Archive for the 'Books' Category

Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 13, 2008
in Books, Feminist Pedagogy, Race, Teaching and WAM 2008
. 55 Comments

I’m taking a break from packing for our spring break trip to offer a Sunday afternoon post. We’re off tomorrow to the place where ‘Canes roam, where Democratic delegates wait in limbo this spring, and where dear old Gianni Versace breathed his last. It’s a region I love visiting every year, but gosh, I’m always as happy to leave as I am to arrive. It doesn’t help that I love the sun and the sun doesn’t love me. (My friend Joe and I used to run shirtless together; Joe, an ER physician, always called me a “melanoma farm.”) And I’m eager for the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Later today or tonight, I’m going to close comments I have closed comments on this post regarding the Amanda Marcotte, feminists-of-color, plagiarism/appropriation/attribution fight that happened across our corner of the blogosphere this week. I don’t regret having taken the tack I did in the original post, but I do appreciate the many and disparate voices that weighed in here. The general rule that threads rarely stay productive after the 200th comment may not have applied, but better not to push it. Two other threads with good discussions of this issue were at Feministe and Amptoons. I remain convinced of two things: first, that Amanda did nothing to deserve the opprobrium directed her way; two, that the mainstream, predominantly white feminist blogosphere (of which I am most decidedly a part) has more to do in terms of both listening and crediting what we hear.

When we were gathered in Cambridge two weeks ago for the Women, Action, and Media conference, I chose not to go to the panel on women–of-color bloggers. I missed out on the chance to meet the likes of Blackamazon, Brownfemipower, and Sudy. And I’ll be honest: I weighed whether to go up until the last minute. I talked to a few people at WAM whom I trust, and who were familiar with the often bitter and bewildering exchanges I had with many of those same bloggers in last year’s long and exhausting Full Frontal Feminism fiasco. (Do a search in my archives or in the archives of half the feminist blogosphere — first in May, and then around Thanksgiving, things got heated.) These friends told me that while there was some potential for good, it might be best if I didn’t go to the Women of Color panel. That was my gut intuition as well. Perhaps I flatter myself unduly, but I wondered if, in the aftermath of all that had happened, my presence would be a noticeable irritant. It would be hard — given that I was just about the only man over forty at the entire conference, and the only one in a bright pink shirt — for me to be unobtrusive. So I didn’t go. Continue reading ‘Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together’

Love trumps aesthetics: of books, music, desire, and deal-breakers

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 3, 2008
in Books, Music and Relationships
. 23 Comments

Jill and Amanda both had posts up on Monday about the “Pushkin Problem”: the issue of love, disparate literary taste, and “deal-breakers”. Their posts were inspired by this Sunday Times piece: It’s Not You, It’s Your Books. It begins:

Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”

We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.

As of this morning, there are 114 comments below Jill’s excellent reflection, and twice that many below Amanda’s. And all of this has me thinking about deal-breakers, both past and present, when it came to dating or marriage.

I didn’t have my first real girlfriend until I was 17 and a senior in high school. Before that, I spent a great deal of time talking with my friends — and fantasizing to myself — about what the “ideal girl” for me would be like. I’m not talking about physical attributes, though that sort of fantasizing was not absent from my reveries. I’m talking about taste. Like so many teenagers, I cared a great deal about books and music. It was the early-to-mid-1980s, after all, and I was in perhaps the only stage of my life where music (this meant records and tapes) was hugely important. I went back and forth between listening to Sixties folk-rock and early ’80s pop-punk; Joan Baez and The Clash were indispensable components of my adolescent soundtrack. And sometime in 1983, before I had even been properly kissed, I declared, with puerile self-righteousness, that “I would never date a girl who likes Duran Duran.” As best I can remember, this was the first of many “statements of exclusion.” Continue reading ‘Love trumps aesthetics: of books, music, desire, and deal-breakers’

Amanda Marcotte’s danceable revolution: on “It’s a Jungle Out There”: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2008
in Books and Feminism
. 12 Comments
UPDATE:

As of April 25, I am suspending my endorsement of this book until a new edition appears. I read this book without more than a cursory glance at the comic images used to illustrate it, images that were deeply offensive and unmistakably racist. Though Amanda Marcotte did not select these images herself, she and the publisher share responsibility for a very unfortunate lapse in judgment. As a result, I cannot in good conscience support the sale of the currently available edition. When a new edition appears — may it be soon — without these indefensible images within its pages, my endorsement will stand.

