Archive for June, 2007

Friday Random Ten: music to rest the joints to

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 29, 2007
in Friday Random Ten
. 0 Comments

I’ve got the longest run of the season coming up on Sunday, and can begin a gradual taper next week. These old bones need the rest.

Don’t read too much into my great fondness for #1. #5 is my favorite Eagles track, #3 is from one of those folk groups whose records my mother played for me when I was small, and they’re thus permanently part of my consciousness. #7 includes a line I thought immensely profound when I was nineteen: “we’re too young to reason, too grown up to dream.” (Now, it seems silly, but that’s what a couple of decades will do for ya.) #8 is from a local Pasadena artist whose work I’ve long admired. The Paul Colman Trio are a fairly obscure Christian band from Australia; I caught them opening for Third Day a few years back and they stole the show.

1. “Damn, I Wish I was Your Lover”, Sophie B. Hawkins
2. “Uncle John’s Band”, Indigo Girls
3. “Keep On the Sunny Side”, Ian and Sylvia
4. “Echo Park”, Joseph Arthur
5. “The Last Resort”, the Eagles
6. “Jealousy”, Natalie Merchant
7. “Slave to Love”, Bryan Ferry
8. “Fire and Rain”, Michelle Bloom
9. “Run”, Paul Colman Trio
10. “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down”, Uncle Tupelo

Bonus Track: “The One Who Knows”, Alison Krauss and Dar Williams

A few political notes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 28, 2007
in Politics
. 1 Comment

I don’t blog much about politics here, but I have followed the recent rulings from the Supreme Court with a mixture of dismay, jubilation, confusion, and above all, fascination. I have lots of very right-wing friends who are going through Bush Alienation Syndrome; they ought to comfort themselves that “their” president kept his promise to appoint justices in the Scalia and Thomas mold!

If the perception is true that we are a deeply divided nation, we also have a very deeply divided court. Lots of 5-4 rulings lately, with almost all of them featuring a solid liberal bloc that rarely splits apart (Souter, Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg) and a solid conservative bloc (Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Scalia). Anthony Kennedy is the wild-card, almost invariably in the majority, taking over the role once held by Sandra Day O’Connor. This is his court, and he must be having a marvelous time. I wonder if Kennedy’s eight colleagues, seemingly committed to their two ideological camps, spend time “courting” him. I have this happy image of two groups of four heading out to lunch at two separate restaurants, each urging a vacillating Kennedy to come and dine with them.

But the right-wing killed immigration reform in the Senate today, and the Court struck a serious blow to desegregation efforts in public schools. My weary and disgruntled conservative friends ought to buck up a bit; they’re having a good week!

And since we’re talking politics, I’m still thinking that it’ll be John Edwards and Mitt Romney in the general election next year. Or maybe I’m just partial to exceedingly handsome and articulate men who are routinely underestimated and dismissed as lightweights! John Edwards is still getting my money, even as Dennis Kucinch still has my heart.

Jack and Jill again: a response to Father Figure about mentoring and attraction

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 28, 2007
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Favorite posts 2007, Mentoring, Older Men & Younger Women, Teaching, Youth and Youth ministry
. 3 Comments

It’s genuinely flattering that I get several e-mails a week from people who have read my posts and are asking me for input on issues ranging from chinchilla care to student crushes to youth ministry to older men/younger women relationships. I want to make it clear to those who do write me, however, that I assume all unsolicited email is “bloggable”. I am not able to offer replies or advice outside of the format of this blog. I will, of course, change names and details in order to protect the writer’s anonymity. That seems a fair policy.

Got an email last week from a fellow who calls himself Father Figure. Father Figure is married, and though he doesn’t specify his age, seems to be forty-something (I take great delight in calling myself a forty-something these days). He writes:

You seem to be very perceptive on the area of
crushes developing on mentor/father figures.

How does the mentor/father
figure disengage from such a relationship as he sees
himself being attracted to the young woman [half his
age!] who’s paying so much attention to him?

The last three years have been among the worst of
my life, mainly from being unable to forget about the
attention that this young woman gave to me for a few
months, but also from incredible guilt for the way
that I totally broke off contact with her. Even now I
tend to feel that if I see a mutual friend, I should
casually inquire about her, not so much because I want
to know, but out of concern that if the conversation
gets relayed back to her, it will hurt her that I
didn’t even ask about her. Her own father died or
left the home when she was a young girl, and it seems
that in some ways she related to me as a sort of
“safe” father-type figure. The problem was that I
fell for her, and so I found the only way to deal with
my feelings was to stop contact. But my breaking off
contact [when we had been fairly close friends] must
have come across to her as rejection of her as a
person. Hence, my profound feeling of guilt.

It’s a painful situation for Father Figure, and clearly equally painful (if not more so) for the young woman whom he has pushed out of his life.

