Archive for November, 2009

Smugness and cheap grace: the scandal of the Manhattan Declaration

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2009
in Christianity
. 12 Comments

A fortnight or so ago, a group of conservative evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian leaders issued the Manhattan Declaration. The Declaration begins:

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1.the sanctity of human life
2.the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3.the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

The document is a pointed attempt by the religious right to fend off the growing consensus among many Christians, particularly younger evangelicals and Catholics, that the relentless focus on “pelvic morality” (the obsession with sexual purity) was a warped one. While many younger Christians may remain opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, a great many (this was clearly reflected in the 2008 election) insist that fighting poverty, war, and environmental degradation deserve equal if not greater attention. A number of commenters have noted that younger evangelicals tend to be less concerned with the “social issues” than their elders — and this has meant that younger evangelicals and Catholics have felt much more comfortable voting for Democratic and pro-choice politicians. The ageing leadership of what might be called the “traditional religious right” is understandably concerned; the Manhattan Declaration is an attempt to lead these straying youngsters back onto the narrow path.

It’s worth noting that many of the leading figures in contemporary American Christianity refused to sign it. My father’s former student, Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, would not add his name to the list. Neither did celebrated mega-church pastors like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. None of those three men support same-sex marriage; all have solidly pro-life credentials. But wisely, they — and countless other respected figures in the evangelical mainstream — refused to be taken in by the Declaration’s indefensible attempt to create a “hierarchy” of virtues in which the fight against gay marriage trumps the battle to save the planet and the poor.

Brian McClaren, the best-known young evangelical writer in America and leading figure in the “emerging church” movement, wrote a critical and feisty response to the Declaration in Sojourners last week. As he usually does, Brian gets a lot right, particularly in his assertion that we need to spend far more time combatting a culture of greed than the framers of the Manhattan document suggest.

Here’s the thing: fighting against abortion and gay rights is, in the end, cheap. It requires no particular personal sacrifice or reflection on the part of those who claim these are the top issues. Men who will never get pregnant; heterosexuals who have the privilege to marry those whom they love — they surrender nothing precious to them by fighting tooth and nail against reproductive and glbtq rights. The struggle against global poverty and the struggle to save the planet from environmnetal degradation, on the other hand, make radical claims on all of us — particularly on the affluent in the West, whose unsustainable consumption patterns are directly linked to human and animal suffering. Fighting against climate change and poverty require that the wealthy transform their lifestyles; fighting against gay rights requires nothing more than censorious and self-righteous indignation.

To put it more simply, the Manhattan Declaration is an exquisite example of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” Those who sign it, embrace it, and live out its call can comfort themselves with the thought that when they campaign against same-sex marriage and women’s health, they are doing the most important work in all of God’s kingdom. Changing how they spend, how they travel, how they eat — the really challenging things — are rendered irrelevant by comparison. This is a scandal and a shame to the body of Christ, and deserves bold and prophetic repudiation.

Happy Thanksgiving

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 24, 2009
in Traveling
. 5 Comments

I’ll be in Northern California from tonight until Sunday, doing the vegan Thanksgiving thing with the loved ones. Posting resumes next week.

“Are you gonna step up and pat the pony, or do I need to go to the rodeo down the road?”* On myths of male weakness and having the marriage discussion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 24, 2009
in Myth of Male Weakness and Relationships
. 27 Comments

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about dating difficulties. “Laura” is 30, single, heterosexual, and interested in — eventually — getting married and having children. It’s not, as she says a “ticking clock thing”; rather, she’s clear that at this age, she’s done having casual relationships with men that drift for months and years. She wants to, as my evangelical friends put it, date “intentionally” — that is, with the explicit intention of moving towards marriage. If a guy isn’t marriage material, or has no interest in getting married — or is planning on waiting indefinitely until he is “struck by certainty”, Laura wants to know sooner rather than later so that she can move on.

Laura asked yesterday: “When is it best to bring up what my goals are? If I say — on our first coffee date — that I’m looking to get married, I’m worried I’ll scare most men away. On the other hand, I don’t want to wait indefinitely. If a guy is very clear that marriage and children are off the table for the next few years, I want to move along before I get too invested. So when’s the best time to bring it up?”

Tom Leykis, a repugnant, misogynistic, and yet undeniably talented talk show host in Los Angeles, famously advocates his “three date rule” to his mostly male audience. “If a woman won’t have sex with you after three dates”, Leykis advises, “dump her. She’s not worth investing any more time in.” I think there’s a far more helpful version of the “three date rule”: by the third date with a prospective partner, one needs to initiate the “what are you looking for in a relationship” conversation. If the initial answer is a bit evasive, something along the lines of “let’s just go slow and see how things develop”, it’s not too soon for someone in Laura’s position to explain what it is that she wants. If the other person flinches at this point, that’s a fairly definitive sign that your goals are unlikely to be mutual.

The reason I bring this is up is because of still another corollary to the “myth of male weakness”. This is the notion that men are “easily scared off” by women who are too frank about their interest in enduring commitment or children. It repeats the old lie that even grown men in their late twenties and thirties are little more than overgrown, feckless adolescents desperate to remain single and avoid being “trapped” into a monogamous relationship with a woman. It suggests that all men need to be treated like brash young colts who will buck and kick should the saddle appear too soon. Above all, this particular corollary insists, as Jack Nicholson famously did in a film with men in its title, that most guys “can’t handle the truth”.

To be clear, no one is under any obligation to marry. I don’t think marriage is for everyone, nor do I think it to be the only vehicle for personal growth. But the ones whom the likes of Laura can weed out quickly are those who are adamant that they will never marry. The ones who are more problematic are those who, often while already well into their thirties or beyond are open to marriage somewhere in the very distant future, sometime after the end of Obama’s second term — and only after they are, as they naïvely imagine must surely happen, “struck by certainty.” It is these latter lads with whom one needs to have a serious conversation by the end of the third date.

I’ll say it again: the capacity for self-reflection and the ability to articulate one’s thoughts and fears was not given only to the be-uterused. Yes, most American men are raised in a culture that discouraged the development of a vocabulary for the inner emotional terrain — but lack of familiarity is not the same as genuine inability. (Pace, my friends whose loved ones suffer from autism or Asperger’s; there are exceptions.) Men are indeed under no particular obligation to commit to any one particular person, or to commit at all. But they are, like all of us, under the obligation not to shy away from serious conversation about one’s short-term and long-term goals. And any man old enough for a thirty year-old woman to sleep with without violating state law is old enough to handle a discussion about the possibility of a shared future by the end of the third date.

* Years ago, an ex-girlfriend of mine initiated just this sort of discussion with this line. I’ve never forgotten it.

GLBTQ History Spring 2010 reading list

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 23, 2009
in Books and GLBTQ
. 6 Comments

I’ve finished putting together my reading list for History 24F, my survey course in American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered history. Given the expense of books (and the problems we have putting together readers on campus), there’s no such thing as a perfect syllabus — but here are the four texts I’ll be asking my students to buy. It’s a fairly significant change from when I taught the course a year ago – but it’s good to experiment about.

Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians, Lillian Faderman.

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg

A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America, Leila Rupp

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel

I read Stone Butch Blues years ago, but only thanks to recent suggestions have I decided to include it in next year’s syllabus. The Bechdel book was suggested by several folks last week — I picked up a copy, and read it over the weekend. It’s pitch-perfect. Many thanks to all who recommended it to me!

Things her soul already knows: more on children, obligation, and parental dreams

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 23, 2009
in Parenting
. 5 Comments

In the comments after the reprint of my 2005 post (immediately below) on moving away from home, Metamanda asks if my views on the matter have changed in the past four years. Metamanda, like many of my commenters below this post and the original, called me out not merely on my privilege but on some of my misconceptions about why people might choose to do all that they can to stay near their families.

My views have changed on many things, but when it comes to the values I professed in ‘05, I’m still where I was when I wrote this:

I still see offering people “choices” as among the highest of moral imperatives in a good society… My brother and sisters and cousins have pursued their dreams unconstrained by geography or guilt — what could be more worthwhile than that? If we only see each other at weddings and funerals and other special occasions, it makes our reunions all the more sweet. Once we moved off to college, we all began to make the series of choices that would shape our lives and carry us to the various corners of the earth. We traded physical closeness for the privilege of pursuing our individual dreams, and on balance, I’d say, it was worth it…

Now, of course, I’m a father. Becoming a dad has made me rethink a lot of my views. I’m certainly not as ardent a pacifist as I once was; on the other hand, the importance of the feminist struggle for autonomy has been affirmed. My views on children pursuing their dreams with minimal parental interference have also been solidified rather than called into question since Heloise was born.

Heloise’s personality is starting to take shape. She’s a curious, adventurous girl. But both her mother and I are very clear on one thing: we have no idea what dreams our daughter will dream. She is not merely a blank slate upon which we can inscribe our biases and our beliefs. Though we will, of course, raise her with our particular values about the world, we are clearer than ever that our words will be tempered with the reminder that ours is only one of many paths. As much as her mother and father love her, Heloise will be told — at an age-appropriate time — that our certainties may not be hers. Our faith tells us that our daughter is not ours: she belongs to the light, to God, and to herself. We are the loving stewards into whose care she is committed during her vulnerable years, and we intend to do all that we can to pour our love and devotion into her.

As I’ve written before, I don’t want my daughter burdened by history and obligation. In April, I wrote:

I owe (my daughter) the stories I was bequeathed; I owe my ancestors the bequeathing of those stories. But beyond that, I owe very, very little, just as Heloise Cerys Raquel (whose names all come from no known forebears) will owe us little, even as she owes the world and its creatures so much.

I’d like to say more about that last line.

I want my daughter to learn that she has a purpose. Her mother and I have no idea what the specifics of that purpose will be, but we know this and we will remind Heloise of this often: she was created to know joy, and she was created to do justice. Her goal will be to find the place where the desires of her heart, her particular talents, and the needs of the world intersect; we intend to do all we can to help her discern what each of those are. Heloise was born with a certain set of privileges that will become evident to her as she ages. While we don’t intend to raise her with noblesse oblige, she will not grow up unaware that to those to whom much has been given, of whom much is expected. But what that second “much” will look like — that is largely going to be hers to decide.

My wife and I dress our daughter up in USC and Cal gear, each of us joking that she will choose our own alma mater to attend. But Heloise might not choose college at all. She might decide to go to the fire academy, or to be a dancer, or to be a mechanic. If she longs to go to school on the far side of the country, we’ll do all we can to encourage her with (heavens forfend) nary a word of selfish reproach on our part. If she decides to live at home and attend a local school, we won’t force her out the door, insisting that she “sink or swim” on her own.

We don’t know our daughter’s heart yet, and we don’t know her particular calling. What we do know is that she was made for joy, made for delight, made for happiness. What we do know is that she, like all of us, is called to serve. What we do know is that she has been given talents and gifts as yet unrevealed, talents that can help her find that delight — and be of service. It’s our job to remind her of these things; remind her, I say, because these are things that I suspect her soul already knows.

Class, culture, and moving away from home (a reprint)

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 20, 2009
in Reprints
. 15 Comments

This post first appeared in May, 2005.

This month, I’m writing two appeals letters on behalf of two students who were denied admission (inexplicably, in both cases) to UCLA.  Both students are very bright young women, but one of the two presented me with a bit of a dilemma: my alma mater accepted her, while the so-called "Southern Branch" rejected her.    I must admit that my Golden Bear pride was hurt.  I know that admissions decisions can be capricious; a few years ago, I had one student get into Stanford while being rejected from UC Santa Barbara.   But it stings a Cal alum to have UCLA appear to be more selective!

This young woman, whom I’ll call "Amy", would much rather attend UCLA than Cal.   She’s appealing her denial of admission to the former school not for academic reasons, mind you; she knows the education in Berkeley is world-class.  Amy is appealing because she wants to live at home while finishing up her college education.  She’s blessed to be in a position where her family could easily afford to have her live in on-campus housing anywhere she was accepted, but she still wants to be close to her parents.

I’ve had a number of students like Amy.  True, a very high percentage of community college students have limited financial means.  Living at home throughout their academic careers is a necessity, not a choice.  But I’ve also met many, many students whose families did have the wherewithal (or the financial aid) to send them away to college — but who nonetheless chose to remain at home, picking Los Angeles-area schools over superb colleges and universities farther away.

Even after a dozen years teaching in this multi-cultural greenhouse called Pasadena City College, it’s hard for me to fathom why folks who can afford to move away to go to college don’t do so.  In my family, no one lives at home while going to college.  Indeed, my brother and I bucked a long-standing trend by not leaving the state, though my brother and one sister did end up living and working in the UK.   Many of my cousins went as far as they could from California, to schools in Virginia or New York or Illinois.  Yes, they were blessed with the resources to do so.  But we were also raised with the belief that a truly worth-while college experience hinges on physical distance from one’s family

Continue reading ‘Class, culture, and moving away from home (a reprint)’

Jack Kissell, 1930-2009

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 19, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness and People
. 0 Comments

I read this morning of the death of Jack Kissell, a legendary figure in Southern California recovery circles, and my “sponsor” (on and off) for many years during the 1990s and the beginning of this decade.

Alcoholics Anonymous and the legion of Twelve Step programs that sprang forth from it have always insisted on, as the name implies, anonymity for its members. (In my writing, I’ve danced very close to the edge of “outing” myself, of course, but on this blog claim no membership in any particular organization.) For years, it has generally been understood that the anonymity requirement ended with death; it is common in public obituaries to note a long-standing period of sobriety in AA or other groups. Jack, who died at 79, died with 38 years sober.

In my recovery, I’ve had many sponsors. Two have stood out: my friend Jenia B., a woman just four years my senior but with (today) over a quarter century of sobriety who brought me into the heart of what is often called “the program”, and Jack Kissell, who took me through the twelve steps with insight and humor and Irish relentlessness. Jack sponsored hundreds of men and women around the country, and how he found time to talk so intimately and warmly with each is simply miraculous. For years, he and his beloved Jean lived in an apartment near the water in Redondo Beach. Time and again, I drove down to see him, to “read him my inventory” or talk about a specific problem. We always finished our conversations by moving from a discussion of sobriety to Jack’s second-favorite topic, Notre Dame football. I saw him on the stage many times in productions across Los Angeles; he was a delightful character actor who could, like so many sober alcoholics, perform both menace and vulnerability with ease.

I’ve referred to Jack before on this blog, never by his full name. It was Jack who taught me to “do the NEXT right thing”, who taught me what fidelity really looked like, and who gave me - at least for a short time — the gift of celibacy. And it was Jack who first taught me these lines:

If you want what you’ve never had, you have to become what you’ve never been. To become what you’ve never been, you’re gonna have to do what you’ve never done.

It is not the melodrama of a eulogy that leads me to note that I might very well not be alive without his wisdom, his kindness, and his love. Jack Kissell and I hadn’t spoken since 2000, after a foolish falling-out. (The fault was entirely mine, and I confess I held a entirely unjustified resentment against Jack for a long time.) I always meant to call him again, and never made the time. I am glad that while he was my sponsor, I was able to express my profound gratitude for his loving presence in my life, and glad that I am now able to give public credit where credit is due. I know that many folks have found comfort in things I’ve said or written that I learned from Jack, and they ought to know his full name.

We’re all on a journey, going through a process, and it would be far more lonely and far more terrifying without the wisdom of those just a bit further down the road. Jack’s gone farther along now, to the other country, and in due course, all whom he loved and sponsored will follow him there. But the good he did — for he was a very, very good man — will last, kept alive by the many he taught who will, over and over again, repeat his insights.

Thursday Short Poem: Wagoner’s “Night Song”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 19, 2009
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

A dark poem with a familiar theme from David Wagoner.

Night Song from the Apartment Below

The argument begins. One voice is overcoming
another because it’s had it, it’s had enough
of all this shit and, unaccompanied, rises
to the edge of screaming and past it
till the column of air in that throat has nearly abandoned
everything under it. Only the vault of the forehead
and the bridge of the nose are left to resonate.

An abrupt pause. A brief intermission.

Lotte Lehmann, who knew all there was to know
about singing, said in the upper register
one should always have two notes in reserve
which one never uses.

And now the second voice
comes lurching up and out of the dungeon
beneath the memory of the other, from as deep
as the torture chamber of the diaphragm,
offering to surrender everything
imaginable, hope, wine, money, love,
credit cards, even the need to be touched.

In the following silence, the long silence,
those of us already lying down
in our own forms of darkness are listening
in the name of mercy for the next wrong note.

Happy update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 18, 2009
in Parenting
. 6 Comments

Heloise said “dad-dah” for the first time this morning. She had said “Mama” for the first time three weeks ago, and I had been waiting very patiently.

Neither too much to expect, nor too much to ask: how Lesley Garner gets rape, marriage, and men all wrong

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 18, 2009
in Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Rape, aggression and violence and Relationships
. 105 Comments

Via Amber, whose blog I’ve long admired, I found this horrific English advice column and this blistering retort from M. Le Blanc.

A woman, Eva was raped by her boss while abroad on a business trip. Upon her return to the UK, her husband noticed something was wrong, and Eva told him the terrible story. She also discovered that the rapist had impregnated her; she made the difficult choice to keep the baby. Too upset at the prospect of raising another man’s child, the Eva’s husband left her, and has never seen the son to whom she gave birth. Seven years on, she’s still single — as is her ex-husband — and she’s written to a Telegraph advice columnist about the possibilities of reconciling. The advice columnist, Lesley Garner, is breathtakingly unsympathetic to her, writing:

You decided to continue with the pregnancy in the absolutely unrealistic expectation that your husband would be happy to bring up the child of another man, his wife’s rapist. This is a no-brainer, Eva. No man could contemplate this. He would have found your decision inexplicable.

M. Le Blanc, Amanda Hess, and many of the commenters at the Telegraph site, are appalled both with Garner’s dreadful analysis and the beastly behavior of Eva’s husband. Amber, with whom I generally agree, surprised me by sympathizing with the ex, rejecting Hess’ characterization of him as a “total dickwad”:

It is baffling to me how the same people who would (rightfully) snap if a female rape victim was told not to abort her pregnancy because she’d love the baby as soon as it was born, or that tons of women are stepmothers or social workers and thus raising other people’s kids is no big deal, are incensed at the idea that a man might not be able to embrace this situation.

Count me in the camp that labels Eva’s husband a complete and utter “dickwad”.

There is nothing remotely analogous about, on one hand, forcing a woman to carry to term, against her will, a fetus conceived as the result of a rape — and on the other, expecting a husband to support his wife’s decision without equivocation. Even in marriage, a woman’s body doesn’t become her husband’s property; he doesn’t get to be sovereign over her reproductive choices. Obviously, in terms of their shared sexual life, a couple should, ideally, make decisions together about every aspect of family planning. Real life, however, wreaks havoc with our ideals. Men still rape women, and sometimes those women get pregnant as a consequence. While it would be a rare married couple who would have discussed this potential scenario in advance, it’s not at all unreasonable to expect a husband like Eva’s to share his wife’s burden to the best of his ability — and to share in the joy and responsibility that comes when a child is born.

This doesn’t mean that a man whose female partner is raped isn’t entitled to the full spectrum of feelings that would seem natural, given the situation. He’s entitled to feel ambivalent about raising a child conceived in an act of violence. But he wasn’t raped, and he’s not carrying the child. To leave his wife because he “can’t handle” the constant reminder of what happened is to elevate his feelings above her, to suggest an indefensible false equivalence between the harm done to his wife and the harm done to him.

This is, in yet another nasty form, the old “myth of male weakness”. This version suggests, as Garner does, that men are incapable of bonding with a child not biologically their own. I know a great many adoptive dads, including some wonderful gay male couples who parent together, who would be flabbergasted to learn this. (Parenthetically, I’ve always thought that what makes Joseph, husband of Mary, a saint in the Catholic tradition is not his willingness to raise a son who is clearly not his own. That was his moral if not his legal obligation, and ought to be expected of any husband. What made him saintly was his willingness to stay in a marriage that would never be consummated, the lasting companion of the ever-Virgin!) It is not “asking too much” of husbands to expect them to stick by their wives following rape and an unwanted pregnancy — unless we believe, as Garner does, that the male ego is terribly fragile, and the male capacity to love so very small indeed. Continue reading ‘Neither too much to expect, nor too much to ask: how Lesley Garner gets rape, marriage, and men all wrong’

“The Fountainhead”, Muggledom, and a road to feminism: why I both loathe and appreciate Ayn Rand

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 17, 2009
in Books, Feminist Pedagogy, Teaching and Youth
. 24 Comments

In my reprint of a post about young conservative students, I made a crack about Ayn Rand. Since Rand has been the subject of a pair of recent biographies, and has been much discussed on the right as a kind of ideological mother figure of the so-called Tea Party Insurrection against the Obama Administration, I think it’s time to say a bit more about her work.

I discovered Ayn Rand at 16. A friend of mine finished “The Fountainhead”, and came to me one morning before class: “This book has changed my life, Hugo, and it will change yours. Read it!” I liked and respected Lisa, and accepted the thick and battered paperback she proffered. I took it home, and showed my mother, a philosophy professor. She took one look at the book, grimaced, and then said “Darling, I won’t say anything. Make up your own mind.”

It wasn’t until I read “American Psycho”, many years later, that I had a comparable experience of near-instant loathing of a text, an author, a prose style, and a worldview. I was a young lefty at 16, struggling through John Rawls and Herbert Marcuse. My favorite novel that year was Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle” one of the most polemical works that the great local writer (I grew up on the Monterey Peninsula) wrote. Rand was ideologically and stylistically abhorrent to me at 16, and though it’s been years since I’ve picked up any of her work (I finished “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” through sheer acts of will in my youth), my general feeling of disdain on every imaginable ground remains.

But I’ve met many young people, more often women than men, who — like my friend Lisa in high school — find great inspiration in Ayn Rand. Generally, there’s a specific type of teen who falls in love with either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. She’s usually very bright, raised to one degree or another with the “pleasing woman discourse” (what I call “the Martha Complex.“) She often finds her classes dull and her teachers pedestrian. She suspects she’s destined for something extraordinary, that she’s somehow different from everyone else — but unlike the immensely talented dancer or athlete or actor, she doesn’t have one specific skill that stands out as a ticket to stardom. She vacillates between feelings of intense superiority — and feelings of equally intense guilt for the way in which she looks down on so many of those around her.

She picks up Rand, and suddenly it all makes sense. She is superior, one of the elect. She isn’t what a far more interesting and talented writer would call a “Muggle”. She has an exalted destiny, just as she had suspected. Rand inspires her; telling her that it’s time to throw off the chains of obligation and guilt which have left her confined and miserable. In an odd way, Rand — who would be exceedingly difficult to classify as a feminist — is often a gateway into feminism for some young women. It’s through reading Rand that not-insignificant percentages of young women begin to think seriously about what they want for themselves rather than what others want for them. Young women who have the false impression that feminism is about collective victimization find temporary inspiration in “The Fountainhead” — and in due course, when they encounter real sexism in the real world, they reluctantly concede that perhaps those nasty old feminists had a point after all. I’ve met a hell of a lot of strong young progressive feminists in their twenties and early thirties who were enchanted by Randian philosophy in their teens.

So yes, I think an infatuation with Ayn Rand is developmentally appropriate for adolescents. She flatters and inspires the bright and the isolated and the uncertain; she’s useful for helping some young people, girls in particular, break the deadly people-pleasing habit. So if reading “Atlas” or “Fountainhead” is what it takes to inspire the lonely, the introverted, and the insecure — then may the God that she rejected bestow blessings upon that poor unhappy soul that was Ayn Rand.

This post has been altered from the way it originally appeared earlier today, ill-considered references to comic books, Star Trek, and New Kids on the Block were deleted.

Call for book suggestions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2009
in Books and GLBTQ
. 6 Comments

I’m revising my syllabus for my GLBTQ American history course in the spring. If anyone has any cool books on the various subjects contained within that vast category they’d like to suggest (that would work for a college audience) I’d be grateful. Can’t keep up with all that’s out there.

Eloquent in self-deprecation, inarticulate in self-celebration: on masculinity and the male feminist dilemma

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2009
in Male feminists
. 17 Comments

One great disappointment for me this fall was that I wasn’t able to attend the first annual National Conference for Campus-Based Men’s Gender Equality & Anti-Violence Groups, held the weekend of November 6-7 in Collegeville, Minnesota. My commitment to be at the National Women’s Studies Association in Atlanta the following weekend meant that I had to forego the men’s conference, and I regret that. Still, many of those who attended our panel in Atlanta had been present in Minnesota a week earlier, and my co-presenter Tal Peretz was hardy enough to have offered papers at both.

The Men’s Gender Equality conference has received a fair amount of coverage in the feminist blogosphere, particularly thanks to Courtney Martin (author of the indispensable Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters), who attended the conference. Courtney, who has been immensely supportive of men doing feminist work, wrote a provocative piece in American Prospect after her return from Collegeville, noting what she sees as a “dangerous” problem: the absence of a clear explanation of what feminist men do as opposed to what they don’t:

This contemporary movement of gender-conscious young men is largely identifying themselves in terms of what they are against. They’re not rapists. They’re not misogynists.

They’re also not particularly effective in imagining what they do want to be. Case in point: back to (conference facilitator Ethan) Wong at the chalkboard. The negative associations with masculinity poured off the tongues of these feminist-friendly college kids. They’ve taken Women’s Studies 101. When their buddy says, “That’s so gay,” they spit back, “That’s a sexual identity, not a dis.” They let a few tears fall during the Take Back the Night March. They devour Michael Kimmel’s Guyland and proselytize about Byron Hurt’s documentary, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. This generation is saying no to toxic masculinity.

But what are these young men saying yes too? We’ve all failed to envision an alternative.

I didn’t read Courtney’s piece when it first came out, but several folks mentioned it to me at the NWSA conference, and I’ve received a couple of email requests to post a response. (I’ve seen at least one so far from a male feminist, AJ’s at Feminists for Choice.)

There’s a lot of debate among feminists of all sexes about whether masculinity, as a construct, can be redeemed and reimagined along feminist lines, or whether it needs to be abandoned all together. Allies are divided on the issue; the lads at Men Can Stop Rape famously created their Men of Strength campaign, seeking to offer young men a masculine counterstory in which something traditionally associated with maleness, physical toughness, becomes something pro-feminist. (Posters for the campaign featured young men of color holding their girlfriends tenderly, with the tag line “My Strength is not for Hurting.”) Robert Jensen, on the other hand, is a celebrated representative of those who regard masculinity itself as irredeemably toxic, a point he drives home vividly in his powerful Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, a book which deeply troubled Courtney Martin.

I don’t know if we can say it’s reached the point of a growing consensus, but there are a great many self-described male feminists who see masculinity (like its feminine counterpart) as something we perform rather than something that we are. Masculinity and femininity aren’t as tied to male and female physiological identity as we once imagined; they occur, as our transgendered friends are particularly good at pointing out, on a spectrum. Both males and females can “do” masculinity and femininity in terms of a kind of performance; both males and females can embody the positive traits traditionally associated with the former (strength and courage) as well as those linked to the latter (tenderness, the capacity to intuit).

The problem that Courtney is getting at is a real one. Most of us who are involved in anti-sexist work already acknowledge the fluidity of gender roles. We honor women’s capacity to adopt traditionally masculine dress and behavior. We celebrate men’s capacity to explore traditionally feminine roles. And though it remains a source of tension within feminist communities (a tension often inter-generational in nature), we are increasingly willing to acknowledge that women can be feminists while still delighting in normative female behavior. In other words, we’re clear that a feminist woman can wear make-up and get bikini waxes without compromising her feminist credentials. But there’s one area where we’re understandably more cautious: can a feminist male, particularly a het man, “perform” traditional masculinity without reinforcing toxic misogyny? Relatively few men who do feminist work are willing to say “of course”. And this creates the problem that Courtney Martin — and a great many other sympathetic observers of anti-sexist men — sees: a movement in danger of being defined by what it isn’t rather than by what it is. Continue reading ‘Eloquent in self-deprecation, inarticulate in self-celebration: on masculinity and the male feminist dilemma’

Support Scarleteen

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 13, 2009
in Sex Education
. 0 Comments

We’ve all got dozens of charities near and dear to our hearts, and few of us have the resources with which to share generously with each and every one of them. But I’d love to plug Scarleteen, the indispensable sex education website run by the remarkable Heather Corinna and her amazing team. Read the fundraising appeal here.

A key excerpt from the appeal:

Engaged in over 4,000 conversations with young people on our message boards, providing them factual and friendly answers on contraception, sexual anatomy, safer sex, sexual health, masturbation, interpersonal relationships and other related topics; helping them through struggles like pregnancy scares or unplanned pregnancies, STIs, sexual harassment, rape and intimate partner violence or abuse; talking them through relationships and breakups, family conflicts, gender, sexual identity or body image issues and their sexual decision-making; discussing political issues pertinent to sexuality and youth rights. Most posts at the boards are answered within a few hours, some within minutes. Many of our board users return to the boards again and again for more help, to engage in deeper discussions or to talk with or support other users.

In total our boards have over 43,000 registered users who have posted over 60,000 topics: all have been answered by one or more of Scarleteen’s staff and volunteers. Our boards are fully moderated and a safe space for young people. To help protect our users from potential harassment, they may not share personal information like full names, e-mail addresses, messenger or social networking handles or personal webpages. Managing and moderating the message boards often requires the bulk of our staff and volunteer time.

Answered nearly 100 column-length young adult questions in our Sexpert Advice section, which is also syndicated weekly at RH Reality Check. There are around 900 Sexpert Advice columns in total published at the site. However, our advice queue typically has over 500 questions waiting for answers. In order to catch up with this backlog, we need the funds to acquire more staff to handle the high demand for the longer, in-depth answers our advice column provides and our users are seeking there.

There is no other site as comprehensive, as candid, as safe, and as committed to the physical and emotional well-being of young women and men as is Scarleteen. Visitors come from all over the world looking for one place that will tell them the truth; more than half of Scarleteen’s visitors come from abroad. I urge you to join me in supporting Scarleteen’s vital work.

Men, feminism, and suspicion: a report on our NWSA panel

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 13, 2009
in Academia, Feminist Pedagogy, NWSA 2009 and Rape, aggression and violence
. 6 Comments

I’m in Atlanta, taking a break from presentations at the National Women’s Studies Association meeting. (I also need to get away from the exhibitor’s hall, before I buy so many books that I won’t be able to fit them in my suitcase home.)

Brian Jara, Tal Peretz, and I were the panelists for a discussion entitled Men in Anti-Sexist Activism: Problems and Potential. Brian teaches gender studies at Penn State; Tal, a graduate student at USC (and former student of Brian’s) is writing a dissertation on men doing feminist work. Our panel ran from 8:15-9:30AM — which meant a 5:15AM start for those of us whose body clocks are on Pacific time! The three of us had anticipated having ten to fifteen folks come to hear and participate; we were thrilled that more than forty showed. At the beginning, we asked the audience to pose questions for us about men and anti-sexist activism. Most of the questions asked for suggestions for more ways about recruiting men into doing anti-sexist (and explicitly feminist) work; others asked about ways to address the “white knight” or “pedestal” phenomenon, the dynamic in which men expect praise merely for being males doing this kind of work.

Brian noted that he’s fundamentally suspicious of men who come into his women’s studies classes and get involved in feminist clubs on campus. This isn’t out of his territorial desire to be the only male feminist (the one who can soak up the approbation); rather, it’s rooted in his experience of seeing so many men come into this work with motives ranging from the sexually predatory to the expectation that women’s studies is an intellectually undemanding “easy A”. Tal and I echoed Brian’s concern, acknowledging our own experience encountering men in feminist spaces whose motivations for being there are less than salutary. At the same time, we stressed the importance of encouraging men to explore feminism and start doing feminist work. The point, as I emphasized in my brief oration from the table, is to frame the reality of that suspicion as a reason for more men to get involved in anti-sexist campaigns in the classroom, on campuses, and in the “real world.”

I’ve written before about the “guilty until proven innocent” dynamic, most recently in this post on the “Schroedinger’s Rapist” question. We’ve got to recognize two things, I reiterated today: first, the reasons to fear men are legitimate, grounded in tragic reality more than in unjustified paranoia. Second, that sense of being feared, of being viewed as a potential predator at worst and cluelessly insensitive at best does real damage in the lives of an extraordinary number of men. We underestimate the degree to which young men are cognizant of the way in which they are constantly viewed with suspicion, and we often fail to take account of the toll that exacts on psyches and self-esteem. A great many young men work desperately hard, with varying degrees of success, to prove their “safety” and trustworthiness to a select handful of women. (Frequently, though not always, there is a sexual agenda that drives that effort.) Few young men recognize the solution lies in transforming an entire culture; an individual commitment to being a “good guy”, no matter how sincere and consistent, will do little to change a world in which many, perhaps most, women are raised to fear — again, with good reason — a great many, if not most, men. What’s “in it” (anti-sexist work) for men is not of course just the chance to be trusted, what’s in it for all of us is freedom from sexism, objectification, harassment and sexual violence. Continue reading ‘Men, feminism, and suspicion: a report on our NWSA panel’