Archive for October, 2006

Some reflections on the decline of military history

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 16, 2006
in Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 41 Comments

Recently, the National Review published Sounding Taps, a dire jeremiad by John J. Miller about the state of military history in American universities.  The article warns that military history is increasingly unfashionable, and except for a few bastions like the service academies and Ohio State, it’s in danger of dying out as a subject.  Miller blames liberal suspicion of all things martial for the decline in the number of new faculty hires specializing in the study of battles and strategy.

The refusal of many history departments to meet the enormous demand for military history is striking — the perverse result of an ossified tenure system, scholarly navel-gazing, and ideological hostility to all things military…

Mark Grimsley, my colleague at Cliopatria, issued this response in his capacity as an Ohio State military historian.  In a nutshell, he doesn’t think "Taps" is being sounded for military history; from his vantage point, it’s time to play "Reveille."  Military history is on the rebound, and the suggestion that it isn’t is due more to conservative alarmism about the state of higher education than it is to the actual "facts on the ground".  Grimsley writes:

Some in academia may view military history with jaundiced eye, just as some others may feel impatient with women’s history or frustrated at the shortage of faculty positions to cover adequately the non-Western regions of the world. And it must also be acknowledged, candidly, that military historians have not always been good ambassadors for their field. But in our view the situation is nowhere near as bleak as John J. Miller’s article portrays — not at OSU and not in this country.

In my survey courses, I do very little military history.  In my Western Civ classes, there are a few battles so vital I describe them in detail: Salamis and the Somme, for example.  But I always fall short of what some of my eager young men want.  Every prof who teaches survey courses knows the type: the earnest lad who comes to office hours, filled with righteous anguish because I chose to talk more about the unique status of Spartan women than the heroics of their husbands and brothers at Thermopylae!  I’ve noted that the most consistent complaints I get as a professor is the lack of military history in my survey courses. I emphasize religious, gender, and social history at the expense of battle tactics time and again, and given the time constraints, I make no apologies for it.

But I do regard military history as immensely valuable.  I may be a pacifist progressive, but I think a basic understanding of how battles unfolded and how strategy works is vital for any professional historian.   My dissertation, believe it or not, had a healthy dollop of military history within its 300 dreary pages.  I wrote on the role of the English church in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the middle ages, and had to include detailed accounts of the battles of Falkirk and Neville’s Cross, two engagements in which clerics played vital roles in English victories.  If nothing else, it left me with a great sense that luck — or divine providence — played an especially important role in the outcome of many of these bloody encounters.

I will note that when I was hired to teach European History/Women’s history, I was hired to replace a historian who was a military specialist.  Jim Kingman, the man whose "spot I filled", was a gentle, kind, soft-spoken professor who taught the same survey courses I did — but with infinitely more attention to battle tactics and far less attention to social and intellectual developments.  He stayed on in the department for a few years after I was hired, and many times said to me, ruefully, "Hugo, what I do seems to be going out of fashion."   He would agree with John J. Miller’s assessment that military historians, at least in some places, are indeed being replaced by those whose interests are elsewhere. 

I am glad to hear military history is thriving in some institutions.  I am glad that women’s history continues to thrive, and that "men’s history" is emerging as a legitimate discipline.   Those of us who teach survey courses to undergraduates need to draw from many different sub-fields of history, and at least a cursory knowledge of war is essential to do our jobs well.  I’m grateful for the training I got in the field, but I am equally glad it is not my specialty.  But I wouldn’t mind hiring a colleague who knew a hauberk from a Howitzer.

Pressed for time, and praising Steve Joordens: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 16, 2006
in Ratemyprofessors and Teaching
. 6 Comments

It’s a chaotic Monday morning with far too much to do and too little time to do it. I’ve got a post on the decline of military history percolating in my brain, but that will likely have to wait until tomorrow.    Thanks to all for the comments below the various posts below — this has been my highest week of "hits" (15027 as of 9:00AM) in all of 2006, and for that I am grateful.

Reject the Koolaid has an interview this morning with Steve Joordens, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto.  He’s in 1st place on the 50 Hottest Professors in North America list, and he’s a humble, funny dude who loves his wife and plays in a campus rock band.  Clearly, his nearest competition on the list can’t compete on grounds of humility, humor, looks, or musical skills — though word on the street has it #2 loves his wife very much as well.  Anyhow, read all about Steve.  Whether the RTK will conduct an interview with the (rapidly fading) runner-up remains to be seen.

UPDATE:  A reader kindly tells me that this post seems to have led those who love me less than they ought to put fictitious ratings up at RMP in an effort to rob me of my hard-earned chili peppers.  Their perfidy is revealed by the fact that they don’t know what classes I teach, and list me as teaching psych and sociology.  Folks, if you want to slam me on RMP, at least have the sense to list the right classes so that it will appear that you are an actual student: I teach History 1A, History 1B, History 25B, and Humanities 1.  It”ll look more authentic that way.  Sheesh.

UPDATE to the UPDATE:  They’ve caught on.  I’ve lost seven chili peppers since this morning.  Keep at it, lads, and you’ll have me off the top fifty by Thursday.

Running report, and a note on hairy chests

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 15, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Men and Masculinity, Sports and Vanity
. 22 Comments

Mark, Caz, Magnus and I had a glorious, tough fifteen miler today, running in the cool and the mists of the Angeles National Forest.  (If there are any of my readers who know the San Gabriel Mountains, we ran from Chantry Flats to Newcomb’s Saddle via First Water and the Sturtevant Trail.  After years of running, those very names reek of sweat and excitement to me.)  Four tired and happy men we were at the end.  I ran shirtless, the other lads wore tights and long sleeves.  There were a few chilly gusts, but nothing I couldn’t handle.   Of course, I just got over a nasty cold, so this probably wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had.

We ended up at Noah’s bagels.  For a decade now, I’ve ordered the same thing over and over: cinnamon raisin bagel toasted with sun-dried tomato shmear.  I have no idea what anything else tastes like there.  (And yes, New Yorkers, I know, your bagels are better.  I concede.)

We’ve got quite a good (and mostly civil) discussion going in the comments section below Friday’s post about feminism and loneliness.  I’m grateful that Amanda Marcotte discussed it at length yesterday, and offered some interesting insights (and sent lots of welcome hits this way.)  If you don’t already read Pandagon, read my post and hers as well as both comments sections.

And as anyone who has been doing any reading this week in the feminist blogosphere knows, we’ve all been obsessed with hair.  Mostly, we’ve been interested in how women groom — or don’t — the hair below eye level.  I posted here, Happy posted here, Jill posted here (and was ripped here), Zuzu posted here,  Lauren here, and if you poke around elsewhere, I am sure a dozen other feminist bloggers have weighed in on issues of waxing and plucking and related strategies.  It may seem silly, but it isn’t, not really, not when we’re all convinced that we have an obligation to live lives of integrity and we disagree passionately about whether or not our most intimate grooming habits are or aren’t consistent with our core values. 