My first thought is that those of us who do enjoy mentoring young people have an obligation to set strong boundaries with ourselves. I meet with and mentor a small group of young people; some are former students and some are former “youth groupers.” I mentor both men and women. One of my chief jobs as a mentor is to never, ever forget that my relationship with my mentees is one of mutual respect, but not one of mutual support. I am there for them in a way that they cannot and should not be there for me. In my relationships with my mentees, I make very little mention of my private life (less, in most cases, than I do on this blog). When I do talk about myself, it is usually only in order to share an anecdote from my past that may prove helpful to the mentee.

The mentor/mentee boundary is not as rigid as that between therapist and patient. No one is on a couch, and there’s no strict psychological protocol to observe. But I always remember that this young man or this young woman with whom I am sitting in my office or drinking coffee under a tree here on campus is there as an opportunity for me to be of service. My mentees are not potential “best friends forever”. That doesn’t mean I don’t like them, and heck, it doesn’t preclude me from starting to care very deeply for some of them. I love working with young people; it gives me a great sense of purpose and satisfaction to do so. But my students are not my dearest friends, and I don’t confide in my mentees as they confide in me. That’s not about power, that’s about respect for boundaries.

I wrote a long time ago about the story of Michael Gee, an adjunct professor and journalist who was fired from his teaching position after posting to a website his feeling that one of his female students was “incredibly hot.” As part of that post, I wrote about how we as teachers and mentors can respond to students whose bodies might be distracting to us. I wrote about an old student of mine named “Jack”, whose cigarette stench and body odor made our office hours together difficult; I wrote about “Jill”, whose unusually revealing clothing posed a different challenge. Jack and Jill were wonderful students, solid “A” students, both interested in having me mentor them. Jack’s smell was burdensome; Jill’s state of near-perpetual underdressedness posed a similar problem. With both students, my job was the same: to not allow their bodies to become my focus. I made a conscious effort to be there for Jack in all of his malodorousness, and to keep my eyes on Jill’s face. I’m not an instructor in grooming, fashion, or deportment; if I am only able to be present for those who are bathed and reasonably covered up, then I am a piss-poor mentor and teacher and ought not to be in this job. I learned a lot from Jack and Jill.

Perhaps it’s because I’m happily married, perhaps it’s because I’ve worked so hard to establish excellent boundaries, perhaps it’s because I’m in my forties now — but for whatever reason, I don’t any longer have the trouble “Father Figure” has had with this woman he mentored. That’s the result of some hard work on my part, and also the result of being willing to ask for grace to come into my life and guide my mentoring relationships.

With the Jacks and Jills of this world, there’s a prayer I use. It was one I learned many years ago, and it has served me in good stead. I use the same prayer with the potentially attractive as with the potentially hostile:

“God, show me this person not as I see them but as you see them. Help me to be for them what I am called by you to be. Remove from me my fears and my selfish desires, and show me how to love them as you love them”.

Yeah, we have a problem with singulars and plurals here, but you get the point. I really do use that prayer, though much less often than I used to. God has been faithful to me, and I can say that when I have prayed that prayer sincerely, it has always been answered. I have never had to break off a relationship with a mentee because I was worried about my own growing feelings of attraction towards him or her.

Does that make me better than “Father Figure”, who did choose to break off his mentoring relationship with a younger woman to whom he was increasingly drawn? No, not really. It was far better for him to abrogate their relationship than to act on his feelings. But while seducing her would have been a profound betrayal of his commitment to her (and, of course, to his marriage), breaking off their contact (which had become important to her) without telling her why is a serious form of abandonment. There’s a general rule in working with much younger people, even when they are in their twenties: if you as a mentor cut off contact or withdraw from them, they will almost always assume that it was something they did. They will very rarely conclude that the problem was with the mentor; they will assume that they did something to drive him or her away. They may feel ashamed or guilty without quite knowing what they’ve done. It’s a serious wound, and I’ve seen it inflicted many a time.

Father Figure inquires as to what he should do. In the best case scenario, he would be able to resume his mentoring relationship with this young woman, taking responsibility for keeping his own feelings and desires strictly in check (and asking for spiritual help in order to do so.) Given that the young woman is an adult, his next best option — but not the best — is to be candid with her about his reasons for terminating their time together. He’ll have to be very emphatic that the responsibility is his and his alone, and that she did nothing wrong. It’ll be hurtful, but she’ll at least have (oh, overused word) the beginnings of some closure. The worst thing to do would be to continue to be distant and unvailable without giving a reason why.