It took others to point out what I could not see. I am ashamed of that. This review stands in its entirety, with this disclaimer attached.

Last week, It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments arrived on my desk. Amanda Marcotte’s new book from Seal Press is indeed available now, and over the course of the Easter weekend, I made my way through its brief and breezy 235 pages.

Amanda was a leading figure in the feminist blogosphere before she and Melissa McEwan were involved, over a year ago, in the now-infamous John Edwards blogging drama. (Details in this Salon article.) I’ve been reading Amanda since 2004, when she blogged at the now-defunct Mouse Words; since moving to the widely-read Pandagon, she’s become one of the most prolific and best-known of feminist bloggers. She’s also become one of the most controversial, not least for her fierce and occasionally profane perspectives. Despite her rising fame and her book deal(s), Amanda remains legendary for her willingness to comment frequently and thoughtfully on an extraordinary number of lesser-known blogs. I can’t think of many bloggers as well-known as she who do so much to nurture and encourage good feminist writing from all corners and all comers.

“Jungle” is listed (on the back jacket) as “Politics/Humor.” It goes without saying that writing and performing political humor is a tricky business; what one reader finds hilarious another will invariably find offensive or dull. I can’t imagine many people being bored by Amanda’s rapier wit, but I do know her capacity to alienate is formidable. Those already hostile to feminism, or those who are “on the fence” about women’s equality, are not the ideal audience for this rambunctious tour through the minefields that confront young American women today. In any movement, you need great satirists — and winsome apologists. Amanda Marcotte is definitely in the former category. She’s not winsome, she’s not irenic, and her writing isn’t going to make your misogynistic brother-in-law suddenly start donating to Planned Parenthood and start sharing the housework burden for the first time in his life. But for the right reader, “Jungle” will prove an inspiration and a delight. Continue reading ‘Amanda Marcotte’s danceable revolution: on “It’s a Jungle Out There”: UPDATED’

“The chance to become something more than a man”: a review of “Men Speak Out”: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 5, 2008
in Books, Men and Masculinity and Men's Movement
. 9 Comments

I’ve been taking my time to make my way through the nearly forty essays in Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power. The anthology, deftly edited by Shira Tarrant, is a marvelous one, with a breadth and diversity of men’s voices that is impressive — and moving. Though I got a copy in mid-January, it’s taken me nearly two months to read all the essays, generally moving at the pace of no more than one or two per day.

A few of the essayists are celebrated names in the small world of the pro-feminist men’s movement: Michael Flood, Robert Jensen, Michael Kimmel, and Jackson Katz (who penned the introduction.) But most are not as well known. These male voices are ethnically, chronologically, and sexually diverse, united by a strong commitment to gender justice and to creating a different understanding of what it means to be a man in the modern world. The essays are organized into themes: Masculinity and Identity, Sexuality, Feminism, and Points and Perspectives. And yes, I have a short piece in the anthology as well.

Refreshingly, few of the essays are written by academics. This is not to say that those of us who “labor” in the ivory tower (whether in the Ivies or at community college backwaters) don’t often have excellent perspectives on gender, sexuality, and feminism. But the dynamics of the culture being what they are, it has often proved true that the men best positioned to publicly identify as feminists are those who enjoy the protection of tenure. Tenured professors have a firmer rock on which to stand than do their brothers in, say, the military, or the corporate world, or in a factory, or in graduate school. The men who contributed essays to this anthology come from all those places and more, and there is a richness and an authenticity to what they have to say about their lives. Continue reading ‘“The chance to become something more than a man”: a review of “Men Speak Out”: UPDATED’

The Books of the Bible

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 15, 2008
in Books and Christianity
. 0 Comments

I was recently sent a review copy of The Books of the Bible.

