Archive for November, 2007

Losing my first action hero

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2007
in Memories and People
. 6 Comments

Evel Knievel has died. I was seven when he hit the apex of his fame, trying to jump Snake River Canyon. In the year after he made that doomed attempt, I remember riding my Schwinn through the streets of Carmel, building little jumps with other children and playing a game that we simply called “Evel Knievel.” When I saw he died today, I had a sudden flashback to a time — nearly thirty-five years ago — when he was the hero of every kid in my school. I had a little plastic Evel Knievel motorcycle with a plastic action figure, and when I wasn’t building small wooden ramps out of particle board to do jumps on my bike, I was playing with that darned doll.

For someone who writes as much about masculinity as I do, it’s odd I don’t refer more often to the cultural icons of my childhood. Three public figures from the mid-’70s were, for me, the ultimate “men’s men”: O.J. Simpson, Evel Knievel, and the actor Tom Laughlin, who starred in The Trial of Billy Jack, an utterly forgettable film that was perhaps the first grown-up movie I saw in the theater (age eight). Another post for another time about these three very different men and their influence on a very young Hugo.

Part one of a series on “Getting Off”: masculinity, pornography, and the truth of what we don’t want to face

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2007
in Men and Masculinity, Porn, Porn and Masculinity Series, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 50 Comments

This will be the first (long) part of a three-part post. Parts two and three to come next week.

I started reading Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity over the Thanksgiving holiday, and finished the relatively short book earlier this week. As I said in my post immediately below this one, it has had a deep and profound impact upon me.

In this first post, I’ll look at the case Jensen makes against porn, particularly the arguments he marshalls against the idea that porn isn’t a “big deal” and that “normal people” can use it without negative consequences for themselves, their relationships, and society as a whole. In the second post, I’ll respond to the charge against Jensen — reiterated by Courtney Martin – that his prose “reeks of self-hate.” Self-loathing is a common slur tossed at pro-feminist men, and deserves a response all of its own. In the third post, I’ll look at Jensen’s proposals about masculinity and sexuality, particularly his remarkable suggestion that we ground our sexual ethics not merely in pleasure, but in joy and in light.

Robert Jensen is one of a small group (others include Jackson Katz, Michael Flood, and Michael Kimmel) who are the dedicated public faces of the pro-feminist men’s movement. Jensen, a professor of journalism at Texas, wrote the marvelous Heart of Whiteness, about which I also ought to blog someday. Getting Off sees Jensen take an enormously brave step. Balancing thoughtful analysis with deep candor, he makes the most powerful case against pornography that I’ve read since the late Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women, a book now more than 25 years old. And yes, Getting Off is dedicated to (among others) Dworkin herself.

Jensen starts by reminding us of what we already know: we live in a porn-saturated culture. Technological innovation has made the furtive peeps at father’s Playboy an unknown experience for most young people today. Jensen, born in 1958, describes his own adolescent fascination with pornographic magazines and the lengths to which he and his buddies would go to acquire porn. My own experience with porn was similar; I “discovered” it in 1979, when I was twelve. The porn that so indelibly marked (and marred) my nascent sexuality came in print with magazines like “Club International” and “Penthouse.” What’s available today online –even for free — is infinitely more vivid, infinitely more hardcore, and infinitely more interactive than it was in my youth or in Jensen’s.

We know all this of course. What we don’t know — or, as Jensen points out, what we don’t want to know — is how truly ugly pornography is. For a host of reasons ranging from denial to civil libertarianism to sheer horny curiosity, a great many voices across the spectrum are unwilling to name porn as one of the most corrosive influences on our culture and on our humanity. Continue reading ‘Part one of a series on “Getting Off”: masculinity, pornography, and the truth of what we don’t want to face’

Previewing a post on pornography, masculinity, and Robert Jensen: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2007
in Links, Men and Masculinity and Porn
. 11 Comments

I’ve spent part of my time this week scribbling out some thoughts about Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, the genuinely extraordinary new book from Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas.