It’s been pointed out in many corners that women are not the only ones who remove body hair.   While in an earlier era, only athletes in certain sports (body building and swimming, for example) regularly removed chest and leg hair, within the past ten years the number of men "going bare" has increased enormously.   Pick up any men’s magazine (Men’s Health, etc.), and the chances are good the bare-chested model on the cover will be completely or nearly hairless.  Many folks assume that the focus on hairlessness has to do with the tremendous increase in body anxiety among men that we’ve witnessed in recent years.  It’s widely argued that men are more and more likely to be judged on their appearance these days, and as a consequence we’re seeing an upsurge in male body hair removal.  Men are, perhaps, beginning to suffer from the same concerns from which women have suffered for considerably longer.

One key difference, however, goes unremarked most of the time.  Classically, the reason why men remove chest hair is that hair obscures muscle.  A rug, or even some wisps, may make it more difficult to display one’s pecs.  Taking off the hair immediately makes the chest look bigger and makes the upper body appear more defined.  Trust me, I know this first hand.  When I was lifting a lot of weights about a decade ago, I "Naired" my chest a couple of times.  (I had one brief experience with waxing at the hands of a helpful but not very skilled female friend.  Yikes.)  The "Nair" burned, particularly around my nipples (which were pierced at the time), but it got rid of all the hair from my throat to below my belt line. 

The visual results were instant — my chest looked manlier, which struck me as oddly paradoxical.  The hair (which I’ve had on my chest since I was 16) "should" have been the primary signifier of masculinity.   After all, we’re all familiar with the the exhortation "Come on, do it, it’ll put hair on your chest" — which is usually said about something dangerous or "manly".  But in our world, pectoral muscles are an even more powerful signifier of manliness, particularly because their appearance is more likely to be the result of effort rather than genetics.   In order to enhance my masculine appeal, I "had" to remove what was quintessentially masculine.  As I washed the stinging Nair off in the shower, the contradiction did not escape me!

Male porn stars generally have very closely cropped pubic hair, if they have any at all.  (Their female co-stars increasingly have little or none.)  Many women who wax claim it enhances their comfort, or their sense of pleasure, or — and this seems to be the most frequent — their sense of cleanliness.  (Even when they know intellectually that body hair is not inherently dirty.) But the reason for a man to remove his pubic hair is radically different — as with the chest, hair "down there" obscures.  An erect penis automatically looks bigger when there’s little or no hair about.  In porn, where "size matters" tremendously, there’s little doubt that a male actor can enhance his attributes by removing his pubic hair.  Of course, while both men and women have pubic hair naturally (and most women, and some men, don’t have chest hair) men and women are removing the "hair down there" for radically different reasons.   For many women, anxiety about cleanliness is at least one factor — while for men (even outside of the porn industry), the old anxiety about being "too small" is the primary motivation.

I haven’t removed any body hair from the vast expanses below my neck since early in the second Clinton Administration.  I enjoyed the visual effect of hairlessness, but hated the stubble as it came back in.  And though I found that some women liked a bare chest, I found — and here I step into dangerous territory — that the women I was most likely to actually want to be with were those who liked men with hair. Somehow, there was something suspicious to me about women who liked their men too smooth.  Perhaps it was — and here I psychoanalyze without a license — a sense I got that women who were turned off by chest hair were in some sense intimidated by or frightened of certain aspects of male sexuality.  (Bring on the flaming, but so help me, that was my experience.  I agree that my anecdotes, no matter how numerous, do not in any way constitute data!)  I will note that when my teenage girls in youth group talk about what they like and don’t like in guys, most are enthusiastic about hairless, smooth chests.  Given that those are what the chests of most of their peers look like, it makes sense.  But the connection between eroticising hairlessness and a kind of adolescent view of sexuality does seem to be logical, if nothing else.

I don’t trust Esquire Magazine with much.  (They named the no-doubt talented and lovely, but very young Scarlett Johannson the "sexiest woman alive" earlier this year, a decision which mystified me.  In my mind, she falls into the category of "much younger women I would set up with my college-age nephew, not my best friend.")  But they do report this month that "chest hair is back", which, if true, I find quite encouraging.  Of course, the linked article implies that it’s all a backlash against metro-sexuality:

The area rugs popularized by Hugh (Jackman) et al. are more than just decorative statements; they’re welcome beacons of masculinity in a too-calm sea of feyness. They’re a rebuttal to the androgynous Jude Law pretty-boy aesthetic and the skinny-pantsed Strokesification of our time. In short: Your chest hair is hot. Own it.

Uh, my chest hair is not a rebuttal to anything. It is what it is — a tribute to my DNA, which decreed (thank you, ancestors) that I would naturally have hair on my head for life, hair on my chest in moderate abundance, and very little hair on my back.  (That constellation of gifts almost makes up for the hopeless nearsightedness.)   Praise be to God that my wife loves every last little sprout and tuft!  (Especially, bless her heart, the increasing number of white ones.)

Note: After further reflection, the photo that was here of said chest hair has been removed.

“I don’t want to be the feminist cat lady”: teaching women’s studies and confronting the fear of being alone

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 13, 2006
in Feminism, Relationships and Teaching
. 100 Comments

As regular readers know, one text I’ve relied on a lot in recent semesters in my women’s studies classes is Lynn Phillips, Flirting with Danger.   A sociology/psychology text, it’s a masterful study of young women’s profoundly conflicted feelings about sexuality, gender roles, and power.  Like many social scientists, she talks too much about "discourses", but that’s forgiveable.

In any event, it was in the process of teaching Phillips that I realized something about a great many of my students. One key reason why many of the young women whom I teach remain reluctant to embrace feminism is simple, sad, and profound: they are convinced that living a feminist life will leave them lonely.   As tempted as they are by a vision of themselves as empowered, active, assertive agents, far too many of my students are genuinely convinced that to live as feminists will make it nearly impossible for them to find and sustain a loving relationship with a man.

When I first started teaching women’s history, I figured my main obstacle to getting my students to embrace the feminist label was the set of negative stereotypes about feminists as "angry, hairy, and man-hating."  This doesn’t mean that I refuted all of these stereotypes directly; after all, teaching young women to get in touch with their righteous anger is an important feminist task.  And questioning the cultural norm about women and body hair is also important, even as we acknowledge (as we’ve been doing in the blogosphere this week) that feminists can have different views on personal grooming!  But for the most part, I figured that students were anxious not to associate themselves with what they saw as these unattractive, unpleasant stereotypes.

But I’ve come to see — more and more in recent years — that for so many of my community college students, the real fear is not of the feminist label.  The real fear is that embracing feminism will make it impossible for them to find and sustain a lasting relationship with a man.  What they are hungry for — and what a male professor can’t offer them, regardless of his marital status — is female feminist role models who blend successful heterosexual relationships with their activism.  Obviously, this is heterosexist.  But while a certain small percentage of my students are sexually and romantically drawn to other women, the clear majority are "straight."  And even among the most ambitious, it is not patronizing to point out that for a great many of my female students, a major life goal is an enduring, fulfilling, satisfying relationship with a man.   (I often have students admit this apologetically, as if they are "letting down the side" by expressing romantic longings.)