Using Today’s New International Version (TNIV) translation, TBOTB departs from “traditional” bibles in several ways: none of the artificial chapter and verse breaks (which, of course, date only from the 16th century C.E.), and the books are placed in a “sense order” that allows for the reader to connect more effectively with the intent of the original authors. For example, the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts are combined into one single document; the gospel of John comes at the very end of the bible, after all the other epistles and gospels, combined with the three letters of John and the book of Revelation. It’s not a chronological ordering (though that too would require that the Pauline epistles go before the gospels) — it’s an ordering based on historic views of authorship and upon what will “work” for the reader. Each gospel now heads up a set of other texts (Acts, Epistles, etc.) that allow for a new perspective on the life of Jesus.

I’ve been making my way through the New Testament portion of TBOTB, and am enjoying it immensely so far — especially reading Luke/Acts as a single coherent document. Best of all, folks, it’s soft-bound and available for only $8.99. I only endorse what I use, and I’m using this. It’s going in my carry-on.

Speaking of anthologies…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 3, 2008
in Books and Men and Masculinity
. 1 Comment

… Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power is now at last available from Amazon and other booksellers. Edited by the wonderful Shira Tarrant, it features essays by some forty pro-feminist men. Some are famous: Robert Jensen, Michael Flood, Michael Kimmel. Others are less so. Heck, there’s even an essay by some guy named Hugo Schwyzer.

I’ll review the whole thing in, well, February. But you should get it now.

Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 3, 2008
in Blogging, Books, Christianity, Feminism and Mass media
. 55 Comments

On the ongoing “Yes Means Yes!” front, Theriomorph has a thoughtful response to my post last week. In the comments section below my December 27 post, I wrote:

…feminist missiology has to operate on multiple levels. We need our radicals and our moderates, our popularizers and our theorists. We need to package our most important ideas for the mass market in a way that the mass market will find palatable.

I’d rather 97% of the people get 3% of feminism than have 3% get 97%, if that makes sense.

Theriomorph responds:

We do, however, live in a world in which a woman political activist who is white, young, economically privileged, and saying something essentially upbeat and dumbed down that is guaranteed not to rock the institutional privilege boat but instead work only on the concerns of the most privileged among us and do so in an extremely circumscribed way can sell mad books.

We live in a world in which the merit of our ideas or talents or ethical constructs is far less important than the marketing behind them, and the same people get marketed saying the same things.

First of all, let me again reject the notion that Jessica Valenti’s writing is “upbeat and dumbed down.” But we’ve been down this road before; what Theriomorph calls “dumbed down” I see as “radically accessible”; what she calls “upbeat” I see as “inspiring.” Evel Knievel on his rocket-powered motorcycle couldn’t leap the gulf in perspective that has opened up over Full Frontal Feminism. That’s disappointing.

But I’d like to expand on my short remarks about “marketing”, and the comparison between Christian evangelism and the feminist mission. In many ways, the feminist community bears a resemblance to the evangelical Christian one. Both are committed to transforming the world. Both are committed to reaching people globally with a message that is life-changing. And both communities have intense, often bitter debates about exactly how to “package the message.” Continue reading ‘Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED’

On the “Yes Means Yes!” project

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 27, 2007
in Books, Feminism and Sexuality
. 20 Comments

Nearly three weeks ago, Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti announced a call for submissions for their new anthology project: Yes Means Yes. The blurb:

Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren’t shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Welcome to the world of “Yes Means Yes”.

“Yes Means Yes!” will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.

Even in the midst of the holiday frenzy, the by-now customary brouhaha erupted across the feminist and progressive blogosphere. Busy as I was with family and tree obligations, I didn’t catch up on most of the controversy until yesterday. Theriomorph’s post has some of the most cogent criticisms of the YMY project, and includes links to other bloggers who have taken issue it.

The criticisms are many, but seem to fall into a couple of clear categories:

1. Yes Means Yes! defines “rape culture” too narrowly. It takes the “acquaintance rape” scenario and expands it to include every other aspect of sexual assault. How, the critics wonder, can “empowering female sexual pleasure” do anything about the guy with a knife lurking in the bushes, or about the international trafficking of women? Theriomorph got off the best zinger in this regard: An upper middle class 18-30 year old white woman’s screaming orgasm is not going to end rape.

