Monthly Archives: November 2005

Thanksgiving message

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Though I will have a Thursday Short Poem up tomorrow, this will likely be my last post until Monday the 28th.

It is the day before Thanksgiving, and thus appropriate to reflect briefly on what I’m thankful for.  I have much about which to be grateful!  My gorgeous beloved and I were married on September 4, and the last two and a half months have been joyous indeed.  Nothing else in the past year can compare to that happiness.  I’m grateful for her love, her patience, and her willingness to stay deeply connected to a personality as mercurial and exasperating (albeit entertaining) as my own!

I’m grateful that I still love my job!  A dozen years in to my teaching career, I still get butterflies before meeting the first class of the semester.  I still like telling the same old stories in Western Civ classes, and I still like "pushing buttons" in my gender and sexuality courses.  And this year, as in years past, I am blessed with a few very special and dear students who visit me regularly, invite me into their lives, and wrestle through the material with me.

I’m grateful for the many new opportunities and projects that we’ve started this year.  I’ve begun working on a book.  We’ve started a chinchilla charity, completing the expensive and time-consuming 501(c)3 process.  In various ways (such as radio appearances and documentary work), I’ve started to "put myself out there" more and more.  I don’t know quite what will become of all of this, but it’s exciting to be doing new things — and I’m grateful both for the opportunities and for the challenges.

I give thanks for the continued health of my family; I don’t see them nearly as often I would like, but they are never far from my thoughts and prayers.

And above all, I give thanks for the rekindling of my faith this year. Like a lot of folks, my love affair with Christ has its ups and downs.  I have my seasons of passion and my seasons of ennui, my days when I’m "crushing on Jesus" and my days when I wonder what, if anything, I really believe.  This year, our relationship deepened a little.

Two years ago this week, when I was at Pasadena Mennonite, we had a community discussion of thanksgiving.  We passed a microphone through the entire 80-member congregation one morning, and each person gave a quick thanks for something.  I said what has always been my standard line: "I’m thankful that I worship the God of second, third, and ninety-seventh chances!"  As an adult convert with a chaotic personal history, I’ve always been immensely grateful for God’s abundant forgiveness.  Despite all the wreckage I created before my conversion, and the colossal mistakes I continued to make even after my conversion, I have never doubted God’s willingness to embrace me and hold me and forgive me, no matter what.

But this year, I feel as if I’ve started to move beyond a focus on the cycle of "regression and repentance."  Yes, I’ve needed a God of "97 chances".  (My cousin Dean, who has seen me through four marriages and countless theological transformations, calls me The King of "Starting Over Again").  And you know, frankly, I still may need a God of 977 chances!  But in the past twelve months, I feel as if I’ve begun — at long last — to grow up a bit in my faith.  I’ve long had a sophisticated theological vocabulary; I picked that up on the road to a doctorate in medieval Christian history.  I’ve long been able to "talk the talk" of the convert — when called for, I "speak evangelical" pretty well.  But as we all know (ENFPs especially), matching one’s language and one’s life is easier said than done!  This year, since Thanksgiving last, I’ve found it easier than ever before to achieve a kind of coherence between what I say and what I do, what I believe and how I act.

Perhaps the greatest gift God has given me this year, next to my amazing wife, is the gift of liberation from one of my most nagging fears.  This year, for the first time in my adult life, I’ve begun to lose that "fear of my own fraudulence."  Like so many folks, I lived so much of my life — even post-conversion — with that awful sense that if my friends, family, students and colleagues only knew what I was really like, they would be appalled.  I had a keen sense of myself as an actor playing a role, and I feared what I imagined would be my imminent and inevitable unmasking.  I know many of my readers know exactly what I’m talking about!

Do I still have the sense, sometimes, that I’m playing a role?  Of course.  But I am less and less haunted by the sense that my language and my life do not match.  Though I am still a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness, I don’t seem to need to pray, tearfully and fervently, for God to give me the strength to act in accordance with my convictions.  For whatever reason — the natural aging process, divine grace, my wife’s influence — wholeness and congruence come much more easily these days.   That’s a happy thing.

So I’m still grateful to the God of 97th chances.  But I’m especially grateful this year to the God who gives the power, the wonder-working power, to transform our lives so that we no longer have to be asking for still another chance, another new beginning.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tuesday night update of little import

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My family tells me that they frequently check in on the blog not to read my endless musings on gender, sexuality, masculinity, and the church, but rather to find out little details of my life.  So, Mom, Dad, sisters, brother, here’s an update:

Physically, I’m better.  At 8:30 on this Tuesday evening, I’m home from an hour’s run around the Rose Bowl and a shopping trip to Trader Joes.  My cold/flu is almost gone, so I’m able to work out.  I’m still keeping the weight off I dropped over the summer; the Pilates has really helped, but it sure is nice to be able to run again too.

Yes, my dear parents, I get sick a lot.  Yes, it probably has to do with the fact that I try and convince myself that I can get by on six hours of sleep a night, night after night, during the week.  I drink too much coffee, and I find too many interesting things to do.  When I was depressed in my twenties, I wanted to sleep twelve hours a day.  Today, I’m usually eager to get up and find things to do with my days.  This is a nice change.  But I could get to bed earlier.

