Archive for the 'Sexual harassment' Category

Pat-downs, search terms, tampons

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 23, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Blogging, Body, Feminism, Modesty, Sexual harassment and Traveling
. 20 Comments

Today’s New York Times has this piece on the growing problem of "pat-down" searches of female passengers by security screeners at the nation’s airports:

In dozens of interviews, women across the country say they were humiliated by the searches, often done in view of other passengers, and many said they had sharply reduced their air travel as a result.

The new security policies on body searches were put into practice in mid-September, after a terrorist attack in Russia a few weeks before that destroyed two planes, killing 90 people. Two Chechen women were thought to have carried nonmetallic explosives onto the planes, officials said. It is not known whether the explosives were hidden in the women’s clothing, or whether the women merely boarded unimpeded, carrying the explosives.

But the Transportation Security Administration in the United States, already worried that metal detectors could not pick up nonmetallic explosives, issued new regulations requiring airport screeners to conduct more frequent and more intense secondary searches and pat-downs.

The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, declined to break down the percentage of searches conducted by gender, but a spokeswoman said it did not treat women differently from men under the policy. While some men have complained about the groping nature of the searches, women object the most. Several women interviewed said that male colleagues had scoffed at their complaints, saying that a physical pat-down was a small price to pay for security.

I’m not qualified to blog about security procedures at airports.  To put it mildly, I find all of these security procedures tiresome.  I don’t mind the pat-downs; I mind the time involved.  (And after being physically pawed and searched by teenage soldiers a few times on remote roads in rural Colombia last summer, I have a new outlook on  "pat-downs"!)

But it’s very different for a man to be patted down than it is for a woman.  Whether in LAX or on a highway in Cesar Department, I’m quite confident that the man who is running his hands over my body has no sexual agenda in doing so.  My chest is not considered a "private area", and so a man’s hands roaming across my upper body does not provoke discomfort.  For women, the situation is obviously radically different, as the anecdotes in the Times article attest.

I have to be mindful of my own protectiveness.  If my fiancee, or my mother, or one of my sisters were to be asked to partially disrobe at an airport (as is happening more regularly, according to the Times), I would be angry.  Though Russia’s recent experience with female Chechen suicide bombers makes it clear that women can be a threat, I frankly believe that our nation’s security needs to be balanced by a respect for human — particularly female –dignity.  I am aware that this may come across as less-than-enlightened, but honestly, I’m willing to take the risk that the lady next to me on the plane may have a bomb in her bra rather than subject her and others to humiliating searches.

I have female friends who are Muslim and wear hijab; I have other female friends who practice orthodox Jewish standards of modesty.  I cannot imagine how they are expected to get through these newly intensified screening procedures.  (The article makes clear that women who insist on being screened by other women, rather than the more available male screeners, often risk missing their flight).  And yes, I think that their right to fly unmolested outweighs the security need to closely inspect their persons.

Okay, so it’s not the biggest issue in the world, but it has me mildly irked.  On the other hand, it’s time for fun with search terms!  Today, folks have used the following to find me:

faux bisexuality  (and I was so sure I made up that phrase!  Darn.)

people hugging  (this is a query?  Do they want pictures?  A "how-to" guide?)

pussy different languages (a cat is still a cat, brother)

athletic amennorhea (I could say, stop working out and eat a burger, but that wouldn’t be kind)

But lord, they’re gay (My kingdom for a context!)

women’s magazines influence metrosexuality (Perhaps they do, but some of us don’t need that kind of encouragement)

gay mennonites (I know a few, but I’m not telling!)