I am absolutely certain that I will not cross a line with my students and youth groupers, either in act or in fantasy. I am confident that my intent will remain clear and my goals pure. Is this hubris? No, because I don’t rest this certainty on my own will alone. I’m a mortal human being, and I know all too well how quickly my own unchecked desires can run riot. My confidence lies in my faith in a faithful God, a God who will not give me any challenge I cannot handle if I ask for His help. I also have faith in my peers who hold me accountable, who ask me questions about my motives, who watch me. If I seem to be crossing a line, they’ll gently inquire and remind me of where it is that my priorities lie, what my obligations are.

If I can only mentor the unattractive, the well-groomed, the polite and unchallenging, I’m not doing my job. (Of course, the reverse is true: if I seek out only the beautiful and the brilliant to work with, something else is amiss!) If I were to find my own feelings getting in the way of my work with a mentee, I am confident that I would be given the strength to overcome those feelings. And by overcoming, I don’t just mean the strength to not act upon them. I mean the strength to eradicate them altogether. My wife is the human being in whose company I am happiest. If I were to be more excited about spending time with a friend or a mentee than with my wife, that would be a colossal red flag. And I am prayerfully, quietly confident that God would give me the strength to redirect my desires and my thoughts themselves if I asked Him to. But if for some reason that sustenance didn’t come, then I would have to terminate the mentoring relationship.

Thursday Short Poem: Hicok’s “Poem for my Mother’s Hysterectomy”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 28, 2007
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

I read this Bob Hicok offering last week in Plougshares, and can’t get it out of my mind. I wasn’t sure I wanted to put it up, but decided to go ahead and do it. I lecture every semester on “hysteria” and the absurd notion of the “wandering uterus”, and will confess that as the just over six-foot son of a woman who did undergo a hysterectomy a decade ago, much of this rings viscerally familiar.

Poem for my Mother’s Hysterectomy

The bell in you out of which I was rung
long ago removed, I cannot go home.

What did they do with your uterus?

I think of it as a hat or a bird,
resting on a head or flying away, over those mountains,
on the other side of which I have never been.

Maybe that’s where the navel of the Earth is,
and these womb birds go there out of memory.

I am that of you: a six-foot-tall memory, graft
that took and learned to drive, pick locks, lick
on other women the door you opened for me.

Why did they call you hysterical
when rage is essential for a pulse, to beat the drum
of being alive?

I know this dream; my face in a jar, saying
I can be anything I want, just not
me.

For you, who had seven children
and wanted more, it must have been
like having your face removed,
the Catholic mirror asking, What has your emptiness
to give?

I miss you as the only water I breathed, as a way of living
at the center of things.

You gave me nine round months, time since
is straight as a knife.

I’ve never asked, What was I in you; a tickle fish, thorn
in your side, a goat
kicking the night?

If I left graffiti in there, a sign or mark,
and was the monster you worried I’d be as sharp-toothed
as the one I am?

“Why not rather be cheated?” A note on lawsuits, divorce, and Anglican court battles

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 27, 2007
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity and Divorce
. 25 Comments

In a rather surprising ruling, the 4th Circuit of the California Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles yesterday. For those not in the loop, three conservative parishes within our diocese have broken away over the issue of homosexuality; in opposition to same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy, these parishes have sought to leave the diocese — and take their church property with them. Yesterday, reversing a lower-court ruling, the appellate justices said that the church buildings belong to the diocese, not to the rebel parishes. Y’all can leave, in other words, but the bricks and mortar stay.

It’s a setback for the break-away traditionalists in California, and perhaps nationwide. Though the Times reports that the rebels haven’t decided on whether to appeal to the state Supreme Court, I can’t imagine that they won’t. The stakes are much too high to let things come to a tidy end here.

I have mixed feelings, of course. On the one hand, I’m a strong supporter of same-sex blessings and of the full integration of non-celibate gays and lesbians into holy orders and into the full, rich life of the Anglican Communion. I’ve also known Bishop Bruno for years, going back long before his stunning upset victory in the 1999 bishop coadjutor election. (You’d have to know a lot about dull diocesan politics to know what a shocker that was. He beat the favored candidate of All Saints Pasadena, and it took a couple of years to patch things up between the new bishop and the largest parish in the diocese. Let’s just say that there were some very, very disgruntled people at All Saints when Jon was elected; they’ve become “gruntled” since.) So as the bishop’s friend and admirer, I support him in his decision to do battle.

On the other hand, I know a thing or two about divorce. And having managed to get through three divorces without any serious legal fights, I know that the smart thing to do is to be generous towards those with whom you are ending a covenanted relationship. In the end, as my third wife and I agreed when we split, “it’s just money.” And no, neither of us had so much cash that we could afford to be recklessly cavalier about the subject — we just both knew that new houses could be bought, new silver patterns selected, new retirement accounts opened. Adding my three divorces together, I’ll reckon I walked away from somewhere around half a million dollars (most of it in real estate, of course). Could I find good use for $500,000 today? No doubt! Would it have been worth a nasty court battle, or two, or three? No.