Deo volente and the crick don’t rise, I’ll finish my review tomorrow and post it. In the meantime, Courtney Martin has her own thoughts up at Feministing, and the comment thread below her piece is very interesting. Courtney is clearly troubled by the book, both by its insights into a world she has deliberately avoided, and by Jensen’s radical proposed solution: the eradication of masculinity as a category of human identity. I’m less troubled — largely because I think Jensen is more right than Courtney would like to believe.

I’ll say this as a preview: this is the first non-fiction book I’ve read this year that’s made me weep. It’s the best thing I’ve read about pornography in years, and it functions brilliantly on many levels. It’s so good that as I read, at times fighting back tears, I cursed Robert Jensen for writing the book I would have longed to write. Whatever I publish on pornography and masculinity in the future will be heavily influenced by this book and my response to it. I’ll explain tomorrow, and in the meantime, check out Courtney’s post.

UPDATE: The thread at Feministing has a lot on the problem of fantasy, and Greg raises the issue below this post. Let me, as a prelude to what I’m gonna write tomorrow, offer these links to old things I’ve written:

Why Pornography Bothers Me More than Depictions of Violence

Some Very Long Thoughts on Fantasy and Masturbation

Quick GOP debate thoughts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2007
in Politics
. 6 Comments

I was feeling a little drained last night, so I stayed on the couch and watched the Republican “Youtube” debate on CNN. Lots of other folks around the blogosphere were watching, and many will have deeper thoughts than I. What follows is pretty darned superficial:

In the general election, I will likely vote for any of the current Democratic candidates over any of the men who were on the stage last night. But in the primary, as a registered Republican, I’ve been leaning towards voting for John McCain. And last night’s debate — especially with McCain’s fierce rejection of waterboarding as torture — reminded me of what I’ve always admired about him. He’s not going to get the nomination, but despite his obvious anger problem, he’s probably the most worthy man in his party. And he has the endorsement of Republicans for Environmental Protection, a group whose opinions I admire.

Huckabee was charming. His candidacy has the potential to widen the fissure that liberals very much want to see widened — that between fiscal and social conservatives. He’s never going to get the nomination, but he’s for real. If he pulls social cons away from Romney, that ends up helping Rudy.

As for Romney — are we really ready to have a president who is that handsome? I mean, forget the Mormon thing. I found myself studying Mitt’s face and hair last night, looking for flaws. It’s positively unnerving, and in “all half-seriousness”, I wonder if his “central casting looks” will end up hurting him in the general election. His appearance was genuinely distracting.

Fred Thompson was beyond hopeless. Great voice, but he looked bored, disengaged, and grumpy. And his suit jacket didn’t fit. Give the man a drink and send him home.

Pain, poetry, privilege and moral triage

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2007
in Feminism, Links, Poetry and Race
. 4 Comments

The Full Frontal Feminism discussion continues in various fora. I’m struck this morning by this long, powerful, angry, passionate, frequently funny poem by Ilyka: Letter to a Puppet. It’s written more to a well-meaning commenter than to me, but I’m provoked and stirred — in the best way — by it. Poetry frequently gets things across to me that prose can’t. This bit is haunting me right now:

Moral triage was performed,
and some people
were just going to have to sit in the waiting room
a little fucking longer than they had been,
and they’d been there for hundreds of years already, that’s the really shitty part.

I thought that was sad,
and hateful,
and patronizing. That it was said in an earnest,
well-meaning,
conciliatory,
and no doubt civil tone–
well. It didn’t make ME any less angry,
let’s put it that way.

