Archive for the 'Flirting' Category

Does shyness change the rules? A response to Luisa and Hector

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 30, 2009
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Flirting and Relationships
. 40 Comments

In a comment below yesterday’s brief post which quoted from a new sci-fi anthology, Luisa wrote:

A lot of sexually confident young women are attracted to nerdy, geeky guys, particularly if they’ve got that “nerdy in a hot way” thing going. I’m in a relationship with a woman, but sometimes get crushes on this sort of guy myself! Does the sexual confidence differential that favors the student somehow compensate for the academic power differential in this case?

And Hector chimed in:

It’s true that people vary a lot in their sexual confidence as well as in other, more visible axes of distinction like age, wealth, or power. Sometimes I feel like Hugo is unable to grasp that there are some of us, men and women, who have very little sexual confidence, regardless of how much ‘power’ we might have in other regards.

I need to repost something I wrote nearly five years ago: Loving the Bookish and the Cool, in which I made it quite clear that I was hardly a model of masculine confidence as a youngster:

I was an introverted, clumsy, bookish, unathletic, slightly chubby teen boy. I was teased and harassed throughout my elementary and junior high school years. I found solace in two places: books and the theater. I spent years working with a community theater group as a kid, and it was in drama that I first found “folks like me” who felt like misfits. Most of my good friends were girls — and boys who were on their way out of the closet! I was not remotely good-looking. I had unrequited crushes on several of my female friends, who thought I was “nice, but…” I had only one straight male friend in high school, and even that was often a tense and ambivalent relationship… I think my bona fides as a certifiable geek are in place!

Much as changed in the quarter century since I began to emerge from awkward adolescence, but it’s not as if I’ve completely forgotten what it was like to be paralyzed by self-doubt. And whatever later “success” I enjoyed with women did not erase the memories of what it was to feel undesirable, inarticulate, and at a complete loss as to how to negotiate romantic and sexual terrain.

One thing I learned: it was not anyone else’s job to do for me what I felt unable to do for myself. To put it another way, my geekiness wasn’t a woman’s problem to solve. It is true that my first girlfriend in high school asked me out (I was too scared to make that first move). I was a virgin, she wasn’t. But I learned quickly that fear is not a justification for passivity. While I had no reason to be ashamed of my shyness, I did have an obligation to learn to be more assertive. And among other things, I also learned that whatever frustration I had felt as a consequence of feeling unattractive and geeky and unwanted was not my girlfriend’s pack to carry. I remember feeling those brief flashes of anger, flashes which I think are quite common among those who end up as men’s rights activists, when I thought about my years of feeling unattractive and unwanted. And my first lover was blessedly assertive enough to make it abundantly clear that while I was entitled to my feelings, I was not entitled — ever — to be desired by others. I wasn’t owed the feeling of being wanted, nor was I owed any particular deference because of my fears and inexperience. Continue reading ‘Does shyness change the rules? A response to Luisa and Hector’

Unlearning flirting and letting go of “feigned fascination”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 09, 2009
in Addiction and mental illness, Flirting, Memories, Physical affection, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 19 Comments

I’ve worked with a mentee of mine for about a year who, while immensely bright, struggles with some sexual compulsivity issues. (Yes, this mentee is also in therapy; I’m not overstepping my role.) “Kelly” read this old post of mine about flirtation, and brought the subject up with me last week. Kelly asked: “How do I go about unlearning flirting? It’s like second nature to me, and it gets me in so much trouble.” I gave Kelly some tips, and thought I’d roll them into a post.

First off, I realize that when I talk about “unlearning flirting” it raises an obvious question: why would someone want to unlearn such a pleasurable and innocent pastime? For most people, flirting (once they figure out what it is) is exciting and pleasant; it offers an opportunity for thrilling little boosts to one’s self-esteem without great risk. It makes a lot of people feel just a bit more alive. Then again, the same might be said for alcohol. Some of my friends can take one or two drinks and stop; my experience over many years was that I couldn’t. I tried for years to drink in moderation, and failed spectacularly — all of my growth in the past decade or so has come since I became completely sober. No half measures for me in this area of my life. Kelly is someone also struggling with chemical dependency, but the primary addiction seems, to my experienced layperson’s eye, to be sexual compulsiveness. It is something with which I am all too familiar from my own life — and it is something which led me to conclude that at least for me (I speak for no one but a select group of my fellow addicts), flirtation was unhealthy and destructive.

