Archive for October, 2008

A brief escape

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 30, 2008
in Endorsements and Stuff
. 0 Comments

One way to escape election anxiety is to disappear for a while. I’ll be out of the country again (briefly) from this afternoon until late Sunday night. No blogging until Monday, November 3.

Play nice in the comments sections, please. I think I’ll have some wireless access with an ability to moderate, but it will be intermittent.

And a reminder of my endorsements:

Barack Obama for President.

Yes on California Propositions 1A,2,3,11, and 12.
No on California Propositions 4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

Yes on Los Angeles County Measure R (transportation).
Yes on San Francisco Measure K (Sex worker rights).

Good communication cannot be mandated: Catty on Prop 4

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 30, 2008
in Abortion
. 3 Comments

As Californians prepare to vote next week on Proposition 4, which would require parental notification for minors seeking an abortion, my friend Catty offered the following reflection on her Facebook page. With her permission, I’m reprinting it here. Her very thoughtful piece, with some important insights into sex, abortion, souls and Japanese culture appears below the cut. And join both of us in voting no on Prop. 4. Continue reading ‘Good communication cannot be mandated: Catty on Prop 4′

Thursday Short Poem: Holland’s “Hot Days in the Eighties”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 30, 2008
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

Jane Holland is a fine English poet; visit her website. She’s a year older than I am, but the references ring true to this dual USA/UK citizen who transitioned into adulthood in the decade of Reagan, Thatcher, Boy George and safe sex. (And the physical description sounds remarkably like my second wife, but let that pass.)

Hot Days in the Eighties

On hot days in the eighties, you stopped
for ices at Taunton Services. Little
did you know then, twenty-something
in the white Ford Escort Estate -
radio on full, heater too, blasting out
to keep the engine cool - the traffic jams
from Portishead to Liverpool.

That was the decade of the motorway.
You chopped your locks in the back
of the car one day, dyke-short.
Kept dental dams in the glove box,
grew the hair under your arms
to a mousey fuzz. Purchased
a map of the highways, went native.

You wore a suede jacket and a crucifix
in the ‘V’ of your chest, strode
like a man (and the rest). Drove
a Lancia Delta into the dirt.
Years later it was a Mercedes camper van,
seven berth, and beads, hippy skirts,
needing to get close to the earth.

These days you don’t get out much,
stuck in with a husband and kids.
But the road’s strong, it hauls on you
like a blackbird on the worm,
and you find excuses - friends ill,
time alone - for the grip
of the wheel, a licence to roam.

The longing to “jump the life to come”: some thoughts on Shakespeare, pregnancy scares, contraception, and romantic myths

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 29, 2008
in Abortion, Birth control and contraception, Favorite Posts 2008, Memories, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 69 Comments

There are a great many things I could blog about this morning, my own pre-election anxiety not least among them. I’m grateful that I’m leaving town (actually, the country) from tomorrow afternoon until late Sunday night — and that will give me a break from incessant poll-checking. Yesterday, I visited RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight and the DailyKos at least a dozen times each. I met with Stephanie, my Pilates trainer, this morning at 6:00. Though I normally do a private session with her three times a week, because of my travel schedule I won’t see her until next Wednesday morning — the day after the election. “We won’t see each other until after the election”, I blurted on my way out the door. “Oh God”, Stephanie replied, “I know. Let’s hope we’re both giddily happy at this time a week from now.” “Amen, sister”, I replied.

I will have more posts up about porn soon, but I am always reluctant to post too often about the same issue. I have a diverse group of readers, fortunately, and want to do my best to cover as many bases as possible. Two important voices for sex workers rights and for a “pro-porn” position, Amber Rhea and Renegade Evolution, have thoughtful responses to my recent posts. (Ren’s site may not be work-safe for all.) I’m glad respectful dialogue can happen.