2. The YMY call for submissions is unnecessarily divisive. To some, promising to “fly in the face of conventional feminist wisdom” sounds like a thinly-disguised effort to stir up the old “anti-sex Second Wave vs. pro-sex Third Wave” argument. Given that in 2007, it’s difficult to label anything as “conventional feminist wisdom” (given the breadth and diversity of the movement), it suggests to some that the editors of YMY are erecting a straw-woman to knock down.

Let me say that I do intend to submit an essay for possible inclusion in the Yes Means Yes! anthology. I intend to re-work and expand my “Not just consent, but enthusiasm” post. I’ll focus on how those of us who work with young people can design and implement workshops and programs that focus on the “enthusiasm” and “joy” model. I’ll be writing most of the piece in February, just before the March 1 deadline for submissions. So I’m posting now as a potential contributor, which no doubt partly colors what I have to say.

That said, I have never met Jessica Valenti. We’ve spoken on the phone and exchanged e-mails, but that’s it. (I look forward to meeting her — and a lot of other good folks — at WAM 2008). But I’m convinced that at least some of the outrage directed at Yes Means Yes! is rooted in a knee-jerk antipathy towards her. Indeed, many of the harsh words about the YMY project are directed towards her and not towards her co-editor, Jaclyn Friedman. The resentment Jessica inspires in one corner of the blogosphere is stunning. And while some of the criticisms of her various projects may be fair, it seems clear that much of what is being said about her current anthology is rooted as much in envy and personal animus as it is in legitimate qualms about her approach.

Jessica has, it seems, ceased to be a person and become a symbol. Her writing at Feministing and in her books have given her a high profile, and through no intent or design of her own, she has become representative of what a great many people dislike about a certain kind of contemporary feminism. In the eyes of some of her most bilious critics, Valenti is the embodiment of superficial, orgasm-obsessed, clueless, vapid, white feminist privilege. The lengthy, painful discussions of Full Frontal Feminism that raged in both May and November mixed legitimate criticisms of the popular — and as my students will attest, deeply important and useful — book with ugly personal invective. And the hangover from those arguments seems to have colored the conversation about an anthology that hasn’t even been put together yet.

At the same time, I too have some problems with the call for submissions. Rape, after all, isn’t only a huge problem — it’s a multi-faceted one. Some men rape without being cognizant that they are raping, just as some women have sexual experiences that they have trouble labeling as rape. Other men rape with the clear intent of degrading women. Some women are raped as punishment for the transgressions of their relatives, or raped because they were on the losing side in war. Clearly, “empowering female sexual pleasure” isn’t a viable universal strategy for ending all forms of rape. It’s a very powerful strategy, however, for ending one particularly insidious kind of rape that is widespread in our own culture. The small mistake in the call for submissions lay in not clearly distinguishing which aspect of rape culture the book was intended to address.

And yeah, I’m not crazy about the “fly in the face of conventional feminist wisdom” line either. Sometimes rape is about sex, and sometimes it isn’t, and almost anyone who does anti-violence work knows that. Very few contemporary feminists (I can’t think of any, actually) argue that rape is never, ever about sex. Yes Means Yes! has the potential to make a major contribution to the discussion about consent, pleasure, and agency; it doesn’t have to position itself as radically revisionist in order to do so.

If this anthology emerges as I hope it will (with or without a Hugo Schwyzer contribution within its pages), it’s going to be less a theoretical compilation than a practical tool. I’d love to have a book I could give to high-school and college-aged men and women, a book that helped them navigate through the sea of confusing messages about what sex is and what it isn’t, a book that honestly addressed what it means to say “Yes”, “No”, and “Not Yet.” More importantly, I’m hoping that this book will, in some small way, help inspire (and yes, empower) young men and women to say both “Yes!” and “No!” with greater certainty and conviction. I can’t know yet if the YMY anthology will prove to be such a tool. The project has promise, however, and I hope that the current debate will only serve to generate a greater number of submissions.

Jane Rule, 1931-2007

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 8, 2007
in Books and GLBTQ
. 0 Comments

Apparently others saw the obituaries earlier, but both the big New York and Los Angeles papers just printed Jane Rule’s death notice in today’s editions. Rule was the author of Desert of the Heart (which was turned into the marvelous “Desert Hearts”, a 1985 film in which my cousin Dean played a key role). For that work alone, Rule became an iconic lesbian literary figure. But my favorite novel of hers is a much less well-known book, Memory Board. I’ve read it and reread it many times, and found it not only deeply moving, but immensely comforting. It’s one of perhaps only half-a-dozen books I re-read every year or two, and it would make the list of my ten favorite novels ever written in the English language. I’ll re-read it again this holiday season.

