Monthly Archives: December 2005

Thursday Short Poem: Jeffers’ “Inscription”

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As I’ve mentioned many times before, I grew up loving the work of Robinson Jeffers.  My boyhood home is a half mile from his famous Tor House.  I’ve had a few of his poems up, but this is one I love deeply — and it is also one about which I am conflicted.

I come from a large family.  We have deeply religious people within the clan, but most of my relatives are thoroughly agnostic.  I was raised by secular humanists (the best and kindest sort), the kind of folks for whom the Unitarian Universalists are the closest they’ll come to making a serious religious commitment.  When it comes to the great questions of life and death and life AFTER death, my family is fairly clear that there isn’t anything to look forward to.   We’re cremated, we are released into the ephemera, and that’s that. I no longer believe as they did, but for years, I shared that conviction.

When I was a young humanist, worried about what happened after death to those of us who didn’t believe in heaven or hell or reincarnation, my mother shared this Jeffers poem with me.  I’ve always loved it, even after I came to believe that I will someday begin a new life, an everlasting one, in another country.    We read this poem at my grandmother’s memorial service, and if I were ever to lose my faith, I would want it read at mine.  Maybe it still should be.

Inscription for a Gravestone

I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That’s gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.

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Top Ten in ’05: the First Half

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Last year, at the inspiration of Bob Carlton, many of us submitted our "Top Five" posts of the year.  I’m going to be bringing my 2005 blogging to an end very soon — my last day of new posts for the year will be December 14, and then nothing again until January 3.

So call it excess, but I’m selecting ten posts this year with which I was particularly pleased.  I’m putting  up the first five (numbered 10 through 6)  today and I’ll put up the top five on Friday. 

10.  May 24′s A Long Reflection on Moving Away from Home.   Excerpt:

I want to help my students and my teenagers in youth group develop their individual autonomy, their individual selves, their individual identities.  For all my professions of faith, I still see offering people "choices" as among the highest of moral imperatives in a good society.   I want my teenagers to be able to extricate themselves from the constraints of their families and go off to find liberation in the dorms and the leafy green quads of American colleges in, if not another time zone, at least another county!

9.  March 8′s A short post wherein Hugo reveals his Luddite tendencies.  Excerpt:

I am sick and tired of having folks with doctorates in education (Lord help us) tell me that "lecturing is an outdated teaching style."  Well, it’s still a damned effective teaching style if it’s done well.  I put a lot of time and energy into crafting articulate, interesting, lectures, largely because I believe that for most students, it remains the most effective and memorable way to learn.   I do invite discussion and debate in some of my classes, and I welcome questions — but I cling tenaciously to the old-school notion that my job is to be an interesting, compelling, and provocative deliverer of information.

8. October 27th’s "No right not to be looked at": Reflections on lust and male responsibility. Excerpt:

I’m not suggesting that we can create a society where none of us ever gazes at another person with a fleeting sensation of desire.  But lust is about more than passing desire, lust is a conscious choice to not only look for a moment, but to continue to look. It’s the difference between an "appreciative glance" and a "penetrating gaze."  I don’t think it’s a tortuous and artificial distinction, either. I think it’s straightforward and practical, and with discipline, easily applied.  And let me be clear that my goal is not to create a de-sexualized, guilt-ridden society!  My goal is a world where men and boys, women and girls, interact with each other as loving members of the human community, with a sense of responsibility for each other and a commitment to love and protect each other. I want a world where young women can feel validated and seen, not because of their physical desirability but because of their essential worth as human beings.

7. August 11ths’ A Long Reflection on the Good Divorce.  Excerpt:

But I don’t just believe that divorce is an "evil" that can be forgiven.   Though many divorces are bitter and nasty, not all of them need be.  I’ve gone the bitter and angry route (in my second), and I’ve gone the loving, charitable, and (dare I say it) "positive" route (in my third.)  Thus in my own experience, I have witnessed the very real redemptive possibilities that can be found in the experience of marital dissolution.

In this last divorce process, which lasted months, I allowed myself to experience the unique "refining fire" that the end-of-marriage process can offer.  I am absolutely convinced that few other experiences, if any, can force one to confront the realities of one’s own sinfulness and one’s own selfishness!  In that marriage, especially in the drawn-out process which ended it, I faced some colossally uncomfortable truths about myself.   In the safe atmosphere of the therapist’s office, my ex-wife and I confronted each other.  But rather than just "dump", we both took the time to hear what we were being told.    And by doing that "hearing work", we not only validated the other’s experience, we came to terms with facts about ourselves we would never otherwise have seen.

6. January 12th’s Older Men, Younger Women, Integrity.  Excerpt:

Young women need older men in their lives who will respect and care about them, who aren’t their fathers or brothers but who aren’t prospective lovers, either.  They need to know that they bring more to the table than their sexuality.  They need to be seen as complete human beings.  Paradoxically, seeing young women as complete human beings means that in actions, words, and yes, even in thought, older men cannot see them as objects of sexual desire.  That doesn’t mean that we (older guys) shouldn’t acknowledge that younger women are sexual creatures.  But we must (and the burden is on us alone here, fellas) love them with radical unselfishness,and that requires that we ourselves always refrain from sexualizing them. 

