Hugo Schwyzer

For the past two Decembers, Bob Carlton at The Corner has organized a “Top Five” posts carnival. Those of us who have written interesting posts in the past year are invited to rank them and post links to them, perhaps with a small excerpt. I’m hoping Bob will do it for a third year in 2006. And for those of you who write longer posts (or just some shorties you’re proud of), please consider doing this!

Last year, I couldn’t limit myself to five favorite posts for the year, so I had to have ten. (Here’s a link to posts 10 through 6 in 2005, and here’s a link to the actual top five in ‘05.)

I will probably not have any particularly good posts in the remainder of December. In any event, I’ll post my top five of 2006 next week. But for today, here’s the first half of my top ten of this year.

10. The Happy Wasp Boy (March 30) Excerpt:

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

9. “But you’re pretty!” A pro-feminist musing on why compliments don’t help (January 5) Excerpt:

…this “be very careful with physical comments and compliments rule” is applicable in the rest of the world, as well. Pro-feminist men must recognize that men constantly use compliments to gain access to women, and that that is a fundamentally destructive dynamic. How many bad pick-up lines start with overzealous praise of a woman’s appearance? Men use these lines because as hackneyed as they are, they know sometimes they work. By the time they reach college, most men recognize that a great many women are deeply and profoundly hungry for praise, and by offering that praise, guys will be able to gain an opening. When men praise the beauty of women they barely know, they are employing an old patriarchal strategy that preys upon a serious vulnerability.

8. Another Long Post about Pleasure, Feminism, Food, and Sex (November 16) Excerpt:

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.

7. A long and personal post about agape, All Saints youth, and the progressive notion of salvation (February 9) Excerpt:

But when I think about agape and my youth group, I think of the end of the gospel of John. You know, the bit where Jesus makes breakfast for the disciples on the beach? He asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” And when Peter answers yes each time, Jesus tells him, “feed my lambs”; “take care of my sheep.” I suppose I’m not the only youth minister who thinks of his beloved teenagers as being like lambs. And in my heart, I believe that by trying my best to love everyone of these kids as much as I can, as intensely as I can, with as much openness and freedom from conditions as I can, I am feeding them just as Jesus wants me to. My conservative friends will tell me that I’m feeding them a diet of sweet sugar that tastes good, but is ultimately not enough to end real hunger — but I’m convinced and convicted that we at All Saints are giving them the real deal.

6. Between the Already and the Not Yet: a long post on premarital sexuality and doing “everything but”. (June 7)

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

Look for the top five of 2006 next week; I know which posts I’ve chosen, but am not yet sure in which order to place ‘em.