Another long one on Christianity, feminism, ezers, and gender roles

Posted on January 19, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

In my ongoing and quixotic efforts to reconcile my faith and my feminism, I’ve often run up against my own susceptibility to the theory of complementarity. That’s a fancy term for the notion that men and women are divinely created to play different, complementary roles.

Lots of contemporary Christians use the rhetoric of complementarity. Where some of the church fathers might have insisted that women were defective men, more vulnerable to sin and of lesser value, most modern conservative Christians employ the Plessy v. Ferguson model of understanding gender: we are all equal, but ought to be in separate spheres.

One of my best students this semester is a moderately conservative young Christian woman. In our class this morning, she said "I think true femininity in women brings out true masculinity in men, and vice versa." Several of her classmates nodded their heads, while others looked quizzical.

In all these years of teaching feminism and reading the Gospel, of activism and prayer, I’ve gone back and forth on the issue of whether gender is merely a social construct or an eternal reality that transcends culture. At times, I’ve been a flagrant essentialist, convinced that men and women (thanks to divine design, testosterone, Y chromosomes, ocytocin, whatever) will always see the world differently because of their biology. The best we can do as feminists and pro-feminists, therefore, is try and enable both men and women to live into their prescribed roles as happily and as fairly as they can. While liberal essentialists may acknowledge women’s intellectual equality with men, they still fiercely defend the notion that at the end of the day, most women are more nurturing and less sexual than most men. Even when they refrain from using absolutes, they tend to use phrases like "While it’s true that exceptions exist, it’s clear that the majority of women…"

I’ve worked and taught as a bit of an essentialist. It seems compatible with most Catholic and evangelical thinking on sexuality. Those of us who believe that God created the world, and all that is in it, also have to acknowledge that She created us male and female. (Pace, my transgendered friends.) If we believe that God’s design has a purpose, it’s hard to avoid coming to the essentialist conclusion, even with a whole series of caveats: "Yes, men and women are different, but we still ought to mutually submit to each other" (ala Ephesians 5:21). It’s thus not impossible to believe in Christ, creation, and — simultaneously — the radical equality of men and women. It is tough, however, to do so without falling prey gender stereotypes.

As any feminist theologian can tell you, there’s more to the creation story than the need for dichotomous sexual reproduction. Genesis tells us that Eve was created to be an "ezer" to Adam, a term that denotes "companion" or "equal partner". The same term ezer used for Eve in Genesis 2:18 (mistranslated as "helper") shows up to describe God’s partnership with Moses in Exodus 18:4.

Biblically and psychologically speaking, we can have companions who are male or female. In order to feel "complemented" and "helped" by another person, they don’t have to be of the other sex. While it is true that it is not good for a man to be alone, it doesn’t follow from a close reading of Scripture that therefore women were created to "balance men out." There’s nothing in Genesis about "true masculinity" and "true femininity" that reinforces the radical difference between the Creator’s intention for men and his intention for women.

This is just a thumbnail sketch of how I’ve worked through this issue. Back to my student’s comment this morning. I tried to be as kind as I could in gently deconstructing this notion of "true masculine and feminine."

While acknowledging that the complementarity thesis is immensely appealing, I pointed out that it is enormously destructive to those countless men and women who experience themselves as having qualities that this theory associates with the other sex! What room is there in this theory for a woman with a powerful libido, or one who doesn’t want children of her own, or one who longs for political power? What room is there for a man whose joys are cooking, creating a beautiful home, and taking the lead role in raising his own children? Either we call these men and women "defective" and perhaps in need of therapy to discover their true nature, or we call them "exceptions" to the rule. The problem with the former strategy is we end up pathologizing perfectly acceptable and normal desires; the problem with the latter strategy is that if we are honest, we quickly acknowledge that there are so many exceptions out there as to render the "rule" utterly useless!

So have I become, once again, a strict social constructionist? Am I prepared to say that all of what we think of as our innate ideas about sex roles are entirely cultural? No, I’m not. Testosterone, Y chromosomes, and other biological factors are very real players in the construction of the human person. But so too are faith, culture, and family. And too often we label our differences as inevitable and intrinsic and part of the divine order without stopping to consider just how many of those "differences" are actually built and reinforced by human institutions.

