Archive for the 'Science' Category

A survey on attitudes towards casual sex

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 05, 2010
in Science, Sex Education and Sexuality
. 2 Comments

Heather Corinna, founder and executive editor of the indispensable site Scarleteen, is doing a large study on multigenerational experiences with and attitudes about casual sex. The data will ideally be used for publication, but answers are completely anonymous and will only be used anonymously.

There’s a lot of buzz now about “hooking up,” the newest term for casual sex, though casual sex isn’t new at all — nor does it only belong to the current generation, despite often being presented that way. Unlike most of the buzz out there, she’s not interested in telling anyone how to have sex, warning people off any given kind of sex or in presenting any one kind of sex as “the best way.” She’s just looking for what’s real, both in sexual attitudes and experiences among a diverse array of ages, genders and sexual identities, races and sexual ideologies/constructions. The only requirements for participating in this study are being over the age of 16, and having had some kind of sexual partnership before, even if none has been casual. The study will take around twenty minutes.

She would like the study to show as diverse an array of people as possible, especially since so often media representations or cultural conversations about casual sex are usually only about heterosexual white women or about gay men. She particularly wants to be sure LGBT people, people of color, those over 45 and social conservatives are adequately represented, so please share this link with your networks after you take the survey yourself, especially if your networks include people in any or all of those groups. I know I have a number of readers who fall into those groups, and urge them to take part.

You can take the survey by clicking here.

If you don’t know who Heather is, she’s been working in human sexuality for around 12 years. She is the founder and executive director for Scarleteen.com, does sex education outreach at youth shelters and women’s clinics in Seattle, and has been a sex columnist and writer online for sites like The Guardian and RH Reality Check. She has also been published in a handful of anthologies and is the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know-Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College (DaCapo Press), a book which I regard as the single best sex education text available anywhere.

If you have any questions, you can contact Heather at hcorinna@mac.com

HPV and boys: new concerns

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 24, 2010
in Health Care, Science, Sex Education and Youth
. 14 Comments

My sources tell me that today, the immunization committee at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is debating whether to recommend the use of Gardasil, a vaccine against HPV, for use with male patients. HPV, or the human papillomavirus, is the most common of sexually-transmitted infections; the CDC estimates that 50% of sexually active adults will acquire HPV at one point over the course of their lives. Some suggest that the percentage is higher still.

HPV has been conclusively linked to cervical cancer. Since 2006, Gardasil has been approved by the FDA for use in inoculating women against HPV. Because the best form of protection is prevention, many health experts recommend vaccinating girls before they become sexually active. Given the grim reality that HPV can be easily transmitted through non-consensual sex, and given the ease with which the virus is spread through oral sex, vaccinating girls before the onset of puberty is encouraged. (This has led, of course, to predictable howls from the religious right, who are less concerned with protecting young women’s health and more concerned that a vaccine against HPV might encourage pre-marital sexual exploration.)

But as an article in the brand-new issue of Ms. Magazine makes clear, HPV poses a greater threat to men and boys than was previously known. The Adina Nack piece is not available online, but here’s a quote from what’s available on your newsstand:

While it is fears of cervical cancer that
have motivated young women to get HPV vaccines,
that’s not the only cancer caused by this virus: It can lead
to oral, anal and penile cancers as well. In fact, the combined
U.S. death rates for these cancers are at least twice
that of cervical cancers… Some researchers, in fact, believe that
HPV may soon cause more oral cancers in the U.S. than
alcohol or tobacco combined.

As a result of this research, the CDC may well soon recommend that boys and young men also be inoculated with Gardasil, as the connection between HPV and oral/anal cancer becomes as apparent as it already is with cervical cancer.

Nack emphasizes that men’s health is a feminist issue:

Women’s health—especially reproductive health—is usually
the focus of sexual-health discussions but men’s health
also deserves women’s attention—and not just because
women care about their sons, male partners and male
friends. It almost goes without saying that women can also
be infected by their intimate partners, and since the great
majority of women primarily have heterosexual relations,
that usually means by men.

In fact, men’s health is an even larger feminist issue.
“Feminists have a vested interest in advocating for policies
and circumstances around the world that shape men’s ability
to develop healthy sex lives, which, by definition, has
to include respect for the rights of those with whom they
partner, regardless of gender,” says Patricia Rieker, Ph.D.,
a sociologist at Boston University and Harvard Medical
School and coauthor of Gender and Health (Cambridge
University Press, 2008).

The truth is, if women don’t prioritize men’s health,
we’re not just losing a chance to foster the overall health
of our communities, we’re actually putting ourselves and
future generations at risk

It is axiomatic that women of all ages are more willing to seek medical treatment than are men. The “sturdy oak” myth of robust masculinity makes it difficult for boys and men to acknowledge vulnerability. Our cultural narrative about heterosexuality tends to suggest that women are emotionally and physiologically more fragile — and more likely to “suffer” from sex. That “expectation of female suffering” (associated with everything from first penetration to pregnancy to increased vulnerability to STIs to the guarantee of heartbreak after a break-up or abortion) is matched with a narrative of male imperviousness to harm. We like to pretend that boys are dense, violent, and comparatively shallow. But boys do cry, and boys do get hurt, and as the latest research shows, boys do get HPV-related cancers too.

Feminists have done much to dispatch the myth of female frailty. They have also been on the frontlines of fighting against this myth of the invulnerable male. It is no surprise then that we find this important clarion call for male sexual health in the pages of Ms. Magazine.

The plasticity of desire: new and comforting research

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 12, 2010
in Science and Sexuality
. 35 Comments

In many of my posts (most recently, here), I’ve made the case that sexual desire is more malleable than we think it is. I tend to argue against reparative therapy (the pseudo-science of helping gays become straight, repudiated by every serious professional body of psychologists and psychiatrists) not on grounds of inevitable ineffectiveness but on grounds that it attempts to fix something that isn’t broken. I do think we can shift our desires, and that to a far greater degree than we realize, our desires are less inherent in our make-up and more a response to external influences. I realize that the pendulum of popular thinking is in the opposite direction — the last quarter-century has seen the hegemony of the evolutionary psych crowd, the sort who insist that virtually every aspect of our identity is coded in our genes and driven by our hormones. In the nature v. nurture debate, the trendy thing to believe now is that nature has won in a cakewalk. But — to mix my metaphors recklessly — pendulums do swing back, and I think the turn of the tide approaches.

To that end, this very interesting article in last weekend’s Science Blog: ‘Straight Men, Gay Porn’ and Other Brain Map Mysteries (h/t to reader Jo for sending it along). It opens:

For most of the last century, neuroscientists were convinced that adult brains were pretty much set. Now, recent neuroscience reveals that our brains are surprisingly plastic throughout our lives. By learning techniques that help us sidestep unwanted wiring, we can even direct the re-wiring process—with seemingly miraculous results.