I’ve written before about flirting, but never in detail about how I “unlearned it.” It was more difficult to do than quitting drinking, but for my recovery, just as essential. And the first step, of course, was acknowledging that flirting (or as I called it in Twelve Step programs, “intriguing” - used as a gerund) was making my life unmanageable. I was good at it, if by good we mean able to elicit positive responses from the folks with whom I flirted. I wasn’t always looking for sex itself (though I rarely turned that down); rather, I was looking for validation. The addict in me cared far more about ego gratification than about orgasm; knowing that I had aroused interest or desire was usually sufficient to satisfy me. At times, sex itself became a rather tedious, obligatory postlude to what had really mattered, which was getting the reassurance that someone wanted to sleep with me, or was at least interested in me on a physical/romantic level. It took me a while to realize that this was what I was doing; it was much more flattering to think of myself as a hyper-libidinous (if decidedly nerdy) Don Juan figure than to acknowledge the truth that I was just pathetically insecure, trading on chemical attraction and all of its attendant rituals to get the attention I craved.

I made an inventory of what I did when I flirted. I’d been practicing flirting since eighth grade, and over many years I’d developed a “bag of tricks” that tended to serve me well. (Parenthetically, these tricks were hopelessly ineffective in certain other countries. Traveling through Italy one summer when I was twenty, I gave up early on — whatever “game” I had had been developed with North Americans very much in mind!) Flirting was about words, of course, but also glances and the gentle but insistent erosion of normative physical boundaries. I realized I changed my voice, very slightly, and tended to hold a gaze just a second or two longer than the American standard. I leaned in towards people, affecting shyness or boldness based on what my intuitition told me would work. And I remembered the cardinal rule that my uncle Wolfgang had taught me when I was about ten: “Hugo, if you want to be popular, remember to be interested in what other people tell you. Even if they bore you, remember a few things that they say and ask them questions about what interests them. They will be fascinated that you find them fascinating.” I’ve never forgotten that last line, and it was the foundation stone on which all the little tricks were built. Continue reading ‘Unlearning flirting and letting go of “feigned fascination”’

Being passionately interested without arousing interest: more on crushes, flirtation, and safety

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 08, 2008
in Flirting, Mentoring, Student crushes, Youth and Youth ministry
. 12 Comments

It’s one of those very hectic mornings.

I’m tired of discussing Sarah Palin and the merits of the other various candidates for president. (I might feel rejuvenated within 48 hours — it’s entirely plausible I’ll be right back to bloggin’ about politics again soon).

The BBC reports a study this morning: Declaring Love Boosts Sex Appeal.

Telling someone you fancy ‘I really like you’ could make him or her find you more attractive, research suggests.

Making eye contact and smiling have a similar effect, says Aberdeen University psychologist Dr Ben Jones.

His study, involving 230 men and women, found such social cues - which signal how much others fancy you - play a crucial role in attraction.

In other words, people are apparently much more likely to be attracted to you if they think that you find them attractive. I’m no psychologist, but it seems to make good sense. We all have our inner narcissist, after all — many of us will naturally be drawn to people whom we think see in us what we long desperately to be seen.

I’m thinking about this in terms of my own work as a youth worker, college professor, and mentor. One of the things it took me a long time to learn was how closely connected flirting behavior and straightforward active listening are in our culture. I suppose it’s a lesson that every therapist learns early on — clients often fall in love with their shrinks because they are so overwhelmed by the experience of having someone listening so attentively and with such evident interest. In our culture, one of the simplest ways to flirt and signal sexual interest is to listen attentively, making eye contact and offering encouraging cues (like little nods or smiles). Good mentoring and youth work involves using similar techniques.

Students get crushes on me less often than they used to, thanks to two things: one, I’m getting older, and two, I’m much more conscientious these days about carefully distinguishing between sexual intent on the one hand and enthusiastic interest in their lives and work on the other. I also work hard to make sure that the “safe, married, even vaguely asexual” vibe gets projected hard. Continue reading ‘Being passionately interested without arousing interest: more on crushes, flirtation, and safety’

Restraining the ego and leaving doors unopened: a note about crushes, flirtation, and the “desire to know”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 10, 2007
in Favorite posts 2007, Flirting, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Student crushes
. 18 Comments

Below this post on student crushes, a reader named “P” describes her crush on one of her (married) professors. I’ll quote a section that has me thinking this morning:

I was interested in your advice not to talk about it with the professor. I had been considering doing so, although not now because there are still letters of recommendation for grad school to be written and I most certainly want to maintain a level of appropriateness until his defined role as a professor is done.