I liked these posts — not my top five, mind you, but ones I want to remember nonetheless.  I invite my fellow bloggers to do the same, make their own lists, and we’ll see if Bob Carlton does his compendium again this year.

Blaming the feminists. Again. — UPDATED

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Every once in a while, an op-ed gets me unusually angry, and Kate O’Beirne has managed to do it this week with this jaw-dropped at (where else?) National Review Online: Our Boys are Hurting in School.  Thank the Feminists.

O’Beirne is commenting on this piece in last week’s Post by Michael Gurian: Disappearing Act.  Gurian raises the very real issue of declining male enrollment in the nation’s colleges and universities.  His tone is only moderately alarmist:

Colleges and universities across the country are grappling with the case of the mysteriously vanishing male. Where men once dominated, they now make up no more than 43 percent of students at American institutions of higher learning, according to 2003 statistics, and this downward trend shows every sign of continuing unabated. If we don’t reverse it soon, we will gradually diminish the male identity, and thus the productivity and the mission, of the next generation of young men, and all the ones that follow.

Gurian tries, with some success, to identify the real culprits: prison, an increasingly competitive job market, the military, and poor personal choices on the part of many young men:

The young men who are working in the lowest-level (and most dangerous) jobs instead of going to college. Who are sitting in prison instead of going to college. Who are staying out of the long-term marriage pool because they have little to offer to young women. Who are remaining adolescents, wasting years of their lives playing video games for hours a day, until they’re in their thirties, by which time the world has passed many of them by.

Gurian also notes another problem:

Lack of fathering and male role models take a heavy toll on boys, as does lack of attachment to many family members (whether grandparents, extended families, moms or dads).

He also offers some of the more recent data on brain development, suggesting that boys in particular are often ill-suited for what he calls the "industrial classroom" mode of instruction with its emphasis on self-control, neat work, and attentiveness. I’m not enough of an early childhood expert to argue with his theories and his evidence, and I’m prepared to believe that there is much we can do to make classrooms friendlier to rambunctious boys — and girls — who are exhausted and overwhelmed by the results-oriented curricula we force down the throats of the young these days!

But it’s O’Beirne who ticks me off.  She’s angry at Gurian for not identifying the real culprit in all of this: feminism.

(Gurian) doesn’t explain who is to blame for boys’ alienation from our current schooling regime. So I will. It’s radical feminist academics, theorists, and activists.

Huh.  Who knew that schoolteachers in Ottumwa, Iowa, modeled their pedagogy on Andrea Dworkin?  O’Beirne tries to be specific:

Take reading achievement, as one example of what feminism has wrought. With the federal government’s clout and cash, feminists have dictated the rewriting of textbooks to conform to their notions of gender equality. At its 1973 convention, NOW resolved to take “dramatic action” to see that dangerous sex-role stereotypes were erased from textbooks, and within a year they had the Women’s Educational Equity Act to advance their campaign with funding for alternative curricula. The editors, publishers, administrators, bureaucrats, and teachers’ unions that make up the feminized education establishment have eagerly adopted the feminists’ destructive gender agenda.

The result is what NYU psychology professor Paul Vitz calls “Wonder Woman and the Wimp” stories that little boys understandably have little interest in reading. Sandra Stotsky, a reading specialist and research scholar at Northeastern University explains, “Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound.”

Hmmm.  Gosh, last time I checked, since the mid-1970s we’ve added a huge segment on Martin Luther King, Jr., to the required school curriculum.  Here in California, we have a state holiday to honor Cesar Chavez, and his life and career are required subjects in our elementary schools.  Unless I’m seriously mistaken, King and Chavez were men with very inspiring biographies.  But they didn’t shoot anybody, and they didn’t have white skin, so perhaps they don’t count in the Stotsky/O’Beirne world.  Sheesh.

Let me be clear:  I am worried about young men.  But young men are not disappearing from our college campuses because of feminism.  They are disappearing because contemporary masculine culture offers so little to support young men.   While young women are increasingly able to take advantage of strong support networks, young men are left isolated.  The problem is not feminism, the problem is a striking lack of interest on the part of older men in mentoring younger ones.

I know many, many wonderful women who are primary, secondary, and college teachers.  A remarkable number of them have strong feminist commitments.  But I see so few men entering our field saying "I want to mentor younger men."   The problem, of course, is not that feminism has made the schools and the universities hostile environments for men.  The problem is that male teachers and professors have failed to take on the same kind of commitments as their female peers.  Young people, I firmly believe, need same-sex role models who care not only about their intellectual development but also about their emotional growth and personal happiness.  The feminist movement, thanks be to God, has raised up a generation of women committed to empowering young girls and inspiring young women.  The benefits have been enormous.

But far too few men show any interest in primary school teaching.  Those men who do teach at any level are much less likely to take a passionate interest in empowering, inspiring, and discipling the young men with whom they work.  As a result, young men in today’s educational system rarely have healthy institutional support from other males, particularly older ones in positions of authority.  (The glaring exception, of course, is in athletic departments — but only a few fortunate young men can really take advantage of that.)

I agree with both Gurian and O’Beirne that the problem is real.  The drop-out rates among young men are far too high; the disengagement we faculty see on the part of so many young guys is a serious issue.  But feminism is not the culprit. The blame lies on men themselves.  Not on the young men who are struggling in school (though their own poor personal choices play a part, especially by college age), but on older men who are too busy, too distracted, or too uninterested to take an active role in the lives of boys.  More and more women have done a generally outstanding job of reaching out to their younger sisters, while we men have, on a national scale, abandoned our responsibilities to disciple and nurture our little brothers. 