Beyond heat and pleasure to joy and light: the third post on Robert Jensen, porn, and sexual ethics

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 5, 2007
in Books, Porn and Masculinity Series, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 17 Comments

This is part three of my series responding to Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Part One is here, Part Two is here.

At the end of this short, powerful book, Jensen muses about sexual ethics. I was struck by what he has to say about heat, light, and pleasure:

Another common way people talk about sex, especially in the past decade, is in terms of heat: She’s hot, he’s a hottie; we had hot sex. In the world of hot, it’s natural to focus on friction, which is what produces heat. Sex becomes bump-and-grind,; the friction produces the heat, and the heat makes the sex good.

But we should take note of a phrase commonly used to describe an argument that is intense but which doesn’t really advance our understanding; we say that such an engagement produces “more heat than light.”… So what if our sexual activity — our embodied connections –could be less about heat and more about light? What if instead of desperately seeking hot sex, we searched for a way to produce light when we touch? What if such touch were about finding a way to create light between people so that we could see ourselves and each other better? If the goal is knowing ourselves and each other like that, then what we need is not really heat but light to illuminate the path.

I read that and leaped to my feet, crying “Yes!” At its best, I am convinced sex not only brings pleasure but helps to transform the people who are participating in it. I am a better teacher, better friend, and better mentor because of the light that my wife and I reveal when we have sex with each other. After three divorces and countless short-term relationships, I understand what Jensen is talking about here, because my wife and I are living it out. Make no mistake, I don’t think marriage is the only arena in which this kind of light can be created. But a relationship in which one or both parties is expending sexual energy on pornography and fantasy is one in which there is very little chance of light indeed.
Continue reading ‘Beyond heat and pleasure to joy and light: the third post on Robert Jensen, porn, and sexual ethics’

Shame and self-hatred, guilt and self-esteem: part two of the series on Robert Jensen, porn, and masculinity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 3, 2007
in Books, Men and Masculinity, Porn, Porn and Masculinity Series and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 34 Comments

This is part two of a three-part response to Robert Jensens’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. Part One appeared last Friday, I’m aimin’ to have Part Three up on Wednesday of this week.

Courtney Martin wrote last week that Jensen’s prose “reeks of self-hate and desperation.” Blogger “Sweating Through Fog” writes that “Jensen uses porn to indulge his hatred for masculinity.” In this second part of the series, I’d like to take up this issue of male self-loathing (or, to put it another way, the loathing of one’s own maleness.) Far from hating himself, or men, Jensen is calling men to love themselves, their fellow men, and women enough to transform. His argument hinges on understanding the distinction between shame and guilt, a distinction that may have eluded some of those who read (or have decided to condemn without reading) the book.

The charge of “self-loathing” is one of three classic slurs used against feminist men. Any man who is committed to feminism publicly will regularly encounter at least one (and likely more) of the following stereotypes:

1. All feminist men are gay, and thus not “real men”.

2. All feminist men are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, using an outer veneer of egalitarianism in order to get women into bed.

3. All feminist men are filled with self-loathing; secretly believing that women are the superior sex, they project their own self-hatred onto other men.

From the time I began studying feminism and doing pro-feminist men’s work, I ran into all three of these charges on a regular basis. The men’s rights advocates (MRAs) who periodically comment here tend to use all three, with a few not-very-bright ones insisting that all three are true simultaneously. So when Robert Jensen makes a compelling, at times radical case against pornography — accompanied by a searing and entirely accurate indictment of contemporary American masculinity — it’s little wonder that even well-meaning folks bring out the “he must really hate himself, or at least hate his maleness” card. Continue reading ‘Shame and self-hatred, guilt and self-esteem: part two of the series on Robert Jensen, porn, and masculinity’

The “Full Frontal Feminism” controversy again, and a call for suggestions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2007
in Blogging, Books, Ethnicity and Feminism
. 61 Comments

I’m grateful to the Reproductive Health Reality Check blog for reposting this morning my little piece on early motherhood and “false intimations of tragedy.”

