Archive for the 'Relationships' Category

“Bowflex Boy” and Kristy McNichol: desire, celebrity, and the sexiness of earthy reality

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 27, 2008
in Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Mass media, Memories, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 5 Comments

There’s been an interesting discussion going on beneath this post at Feministe. As part of a riposte to some rather silly criticism of Third Wave, sex-positive feminism, Jill last week put up a number of pictures of hot shirtless men. (It’s reasonably work-safe to visit.)

Some commenters (both men and women) criticized the decision to put up the photos. They asked the usual questions: isn’t it reflective of a double standard if we denounce men for objectifying a narrow range of beautiful women, while celebrating when a feminist woman posts pictures of handsome, ripped, relatively young men? Isn’t it problematic to celebrate a narrow ideal when we live in a culture in which body dysmorphia and self-loathing is rising dramatically in the male population?

Jill responds to the criticism in this comment. When the question of poor male self-image is raised, some commenters leap in to make the perfectly legitimate case that all things considered, women today suffer far more from a culture that fetishizes a very narrow notion of perfection. That’s true enough, but the damage done to young men by our contemporary ideal of the “cut, be-sixpacked” physique is very real.

But this post is not an attempt to revive some sort of suffering Olympics discussion about male v. female body image issues. Rather, I’ve been thinking about something I learned twenty years ago about desire, the ideal, and insecurity. In college, I lived for a while in a co-op on the northside of the Berkeley campus. There were 37 of us in the house, nearly as many women as men. One of my best female friends in the house lived in a “single”, and I often visited with her in her room. (I had a triple for most of my time in the co-op). Debbie had a huge poster on her wall — an ad for the “Bowflex Man.” If you remember the ’80s, you remember the ad. I’ve done a Google image search, and can’t find it, but the picture is indelibly carved on my brain. A young, dark-haired man is pulling off his white t-shirt, lifting his arms over his shoulders. His body beneath is tanned and spectacularly toned. A Bowflex machine is in the background. Half the dorm rooms on campus seemed to have this picture up; it was more popular than that college staple, Robert Doisneau’s kissing Parisian street couple.

Anyhow, Debbie had this picture in her room, over her bed. At one point, Debbie and I made a brief attempt at a romantic relationship. It lasted only a few weeks before we realized we were better off as friends. But I remember that when I was naked in her bed the first time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of masculine perfection just inches away. I was not terribly out of shape in college, but in both color and texture was a bit doughy around my middle. I certainly wasn’t “Bow-flex boy”. And after we had finished fooling around, as we lay in her very narrow single bed, I made a rather joking, obviously insecure remark. It’s been more than twenty years, so I don’t remember exactly how I put it, but it was something like “I can’t believe you want to be with me when you’ve got this guy to look at.” Continue reading ‘“Bowflex Boy” and Kristy McNichol: desire, celebrity, and the sexiness of earthy reality’

Making the decision: more on men, women, and waiting to be struck by certainty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 8, 2008
in Relationships
. 34 Comments

A former student of mine, “Ruth”, writes in:

When you are dating someone and want to “take it to the next
level” and be in a commited relationship and the other person claims to
not be “ready right now,” but yet still wants you in their life
romantically, is it wiser to assume that the person is simply “not that
into you” and move on? It’s a loaded question, I know. But my take on
it is that, when you feel strongly enough for someone the question of whether
or not you are “ready” goes out the window. Other people have told
me, it’s not so black and white, that you can have deep feelings for
someone and the timing can be off to where it’s just not the “right
time.” Others argue, that everyone is different and for some people it
takes a little more time to make the call as to whether or not they want to put
forth the energy into actually being in a relationship with someone. Is giving
another person time so bad? I mean, when there is nothing to lose? In the
initial stages of courtship, isn’t one person more engaged in it then the
other?

Ruth has been seeing this lad since October of last year, and describes the attraction between the two of them as deep, strong, and multi-faceted. But Ruth is readier for an enduring commitment than he is, and wants to know if “waiting it out” is wise.