The dilemma for feminist professors is obvious.  On the one hand, if we spend a great deal of time reassuring our female students that a commitment to feminism is easily compatible with heterosexual romance, we end up reinforcing the questionable notion that sexual relationships are the ultimate source of human happiness.  On the other hand, in a fiercely anti-feminist world, we may be tempted to down play the very real consequences of embracing a feminist life.  The fact is that some men, maybe even a great many men, will be put off by a woman who is an authentic feminist.  To pretend otherwise, and promise an endless supply of thoughtful, egalitarian, hot men just looking for a true feminist woman would be, well, a colossal misrepresentation of reality.

Yet if we try to dissuade our students from focusing on relationships and romance, we end up invalidating their very real fears and desires.  Too many women I’ve taught have heard the line "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", and said to themselves "Damn, there must be something wrong with me for wanting a bicycle so badly!"  Yes, we feminists ought to question the centrality of the heterosexual discourse in young women’s lives.  Yes, we ought to challenge many of their preconceptions about romance, sex, love, and marriage.  But we must do so without dismissing or shaming the very real desires that so many of these young women have for these very basic things.

In recent semesters, addressing the fear of loneliness has become a chief priority in my women’s studies classes.  It’s vital work because it meets the concerns of many of my students — who frequently come to the course with a great deal of ambivalence (and ignorance) about feminism and women’s liberation.   One  articulate student wrote in her journal this semester:

I am not sure I want to be a feminist.  I believe in feminist ideals, but I’m terrified that claiming the name of feminist will doom me to ending up as an old lonely "cat lady"!  I want to be an independent, strong woman.  I want a career and I want to be a mom.  I’m scared that if I’m too feminist, I will end up alienating a potential husband.  What I want to know is, can feminists really have it all?  Or is it about choosing between either a great relationship with a man or having this amazing single feminist life?  Because honestly I know I’d rather have the first one, even though that is hard to admit. But I really want both.

Bold emphasis mine. One thing we can all do better as "public feminists": blog more about how we mesh our politics with our marriages and romances and partnerships.  Gay or straight, monogamous or polyamorous, we need to set examples for how we reconcile our beliefs and our private lives.   With all respect to my lesbian sisters and gay brothers, this is a particularly important task for those who are heterosexually partnered.  It is not that single men and women can’t be good feminist role models!  And it’s not that singleness and loneliness always go together.  But when so many of our aspiring feminists admit that the fear of loneliness is a chief factor in their reluctance to embrace the feminist label, we’ve got to meet that problem proactively and publicly.

Friday Random Ten: old loves, new loves

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 13, 2006
in Friday Random Ten
. Closed

I think four of these songs have shown up on previous FRTs, signifying that I don’t have as many songs in my collection as I ought to.  #9 is from my folkie childhood; 1,8,10 are college/grad school songs. #4 was a theme song from another time in my life, and #7 just breaks my heart every time.

1.  "Walk Forever by my Side", The Alarm
2.  "Abraham", Sufjan Stevens (Thanks, Lauren)
3.  "This Heart of Mine", Wailin’ Jennys
4.  "Sexuality", Billy Bragg
5.  "Awful", Hole
6.  "Shimmer", Fuel
7.  "The Letter", Macy Gray
8.  "Tried to be True", Indigo Girls
9.   "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore",  The Weavers
10.  "Tuesday’s Gone", Lynyrd Skynyrd

Bonus Track:  "For a Dancer", Jackson Browne

Amp thinks I hung the moon, and why my traffic is through the roof

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 12, 2006
in Blogging, Chinchillas, Class and Feminism
. 11 Comments

Okay, lesson learned about driving traffic to my blog:

1.  Get involved in one big intra-feminist hullabaloo.

2.  Blog about my penis, where it’s been, and what I did to it.

3.  Get involved in a second big intra-feminist hullabaloo.

Do all three in a three-day period, and presto, I’ve tripled my visitors to this site.  Take notes, people.

Bitch-Lab dedicates a post to me today.  Though I am a bear of exceedingly small brain, I think BL takes issue with what she sees as my insistence on filtering discussions of feminism through a white, middle-class lens.  I mean, jeez.  What’s this crazy WASP dude teaching courses on feminism to classrooms filled with first-generation women of color?  And then name-dropping the prominent feministas whose courses I took in college?  Sorry, don’t mean to be snarky.  Oh hell, maybe I do.

And someone named Funniekins is righteously angry that Amp’s long, comments-open post about his decision to sell amptoons began as a response to me.  Actually, Funniekins is only one of several to express annoyance that Amp’s reply was addressed initially to me, and then to his other critics.  As both Amp and I have explained, that’s because I thought it best to shoot him an email before I posted on Tuesday night about him.  No one else, apparently, did the same.  But this courtesy was clearly an example of white male privilege, the old boys network at work even within the feminist community.  Funniekins writes:

Interestingly, when asked why the fuck Hugo hung the moon, Barry replied:

I picked Hugo out because he is the one person who emailed me personally asking me to open up such a thread.

And there you have it! Public criticism of public actions is most APPROPRIATELY handled only after discreet and private inquiries among men. I’m sorry, I mean, among friends.

Look, I’m the grand champion of mea culpas when it’s called for.  But yeah, Amp is my cyber friend.  We’ve been linking to each other for two years, and I’ve learned a lot from him.  He’s been an immensely valuable ally.  And I think he screwed up big-time on this one issue of selling his blog, and I called him on it.  Do I think I’m a better person because I e-mailed him first when others didn’t?  No.  Did I e-mail him first because he’s a man?  No.  If I were about to take to task a female "blog friend" in a public way (an Amanda, a Zuzu, an HF, a Lauren, a Jill, a Lorie, a Jenell, a Jessica, a Mermade, etc.), I would damn sure give ‘em a heads up first.  Is that male privilege hiding behind good manners?  I really, really don’t think so.

Okay, enough navel gazing.  Watch the soft scrub ad with the chinchilla in it.  That’s the ticket.

A meandering reflection on fun feminism, waxing, role modeling, Socrates, and intra-feminist dialogue

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 12, 2006
in Feminism
. 40 Comments

In the last 24 hours, my hits have shot through the roof.  Lots of folks clearly want to know why I had my foreskin cut off last year. 

For whatever reason, the feminist blogosphere seems to be undergoing a period of particularly intense self-criticism.  The whole Ampersand/Alas/porn thing exploded this week and the discussion continues in that arena.

Meanwhile, the debate over "fun feminism" (or feminist women’s concessions to femininity) has re-emerged with a vengeance.  Three feminists whose writing I admire immensely (The Happy Feminist, Amanda Marcotte, Jill Filipovic) all offered their own personal, articulate reflections on their own relationships with "femininity".  (See here, here, here).  This particular round of self-reflection was sparked by a new book from Laura Kipnis, The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability.  (Not even available to the schlumps like me who have to wait for its publication; some folks clearly got review copies.  Ahem.)  Jill summarizes the Kipnis thesis:

That feminism and traditional femininity are at odds with each other, and that compliance with the traditional trappings of femininity only serves to keep women down. I’m not too far into it yet, but in the intro she points out that traditional femininity wasn’t directly put upon women, but created by women themselves as a rational response to their own powerlessness. She argues that, now that women have the same legal rights as men, we’re still choosing to embrace these feminine things, and that feminism has been complicit or even supportive of that embrace. And, in embracing these things, women are complicit in their own oppression.