The roots of the "boy crisis" do not lie in feminism, radical or otherwise.  They lie in the collective failure of adult men to meet their responsibilities to their sons and brothers, and to take an active role at every level of the education system –  from kindergarten to law school — to nurture, love, and empower young males to grow into responsible, loving, successful, caring adults.

UPDATE:  In my anger at O’Beirne, I essentially conceded all of Gurian’s major points.  Thanks to Jill,  I’ve now been directed to some statistics at Salon that call into question the premise that men are vanishing from our nation’s campuses.

Office parties, small tasks, feminism

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So we just had our "end-of-the-semester" holiday party for the Social Sciences division.  Lots and lots of food (Hugo had two brownies and a slice of apple pie).  A great chance to socialize with one’s colleagues and former colleagues; retired members of the division always come back for food and fun.

This morning, one of my students in my women’s studies class asked me, bluntly but politely, if I just "talked the talk" of feminism or if I "walked the walk."  I was clear that to the best of my ability, I do walk that feminist walk.  And lo and behold, in the thirty minutes before the division party began, I found myself in the "party room" setting things up.  I was with six of my female colleagues, but I was the only male prof participating in the "set-up." 

We’re a good-natured department, and like most college departments, we like to eat and drink together.  But almost all of the time, the work of setting up and cleaning up is done by women.  Our secretaries are not asked to help (though they do); most of the women who do this work are also faculty members with the same teaching loads and obligations as their male colleagues.  Today, as I carefully cut pies with a very dull knife and laid out dips and veggies, I realized that I’d rather be in my office checking the Internet.  But I can’t very well preach egalitarianism and then leave the domestic chores of parties to my female colleagues. 

I’m not asking for praise for a few moment’s work.  I’m simply recognizing that it is so easy for me and for other men to "not think" about who puts on the parties, lays out the napkins, slices the cake, and makes sure that the trash can has plastic liners.  It’s so easy to just "disappear" into the office until it’s time to eat.  But even though they aren’t actually present, I often feel the eyes of my students on me; I know they are curious to know if my actions and my words are congruent.  And though feminism is about a good deal more than small tasks of the sort I did this morning, those little chores are not insignificant, either.  Next year, I’m dragging my male office mate with me to "set-up time."

Betrayal and plagiarism: on falling in love with students

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Through Inside Higher Ed, I found this post: Loving the Liars, by Ryan Claycomb, a professor at West Virginia University.  He and I and countless other profs are dealing with the influx of finals and term papers this time of year, and we’re also dealing with the ancient bugbear of plagiarism.

Ryan writes of one of his early experiences with confronting a young fellow who had lifted his final paper entirely from the Washington Post. 

When I figured it out I was so angry–furious–that all afternoon long I was literally seeing red around the edges of my vision, my face was flushed, I couldn’t sleep that night.

When I confronted him, long after I had gotten my emotional response in check, he wept like a chil… and still, I thought, "Man, is seeing him cry making up for the anger I felt? That would make me a horrible person." But I just couldn’t figure out why it had made me just so mad–it had completely ruined my day. It ruined his, too, but HE did something to deserve it.

You know, we are often reminded by our students how much power we have over them, but we really do give so much back to them–we lay our hearts in their little fingers every time we assign a paper, and have them broken dozens of tiny ways, and mended in another dozen.

For God’s sake, we didn’t go into this for the money. We went into it because we love it–we love the material, and at our best we love them–maybe not individually, but collectively. And sometimes, just like all the people we love do, they betray us, in little ways and big ways.

My point is, the moment I stop feeling just a little betrayed by my students is a scary one for me. Maybe that’s not a bad thing for many people, but for me, and I suspect for others, too, it’s a moment I dread, because then it might become just a job, and I never wanted just a job.

In the hypercritical field we’re in, it’s really very hard to talk about something so unrigorous as love–for the books we read; for the time we spend in front of the classroom; for the stupid little crushes we get on students with bright ideas, and with potential; for the silly idealism of it all. It’s important for me to remember, right now especially, as papers pile up, as cribbed papers slide across my desk, as identical wrong answers appear on consecutive quizzes. And I want to tell my students, yes, dammit, it makes me mad. It makes me mad because unrequited love always makes us mad.

(The bold emphases are mine.)  I read this last night, and wanted to call Ryan up on the phone and cry "My brother!  You get it!"  Claycomb nails perfectly exactly why it is that I still get so upset when students plagiarize and cheat.  Even after a dozen years at Pasadena City and close to ten thousand students, I still find myself deeply invested in the work they do and the possibility of witnessing their growth and transformation.

If I can trust my teaching evaluations (not the ones at the uncontrolled online sites, but the in-class ones), I’m a pretty good professor.  And I don’t doubt for a second that there is a direct correlation between my love for my students and my success as an instructor.   I teach four classes spread over seven different sections.  This fall I’ve got three sections of ancient history, which means I give the same lecture three times a week.  No matter how passionate I am about the subject, I will get bored and frustrated if I focus on the fact that I’m delivering the same information thrice weekly.  What turns me on is the certainty that each class is hearing this information for the very first time.