A reluctance to commit to a monogamous relationship can, of course, stem from many factors. One plausible explanation is, indeed, that he (or, in some instances, she) is “just not that into you.” But that’s not, in my experience, the most common explanation for a refusal to pledge monogamy or to move towards whatever the “next level” of commitment may be.

As I’ve written before, we live in a culture where young men are encouraged to “wait to be struck by certainty.” In other words, we discourage men in particular from making any enduring commitments until they are “absolutely sure” that they are doing the right thing. Because even now, we push romantic myths much more strongly onto our daughters, young women are, generally speaking, more likely to believe that they are “sure” sooner than the men they’re dating. What we forget is a simple truism: certainty is rarely a predicate to action, but rather a consequence. Put simply, we frequently only become certain about a relationship as a result of making the commitment. If we wait for certainty as a condition for making a commitment, we may wait in vain. (I’ve got a book proposal out there that makes this point in considerably more detail.) Continue reading ‘Making the decision: more on men, women, and waiting to be struck by certainty’

Of sacrifice and growth: an argument in favor of long-distance relationships for college students

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 26, 2008
in Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Youth
. 16 Comments

I had coffee this week with one of the girls from my old youth group at All Saints church. “Brynne” has just finished up her junior year, and in the past few months, has started dating “Scott”, who is a year older and has just graduated. Scott is off to university in the fall, hundreds of miles away.

In many senses of the term, Scott is Brynne’s “first.” He’s the first guy she’s ever fallen in love with, certainly, and before they started dating this spring, they had been friends for two years, since they first met in youth group. I know Scott almost as well as I know Brynne: he is a remarkable young man, outgoing and ambitious and passionate. These two teens, so bright and sensitive and driven, are as near-to-perfect for each other as could be.

When we met at Starbucks, however, Brynne was anxious. Practically the first words out of her mouth to me were “September 18!” I asked what that date meant, and she explained that that was the day Scott was heading off to college. “It’s less than three months away”, she said, “and I don’t know what’s going to happen.” As we talked further, Brynne made it clear that both she and Scott had talked about wanting to stay together in a committed relationship after he goes off to university. “I know that’s what I want”, Brynne told me. “I also know it’s what Scott says he wants, and I believe him — now. But I don’t want to be the reason why he misses out on ‘college’ experiences, you know? I don’t want to be this stupid high school girl who is his ball-and-chain preventing him from having fun. Sometimes I think we should just break up, as much as that would suck, just so he could be ‘free’”.

In my role as a youth group leader and mentor, there are few questions I get asked more often than the one about the viability and wisdom of long-distance relationship. “Should we break up or stay together?” is a query I get every year, usually in the summer as a couple moves inexorably towards autumn’s physical separation. I never answer the question definitively, because each situation is in some sense unique, and each couple’s set of abilities and desires is different. But if I have a bias, and based on my own experience and that of a great many people I’ve worked with over many years I do have one, it is towards saying that yes, a couple that is in love ought to make an effort to stay together when separated by different colleges.

I asked Brynne: “What sort of experiences do you think Scott would miss out on because of being in a long-distance relationship with you?” She winced a bit, and I pressed on: “Is he going to miss out on great classes? Miss out on joining the right club or fraternity? Miss out on making great friends? Miss out on learning to surf, skydive, or mountain bike?” Brynne laughed, saying “That’s not what I mean.” “I know”, I said, “you’re worried he’s going to miss out on the chance to ‘be with’ new people, with other girls”. She nodded. Continue reading ‘Of sacrifice and growth: an argument in favor of long-distance relationships for college students’

“Scrubbing the calendars of every conceivable risk”: Carolyn Hax on trust and fidelity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 18, 2008
in Friendship, Marriage, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 8 Comments

Leslie very kindly sends me a link to this Carolyn Hax column that ran in the Minnesota paper. Carolyn responds to a young man who has broken off a relationship with his girlfriend over her refusal to give up her (platonic) friends of the opposite sex. After some general remarks about the importance of honesty, Hax opines:

…you were hiding, too, behind that ridiculous opposite-sex boycott. You were hiding from the very real risk every couple faces, that one of you will fall for someone else. People who love and respect each other do so not in a vacuum, but in a world populated by others — some of whom, inevitably, will prove tempting.