And of all things, in today’s women’s history class, we’ll be delving into the history of the tampon, its use among different ethnic groups in America, and its connection to the sexual revolution of the 60s.  If there is demand, I shall post on the subject…

Bikes and Bankruptcy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 7, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Christianity, Money and Sexual harassment
. 11 Comments

My gal has been getting up at dawn each morning this week to watch the Tour de France live; I confess, she’s got me hooked as well. I’ve even added a link to the excellent “Tour de France” blog; it has up-to-the-minute news from the race. I’m seriously thinking about buying a road bike so I can do some cross-training. My body has held up well with five days a week of running, especially since I do so much of it on dirt; nonetheless, the “no-impact” aspect of cycling intrigues me. (I just think men look a bit silly in bike shorts. As one of my best friends put it years ago, whenever he wears them, he feels like he’s “smuggling plums”.)

By the way, I love the Lance Armstrong Nike ad. Ralph at Cliopatria brought it to my attention a month or so ago, and I play it twice a day.

The Catholic archdiocese of Portland has filed for bankruptcy protection; it is surely only the first of many dioceses to do so in the face of lawsuits resulting from allegations of sexual abuse by priests:

Although the decision raises serious questions about the future of archdiocesan schools, parish property and donations, plaintiffs and their attorneys accused Roman Catholic officials of seeking yet again to cover up 50 years of priest abuse.

“They have been morally bankrupt my entire life,” said James Devereaux, one of two plaintiffs who was set to go to trial Tuesday.

But in an earlier news conference, Portland Archbishop John G. Vlazny said bankruptcy was the church’s only move in the face of empty coffers, a pair of lawsuits seeking more than $155 million and dozens of other unsettled claims. In its filing, the archdiocese said its largest 20 lawsuits added up to more than $340 million in claims.

20 lawsuits adding up to $340 million? That’s $17 million per claim! As awful as the church’s sex scandal has been, how can anyone justify taking that kind of money away from a non-profit? I’ve been kicked off a jury panel because I made it clear that I was morally troubled by the notion of damages for “pain and suffering”. I’ve got no problem with paying the therapy bills for all of those who suffered at the hands of abusive priests; I have a huge problem with bankrupting a diocese to pay for something as utterly unquantifiable as “pain and suffering!” I’m not diminishing the horrific nature of what was done to so many young men and women by some very troubled priests. I just know that the good and vital work of the larger church has already been compromised by a few “bad apples”; it makes little sense to me to further undermine the church’s work by forcing her to pay exorbitant legal judgments or descend into Chapter 11! (Note: I am totally inconsistent. I am a fan of John Edwards and other trial lawyers who get big, punitive damage awards against corporations — I just have a completely different view of things when the corporation being sued is Holy Mother Church, and I know the money is coming from parishioner’s pockets, and, as the article above notes, will lead to the closure of schools.)

As I’ve posted before, the Catholic sex abuse scandal hits home for me. As a volunteer youth pastor, the revelations about the church in the past three years have created an unpleasant “climate of suspicion” for any male who chooses to volunteer his time and energy to work with adolescents. At times, I’ve felt a great deal of anger at those priests who did abuse kids, because they’ve made things so much more difficult for men like me who ought to be trusted. Though I understand why I have to do it, it does get damned tiring proving over and over again that I am “safe”. Every headline about sexual abuse in the church (and there are plenty of stories from within Protestantism) creates another barrier to be overcome.

I wish that instead of ugly and costly lawsuits, the church could create a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” along the lines of what was done in South Africa in the 1990s. Victims of abuse could be invited to tell their stories. Surviving abusers would be required to listen, and given an opportunity to apologize and make amends. Those who were complicit in covering up the abuse would also be required to participate, and given immunity from prosecution in exchange for honesty and remorse. The church would bear the costs of the commission, as well as paying for therapeutic care for the victims — but it would be immune from mammoth punitive damages. I can hope.

On related lines, Lynn at Noli Irritare Leones has a fine summary of recent postings on priestly celibacy. It’s worth a visit.

I’m going to play the Lance video again.

