Archive for July, 2007

Tuesday search terms

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 31, 2007
in Blogging
. 2 Comments

Some search terms from the past week:

men who carry emotional baggage such as ex wives (Need to buy a new luggage set)

dress chinchillas on the internet (Chinchillas don’t shop online, they wear couture)

how to treat your boyfriend (However he deserves, presumably)

what if you found out your fiancee wasn t a virgin (Do you want a partner or a possession? If the former, shouldn’t make a darned bit of difference.)

veganism and anorexia (Are not correlated as often as some say)

true love waits for teenagers 10 bad things that happens during sexual intercourse christian view (Can we take the funding away from abstinence-only indoctrination and give it to grammar instruction?)

how to tell if professor has a crush on you (He doesn’t.)

girlfriend taking feminism way out of proportion (Uh oh, buddy, next thing you know, she’ll want to vote or something.)

tuffskins jeans (Were the bane of my childhood)

Notes on Bergman, Walsh, sexual decision-making and homosociality

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 31, 2007
in Men and Masculinity, Movies, People, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sports and Youth
. 9 Comments

I’m in my office with a big stack of summer grading to do, and thus little time to post. I’m scatterbrained more than usual, perhaps knowing that once I’m done grading, my real vacation begins!

I’m reflecting this morning on several things, including the deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Bill Walsh. When I was in college, I watched (at my mother’s insistence) a tape of the former’s “The Seventh Seal”. I was transfixed and moved and stunned, and more than two decades later, it remains one of my favorite films ever made. I’m not a movie buff, and most of the rest of the Bergman oeuvre leaves me cold, but I watch “The Seventh Seal” at least once a year.

Bill Walsh coached the 49ers throughout my adolescence; I was raised a loyal Niner fan and followed them obsessively throughout the 1980s. My interest in professional football began to diminish just as Walsh retired in 1989. I don’t think I can name more than three current players on the 49er roster; I can still recall — without prompting — the names of each player in the marvelous 1984 secondary (Wright, Lott, Williamson, Hicks.) Walsh was my coaching hero, and though he was a head coach at Stanford, my fellow Cal alums know that long before he served in Palo Alto, he was an assistant coach at Berkeley in the early 1960s.

But in addition to thinking kind thoughts about these two very different influences on my adolescence, I’m also struck by this New York Times article on The Whys of Mating.

…thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child.

Here’s the good part:

The results contradicted another stereotype about women: their supposed tendency to use sex to gain status or resources.

“Our findings suggest that men do these things more than women,” Dr. Buss said, alluding to the respondents who said they’d had sex to get things, like a promotion, a raise or a favor. Men were much more likely than women to say they’d had sex to “boost my social status” or because the partner was famous or “usually ‘out of my league.’ ”

Dr. Buss said, “Although I knew that having sex has consequences for reputation, it surprised me that people, notably men, would be motivated to have sex solely for social status and reputation enhancement.”

Well, it may have surprised the good doctor, but it isn’t a surprise to any of us who do gender studies. I’ve often praised Michael Kimmel’s use of the term “homosociality”. Homosociality is the notion that many heterosexual men engage in sexual activity as much to earn status with other men as for sexual pleasure itself. Having sex with women (particularly those who are perceived as “high-status” in the eyes of male peers) is as much about increasing the measure of one’s own manhood as it is about private satisfaction or erotic and emotional connection with another human being.

The study cited in the Times was done on students at the University of Texas, Austin. The men surveyed were generally of college-age, a time in men’s lives when they are particularly susceptible to homosocial pressures to win status. This study is a helpful reminder of the ubiquity of those pressures — and of the damage that homosociality inflicts on men and women alike. For those of us committed to working with teens and young adults, it’s still more incentive to focus our efforts on deconstructing young men’s desperate, heart-breaking, soul-destroying desire to win favor in the eyes of their male peers.

Challenging homosociality is near the top of the priority list for me in my men’s work. For those of us who want to be genuine egalitarians, what matters is not merely what we profess. Men who want to be real change agents need to treat women (and speak about women) the same way when they are “alone with the guys” as when they are in “mixed company.” Many women know what it’s like to have a boyfriend who is sweet and charming when she’s alone with him, but a jerk when he is surrounded by his friends (this is usually her bitter introduction to homosociality.) The great challenge is to be radically consistent, to be the same man always — with the brothers of Delta Kappa Epsilon, with one’s grandmother, with one’s girlfriend, with one’s teachers. I’ve seen young men achieve this time and time again, but rarely without colossal effort, and rarely without earning scorn from their peers. But there’s tremendous value in matching one’s language and one’s life. The damage that not doing so creates is equally tremendous, and the fact that women often bear the brunt of that failure is difficult to deny.

