Archive for November, 2006

The apparent apostasy of Peter Singer, and a note on my father’s cancer and animal rights

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2006
in Animal Rights
. 100 Comments

The animal rights community is processing the rather stunning news that Peter Singer, the renowned Princeton bioethicist, has pulled a remarkable about face and offered an endorsement of limited use of animal experimentation:

Singer… is quoted, on camera, backing the research of Tipu Aziz at Oxford University, in which cruel experiments on monkeys are carried out to develop surgery for Parkinson’s’. Mr Singer admits on “Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing”, which will be screened on BBC2 tomorrow, “It is clear at least some animal research does have benefits.” He goes on to say “I would certainly not say that no animal research could be justified and the case you have given sounds like one that is justified.”

The National Review, hardly an organ sympathetic to vulnerable creatures (with the possible exception of unborn humans) is gleeful at the possibility that Singer’s stunning change of heart could lead to a fracturing in the broader animal rights world. The Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group for the tobacco and factory farming industries, is similarly ecstatic.

Peter Singer is an enormously important figure; his 1975 treatise, simply entitled Animal Liberation, more or less established an entire movement. He’s an ethicist and a philosopher, but he’s also — like many good teachers — a provocateur, prone to the outrageous statement designed to stimulate discussion. His remarks to the BBC this week, remarks that seemingly undercut the work of the entire anti-vivisection, animal rights community, need to be understood in that context.

After my father died of cancer in June, I inherited a little bit of money. Among the things my wife and I decided to do with a percentage of that money is give to charities in his name. We gave to the non-profit hospice that cared so well for him, and we gave to a variety of conventional animal charities. (He loved animals very much; in the last days of his life, he wept at the loss of our beautiful chin Matilde, who had adored him.) We gave also to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the leading group in this country advocating for veganism and protection for all living things. PCRM doesn’t deny that there may be some benefits to animal research, but it denies that animal research is necessary for the discovery of cures; it further insists that no cure is worth the suffering inflicted on innocent research subjects who have not volunteered. That is a conviction I share. My wife and will not give money to medical foundations or to university programs unless we are absolutely certain that animals are not used for experiments. This has changed our giving pattern considerably.

I loved my father so very much. As we head towards Christmas, I can feel the grief at his passing flowering within me. I wanted my Dad to beat his cancer. I wanted him to live and recover, and I am still heartbroken that he didn’t. But I would not — not for a second — have supported animal research that could have saved his life. I hate cancer for what it did to our family; I hate cancer for robbing my future children of a relationship with their grandfather. But my hatred for cancer is trumped by my love for animals, for the rats and the monkeys and the dogs that share equally in the gift of creation and for which we humans are responsible. I will not support cancer research involving animals, and though the breakthroughs that have already come ought not be discarded, I am not willing to cause pain or death to any creature so that other families will not go through what my family went through this spring. I am not heartless or quixotic — I am honoring a commitment to creation, one that has led me to veganism, one that has reshaped how I spend my money, one that has transformed how I think about life itself.

I honor Peter Singer for what he has given to the cause of animal rights. If his off-the-cuff remark on television this week reflected a change in his views, then I am sorry for it. But the movement he did so much to create is not backing down, is not going away, and will continue to spread the good news of a plant-based diet and a cruelty-free lifestyle to all. And they are gonna get the lion’s share of my charitable giving.-

The first task for pro-feminist men: self-transformation

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2006
in Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 9 Comments

Miss Ginger at Diary of a Freak Magnet will be hosting the next “Carnival of the Feminists” on December 6; please consider offering a submission.

One of Ginger’s suggested topics is what she calls the “Y Factor” — the role of men in the feminist movement. Few topics are nearer and dearer to my heart, so I’ll see if I can’t oblige again.

Once Lauren and I get some 1200 old posts categorized, I’m sure I’ll have quite a few that fit both into the “men and masculinity” and “feminism” rubrics. But there’s always room for more. Blogging is, I suppose, a bit like teaching: one returns to the same material, again and again, trusting that many will be hearing it or reading it for the first time.

There are few questions that I get asked more often than “What do you think the role for men in the feminist movement ought to be?” Relatively few men teach women’s studies courses at any level in higher ed, and those of us who do are rightly scrutinized. Folks want to know why we do what we do. Some just want to psychoanalyze the “strange beast” of the male feminist, while others are genuinely interested in discovering if we have something important and unique to contribute.

Someone — perhaps Jeff of Feminist Allies, since I’m fond of volunteering others — ought to organize a thread for pro-feminist men in which we tell the stories of how we became interested in doing this work. Some of us were raised by feminist mothers (and fathers!); others came to it through friends in high school or college; others were inspired by teachers or activists. I don’t know if anyone’s put together a compendium of “male feminist stories”, but they ought to. Someone might even come up with a book proposal out of it.

