Archive for the 'Men's Movement' Category

Reprint: Daughters and Fathers, Girls and Men

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 16, 2006
in Family, Men's Movement, Older Men & Younger Women, Sexuality and Youth
. 3 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I’m not in the habit of quoting from advice columns.  Still, I do read them regularly, and Carolyn Hax of "Tell Me About It" is perhaps my favorite these days.  I was struck by this one that appeared in today’s Times, but which I can only find online here:

Dear Carolyn: I’m a 15-year-old girl and have a twin brother. I really love my Dad, but he has little interest in doing things with me. He spends lots of time with my brother every weekend, taking him to ballgames and playing golf and tennis with him, and they go on camping trips in the summer, but he never invites me. I recently got up the courage to tell him that I would sometimes like to be included, but he said that a father and son need bonding time, and that I should be spending more "mother/daughter" time with my mother.

I’m really more interested in doing the kinds of things my Dad and brother do together, and my mother is not interested in them. And we do spend plenty of "mother/daughter" time anyway. He is a good father, and I don’t think he understands how much this hurts. My brother has all kinds of souvenirs in our room from the things they have done together, which are a constant reminder to me. How can I make my Dad understand that spending time together is just as important to me as it is to my brother? — Left Out

Hax doesn’t say it, so I will:  this man needs to get in touch with the wonderful Dads and Daughters.  Pronto.

In my dual roles as gender-studies professor and youth leader, I’m a great advocate of adult men (fathers and others) spending time with boys.   Here is where I am in complete agreement with the Men’s Rights Advocates; indeed, a belief in the importance of good fathers and strong adult male mentors in boys’ lives is one of the few points that can unite the entire men’s movement.  "Left Out" has a father who seems to have embraced that part of his job, her dad even uses the phrase "bonding time" to describe what he and his son are doing together.   The assumption, which "Left Out" rejects, is that this kind of bonding is most important between parents and their children of the same sex.

To some extent, this attitude carries over into youth group work.  I’ve often worried that I’m being unfair in the amount of time and availability I have for the guys at All Saints compared to their female peers.  For example, I’m willing to give my cell phone number out to any boy who asks for it.  (And I’ve had to stress, many a time, that they are NOT to call after 9:00PM, a point some have a hard time grasping!) I’ve got a couple of guys with whom I meet (alone) semi-regularly for lunch or coffee.  Except in emergencies, I don’t give that number out to girls, nor do I meet with them alone.  Some of this is in keeping with church policy, some of this a result of boundaries that I have in place because they just seem to "make sense."

As I’ve written before, we live in a culture that, with some justification, distrusts adult men who want to spend time with adolescent girls.  (I suppose in the wake of recent scandals, we are beginning to distrust men who want to spend time with any child, regardless of sex.)  As a youth leader, it’s easy for me to justify spending more time with the boys because, I sometimes assume, they are more in need of a male role model than their female counterparts.  I know I’m sometimes guilty of the very kind of gender essentialism that "Left Out" rejects when she writes:  I’m really more interested in doing the kinds of things my Dad and brother do together..

Spending time with youth can’t be a zero-sum game — we can’t assume that just because boys desperately need male role models that young girls don’t.   Somehow, we in youth work have to find a way to balance the need for public accountability and safety with the very important goal of having safe, strong, loving men play active roles in the lives of girls.

Obviously, youth leaders and fathers have different roles in the lives of young people.   No matter how devoted we in youth work are, we are no substitute for good and loving parents.  But just like fathers and mothers, we have an obligation to nurture and care for all of our kids, not just those who share our sex.  In a world where adult men are regularly viewed as predatory or odd for wanting to work with young folks of any gender, the justification for keeping the "men with the boys" and the "women with the girls" may be difficult to sustain.  I’m not saying that we ought to treat boys and girls identically.  Male youth leaders should, obviously,  still sleep in the boys’ cabin, not with the girls. (Though in a church that has more than one gay male youth leader, that policy has made at least one parent I know rather uncomfortable!)  But we cannot allow our fears to outweigh our responsibility to care for all of our children, and we must be careful to avoid a gender essentialism that minimizes the importance of fathers and other adult men in the lives of young women.

Originally published April 21, 2005

Two — whoops, three — more notes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 6, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Blogging, Men's Movement and Movies
. 23 Comments

Two quick Sunday notes:

I’ve had a big upsurge in MRA (men’s rights advocate) comments this week. I’ve banned a few for trolling and will happily ban more.  Hint, lads: using words like "misandrist" will get you knocked out of here in five seconds flat.  Double standard?  Perhaps.  But this is not a free speech forum; this is a Christian feminist space, and those who are hostile to faith and feminism need to respect the focus and purpose of this blog.  Send me vitriolic emails if you like; call me a Stalinist; express your deep disappointment in me elsewhere in the numerous MRA forums, but please understand that unless you bend over backwards to demonstrate civility, you’re outta here.   Comments questioning this policy will also be banned.

Second: my readers who know All Saints Pasadena well will appreciate this.  Mutuality arrived in the mail this week; it includes an article by me.  In the short bio I submitted to the magazine, I described myself as an "evangelical Episcopalian" who worships and volunteers at All Saints Pasadena.  The dear editors of Mutuality reworded my bio, so that All Saints Pasadena — a flagship church of the progressive mainline — is now referred to as "an evangelical Episcopal church."  An understandable error, but for those who know ASC Pasadena, a whopper.

Oh,and #3: you must go see Little Miss Sunshine.  Now.   I mean, Toni Collette is just about my favorite actress in the whole damn world, and I’m in love with Steve Carell, but the whole cast is sublime.   I haven’t laughed and cried with such simultaneous intensity in years.  You’ll thank me for the recommendation.

One more on men, self-control, and common grace

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 18, 2006
in Christianity, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Sexuality and Teaching
. 42 Comments

The comments below July 7’s post on biology and male accountability continue to be impassioned.  I finished that post this way:

It would be absurd to deny that many young men are aroused by the sight of an attractive woman wearing revealing clothing.  What pro-feminists deny is that women are somehow responsible for male arousal.  A girl in a mini-skirt is no more responsible for her classmate’s lust than the barista at Starbucks is for my full bladder!  I have as much control over where my eyes linger as I do over what I choose to drink; whatever physiological reactions I experience as the result of either activity (drinking coffee, ogling) are my responsibility and mine alone. While in other fora we can have long and interesting discussions about dress codes and "appropriateness", pro-feminist men ought to be adamant that whatever the imperious demands of our flesh, the human will is stronger still.

My emphatic final sentence has generated some satisfying discussion both here and elsewhere.  It even ended up getting dragged into a discussion on same-sex marriage, not something I would have anticipated!

I’ve been thinking about why it is that so many folks, both men and women (see Jen’s comments below the post) are convinced that the male sexual drive is this extraordinary, uncontrollable force.  In my women’s studies classes, we call it the "myth of male weakness."  The "myth" part is the notion that men are less capable of self-control than women, and that the insatiable demands of the male libido will invariably trump the sound judgment of the average man.  It’s a myth that both sexes frequently buy into, albeit for different reasons.

A belief in the "myth of male weakness" benefits men in an obvious way: it allows us to avoid being fully accountable for our actions.  When we cheat, or when we get hooked on Internet porn, or when are distracted by an attractive woman during class or Mass, we construct a false victim narrative for ourselves. "I couldn’t help it", we say in the aftermath of still another exasperating or heartbreaking betrayal.  Men often claim, wrongly, that they are victims in one of two ways, or both at once: we are victims of biological impulses that overwhelm our judgment, and we are victims of "loose women" who deliberately tempt us beyond the point of no return.   Sadly, this is a satisfying narrative for many men — it allows us to avoid taking full responsibility,and forces women to be the "gatekeepers" who regulate our sexual activity.