I’m thinking about something else sex-related this morning. In the past month, three of the students I mentor (two women, one man) have come to me reporting pregnancy scares. They are all between 18-21, and each is in a committed relationship, though not with one another. In the case of the lad and one of the gals, the tests came back negative; in the case of the second young woman, she’s planning on taking a pregnancy test later today. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I do have a solid number of students of both sexes whom I mentor — and some of those students choose to seek me out for advice about their private as well as their intellectual lives. In cases where professional counseling is needed, my motto is “affirm and refer”, but in most instances, what these students need is a safe and reliable ear. Given that I teach so many courses on gender and sexuality, it makes sense that some students would seek me out for direction and counsel. I see it as part of my job, remembering that in my college days, I had a few professors from whom I sought personal as well as professional advice.)

I’m familiar with pregnancy scares. Heck, I’m familiar with unintended pregnancies, both in my own life as an adolescent and in my work as a teacher and youth leader. I have helped arrange (and in a couple of instances, helped pay for) abortions, and helped facilitate one adoption. I have been to two weddings of former students who got married as a result of a pregnancy. I’m honored to be trusted by as many young people as I am, and I hope to continue to be worthy of that trust.

But I’ve been thinking more about why so many young people I know choose not to use contraception. The gal who came to see me yesterday had been on the Nuvaring, but her insurance coverage lapsed, and she couldn’t get the scrip refilled. She and her beau had condoms available, but chose not to use them. “I don’t know why we’re so stupid”, she said to me yesterday. The young man I work with who came to me last week, worried his girlfriend might be pregnant, also reported that “condoms were available” at the key moment, but “we went ahead without them anyway.” I wasn’t shocked. When I got my high school girlfriend pregnant, we had condoms nearby as well. I didn’t like wearing them, and my girlfriend said she hated the way they felt. So we used them “some of the time”. And predictably, a pregnancy resulted.

The $64,000 question is: “Why?” Why do bright, educated young people who are very clear about how exactly babies are made choose to have unprotected heterosexual intercourse so very often? Why, on many occasions, do they find such flimsy excuses for not using contraception, even when contraceptive devices are easily available? In some cases, of course, lack of affordability is an issue — condoms aren’t as cheap as some folks think, and other forms of prescription contraception have grown much more expensive in recent years. In other cases, one partner (almost always the male) will nag the other about how “uncomfortable” condoms are. But in plenty of cases, these young people have access to reliable methods of birth control, and choose not to use them. Ignorance is not an all-encompassing explanation, and neither is expense. Something else is at play. Continue reading ‘The longing to “jump the life to come”: some thoughts on Shakespeare, pregnancy scares, contraception, and romantic myths’

Bumped: California Election Endorsements

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 28, 2008
in Endorsements
. 0 Comments

This post will appear daily between now and the election. Scroll down for new posts.

Since folks are voting early, here are my endorsements:

President: Barack Obama

California Propositions:

1A: Yes.
2: YES!
3: Yes.
4: NO!
5. No, reluctantly and with ambivalence, but no.
6. No.
7: No.
8: NO!
9: No.
10: No.
11: Yes, with trepidation.
12: Yes.

A link to a longer explanation here.

Perception, Intention, Pornography, and Competition

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 28, 2008
in Athletics and Fitness, BDSM and Porn
. 25 Comments

A few years ago, I wrote a post about healthy competitiveness, fantasy, and violence. I’m revisiting that post this morning in light of some of the recent posts I’ve had up about both relationships and pornography.

In July 2005, I wrote about running with my friend Mark:

When I race my friend Mark down the front stretch of the track at Arcadia High School, I’m not thinking “I’m going to kick his ass!” I’m thinking “Damnit, I’m going to keep up with you if it kills me!” Of course I love beating him (which happens one time in five, mind you), but after every hard interval together, we touch fists and say “Good job, brother.” I don’t want to dominate or humiliate him; our competition is a friendly rivalry. Deep friendship — even love — can comfortably co-exist with a real desire to defeat the very person one loves in a game or athletic competition.