Follow-up on consent

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 10, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Feminism, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexual harassment and Sexuality
. 16 Comments

Well, it was a disorganized rant indeed, and it’s in need of a follow-up. However, I suspect I will still end up frustrating quite a few critics with this:

A number of commenters on my post below about consent and enthusiasm have noted that I fail to make the all-important distinction between legal and moral definitions of rape. I know full well that many of y’all out there are better schooled in the law than I, and indeed, my post was not intended to shed any new light on the legal understanding of rape. Lawrence Krubner says:

Surely female enthusiasm is not a standard that can be legally enforced? What would the standard be? There is, of course, a difference between morals and law - we can say that morally men should only have sex with women who are enthusiastic, but legally we have to provide a benchmark that courts can enforce. The “yes” and “no” thing has it problems, but is a clear enough standard for men to understand and courts to enforce.

That’s fair. But my interest as a teacher is primarily in preventing rape and sexual assault in the first place. And though I have no interest in challenging the prevailing standard surrounding the definition of rape as a crime, I am interested in reducing the frequency of what I would call “unwanted sexual contact” that falls below the threshold of legal rape. When a woman says “yes” (but wishes she could say “no”), I don’t think she’s been raped in a legal sense. (Unless her “yes” was obviously coerced). But I do think she has been violated in a very real sense, and I don’t think that the responsibility for that violation is hers alone, regardless of her age.

Saying that men don’t like to hear this (look at the gender break-down in the comments section!) is an understatement. What my male students say to me, with frustration — and sometimes anger — usually goes like this: “I’m a nice guy, Hugo. I know that no means no. Now you’re telling me that yes can mean no, too? Sheesh! You’re putting too much responsibility on us! But beneath this frustration is legitimate fear and guilt. Most young men are afraid that their partners are, to one degree or another, feigning enthusiasm in order to please them. It’s humiliating, and for men who care for the women in their lives, it’s painful to realize that they have hurt those whom they love. Most young men assume that women were socialized just as they were, with the same right to verbalize their wants and desires. Most young men are utterly unaware (often willfully unaware) of just how powerful the social forces are that condition young women to be pleasing, compliant, and quiet. On that subject, since she put it in my comments section, let me quote Andi, who speaks with far more personal authority than I:

It’s a terrifying and frustrating thing realize that, for all the educating I did/do for other people, for all the times I’ve stood up for other women, I still can’t do it for myself. I’ve described it as “deer in headlights.” Every bone in my body knows I should say no–to my boss, to my friends, to the stranger, to my partner–for all sorts of reasons, usually not related to sex. But I don’t. My brain, stuck in a frenzy of “I should say no, I can’t do this, this is ridiculous, I don’t want to/I should’t have to, this is unfair” etc., spins its wheels while my tongue, trained to acquiescence, condemns me again: “Yes. No problem. I can do that.” (Emphases are Hugo’s)

Of course women have some responsibility to overcome their socialization. Adults are not always victims, to some extent they are also volunteers. But the personal stories of countless bright, courageous women make it clear that overcoming that socialization to please and to placate is not easily done. As Andi said so perfectly:

The hardest thing to do is untrain yourself. Even if you know what you should do, women of my generation are caught in a particularily painful place: knowing what we are doing to ourselves, and yet still being unable to undo our own habits.

What men have the moral (not legal) responsibility to do is to understand just how powerful that socialization has been in the lives of the women they love, and how often they (men) have been the unwitting beneficiaries thereof. I’m naive enough to believe that once men are aware of this, they can no longer in good conscience continue to act as they have before. What real man (a loaded term, but it has its uses) wants a woman in his life who sees his sexual desire as something to be soothed and managed? Long before they become sexually active, young women in our society are taught to develop strategies to deflect, manage, or soothe male desire. But until men become better regulators of their own desires, they cannot expect women to single-handedly stop using these (somewhat) manipulative (but understandable) strategies!

The solution here is, I think, a moral and a behavioral one. In a culture of promiscuity and hook-ups, it is simply impossible for two young people to have the emotional “togetherness”, trust, and confidence to have an honest conversation about what they really, really want. Vocalizing one’s wants in an explicit fashion is rarely easy, and when one is with someone one doesn’t know well, it’s going to be impossible for all but a few. Only when two people “know” each other (in the epistemological sense of the word), are they truly prepared to “know” each other (in the biblical sense). And that takes patience, self-restraint, and commitment — and to say those three virtues are uncelebrated in our contemporary sexual discourse would be another massive understatement.