Cheryl Cannon smoked me yesterday: a note on marathoning and sexist marketing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Feminism and Sports
. 9 Comments

On Saturday afternoon, my wife went on a shopping excursion along Maiden Lane and Post Street while I relaxed in the hotel room, resting and snacking and preparing for Sunday morning’s run. A front-page article in the Chronicle naturally caught my eye: For a relaxing girls’ getaway, try a marathon. Written by long-time Bay Area sportswriter C.W. Nevius, it’s a frustrating but still interesting exploration of the boom in women’s running in the past decade. Excerpt:

“It’s a tidal wave,” says Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner’s World magazine and former winner of the Boston Marathon. “Thirty years ago, less than 5 percent of marathon participants were women. Now it is 40 percent.”

And higher. Race officials say the San Francisco Marathon is split almost exactly in half — 50 percent women, 50 percent men.

A group of five women from Fort Collins, Colo., represent the demographic perfectly. Tiffany Green, Connie Le, Kris Baugh, Erin Thomas and Stephanie Rogers are all in their 30s, married with children, and here on a running vacation.

“It’s girl time,” says Green. “We’re using this race as a reason to get away.”

This is not news, and it’s something I blogged about after I ran a marathon in June 2005. Nevius explains one reason for the change:

The new marathoners make it on a much lighter workload. Cheryl Cannon, down from Sacramento to run the marathon, says she rarely logs more than 40 miles in a week. Cannon, 42, started running only five years ago, but this will be her sixth marathon. Like many women, she runs with a regular group, which meets three times a week to jog 6 miles.

“We go out there and chat,” she says, “and the trees don’t repeat the gossip. We’re all in our 40s, have kids, and in much better shape than our husbands.”

That’s a good point. While big running events are booming, participation by men has actually gone down. What’s the reason for that?

“First,” says Burfoot, “it’s not a strength or skill sport. And second, success is measured in discipline, determination and consistency. Those are traits that women are all good at.”

Okay, so I looked up Cheryl Cannon’s results online — and two years my senior, she smoked me by fourteen minutes, running a 3:38 and finishing 11th overall among women in her age group. Nevius’ article suggests she runs only for fun and companionship. But her outstanding time, which puts her in the top 5% of her age group, is the result of hard work as well. Reading the whole article, one might have expected ol’ Cheryl to barely squeeze in under the six-hour cutoff. Continue reading ‘Cheryl Cannon smoked me yesterday: a note on marathoning and sexist marketing’

Home, and an initial marathon report

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 30, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Sports and Traveling
. 1 Comment

We’re home from a happy weekend in the Bay Area.

I ran the San Francisco Marathon yesterday morning, finishing in a pedestrian 3:52:44. I’d had a good season of training, but despite the pleas of my good running buddies, I hadn’t done a lick of “speed work” all spring or early summer. And yesterday’s run result reflected both the good and the bad of the last few months of work: I ran at a remarkably steady pace, hitting nearly perfectly even splits for the entire race. I ran the first half in 1:56:16, the second 13.1 miles in 1:56:28. In my thirteen previous marathons, I’d always run my second half at least two minutes slower than my first, so it was nice to show some consistency. (And I can account for those twelve second-half seconds: Hugo had to duck into a bush in Golden Gate park just past the half-way point. I know, far too much information…)

My last three road marathons have all seen me finish in the 3:50s, though I was faster yesterday than I was in my previous two (3:54 and 3:57). And I felt very strong at the finish, crossing the line with a sense that if I had had to do a few more miles, it would have been okay. The walk back to the hotel — a good mile and a half — was relatively easy, which was a relief. So, bottom line: I had a great time, particularly while running across the Golden Gate Bridge, and finished in a time that was consistent with my “heavy on long, slow distance; short on speed work” training regimen. My now eight-year old personal best of 3:13 is safe, assuredly forever.

I can highly recommend Millenium, the superb vegan restaurant we went to on Saturday night. A fine place to fuel up for a marathon; my wife and I shared a delicious tasting menu of plant-based foods that were all locally and organically produced. Millenium is worth a trip to the City.

Perhaps some more marathon reflections later.