I’ve got lots more to post on this. I will say that at this point, I’m willing to argue that a healthy Christian feminism (or a feminist Christianity) does exist, and it doesn’t require one to adopt a strictly essentialist "argument from design" view in order to reconcile the two. We can believe that we were all created to be companions, ezers, to one another without believing that God intended us to live and operate in separate spheres according to separate and discrete codes of behavior.

We can, in other words, celebrate that we are created both male and female while denying that those two categories impose any meaningful limitations on our lives. That’s where I stand today.

Quick reflection on UCLAProfs

Posted on January 19, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

Lots of folks out there are addressing the "UCLA Profs" controversy first reported earlier this week. Jill discusses the issue here, while UCLA conservatives Eugene Volokh and Stephen Bainbridge weigh in as well.

The actual site designed to track "radical left" professors is here.

I have more than a passing interest in the subject. I spent my graduate school years in the UCLA history department, earning my MA and Ph.D. Though the UCLAProfs site tracks professors from many disciplines, they have clearly singled out the highly-ranked history department for special censure. Only the graduate law school has more "radicals" listed.

The professors who were on my doctoral dissertation committee and with whom I worked most closely aren’t on the list, largely because with one splendid exception, they are all dead or retired or lost to administrative duties. (Yikes, that makes me feel old.) But I do know a few of those mentioned, particularly the splendid Ellen DuBois, whose textbook I assign in my women’s studies class. The UCLAProfs summary of Dubois (whose name they can’t even get right) is nasty and puerile:

Feminist history professor Ellen DuBois is in every way the modern female academic: militant, impatient, accusatory, and radical â€“ very radical.

What, boys? Did you forget that she and her most loyal grad students conduct ritual bra-burnings on the roof of Bunche Hall every Wednesday at 4:00? Why not just call her an "angry hairy dyke" and leave us in no doubt as to your misogyny? It’s telling that the comments about DuBois are, on the whole, more consistently condemnatory and unpleasant than those about her male colleagues.

On one hand, I’m angered to see academics whom I know maligned and attacked. Their work is quoted out of context by folks who give no evidence of actually having enrolled in the courses these faculty members teach. And though most of those named on UCLAProfs are tenured, I worry about the effect that this site may have on more easily intimidated junior faculty. I’m also worried about this site being copied at other universities. UCLA is a progressive public institution, where being identified as a lefty is unlikely to have many repercussions. But suppose a similar site sprang up at, say, Baylor? Or Furman? Or the University of Nebraska? Professors at public institutions in red states, and private institutions with religious affiliations, are obviously more at risk. Suppose angry right-wing alumni of Wheaton College began a site designed to identify those professors who strayed too far from the path of what these self-appointed watchdogs considered to be true Protestant orthodoxy? That’s a much more frightening prospect.

On the other hand, I’m also inclined to suggest that those named on the site embrace the criticism as a badge of honor. After all, there’s little chance that this site will affect the professional prospects of any of the tenured professors named. Indeed, in the generally progressive world of higher ed, I can imagine that some teachers might be eager to have their names included as those most worthy of the opprobrium of the far right! I can already think of a couple of UCLA profs I know who are likely indignant at not yet having been "named and shamed" by the earnest young conservative alumni who created this site!

Though we have the silly "rate my professors" site for Pasadena City College faculty, we don’t yet have any public forum for commenting on the political leanings of our teaching staff. Were such a site to appear, I would only be miffed if I were excluded. Of course, given that I hold a number of seemingly contradictory views that span the political spectrum, I would be rather difficult to classify. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t expect the hard-working busybody types who create these sorts of websites to at least give it a try.

Thursday Short Poem: Olds’ “Connoisseuse of Slugs

Posted on January 19, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

I’ve long been a fan of Sharon Olds, the American "poet laureate of the body". No other poet today writes incarnate flesh and sex in all its gorgeous messiness as well as she; I’ve had a few of hers up before, but this is another old favorite.