Speaking only for myself — not for Jessica Valenti, not for any of my commenters, not for anyone else — I do perform moral triage all too often. And time and again, as much as I say I don’t want to play the “oppression Olympics“, I do create “hierarchies of hurt”, saying “well, we can’t fight all the battles at once, so let’s pick the most important ones.” My instincts and my training, and yes, my whiteness, lead me to see the mistreatment of women (all women, irrespective of color or class) as the Greatest Crime. And I’ve been called out more than once for continuing to rely on the problematic Shirley Chisholm model, the one in which I get a famous black woman’s blessing to perform “moral triage.”

And let me say this as well: speaking only for myself and for no one else, I don’t think anyone in the “women of color” community has been “hating” on me. I’d like to think I can distinguish between being the target of righteous anger and being an object of mindless hate. In the blogosphere, I’ve been on the receiving end of both from time to time, and have noticed that there is a difference. Saying “Hugo is a privileged ass who doesn’t get it” is very different from saying “Hugo is a self-loathing mangina”.

Thanks, Ilyka. I loved the poem, and it’s got the chinchillas who live in my head racing extra-fast on their wheels.

Thursday Short Poem: Mazur’s “Whatever they Want”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 29, 2007
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

Good teaching — especially in gender studies — often involves a willingness to tell stories about oneself. That doesn’t mean tormenting students with irrelevant anecdotes, but it does mean a willingness to offer evidence that you, the instructor, match your language and your life. This Gail Mazur poem plays with that theme nicely. The last five lines ring especially true for me. And yes, as wince-inducing as it no doubt sounds, sometimes– only to myself — I call my students “my babies.”

Whatever They Want

Tonight, my students can ask me anything.
I’ll tell them the story of my life,
whatever they want. Outside, traffic shimmers
in the gulf haze, mosquitoes incubate
in the bayou. My students laugh softly
at the broad a of my accent, evidence—
if they need it—of my vulnerability,
a woman fallible enough to be
their mother. And it’s easy, I’m easy
with their drawled interrogations,
their curiosity, the way they listen
without memory or desire every Monday,
while I peel another layer from the onion,
the tearjerker, while the air conditioner
in the classroom stirs the fine hairs
on their arms, and I forget the cool protections
of irony, giving them my suffering family,
my appendectomy, my transcendent first kisses—
What kind of teaching is this?
I transport them with me to Maine,
to the Ukraine, they see my great-uncle’s
dementia, my cat’s diabetes—exotica
of gloom, pratfalls, romantic fantasias,
extravagant sleet, snow, sweet innuendoes. . . .
They ask for it, they want to tell me things, too,
Texas stories, with boots, with dead fathers
and shrimp boats, with malls, with grackles,
with fire ants, with icehouses, with neon,
with rifles, and the Holy Scriptures—
Inexhaustible reality!
When I drive home singing past the palm trees
and the tenebrous live oaks and the taquerías,
I’m in the movies, and later, when I sleep,
I dream of my babies, their insatiable hungers,
I give them permission to say whatever they want,
as long as there’s no meanness in it,
as long as words taste bittersweet,
as long as they’re true, as long as they move me.

Where the Blind Horse Sings

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2007
in Animal Rights
. 0 Comments

A reader named Anne introduced me to Kathy Stevens’ blog: Where the Blind Horse Sings. Kathy runs an animal shelter in the Catskills, and I’ve just ordered her book. Kathy has a lot to say about animal rights, the cruelty-free lifestyle, and anthropomorphism.

I have a hard time with the concept of anthropomorphism. I work with animals every single day. They arrive at Catskill Animal Sanctuary broken and fearful, and over time, we watch them blossom–often into enormous and unforgettable characters. Interestingly, the process is similar from animal to animal: first they trust their caretakers–those who give them food, shelter and love day after day. Then we watch in delight as they generalize to visitors. Indeed, there is no greater joy than participating in the transformation of these broken spirits, and watching them evolve as dark memories are replaced by consistent positive experience.