In the course of their three very different, very readable posts, HF, Amanda, and Jill all admit to at least some conflict and ambivalence regarding their own "feminine strategies."  Jill writes of enjoying high heels, bikini waxes, and Sex and the City.  HF notes her use of hair dye and anti-wrinkle creams. Amanda ties in her decision to take full financial responsibility for contraception.   But read all three posts at length rather than my summaries.

Though Jill, Happy, and Amanda are more experienced feminists than my students, what they write reflects what I read in student journals all the time.  So many of my students who are budding feminists worry about what they will have to "give up" in order to become "real feminists."  Many make lists of their feminist principles, and juxtapose them with the particularly "femmy" aspects of themselves.  "I want to be a feminist, but I like the door being held for me by a man."  "I consider myself a feminist, but I like feeling pretty."  "Can I be a feminist if I wax?"  "Can I be a feminist if I watch Project Runway?"  "Can I be a feminist if…."  The list is endless.

Of course, the temptation is to offer reassurance that "anything can be feminist" as long as its "what you want to do" and not "what society tells you to do."  As Jill points out, most folks who’ve gotten past Feminism 101 recognize the speciousness of that particular reasoning.  Teasing out what is really "our" desire and separating it from what we have been taught to want by a sexist culture is not nearly as easy as we imagine.   The most superficial kind of feminism is "choice feminism", which insists that any choice a woman makes is above reproach merely because she is making it as an active agent.  Shallow "choice" feminism offers little opportunity for reflection on what is gained, what is lost, and who else gets hurt by these choices.  Jill, HF, and Amanda all clearly and emphatically reject choice feminism.  Jill and HF don’t claim that their choices to wear heals, wax, or use wrinkle creams are feminist choices — but they also argue that they aren’t inherently anti-feminist decisions either.  They acknowledge the tension and ambiguity that exists in feminist women’s relationship with femininity, which is a very different thing from mindlessly accepting the dictates of pop culture.

On the other side, read Twisty and Molly.  Twisty savages Bust Magazine for its faux feminism, and Molly rebuts Jill with a post entitled Why my Brand of Feminism is No Fun at All.  Molly writes:

Being introspective about one’s choices and admitting that not all of them are empowering is a great first step. But that’s it. Once you’ve gotten to that level, make some more changes. For instance, I did feel like shaving was a real pain in the ass, and yet I kept doing it for a long time because I felt I had to in order to gain acceptance. Once I examined this view, however, I felt guilty. But I didn’t say "well, I can stop feeling guilty because I’m so fun!" I stopped shaving my legs except when it’s so dry that they itch unshaved (this amounts to 1-2 times per year). Oh no — now I’m a "Hairy Feminist," and we all know hairy girls can’t be fun. I don’t feel guilty about the times I do shave my legs, because now I am doing it for my own comfort. When I realized my actions were not in harmony with the ideology I espoused, I did what I could to change my actions.

Bold emphasis mine.  Jill has an excellent rebuttal to Molly in Molly’s comments section.  Excerpt:

I’m not saying that I’m immune to criticism for my personal choices, but I do wish that we would go after the system that compels women to make certain choices rather than the women themselves. I don’t see the point in having a feminist pissing contest about who’s the "most" feminist based on how we dress or how much hair we have on our bodies.

Bold mine again.  Molly has a follow-up here, which is where we finally get to the point of my post this morning.   She makes an interesting point (and singles me out as an example, which obviously gets my attention).  Molly argues that those of us who are public feminists (and that includes not only those of us who work for money as feminists, as I do, but also prominent bloggers like Jill, Amanda, and Happy) must be held to a higher standard than "newbie" feminists or those whose role in the movement is not as public:

I only mean to address those who hold themselves up, either explicitly or implicitly, as feminist role models. This would definitely include all feminist bloggers, particularly those who have acquired real renown in the blogosphere. I don’t hold a random woman on the street to the same standards — or even close to the same standards — as those who would be the voice of feminism online.

Molly has a point.  Some of us get hundreds, many of us thousands of individual readers of our posts.  Young men and women looking for information on feminism frequently "google" certain topics that lead them to Feministe, Pandagon, Happy Feminist, Hugo Schwyzer, or dozens of other feminist blogs.  And as someone who works with high school and college-age feminists, I know how vital the Internet and the blogosphere are in shaping perceptions of what contemporary feminism is all about.  If we’re lucky enough to have a high readership, we can be fairly certain that at least some young (and not so young) men and women are taking our words to heart.  And as we saw in the Ampersand/porn controversy, part of our "cyber cred" is the sense that we who blog and act as role models are doing our best to practice what we preach. And where we find ourselves engaged in personal behaviors that we believe to be inherently problematic, we who are role models have a special obligation to work to change our behavior.

Am I taking Molly’s side over Jill’s?  No.  What Jill does more publicly than most is something vitally important for feminists to do: "process out-loud."  Maybe it’s just the Episcopalian in me, but I like it when folks allow themselves to sit in tension, allow themselves to wrestle with ambiguity, allow themselves to acknowledge complexity.  Jill likes getting Brazilian waxes,and she’s clearly aware that part of her pleasure in being hairless is linked to the culture.  But by the same token, part of her preference for hairlessness may be part of who Jill is as an individual, distinct from a socially imposed pressure to be "bare down there."  It’s absolutely absurd to suggest that those women who take pleasure in traditionally feminine behaviors are always doing so because of the patriarchy, while those women who take on more androgynous, more masculine behaviors (not shaving is stereotypically masculine) are somehow always demonstrating their courageous resistance to "the man."

Do I have a nifty answer for all of this?  No.  But let me tell you what I think a role model ought to do.  (And Molly, thanks again for singling me out as one.)  A role model is willing to wrestle publicly with his or her own uncertainties.  A role model is willing to engage in healthy self-analysis, and willing to give up behavior patterns that are hurtful to others.  But a role model is not a super-hero.  Real role models are flesh and blood men and women, with their own unique set of desires and experiences, hopes and fears.   Real role models aren’t defensive (and Amanda, Happy, and Jill have been anything but on this topic).  Whether they wax or don’t wax, wear heels or not, they are willing to examine their own choices critically and dialogue with others about them.  Some role models may choose to not wax; others may choose to continue to do so.  What makes a man or woman an important feminist role model is openness, candor, and willingness to acknowledge a connection that links private pleasure, public behavior, and the larger feminist movement.   Twisty meets that standard.  Amanda meets that standard.  Happy meets that standard.  Jill meets that standard.  And by being willing to wade back into the heat over his decision to sell amptoons, I think Barry Deutsch (Amp) is doing his damndest to meet that standard.

Few of us ,one hopes, get out of higher ed without learning the Socrates admonition: "The unexamined life is not worth living."  I decided a long time ago that my primary task as a pro-feminist blogger was to live out a very publicly "examined life."   How I eat, how I make love, how I teach, how I dress, how I exercise, how I vote, how I relate to those beneath and those above, how I pray, how I read Scripture, how I spend — all of those choices are rightly open for analysis and discussion.  Of course, "examining" is not the end goal!  The end goal is to become an ever more loving, ever more effective human being.  The goal is change and growth, in the name of our own happiness, yes,  but even more so that we might be of ever-greater service to the world and to our cause.