When I lecture, I pace back and forth, making eye contact.  I try to focus on my students as people (it becomes easier as their faces become more familiar).  It may be my 326th time lecturing about Constantine, but it’s the first time — and probably the only time — that Maria, or Soon, or Armen, or Mike, or Cynthia will hear this information.   That thought excites me every time, week after week, semester after semester.  Thus the only way I can be even remotely effective as a teacher is to personalize the relationship I have with my students.  I’m focused less on my own delivery and more on my students’ reception, and if I didn’t have intense feelings about my students I wouldn’t be able to do that.

Beneath Ryan’s post, there’s a rather snarky comment from a Mike Lee, who teaches Electromagnetics at Kent State.  Mike writes:

We are educators, not parents. We have classes, not families. We are paid to educate, not sit and decide what students "deserve". Maybe you never "just wanted a job", but the students who are in your classes and the university that hired you did not have that in their contract. You do not get to add your morality and emotional responses to the job.

Perhaps this is the difference between someone who teaches electromagnetics and those of us who teach English (as Ryan does) or history!  No, we are not parents.  But I hate the word "educator", and never use it. It should only be employed by administrators and union hacks, not by real teachers.  I can’t quite articulate it properly, but the word "educator" is a "distancing" word — there’s a cold, clinical tone to it that seems utterly at odds with what it is that we’re supposed to be doing.

I’ll be honest: the teaching style that works for me is modeled on seduction.  Not the sexual seduction of individual students, but the emotional and intellectual seduction of a group.  I walk into my class meeting of the semester confident that a great many of my students don’t care about the subject they’ve signed up for.  They just want their grade and their units and they want to do as little work as possible.  My job is not to convey information — that’s what textbooks are for! My job is to seduce the students into taking a genuine interest. I want to arouse passion, not for the teacher but for the subject. I want them to become fascinated with what they once considered dull; I want them to be turned on by what they once considered deathly and alienating.  In order to do this work and do it well, I need of course to care about history itself — but I’ve got to, just like Ryan, care with great intensity about my students.

We use the same word "cheating" to describe both adultery and plagiarism.  Frankly, Ryan’s post reminds me that we are right to do so.  My students and I are in relationship together. Like all relationships, it has rules, both spoken and unspoken. It has expectations and hopes.   It has its little compromises and little bargains (I’ll let them out early in return for a good overall class score on a test). It also has its little betrayals.  Like so many relationships, especially in high school and college, it is sometimes one-sided.  Sometimes (not so often now that I’m older), students get crushes on me that I can’t and won’t reciprocate.  Far more often, I try and try to motivate a student to get the work done, take an interest in the course — and I fail.  I don’t fall to pieces when this happens, but I do feel a little twinge, even now, of real disappointment.  And sometimes, the great betrayal comes: I’m cheated on in the form of plagiarism.

Like Ryan Claycomb, I still respond to plagiarism the same way a betrayed spouse responds to infidelity.  Disbelief, followed by rage, followed by a nagging sense that it might all have been my fault!  I ask the same sorts of questions: Was I unclear about what the boundaries were?  Should I give the student another chance?  I have no problem giving failing grades to those who cheat, just as I have no problem justifying terminating a relationship based upon adultery.  But the fact that I can move to a swift and just punishment does not mean that I am not personally affected by the betrayals.

I am in love with one woman.  But I fall in love with my students, collectively, over and over and over again, semester after semester after semester.   I grow older and older each year, and they, for the most part, stay forever youthful.  Where once I was but five years older than my average student, today I am old enough to be their father.  The nature of the love I feel has changed a bit over time, the way all relationships change and grow as we age and mature.  I’m more patient; I’m a heck of a lot less insecure.  But I still love them, just as I love Clio whom I serve, and the day I take that intense emotional urgency out of my teaching is the day I will cease to be a useful professor.

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Some links and a self-indulgent note about reconciling irreconcilables

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First off this afternoon I’ve got some links and notes.  I’ve been remiss in not putting up my own link to HollabackNYC, a site that offers a safe way for women to "fight back" against street harassment in our nation’s largest city.  Check it out — it’s stern stuff.

Jessica Valenti and her partners at Feministing have created a terrific new idea: The REAL Hot 100.  Here’s the idea:

The REAL hot 100 are young women who are smart, savvy, and actively trying to make the world a better place. They contradict the popular notion that sex appeal is all young women have to offer.

The REAL hot 100 also highlights the important — but often overlooked — work young women are doing. Are you a younger woman who is REALLY hot? Do you know a younger woman who is REALLY hot?

Consider submitting a nomination.  Read the guidelines here.  It goes along nicely with the Men Can Stop Rape "counterstory" campaign I blogged about almost exactly one year ago.  I’ll think about some good nominations.  I’ve got some likely candidates, though, ranging from Bethany Torode to duVergne Gaines, Micki Krimmel, and the other women who blog at "Stand Up".  I could think of several dozen young feminist bloggers whose work I admire.  I could also think of the many fine young Christian women I know who write or are doing public activist work on a variety of issues. 

If you click on my links, you’ll notice they fall into two general categories: Christianity and feminism.  A few such links are to blogs that specifically reconcile these two commitments, but most of the writers I read in the ‘sphere are healthily suspicious of feminism or of institutionalized Christian faith.  (A few folks I read reject both.)   And though I’ve surely brought it on myself, sometimes it does get tiring shuttling back and forth.