Until Tuesday

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 26, 2007
in Blogging
. 4 Comments

As i write, my women’s history students are taking their open-book final exam. Summer school is at last at an end, and we’ve got a month until the fall semester begins. I’m happy — this was the best crop of students I’ve had in many a summer session, and the quality of the work they did has been really inspiring.

My wife and I are off to the Bay Area for a weekend with family; I’m doing the San Francisco Marathon on Sunday. All my hopes of running a fast time have long since left me, but I did get some quality long runs in that ought to enable me to finish without collapsing in a world of hurt.

I’ll be back to posting on Tuesday the 31st.

Friendship, weight, and the collective rejection of an unattainable ideal

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 26, 2007
in Athletics and Fitness, Body, Eating disorders and Food
. 9 Comments

I know everyone else in the ’sphere is writing about the major new study on obesity and friendship, but I can’t seem to resist weighing in (ouch) as well.

The opening sentence in the Times report yesterday left me wincing:

Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. When a person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too.

My first reaction is fury. Fabulous, another excuse for the shunning and shaming of fat folk. I can almost hear it: “Bob, you know I love you. But the New York Times says that obesity is contagious, and I’ve noticed you’ve gained a lot of weight lately, so I’d rather not spend as much time with you because I’m afraid you’ll infect me.” The phrase “much like a virus” is infelicitous at best and genuinely misleading at worst, and to have it in the opening sentence is deeply unfortunate.

The study’s point, of course, is that other people’s behavior and appearance can impact our feelings about ourselves.

Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, says one explanation is that friends affect each others’ perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad.

“You change your idea of what is an acceptable body type by looking at the people around you,” Dr. Christakis said.

I’m not entirely sure that this is a bad thing. After all, we’re all well aware that the media (in its nearly infinite manifestations) has a huge impact on women’s self-image; the endless message that one must be thin and toned has done demonstrable damage. The struggle to emulate movie stars and supermodels, the struggle to achieve an unattainable ideal, breaks hearts and spirits and bodies year after year after year. For most women, that struggle is played out in two dimensions — in private acts of self-denial and in public, shared acts of self-loathing. Poor body image is reinforced by peers (or parents) who make self-deprecating remarks about their own bodies, and it’s reinforced by the common and unhappy practice of “bonding” over mutual self-hatred.

When a good friend or family member begins to gain weight, it’s as if he or she has “opted out” of the destructive pursuit of an eternally elusive ideal. This opting out provides an alternative model for friends and family. Seeing a good friend gain weight can be liberating, as it raises the prospect that if you yourself put on some pounds, you won’t be alone to face the judgment of a hostile and censorious culture. Most of us who teach and practice feminism, after all, are eager to create “feminist communities” in which women and men consciously reject the culturally prescribed ideals for our appearance and our behavior. We know that it’s hard to opt out alone, and much easier to do so when you have visible allies. This study reinforces the importance of those visible allies.

While extreme obesity may be unhealthy, it may well be that the negative effects of modest weight-gain are exaggerated. Certainly, the social and psychological costs to dieting are immense. The damage that pursuing the thinness ideal does to men and women (especially women) is colossal. In many ways, the physical and spiritual damage brought on by a lifetime of dieting and self-loathing may be far worse than the threat posed by twenty, thirty, or even fifty “extra pounds”.

I’m a recreational athlete who is married to a recreational athlete; we spend a lot of our social time with other recreational athletes. We belong to a subculture in which exercise and competition is normative, and where discussions of the latest “brick workout” or the benefits of heart-rate monitoring are common at picnics and luncheons and around the dinner table. We reinforce not self-loathing, but a sense that a physically active life is an important one. This doesn’t make us in the least bit more virtuous; we’re simply competitive people who love exercising outdoors. The point is, we’ve created a small subculture in which our lifestyle choices are supported and reinforced. There’s nothing wrong with that, just as there’s nothing wrong with a group of people who don’t enjoy exercise and hate dieting mutually supporting each other as they collectively reject a societal ideal of thinness.

So there’s much about this study that is, frankly, potentially encouraging. But my fear is that the way in which it is being reported, and the way it is being discussed, will morph into still another tool with which to shame and shun those whose bodies don’t meet our societal standards.

Thursday Short Poem: Robbins’ “Iconoclasm of Mice”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 26, 2007
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

Our strictly vegan household has had to take some fairly drastic steps to deal with an invasion of rats in our attic. After months and months of trying every imaginable non-lethal method, we’ve been forced to choose what we were assured was the most humane way of ushering our uninvited guests to the far side of the Jordan. There’s a lot of guilt around our house, however. Thus, this Judith Robbins piece is perfect today.

