Archive for the 'Aggression and violence' Category

Self-awareness good, navel-gazing bad: some thoughts on men, accountability, and the lesson of Kyle Payne

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 10, 2008
in Aggression and violence and Male feminists
. 32 Comments

Cara, Jill, Belledame, Renegade Evolution and Jeff are just a few of the feminist bloggers to take on the disturbing story of Kyle Payne, a progressive feminist blogger and anti-pornography activist in Iowa. According to the Iowa Independent:

An Iowa blogger who claimed to use activism and education to promote “a more just and life-affirming culture of sexuality” for women, especially those women who have been victims of sexual violence, has pleaded guilty to photographing and filming a college student’s breasts without her consent.

Kyle D. Payne, 22 of Ida Grove, presented his guilty plea Monday in Iowa District Court for Buena Vista County. He agreed he was guilty of felony attempted burglary in the second degree and two counts of invasion of privacy, a serious misdemeanor.

At the time of the incident, Payne had been employed by Buena Vista University as a dormitory resident adviser. Police reports indicate that while attending to an intoxicated and unconscious female student, Payne reportedly assaulted and photographed her. The guilty plea entered Monday did not include assault charges. Tips received by police and campus security following the incident led to a 10-month investigation that resulted in Payne’s arrest in February.

There are other allegations on some of the blogs that Payne had child pornography on his computer as well, though I haven’t been able to find any substantiation — if anyone has more info on that aspect of this case, please include it in the comments.

It’s always immensely disheartening when any advocate for social justice is discovered living a life in contradiction to his or her professed values. In my initial comments on the subject at Jill’s, I wrongly implied that there was something particularly troubling about a “male feminist” betraying his commitments. I noted how angry I was that a young man who shares the same passion for sexual equality that I do had done such a thing, and I worried — and indeed still do worry — about the negative impact Kyle Payne’s appalling behavior will have on the public perception of feminist men. Some of the commenters on the thread pointed out that my concern was at least partly misplaced; Kyle’s real victim was the woman he attacked, and worrying about the impact on progressive men distorts the real impact of his actions. I think that’s right. Continue reading ‘Self-awareness good, navel-gazing bad: some thoughts on men, accountability, and the lesson of Kyle Payne’

“The opposite of rape is not consent; the opposite of rape is enthusiasm”: a revised and expanded post

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 15, 2008
in Aggression and violence, Favorite Posts 2008, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexual harassment, Sexuality and Youth
. 42 Comments

I’m very much looking forward to Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman’s forthcoming anthology: Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. I submitted a piece for inclusion, but a week or two ago received a very kind rejection note from the editors. I don’t think the short essay I wrote is viable for publication elsewhere, as Yes Means Yes will likely be the definitive work on the subject of consent for some time to come. So I’m posting the submission here.

This essay is a revised version of an earlier blogpost, of course. And though I am naturally disappointed that this essay won’t be included, I’m still very much looking forward to the appearance of the book, scheduled for later this year. in any case here goes:

“Yes means yes.” It’s a powerful, simple phrase, and important enough to be the guiding theme for this anthology. But the problem, of course, is that there is more than one kind of “yes.” There’s a world of difference between the “yes” said to appease or please, and the “yes” that comes from our core, brimming with enthusiasm. From the time we were children, most of us have been raised to say “yes” to things we would rather say “no” to: doing household chores, covering a co-worker’s shift, agreeing to pick a friend up at the airport. “Yes” often means “I am willing” rather than “Gosh, I’d really like to do that.” And while part of living in community with other human beings involves saying “yes” to things we’d rather not do, this issue of consent and enthusiasm is very different when the subject is sex.

This essay argues that when it comes to teaching young people about sexuality, we need to do more than make the case that “no means no, and yes means yes.” We need to make the case that consent is not enough. Great sex – ethical sex – is rooted less in mutual agreement than in mutual enthusiasm. It’s about moving from a “yes” to a “Hell, yes!”

I’m the elder of two sons raised in the ‘70s and early ‘80s by an avowedly feminist single mother. Mom hosted meetings of the League of Women Voters in our living room; Ms. Magazine rested on the coffee table. My brother and I didn’t get much of a sex talk from our mother, but she was gently insistent that we “respect” the girls we dated. When I was fifteen, I had my first girlfriend, Carmen. One afternoon, as my Mom drove me over to Carmen’s house, she warned me: “Don’t push her further than she wants to go. No means no, always.” I was acutely embarrassed (Carmen and I hadn’t moved beyond the kissing stage), and changed the subject. But I remembered the message.

The problem with the “no means no” slogan, as vital as it is, is that it implies the opposite is always true: “yes means yes.” “Yes means yes!” can be a triumphant statement about women’s sexual autonomy. But in a world where so many young women feel pressured to please others (particularly men), too many of the “yeses” uttered in dorm rooms and in the back seats of cars don’t reflect authentic desire. Too many “yeses” are coerced; too many quiet “okays” and “I guess so’s” are interpreted as blanket permission. When we confine our advice about sexual decision-making to a simple “no” means “no”, we risk sending the message that anything that isn’t a clear and strong “no” constitutes a “yes.” And as countless anecdotes told by young women reveal, that’s a recipe for disaster. Continue reading ‘“The opposite of rape is not consent; the opposite of rape is enthusiasm”: a revised and expanded post’

American foreign policy, still a potential force for good: in support of I-VAWA

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 6, 2008
in Aggression and violence, Foreign Policy and Global Feminism
. 2 Comments

McKenzie at Women Thrive writes to alert me about the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), introduced in the House just last Thursday by Southern California’s own Howard Berman (D-Panorama City). A similar proposal was introduced in the senate last year by Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), showing bipartisan support.

The good news is that violence against women is preventable and that there are proven solutions that work. The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), if passed, would, for the first time, comprehensively incorporate these solutions into all U.S. foreign assistance programs - solutions such as promoting women’s economic opportunity, addressing violence against girls in school, and working to change public attitudes. Among other things, the IVAWA would make ending violence against women a diplomatic priority for the first time in U.S. history. It would require the U.S. government to respond to critical outbreaks of gender-based violence in armed conflict - such as the mass rapes now occuring in the Democratic Republic of Congo - within two months. And by investing in local women’s organizations overseas that are succesfully working to reduce violence in their communities, the IVAWA would have a huge impact on reducing poverty - freeing millions of women in poor countries to lift themselves, their families, and their communities out of poverty.

Find out more here. (PDF-file)

I haven’t yet read any criticism from the left of IVAWA (and yes, I’ve done a google blogsearch.) There are those in lefty circles who are profoundly suspicious of the idea of utilizing the State Department — and, potentially, the Defense Department — to advance women’s rights. Laura Bush’s claims that the USA liberated Afghan women have begun to ring hollow with the retrenchment of conservative forces in that country, and it’s clear that talk of “letting girls go to school” was part of a very effective pro-war propaganda strategy. One reason why progressives were generally so much more supportive of the Afghan war than the Iraq adventure had to do, I think, with a sense that Afghan women desperately needed liberation from the Taliban in a way that Iraqi women did not need freeing from the far more enlightened, albeit still-thuggish Baathists.

I would not like to think that IVAWA would give cover to more internationalist adventurism. As satisfying an idea as it is to send the 101st Airborne ’round the globe to liberate women from oppression, the well-documented result is that the “liberators” usually replace one form of violence (often familial) with another (military). Freeing a woman from an abusive husband by turning her into a widow is hardly the best way to promote global justice.

Of course, I agree with groups like Women Thrive that part of progressive action is shaping and directing American foreign policy. Global change cannot come through the churches and NGOs alone. Protecting women and girls from violence ought to be a stated U.S. interest, and I like the idea of tying aid directly to measurable improvements in women’s living conditions. Without resorting to military action, there is much that the USA can do to transform the lives of the oppressed and marginalized for the better. For those who despair about the foreign policy of our country, I-VAWA is a reminder that there is much good that we can yet do collectively, as a people and a nation. I’m glad that the bill has bipartisan backing, and urge folks to write or call their elected representatives in support.