On the one hand your advice makes sense because he can’t really help me work through a crush of which he is the object. That’s not my goal though. My concern is that a large part of the reason I still think about him now is a curiosity as to whether he feels the same way…

Bold emphasis is mine.

I’m going to step beyond P’s specific issue with her professor, and reflect for a moment on the extraordinary desire so many of us have “to know”. P seems less interested in actually having an affair with her married prof than she is in finding out if her feelings for him are reciprocated. If you read through the comments below that post — and indeed through the comments on all the student crush posts — it seems clear that for many folks with crushes on their teachers, this curiosity to know whether or not the object of their desire feels something in return can be overwhelming.

I can’t think of a more tempting — and more disastrous — reason to begin any love affair than “curiosity.” When I was younger, I cloaked neediness and compulsiveness in the language of intellectual (or at least romantic) curiosity. Time and again, I pursued someone because I was desperately curious to know certain things: Could I “have” them? Did they “want” me as I “wanted” them? What would it be like to “be” (however briefly) with someone “like that”? Firmly committed to the lie that “experience is always the best teacher”, I attempted to justify some fairly unjustifiable behavior with the explanation that I had “an insatiable desire to know.” (This is a particularly common trait, I know, among academics — many of whom are notorious for petty affairs and infidelities. We exalt the pursuit of knowledge above all other virtues, and periodically find it all too easy to confuse the gratifying of our own ego with the acquisition of genuine understanding.)

I posted in February about flirtation. I wrote:

Flirtation, particularly when we are married or in committed relationship, brings us dangerously close to one of the most pernicious sins of all. No, I don’t mean adultery. I mean the sin of using another human being to soothe our own anxiety, to feed our ravenous ego. Sending out “mixed messages” that arouse interest, deliberately fishing about to see if we can get a little “stroking” — this is toxic, manipulative, adolescent.

This connects to the kind of curiosity to which P seems to refer. Our ego longs to know if we are wanted. Our ego promises us “I won’t take things too far; just let me find out!” The ego has a way of making its demands seem alternately reasonable and irresistable. It tells us that there’s no harm, surely, in taking steps to “know once and for all” whether that cute, taken teacher or student or colleague has an interest. Surely there’s no way any normal person ought to be expected to resist the temptation to “open the door, just a crack” in order to find out whether or not he or she is the object of another’s desire. “I don’t want to do anything”, the ego protests, “I just wanna know!”

I came to this realization later than many, but I’ve become convinced that wisdom and happiness in no small way correlate with a willingness to leave some doors closed, certain opportunities unpursued. One tool I use these days to measure my own spiritual growth is my own willingness to live contentedly with what I don’t know. Not only do I not need to know if a student has a crush on me or not, I’m called to make certain I take no steps in order to “find out.” (Like a lot of people’s, my ego, unrestrained, had all the subtlety of an untrained Great Dane; left unleashed, it would pant and slobber and race after promising scents that suggested the delicious gratification it craved. It knocked a lot of things over, periodically knocked people down, and left a big wet mess.)

Committing to “leaving doors unopened” is a spiritual and psychological discipline. Like any discipline, it gets easier with practice and the passage of time. When I was younger, I thought wisdom would come as the natural result of the relentless pursuit of every possible new experience. I believed that in love (or at least its physical aspect), any door unopened was a “crime against eros”. I didn’t see my behavior as compulsive, needy, and childish — I honestly thought it vaguely heroic. That was my sad foolishness, but it was a foolishness that hurt many others as well as myself. And it’s a foolishness I see alive and well in many of my students and, more troublingly, in my peers.

I have no right to judge those younger than myself who are only doing what I was doing at their same age. But I am wary of the lie that bitter experience is the only way to learn. Jesus told doubting Thomas, Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. I’ll take the huge liberty of rephrasing it: Because of all the doors you recklessly opened, you have become wise; blessed are those who have become wise while leaving the doors closed.