The Iconoclasm of Mice


Mouse dung falls from overhead on books
I’ve made into icons in my writing house.

All waste unsettles me, challenges me
to eradicate it. Yet I crouch in my brain ashamed

of thinking of killing, of how I will do it.
I mount the wooden ladder I use

to prune trees in another season
and place the bait

wondering does the Creator notice
what I do while her furry back is turned.

Faith is not a choice: some thoughts on William Lobdell

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 25, 2007
in Christianity, Faith and Memories
. 20 Comments

The Los Angeles Times this weekend ran a painful, powerful story by their former religion beat writer, William Lobdell. Lobdell, a serious Christian, had sought the job eagerly, but in time, became profoundly disillusioned. In the course of his work as a religion reporter, he covered sex scandals and uncovered financial wrondoing by trusted leaders. The abuse and hypocrisy he encountered shook him. His faith suffered.

For some time, I had tried to push away doubts and reconcile an all-powerful and infinitely loving God with what I saw, but I was losing ground. I wondered if my born-again experience… was more about fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability than being touched by Jesus.

And I considered another possibility: Maybe God didn’t exist.

Lobdell continued to cover religion for the Times, but after witnessing a dismal case in Portland where the diocese refused to take responsibility for caring for a child conceived as the result of an affair between a priest and a vulnerable young parishioner, his doubts overwhelmed him.

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don’t. It’s not a choice. It can’t be willed into existence. And there’s no faking it if you’re honest about the state of your soul.

Sitting in a park across the street from the courthouse, I called my wife on a cellphone. I told her I was putting in for a new beat at the paper.

Bold emphasis mine.

I read the article over the weekend and was deeply moved. I had forgotten about it (oh, how quickly the ENFPs move on to new ideas) until Jill blogged briefly about Lobdell yesterrday.

Like Lobdell, I had a born-again experience rooted in “fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability.” I fell in love with Jesus nine years ago this month, after yet another suicide attempt and another involuntary hospitalization. My addictions to substances and experiences had left me so empty that I was desperate for anything, and I turned to Christ less as the result of a thoughtful, gradual process and more out of a sense of profound despair. Coming as it did at the very same time that I took the first temporary vow of celibacy of my adult life, my nascent faith in Jesus was very much like a passionate, hormonal love affair.

The great wonder is that my faith has lasted these past nine years. Oh, it’s grown and shifted a time or three. I’ve affiliated myself with Christians as diverse as Pentecostals (AG) and Mennonites and Episcopalians. I’ve flirted with theologians as liberal as John Shelby Spong and as conservative as John MacArthur. I’ve tried out Five Point Calvinism and Progressive Anabaptism and I’ve been “slain in the spirit”. It would not be uncharitable to say that in the first few years after becoming a believer, I replaced one form of promiscuity with another! My attachment to specific church communities was fleeting, but always intense. Like any good Borderline, I moved from idealization to disillusionment with extraordinary rapidity. The difference was that I was now idealizing (and then rejecting) churches rather than women.

I’m a lot more stable in my religious and personal commitments these days. But the truly amazing thing is that what happened to Lobdell didn’t happen to me. Though I have frequently been appalled by the dissonance between what my fellow Christians say and what they do, I’ve somehow never connected the failings of the church with my own beliefs. Perhaps because I never put down roots n any one faith community, I never had my faith shaken by the misbehavior of pastors or parishioners. My love for Jesus is too personal and too private to be threatened by what any one group of fellow believers says or does. That’s the privilege of the adult convert who can break communal attachments as easily as he made them.

In the end, after all this time, I still think of Jesus as my best friend and greatest lover. Like many evangelicals — particularly those influenced by Pentecostalism — I’m more in love with the Son and the Spirit than with the Father. Frequently, when someone asks me about my spiritual affiliation, I say simply “Jesus lover”. It’s a bit precious, I realize, but it also allows me to escape the theological pigeon-holing that I find so deadening and tiresome. In my life, Jesus comes first, my wife comes second, and everyone else follows. And my faith in Jesus, so far, has proven remarkably firm. Indeed, it’s been consistent for nearly a decade, and other than respirate, teach, and be addicted to caffeine, I haven’t done anything else consistently for that long.