How is it that so many people use the term “anthropomorphism” so freely? The impetus for my book Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary was the startling similarity in the emotional lives of humans and animals. Ask anyone at Catskill Animal Sanctuary or come visit or volunteer and discover for yourself: we’d be hard-pressed to name an emotion that animals don’t possess. They display love, tenderness, joy, curiosity, impatience, anger, jealousy, grief and a host of other emotions generally considered the domain of humans. The greatest among the animals display things like courage and compassion…

It is surely true that animals process many things differently than humans do. It is also true that all of the great emotions are genuinely universal. It is not wishful thinking that causes us to believe that the animals in our lives feel pleasure, feel joy, feel grief. And the more aware that we become that other living creatures are sentient and have feelings, the greater our responsibility towards them.

White men teaching feminism to women of color: a post about class, privilege, and the need for humility, curiosity, and flexibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2007
in Class, Ethnicity, Feminist Pedagogy and Race
. 19 Comments

With the re-emergence of the Full Frontal Feminism discussion this past week, I’ve been called to reflect on the challenges and privileges that come with being a middle-class, heterosexual, Christian white man who teaches gender studies. (I say “gender studies” because, even though PCC still has no such formal department, I teach courses on Women’s History, Men and Masculinity, Lesbian and Gay History, and “body” history.)

I’ve written about the problematic nature of my role as a man teaching feminism before. Here’s part of what I wrote three years or so ago:

I do acknowledge that having a man teaching women’s history to a class filled with women (and always at least one or two other men) is problematic. I know just how important it is that young women have feminist role models who, in both their work and their private lives, can live out feminist principles. But higher education is not just about providing role models! It is about the principle that knowledge itself has no sex, and that all human experience is equally worthy of study by all human beings. When we limit the teaching of women’s studies to women, we send the message that this subject is not, somehow, worth the time and attention of male academics. This does not mean that a male teacher confers a legitimacy his female colleagues do not — though some students may perceive it that way. But it does mean that it is immensely counter-productive to “ghettoize” (I use that term carefully) an academic discipline by suggesting that only some folks can teach it.

… “being a woman” does not guarantee compassion or empathy with other women! Women of color in the feminist movement have spent years having their concerns marginalized by their white, upper-middle class sisters. What makes a wealthy white woman more qualified to teach her Latina and African-American sisters than, say, a Latino man — or for that matter, a white man? Feminists who insist that the oppression of sex transcends racial and economic discrimination do a colossal injustice to the experiences of both men and women of color. My point is simple: if we are going to take a teacher’s sex into account, we must also take his or her race into account — and that sets up a slippery slope towards the extreme Balkanization of academic disciplines.

Of course, most of my critics in the “feminist/womanists of color” blogosphere haven’t said “Hugo can’t teach women’s studies merely because he’s a middle-class white Christian male.” Too suggest otherwise is to erect a straw-woman to knock down. What is clear is that my pedagogical decisions (like assigning Full Frontal Feminism in the way in which I did, and managing the discussion the way I did), combined with my maleness and my whiteness, raises a number of questions about teaching, feminism, sex, race, and power.

I don’t know what it’s “like” to be a woman. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up poor, or to grow up non-white, or to grow up in a religious minority. Sometimes, even in recent days, I’ve made the classic white male liberal mistake of trying to establish my progressive bona fides by the classes I took taught by radical women of color, or by talking about my marriage to a mixed-race woman. That’s a cheap and ineffective strategy, and it tends to infuriate the very people I’m trying to convince. I can recite the books I’ve read, I can name-drop until the cows come home, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a tremendous amount of white privilege.

I’m forty, older than most of the folks who’ve been involved in this debate. I’ve been teaching gender studies here at PCC since 1995, my third year at the college. And even after all this time, I know I still frequently “don’t get it”. Unlearning the acculturation to privilege is painful, it is hard, and the hardest and most painful thing about it is it never, ever ends. Every time I start to “believe my own press”, and begin to imagine that I have become a particularly enlightened being, a person who has transcended his class, his culture, and his sex, I am brought rudely back to earthly reality. I have a penis and a Y chromosome, I am melanin-deficient, and my speech and my bearing reflects a carefully-bred confidence that comes from privilege. Whether or not I think my sex or my race or my class matter, my students (almost none of whom share that particularly constellation of privileges) are likely to see me as a very familiar sort of figure: the older white man who knows a lot (or thinks he does) and is eager to enlighten them.