Of course,some women are deeply attached to this false narrative as well. A woman who believes in the myth of male weakness may mistakenly believe that it offers her — and other women — a special kind of power.   If you genuinely believe men are weak, you may believe that women have a right to use that weakness in order to get what they want and need.   A woman who is an artful and manipulative gatekeeper may be able to get all sorts of things from men, and far too many young girls are raised and encouraged to be experts at taking advantage of the myth of male weakness.  It actually offers little for women, of course.  In a society where men are taught to see barely pubescent women as the most desirable, over the course of her lifetime a woman who relies on her sexual attractiveness for her status will see her power diminish with each passing year.

I note that for many of my women students, believing in the myth of male weakness is less about an opportunity to manipulate and more about self-protection.  So many of my female students have been raised to believe that "men only want one thing" and that "you can’t trust a man" and "men are guilty until proven innocent".  Many of them learned these lessons from both moms and dads, parents who were anxious to protect their daughters.  After all, many parents reason that a cynical and suspicious girl is less vulnerable than a starry-eyed romantic who believes that most men of any age are capable of regulating their impulses! 

If you’re raised to believe in the discourse of male weakness, it’s an enormous challenge to try and unlearn it.   The evidence that it isn’t a myth at all, but a verifiable biological reality, seems overwhelming! The number of men who seem genuinely capable of living lives of integrity often seems so small, and it’s easy to believe that they are exceptions to the norm.  (I run into this all the time: folks either assume I’m lying when I talk about my ability to exercise self-control, or that my libido must be unusually low.  No "real man", particularly no real young man, could have a will strong enough to trump his desires — every time.)  But the fact that it’s a challenge to unlearn this doesn’t mean it’s impossible.  At its best the feminist project has always been about challenging both men and women to move beyond the familiar and to consider the possibility that we can transcend culturally imposed limitations.

I do believe that the power to control my eyes, actions, and even thoughts is a gift of grace.  My story is clear: before I became a Christian, I didn’t exercise much in the way of self-restraint in any area of my life.  To paraphrase the famous lines from the James Dean film, if someone asked me what I was addicted to in my youth, I would reply "Whaddya got?"  When I was "born again" a number of years ago, I became aware for the first time that I had this God-given ability to make good choices.  My urges and impulses did not vanish overnight, but the power — the wonder-working power — to regulate and restrict and redirect — was within my grasp.

I’m also a believer in what Christians call "common grace", the notion that to one degree or another all humans are given the strength to resist sin, even if they don’t share a faith in Christ.  Heck, even Calvin (not known for his belief in the power of the unaided human will) acknowledged that "common grace" extended to all.  Most of the modern understanding of common grace comes from the marvelous Dutch Calvinist Abraham Kuyper, whose work is nicely summarized (and expanded) in a delightful little book by my friend Richard Mouw.   This is not a theology blog, of course.  My point is this: the ability that we have to regulate our sexual desires is, I believe, a gift of that "common grace" that is given to all, not merely the "saving grace" that comes to the believers in Christ.  Men in many cultures, of many religions or none at all, have shown the ability to control their sexual impulses.  Though I did not learn to do so until I became a Christian, I am convinced that becoming a believer in Jesus is not a prerequisite for a man to develop and use his will to trump the demands of his body.

The battle against the "myth of male weakness" is perhaps the most important one that pro-feminist men can fight.  We must lead by example, matching our public rhetoric and our private behavior.  In ways big and small, we need to challenge other men to rethink their own accountability, and to take responsibility for what they do with their penises, their hands, their eyes, and even their thoughts.  The goal is not to instill guilt or shame; the goal is to empower men to realize that they have a power and a control that they may never have realized that they had.  And though taking responsibility is sometimes hard and painful, it can also be immensely liberating.

Male despair and mail-order brides

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 11, 2006
in Feminism, Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and Relationships
. 114 Comments

Catty sent me a link to this article that appeared in Harper’s last month, and that I understand has already been widely discussed on the ‘net: A Foreign Affair: On the Great Ukrainian Bride Hunt.  The author, Kristoffer Garin, spent a few weeks in the Ukraine with a number of American men eager to meet and marry the beautiful, traditional, submissive, much younger woman of their fantasies.

I’ve read this sort of piece before, and I’ve learned I have to be careful to watch my own emotional reaction.  Reading about the men (Garin is a compelling writer with a knack for succinct characterization), I oscillate between anger, contempt, and compassion.   I’ve thought hard about what it is that makes me so angry about these men in particular, and I’ve decided that it’s the colossal sense of entitlement.  Over and over again, the men Garin interviews claim that American women aren’t giving American men what is their birthright: submissive, pleasing, beautiful, infinitely understanding companionship.   In the Ukraine, a nation whose economy has forced countless young women into one form or another of prostitution, these men hope and expect to have the "natural order" of human relationships restored.  The Ukraine, in the fervid fantasies of the middle-aged and the socially inept, represents an idyllic pre-feminist culture where women "still know their place".  In a sense, traveling to Eastern Europe (or Southeast Asia, or South America, or wherever) is, in the hopes of these sad characters, an opportunity to live out their boyhood fantasies of time-travel.

My language is harsher than normal, because these men infuriate me.   For example, when Garin nearly blows his cover by questioning the men about their decisions, he gets this response:

“You’re bringing all your value premises and laying them over relationships,” the New Englander objected. “You’re thinking about how you view it as, not what she’s looking for.” He became angry. “Have you been married and divorced before?” he continued, apoplectic now, forcefully jabbing his finger in my direction to punctuate each thought. “No? So you know nothing."

Garin may not have been divorced, but I have.  Three times.   Three times I’ve started over, more or less from scratch.  Three times between 1992-2002 I found myself buying a basic set of pots and pans, a few pieces of furniture, a television.  Once, I calculated the total losses from my divorces (based on real estate prices and so-called "lost opportunity costs"); the sum comes to around half a million dollars.  No, I never had human children.  But in each of my three previous marriages, there were beloved dogs, and each time, my ex-wives kept them.  (There was never, ever, litigation — it just always seemed to make sense in the particular situations for these women to hold on to the pets.)  So, I’ve got at least some sense of what it is to go through a divorce.

In March 2005, I wrote about marriage, divorce, and taking responsibility.  I wrote then:

When faced with the end of a marriage, one has a choice.  One can get bogged down in blame and bitterness, or one can honestly face up to one’s own myriad mistakes and shortcomings.  One can point fingers, or one can take responsibility.  Too often, on the subject of women and divorce, I see the men’s rights advocates trapped in that blame and bitterness.  Too infrequently, I see self-criticism and a willingness to transform.  When I became convinced that it was I who was the architect of my own adversity, and not my wives, I took the first key step towards healing and growing up.

If that sounds condescending, I’m sorry.  But three divorces have earned me the right to speak on this subject.

And what makes me angry about the men visiting the Ukraine is that they are failing to do what I — and many other decent, thoughtful men I know — have done, and that is take their fair share of responsibility for their divorces.  That doesn’t mean denying that one’s ex-wives have a share of the blame as well; it does mean refusing to play the childish but seductive role of the misused and abused victim of an angry, selfish harridan. 

And yet, as exasperated as I get with the crude sense of entitlement I see in these men, as infuriated as I am by their misplaced rage at American women, as maddened as I am by their refusal to take responsibility for their past relationship failures and divorces, I also feel a genuine compassion for them as well.  Their loneliness is real and profound, and though they may not recognize that their wounds are largely self-inflicted, their pain is genuine and acute.  Garin describes the men following their first big "social" in the Ukraine:

By the time the social ended at 10:00 P.M., many of the men were positively radiant—the attention had transformed them, if only temporarily. The happy ones were positively brimming.

It’s odd — as I read those two sentences, I felt the pinpricks that signal the beginning of tears.  I’ve known what it’s like to feel inept, unwanted, and, as Morrissey sang in my youth, "sixteen, clumsy, and shy."  I’ve also known the euphoria that comes when suddenly, perhaps for the first time, someone to whom you are deeply attracted pays you real and sincere attention.  After years and years of secretly believing that you are undesirable and unloveable, to realize that you are wanted is intoxicating and transforming.   Just for a moment, reading the Harper’s piece, my heart ached for these sad and lonely men.  Beneath their misogyny, their rigid traditionalism, their anger, their misplaced sense of entitlement, beneath all of their crap lie  vulnerable and hurting hearts of boys who never got to feel like the handsome prince.  Without excusing their actions, I can genuinely empathize with that sadness, that woundedness, and that desperation.