So let’s keep challenging each other in the feminist blogosphere, let’s keep pushing each other, let’s keep telling each other the truth.  And let us balance our eagerness to hold each other accountable with a willingness to acknowledge that we all see through a glass darkly.  Let’s be really loving to each other, modeling for the whole world what a cyber feminist community can look like.

Thursday Short Poem: Moore’s “Scuffle of the Small”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 12, 2006
in Poetry
. Closed

This is another poem I found in a back issue of Ploughshares.  From Emily Moore, it’s a little piece, but it works.

The Scuffle of the Small

The overrated owe
a great debt to the little:
the pinpoint feet of shrimp
unleash the tide pool billows.

The mismatched flecks within the rock
make granite glitter.
Could the gnat impart
the summer with her shimmer?

Each spring the tightness of the soil
is tirelessly relieved
by the boring of a worm:
she dares the roots to breathe.

the fleeting glance
reshuffles our attention.
The awkward and unrhymed
wheedle in and loosen

with such resolve that all our gaps
and solitudes are filled.
It is the scuffle of the small
that stirs the silt.

Circumcised at 37: a personal story and a rebuke to the MRAs

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 11, 2006
in Body, Circumcision, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Men and Masculinity, Music, Relationships, Sexuality and Vanity
. 144 Comments

In January 2005, at the age of thirty-seven, I was circumcised.   I’ll get to the reasons why later in this post, but I figured I’d start by getting your attention.

Below this post, a men’s rights advocate (MRA) calling himself "ballgame" (!), offers a long comment that concludes with a reference to male circumcision as Male Genital Mutilation (MGM, a play on the term Female Genital Mutilation, which refers to a genuinely dreadful practice performed primarily in North Africa.)

One particular strand of the men’s rights movement that I find especially distasteful is the group that insists that the removal of the foreskin of the penis is equivalent to the removal of the clitoris.   The best known anti-circumcision lobbying group is NOCIRC.  The explicit equivalency between male circumcision and female genital mutilation is made by the folks at (get ready) the International Coalition for Genital Integrity. 

No one denies that there are "botched" male circumcisions.  But the NOCIRC and ICGI folks, and their men’s rights advocate supporters, fail to recognize that male circumcision is performed for radically different reasons than is female genital mutilation.  While the latter operation is designed to safeguard women’s purity (and make pleasure nearly impossible), circumcision is done for a variety of reasons, including increasingly legitimate health ones.

Though it is problematic to quote President Clinton in regards to this part of the male anatomy, the Guardian reported in August that

Bill Clinton called for the world to prepare to tackle the cultural taboos surrounding circumcision yesterday if, as many expect, trials show that it protects men and the women they sleep with from Aids.

Though a fuller study will not report until next year, a preliminary South African study released in 2005 made the compelling claim that male circumcision is a vital weapon in the fight against HIV.  Francois Venter, the head of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, described male circumcision as "what may be our most important HIV-prevention strategy ever."

No such medical benefits to the infinitely more barbaric practice of female genital mutilation have ever been reported.

Though the findings remain controversial, many doctors do believe that circumcision also reduces the risk of cervical cancer in women.   Warning: if you google about for information on this topic, you’ll note that non-medical anti-circumcision groups have had remarkable success in getting their results to the top of the queue of answers.  Much more will be known when we get the results of the first truly large scale study on circumcision and health from Africa next year.

My brother and I were not circumcised.  I was born in 1967, my brother in 1970; we were born in the United States at a time when virtually every baby boy was circumcised.  My parents had to be quite emphatic with the physicians at Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, to prevent what was a routine operation from being performed.  For my late father, the reason to avoid circumcision was linked to religion, ethnicity, and the Holocaust.  My father’s father was raised Jewish, but married my Catholic grandmother and converted.  When my father was born in Vienna in 1935, he was the first male Schwyzer in the family line not to have the foreskin removed.  My grandfather saw not being circumcised as a sign of assimilation, something he wanted very much for his family.  In Austria in the 1930s, only Jews were circumcised.  With the gathering clouds of anti-Semitism already clearly on the horizon, it was thought best that my father "not look Jewish" down there.

My father was of course no anti-Semite.  But like many Europeans, he retained the association between Judaism and circumcision.  He didn’t understand the post-war American custom of circumcising all boys routinely, regardless of their faith.  And quite understandably, he wanted his sons to look like him "down there."  Many fathers, I am sure, feel the same way.

It wasn’t easy being the only uncircumcised boy growing up.  Junior high locker rooms (where we had open, communal showers) were brutal.  I was teased relentlessly.  One memorable comment that has stuck with me since about 1979: "It looks like a pistol, instead of an apple like it’s supposed to."  My mother explained why I wasn’t circumcised with a simple "Your father is European, and it’s not done over there."  That explanation was all I got until I was in college, and it did little to ease the sense of being different.

In my sexual life, I found that some women were fascinated with the foreskin, others repulsed by it, others absolutely didn’t care.   But I did find — and here I’m walking dangerously close to what is known as TMI — that my foreskin did not always retract as easily as I would like for intercourse.  I had one very memorable, very painful visit to an emergency room when I was in college.   I’ve had stitches in my knees, on my scalp, on my arms — but stitching up a little tear "down there" was no picnic.   As I grew more experienced, I learned little tricks to make sure that I never had a foreskin tearing incident again, but it certainly made me worry for years and years afterwards.

The first person to recommend circumcision to me was the doctor at Cowell Hospital (in Berkeley) who took care of my "sex-related injury."  He said that it would make sex much easier, but I was emphatically not interested.  I didn’t consider circumcision again until just a few years ago.  There were many reasons for my choosing circumcision in my late thirties.  Some of those reasons are too private to get into in a public blog.  One reason, of course, was indeed to make intercourse more comfortable.  But there was another, profoundly personal reason as well that I will share (with my wife’s permission.)

I’ve alluded many times to a past of promiscuity.  While I am not ashamed of who I was or of what I did, when I met the woman who is now my wife and fell in love with her, I began to wish that I could offer her something radically new about me.  And it occurred to me one day that getting circumcised would be something tangible I could do to provide an outer manifestation of my sexual rebirth.   My wife would thus be the only woman with whom I had made love with that particular penis, as it were.   It was not her idea, it was entirely mine.  And that desire to create something wonderfully new, combined with the desire to avoid future trips to the ER, led me to call a urologist in early 2005.

The procedure was done outpatient.  It lasted just over an hour.  The application of the anesthetic stung a bit, but the actual circumcision (done by laser) was absolutely painless.  Dissolving sutures were applied, and I was on my way home.   I was running within two days, and my wife and I were intimate again within four weeks.  There was no loss of sensation or any other complication as a result of this minor, safe, medical procedure.  The physical benefits I had sought were exactly as I hoped, and the spiritual benefits were tremendous as well.  Every time I’m naked, my very flesh reminds me that I am not the man I once was.  I rejoice in that, and haven’t regretted my decision for a single second.