My women’s studies classes average 45-50 students now (before 2004, I taught in a smaller classroom and had only 30-35). I need to cover women’s history in America from the pre-Columbian era to five minutes ago, and I need to cover contemporary women’s issues — especially feminism — at the same time. I have 75 minutes twice a week in which to pull this off; I have no teaching assistants. The room is too crowded to have us sit in a circle, and the size of the class means interactivity will be severely limited. Lecturing, therefore, is going to be the primary pedagogical tool; that’s of necessity as much as of inclination. The students do write journals, they do initiate discussions from time to time, but most of the time, it’s me talking to them. I make my lectures as captivating as possible, and when I’m “on”, I’m a pretty damn good orator. Which is fine, except that having a middle-class white man strut and fret in front of a classroom that is made up primarily of first-generation female students of color doesn’t do much to undermine the patriarchy. The more I exhort, the more I inspire, the more I risk reinforcing something very traditional.

I can’t do anything about the size of the class. (Indeed, because it is a popular class, I was asked to consider moving into a larger lecture room that accomodates 150. I turned down the offer and asked for two smaller sections instead, and was told that wasn’t feasible.) And I can’t do anything about my maleness, my whiteness, or the fact that I grew up in Carmel, went to prep school (though I was kicked out!) and live a moderately comfortable life. But there’s still a lot I can do, even with the limitations of a large class size and my own privilege. And the chief thing I need to continue to do, and to get better at doing, is to remain teachable.

Actually, that’s not quite enough. As I was reminded this week, “remaining teachable” is essentially passive. It asks those who want me to change to do the work of teaching me. Perhaps it would be better to say that I need to work on three things in particular: humility, curiosity, flexibility. The arguments over Full Frontal Feminism haven’t changed my mind about the usefulness of the book as a highly accessible primer. But the arguments have reminded me to be a better listener to criticism, more humble about my role in facilitating learning, and to be more actively curious in seeking out alternative views to provide to my students. I need to better, too, about being flexible. Like most ageing academics, I get attached to the “way things have always been done”, and tend to be loth to update my syllabi.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I teach gender studies courses because I want to raise up young feminists. I want to inspire men and women alike to become informed agents of personal and collective transformation. I want them to reflect upon the past — and upon their own lives. I want the result of that reflection to be a strong sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. I want them to be committed to justice for the vulnerable and equality for all — but I also want them to begin to liberate themselves from self-doubt and self-loathing. I believe that personal happiness and public virtue are, in the end, deeply compatible (as a Christian who grew up listening to my mother’s lectures on Aristotle, I could hardly believe otherwise!) And in the end, I want my students to be happy, free, kind, independent, and good. That has been my goal for a very long time.

My male body, my family background, and my white skin have opened many doors for me. I cannot close those doors retroactively. I’m not ashamed of my masculinity, my heterosexuality, or my class. (See the OKOP post.) But I’m not inordinately proud of these things either. Privilege is not the consequence of virtue. It’s simply a fact, and it’s one of which I have to remain perpetually cognizant. Sometimes, privilege will blind me, and I will need help to see the right path. But in the end, privilege is both an advantage and an obstacle to good feminist teaching. And as long as I am aware that it is a double-edged sword, and as long as I remain committed with evangelistic zeal to my students’ growth, I’ll do a good job.

That is, if I work harder at humility, curiosity, and flexibility.