I love what Paul says about lawsuits in 1 Corinthians 6:5. It was a great comfort to me during my last divorce, which was amicable and kind and generous on all sides:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

So many people say “I’m not going to court over money, it’s the principle of the thing.” But Paul is truly subversive here; he calls on us to allow ourselves to be wronged and cheated rather than turning to secular courts to resolve our disputes — particularly our disputes with fellow Christians.

Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? That’s the question I ask equally to both sides in the property dispute between the church and its traditionalist rebels. It’s the question I would pose to Jon Bruno, and to the vestries of the three renegade parishes. I would urge the rebels to abandon their property rather than sue to keep it; I would urge my friend Jon to let the dissenters take that same property rather than sue to get it back. If both sides act with glorious generosity, who knows what good might come of it?

A note about the difference between teaching and blogging

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 26, 2007
in Blogging
. 6 Comments

It’s a busy sort of day, and I don’t think I’ll have time for a serious post.

I do want to remind folks of something: the fact that I am a college professor doesn’t mean I blog the same way I lecture. As an academic, I have a responsibility to be fair, to explore multiple points of view, and to ground what I say in verifiable evidence. But that obligation stops the moment I step off campus. I am not required to blog with the same scrupulousness with which I teach.

Yes, many of my students read this blog. But they are at least nascent adults, capable of distinguishing my in-class analyses from my personal pronouncements here. Do I have prejudices that bubble forth here? Sure. Look, in my classes I don’t take half an hour to wax eloquent about veganism and the sins of meat-eating. In my classes, I don’t suggest that most men who are drawn to much younger women are fundamentally fearful of being challenged by an actual equal. In my classes, I don’t talk much about my own colorful past.

I blog under my own name because I can’t think of a clever title for this blog. (The closest I came was “What Rough Beast”, but quoting any line from that most famous of Yeats poems is almost certainly a sign of excessive pretension, something I get accused of anyway.) Do I hope to influence a few people with my writing? Of course. Do I see my writing here as an extension of what I do in the classroom? Perhaps, but under radically different rules. Here, I can let down my guard, and abandon the strictures of dispassionate objectivity that are, frankly, often rather confining. Pasadena City College pays me to teach, I pay for this blog (and most of the posts I post are posted from my own personal computer, not from college equipment.) The rules are different.

So if you disagree with something I’m saying, say so civilly. But I am at a loss as to why some folks who seem to disagree with virtually everything I say and find me “narcissistic”, “repetitive” and “Puritanical” continue to come around and read and comment. Look, people, I’ve never understood the pleasure some seem to get from making themselves angry! Some of my commenters here remind me of a dear lefty friend of mine who listens to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly every day, just for the pleasure of getting infuriated. To each his own, I suppose, but to me that’s an odd sort of thrill to seek. What joy is there in seeking out the annoying and the exasperating?

Is there a danger some of my students will conflate my blog persona with my classroom persona? Of course. Mind you, I’m not compartmentalizing. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not in either space. But navel-gazing on the part of a professor in the class is inappropriate; navel-gazing on a blog is acceptable and expected. What I write here, folks, is opinion — occasionally grounded in a stray fact or two, but for the most part rooted in my own melange of personal experience and spiritual faith.

In my teaching, I am committed to coherence and consistency; in my blogging, I am really committed only to the former. And sometimes, as regular readers have noticed, not even that.

No summer school office hours

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 25, 2007
in Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 4 Comments

One of the things I loathe about summer school: no office hours. I’m teaching three classes back-to-back-to-back and I don’t have five danged minutes to meet with students. No time to go over papers with them, no time to meet to chat. I try and get to my office early before my 8:00AM class, which is the one time I can set aside, but that’s awfully early for many of my students — especially those who don’t have my class until the afternoon.

Query: anyone work at an institution where summer school profs have office hours? I feel as if my students are getting short-changed as they don’t get the access to me that kids do during the regular semesters. On my own time, I can squeeze in five minutes here or there, but it’s tough to make up.

A long response to “Debra” about older men, younger women

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 25, 2007
in Older Men & Younger Women
. 122 Comments

As I’ve mentioned several times, I get more email about my “older men, younger women” posts than all the other things I blog about put together. (Student crushes is a distant second, and chinchillas are third).

I got a long letter a couple of weeks ago from a woman in her late forties named “Debra” (not her real name). She tells a by-now very familiar story:

Now, here’s my situation. Within the past couple of years I’ve become
aware of a man a couple of years older than me. From what I can see,
this man is very much like me in many ways–in fact, so much so that
he could be my male twin.

I’m attracted to him. From a distance, I find him intelligent, thoughtful, humorous, honest,
emotionally open, openminded, and kind. And, up until last year, he
was like me in one other important way: he had no relationship. He was
an intelligent, witty man in his later forties, yet he had never been
married and made frequent complaints in public about how all of his attempts
at relationships with women (and he made it clear without using a
sledgehammer that yes, he was attracted to the opposite sex) had ended
in disaster.