The point I only made obliquely then, and would like to make more explicitly now, is about the way in which this anecdote displays that “love-of-self” and “love-of-other” can be fundamentally compatible. When I race Mark, I want to defeat him. I want to win, which will require him “not winning”. He and I have crossed the line together a time or two, and that feels great, but like most sports fans, I don’t consider a tie to be the grandest of accomplishments. What I want, when I race Mark, is to surpass him. He wants to do the same to me, of course. (It took me years to get comfortable with competition, and I still only fel safe being “ruthlessly competitive” with the folks whom I love and trust.)

Is it a failure of empathy on my part that leads me to want to beat Mark? If he is going to be disappointed even in the slightest by his failure to win, shouldn’t my regard for his feelings trump my own desire for victory? Of course not. After all, each of us has beaten the other many times in our workouts (he has the better record); each of us knows the disappointment of the loss is slight. But if one of us were to “throw” an interval to the other out of charity, the one who was the recipient of the gift would be angered and betrayed. To concede a race is not generosity, it is condescenscion at its most appalling. It says to the other “I think you’re too fragile to handle defeat.” It fails to honor the maturity and the dignity of the other. “Friendly competition” is that where each of us each believes three things about our rival:

1. He is playing by the same rules
2. He is capable of distinguishing between competition on the track and animoosity off of it
3. He is sufficiently emotionally resilient to handle defeat.

Unless I know these three things about the person I’m racing, I don’t feel I can give my maximum effort.

What on earth does this have to do with pornography? In my review yesterday of the Price of Pleasure, I noted that the anti-pornography documentary makes a compelling case that contemporary erotica is more and more likely to be focused on violence and degradation. (Even when I did regularly watch pornography, I found the harder, BDSM-oriented stuff to be distasteful. Without offering too much information about my own inner world, for all of the darkness I’ve put myself through, I’m clear that power imbalances are not particularly erotic for me. Power exchanges in the bedroom haven’t, in my experience, been either particularly healing or particularly interesting. Light-hearted reciprocity tends to be what makes my socks roll up and down. Your mileage may vary.) Continue reading ‘Perception, Intention, Pornography, and Competition’

Dean Barnett

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 27, 2008
in People
. 0 Comments

My goodness, the conservatives keep dying. I don’t mean to be rude or flip, but the rapidity with which the ranks of the right are being depleted by the reaper seems, well, a bit stunning. (I mentioned that here.) In any event, a conservative commentator whom I enjoyed, Dean Barnett, died today of complications from cystic fibrosis. He was a regular guest host on the Hugh Hewitt radio program, and I always liked listening to him when he filled in. Like Hewitt, Barnett was painfully, willfully, irretrievably reactionary in his politics; like Hewitt, he softened some of that troglodytism with humor and grace and thoughtfulness. He was wrong on the issues, but I suspect he died right with his God.

May his family be comforted by his memory, and by the promise that they will rejoice with him again, in another country.

Some thoughts on “The Price of Pleasure” (with notes)

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 27, 2008
in Feminism, Movies, Porn and Relationships
. 121 Comments

Several weeks ago, I was sent a review DVD of The Price of Pleasure. The film, by first-time director Chyng Sun, explores the impact of contemporary American pornography on men, women, and relationships* It is not currently for rent or in theaters, but it is out on a national screening tour. It will be screened, with a panel discussion, this Thursday, October 30 here in Los Angeles on the USC campus. Exact time and location have not yet been announced, though I am prodding.

Gail Dines and Robert Jensen, two celebrated anti-pornography feminists serve as senior advisers for the film (referred to as TPOP for the remainder of this post.) I wrote a long review of Bob Jensen’s most recent work here. Dines is founder of Stop Porn Culture, and organization for which I have considerable admiration.