“Find out what it means to me”: some thoughts on respect, chivalry, and campaigns against sexual violence

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 17, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Chivalry and performing gender roles, Feminism, Male feminists, Men and Masculinity, Music, Sexual harassment and Youth ministry
. 29 Comments

Vanessa posted last week about the Coaching Boys into Men program, a product of the New York Family Violence Prevention Fund. Vanessa posts one of the flyers produced by the program; it features a boy in an orange hoodie with the words “Awaiting Instructions” emblazoned across the front. And the instructions the boy receives:

1. Eat your vegetables
2. Don’t play with matches
3. Finish your homework
4. Respect women

And in the comments section at Feministing, there’s a mix of praise and criticism for the campaign, mostly revolving around the “problematic” meaning of “respect” for women. ProFeministMale writes:

…often times, when I hear the general, non-feminist public teach young boys to “respect” women, I get the impression that a lot of what they’re teaching also involves “chivalry,” to to see women as somehow being “different,” that they’re nimble and weak and need to young boys and men to serve as the “protectors.”

This is a good idea - but I can’t help but think these boys are also being indoctrinated into gender roles that so much of the world is buying into.

In the various workshops I’ve put on for young men (and not so-young-men) in church and school settings, I’ve talked a lot about the real meaning of one of my favorite words, “respect.” (And if you’re thinking of the Aretha Franklin song now, hold on, I’ll get to it.)

I often start by writing the word “respect” on a flip chart or chalkboard, and then ask the folks I’m working with to play the word association game with me. Everyone gets to throw out the first thing that comes into their head when they hear or see the word. As you might expect, I get a lot of different definitions. Some people do think of chivalry; almost always, someone will say that “opening the door for a woman” is the first thing that he thinks of when he hear the word. Others will offer a negative definition, suggesting that “respect” is more about what you don’t do than what you do: “It’s like watching your language around a girl”; “It’s about not grabbing her just ’cause you want to”; (I remember that definition vividly from one high school group), “It’s treating her as a girl and not like a guy.” I write as many of the definitions and word associations on the board as I can. Continue reading ‘“Find out what it means to me”: some thoughts on respect, chivalry, and campaigns against sexual violence’

“When you are persecuted… flee”: some thoughts on the Gospel and domestic violence

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 10, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Feminism and Marriage
. 6 Comments

I’ve been catching up on my reading, and just this weekend got around to perusing the summer 2007 edition of “E-Quality“, the online journal of Christians for Biblical Equality, an organization of which I am an enthusiastic supporter. This past summer’s issue focused on the church and domestic abuse, and included this short and stirring piece by Gerald W. Ford: Tolerating and Staying: How a theology of female submission contributes to the prevalence of women tolerating and staying in violent situations.

One of the classic feminist critiques of traditional Christian theology has been the troubling tendency to glorify suffering. Too often, women who are being abused are told that their suffering is redemptive. They are encouraged to stay with violent partners, often with the suggestion that by continuing to endure pain and abuse, they are being more “Christlike.” In this short piece, Ford argues that this is a profound distortion of the Gospel:

I frequently hear women, and a few men, who say that they are suffering in their marriage but they see it as suffering for Christ. They stay because they can view their suffering as something they are doing for the greater cause; it’s what Christians do, they say. Yet suffering is not the core of Christianity, it is only an experience which will sometimes accompany the true core of Christianity, which is the Christ-like life. To be like Jesus may include suffering, but it also includes much more.

We must ask the question of whether Jesus suffered always, or if he had some boundaries of his own for when, for what cause, and how much he would suffer. A review of the Gospels will reveal many situations in which Jesus did not suffer silently, did not allow abusive behavior to go unchallenged, and gave his followers instruction to move away from rejection.

The idea of Jesus “having boundaries” seems anachronistic, but Ford builds his argument on Matthew 10:12-23, where the idea of the Great Commission begins to appear. Ford doesn’t say as much as I’d like him to, but I’m struck by these two verses and what they might mean for women in abusive situations:

If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town… When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.

When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Reading that this weekend was galvanizing. I’ve known this passage for years, read it dozens of times, but never thought of its implications: we are not called to endure persecution silently. We are allowed, and indeed, commanded, to leave violent situations. When partnered with an abuser, it is not our role as Christians to suffer silently, praying that God will change a violent temperament. Persecution for the sake of justice may indeed be inevitable — the Gospel makes that clear. But persecution in one’s own home, whether by parent or spouse, is never God’s will. Suffering at the hands of a spouse is not Christian martyrdom, and Matthew 10:23 makes it clear that sometimes, we’re called to leave.

I am aware that many in the church still regard divorce as a sin. But I think that sometimes the failure to divorce can be sinful as well. When we stay with an abuser, or someone who is chronically unfaithful, our willingness to remain in relationship with them validates and affirms their behavior. If we don’t show a cheater or an abuser that there are consequences for their repeated failures then we fail in one of our key spousal roles: to be a witness to and a facilitator of our partner’s continued spiritual growth. Indeed, by staying in a violent or chronically unfaithful relationship, we make two errors: we fail to hold our partner accountable, and we fail to value ourselves as God values us. If we believe in God, we must believe He loves us. If we do not love ourselves enough to prioritize our own safety and our own right to pursue happiness, we tell God He’s made a mistake about us and our true worth.

Ford writes that we need to “come to grips with the fact that theology affects lives.” That makes very good sense. Those of us who call ourselves Christians must realize that how we interpret Scripture has a very real impact on those around us, particularly those who look to us as role models. For centuries, priests and pastors have used Bible verses to encourage women to stay in abusive situations, counseling them that their suffering is part of the Christian life. Those of us who value women’s lives, women’s bodies, and women’s happiness have an obligation to interpret Scripture more responsibly. And a responsible and sound interpretation of the Gospel tells us that when we’re being physically or verbally abused, the best course is to flee.

Justice is not a zero-sum game: some thoughts on Michael Vick, feminism, and animal rights

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 23, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Animal Rights, Feminism and Sports
. 32 Comments

I haven’t blogged about the Michael Vick case yet, largely because I haven’t been sure I had anything I wanted to add to the conversation. I get e-mail updates from just about every animal rights organization you can think of, so I’m following the story both in the mainstream media and through those charities.

On Tuesday, Sandra Kobrin wrote an interesting piece at Women’s E-news: Beat a Woman? Play On; Beat a Dog? You’re Gone. (Hat tip: Feministing.) Excerpt:

…just wish the NFL had the same outrage toward spousal abuse and other forms of domestic violence. But they don’t. Not by a long shot.

Scores of NFL players as well as players from the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have been convicted of domestic abuse, yet they play on with no fear of losing their careers. Most pay small fines, if that, and are back on the field immediately.

The message is clear. Beat a woman? Play on. Beat a dog? You’re gone.

Well, to be fair, Vick did more than beat dogs. He tortured many of them to death. That’s more than physical abuse. For those of us who care profoundly about animals, Michael Vick’s case is more like O.J. Simpson’s than, say, Jason Kidd’s. And O.J., despite his acquittal, has been justly ostracised.

But I understand Kobrin’s frustration. The double standard is real. Our cultural tolerance for violence against women — especially when committed by male athletes –is much too high. Much of that is rooted, I think, in the reality that the majority of sports fans and sports writers in this country are heterosexual males. And though most heterosexual men in this country don’t physically abuse their girlfriends and wives, a great many of them are frequently very, very angry at women. On a visceral level, far too many men may empathize with a celebrity athlete who strikes his female partner, assuming that she “made him do it”. Most men don’t condone domestic violence (or won’t do so publicly, particularly in mixed company), but many, I suspect, “understand” how a “normal guy” might “just happen to strike his wife” in the course of a heated argument.