“Let them go in peace”: some thoughts on unity, friendship, the Episcopal Church, and staying friends with Glenn Sacks

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 20, 2006
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity and Men's Movement
. 87 Comments

In a comment below yesterday’s post about the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as presiding bishop, I said (writing about the now-clear impossibility of preventing a schism): 

None of us should value unity over conscience.

Evil_fizz, a regular commenter here, wrote:

Hugo, I think that this comment is worthy of its own post, especially in light of a lot of the criticism you’ve been getting in the blogosphere lately. I find it fascinating that you’re able to stand on principle when it comes to something like ordaining liberal female bishops, but you still have lunch with Glenn Sacks (to use an old and well-thrashed example).

Evil_fizz refers to my personal fondness for men’s rights/father’s rights commenter and columnist Glenn Sacks on whose radio show I appeared twice in early 2005.   At various times as a result of various posts, I’ve been challenged in regards to Glenn and to my willingness to maintain warm friendships with men and women who hold strongly anti-feminist, anti-progressive views.  And while I have consistently celebrated the possibility of close relationships across ideological lines, I wrote yesterday that I do think that the best solution for the Episcopal Church in the USA would be for progressives and traditionalists to go their separate ways, acknowledging that to work to stay in the same denomination would involve too great a compromise on both sides.

Friendship and denominational unity are two different things, just as friendship and marriage are different things.  Last year, I wrote in defense of divorce.  Quoting Hall and Oates, I suggested that when it comes to ending a marriage — or, in this case, ending a theological union — "the strong give up and move along, the weak, the weak give up and stay."  That’s not a defense of giving up at the first sign of trouble; it’s an acknowledgment that after you’ve worked hard and unsuccessfully to bridge the gap, it’s wisest and best sometimes to let each other go. 

On a personal level, I’m grateful for all that my ex-wives taught me, even as I’m sorry for the pain I brought to them.  I’m not close to them any longer, but there is no enduring spirit of bitterness either.  We let each other go in peace.  I truly believe that the Episcopal Church in the USA may have reached the point where divorce is necessary and healthy.  The beauty of a "good divorce" is that it brings to an end the pointless fight over who is "right" and who is "wrong."  Though in the end, we Christians all believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, we can in good faith and conscience disagree radically about issues of sexuality and faith.  Though those disagreements will not, I believe, be impediments to our collective salvation, they are — in this broken world — real impediments to unity.  And that’s okay.  In the name of love, perhaps now is the time to let the other go.  Neither side (progressive or traditionalist) should have to sacrifice conscience any longer on an idolatrous altar of unity.

But giving up unity isn’t the same as terminating a friendship.  Nothing is more important to me than my faith.  The Great Fact of my life is that Jesus Christ is my savior; I believe His blood atoned for my sins and I believe I am called to follow Him.  But if I limited my social network to those who shared that set of theological beliefs, my life would be poor indeed!  I have friends who believe in the ordination of women — and those who are strongly opposed.  I can disagree with the latter openly; real friendship is not about the denial of differences but the warm and polite exploration of those differences! 

Of course, I have a great many friends who don’t share my feminism. Indeed, I am fond of some men who are active in the anti-feminist movement, just as I am close to some folks who are involved in the anti-immigrant Minuteman Project.  Yes, I acknowledge that "white male privilege" allows me to move in a variety of circles with a variety of friends, but I reject the charge that to believe in something passionately means forgoing a warm relationship with someone who actively believes the opposite.    I’ve been told countless times that I’m "not a serious person" (the classic slur among the leftist intelligentsia) because I insist that political and theological convictions are not the sum total of our identities. One can believe execrable things (and be an activist for execrable causes) and do so with the best of intentions and the most loving of hearts. Real friendship means "calling" one’s friends on their views and their behavior, but it also means acknowledging the possibility for mutual pleasure in each other’s company despite vast differences.  Ideology, folks, is not identity.  Good hearts can coexist with bad judgment and appalling views (something I know some folks regularly say about me.)

Marriage and the church involve a special kind of unity.  In order for a marriage to work, it may not be necessary to share the same views (we all know couples who cancel each other out every election day), but it is necessary to share the same ultimate goals for the relationship and a general agreement about how those goals are to be achieved.  Similarly, in a religious denomination, there can be some room for disagreement about non-essentials, but there needs to be a shared understanding of the fundamentals of issues like human sexuality and identity.  The Anglican Communion is, I believe, irrevocably split over these latter issues.  A warm and amicable divorce, with as little squabbling over property and power as possible, is in my humble lay-person’s opinion now the best course of action.*

But during and after a divorce, friendship can survive. And truly, we are all at our best when we surround ourselves with friends and family who challenge us regularly, whose beliefs trouble us as ours trouble them.  We may not be able to marry them, or worship in the same house, but we can "do lunch" and go for long runs together, neither obscuring our differences nor allowing them to drive us apart..   Friendship without ideological unity?   Not always easy, but almost always worth it.

*(Yes, I often mention that I’m fond of L.A.’s bishop, Jon Bruno, whom I’ve known for nearly a decade.  As a layman, I disagree with his decision to engage in litigation with those parishes that wish to leave the diocese with their property.  But I’m not the bishop; Jon is.  My admiration for and friendship with him does not preclude my disagreeing with him on my own blog, but I do so with a humble recognition that he is surely privy to facts that I am not.)

More on bare chests and privilege

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 16, 2006
in Athletics and Fitness, Chinchillas, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Men's Movement and Modesty
. 43 Comments

I’ve got one eye on the Mexico-Angola match, and another on the computer.  Once I finish this post, I will dive into some serious grading.  I’m still wracked with sudden and intense bouts of grief over Matilde, but that is to be expected.  No one said this would be an easy time.  (I can say that we may be adopting two older chins later this year from Michigan, but that is still tentative.  We are committed to these most extraordinary of animals, of course, no matter what — we just need much more time to celebrate Matilde’s life and cope with her unexpected loss.)

I’m taking a break from blogging about my views on teaching feminism; my attempts to explain (even when written after considerable reflection) only seem to exacerbate the gulf between my weltanschauung and those of many other feminists whose work I respect. (Violet’s response to yesteday’s post is here.)   We can continue to be allies even while we mystify each other, and I remain happy to be provoked and challenged by those whose ultimate goals I believe I share.

It seems an eternity ago, but it’s only been a week since my "Hey, put a shirt on!" post.  I did want to address an important point made in the comments beneath that post made by Helen.  She writes:

Frankly, I’m offended by men running shirtless, although it does depend on the situation (it really pisses me off in town but if I were out in the country or mountains I might not be as bothered, I don’t know). It’s just a smack in the face that I have to be so careful about what I wear and I’ll still get hassled, whereas there’s some guy running around half naked and confronting me with his naked chest. Of course, I’m not forced to look at him, but a mostly-naked person out of place (in a sea of clothes, sometimes) is likely to attract your attention before you look away.

I am curious as to how the expression "your rights end where mine begin" fits into this. I think you could argue that a man’s shirtlessness does actually infringe on other people’s rights and thus it’s not entirely unexpected that some people will respond negatively. I just try and ignore it when I see it and I’m not defending the person in the car who should have kept his comments to herself, but I thought I’d share my opinion on why that might have bothered her (especially since it was a woman).

Helen makes an important point.  As a man, I can (legally) run shirtless.  I run shirtless because it’s much more comfortable, particularly on longer runs, to do so.  I’d rather be a bit too cold than a bit too warm, and I can do without all the chafing issues that even a Coolmax shirt presents on a long run.  (And don’t get me started on horror stories about bloody nipples.)