Lobdell is absolutely right: faith is not always a choice. I don’t know why some people stop believing and others get to keep that sense of God’s presence. I know plenty of people, like the Times reporter, who work harder at keeping their faith than I do — and they still lose it while I remain strangely certain. I’m a great believer in hard work, a great believer that all relationships, even one with God, require effort. But I’m also reluctantly convinced that faith is a result of a grace that is, mysteriously, not given equally to all. That doesn’t mean I’m a Calvinist convinced of total human depravity. It does mean that I don’t believe, not even for a moment, that my conviction that God is real and that Jesus died for me and for the world is the result of my own personal virtue.

Those of us who are blessed with a faith that has withstood many trials would do well to remember how fortunate we are. And those of us whose faith came to us through our parents must test that faith to find out if it is what we can embrace as adults. Those of us who, like me, came to faith as adults in a moment of deep crisis must be honest about whether or not our belief is rooted more in authentic spiritual conviction or in the simple emotional longing not to be alone, to be loved unconditionally, to have (at last) someone who loves us so much that they will never leave us.

I’m praying for William Lobdell this morning and for the broader church. I’m grieving the countless sins, big and small, that we in the churches have committed that have helped drive Christians like Lobdell away.

And I’m feeling really, really grateful to have what I sure as hell did not earn.

UPDATE: Christy has a terrific post up on Lobdell as well, and she throws in Tammy Faye for good measure.

Reprint: the final lectures, a note on wrapping up courses

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 24, 2007
in Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 0 Comments

This post is a bit over two years old, but since I’m giving my final summer school lectures today, it’s worth a reprint on the assumption that relatively few of my current readers remember the original.

Ever since I started teaching, I’ve been convinced that a course needs ‘wrapping up’ at the end of the term. I never liked profs who finished by saying “Well, that’s it, good luck on the final!” I’m convinced that it’s my job as a teacher to tie as many loose ends together as possible, summarize the material, point out the overarching theme of the course, and then exhort the students to apply what they’ve learned — somehow.

I know my students will soon forget most of the facts they’ve memorized. Five years from now, will my ancient history students remember Augustine’s conditions for a just war? Will my modern Europe students remember who was in the Triple Alliance? Will my women’s history students remember the date the Declaration of Sentiments was signed, or who invented the tampon? I suspect most of these facts (if memorized at all in the first place) will rapidly vanish from their memories in the months and years to come.

For example, in my History 1B (Modern Europe) class, the theme all semester long has been “the triumph of the individual.” (For an Anabaptist socialist, it’s an unlikely theme. My heroes ought to be Menno and Marx; instead I tend to rely on Montesquieu and Mill. Go figure.) My course began with Martin Luther nailing up his theses; it ends with the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two. It’s a stretch to tie them together, but I give it a go. I suggest that just as Luther insisted on the primacy of faith (and faith, while a gift from God, is essentially internal and individual), the Nuremberg Trials insisted that men and women were accountable to their individual conscience even over the direct orders of a superior. The Protestant Reformation and Nuremberg are, I argued, both instances where the notion of a universal law, written on the human heart, is used to trump obligations to an external, human authority. It’s a whopping generalization to describe these events in that fashion, but while it’s a stretch, it’s not indefensible. I ask my students to consider this concern for individual rights and individual conscience to be the great legacy of the last five centuries of European history.

In my women’s history class, I’m far more polemical. I tell them that my real purpose in teaching this course has been to raise up young feminists and their pro-feminist allies. I’ve given them a narrative of four centuries of American women’s history to instill gratitude within them for all that their foremothers endured on their behalf. I want them to understand that the right to vote, the right to use birth control, the right to education — all of these were won by women who sacrificed years and years of their lives to the feminist cause. But I don’t just want my students to be grateful! I remind them that the feminist struggle is far from over: in a country without guaranteed maternity leave, where rape and sexual exploitation remain serious problems, where sexual harassment is still widespread and families headed by single women are disproportionately poor, feminism still has relevance. I remind them that how they feel about their bodies — and the bodies of other women — is also a feminist issue. Women have not always suffered from crippling anxiety about their flesh, as my students have learned; one important front in the feminist cause must be to transform individual and collective attitudes towards the body. I urge my students to consider wearing the feminist label (which most of them have heretofore shunned) with pride.