A few more notes about flirtation and connection

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2007
in Flirting, Relationships and Sexuality
. 15 Comments

Last week, I wrote a post about flirtation.

Kate commented at length. She made an excellent point, and asked a good question along with it. The point:

This an area where male privilege works overtime. You can decide ‘not’ to flirt and that’s a conscious decision. When women decide ‘not’ to flirt, it often makes NO difference in some men’s minds - we talk to them, we’re flirting, whatever we say…

That certainly rings true enough. It’s a rare woman who hasn’t had her words and actions misinterpreted; few women grow up in this culture without having at least one experience of friendlness mistaken for frank sexual interest.

And for a man to stop flirting, particularly a man who made a habit out of flirting for years and years, may seem virtuous; for a woman, it might well be perceived as chilliness.

The question Kate asks:

I was wondering, if by giving up ‘flirting’ you were more able, in a way, to have your eyes opened to ‘other’ sorts of connection with people of all genders; or if you felt that you had to ‘close off’ that capacity to some extent in case it became sexual?

Well, once I stopped flirting, I found that my genuine friendships with both men and women improved exponentially. I became less inclined to see men as rivals once I stopped seeking validation from women. The relationships with women, of course, became far more transparent, honest, and ulitmately more intimate without that deliberate attention to a sexual undercurrent.

Potential sexual attraction can happen in all sorts of relationships. Most people who’ve lived a while on this planet have found themselves taken by surprise by the sudden emergence of either mutual or unrequited desire for someone who most decidedly isn’t their “type.” Living a life of accountability, which is what I’m trying to do here, requires a healthy respect for the power of sexuality and the habit desire has of appearing almost without warning. So I set some pretty good boundaries in my friendships.

In her comment, Kate quotes Forster’s maxim from “Howard’s End” (one of my favorite novels ever written, and one from which I quote habitually): “Only Connect.” Connecting with others is our most important task and for many, our greatest joy. But connecting with others is more about philia and agape then it is about eros. Indeed, too often sex is the very thing that makes true connection impossible, not because sex is inherently wicked but because sexual desire (or the desire for sexual validation) makes so many of us selfish and self-absorbed.

One classic defense of flirtation is that it makes other people feel good about themselves. I’m all for making other people feel good. But I’m convinced that we can achieve this without using sexuality as the primary vehicle for accomplishing that.

A long post about flirtation, validation, and conversion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 22, 2007
in Age, Faith, Favorite posts 2007, Flirting, Marriage, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Vanity
. 24 Comments

I read a lotta blogs, and one I check in on from time to time is Amber’s. And a few weeks ago, she wrote a very brief, one-sentence post that brought me up short:

The deadpan flirtatiousness of certain married male bloggers is baffling to me.

Now, I was pretty damn certain Amber wasn’t thinking of me. I don’t know to whom she was referring, actually. But it made me reflect a bit about my past, about marriage, about neediness, and about unlearning flirtatiousness.

From early adolescence on, I was a student of flirting. I remember having the word defined for me in eighth grade by a girl named Jenny Nicholson. We sat together in math class, and I was a bit infatuated by her, a mild crush that was unreciprocated. But we chatted a lot, and one day she smiled and asked, in response to something I had said that I can’t remember, “Hugo are you flirting with me?” I said “no”, but obviously looked confused long enough for Jenny to throw out a definition: “It’s when you kinda like someone but don’t want to say it.”

I think I grunted out an “oh”, and left it at that.

I went home and asked my Mom about flirting. She gave me a more thorough definition, which I seem to remember as “Showing subtle romantic interest.” I also looked it up in a dictionary or two, and began to get the picture.

My mid-adolescent attempts at conscious flirting began not long thereafter, and they were predictably excruciatingly obvious, puerile, and unsuccessful. But my interest in girls was strong enough to help me overcome rejection after rejection, so I kept practicing what I thought of as my “technique.” I watched two of my older teenage male cousins, young men in college whose bodies were hard and chiseled and whose “patter” was smooth and (judging from their large number of girlfriends) successful. I watched their hand gestures, listened to their voices, studied their apparent effortlessness. Slowly, as my own body matured and changed, my confidence began to increase.