Choice, equality, radical authenticity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 27, 2007
in Feminism and Links
. 4 Comments

In today’s New Statesman, Courtney Martin issues a brief, ringing creedal defense of feminism. If reason, scripture and tradition were Hooker’s three-legged stool of Anglicanism, Courtney’s three-legged stool is educated choice, genuine equality, and radical authenticity. It’s her explanation of the last that had me sayin’ “amen”:

Radical authenticity: This facet of feminism gets talked about far too little in my opinion. A visionary twenty-first century feminism should aim to support both men and women to be their most authentic selves in the world, shedding prescribed gender roles and really getting in touch with their authentic desires, passions, and ethics. Feminist workplaces, for example, would nurture both men and women having present relationships with their children and fulfilling work lives. Men should be empowered to express a complex range of emotions, just as women must learn how to handle conflict healthily and assertively and take care of themselves, not just everyone else.

The most exciting thing about feminism, is that it is ultimately about leading more fulfilling, ethical, joyful lives, characterised by more healthy and genuine relationships. Who could argue with that?

Yes, yes, yes.

In my Humanities class (focusing on “Beauty, the Body, and the Western Tradition”) in the spring, I’ll be assigning Courtney’s book. I reviewed it here.

Once was lost, but now I still am: some thoughts on conversion and remaining teachable

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 27, 2007
in Christianity, Faith and Relationships
. 5 Comments

I’m still mulling the whole race, sex, and Full Frontal Feminism controversy. More on that soon.

On a different note, my friend “Clive” and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about a mutual buddy of ours, “Keith.” I met Clive and Keith at my old gym a decade ago; we’re all about the same age and we were “lifting partners” and “spinning pals” for several years. Clive and Keith are both evangelicals, both graduates of the same small prestigious Christian liberal-arts college. In different ways, they both played pivotal roles in my return to Christ in 1998. In my early days of sobriety and conversion, I found it difficult to talk easily about what was happening in my life. Working out together was the shared activity that made our masculine intimacy easier, and in different ways, Clive and Keith were able to do some vital “witness work” to bring me home to Jesus once again.

As it turns out, Clive and Keith aren’t speaking much these days. According to Clive, Keith (a very successful self-made entrepeneur) has turned his back on a lot of old friends. Keith has a hard time, apparently, hearing constructive criticism without getting outraged and defensive. The three of us belong to a Christian subculture in which loving confrontation and an insistence on mutual accountability are vital — and yet Keith has grown increasingly certain that he doesn’t need that kind of gentle challenge. Keith’s marriage is increasingly stormy, his relationship with his four children is strained, and his hard-driving business practices have alienated old and new acquaintances alike. We’re worried about him, and Clive and I spent a bit of time chatting about ways to “get through” to him. Continue reading ‘Once was lost, but now I still am: some thoughts on conversion and remaining teachable’

A call for “Little House on the Prairie” fans

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2007
in Family and Mass media
. 10 Comments

I spent much of the Thanksgiving holiday with my cousin, Dean Butler. Dean is my mother’s sister’s eldest son, and for much of my childhood, he was my great hero. In the 1970s, whenever Dean (eleven years my senior) and I were at our family Ranch together, I followed him. My childhood enthusiasm for swimming and riding horses came largely from the fact that these were things that Dean did.

Dean’s an actor turned documentarian. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, he played Almanzo Wilder on the enormously successful “Little House on the Prairie” television series. LHOTP episodes have, for some time, been available on DVD — and a new generation is discovering this remarkable program. “Little House” was one of my favorite shows as a child and as a teen even before cousin Dean joined the cast, and I still find the old episodes surprisingly watchable and engaging.

Dean has a blog, and he’s interested — perhaps for a future project — in soliciting stories from people who watched and enjoyed “Little House” in its heyday. The show was unlike any on television, and had a near-cult following. If you watched the show then (or have discovered it more recently), Dean would love to hear your story. Visit his blog, and leave a comment about where you were in your life when the show was on, and how the program may have impacted you. Though “fan mail” is always nice, my cousin’s real hope is to gather stories about how LHOTP affected the people who watched it. During the years that the show aired (approximately 1974-1983), America was in a period of significant social, cultural, and political change. Those of us on the high side of forty can remember the era well, how we felt, what we thought. If LHOTP connected to your life, please visit Dean’s blog and drop him a line. And if you have friends or family who loved the show, please let them know about this project.