So that’s my story.  Hostile comments about that aspect of this post will be deleted, though you are free to take issue with my other contentions about circumcision. I write as a man who has intimate experience with the "before" and the "after", and whose "after" is physically and spiritually better than his "before."  I write as a pro-feminist angered by the "victim consciousness" of anti-circumcision advocates, who equate a quick, safe, beneficial procedure that rarely produces lasting trauma to an operation performed on girls that produces lasting pain and robs them of the opportunity for sexual delight. To suggest that male circumcision is equivalent to Female Genital Mutilation is like comparing the pain of a vaccinating needle to that of being stabbed by a knife.  It’s deeply offensive and indefensible to do so.

Home sick, day two

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 11, 2006
in Teaching
. 3 Comments

I’m cancelling classes for the second straight day.  I feel drained and weak, and can’t stand for long.  I can sit up just fine, though I’m sneezing and coughing while I do so.  And my voice is shot.

I am postponing my Monday/Wednesday class midterms until October 25; my Humanities class still has its response paper due next week.  I have every expectation that I will be in tomorrow.

Ampersand, male bloggers, selling out: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 10, 2006
in Blogging, Men and Masculinity and Porn
. 26 Comments

I’m feeling a tiny bit better.

Warning: explicit language ahead.

I learned this evening from Lauren (who is working with me to create a new wordpress blog, about which you will all learn soon) about the serious news regarding Barry (Ampersand) and Alas, A Blog.   Amp has been one of the most important voices in the pro-feminist men’s blogging community; indeed, he might well be the best-known male feminist blogger.  (Cuz it sure as heck isn’t me.)  I’ll always be grateful that Amp called in to the Glenn Sacks show when I was a guest in January 2005. (Bored?  Download the free MP3 of that broadcast.)

Anyhow, Violet summarizes what has happened:

I’m just now discovering what some of you may already know: Barry sold his domain to a pornographer, so now his blog is hosted alongside hard-core porn reviews. The deal is that the huge traffic to Alas — feminist traffic, generated by people who have built up that readership over years — drives up the search engine rankings for the pornographer. (Heart has a fuller explanation of the deal.)

Barry didn’t bother to tell any of his readers about this until someone discovered the links and asked him what the fuck was going on. Even now I’m not sure most of his readers are aware of it, since Barry’s explanatory post didn’t allow comments and so rapidly sank to the bottom of the list.

I think this is absolutely vile.

Lauren has more:

Some may think this is small beans, but in a community where sexual politics are so very personal, as well as political, this is an enormous business gaffe of exceeding irony. Of all the things one can do to save a buck, making money off the backs (and mouths and pussies) of women is not one that I encourage for a feminist man.

I do understand that hosting a popular blog is expensive.  I don’t criticize my fellow bloggers who accept advertising or who market shirts, caps, and other blogware.   This (NSFW), however, goes well beyond the acceptable.

Men who blog as pro-feminists are –rightly or wrongly — under a microscope.  Anti-feminists and feminists alike are frequently suspicious of our motives.   Is our feminism a strategy for sexual conquest?  Is it a manifestation of self-loathing?  Are we for real, or are we frauds?  Lauren’s right: in the feminist blogosphere, sexual politics are personal as well as political.  How we live our lives matters.  What we do for money, what we do for pleasure, what we do in private must be congruent with what we profess in public. 

The feminist community is split over the porn issue.  Some of us are hostile to all forms of visual erotica, at least in commercial form; others are more ambivalent; still others of us are enthusiastic proponents of helping women become more active, discerning consumers of pornography. All of us, however, are concerned with the impact that the male-dominated, male-centered commercial sex industry has on our lives.  All of us are concerned with the impact on the women who work in the "industry."  Alas, A Blog was a forum for discussing this very topic.  But it is impossible to see Amp’s blog as "safe ground" for that discussion when it is sponsored and supported by pornographers.

I’ve forsworn the "good feminist", "bad feminist" game.  (See Jill today for more on this aspect of the topic.)    I gave up discussing the whole idea of "feminist credentials" after this debacle.  But I do think that it is important that feminists in general, and pro-feminist men in particular, talk about our communal obligations.   Given that we daily tread on very personal ground, given that we write about our intimate lives and advocate for radical changes in how we and others live those lives, we have a huge responsibility to be clear and honest and gentle with each other.  ("Honest" and "gentle" are not mutually exclusive.)  And quietly selling a prominent feminist blog’s domain name to someone who will use it to drive traffic to porn sites is a hurtful, bewildering, and — until I hear more — frankly inexplicable act.

If what I do for money, or what I do in my marriage, or what I do in my church, or what I do in my classroom doesn’t match my professed beliefs, my friends, family, students, colleagues and readers had better call me on it.  And right now, a lot of us are calling Barry (Amp) on this one.  Barry, you owe your readers a public forum where you can further explain your decision, and offer those who are stunned and hurt an opportunity to express that to you directly.

It’s the right thing to do, and it needs to happen right now.

UPDATE:  Amp has responded swiftly with a new post, further explaining his decision and his regrets.  He has also wisely and bravely opened that thread up to comments.  It was indeed the right thing to do, and I commend him for it.  Thanks to those of my commenters who pointed this out.

Home sick, and a press release on male anger and pain

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 10, 2006
in Men and Masculinity
. 7 Comments

I’ve been fighting a cold since the middle of last week, and have not been doing a good job of taking care of it.  I haven’t been sleeping well, and despite feeling awful, got up at 6:00AM yesterday morning to go to boxing training, taught a full day (including my night class) and threw in an academic senate meeting for good measure.  Naturally, I was waiting at baggage claim when my wife’s plane landed just before midnight last night at LAX.  I was so excited to have her back I managed to push through until we got home to Pasadena a bit before 2:00AM — and then just had a complete collapse.  I got up this morning to get ready for school and lasted all of five minutes before crawling back into bed. 

It’s just past 2 in the afternoon, I’m — briefly — out of bed and feeling somewhat human again.  I’ve had some soup and some tea and am making strange grunting noises as I move about the house.    As I sit at the computer typing, clad only in my Black Watch flannel pajama bottoms (indispensable), I note that I have the most extraordinary bed hair.

In any event, I am not in a mood to post.  Instead, I’ll link to a press release written today by Pat McGann of Men Can Stop Rape.  I’ve trained with Pat and I love his organization.  He writes today in response to the recent school shootings where adult men have targeted young girls, and it’s very powerful.  Here’s part of what Pat writes today:

I knew that after tragic incidents like those named earlier, the media wants to present the public with answers, and it seemed probable that none of the answers would clearly identify traditional masculinity as a culprit. But I didn’t want to just stay on the surface of manhood; I wanted to burrow underneath to get at its muscle and bone. I wanted to write about how men’s pain gets transformed into men’s anger, because it seemed to me that some deep-seated anguish was underlying all the bullets, the ropes, the knives. We men typically aren’t socialized to handle pain in healthy, constructive ways. Instead we’re taught to “suck it up” and “get over it,” which might be useful strategies some of the time but not as everyday practices – especially when it comes to violence.