But women can’t run with a completely bare chest.  For many women — perhaps most — wearing at least a jogging bra is essential for comfort.  But it’s possible that there are women who would be quite comfortable running entirely bare-chested, but aren’t allowed to do so thanks both to laws about public nudity and to cultural prohibitions.  Leaving the sport of distance running aside, it’s clear that there’s a double standard when it comes to the exposed chest in our culture.

One of the things about privilege is that it isn’t always enough merely to recognize it; one has to be willing to renounce it.  If I read Helen correctly, she’s suggesting that male feminists should think twice about running about bare chested  — not for aesthetic reasons, but for reasons of solidarity.  Until women have the same freedoms that men do, men should — whenever reasonably possible — avoid taking advantage of unearned masculine privilege.

I can think of a clear parallel to gay marriage.  I know two straight couples who have told me that they aren’t going to get married until same-sex marriage is legalized.  These couples believe that heterosexuals should make a conscious effort to renounce "special privileges" as an act of solidarity with their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.  As one of my friends in one of these relationships put it to me, "You can’t simultaneously work to end injustice while benefiting from injustice.  While we all as privileged Americans benefit from injustice in ways we can’t avoid, we do have a choice whether or not to legally marry — and it’s a choice we should choose not to make until that choice is available to everyone."

I think that’s what Helen may have meant about men going shirtless in public.  I can wear a running singlet without too much discomfort; shouldn’t I be willing to do so in order not to enjoy a right that my sisters cannot?  On the other hand, it’s easy to take this to an extreme quickly: should I refrain from using a urinal in the men’s room because only toilets are available in the ladies’ loo? 

I’ll be running up the mountain bare-chested tomorrow morning, mind you, but I’m interested to hear what my readers think about naked chests and unmerited privilege.

“Malcolms and Martins” and fulfilling the feminist Great Commission: responding to the critics

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 15, 2006
in Christianity, Feminism, Men's Movement, Teaching and Vanity
. 90 Comments

It’s early on a Thursday morning, and I’ve got finals to give and papers to grade.  And though at least a good percentage of my mind is elsewhere, I am ready to begin to respond to folks like Piny at Feministe, McBoing at Punkass Blog, Sheelzebub, and Violet at Reclusive Leftist (among others) who have been debating my June 6 post in which I gave advice to a lad named "Pete".

As best I can tell, the problem unfolded on two fronts.  First off, a number of voices in the feminist blogosphere felt I took it too easy on Pete when he announced that he wasn’t ready to practice pro-feminism and give up some of his "bad boy" behavior.  Secondly, when called on that by McBoing, I wrote in a comment at that blog:

The key thing I would like to stress is that unlike a great many folks who commented, I do the pro-feminist thing FOR A LIVING. I work, in the trenches, to try and bring young men who are profoundly hostile to anything that smells of feminism to a greater accountability in their lives. If I confront these guys, they’ll walk away with nothing at all but an even bigger chip on their shoulders; an incremental approach that encourages small changes is the one way that I have found that really works.

Piny and Violet were as incensed by that comment as by my original post. 

Let me see if I can tackle the two related issues in order:

First off, I’m sorry that my original post about Pete gave the impression that I wasn’t interested in challenging him (and other fellas like him) to overcome their sexism and become better, kinder human beings.  I think I made it fairly clear in the piece that I was challenging Pete’s notion that pro-feminism isn’t about chronic anxiety and indecisiveness.  I certainly didn’t intend to give the impression to readers that I thought that Pete was "just fine where he was", without considerable room for growth.  I wasn’t endorsing reckless, cruel, and unthinking behavior with women — regardless of what age Pete is. 

But becoming a pro-feminist is a process, not an event.  There are hundreds of comments at Feministe and Punkass Blog suggesting that I ought to have been more forceful with Pete, more condemnatory of his "player" attitude, and more firm in my challenges to his worldview.  A great many folks were appalled that I chuckled with Pete and let him leave with the seemingly benign maxim to take things "one day at a time."  Yet I remain convinced that with some young men, this sort of gradual (even indulgent) approach is best.  Before I can hold a young man to account, I have to earn his trust; before I can challenge him to grow, I have to establish my bona fides. And part of earning that trust is acknowledging that some of his concerns (not all) are legitimate, and that living life as a pro-feminist man (particularly in college) isn’t a cakewalk!

As a Christian, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about evangelistic strategies.  I have friends who are faculty members and students at Fuller’s School of World Mission; their field, "missiology", is devoted to the study of evangelism.  The great question is always: "How do we couch the Gospel in terms that will be heard by people from different backgrounds and cultures?"  I’ve sat in on a class or two in "missions"; it’s a fascinating academic discipline and an enormously important subject in the evangelical world.  And as a gender studies professor, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I can adapt some of these missionary strategies to reach young men and women with a pro-feminist message.  In missions work, you learn fast that hectoring (the "hellfire and brimstone" strategy) gets you nowhere fast.  Though Christianity has a history of aggressive and often violent proselytizing, modern evangelism is an elegant,intellectually sophisticated,  culturally sensitive seduction.  I’m convinced that those of us who preach feminism should use the same strategies!

Now,  I’m not saying this "softer, gentler, one-day-at-a-time" strategy is one that every feminist ought to use.  Feminism is a big house, and there is room within that house for a variety of approaches to "spreading the word".  Confrontation has its place.  All good movements for justice, in  other words, need their "Martins" and their "Malcolms"!  (Please know I’m not trying to compare myself to either Malcolm X or Dr. King.)  I’m more interested in adopting an incremental approach because it’s the approach that I think works best with the greatest number of young men and women.  My students always hear me, for example, compare becoming a feminist to getting into a cold swimming pool:  a few will find it easiest to just dive in, but most of us will climb down, step by step, shivering all the way, only gradually becoming comfortable.  And none of us can fully immerse ourselves forever; we all have to keep a head above water in order to breathe.  That image may not work for everyone, but it comes as close as any to describing my "slow and easy" approach to transformation.

And then there’s the second issue: my unfortunate choice of words on McBoing’s blog.  I wrote, rather defensively: I do the pro-feminist thing FOR A LIVING. I work, in the trenches, to try and bring young men who are profoundly hostile to anything that smells of feminism to a greater accountabilty in their lives.  I posted that comment in haste, and I regret my poor choice of words.  I didn’t mean to imply that I am a "better" feminist than those who are not paid to teach feminism.  And I recognize that as a man, I can always make the choice to not be a feminist without paying a major personal pricee.  It is obvious to me in hindsight that the comment was pompous and patronizing, and I regret that I made it.

My goal was to point out that I do have a decade or more of experience teaching feminism to college students, and seven years of working with teens as a youth leader.  I’ve learned, through trial and error, a great deal about what "works" and doesn’t work.  When I was younger, I was far more passionate and far more likely to see things in black and white.  I’d like to think that my appreciation for ambiguity and incremental change is a sign of wisdom on my part, but I am aware that my critics are more likely to construe it as cowardice, people-pleasing, and privilege.  It is possible that at times I am not forceful enough with young men and women who are still "stuck" in certain patterns of thinking and behavior; then again, I know plenty of colleagues of mine who scare off potential converts.  This much I am certain of:  no one who teaches this subject has anything like a 100% success rate in raising up young feminists and pro-feminists!  We are all struggling, as best we can (in the trenches) to carry out the feminist version of the Great Commission: to convey the message that women are full and complete human beings, radically equal to men in every imaginable respect.  We who teach and lead will all have our sucesses and our failures, and we do well to always be alert to new and possibly more productive strategies for achieving our goals.

I’ve got another post in mind about the way in which my writing seems to infuriate my potential allies, but that’s for later.

Some thoughts on pro-feminism, young men, and always taking women’s emotional temperature

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 6, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Relationships, Sexuality and Youth
. 94 Comments

It’s election day in California, my endorsements here.

I had a visit last week from a fella who was in my women’s studies class a couple of semesters ago, and is now a student in another one of my courses.  I’ll call him "Pete"; he’s a regular reader of this blog and gave me permission to blog about our conversation.