Here’s a pic of me with Dean taken last Friday atop Mission Peak, just above our ranch. Dean (a graduate of the University of the Pacific) is wearing Cal kit; I (a Cal alum) am wearing UVA gear. Buddy, our ranch lab, is in the background.

The “Full Frontal Feminism” controversy again, and a call for suggestions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2007
in Blogging, Books, Ethnicity and Feminism
. 61 Comments

I’m grateful to the Reproductive Health Reality Check blog for reposting this morning my little piece on early motherhood and “false intimations of tragedy.”

And while I was away for the holiday, Jessica Valenti put up a short link at Feministing to my post from several weeks ago, one in which I reported on my students’ enthusiastic responses to her Full Frontal Feminism.

Many of the prominent “women of color” bloggers in the feminist blogosphere clearly don’t read my blog regularly. They do read Feministing, however, and starting on Thanksgiving a number of folks began to weigh in. Old criticisms of Jessica’s book reappeared, as well as strong words about my pedagogy. See here, here, here, here, and here.

I suppose another post is due sometime soon on what it means for a middle-aged, middle-class white man to teach women’s studies to mostly female, mostly non-white, mostly working-class students. I’ve dealt with that topic in previous posts, but I’m happy to bring it up again, and I will do so this week or next.

I did want to respond to one particular challenge that appeared in this comment. Michelle writes:

IMO You need to directly connect your students to the discussions that have gone on about this on the web.

IMO you need to do this by actively, directly and respectfully collaborating with the actual people who have offered these critiques. You know who they are, yes?

So. Ask them: What specifically would they like your students to read and in what format? Ask them and then assign it. What questions would they like your students to discuss based on this situation? Ask them and have those discussions in your classroom (with respect, not to discredit them and you know what I mean). What kind of follow-up, if any, do they want to see? Ask them and do it.

It is indeed too late for me to revisit FFF this semester (I have only four class meetings left, and every second of those is packed). But I’m going to accept Michelle’s challenge for the spring semester, beginning in February, when I will once again be assigning Full Frontal Feminism to my classes. In the spring, I will teach the book again. I will also assign a packet of criticisms of the book — indeed, I will do what I have been taught to do since I was an undergraduate, which is to “teach the controversy.” Assuming that the critics of FFF leave up their posts, I will provide links to those pieces, and actively encourage my students to participate in the broad discussion that this book created. That discussion will take place in the classroom, but also — I hope — online.

A few of my students read my blog, most don’t. Perhaps I erred in not informing my students about the controversy surrounding Full Frontal Feminism. Though I am absolutely convinced that my students’ generally enthusiastic responses to Jessica’s book were both genuine and uncoerced, I think it makes sense to expose them to other voices. I’m going to continue to assign and recommend FFF, but I’m very interested in “teaching the controversy” — which means collaborating with vital and interested figures in the blogosphere (Jessica herself, BlackAmazon, Brownfemipower, and so on).

My main syllabus for the spring is already set, folks, so please don’t ask me to change my assigned readings. But suggestions on how to structure a rich, civil, and productive exchange with my students about race, sex, feminism and the controversy that this one particular book has generated would be very, very welcome. You can email me at dochugoboy(at)hotmail.com, or put comments below here.

Home and photos

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 25, 2007
in Photos
. 1 Comment

We’re home following a very, very long drive down from Northern California. More tomorrow but for now, I’ve got some photos from Thanksgiving up in Flickr.

Thanks

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 20, 2007
in Blogging, Family and Holidays
. 9 Comments

Starting this afternoon, I’ll be away for the Thanksgiving holiday. No posting until Monday, November 26.

