odd for wanting to work with young folks of any gender, the justification for keeping the "men with the boys" and the "women with the girls" may be difficult to sustain.  I’m not saying that we ought to treat boys and girls identically.  Male youth leaders should, obviously,  still sleep in the boys’ cabin, not with the girls. (Though in a church that has more than one gay male youth leader, that policy has made at least one parent I know rather uncomfortable!)  But we cannot allow our fears to outweigh our responsibility to care for all of our children, and we must be careful to avoid a gender essentialism that minimizes the importance of fathers and other adult men in the lives of young women.

Originally published April 21, 2005

Reprint: A Personal Note on Experience

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 14, 2006
in Faith and Youth
. Closed

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I’ve been thinking about my own life, about mentoring adolescents, and about the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore on account of this".)

I was talking this past week to a 17 year-old fellow who has become quite dear to me.  Like many of the young people in my life, he knows some of the details of my past.  He knows I’ve been married and divorced more than once, and he knows that when it comes to the sort of things with which the young experiment, I was quite an expert in my day.  I’ve got the scars, the tattoos, and the stories.   When I was younger, I shared my life indiscriminately: everyone within earshot knew what Hugo had done and with whom he had done it.  As I’ve grown older, I’ve become far more restrained in what I share, both out of respect for those closest to me and out of a desire to build a healthy boundary between the public and the private.

Still, my past can be useful in establishing credibility with troubled kids.   Kids like scars, it seems, and they like the stories behind them.  It is often meaningful to them that an adult knows first-hand what it is that they have been through, has felt what they have felt, has known the shame they know.  I’m grateful that my experience gives me that "in" with them.

But I am aware (and was especially aware with this 17 year-old recently), that kids are vulnerable to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.  I have a comfortable life, a doctorate, tenure, a townhouse, a wonderful fiancee, and a magical chinchilla.  I’m also pretty damned comfortable in my own skin.  This young man knows all this, and when we were having lunch last week, he said, "I know I’ve got to go through a lot to get what you (Hugo) have.  Don’t you think all that stuff (the chaos and the wreckage) has made you a better person?"

Uh, no.  Whatever success I’ve had in life has been despite my own poor choices, not because of them!  When I was younger, I believed (as so many of the kids in my life believe) that "experience is the best teacher."   My own experience, if you will, taught me otherwise.  When it came to drugs, alcohol, sex, relationships — the most "experienced" people I knew kept making the same damned mistakes over and over again.    Rather than learning from their experiences, they became stuck in self-destructive, self-defeating patterns.  Lord knows, I was stuck there as well.

I firmly believe it was God’s grace, not my own decision-making, that "lifted me out of the pit."  Whatever evangelicalism I still cling to is rooted in that "born-again" experience of being transformed by grace  Why I "got it" — when others whom I know (some of whom are dead now) didn’t, I don’t know.  I am clear, however, that I didn’t "merit" it, nor did my own experiences teach me how to extricate myself from a fairly wretched existence.

The longer I stay in youth ministry, the more ambivalent I become about sharing my past with kids.  The fact that I have the joys that I do today may make the truly terrible decisions I made in my youth seem less consequential.   There is no guarantee that those who do as I did will be as fortunate as I.  More troublingly, many of the kids do believe that these experiences were absolutely necessary components of my own growth, and that without them, I would not have come so far.

One of my dearest male friends in the world is a man a few years older than I.  He and I share a passion for trail running (heck, he took me on my first long trail runs.)  He’s been married to one woman for more than 20 years (since he was in college);  he has never "been with" anyone else.  He and I have talked at great length about our lives and our pasts (one does tend to talk a lot on the mountain.)  If the kids were right, my friend would have less compassion and less wisdom than I.  On the contrary, my running buddy is one of the kindest, most insightful, and most remarkable men I’ve ever known.  While he is mildly curious about some aspects of my colorful past, there is little doubt that I am far more envious of his life.   

I know that some of my students read this blog, as do a few of the kids in youth group.  (And no, I’m not going to give you more details than I do here!)  Please know that I am not ashamed of my past.  But please, as you contemplate decisions about sex and drugs and so many other things, know that experience is not the best teacher!