Lastly, Lawrence Krubner’s final point about enthusiasm is an instructive one:

…enthusiasm is a pointless thing to aspire to if your concerns are more moral than legal - women who were sexually abused at a young age sometimes become wildly promiscious - catch then at age 20 and you will see wild enthusiasm for sex, but are they engaging in sex for the right motives?

Enthusiasm is not merely the outer manifestation of inner desire or excitement. The etymology, it seems, comes from the Greek enthousiazein: “God-breathed”, or “God in us”. That maybe a little bit too religious for some, so here is how I have come to phrase it: “When your head, your heart, your mouth, your body, and your spirit all want the same thing — that’s enthusiasm!” And until we know each other’s head, heart, mouth, body, and spirit — then folks, we just ain’t ready.

Follow up on Bloom, Wolf, and the responsibility to be safe

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 9, 2004
in Feminism, Older Men & Younger Women, Sexual harassment, Sexuality, Student crushes and Teaching
. 7 Comments

The post right below on Naomi Wolf, Harold Bloom, and sexual harassment drew an interesting response from my good friend John in New Zealand. I’m pulling what he said up out of the comments (forgive me John, but blog etiquette allows the publication of any public correspondence!). Referring to the details of the 1983 encounter between Wolf and Bloom (details are in the linked story below), John wrote:

Sorry, but when she (Wolf) cooks a candle-lit dinner with alcohol for a professor, and invites him (Bloom) to discuss poetry on the couch, don’t you think that’s rather a mixed signal? From what I gather, he put his hand on her thigh, she jumped up and vomited (!) (How about just “No!”), and he did the gentlemanly thing and left immediately, with apologies. Where is the problem here? It’s not the ancient Professor Bloom, in my opinion.

Of course it’s a mixed signal. Young female college students send mixed signals to male professors all the time. Whether they are at Yale or a community college, young women come to academic environments already painfully aware of the power (or lack thereof) attached to their sexuality. Everywhere around them (in the media and among their peers) they are reminded that for young women, sexuality is the best tool in their arsenal. They are so consistently disempowered in every other respect, that it is little wonder that many of them do “use” their sexuality to get the attention and validation that they (like all young people) want so badly. Many of them do get crushes on their profs too, but often those crushes are less about a real attraction to the one particular man, and more about the romanticization of their own hopes and dreams for themselves. Other times, it is simply a manifestation of the truth that for many women, power and knowledge are themselves deeply sexually attractive.

Those of us who teach have a moral obligation to recognize all of those factors. While legal adults, students in their late teens and even early twenties are still far more vulnerable than they will be in later years. College professors must remember that that vulnerability and that uncertainty is always there, even in students who appear outwardly mature, confident, and sexually aggressive. A good professor respects his students’ strengths and weaknesses, and he understands the erotic nature of the pedagogical transaction. Equipped with that understanding and respect, he doesn’t exploit his students’ vulnerabilities. Wolf may well have come on to Bloom (she certainly did send a mixed signal), but that is beside the point: Harold Bloom, if the story is true, blew it. I think he blew it because he was not capable of doing what he was morally called to do, which was to respect and protect his student from the consequences of her own mixed signals!

The professoriate is not merely an academic vocation, it is a moral calling. The reward of tenure brings with it unparalleled benefits and job security, but it also carries a heavy ethical burden. Slowly but surely I have come to embrace that burden, even as I recognize that my ability to live up to that weighty responsibility has more to do with God’s grace than with my own will. And I have come to see my students of both genders as deserving of intellectual stimulation, but also — despite their legal and physical adulthood — of my care, my nurturing, and my protection. Before anything else, in the end, I have the obligation to be intellectually provocative and emotionally safe.