Speaking only for myself, the key foundation of what it means to be a male feminist goes beyond an ideological belief that eradicating sexism in the world is a good idea. The sine qua non of pro-feminism ought to be the commitment to match one’s language to one’s life. It’s one thing to give intellectual assent to a series of political positions (”sexism is bad”; “women should be paid the same as men”; “abortion should be legal”.) It’s another thing altogether to examine one’s own attitudes and behavior, ruthlessly determined to overcome one’s own sexist impulses and behaviors. Any man who publicly identifies as a feminist risks scorn from non-feminists, and justifiable suspicion from many women in the movement. A feminist man establishes his bona fides over time, and he establishes them less through his political work than through his commitment to personal transformation.

Radical feminists (in the authentic sense of the phrase) are always wary of the rhetoric of “bourgeous navel-gazing.” (And jeez Louise, am I a bourgeois navel-gazer, par excellence!) But let me be clear: I don’t see men’s personal transformation from sexist jerks into models of self-restraint, compassion, and kindness as the final goal of male feminism. Personal transformation is an ongoing process, after all; it is not an instant event. But the end result of the process is not just a “nice guy” or an “enlightened man”, but someone who is active in the struggle for global and local change.
I am convinced that our efficacy as “change-makers” is contingent upon our character. Despite what some folks see as a vaguely Puritanical streak in my writing, I’m not suggesting constant self-criticism that would make a Maoist (or an Inquisition confessor) proud. I’m advocating a commitment to exploring ways in which our goals and our practices can converge. I’m advocating a life that sees congruence between private and public acts as among the highest of virtues. I’m advocating tremendous patience with those who still struggle to reconcile their beliefs and their behaviors, and great sympathy for those who fall short of the mark time and again.

Once we’ve walked a bit down this road, we can start to become effective members of a larger feminist community. We can start leading by public example, exhorting and encouraging and challenging both women and men, but especially our fellow men. We live in a world where men are still given greater respect in many walks of life; we live in a world where our voices are more likely to be heard, at least in certain quarters — we can both lament that unearned privilege and take advantage of it for the cause.

Thursday Short Poem: Merwin’s “Vixen”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2006
in Poetry
. 2 Comments

This was the first Thursday Short Poem I ever posted, way back in July 2004. It’s coming up again because it was my favorite poem in my very late twenties, early thirties; recently, I’ve been putting up poems that resonated with key periods of my life. (This from adolescence, this from childhood.)

I love W.S. Merwin; he’s surely among our greatest living poets. His 1996 “Vixen” collection, based on his years living in a rural French farming community, sees him at the peak of his awesome powers. With little regard for punctuation, Merwin’s work is best understood when read aloud.

When I originally posted the poem, I wrote The first time I read it, I was standing in the Earthling Bookstore in Santa Barbara in June 1996, and I burst into tears right there. I read it aloud, softly to myself, over and over again, until the page was wet and I had to buy the book.

Vixen

Comet of stillness princess of what is over
high note held without trembling without voice without sound
aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets
of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences
never caught in words warden of where the river went
touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished
window onto the hidden place and the other time
at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting
in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born
you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me
you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you
even now you are unharmed even now perfect
as you have always been now when your light paws are running on
the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you
when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and contradictions
that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications
as long as it lasted until something that we were
had ended when you are no longer anything
let me catch sight of you again going over the wall
and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures
guttering on a screen let my words find their own
places in the silence after the animals

This bit is so perfect, I memorized it and recite it to myself on long runs:

when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and contradictions
that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications…

Vincent Lugo (”Monster”) park

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2006
in Politics and Stuff
. 1 Comment

For those of you who live in or near San Gabriel, there’s a battle going on to save “Monster Park” (Vincent Lugo Park) and its valuable playground. My colleague and office mate, Eloy Zarate, has a website up that explains a bit more about what’s at stake. He and his wife Senya have also got an online petition going; it will eventually be presented to the city council. In the interests of local historic preservation, sign on.

“I really like big guys”: culture, desire, and the awkward position of pro-feminist men

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2006
in Body, Feminism, Men's Movement, Relationships and Sexuality
. 107 Comments

I was talking to a female friend of mine yesterday; she’s just started dating a new fella, and the budding relationship appears promising. My friend is about 5′8″, and her new boyfriend is 6′5″. I knew her last boyfriend, who was her height — and so, as we chatted, I asked her if the height differential in this current relationship made a difference.

“Yes, I suppose it really does”, she said. “Being with a man so much taller and bigger makes me feel smaller, more feminine. Being in his arms feels wonderful because I feel the difference between us so much more than with Jack (her ex).”

My friend, who knows I teach feminism, asked “Do you think that makes me less of a feminist, wanting a man who can wrap me up and make me feel so feminine and protected?”

Almost from the start of 2006, the broad feminist blogosphere has been engaged in an intense period of self-criticism, culminating in October’s infamous “waxing wars.” I have no interest in reviving a lot of talk about feminist credentials. But my friend’s sense of delight in the size differential between her and her new guy — and her mild discomfort at what that delight might symbolize — is worth a post.

