Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

Summer

For the first time in seventeen years, I’m not teaching summer school. From 1994-2009, each summer found me in the classroom, lecturing away; this year, I’m taking a break. We’re going to be doing some traveling, and I’m going to spend some good time with my wife, daughter, and extended family.

I’m also heavily involved with a writing project about which I can’t yet say much publicly, but which will keep me very busy this summer.

Posting will be quite light until the start of the fall semester on August 30. An occasional new post will appear, as will some reprints. I will do my best (when I have internet access) to moderate comment threads.

As always, I’m so grateful for my readers. For six and a half years, this blog has brought me a great deal of joy. I’m thankful for all the comments and emails I’ve received over the years; you’ve made me a better writer and a better man by relentlessly challenging me to reflect and reevaluate. I’ve adored blogging, and intend to continue. But the fresh updates will be infrequent until the end of August.

Away ’till the 1st

No posting for the rest of this week… back June 1! I’ll be moderating comment threads as needed, however.

Spring breaking

It’s Spring Break this week at Pasadena City College, where it is customary to joke that we enjoy America’s latest such hiatus. I’ll be doing some traveling with the family (fortunately, our plans this time do not involve Europe and flights that might be cancelled due to ash). Regular blogging resumes Monday, April 26.

Back up and running

All sorts of disasters befell the site last night, and anyone who tried to reach this blog between 7:00 Wednesday night and 1:00PM (California time) today would have been greeted by a blank screen. The various problems seem to have been solved, and the site is once again fully accessible. Thanks for your patience.

Comments policy, one more time

A good time to reiterate my commenting policy:

Please remember that this is a feminist blog, and open primarily to feminist and feminist-friendly commenters; those whose worldview is fundamentally hostile to feminism are asked to refrain from posting.

There are so many fora for free-wheeling discussion on the ‘net; I get tired of having the fundamental premises under which I blog questioned. That doesn’t mean I only want yes-women and yes-men — but I’m looking for thoughtful commentary and criticism from those already in the tent of gender justice, egalitarian spirituality, and so forth. I’d rather have fewer comments, but from those who want to move the discussion forward, and only those who accept the basic worldview can do that. (Right now, it is a bit like hosting a blog about evolutionary biology, and having creationists hijack the discussion. That gets old.)

People, censorship is when the state prevents you from airing your views. My choice to limit my blog to those who are at least sympathetic to what is traditionally understood as the contemporary feminist movement is not censorship, but good housekeeping.

Unless otherwise noted, all posts are designated as open for comments that are “feminist-friendly only”, particularly posts dealing with subjects such as pornography, domestic violence, abortion, and so forth. One anti-feminist can derail a thread very easily, and to the best of my ability as a tired moderator, I’m not gonna let that happen as often.

Annual spring hiatus

I don’t expect to resume blogging until Monday, April 5. Until then, a happy Pesach and a glorious Holy Week to all.

Voice of the Week

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!

Comment problems

Comments on my most recent posts are reopen.

I’d love a tip from some Word Press whizzes. About every two or three months, with no warning, the comments sections on all my posts are closed, and overnight, the little box that says “must be registered and logged in to comment” gets checked. I then need to uncheck the box and reopen –individually — posts for comments. Is there any way for me to reopen all my previously published posts for comments automatically without republishing them? Shoot me a comment or an email at hbschwyzer@gmail.com if you have any suggestions. Thanks.

Parents, children, candor, and embarrassment: a note from a blogging father

Several times in the past year, friends both in cyberspace and in “real” life have asked me the same question: Do I ever pause to consider the impact that this blog will have on Heloise, and any other children with whom we may be blessed, when they are older? Though it’s been a quarter century and more since I was a teen, I’ve been working around them continually almost since I stopped being one. And though there are some surprising exceptions, the general rule continues to be true: most teens, particularly at the onset of puberty, go through a stage where they are acutely embarrassed by their parents. Call it the “please drop me off a block from school” phenomenon — it’s a rare fourteen year-old who wants his or her friends to know much detail about his or her parents’ lives.

I write and speak openly about my past and my present. Compared to the degree of disclosure now common among teens on social networking sites (both in terms of words and images), what I’ve shared here is pretty tame. Of course, I write as an adult — and though I have plenty of youthful indiscretions in my past, I cannot claim the excuse of youth when it comes to explaining my reasons for choosing to be so candid about certain aspects of my life on this blog.

I cannot protect my daughter entirely from future embarrassment. No doubt there will come a time when how I dress, or walk, or even breathe will be a source of intense annoyance to her; I know adolescents well enough to know that that those moments of deep disgust with her parents (perhaps particularly her father) will be brief albeit (probably) intense. And no doubt she’ll wince when and if (realistically, just when) she reads what I’ve written and continue to write about my life and my past.