I did want to give thanks this morning to all the readers of this blog. If my statistics can be trusted, I’ve got a fairly stable readership. I’ve been averaging just under 1000 unique hits a day, and from what I can tell, a little less than half that number (300-400) are regular visitors. That’s nothing compared to the bigger blogs, of course, but given the length of my posts, I’m very grateful.

I’ve been blogging since August 2003. It’s been a joy and a revelation, and has become so much a part of my life that I would sorely miss it were I forced to give it up. I have no intentions of quitting, even as I sometimes struggle to come up with topics to write about. I’m grateful for the outlet this forum has given me for my thoughts and ideas. My friends and family are also grateful, I think — the fact that I blog means that I release some of my pent-up energy that might otherwise be expended all over them. Even now, periodically, my wife will say to me firmly: “My love, why don’t you go blog about that now?” (Telling me to blog is her kind way of getting me to stop bouncing around the house like a whippet on crack.) Continue reading ‘Thanks’

Teaching, teen moms, and false intimations of tragedy: a response to Will Okun

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 19, 2007
in Class, Parenting, Teaching, Youth and Youth ministry
. 39 Comments

This short Will Okun piece in the New York Times on teen pregnancy has gotten some strong reactions, here and here and here for starters. Okun teaches English in inner-city Chicago:

It happens too often. A female student approaches my desk, says “Mr. Okun?”, and and whispers the two words no adult wants to hear from a teenager: “I’m pregnant.” I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to shake her with anger. What have you done? Life is not hard enough already? Is it over, have you given up? What about finishing high school? What about college? What about your own dreams? What about enjoying the last of your own childhood? How can you parent a child when you are just a child yourself? How will you support your baby, how will you support yourself? Where is the man, will he be here next year? Will I see you and your baby coldly waiting alone for a city bus that will not come? Please look me in the eye and tell me you know what you have done.

Although her news disappoints me, I try to react without emotion or judgment. “What are you going to do?” I ask. But if she has already told me she is pregnant, we both already know. “I am going to have it,” she replies. I used to argue for abortion, which only enraged us both. At this point, what is done is done. All I can do now is offer her my unconditional support. I will give her a referral to counseling and pre-natal care and keep my personal frustrations and opinions to myself.

Inevitably, a few months later I will be invited to take photographs at the baby shower. I go because I like the student and I want to show that I support her and her family on this joyous occasion. But, in some cases, are we celebrating tragedy?

Well, Will, you get points for no longer “arguing for abortion.” (Just FYI, bud, there’s a rather nasty history of well-meaning whites encouraging poor women of color to have abortions. Glad you’re no longer one of them. Eugenicists are often well-meaning do-gooders.) But man, Will, you really don’t get it.

Let me be clear I don’t think teen pregnancy is a “good idea”. That said, I’ve spent more time than you might imagine with teenage mothers and their extended family. My wife and I have two nieces, both of whom became moms before they were eighteen years old. My wife and I will meet our newest great-nephew this coming weekend. Neither of our nieces are married to the fathers of their children. Both young moms are now living with relatives, both are working. And when it comes to parenting, my nieces are pretty damn good mothers. They are surrounded by a multi-generational community of experienced care-givers. Their children are not being raised in isolation, but with a surprising amount of community support.

I’ve been to baby showers for many a teenage mom in my day. I’ve also quietly helped pay for an abortion for a teenage girl who wanted one and who confided in me. Though I do everything I can as a mentor and a youth leader and a teacher to encourage a culture of informed decision-making (especially around sex), I understand that a very large number of teenagers are going to have unprotected intercourse for a very wide variety of reasons. And when some of them get pregnant, as they invariably will, there are no perfect options. Abortion is one choice (it was the one my girlfriend and I chose when we were teens with college plans). Adoption is another. And having the baby and keeping it is the third. Continue reading ‘Teaching, teen moms, and false intimations of tragedy: a response to Will Okun’