The Connoisseuse of Slugs

When I was a connoisseuse of slugs
I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the
naked jelly of those gold bodies,
translucent strangers glistening along the
stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies
at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel
to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt,
but I was not interested in that. What I liked
was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the
odor of the wall, and stand there in silence
until the slug forgot I was there
and sent its antennae up out of its
head, the glimmering umber horns
rising like telescopes, until finally the
sensitive knobs would pop out the
ends, delicate and intimate. Years later,
when I first saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.

A lengthy musing on body image, Millay, and the possibility of transformation: a response to Jen

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

From the Carnival of the Feminists, I found this blog post from Jen, a student at Smith College, on being a young feminist struggling with body image issues. She writes:

My being a feminist does not, unfortunately, make me immune to the widespread dissatisfaction of women with their bodies. I, too, hate my body. Well, that’s not entirely true. My ass is pretty shapely. And I enjoy my surgery scar on my knee. But everything else? There’s definitely room for improvement, to say the least.
And see? Even that, I know, is problematic. Seeing my body as something that needs to be improving. Wanting that waifish, bony (read: passive, unaggressive) body is purely a product of the patriarchy.
I know this.

And because I know this, I’m having an ideological dilemma. On the one hand, I have the typical eating-disorder-esque mindset of self-hatred and celery sticks*. On the other, though, I fully recognize and acknowledge that the source of the majority of the aspects of this mindset lie in the way that my mind has been socially constructed to play into the patriarchal beauty myth. I recognize these things, but I cannot change them.

Part of the reason I use this disordered eating is because I want that socially constructed impossible ideal of the 6-pack abs – the "perfect" body. I know that this body is largely unattainable, and my desire to attain this level of "perfection" plays easily into the hands of the patriarchy. But that doesn’t mean that the social pressures to attain this ideal affect me any less.
But the main reason that I need these disordered eating patterns is control. It is an explicitly personal need to control my life and what happens in it. It being so explicitly personal, it almost becomes easy to dismiss it as not really part of the patriarchy, because it is my (intrinsic?) "nature" that makes me so reliant on the idea of self-control. It’s not, and I know this. After all, the personal is political. And the personal, too, is largely socially constructed.
Even so.
I need that control. And no amount of feminist theory can give that to me.

Bold emphasis is mine. For some reason, this old Millay line comes to mind:

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

This is true for so many of us, feminists and non-feminists alike! We go to college, we get filled with all sorts of interesting and useful theories, and we become first-rate students of ourselves and our motivations. We very quickly discover why we do what we do. We wax eloquent about the constellation of factors that made us who we are today, about parents and peers and popular culture. But the intellectual grasp of the nature of the problem is not the same as a solution to it! Ask any sad and wise alcoholic, who can tell you eloquently why he drinks and is fully aware of what it is doing to him and those who love him, but feels powerless to stop his behavior.

I was moved by Jen’s short post. I’ve struggled with my own eating disorder/exercise addiction/body dysmorphia for years. It began in my teens and continues to haunt me, though I am pleased to report that I have an infinitely healthier relationship to food and my own flesh than I did in my youth. I don’t exercise twice a day any longer, I don’t try and get by on 800-1000 calories a day while training for a marathon, and I don’t weigh what I did at my "adult bottom" (just under 145 pounds on my 6’1" big-boned frame). But I still run plenty of miles, lift plenty of weights, take plenty of Pilates classes, and still gaze critically at myself in the mirror. Yes, though I am 38 and tenured and at peace in my life, I’m still known to exasperate my patient wife with queries about whether or not I look good in a specific outfit. But praise be, I’m infinitely more self-accepting with each passing year, even as the wrinkles sprout across my skin.

Of course, male privilege affected my own experience with an eating disorder. In the early 1990s, when my weight plunged below 150 and I became gaunt and emaciated, my friends and family rallied to help me. Folks told me I looked awful, and that they were worried. My department secretary asked me privately if I had AIDS (the rumor was going around). You see, by getting so thin and frail, I was doing something distinctly at odds with the masculine ideal. My "sickness" was easy to see. I got help, and I got it quickly. (I wrote about some of this before, here.)