Pete came to my office to ask me about pro-feminism.  He’s 20, bright, articulate, handsome, a native of Pasadena of Greek descent.  I’ll try and paraphrase what he said and asked:

I’m really struggling with whether or not I want to be a feminist man.  I get that injustice and inequality exist, but at the same time, I don’t know why I have to get involved in this now, when I’m so young. Didn’t you, Hugo, take a long time to match your language and your life?

Darn it all, Pete reads this blog.  And he’s right — when I was 20, I claimed to be a male feminist, but my feminism was shallow to the core.  It’s tough to challenge young men to be at their age what I most certainly wasn’t until much, much later!

The thing is,Pete continued, I don’t think girls want feminist guys!  You know that whole thing where girls aren’t into nice guys but would rather have bad boys?  It’s like they say they want one thing, but in reality they want another.  If I want to meet girls and have fun, I have a lot more success when I don’t try and be pro-feminist.  I mean, why should I be more feminist than the women around me?

I hear this from guys like Pete a great deal.  I had a female friend in college who was an ardent feminist, yet admitted that she wasn’t sexually drawn to most pro-feminist men.  "Jackie" acknowledged an inconsistency that I’ve come to see in a number of other younger feminist women — an intellectual desire to be in an egalitarian relationship, but a strong physical and emotional attraction to men who were more dominant and, to put it mildly, much less feminist.   Jackie always said she wanted to marry a pro-feminist man someday, but until then, she was going to have her fun with men she referred to as "dangerous assholes who turn me on." 

When I was in college, I knew a lot of women like Jackie.  They haven’t disappeared from the ranks of the younger generation, either.  This is what Pete was complaining about — among his peers, he found relatively few women who seemed to want feminist men, and more who seemed drawn to the alpha male "bad boy."  Pete told me that he had the capacity to be either at any time, but it seemed pointless to work on being a feminist when living up to pro-feminist principles didn’t seem to him to be an effective strategy for connecting with women.  Pete asked:

Why shouldn’t I wait to be a pro-feminist man until I’m older, when women will appreciate it?  Why shouldn’t I be a player now, and have my fun?

I laughed gently, and reminded Pete of Augustine’s famous plea:  "Give me continence, Lord, but not yet!"  Pete got it, and chuckled too.

Of course, I did tell Pete that the purpose of becoming a pro-feminist man is not to please women or to "get" women into bed.  Indeed, doing so only reinforces the worst stereotypes about male feminists!   I know countless folks who suspect that pro-feminist men are simply "wolves in sheep’s clothing", looking for a new and effective strategy for seducing women.  Indeed, when pro-feminist men aren’t being told that we’re gay, or filled with self-hatred, we’re frequently accused of being predatory frauds.  I reminded Pete that I hadn’t tried to sell pro-feminism as a "tool" for using and exploiting women.

What I did suggest to Pete was that he consider the possibility that what was really attractive to women wasn’t necessarily the "bad boy", but the confident man.  One of the worst stereotypes of pro-feminist men — one that may have a small grain of truth — is that many pro-feminist guys are timid.  My cousin Dinah put it beautifully years ago:  "I really hate it when nice guys are always trying to take my emotional temperature! It’s like, stop asking me what I want all the time and be an equal partner in decision making!"

In the early stages of embracing pro-feminism, too many young men (including my younger self) tend to walk on eggshells around women.  These young men are idealistic, and intensely eager to reject traditional male privilege and modes of behavior.  But the end result, all too often, is a most unattractive kind of indecisiveness!   I went through a period in my own life where I figured my job as a pro-feminist was to always, always, always, ask a woman what she wanted.  "Where do you want to go to dinner?"   "Are you feeling okay?"  "Is there anything I can do for you?"  "Would you like to talk about it?"  While showing concern for another person’s feelings is appropriate, it’s all too easy for insecure "newbie" pro-feminist men to drive women stark raving bonkers by, as cousin Dinah said, constantly trying to take a woman’s emotional temperature.   Constant, anxious solicitousness is not, um, sexy.

The most difficult thing about being a young pro-feminist man isn’t just practicing one’s feminist principles in all aspects of one’s life, though that sure as heck is difficult enough.  I told Pete last week that I’d found that the most difficult thing to do was to become clear on the difference between an attractive and compelling confidence and a privileged arrogance.  Pro-feminism is not about turning men into eager and attentive servants or rescuing knights in shining armor. It’s possible to learn to renounce male privilege while retaining a strong, bold, sense of oneself.  Sometimes, in other words, a pro-feminist man can make decisions.  As Jackie put it, "I don’t want a man to always ask me where I want to go to dinner — sometimes I want a man confident enough to pick the damn restaurant on his own."

In the end, I told Pete, there’s more to life as a man than choosing between being a wimp or a jerk!  Pro-feminism, at its best, is not "wimpy."  Indeed, it’s intensely courageous, as it involves the conscious and public refusal to live up to what our culture traditionally demands of men.  It also demands that men stand up to other men, challenging their sexism even when no women are around.  As most young guys will tell you, there aren’t many things that are scarier than speaking up against misogyny when in an all-male group.  Any young man who can do that is doing something exceptionally brave and impressive.

Pro-feminism asks men to ask hard questions of themselves and the culture. It asks young men to hold themselves accountable; it asks young men to see women as human beings.  But it doesn’t ask young men to be anxious people-pleasers.  People-pleasing, after all, is cowardly and manipulative.  An aspiring pro-feminist man still gets to express his desires and his wants; he doesn’t get to keep a sense of entitlement that tells him that women exist only to meet those desires and wants.

I don’t know how much Pete got out of our conversation, but when he left, he said "Hugo, thanks.  I know I’m going to be a pro-feminist — soon.  But not just yet."  I laughed and told him "One day at a time, buddy, one day at a time."

Six questions, six answers on feminist men

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 31, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Men's Movement
. 30 Comments

Someone named the "Questioner" (perhaps a troll, perhaps not) wrote me a couple of weeks ago, asking me to comment on this post from Janice at Girlbomb: Feminist Men: Oxymorons or Simply Morons?  The post begins:

… most of the men I’ve personally known who have made a huge hairy point of identifying as feminists have been either date rapists, mom fetishists, porn addicts, or bear daddies inflicting their frustrated pseudopaternal tendencies on women. They are some of the most passive-aggressive, patronizing, out-dishing without it-taking twerps on the planet, and they are poisoning the women’s movement from the inside by sapping the hell out of everyone’s goddamn energy.

She then goes on to provide several examples. Questioner asks six questions of me about Janice’s post, and because they touch on several important issues, I’m going to respond to them.

1. Do you think that Janice’s post transgresses the bounds of reasonableness at all? Why or why not? Should we take her words seriously, or should we react with a good-natured chuckle and say that she didn’t mean what she said?

Well, not all blog posts are meant to be "reasonable."  Janice — who is a well-known blogger in the feminist ’sphere — makes it clear that she’s reacting with a certain amount of frustration.  Note that she doesn’t say "all male feminists are bad" — she refers only to the ones she’s personally known.  I’ve known a few guys who are very much like the sort she identifies in her (often funny) post; I hope that she does meet a broader array of pro-feminist men.

2. Do you think having opinions like these damages Janice’s feminist credentials or does it enhance them? Can you explain why?

No one issues feminist credentials. In fact, I’m asking everyone to join me in forgoing the use of the phrase "feminist credentials."

3. If you were to make a post on your blog in which you said that all the female feminists you know are morons and bitches, would that get a warm reception? Would you get agreement and encouraging words from your feminist friends? Would it be considered a cute joke which would be greeted with a good-natured chuckle? Or do you think your reputation would be damaged somewhat?

Oh, I’m sure I’d get a very negative response, and deservedly so.  But it’s not the same thing!  A woman calling a man a bitch is a very different thing than a man calling a woman a bitch; the latter is part of a long history of misogyny; the former is a relatively recent phenomenon.  We have to judge words by their power to hurt. 