In a different context, Yeats remarked that "too much suffering makes a stone of the heart."  He was right.  It has taken so much work for me to heal the literal and figurative scar tissue from unnecessary injuries I inflicted on myself.  The more I "did", the less I cared about those around me. Whatever little compassion or tenderness you see in me was and is a gift from God, not the consequence of living too much and too hard.

Originally posted December 6, 2004

Reprint: A Lunchtime Response to Artemis on Girls and Lust

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 13, 2006
in Body, Feminism and Sexuality
. 1 Comment

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

Let it not be said I don’t "take requests."  Artemis at the splendid Feminist Mormon Housewives had a very kind post about my piece yesterday.  She also wrote:

The only thing I think is missing (but would be better addressed in a separate post) is more of the girls’ point of view and a validation of girls’ sexuality–letting girls know it’s okay for them to have (and enjoy and not feel guilty for) those feelings, as well as how they too are responsible for them. Which, I suppose, could lead to a discussion of whether men and their dress are responsible for women’s sexual desires, or–since there are double dress and sexual standards for women and men in our society–the repression or secondary-ness of women’s sexual desires.

For what it’s worth, here are two earlier posts some of you might have missed on women, dress, and responsibility: Propriety, Marie’s boobs, and the myth of male weakness and Sisterhood is Easier in Winter.  I’ve also dealt with the issue of men and dress, and specifically how I dress for the classroom, here: The Male Teacher’s Body and Propriety.  Here’s what I wrote at the end of the last of these posts: What I really care about is not using my body to make others uncomfortable.  I don’t want my clothes and my flesh to arouse others, I don’t want them to scare others, I don’t want them to inspire economic envy, and I don’t want them to distract others.

So that deals a bit with the second part of the Artemis query.  But what of the first part?  What about the healthy, pro-feminist validation of young women’s sexuality?  Let me take a lunchtime stab at the subject…

When dealing with young women and sexuality, I find it is always dangerous to confuse two issues: the joy of being an object of desire, and the joy of being a subject of desire.   The former and the latter are two fundamentally different experiences.  The former is the traditionally validated expression  of female sexuality, and it’s the one with which young women are much more comfortable.  From a very early age, most girls in this country are taught to dress themselves with a keen attention to their role as objects of scrutiny.  Parents and grandparents praise cuteness long before boys and older men leer.  Much more so than boys, girls are programmed to be alert to the various signals their dress and their bodies send.  And indeed, for many girls — not all — the attention and the validation they get as young girls for being "cute and pretty" feels good.

And then comes adolescence.  Is there anything as contradictory as the various messages that bombard young girls about their bodies?  Parents and teachers and op-ed writers urge them to "Cover up!"   Pop culture figures urge them to "flaunt it" (whether they have "it" or not).  And as always, young girls notice that their peers who do dress in certain ways get more attention and validation than others. 

Because of this, those of us who do youth work have to be aware that it’s never enough to ask teenage girls "What do you want?"  We first have to ask them another question, one I regularly ask my girls:  "How does it feel to be wanted?"  In both youth group and in college groups, I’ve had my female students share their feelings about being objects of desire.  The answers, of course, vary.   As always, it depends on what form the "wanting" (or at least the "noticing") takes.  If it’s what I call the "appreciative glance", especially if it comes from an attractive boy, then most of my girls say it makes them feel really, really good.  Even more common than "good" is the word "powerful".  Over and over again, girls report saying it feels exciting and empowering to be noticed and desired.

But if the "wanting" takes the form of a penetrating stare, particularly from an older man, then that doesn’t feel good at all.   "I feel creeped out", "Gross", "Icky", "Like I want to wear a raincoat or disappear" — these are some of the typical responses to questions about reactions that are either  flagrantly sexual or that come from considerably older men.  (And of course, as I’ve written in "Sisterhood", there’s the whole other question of how other girls and women respond!)