Then, last year, suddenly something changed. Out of the blue, Mr. Sad
Sack began seeing a woman. A woman who lived on the opposite coast
from him. Two and a half months
after they began dating, she packed up all her belongings and crossed
the country to move in with him. As of now, they have been together
for a year, and have lived together for ten and a half months

Why do I come to you to ask you what you think of all this? Simply
this: He is 47; she is 22.

This is a long post, so more below the fold. Continue reading ‘A long response to “Debra” about older men, younger women’

A no-doubt dull report on this morning’s run, and a note on why I hate fishing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 24, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness and Environmentalism
. 6 Comments

If there’s one paved run I enjoy more than any other, it’s the run up to Cogswell Dam along the West Fork of the San Gabriel River.

This morning, the alarm went off at 4:40AM, and I was at the trailhead out on state route 39 above Azusa by 5:55. After putting on the sunscreen and the body glide and triple checking my gear, I headed up the road.

It’s about eight miles of paved road up to Cogswell, so a round trip is sixteen miles. I needed more miles today, so I ran about two miles up, turned around, came back to the car, and started over again.

Though it was very early on a Sunday morning, there were already a number of folks with fishing poles — some of whom had clearly camped over night — along the West Fork. The river is stocked with Rainbow trout, Speckled Dace, and something called the “Arroyo Chub.” I like the name, and when I’m in a self-deprecating mood, I apply the monicker to myself. (When you run with folks who are truly rail-thin most of the time, even a few extra pounds leaves one inclined to pick such a label.)

Even before I became vegan, I had no interest in fishing. I can’t imagine an outdoor activity I would like less, frankly. My second wife loved the outdoors, and was an avid fan of camping and fly-fishing. We honeymooned at a remote lodge on the Mackenzie River in Oregon, about thirty miles east of Eugene. We fly-fished every day. I found the waiting around tedious beyond words, and the actual catching of the fish (something I never succeeded in doing, but something she was really good at) to be ghastly. I wanted to be running, or at the least hiking through the woods, keeping my heart rate happy in the triple digits. My ex-wife wanted to stand in the water in waders like something out of “The River Runs Through It” (which, incidentally, was her favorite film). I ought to have known that marriage was doomed.

So today I made my way past the fisherfolk, and eventually hit Cogswell dam itself. Cogswell is a glorious example of 1930s WPA engineering. The last time I was at Cogswell was nearly two years ago, after our record rainfall of the previous year. I was heartsick to see how low the water level was today behind the dam, lower than I’d ever seen it before. It’s only June, and it’s six more months until we can begin to hope for some good rain. I’m so anxious about fires, and anxious about the impact of this drought on the ecosystem. (Of course, my first thought is for the small mammals who are my special loves, but I know the whole danged food chain is suffering right now.)

I was feeling good, so I decided to go over my scheduled miles, and I ran the trail behind the dam for a bit; the fire road continues for about a mile and a half past Cogswell until it comes to an abrupt end. It was only at that dead end that I turned around and headed back. My goal was to cover the distance home at “marathon pace”. I covered the nine miles back in an hour and fifteen minutes, which is right about the 8:20 per mile pace I want to try and run in San Francisco next month. It’s a far cry from what I used to be able to do, but it’s a reasonable goal to have for where I am these days.

Counting the four miles I did as a warmup, that gave me twenty-two miles of running for the day. I was done by 9:25AM, exhilarated and happy beyond words. I drove back down the 39 into Azusa, where I stopped to have Inge the Solara washed by the Azusa High girl’s volleyball team. They did an enthusiastic if spotty job, and while they were hosing and washing and rubbing the car, I ducked into a store and bought myself 24 ounces of coffee. Endorphins last longer, folks, if you add caffeine on top.

So now it’s off to the gym, and then home to some quiet time with the paper. Our son Dudley might get some extra afternoon out time today.

Serious blogging will return this coming week.

A note on Title IX, proportionality, and why some girls aren’t playing… yet

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Feminism, Sports and Youth
. 13 Comments

I try to stay out of the ongoing arguments over Title IX, proportionality, and women’s sports. (I’ve mentioned Title IX once or twice) but I’d rather leave the defense of Title IX to those who are best equipped to do that — the good folks at the Women’s Sports Foundation.

But sometimes, the issues raised in the ongoing debate over proportionality (the principle that spending on men’s and women’s athletics by colleges should match the percentage of the respective genders in the student body) get me really interested. On Wednesday, the National Review published this piece by Jessica Gavora, who is associated with the nemesis of women’s sports, the College Sports Council.