4. Do you think that it’s possible for the feminist movement to make any progress if it’s OK– applauded, even– to call male feminists nasty names? Why or why not? How many male feminists do you think would feel welcome when they are confronted with opinions like Janice’s?

Well, I responded to Janice’s post — which I only just now read — with a sense of frustration. No, I don’t like some of the language she chooses to use.  No, I don’t agree that all male feminists are frauds or narcissists or predators.  But an authentic pro-feminist man doesn’t demand to be treated as "innocent until proven guilty."  Given the state of sexual relations in this country, pro-feminist men ought to be willing to be considered "guilty until proven innocent."  I wrote here and here on this topic almost two years ago. Let me quote myself:

"I can rail against the "unfairness" of judging me by the poor behavior of other men, but in this culture, that’s fruitless. As men, we do have to accept the fact that collectively, we have given good reason why it is that we ought not to be trusted — above all in the sexual realm. We can bemoan the injustice of paying for the sins of others, or we can shoulder the burden that our brothers have created for us (and that perhaps, in our own lives, we have helped to create). What that means practically is that I am committed to meeting suspicion with patience, openness, and accountability. I’m no longer hurt when folks don’t trust me just because I’m a man — I accept now that they have every reason not to."

5. Can you see why some people would get the impression that there’s a double-standard existing within feminism? Do you feel that their perceptions are delusional or do you feel that their opinions might have a factual basis to them?

Of course, I’m sympathetic to those who do see a double-standard. And yes, there are some feminist voices out there that are, in fact, unreasonable and unkind.  Contrary to what my MRA critics believe, I don’t believe that every single feminist blogger is always right and reasonable.  After all, if we’re going to acknowledge that feminism is about the radical notion that women are human beings, then we have to acknowledge that even the best feminists will, at times, say some intemperate and hurtful things.  But what happens, all too often, is that folks focus in on a few angry or sarcastic voices and ignore the vast majority of thoughtful, articulate, and open-minded writers in the feminist blogosphere.

6. Can feminism realistically expect to widen its appeal if outsiders see double-standards? Do you see this as a stumbling block to the feminist movement’s effectiveness as an agent of social change?

Every movement for social justice is accused of having double standards and of not doing enough to broaden its appeal.  Look, in the feminist world there are many different people doing many different things.  Some folks do theory; some folks do outreach; some folks do biting social commentary. Some of what is written is written for "insiders" — and some is written in the spirit of evangelism.  I suspect that the Girlbomb piece was the former.

What bugs me about a few pro-feminist men I’ve known is that they sometimes expect to be showered with praise merely for not being stereotypical sexist jerks.  Newsflash, my brothers:  we earn trust through the good we do, not just the bad things we don’t.  I’ve had male students in my women’s studies class who expected gold stars merely for showing up.  I’ve had men say "I’m a feminist man because I don’t use porn or hit my girlfriend — that’s enough isn’t it?"  Uh, no.   A great many women in the feminist movement have personal experiences of frustration and betrayal with men who appeared to be sympathetic allies, but whose "walk" didn’t match the "talk."  Being an authentic pro-feminist man means doing more than whining about "lack of trust", and it means doing more than just showing up in feminist spaces. It means committing oneself to surrendering privilege, it means doing a lot of listening, and it certainly means challenging other men.

Do I recognize myself in Janice’s piece?  No, I don’t.  And I don’t think I recognize most of the men who have inspired me in my pro-feminist work. But are there guys out there who are the walking embodiment of what she finds so exasperating and hypocritical?  You betcha.

More on men, women, hazing, and why we should avert our gaze

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 22, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Porn, Sexuality, Sports and Youth
. 16 Comments

Third post of this birthday day.

I’ve posted both here and at Inside Higher Ed on the brouhaha over women’s sports teams and hazing. I’d like to revisit two other aspects of the issue.

On Friday, Jill linked to this dreadful Kathryn Jean Lopez essay at National Review Online.  Lopez reacts to the news that Catholic University of America’s women’s lacrosse team has also had its hazing rituals revealed in online photos:

Young men shouldn’t be getting sloppy drunk and doing childish things and paying for a stripper. But young women really shouldn’t. There is something more disconcerting about the latter—and it is even more disturbing that we won’t all have that reaction. It’s not beyond the call of duty for women to encourage men to be gentlemen. It’s women’s work.   (Bold is mine)

Jill takes that apart very well, but I’m going to add my two cents.

The notion that women ought to hold themselves to a higher standard than men is a profoundly upsetting one to those of us who care deeply about issues of faith, feminism, and gender.  Jill, and other articulate feminists, rightly point out that making young women responsible for civilizing men is a cruel burden to impose on women.  But of course, what’s also so infuriating is the implication that men can’t be civilized and restrained without the active intervention of women.

A key thrust of the pro-feminist men’s movement (a movement to which I happily belong) is to empower men to escape the "myth of male weakness" (the notion that at their core, men are sex-crazed brutes who need women to soothe, nurture, and restrain us.)  In my life, one of the most liberating discoveries of all was the discovery that I could control my actions, and I could challenge other men in all-male settings to hold themselves accountable.  It’s a fine thing indeed to discover that possessing a penis (even an erect one) does not vitiate the ability to reason, nor does a rush of testosterone automatically override compassion and common sense!

The CUA lacrosse team hired a male stripper (photos are on the internet to prove it).  So too did the Duke men’s lacrosse team, with infamous results.  But the two actions aren’t comparable, largely because of the enormously reduced threat to a male stripper as opposed to his female coutnerpart.  Zuzu writes below Jill’s post:

The dynamic is very different than when you have a bunch of men hiring a female stripper. There’s no expectation of sexual acts with the stripper for a little extra cash, for example, and the fun is in being naughty with your friends and letting loose for once, with no men around but the bouncers and the stripper. There’s no real menace, because no matter how much they’re whooping and hollering and drinking, women aren’t going to, say, gang-rape a male stripper. Even if he does a little lap-dance type of thing for you, the goal is not for you to get off; the goal is for you to have fun (and for your friends to have fun watching you).

That’s exactly right. I don’t want anyone hiring strippers, period.  But I’m not going to pretend that what the CUA women’s lacrosse team did is remotely equivalent to what the Duke men’s team.  Zuzu’s right: women don’t rape male strippers.  The man may take off his clothes for money, but he can be reasonably certain he won’t be forcibly violated.  And though some women may respond sexually to his gyrations, the real pleasure for most young women in hiring a man to strip is in the role reversal.   Look at the faces of men watching a woman strip — the men look hungry.  Look at the faces of women watching a man strip — they’re contorted with often hysterical laughter.  There’s often a sordid, deadly seriousness beneath the raucousness when a group of men watch a naked woman dance for them; there’s usually a kind of embarrassed silliness among the women when a man in a thong cavorts in front of them.

Lopez has it exactly backwards.  While I don’t want any college team stripping or hiring strippers as part of an initiation ritual or celebration, I think that it’s far worse when men do so. It’s not that I hold men to a higher standard — it’s that the threat of potential violence and violation is infinitely greater to a female stripper with a male audience than with a male stripper in front of a female audience.  Young men worthy of carrying the name of their university on their chests or backs ought to know this well enough, and college administrators — and conservative pundits — would do well to keep this in mind.

I also want to reiterate my strong feeling that we shouldn’t be looking at the photos circulating on the internet from these parties.  Inside Higher Ed (as well as most other websites and many national papers) already linked to the site, and thus I mentioned it in the version of the post I wrote for that webpage.  But I’m not linking to any of the pictures here.  I’ve seen a few of them — once. And there are numerous photos available on the web and linked to by major publications that I have avoided viewing.  And I am adamant that I think we should all avert our gaze from these photos.  The people who snapped these pictures of young people in various states of undress and intoxication did upload them to various photo-sharing communities.  But they never intended the photos to be discussed, analyzed, and quite possibly drooled over by millions of folks across the country.

