Archive for the 'Sexual ethics and transformation' Category

“The rights of desire”: a professor-student romance makes the local news

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2008
in Marriage, Older Men & Younger Women, Sexual ethics and transformation, Student crushes and Teaching
. 13 Comments

This story popped up on my radar screen today: Professor, ex-student tie the knot.

Muata Kamdibe and Crystal Domingues aren’t looking for anyone’s stamp of approval - not from their resistant families, curious colleagues, or a gossip-prone public.

For two months, the couple managed to keep their romance a secret from everyone, knowing the kinds of whispers and judgments their 18-year age difference would spawn - as well as the fact that Kamdibe, 36, a Rio Hondo College professor, first met Domingues, 18, when she was a student in his class last fall.

But it all publicly tumbled out two weeks ago, when Domingues was reported missing by her family, then tracked down by a private detective Feb. 7 to Kamdibe’s home in Irvine.

Well, that’s one way to start off with the in-laws. Continue reading ‘“The rights of desire”: a professor-student romance makes the local news’

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’

On “settling” and the indispensability of passion: a reply to Lori Gottlieb

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 9, 2008
in Divorce, Favorite Posts 2008, Marriage, Memories, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 33 Comments

The March 2008 issue of The Atlantic has one of those sure-to-start-a-heated-discussion pieces: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. The author, Lori Gottlieb, is exactly my age: forty, on the nose. She’s a single parent, having conceived her young son with donor sperm. Lori begins:

About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.

“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

Gottlieb anticipates that this last sentence will arouse howls of indignation, but she pushes blithely ahead. She’s writing, it seems for younger women, and she’s offering what is only a slightly different spin on the by-now ubiquitous bromide that “feminism hurts women by suggesting that happiness is possible without a man.” I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t dozens of books and articles out there aimed at headstrong young women warning that if they don’t get hitched and start breeding early, they’ll miss their chance at the deepest and most satisfying source of happiness that the be-ovaried can ever know. It’s an old trope: the wiser older sister figure presenting her own story of woe as a cautionary tale. (And yeah, I know I sometimes do a similar thing here on this blog.) What’s interesting — and particularly galling — is Gottlieb’s hook: she urges smart young women to marry “Mr. Good Enough”. Continue reading ‘On “settling” and the indispensability of passion: a reply to Lori Gottlieb’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part one of a series on “Getting Off”: masculinity, pornography, and the truth of what we don’t want to face

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 30, 2007
in Men and Masculinity, Porn, Porn and Masculinity Series, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 49 Comments

This will be the first (long) part of a three-part post. Parts two and three to come next week.

I started reading Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity over the Thanksgiving holiday, and finished the relatively short book earlier this week. As I said in my post immediately below this one, it has had a deep and profound impact upon me.

In this first post, I’ll look at the case Jensen makes against porn, particularly the arguments he marshalls against the idea that porn isn’t a “big deal” and that “normal people” can use it without negative consequences for themselves, their relationships, and society as a whole. In the second post, I’ll respond to the charge against Jensen — reiterated by Courtney Martin – that his prose “reeks of self-hate.” Self-loathing is a common slur tossed at pro-feminist men, and deserves a response all of its own. In the third post, I’ll look at Jensen’s proposals about masculinity and sexuality, particularly his remarkable suggestion that we ground our sexual ethics not merely in pleasure, but in joy and in light.

Robert Jensen is one of a small group (others include Jackson Katz, Michael Flood, and Michael Kimmel) who are the dedicated public faces of the pro-feminist men’s movement. Jensen, a professor of journalism at Texas, wrote the marvelous Heart of Whiteness, about which I also ought to blog someday. Getting Off sees Jensen take an enormously brave step. Balancing thoughtful analysis with deep candor, he makes the most powerful case against pornography that I’ve read since the late Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women, a book now more than 25 years old. And yes, Getting Off is dedicated to (among others) Dworkin herself.

Jensen starts by reminding us of what we already know: we live in a porn-saturated culture. Technological innovation has made the furtive peeps at father’s Playboy an unknown experience for most young people today. Jensen, born in 1958, describes his own adolescent fascination with pornographic magazines and the lengths to which he and his buddies would go to acquire porn. My own experience with porn was similar; I “discovered” it in 1979, when I was twelve. The porn that so indelibly marked (and marred) my nascent sexuality came in print with magazines like “Club International” and “Penthouse.” What’s available today online –even for free — is infinitely more vivid, infinitely more hardcore, and infinitely more interactive than it was in my youth or in Jensen’s.