And while I was away for the holiday, Jessica Valenti put up a short link at Feministing to my post from several weeks ago, one in which I reported on my students’ enthusiastic responses to her Full Frontal Feminism.

Many of the prominent “women of color” bloggers in the feminist blogosphere clearly don’t read my blog regularly. They do read Feministing, however, and starting on Thanksgiving a number of folks began to weigh in. Old criticisms of Jessica’s book reappeared, as well as strong words about my pedagogy. See here, here, here, here, and here.

I suppose another post is due sometime soon on what it means for a middle-aged, middle-class white man to teach women’s studies to mostly female, mostly non-white, mostly working-class students. I’ve dealt with that topic in previous posts, but I’m happy to bring it up again, and I will do so this week or next.

I did want to respond to one particular challenge that appeared in this comment. Michelle writes:

IMO You need to directly connect your students to the discussions that have gone on about this on the web.

IMO you need to do this by actively, directly and respectfully collaborating with the actual people who have offered these critiques. You know who they are, yes?

So. Ask them: What specifically would they like your students to read and in what format? Ask them and then assign it. What questions would they like your students to discuss based on this situation? Ask them and have those discussions in your classroom (with respect, not to discredit them and you know what I mean). What kind of follow-up, if any, do they want to see? Ask them and do it.

It is indeed too late for me to revisit FFF this semester (I have only four class meetings left, and every second of those is packed). But I’m going to accept Michelle’s challenge for the spring semester, beginning in February, when I will once again be assigning Full Frontal Feminism to my classes. In the spring, I will teach the book again. I will also assign a packet of criticisms of the book — indeed, I will do what I have been taught to do since I was an undergraduate, which is to “teach the controversy.” Assuming that the critics of FFF leave up their posts, I will provide links to those pieces, and actively encourage my students to participate in the broad discussion that this book created. That discussion will take place in the classroom, but also — I hope — online.

A few of my students read my blog, most don’t. Perhaps I erred in not informing my students about the controversy surrounding Full Frontal Feminism. Though I am absolutely convinced that my students’ generally enthusiastic responses to Jessica’s book were both genuine and uncoerced, I think it makes sense to expose them to other voices. I’m going to continue to assign and recommend FFF, but I’m very interested in “teaching the controversy” — which means collaborating with vital and interested figures in the blogosphere (Jessica herself, BlackAmazon, Brownfemipower, and so on).

My main syllabus for the spring is already set, folks, so please don’t ask me to change my assigned readings. But suggestions on how to structure a rich, civil, and productive exchange with my students about race, sex, feminism and the controversy that this one particular book has generated would be very, very welcome. You can email me at dochugoboy(at)hotmail.com, or put comments below here.

A note on not grieving Norman Mailer (or Ayn Rand, or Kahlil Gibran)

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 13, 2007
in Books, People and Poetry
. 28 Comments

More than is absolutely necessary, I don’t grieve Norman Mailer’s passing. Of all the acclaimed American writers of the second half of the last century, his popularity was the most inexplicable to me. I found Mailer’s prose dull, and perhaps for that reason, his nasty, angry, posturing sexism seemed all the more obvious and shopworn to me. I tried three times to read The Naked and the Dead, and never finished it. I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but in Mailer’s case, yikes, it’s hard.

Mailer is in a very small group of writers whom I find so impossible that I get irked the moment I even hear their names. The two others who come to mind are, for different reasons, Ayn Rand and Kahlil Gibran. I’ve actually read the major works of Rand (she’s the only writer I’ve ever read who can both bore and enrage simultaneously), and I’ve struggled with the Prophet. I’ve done a few weddings with my mail-order minister’s license, and at one, I even had to read a long section from Gibran. I did so cheerfully and without complaint, but to hear those pretentious, gummy syllables fall from my lips was hard. (And I know a thing or two about being pretentious and gummy.) Anyhow, the best thing I’ve read all year is Alan Jacob’s delicious take on Gibran in First Things. It’s not entirely Christian in spirit, but it’s very fine, and if you’re familiar with the Prophet’s style, you’ll be howling. An excerpt:

O Book, O Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran,
Published by Everyman’s Library on a dark day,
I lift you from the Earth to which I recently flung you
When my wrath grew too mighty for me,
I lift you from the Earth,
Noticing once more your annoying heft,
And thanking God—though such thanks are sinful—
That Kahlil Gibran died in New York in 1931
At the age of forty-eight,
So that he could write no more words,
So that this Book would not be yet larger than it is.