Of course, y’all know I’m going to share the inevitable personal anecdote. In college, I had a huge crush on a gal who lived in the same co-op as I did. She was my height (6′1″) and a broad-shouldered swimmer who had started her college career on an athletic scholarship but who had tired of the intensity of the competition. She was the consummate jock, and if I could be said to have a “type”, it was always the very athletic, tomboyish women. “Lisa” and I tried a romantic relationship, but it ended quickly; my interest in being more than friends exceeeded hers.

Lisa told me, even before we started dating, that she had doubts about our chances together: “I really like big guys”, she said; “I’m a tall strong girl and I like being with a man who makes me feel petite and feminine.” She liked dating tall linemen, and I was going through one of my “skinny stages”. I was already taking women’s studies classes at that point, and in order to make my case, I quite shamelessly used what I thought were sincere feminist tactics, saying something like:

“Lisa, you only want a stronger, bigger man, because you’ve been brainwashed by a sexist culture. You’ve been taught to be uncomfortable with yourself as a tall athletic woman, and so you want to be with an even bigger guy who can make you feel more traditional. You’re surrendering to the patriarchy!”

There might have been one or two grains of truth in what I was saying, but it was evident to both of us that my exhortation was colored less by a commitment to feminist principle and more by naked self-interest. And I had no reply when Lisa told me off, saying (and this I remember more vividly than my own words):

“Don’t be an asshole and assume that what I want stems from my oppression as a woman. If you were a real feminist man you would never try and channel my feelings and desires to serve your needs, and you’d never try and use feminism to guilt me into being with you.”

That was an uncomfortable “aha” moment, and it taught me an enduring lesson. Few things are more indefensible and pathetic than a self-proclaimed male feminist using the rhetoric of gender justice to try and “get” a woman to be attracted to him. Been there, did that, grew out of it.

Of course, this argument is really raising a very old question: to what extent are our romantic and sexual desires shaped by cultural and familial expectations, and to what extent are they genuinely organic, original, and unique to our “truest self”? (Yes, philosophers, I know, we can’t even be sure we have a “truest self” independent of outside influence!) I’ve raised this question before, writing about men, women, homosociality, and weight. There, I took men to task for being overly concerned with how the weight gain of their female partners would reflect upon their status as men.

So is wanting a “big strong man who will make me feel delicate and feminine” something feminists ought to try and talk women out of? Can we presume to distinguish between a woman whose innate sexuality gets turned on by “big guys” and a woman who likes being with bigger men because she’s uncomfortable with her own size, and longs to feel smaller? Can we insist that women’s erotic desires be shaped and informed by their feminism — and thus work in conjunction with their ideals, not in opposition to them?

Here’s where I drive many of my male critics in the men’s rights movement nuts. When I write about male heterosexual desire, I am adamant that it can be channeled. When discussing what men want, I am quite comfortable — because I am a man — in suggesting that men can master and redirect their libidos. I post a lot about older men and younger women in this regard, and regularly make the case that one key thing men can do is match their desires to an age-appropriate partner. I’ve also made a case against porn, and against male fat-phobia. But I am not willing to make the same demands on women.

Is it because I think women ought to be held to a lesser standard? Of course not. But I’m a great believer in the notion that men ought to hold other men accountable. When men do try and hold women accountable, even in the name of feminism, it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish a righteous motive from a self-serving one. Too many women have been told too often what to do by too many men. Women’s transformation and accountability needs to take place in community with other women, not at male behest. Do I think that women ought to think critically about the ways in which our culture shapes their erotic drives, particularly when it encourages pleasure in submission and a sense of “being small”? You betcha. Am I troubled that we live in a world where so many women are taught to find particular pleasure in being overpowered, overwhelmed, “swept off their feet”? Of course. It may be my place as a teacher to raise uncomfortable questions, but that’s as far as I ought to go.

Explicit judgment and direction are things I choose to reserve for the men in my life, not because I am filled with self-loathing or dislike masculinity, but because I believe in the importance of same-gender accountability. And, most of all, I am leery of having any man — no matter how well versed in feminist rhetoric and praxis — telling a woman what she “ought” to want. Lord knows, I spent years wishing that more women would eroticize cross-country runners instead of football players! It’s damned hard for any man to ever escape the charge of blatant self-interest when this topic comes up, and though it’s been nearly twenty years, Lisa the swimmer’s cutting words still echo in my brain.

Uncomfortably numb

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness and Body
. 7 Comments

Feministing links to this article about female cyclists and loss of genital sensation. It jives with what I’ve heard from some women I know who ride regularly. The study also found, I was delighted to read, that no such problem occurred in a control group of women runners.