But truly, I like getting up in the morning, because if it’s a school day I get to hang out with young people and I get to chat with my colleagues.  If it’s a day off, I get to work out for a few hours and I get a chance to write.  (The book that you know I’m writing, Mom, is coming along.)  Lately, no matter what time I go to bed, I wake up before the alarm, and even if my body is tired, my mind is racing with thoughts about the day ahead.

Professionally, I’m thinking tonight about reviving the college’s "History of Religion in America" course.  It hasn’t been taught in a decade; it would be a survey of religious history from the earliest indigenous peoples up to the emergent church movement of the 21st century.  In one semester.  Once I finish teaching another semester of Gay and Lesbian History, I might give it a whirl.  Where else but a community college could I teach so many things?

Domestically, we’ll be staying in Southern California for Thanksgiving this year.  Alternating holidays is one of the obligations of marriage, and it’s one with which I am well familiar.  When I was in my first couple of marriages, I always resented spending holidays with my wives’ families; I felt as if they ought to have known they were marrying into my family, and not the other way around!   These days, our marriage comes first — wherever my wife and I are, there my family is.  I miss our big Northern California Thanksgivings, but I know we’ll be there next year… this Thursday I’ll be with my new family, my family of choice through a marriage of grace, and I’ll be as happy — and as stuffed — as can be…

Musically, I’m listening to a strange Itunes mix that includes (in order) tunes from Dolly Parton, Sting, a South African gospel choir, Motley Crue, the Beach Boys, Sam Cooke, and the Indigo Girls.

To read tonight, I have the December edition of the conservative Catholic journal First Things.  I never miss an issue.  I suspect I may be one of the few people who subscribes to both First Things and Off Our Backs.  A man’s got to keep his ear to the ground you know, and one of the great joys of my life is being able to move comfortably in circles right and left.  Uncharitable people would call it a pathological need to be liked, but I prefer to think of it as an endless curiosity.

And since you asked, Matilde the chinchilla is well.  I’ll try to get a new batch of pictures up soon.

A lunchtime response to Artemis on girls and lust

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Yes, it’s another long one.  Feel free to skip.

Let it not be said I don’t "take requests."  Artemis at the splendid Feminist Mormon Housewives had a very kind post about my piece yesterday.  She also wrote:

The only thing I think is missing (but would be better addressed in a separate post) is more of the girls’ point of view and a validation of girls’ sexuality–letting girls know it’s okay for them to have (and enjoy and not feel guilty for) those feelings, as well as how they too are responsible for them. Which, I suppose, could lead to a discussion of whether men and their dress are responsible for women’s sexual desires, or–since there are double dress and sexual standards for women and men in our society–the repression or secondary-ness of women’s sexual desires.

For what it’s worth, here are two earlier posts some of you might have missed on women, dress, and responsibility: Propriety, Marie’s boobs, and the myth of male weakness and Sisterhood is Easier in Winter.  I’ve also dealt with the issue of men and dress, and specifically how I dress for the classroom, here: The Male Teacher’s Body and Propriety.  Here’s what I wrote at the end of the last of these posts: What I really care about is not using my body to make others uncomfortable.  I don’t want my clothes and my flesh to arouse others, I don’t want them to scare others, I don’t want them to inspire economic envy, and I don’t want them to distract others.

So that deals a bit with the second part of the Artemis query.  But what of the first part?  What about the healthy, pro-feminist validation of young women’s sexuality?  Let me take a lunchtime stab at the subject…

When dealing with young women and sexuality, I find it is always dangerous to confuse two issues: the joy of being an object of desire, and the joy of being a subject of desire.   The former and the latter are two fundamentally different experiences.  The former is the traditionally validated expression  of female sexuality, and it’s the one with which young women are much more comfortable.  From a very early age, most girls in this country are taught to dress themselves with a keen attention to their role as objects of scrutiny.  Parents and grandparents praise cuteness long before boys and older men leer.  Much more so than boys, girls are programmed to be alert to the various signals their dress and their bodies send.  And indeed, for many girls — not all — the attention and the validation they get as young girls for being "cute and pretty" feels good.

And then comes adolescence.  Is there anything as contradictory as the various messages that bombard young girls about their bodies?  Parents and teachers and op-ed writers urge them to "Cover up!"   Pop culture figures urge them to "flaunt it" (whether they have "it" or not).  And as always, young girls notice that their peers who do dress in certain ways get more attention and validation than others. 

Because of this, those of us who do youth work have to be aware that it’s never enough to ask teenage girls "What do you want?"  We first have to ask them another question, one I regularly ask my girls:  "How does it feel to be wanted?"  In both youth group and in college groups, I’ve had my female students share their feelings about being objects of desire.  The answers, of course, vary.   As always, it depends on what form the "wanting" (or at least the "noticing") takes.  If it’s what I call the "appreciative glance", especially if it comes from an attractive boy, then most of my girls say it makes them feel really, really good.  Even more common than "good" is the word "powerful".  Over and over again, girls report saying it feels exciting and empowering to be noticed and desired.