So, folks, which writer much esteemed and beloved by your friends do you really, really dislike?

Mothers, daughters, and sons: some thoughts on Astrid Henry and inter-generational feminist rebellion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 13, 2007
in Books, Feminism and Feminist Pedagogy
. 5 Comments

I’m a little bleary-eyed this Tuesday morning. The cold I was fighting off all of last week settled on me with some force on Saturday, and it still lingers today. The onset of illness did not prevent my wife and me from taking a much-needed “short break” (as the English would say) — we gave ourselves 24 hours at a nearby hotel. No cell phones, no computers, just lots of rest and time for each other. We’ve been going non-stop at one thing or another since late August, and we needed a quick recharge before settling into the holiday frenzy that now looms.

Though his site is not work-safe for all, Figleaf has some very kind (and interesting) things to say about my recent post on a “passionately feminist” marriage.

And I’ve just finished Astrid Henry’s Not my Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third Wave Feminism (I learned about the Henry book from Courtney Martin at Feminsting.) The book explores the “mother-daughter” model to describe the conflict between two successive waves of feminism: the Second Wave of the 1960s and early ’70s and the Third Wave that began to emerge in the early 1990s. Feminists of the Second Wave (everyone from Betty Friedan to Shulamith Firestone) were born between 1920-1955; the Third Wave roughly corresponds to “Generation X” (1964-1981). Some folks, of course, now speak of a Fourth Wave. To outsiders, it all gets very confusing. Though imperfect, the Wikipedia definitions of Second and Third Wave feminism are helpful.

My mother was — and still is - in many respects a classic “Second Wave” feminist. Born in 1937, she graduated from Vassar in 1959, back when it was still an all-women’s college. She was influenced by the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and, later, Betty Friedan. My mother was active in the League of Women Voters, and joined the National Organization for Women more or less upon its 1966 inception. Throughout my early childhood, Ms. Magazine was on the coffee table. My mother had an enormous influence on my sense of what feminism was; indeed, even after all of these years of teaching women’s studies, when someone asks me for a mental image of a feminist I still see my mother, circa 1975: short hair, black wool turtleneck, smoking Vantage cigarettes, sitting at her desk in her study reading Hobbes. (I realize that in that image I have of Mom, she’s younger than I am now.)
Continue reading ‘Mothers, daughters, and sons: some thoughts on Astrid Henry and inter-generational feminist rebellion’

Full Frontal Feminism: my students respond

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 7, 2007
in Books, Feminism and Teaching
. 37 Comments

This semester, I assigned Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism. I reviewed the book back in May, and a few weeks later explained why I would be assigning it to my women’s history class this fall. Yesterday, we had our first in-class discussion about Full Frontal Feminism (FFF, or F3).

If you were reading in the feminist blogosphere last spring, you know that a major quarrel erupted over Jessica’s book. (Click on the third link in the paragraph above for more.) Indeed, some of the most embittered intra-feminist exchanges I’ve ever seen online took place in the responses to FFF, many of them revolving around the perceived “whiteness” of the book’s perspective. To say that the book “struck a nerve” would be to employ an overused cliche that underestimates the intensity of the debate that raged in the blogosphere in May 2007. All the more reason for me to be eager to collect student responses to Valenti’s brand-new offering.

I knew my students would be honest. This class in particular is quite vocal about what it likes and doesn’t. For the last few years, for example, I’ve assigned Flirting with Danger. It’s an immensely valuable study, but the turgid, social science-jargon-laden prose alienates quite a few of the folks in the class. Frankly, it’s a toss-up each semester as to whether or not to keep assigning it, and it may be that at last I dump it for next year. The point is, my students have — as a general rule — no problem telling me what they don’t like about my syllabus, and what they do. Continue reading ‘Full Frontal Feminism: my students respond’