I cycle rarely these days. I enjoy the bike, but it doesn’t give me the same high, the same rush, as running. The article above suggests that many women might be well-advised to consider reducing saddle time, or at least invest in extra padding in the shorts. (Too many folks, both male and female, ride without sufficient padding in the right places.)

Matilde Mission Update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2006
in Chinchillas
. 2 Comments

All six of our chinchillas are doing very well at home. There’s a lot of cleaning and monitoring involved in having six chinchillas, but it’s more than worth it. I will get around to pictures eventually, but time is not on my side these days.

As many readers know, my wife and I started a charitable foundation to support chinchilla rescue: The Matilde Mission, named for our beloved girl whom we lost in June. Our first fundraising campaign at the beginning of 2006 did fairly well, and we can report that the money raised has gone to good use.

Our project coordinators, Adam and Sally Blacke, saved 16 chins from a pelter in Michigan last month. Some were in poor condition, and the Mission has absorbed the cost of medical care as well as housing and food for these sweet ranchies. Read the update here. Ranch chinchillas who live with pelters live in tiny cages, without toys or wheels or ledges or shelters. It takes a while to acclimate the little ones to their new, safe, infinitely more fun lives.

Our hearts belong to Flipper, who was named for the broken wrist he came with from the pelter. The Matilde Mission saw to his medical care, and he’s recuperating well. Here’s a picture.

Folks, I imagine that chinchilla rescue doesn’t rank high on your list of charitable causes. Yet in a world filled with unnecessary human and animal suffering, anything we do to alleviate pain and provide joy and comfort to our fellow creatures is God’s work. The Matilde Mission is a 501(c)3 tax-deductible charity, and we welcome your donations — from $5 to $250 — through our safe and secure network.

“Narratives of suffering overcome”: admissions essays and a lamentable trend

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 27, 2006
in Ethnicity, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 37 Comments

It’s a frantic week around these parts. The deadline for applications to all University of California campuses is November 30, and I have a great many students who are desperately finishing up their personal essays. UC doesn’t ask for letters of recommendation or examples of scholarly papers; the only thing they want — besides grades and test scores — are a series of personal essays.

It’s been a decade since California did away with affirmative action by passing Proposition 209. Race can no longer be considered as a factor in admissions to public universities, a change that seems to have led to declining black and Latino enrollment at the most prestigious schools (Berkeley and UCLA). What the end of affirmative action has meant, of course, is a huge rise in the significance of the personal essay. While a student’s ethnicity is no longer automatically factored into an admissions decision, a student is free to mention their racial background in their essay. And judging from the large number of essays I see (I am often asked to help craft admissions essays), an exceptional number of my students do just that. The hope, apparently, is to make a legal, oblique appeal to “diversity.”

This is not a post about the wisdom or merits of affirmative action. But count me among those who has always considered class to be as important as race; I’m a fourth-generation Cal grad from an educated, prosperous family. I’m also white. Obviously, I didn’t need or deserve any affirmative action from the state; my culture and my class had already bequeathed to me more than I deserved. But I went to school with a kid whose parents were Spanish — pure Castillian — and wealthy as could be. He shamelessly (and accurately) checked the “Hispanic” box back in the affirmative action days; I also went to school with poor whites from the Central Valley. Descendants of “Okies” and “Arkies”, they shared my skin color but not much else. Race is often linked to class, but not inextricably.

In any event, I digress. My point is that far too many of my students insist on writing essays that I can only describe as “narratives of suffering.” About half of all the essays I see are blatant appeals for sympathy, usually based on a constellation of socio-economic, racial, and historical factors. Some of these essays are poorly written, but many are actually quite good. They all follow the same game plan: tell the reader about all the obstacles you’ve overcome. If your parents are immigrants, mention it. If one of your parents drinks, or is in prison, don’t hide it — wallow in it! If you moved around a lot, if you grew up surrounded by drugs or violence –share, share, share! It’s the modern version of the apocryphal story about “walking fourteen miles every day to school, in the snow, uphill both ways.” It’s shameless, it’s vulgar, it’s repetitive, it’s tiresome,and it seems to work.

I’ve been in the teaching game long enough to notice that these “narratives of suffering endured and transcended” have gotten much more common in recent years. I did notice a sharp uptick after the end of affirmative action in 1996, but it would be wrong to suggest that only ethnic minority students employ this technique today. Even the relatively small number of my students who come from what might be thought of as “privileged” backgrounds (white, middle-class families where college education is a multi-generational norm) have fallen prey to the seductions of competing in the “suffering Olympics.” If one’s family wasn’t disadvantaged economically, perhaps an inspiring tale of battling anorexia will suffice. (Indeed, the “let me tell you all about how I overcame my eating disorder strategy” is one I’ve now seen three times in the last few years. It suggests a trend.)