But if the "wanting" takes the form of a penetrating stare, particularly from an older man, then that doesn’t feel good at all.   "I feel creeped out", "Gross", "Icky", "Like I want to wear a raincoat or disappear" — these are some of the typical responses to questions about reactions that are either  flagrantly sexual or that come from considerably older men.  (And of course, as I’ve written in "Sisterhood", there’s the whole other question of how other girls and women respond!)

So we’ve got to be honest here about the fact that many young women enjoy "being seen"!  They enjoy being wanted, and they are keenly aware that what they wear can impact how they are viewed.   As youth workers or parents, we shouldn’t shame this perfectly normal desire to be wanted.  We can validate the fact that it feels good sometimes to be the object of another’s desire, even as we ask our girls to begin to take responsibility for how their clothing decisions make everyone else around them feel.  Dress that makes other people feel inadequate, or poor, or envious, is not appropriate.  And while we cannot always predict how our clothing choices will affect others, we can ask our girls to consider the well-being of the wider community, and balance that well-being against their own perfectly valid longing to be wanted.

But adolescent girls are not just objects.  They are also subjects of desire.  And here, of course, we tread on less familiar ground.  While traditional cultures are accustomed to teaching young women to gain at least some validation from being wanted, they aren’t nearly as comfortable with telling our girls that it’s okay to want!  Too much of what is written about teenage girls still insists that adolescent females don’t really have strong libidos; any apparent sexual agency that these girls display is really just a longing for attention.   According to this tired discourse, a sexually aggressive teen girl never really wants sex for its own sake, she merely wants attention and validation from a man (perhaps due to her neglectful father) and is "using" sex as a tool.  While there is some considerable truth to that stereotype, it’s also true that whether we like it or not, our daughters do have libidos of their own.

We live in a culture where even now, young women are very reluctant to talk about themselves as subjects of desire.  A girl who confesses to looking and lusting still risks being labeled as a slut by her peers.  From what I’ve seen, a conservatively dressed young woman who admits to lusting is far more likely to be ostracized than a scantily-clad gal who publicly denies her own sexual desires.  If what I hear anecdotally in many college and high school groups is true, girls are infinitely more frank about what they do to please boys sexually (like blowjobs) than what they do to please themselves (like masturbate).   Pleasing boys and men, no matter what it involves, still is part and parcel of a very traditional understanding of female sexuality.

I don’t write this to titillate or scandalize, but to make a larger point about our cultural messages about sexual desire.  We all acknowledge the reality of the adolescent male libido, and indeed, we are likely to over-emphasize its power.   Too many folks either shame boys for their sex drives, or see those same drives as so irrepressible that they are beyond the capacity of boys to control.  This narrative of the unconquerable male libido is used to make girls and women responsible for male behavior, a point that I have rejected many times (explicitly in yesterday’s post). 

But we need to face the truth that our little sisters and our daughters are sexual creatures.  However powerful their socially sanctioned desire to be seen, they also have a very real desire to see.  Again, as with boys, we must do everything we can not to shame our girls for these desires.    Even more so than with boys, we’ve got to do a good job of communicating to them that it is okay to want and to look and to fantasize.  Girls will, in general, be more reluctant to admit to their own libidinousness.  While I’ve never heard of a boy put down another boy for being horny, I have heard girls say incredibly cruel things about a peer who admitted to having strong sexual desires of her own.  This difference in peer acceptability is a key aspect of the discussion about boys, girls, and desire — and parents and youth workers and teachers need to be cognizant of that.

And of course, we live in a world where young women are sent the blunt message that their sexuality can get them hurt.  According to the dominant narrative of the culture, sexually aggressive women not only risk assault and rape, they deserve whatever they get if they are victimized.  Those are powerful warnings, and they serve to silence public discussion of the reality of teen girls and their own sexuality.  As adults and pro-feminists, we have to redouble our efforts to transform the culture and help create a world where young women don’t see their sexuality as a weapon that will be used against them!

In the end, those of us who have teens or work with teens have to be willing to acknowledge the full and complete humanness of both our boys and girls.   We have to admit that both our sons and daughters are sexual creatures.  And as with boys, we must be clear that our daughters have every right to be both objects and subjects of desire, but they also have responsibility for their actions — particularly as subjects. 

Tuesday mea culpa

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Too busy to post this morning, will try and have something up around lunch…

Three different people have e-mailed me since Sunday, telling me that my posts have been getting too long.  I’ll admit, yesterday’s was a bit of a push — but the academic in me wants to see an idea nicely developed.  (And that’s why I bold certain sections, to help out!) In the end, I’m writing less for an audience than I am in order to see my own ideas fleshed out a bit, and I suppose this blog shows that.  I do apologize if I’ve been exceptionally verbose lately!

Some day, I’m pulling all of this into a book on sexuality, masculinity, faith, and justice.  Just don’t ask me when or how, but the idea is percolatin’.

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An exceptionally long post on girls, boys, dress and desire

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A number of folks in the "femosphere" (my new term for feminist blogosphere) have been discussing the latest salvo in the "Teenage Fashions are Turning Our Daughters into Whores and it’s all Feminism’s Fault" wars, this Washington Post piece from yesterday’s paper:  What’s Wrong with This Outfit, Mom?  Today, Amanda and Jill both offer excellent "fiskings" of the Patricia Dalton op-ed.