Of course the young people involved should have known better.  Yet I suspect that many of the young women involved in the most noteworthy of the hazing incidents,that of the Northwestern soccer team, had no way of stopping the photos from being taken.  (When you’re being hazed, how do you tell the juniors and seniors who are running the show not to take a picture of you drunk and in your underwear?)  But even if they put the photos up there deliberately and intentionally, even if they want us to look, we still shouldn’t.

I wrote in February that I gave up my Myspace account for many reasons, not the least of which that I thought it was inappropriate that I be exposed to the (frequently) revealing and embarrassing photos that teenagers post of themselves on that site.   I understand the temptation that young people feel to share their amusing, silly, and mildly shocking pictures with their friends and the broader world.  But I know full well that what one considers funny and daring when one is 18 and smashed may be humiliating and painful at 28 — or heck, even the next day when sobriety arrives with a brutal reality check.  Those of us who ARE old enough to know better must do more than simply shake our heads and bemoan the poor judgment of "kids these days."  Yes, we need to mentor and counsel and supervise.  But we also need to avert our eyes, both out of a healthy and loving respect for the young people involved as well as out of a sense of what is healthy and good for us to see. I don’t need to see a photo of some eighteen year-old soccer player giving a drunken lap dance in her bra and panties — and I’m pretty damn sure that given the time to reflect on it, she doesn’t want the likes of me to see that picture either.  Out of respect for both of us, I’m not going there.

And yeah, I don’t think of any of you should be going there either.

Boxing, MRAs, priorities

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 28, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Athletics and Fitness, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and Vanity
. 48 Comments

North Carolina beat Tennessee.  Darn it all.  My women’s bracket is now nearly wiped out; please, Lord, let Duke beat UConn.

A friend points me to the ultra-MRA lads at the Nice Guys Forum; they’re all very confused that I’ve started boxing.  In their infinite spare time, they’ve devoted a thread to me.  One of them writes:

All of that being said, I think I saw somewhere that Hugo was either considering practicing boxing or actually doing it. As someone who has sparred in contact fighting (including Thai boxing and grappling) I find it rather strange on his part. I though he criticized ‘traditional’ male activities like that . . . oh well.

Deal with it, fellas!  Really, I’ve been loving the boxing, though I still have a long way to go in learning technique.  My trainer Pepe has been amazing — in two months, he’s begun to transform my body and my skills.  Increasingly, I’m comfortable about the idea of hitting another human being without intending to hurt them.   If I think of boxing as "scoring points", I can imagine myself sparring with others without abrogating my commitment to non-violence. 

When I hit the bag, or my trainer’s mitts, I’m not fantasizing about hurting people. I’m not venting or letting out anger. When I started all of this training, I worried that it might make me more aggressive, or at least encourage violent daydreams.  (I’ve posted about this in an explanation of why I stay away from video games).  Happily, boxing three mornings a week with Pep leaves me tired but peaceful. I feel more in tune with my body than I have in a long time, and I rejoice in that.

When I add up how much money my wife and I spend on things like Pilates sessions and gym memberships and private boxing lessons, it’s a considerable expense. (And I’m about to add yoga into the mix.)  I go through a pair of running shoes every six to eight weeks. And yet, we don’t spend much on our cars.  I don’t spend anything on alcohol, because I don’t drink and my wife has only a rare glass of wine.  We don’t own a stereo system.  I have no idea what a Blackberry really does, or what Bluetooth is. Our TV is adequate, but unimpressive.  I have zero interest in spending much on entertainment, and realize that the amount of money I spend each week on working out is no more than some of my friends spend on going out.  We all have our priorities, I suppose!

I’ve got some more thoughts on immigration coming tomorrow.  And a long post about masturbation percolating in my head too, though that may wait a day or two.  And one about the first woman priest I knew well.  Sigh.  And now I’ve got dinner to make and a chinchilla to entertain and a wife to embrace — and I’m getting up at 4:30 tomorrow morning to go hit things before the sun comes up.

On cocktail parties and men’s work

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2006
in Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and Teaching
. 23 Comments

Last night, I was at a very large party.  My wife and I sat down with a young married couple ("Keith" and "Ali") whom we know vaguely, and we had an animated group conversation.  When our wives excused themselves to make a trip to the restroom, Keith and I chatted. 

"So what do you teach?", he asked.

"History and gender studies", I replied.

"What sort of gender studies?"

"Well, I teach women’s history and a course on men and masculinity."

As I’ve seen happen so many times before in similar conversations with men, Keith shifted from a slightly distant politeness to genuine curiosity.

"Men and masculinity?  What’s that about?"

So I told him:  "It’s a course about how ideas of manhood have been constructed in America over the past four centuries.   While other history courses discuss what men have done, we try and explore who men are and how they have come to be that way."

Keith and I weren’t able to talk for long, but I admit that I was pleased, as I always am, when I see genuine curiosity from another man about the study of masculinity.  Keith knew that women’s studies courses existed, but like so many men, had never considered the idea that manhood itself had a history that could be studied.  As I told him, "We discuss all of the things that men take for granted about their lives; rather than accept that ‘men are the way they are’, we ask how they came to be that way."  Keith and I weren’t able to talk much longer before we had to make our rounds to visit with other folks at the party, but I hope to talk with him again. 

Some folks tend to assume that I’m awfully hard on the other men in my life.  Given that I have often blogged about the importance of male transformation, they may assume I hector the boys with whom I work and nag the men who are my friends.  As one commenter said a long time ago, "I bet Hugo is like the ultimate sexism cop, writing tickets whenever a guy says anything Hugo thinks he shouldn’t."  It’s an amusing if stereotypical image of a male feminist, and it certainly isn’t accurate.

With my students in my gender studies classes, I can directly address issues of masculinity, privilege, and patriarchy.  With my male friends (and new acquaintances like "Keith" whom I encounter at cocktail parties), I don’t lecture.  Usually, I try and ask questions about their own lives.  The single best way to begin a serious talk with another man about sexism is to ask him what he was taught as a child about what a "man ought to be."  I’ve listened to countless stories about overbearing fathers, absent fathers, loving and attentive fathers; I’ve listened to stories about athletic achievements and failures; story after story about how my brothers tried to "prove" and demonstrate their masculine bona fides when they were young.

I’ve been on a great many all-male retreats.  I’ve been to a Promise Keepers meeting or two.  I’ve done a fair amount of anti-sexist work with other pro-feminist men.  And if there’s one commonality that ties all of these diverse men’s groups together, it’s the central importance of storytelling.  Whether the goal is to make men better Christians or better pro-feminists or better fathers or more effective advocates for men’s rights, all of us who do men’s work agree that we have to begin by sharing our stories of growing up male — what we learned, how we lived up and failed to live up to the ideals with which we were raised.  And though so many men are initially reluctant to tell these stories, time and again I’ve seen how the words (and sometimes, the tears and the rage) pour out when guys finally believe that they can share freely without being judged.

Though I love working with women’s groups, I find men’s work more challenging and ultimately more rewarding.  This does not mean that I don’t take feminism seriously!  But it’s often easier, because of acculturation, to get women talking about sexism.  Asking women to share their stories doesn’t challenge their preconceived notions of what it means to be feminine in quite the same way.  In this culture, getting men to open up one-on-one or in single-sex groups is usually more difficult.  I like that challenge!  I also recognize that I’m a man, and though I’m a pro-feminist one, I’m still living life incarnate as a male.  Thus I do think I have a special obligation to reach out to the extraordinary number of men I know or meet (like "Keith") who have never been given the chance to think critically about their own manhood.  "Thinking critically" doesn’t mean developing a case of masculine self-loathing; rather, it means examining one’s own tacit assumptions about what it means to be a man, and, more importantly, sharing honestly how it feels to struggle to live up to what is ultimately an elusive if not entirely unattainable ideal.