I can’t remember much about what I wrote in my college essays when I was a high school senior twenty-two years ago. (I applied to just two schools: Cal and Vassar.) I think I wrote mostly about my love of history. They weren’t very interesting essays, but I remember being told that the point was to convince an admissions committee that I could write well and that I had a certain amount of intellectual ambition. And though I was hardly underprivileged, I was a chubby, clumsy, unpopular teen who grew up as a child of divorce. By the time I was a senior in high school, my problems with alcohol and depression were already emerging. I am sure that had I wanted to, I could have crafted a serviceable sob story, demonstrating both my facility with the English language and my capacity to transcend my own special and important misfortunes.

So, my beloved students, I’ll be happy to read your essays before you pop them in the mail this Thursday. I want you to do well, and I hope you get in to the school of your choice. Write whatever you (and your counselor, who probably knows the admissions committees better than I) think best. But if you want my two cents, talk about your accomplishments, your goals, and your dreams outside of the context of your own narrative of disadvantage and oppression. I’m all for sharing stories, mind you! But when appealing for admission to a selective university, consider that constructing a narrative that is obviously designed to elicit sympathy is, well, pretty poor show.

A note on Diana and “The Queen”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 27, 2006
in Memories, Movies and People
. 11 Comments

It’s a rainy morning here in Pasadena, I’m behind on a great deal of paperwork (anyone who has been in my cramped, messy office can understand why), and I’m adjusting to posting here at the new blog.

I’m way behind on my emails. My wife and I were away with my family in Northern California for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I didn’t check my inbox until yesterday afternoon. It will be a while before I get back to everyone who’s written. Thanks for understanding.

I promise a more serious post later today — about race, class, affirmative action, and student essays for college admission — but for now, a note about the film The Queen. We saw it last night and loved it; Helen Mirren was marvelous, of course, but Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair nearly stole the picture. Sheen bears only a slight resemblance to the PM, but he nailed his mannerisms and the inflections in his voice, particularly when stirred up or excited. It’s a marvelous picture. It’s at movies like this that I remember that one of the gifts my late father gave his children was the right to a British passport. My brother, alone among the four of us, chooses to make his home in England, but the rest of us feel at least some attachment to the nation that gave my father’s family refuge in the darkest days of the 1930s. I am Her Majesty’s subject, and have the documents to prove it.

The film, of course, deals with the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death in the late summer of 1997. As luck would have it, I flew into Manchester Airport on the very day Diana died — Sunday, August 31. I was traveling to a medieval history conference at Durham University, and had to drive the several hundred miles from Manchester to Durham in the pouring rain. It was my first experience of driving on the “wrong side” of the road, and to do so in a downpour, jet-lagged, while listening to the BBC coverage of the terrible accident and its aftermath was positively surreal. It was an amazing thing that my life didn’t also end on the same day that Diana’s did!

I was 14 when Diana and Charles married; six years younger than the Princess, I had an almost obligatory crush on her from the time their engagement was announced in February 1981. I was exactly the right age to be mesmerized by her. I followed her story for years and years, and like many, was saddened by the divorce. (The separation from Charles came in the Queen’s annus horribilis of 1992, the same year my first wife and I split up.) And I can say without question that if the 9/11 terrorist attacks are the single most shocking event of my lifetime, Diana’s death in that Paris tunnel ranks a close second. No shuttle explosion, no assassination attempt, no earthquake — no other historic happening is as vivid in my memory as those stunning days in 1997.

I signed two condolence books: one in Durham, and one in Carlisle. In one day, after the conference let out, I drove all over the north of England, seeing everything from the Lake District to Hadrian’s Wall to Fountains Abbey to York. I gave a paper at the conference (it ended up being published here), but I barely remember what the damn thing was about. That week was about Diana and the extraordinary reaction to her death.

…and in with the new blog.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2006
in Blogging
. 18 Comments

Welcome to hugoschwyzer.net! After nearly three years with Typepad, I had longed to leave behind the “Movable Type” format and join the cool kids who use WordPress. It’ll take me a while to become familar with the format, so things may be wonky here for a week or two.

I was tired of the old “hugoboy” URL; getting a proprietary and eponymous site seems more professional, particularly as I aim to increase my readership. I was also eager to offer the best new feature of this blog: categories! Scroll down on the right, and you can easily find a wide variety of topics from which to choose. I got several complaints that it was difficult to find things in my archives; this should make it much easier. The categorization process is not complete, but should be finished in the next couple of weeks.

The look and design of this blog is entirely thanks to Lauren, formally of Feministe and now of Faux Real, Tho! Lauren moved all of the archives from Typepad over here, and has also handled the exhausting work of categorizing 33 months of old posts. I’ve been a verbose old boy, and she’s done an extraordinary job of imposing organization on chaos. Anyone needing a “blog-redo” would be well advised to seek out Lauren.

Vanity posting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2006
in Body and Vanity
. 8 Comments

I’m home from the gym and a quick nine-miler in the hills around the Rose Bowl.  I’m happy to report my body has now adjusted to the vegan diet quite well; I’m grateful for all the wonderful recipes that a number of folks e-mailed me.  Thank you!