I remember vividly a conversation I had with my father not long after I had lost my virginity. I was seventeen, and he was fifty. He was in Carmel visiting us for the weekend (when my parents divorced, my mother took my brother and me to the Monterey Peninsula while Dad stayed in Santa Barbara, where he remained until his death.) Papa and I took one of our long walks and talked about many things, mostly about my new girlfriend. Dad remarked, as we strolled on San Carlos Avenue, that I was younger than he had been when he lost his virginity; “I was nineteen and in the RAF”, he said. It was the first time he had ever mentioned his own sexual life to me, and I felt that familiar mix of revulsion and curiosity so common to adolescents when a parent begins to offer what my cousin Dinah calls an “over-share”. He told me a little about the “girl from the village”, how they had met and so forth, and I listened with eagerness and trepidation, not knowing how much I wanted to know, afraid of hearing more than I wanted but fascinated by my father’s sudden burst of almost uncharacteristic candor.

We walked on for a few more moments in silence, and then Dad asked “Were the lights on or off?” I said something like “Jesus, Dad, what a question!” I told him that the lights had been off but the television had been on (videos on MTV). My father seemed puzzled and asserted that he preferred the lights on. And that was the last we said of the subject; indeed, in the remaining 21 years of his life, we never had a similar conversation again. But what I’ve noticed, as I play through my memories of my father in my head, is that the embarrassment I felt discussing sex with my father has faded completely. What remains is the recollection of a precious glimpse into his youth, of what life in England in the early 1950s might have been like for this bookish, gentle, funny young man doing his national service before heading off to university. What remains after the awkwardness is the memory of intergenerational intimacy, tinged as it was with the mutual incomprehension that comes with an age gap and a different cultural vocabulary.

To put it simply, what made me cringe when I was seventeen is now a fond and precious recollection. And it is in that light that I think about my daughter’s future reaction to my own writing, so full as it is of stories about my past. There will be a time, I am sure of it, when Heloise will wish very much that her father had not been quite so forthright, so inclined to what my generation often calls “TMI” (too much information). But I also suspect, based upon my memories of my father, that when she is older still, what once seemed so embarrassing will become considerably less so. Though our culture does do its damndest to turn adolescence into a quarter-century process (at least for men, and not an insignificant number of women), psychic puberty does end. And as far as I’m concerned, psychic puberty ends when we cease to blame our parents for our own adult mistakes, when we absolve them of responsibility for the outcome of our lives, and when we no longer cringe when we contemplate them in all their lovely, flawed, perfect humanness.

What humiliates and infuriates at fifteen becomes the happy recollection at forty; the story I shared above is hardly the only such instance. And it is a good reminder to parents and children alike about the need to balance both candor and respect for boundaries, and to forgive generously when that balance becomes skewed, as it inevitably will.

The hiatus continues

We’re very busy with family and other projects these days, and as it turns out, I find I have less time to blog while on vacation than I do when I’m teaching. More posts to come soon, but for January at least, those posts are likely to number only two or so per week.

Until next year

The Thursday Short Poem returns next week. The final post of 2009 is a brief one, as I have jury duty today, of all days.

I’m enough of a pedant to be in that small crowd that insists that this is not the last day of the decade; the decade will properly end one year from now, just as it began on the first day of 2001, not 2000. I do, however, want to give thanks for this glorious year that has been. Whatever else may have happened, whatever other global challenges and disappointments may have arisen, I became a father in 2009! I had waited so long to become a Dad, and Heloise Cerys Raquel seems to me still, weeks shy of her first birthday, like the most extraordinary gift I’ve ever been given. Or, rather, the chance to parent her in partnership with my wife is the gift — because the child, after all, doesn’t belong to the parent.

In any case, until next year. A blessed and happy and challenging-in-all-the-right-ways twenty-ten to all.

UPDATE: Yes, I deleted temporarily deactivated my Facebook account today. I will continue blogging (and, it is to be hoped, writing in other areas), but the social-networking time suck was too much for this ENFP to handle. I can also still be found under my own name on Twitter.

Holiday hiatus

This will be my last post until the week of December 28. Though I will likely post again in 2009, and will be checking in on comment threads as needed, I do want to take an opportunity to thank those of you who read this blog. Even though the vast majority of you don’t comment, when I check my stats to see how many folks are visiting regularly, I am delighted and humbled to know that there is a steady readership. Blogging has been a source of great joy (and occasional frustration) for me these past six years or so, and I am immensely grateful to all who have supported, encouraged, and challenged me along the way.

A Happy Hanukkah (last candle tonight); happy Solstice; and Merry Christmas to all.

Advertising comes to Hugo Schwyzer

After years of hemming and hawing about it, I’ve made the decision to bring advertising to this site, using the feminist-themed media company BlogHer and their BlogHerAds program used on many of the most respected sites in the feminist blogosphere.

If you see something that interests you, please do click on it. Thanks so much. All of the regular material on my sidebar is where it’s always been, below the adverts.

Do feel free to contact me with any concerns you may have.

Jaclyn Friedman on changing the cyber culture

Jaclyn Friedman has a terrific piece in the online edition of Bitch Magazine on cyberharassers and anti-feminist trolls. The problem she outlines is a serious and familiar one, and the solutions are excellent. A must-read in the feminist blogosphere.

The August hiatus arrives

Like psychiatrists, the Schwyzers vacation in August. This blog will be dark until the week of August 24. When I have the internet connection and the time, I will moderate comments and jump into discussion threads if needed.