On the other hand, very few men or women in this country regularly murder dogs. Dogs are thought of as members of the family, and rightly so. And because so few men can (thank Goodness!) imagine themselves electrocuting or drowning Spot and Rover, they have no empathy for Michael Vick and the appalling crimes to which he has apparently agreed to plead guilty. It’s this cognitive gap that lies at the heart of the different response to Vick than to those athletes convicted of domestic violence: most men can’t “get” what the Falcons quarterback did in the way that they “get” hitting a spouse when one is exasperated.

Kobrin:

Vick has already lost most of his sponsorship deals worth millions of dollars and he deserves to lose a whole lot more.

But the disproportionate punishment of Vick–while athletes who commit violence against women are let off the hook–has to be wondered at.

Might it be that domestic violence and spousal abuse is so pervasive in sports that it’s simply too costly for leagues to suspend so many men? What would happen after all if those poor dear teams couldn’t fill their rosters?

I wince at Kobrin’s use of “disproportionate.” As an animal rights activist, there’s nothing excessive about Vick’s suspension and loss of endorsements. Indeed, if his jail sentence is in the range of a year or two, it’s woefully inadequate in light of what he did to so many precious, sentient animals. (I’m assuming Koprin meant Vick’s punishment was disproportionately harsh in the light of what is meted out to those who abuse women, and that she didn’t intend to minimize cruelty to animals. At least, that’s my sincere hope.)

It would be very sad if the historically strong alliance between the animal rights community and the feminist movement were to be weakened by the Michael Vick case. I understand completely feminist outrage at the “slap on the wrist” that most male athletes who abuse women receive. But the answer doesn’t lie in minimizing the horror of dog-fighting. Calling Vick’s punishment “disproportionate” and mentioning only that he “beat” dogs (rather than drowning and slaughtering them) minimizes his crimes — which, of course, is exactly what far too many people do in cases of domestic violence. Saying Vick only “beat” dogs is comparable to saying that breaking your wife’s jaw is just “keeping her in line.”

We live in a culture that teaches many men that women are still property. We live in a society where many young men — particularly privileged athletes — are allowed unfettered access to women’s bodies. Sexual assaults and acts of domestic violence are excused or punished very lightly. (I wrote about this a long time ago.)

We live in a culture where the horrific abuse of animals is also tolerated. Michael Vick killed animals that most folks identify as pets; plenty of other equally intelligent animals are slaughtered in barbaric conditions every day for our food. We raise our children to believe that animals exist for their pleasure (just as we raise many men to believe women exist for theirs) and when our kids ask how the Easter ham came to the table, we tell them “don’t think too much about it.”

Justice is not a zero-sum game. Taking animal abuse more seriously does not mean ignoring violence against women. We need stiffer penalties for these crimes, and we need to hold our celebrities equally accountable. As the Michael Vick case dominates the news cycle this steamy August, feminists are right to demand an end to the pattern of excusing the violence that male athletes commit against women. But we can demand more substantial penalties for those who hit their wives and girlfriends without minimizing the horror of Michael Vick’s crimes.

Those who struggle for animal rights and for women’s equality ought to be natural allies, partners in a great coalition seeking justice and demanding protection for the vulnerable and the exploited. It would be very sad indeed if this case were to widen a rift between these two vitally important movements.

Exposing a myth about “leaving”: some notes on Evan Stark’s new book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 13, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Books, Family and Relationships
. 10 Comments

I’ve been asked to comment on this remarkable excerpt from Evan Stark’s new book Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life.

Stark laments that so much of the writing on domestic violence over the past thirty years has remained focused on the psychological weaknesses that lead women (who are the overwhelming victims of spousal or partner abuse) to stay in these relationships. Stark:

Because women have such ready access to rights and resources in liberal democratic societies, it is widely assumed that if abusive relationships endure, it is because women choose to stay, a decision that seems counterintuitive for a reasonable person. The logical explanation is that women who make this choice are deficient psychologically or in some other respect. Yet researchers have failed to discover any psychological or background traits that predispose any substantial group of women to enter or remain in abusive relationships. Battered women do suffer disproportionately from a range of psychological and behavioral problems, including some, like substance abuse and depression, that increase their dependence and vulnerability to abuse and control. As we will see momentarily, however, these problems only become disproportionate in the context of ongoing abuse and so cannot be its cause…

My emphasis. So if it’s not “women’s fault” for remaining with their abusers, and their decision to stay isn’t the result of a pre-existing psychological handicap, then why — why, why — do so many women find it so difficult to exit these relationships permanently? Stark points out that most of our talk about domestic violence is based around what seems like a logical assumption: that by leaving an abuser, women reduce their chances of being victimized. That may make intuitive sense, but Stark makes the case that the reverse is true:

In fact, around 80% of battered women in intact couples leave the abusive man at least once. These separations appear to decrease the frequency of abuse, but not the probability that it will recur. Indeed, the risk of severe or fatal injury increases with separation. Almost half the males on death row for domestic homicide killed in retaliation for a wife or lover leaving them. As we’ve also seen, a majority of partner assaults occur while partners are separated. So common is what legal scholar Martha Mahoney calls “separation assault” that women who are separated are 3 times more likely to be victimized than divorced women and 25 times more likely to be hurt than married women.

Bold emphasis is mine.

I’d heard this anecdotally, but confess I hadn’t really considered the implications of this.

Most of us who counsel women or girls who are in abusive relationships encourage these women to report the abuse and leave the relationship. We assume (at least, most of the folks I’ve talked to do) that getting “professional help” and “involving the police” and “moving out” are the best ways for a woman to keep herself safe. Many of us have heard women say things like “I’m afraid of what he’ll do to me if I leave him”, and we respond by making soothing noises that reassure her that the police or the courts or a shelter will provide her with all the protection she needs. Though logic would seem to make that self-evident, the sobering crime statistics Stark cites suggest otherwise.

I haven’t read the book yet, though it’s now on order. But I’m sobered by what I’ve read in this brief excerpt, and I’m all the more determined to expose our fundamental myth about partner violence. That fundamental myth says that we end partner violence primarily by empowering women to leave abuse relationships. The truth is that the available legal, social, and economic resources to protect women (and their children) once they’ve left are woefully inadequate.

Note: This thread is not to be used to launch attacks on feminism, or to question domestic violence statistics, or to advance the absurd MRA lie that men are the primary victims of partner abuse. All comments made in that vein will be deleted without warning.

Boys, girls, the fag discourse and compulsive heterosexuality: a review of CJ Pascoe’s book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 16, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Books, GLBTQ, Men and Masculinity, Sexual harassment and Youth
. 25 Comments

I’m taking a day away from writing about Jerry Falwell. I will post my own reflection, including “the good, the bad, the ugly” tomorrow.

On a blessedly different subject than anything I’ve been writing about lately, I’ve just finished a wonderful new book that I’m considering for use in my “men and masculinity” course next year. Dude, You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School is from C.J. Pascoe, a Cal grad and a sociology professor at Puget Sound up in Washington state. It’s a remarkable, challenging, provocative and at times depressing study of the obsession with “proving masculinity” and the “fear of faggotry” among contemporary American high school students.

I picked the book up on Saturday afternoon, and read it all by Sunday night. Though like many social science texts, it’s jargon-laden (and the APA style of citation drives me bats), Pascoe’s work is fresh and exciting. While in grad school at Berkeley, Pascoe spent a year among students at the pseudonymous “River High School” in Riverton, California. (She’s very careful not to name the real school or real town, though from little references she drops, it sounds suspiciously like somewhere near Stockton.) She didn’t pull the Cameron Crowe trick of pretending to be a high school student; Pascoe made it quite clear to the administration, the teachers, and the students that she was there as a researcher writing a book about boys and masculinity.