I’m supplementing my diet with Vega, and it’s really helping. I’m eating the bars and drinking the meal replacement stuff, and it gives me the energy I need.  My weight has stabilized in the high 160s (I’m guessing, because I’m sticking to my commitment not to weigh myself).  That’s the lowest it’s been in years, and fifteen pounds below where I was when my father died.   I’m still taking in the occasional non-vegan thing or two; I had some ice cream the other day and I had a few bites of a veggie lasagna last night at youth group.  I’m not interested in being fanatical about avoiding all animal products when I’m out; I’m "vegan in the house, vegetarian in public", and that works for now.

Boxing is good.  We’ve been doing tons of plyometrics lately. Plyometrics build power and explosiveness, and I can certainly use both.  It’s a great supplement to my marathoning.  All my long runs build lots of slow-twitch muscles; it’s nice to work on building up some speed and power.  And if I keep doing enough squats, I might rebuild my now nearly non-existent backside.  Still, it’s nice to have a much better body at 39 than I did at 19 or 29.   How long I’ll keep it, I have no idea.

One long-term goal of mine: I want to help develop low or no-cost work-out programs to offer to working adults, stressed college students, etcetera.   Really long-term goal: open a summer camp for teens — and adults.  Teach fitness, teach basic life skills, spirituality, the whole thing.  I’m just putting it out there… give me a few years, let me write a book or two, raise some chinchillas and human children, and raise the funds. 

In the meantime, plenty of work to do.

Another long post about pleasure, feminism, food, and sex

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2006
in Body, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Feminism, Food and Sexuality
. 15 Comments

In recent years, as I continue to fiddle with my women’s studies syllabus, I’ve moved away from emphasizing certain themes and towards others.  One theme that has become more and more important to me: tracing the cultural history of women’s shame in America, particularly in regards to sexual pleasure, food, and other "selfish" desires.

I’ve emphasized this many times before, but my students are, overwhelmingly, non-white.  They are, overwhelmingly, first-generation college students.  And in my women’s studies class, overwhelmingly female.  But whether they are black, Latina, Asian, Armenian, they’ve almost all been raised with one enormously important — and colossally destructive — discourse: pleasure comes with penalties.

I tend to focus on the close relationship between attitudes towards eating and attitudes towards sex, largely because they seem so often to be inextricably linked.  The pleasure of food is our first pleasure; when we were tiny infants, it was what we screamed for and it was gave us comfort and delight.  Long after many of our other appetites may have faded, we will still take pleasure in what we eat.  (I’ve spent a lot of time with the elderly; my experience has been that in nursing homes, the subject of lunch tends to dominate conversations.)  Throughout our lives, in groups or alone, eating has the potential to be one of our greatest physical delights.

And we do not live in a world where women are permitted to eat to satiety without a considerable degree of shaming.  While their brothers are often encouraged to eat to excess, the majority of my female students grew up with a sense that they had to monitor what and how much they ate.  Many were first introduced to the idea that "pleasure has penalties" by mothers who warned them, as they moved into puberty, "don’t eat so much or you’ll get fat."  Others grew up with parents who were happy to have them eat all they liked, but as they transitioned into puberty, found themselves under the crushing influence of the broader culture, which idealizes a female body type at odds with healthy, indulgent eating. 

Bottom line: few students get to college without a considerable amount of shame surrounding their eating.  Most, if not all, have incorporated specifically moral language to refer to their food habits.  When I ask them "What does it mean when you hear a friend say ‘I’ve been good today’", all of them know that that refers to a particularly successful period of restriction.  When another friend says "I was so bad at lunch today", that never refers to skipping out on a restaurant bill; it’s always a reference to prioritizing pleasure over self-denial.  And as a feminist, few things make me sadder than to see so many of my students caught in that trap of oscillating between self-denial and indulgence, between bouts of puritanical pride in their own restriction and crushing guilt for giving into the basic desire to be sweetly, pleasurably, full.

I always connect this struggle around food to sexuality.  Just as my students vary in their eating habits, they vary widely in their sexual mores.  I’ve posted before about just how diverse they can be; I’ve had porn stars sitting alongside those who insist that kissing before marriage is a sin.   But if I can make some generalizations, I can say with confidence that most have been raised to view women as "gatekeepers" who must carefully guard their bodies against lustful, predatory, men. Too many have grown up with a sense that lust is a one-way street in which women are objects but rarely subjects.  Many were taught by their mothers how to be pleasing  and desirable; they were taught how to attract men while at the same time keeping them at bay.  For far too many, male sexual desire is a tool to be used with great care.  But few were raised with any sense of their own sexual agency (at least in the service of their own pleasure.) During a discussion a few semesters ago about the "discovery of the clitoris" by the male-dominated medical profession, one bold young woman said frankly:

"I’d sooner admit to sleeping with dozens of guys than admit that I masturbate.  Bringing pleasure to men is always easier to cop to than bringing pleasure to yourself.  It’s almost like masturbating for yourself makes you more of a slut — it’s like you can’t control your own desires, and that’s bad." 