We know all this of course. What we don’t know — or, as Jensen points out, what we don’t want to know — is how truly ugly pornography is. For a host of reasons ranging from denial to civil libertarianism to sheer horny curiosity, a great many voices across the spectrum are unwilling to name porn as one of the most corrosive influences on our culture and on our humanity. Continue reading ‘Part one of a series on “Getting Off”: masculinity, pornography, and the truth of what we don’t want to face’

The “miracle cure” of marriage: responding to Kay Hymowitz and Brad Wilcox (again)

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Hugo Schwyzer
on November 15, 2007
in Class, Favorite posts 2007, Marriage, Money, Politics and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 26 Comments

I’ve taken two days to write this post. I feel very, very strongly about it — more than about any post I’ve written in, well, at least a few months.

In the latest issue of First Things (not available yet online except to subscribers), W. Bradford Wilcox reviews Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age, the latest from conservative family scholar Kay S. Hymowitz.

I haven’t read Hymowitz yet, but I always seem to have a bone to pick with Brad Wilcox. I’ve taken issue with him in three separate posts: here, here, here. Wilcox is a Virginia Cavalier (and I have a soft spot for all things Charlottesville), and he’s an important family scholar in his own right. I agree with him on almost nothing, but admire his writing style.

Wilcox has this way of saying things that are so stunningly wrong that I leap up from the couch or chair or desk and start madly pacing about. From this month’s First Things review:

The rise of the marriage gap also reveals that a large minority of working-class, poor, and minority adults no longer “believe in marriage as an institution for raising children.” They have lost touch with a marriage orientation that requires them to keep an eye on the future, to work hard, to discipline their sexual (or at least reproductive) behavior, and to be discriminating in their choice of romantic partners. In making this point, Hymowitz provocatively turns on its head the standard liberal argument that the poor do not marry because they do not have good jobs, adequate income, and decent housing; instead, she persuasively argues that the disappearance of a marriage orientation—and the virtues and values associated with this orientation—among the poor and working class is a big part of the reason that they and their children are more likely to end up at the bottom of the social ladder.

I may be blaming Wilcox for Hymowitz’s sin, but his approval of her stance (the bold is mine) is clear. It’s like reading something from the Gilded Age of nineteenth-century social reform, when earnest upper-middle-class types tut-tutted about the licentiousness and immorality of the poor and the brown. The urban poor (particularly, I suspect, Wilcox and Hymowitz mean black and Latino people) have — get this — no work ethic and no sexual self-control. Why? Because the “po’ folks ain’t gettin’ married no mo”. Wilcox and Hymowitz, like most social conservatives, see marriage as the panacea for all social problems. Sexually frustrated? Get married. Worried about social security? Get married. Want to have happy children? Get married. Want to end global warming, cure the common cold, and hasten the return of the Lord? Get married. Continue reading ‘The “miracle cure” of marriage: responding to Kay Hymowitz and Brad Wilcox (again)’

Saturday reprint: Courtly Love and Double Standards

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 10, 2007
in Chivalry and performing gender roles, Christianity, Feminism, Porn and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 9 Comments

It’s a long holiday weekend, and I won’t be back to regular posting until Tuesday morning. In the interim, here’s a repost of something I wrote back in March 2005:

The comments on this post from last week about accountability have shifted to the topic of bad male behavior, particularly the sort that takes place when no other fellow is around. Mythago recently wrote:

Chivalry has always been about good manners towards ‘ladies,’ not to women, period. It’s as true in the modern day as it was when The Art of Courtly Love was written.

She’s right about the Art of Courtly Love. Andreas Capellanus, who wrote that famous medieval tract, argued for immense patience in pursuing women of gentle birth. As for peasants:

“If you love a peasant woman, praise her and force her–peasants don’t respond to gentle wooing.”

So much for seeing all women as one’s sisters in Christ! Capellanus makes it clear that the pursuit of courtly love is likely to be immensely frustrating for a man — which is why peasant women make such a convenient outlet for pent-up sexual desire.

Mythago is right when she suggests that nine centuries after Capellanus wrote his tract, the attitudes within it survive. Many of the male commenters on my recent posts about responsibility and propriety have implied that good manners are essentially reciprocal. Their thesis? If a woman dresses appropriately, she is deserving of respect in return. If she doesn’t respect herself or her community, then she forfeits her right to be respected. In other words, “nice” girls, “demure” girls, have the right not to be objectified and openly lusted for; “bad” women (you know, the bra-less ones, the ones in short skirts), deserve the wolfish stares from their brothers and resentment from their sisters. Continue reading ‘Saturday reprint: Courtly Love and Double Standards’

The lure of victim consciousness: more on marriage, disparate desire, and responsibility

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Hugo Schwyzer
on November 8, 2007
in Marriage, Relationships and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 33 Comments

Below Monday’s post on marriage and disparate desire, “Married Tom” writes:

There are two sides to the incompatible libido/unhappy sex life coin. I would argue that living with the expectation that most advances to your spouse will be met with a “not interested tonight, and since ‘I’ come before ‘us’ that is justifiable” can have equally “soul scarring” results. The sense of rejection, demoralization, and ultimately apathy that builds up over time from constant, predictable rejection is just as real and damaging as the bleak feeling that must come from being “pressured or nagged” into sex. Neither is good, yet you are implying that one is morally acceptable while the other is damning.

You are saying that regardless of whether the decision is mutual, you should learn to accept the situation and be happy with it. Many spouses do just that, I believe it is an example of the factors behind what Thoreau observed behind the “quiet desperation” in many men. Failing to see why the anxious spouse can’t just learn to “deal with it” is not particularly helpful–a strange mix of pragmatism and sanctimony.

Monday’s post was in response to a particularly asinine article. My point was that no one, married or not, is ever “entitled” to have sex with another human being. The “yes” of the wedding day is not a “yes” to every future sexual encounter with a spouse. Good sex is based not on duty but on desire — and when it comes to sex, most folks seem to find that duty makes desire disappear right quick. The author of the article suggested that lower-desire spouses ought to think of sex as one of the many tasks one undertakes to make a partner happy, like taking out the garbage or doing the dishes. I — and most of my commenters — vigorously reject that analogy. Taking out the garbage when one doesn’t want to leads to momentary resentment, while having sex you don’t want can be profoundly damaging to the spirit. Sex is not easily made analogous to any other household activity! Sophonisba makes this point well:

We are all aware that you have to do lots of things you don’t want to do, in life and in marriage. Every decent person does things they don’t want to do, every day–yes, even people who don’t put out on command.

Try stepping away from the easy, comforting “anything I don’t want to do” generalities for a second and put it in concrete terms. You’re not talking about having somebody do “something” or “anything” they don’t want to. You’re talking about having them have sex they don’t want to have. Not quite so vague and fluffy, when you look it in the face. Continue reading ‘The lure of victim consciousness: more on marriage, disparate desire, and responsibility’

“Guardians of each other’s autonomy”: some more thoughts on sex and disparate desire

Published
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Hugo Schwyzer
on November 5, 2007
in Christianity, Marriage, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 36 Comments

Over at Feministing this morning, Jessica links to this appalling piece that ran in the London Times: Not tonight, dear . . . in fact, not ever. Written by Dr. Pam Spurr, it’s subtitled: Feminism gave women control of their sex lives, but has it gone too far? Author and sex expert Dr Pam Spurr argues that many women are risking their relationships by saying ‘no’.

Here’s the whopper:

At the risk of being called old-fashioned (though I don’t think that old-fashioned should always have negative connotations) and antifeminist, I’d go so far as to say that for both partners sex could be considered a duty, if it is something that one partner knows would make the other happy.

Does he really want to go up on the roof to repair a leak on a Sunday afternoon?

Does she really want to take out the rubbish in the pouring rain? No, but partners in relationships do such things because they know that it makes the other happy. Sex should be seen in the same light.

Jessica takes it apart very well, and there’s a thriving discussion in the comments section at Feministing as well. Continue reading ‘“Guardians of each other’s autonomy”: some more thoughts on sex and disparate desire’

I’m “viral”, and it makes me happy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 18, 2007
in Blogging, Links, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexual harassment
. 16 Comments

Actually, it’s the “enthusiasm not consent” post from July that’s getting the attention. Nothing I’ve ever written gets quoted as often as these lines:

“The opposite of rape is not consent. The opposite of rape is enthusiasm”. It’s dangerous because it’s shocking, and of course, it’s dangerous because it twists the purely legal meaning of the term “rape.” But from the standpoint of one who cares desperately about the well-being of young people, my goal in offering workshops like these is not merely to prevent sexual assault that meets the legal standard of a criminal act. My goal is to prevent that, of course, but to also offer shy and uncertain young people tools to prevent them from having bad sex characterized by obligation, confusion, and detached resignation. I always argue that anything short of an authentic, honest, uncoerced, aroused and sober “Hell, yes!” is, in the end, just a “no” in another form.

Looking through my pings, trackbacks, and hits, it’s my most-linked-to post ever, and I’m genuinely glad, because the subject matters so much.

Thanks, Curmudgette!

“Ginormous breasts” at the gym: a response to Isky about the male gaze and responsibility

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Hugo Schwyzer
on October 12, 2007
in Clothing and Fashion, Modesty and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 51 Comments

My friend Isky sent me an email this week that revisits, yet again, the subject of women, clothing, and the male gaze. I asked him to look at the posts in the modesty category, particularly these (one, two, three) that summarize my views fairly well. Still, Isky seemed to want a specific reply to his situation. As the whole discussion may be triggering or repetitive for some, it’s below the fold. Continue reading ‘“Ginormous breasts” at the gym: a response to Isky about the male gaze and responsibility’

“Domestic Democracy”, Ephesians 5:21, and BDSM in the Christian marriage

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Hugo Schwyzer
on October 3, 2007
in BDSM, Christianity, Marriage, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 14 Comments

So, one more post on BDSM. I can’t promise this will be the last, but I will try to move on to another subject eventually.

In the two previous posts, I made the case that the incorporation of bondage and domination/submission strategies into a couple’s sexual life was not inherently anti-feminist. The debate continues in the comment threads below each.

But what about the Christian perspective on BDSM? Let’s imagine a heterosexual, married Christian couple (I’ll call them Edgar and Edna). Edgar and Edna are faithful to each other and devoted members of their local church, actively involved in the work of the Great Commission. And on Thursday nights after they get home from the building committee meeting, they take turns dominating each other. They incorporate restraints, quirts, and hot wax. It’s not uncommon for one of them to be sore and bruised the next day. Their marriage is a model of Christian egalitarianism. Not only do they fulfill the scriptural commandment to mutually submit to each other as spouses, they choose to take a very literal interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 with them into the bedroom (which they playfully call the “dungeon”.)

I’m making Edgar and Edna up, of course. But I’ve known at least one devoutly Christian married couple who did incorporate some elements of dominant/submissive play into their sexual life. They talked about it openly within a trusted small group at a church to which I no longer belong (no, it’s not All Saints or Pasadena Mennonite). My friends’ admission was a bit too much for even their small group family, and their revelation (which was really an invitation for some discussion about the ethics of married sex) did not result in further dialogue.

Too often, discussions of Christian sexual ethics focus on pre-marital, extra-marital, and homosexual sex. That doesn’t mean those aren’t important topics. Faithful Christians can, with integrity and in good conscience, vigorously disagree about whether all genital sexual activity ought to be restricted to heterosexual married couples. But we talk less about sex within marriage than sex outside of it.

The great debate about marriage in contemporary Christian circles is between “complementarians” and “egalitarians.” The former group argues that God intended men to “lead” their wives as “heads” of the family. Men and women have different roles, each complementing the other. The latter group (to which I belong) argues that God intended spouses for mutual submission, each in radical equality with the other. An army, after all, needs a general — but the military model doesn’t apply to marriage, or so we egalitarians argue.

For those of us who are egalitarians, then, isn’t BDSM — even within monogamous marriage — problematic? Regardless of who is assuming the dominant role, BDSM celebrates the erotics of asymmetrical power. Even if that asymmetry only applies in the bedroom (and not, say, in the divvying up of household chores), isn’t it at odds with the egalitarian worldview? If God intended spouses to practice “radical domestic democracy” (which is how I like to describe the egalitarian outlook), shouldn’t how we make love be congruent with how we live out every other aspect of our marriage? If we are committed to equality in decision-making and chore-sharing, shouldn’t our physical delight in each other also be egalitarian rather than hierarchical? If an egalitarian Christian couple delights in domination and submission (particularly, say, if one partner always assumes the same role), isn’t there some disconnect between their theological principles and their sexuality?

These are all excellent questions, the sort that I think my old friends in the small group were trying to work through. It’s also what Ann’s comment below my previous post on BDSM is getting at, I think.

Christians have to be concerned not only with issues of consent and enthusiasm but also with justice. We live in a world where men and women are taught to delight in the abuse of power. We live in a world where rape and abuse are so common that they have affected how many of us think about sexuality. We know that what “turns people on” is a consequence of both biological and cultural influence; too often, the culture sends out a message that tells both men and women to eroticize domination, degradation, abuse. So even if a couple practicing BDSM is doing so with great care, even if each partner in the relationship feels valued and loved, if they delight in radical inequality in their sexual life they may be bringing the brokenness of the outside world into their intimate private sphere. For married Christian egalitarians in particular, that’s a troubling thought.

I wrote in the previous posts of the potential for BDSM to offer healing and liberation. Those weren’t empty phrases; though I’ve never had any interest in delving into that world myself, I’ve known too many good people who did find growth and freedom within that “lifestyle” to condemn BDSM as inherently incompatible with Christian sexual ethics. At the same time, I cannot help but feel that for most, the delight that is taken in BDSM is rooted less in biological impulse and more in a sexist and exploitative culture. And so I’m torn.

I honor the fact that so many of those who did practice BDSM have such evident care for each other and for each other’s boundaries. I am struck by how many people in that “scene” speak of how they have found recovery and fulfillment through ritualized acts of domination and submission. Their positive experiences are genuine and real. But if they had not already been so wounded by a corrupted, violently misogynistic culture, would they need to find healing in this way? Is BDSM only appealing because it is a response to darkness, or, in a perfectly egalitarian world where we all were raised with healthy sexual messages, would some people still be drawn to it? As a Christian feminist, I have to ask these questions and ask both my fellow feminists and fellow Christians to ask the same.

I’ve gone on and on here, and I’m still ambivalent. Because neither my wife nor I have any real interest in any aspect of BDSM, this is a moot point in our marriage. Still, I’m interested in the discussion because I think it’s important for us (feminists, Christians, honest, thinking people) to reflect on what we think really good sex is. I do believe we are called to match our language and our life (a phrase I use too often, perhaps); we’re called to match what we do in private with what we do in public. That doesn’t mean we ought to have public sex, but it does mean that if we are egalitarians in the outside world we ought to be wary of finding particular pleasure in dominating another human being behind closed doors.

At the same time, we ought also to be wary of insisting that all good sex “looks” egalitarian. Taken to its logical extreme, that would mean that the missionary position would be seen as evidence of too much comfort with male domination. Egalitarians would always have to have sex while spooning, so neither was on top! Proscribing certain positions because of their anti-feminist, complementarian implications would be manifestly silly. But if it’s okay, say, for both partners to prefer sex with the woman on top, isn’t it just a very small leap to saying it ought also be okay to incorporate handcuffs and a ball gag?

I don’t know the answer to all these questions. But I think that Christians need to be fearless and forthright in wrestling with them.

Private pain, private pleasure, public justice: a follow-up on feminism, sexuality, and BDSM

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 1, 2007
in BDSM, Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 31 Comments

Folks, this is an R-rated post.

Some interesting exchanges in the comments section below Friday’s post on feminism and BDSM prompt me to follow-up.

In the thread, the basic positions (sorry, can’t help it!) are sketched out: one camp argues that BDSM is only a turn-on because of patriarchal conditioning. According to this view, when consenting adults mutually delight in bondage/discipline/submission/domination, they’re still replicating in the bedroom the brokenness of the culture. If we lived in a world without toxically oppressive sex roles, the thinking goes, no one would be turned on by bondage or pain or domination. If we want to end public oppression, we need to make sure our private erotic lives do not replicate (symbolically or substantively) that oppression.

The other camp usually stipulates that the turn-on of BDSM is culturally conditioned. I don’t encounter a lot of folks who say that a delight in BDSM is genetic! But the fact that we live in a culture that eroticizes often unhealthy power imbalances doesn’t mean that every such exchange in the bedroom is automatically an unhealthy replication of a warped society. In this view, BDSM can be both healthy and redemptive. I’ve heard from too many women and men who, though sexually disenfranchised and victimized through childhood or adolescent abuse, have found liberation and authentic erotic empowerment through BDSM. (Someone mentioned the terrific Secretary, which while a perhaps problematic film from a feminist standpoint, came closer to “getting” that aspect of submission and domination than anything I’ve seen in the mainstream.) I’m not going to pathologize these folks or question their feminist credentials, particularly when so many of them (like Dev) are willing to wrestle with the feminist implications of their sexual lives.

Pisaquari writes:

Believe it or not, what people do in their bedroom does NOT stay there. It perpetuates how they treat other people, what they do to the next lover, interactions with the sex industry, etc…

At least in part, that’s right. While like any good liberal I believe in a right to privacy (whether or not it is enshrined in the Constitution), I also acknowledge (as most folks do) that most of us don’t do a great job of building a wall between our public and our private lives. If my sexual life with my wife were characterized by degradation and mistrust, that would invariably carry over into my teaching. If I were to go back to using pornography, as I did many years ago, it would sooner or later affect the way I view the women in my life. If we’re taking sex seriously, we put a lot of ourselves into it! And the reverse is true — if we’re taking sex seriously, how we have it will invariably help shape who we are, for better or worse.

How I have sex matters. If I don’t practice my feminism in my sexual life, then my feminism is superficial and hypocritical. If I don’t practice my faith in the marriage bed, then my faith — despite my claims — has not really transformed my life. The specific details of my sexual life with my wife are, of course, private. But I will say that what we do in the bedroom is far less important than the devotion, honesty, and caring with which we do it. What makes sex unethical, I am convinced, is exploitation, abuse, dishonesty, and selfishness. What makes sex righteous (and feminist) is genuine concern for mutual pleasure, radical trust, and a willingness to be there for the other person as he or she processes through their own responses to the sex that’s being had.

It’s possible, too, to overthink this stuff. The word “fuck”, for example, is a loaded with potential anti-feminist implications. It’s a word we use for sex — and violence. We do our children a disservice by raising them in a culture where the most common vulgar term for intercourse (”fucking”) is so closely linked to the term that most commonly expresses sudden anger (”Fuck off!”). In a world where women are often victims of male violence that mixes together sex and rage, it’s more than a little unfortunate that our most popular slang word also mixes the two! That said, I think a feminist can cry out (when so inclined) “Fuck me!” or “I’m going to fuck you so hard!” in good conscience. A lusty and enthusiastic “let’s fuck” may take a similar semantic form to the vocabulary of degradation and violence, but thinking adults (even thinking teens) can use the phrase with emotional and ideological safety. The words themselves matter less than how they are understood at the time.

Here’s the point: if honesty, integrity, communication, trust and concern for the other’s well-being are the hallmarks of good sex, then I think it quite possible that many practitioners of BDSM could meet that standard at least as well as those of us who are cheerfully “vanilla.” One thing I’ve learned from my friends in that “scene”: it is possible to “perform” acts of domination and submission in the bedroom (or the family dungeon!) while also practicing radical respect and mutuality. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge amount of potential for ritualized self-abuse, soul-destroying cruelty, and toxic exploitation within the BDSM world. But you can have miserable, selfish, damaging sex with your spouse in the missionary position with the lights off. Take it from this thrice-divorced fella. The postures adopted, the wedding bands present or not, and the toys and tools used do not tell us much about whether or not sex is mutual, loving, or safe.

Ultimately, “Good Sex” (in the larger sense of “contributing to the greater good” as well as mutually pleasurable) can happen in an almost infinite variety of ways. And though it does not fall into the realm of my own experience, I am reliably assured by those whom I trust that it can even involve the carefully negotiated use of pain and domination.

A long post on feminism, BDSM, consent, and constructive suffering

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 28, 2007
in BDSM, Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 24 Comments

Though most of the letters I get from readers revolve around the same few issues (older men/younger women; student crushes on teachers; chinchilla care), every once in a while I’ll get a spate of queries about another topic. And on my return from Israel, I found no fewer than three emails in my inbox on the topic of BDSM and feminism. This same week, a student obliquely raised the subject in my conference hours.

I don’t do this often, but let me suggest a quick perusal of the generally work-safe Wikipedia entry on BDSM. It’s a non-titillating, and inoffensive introduction to a world that makes many folks uncomfortable (in more than one sense, I suppose.)

Two of the three emails I received were from young women; one from a man in his thirties. All three are self-described feminists, and all three are involved — in one way or another — in the BDSM subculture. And their questions were all essentially the same. “Caitlin” (21) wrote:

I’m a women’s studies major at (mid-size university in Ohio)…The only sexual experiences I have ever had with another person that felt safe and pleasurable… were in situations where I was a submissive. I’m not into heavy pain, but I connect my own arousal to being dominated and controlled. I know it’s my “choice” to participate in this scene, but I feel as if I’m betraying a basic feminist principle by doing so.

How can I distinguish between what I really want and what society has acculturated me to want? If I can’t discern the difference, am I a bad feminist? Do feminists have to have vanilla (non-BDSM) sex?

I should add that I was raised in a liberal Catholic home, and though I don’t go to church anymore, I still believe in God. I’d be interested in a feminist Christian perspective on BDSM, because I haven’t seen anything like that.

The questions in Caitlin’s middle paragraph are essentially the same ones the other two emailers asked, and they jive with what my student was asking me this week.

I have no personal experience in the BDSM scene or the fetish world. Though I often allude to a colorful past, I confess that even in my wildest periods of youthful indiscretion and experimentation, I shied away from that subculture. I’ve long known — ever since I was a child — that I have, for lack of a better phrase, a mean streak. I’ve worked all my life to keep it in check; much of my passion for feminism and animal rights work is linked, on a not-very subconscious level, to my own awareness that my capacity for cruelty is very real. God and I have done some amazing work together; the gentleness that I think many others can see in me today is rooted entirely in my effort and His grace, not in my nature. Stepping into the world of BDSM would, for me, have been to tempt something that even at my most reckless I was not ready to tempt.

That said, I’ve had many colleagues and students and fellow feminist activists who were involved (to one degree or another) in the world of domination and submission. Indeed, when I think about it, it’s remarkable how many men and women I’ve known who spent time in that subculture. Going back to my years as an undergraduate, I can recall a series of conversations on the question of whether or not BDSM was compatible with feminist commitments. Twenty years ago — even ten years ago — I was certain that an authentic devotion to public equality couldn’t possibly coexist with a delight in private transactions in which sexual power is surrendered and taken. But I’ve met too many women whose public “feminist credentials” were impeccable and whose freely chosen delight in submission was equally sincere.

I got a note last year from a former student. I looked for it in preparation for this post but couldn’t find it. She’s worked as a submissive fetish model, and just finished her MA in women’s studies. She remembered that when she was my student, I had made some remark (long since forgotten by me) that she perceived as “closed-minded” about the BDSM world. It had taken her a while to get around to correcting me, but correct me she did. Part of what she said in her email I remember well, though I’m paraphrasing rather than quoting in the hope of conveying the gist of what she said:

Growing up as a teenage girl in my society, I felt my power taken away from me by everything and everyone: peers, parents, culture, men. No one ever asked me what I wanted. It was only in the ’scene’ that I found a voice. I’ve never known people as respectful, as caring, as concerned with my feelings and my own boundaries as the people I’ve found in BDSM. Because we find pleasure in pushing limits, we take greater care than anyone else does to make sure that we respect each other’s boundaries. Yes, as a submissive, I’ve found pleasure and I’ve found a voice. Of course it’s been cathartic to be involved in this world, but it’s not just about healing the damage done to me as a girl. It’s brought me healing and joy.

I remember she pointed out to me that as an endurance runner, I obviously was aware of the close relationship between suffering and pleasure. She even used a phrase I first heard used by one of my old running buddies: “constructive suffering.” Reflecting on her note, I admitted that taking my body to its often painful limits has not only been empowering for me, it has helped me to heal much of my own physical self-loathing. The greatest and most enduring payoff of endurance work hasn’t been the eradication of fat, because fat isn’t the enemy. The greatest payoff of marathoning hasn’t been the lowered resting heart rate or the endorphin high. The greatest payoff has been the end to the dualism that sees the body as separate, disconnected, and alien from me. Running — especially hard, painful running — has helped me understand what it means to be an incarnate spirit, a soul and a body joined together. And I’ve become convinced that for many men and women, participating enthusiastically in BDSM can bring about the same sort of epiphany.

I’m a great believer that we’re all called to work for public justice. I’m also convinced that a commitment to public justice needs to be built on a foundation of private virtue. I don’t think compartmentalization is healthy. And until relatively recently, I would have had a hard time believing that a “feminist submissive” wasn’t an oxymoron. But if, as my trusted sources tell me, real integrity and caring and concern for “voice” and boundaries not only exists in but is treasured by the BDSM community, then I think it’s possible to say that feminism is indeed compatible with this often misunderstood subculture.

Those who are better informed than I are welcome to weigh in.