Pascoe writes of what she calls the fag discourse. The discourse manifests itself in the almost incorrigible way in which young men label each other “fags” while seeking to avoid having that label applied to them. According to this discourse, fear of being called out publicly as a “fag” is the primary driving force behind what Pascoe cleverly calls the display of “compulsive heterosexulity.” Playing on Adrienne Rich’s classic notion that contemporary society functions with a discourse of compulsory heterosexuality, Pascoe notes that among young men desperate to establish their masculine bona fides with their peers, what we see in American high schools amounts to compulsive, almost frantic efforts by young men to prove their manhood.

Anyone who has worked with adolescent boys knows how much anxiety many of them feel about their own masculinity. It’s not news to say that our sons, like their fathers before them, often have to endure or participate in physical or at least verbal violence that we tragically and falsely believe is necessary to transition into manhood. It’s not news that boys torment each other with the “fag” epithet. And it’s not news that the real stigma in being labelled a “fag” doesn’t lie in the association with homosexuality, but with being seen as feminine. Pascoe correctly points out what has been clear for years — that what we often see as homophobia is really thinly disguised misogyny.

Pascoe’s most original insights are her most troubling. After a year of observing the kids at “Riverton”, she found that boys chronically used their access to girls’ bodies as a way of establishing masculine credentials and escaping the “fag” label. Pascoe describes what I’ve seen all too often (and what I always try and break up as quickly as I can when I’m with high schoolers): the tendency of many young men to touch and “playfully” harass young women as a way of proving their own manhood. Pascoe describes incident after incident, in cafeterias and gyms, in breezeways and even, sadly, in classrooms. Pascoe:

… other ‘touching’ episodes has a more explicitly violent tone. In this type of touching the boy and the girl ‘hurt’ each other by punching or slapping or pulling each other’s hair until in the end the girl lost with a squeal or a scream. Shane and Cathy spent a large part of each morning in government class beating up on each other in this sequence of domination. While it was certainly not unidirectional, the interactions always ended with Cathy giving up… while this sort of interaction disrupted Cathy’s work and actually looked exceedingly painful, she never seriously tried to stop it.

There are quite a few similar, heartbreaking anecdotes. Pascoe notes, not surprisingly, that this sort of aggressive behavior (which to an impartial observer regularly constituted assault) was only done in the presence of other men. Pascoe notes what I’ve often observed:

When not in groups — when in one-on-one interactions with boys or girls — boys were much less likely to engage in gendered and sexed domination practices. In this sense boys became masculine in groups… when with other boys, they postured and bragged. In one on one situations with me they often spoke touchingly about their feelings about and insecurities with girls.

Bold emphasis mine.

Many men in the men’s movement have lamented the “fag discourse” in American youth culture. Most adult men have their own scars and wounds that they received in adolescence as they struggled to establish their manhood in the eyes of their peers. Less often discussed, most adult men — when pushed in therapy or group discussions — will cop to the various ways in which they cruelly inflicted wounds on other boys. As Pascoe and others have pointed out, the only way to deflect the fag label is to slap it on to some other nearby man. Most adult men carry with them the wounds inflicted by the fag discourse in their youth — and many carry the guilt of the verbal and psychic violence they did to their peers.

But when men get together to lament the fag discourse and to talk about how difficult it is to grow up male in this culture, how painful it is to try over and over again to establish one’s manhood, we forget something that Pascoe, rightly, doesn’t. The fag discourse doesn’t just victimize men; indeed, men aren’t even it’s chief victims. Pascoe notes that time and time again, women’s bodies are used as yardsticks for men to measure their manliness. When boys brag about their sexual conquests, or pressure young women for sex in order to have a story to tell “the guys”, it is women who are the chief victims of the fag discourse. When boys, as Pascoe describes, snap bra straps and slap bottoms and pull hair in order to display their apparent “right of access” to girls’ bodies, they do this not out of authentic sexual desire but because of this compulsive need to perform, over and over again, as masculine. Women are harassed, assaulted, and taunted because we are raising generation after generation of young boys that sees no better way to establish their manhood than by demonstrating their ability to impose their will on the bodies of their female peers.

So much of the writing by pro-feminist and gay men about the “fear of faggotry” has focused primarily on the profound psychic (and occasionally, physical) injury young men inflict on each other. Pascoe doesn’t dispute the genuine pain and desperation that adolescent guys endure, but she convincingly makes the case that they are not the chief victims of the discourse they perpetuate and try, over and over again, to escape.

I recommend Dude, You’re a Fag with enthusiasm.

Virtue, desire, self-control: a long response to curiousgyrl

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 15, 2007
in Addiction and mental illness, Aggression and violence, Faith, Favorite posts 2007, Sexual ethics and transformation and Veganism
. 19 Comments

Blogging about feminism and veganism doesn’t seem to be winning me any friends. My feminist allies seem concerned that the way in which I write about veganism is likely to promote or trigger disordered eating. My vegan allies worry that I make veganism sound too much like a difficult challenge, and less of a celebration of diverse and exciting food choices. And those who are neither vegan nor feminist seem irked by the strong strain of self-righteous evangelism that seems to characterize most of my writing.

So I’ll admit I’m frustrated. I spend too much time, perhaps, trying to explain myself. I assume that folks don’t understand what it is that I believe and why, when the truth seems to be that they understand perfectly well what it is that I believe and why I believe it, and they think it’s wrong-headed and judgmental. At some point, does it stop being worth it to try and make the case for feminist/vegan/Christian living? Judging from most of the comments here and elsewhere, what I advocate sounds too joyless, too difficult, too Puritanical for most folks to stomach. (Even if I am, as I wrote in December, a Happy Puritan!) Priggishness is not seductive, and I’ll be clear — I am trying to be seductive on this blog. I want other folks to consider what I have considered, and to join me in making certain commitments. I clearly need to do some deep reflecting on how to make the case for this way of life in a way that is more light-hearted, more winsome, more attractive!

In the comments below last night’s post, curiousgyrl (who regularly participates at Alas) writes:

I’m a feminist and former vegan the main thing I dont get is why self-control is the central component, rather than conscious eating or ‘giving my self the gift of tasty, healthy, fair food.’

I also have to say that I hope your compassion for young women and feminism in general is not predicated on a similar foundation of self-denial and control–i haven;t read enough of your blog to know.

Oh, to be someone for whom justice came naturally! Oh, to never feel the pangs of longing for an older, more self-indulgent way of life!

Eating vegan is often a joy. I do eat a more diverse diet than I did before, and most of what I eat tastes yummy. I like it, and it makes me happy. (I’ve got the most amazing lentil soup for lunch today.) But sometimes, I still crave meat. Some vegans I’ve talked to never crave meat, some do all the time. For some, vegan living seems “natural”, while for others, it seems easy some days and hard on others.

This fits with my experience with other things. I loved alcohol. I loved pornography. I loved womanizing and taking drugs. I gave them all up in order to save my life and in order to live justly. None of these were easy surrenders. In my early days of sobriety, in my period of chosen celibacy and then later in my first truly monogamous relationships, I found the whole process of living “by the rules” to be absolutely exhausting. The cravings for alcohol, for illicit and exploitative sex, for drugs — all of these slowly, gradually abated. (Monogamy is not in the least bit difficult for me any longer.) But every once in a while, nine years sober, I look at a bottle of beer on a hot day and I feel the longing rise in me.

It is the same thing with meat and dairy. Most of the time, I am very happy with my vegan lifestyle. But every once in a while, I have a sudden overpowering urge to eat meat. Driving by the little taco stand on the corner of Fair Oaks and Villa this weekend, I smelled the grilled carne asada. Was I nauseated? No, I was turned on. I suddenly felt famished. I went home, had a vegan shake, and felt better very quickly. But for a few moments, the urge to eat meat was palpable and intense. It was pure self-discipline that held me back. For a few minutes, there was no joy in being vegan, only sacrifice.