Read on. It’s nice to have something I’ve been saying for a long time validated by some of the latest research. It doesn’t end the argument, but it’s the beginning of a counter-narrative.

Men killing women: maternal mortality, heterosexual desire, and the work of male transformation

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 30, 2009
in Birth control and contraception, Desire and objectification, Global Feminism, Health Care, Parenting and Science
. 53 Comments

Back to school with much work to be done.

After Friday’s post (immediately below) about male sexuality and its perceived dangers, I got an interesting email from blogger Erin Solaro. She wrote:

The reason male sexuality has been viewed as dangerous and yet at the same time men are supposed to push women has a great deal to do with biology, and no, I don’t mean that men have a higher sex drive than women…

…I mean that 1940 was the first time in America that the mythical average woman’s chance of dying in childbirth dipped below 1 in 100. (For black women, it was higher, about 3 times as high.) In modern Afghanistan, it’s about 1 in 7, which may be pretty close to the historic norm.

Until we understand that, we aren’t really going to understand why we think about men, women and sexuality the way we do.

It’s an interesting point. Any women’s history class must take into account the history of birth-related maternal and infant mortality. While it’s difficult to get accurate historic statistics, the 1 in 7 figure that Solaro cites for contemporary Afghanistan is probably lower than it was in many other time periods. It is generally assumed that until the 20th century, childbirth was the leading cause of death for all women of childbearing years; in some societies that maternal mortality rate may have reached 40%, while other medical historians prefer a lower figure of 1 in 4 or 1 in 5. Given that many women in the developing world still have half a dozen children or more, as they did in previous centuries, the overall risk is compounded by the sheer number of pregnancies carried to term.

Our cultural memory of this devastating toll is limited. We have a Mother’s Day, of course, but we have no public rituals to honor our countless female ancestors who died — quite literally — so that we could live. There is no Tomb of the Unknown Mother in Arlington, though more American women died from childbirth than male soldiers did in war for the first century and a half of our republic’s history. This legacy lives on best in fairy tales, replete with stories of single fathers (Beauty and the Beast) or wicked step-mothers (take your pick). When I ask my students what happened to Cinderella’s birth mother, it drives the point about maternal mortality home.

Whatever the exact figures, childbirth has probably killed more women than any other single cause in human history. Until very recently (a miracle two millenia ago in Palestine notwithstanding), the only possible cause for pregnancy was heterosexual intercourse. So if childbirth kills women, and sex causes pregnancy, then by the logical transitive property, heterosexual intercourse has been, not so indirectly, the most lethal of all human activities for one-half of the population. To put it even more bluntly, men have killed far more women by ejaculating inside of them than they have by any other method. Semen has killed more people than any other body fluid (and yet it is menstrual blood that is considered far more “unclean” in many Western traditions.) (This, by the way, is a good moment to note how absurd the argument is about AIDS being “God’s punishment for homosexuality.” Even if we were to assume that AIDS was primarily transmitted through same-sex sexual activity, the number of deaths globally from AIDS has not yet risen to the historic levels of those from childbirth. If God punishes by death those who engage in forbidden sexual activity, how then to explain that the leading cause of death for women for centuries was having intercourse with their own husbands?)

Very few, if any, men ever presumably sought to kill their wives or lovers through intercourse. But men did devise patriarchal power structures that forbade women from using contraception or from refusing sex to their husbands. From both a moral and a statistical standpoint, cultures that don’t allow women access to contraception — as well as the right to say “no” after marriage as well as before — are complicit in the death of countless millions of women. Of course, many women surely enjoyed sex despite the risks; many women surely longed for children even in the face of the grave dangers that attended pregnancy, labor, and delivery. All the more reason to honor the bravery and the sacrifice of those who fought for life against death on a battlefield far more lethal than those on which their husbands, fathers, and brothers struggled. Continue reading ‘Men killing women: maternal mortality, heterosexual desire, and the work of male transformation’

Reprinting an oldie about Wendy Wasserstein, fertility, feminism, and hope

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 16, 2009
in Parenting, Reprints and Science
. 10 Comments

This post first appeared here on January 31, 2006, and not all the links within it may still work. But the point about motherhood and feminism is one I’d like to reiterate, as well as to remind folks of a great feminist voice now silenced. If you want to read the original 2006 comment thread, it’s here.

Coretta Scott King and Wendy Wasserstein have left us, much too young in both cases.  Readers can easily find many obits and tributes on the ‘net.

I’ve long been a fan of Wasserstein, and remember the birth of her now seven year-old daughter, Lucy Jane, as the occasion of a bitter fight with a dear friend.  As is well-known, Wasserstein spent many years in her forties in fertility treatments, anxious to have a child.  In his obituary in today’s Times (rather annoyingly titled "Witty Voice of Feminist Self-Doubt"), Mike Boehm writes of her as a woman whose need to nurture led her on an eight-year journey through fertility treatments that culminated in motherhood at the age of 48.   Somehow, that description bothers me a bit, and I can’t figure out why.  Is it vaguely condescending?  Would I mind it as much if the obit was written by a woman?  I’ll mull it over.  Is it the verb "need?"

Anyhow, when Wasserstein’s account of her journey to motherhood appeared in the New Yorker back in the summer of 1998, I got into a huge fight with a buddy about the ethics of becoming a single mom at Wasserstein’s age.  I enthusiastically supported Wasserstein, while my friend accused her — and other older women like her, who conceive children artificially and while single — of profound selfishness.  It was strange how heated the argument quickly became, and my friend and I realized that the story of how Lucy Jane came to be exposed a basic fault line in our worldviews.  At the time, I was in the midst of my conversion process; my friend was a much more conservative Christian than I.   While I was genuinely moved by Wasserstein’s steadfast refusal to let either aging or singleness deter her from her dream of motherhood, my buddy saw her actions as evidence of narcissism and upper-middle class privilege.  My friend — at the time a recently divorced father — said bitterly: "Women like Wasserstein think men are expendable.  We’re more than sperm donors, you know."

I’m not a bio-ethicist.  My recollection of the fertility techniques Wasserstein actually used is vague.  I thought I had her book "Shiksa Goddess" somewhere (it has the original New Yorker essay about Lucy in it), but apparently it got misplaced in my last move, or lent to a student, or it walked off into the ephemera.  But even now, as an evangelical Christian, I am untroubled by the notion of a woman in her late forties conceiving, bearing, and raising a child without the help of the child’s biological father.   Yes, certain fertility techniques that involve the destruction of embryos bother me a bit, but I can hold that discomfort in tension with my very firm belief that the role of science in allowing women to bear children at an older age is a good and positive one.