If your relationship can’t survive that, it can’t survive, period, no matter how thoroughly you scrub each other’s calendars of every conceivable risk.

Emphasis in the original.

“No matter how thoroughly you scrub each other’s calendars of every conceivable risk” is a terrific line, and I am going to borrow it regularly. Hax is on to something very important: despite our best and worst efforts, we can never — thankfully — control what an adult romantic partner will do. Part of being in a real relationship, a real marriage, is honoring the omnipresent possibility that your partner could make a different choice. For some, that reality is too terrifying to contemplate, so they stay in denial; for others, that reality is so terrifying that it turns them into over-controlling snoops. And for others, that reality is part of the risk of what it means to love someone. We cannot be vulnerable to the possibility of joy without being concomitantly vulnerable to betrayal; it is axiomatic that intimacy and risk are nearly perfectly correlated. To the extent that you are unwilling to take on the latter, you assure yourself of not having the former.

My wife is somewhere in central Africa at the moment. A classic ESTP and a successful businesswoman, she travels a great deal (sometimes without me). She’s beautiful and gregarious, and every day she meets and works closely with handsome men and gorgeous women in what is our town’s most famous industry. She has excellent boundaries, or so I believe; the ring she wears is an outer symbol of a profound inner commitment, one that I am confident radiates forth from her. Mutual friends have said to me that they have seen my wife in social situations (such as “girlfriend weekends” in Las Vegas) where I wasn’t present, and that she was exuberant, extroverted, and — in her words and actions and aura — evidently married. I like hearing things like that.

My wife could be meeting all sorts of men on her trip: hot young European businessmen in the British Airways T1 lounge, dynamic Ugandan tour guides, impassioned volunteers with NGOs in Kigali or Kampala. Some of these men will be cuter than I am, younger than I am, better muscled than I am, wittier than I am, and so forth. But they won’t be the unique package of Hugo-ness to which my beloved has pledged her fidelity and her love, and I trust in that love and in her good judgment.

I meet all sorts of attractive people in my world as well. I’d like to think I exude a certain level of married-ness (uxoriousness?). I was a pretty damn good flirt in my younger years, and I consciously avoid being flirtatious with women (or men) these days. Though I always wear a wedding ring in public unless I’m working out, I am fairly certain I project a clear “taken” energy even when that David Yurman band is not on my left ring finger.

Better than most, I know marriages can end. A promise given on a wedding day is not, in and of itself, surety of everlasting faithfulness. For me, fidelity is a choice. It was a choice I made when I first decided to stop seeing other people and be “exclusive” with she who is now my wife. It was a choice I made again when I asked her to marry me, a choice I made when we were married, and a choice I make day after day after day.

The other day, I was in a coffee shop I don’t normally go to, playing with my iPhone, which I still don’t understand. An attractive woman near my age also had her iPhone out, and we started talking about our mutual frustration that the “new” model was coming so soon after we had purchased the soon-to-be-outdated ones. I was getting ready to go to Pilates, so I was in workout clothes with no ring on my finger. At one point, I caught “that vibe” from the woman in Seattle’s Best Coffee, the vibe that suggests at least some initial interest. And I made the decision that comes blessedly easily to me these days: I dropped a reference to my wife into my next sentence (remarking about my beloved’s far greater technological facility.) The tall brunette deftly picked up on it, and in that unspoken and yet obvious way, withdrew “the vibe” without the slightest hint of incivility. We chatted for a few minutes more, and off I went.

Bottom line: I make choices every damn day to honor my marriage. I have other options, my wife (younger and lovelier than I) has far more. My happiness and security are not predicated on controlling who it is that she talks to. My goal is to take all of my sexual energy and direct it towards her, and no one else: that means fidelity in fantasy as well as in body. She has told me she does the same, and I believe her. It would devastate me if I found out it were otherwise, but I am smart enough to know that joy and growth are contingent upon two things: my own trustworthiness on one hand, and my radical willingness to be open to devastation and betrayal on the other.