When I went through my last divorce in 2002, I was devastated. My wife at the time — a fellow Christian — had decided she “wasn’t in love” with me, and wanted out. I had left my first two wives, but my third left me. We had done “everything right” (right down to waiting ’till the wedding night) according to my newfound evangelical faith, and wouldn’t you know it, the third marriage was even shorter than the first two. I was deeply and profoundly depressed, and one night in September ‘02, drove to the parking lot of a strip club in the San Fernando Valley. What I wanted, with every fiber of my being, was to go in, get hammered, and drool over naked women. I felt betrayed, because I had imagined that if I did everything “right”, and didn’t drink and didn’t use and didn’t cheat, then my marriage would naturally prosper. It didn’t turn out that way, and I was tempted, God was I tempted, to throw away what was at that time four hard years of therapy, sobriety, and self-control.

By the grace of God, I didn’t darken the doors of the club. I didn’t pick up a drink. I didn’t have a one-night stand. But God’s grace was manifest in my ability to squelch my own deep and driving desires to act out, to be selfish and self-indulgent and destructive. Self-control saved my sorry rear that night on Sepulveda Boulevard.

Curiousgyrl wants to know if my compassion for young women and my commitment to feminism is predicated on my own self-control. Well, my compassion is genuine. My spirit is committed, and has been committed most of my life, to living justly and kindly, to treating other human beings with respect and dignity. But where my spirit was willing, for years and years my flesh was very weak, as Paul so famously says. I did what I didn’t want to do over and over again, and I didn’t do what I wanted to do over and over again. There was a huge amount of wreckage created even as I longed to be a kind and gentle man.

But while my compassion isn’t rooted in my self-control, my ability to act compassionately is. That’s a vital distinction. My spiritual life, my relationship with God, gives me the strength to not do what I still periodically am tempted to do. I am happy to say that with the passage of time and my own spiritual growth (and perhaps my own ageing), the desire to do selfish, irresponsible, destructive things abates a little more each year. But I know in my heart that at my core, I am not inherently a kind and loving person. I am a narcissistic, self-involved person trying to become a gentle, devoted, empathetic husband, teacher, mentor, brother, son, family member (and someday, father.) I am not by nature a pacifist; I have a lot of violent rage within me, rage that with time and grace and prayer and self-discipline is being slowly dissipated.

I make no apologies for not being “naturally” good. Virtue is not the absence of temptation; indeed, if we were never ever tempted, how would we know what virtue is? Virtue is restriction and self-control in the face of temptation. Virtue lies in the conscious choice to practice what the Buddhists call lovingkindness with everyone (including the animals, including oneself) when one would rather hit them, steal from them, seduce them, use them, eat them.

Not everyone is like me. I am obviously an addictive personality. But there are a lot of folks out there who share this compulsive, driven character make-up. Shaming them for their desires won’t work. Neither, of course, will giving up on them and telling them that they can’t help themselves. I write for as wide an audience as possible, but my heart is with the addict, with the narcissist, with the violent, with the myopically self-absorbed. My real interest is in reaching those with the greatest capacity to do damage to women, to children, to men, to animals, to our planet — and in giving them a message, a message backed up by how I and others like me live — that change is possible. Saul the persecutor became Paul the apostle; had he not been so wickedly good at the former he might not have been so grace-filled as the latter. I am no St. Paul. But I am a man who knows what it is like to live ruled by impulse, and I know what it is like to live ruled by self-restraint and grace. And I know which man I like better, and I know which man my wife, family, students, friends, and chinchillas like better.

“Sheer desecrated hurt and anger”: more on the shooting, and on reaching out to alienated, brooding, rage-filled young men

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 18, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Men and Masculinity and Youth
. 38 Comments

As has been widely publicized, the Smoking Gun website has acquired a disturbing short play by Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter. It’s not for the faint of heart, and I admit I scanned it quickly, not wanting to linger on the ugly details. It deals with pedophilia, extreme violence, and a boy’s rage at his step-father.

What grabbed me was the language on the final page, where the last stage direction requires the stepfather to kill his stepson. Cho wrote:

Out of sheer desecrated hurt and anger, Richard lifts his large arms and swings a deadly blow at the thirteen year-old boy. Finis.

What jumps out at me is the phrase “sheer desecrated hurt and anger.” Cho was an English major, and his writing was competent, if bizarre. I assume he knew what “desecrated” meant: to violate what is sacred. And at the risk of spending far too much time parsing the words of a madman, I’m struck by what followed: “hurt and anger.” He got them in the right order; as any therapist will tell ya, anger is one emotion that is never primary. It’s a secondary response to fear or hurt, though it often is the first emotion that a wounded person displays.

I posted yesterday (and clearly, controversially) about the potential for anti-Asian backlash in the aftermath of Cho’s deadly rampage. But what is striking me today is the depth of the pain, the depth of the rage, that emerges in Cho’s work. Many men’s rights activists (MRAs) write a great deal about men and anger. (I am in no way implying that your average MRA is a potential mass murderer.) Indeed, much of the discourse about male rage is produced by men who point to feminism as the chief cause of that anger. MRAs often argue that male rage is a product of a legal system slanted against men (particularly husbands and fathers), and a business and political elite whom they see as more interested in protecting and advancing the interests of women than of men. The MRAs often argue that the unreasonable, excessive, and contradictory expectations of women are a source of justifiable male anger.

Obviously, the feminist community is concerned primarily with protecting women from angry, violent men. Debating the roots of male rage is something of a luxury compared to protecting women from rape and assault and murder. But it’s vital that pro-feminist men talk openly about what more we can do to reach young men whose pain and hurt is so extreme that it is dangerously close to erupting into violence.

The rage within Cho Seung-Hui that emerged at others began and ended with a rage against himself. The papers report today that he was hospitalized in 2005; he was considered suicidal. Monday’s rampage ended with Cho taking his own life. His pain and self-loathing were at the heart of what he did. I don’t mean to excuse these awful murders, but I do think that we can balance profound horror at what Cho did on Monday with profound regret that not enough was done to reach him in his isolation and his pain. And we can recognize that there are others like him, overwhelmingly male, who need our immediate and enduring care and attention.

After the Amish shooting in October, I put up this post in which I quoted Pat McGann of Men Can Stop Rape. What he wrote then is worth putting up once more:

I knew that after tragic incidents like those named earlier, the media wants to present the public with answers, and it seemed probable that none of the answers would clearly identify traditional masculinity as a culprit. But I didn’t want to just stay on the surface of manhood; I wanted to burrow underneath to get at its muscle and bone. I wanted to write about how men’s pain gets transformed into men’s anger, because it seemed to me that some deep-seated anguish was underlying all the bullets, the ropes, the knives. We men typically aren’t socialized to handle pain in healthy, constructive ways. Instead we’re taught to “suck it up” and “get over it,” which might be useful strategies some of the time but not as everyday practices – especially when it comes to violence.

In many of the violent incidents I was struck by the number of men who committed suicide. At the end of the Pennsylvania and Colorado school shootings both men shot themselves…. And supposedly the Wisconsin shooting took place because the student had been bullied by students and neither teachers nor the principal would act to stop it. In each of these instances, it seems likely to me that some deep-seated, chronic despondency was present and fueled by anger, the likely source of the violence. I don’t mean to suggest that the root cause of men’s violence is always despair and sadness; everyone can probably clearly point to some examples of brutal acts by men that could be traced back to something other than emotional anguish, but to overlook despondency as a possible cause some of the time misses a revolutionary opportunity.

Yes, revolutionary. I’m making what could be construed as an inflated claim, but I don’t think so: men dealing with their pain in responsible, constructive, and healthy ways would make the world shudder and shake, shifting the foundations of our realities. Once the dust settled, we would be in a better place, a less violent place.