The goal of pro-feminist men’s work — and the reason I want to inspire men to do it — isn’t just to make the world better for women.  Creating a safer world for women and girls is of course a vital part of what we’re doing, but it’s not the only reason.   The real reason I feel so evangelically passionate about men’s work is that I want to help my brothers become more fully and passionately human.  It’s not that they are all "bad" as they are — it’s that traditional American masculinity leaves little room for men to become full and complete human beings.  Too many men my age (late thirties) are leading the lives of "quiet desperation" that Thoreau wrote of a century and a half ago.  Too many feel consumed by the "shoulds" and the "have-tos" of their lives; too many feel lost; too many anesthetize themselves with overwork and pornography and (grim flash of self-recognition) constant exercise. 

We don’t need to sit around and tell each other "We’re fine the way we are."  Nor do we need to beat ourselves up for our real and imagined shortcomings.   What men’s work asks us to do is tell our real stories.  It asks us to be honest about the source of the pressures and anxieties so many of us feel and too few of us articulate.  And once we’ve laid the truth out on the table, men’s work invites us to support each other in taking positive action to change our lives and to change the world in which we live.   But we can’t move directly to the action without first telling each other the truth.  And at its core, the goal of all men’s work is to help men do just that.

I’m hoping to have lunch with Keith sometime soon.

“What I’m doing and what I have failed to do”: a long and personal meme on anti-sexist work

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2006
in Feminism, Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Porn and Teaching
. 14 Comments

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day.   Appropriately, the latest Carnival of the Feminists is up with many good things to read.   It’s also been declared "Blog Against Sexism" day, and I intend to do my part this morning;  let me first also recommend the "grid blog" against sexism at Thursday PM.

I’ve been getting a lot of queries recently about my use of the term "pro-feminist", as well as other terms from the broad men’s movement.  I tried to post a summary of the various strands of the men’s movement back in June 2004, and I still think it’s a fairly good thumbnail sketch of what I believe to be the "four branches".

As a man who teaches women’s studies as well as courses on men and masculinity, I have a personal and professional interest in the struggle against sexism.  As I was thinking about what topic to blog on for today, I thought about a general re-hashing of my oft-repeated views on the role of men in the broader struggle for gender justice.  Somehow, everything that popped into my head seemed hackneyed; I didn’t want to write another long post in which I called once again upon my brothers to be "visible allies" in the fight against sexism.  I’m sure I’ll write such a post again in the future, just because I tend (like most teachers) to repeat myself every term!  But I’m not in the mood on this Wednesday.

Years and years in what is generally called "recovery", combined with many years in countless Christian small groups as well as many wonderful spiritual retreats, have led me to always frame discussions about sexism (or any other social evil) in terms of what I — and other individuals — can do.  Maybe it’s just what my Marxist friends would call "bourgeois navel-gazing" (a charge to which I have gleefully plead guilty lo these many years!)  Useful or no, I want to ask two questions this morning of my readers, and of myself:

1.  What are three ways in which I (you) am (are) working to end sexism in your personal life and in the broader world?

2.  What are three ways in which I (you) am (are) continuing to "fall short of the mark" in terms of embodying your ideals?

You can have a go in the comments section.

I could answer the first question by proudly trumpeting the number of courses I teach from a pro-feminist perspective; I could boast of my volunteer work with boys and girls at All Saints Pasadena, and the anti-sexist lessons I teach ‘em.  But that would be too easy to write about, and y’all have heard it all before.  Here’s what comes to mind for me in terms of the steps I’m actively taking today:

1.  In my marriage, I’m constantly thinking of ways to push myself out of my culturally determined comfort zone.  Like so many men, I have to fight the overwhelming cultural and psychological forces that want me to treat my wife like my mother.  I am convinced that one of the most essential things that heterosexual men can do — as part of anti-sexist work as well as just plain growin’ up — is not play any part in creating a mother-son dynamic within their relationships with their lovers and wives.   One of the nastiest things about sexism is that it teaches us to see men and women largely in terms of specific, prescribed roles that they fulfill.    Wives must resist the urge to mother their husbands, because when they do so, they rob their husbands of the chance to develop the vital skill of learning to soothe themselves; husbands must resist the urge to defer and accept the lie that men are "domestically incompetent".  Even after years and years of counseling and study and work, after several marriages and a couple of conversions, I still must be vigilant not to give into the temptation to play the part of a little boy who wants his mommy.  And from what I hear from the women in my life, I know damned well I’m not the only guy who has to fight this tendency — but fight it I am.   My credentials — indeed, my usefulness to the struggle — hinges on it.

2.  I am living out my commitment to stay away from pornography and the rest of the sex industry.  We’ve debated porn many times on this blog; I remain firmly in the anti-porn camp.   I don’t believe that one can simultaneously fight against sexism in one’s public life while commoditizing women’s bodies in one’s private fantasies.  None of us compartmentalize as well as we imagine; no man can, I believe, seamlessly transition from masturbating in front of his computer to images of "exploited teens" to seeing his female co-workers, students, bosses, friends, and lovers as full and complete human beings with needs and desires of their own.   Most of the men I know use Internet porn, or have used it in the past and given it up. Some of those who still use it do so openly and proudly; a few even insist that lusting over images of the young and the economically vulnerable is not inconsistent with pro-feminist commitments!  One of my goals is to not only continue to stay away from pornography myself, but to couch an anti-porn message in a way that will more effectively resonate with the young men and women with whom I work. 

3.  I’m committed to expanding the network of people to whom I am accountable for my spiritual growth and my anti-sexist actions. Yes, I’m an extrovert.  But regardless of our personalities, I think we all need other folks to inspire us, to encourage us, to challenge us. My wife is a tremendous resource in my life, and I have many other men and women to whom I turn with a variety of issues and concerns.   But I’ve slipped a little bit recently.  I learned years ago that healthy growth required that I talk to three types of people a week: older and more experienced folks who could role model for me what I hoped to become: peers who are going through my same set of experiences; younger people for whom I can be a role model.  This is a good practice in recovery, in Christian community — and in anti-sexist work.  I’m great at working with peers and kids — I need to recruit some solid older advisers into my camp to kick my butt a bit.

Whew.  Still reading?

Three ways in which I’m falling short of the mark:

1.  I have the most remarkable difficulty controlling my mouth.  I don’t use sexist profanity, but dang it all, I often find myself calling every  man "buddy" and every woman "darlin’" or "sweetie." (Yesterday, I did it to one of my female colleagues in the hallway: "Hey, babe, what’s up?"  This colleague and I are good friends and both tenured as equals, but to use that kind of familiar language in front of our students was, well, unacceptable.)  I’ve never had a complaint, and no, I don’t do it in the classroom; but honestly, it still comes out in some whoppingly inappropriate places.  I do it, of course, as a shortcut to good-humored intimacy.  I need to work on some more lovingly gender-neutral ways of creating that!

2.  I’m still struggling with my tendency to protect women.  I’ve posted about this habit before; many men come to pro-feminism because they see anti-sexist work as a modern and enlightened way of living out a "knight-in-shining armor" fantasy!  Even though I know that’s the number one classic pitfall for pro-feminist men, darn it all, I still find myself thinking in ways that are more chivalrous than egalitarian.  As a result, I end up minimizing women’s agency and autonomy — the exact opposite of my intentions!

3.  In my classes and in my assigned readings, I still tend to teach women’s studies from a white middle-class perspective. That doesn’t mean I don’t talk more and more each year about issues affecting non-white women; it does mean however that I still see those issues as additions to the curriculum rather than the foundations of the curriculum.  I still focus the contemporary portions of my course on issues of body image, the media, sexuality, and the struggle to balance career and motherhood.  Too often, what we read and discuss about these issues is overwhelmingly from a white, middle-class female perspective.   I need to do more than just throw in some token readings from the perspective of radical women of color; I need to rebuild my syllabus from the ground up. I’ve been saying I’m gonna do it for years, and I haven’t done it yet.  Now, I’m letting you all know I need to get off my butt and get crackin’ on creating a more inclusive course.

So there they are: three things I’m doing, and three things I need to work on still, not just in the fight for women’s equality, but in the even larger struggle to build a kinder, more just, more loving world.  If you feel inspired, share your lists.

A long post on youth ministry, accountability, and fearless loving in a climate of suspicion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 3, 2006