While some students vigorously disagreed, it was clear that that comment had struck a familiar chord with many of the young women in the room.  (Nota bene: I do NOT ask students to disclose details of their private sexual lives to me or the class; I do, however, try and create a safe environment where those who wish to take such risks can do so.) 

Many of my students seem to have a sense of their own sexuality that reminds me of many folks with eating disorders whom I have known.  I’ve known quite a few women who regularly starved themselves.  And yet, rather than avoid food altogether, they became marvelous cooks.  I once dated a woman (briefly) who wanted to cook for me every weekend.  She made full-course fattening meals; she spent hours in the kitchen.  And she ate virtually nothing.  It became incredibly uncomfortable for me to eat in front of her, as she watched me with tremendous interest, constantly asking if I wanted more.  Obviously, she took some vicarious pleasure in watching someone else eat, but she clearly also had a perverse sense of personal agency.  For this woman, pleasure consisted solely in the capacity to bring pleasure to another.  She had no ability to enjoy food for herself; her delight was entirely contingent upon mine.  It was absolutely awful.

I’ve told that anecdote to a few of my classes, and seen many nods of recognition.  And it seems evident to me that for far too many young women, that attitude of "contingent pleasure" seems to carry over from the kitchen to the bedroom.  Even in our hypersexualized culture, most of my female students are taught more about how to provide pleasure to another than to experience it for themselves.  The agency that they are permitted is the agency that comes with mastering the male ego and the male body, learning how to flirt, learning how to seduce, learning how to bring delight and pleasure. They see porn everywhere, but rarely do they see a storyline written for them, one in which their own ecstasy is central rather than something feigned to soothe male anxiety.

I don’t tell my students that they must masturbate without concomitant shame in order to be good feminists.  I don’t tell them they need to eat cheesecake without guilt  in order to be liberated.  It’s not the place of a feminist professor (particularly a male one) to prescribe specific steps for  transformation and growth in such profoundly personal arenas as sexuality and food.  But at the same time, I am clear that there are few areas of life where it is more important to live out our egalitarian values than eating and sex.  I am not advocating uncontrolled gluttony or destructive promiscuity. I am advocating an ethic that respects women’s pleasure as an a priori good. I am not advocating selfishness.  (Heck, I’m a monogamous vegetarian; I understand the importance of balancing one’s own desires with one’s commitments to others.)  I am challenging my students to see physical joy as their human birthright. 

Though not all of my students are yet sexually active, all of them are "food active."   They’ve been eating for as long as they can remember, and will do so for the rest of their lives.   Part of beginning a feminist journey is making a commitment not merely to self-indulgence, but to the principle that all human beings are entitled to seek out pleasure.  It’s one thing to say those words aloud, another to live them out.  And since feminism is never merely about transforming the self for the self alone, it’s vital that men and women commit themselves to being advocates for shame-free pleasure in the lives of their friends and family.  Though our understanding of when and how we seek pleasure may be informed by our own spiritual beliefs, and though we ought never seek pleasure at the expense of another’s happiness, we can still boldly, loudly, and continually proclaim the God-given right to delight in our bodies.   

Creation, in all of its messiness, is a good thing.

Thursday Short Poem: Hearle’s “Politics of Memory”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2006
in Poetry
. 4 Comments

This fine Kevin Hearle poem makes this sixth-generation Californio smile in recognition, and wince at our state’s particular propensity for (literally and metaphorically) paving over the past.

The Politics of Memory

I was born in a state
where everything had to be named twice
to survive:
where Hangtown became Placerville,
where La Brea couldn’t hold its bones
in Spanish, but had to be redundant
and  bi-lingual —
The La Brea Tar Pits,
redundant, like the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
in name only;

a state so arid in parts
that what has been forgotten
is blown to dust
in the wind across the alkali flats;
a state where you change the name
and all is forgiven:
where Gospel Swamp
loses both its muck and its religion
to emerge the model suburb

Fountain Valley forgives the swamp,
but what of Manzanar?
In a state where everything
has to be named twice
or be forgotten,
who will remember Manzanar
(a place in exile
from the maps)? The detention camp is closed,
but I was born in this state
and, for now, I know the name.

A quick note about being outside the feminist mainstream

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 15, 2006
in Feminism and Teaching
. 15 Comments

A former student I like very much came to see me yesterday.  She’s a woman studies major at UCLA now, and she and I chatted about her work at length.  She told me she had picked her major after taking my women’s history course, and she said some very complimentary things about the impact of the course on her life.

And she also said this:  "Dr. Schwyzer, you were one of the first people (and definitely the first man) I ever met to call himself a feminist.  And now that I’m taking all of these other courses and applying for grad school as a feminist scholar, it’s funny, but I realize how far outside of the feminist mainstream you are.  I’m not sure I would call you a feminist now, but you’re the reason I became one."