So we’ve got to be honest here about the fact that many young women enjoy "being seen"!  They enjoy being wanted, and they are keenly aware that what they wear can impact how they are viewed.   As youth workers or parents, we shouldn’t shame this perfectly normal desire to be wanted.  We can validate the fact that it feels good sometimes to be the object of another’s desire, even as we ask our girls to begin to take responsibility for how their clothing decisions make everyone else around them feel.  Dress that makes other people feel inadequate, or poor, or envious, is not appropriate.  And while we cannot always predict how our clothing choices will affect others, we can ask our girls to consider the well-being of the wider community, and balance that well-being against their own perfectly valid longing to be wanted.

But adolescent girls are not just objects.  They are also subjects of desire.  And here, of course, we tread on less familiar ground.  While traditional cultures are accustomed to teaching young women to gain at least some validation from being wanted, they aren’t nearly as comfortable with telling our girls that it’s okay to want!  Too much of what is written about teenage girls still insists that adolescent females don’t really have strong libidos; any apparent sexual agency that these girls display is really just a longing for attention.   According to this tired discourse, a sexually aggressive teen girl never really wants sex for its own sake, she merely wants attention and validation from a man (perhaps due to her neglectful father) and is "using" sex as a tool.  While there is some considerable truth to that stereotype, it’s also true that whether we like it or not, our daughters do have libidos of their own.

We live in a culture where even now, young women are very reluctant to talk about themselves as subjects of desire.  A girl who confesses to looking and lusting still risks being labeled as a slut by her peers.  From what I’ve seen, a conservatively dressed young woman who admits to lusting is far more likely to be ostracized than a scantily-clad gal who publicly denies her own sexual desires.  If what I hear anecdotally in many college and high school groups is true, girls are infinitely more frank about what they do to please boys sexually (like blowjobs) than what they do to please themselves (like masturbate).   Pleasing boys and men, no matter what it involves, still is part and parcel of a very traditional understanding of female sexuality.

I don’t write this to titillate or scandalize, but to make a larger point about our cultural messages about sexual desire.  We all acknowledge the reality of the adolescent male libido, and indeed, we are likely to over-emphasize its power.   Too many folks either shame boys for their sex drives, or see those same drives as so irrepressible that they are beyond the capacity of boys to control.  This narrative of the unconquerable male libido is used to make girls and women responsible for male behavior, a point that I have rejected many times (explicitly in yesterday’s post). 

But we need to face the truth that our little sisters and our daughters are sexual creatures.  However powerful their socially sanctioned desire to be seen, they also have a very real desire to see.  Again, as with boys, we must do everything we can not to shame our girls for these desires.    Even more so than with boys, we’ve got to do a good job of communicating to them that it is okay to want and to look and to fantasize.  Girls will, in general, be more reluctant to admit to their own libidinousness.  While I’ve never heard of a boy put down another boy for being horny, I have heard girls say incredibly cruel things about a peer who admitted to having strong sexual desires of her own.  This difference in peer acceptability is a key aspect of the discussion about boys, girls, and desire — and parents and youth workers and teachers need to be cognizant of that.

And of course, we live in a world where young women are sent the blunt message that their sexuality can get them hurt.  According to the dominant narrative of the culture, sexually aggressive women not only risk assault and rape, they deserve whatever they get if they are victimized.  Those are powerful warnings, and they serve to silence public discussion of the reality of teen girls and their own sexuality.  As adults and pro-feminists, we have to redouble our efforts to transform the culture and help create a world where young women don’t see their sexuality as a weapon that will be used against them!

In the end, those of us who have teens or work with teens have to be willing to acknowledge the full and complete humanness of both our boys and girls.   We have to admit that both our sons and daughters are sexual creatures.  And as with boys, we must be clear that our daughters have every right to be both objects and subjects of desire, but they also have responsibility for their actions — particularly as subjects. 

Originally published November 22, 2005

Back later

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 12, 2006
in Traveling
. Closed

My wife and I are off for the week, and I’ll be away from the computer entirely.  I’ve arranged for some more reprints of favorite posts to go up throughout the week, about one every other day.  Emails will not be returned until at least August 21.