Gavora is worried that having had great success in defending the proportionality rule in colleges (which has led many schools to cut certain men’s sports, like wrestling, in order to meet quotas), the advocates for Title IX are going to push for similar measures in high school. Gavora, like most conservatives, is a fierce believer in gender essentialism; she is convinced that girls “just don’t like sports” as much as boys do. Thus mandating equal funding for both sexes unfairly punishes boys for their “natural” competitive nature. After all, many conservatives seem to believe that most real women would rather be at the quilting bee (or shopping at the mall, or writing sonnets in imitation of Millay) than running, leaping, or striking at balls with their bats or their cleats.

Okay, so maybe that’s not fair. Here’s what Gavora says that I did find interesting:

The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated.

The implication of this is clear: If high schools follow colleges and universities in instituting gender quotas in athletics, boys will be forced to pay the price in limited or eliminated opportunities. Girls are too busy doing other things after school to turn out at the same rate for sports.

Bold emphases mine. There’s a grain of truth in what Gavora says, though it’s hardly an argument against proportionality. I’m convinced that the primary reason some schools have a hard time getting enough girls to come out for sports is not because of a lack of interest, but because of a perception on the part of these over-scheduled, over-pressured young women that sports isn’t the best use of their time. I’ve written before about the colossal pressure we put on this generation of young women to be successful; all things being equal, it does seem clear that our daughters are more anxious to please and to achieve tangible signs of success than many of their brothers.

It’s not that girls are any less competitive, any less interested in getting sweaty and dirty, any less interested in victory than boys. But as they think about college applications, as they look to their parents and adults for cues as to how to succeed, they are more likely to be pushed towards student government, the debate team, the French Club, or massive amounts of community volunteering. That’s not a function of nature — that’s a calculation about what will look good. When applying to a selective university, these girls imagine that being president of the student body will look more impressive than being an all-league mid-fielder on the soccer team.

Not everyone wants to play sports, of course. There are plenty of boys (I was one in high school) who have no interest in being athletic, and I know perfectly well that there are lots of girls who find the idea of playing on a team to be a dreary one. But I know full well that those boys who are interested in playing are more likely to be encouraged to do so, while their sisters are more likely to be pressured to choose other, seemingly more “prestigious” extra-curricular activities.

Applying proportionality to the high schools will force a necessary cultural shift. We’re going to need to do more than demand that dollars spent reflect the percentage of girls and boys in the entire school. We’re going to have to challenge the “culture of perfection” in which so many young women labor, a culture which often discourages girls from putting their hearts, bodies, and souls into sports. (Courtney Martin writes very well about that culture, I reviewed her book here).

And we’re going to need to get some boys up off the damn couch, away from the video games, and into not only sports, but those activities now so often dominated by girls: debate, band, student government.

Bring on proportionality.

My younger siblings be smarter than me is!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2007
in Family and Father
. 3 Comments

It feels like the first full day of summer. It’s hot, and soon I’ll be hitting the trails of the Arroyo for a morning run. I’ve switched sunscreens — I’m trying to get rid of all the parabens in my grooming products, and am trying to make sure everything I put on my body is vegan, never tested on animals, and without suspected carcinogens. So far, I really like Alba Botanica.

No doubt you’ve seen the story about the statistical probability that first-born sons will turn out a wee bit smarter than their younger siblings. Though I don’t consider myself feeble-minded, I can say with absolute certainty that this did not prove to be the case in my family.

Both my younger brother and I were tested in the mid-1970s with the old Stanford-Binet IQ test. I did very well, but my brother was off the charts, quite a few points above me. I was twelve when, pilfering my mother’s desk, I found the two papers with our relative results — it was a memorable but hardly crushing moment in my youth. (I was an incorrigible snoop from about age 8 to 13). Luckily (because sometimes it seems to be more attributable to grace or luck than to virtue), I’ve never been jealous of my brother’s first-rate mind, or of his accomplishments. I will note that he and my two younger sisters followed me to Berkeley; each sibling had a higher GPA than his or her predecessor. The Schwyzer family defies the results of this little study.

It was a blessing to grow up with parents who made each of their children feel special, unique, talented, bright, and loved. We all ended up at the same university, but we never - I can say this with certainty - felt competitive with one another. On this, the first anniversary of my father’s death, I am grateful for many things, not least for his unconditional acceptance of the paths his two sons and two daughters chose. He loved us radically equally, and we knew it, and our closeness today is in many ways a consequence of that.

Friday Random Ten: Thursday afternoon edition

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 21, 2007
in Friday Random Ten
. 6 Comments

I’m putting up the FRT half a day early; tomorrow is the first anniversary of my Dad’s death, and a Friday Random Ten doesn’t feel right. I may post about other things.