TPOP is less than an hour long, but it took me more than a week to sit through it. The documentary features a considerable number of outtakes and excerpts from porn, and though genitalia are “fuzzed out”, the effect is still searing and for some, potentially triggering. As someone who struggled with porn addiction in the past, I wanted to be careful about how I watched and responded to this film. I was relieved to discover that I didn’t find myself in the least bit tempted to “relapse” on porn use as a consequence of watching TPOP. I can recommend the film as “safe” for most folks, though some of the sound and imagery is violent and deeply degrading. Potential viewers will need to weigh for themselves the risks and benefits of taking it all in. (It’s worth noting that some in the pro-porn world have complained that TPOP violates both copyright and federal obscenity rules. I’m not qualified to speculate.)

TPOP uses interviews with a wide variety of people: pornographers and porn actresses, men who use porn, women whose husbands or boyfriends use porn, and academic researchers who have studied porn. Pornography, we are told, is a $10 billion industry today, and thanks to the Internet and other technological advances, is far more ubiquitous than it was just a few years ago. One point that the film makes clear (particularly in an interview with Ariel Levy), is that today’s young people (those in their teens and early twenties) have grown up in a culture saturated with porn to a degree difficult even for those just two decades older to comprehend. Just as an eighteen year-old today cannot remember a time before mobile phones, so he or she cannot remember a time when porn was not “everywhere.” This jives with what I hear from the young people with whom I work; they describe porn as providing an “aduiovisual soundtrack” for their lives. Continue reading ‘Some thoughts on “The Price of Pleasure” (with notes)’

A surprising Sunday vision

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 26, 2008
in OKOP/NOKOP and Politics
. 7 Comments

I went out very early this morning to the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, and knocked out a 21 mile run along the road that leads up and beyond Cogswell Dam.

In order to get out to West Fork, one must drive through the small community of Azusa. Azusa is in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, only a dozen miles from Pasadena — but culturally, the distance is much greater. Azusa Pacific University is a fairly conservative Christian school, and the demographic of the city is split between a growing Latino population and lower-middle/working-class whites. Done with my run, floating on a sea of endorphins, I decided to drive some back streets of Azusa to count lawn signs. Obama-Biden signage outnumbered McCain-Palin posters up and down several blocks. It was striking, because I remember how many more Bush-Cheney signs I had seen just four years ago in the same area.

On a similar note: I often half-joke about “Our Kind of People” and “Not Our Kind of People” (OKOP and NOKOP.) I’ve always said that if there is an official sport for NOKOP, it is “off-roading.” As an environmentalist, there is no human activity — not even perhaps carniverousness — that I find more vile than the delight in driving a gas-guzzling behemoth through creekbeds and up hillsides, tearing up habitat, wasting fuel, and making a dreadful ruckus. The sooner we ban off-road vehicles from all of our state and national parks, the better; it is fervently to be hoped that high gas prices will create barriers to this repulsive and indefensible activity.

That said, sometimes my stereotypes get challenged. Today, on my way back down Highway 39, an enormous pick-up, jacked up to an improbable height, began to tailgate me. Dust-spattered, it and its occupants were clearly just finished from a happy morning of destroying plant life and spreading fumes in a dry river bed. I pulled my Volvo over at a turnout after the driver of the behemoth (it seemed to have once been a Dodge Ram) flashed his lights at me. He roared past, and just as I was about to curse him under my breath, I saw two stickers on the back of his truck. One read “Obama-Biden” and the other read “No on 8: Defend Equality”. I was so surprised, I ended up briefly tailgaiting the Dodge just to make sure I had seen what I had seen, and that this wasn’t just a vision induced by post-run exhaustion. Yup, the stickers were there.

Whatever else his numerous sins against nature, the driver of this monstrous and unnecessary thing was willing to let all and sundry know his support for gay marriage and his commitment to the Democratic ticket. If gay marriage is picking up vocal and public support among the off-road vehicle crowd, then Proposition 8 may well and truly be destined for failure — and the culture ready to accept a new milestone on the road to full equality.