No big travels this time.  After hitting five continents in a four month period earlier this year, we’re staying in the Golden State.  I’ll be running in the golden hills of my truest home on this earth, and I’ll be happy.

Reprint: “Never allow our youngsters to die in vain”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 11, 2006
in Christianity, Politics, War and Youth
. 8 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I watched the tail end of the presidential press conference yesterday, and was struck by these words (the full transcript is here):

One of the things that’s very important, Judy, at least as far as I’m concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it’s not going to happen under my watch.

That phrase "die in vain" is an old one, and one with an interesting history. A little playtime on the Internet revealed the following:

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met-the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that, where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace.

– Richard Nixon, January 1973

Ten years earlier, in a very different context:

"And so my friends, they did not die in vain."

– Martin Luther King Jr., speaking at the funeral of the young victims of a church bombing, 1963

And exactly one century earlier, the most famous use of the phrase to most Americans (one hopes):

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…

– Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

Lincoln probably got the phrase from the King James Version of Galatians 2:21:

"I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."

Someone will no doubt correct me if I am wrong, but I am assuming that that is the earliest use of the phrase in English. The phrase is never used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to anyone else’s death, only Christ’s. It seems to me that it’s a heck of a jump that Lincoln made — to go from Christ’s death on the cross as not being "in vain" (a phrase the literate and faithful Lincoln knew likely by heart) to the deaths of soldiers. It’s clear what Paul means — Christ’s death is liberating for the world. It is clear to my emotions what Lincoln meant, what King meant, what Nixon meant, and what Bush meant. It sounds good — largely because it sounds so comfortingly familiar.

I’m not here to judge the merits of our War between the States, the Vietnam War, the deaths of the Civil Rights Movement, or Iraq. I am here to question the real meaning of the phrase. If "dying in vain" refers to Christ’s efficacious death on the Cross, then to use the same words to describe the deaths of other folks borders on the sacriligious.

Trying to honor the dead by giving meaning to their deaths precedes Paul, of course. One thinks instantly of Pericles’ funeral oration. But it’s the repeated and theologically problematic overuse of the phrase "in vain" — the one thing that jumped out at me from Bush’s words last night — that sticks with me today.

Originally posted April 14, 2004

Thursday notes: lion tracks, high mileage, dreaming of Billy Crudup, and rediscovering Robertson Davies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 10, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Books, Fun and Music
. 9 Comments

After having taught 20 classes in the past twelve months (seven per regular semester, three each in the winter and summer intersessions) I am enjoying the break until August 28.  I’m working on a book proposal — about which I’ll say more when that project is further along.  I’m spending lots of time outdoors in "my" mountains, and indoors at the movies.

Today’s movie recommendation: Quinceanera.  Filmed in and around nearby Echo Park, it’s a joy to watch.  I caught the matinee today by myself, and wept enthusiastically through the last fifteen minutes.

Early this morning, I ran up the Brown Mountain fire road and counted no fewer than three dozen rabbits.  Bunnies are among the chief joys of running just after dawn.  Near the top of the climb, I came across fresh mountain lion tracks, the first I’ve seen all summer.  Since it was still fairly near dawn, and I was running alone, I cast quite a few glances over my shoulder.  I don’t fear large mammals; the chances of getting attacked by a lion or bear in these hills are pretty remote, though I see their paw prints and scat fairly often.  The only creature I fear up there is Mr. Rattlesnake, and the earlier in the day I get the run done, the less of a chance I will find him sunbathing in my path…  I am terrified of snakes, so much so that I actually pick my running routes and times to avoid them.

This morning’s run wraps up fifty miles of running in the past six days, my best total so far this year.  I was once able to sustain this mileage for months at a time, but it’s really only on vacations that I can push that hard these days.  I need to find a fall trail race.

I had a very strange, vaguely sensual dream (no details, sorry) last night, the sort that lingers with you throughout the day.  One key tidbit: Billy Crudup was in it.  If someone makes a movie of my life, I want him to play me.  He’s also my answer to the question, "if you were going to change your sexual orientation for a celebrity, who would it be?"