Bottom line, I spent years learning how to flirt. I suppose I only got good at it around the time I stopped consciously thinking about what I was doing and simply let myself “do what came naturally.” And for years and years, I did a hell of a lot of flirting. I flirted in and out of both of the disastrous marriages I had in my twenties. I found that my need for validation was stronger than any commitment I had made to any one particular woman. Even when I was physically faithful, I still loved the “intrigues” that had become second nature to me.

It was only in my early thirties, when I underwent my spiritual conversion, that I became willing to rethink my own flirtatiousness. Doing a written inventory of my romantic and sexual history, I realized that from 13 to 31 I had devoted a colossal amount of time and energy to flirting. The goal was rarely sex — the goal was validation of my own desirability. I was a first-rate narcissist, always eager to “stir the pot” to see if I could arouse a spark of interest in the various women I met in my life. It never mattered if I was single or attached, and I didn’t much care if these women were available or not. My ego needed feeding, and flirting was the best damn way I knew to get it fed. If the “intriguing” led to a short-term relationship or brief encounter, so much the better — but that was just icing on the cake. The “cake” in these instances was the knowledge that I was wanted. And knowing that I was desirable was the ultimate payoff.

I wrote last year about my 1998 “experiment with celibacy.” Not only did I not have sex or date, but for the first time since early adolescence, I consciously refrained from flirtations and intrigues. Cutting off that source of validation was extremely painful. I felt panicky and anxious. I was forced to do a lot of praying. And God was faithful. He brought me that sense of well-being that I needed so badly, that I had wanted so badly. My promiscuity and my addictive flirtatiousness had been all about filling a hole inside of me that only He could fill. But His grace could only fill that hole once I had made the decision to give up this habit that had sustained me and driven me for so long.

It’s been nearly nine years since that experience. And of course, I’m married once more, in a relationship that is deeper, richer, more challenging and more fulfilling than I have ever known. And finally, in this marriage, I can say that not flirting is truly second nature for me now. I still remember all of my old tricks, mind you. Even now, I often pause and examine my own words and actions to make sure that nothing I am doing or saying with any of the women in my life rises to the level of flirtation or intrigue. I’m gradually growing less hyper-vigilant as I learn to relax into my own skin. I’ve finally learned to stop using other people in order to feed that insatiable ego. And I’m finally in a marriage where all of those sparks, all of that heat, all of that “intrigue” is directed towards my spouse and my spouse alone.

Flirtation, particularly when we are married or in committed relationship, brings us dangerously close to one of the most pernicious sins of all. No, I don’t mean adultery. I mean the sin of using another human being to soothe our own anxiety, to feed our ravenous ego. Sending out “mixed messages” that arouse interest, deliberately fishing about to see if we can get a little “stroking” — this is toxic, manipulative, adolescent. I did it for nearly twenty years. It took several years more of hard work to break myself of the habit. Even now, I remain vigilant, knowing that it would be false pride to claim that I am forevermore immune from the temptation to soothe myself this way.

In my blog presence as in my “real world” life, I try and make it very clear that I am safe, romantically unavailable, happily married. I do this to honor my wife, of course, but there’s more to it than that. The other women in my life, be they colleagues, friends, or students don’t need me trying to pry out some sort of response from them. To put it vulgarly, using people sucks.

As it’s clear to regular readers, I’m spending a lot of time these days thinking about getting older. 40 is just around the corner. And of course, there’s a little nagging voice that says “Hugo, whatever looks you’ve had are fading. Do you think you can still “pull” (as the English say) as you used to?” And it’s my job these days to quiet that voice and not let that ugly, poisonous, neediness back into my life.

When that voice comes into my head, I remind myself that my real validation comes from the truth that — just like every other creature on this planet — I’m God’s beloved favorite. That’s true whether I’m lean or soft, wrinkled or smooth, handsome or homely, 29, 39, or 59.

And my wife, bless her, thinks I’m hot. The chinchillas just want to know if I have their shredded wheat treats, and it’s time to fetch those for them.

A note about unwanted flattery and flirtation: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 14, 2006
in Flirting, Ratemyprofessors and Sexuality
. 11 Comments

A rare fourth post of the day, simply to make a new policy.

I’ve been getting quite a few comments lately that are flirtatious, complimentary, and vaguely sexual in nature. (Here, here, here, here.)