Continue reading ‘Reprinting an oldie about Wendy Wasserstein, fertility, feminism, and hope’

“Men are simple, women are complicated”: another corollary to the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 14, 2009
in Desire and objectification, Myth of Male Weakness and Science
. 43 Comments

Below last week’s post on toplessness, Brian takes issue with my suggestion that men are capable of empathizing with women’s nearly-universal experience of being objectified. He writes:

Dialogue between the starving and the force-fed ain’t easy; even establishing a common frame is hard; nevermind agreeing on whether something looks tasty.

It should be easy enough to see terms aren’t used the same way. It comes up often enough that men can’t readily distinguish between objectifying and finding aesthetically appealling. (I know I can’t). Lack of a frame of reference.

The “force-fed and the starving” image refers to the experience of most men (who never feel themselves as objects of desire) and many women (who are objectified and ogled for much of their lives.) It’s an offensive analogy, because it suggests comparable injury between never being wanted and being harassed on a daily basis; the subtext is that women should even feel grateful for the attention they receive, and think sympathetically of men who never know what it is like to be whistled at. Given that we live in a world where a large number of men sexually assault women and use their own desire (inflamed by a woman’s choice of clothing, or behavior, or something similar) as an excuse, it’s silly to suggest any equivalence whatsoever. (Note that I am not unsympathetic to men’s lack of experience of feeling desired; see this post.)

Besides the problem of false equivalence in Brian’s remark, there’s a corollary to the “myth of male weakness” in what he writes. The myth of male weakness suggests that all men are cavemen; brutish and hyper-sexual, our civility is a thin veneer that can drop at any time. Driven by the irresistible forces of the Y chromosome and testosterone, we are to be applauded (so say the peddlers of the myth) for even the most half-hearted efforts at self-restraint. Because of our inherent vulnerability to temptation and our concomitant single-mindedness, the myth suggests it is women’s job to protect us from ourselves. Women need to cover up so as not to distract us; women need to flatter and cajole us rather than ask us directly for what they want; women, in other words, need to treat men like potentially dangerous but nonetheless loveable overgrown infants rather than as full and complete equals. And of course, while this sounds demeaning to men, the real pain of the myth is born by women — who are held responsible for men’s inability to exercise self-control. (This is a good place to recommend, again, Martha McCaughey’s magisterial corrective to all the bad evolutionary biology in the popular media, The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science.)

Brian’s corollary is a familiar one: men are too simple-minded to understand women, who are infinitely more complex. The “men are simple, women are complicated” myth works to serve the interests of a sexist status quo. The myth excuses men for being uninterested in women’s inner lives and inattentive to women’s concerns; it suggests that a man trying to understand a woman is like having a toddler try to grasp advanced mathematics — taught in Finnish. It is not flattery to tell women that their inner lives are infinitely more rich and nuanced than those of men. It’s part of a very clear agenda to tell women that asking men to “get” them is an unreasonable and bootless request. It may be the soft bigotry of low expectations in a new form, but the real victims are women, who are urged not to expect too much. And the beneficiaries, whether they realize it or not, are most men, who are excused the challenging but certainly not impossible task of listening to women, developing empathy, and remembering what it is that they have heard. Continue reading ‘“Men are simple, women are complicated”: another corollary to the myth of male weakness’

Babies, family planning, environmental stewardship and the needs of the preborn: the real roots of the culture war

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 05, 2009
in Birth control and contraception, Christianity, Environmentalism, Faith, Favorite Posts 2009, Feminism, Global Feminism, Kabbalah and Science
. 82 Comments

Regular readers know that I tend to discourage my conservative commenters from derailing threads by questioning the very suppositions on which this blog is based. This is a feminist blog, for example, and one which seeks to explore various things from a feminist perspective. This is not a place to question whether the feminist lens is an appropriate one through which to see the world; similarly, a Calvinist blog which seeks to offer a Calvinist perspective on current events is not the place to question the essential tenets of Calvinism. This is why I read quite a few very conservative blogs, but rarely — if ever — comment there. I’m interested in what is said, but since I reject the fundamental premises on which their worldview is based, I don’t think I have much to offer to the conversation. It would be like insisting on speaking Finnish to a group which prefers to dialogue in Thai.

That said, reading all these blogs, I’m increasingly convinced that the core of the split between social conservatives and progressives in this country revolves around not abortion or gay marriage, but a more fundamental disagreement: population. Religious conservatives have become increasingly vocal about their desire to see larger and larger families; indeed, their arguments against abortion and gay marriage seem less couched these days in an assumption that these are intrinsic evils, and more in the language of concern that these practices pose a threat to the large families which the right venerates above all else. Hostility to feminism is surely a sine qua non of contemporary social conservatism, but reading what the pundits on the other side have to say, it seems more and more obvious that their hatred of feminism is rooted in the recognition that increased sovereignty for women over their own bodies is inextricably linked with the reasonable desire to not have, in Amanda Marcotte’s happy phrase, their “vaginas turn into clown cars.”

Feminists and environmentalists have formed common cause over the vital issue of family planning. Those who believe that the world’s resources are already over-taxed by humans whose behavior is frequently parasitic have allies in those who believe that women can and should be encouraged to find fulfillment in pursuits other than motherhood. The longer women wait to marry or reproduce, the less likely they are to have large families; the more opportunities we can create for women to pursue happiness outside the home, the greater the likelihood they will delay marriage and childbirth. The intersection of sound environmental policy and the campaign to give women the precious right of personal autonomy is a fortuitous one indeed! And almost to a man and woman, social conservatives despise this alliance, one which is changing family structures across the western world — and increasing the possibility for greater happiness for the earth and its creatures.

Here, replete with grammatical error on top of grammatical error, is a piece by David Goldman in First Things: What Should Conservatives do about Obamanomics? It takes the “we must have big families” argument to a new level, by suggesting that the collapse of the real estate bubble is due — wait for it, can you guess? — to, yes, birth control:

The first thing that conservatives have to tell Americans is: “You are poorer because you failed to bring up enough children. The decline of the traditional family is undermining the American economy.”

Right. Apparently, that’s why the countries with the highest birth rates, like Sierra Leone and Chad are so rich, and countries with among the lowest, like Sweden and Switzerland, are so desperately poor?

This isn’t the place to point out the risible foundations of the “we must have more babies or the world will collapse” argument. Plenty of economists have pointed out that the “growth” model can be replaced by a healthy “sustainability” model. The transition may be wrenching, but far less so than the apocalyptic impact on our planet of ever-growing voracious human appetites.

What I’m wondering — to get to the point of this post — is why religious conservatives are so eager to have large families? I get the economic argument (we need more future workers to maintain retired ones), but the churches were urging their flocks to “be fruitful and multiply” long before anyone thought up modern pension schemes, or modern feminism. Beyond the instinct to reproduce and survive, what are the theological roots of this obsession with making babies?

I know my Mormon friends believe, or so they tell me, that there are countless billions of “pre-born souls” wandering around up in the ether, each longing to be born. Thus, having a large family is an act not of irresponsibility but of self-sacrifice: parents give up their freedom in exchange for the satisfaction of helping as many of these pre-born souls as possible become incarnate. (My LDS friends, please tell me if I’ve misrepresented the idea.) Some of my friends in the Kabbalah Centre believe that in the Beginning, God created a “vessel” which then shattered into trillions of tiny sparks. Each of these sparks is a sentient soul, and each longs to be born into human flesh for the sake of reassembling the broken vessel and completing what in Hebrew is called tikkun olam, the repair of the world. Thus for Mormons and Kabbalists, family size limitation is selfish on an eschatalogical level — it delays the final redemption and robs the “pre-born” (the term sends chills down my spine) of their shot at participating in the glories of incarnation. Continue reading ‘Babies, family planning, environmental stewardship and the needs of the preborn: the real roots of the culture war’

The sadness of voles, the madness of humans

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 16, 2008
in Animal Rights and Science
. 6 Comments

I’ve made my opposition to animal research clear many times. And given that my posts on the subject have tended to alienate the very sort of people I am eager to win over to the cause of justice for our fellow creatures, I’m keeping this one short.

This morning’s paper featured this story.

Scientists have confirmed what poets have long known: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Working with mouse-like rodents called prairie voles, scientists have found that close monogamous relationships alter the chemistry of the brain, fostering the release of a compound that builds loyalty but also plays a role in depression during times of separation.

The scientists found that after four days away from their mates, male voles experienced changes in the emotional center of their brains, causing them to become unresponsive and lethargic. When given a drug that blocked the changes, however, lonely voles emerged from their funk.

I am not a perverse sentimentalist who weeps more for lonely voles than for starving children in Somalia. But I teared up this morning thinking about the sheer wastefulness and the utter absence of empathy that is shot through this experiment. Any ethologist (someone who studies animal behavior without interfering in their lives) could have told you that many pair-bonded species grieve and mope when separated from a mate. Natural death of old age or predation offers plenty of examples; to allow two voles to bond and then deliberately separate them for the purpose of killing one so that his brain chemistry can be studied — this is jaw-droppingly, heartbreakingly immoral. So often, animal suffering is justified in the name of providing “life-saving” treatment for humans. But there is no pressing urgency that can justify the emotional torture of what the study reveals are intelligent creatures. Humans, as the article points out, rarely experience death as a result of being separated from a partner. They do suffer, as voles suffer.

After separating nine male voles from their partners, Young and colleagues from Emory and the University of Regensburg in Germany tested the animals’ ability to cope with stress.

When placed in a pool of water, the voles passively floated instead of trying to swim. In a second test, the animals failed to struggle when suspended by their tails.

The animals displayed “depressive behaviors,” Young said. “They become more passive, more likely to give up.”

When researchers killed the voles and looked inside their brains, they found elevated levels of CRF, which is known to have a role in depression.

Bold emphasis mine.

Cutting off funding for this sort of animal experimentation is critical. While threatening the lives of researchers and their family is unacceptable and inconsistent with justice-centered values, doing everything possible to expose monstrosities like this — often funded with tax-payer dollars — is vital.

Our need to understand the world is real. But real understanding, real knowledge, and real science must be built on a foundation of respect for life and wonder for creation. Goya remarked el sueno de la razon produce monstruos : the sleep of reason breeds monsters.

And as my paper tells me this morning, some of those monsters work for Emory and Regensburg universities.

Guys in love: celebrating the new SUNY Oswego study on teenage boys and relationships

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 18, 2008
in Age, All Saints Pasadena, Men and Masculinity, Relationships, Science, Sexual ethics and transformation, Youth and Youth ministry
. 7 Comments

Reader “English Rosebud” sent me a link this weekend to this story that ran in the New York Times on Friday: Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter. As she mentions in her email, it’s a powerful corrective to the widespread notion that teenage boys have just one thing on their mind.

The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.

Based on a study that appears in this month’s Journal of Adolescence, the researchers (from SUNY Oswego) concluded:

Among the boys who had been sexually active, physical desire and wanting to know what sex feels like were among the top three reasons they pursued sex. However, the boys were equally likely to say they pursued sex because they loved their partner. Interestingly, only 14 percent said they sought sex because they wanted to lose their virginity, and 9 percent did so to fit in with friends.

The researchers note that there is no way to assess the truthfulness of the boys’ answers, but the rate of sexual activity in the sample is consistent with national trends, suggesting the boys were answering honestly. The survey group was ethnically and economically diverse, and 95 indicated they were heterosexual, while 10 boys didn’t answer the question.

Bold emphasis mine.

The overall findings are contrary to cultural beliefs that boys are interested primarily in sex and not relationships.

“Let’s give boys more credit,’’ said study author Andrew Smiler, an assistant professor of psychology at the university. “Although some of them are just looking for sex, most boys are looking for a relationship. The kids we know mostly aren’t like this horrible stereotype. They are generally interested in dating and getting to know their partners.’’

(I wish Professor Smiler hadn’t used the phrase “horrible stereotype”. I wince at the implication that wanting sex for pleasure is “horrible”. After all, both men and women do sometimes pursue sex outside of the context of an enduring relationship. While dishonesty and manipulation are indeed “horrible”, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake need not be accompanied by deceit or abuse. It’s “slut-shaming” at its most tiresome to suggest otherwise.)

Still, I’m delighted with this study, and not at all surprised. I’ve worked with adolescent boys as a youth minister for many years, and I’ve taught slightly older young men for even longer. One of the most common complaints that I — and anyone else who works with teen boys — hear is “I’m tired of having everyone think all I care about is sex”. Like the boys in the SUNY study, the teens I work with don’t deny that they are sexual creatures; they don’t pretend that sex isn’t frequently on their minds. What they find more frustrating than unsatisfied horniness is the enduring stereotype that they have no real interest in love and romance. When speaking of teens of either sex, it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that they want either sex or a relationship. All the recent research suggests that adolescent girls can have powerful libidos; this study makes clear what youth workers already know: that teenage boys, as horny as they are, have deep and complex emotional desires. Continue reading ‘Guys in love: celebrating the new SUNY Oswego study on teenage boys and relationships’

The burden of being a change agent caught betwixt and between: a note to “Kendra” about women, the sciences, and grad school

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 16, 2007
in Age, Feminism, Science and Working
. 25 Comments

I got a long email from a woman I’ll call “Kendra”. Here’s some of it:

I’m writing you because I’d like to get your thoughts on a major frustration I’ve had for a while (if you have time or feel so compelled).

I’m a 32 year old graduate student in electrical engineering. I’ll be finishing my masters next spring, and then I know I want to get a PhD…

It really stinks being a woman who is pursuing an advanced degree in engineering (or physics, which was my undergraduate area). It is even worse as you get older. I have two very close friends, both of whom are women. However, I don’t see them often.

Most time is spent around my “peers”, who are often 10 years younger than myself and almost entirely male. Most guys that age seem a bit phobic of girls and women. Age-wise, I am as old or older than most of the junior faculty in the department. However, none of the faculty seem terribly interested in being friendly. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. If I walk into the lunchroom when the faculty are there, they often stop talking as long as I am there. I honestly can’t tell if it’s the fact that I’m “just a student” or if it’s because I’m female, or possibly both. Either way, I wish I could blend into the wall. It’s obvious that they know I’m there, but also as obvious that they have no desire to include me.

I also don’t have a terribly easy time relating to other people outside of school. I hate to say it, but it seems like the stereotype of the engineer without any social skills is true. So much of what I do is wrapped up in my work that I can’t seem to relate to most people effectively. Although I’m a social butterfly by engineering standards (probably too much so since I’m rather talkative once you get me going), but I am often perceived (especially by other women) as “showing off” simply by discussing things that interest me. The feeling I get is that it’s okay for men to be engineers and talk about that “technical stuff”, but not for women.

I really hate being in this position.

No matter which path I follow career-wise, I sense that I’m always going to be caught in this limbo where people don’t fully accept me as a peer because I am different. I’m either older, younger, female, married with kids, a student, (someday) faculty, what have you…and this cuts off a lot of options for friendships. It’s very isolating and makes me wonder what I am paying in order to have the career I’ve been trying to work toward for so long. I would hope that going someplace else may change some of that, but I’m really not sure.

Does this ever change? Once I have my PhD, will faculty magically start treating me like a peer? Or will other students distance themselves even more because I crossed that imaginary line?

I don’t have an easy answer for Kendra. My Ph.D. was in the humanities, and I went through a graduate program that was evenly divided between men and women who were almost all my chronological peers. We were a gossipy, emotionally entangled lot.

I had a good friend a few years ago who was a Caltech graduate student (I can’t remember exactly what she did. It had “materials” in the name). My friend was, like Kendra, in her early thirties and one of the only women in her program. She also felt isolated from both her peers and her professors. Her fellow graduate students either had obvious schoolboy crushes on her, or they ignored her, unsure of what to do with a woman in what they clearly thought of as “male space.” Her male professors tended to treat her with exaggerated formality, always civil and encouraging, but also a bit distant. She noticed that her chief supervisor regularly went out for beers with some of his male graduate students, but never invited her — out of fear, she suspected, that he might misinterpret an invitation as an inappropriate advance. She was never once sexually harassed — but she found the “walking on eggshells” treatment to be almost as frustrating.

We need to acknowledge that graduate school can be a terrifying business. Working on a Ph.D. in any field is frightening; no matter what your topic or your field, there’s always the fear that your research won’t pan out, that you’ll end up in a dead end, or — worst of all — you’ll discover at the last minute that some other grad student at another university just did their doctoral work on exactly the same thing, and finished a month before you did. Add to that the financial strain that graduate education almost invariably imposes, throw in some family responsibilities, and the whole thing can be fairly wretched. I spent years oscillating between intellectual elation and debilitating anxiety, between authentic cameraderie with my fellows and bitter competitiveness. It was a tough time, and I think it is almost certainly worse for women in male-dominated fields.

As for the questions Kendra asks, I can say that in my experience — and, anecdotally, in the experience of most of my fellow graduate students — things do change once you get the Ph.D. I was never especially close to my dissertation supervisor, though we certainly got along quite well. At the moment he signed my completed dissertation, with all my exams and research and writing done, he said to me just one word: “welcome.” Not “congratulations”, or “well done”, but “welcome.” I already had tenure here at Pasadena City College (even though I technically had only an MA), but in his eyes it seemed, getting the Ph.D. was a hurdle I had to get over in order to become his peer. Honestly, “welcome” was the word I most wanted to hear at that moment. It was the recognition not just of a significant accomplishment, but of belonging.

Of course, once you have the Ph.D. you cease to be a student like other students — even if you’re doing a post-doc somewhere rather than actually joining the professoriate. My friends in the sciences who are doing post-doctoral research (but not teaching, and not being paid as full-time academics) often do report feeling a bit “betwixt and between”. On the one hand, they’ve achieved the highest standard the western academy offers, and on the other, they’re not climbing the tenure ladder and they don’t yet have students of their own. Whatever your sex, whatever your age, it can be a rough time.

But in the end, things do get better. And in the sciences, they have started to get dramatically better for women. The percentage of women receiving advanced degrees in the hard sciences, mathematics, and engineering has climbed considerably in recent years. Caltech now is over 40% female, three times what it was just a quarter-century ago. At times, the continued obstacles all around us blind us to the happy reality that we have already come so far. And though women in science and engineering continue to experience the kind of treatment that Kendra writes about, that sense of isolation will decrease as more and more women like her continue to work for the Ph.D. and continue to take post-docs and tenure-track jobs.

I remember very well one thing my old friend from Caltech said to me: “Sometimes, when it gets really bad, I tell myself I’m taking this shit so other women who come after me won’t have to.” It’s hard to be a pioneer, and it’s hard to carry the burden of being a “change agent.” But sticking with it gives others the inspiration to follow in your footsteps. And as more and more women come into the sciences, as math and engineering departments cease to be all-male enclaves, the sense of isolation that “geek women” experience will inevitably diminish. And though that may not be much comfort to Kendra now, in the long run, I hope that it will be.

“Boys Adrift”: part one of a lengthy review

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 29, 2007
in Books, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Science, Teaching and Youth
. 18 Comments

Last week, with not inconsiderable trepidation, I picked up a copy of Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. The book is by Dr. Leonard Sax, who wrote the very troubling and numbingly essentialist Why Gender Matters a couple of years ago. I read WGM last year and was disturbed by Sax’s claims, most of which seemed to be largely in service of his pet issue: advancing the spread of single-sex education, which he argues is vitally important for boys.

But a couple of people who disliked WGM told me that they’d read “Boys Adrift” and thought that it was significantly better, if still flawed. It’s a quick and easy read, and I made my way through it during “chinchilla out time” last Saturday.

I’m going to review this book in two parts. The criticism comes today, the praise later this week.

First off, there’s much here that is troubling. Though this may be an instance of the pot calling the kettle black, Sax is still prone to the whopping and unsupportable generalization. In discussing the importance of competition, he opines:

Most girls value friendship above team affiliation…Boys are more likely to understand that friends don’t have to be teammates, and teammates don’t have to be friends. And boys are more likely to be invested in the success of their team regardless of whether any of their friends are on the team.

Dr. Sax, please, come and watch some of the girls I mentor and teach play soccer and softball. If “Megan” is playing catcher, and her best childhood friend “Melissa” is a runner for the other team trying to steal second base, I guarantee you that “Megan” isn’t going to hesitate for an instant in trying to throw out her closest confidante! I’ve worked enough with both male and female athletes to know that team solidarity and competitiveness flourishes just as effectively among girls as among boys. I suspect Dr. Sax spends very little time with young female athletes.

Of course, sometimes the good doctor focuses on the science he is far more qualified to discuss. But like most of those who defiantly cling to the “nature” side of the argument, the evidence doesn’t necessarily support his conclusions. For example, Sax has an interesting section about why boys don’t like reading any more. It’s not, according to him, because video games are inherently more interesting (though he is, I’m relieved to say, no fan of them). It’s because the kind of questions teachers ask about reading assignments don’t address boys’ concerns.

Sax comes up with the following scenario: a junior high-school English teacher has assigned the kids “Lord of the Flies.” An essay question is given for homework:

“Write a short essay in the first person, in Piggy’s voice, describing how you feel about the other boys picking on you. Remember to include lots of detail.”

Sax writes:

This homework assignment boils down to: How would you feel if you were Piggy? When I spoke with the teacher who assigned this homework, she explained that she wanted to teach the children about empathy… I submit that this assignment didn’t teach anything about empathy. Instead, the message reinforced for (boys) is that doing homework is for girls, not for real boys. No self-respecting boy, in this boy’s frame of mind, would do such a homework assignment.

The answer (you knew this was coming) is that boys and girls have different brains:

It’s easy for most middle school and high school girls to answer a question like “How would you feel if you were X?” because the area of the brain where the feeling is happening is closely linked to the area of brain where talking happens. For boys, that’s not the case… it’s not easy (for them) to answer, in a genuine and articulate way, the question “How would you feel if…?” He may attempt to produce the answer he thinks the teacher wants to hear, but it’s a chore. A better question for most boys would be “What would you do if…” That question may sound similar, but it’s actually a different question, and much more boy-friendly — for most boys.

I’m willing to concede that biological differences may explain why some boys have a hard time articulating feeling. I’m not qualified to disprove that possibility. But for heaven’s sake, one of the most vital tasks the schools have is to help young people overcome natural obstacles. If there are differences in the brain that make it more difficult for boys to empathize with fictional characters (or make it more difficult for girls to understand calculus), that’s hardly a case against teaching empathy or higher math! Rather, it’s a signal to teachers and parents that we have to work even harder with certain students (who may be clustered in one sex or another) to help them develop into full and complete human beings.

Dr. Sax complains that for a boy, it might not “be easy to answer, in a genuine and articulate way, the question “How would you feel if…” Fine, I concede his point. But boys do hard things all the time. Getting to level 346 on the latest video game is hard. Getting in shape for football is hard. Building muscle, building reflexes — these aren’t “natural”. Sometimes, getting in shape to be a soldier or a quarterback feels like a chore, but no one suggests that because it’s difficult for the young to do, they ought to be excused from doing it!

I suspect (and hope) that Dr. Sax is genuinely concerned with the well-being of young American men. I share his concern and his commitment. But he draws dangerous conclusions from his own considerable research. His diagnosis may be accurate, but his remedy is wrong. Though for the sake of discussion, I am willing to concede that his findings about brain differences are real, I think he sells boys woefully short by suggesting that these differences are so significant that they serve as obstacles to the development of empathy, tenderness, and an articulate vocabulary for one’s own inner emotional terrain.

Feminists are often accused of suggesting that “there are no differences between boys and girls, between men and women.” We’re accused of ignoring nature and over-emphasizing nurture when it comes to psychological development. Though some feminists may have denied difference, most feminists today accept that brains and hormones may operate differently between the sexes. But we also point out that once you start characterizing boys and girls as fundamentally different, you immediately encounter so many exceptions (sensitive boys, aggressive girls) that the usefulness of the whole damn dichotomy becomes moot.

More importantly, some feminists (I include myself in this bloc) argue that the whole purpose of social institutions (be they churches, schools, or extended families) is to help each individual achieve full human potential despite whatever limitations are imposed by biology. Access to birth control helps address the biological reality that women get pregnant and men don’t. Toilet training socializes children to overcome their own physical impulses. “Nature” might have us all peeing our pants; “nature” might have every woman the mother of ten. Though real biological differences do exist, they ought never be used as an excuse for failing to develop our children into complete, effective, kind, tolerant, well-rounded human beings.

I’m willing to accept the premise that for biological reasons, it may be harder for some boys to articulate empathy — and for some girls to do advanced mathematics. But all that tells me as a teacher and a mentor is that we may need to redouble our efforts to help our sons and daughters reach their full potential. Rather than doing as Dr. Sax suggests, and re-phrasing the questions in order to make things “easier” for boys, we need more commitment from teachers and parents to help our sons “do hard things.” And while “hard things” might include making the football team or playing a fantasy game at a very high level, it also includes learning to identify emotionally with the vulnerable.

In the end, feminists don’t deny nature. But we refuse to be in thrall to it. And we sure as heck refuse to buy the tired excuse that “nature” means that our sons cannot all be kind, gentle, articulate and ambitious.

Part Two soon.

Wandering over to Lake Avenue, and a great Mouw post on faith and science

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 12, 2007
in Christianity, Faith and Science
. 11 Comments

I’m taking an extended break from All Saints Pasadena, and have been wandering back to the Warehouse community at Lake Avenue Church. I attended intermittently in 2001-2002, and will be heading back there on quite a few future Sundays. I’ll post some of my reasons for this transition another time.

And at Richard Mouw’s site, he takes on the issue of faith and evolution, and how he — as an evangelical — came to embrace the latter while remaining firm in the former. He writes of what helped him:

…I was immensely pleased to come across a wonderful paragraph in a scholarly essay, published in the early 1990s in Christian Scholars Review, by Ernan McMullen, who taught in the Notre Dame philosophy department for several decades. Father McMullen affirms that over a period of millions of years, there have been “uncountable species that flourished and vanished [and] have left a trace of themselves in us.” The Bible, he says, sees God as preparing the world for “the coming of Christ back through Abraham to Adam”; but is it too much of a stretch, he asks, “to suggest that natural science now allows us to extend the story indefinitely further back?” And then this wonderful passage: “When Christ took on human nature, the DNA that made him the son of Mary may have linked him to a more ancient heritage stretching far beyond Adam to the shallows of unimaginably ancient seas. And so, in the Incarnation, it would not have been just human nature that was joined to the Divine, but in a less direct but no less real sense all those myriad organisms that had unknowingly over the eons shaped the way for the coming of the human.”

I love that. That makes this evangelical animal rights activist very, very happy.

Live Strong Day

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 15, 2007
in Animal Rights, Links and Science
. 4 Comments

Amanda Marcotte is helping coordinate the internet presence of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The LAF, famous for their LiveStrong campaign that saw 40 million Americans don yellow wristbands, is annoucing that tomorrow, May 16, is LiveStrong Day. Lance and his supporters will be lobbying Congress for greater support for cancer survivors and their families.

The biggest priority of the LAF, I am happy to say, is expanding access to health care for millions of uninsured Americans. The Lance Arrmstrong Foundation is also eager to expand early screening, taking note that cancer deaths could be reduced by at least a third with early detection. And of course, the LAF wants to fund more research.

As a rule, my wife and I only support medical charities that receive the Humane Seal of approval, meaning that their research does not involve any use of animal subjects. Next to our own Matilde Mission, there is no charity nearer and dearer to our hearts than the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. They created the Humane Seal program.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation, I am sorry to say, still funds research that uses animal subjects. Yet I am happy to say that the LAF has a history of funding many of the projects of the PCRM. PCRM is eager to extoll the cancer-fighting benefits of a vegan diet; in recent years, their vegan nutrition classes have received direct support from the LAF. I am delighted that that support seems likely to continue.

Where the Lance Armstrong Foundation calls for early detection programs, for better support for those living with cancer, for immediate attention to the plight of the uninsured, I stand with them in full support. Where the LAF funds research on animal subjects, I withdraw that support. My adored father died of cancer last year, I held him in my arms on the day he passed. But if anything, his death only strengthened my opposition to animal research and testing. Even if it would have extended my Dad’s life, I remain steadfastly opposed to all forms of vivisection. I blogged that story here.

If you are considering donating to the LAF, please include a note with your donation asking that your money not be used for research programs except for those where animal subjects are never used. Lance Armstrong is a symbol of vibrant good health and radical commitment to personal transformation; I have long been in awe of his drive and his dedication. The LAF’s past support for PCRM programs is encouraging, and I don’t think it’s out of the question that the LAF could choose to fund research using non-animal subjects (a field growing by leaps and bounds). Your support for that shift may well help.

Whatever your views on animal testing, let’s applaud the commitment of the Lance Armstrong Foundation to helping people fight cancer and lead healthier, longer, happier lives. Let’s Live Strong indeed, and let’s Live Cruelty-Free to boot.

A long post about PCRM, veganism and gettin’ evangelical

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 16, 2007
in Animal Rights, Body, Environmentalism, Food, Science, Traveling and Veganism
. 23 Comments

My prayers this morning go out to all those affected by the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy. I have a few Hokie alumni in my family (though far more who went to UVA), and I know a couple of folks still closely associated with the Blacksburg campus. I know that several of my readers are Hokies, and my thoughts and prayers are especially directed towards them.

It’s spring break (Pasadena City College has what must be America’s latest spring break), and I’m in our little study at home. I was in Virginia yesterday, if driving from the District to Dulles in a downpour can be considered being “in Virginia”. (We did find some great vegan Ethiopian food in a little strip mall in Ballston.) My wife and I spent the weekend in Washington attending the Art of Compassion gala to raise money for and celebrate the accomplishments of one of our very favorite charities, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

What I love about PCRM is that more than any other animal rights outfit, they adopt a holistic approach to personal and global transformation. PCRM is one of the leading organizations advocating vegan diets for all. Backed by a growing network of hundreds of doctors and nutritionists across the USA and Canada, PCRM is reaching out to millions through increasingly savvy media campaigns. (My wife and I are particularly pleased with — and particularly interested in supporting — PCRM’s brand-spankin’ new Spanish-language campaign.) PCRM also campaigns against the use of animals in medical research, and has played a leading role in developing alternatives. (PCRM helped create “Digital Frog” to help end school dissections; they’ve helped popularize TraumaMan to replace the use of live animals in emergency medical education.)

Most animal rights organizations — and Lord knows, they all do fabulous work — want to save animals. The folks who run PCRM, led by the remarkably energetic and charismatic Dr. Neal Barnard, want to do the same. But saving animals is about more than stopping a seal hunt, or shutting down a few fur farms or puppy mills. (All very worthy causes, mind.) PCRM’s point is that what is good for animals is also good for us and for our planet. A balanced vegan regimen requires far fewer natural resources to produce than a meat-and-dairy laden one. And the health benefits of veganism (or even its softer form, lacto-ovo vegetarianism) are sufficiently well-demonstrated as to be nigh on undeniable.

The world says: “Children need milk to build strong bones”. The world says “Beef is the best source of iron and protein, especially for women.” The world says “Without animal research, we can’t make necessary medical breakthroughs.” The world says “A vegetarian or vegan diet is too boring, too miserable, and too time-consuming for the average modern person.” And carefully, with painstakingly documented research, PCRM works to disprove all of these deeply-held myths. (PCRM helped expose the roots of the Vioxx tragedy: what had proved safe in animals turned out deadly for humans. Animal testing too often makes animals suffer and tells us nothing about what works for people.)

Sigh. This post is turning into an infomercial. That’s not what this blog is supposed to be about, and I apologize. This is how I feel after retreat weekends with my youth group, or after a men- against-rape training. I feel inspired and invigorated, and more than usually evangelical!

Last month, Stentor at Debitage put up this post: Moral Relativist Anti-Vegetarianism. Stentor, a trained amateur philosopher, has pointed out more than once that I have an exasperating habit of making sweeping moral statements — and promptly disavowing the idea that I am actually proselytizing, claiming at times that “this is just me.” He’s right. The truth is that a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle almost always is about making a universal moral claim. Stentor writes:

So what makes vegetarianism especially threatening whereas diversity in other parts of life evokes less hostility? One inescapable part of the picture — which unfortunately vegetarians spend a lot of time disclaiming in a usually futile effort to avoid the proselytizing charge — is that vegetarianism is a moral position. Aside from the small number of people who are vegetarians purely for health or henotheistic religious reasons, to become a vegetarian is to implicitly endorse a non-relativistic moral code*. Second, vegetarianism is threatening – becoming a vegetarian involves a significant change in a fairly fundamental part of one’s lifestyle. Third, vegetarianism is realistic. For all the joking about how life wouldn’t be worth living without bacon, vegetarianism is within reach of the majority of developed world adults. (It’s not without hardships for some, and I’m not endorsing a purely personal-lifestyle-change-based policy, but the fact remains that most North Americans could drastically reduce their meat consumption if they really put their minds to it.) Adding to the realism is the surface plausibility of the vegetarian position — it’s comparatively easy for even a committed omnivore to understand what makes vegetarians think they’re right. Bold emphasis is mine.

Stentor is frequently right, and here, he’s dead on. I realize that on this blog, I write about many things: diet, feminism, faith, exercise. As a progressive evangelical writing for a general audience, I’ve deliberately disavowed Christian proselytizing in this space. Do I wish more people would pursue a personal, transforming relationship with Christ? Yes. Do I believe that no one can be saved without consciously forming that relationship? No, I don’t. Do I wish more people — especially men — would embrace feminist principles of egalitarianism in every aspect of their public and private lives? Yes. Do I want every man (and woman) to stop using porn, to stop objectifying women, to stop the economic, sexual, and physical exploitation of their sisters? Yes.

So the question I’m wrestling with is this: does my veganism correlate more closely with my feminism or my Christianity? If it’s like my Christian faith, it’s a “personal choice” — one among many. I do believe that my Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Wiccan, animist, and atheist friends will be saved (though how, exactly, is not something I can always articulate.) I do believe that I am called to follow Christ, but I also believe that others follow Him even as they call Him by other names. What would make the world a far better place isn’t necessarily everyone becoming Christian; what would make the world a far better place is if everyone actually lived out the principles of their faiths and creeds. But if every man and woman on this planet saw women as equally worthy of dignity and respect, as equally entitled to share in resources and in decision-making, as equally prepared to lead, as equally deserving of being seen as a whole person — then heck yes, the planet would be better off. Feminism is, in that sense, essential.


And I’m prepared to start arguing that vegetarianism (or better yet, veganism) has the power to bring about tremendous change. It will improve the health of the individual and of the planet, and it will exponentially reduce the unnecessary suffering of sentient, conscious creatures. So yes, I’m going to risk alienating still more readers with a more explicit commitment to veganism here on this blog.

In the end, I’m trying to follow ever more closely Forster’s maxim: “only connect.” What I wear matters. What I eat matters. Everything we do connects us to other living creatures. Every darned thing I do every day matters. And my brothers and sisters, the same does go for you too. Every dollar you spend is a vote. The food you buy, the clothes you wear, the words you speak: these impact the world. And I’m asking you to consider making the best possible choices in your public, private, educational, familial, sexual, and economic lives.

My commitment to full veganism is relatively recent (I’ve been a vegetarian for longer.) It’s been a slow evolution rather than an instant decision. Like most lasting conversions, it has come gradually rather than in a flash of light. But you’re gonna be hearing more on this blog about animal rights, veganism, and how they connect to faith and feminism.

More about my PCRM weekend below the fold. Continue reading ‘A long post about PCRM, veganism and gettin’ evangelical’

Biology, free will, and what’s “written in the genes”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 12, 2007
in Body, Men and Masculinity, Science and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 32 Comments

A couple of folks have emailed me this New York Times piece: Pas de Deux of Sexuality is Written in the Genes.

It begins:

Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term attachment.

So much fuss, so intricate a dance, all to achieve success on the simple scale that is all evolution cares about, that of raisingthe greatest number of children to adulthood. Desire may seem the core of human sexual behavior, but it is just the central act in a long drama whose script is written quite substantially in the genes.

I don’t have a personal animus towards evolutionary biologists. I’m no scientist, after all. I honor the work these men and women do. But I always shudder nonetheless when I get one of these articles e-mailed to me. And I shudder because I know that the laypeople who read these articles frequently come to the conclusion that these “latest findings” prove that heredity trumps socialization, and that genetics trump free will.

The field of evolutionary biology is intensely politicized, less so by the scientists themselves and more by those of us who interpret the findings to fit our own agendas. The right-wing often contradicts itself. Many conservatives I know believe that homosexuality is a matter of personal sin, not the hard-wiring of the brain; they believe that gay-ness can be cured. And just as they proclaim that gays and lesbians can become “completely heterosexual” (Ted Haggard just set a world speed record in that regard), they often rely on science to make the case that men and women are so enormously different that rigid gender roles actually make good sense. Where homosexuality is concerned, they think free will trumps biology; where gender roles are concerned, they think the reverse.

Is the left guilty of the opposite? Frequently. Many in the GLBTQ community have welcomed the increasing scientific consensus that the “cause” of homosexuality is biological, and thus not an individual choice. But there are problems with this, problems that the recent New York Times article hints at. Male homosexuality seems to be more closely correlated with pre-natal biology than female homosexuality. If GLBTQ activists attach themselves too closely to the scientific community, we end up with some awkward conclusions to wrestle with, particularly the serious possibility that women’s sexuality is far more mutable in adulthood than men’s. If we suggest that gay and lesbian rights ought to be based on the reality that some folks “are born this way”, we end up with an argument that might be much more helpful to men than to women.

I’ve never liked the “argument from nature” as a defense of gay rights. My support for same-sex marriage, for example, is not rooted in a sense that gay and lesbian folks were born “that way.” My support for SSM is rooted in a conviction that marriage is a fundamental good, and that we all ought to be free to marry the person with whom we feel we have the best opportunity to build a life most excellent. (In my case, that means trying over and over again until hitting the jackpot.) Whether or not someone’s brain is different from his or her brother’s isn’t of interest to me; who he or she longs to be with is, regardless of whether that longing is rooted in environment or heredity.

Evolutionary biology can go a long way, I think, in explaining why it is we want what we want. But there’s a colossal difference between understanding the origin of our desires on the one hand, and assuming that we have no choice in how we express those desires on the other. (See my “Biology and Bladders” post from last summer.) To quote myself:

What I do question as a pro-feminist man is whether our “nature” is ever an excuse for poor behavior. It’s one thing to acknowledge the very real presence of physiological factors that influence our wants; another thing altogether to suggest that men have little or no control over how they respond to those influences! What I find so exasperating is that so many men confuse an explanation for an excuse, denying their own ability (or that of the “average man”) to resist and control those impulses.

Obviously, I think same-sex marriage is a social good. Equally passionately, I believe that we all are capable of restricting and channeling our desires, whether those desires are rooted in our DNA, our brain, or our dysfunctional upbringing. No desire is so strong that it cannot be shaped by free will. At the same time, in a healthy and just society, we should challenge people to curb only those desires that have great potential for harm if acted upon. For a variety of reasons, I see prostitution and pornography as profoundly harmful — and argue that all of us can should choose not to make use of either industry. For a variety of reasons, I do not see cultural acceptance of homosexuality as profoundly harmful, and so I don’t see any reason to ask my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to transform themselves.

Mind you, I think our sexuality is highly mutable. Put another way, I do believe that if I wanted to be gay badly enough, and if I sought God’s help, I could make myself be attracted to men. I might even be capable of falling in love with a man. I see no reason to do so, of course. But my belief in the power of the will, aided by grace, is pretty profound. And my frustration with most popular coverage of science grows, as people continue to be tempted to use biology and evolution as an excuse to accept things — in particular, bad male behavior — as natural, inevitable, and beyond the capacity of the individual human being to change.