I’m reading novels again too!  I’ve rediscovered Robertson Davies, one of my favorite writers when I was in grad school.  This week, I’m making my way through my favorite of his books, Murther and Walking Spirits.   I may get through the wonderful Cornish Trilogy again before school starts if I make a push.   Davies infuriates me and comforts me — and yes, his snobbishness strikes an uncomfortably familiar chord in my life.  It’s been long enough that I’ve completely forgotten the plots, which makes ‘em more fun to read.

And like everyone else these days, I’m listening to James Blunt.  "Wisemen" is in my head constantly; it’s also in the trailer for the new BIlly Crudup movie, so it all is connecting somewhere.

Back to the novel.  More reprints for the next 18 days, and then — Lord willing and the creek don’t rise — some inspired blogging again.

Reprint: Tampax, Virginity, and Teaching the Body

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 10, 2006
in Body, Feminist Pedagogy, Sexuality and Teaching
. 15 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I spent an hour and fifteen minutes in Tuesday’s Women’s Studies class lecturing  on masturbation, menstruation, and tampons.  (If that don’t got your attention, don’t know what will!)

As I’ve written before, much of my Women’s History course focuses on shifting attitudes towards American women’s bodies.  Tuesday, we spent a fair amount of time reviewing the 19th century panic about women’s sexuality (spurred by the medical "discovery" of the clitoris by the medical profession). I blogged a year ago about some of the unhappy consequences of this panic over young women’s masturbation.

We then connected to this to the history of, of all things, the tampon.  The modern tampon was patented in 1931 by a Dr. Earle Haas, who later sold the patent to what would become the Tampax company.  The first commercially marketed tampons appeared on the market five years later.

What does this have to do with women’s sexuality?  One thing is at least anecdotally evident:  cultural background and openness about sexuality seems to play a critical role in whether or not young women begin to use tampons soon after menarche.  My Asian and Latina students (who comprise two-thirds of my female students) are extremely unlikely to have been encouraged to use tampons when they began to menstruate.  Most tell stories of mothers who insisted on pads, often claiming that the tampon was only to be used by women who had lost their virginity.  One gal shared that she began to use tampons when she was on the her high school dance team where the uniforms made them essential; she told of the horrified and amazed reactions of her friends, who were entirely Hispanic.  At the same time, "white girls" seemed much more likely to use tampons in early to mid-adolescence.  Many of these students are stunned when they hear the myths that their classmates from more culturally conservative backgrounds were raised with. 

This jives with the info in this 2000 Wall Street Journal article.  According to company figures:

While about 70% of women in the U.S., Canada and much of Western Europe use tampons, usage falls to the single digits in a handful of countries such as Japan and Spain, and it’s not even measurable in much of the world. Just 2% of women in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, use tampons.

Those figures seem to match the ethnic disparity I see in my classroom. 

Religious and cultural taboos are a hurdle: There is a persistent myth in many countries, for example, that if a girl uses a tampon, she might lose her virginity. "Everywhere we go, women say `this is not for senoritas,’ " says Silvia Davila, P&G’s marketing director for Tampax Latin America. They’re using the Spanish word for unmarried women as a modest expression for young virgins.

This concern crops up in countries that are predominantly Catholic, executives say. In Italy, for instance, just 4% of women use tampons. The Roman Catholic Church says it has no official position on tampons. Nonetheless, some priests have spoken out against the product, associating it with birth control and sexual activities that are forbidden by the Church. Indeed, Tampax faced objections from priests in the U.S. when it introduced tampons in 1936.

In many countries, women aren’t accustomed to spending on themselves, particularly for something they’ll throw out — and that costs a bit more than pads. Women must also understand their bodies to use a tampon. P&G is finding that in countries where school health education is limited, that understanding is hard won. P&G marketers say they often find open boxes of tampons in stores — a sign, P&G says, that women were curious about the product but unsure as to how it worked. (Bold emphasis is mine).