In many of the violent incidents I was struck by the number of men who committed suicide. At the end of the Pennsylvania and Colorado school shootings both men shot themselves…. And supposedly the Wisconsin shooting took place because the student had been bullied by students and neither teachers nor the principal would act to stop it. In each of these instances, it seems likely to me that some deep-seated, chronic despondency was present and fueled by anger, the likely source of the violence. I don’t mean to suggest that the root cause of men’s violence is always despair and sadness; everyone can probably clearly point to some examples of brutal acts by men that could be traced back to something other than emotional anguish, but to overlook despondency as a possible cause some of the time misses a revolutionary opportunity.

Yes, revolutionary. I’m making what could be construed as an inflated claim, but I don’t think so: men dealing with their pain in responsible, constructive, and healthy ways would make the world shudder and shake, shifting the foundations of our realities. Once the dust settled, we would be in a better place, a less violent place.

Bold emphases are mine.  Read the whole thing.  Pat is one of my heroes in what is loosely called the pro-feminist men’s movement, and as usual, he’s right on the money.   While some men’s rights advocates have also acknowledged that men’s anger led to the recent school shootings, the MRA contention is generally that that anger is righteous and justified, even if the violence that followed was unacceptable.  But the pro-feminist movement’s contention is that anger is never a primary emotion; it is always a secondary response to deep and profound hurt.  And the source of that pain is not cruel women, or an unfair legal system, but the straitjacket of masculinity that allows men little opportunity to feel and to become fully human.

I think I’ll totter back to bed now.

The beloved comes home

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 9, 2006
in Marriage, Relationships and Traveling
. 6 Comments

Calloo callay, o frabjous day, my wife is on her way…

…home.  From all over Europe. To me.  I haven’t seen her since the night of Friday the 29th; it’s the longest we’ve been apart since we started dating.  I’m picking her and her girlfriend up late tonight at the airport, and I can’t wait to see her.  Does absence make the heart grow fonder?   Well, I was pretty damn fond to begin with.  But I’m hella excited now, checking the flight status of her planes with great eagerness.

Older Men, Younger Women #4: a response to Louise

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 9, 2006
in Older Men & Younger Women and Sexuality
. 25 Comments

Carnival of the Feminists #24 is up at F-Words. 

As I wrote in yesterday’s post, I’ve had several e-mails lately from women who find themselves profoundly attracted to older men.  As always, folks google the topic "older men, younger women" and find this post, this post, this post.  I’m going to do a fourth and fifth post on the topic.  This is the fourth.

The first email came from Louise, who wrote:

Logically, everything you said makes absolute perfect sense.  Logically, yes I can recognize that I am (even at 27) a young women "eager for attention and validation from older men” and that it is not him that I really want… "what they (I) really want is to be noticed, to be seen, to be validated as good and worthy and an interesting individual.”  And this man that I’m writing about is indeed much of what you talked about: an older man who respects and cares about me, who isn’t my father or brother but who isn’t a prospective lover, either; in essence “safe” as you put it; never did he make any sort of sexual pass at me or indicate in any way he such a thought ever crossed his mind. 

I admire him for his professional accomplishments, for being respected not only for his expertise but also for his character, for his stress- and time-management skills, for his close-knit family life, for his intelligence, for his discipline, amicable nature, I could go on and on.   I seek his advice often, respect his opinion, and take his praise and encouragement to heart.  He is one of those people I look to for guidance on a number of issues, but also enjoy as a person as well (we talk about current events, trade books, music, etc.)

My dilemma is this: why is it that after everything I’ve told you, and defying all logic, I still have a “school-girl crush” on him?  Why is the line between admiration for “appropriate” reasons and sexual/romantic feelings and fantasies so blurred?  Why do women idealize and idolize older men in this way? Even those that give them no reason to?

Bold emphasis is mine.  That section I’ve highlighted is the crux of the question, as far as I can see.   I’ve spoken elsewhere about the real meaning of crushes on teachers.  But "Louise" is not writing about a teacher, at least not in the formal sense.  What she’s writing about is a profoundly influential cultural narrative: that of the older man who will act as a guide and a mentor as well as a lover.  It’s part of an old, troubling discourse that teaches young women to eroticize knowledge, wisdom, and authority in others rather than developing it within themselves.  In books and movies and popular folklore, young women are often taught that a sexual and romantic relationship with an older man will be a wonderful transaction: she will offer her youth, her sexual desirability, and her love; he will offer wisdom, insight, and guidance as she navigates the tricky waters into adulthood.   It would be hard to deny that that exchange is immensely appealing for some!  Louise describes the line between mentoring and erotic attraction as "blurred", and she’s right to do so.  We live in a culture where an extraordinary variety of forces seek to blur that line!

(In ancient Athens, this "exchange" was a celebrated one. Of course, it was an exchange between two males, where an older man offered wisdom and power and knowledge to a youth who gave his body and his sexual desirability in return.  But the Athenians were wrong about many things, particularly on the subject of women!)

Ultimately, I acknowledge that some age-disparate relationships can be healthy and loving.  As anyone who has been married a long time knows, the terms of the relationship can change.  What was once a relationship characterized by an asymmetric power exchange can, in the best cases, become far more rich and egalitarian over time.  I honor that possibility.

But the fact that some of these "exchanges" "turn out well" doesn’t mitigate the essential problem.  And the essential problem is that the eroticizing of a power imbalance is, I believe, fundamentally unhealthy.  It teaches the lesson that for young women, their sexuality becomes a vehicle not only for their own pleasure but also for accessing those things they feel that they lack in themselves: stability, safety, wisdom.  While sexual experience can be a great teacher, it comes with a high price.  And the price is that it reinforces the notion that for women, it is necessary to offer one’s sexuality in order to get the most desirable of prizes, be they status, wealth, intellectual fulfillment or a deeper understanding of the world.

I say this not to judge the younger women who engage in these age-disparate, transactional love affairs.  My compassion for the older men is less, not because they are men but because they are older.  Eroticizing the teaching experience — in or out of the classroom — is not us at our best!  But there’s no denying that, as Louise and so many others have pointed out, knowing all of this in one’s head doesn’t always mean that the heart and the body will follow.  As Millay said

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn

In the end, Louise, I believe that particularly when we are young, we are often drawn to others who clearly manifest what we want in ourselves. You list the things you admire about this man, and they seem to be the things you long for as well. Perhaps a man like him could give you these things, perhaps not.  But the harder way, the better way, the ultimately more fulfilling way is to learn from this crush that you want him less than the things he represents and embodies.  And once you are clear on what those things are, go out and get ‘em.  On your own. Easier said than done, I know.

Does the libido mature? A musing on desire and ageing in response to Fiona

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 8, 2006
in Older Men & Younger Women, Relationships, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 51 Comments

I am home from a very happy visit with my family in Northern California.  Despite nursing a mild cold, I did get in some good trail running, got plenty of sleep, plenty of time with my family.  I also got to be among the 72,000 in attendance as my beloved Golden Bears won an impressive victory over the Oregon Ducks last night.   It was my first time in Memorial Stadium since 1986, and it was a joy to be back.