I don’t expect many of my students to really take what I’m saying to heart. I’m far too realistic for that. Most of them are simply here to pass their classes, move on to the next level, and have what they and I hope will be rewarding careers as a result. I wish them well regardless of whether or not they embrace feminism as a philosophy and a cause. Yes, my heart is thrilled whenever I get a note from a student who has changed her major to women’s studies, or has decided on a career in justice work. Part of me suspects these students might have chosen these laudable paths without me or my class; it’s dangerous for those of us in this profession to over-estimate our own significance. But it’s dangerous to underestimate our influence as well. Even those students who won’t make different decisions academically or professionally as a result of a feminist studies class may still find fruitful, if small ways to apply what it is that they’ve absorbed in these sixteen weeks.

In the end, I’m convinced that good teaching is polemical. In order for me to teach, I have to believe that what I teach has a practical application beyond simply providing students with interesting stories and a general background. Good teaching — and I hope in some way, some of the time, I’m a practitioner of that — is meant to push students in specific directions, not merely towards the “truth” but towards the application of that truth in their own lives. Though that is most true in courses like Women’s History, I’m convinced it is also part and parcel of even general survey classes.

Street harassment and recruiting alpha males

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 24, 2007
in Men and Masculinity and Sexual harassment
. 32 Comments

I got an e-mail last week from a man named X, asking about pro-feminist men and responses to sexual harassment — particularly on the street.

There’s been a lot of blogosphere discussion about street harassment lately, and I was interested in your thoughts about how, and whether, men can help (aside from Not Doing It, and acknowledging the pain it causes).

I’m embarrassed to admit that I only started to become aware of how big a problem this is fairly recently, and so it’s been on my mind. This morning, for example, I was walking to the subway and right about when I passed by a woman, a guy sitting in a parked van made some remark to her. I felt ashamed to just walk by, as if I didn’t notice or I approved, but also couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

On the one hand, I think there are good reasons why confronting other men in situations like this might not help at all–as a post at Feministe (where I originally posted this, before realizing maybe asking you would be a better venue) and some comments have noted, most harassers simply won’t acknowledge their behavior as wrong, and there’s a non-trivial chance of violence. (This inability to productively engage may be even more true insofar as class and race issues enter into things.) It seems that especially in cities, people almost never sanction strangers for their public improprieties; attempting to do it on a regular basis, especially as a third party, is hard to imagine. On the other hand, is that just cowardice speaking?

I agree with the suggestion that verbally accosting harassers in the street can be dangerous and (almost worse) unhelpful. While we might be called on to jeopardize our own safety to assist someone who is being physically assaulted, I’m not sure that that moral mandate applies to all instances of sexual harassment. Male feminists are not asked to be “knights in shining armor”, rescuing helpless damsels. And while it is certainly true that male feminists have a special and vital role to play in challenging other men to rethink what is acceptable, that doesn’t mean that we ought to ask men who embrace feminism to put themselves into regular physical danger.

Continue reading ‘Street harassment and recruiting alpha males’

A note on being Hugo, one which contains a small Harry Potter spoiler

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 23, 2007
in Family and Stuff
. 18 Comments

I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, and though I saw the first film in a theater and the second film on a long Emirates flight, I haven’t been keeping up with the movie versions either. I’ve got no objection to the Potter books on artistic or theological grounds, and mine is not an aversion rooted in snobbery. It’s just that I can always think of something else I’d rather read.

That said, I’ve heard from several people this weekend who excitedly report that in the epilogue to the final story, two central characters end up married with children — and they name their son “Hugo.” One young man I work with came running up to me on Saturday to inquire what my name “really means”, convinced that there was some deep symbolism embodied in Rowling’s choice. My name, depending on which source text you use, means “bright” or (I like this better) “bright mind.” This revelation seemed deeply satisfying to the sixteen year-old who was querying me, and he went off quite pleased.

I was named for my father’s side of the family. “Hugo” was my father’s father’s father. He came from a family of Moravian Jews who had thoroughly assimilated, and thus he and his brothers all had these very Germanic names (Berthold and Ludwig were other choices). “Benedict”, my middle name, comes from the first name of another great-great-grandfather. (My brother, Philip Arthur, was named for my mother’s side of the family).

I grew up hating my name. The teasing started early; some of my readers will be old enough to remember the character “Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces” (a seemingly innocuous title that became a painful burden). One group of insipid children in third grade came up with the inspired “Hugo’s a go-go” (not that they really knew what go-go dancing entailed), and that monicker lasted throughout elementary school. I can remember wishing, at age ten or so, that I had been named “Mike”. That was by far the most popular boys’ name in my school, and it seemed just the sort of name that would act as a magical coat of protection against all sorts of insults. Once, while on the school bus, I tried to tell a new boy that my name was Mike, just to “try out” the new title; I was overheard and my deceit was greeted with cheerful howls of derision.