It is the last day of spring or the first day of summer, and in the midst of grief there is room for robust joy. The song titles suggest I’m in a, uh, frisky mood. #1 is a splendid Ryan Adams track, it’s a satisfying one to sing along to; Christian singer Derek Webb shows up twice here with two fine cuts he recorded for Itunes. That #9 and #10 should have the same theme makes me chuckle a bit. Julie Miller is Buddy’s wife, and a fabulous singer and songwriter in her own right, #4 is among my favorites of hers. When the Millers open for Emmylou Harris, as they often do, it’s sublime. #7 I sing out loud — even once on a car trip with my youth group kids. #3 is my favorite Joel song, and Rosie Thomas is a pretty cool folkie I’ve recently been introduced to. The bonus tracks weren’t picked at random — just two songs I played a lot this week on my Itunes as I graded papers.

1. “Come Pick Me Up”, Ryan Adams
2. “Nothing is Ever Enough”, Derek Webb
3. “Summer, Highland Falls”, Billy Joel
4. “Broken Things”, Julie Miller
5. “Cry Love”, John Hiatt
6. “Young Lust”, Pink Floyd
7. “I Touch Myself”, Divinyls
8. “Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn”, Emmylou Harris
9. “Wedding Day”, Rosie Thomas
10. “Wedding Dress”, Derek Webb

Bonus Track One: “Dead Flowers”, Rolling Stones
Bonus Track Two: “Virginia, No One Can Warn You”, Tift Merritt

What’s in it for men?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 21, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Men's Movement
. 35 Comments

One question that those of us who are male feminists are bound to get asked over and over again: “What’s there for men in feminism?” The Chief asks a version of that question below Monday’s post:

Hugo, particularly, loves to preach on how men CAN change. He’s weak on providing the reasons why we SHOULD. To put it crassly, what’s in it for us?

I suppose I could quote Aristotle to the effect that virtue is its own reward, but something tells me that wouldn’t go very far.

I do answer this question regularly, as I’m asked it semester in and semester out. As most any serious feminist will tell you, feminism is about reconfiguring the culture in order to create greater equality between men and women. For most feminists, it’s also about liberating both men and women from the chains of sexism and patriarchy. As countless men in the pro-feminist movement have pointed out, oppressing women doesn’t make most men nearly as happy as one might imagine. We make a huge mistake when we assume that to be complicit in injustice brings joy and fulfillment. Yes, the benefits of living in a sexist culture are there for most men — but most men are so accustomed to taking these benefits for granted that they derive little if any sense of satisfaction from their own privilege.

When I meet with young men, I hear the same lament over and over again: “Why won’t women trust me? Why won’t women smile at me? I”m not a predator, I’m just a nice guy. Why am I always guilty until proven innocent?” I’ve answered those questions before: read “Guilty until Proven Innocent” and “No Right to be Assumed Harmless”.

When men work to transform themselves, to become genuine egalitarians in the bedroom, the boardroom, and cleaning the bathroom, they make the world a better place for themselves as well as for the women with whom they interact. When men challenge other men’s catcalls, porn use, leering stares and rude comments, they work to eliminate the very things that cause so many women to be justifiably mistrustful of so many men. Many men’s rights activists (MRAs) decry the epidemic of t-shirts that say things like “Boys are mean, throw rocks at them” or simply “Boys lie.” I’m not fond of those shirts myself, and I don’t think they’re in the least bit funny. But I recognize that in addition to reflecting an adolescent desire for attention, they reflect a legitimate anger, a legitimate fear, a legitimate frustration on the part of many women with men.

Quite a few men I know would love to be trusted more. They’d love to have their friendly “hellos” returned; they’d like it if everyone, male or female made eye contact with them and returned their smiles. They’re depressed by the way so many women respond to them, with guarded distance. Some of them become angry at women, blaming the targets of sexism for not being more warm and open to those who might well hurt them further. But the wiser ones understand that creating a world where men are trusted, believed, and smiled at involves changing the basic rules of masculine behavior.

One of the cardinal rules of American maleness is “Don’t call another man on how he treats women.” Men co-sign each other’s bad behavior far too frequently; the end result is that the “nice guy” who doesn’t harass women is rightly lumped into the same group as the jerk who does. Boys, if you’re not actively part of the solution you are — at best — passively part of the problem. If you’re respectful, friendly, honest and thoughtul to women in your interactions with them, but you remain silent while your male friends and relations behave otherwise, then you’ve got no right to complain about women’s suspicion!

I’m tired of living in a world where a man who wants to work with small children is automatically presumed to be a pedophile; I’m tired of living in a world where folks worry that the embraces I give the boys and girls in my youth group have a perverse, ulterior motive. But simply pleading my innocence isn’t enough. The incidences of abuse, the incidences of betrayal, the incidences of profound irresponsibility on the part of men in positions of trust aren’t just anecdotal — they’re overwhelming. And the answer for those of us who are trustworthy and long to have others know it isn’t to blame other people for being suspicious. It’s to work doubly, triply hard to create an authentically feminist culture in which men hold each other accountable, in which bad male behavior is immediately called out by other men.