Carolyn Hax nailed this one; brava, sister woman.

Hair length, skirt length, body odor and a bulge in the jeans: what we should and shouldn’t say to loved ones

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 10, 2008
in Clothing and Fashion, Modesty and Relationships
. 29 Comments

Last Wednesday’s post about controlling boyfriends got quite a few comments. The post dealt with two young women whose beaux wanted them to stop wearing short skirts, or to stop having lunch with decidedly platonic male friends. I don’t want to re-visit that post, but I have been thinking about the ways in which we negotiate reasonable and unreasonable requests from romantic partners. What is “reasonable” is obviously culture-bound, but that doesn’t mean that some frank discussion about the limits of compromise isn’t going to be helpful.

It seems to me that there is a colossal distinction between a partner’s expression of aesthetic preference on the one hand and a fear (or jealousy) based desire to control on the other. (And let’s be clear, the line between the desire to “protect” and to “control” is a fuzzy one, and when speaking about adults, the language of the former almost always masks the true intent, which is the latter. Obviously, the advice a parent gives to a 12 year-old about how to dress is different than that a boyfriend gives to a girlfriend.) For example, it’s not inappropriate to say the following:

“I really like it when you wear black, it suits you.”

“Since you asked, I actually prefer the blue shirt, as it matches your eyes better than that magenta one you were considering.”

My wife has, at the moment, very short hair. I like very short hair on her, and indeed, prefer it on most people of both sexes. That’s an aesthetic preference on my part, and it’s one about which my beloved is not ignorant. Over the course of our nearly six-year relationship, she’s cut it very short and grown it out past her shoulders. When it was long, I never begged her to cut it, but when she asked, I never lied about my preference. “You look beautiful regardless, dear, but if you want to know my own opinion, I think you are at your most spectacular when it is very short.” Continue reading ‘Hair length, skirt length, body odor and a bulge in the jeans: what we should and shouldn’t say to loved ones’

Jealousy, fear, and still more on the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 4, 2008
in Relationships
. 58 Comments

I’ve had a couple of students lately come and talk to me about issues with jealous boyfriends. In both cases, the women involved are self-identified feminists, ambitious, bright and talented. They’ve each recently started dating new guys, and each of these beaux has started exhibiting what I would call controlling behavior.

“Lori” is 20, as is her new boyfriend. She’s still very much in the early stages of the romance, a little bit giddy. She came to see me, however, because her boyfriend has made, just within the past week, two requests: he’s asked her to stop wearing short skirts, and he’s asked her to stop going to lunch with her male co-workers. Lori told me she hasn’t verbally agreed to stop wearing short skirts, but since her fella asked her to stop, she has quietly complied. On Monday, however, she did go out to lunch — a normal ritual — with two or three of her male co-workers, something that now has left her feeling very guilty.

Lori comes from an Armenian background. (Demographically, the Glendale-Pasadena-Burbank area, in which my college is located, serves the largest Armenian community in America. Students of Armenian ancestry make up half of those whom the college identifies as “white”.) Before coming to see me to talk about her boyfriend’s requests from a feminist perspective, Lori talked about his desires with her sisters and other female friends, all of whom share her heritage. Without exception, her family members and friends told her she should do as her new beau asked. Most disturbingly, several said that she should be “pleased” that her boyfriend “cared so much”; jealousy, they insisted, was a sign of devotion. Lori reported that her older married sister said: “You should only worry if he didn’t ask you to change how you dress — then it would mean he wasn’t interested.” Continue reading ‘Jealousy, fear, and still more on the myth of male weakness’

“If I were better, he would never leave”: on romantic illusions, writing screenplays, and myths of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 10, 2008
in Favorite Posts 2008 and Relationships
. 17 Comments

It’s a crazy midterm-y type of day, and I don’t have much time in which to post. Yesterday’s post about having “so much love to give” struck a nerve with some folks. Hilary writes in response:

I’ve been reminiscing about what I could have done better as a girlfriend in my previous relationship, what I would change if I could go back, etc. My list of changes includes more sex, more time/work/reciprocity invested, more communication, less arguments, less jealousy, more love. Shit, that’s a lot of changes. I’ve learned a lot about myself and I feel I’ve vastly matured as a feminist, an independent, single woman, and a girlfriend. But I’m a bit nervous about my feelings of seeking to be the perfect girlfriend. I guess what I’m afraid of is being left, being cheated on, being criticized, because I know what all of that feels like and if only I could be the perfect girlfriend, that wouldn’t happen…right? What also scares me is that I’m not wondering to myself what I’ll get out of the relationship. Rather, I’ve been wondering what I can give to the relationship.

