Hugo Schwyzer

The spring issue of Ms. Magazine hits the stands today. After nearly forty years and many editorial changes, it still remains vital, intelligent, essential reading. (How many other folks out there subscribe to both Ms. and First Things?)

There’s an interesting article on “what you can do with a women’s studies degree.” I’m happy to say I’ve inspired quite a few young women (and one or two fellas) to consider a women’s studies major, and a great many of them have asked me that very question. Here’s an answer I’m happy to give them: with a women’s studies degree, you could become president of Harvard. Drew Gilpin Faust, the first woman to head this country’s most celebrated university, was formerly the head of the women’s studies department at Penn. You could also end up on a reality show:

Becky Lee is representative of this
new generation. After acquiring a
B.A. in women’s studies from the
University of Michigan in 2000, Lee
went on to law school and then
worked as an advocate for domesticviolence
survivors. While doing this
work, she was approached to audition
for the popular reality TV show
Survivor. Thinking it could serve as a
good platform for her cause, she
joined the cast, and while she found
that most of her statements on domestic
violence got left on the editing
floor, she has used the Survivor experience
to expand her advocacy.

“I came in third and used my
$75,000 prize to found a fund for
domestic-violence prevention with a
special focus on immigrant women
from marginalized communities,” she
says. “Now when I make public appearances
for the show, I talk about
the fund as a way to raise the issue of
domestic violence for mainstream
audiences.”

Cool.

I have an affection for Ms. Magazine. I grew up with it, you see. My mother was an early member of the National Organization for Women and a Ms. subscriber from its inception. I’ve inherited from her an interest in subscribing to lots and lots of magazines (yes, I recycle them.) As a child, I remember that Ms, The New Republic, and the New York Review of Books enjoyed prominence on our living room coffee table. I still read the first and last of these, but long ago tired of TNR.

My mother very briefly considered dropping her Ms. subscription when I was about eight, after a front-page article on women’s sexuality caught my eye. It must have been about 1974 or ‘75, and my mother was somewhat discomfited when I came to her, innocently waving the magazine, asking, “Mom, what’s an orgasm?” My mother, raised in a generation of feminists who did not see an open and cheerful discussion of the clitoris as essential to women’s liberation, wondered if the Schwyzer family ought to take a break from the magazine for a while. Somehow, I got the idea that Ms. Magazine had things “I wasn’t supposed to read yet”, and thus eagerly sought out copies.

Many of my friends tell me that they pored over their father’s Playboys when they were children, curious to discover what “all the fuss was about.” I didn’t see a Playboy (or any other kind of porn) until I was in the throes of adolescence. But I darn sure studied Ms. Magazine very closely in the mid-’70s, and though much of what I read went right over my head, it surely formed part of my very early sex education. And perhaps it helped make me what I am today.