I think the thing I find most exhausting about being a self-proclaimed "Pro-feminist progressive evangelical Christian" is that I tend to be the subject of a fair amount of suspicion.  Many of my secular feminist allies don’t like overtly religious language, and they worry when I make remarks that suggest that individual autonomy is not the most important component for personal happiness.  My evangelical and conservative Christian friends are convinced that my spiritual beliefs have been sabotaged by my ideological convictions; I have made, in their eyes, too many compromises with the culture.  And my progressive Christian friends (like some of my readers at All Saints) worry that I spend too much time hanging out with folks on the so-called "religious right" to be a real, trustworthy progressive.

The temptation I have to fight is to be "all things to all people."  It’s easy for me to "talk evangelical" when surrounded by conservative Christians.  It’s just as easy for me to employ the language and the rhetoric of the feminist left, both in its secular and Anglican manifestations.  But what is harder for me to do, and what I realize I am called to do more and more, is to develop one consistent, large vocabulary.  I’m called, I believe, to carry the good news of Christ to everyone.  I’m called, I believe, to work for gender justice as my own particular vocation.   My secular feminist friends want me to work with them but keep my religious opinions to myself.  My conservative Christian friends welcome me in worship, but would rather I not challenge many of their traditional beliefs about sex roles. 

I am convinced that feminism and faith are not irreconcilable.  I’m equally convinced that one can thoughtfully reject traditional teaching about both sexual behavior and gender roles while living humbly as a disciple of Christ within His church.  And the hard part isn’t holding these seemingly contradictory value systems in tension.  The hard part is witnessing to the passionate adherents of one about the virtues of the other, and doing so in a way that is irenic, humorous, winsome, and, above all, gentle and kind.

I’m not saying "poor me", mind you.  I love doing what I do.  I’m just trying to work up the courage to be braver in all the various forums in which I find myself.  I need to do a better job of listening, that’s for sure.  I need to hear the very real fears my feminist friends have about the church, and I need to hear the very real fears my  conservative Christian friends have about feminism.  But having heard those fears, I need to be bold enough to suggest that what my friends hold dear and what they loathe may not in fact be as inimical as they imagine.   I need more guts and more sensitivity.  Right behind lots of donations for the Matilde Mission, and right ahead of some really nice new jeans, those virtues are tops on my Christmas list this year.

 

The USC game, football, and the dangerous anger of the fan

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Like every Monday, it’s turning into a busy morning.  I’m feeling very guilty to boot.  I have two students with the same first name who are both applying to multiple colleges; one is a former student now applying for grad school, the other a current one.  I wrote them both glowing letters of recommendation — and of course, switched the last names.  They aren’t applying for the same programs or the same schools…  I’ve got time to correct the error, but it’s deeply embarrassing and I have been quite apologetic to the two students involved.   I write dozens of letters of recommendation every year, and I can’t ever recall having done this before. 

It was a happy weekend.  My wife managed to "score" some tickets to two very nice seats for the UCLA-USC football game, so we spent Saturday afternoon with 92,000 other folks at the Coliseum.  I, holder of multiple degrees from the University of California system (including the Ph.D. from UCLA) went to the game decked out in Trojan red.  As I wrote last week, my heart belongs to Cal; I didn’t feel as if I had much of a dog in this particular fight.  My wife, on the other hand, owns every available,purchasable piece of USC paraphernalia, and is absolutely rabid with passion for her alma mater.  (Each year that she was at ‘SC, the Trojans lost to both Notre Dame and UCLA, so she’s got extra reason to be happy these days.)  I had hoped for a more exciting game; as most folks know, the Trojans dominated from the start and won 66-19.  Given that the game was a bit of a dud, I spent as much time watching the action in the stands and enjoying the bands as I did following the struggle on the pitch.   (I also had one of my occasional "non-veggie" days.  I ate two burritos and two hot dogs by the start of the fourth quarter.)

What bothered me — and always has at athletic events — was the venom.   My wife and I were sitting surrounded by USC fans, and with one or two exceptions,  we were the youngest two folks in our section by a decade.  Most of the folks around us were old enough to be grandparents, but that didn’t stop virtually everyone of them from hurling extraordinary profanities towards UCLA, its players, its band, its cheerleaders, and everything else associated with the Bruins.   A woman in her fifties, sitting behind me, shouted "Hurt him!" when a Trojan defender dropped the Bruin quarterback* for a sack.  "Break his fuckin’ leg", her husband yelled.  They were drinking water and sodas; neither seemed intoxicated.   When the husband dropped his camera case on my shoulder, he apologized profusely.  He was perfectly polite to me while simultaenously rooting for a 21 year-old kid he’d never met to suffer a serious, painful injury. This couple wasn’t alone — everyone around us chanted "UCLA sucks" on more than one occasion. Three rows behind us,  that cry seemed to span three generations — I saw a Dad, his father, and his son all joining in the joyous obscenities together.

I do not mean to suggest that USC fans are any worse than any others.  I’ve been to countless Cal games and sat with both students and alumni, and heard the exact same sort of thing.  During my years as a UCLA grad student, I went to a few Bruin games at the Rose Bowl — and heard similar ugliness.  Something seems to give otherwise civilized people permission to say things they might not say publicly outside the confines of a sports stadium.   And I’ll be the first to admit that in my younger years, I sat in the student section at Memorial Stadium and rooted not only for my Golden Bears to do well, but for my opponents to be humiliated — and injured. 