Conventional relationship advice to someone in Hilary’s position would applaud her focus on what she will do differently in her next relationship. After all, it seems mature and commonsensical to focus on self-improvement, on learning from past mistakes, and so forth. I’ve said a time or nine that one of the chief purposes of relationship — particularly an intimate and enduring one –is to serve as a vehicle for our personal growth. Given that we all know the dangerous old axiom “‘Tis better to give than to receive”, Hilary — and those like her — have nothing to worry about, right?

The problem, of course, is that as Hilary herself recognizes, her desire to be the “perfect girlfriend” is rooted in a fantasy that her perfection will ensure she will never be disappointed, betrayed, or left. Many of us, men and women alike, imagine that if we could just do things a little bit better, we could control how everyone else reacts to us. As anyone who has struggled with people-pleasing knows, the great dream of every people-pleaser is to be able to orchestrate everyone else’s emotional responses. “If I say things in just the right way”, the people pleaser imagines, “my boyfriend (girlfriend, spouse, mother, etc.) will follow the script I’ve written for them.” Continue reading ‘“If I were better, he would never leave”: on romantic illusions, writing screenplays, and myths of male weakness’

“I have so much love to give”: young women and self-flattery

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 9, 2008
in Relationships, Teaching and Youth
. 18 Comments

In my women’s history class yesterday, we were making our way through Lynn Phillips’ Flirting With Danger, a text about which I have written before and which I have used in class for the last several years.

Phillips talks a great deal about discourses that impact the lives of contemporary young American women. Among these is what she calls the “Love Conquers All” discourse:

The love conquers all discourse does not limit itself to the notion that long-term heterosexual relationships are necessary for women’s fulfillment in love. Indeed, it suggests that finding the right man will somehow solve all of life’s problems.

Fed by Disney movies and pop songs, magazines and movies, most girls run into the notion that love conquers all early on. Some fiercely resist it, of course. The discourse suggests, however, that those who most fiercely resist making romantic love a priority are fooling themselves; from Jane Austen’s time to our own, we have countless fictional heroines who are initially dismissive of love, but in the end, succumb to its all-consuming power.

My students know all this, of course. It’s not news to any group of college students that they live in a culture that tries to impose a vision of happy heterosexual fulfillment on each and every one of them. But I’ve found another aspect of the “love conquers all” discourse that Phillips largely ignores: a great many young women (usually younger than typical college-age) go through adolescence with a vast over-estimate of just how much love they have to give to the “right person”.

When I first started working with youth group kids, particularly ninth and tenth-graders, I was struck by how often I would hear the same thing from so many of the girls with whom I worked. In group discussions or in writing, many would say something more or less like this:

I have so much love to give. I’ve never been in love, not really, but I just feel like I have this huge amount of passion inside of me. If I could just find someone whom I could really trust, then I could give him (usually, it’s a him) everything I have inside of me. I know it sounds corny, but I really believe love can heal all our problems. I feel like I have enough love inside of me to change the world, if I could just find a way to let it out. Continue reading ‘“I have so much love to give”: young women and self-flattery’

Monday Reprint: dating, self-worth, and challenge

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 7, 2008
in Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 6 Comments

I wrote this back in November 2005. It seemed appropriate to put back up today. The original post with comment section is here.

It struck me that no one has ever come up with a “dating tips for pro-feminist men.” I toyed with the idea for a moment, but then rejected it. After all, all such “tip lists” which offer ten or twenty suggestions for “scoring” with the opposite sex, or “picking up”, or even “meeting” partners have one fundamental problem. By their very nature, they turn sex/dating/romance into a project. They posit a problem and offer a solution.