I wouldn’t add my own thoughts, save for two particular paragraphs near the end of the article.  Dalton writes in the first one:

The girls who dress the most outrageously are often those most starved for adult male attention, first and foremost from their fathers. This happens most commonly with girls whose fathers have disappeared from their lives, perhaps following a divorce, or because their workaholic schedules leave them little time for their children. Children who are raised with attention and affection tend to identify with and admire their parents. This identification is the basis for both discipline and the transmission of values. Without it, parents can’t do their job.

I’m with her so far. Dalton is spot on that the absence of safe, loving adult male figures (fathers in particular) is linked to young women’s need for attention.   To be fair, it ignores the possibility that some teenage girls have their own agency, and are interested in sex with boys not because of absent fathers but because of their own libidos. I do not suggest that they are the majority of young women, but they are not an unheard-of subset of American adolescents.  Still, Dalton is to be applauded for her suggestion that men’s workaholic schedules play a part in the problem.  Anyone who is advocating that fathers spend more quality time interacting with their sons and daughters and less time at work, on the Internet, or in front of the TV is going to get no argument from me!

But the second quoted paragraph is a disaster:

I often recommend that fathers be the parent to take the lead in setting limits on their daughters’ dress, because opposite sex offspring typically cut that parent more slack. Fathers can say, "Honey, you can’t wear that. I know teenage boys — I was one!" A dad like this is looking out for his daughter and treating her as someone special.

Jill does a nice job tackling this:

No, he isn’t. He’s putting her in an even more vulnerable position — if something does happen with one of those teenage boys, she’ll internalize it as her fault for dressing in a particular way. When she goes out of the house and sees other girls dressing in more revealing clothes, she’ll become part of the group that looks at them and says, “You’re a slut.” Adolescence is hard enough on young women; when they’re already desperately trying to fit in and find their own identities, the worst thing one can do is encourage greater rifts between “good girls” and “bad girls,” and create even deeper insecurities in all of them.

And where is the dad who says, “Honey, I was a teenage boy once. I know that they’re capable of being reasonable human beings, and of treating women well. Don’t accept anything less than that” — and who tells his sons the same thing? Sexual equality and women’s physical safety simply cannot come from women alone. Shaming young girls about the way they dress isn’t the way to achieve anything.

Jill nails that,and I agree completely.

Thinking about what I would much rather have men say to their daughters, and thinking about what I say to teenage girls and boys, leads me into another youth group anecdote (you knew it would).  Three years ago, we were in the midst of our "sex month" with the kids at youth group.  (Four consecutive Wednesday nights of talking about sexuality, dating, and Christian ethics "All Saints style").  As we always do, we spent some time in single-sex groups.  There were just two youth leaders at the time, and my female colleague took the girls off to one room, while I went to another with the boys.

It was May.  The weather was warm.  One girl in our group, widely regarded by both sexes as being among the "hottest" of her peers, had worn some very short shorts, flip flops, and a tiny top to youth group.  As soon as I got the boys alone in the room, two of them started talking excitedly about what "Janae" (name changed, of course) had been wearing.   One of the boys, using what seemed to be the pervasive lingo of 2003, said "Dang, when I look at those shorts all I think is how much I want to ‘hit that’!" (The meaning of "hit that" ought to be clear even for those of you who don’t hang out with the younger set these days.)  The other boys all laughed and concurred,and then turned towards me with sheepish grins.  Yes, their youth minister was with them — but he was also a man, and they were operating under the homosocial assumption that even in church, it’s okay to objectify women and girls as long as only other men are around.

A younger Hugo would have rebuked them sharply.  I could so easily have given them the "Janae is your sister in Christ, boys!" lecture, and tried to shame them.  An even less mature Hugo might have validated what they were saying by agreeing about Janae’s attractiveness, if for no other reason than to affirm my masculine bona fides by showing them that I too was, after all, "just another guy" who enjoyed looking at pretty girls.  (Obviously, for the record, I never have nor will I ever use sexually objectifying language about any of the kids in my youth group.  But  I have heard stories of other male youth leaders at other churches who have not felt the same need to restrict, sadly enough).

But since the subject was supposed to be sex anyway, I figured I’d use Janae’s shorts as a teaching moment.   So I asked the boys: "What’s it like when a girl like Janae is showing a lot of skin? How does it make you feel?"  The replies came fast and furious:  "Dude, it’s so awesome!"  "I love it when you can see so much!"  And, of course "I can’t stop looking!"  I let the boys share and laugh and get squirrely, and then I quieted them again.  I asked: "When you say you can’t stop looking, what does that mean?  Do you really have no choice?" 

Silence.  One boy, "Aaron", blurted out "No way, dude.  No choice.  Girl that fine, can’t control my mind."  Other boys laugh and agree.  I wait, and then follow up: "Do all of you feel like Aaron feels?"  None of you think you can control where your eyes go and where your mind goes?"