But I’ve known plenty of women who’ve dieted and exercised as hard as I did, and who became just as skinny. But instead of attracting oodles of worried attention, they got validated. "You look great!" "Keep it up!" "I’m so jealous, how do you do it?" When I starved myself, I was rejecting a traditional message about manliness; when my female friends starve themselves, they are embracing a very seductive and very dark message about what it means to be a desirable woman. Though I do not make light of my experience, I do recognize that I got much more attention and support as a man exhibiting anorectic behavior than I would have as a woman in a similar situation.

So what does this have to do with the Jens of the world? Jen is hopeful about what we can do to reach out to little girls, but though still young herself, is somewhat despairing of feminism’s ability to help her and those like her work through these immensely difficult body issues:

I’m sure there are cases where feminist consciousness has brought someone out of their eating disordered life, but in my case, and in many others’, understanding these social implications does not immunize you, or even seriously protect you, from the patriarchy’s message that you must attempt to attain this unattainable, "perfect" body. It might allow you to deflect the more blatant indoctrination of this ideal, but I don’t think that anything, really, can protect women from the subtle forms of patriarchal control over our bodies.

I do think, however, that feminism’s role in this issue of eating disorders is one of prevention, of preventing the indoctrination of young girls into this distorted body image cult. There is, unfortunately, little that can be done about the women who have already been indoctrinated by the patriarchy, an indoctrination that runs much deeper than we could possibly hope to reach. But it can change for the future generations. And, really, it must.

Though I share Jen’s commitment to reaching younger girls before they are "indoctrinated", I’m deeply saddened by her belief that there is little we can do for college-aged and older women who have already got years of experience with loathing their own flesh. Certainly, reciting feminist aphorisms about beauty and identity is insufficient. And though I have found that spiritual conversion has been an immense source of solace in this regard, I’m not going to crassly suggest that what Jen and other young feminists really need is to "come to Jesus." Believe me, there are plenty of young women at evangelical colleges whose hearts are on fire for the Lord but who share with their secular sisters an intense hatred of their own flesh! A relationship with Jesus, even if it becomes the Great Fact of one’s existence, is not a prophylaxis against the damaging lies of the culture about beauty and the body.

But while neither feminism nor faith is a magic bullet to kill self-loathing, feminism does offer more than theory. At its best, feminism — like the church — is about building community. It’s about creating a family of like-minded individuals with similar ideological or theological commitments who are devoted to each other. So many women, and some men, struggle with comparing their bodies to those of their peers. Feminist community, at its best, ought to offer a safe haven to women, a place where they can be challenged when they need to be challenged and nurtured when they need to be nurtured. Above all, feminist community is about creating meaningful, safe, and enduring relationships where men and women can and do hold each accountable for their eating, their exercise, and their own slow and painful progress in extricating themselves from the Great Lie about their own bodies and their worth. This is more than just an opportunity to bemoan one’s shortcomings — it’s an opportunity to hear the truth in love, and to be challenged to take small steps to change one’s own behavior and thinking.

I work with teenagers who have exquisitely sensitive bullshit detectors. One reason I’ve worked so hard on my own issues around the body (anorexia, compulsive exercise, cutting) is because I feel an intense obligation to show kids who are struggling with similar problems that hope exists, that change can happen. As they say in Twelve Step programs, "You can’t give away something you haven’t got." We can’t ask our younger brothers and sisters to overcome problems which still have us bewildered, overwhelmed, and defeated. Overcoming one’s own disordered eating and body dysmorphia is thus not merely about self-improvement and personal happiness, it’s about setting an example and transforming the culture.

I have nothing but great sympathy — and to the extent that it’s possible for a man twice her age — empathy for Jen. I’m not asking her to try any harder than she’s already tried. But I grieve the tone of despair I sense in her writing, and it reminds me that those of us who are a wee bit older must redouble our efforts to transform our own relationships to our body, and to witness about that transformation to our younger brothers and sisters so desperately in need of that good news.

A note on my women’s studies class

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’m teaching my women in American society course for the first time in a six-week winter intersession. I was worried about compressing the material down, but I’m happy to say that things are going very, very well indeed.