The last time I yelled out something ugly at a football game was back in October, 1990.  I was at the Coliseum here in Los Angeles; my Cal Golden Bears were visiting the USC Trojans.  I was sitting in the visitor’s section, but fairly close to the field.  As folks familiar with ‘SC football know, they have as one of their mascots "Traveler", a white horse who carries a rider dressed in "authentic" Trojan guise.  After each touchdown the Trojans score, Traveler comes out and gallops up and down the sidelines.  (Back in 1990, the Coliseum still had a track around the perimeter of the field; it has since been removed. Traveler used to do a lap around the track .)  As Traveler came out after an ‘SC score that day, he suddenly bucked and threw his rider right in front of the Cal section. 

In an instant several thousand Cal fans, myself included, rose to our feet and cheered madly.  Traveler headed off riderless, and was grabbed by a few brave security men before he went into the Cal bench area.  The rider stayed down; he bled heavily from his nose and was treated on the field.  Some of my fellow Golden Bear fans continued to hurl obscenities at the injured rider, but I began to feel deeply ashamed.  The man was not seriously hurt, but he still needed to be taken off the field on a stretcher.  As he was wheeled off, he raised his hand with the two-finger Trojan victory salute, which served to stir up my fellow Cal partisans even further.  But I felt awful.  You see, when Traveler threw him off, I had wanted that man to be hurt.  I wanted — or thought I wanted — to see his blood and his pain.  And then I did see it quite clearly, and was disgusted with myself. 

Cal and USC ended that game in a 31-31 tie.  (Golden Bear fans will remember that that game was the last tie game in our history.)  As I headed home unsatisfied, I remember an acute feeling of self-disgust.  I did not like my own longing for blood, my own exultation at another man’s misfortune.  I made a pledge to myself: if I couldn’t control my own mouth and my own rage, I wasn’t going to let myself go to any more football games.  I actually took two years off as a result, not returning to a college game until Cal’s next visit to the Coliseum in 1992.  But I haven’t cheered for injuries or yelled that anybody "sucks" since that day some fifteen years ago. 

It’s not always easy holding back my tongue.  Two months ago, my Bears lost a heartbreaker to UCLA at the Rose Bowl. I was bitterly disappointed and frustrated (we squandered a couple of double-digit leads).   On the way out of the stadium for our walk home, some UCLA fans jeered at us (my wife was loyally wearing Cal colors too).   With every fiber of my being, I wanted to yell "Fuck you, assholes!"  But I restricted, and just shook my head at them.  Not only did I feel an obligation to all of the other folks around me not to pollute the air with bile, I felt an obligation to myself not to get high on my own anger.  In my youth, I was intoxicated by the rush of self-righteous rage that seems almost omnipresent at major college football games.  I remember too well that I once enjoyed seeing my opponents lose more than I enjoyed seeing my own team win.  It felt good to lust for blood; it felt good to be enraged; it felt good to feel big and important and powerful.  (It was very similar to how I felt at street protests, as I’ve posted before.)

So today, I don’t let myself go to that dark and enticing place of anger.   I love sports with all my heart.  I love watching sports, playing sports, reading about sports.  But today, I care less and less about who wins and who loses.  I care more and more about the way the game is played,and less and less about the result.  Of course I want my teams to win, but I will only root for them to win — never for their opponents to suffer injury or humiliation.  It took me years and years (and a self-imposed ban on going to games) to figure out how to do that.  I’d like to think I’ve done it fairly well.

My wife and I long to have children.  Given that we are both athletically inclined and sports-mad, our children will no doubt be dragged to many a football game.  I worry about what they’ll hear in the stands.  I worry about what emotions they’ll feel inside. I wonder if, like their father, they will feel that "high" that can so quickly turn ugly.   I don’t know what the future holds for them.  But I know this — no matter what the game, no matter what the score, they will never hear a single word of rage from their parents.  They may hear exasperation and disappointment, but nothing more. (And hey, I’m a Cal fan — I’ve had plenty of experience in recent years practicing being a gracious loser!)

One of the benefits of becoming an "older Dad" (as I surely will be) is that so much of that youthful rage is gone.  It went thanks to my own efforts and God’s grace, frankly, more than mere biological maturation.  I heard plenty of venom from men twice my age this weekend; the idea that men automatically lose all their bile and toxic anger after a certain age is simply absurd.  Nature is not quite so kind — this kind of transformation takes work and prayer.  Time alone doesn’t do it.  Thus Lord willing, my sons and daughters will not have to grow up with a father who gets apoplectic with anger due to lost elections or rivalry games.  They will be, I think, the better for it.

*Drew Olson, the hapless UCLA quarterback on Saturday, is from the same small Bay Area community where my mother and most of my cousins were raised.  Countless family members from four generations went to Piedmont High (Go Highlanders!), and so I really ought to have been rooting for its most successful athletic alumnus.

A long post on John Derbyshire, adolescent sexuality, and “salad days” — UPDATED

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I’m really on a Dar Williams kick this morning.