I am pleased to find that such an interesting and civil discussion took place beneath this post.  I always worry when I’m not around to edit or delete offensive comments, but it seems to have gone quite well.

Before wrapping up my Sunday quietly, I want to address two comments by Fiona below last week’s post on Mark Foley and working with teens.

First Fiona asked:

Do you ever worry about being sexually attracted to your students or youth group kids? Don’t you ever think you might be tempted to cross the line? You write as if you are immune to temptation. Just because you don’t act on it doesn’t mean you don’t feel it!!

Then in a follow-up:

Do male youth leaders like him (Hugo) behave because they don’t have sexual desire, or do they have sexual desire but just control it? It makes a difference to me as an 18 year-old, and it was something my friend who was in his youth group always wondered.

A couple of other commenters weighed in, but I want to address this immediately.

I know that I tend to write a great deal about the importance of male self-control.  My emphasis on self-discipline, I realize, suggests that I spend a great deal of time "wrestling with temptation."  I’ve often made statements along the lines of "Virtue is not the absence of desire, but restriction in the presence of desire." 

I realize that this is a problematic line to take as a youth leader.  I make it clear that I am trustworthy and safe, but I don’t explain whether it is a struggle to be so.  While Kip (another commenter) advises I don’t answer the questions Fiona asks, I think it is vital to do so.

No, I have never experienced sexual attraction to the kids in my youth group.  It is with considerable confidence (and a sigh of relief) that I can make that statement! Never, ever, have I experienced physiological or emotional arousal as the result of an interaction with a teen who was under my charge.   I don’t know what to attribute this to, but I suspect both chronological maturity and spiritual conviction play a part in this.   At nearly forty, I can say that quite happily it has been years and years since I have experienced strong attraction to someone that young.

One thing I’ve been blessed with: a consistent track record of being attracted to women my own age.  When I was 16, I thought about my fellow teens.  In my college years, I was attracted to other students.   Unlike some of my peers, when I was in college I had little interest in older women (honestly, I found them intimidating beyond words!)  I certainly lost interest in high school-aged girls not long after leaving Carmel High.

I’ve been getting a lot of email lately (again) about my posts on older men, younger women.  (Here, here, here.) I’ve got some points I’ll probably address in another post on the subject soon.  But I realize that my experience as a teacher and a youth leader is not the only factor that makes me so inherently mistrustful of age-disparate relationships.  There’s another factor at work, and that is my own conviction, rooted in my experience, that emotional maturity always means being most strongly attracted to those in one’s own age group.

When I was in college, I remember having a discussion with a male friend of mine.  "Sean" and I were talking about my friend’s father, who had recently left his mother for a younger woman. Sean was understandably disconsolate.  But one thing he said haunted me for a long time.  I’ll paraphrase:

Dad left mom for someone only a couple of years older than us. (We were 20 or so at this time).  I don’t find women my mom’s age sexy at all.  It seems my dad doesn’t either.  What if I get married, get to be my dad’s age, and find out I’m still attracted to girls in their early twenties?  What if my sex drive doesn’t mature along with the rest of me?

Boy, do I remember when Sean asked that question in bold!  I had no answer for him, beyond a feeble "Man, that would suck."  But it frightened me.  All around me I saw evidence of men in their forties and fifties who were strongly attracted to young women in their teens and early twenties.  It wasn’t just a media phenomenon; in my early years of taking women’s studies classes, I heard countless anecdotes from my female classmates about harassment at the hands of much older men.  It made me angry, it made me cynical, but it also terrified me.  Sean was right about me too: when I was 20, I didn’t find women twice my age to be at all sexually attractive.  What if I felt the same way when I too was 40?   For whatever reason, that fear nagged and nagged at me.

But I was blessed.  And I found that my libido evolved along with the rest of me.  As I aged, my interest in my peers remained the same.  Gradually, girls in their teens lost their appeal.  Women in their 30s, and then older, began to become far more interesting.  By the time I was in my early 30s, this maturation in my own psyche was quite clear to me, even as I was going through a series of unsuccessful relationships.  My behavior was neither feminist nor gentlemanly, but even at my worst, it was always age-appropriate.   Today, I can say that my wife’s beauty awes me.  She’s beautiful in her fourth decade of her life, but I have every expectation that I will find her every bit as lovely in her eighth decade on this planet.

Once I began working with teenagers regularly at All Saints (some seven years ago), I found that my emotional response to "my kids" was, not surprisingly, often intensely paternal.  I’ve wanted to be a father for a few years now, and the teenagers with whom I work today are easily old enough to be my biological children.  And while I adore these teens in the specific, I find that those protective, paternal feelings exist for all boys and girls of similar age.  While I can certainly acknowledge the aesthetic beauty/handsomeness of certain teens, juvenile loveliness strikes no chord in me.  This is not merely due to my very happy marriage, but also due to this strong internal sense that sexual desire is rightly directed towards one’s approximate peers.

When I was in my early teens, one of my first celebrity "crushes" was on Kristy McNichol. (Famous for "Little Darlings", but also for a favorite TV show few of you remember, "Family.") Then in high school and college it was on Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Now, if I were to admit to one at all, it would be (as I’ve posted before) on Mariska Hargitay.  All three are just slightly older than I am.   And while I admire Scarlett Johannsson as an actress, hearing her dubbed "the sexiest woman alive" made me laugh out loud with disbelief — not because she isn’t lovely, but because she seems so damned young to me.

I do not mean to suggest that someone who is 39 (as I am) shouldn’t be attracted to someone who is 29 or 49.  But those ages seem to me — and this may be my own peculiarity — the outer limits of acceptability.   Anything beyond ten years either direction seems, well, odd.  Please understand that I acknowledge that age-disparate relationships can work, as long as the younger partner is genuinely emotionally mature.  A relationship between a 35 year-old and a 15 year-old is immoral, criminal, and indefensible; a relationship between a 55 year-old and a 35 year-old is none of those things. 

Still, I admit that I am perplexed by those who find such disparities to be erotically or emotionally exciting.  For me, the truth is simple: since I hit puberty, I have never experienced sexual attraction to someone old enough to be my mother or young enough to be my daughter.  And I acknowledge that one reason why I am often so hard on men who do experience that attraction to much younger women is because I can’t empathize with it, not even for a moment.   I try and "get it", and I just can’t.  It makes me instinctively angry, both on behalf of the girls who are all too often horrified by inappropriate sexual attention and on behalf of those "older" women who are forced to worry obsessively about losing their sex appeal as a consequence.

I began this post intending to make an emphatic response to the awkward but important question that Fiona posed.  I realize I’ve gone off on quite a tangent, and for that I apologize.  But as I started to write, I thought about what Sean had asked all those years ago.  I don’t know whether or not his life has turned out as mine has.   For his sake, and the sake of the women who love him, I hope it has. 

It is possible that my experience that the objects of my desire age as I age is just a quirk of my personality.  It certainly hasn’t been the result of any conscious effort on my part (and my regular readers know I am quick to sing the praises of conscious effort!).  But I can’t help but think that "my way" is the fundamentally healthier way.  It just seems to me that a great deal of heartache and exploitation could be avoided if we could all just match our libidos to our approximate peer group!  Or am I wrong?