I began to appreciate my name in high school, largely because in my adolescence I began to value the very things I had been so ashamed of in my childhood. Where at nine or ten I had longed to fit in with all the other boys, at fifteen and sixteen I delghted in my uniqueness. I didn’t meet another Hugo until I was a seventeen year-old high school senior; I encoutered him at the California state Model UN convention. He was Hispanic, and when he introduced himself, asked “How did a white guy end up with a name like Hugo?” I was about to ask him a similar question; we had each assumed that Hugo belonged to a specific language group and were a bit thrown to discover that there are versions of Hugo in most Western European tongues.

I’ve met Dutch Hugos, Swedish Hugos, English Hugos and — by now — a great number of Hugos from Spanish-speaking families. Venezuala’s Chavez, with his infamy, has given the name a sinister touch (or, in the eyes of the fringe global left, a certain Fidelisque cachet). What I haven’t met yet is an American-born Hugo who doesn’t come out of a Hispanic background. I’ve corresponded with one or two, but haven’t yet met in person.

There is pleasure in an unusual name, though it is a pleasure I had to learn to love. I like knowing today that if I hear someone yell “Hugo” in a crowd, it is almost invariably for me. Yelling “Juan” or “Michael” (or, these days, “Hunter” or “Dylan”) often leads only to confusion. I like that I am easy to google, unlike my good friend Jennifer Brown or my dear colleague Steve Richards. The names that my wife and I have tentatively discussed for our future children, should the Lord bless us in that regard, will be kept secret until after the small ones arrive. But I can say that most of our options are indeed unusual. I fully expect my future son or daughter to go through a stage where they wish they had been named “Emily” or “Daniel” instead of the far more unusual name they’ve been given.

I like to scan the popular baby names provided by the Social Security Administration. My operating rule is that no child ought to be given a name from the top 50. Obviously, names go in and out of fashion; the current trend for boys’ names seems to be to mine the Old Testament, and for girls it seems trendy to turn to the likes of Jane Austen for inspiration. I didn’t know any “Avas” or “Jacobs” in my youth, and it seems that names like Lisa or Troy (which were hugely popular among those of us born in the mid-to-late ’60s) have all but vanished. But while one cannot predict long-term trends, one can predict what will be popular on elementary school rosters a few years from now. And it seems wise and good and right to pick with an eye towards the unusual, the ancient, the meaning-filled. Even if such a choice will lead a child to curse her parents when she is nine, she will surely rejoice in what is nearly uniquely hers when she is older.

I am a very happy Hugo Benedict.

Friday Random Ten: music for a restless taper

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 20, 2007
in Friday Random Ten
. 6 Comments

My wife and I share a great love for Mahalia, though #3 is the only song I have on my Itunes (it’s my favorite.) In the 1990s, I listened to Liz Phair constantly, and now don’t seem to do so as much, but my fondness isn’t entirely gone. #4 was on the radio a lot when I first came back to Christ and gave up a host of destructive behaviors, and it was a signature song for that first year of recovery. #1 and #9 are, as I’ve mentioned before, favorite theme songs from an earlier time, when the behaviors I gave up in the late ’90s were what sustained me. And of course, if you’ve never heard of the Wailin’ Jennys or the Weepies or my newest discovery, Sarah Buxton, check them out.

1. “Don’t Follow”, Alice in Chains
2. “World Spins Madly On”, The Weepies
3. “Thy Will Be Done”, Mahalia Jackson
4. “Your Life is Now”, John Mellencamp
5. “Leap of Innocence”, Liz Phair
6. “Darling Nikki”, Prince
7. “My Antonia”, Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews
8. “The Mighty Quinn”, Ian and Sylvia
9. “I’ve Loved These Days”, Billy Joel
10. “Firecracker”, Wailin’ Jennys

Bonus Track: “Stupid Boy”, Sarah Buxton

Not just consent but enthusiasm: some notes on college sex workshops and stoplights

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 19, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexuality, Teaching and Youth
. 58 Comments

The thread below this post has gotten sidetracked in a variety of typical ways. Noumena wrote:

How to not get raped’ workshops are legion and often mandatory for new college students, but I’ve never heard of a `how not to become a rapist’ workshop, to say nothing of `having a healthy sex life at college on your own terms’.