Is encouraging men to talk about their pain an automatic prophylaxis against violence? Probably not. But adult men need to be reaching out to the silent, withdrawn, brooding Cho Seung-Huis of the world. We have to do more to push through the barriers and the walls. We have to find ways — through mentoring, teaching, volunteering — to engage the very sort of young men who look least interested in being engaged by us. Would a quick hug or a teddy bear have prevented this tragedy in Virginia? Of course not. Could a carefully, patiently cultivated relationship, initiated by a mentor who was not dissuaded by an impassive or hostile facade, have perhaps changed the course of Cho Seung-Hui’s life? Yes.

Real men’s work is about reaching young men where they are. Not just the ones who are obviously willing to be reached, either. Real men’s work — especially in school settings — is about initiating relationship with the shy, the bookish, the brooding and the hostile. It is frustrating, difficult, painful, and very tiring work. It is also joyous, especially when the breakthroughs happen. I’ve been working to do this for many years now, with a wide variety of young men. And it may be the most important thing I do.

Sheer desecrated hurt and anger. The hurt emerged two years ago; undealt with, unresolved, it exploded into anger on Monday. The blame lies chiefly with Cho himself; in the end, like any adult, he was more a volunteer than a victim. But along the way, it seems clear that his obvious hurt and pain wasn’t addressed, at least not sufficiently, until it erupted so catastrophically just over 48 hours ago.

Wishing Cho Seung-Hui had been Billy Bob Johnson: the VA Tech shootings and anti-Asian stereotypes: UPDATED (Again)

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 17, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Ethnicity and Men and Masculinity
. 81 Comments

It appears as of this morning that yesterday’s horrific shooting at Virginia Tech began with a young man killing his girlfriend before moving on to massacre dozens of fellow students and at least one faculty member. As has often been the case in the past, a mass shooting seems clearly linked to one man’s colossal rage at an individual woman or women. There’s a long and evolving discussion of many aspects of this event at Feministe. Here’s the post I wrote after last year’s awful Amish school shooting; as the facts unfold about what happened in Blacksburg, these words may or may not prove relevant once again:

As a pro-feminist gender studies prof, if there’s one topic that depresses me more than almost any other, it’s just how widespread male rage at women seems to be in our culture…We live in a culture where rape remains ubiquitous; where sexual harassment is a nearly-universal experience for many women in the workplace; where pornography that features the narrative of teenage girls being raped, overpowered or even murdered is ever more available and popular. I don’t know what specific factors inspired these two three shootings, but I do know that they are, in some as of yet inexplicable way, emblematic of a larger cultural problem…

The shooter has been identified as a young Korean-American man, Cho Seung-Hui. My first thought upon hearing that the killer had been described as “Asian” was “Damn, why couldn’t it have been a white boy?” Please understand, I don’t think the race of the shooter played a vital role in these tragic events. If he had been white, the horror of what happened would be no less (and no greater.) But I teach at a campus where over a third of our students are Asian or Asian-American. Pasadena City College awards more AA degrees to Asians than any other junior college in the United States. And I am deeply concerned about the possibility of anti-Asian backlash, particularly in those areas (and on those campuses) where Asians constitute more of a minority than they do here in the San Gabriel Valley.

In my men and masculinity class (I’ll be teaching it again in the fall after a two-year hiatus), we spend quite a bit of time talking about race. We talk about deeply-held stereotypes about men of various ethnic backgrounds (I’ll bet my readers can think of a few in a matter of seconds.) And over and over again, I’ve listened to the anguish of more than a few Asian male students. We live in a white-dominated culture that exaggerates the athletic and erotic capabilities of black males at the same instant that it denigrates those same possibilities within Asian men. We know the nasty stereotypes: Asian men are invariably near-sighted; always slight of build and small of penis; good at science and math; emotionally inarticulate (even more so than white men); inscrutable. These painful, cruel, inaccurate assumptions do real damage.

One other stereotype that may have a very small bit of truth within it is one I hear repeated quite a bit on my campus: young Asian men, particularly from competitive Korean and Chinese families, may be under tremendous pressure not only to do very well academically but also to keep virtually all emotion repressed. The last time I taught my men and masculinity class, a young Chinese-American fella said something like this:

Prof. Hugo, you ever wonder why Asian guys like video and role-playing games more than anyone else? It’s because black, white, and Hispanic guys get to express their anger so much more than we do. We’re supposed to not get angry. We’re not given the same outlets, not encouraged to play sports as much. So we — I — like video games. And I really like the violent ones.

This led to heated discussion — there were a number of Asian-American men and women in the room, and some vehemently disagreed with what their classmate was saying. Others vigorously supported him.

It’s obvious from the history of mass shootings that most killers — the Dylan Klebolds, the Marc Lepines — have been white males. And we almost never attribute their murderousness to their whiteness. We focus on their misogyny, their alienation, their easy access to guns. But whether or not there is any truth to the stereotype that young Asian men are often under particularly great familial and cultural pressure to succeed (and to do so without expressing any rage or frustration), I am very worried about the legacy of Cho Seung-Hui. I am worried that on many campuses — particularly those where Asians are a very small minority — other students will begin to shun their Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese male classmates. I can hear the jokes now, the ones that have an ugly edge to them: “Hey ____, did you bring your gun to class today?”

I saw what was done to many of my Muslim students after 9/11. And though what happened yesterday was no 9/11, these murders in Virginia are receiving an extraordinary amount of attention. “The worst mass shooting in American history” has a terrible resonance to it, and it will be all most of us talk about for the next few days. For some within our society, the temptation to displace some of their own feelings of anger, sadness, and powerlessness onto others will be overwhelming. And I am deeply worried for my students who share the shooter’s ethnic heritage and outer appearance. And though it wouldn’t change anything in the long run, I am wishing this morning that the trigger had been pulled by a good ol’ WASP boy named Billy Bob Johnson rather than by the late Cho Seung-Hui.

UPDATE: Please don’t devote your comments to a discussion of how white men are actually as victimized by stereotypes as men of other ethnic groups. If I were to do this post over, I would have titled it Wishing Cho Seung-Hui had been William Robert Johnson IV, in order to avoid the sense that I was stereotyping working-class white southern men. I’ve read through a lot of Colombine coverage (most folks are comparing this event chiefly to Colombine); I haven’t found many folks talking about how whiteness played a part in what Harris and Klebold did. I’m already seeing some anti-Asian commentary showing up in my comments section and elsewhere.

Folks, emotions are raw. Be kind, be judicious, and take a second before hitting the “publish” button. I’ll be moderating.

UPDATE II: I just checked my stats. At 2:10PM PDT, I already have more unique visitors and hits than I have had on any single day since I started this blog. Welcome, all of those of you who typed Cho Seung-Hui into a search engine.

UPDATE III: I’m done arguing in the comments section, at least for today. I just did a lengthy phone interview with Newsweek, and my comments may appear in a story there in the next couple of days. I’ve got a gym to hit and papers to grade…

Another school shooting, girls targeted again: a preliminary reflection

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 2, 2006
in Addiction and mental illness, Aggression and violence, Sexuality, Teaching and Youth
. 47 Comments

Third post of the day.

For the second time in a week, a gunman has walked into an American school, forced all of the males out, and then assaulted and killed female students.  It happened today in Pennsylvania, and last week in Colorado.   The Times reports on today’s tragedy:

“There was some issue in the past” that had left the gunman with a desire to harm female students, Commissioner Miller said. He said that the murders were premeditated and that the gunman had called his wife — without telling her he was holding hostages in a school — that he would not be coming home.

It’s not clear whether or not this shooting was inspired by the events last Wednesday in Colorado, where a male drifter in his fifties molested several girls before murdering one.   School shootings have often happened in clusters in the past, so it seems possible that the two events are related.  While the killers at Columbine High School famously targeted "Christians and jocks", these two shootings have targeted young females.  (It doesn’t appear yet that there was a sexual element to today’s event, unlike in the Colorado murder last week.)

I’m thinking this afternoon about Commissioner Miller’s words about today’s killer:

“There was some issue in the past” that had left the gunman with a desire to harm female students. 