What I argue in my course is that tampon acceptance is linked to broader issues of acceptance of women’s bodies.  The real threat of the tampon is not that it will take a girl’s virginity!  Rather, it’s that a woman who learns how to use it must of necessity gain some knowledge of how she works "down there."    Denying young girls access to tampons is a small but tangible way of keeping them ignorant of their own bodies. In that sense, I argue, cultural hostility to tampons can be linked to cultural hostility to female masturbation.   When a woman uses a tampon, she rejects the idea that her body is something of whose processes she ought to be unaware; when she masturbates, she discovers not only pleasure, she discovers that her body truly belongs to her.

I’m always careful to check in on the comfort level my students have when we talk about these things.  Discussion of masturbation and menstruation, clitorises and tampons can be overwhelming in any setting, even more so with a male college professor leading the class.  But by God, it’s necessary!  One young woman wrote in her journal this week:  "It was a very interesting discussion.  I didn’t know we had a clitoris, or knew it was a word.   I think it’s a good thing to talk about."  (Emphasis mine.)  She’s not the first to write something like that.  Remember, these are college students, but they come from many different backgrounds and many parts of the world.

I try and choose my words carefully.  I don’t make assumptions or give direction to my students as to what they ought to do.  What kind of sanitary products to use, and whether to masturbate or not, are, of course highly personal decisions that should be made without professorial suggestion. Choosing a tampon over a pad is not an inherently feminist act.  One could also be a feminist and choose not to masturbate for spiritual reasons, a point I acknowledge. But ignorance and shame are never, ever congruent with the spirit of feminism.  They are the twin evils that we are struggling against.

But whatever our spiritual orientations, it’s vital in gender studies that we teach the history of the body.   It’s equally vital that we challenge our students’ cultural and sexual assumptions, even if, on occasion, we need to acknowledge some embarrassment when we do so.  (I always say it’s okay to laugh and it’s okay to blush.)  Above all, I want my students to continue the conversations that we begin in class with their friends and with their family members.  On topics so sensitive (pun intended), the best discussions will happen in more intimate settings than the classroom.  It’s my fervent hope that what we do in the class will stimulate many good cross-generational, cross-ethnic talks among women — and men.

Originally posted March 24, 2005

Breaking hiatus for a note on Lamont, Lieberman, and civility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 9, 2006
in Politics
. 17 Comments

Still on hiatus, but breaking it briefly to comment on the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut last night.

As a registered Democrat and a Christian evangelical, I welcomed Joe Lieberman’s willingness to talk about his deep and profound religious faith.  It was vitally important that we have national figures who are unabashedly religious — and not all Republican conservatives.  He seems like a decent, likeable man, even if prone to sanctimoniousness.  (A charge of which this blogger is also frequently guilty.)

But I’m very glad Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman last night.  I’m always glad any time someone with authentically progressive views beats a more conservative rival within the Democratic Party.  I’m especially pleased that the anti-war movement seems to have gained some real traction; I’m hopeful (but not overly so) that this augurs well for a national swing to the left come November.

I made a comment at Feministe this morning that I’d like to expand on.  I wrote there: I’m a great believer in civility. But civility and partisanship can coexist, and I think that at times Joe Lieberman assumed — wrongly — that they were mutually exclusive. Partisanship, as the execrable Tom Delay pointed out, is not a bad thing — cruelty, dishonesty, and rudeness are. It’s possible to be a passionate partisan and live out that partisanship  with grace, humor, and a belief that one’s opponents are decent. Lieberman confused personal decency with waffling centrism. They aren’t the same thing at all.

It’s possible to hold very strong, partisan convictions that place one well to the left (or the right) of the political center and still be a civil, cooperative, genial human being.  One of my favorite examples of this is the new mayor of Oakland, legendary Democratic Socialist Ron Dellums.  (When I was a student at Berkeley, he was my congressman.)  In the Reagan years, Dellums was the most left-wing member of congress.  He was also famously good friends with ultra-right wing congressman "Spearchucker" Bob Dornan of Orange County.  Dellums could distinguish between calling one’s opponents policies evil, and calling the opponent himself evil.  He was a civil partisan of the best kind, and his is the example I would like to see more Democrats follow.

Viva Lamont.