And I mentioned that I’ve facilitated a variety of workshops that deal with these issues, though not with those titles. One workshop I helped design years ago, and which I would love to do again, was something we called “Consent and Beyond”. Originally growing out of the work of Peer Sexuality Outreach at Cal, the workshop was designed to create honest discussion about how young people can communicate more effectively about desire, boundaries, limits, and, of course, consent.

Most boys, for example, get the “no means no” message pretty loud and clear in high school and college workshops. It’s a worthy if basic message, and one well worth repeating over and over again. But as anyone who works around young people and sexuality will tell you, in and of itself a “no means no” reminder is woefully insufficient. Many of the young men and women I work with, for example, talk to me of what I’ve come to call the “stoplight” phenomenon. Traffic signals, of course, have three colors: red for stop, yellow for caution, green for go. Good drivers are taught to stop on “red”, which functions as a “no”. But of course, even at the busiest urban intersections, no light stays red indefinitely. If you wait long enough at a stoplight, every red will become green. And when all we do is teach young men that “no means stop” when it comes to sexual boundaries, we often send them the message that if they just wait long enough (or pester, push, nag, beg, play passive-aggressive games) they’ll get the “green light” they’re so hungry for. Good “sexual boundaries workshops” go beyond the “no means no” message. Specifically, we look at the ways in which many men will accept a “no” as a “yellow light” rather than a red, assuming that if they simply keep up unrelenting pressure (often abetted by alcohol or exhaustion) they’ll get the permission they seek.

Part of being a good man, I teach, is not being a relentless advocate for your own pleasure. Part of being a good sexual partner is not using a variety of psychological (and chemical) tactics to turn the red light to green, to turn the “no” into a “yes”, or even worse, to simply wait until the young woman has grown tired of saying “no” and falls into a resigned silence. This is all part of the “how not to be a rapist” workshop. And while one hears anecdotal stories of young women persistently pressuring male partners for sex, all of the evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of the pressure is uni-directional, from boys towards girls.

The message that needs to be repeated over and over again is this one: true consent is never tacit, it is never silent. Too many young men become date rapists by confusing silence with a clear, verbal affirmation. “No means no”, but with folks you don’t know well, you need to presume that silence (especially when accompanied by physical passivity) is also a loud, clear, shout-it-from-the-flippin’-rooftops, “NO!” How many women have had sex they didn’t desire with men they didn’t want simply because they were too tired of fighting, too tired of resisting, too eager to just have it over with?

A dangerous line I sometimes use: “The opposite of rape is not consent. The opposite of rape is enthusiasm”. It’s dangerous because it’s shocking, and of course, it’s dangerous because it twists the purely legal meaning of the term “rape.” But from the standpoint of one who cares desperately about the well-being of young people, my goal in offering workshops like these is not merely to prevent sexual assault that meets the legal standard of a criminal act. My goal is to prevent that, of course, but to also offer shy and uncertain young people tools to prevent them from having bad sex characterized by obligation, confusion, and detached resignation. I always argue that anything short of an authentic, honest, uncoerced, aroused and sober “Hell, yes!” is, in the end, just a “no” in another form.

That sets the bar pretty darned high. But given the consequences of unwanted sex to the body and the heart and the mind and the soul, given the potential for sex to be life-affirming and ecstatic, our young people deserve to have the bar set just that high.

Three links: Now Four

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 19, 2007
in Links
. 1 Comment

More later, but I note that I’ve been rotten about linking to good posts lately. Here’s some of the goodness you ought to check out in your abundant free time:

Jeff at Feminist Allies on Living with Feminist Anger Towards Men.

Jendi Reiter on solitude and faith in Why Church?

Sarah on marriage, growing up Catholic and leaning to the Nazarenes with Taking Things Off Old Pedestals.

And then, read Lynn on interpreting the newest statistics about teen sex.

Thursday Short Poem: Cavafy’s “Body, Remember”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 19, 2007
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

This C.P. Cavafy classic was a favorite of mine a few years ago. As those of us who once — briefly — took simple pleasure in being the object of others’ desire know, ageing is not without its anxieties. There’s a deeply narcissistic comfort here. It’s not a Christian poem by any means, but it reads familiar.

Body, Remember

Body, remember not only how much you were loved
not only the beds you lay on.
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembling for you in voices-
only some chance obstacle frustrated them.
Now that it’s all finally in the past,
it seems almost as if you gave yourself
to those desires too-how they glowed,
remember, in eyes that looked at you,
remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices.