Author Archive for Hugo Schwyzer

“I worry for both of them that they aren’t tempted”: some thoughts on dorms, gender, and the myth that proximity creates desire

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 16, 2010
in Desire and objectification, Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Myth of Male Weakness, Roommates, Sleeping patterns and Youth
. 4 Comments

One of the things about blogging for a few years is that one regularly has the opportunity to reflect upon — and revise — old posts. Mind you, I don’t dip into my archives and surreptitiously rewrite old pieces. Rather, I sometimes find that the passage of time has given me a different perspective. It is so with an issue freshly in the news once more: mixed-sex dorm rooms.

I wrote about the subject of colleges assigning different-sex students to the same dorm room in 2006 in this post. What troubled me then was not that folks would seek out roommates of the opposite sex. What I wanted was to encourage bonding with one’s own gender. Boys who find it difficult to relate to other males; girls who’ve found relationships with other females to be characterized by competition and judgment — these were, I argued, the sort of young people who could benefit from confronting their own discomfort with living with the same sex. Rereading that post three and a half years after I wrote it, I wince at my willingness to be so prescriptive of what young people need. And while I stand by my conviction that we do need to do more to encourage some young folks to fight through their fears of bonding with those who share their biology, I’m much less willing to insist upon it.

I’m thinking about this because the Los Angeles Times, a few years late to the party, ran a front-page article yesterday on what is no longer as much of a novelty as some might imagine: Mixed-gender dorm rooms are gaining acceptance.

The number of colleges offering the option increases each year, though the total number of schools at which it is possible to room with someone of the other sex is still only about fifty. The Times profiles the situation at nearby Pitzer College (an institution to which I have seen a number of my best and brightest transfer over the years), and interviews students there and at my alma mater, Cal. (In the 1980s, the innovation at Berkeley was bathrooms shared by both sexes. After the first week, having women walk past men standing at urinals became old hat.)

What heartened me was the willingness of so many young people to separate the idea of close physical proximity from sexual intimacy. The assumption of an older generation, of course, is that the power of desire is so overwhelming that it makes uncomplicated friendship (or, simply, roommate-ship) impossible between two heterosexual young people of different genders. Read the comments after the Times story; lots of predictions of rape and distraction. The myth of male weakness raises its head in the thread over and over again.

The comment that caught my attention was this one from someone called “cmfreedom”: I guess “gender-neutral housing” means asexual. I worry for both of them that they aren’t tempted! Bold is mine.

What impressed me about the young people in the article is the same thing that depressed me about cmfreedom’s remark. Our dominant cultural narrative is the discourse of uncontrollable male sexual desire. We believe that men — particularly those of college-age — are so in thrall to raging hormones that they are constitutionally incapable of seeing women as anything other than sex objects. The peddlers of the discourse sneer contemptuously at those who insist that men are, in fact, are both quite capable of self-regulation and frequently not as sex-crazed as their elders believe. To claim for men the capacity to exercise control, to insist that young men do not all think about sex every seven (or sixteen, or thirty-five) seconds is to invite derision. Continue reading ‘“I worry for both of them that they aren’t tempted”: some thoughts on dorms, gender, and the myth that proximity creates desire’

Grieving the liberation: a note on faith, gender roles, and the loss of certainties

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 15, 2010
in Faith and Feminism
. 9 Comments

I reprinted this 2009 post recently: “We have used our power to dominate and our weakness to manipulate”: more on the egalitarian vision, and the fundamental sinfulness of traditional gender structures. (No, not quite the longest post title ever.)

A reader named Catherine writes:

I was raised in a very conservative Evangelical community (as in, I never wore a pair of paints until I was in my early twenties and had to ask permission from male authority figures to go on a date with a guy.) Because of this, I entered adulthood with very concrete ideas about gender and my identity was formed within those roles. But perhaps more importantly, my sense of purpose was inextricably yoked to this gender-definition.

My break with my religious tradition was precipitated, almost entirely, by my move to feminist ideals…Becoming a feminist created for me not only an identity crisis, but also an existential and spiritual crisis. What was my purpose on this planet if not to fulfill my gender-dictated role? In the crisis precipitated by this sudden purposelessness, I floundered desperately. I lost all that I was, but was reborn into someone who I would like to believe makes an even greater contribution than I might have made had I remained within those gender roles.

What Catherine wants is more discussion about how to cope with the “existential and spiritual crises” that emerge and the loss that is often felt when one lets go of the security and certainty of traditional gender roles.

It’s more or less axiomatic that the secular feminist left has little regard for conservative Christianity and its insistence on separate spheres for men and women. It’s also true that it’s very difficult for those same secular feminists to recognize the pain and the loss that can accompany the journey from fundamentalism to egalitarianism. Why mourn one’s oppression, they wonder? Why shed tears (unless they are of joy) at wriggling out of what seems to outsiders like a confining straitjacket?

The answer goes beyond the obvious truth that we all tend to mourn the loss of youthful certainties. Traditional societies offer women clearly defined roles and responsibilities. The roles may be subservient, the responsibilities may be primarily domestic, but within the confines of the home and relationships, “traditional” women can both wield a certain kind of power and derive an undeniable sense of satisfaction. In a society that sees men as clueless when it comes to cooking or laundry, in a culture in which men are expected to be unable to care for themselves, women’s willingness to nurture is celebrated. The work may be arduous, the horizons limited, but the rewards are not mere phantasms — they are real.

In one of my many theological peregrinations, I ended up spending a great deal of time with some conservative Southern Baptists who opposed the ordination of women. One of my good friends was a young woman — with a first-rate degree from a Christian college — who made it very clear she wanted to be a “pastor’s wife.” I was in a more rightward incarnation than I am today, but not so far right that I had abandoned my feminism. I asked her why she didn’t want to be a pastor herself. We had the usual exchange of New Testament proof-texting, and after that proved (as it always does) to be a complete waste of time, she remarked to me, gently, “Hugo, you seem to think that pastor’s wives are little more than servants to their husbands” My friend, who was originally from Tennessee, remarked that the pastor’s wives she knew growing up really were co-ministers with their husbands. They counseled couples and children, discussed theology and budgets with their spouses, and were key resources for the entire congregation. “They had every bit as much power as their husbands”, my friend insisted, “they just wielded it differently.” Continue reading ‘Grieving the liberation: a note on faith, gender roles, and the loss of certainties’

Time to Grow Up: a review of Philip Gulley’s “If the Church were Christian”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 11, 2010
in Books and Christianity
. 7 Comments

I recently received a copy of If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus. Written by Philip Gulley, a former Catholic turned Quaker minister, If the Church were Christian is a brief, highly readable, and impassioned call for a a rethinking of our faith along progressive lines.

We are a society that has grown fond in the past decade of polemical tracts from across the political and theological spectrum. The Christian marketplace groans under the weight of books calling for reform and transformation of one sort or another. Few in the church look at contemporary Christianity and say “Yes, this is exactly what Jesus intended.” But even fewer make a coherent case for what the church ought to look like, and of those, hardly any do so with the grace and the winsomeness of Gulley.

A little over a decade ago, I read John Shelby Spong’s Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Though as a liberal evangelical, I shared most of Spong’s progressive views on sexual liberation and economic justice, I winced at the former bishop’s tone. Spong hectored and belittled those who clung to more traditional views; he couldn’t resist mocking those for whom the Virgin Birth and the resurrection were precious articles of faith — and fact. Spong did little to win the hearts and minds of traditionalists; rather, despite his good heart and his excellent politics, he became an easy target for them because of his tendency to be so relentlessly intemperate. I’ve been waiting ever since for a progressive manifesto that argued for the same end goal — but did so with a far greater respect for those who continue to hold conservative views. My wait is over. Continue reading ‘Time to Grow Up: a review of Philip Gulley’s “If the Church were Christian”’

Thursday Short Poem: Merwin’s “Message”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 11, 2010
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

I wouldn’t normally pick a poem published in last week’s New Yorker for the Thursday Short Poem, but this W.S. Merwin piece is too good not to move to the front of the line. It is not an easy poem in any sense of the word. Read it aloud. No one breaks your heart while breaking the rules of punctuation better than Merwin.

A Message to Po Chui-I


In that tenth winter of your exile
the cold never letting go of you
and your hunger aching inside you
day and night while you heard the voices
out of the starving mouths around you
old ones and infants and animals
those curtains of bones swaying on stilts
and you heard the faint cries of the birds
searching in the frozen mud for something
to swallow and you watched the migrants
trapped in the cold the great geese growing
weaker by the day until their wings
could barely lift them above the ground
so that a gang of boys could catch one
in a net and drag him to market
to be cooked and it was then that you
saw him in his own exile and you
paid for him and kept him until he
could fly again and you let him go
but then where could he go in the world
of your time with its wars everywhere
and the soldiers hungry the fires lit
the knives out twelve hundred years ago

I have been wanting to let you know
the goose is well he is here with me
you would recognize the old migrant
he has been with me for a long time
and is in no hurry to leave here
the wars are bigger now than ever
greed has reached numbers that you would not
believe and I will not tell you what
is done to geese before they kill them
now we are melting the very poles
of the earth but I have never known
where he would go after he leaves me

Rebounds and transition figures: doing it right after a divorce

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2010
in Divorce, Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Marriage and Relationships
. 4 Comments

Another email, from Mallory. She writes:

I was married at 27 to my college sweetheart. This man checked all of the boxes dreamed of on the surface - doctor, boy scout-esque from a nice family - all of the family, etc. were thrilled when we were married. However, quite quickly after the wedding things fell apart and he told me essentially that he was not ready to grow-up and had to go find himself. I picked up the pieces, moved to another country with a business opportunity, and started over.

I started dating a man that is very fun, we have a great time together; he’s one year younger, we are very attracted to each other, he stimulates me intellectually and I care about him a great deal. However, I do not see it going towards a serious relationship and/or marriage. This is primarily for a mis-match in ambition levels, he is not willing to move countries, and I am not convinced he is fully ready to take on the responsibilities of a relationship on that level (needless to say a big sticking point after the last relationship).

Currently I do not want to be married, but I am ready to care for someone deeply again.
Being in my 30s, divorced, but not interested in dating lots of men, I feel like it should be okay to have a lighthearted relationship - but I cannot quite shake this feeling of maybe looking like the overweight, middle aged comb-over guy in the red Porsche when dating someone I have no intention of being serious about.

When does it become counter productive to engage in flippant relationships? Am I listening to society too much, or not enough to my gut?

Though I am fond of marriage (I’ve done it four times), I don’t think lifelong monogamous commitments are the only sort of relationships worth pursuing. I’ve come to believe, instead, that at different seasons of our life we may need different sorts of relationships to help us grow. And one of the most important kinds of relationships we can have after a divorce is with a “transition figure” who can help us process the lingering wounds and doubts that almost always remain in the aftermath of the end of a marriage.

I’m not talking about using people. I’m not talking about relying on one’s own pain as an excuse to deal cavalierly and recklessly with another human being. One basic dating maxim for grown-ups: our past history of suffering doesn’t vitiate our responsibility to avoid hurting others. It’s not enough to simply say “I’m on the rebound, watch out!” and then, having broken the heart of the person with whom we rebounded, to exclaim “What did you expect? I was on the rebound!” Nothing we’ve endured gives us the right to disregard our responsibility to consider how a sexual relationship we’re having may affect the other person emotionally. Misleading another person into believing that what is temporary might turn out to be permanent is bad form indeed, particularly for those old enough to know better.

That said, I think there’s a distinction between a “rebound” and a “transition relationship”. The difference lies in three things: our willingness to assume complete responsibility for our own actions, our honesty — in both word and deed — with the other person about what we can and can’t offer, and our own internal clarity about what purpose this relationship plays in our life. If we’re scrupulous about these things, “transitional relationships” which are time-limited but intense can be enormously healing for those who have them. Continue reading ‘Rebounds and transition figures: doing it right after a divorce’

“Divided you fall”: the myth of male weakness and young women’s internalized misogyny

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 09, 2010
in Feminism, Friendship and Myth of Male Weakness
. 26 Comments

I’m thinking once again about the “myth of male weakness” this morning.

Jonah Goldberg has a piece this morning with the whoppingly patronizing title “Where Feminists Get it Right.” (Don’t get excited, folks. Hell remains unfrozen.) Jonah concludes his piece, which largely focuses on the now-familiar yet ever-depressing litany of abuses against women in the less-developed world, with this gem:

Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and “Lord of the Flies” logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.

Give Jonah credit. He’s not blaming women directly for their failure to civilize men. Rather, he’s blaming certain cultures that fail to give women sufficient authority with which to do their civilizing. But that doesn’t change the basic problem in his argument, based as it is on pseudo-science, Victorian sentimentality about women’s “nature”, and a William Golding novel about pre-pubescent boys.

As I sigh at Goldberg’s piece, I think about an email I got from my friend Emily. She recounts a Facebook exchange she had with a female friend of hers, a fellow Christian. Em’s friend posted on her status update that she was “really disappointed w/the female human species.” When Em inquired why, and whether her friend was also disappointed in men, she got this response:

It appears as if men are weaker when it comes to sex, money, power. With that I am realizing that it is the women that should be held at a higher standard because we need to set the tone for our weak counterparts. If women looked at themselves as holy temples and didn’t allow anything less than excellence this may force men to step up their integrity and priorities…

We could go through the gospels, pointing out over and over again the places where Jesus demands that men show self-restraint comparable to that demanded by women. But I’m not just interested in responding to a fellow Christian. Rather, what concerns me here is one of the most troubling aspects of the myth of male weakness: it creates an atmosphere in which both men and women feel justified in policing other women’s behavior.

If men cannot control themselves, and women can, then it is (as Emily’s friend suggests) women’s task to set the limits for men which men cannot set for themselves. All bad male behavior, it quickly follows, is invariably a woman’s fault. We’re all familiar with the loathsome notion that a cheating husband or boyfriend deserves less ire than the woman with whom he cheated. (The “he couldn’t help it, but she ought to have known better because she’s a woman” theory). The end result is a culture of mistrust and hostility among women.

A great many of the young women I work with claim to have trouble liking other women. Call it the “most of my good friends are guys” phenomenon, which is sufficiently common as to merit a word other than “phenomenon”. Many young women — even in feminist spaces — will list the countless ways in which they have felt judged, policed, or betrayed by other women. Many will say things like “I expect men to let me down. But when a woman hurts you, it’s worse because she doesn’t have an excuse.”

The point that feminists try and make in these discussions is that the myth of male weakness is at the very root of this internalized misogyny. The logic is inescapable. The less self-control women believe men have, the less they hold men responsible. The less they hold men responsible, the more responsibility they ascribe to themselves and to other women. The less they believe in men’s capacity to self-regulate, the more hostile they are trained to become to any woman who seems unwilling to engage in the rituals of female self-policing. At its most extreme, every mini-skirt becomes not only a threat to the fragile order women have established for mutual protection, it is perceived as an act of both betrayal and hostility towards one’s sisters. The hisses of “slut”, “whore”, and “bitch” soon follow. Continue reading ‘“Divided you fall”: the myth of male weakness and young women’s internalized misogyny’

Pasadena City College: home of the hot?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 06, 2010
in Ratemyprofessors
. 6 Comments

In the fall of 2008, I reported this flattering and embarrassing news. But oh, how the mighty have fallen!

I learned today from a Facebook friend that Ratemyprofessors has released its 2009-2010 lists of the top profs in the country. Where I was was ranked first in 2008, I’ve tumbled to 25th. My dismay is, well, infinitesimal. Here’s the real news: the top 50 hottest professors in the USA include no fewer than seven from Pasadena City College.

The lists are compiled from student ratings across the nation for both two-year and four-year institutions. It’s worth noting that no other college or university had more than two of its faculty members selected for the top 50. The “roll of smolderingness” includes the following colleagues of mine:

#4 David McCabe, Education
#8 Russell Frank, Languages
#9 Lynora Rogacs, Philosophy — and my office-mate!
#11 Derek Milne, Anthropology (last year’s #7)
#25 your blogger, History
#38 Charlene Potter, English
#40 Tamara Arida, Sociology

Question: does this say more about the faculty — or the students — of Pasadena City College? As for me, I am proud to relinquish my title. (I have no idea what methodology made me #1 in 2008 and makes me #25 now.) But I can’t wait for Monday, when I can begin to tease my office mate (3rd hottest female professor in the country) as mercilessly as I was teased last year.

And with that, a return to serious blogging next week.

A survey on attitudes towards casual sex

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 05, 2010
in Science, Sex Education and Sexuality
. 2 Comments

Heather Corinna, founder and executive editor of the indispensable site Scarleteen, is doing a large study on multigenerational experiences with and attitudes about casual sex. The data will ideally be used for publication, but answers are completely anonymous and will only be used anonymously.

There’s a lot of buzz now about “hooking up,” the newest term for casual sex, though casual sex isn’t new at all — nor does it only belong to the current generation, despite often being presented that way. Unlike most of the buzz out there, she’s not interested in telling anyone how to have sex, warning people off any given kind of sex or in presenting any one kind of sex as “the best way.” She’s just looking for what’s real, both in sexual attitudes and experiences among a diverse array of ages, genders and sexual identities, races and sexual ideologies/constructions. The only requirements for participating in this study are being over the age of 16, and having had some kind of sexual partnership before, even if none has been casual. The study will take around twenty minutes.

She would like the study to show as diverse an array of people as possible, especially since so often media representations or cultural conversations about casual sex are usually only about heterosexual white women or about gay men. She particularly wants to be sure LGBT people, people of color, those over 45 and social conservatives are adequately represented, so please share this link with your networks after you take the survey yourself, especially if your networks include people in any or all of those groups. I know I have a number of readers who fall into those groups, and urge them to take part.

You can take the survey by clicking here.

If you don’t know who Heather is, she’s been working in human sexuality for around 12 years. She is the founder and executive director for Scarleteen.com, does sex education outreach at youth shelters and women’s clinics in Seattle, and has been a sex columnist and writer online for sites like The Guardian and RH Reality Check. She has also been published in a handful of anthologies and is the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know-Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College (DaCapo Press), a book which I regard as the single best sex education text available anywhere.

If you have any questions, you can contact Heather at hcorinna@mac.com

Spared from relapse: of divorce, sex addiction, and angels in hoodies

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 04, 2010
in Addiction and mental illness, Divorce, Memories and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 16 Comments

I got an email yesterday, asking me about advice for dating again after a divorce. It’s a post I intend to get to next week.

But something in the query reminded me of an another question I’d been asked by a mentee of mine. The mentee asked “Since you got sober and had your conversion, have you ever come really close to slipping back into old behavior?” The answer I gave dovetails with that of what one does after a divorce. I’ll share a story.

It was summer 2002. My third wife, E., had told me she didn’t want to be married to me anymore. E and I had met online (Matchmaker.com) in January 2000; she was finishing her doctorate at Fuller Seminary, I was 18 months sober and falling in love with Christ all over again. She had never been married before. I was eager to build a life with someone who shared my faith, shared my values, and was willing to accept a very troubled and turbulent past. E and I moved quickly; we were engaged within weeks and married in early 2001.

As I’ve written before, my third wife and I had terrific intellectual and theological compatibility. We also had very little physical chemistry. I saw that as a plus. I had grown mistrustful of “heat” with another person — in my experience over the course of many years and many relationships, the most intense sexual relationships were invariably the most unhealthy. I ought to have known better, but at this stage of my recovery, I equated heat with danger. I thought of the line I’m too lazy too look up (but I think it’s from one of the translations of Medea), the one in which a Greek chorus prays for a “small fire” of love, just enough to warm a house — but not a big fire, which will invariably burn the house down. Having burned down many houses, as it were, I was ready for something different.

My third wife did me the great favor of leaving me. We were not cruel or unfaithful or dishonest. We were incompatible in a very basic way, a way that could not be overlooked. She was unwilling to settle for kindness and conversation alone; she wanted passion, and that was something we could not generate. She promised me that I would thank her someday for leaving. I have done so. She is remarried, as am I. I hope that her new marriage is joyous.

In any case, back to 2002. I was heartbroken when E left. I also experienced a brief crisis of doubt. I doubted God. I doubted the wisdom of staying sober. The perfect narrative of fall and recovery had been shattered; I wasn’t supposed to get divorced again, not now that I was sober and faithful. In my mind, I had done “everything right this time” and still things hadn’t worked out. And as a consequence, I began to flirt with the idea of going back to old behavior. I don’t mean drinking again — that option wasn’t on the table. I meant returning to casual promiscuity.

I moved out of the home E and I shared in early October, 2002. I had rented a small apartment a few miles away. And I had a date lined up for that first weekend with a woman I’d known for years. To heck with celibacy again, I thought; I’d done that as a healing tool before. What I wanted was new skin. I was in danger of going back to a pattern I’d stayed away from for many years.

But I never went on that date. The day before I moved out, one of my favorite students, Katie, came to my office. Katie had taken a few of my classes, and regularly visited me in office hours. Katie had been “out” for quite some time; she had been in the first gay and lesbian history course I had taught at PCC. Katie had been dating her girlfriend, Jackie — whom I knew vaguely but who hadn’t been my student — for about six months.

Katie was in tears. She told me that Jackie had been chronically unfaithful to her. Jackie was sexually compulsive, she said, hooking up with and having nearly-anonymous sexual encounters with both men and women. Jackie kept pledging to stop — and kept breaking those promises. She had begged Katie to stand by her, and Katie had tried, but was now at wits end. “I’m ready to leave”, Katie told me. “But I was wondering if you would be willing to reach out to Jackie. I know your story, and I know you went through some of these same issues. I trust you, Hugo, and I was wondering if you could take Jackie to some meetings and see if you could help her.” Continue reading ‘Spared from relapse: of divorce, sex addiction, and angels in hoodies’

Thursday Short Poem: Szymborska’s “Contribution” (again)

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 04, 2010
in Poetry
. 4 Comments

I posted this Wislawa Szymborska poem once before, exactly five years ago. It is as timely in my life as ever.

A Contribution to Statistics.

Out of a hundred people

those who always know better
    - fifty-two,

doubting every step
    - nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a hand
if it doesn’t take to long
    - as high as forty nine,

always good
because they can’t be otherwise
    - four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy
    - eighteen,

suffering illusions
induced by fleeting youth
   - sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly
    - fourty and four,

living in constant fear
of someone or something
    - seventy-seven,

capable of happiness
    - twenty-something tops,

harmless singly
savage in crowds
    - half at least,

cruel
when forced by circumstances
    - better not to know
even ballpark figures,

wise after the fact
    -   just a couple more
than wise before it,

taking only things from life
    - thirty
(I wish I were wrong),

hunched in pain
no flashlight in the dark
    - eighty-three
sooner or later,

righteous
    - thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteous
and understanding
    -three,

worthy of compassion
    - ninety-nine,

mortal
    - a hundred out of a hundred.
Thus far this figure remains unchanged.

The “Why I am a Christian” post

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 03, 2010
in Christianity
. 20 Comments

I’m taking a break from posting about issues relating to sexuality to answer a question I received just yesterday in an email from a young woman named Sally. Sally writes:

I don’t know how ‘appropriate’ it is to ask someone about why they believe in religion over an e-mail, especially to a stranger but I am touched by your honesty and openness as demonstrated by your posts, and am inclined to believe that you will answer my question… So here goes: Why are you..or how are you a Christian?

I’m not asking for you to share a personal moment of epiphany or anything like that but rather…I guess I want you to defend yourself, or defend all people in the world who are religious. That’s not because I think you belong in a position to defend yourself but because I am not religious, and out of my arrogance and ignorance, refuse to believe that anyone with ‘intelligence’ or ‘rationale’ would be religious. I only say that because religion is based on faith, not logic. So how is someone as logical as you, as deeply analytical and sharp as you..committed to a religion?

It’s a fair question, and I’ve been asked it before. I’ve answered it as best I can in various ways in other settings, but haven’t dealt with it on this blog. I’ve made allusions to my faith journey — my initial conversion in college, my brief flirtation with a vocation to the priesthood, the long period in the 1990s when I was estranged from my faith and my return to Christ following my near-death experience in 1998. Certainly, the tumult of my personal life over the past quarter century has made me into the ideal candidate for conversion; there is little doubt in my mind that had I not found a faith that could sustain me, I might not have survived.

But to a non-believer, that’s an explanation of belief as a coping strategy. It is not a “case for Christ”, or a case for anything other than the efficacy of religious feeling as a tool for folks in recovery. Even most atheists recognize that there may be psychological benefits to religion. But what of the beliefs themselves? Sally seems to be asking how I reconcile my progressive politics and my reason with a belief in Christ as my savior and the bible as the inspired (if not entirely inerrant) word of God.

I’ve dealt with how I reconcile a deep passion for Christ with a very liberal sexual ethic — see this series from the summer of ‘08. But what about reconciling my faith with my belief in science? What about reconciling my commitment to pluralism and universalism on the one hand (the notion that there are multiple paths to enlightenment and everlasting joy) with my insistence that for me, that redemption has come solely through Christ? And how do I deal with so many of my fellow Christians whose views on a variety of matters are so radically different from my own?

Both of my parents are — or were — philosophers. Both are atheists. I often tease my mother that “I have no problem rejecting the principle of non-contradiction.” Like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, I have on occasion believed “six impossible things before breakfast.” As a child, I believed that if I kissed my teddy bear three times on the morning of a test, I would do well on that test. I always studied too — I never trusted a talisman to do the job for me. It was never “kiss the bear so you won’t have to study”; it was “kiss the bear, and that will help you to remember everything you studied.” I understood a basic theological principle even as a rather obsessive-compulsive child: success is a collaboration between the individual and the divine. (As a Christian, I see this notion reflected in 1 Corinthians 3:9.) So for me, the rational and the inexplicable, the that-which-can-be-proved and the that-which-can’t could always be reconciled. Perhaps it’s a Gemini thing. (Referring to astrology with any degree of seriousness is evidence of still another belief in something that responsible people consider to be just so much woo-woo.)

I studied scholastic philosophy in graduate school: I read Anselm and Duns Scotus, Ockham and Aquinas. I read their various proofs for the existence of God. I wasn’t moved. I’ve never been concerned with proving God exists. God for me is something I experience in a way that isn’t particularly rational — it’s sub-rational, or extra-rational. It’s more emotional and sensory than it is logical. I believe the stories about Jesus — including the bits about his conception and his resurrection — despite my wariness of the miraculous. I believe the stories because they spoke to me as no other stories have. What seems absurd on an intellectual level makes good sense far deeper in my core.

For me, reason is, to paraphrase Jeffers totally out of context, a clever servant and an insufferable master. It is a tool for functioning in the world; it is one way of comprehending and interpreting reality. Whether or not it is reasonable to believe isn’t the question; whether it is worth believing is. And I do know that the evidence for the good that my faith has wrought in my life is considerable. Count me in the “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” camp, if only because without a belief in an omnibenevolent force, the universe would seem so lonely to me that I would feel incapacitated by existential despair. Religion is a crutch. I happen to need a crutch, and haven’t an iota of shame about admitting that I do. And the “Christian crutch” happens to be the one which has worked best for me.

I take Jesus seriously when He says that he has sheep of other folds whom He must lead. I don’t think it is necessary to be a Christian, or even believe in God, to be either a good person or to achieve whatever reward may await us after death. I’ve known too many cruel Christians and kind atheists (and kind followers of other faiths) to believe for an instant that those of us who call Jesus “Lord” have any particular moral superiority. At the same time, I can’t walk every path — I must walk the one that has made a claim on my heart. And Jesus made a claim on mine, so His is the path I try — imperfectly — to walk.

Reprint: On Rebuilding Trust

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by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 02, 2010
in Relationships
. 0 Comments

This post originally appeared in December 2007.

A regular reader asks:

I do have a question for you that you may be able to answer. I am wondering if it is possible to reconcile with a person where trust has been broken and be able to rebuild the trust back again. Have you any personal experience in this area that you can shed wisdom on?

I’m not a relationship expert: three divorces by age 35 are proof of that. That doesn’t stop me from offering advice and reflections, and it doesn’t stop people from asking. So with the standard caveat that my opinion is only that, an opinion, here goes.

I’m going to assume my reader is writing about reconciling with a romantic partner. When trust is shattered in a sexual relationship, it’s usually qualitatively different than it is in other friendships or among family members. But I’d like to touch on the loss — and the restoration — of trust in a variety of relationships, because I’ve got a considerable amount of hard-earned experience in this area.

I had my first major mental breakdown in April 1987, shortly before I turned 20. I had my last (God willing) in the summer of 1998, shortly after turning 31. Over that eleven-year period, I was hospitalized more than half a dozen times. I also struggled very publicly with a host of addictions. And I know full well that addicts break the hearts of those who love them, over and over again. My mother, father, brother, and sisters suffered more than anyone. None of my friends, lovers, or wives were part of my life for that entire period; I very successfully chased everyone who wasn’t bound to me by blood out of my life.

My lies were the standard ones: “I’m sober”, I would say — when I wasn’t. “I’m seeing a great therapist” — when I cancelled all my appointments. “The meds are helping” — when they weren’t. Above all, my most consistent lie was “I’m fine.” Anglo-Saxon reticence, and the concomitant dissembling it requires, were part of my family culture. I spent many years on the stage as a child, and my acting skills came in handy when it came time to cover up the pain, the despair, and the appalling acting-out behavior that characterized my life in my late teens and twenties. Continue reading ‘Reprint: On Rebuilding Trust’

Reprint: Love, Free Will, and What Is — and Isn’t — Written in the Genes

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by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 02, 2010
in Reprints
. 3 Comments

This post originally appeared in April 2007.

A couple of folks have emailed me this New York Times piece: Pas de Deux of Sexuality is Written in the Genes.

It begins:

Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term attachment.

So much fuss, so intricate a dance, all to achieve success on the simple scale that is all evolution cares about, that of raisingthe greatest number of children to adulthood. Desire may seem the core of human sexual behavior, but it is just the central act in a long drama whose script is written quite substantially in the genes.

I don’t have a personal animus towards evolutionary biologists. I’m no scientist, after all. I honor the work these men and women do. But I always shudder nonetheless when I get one of these articles e-mailed to me. And I shudder because I know that the laypeople who read these articles frequently come to the conclusion that these “latest findings” prove that heredity trumps socialization, and that genetics trump free will.

The field of evolutionary biology is intensely politicized, less so by the scientists themselves and more by those of us who interpret the findings to fit our own agendas. The right-wing often contradicts itself. Many conservatives I know believe that homosexuality is a matter of personal sin, not the hard-wiring of the brain; they believe that gay-ness can be cured. And just as they proclaim that gays and lesbians can become “completely heterosexual” (Ted Haggard just set a world speed record in that regard), they often rely on science to make the case that men and women are so enormously different that rigid gender roles actually make good sense. Where homosexuality is concerned, they think free will trumps biology; where gender roles are concerned, they think the reverse. Continue reading ‘Reprint: Love, Free Will, and What Is — and Isn’t — Written in the Genes’

Voice of the Week

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 01, 2010
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

I’m very pleased to be named BlogHer “voice of the week” for this post from Monday last.

The advertisements running on the right side of the page are coordinated through BlogHer, and are producing a tiny but welcome income stream.

Check out the “Voice of the Week” archive too!

Discourses of desire and the problem of rejection

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 01, 2010
in Desire and objectification, Rape, aggression and violence and Sexuality
. 8 Comments

Last week, Rachel Hills guest-posted an explosive piece at Feministe: But Women Don’t Rape. Rachel began by reflecting on this post at the Feministing Community which dealt with a woman’s sudden awareness that one of her female friends had coerced her boyfriend into having sex. The comment threads at both Feministing and Feministe are substantial and well worth a read.

Rachel and her commenters note the constellation of factors that make us believe that women cannot force men into unwanted sex: our misconceptions about male physiology (the “guys can’t have erections or ejaculate against their will” myth); our belief that men are more resistant to psychological pressure and invariably less eager to people-please: our notion that, as the Feministing post put it, “nice girls” (especially feminists) simply are incapable of forcing their boyfriends to do anything against their will.

Please join the great discussion at either site. I have posted a bit on the issue of men-as-victims, as well as on the notion that pleasure is not evidence of consent. In a 2005 post about Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau I wrote:

For too many of us, pleasure and orgasm are inconsistent with (being a victim of) sexual violation. But to assume that pleasure and orgasm are always acts of volition is to defy practically everything we know about adolescent development, sexuality, and power.

I’d amend that to say that the statement holds fairly well even if we remove the “adolescent” from it.

But there’s another issue that Rachel raised at Feministe that I’d like to tackle: the way in which we socialize women to believe that they ought never be the higher-desire partner in a heterosexual relationship. She writes:

…one of the interesting threads that has come through in my interviews is how very poorly many women take it when their male partners don’t want to have sex with them. They don’t like it at all. For these women, being turned down for sex – even if only occasionally, even if only once – is read as communicating a whole lot of nasty things about them and their relationship. That their partner doesn’t find them attractive anymore, that he’s cheating, that their relationship lacks passion, that they’re bad in bed, that he’s not into women at all.

(For more on Rachel’s research and to take her survey, visit here.

I think that Rachel’s right. The male sexual desire discourse tells us that men are always in the mood, invariably hornier than women. Indeed, our whole notion about the myth of male weakness is linked to assumptions about the overwhelming power of men’s libidos. But as countless women have discovered in relationships with heterosexual men, this discourse founders on the rocks of reality. As Rachel says, many women are confused when boyfriends or husbands evince less interest in sex than they themselves do. Rather than question the discourse, many choose to blame themselves, assuming that they are insufficiently attractive. Sometimes, they externalize that self-doubt, accusing their male partners of being gay or of having an affair.

As several of the commenters have pointed out, there’s an old axiom in marital therapy: the lower-desire partner has more power than the higher-desire partner. The one who has the power to please or disappoint by saying “yes” or “no” gains the upper hand. (I’ve posted about that a couple of times. Sorry to always link to myself, but here’s a post on that subject too.). And of course, one of our most traditional (and loathsome) discourses with which we raise young women is the one that teaches that a woman’s power comes from her ability to control men sexually. Sex is a bargaining chip, and its value is created by men’s impetuous libidos.

Though most younger women today, particularly young feminists, intellectually reject the “sex as leverage” trope, the idea continues to exert an uncomfortable hold on many. Many women don’t realize the degree to which they had “bought in” to the discourse until they find themselves in relationships with men whose desire for sex is less than their own. And while it’s never easy to be rejected, and never easy to deal with sexual frustration and self-doubt, men are more insulated than women from the effects of that rejection. That doesn’t mean men are less sensitive, or less vulnerable to hurt. But a man whose sex drive is higher than his female partner’s can comfort himself that theirs is “a normal relationship.” His frustration is par for the proverbial course; his masculinity is not called into question when his girlfriend is not in the mood.

We have many inanities that pass for common wisdom about men and women and their different attitudes towards sex. We say things like “Women need a reason; men just need a place” or, when describing the speed of arousal, that “Men are lightbulbs, women are ovens”. My readers can probably think of more. And while like all cliches, they prove true in some instances, the exceptions are sufficiently numerous as to disprove the rule altogether. The problem is, of course, the effect on the many for whom the opposite of these “truisms” is true. A woman who does “feel like a lightbulb” when it comes to arousal is made to feel abnormal, as is a man who is more “like an oven.” And while these bits of common nonsense comfort “higher desire men”, reassuring them that they are normal, they suggest that all sorts of things are wrong with a woman if she finds herself more easily and frequently turned on than her boyfriend.

It is axiomatic that the fewer freedoms women have, the more their beauty is valued. Some of the most repressive societies on earth value that beauty by concealing it from all but her husband, who is entitled to possess it as he pleases: others encourage young women to display their bodies (whether they want to or not) for men’s consumption. This isn’t about burqas and bikinis again. It’s about the idea that we raise our daughters to see their beauty as a particular source of power. And while most of us would like to be found attractive, our craving to be wanted sexually is often in inverse proportion to the amount of leverage we can achieve using our other talents.

A decade into the 21st century, and many of us still believe that a woman’s desirability is among her most valuable assets. And many women who don’t think that they believe that nasty old sexist notion discover that it still has a strange hold upon them –and they discover it at the moment that they find themselves in relationships with men whose desire for sex is less than their own.