Reprint: Tattoos, Adornment, Spirituality — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 9, 2006
in Body and Faith
. 13 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

In response to this post, Ginger asked:

How do you square your tattoos with your religious beliefs? Did you get them before you were very religious? I ask because I got a tattoo a few years ago during a not so spirtual time in my life, and now I really regret having scarred my body. Your thoughts? (I sense that I have inspired a post topic for you.)

Jenell gives a helpful answer:

Ginger, my family believes that tatooing (and cremation, too) is forbidden by scripture because it is a form of witchcraft. I think this comes from an obscure passage in Leviticus or Numbers about the practice of witchcraft. Its relevance is limited to that cultural context, and it is nowhere repeated by Jesus or established for the New Testament church. Tattooing, like cremation, isn’t necessarily tied to witchcraft - but it apparently was in that culture.

I think the sacred taboo against tattooing is sort of a Christian ‘urban legend’ propagated by people who just don’t like tattoos.

I agree absolutely with Jenell. And Ginger, you have indeed inspired a post!

I have five tattoos in total; two of which are visible when I wear a t-shirt. I acquired all five between April 1997 and September 2000, a period of intense spiritual growth in my life. (I also acquired three piercings during this period; they have been removed.) For me, tattoos are deeply spiritual. They represent two things to me: the valuing of the body and permanence. When I was younger, I abused my body in a wide variety of ways. (I went to Berkeley, and took into my system many, many unhealthy things.) I also scarred my body physically, usually after having imbibed far more than was advisable. Thus by the time I was 30, my body carried on it physical signs of my earlier lifestyle; the manifestations of late adolescent angst were visible on my flesh.

My five tattoos were all chosen because I thought they were aesthetically pleasing and spiritually symbolic. I had grown up hating my body and mistreating it. By placing beautiful images upon my flesh, I was saying to myself "Hugo, your body is good. It is worthy of love and care and decoration." Where once I had scarred my flesh, now I adorned my flesh — and trust me, psychologically and spiritually, there is a world of difference! I can’t say I always like my body. I will be the first to admit that even at 37, like many women and quite a few men, I have "body image" problems. I don’t often like the way I look naked. But some of the things I like most about my body are these five tattoos — they stand for growth, they stand for love, they stand (dare I say it) that in my mind, my body is beautiful no matter what it weighs and no matter how pale my skin may be. For seven years, since I first got "inked", tattoos have been a source of great comfort for me.

I am also aware that tattoos are major commitments. They are permanent (or almost so; they can be removed at great cost and with considerable discomfort). I grew up a child of divorce in a culture of divorce and separation. If there’s one thing my secular friends and I all believed with a grim passion, it was that "nothing lasts forever." As odd as it may seem, getting a tattoo was a way of saying to myself "Now I’ve done something I can’t back out of. Now, I’ve committed to something for life." Believe it or not, getting tattooed made me more aware of my ability to make and keep promises. These images drilled into my flesh? They are mine. I chose them. They will be with me (I presume) forever. They stand not merely for a great and wonderful period of growth in my life, they stand for my commitment to honor and nurture my body rather than mistreat and scar it. (Parenthetically, let me note that the year I got tattooed for the first time, 1997, was the year I started distance running — another way of caring for my flesh.)

Look, tattoos are not for everyone. I am not suggesting that they are some sort of spiritual discipline that everyone ought to adopt. There are as many motives for getting tattoos as there are people who get them. I am glad I was 29 before I got inked for the first time — glad that I made what I still consider to be healthy and aesthetic choices that represented an adult Hugo taking responsibility for his life. I am open to the possibility that in the future I will feel differently, but for now, everytime I undress, I see these external symbols that mark my own journey — and I am grateful.

Originally posted July 8, 2004

UPDATE:  Just this morning, we’ve got this whopper of a post from Dawn Eden.  It ends thus:

Something tells me that there’s a connection between the increase in abortions after Roe vs. Wade and the increase in tattoos. In any case, I believe the devil is always happy when people deface their bodies, because they are defacing the image of God.

I’ve made some unsupportable assertions in my day, but that’s flabbergasting.  I doubt Dawn will read my post, but she needs to. (H/T to "Fat Doug Lover" at Punkass Blog).