Off to the noon meeting of Campus Crusade!

UPDATE THREE HOURS LATER: You know, one of the perils of the instant post is that there is no time for revision. This whole post reeks of self-righteousness. I’m really not as humorless as this entry reads… I mean, I believe everything I said and all, but sometimes I need to say to myself: Hugo, my brutha, you need to chill out.

Naomi Wolf, Howard Bloom, victimhood, responsibility, and power

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 8, 2004
in Feminism, People, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexual harassment and Teaching
. 2 Comments

I know, it’s Monday, and so I am blogging a lot. Four posts in one day is not the norm, and it won’t happen again for a while — not with student papers rolling in on schedule this week!

For a couple of semesters several years ago, I assigned Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth in my women’s studies classes. It began to feel dated and a bit shrill (I know, hot-button word, that one), and I dropped it. I still follow Wolf’s career, however,and like many folks in the gender studies world, got a bit of a shock when she revealed in New York magazine last week that in 1983, when she was a twenty year-old undergrad at Yale, she was on the receiving end of an unwanted sexual advance from the legendary Shakespeare professor, Harold Bloom. (My brother is more of a literary scholar than I; I am not qualified to comment on Bloom’s importance in the field, save to say that no other modern writer has sold more books about the Bard than he.)

Wolf only told her truth after 20 years of silence. (Bloom has not, to my knowledge, issued any statement on the matter.) In the article, Wolf recounts the details of her encounter with Bloom, and of her double sense of betrayal, both at the hands of a professor whom she looked up to and at the university which trivialized her concerns. I don’t always have a lot of time for Wolf and her shallow “fight fire with fire feminism”, but I did like a few points she made, especially this one in her conclusion:

Is Harold Bloom a bad man? No. Harold Bloom’s demons are no more demonic than those of any other complex human being’s. Does this complex, brilliant man’s one bad choice make him a monster? No, of course not; nor does this one experience make me a “victim.” But the current discourse of accused and accuser, aggressor and victim is more damaging than constructive.

Here is a more helpful reading: This man did something, at least once, that was self-centered and harmful. But his harmful impulse would not have entered his or my real life—then or now—if Yale made the consequences of such behavior both clear and real.
All the women who have come forward want only to fix what is broken. Critics of sexual-harassment standards argue that you can’t legislate passions; true enough. But you can legislate what to do about people who act on them improperly…

There is something terribly wrong with the way the current sexual-harassment discussion is framed. Since damages for sexual misconduct are decided under tort law—tort means harm or wrong—those bringing complaints have had to prove that they have been harmed emotionally. Their lawyers must bring out any distress they may have suffered, such as nightmares, sexual dysfunction, trauma, and so on. Thus, it is the woman and her “frailties” under scrutiny, instead of the institution and its frailties. This victim construct in the law is one reason that women are often reluctant to go public.

But sexual encroachment in an educational context or a workplace is, most seriously, a corruption of meritocracy; it is in this sense parallel to bribery. I was not traumatized personally, but my educational experience was corrupted.

In yesterday’s LA Times, Linda Mills (a social work professor at NYU) has a brief and biting critique of Wolf’s New York magazine piece. Recounting her own long-ago tale of an unwanted sexual advance from a prof, Mills says:

In the 27 years since that incident, I’ve come to recognize the power of my sexuality, and the ways I use it to my advantage. Even accounting for the power disparity between my professor and me, there was sexual energy between us. With time I’ve learned that sexual dynamics are never one-sided and that seeing my role in those dynamics gives me control, not only over myself but also over the men who’ve desired me. “Sex and the City” captures this sentiment perfectly — it is the reason it appeals to so many women. It reminds us just how far we’ve come in 20 years.

Indeed, it is time to stop blaming others for the uncomfortable sexual dynamics we as women often find ourselves in, and recognize that we contribute to them.

In both articles, the bold emphases are mine. If nothing else, all good food for thought!