I’ve got many talkative and bright students, the sort who not only make excellent comments in class, but e-mail me afterwards to continue the conversation. Teaching seven hours straight four days a week is fairly grueling (and I haven’t even started grading yet), but with this group to get me started in the morning, things are much easier than I anticipated.

I will admit that I’m shifting my focus considerably. As regular readers may know, I’ve often argued that the early women’s history can be traced to "women’s disappointment in men." The first feminist organizations of the 1830s, such as the temperance clubs and Moral Reform societies, began as responses to the epidemic of "bad" male behavior (usually involving alcohol, gambling, and prostitution). This "epidemic" was linked to the industrial revolution and the beginnings of a significant rural to urban shift, where men encountered infinitely more opportunities to drink and otherwise misbehave.

But where I’ve made a mistake in the past is assuming that contemporary feminism continues to be a primarily female response to being disappointed by men. While it is true that a great many women do become feminists as a consequence of personal experience with male sexism, it’s also true that plenty of feminists did not come to activism through disappointment or hurt or anger. And more importantly, it’s essential to stress that even if every last man in America was a paragon of personal virtue, that doesn’t mean that women would immediately abandon an interest in their own education and independence and autonomy. The desire to direct one’s own life is not necessarily a function of the bitter experience of powerlessness, and I’m afraid that in the narrative I’ve taught in the past, I’ve too often stressed that it is.

My faith continues to be critical of the notion that autonomy is the ultimate good in a feminist hierarchy of goods. But in one of those periodic shifts that have characterized my intellectual development for years and years, I’m once again more willing to embrace the notion that feminism would be essential for women even if the vast majority of men were thoughtful, kind, restrained and loving egalitarians.

I’ve been teaching women’s history for well over a decade, covering the same material each year. But the meaning and the significance that I ascribe to that material has changed with great regularity, as my politics have oscillated from left to right and back, and as my faith as waxed and waned and grown again. In 1995, 1999, 2002 and 2006 I lectured on the industrial revolution and the coming of feminism, sharing the same facts each time — but how I’ve interpreted it has changed and changed again. Whether that is a sign of a prolonged intellectual adolescence, or of a restless mind, or of my own tendency to fetishize change and ambiguity, I don’t know.

Schlafly on Title IX

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

Noted here and there…

First off, let me sing the praises of the excellent new Carnival of the Feminists 7 up at Feministe.

Reflecting on yesterday’s 6-3 Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide, one can only conclude that the elevation of Samuel Alito will still leave Anthony Kennedy and other relatively progressive social voices in charge. The key question — can John Paul Stevens, the court’s oldest justice and a moderate liberal, hang on until a Democratic president can name his replacement? Much seems to hinge on that, more than on either of the previous two vacancies.

And then, there’s this stunner from Phylis Schlafly: Radical Feminists Reinterpret Title IX. It’s filled with the old-time religion that blames women and girls for the decline in male enrollment on college campuses. What’s noteworthy is that she builds her piece around the immensely entertaining (and for some of us, heartbreaking) Rose Bowl game of a fortnight ago:

This year’s spectacular Rose Bowl game attracted a phenomenal 35.6 million viewers because it featured what we want: rugged men playing football and attractive women cheering them on. Americans of every class, men and women, remained glued to their television sets and nearly 95,000 spectators watched from the stands.

The runaway success of this game proved again that stereotypical roles for men and women do not bother Americans one bit. Political correctness lost out as all-male teams battled and women cheered.

I’m assuming that the "attractive" women Schlafly refers to are the female cheerleaders and dance squad members for USC and the University of Texas. Of course, perhaps she means my lovely wife?

I’m a bit baffled as to how "political correctness" lost out at the Rose Bowl, however. USC, long ago shedding its conservative reputation, has one of the most progressive Gender Studies programs in America, as well as the best archive of lesbian history in the English speaking world. I know plenty of very left-wing gender-studies types affiliated with the university — and almost to a man and a woman, they are all football-crazed. (Last week I chatted with a sixty-something lesbian couple whom I know, affiliated with USC’s ONE Institute and of impeccable PC credentials; they were still gnashing their teeth in frustration at Coach Carroll’s play-calling.) So enough with the tired old idea that all authentic feminists don’t like football.