Both Amanda and Lauren* take issue with the stunning comments of National Review columnist John Derbyshire on the subject of women, age, and sexual attractiveness:

Did I buy, or browse, a copy of the November 17 GQ, in order to get a look at Jennifer Aniston’s bristols?** No, I didn’t. While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a paragon of charm, wit, and intelligence, she is also 36 years old. Even with the strenuous body-hardening exercise routines now compulsory for movie stars, at age 36 the forces of nature have won out over the view-worthiness of the unsupported female bust.

It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman’s salad days are shorter than a man’s — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20.

Yikes.  First off, I wish I were the first (one of Amanda’s commenters, Lubbock Troll beats me to it) to point out that Derbyshire misuses the notion  of "salad days."  While today, folks associate the phrase with youth and vitality, the original line is from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: "My salad days,/When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,/To say as I said then".   Salad, for Shakespeare, meant "unripe", "immature", literally and figuratively "green".  It is not a phrase designed to recall a happy youth at the pinnacle of beauty, but a reminder that (thank God), the young and the "green" mature and grow riper and wiser.

But it’s my baby brother who’s the Shakespeare scholar.

Lauren* and Amanda and their commenters skewer Derbyshire from a variety of angles, and almost all of the criticisms are richly deserved.  There is much that he says in those two short paragraphs that is objectionable.  First off, since it’s clear he means "salad days" in the modern sense as referring to the peak of a young woman’s attractiveness, it’s vital that we acknowledge that he does speak for all too many contemporary men who do fetishize teenage girls.   I’m told that the most popular term on internet porn search engines is "teen", and that "schoolgirl" isn’t far behind.  The popularity of the "Barely Legal" niche of erotica is undeniable — Larry Flynt sells a very successful porn mag with that title.  And of course, as with porn, so with the broader culture that has little problem depicting teenage girls as particularly desirable.

I’m not going to dispute that many men — including those of Derbyshire’s age (he’s in his forties) — are sexually attracted to adolescent girls.  What I will dispute is that that is purely a function of biology.  From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes little sense.  Most of the pornography in the "barely legal" genre seems to emphasize that "their girls" are barely developed.  It’s not as if these young women have the wide hips that symbolize fertility!  Furthermore, as plenty of other commenters have pointed out, our cultural obsession with adolescent girls comes along with a fetishization of hairlessness.  More and more young women, inspired by porn, are "going Brazilian" (removing all pubic hair, sometimes permanently).   Folks, hairlessness has zero connection to reproductivity; indeed, it symbolized lack of maturity, girlishness, childhood. 

The contemporary male fascination with the pubescent and the hairless is not defensible on evolutionary grounds.  It’s all too obviously, as I’ve pointed out in my many prior posts about older men and younger women, about power.   Men who are threatened by adult women with adult needs, adult desires, and adult voices will invariably direct their sexual energy towards the young, the vulnerable, the "green", the safe.  The obsession with the still-developing adolescent (remember, Derbyshire includes fifteen year-olds) is about what Barbara Ehrenreich calls the male "flight from responsibility."  What is appealing about the young and the virginal is not firm flesh, it’s a fragile and still-unformed sense of self that an older man imagines he can mold.   The virginal and the young are "unspoiled", not yet "bitter" from bad experiences with men.  Older men also eroticize youth because they long to be the first — and thus safe from unflattering comparisons to a woman’s previous lovers.  The obsession with virginity and youth is inextricably linked not only to fear of adult women and the challenges they offer, but also to a profound insecurity.

Reading Derbyshire, I wonder how many actual teenage girls he really knows.  Between teaching confirmation classes and leading Wednesday night youth groups these past six years, I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time with a heck of a lot of high school girls.  Every week, I’m surrounded by 14, 15, 16, and 17 year-olds.  These girls are real people — not the caricatures of adolescence portrayed on MTV and in the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues.  Most of "my girls" are not poised.  They are in varying stages of adolescence, but all are still, in a very real sense, "green".  Don’t get me wrong: I love these girls with all of my heart, just as I love their brothers.  I’m not yet a biological father — in a very real sense, these are my kids.   

As I spend time with these girls, I’m mystified as to how any adult man could respond to them sexually.  It’s not that I’m repressing some forbidden desire!  Nor is it because I am now happily married to a wife to whom I’m powerfully drawn.  I worked with teens when I was single, and when I was going through a painful divorce.  At no time did I find myself responding sexually — not even for one half-second — to a single one of my teens.  I’ve built a legacy of credibility on this blog by sharing a lot about myself, so I think I can say this and be believed.  And frankly, I’m confident that the other male youth leaders with whom I’ve worked are also absolutely "safe" in this regard. When I look at "my girls", I see teens — not children any longer, but not adults yet.  And I cannot eroticize the young, the developing, and the vulnerable.  I know these kids far too well for that.   In my experience, when you spend quality time with teenagers, listening to them and interacting with them and supporting them and praying for them, it’s impossible to respond to them sexually.   Honestly, a whole lot of men might benefit from spending MORE time (not less) around teenagers.  It might help them separate their powerful and natural desire to protect and nurture from their sexual desires.  It’s easier to objectify what you don’t know and don’t love!