But I still loathe off-roaders.

More Saturday night randomness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 25, 2008
in Blogging
. 3 Comments

Saturday nights are not for writing serious posts; I’m lying on the floor of our chinchilla nursery, watching the little ones as they cavort around the room. Saturday nights are perhaps good for memes, and Ren (whose site may not be work-safe for all) tags me with another “six random things about me” assignment.

6. My earliest childhood nightmare that I can remember was of a massive wave swallowing up Santa Barbara — I still have tsunami dreams a few times each year. They were especially vivid after the Asian/African disaster of December ‘04.

5. The hardest part about being vegan is not the food I’ve given up — it’s the shoes. Yes, there are more and more great faux leather options, but gosh, I miss being able to buy anything in the store that caught my eye.

4. Like the first President Bush, I dislike broccoli. I like me my greens, but that damn stalk has no appeal for me.

3. I have been on six of the world’s seven continents and am a sixth-generation Californian, but I have never been to Bakersfield. Taft, Delano, and Oildale, yes — but never “Bake-o.”

2. My first Halloween costume I remember well was that of a little devil; my mother made the costume and drew a little Van Dyke beard onto my chin. I was four.

1. The only law enforcement agency ever to handcuff me was the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. It was on the last night I took a drink, more than a decade ago. And they were very sweet, almost apologetic, about having to do so. But the rash the cuffs left lasted a week.

Friday Random Ten: soundtrack for a high-mileage training week

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 24, 2008
in Friday Random Ten
. 1 Comment

New and old goodies here. The bonus track is what I’ve been blasting on my iPod all week. #2 and #4 are by artists new to me within the past month or so; thank goodness for Pandora and Sirius satellite radio!

To remind everyone of the rules: random ten is determined by hitting “party shuffle” on the Itunes account. The bonus track is the song that you’ve had on your mind or in your head most in the past week.

1. “Orphan Girl”, Emmylou Harris
2. “Come on Get Higher”, Matt Nathanson
3. “Jesse James”, Bruce Springsteen
4. “Brokedown Palace”, Adrienne Young and Little Sadie
5. “Tonight You’re Gonna Lose Me”, The Lonesome Sisters
6. “Farther On”, Jackson Browne
7. “Dark Come Soon”, Tegan and Sara
8. “Turn Me On”, Norah Jones
9. “Heaven Now”, Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch, Fats Kaplin
10. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”, Prince

Bonus Track: “Welfare Music”, John Hiatt

“Pray to have Him hold you as a Lover”: thinking about Jars of Clay, Teresa of Avila, and erotic spirituality

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 23, 2008
in Christianity, Faith, GLBTQ, Marriage and Sexuality
. 17 Comments

After I wrote my post yesterday on bisexuality, Neil (the pastor whose parishioner had spawned the initial query) responded in a note to me. In the post, I made clear my view that bisexuality could be a stable, healthy, lifetime identity for adult men and women. I also made the case that it need be no impediment to a monogamous relationship with either an other-sex or same-sex partner; what mattered was the degree to which the bisexual person was willing to focus his or her sexual energy in one particular direction.

I’ve got a long reply here. Because of the subject matter, it’s all below the fold. And as the kids say these days, it “may weird you out”, so use your discretion. Continue reading ‘“Pray to have Him hold you as a Lover”: thinking about Jars of Clay, Teresa of Avila, and erotic spirituality’

Twelve days out: of dollars and polls, and — finally — an Obama endorsement

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 23, 2008
in Politics
. 7 Comments

If the polls can be believed (and not all the polls agree), we are moving inexorably closer to a Barack Obama victory on November 4. Like many progressives, I fear a sudden disaster (either tactical or geopolitical) that shifts massive energy to the McCain campaign. I’ve learned to take nothing for granted; after the bitter disappointments of 2000 and 2004, I’ve become clear that it ain’t over until the votes are counted three times and the Supreme Court intervenes. (May it not be that close this time.)