At first they were mildly flattering, now they’re getting annoying, and I have heard they annoy some of my readers too (thanks, folks, for writing in).  Future such comments will all get deleted and the posters will be banned.  I’m putting the annoyingly flirtatious in the same category as pesky MRAs.

UPDATE:  In thinking more about this, I realize that I have been very ambivalent about the whole "hot professor" thing that’s come down since the advent of Rate my Professors.   If I ignore it, others bring it up.  If I bring it up — for example, in discussing how perceived hotness and student crushes work together, I’m accused of preening conceit.  Or someone writes in to say "you’re not that hot at all, get over yourself."  It’s exhausting.

Like most human beings, I like compliments, but tire quickly of what seems insincere or vulgar.  And I’ve been very candid on this blog about many things.  But for now, I’m declaring a moratorium  — in my posts and in the comments section — about my real or imagined attractiveness.  Comments and/or insults about my appearance can be directed to various rating sites or to the heavens above, but they don’t belong here.

Note: I will continue to discuss shoe purchases.  That element of vanity is not being purged from the blog!

A short note on feminist flirting

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 11, 2006
in Feminism, Flirting, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 39 Comments

Over at Bitch Ph.D. there’s a post on feminist men and flirting. It’s attracted lots of interesting comments.  Here’s from the original post:

In general, it seems to me that while flirting is difficult for everyone, that feminist women–made confident in part because of feminism–have it better, right now, than sensitive-to-feminism men. (We are not discussing jerky guys, or jerky girls, although I have theories about them too, but no time to elaborate. Perhaps later in comments.) There are lots of accessible models for sex-positive feminism; but I see fewer (none?) for sex-positive masculinity. I think that men who like women, and who don’t want to buy into the all-too-prevalent role of the fratty guy or the "nice guy" don’t really know how to proceed, especially given that we still, unfortunately, tend to assume that it’s the male’s resposibility to initiate. And even for a woman who is willing to initiate, the diffidence of men who aren’t sure what their role is can be offputting. So how do genuinely nice men and feminist women hook up?

Well, gosh.  I don’t really flirt these days with anyone other than my wife. But it hasn’t been that long since I was "out there", as it were, so I’ll offer some quick thoughts on the topic.  At the risk of getting my pro-feminist Christian credentials pulled yet again,let me say that when single, I never had any qualms about flirting in at least some fairly traditional ways.  Good flirtation always struck me as being about finding clever ways to say to someone "I notice you".  I remember having an argument about this with a male feminist friend of mine. He argued that the kind of "noticing" I was talking about (a subtle response to mutual attraction) was really just about reinforcing old gender roles.  "I’ve seen you flirt", he told me, and "it’s hard to tell you’re a feminist when you do it."

Yes, he really said that.  And I really burst out laughing.  I’m sorry, there’s a feminist way to flirt?  Or better yet, a pro-feminist way not to flirt?  Now I’m not "sex-positive" in the usual use of the term (I hold fairly conservative views on sexual behavior, am virulently anti-porn, etc).  But I  was always very "flirt-positive", even though I now generally direct that flirtation towards one person!   What I told my friend — and what I tell the young men I work with — is that there is nothing shameful about being sexually attracted to women.  Furthermore, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with using traditional flirting methods to express that attraction; where feminism kicks in is in reminding young men that a clear signal to cease and desist needs to be respected at once.  But the idea that a pro-feminist man will only be attracted to a woman’s mind without some appreciation of physical attraction is entirely absurd.

So how do genuinely nice men and feminist women hook up?  One of Bitch’s commenters said she’d never found it to be a problem, and was now wondering why.  And I suppose I’ll have to agree, and say it was never a problem for me either.  (Some who know me and love me anyway would point out that I haven’t always been that nice a man).    But I know it is a problem for some of the young pro-feminist men I work with.  Flirting, like so many other things, is a difficult art to describe in words.  In my life, so much of it seemed based on tone, inflection, eye contact, and physical chemistry.  But one thing is clear — good flirting always involves confidence and fun; feminism always involves mutual respect and good listening.  I’m quite confident all of that can go together nicely!