So Derbyshire’s commentary makes me sad. As an adult man, I disagree with him on a personal level about women, age, and desirability.   As a feminist, I’m frustrated by the great number of men who do agree with Derbyshire.  I don’t see their sexual attraction to teen girls as based on biology, but on fear.  Fear of adult women, fear of egalitarian relationships, fear of personal transformation.  Only those who are confident enough to challenge us can help us grow; when we men eroticize the young, the tentative, and the innocent we are really eroticizing our own reluctance to transform!  And that’s heartbreaking.  So many people lose in this scenario!  Adult ("older") women are seen as "past their expiration date" and suffer from a sense of lost sexual desirability.  Teenage girls (who are still "green" in the real sense of "salad days") are sexualized and exploited by older men, forced to become mistrustful of most adult males and forced to deal with their own sexuality far too early.  And men?  Men miss the opportunity to match their libidos and their hearts.  They miss the chance to grow that only relationship with an equal can offer.

All that said, there’s one thing about Lauren*s post that upset me.  Commenters at both sites draw attention to Derbyshire’s looks (Lauren* even posts a picture). Several folks make fun of the fact that, well, John Derbyshire is not a conventionally handsome man.  The implication is that his comments about women’s looks are particularly inappropriate, presumably because the unattractive have even less right to make sexist and degrading remarks.  But the problem lies in the reverse implication: if Derbyshire were strikingly good-looking, would that mitigate the offensiveness of his words?  Do handsome older men have a special right to objectify teens that their homelier peers do not?  A forty-something man responding sexually to a fifteen year-old (while dismissing the charms of a thirty-six year old woman) is always offensive, whether that man looks like Brad Pitt or John Derbyshire.   

Look, I understand the desire to make fun of one’s opponents.  I understand the temptation to point out the stunning gall of an unattractive older man finding Jennifer Aniston insufficiently desirable because of her age.  But really folks, we can do better than that!  I’ve never been a "fight fire with fire" kind of pro-feminist.  I’m not above a little snarkiness, but I think that posting the Derbyshire picture sets a dangerous precedent.  It reminds me too much of how misogynists often posted pics of Andrea Dworkin and connected her presumed homeliness to her radical feminism.  I didn’t like that.  And I don’t like it done to John Derbyshire.

*Apologetic Update:  In my first version of this post, I attributed the Feministe post to Jill, not Lauren.  Such a confusion is an excellent way to annoy everyone and embarrass oneself, so mea culpas all ’round and noodle lashings for the scribe.

Second Update:  In truth, as I read the comments of those defending the use of the photo of Derbyshire, part of me is reactive because, frankly, I worry about the same thing being done to me.  Like lots of bloggers, I have plenty of pictures of myself up and about on the blog — some more flattering than others.  Several MRA blogs still use that darned see-saw picture of me.  I realize I could avoid this by not having any public photos available on the blog, but I do think pictures help us  to "flesh out" the person whose work we’re reading.  But it hurt when it was done to me.  And even more honestly, though this will sound self-serving, it also bothers me when some folks on the professor rating sites have said that my looks factor into my generally laudatory teacher ratings.  So for all these reasons, I’m oddly protective of Derbyshire — on this issue alone…

Noted here and there and everywhere

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Some random notes at Thursday lunch time:

1.  I thought I had the market to myself on the topic of men, women, and domestic obligations when I posted yesterday.  But there’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about this Linda Hirshman piece, particularly at Bitch Ph.D, Pandagon, and Majikthise.  All good and thought-provoking.

2.  For reasons that I’m not ready to blog about yet, I updated my CV today — something I haven’t done in many, many years.  One of the things about tenure is that I don’t apply for jobs very often!  I’ve got something in the works that may or may not pan out, so I’m keeping it quiet — but I do have cause to fiddle with the old resume.  (Neither fear nor rejoice; I am not leaving Pasadena City College).  The last time I wrote a CV, it was 1993 and I was banging it out on a first-generation portable Mac (pre-Powerbook).

3.  At Christianity Today, Sarah Sumner has an interesting point about how we read Ephesians 5.  Great stuff.  She writes the article I wish I had written when I quickly banged out this post back in February: NIV, TNIV, and Ephesians 5.

4.  I can’t decide whether I’m rooting for UCLA or USC this weekend.  As a Golden Bear to my core, it’s easy to say "a pox on both your houses."  On the one hand, I did spend years and years of my graduate career at UCLA, and they did pay me to tutor their athletes.  On the other hand, my wife is devout Trojan fan and a proud alumna.  She cares a great deal, and I want to see her happy.  On the third hand, UCLA has lost six in a row to ‘SC, and are due a win.  I’ll wear red and blue on Saturday and enjoy the game.  In my days as a Berkeley student, I hated both schools — and I was fond of saying that I would "root for a tie, marred by significant and demoralizing injuries to both squads."  I’ve become a more charitable fellow in my old age!

5.  Last night in youth group, we asked the kids to name their favorite Christmas carols.  We got several "All I want for Christmas is you" responses, (perhaps thanks to Love, Actually) .  Of the traditional carols, several of the choir kids backed "Masters in this Hall" (because they sing it each year).  We got one vote for Dar Williams "Christians and the Pagans" (a song I love, by the way), two votes for "Santa Baby" (how do they know such an old song?), two for "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer", and a few "Jingle Bells".  No "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer".   

I cast my vote for "Joy to the World", but my real favorite is one my mother sang to me as a child in German: "Oh, du froehliche".  I am singing it to myself now.