As a pro-feminist gender studies prof, if there’s one topic that depresses me more than almost any other, it’s just how widespread male rage at women seems to be in our culture.   I have no idea what the "issue" was that the Commissioner refers to that would lead the shooter to target elementary-age girls.  I’m not sure what particular perversity led the guy in Colorado last week to sexually molest his victims before killing one of them.  But you don’t need a degree in abnormal psych to see that these men were deeply, profoundly, angry at women.  Their victims were kids, but only female kids were selected.  They became the victims of twisted fantasies of disturbed men, men filled with some sick and horrific sense of revenge and "justice."

Do I think there’s a legion of men out there whose fantasy lives are similar to those of the murderers in Colorado and Pennsylvania?  Lord God, I hope not.  I know that the misogynistic hatred that many men feel towards all women can be tremendously powerful.  Until this week, I hadn’t imagined that adult men would target vulnerable girls in such terrible ways.  And while these men are obviously anomalies, they are not entirely alone.  We live in a culture where rape remains ubiquitous; where sexual harassment is a nearly-universal experience for many women in the workplace; where pornography that features the narrative of teenage girls being raped or overpowered is ever more available and popular.  I don’t know what specific factors inspired these two shootings, but I do know that they are, in some as of yet inexplicable way, emblematic of a larger cultural problem.

I suspect a lot more feminist commentary is coming.  We just need more time to mourn and reflect.

I was talking to my wife about the Colorado school shooting the other day.  Without intending bravado, I told her that if a gunman came into my classroom and ordered me out, I wouldn’t leave until all my students could go with me.   I asked her if she would want me to leave if we had kids of our own; after all, heroism is easier for the childless!  My wife told me, "No, you should stay, regardless.  There are some things even more important than living for your own children, and if you’re a teacher, protecting your classroom is one of them."    She’s right on, my wife.

As a teacher and a youth leader, I take protecting young people very seriously.  No one can really know what they would do in such a horrible situation, and it is my sincere hope that none of us ever face it.  But for those of us who teach and give our lives to young people, there is a sense that the classroom is a sacred space.  If someone is coming to hurt one of my kids, they will have to do it quite literally over my dead body.  That is not false bravado; it’s the quiet but firm acceptance of the responsibility that my career and my avocation convey.

Feminist men, aggression, doves and serpents: a longer post

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 2, 2006
in Aggression and violence and Feminism
. 14 Comments

There’s been an ongoing discussion over at Feminist Allies about pro-feminist men, "alpha males", and the difference between aggression and assertiveness.  Jeff writes:

…feminism must also supply some ways of changing the world and the people in it such that more and more of them understand it. Comparatively, whether or not you think alpha males exist, whether you think men ought to be aggressive or you think men ought to be assertive (in their feminism, too!), being and doing these things isn’t a simple thing, if you want to hold to feminist ideals.

So, even given that ‘alpha male’ is a problematic concept–to the point of being useless, some think–examining why it’s problematic, especially in the context of men who are feminists, can teach us a lot, I think. Or at least, doing so has taught me quite a bit, without settling for simple statements that boil down to ‘just be a feminist!’.

And I say this not to end discussion, but like bringing up alpha male feminism in the first place, to begin and continue discussion.

I ought to have weighed in on this sooner, and I ought to be linking to Feminist Allies more often.  Jeff, Malachi, and other contributors have some good things going over there.  Check them out!

I agree completely that those of us who describe ourselves as feminist or pro-feminist men do need to have this discussion.  What is our role as advocates? Is it primarily as auxiliaries to women in the movement, acting to assist when needed but never to lead?  We are rightly concerned about replicating society’s male-dominated power structures within the feminist movement, but to what extent does that exclude capable, passionate, competent feminist men from taking leadership roles?  Should our primary goal be, as I have often asserted, to "witness" about feminism to other men, showing them through our words and our behavior that masculine identity and feminist politics can be blended seamlessly?

There’s certainly a stereotype of feminist/pro-feminist men as non-assertive and apologetic.  To use the language of the dominant culture, feminist men tend to be perceived as wimps.  (Or wolves in sheep’s clothing, or filled with self-loathing, or deeply closeted, or somehow all of these at once.)  Some of that perception of wimpiness derives from a conscious decision on the part of many pro-feminist men to avoid using male privilege.  Most men in this movement become aware, at some point or another, that the cultural imperative for males to prove themselves through leadership and domination is problematic. One of the oldest (and most effective strategies) for denying women access to power is by insisting (against all evidence) that women don’t really want power the way that men do, and that it is "right" and "natural" for men to assert themselves and for women to follow.  Thus part of living a feminist life as a man is making conscious decisions not to live out the life prescribed by the culture; it also means being acutely aware of how male privilege can have a silencing effect on women.   It’s not surprising, in light of this, that so many feminist men are ambivalent (at best) about their own assertiveness and/or aggressiveness!

And then there’s the other obvious issue, one which Jeff and others have addressed, of personality differences.  Not all feminist men are the same!  To use Myers-Briggs language, those of us who are Es (extroverts, I’m ENFP) are going to meet challenges differently than I’s (introverts).  I doubt anyone has done a typology of feminist men to discover if those of us active in the movement have personality characteristics different from the population at large!  I’m certain, and indeed, I know from experience that feminist men have widely varying degrees of comfort with issues like public speaking, leadership, and confrontation.

(Parenthetically, this reminds me of an argument I had with a pro-feminist male friend of mine who took strong issue with my newfound fascination with boxing.  "I think it’s very dangerous for you to enjoy hitting things so much", he said.  I pointed out that there was a colossal difference between hitting things (like hanging bags) and hitting people.  I have lots of aggression for which I won’t apologize; I enjoy whaling away on inanimate objects.   For me, boxing doesn’t compromise either my feminist or my Christian pacifist commitments; my friend thinks I’m a hypocrite who needs to examine the issue more closely.)

Jeff is right that there’s more to being a pro-feminist than simply believing that "women are people."  Somehow, feminist men have to be committed to putting that belief into action.  But the actions we take, particularly in our relationships with others, are going to be largely congruent not only with our politics but with our personalities.  Though I try to be irenic on this blog, every once in a while I enjoy a good public confrontation. I’m not shy, and sometimes, I delight in the adrenaline rush that comes from getting in the face of someone who has just made a truly asinine remark.  Mind you, I have to be careful;  justified anger is a drug as strong as any I’ve ever known. Properly channeled, it can be prophetic and powerful — misused, it quickly turns into loathsome self-righteousness that alienates all within earshot.  It’s akin to the line between aggression and assertiveness.  The former seeks to dominate in order to validate the ego; the latter seeks to challenge in order to transform.  In practice, it’s a tricky line to walk!

Of course, y’all know I’m not going to finish this post without dragging in some Scripture!  Almost everyone knows the Lord’s words in Matthew 10:16: Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.  I may not get much agreement on this from my secular male allies, but I think that this passage applies as much to how to live as a feminist man as it does to how to witness to the Good News.   (Um, just so we’re all clear, lads: the "wolves" refers to the dominant masculine culture, not to our feminist sisters!)   The wisdom of the serpent, I imagine, is the wisdom of knowing when to lie low and knowing when to strike — in practical terms, developing a discernment for when and how to challenge cultural and individual manifestations of sexism. 

Feminist men must avoid several temptations: the temptation to passivity as well as the temptation to play the role of the "white knight" chief among them!  Based on personality traits, some men will find it difficult to summon the courage to speak out; others will find it difficult not to fall into traditional masculine roles like that of the Hero or the Rescuer.    Most of us will make mistakes along the way, but learning to be as gentle and harmless as doves — while retaining "serpent wisdom" — is a good place to start.