Textbooks and flirtations

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 28, 2005
in Flirting, Pasadena City College, Sexuality and Teaching
. 12 Comments

An interesting article in today’s New York Times: Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales.  Excerpt:

Anyone who has seen the parade of sales representatives through a doctor’s waiting room has probably noticed that they are frequently female and invariably good looking. Less recognized is the fact that a good many are recruited from the cheerleading ranks.

Known for their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm, cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection.

Some industry critics view wholesomely sexy drug representatives as a variation on the seductive inducements like dinners, golf outings and speaking fees that pharmaceutical companies have dangled to sway doctors to their brands.

But now that federal crackdowns and the industry’s self-policing have curtailed those gifts, simple one-on-one human rapport, with all its potentially uncomfortable consequences, has become more important. And in a crowded field of 90,000 drug representatives, where individual clients wield vast prescription-writing influence over patients’ medication, who better than cheerleaders to sway the hearts of the nation’s doctors, still mostly men.

Read the whole piece.

There’s an obvious parallel, I think, to the college textbook industry.  When I first started teaching at PCC, I was stunned by the large number of attractive young women who visited me regularly as representatives of one publishing company or another.  At our college, individual professors are allowed total discretion in selecting textbooks for their courses.  And this can translate into a great deal of money.

For example, I have three sections of Western Civilzation and two sections of Modern European History.  Each has about 40 students enrolled.   That’s 200 students who will have to buy the texts I pick.  At prices averaging at least $65-75 per book, my text decisions are worth tens of thousands of dollars every year. (I teach intersessions too, of course!) 

During my first four or five years at PCC, at least until the late 1990s, I got regular visits from publishing reps.  I remember one man who was a regular, and one much older woman who had come out of retirement, but the rest were all young women between about 23-32.  Almost all were stereotypically attractive and outgoing.  Each repped for a different publishing house, and each of these houses published different textbooks for Western Civ survey courses.

I have always kept up with the latest textbooks in my field.  Frankly, however, the top four or five publishing houses all put out remarkably similar texts.  Most big companies have several titles in Western Civ; they have books with more of a social/cultural emphasis, books with a straightforward political emphasis, and "brief editions" of their larger offerings.   But by and large, I’ve discovered that there’s precious little difference among them.  They all cover more or less the same subjects in the same way, and they are all priced within a few dollars of each other.

Because the books are so similar to one another, the textbook reps needed strong and vivacious personalities to sell their product.   And flirtation was obviously a strong selling point!  I can say with a straight face that I never consciously ordered one particular text based upon the attractiveness of a publisher’s representative, but I won’t deny that in my younger days I did enjoy the visits.  Several times, I was taken to relatively inexpensive lunches; I received a host of small, relatively cheap gifts. (I still have an old solar calculator from about 1996; it works just fine.)  And of course,  I was flirted with fairly consistently.

From a feminist standpoint, I was a bit ambivalent.  On the one hand, I was — in my younger days — much more comfortable with casual flirtation than I am now.  Though I never dated a textbook rep, I did enjoy the banter and the tension immensely.  At the same time, I was always conscious of the fact that these women were paid on commissions; my decisions did affect, in not insubstantial ways, their livelihood.  As a pro-feminist man, I knew I had to be very careful about deriving even casual pleasure from an experience with a woman that was based on her economic needs.   Many years ago, I decided not to ask out the one textbook rep I found remarkably appealing.  I was using her company’s books at the time, and I didn’t want to put her in the position of being afraid to reject me for fear that I would cancel my order.  So we flirted and batted our eyes and all that, and I ended up going out with the woman who became my third wife instead.  The flirtatious rep moved on to another job, and I switched to a new textbook.

About five years or so, the number of visitors dropped dramatically.  Though the prices of textbooks have continued to rise, it seems the publishing companies have cut back on their expenses by hiring few sales reps.  I now get only one or two visits a year.  Most of the publishers seem to rely on relentless e-mail spam to get me to adopt their books.  This never works.  Honestly, I’ve stuck with the same text for three years now in my survey courses.   It’s a solid one, it’s a tad bit cheaper than the competition, and I haven’t been given any incentive to change.  No rep has taken me to lunch since early 2000, if not before — I haven’t gotten so much as a free pen in at least as long.

My boundaries weren’t bad back then, and they are better now.  But I wouldn’t mind a new calculator.  And I wouldn’t mind being taken out for sushi.