But I’ve come to believe we make a terrible mistake when we see dating and sexuality as problems to be solved. The dating advice that Jill quotes at Feministe — and most other such advice I’ve seen elsewhere – is based on the assumption that women are a challenge to be mastered, rather than human beings to be engaged. There’s the suggestion that when it comes to love and sex, there are a finite set of absolute truths out there about men and women that a few lucky folks have understood and of which the rest of us are ignorant. But if we pay close attention (and pay money) to these “masters”, they’ll teach us their techniques and we can begin to practice them with greater success and confidence.

Yes, I do get asked for dating advice. (Few folks ask me — yet — for marriage advice.) I work with lots and lots of young people, and my life experience and field of interest suggests to them that I might be a good person to ask. Younger boys often ask for specific tips: “How can I tell a girl that I like her?” “How do I know if she’s into me, or if she just likes me as a friend?” “How do I know when it’s okay to kiss her?” There are lots of stock answers having to do with summoning up courage and the like, but I don’t dispense little bon mots of wisdom. I’m not sure I’m qualified, first of all, but more importantly, I think there are more important questions to ask. Continue reading ‘Monday Reprint: dating, self-worth, and challenge’

Girlfriends, boyfriends, feminism: a long response to “Gwynn”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 7, 2008
in Feminism, Links, Male feminists, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 32 Comments

A reader named Gwynn writes:

I’ve been thinking about you recently as my boyfriend and I have been talking about feminism.

He’s 25, I’m 34, but this is not about our age difference per se. A bit before we started dating, I told him I was a feminist, and he took the kind of not-uncommon position something like “well as long as you’re not mad at me personally…” But when we spoke further, I found him very receptive to feminist ideas. He was simply clueless, which isn’t uncommon in either sex, I suppose.

I gave him a bunch of links to read (from this blog and elsewhere).

So everything was great and I’ve been calling him a feminist. But lately he’s admitted he’s not comfortable calling himself a feminist because of his lack of actual education about it, and because he’s afraid someone like his sister or mom will argue with him if he uses that title. And also, feminist stuff is starting to seriously stress him out and sometimes when it comes up, it makes him really miserable, partly from a generic perspective (”the world is really fucked up!”) and partly selfishly.

The way I can approach sympathy for his position is as a white person. Racism is an issue where I’m in the oppressive majority, so I can understand the discomfort that comes with that position. Otherwise I’d probably get truly irritated when he says things like “I just don’t like having so much anger directed at me that I don’t deserve,” etc. I talk him through this stuff as best I’m able.

He’s also freaked out around ideas like “what can I personally do about misogyny?” and “seriously, I can never use the word ‘bitch’ again?” and “do men really have a vested interest in keeping women down?” and “but how does patriarchy benefit me personally?”

I’m not a gatekeeper of feminism. I’m a student of it, like most people. I don’t want to be his feminist authority.

I’m pretty good at answering the questions and challenging him. We had, for instance, a whole discussion in which I convinced him that the position that all heterosexual sex is rape is, while (IMO) wrong, not actually ridiculous. He’s open to everything that I say. He agrees that gender stuff is fucked up. (Of course, he’s especially receptive to arguments about how patriarchy hurts men, but I’m fine with that. I hate how patriarchy hurts men too, and as long as you’re not using that as a way of saying “so shut up, bitches, at least you don’t have to do dangerous jobs”, I’m totally cool with discussing it.)

I wish he had a male feminist mentor of some kind, but I don’t see that happening. I wish he was more well read about it, but he’s been reading “The Republic” for about the past year, which indicates how much time he spends with books and how slow he is at it.

I guess my sort of general question is, without doing all of his work for him, or letting him off the hook, how does a girlfriend help a boyfriend with feminism?