I’m worried, too, that the great success of the Obama fundraising may have hurt other progressive causes. I mean that in two ways. Progressives in California who are committed to, say, better treatment for farm animals (Proposition 2); protecting access to abortion for our most vulnerable young people (Proposition 4) and preserving marriage equality for all (Proposition 8) have many causes to which to give. Obama has outraised McCain impressively; I can think of dozens of people who have given, and given, and given to the inspiring and transformational senator from Illinois. (I know many folks who have given to Obama who have never donated to a politician in their lives before.) This is all to the good, up to a point. Propositions 2, 4, and 8 are all likely to be close. Big agriculture interests in the Midwest are spending a fortune to defeat Prop 2, while national conservative groups like Focus on the Family have spent millions and millions to pass Prop 8. And in these battles, progressive groups are behind in fundraising.

At the same time, some conservatives have given up on McCain. Read the conservative blogs — it’s not just the likes of Colin Powell, it’s David Frum and Christopher Buckley and George Will and so forth. Not all have endorsed Obama outright, but many have been deeply pessimistic about McCain. The money isn’t flowing in to the GOP coffers as fast as it comes in for Obama-Biden. Frustrated right-wingers who want to salvage something are thus turning their attention to issues like marriage, abortion, and animal rights. Prop 8, which would ban gay marriage, thus benefits (perversely) from the national Republican ticket’s poor prospects. Continue reading ‘Twelve days out: of dollars and polls, and — finally — an Obama endorsement’

Thursday Short Poem: Milosz’s “Tidings”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 23, 2008
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

The theme earlier this week was Western Civilization and its peculiar claims; in that vein Czeslaw Milosz’s famous poem seems worthy.

Tidings

Of earthly civilization what shall we say?
That it was a system of colored spheres cast in smoked glass,
Where a luminescent liquid thread kept winding and unwinding.
Or that it was an array of sunburnt palaces
Shooting up from a dome with massive gates
Behind which walked a monstrosity without a face.
That every day lots were cast, and that whoever drew low
Was marched there as sacrifice: old men, children, young boys and
young girls.
Or we may say otherwise: that we lived in a golden fleece,
In a rainbow net, in a cloud cocoon
Suspended from the branch of a galactic tree,
And our net was woven from the stuff of signs,
Hieroglyphs for the eye and ear, amorous rings.
A sound reverberated inward, sculpturing our time,
The flicker, flutter, twitter of our language.
For from what could we weave the boundary
Between within and without, light and abyss,
If not from ourselves, our own warm breath,
And lipstick and gauze and muslin,
From the heartbeat whose silence makes the world die?
Or perhaps we’ll say nothing of earthly civilization.
For nobody really knows what it was.

A very long post about bisexuality, fidelity, fantasy, masturbation and desire: a response to Neil

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 22, 2008
in Bisexuality, Christianity, Faith, Favorite Posts 2008, GLBTQ, Masturbation, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 11 Comments

One of my readers, “Neil”, is finishing up an M.Div and busy working as a pastor in a small congregation. He’s doing a lot of counseling. He wrote to me a few days ago:

So I’m reading your blog procrastinating from household chores
on my day off and come across (no pun intended–really) one of your
posts on masturbation.

I’ll get to the point now: In my pastoral work, I recently
had a conversation with a married bisexual man–whose wife knows he is
and did even before they got married. Masturbation has come up in the
context of “I’m married to my wife and want to be entirely faithful to
her, but what do I do with my desires for men?” I wonder what your
perspective is on orientation and fidelity for bisexuals in a
Christian context.

Since this topic may not be what everyone wants to read about, the remainder of the post is below the cut. Continue reading ‘A very long post about bisexuality, fidelity, fantasy, masturbation and desire: a response to Neil’