Unequal weapons on the pitch: a partial defense of Zidane — UPDATED and REPOSTED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 12, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Men and Masculinity, Race and Sports
. 27 Comments

A reader named Amber recovered this post via Bloglines.  Yay!  Thanks, Amber!  Comments are lost, however.

Like millions of other folks across the globe, I’ve spent the last three days reflecting on the extraordinary actions of Zinedine Zidane in Sunday’s World Cup Final.  I can’t imagine that there’s a reader in the blogosphere who hasn’t learned of the astonishing head-butt.  On Sunday, in the immediate aftermath of the match, I wrote:

I’ve been a sports fan since childhood, and in thirty years of watching every imaginable athletic activity (this was the seventh World Cup final I’ve seen on TV), I cannot think of any incident as shocking as Zinedine Zidane’s mindless, inexcusably violent head-butt in the latter stages of today’s match.  It’s as if in the midst of their last Super Bowl appearances, Joe Montana or John Elway were to have viciously kicked a poor defensive lineman in the groin.  I’ve never seen an athlete of such caliber completely lose his head in circumstances as vital and important as these.  It strikes me as one of the most self-destructive moments I’ve ever seen in sport.  No words — no matter how ugly or vicious — could have justified the violence and thoughtlessness of Zidane’s reaction.  I’m sad for how this will forever color his legacy.

But I wonder.  Zidane is set to speak today about what it was that the Italian player, Marco Materazzi, said that triggered the head-butt.  According to the lip-readers hired by the BBC, Materazzi told Zidane "you’re the son of a terrorist whore" (among other things) before Zidane turned on him.

We all know the old saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."  It’s quite possible that no other childish nursery rhyme is more fundamentally wrong-headed than that one!  And it’s also worth noting that the power of words to hurt is racially and sexually charged. 

In my fantasies, I am a great soccer player.  Now imagine that I was on the pitch on Sunday, not as clumsy Hugo Schwyzer, but as an athlete of Zidane’s caliber.  I am a white, Christian, heterosexual male.   What on earth could Materazzi say to me?  In the great arsenal of insults, Western culture doesn’t have derogatory language for white, Christian, heterosexual men.  The only way to get at me would be to feminize me (call me a "pussy") or "homosexualize" me (call me "queer"), but those would be terms that wouldn’t go to the core of my identity.   Materazzi’s power to injure with words would be considerably reduced. He could also call me the "son of a terrorist whore", but the epithet "terrorist" has no culturally significant meaning when attached to someone of my background.

When a white man and a man of color are playing on the pitch, no matter which European language they speak, the white man will have more "weapons in his verbal arsenal" than his rival.  Leaving aside gendered and sexualized insults, what power do the words "honky" and "cracker" and "redneck" have to hurt compared to, say, the word "nigger"?  If you call me a "cracker" (a term more accurately used to refer to poor rural whites), I’m going to laugh — there is no history of violence and hatred behind the word.  If I call a player of African descent the "n" word, I’m going to expect a different reaction — not because he has less self-control than I do but because of the extraordinary legacy attached to that term.

There isn’t a single term in English that you can use that attacks me for being who I am.   Put bluntly, the word "cunt" has more power to hurt than the insult "prick"; the word "nigger" more power to hurt than the word "honky", the word "faggot" more power to hurt than the word "straight."  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" — indeed, if I happen to be a privileged white male using Western European languages!

It is dangerous for whites, particularly white Christian men, to suggest that players like Zidane (who is of African descent and is a non-practicing Muslim) ought to be able to control their tempers better.  While all of us will be insulted at one time or another in our lives, it is absurd to suggest that all of us are equally vulnerable to racial, sexual, or religious slurs.  To be an African Muslim man, as Zidane is, renders one at the least doubly vulnerable to verbal attack.  And it is the height of arrogance for those of us who have never experienced these sorts of psychic injuries to demand constant self-control from those who have.

Mind you, in the end, I think Zidane deserved the red card.   Head-butting has no place on the pitch.  But I favor red cards for racial, religious, and gendered slurs as well — and if necessary, I favor giving them retroactively.  If FIFA can give a retroactive red card to Germany’s Torsten Frings for a punch he threw after the game with Argentina, they can certainly give one to Materazzi if his abuse is verified to have been racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious in nature.  When black players in Europe are pelted by banana peels or peanuts or monkey calls when theirs is the visiting team, award their side a penalty kick.   We need to be as strong and decisive in confronting verbal violence as we are in confronting head butts.  To do otherwise is to ignore the reality that words are genuine weapons, and in a racist culture, those weapons are unevenly distributed.

UPDATE: Of course, there’s another theory (Bernard-Henry Levy partially made it in the Wall Street Journal, h/t Rusty Parts): Zidane was tired of being the hero, the great man carrying the weight of a world’s hopes, tired of always being elegant and beautiful.  His head-butt was a "I’m a man, just a man" moment — a refusal to play the role he had been assigned and a impassioned plea to be seen as a human being.  Levy writes:

Yes, a man, a true man, not one of these absurd monsters or synthetic stars who are made by the money of brand names in combination with the sighs of the globalized crowd. Achilles had his heel. Zidane will have had his—this magnificent and rebellious head that brought him, suddenly, back into the ranks of his human brothers.

That may not be far off, and it certainly arouses tremendous sympathy.

Some Sunday Soccer Thoughts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 9, 2006
in Aggression and violence and Sports
. 9 Comments

A rare Sunday post to report that my wife and I are utterly worn out after watching the World Cup final with 250 other folks at a public party at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.  We went with my wife’s best friend, who is entirely of Calabrian descent and a passionate Italy fan, and so we all rooted for the Azzurri. 

It was not a beautiful match, but a watchable one nonetheless.   Unlike many football fans, I’ve always accepted that penalty kicks are part and parcel of the game; perhaps it comes from my love of American football, where games are frequently settled by field goals.   On the whole, the better team won — France did not deserve to be awarded the penalty that they were given in the opening minutes, and Italy’s goal was a splendid and fair one.  The play of the entire Italian defense was sublime. On the other hand, Thierry Henry positively sparkled and the Italian offense disappeared in the last hour of the match. 

I will say that this was the first time since 1982 (when Germany beat France in the semis) that a World Cup penalty shootout has gone my way.   England’s exits via shootout in 1998 and 2006 were both heartbreaking, and I wept for Roberto Baggio when he famously missed his penalty here in Pasadena in the 1994 final.  Today it seems that the footie deities have issued divine compensation.  Early prediction: England beats Argentina on penalties in the 2010 WC final in South Africa.  One can hope.

I’ve been a sports fan since childhood, and in thirty years of watching every imaginable athletic activity (this was the seventh World Cup final I’ve seen on TV), I cannot think of any incident as shocking as Zinedine Zidane’s mindless, inexcusably violent head-butt in the latter stages of today’s match.  It’s as if in the midst of their last Super Bowl appearances, Joe Montana or John Elway were to have viciously kicked a poor defensive lineman in the groin.  I’ve never seen an athlete of such caliber completely lose his head in circumstances as vital and important as these.  It strikes me as one of the most self-destructive moments I’ve ever seen in sport.  No words — no matter how ugly or vicious — could have justified the violence and thoughtlessness of Zidane’s reaction.  I’m sad for how this will forever color his legacy.

Another thought: I think the USA ought to remind everyone that they were the only team in Germany 2006 not to lose to Italy.  I have no great love for American soccer, but in hindsight, the American heroics on June 17, where they drew the Italians despite being down to only nine players, were indeed impressive.

My heart is already turning towards another Premiership season (with my heart firmly at St James’ Park) and Euro 2008.  Here’s to Wales and Scotland both qualifying, and to England pulling out a famous victory.

It’s been a hell of a month.  When this World Cup began on June 9, my father and my Matilde were still alive; in the thirty days since this tournament began, I’ve lost them both.  I’ve watched a lot of soccer through my tears these past few weeks, and in years to come, thoughts of Germany 2006 will always be tinged with the memory of great loss.