One of the problems in any age-disparate relationship — particularly when the older partner is committed to a spiritual or political ideal about which the younger knows little — is that a kind of complicated mentoring relationship can develop. The younger partner, so often infatuated with the older, can easily associate their new love’s beliefs with the new love himself or herself. In other words, the interest in feminism could (and in Gwynn’s boyfriend’s case, I don’t know for sure) become inextricably linked with Gwynn, and his receptivity to feminism thus rises and falls with the status of the relationhip. That’s always problematic.

But there are two basic issues here: how to get young men to understand — and embrace — feminism, and how can a romantic partner help in that process, if at all? Continue reading ‘Girlfriends, boyfriends, feminism: a long response to “Gwynn”’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Chivalry is deeply feminist”: butch-femme culture and a rethink on gender roles

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 26, 2008
in Chivalry and performing gender roles, Clothing and Fashion, GLBTQ and Relationships
. 25 Comments

Brownfemipower gets the hat tip and the curtsey for linking to this fascinating post at Sugarbutch Chronicles: Bringing Butch Back. It’s a succinct corrective to many of the received assumptions of Second-Wave feminism’s response to gender roles and chivalry:

Chivalry is deeply feminist to me. When in femmes, I expect femininity to be deliberate, done with the whole knowledge of the compulsory heteronormative restrictions which dictate that women must be and do certain things, particular that we must wear high heels, delicate cloth, restrictive clothing. Femininity is not made for comfort or movement, it is made to accentuate the sexualization of a woman’s body - and that’s why things like holding her doors open (so she doesn’t dirty her white gloves or expensive manicure), pulling her chair out (so she doesn’t have to awkwardly move a bulky piece of furniture, and risk getting it caught on her skirt or stockings and ripping something) or holding her coat (so she doesn’t have to reach around and risk ripping the tight seams in her shoulders or upper back) are necessary to me, as an acknowledgement of how restrictive femininity can be, and of how difficult it is to walk around the world in these clothes, as a celebration of the beauty of femininity on the body, and with deep respect for the courage to costume and perform femme to begin with.

Bold mine.

Most of the discussions about “chivalry” and “courtesy” in the feminist blogosphere are rooted in heterosexist assumptions. Virtually every feminist, early in his or her public “career” as a warrior for gender equality, gets involved in the “opening doors” and “paying for dinner” discussion. It’s remarkable how many young women, convinced that a fondness for playing traditional gender roles is at odds with egalitarian ideology, cite a fondness for “common courtesy” and “being treated like a lady” (or a “girl”, or a “woman”) as a primary reason for rejecting the feminist label. While few feminists claim that a straight woman’s conscious enjoyment of traditional gender roles automatically vitiates her feminism, most feel that it goes too far to claim the enthusiastic participation in “chivalry” as a genuinely “feminist choice.” Continue reading ‘“Chivalry is deeply feminist”: butch-femme culture and a rethink on gender roles’

Humiliation and becoming human: how erectile dysfunction made me a better man, husband, and person

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 14, 2008
in Body, Favorite Posts 2008, Memories, Men and Masculinity, Penis, Relationships, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

I count fellow Angeleno and men’s rights advocate Glenn Sacks as a friend, even though he and I are likely to disagree on virtually every issue. I winced a bit, however, at his rather snarky linking to my re-post in praise of erectile dysfunction. Glenn writes:

I guess if it’s humiliating to men, it must be good. Feminist professor/blogger Hugo Schwyzer recently wrote a blog post “in praise of ED.” Schwyzer writes:

“In my Humanities class on the ‘body’ yesterday, I noted in passing that there was much to be said for erectile dysfunction. I have always maintained that men would be far more insufferable than they otherwise are trained to be if the penis was, in fact, a muscle entirely under their control….ED literally softens the penis; it can also figuratively soften a man by forcing him to rethink his allegiance to a cruel and unattainable standard.”

In light of this, it kind of reminds me of an odd interaction I had with Hugo when he was on my radio show a couple years ago. We were discussing something related to sex–I can’t remember what–and I said something like “Of course, Hugo, men’s perspectives change as they get older. Like me, I’m sure you’re not quite the stallion you used to be.”

Hugo is a very nice guy, and it’s hard to get him angry over anything, but he was not happy over this remark. I was surprised, and didn’t quite know what to make of it. Any amateur psychologists out there have any ideas?

Uh, amateur psychologists? Leave your remarks over at Glenn’s place, please.

But my praise of periodic bouts of ED is not rooted in the internalized misandry of which I — and all other male feminists — are regularly accused. It’s rooted in many things, not least my own experience, about which more (because there’s a fair amount of TMI) below the cut. Continue reading ‘Humiliation and becoming human: how erectile dysfunction made me a better man, husband, and person’

Shared ambition, shared humiliation: some thoughts on women, marriage and public betrayal

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 12, 2008
in Feminism, Marriage and Relationships
. 32 Comments

With complete predictability in the aftermath of the Eliot Spitzer scandal, the media has begun a frenzied analysis of how exactly it is that wives ought to respond to their husbands’ very public infidelities. The Los Angeles Times runs a story this morning about Silda Spitzer, connecting her to the suffering political spouses before her: Wife puts troubling face on the Spitzer scandal. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Joe Garofali asks Why do political wives stand by their men? And Dr. Laura, whose ability to find fault with women for everything is near-legendary, suggested on the Today Show that wives “share the blame” for their husbands’ philandering. (Next week, she explains how women’s materialism led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis!)

The feminist response to Spitzer himself is fairly straightforward: anger, shock, disappointment. But the media — and ordinary folks — seem eager for those who identify as feminists to offer up a “protocol” for how a “real feminist” woman ought to respond to the revelation of her husband’s betrayal. And the frustrating thing, of course, is that the spouse is immediately placed in a no-win situation. If she appears in public by her husband’s side (as so many have done), she risks the accusation that she is a “doormat”, or that she is willing to sacrifice her dignity for the sake of her husband’s career. If she doesn’t appear, she’s unsupportive, abandoning him in his hour of great need and crisis. She garners sympathy, but that sympathy tends to be contingent upon how well the wife lives up to the observer’s expectation of how a wife “ought” to behave. If she deviates from the script, the scorn that awaits her from all sides is as great as that directed towards her husband — if not greater. Continue reading ‘Shared ambition, shared humiliation: some thoughts on women, marriage and public betrayal’

Poking, plucking, popping: a note on the compulsive grooming of one’s beloved

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 22, 2008
in Body, Marriage and Relationships
. 23 Comments

Though it is not available online, my post about Andrew Gomez, my student who became the first female-to-male transgendered Homecoming King in the USA, is in the new issue of XY Magazine. XY in America is not to be confused with XY Online, the Australian pro-feminist site run by Michael Flood ( a site, coincidentally, where I have an article or two available). It’s nice to see Andrew’s remarkable story continue to attract attention.

It’s a busy day, and I’m trying to finish a couple of writing projects that have March 1 deadlines, so not much time to blog.

What I did want to touch on is a lighter subject: picking.

I’ve been married four times and lived with a couple of other women for extended periods. (I never did single well, evidently, from the time I was seventeen). And just about every one of the women with whom I have lived in or out of wedlock has developed a fascination with grooming me. Whether it was searching my back for acne or patrolling my beard line looking for ingrown hairs, virtually everyone with whom I’ve been in a long-term relationship has had a strong desire to explore, poke, pluck, and pop various parts of my body. I have never once felt even the remotest desire to reciprocate.

Mind you, I like my wife’s grooming. Though it’s periodically painful to have tiny hairs torn out, zits punctured and so forth, I take it as evidence of affection. It’s obviously a behavior we humans share with a wide variety of our fellow animals; everyone from primates to penguins seems to delight in removing impurities from a loved one’s skin, fur, or feathers. Despite more than twenty years studying or teaching gender and sexuality, I’ve never given much thought to the cultural or psychological implications of this behavior in humans. In my experience, at least, this sort of grooming in heterosexual relationships is rarely reciprocal — it seems to be initiated mostly by the female partner, and is submitted to with varying degrees of willingness by the male. (In the animal kingdom, it does appear to be a gender-neutral behavior, and enthusiastically mutual.) Continue reading ‘Poking, plucking, popping: a note on the compulsive grooming of one’s beloved’