More silence.  "Roger" speaks up: "I guess it kind of is a choice.  I mean, when you first see a pretty girl, you can’t help but look.  But you can choose whether or not you keep staring at her legs or her tits.  You don’t have to make the girl feel uncomfortable."  Several other boys quickly agreed, and Aaron found himself on the defensive: "I don’t know dude, I don’t know how you can say you really like girls and not be totally distracted by something so fine."  I smiled inwardly; Aaron, bless his heart, was trying to bully the other boys by threatening their masculinity if they didn’t take his side. 

To my delight, what followed was a serious discussion lasting fifteen minutes.  (That may sound short, but getting eight to ten boys in mid-adolescence to have a serious discussion for even that long is, I assure you, a significant achievement!)   With my prodding questions, the boys debated their own ability to control themselves. In the end, even Aaron grudgingly admitted that he too had a choice with where his eyes went.  Roger, his foil, high-fived him at this and said "Hey, Aaron, welcome to All Saints!" (A reference to the church’s staunch pro-feminism.)

What I said to the boys was something like this: "I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with noticing girls.  I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with fantasizing about them!  I do think there’s something very wrong when your focus on their bodies makes it impossible for you to also see them as people, as friends, as human beings. When you find yourself noticing a girl’s body, and staring at her skin, I don’t want you to beat yourself up.  But I don’t want you to make her uncomfortable either."

"Next time you’re looking at Janae’s legs, Aaron", I said, "I want you to gently remind yourself that Janae is more than just her body.  It’s okay to think she’s sexy.  But remember she’s not a pair of legs or breasts.  She may be hot, but she’s also a person, and whether you believe it or not, you are strong enough and good enough to never forget that she’s a person.    She gets frightened and tired and happy just like you do.  She may want you to look at her body, but even more than that, she hopes that you’ll also see her as a human being.   And no matter how hot she is, you’ve got it in you to never, ever forget that."  Aaron nodded solemnly, and I don’t know if he really heard me or not.

But other boys did, and I had a couple of them come up to me thank me for what I said and to talk more about the topic.  Boys almost never hear that they have choices about where they ultimately direct their thoughts and their eyes.  The myth of male weakness and the myth of the raging adolescent male libido that can never be contained are powerful influences. I don’t deny that young men can be very, very horny; I do deny that that horniness is so supremely overwhelming as to make it impossible for adolescent boys to see the essential humanity of even their scantily-clad female peers.

My goal is to reach young men "where they are" with a message about their sexuality that is realistic, loving, and both authentically pro-feminist and Christian.  Ultimately, I don’t want anyone, male or female, to feel ashamed of their desires.  I don’t expect them not to lust for each other.  But what pro-feminism and Christianity both insist on, even for young men, is that sexual desire, no matter how powerful, cannot be used as an excuse to rob our brothers and sisters of their humanness.  Whether Janae is in sweats or in short shorts, how the boys perceive her is ultimately their responsibility.  Of course they’ll be more easily aroused by her in short shorts!  Yet even if she were to wear a burka, plenty of her male peers would find themselves stimulated by even a flash of ankle.  The teenage libido is a powerful thing, after all.  We do well, I think, when we don’t fear all of that raging sexual energy.  We do well to acknowledge it, even celebrate it, and then ask that it always be tempered with a recognition of the other’s essential humanity.  That’s a far more effective strategy than either demeaning boys for lusting or asking girls to cover up in order to prevent the boys from doing so.

Yes, I do think adults should have input into how their teenagers dress.  I think it’s right and proper to ask kids to consider the consequences of their clothing choices, and to ask them to take some responsibility for the messages they send to others.  But I also think that we must do the more difficult — and yet ultimately far more rewarding — job of challenging the most basic beliefs about boys, sexuality, and the damaging discourse of the raging, uncontrollable, male libido.  When and if I have a daughter, I expect I will say to her what I have already said to many girls in my youth group and in my classes:

"Your body is not your enemy.  Whatever you wear, in winter or summer, you have both rights and responsibilities.  You have the responsibility to consider the time and the place you are wearing your outfit.  You should be aware that clothing can create envy.  But in the end, no matter what you wear, no one has the right to refuse to see you as a person because of your clothes or your skin.  You don’t ever have to choose between being desired and being taken seriously, and you don’t have to believe the myth that men cannot control their eyes or their actions.  Whether in a miniskirt or sweats, you are still a woman who deserves respect, because respect is not contingent on your body or your attire.  Believe it, and be willing to demand it."

A note on Cal, a movie recommendation, and a surprisingly vigorous defense of Michelle Malkin

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It’s not yet 8:00AM, but I’ve already been up three hours.  I felt well enough this morning to do some light lifting at the gym.  I expect to be back to a regular training schedule tomorrow.

It’s a short week, so there are loads of things to do. I always cancel my classes the day before Thanksgiving; the one year I did teach on that Wednesday, fewer than a third of my students showed up.  I’m mystified as to why it isn’t a holiday here at PCC; many of the local K-12 schools do give kids the extra day off.  But a two-day week, as luxurious as it is, just means more work compressed into a very short time frame.  Lots and lots of grading to do, and writing, and so on.