Talk about your back-handed compliments!  She said this as she was leaving, and there was no chance to follow up, alas.  I know that for a variety of reasons (my sex being the least of them), I’m not in the mainstream of contemporary feminist thought, but still…

CT, you know who you are, e-mail me and explain! 

A radio interview, chin update, and a confession of love for Bobby Knight

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 15, 2006
in Chinchillas, Men and Masculinity, Ratemyprofessors, Sports and Youth
. 14 Comments

Yesterday at lunch time, I trundled over to the KPCC radio studio here on campus to do an interview with NPR.  They’re doing a story on Ratemyprofessors, and they got my name from this InsideHigherEd article.  The piece will eventually air on either Morning Edition or All Things Considered, but probably not for a week or two.  If I get more details on when it’ll be on, I’ll post them.  I really, really like radio.  I make no secret of my own desire to have a part-time gig as a talk-show host.

Our six chinchillas are well and happy.  I’ve opened up a new "Flickr" account, and now must simply edit and upload the many photos we’ve taken of Chihiro, Ninotchka, Gabriella, Joonko, Dudley, and Racheli.   They have captured the hearts of the team of workmen who are redoing our air-conditioning system at home.   Tony, the owner of the company installing the new ducts and compressor/condenser thing, said "I’m amazed that people are willing to spend so much for these little guys."  He’s considering a chinchilla for his kids; we figure that an AC repair guy is the right man to adopt one.  He’ll know how to keep these intensely heat-sensitive animals nice and cool.

And I have an odd confession to make: though it may seem strange for a liberal evangelical metrosexual college gender studies professor to say so, I am now and have been for decades a huge Bobby Knight fan.  The former Indiana and current Texas Tech coach is in the news again; once again, he is accused of "crossing the line" with one of his players.  (He apparently struck the boy gently under the chin to reprimand him.)  For some thirty years, Knight has made himself famous for many things: his remarkable coaching and motivational skills, his famous flashes of anger, his willingness to cross verbal and physical boundaries with his players — boundaries that no other modern coach would dare cross.  He is feared and hated by many, loved by others.  His epic tirades are balanced by a reputation for extraordinary, quiet kindnesses.  Few other figures in sports have had as many passionate admirers and detractors debating his behavior, his meaning, his role, and his legacy for so long.

I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that Knight wouldn’t think much of the likes of me.  Men who teach critical analyses of gender in contemporary American life probably don’t rate high on his scale.  And as someone who is committed to envisioning, embodying, and bringing about a gentler, kinder, more emotionally attuned masculine ideal, I ought to be repulsed by Bobby Knight.  He ought to represent everything I dislike and struggle against.  His overbearing swagger, his overgrown adolescent refusal to play by the rules, his penchant for abusive tirades (and the occasional slap or punch); this man is the very sort of rage-aholic we progressive feminists ought to find repulsive and horrifying.  And yet Knight is one of a handful of coaches whom I, a devoted fan of almost every non-motorized sport, truly admire.  (You haven’t heard of most of the rest of them: Vivian Stringer, Anson Dorrance, Joe Ehrmann, John McDonnell, Sue Enquist.)

What I like about Knight is not his inchoate rage.  What I like about him is something I don’t know that everyone else sees.  When I watch him on the court (and I always try and watch when his teams are playing), I see what I aspire to be: a master teacher.    For me, Knight’s greatness lies in his absolute, unswerving, nearly mad commitment to the personal, intellectual, and physical growth of his student-athletes.  When I watch him coach, I see a man for whom winning isn’t nearly as important as transformation; his great obsession is to be the catalyst for his players to grow.   His famous temper seems primarily directed less towards those who challenge him and more towards those who show some reluctance to grow, change, relentlessly push themselves to become better and better still.

I’m regularly accused on this blog of setting too high a standard, particularly for men.  Whether the issue is pornography, or relationships with younger women, or making and keeping commitments, or accepting responsibility for developing an emotional vocabulary, I push men hard.  I push them harder than I push women not because I think women are weak, but because I am a man who knows first-hand that transformation is possible.  There are plenty of folks out there pushing women to change themselves (not always in healthy ways); there are fewer voices pushing men as hard.  I don’t rage like Knight does, and of course, I would never, ever, ever put anything other than an affectionate hand on a student or youth group kid.   But Coach Knight inspires me more than do any of his peers because I sense in him a kindred spirit; I see in him a man committed to never surrendering to the notion that we cannot become all that our truest selves long to be.

Even now, in the twilight of his career, he is barking and raging against laziness, against incompetence, and above all, against the notion that we cannot radically transform ourselves.  Coach wants to build great teams of unselfish, committed young men.  In a very different and significant way, that’s what I want to do too.

Let’s go Red Raiders; fight on, Texas Tech.