In his comment, The Chief compares men to wolves. Just as its not easy to make a carnivorous wolf into a herbivore, he doesn’t think it’s easy — or even desirable — for men to change their essential nature. (I’m not a great believer in anyone’s essential nature, and have written umpteen times of the ways in which biology is used to excuse passivity and defeatism in the face of sexual injustice.) But it’s true that a great many women do see men as being like wolves, and a great many men do behave in ways that give women reasons for thinking that lupine comparison is apt. The damage predatory male behavior does to women is obvious. But what’s less obvious is that the “lone wolf” of lore is a symbol of isolation. I know a lot of guys who’ve tried to be lone wolves, tried to live up to the masculine ideal of the strong, silent, sturdy oak. Most of them, as Thoreau pointed out, lead lives of quiet desperation. Most of them, especially as they age, cope with an alternating sense of numbness and profound pain.

A sexist culture leaves men cut off from their own pain. Years and years of hearing “boys don’t cry” leaves many men in their teens and twenties in a state of permanent numbness, with only anger and lust as identifiable emotions still flowing through them. Feminism — with its insistence that men are as entitled to emotional expression as women — liberates men from the awful standard of “lone wolf-hood”. It allows us to stop being ciphers and become human beings, complete and whole and kind and good. It allows us to balance our strength with our humanity.

I am a feminist because I see organized feminism as one of the great vehicles for social justice and personal transformation. I am a feminist because I want to see a world in which both men and women are free to become complete people. When we shut down women’s anger, women’s desire, women’s impetuousness — we create half-people. When we shut down men’s tenderness, men’s vulnerability, men’s empathy — we create half-people. Half people alternately long for a partner to complete them, and resent the hell out of those partners for being able to do for them what they could not do for themselves. It makes for a pretty miserable existence, characterized by the strange and odious way in which men and women simultaneously long for and loathe each other. That’s not nature, that’s a social construct that needs to be dismantled.

I’m a feminist because I want to create a world where men and women alike can realize their potential; I’m a feminist because I believe that our potential is not directed or confined by our chromosomes or our secondary sex organs. My penis and my Y chromosome do not destine me to be unreliable, predatory, and emotionally inarticulate. My wife’s uterus and her estrogen do not limit the horizons of her professional or athletic ambition. Feminism is, as we’ve all heard, the radical notion that women are people. But it’s also the radical notion that men are people too, complete human beings, with the same range of emotions and the same capacity for empathy and self-control as any woman.

Feminism frees men to become truly complete human beings. And there’s an amazing payoff in that.

Note: You don’t have to be a feminist to comment here, but misogynist broadsides and anti-feminist bromides — as well as personal attacks — are out.

Thursday Short Poem: Olds’ Topography

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 21, 2007
in Poetry
. 3 Comments

Time for another famous one, by my favorite poet of the body, Sharon Olds.

Topography

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Rocky’s a female, and cops love her

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 20, 2007
in Chinchillas
. 4 Comments

So my wife took Rocky Shimon, our newest baby chinnie, to the vet’s today. To our moderate surprise, it turns out that Rocky is a girl, not a boy. (Trust me, sexing a chinchilla is notoriously difficult. To be really graphic, girl chinnies have big labia, boy chinnies have very small penises, and when they’re wriggling around and not sedated, holding them still to tell the difference is miserable for them and for you.)

The a/c in my wife’s Solara is out; we forgot to switch cars this morning so that Rocky could ride in airconditioned comfort. As a result, my wife drove home in the midday sun briskly, and rolled through a stopsign. Two cops pulled her over. She begged to be allowed to drive Rocky home quickly, and asked the police officers to follow her back to our house. Once Rocky was safely back in the cool, she promised would “take the ticket.” The cops looked at Rocky in her cage and fell — not surprisingly — in love. They offered to put the cage in their air-conditioned squad car, and my wife readily agreed.

By the time the small caravan arrived home, two of our local finest were head-over-heels. They came into the house and met all of Rocky’s siblings. They talked at length to my wife about our chinchilla charity; they each gave her $20 towards the work of the Matilde Mission.

And they warned her about rolling through stop signs, and didn’t write a ticket. I won’t name the city for which they work or give any more details about them, as I don’t want the very nice pair of officers to get in trouble. But Rocky, Gabby, Chihiro, Dudley, Joonko, Racheli, and Ninotchka join their mama and papa in expressing gratitude.

Oh the enchanting allure of chinchillas, to get donations (and a free ride in air-conditioned coolness) rather than a moving violation!

Please folks, no remarks about women getting out of traffic tickets easier than men. (One of the officers was a woman.) This was about the wonder-working power of chinchillas, not about my wife’s looks.