Two notes on the weekend:  First, my Cal Golden Bears won the Big Game against Stanford for the fourth year in a row, a streak unseen since the second FDR administration.  In my four years at Berkeley, we won only once.  For those folks who remember the famous "play" in 1982 (where Cal scored in the final seconds by running through the Stanford band), that victory came at a high price.  Over the next 19 games from 1983-2001, the Cardinal held a 14-4-1 edge over my Golden Bears.  Those were hard years indeed!

Second, my wife and I went to see "Bee Season" last night.  Starring Juliette Binoche and Richard Gere, the film has had generally positive reviews.  My wife and I split on the film — I liked it very much, she didn’t.   Kabbalah is one of the film’s themes, and that had piqued our initial interest.  One thing I can say for Richard Gere — he may not be a great actor, but he’s become darned good lately at portraying self-satisfied, middle-aged narcissists who undergo a dramatic catharsis!

And I write this morning with considerable sympathy for, of all people, Michelle Malkin.  (Hat tip: XRLQ).  The right-wing syndicated columnist, blogger, and commentator is one of my least favorite mouthpieces for the conservative agenda.  I don’t read her blog regularly, largely because I’m not one of those people who takes pleasure in being exasperated. 

But Malkin is an Asian woman, married to a Jewish man.  I’m sorry to say that far more than her white counterparts on the right, Malkin has apparently been subjected to extraordinary sexual and racial ugliness from those whose politics are close to my own.  Last February,  Malkin posted some of the criticism that regularly comes her way; most of it falls into the "yellow whore" camp of nastiness.  This weekend, she posted about it again, as the issue of her race and her marriage resurfaced when she was a guest on a radio talk show.  Malkin, the mother of a kindergartner, writes:

The racist and sexist "yellow woman doing a white man’s job" knock is a tiresome old attack from impotent liberals that I’ve tolerated a long time. It is pathetic that I have to sit here and tell you that my ideas, my politics, and my intellectual capital are mine and mine alone in response to cowardly attacks from misogynistic moonbats with Asian whore fixations. My IQ, free will, skin color, eye shape, productivity, sincerity, and integrity are routinely ridiculed or questioned because I happen to be a minority conservative woman. As a public figure, I am willing to take these insults, but I cannot tolerate the smearing of my loved ones. Because I have always been open and proud about his support for my career, my husband has taken endless, hate-filled abuse from my critics. His Jewish heritage, his decision to be a stay-at-home dad, and even his looks, are the subject of brutal mockery.

Enough.

If you have a problem with my work and what I stand for, go ahead and take me on. Keep calling me whatever four-letter-word makes you feel better when you can’t win your arguments. But leave my family alone.

Well, Michelle, I could have done without the "impotent liberals" bit, as it does knock you back off the moral high ground you’re rightfully occupying, at least on this issue!  Still, I share Malkin’s outrage even as I abhor her political positions.  As a pro-feminist progressive, I’m angered whenever a woman who chooses a public life is attacked with misogynistic rhetoric.  (Heck, I’m happy that Malkin is willing to use the word "misogyny"; some of her colleagues on the right deny that visceral hatred of women still exists anymore in public life).  As a man in a mixed-race marriage, I’m also angry when tired old stereotypes emerge around that issue, as they have in the case of the Malkins.

Though I am obviously not as public a figure as Michelle Malkin, in the past year, I’ve received several hundred "hate e-mails" and hundreds of nasty comments here on this blog.  Because I’ve taken a pro-feminist position and attacked the men’s rights movement, I’ve regularly had my masculinity questioned.  I’ve been called a "mangina" (man + vagina), "pussy-whipped", "a traitorous piece of shit", a "pathetic eunuch", and worse by dozens and dozens of readers.  In a couple of instances, I’ve been threatened — anonymously — with physical violence.  I very carefully don’t disclose my wife’s name or much about her identity, but even in relative anonymity she too has been attacked, at times with racial slurs directed at her mixed-race (African-Colombian-Croatian) heritage.

Above all, my critics use one charge more than any other: self-loathing.  Because I’m so hard on my brothers, because I am so committed to pro-feminist principles, my critics have decided that I must be seething with nearly pathological hatred of my own masculinity.  Over and over again, I’m told by my critics that if I really liked myself — as a man — I wouldn’t hold the views I do.    What’s so tiresome about the charge of self-loathing, of course, is that it is impossible to refute.  How do I prove to anyone — especially on a blog — that I am comfortable in my own male skin?  I’ve given up trying, but that hasn’t stopped the critics.

Here’s where my real empathy for Malkin lies: as an Asian woman with right-wing, anti-feminist politics, she too is tarred with the charge of "self-loathing."  She and I are both accused of actively betraying those who share our sex or our ethnicity.  Her critics assume she’s desperately currying favor with white men, while my critics assume I am eager to be validated and affirmed by women, particularly feminists.   In other words, because our views contradict cultural and social expectations, there can be no legitimate explanation for why we believe as we do.  We are either dupes of our allies (white men or feminists), or we are filled with self-hatred (for our heritage or our sex), or we are simply crass opportunists, using novelty (a woman of color with right-wing views, a straight evangelical man with pro-feminist ones) to attract attention.

If there’s one thing I am clear on, it’s this: one’s skin color, one’s heritage, and one’s sex do not, in and of themselves, impose specific political obligations.  Michelle Malkin, as a woman of color, is under no obligation to toe any party line.  She can be an interesting and effective spokeswoman for her side without being a misguided dupe, a self-hating woman of color, or a shrill manipulator.  I happen to believe that she’s wrong 95% of the time on virtually every major foreign policy, economic, and social issue of our day.  But when she is attacked not for her politics but for her person, she has not only my empathy, she has my vigorous support.

Going to nap, and a link

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I’m afraid I’m just too dopey for any more posting this week.  Rather than sit at the computer and try to think of something clever to say, I’m going to curl up in front of the TV for the rest of the afternoon and nap.  When I’ve got the energy to write, I write.  When I don’t, I need to chill.

One terrific link: Jenell has posted a "work from home " job position announcement.  It’s a magnificent summary of what’s needed to be a stay-at-home mom.  Here’s one excerpt:

Responsibilities:
1. Childcare. Plan, purchase, prepare, and serve food. Watch, wipe, and wash asses, noses, and hands. Take primary responsibility for night-time needs. Nurture, and support personal development. Research, make choices, and keep records regarding medical care and upkeep of bodies. Initiate and maintain spiritual care. Lift, carry, cajole, move, transport, and restrain bodies as needed. Provide appropriate play and learning activities. Generate memory-making situations, capture, develop, and creatively present these memories. Purchase, clean, and repair toys. Solicit, arrange, and monitor friendships. Worry. Pray. Hope. Love. Rejoice.

2. Pet care. Same as above.

That’s classic, but this last bit is even better:

5. Marital maintenance. Initiate “us time”, and arrange child care. Help husband remember birthdays and anniversaries. Clearly designate husband tasks (car maintenance and repairs, yard work, garbage, major household repairs), and encourage their completion with affirmations. Enjoy sex. Maintain personal appearance. Encourage husband’s personal and spiritual growth. If desired, arrange husband’s medical appointments, financial matters, and haircuts. If desired, purchase and maintain husband’s clothing. If working under conditions of biblical traditionalism, create appearance that husband has initiated and executed much of this work. 

The last bold section is my emphasis.  Loving it!

Pajama day

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I’ll try to have another post up this afternoon, but for now, a quick note to say that my cold seems to have turned into the flu.  Perhaps flying back and forth to Boston in one day while already sick was not the best of ideas!  It was probably not a good idea to keep my Pilates appointment yesterday afternoon either — an appointment that was followed by a six-mile run in the hills around the Rose Bowl.

I don’t rest well.  I tend to push myself time and again past the breaking point until my body literally gives way, and I am forced to "take it easy."  I have so many things I want to do, so many little projects and goals, and I end up overwhelmed.  So apparently, a day in my pajamas is in order.   

But I can still get some writing done on some other projects, and that will be soothing.

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Cold medicine and lack of sleep produces a post on dating advice and self-transformation

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I’m catching up on other people’s blogs, returning e-mails, and trying to stay awake.  My head is still stuffed from the cold,and my ears are still blocked from the plane.  Other than that, things are going swimmingly.

At Feministe, we’ve got "Equal Opportunity Crappy Dating Advice".  Jill alerts us to one particular offering for men that’s making its way around the internet.  It lists ten mistakes men are said to make that blow their chances with women, and offers advice for "getting" "really attractive" women.  The ten mistakes range from the sensible to the absurd, and the advice commentary that accompanies each mistake is quite entertaining.  Some 60 comments debate the whole thing, and it’s worth a read.

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

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

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

Here’s a question I’ve often challenged my youth group kids with — but it works for older folks too: "Why should someone go out with me?  What do I bring to the table?"  When I first ask the kids to ask themselves that in youth group a few years ago, I got standard answers like the following:

"I don’t know."  "Because I’m pretty?" (complete with question mark) "Because I’m nice."  "Because once you get to know me, I’m really loving."  "Because I’m tall."  "Because I listen to tight music."  "I don’t know."  "Who would want to go out with me anyway?"  "Because of my boobs."  "I don’t know.  Because I can make people laugh."  "I don’t know."  "I don’t know."

My experience with older folks is that they aren’t much better than 15 year-olds at answering that question!  So many people are terribly focused on meeting new people, or finding a new relationship, or just "hooking up" with someone new — but they are reluctant to ask themselves the most basic question:  "Why should someone be with me?"  And if they do answer the question, they may answer it with the same "I don’t knows", or a list of trivial assets, or cutting self-deprecation.  But I’m convinced that a key to healthy, loving relationships (both sexual and non-sexual) is focusing honestly, without deception or bravado of self-loathing, on what it is that we genuinely have to offer.  The list has to go beyond body parts and bank accounts and sexual skills.

Most of the lists I see are essentially techniques for more effectively cultivating a mask, a false image, an "idealized other."  Once we’ve "hooked" the other person, we then start to drop the mask in the hope that they’ll be sufficiently comfortable with us that they won’t run away when we show them all of our filth.  But obviously, that’s both a dishonest and ultimately ineffective way of resolving the problem of human loneliness.  Even in adolescence, the focus has to be on helping folks to become worthy of being dated, worthy of being slept with, worthy of being married!  Though it’s trite to say so, you’re not going to be effective at getting other folks to like you — and stay around — if you aren’t clear on why it is that they should do so.

When I was first dating the woman who is now my wife, someone very close to us asked me this question: "Why should she be with you?"  Of course, I made the usual silly remarks — I’m entertaining, I’m not unattractive, I have a state teachers pension — but then I did get serious.  And I thought and thought and I said something like this:

"At my core I’m fundamentally committed to transforming myself, transforming my partner, and transforming the world. Because I see a good relationship as one where each person is simultaneously potter and clay — we are molding each other as we ourselves are molded, sometimes pushing and pulling and kneading, sometimes caressing, always being pushed and pulled and kneaded and caressed.  Because in the end, I will never excuse anything I do by throwing up my hands and saying ‘That’s just the way I am, accept me, dammit!’  And I will never let my partner get away with that either."

That was my answer, and of course other people will have different ones.  But what I needed to do was see why it was that I was worthy of being truly loved by a woman as amazing as my wife.  If I thought that I had tricked her into loving me, or if I thought that she just had poor taste, I would be unable to appreciate her.  In order to love someone fully in relationship, you have to do more than thank your lucky stars that despite your faults they love you back!   I think it’s essential that, without immodesty or excess pride, you honestly see yourself as being worthy of being loved and become committed to working every day to make yourself still worthier.

I’m by no means a perfect husband.  But I often ask myself a question these days when I’m contemplating an action or making a choice:  "Is what I’m about to do consistent with the man who is worthy of being loved so much?"  That is not the same as making my wife an internalized audience!  I’m not turning her into a parental super-ego!  Rather, it’s about recognizing that I have an obligation to myself to continue to see myself as worth a magnificent, exciting relationship — and the choices I make as to what I do and don’t do help shape that self-perception.

Heavens, I’ve wandered off topic! Maybe ten hours sleep total the last three nights and way too much cold medicine has made me loopy.  But if you’re still reading, I hope my basic point is clear.  If we want connection, if we want relationship, if we want eros at its magnificent best, we can’t disguise ourselves to capture it!  We may not merit Christ’s agape love, but we will always attract the very level of people whom we believe we truly deserve.  My old friend Jack always said it like this, and it still stands as the best dating advice I know:

"If you want something you haven’t got, you’re going to have to become someone you haven’t been.  And in order to become someone you have never been, you’re going to have to do things you’ve never done." 

Every day, I push myself to do things I’ve never done before, in the hopes of becoming someone I haven’t been yet, in the assurance that if I do so, I will continue to merit the love of a woman whom I know is pushing herself as hard as I am, with that same mix of faith and joy and relentless perseverance.

Home from Boston

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I’ll have another post up today, perhaps around lunchtime.   I’m bleary-eyed and still struggling with a cold, but I’m back in the office after a very quick one-day trip to Boston yesterday.  I flew out Tuesday night on a red-eye, and flew back in last night.  I went to Massachusetts to take part in the filming of a documentary (at a very nice production studio in Canton) on Kabbalah and Christianity; Lord willing, the documentary will be finished soon and be airing in various places at various times.  I’ll keep my readers posted when I know more.  I do promise to post more in the future about my interest in Kabbalah, my work with the Kabbalah Centre, and how it dovetails with my commitment to Christ — but as I’m currently in the middle of a number of projects related to this topic, it’s not the time to be blogging about them.  Soon enough.

Notes on the trip:  This was my first visit to Boston, and on my next visit, I’ll have to do more than spend ten hours in the state.  The weather was apparently unseasonably warm, and there were still many beautiful autumn leaves about, even though the prime time for fall foliage has apparently passed.  On the long drive from the airport out to the studio, we drove through towns like Natick, Wellesley, and Needham.  If only through the back of a town car, it was a very pleasant experience.  Years ago, I applied for a teaching job at Wellesley. I didn’t even get called for an interview (quite understandable given my thin vita at the time); driving by the stunning campus yesterday, I felt a certain wistfulness.   Someday, somehow, I’d like to spend a year teaching at one of the single-sex Seven Sisters!

For those of you who read this post two weeks ago, I can report that on the red-eye out to Boston, I dozed rather than hunt for a chatting partner.  But last night’s six-hour flight home was packed, and I — stuffed in my customary middle seat — did find a mate to chat with.  As we sped over the fly-over states, we covered Kabbalah;  John Paul II’s "theology of the body"; the perils of start-ups in the biotech industry; the merits of Alice Munro’s short stories; and the anti-feminist implications in the shift from 1940s to 1950s women’s fashion.  In short, it was one of those deeply satisfying conversations that one can only have on long flights.

And a sports note: the University of Connecticut men’s basketball team was on board the flight.  For the record, the head coach (Jim Calhoun, two-time winner of the national championship) sat in first class while his assistants and his players were squashed in economy.  I pitied the 6’10" young man in front of me in the window seat…