Schlafly gets odder:

It’s too bad that male sports are being eliminated on most college campuses. Except for Texas, USC, and a few other places, radical feminism rules in the athletic departments at the expense of popular male sports.

Gosh, as I said, ‘SC has the most progressive Gender Studies program on the West Coast. And some pretty awesome women’s teams in a variety of sports (water polo, track, and at least in the 1980s with Cheryl Miller, basketball.) They’ve managed to fully fund both men’s and women’s teams just fine.

More fine logic:

The Rose Bowl proved that public demand is for all-male sports, not female contests. Boys do not want to go to a college that eliminates the macho sports, and that is true even if the boy does not expect to compete himself.

The effects of the feminists’ attack on men’s sports are now coming home to roost. By the time this year’s college freshmen are seniors, the ratio will be 60 percent women to 40 percent men, and women are now crying that there are not enough college-educated men to marry.

China’s brutal one-child policy has artificially created millions of young men for whom no wives are available. Right here at home, the feminists have created millions of college-educated women for whom no college-educated men are available, and the trend is getting steadily worse.

The American people clearly want male football, baseball, track and wrestling, and colleges that cut these sports should be cut out of the federal budget.

Well, I don’t know what Schlafly means by "eliminate macho sports." The male teams that have been cut by many universities in recent years include swimming and tennis and crew — not traditionally seen as "macho" compared to football and basketball (which are cut far less often.)

Schlafly suggests that the American public would much rather see men play anything than women. But it’s absurd to imply that all intercollegiate men’s sports are more popular than all women’s sports! Yes, football is the sacred cow of American university athletics. But Phyllis, with all respect, I’m willing to bet I’ve been to a heck of a lot more intercollegiate track meets than you have. I’ve sat in a near-empty Drake Stadium at UCLA (one of the most famous venues in the sport), watching the Bruin men in many a dual meet. (Quick: name the defending NCAA champions in cross-country and track. No looking it up on line! Yeah, that’s what I thought.) I’ve been to water polo games and soccer matches and gotten the best seat in the house time and time again — most folks don’t care about the so-called minor sports, regardless of who’s playing! On the other hand, the famous University of Tennessee women’s basketball program regularly outdraws their male counterparts in terms of spectator attendance, and I’ve often seen more fans at UCLA softball games than at Bruin baseball matches.

If these are the best arguments against Title IX that the right can come up with, we’re in better shape than I thought.

“Being There”: A Tuesday morning post on commitment and sexual ethics

Posted on January 17, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

We spent a happy and long MLK weekend in Northern California. Once again now, I am back in the office with much to do.

In my post about pro-feminism and "getting laid", I made the case that sex outside of the context of "commitment" falls short of both a feminist and a Christian mark. Several of my secular feminist allies (and MRA opponents) took issue with that conclusion, and others expressed some curiosity about what it was I meant by "commitment" — an admittedly pliable term that can be used to describe a very wide variety of arrangements.

I see sexual "commitments" as appearing on a ladder — or a hierarchical continuum — rather in a simple dichotomy. The most basic commitments we make are to certain principles that do not create obligations to one specific person. The obvious example here is the commitment to be honest. Even the most enthusiastic defenders of a relaxed sexual ethic tend to be firm proponents of the honesty principle, and the moral obligation to be clear with one’s partner(s) about one’s intentions and expectations.

But rising up the "commitment" ladder, we encounter other essential virtues. Here, the commitments shift from being general principles that help us deal with the world (like honesty), and become more focused on the person with whom we are sharing physical intimacy. The obvious components of a commitment here are concern for a specific partner’s pleasure, safety, and emotional well-being. Again, most of my friends who believe that non-monogamous sexual relationships can be ethical stress that in their encounters and exchanges, they take responsibility for these things too.

I would never suggest that caring and concern only manifest themselves in enduring monogamous relationships. It is theoretically possible to be kind to and honest with any number of people at the same time; I’ve seen it done, often with aplomb. But despite recognizing the possibility for virtue in the transitory, the fleeting, and even the promiscuous, I’m convinced that all such relationships fail to reach the highest level on the ladder of commitment.

I’ve come to believe that the most important commitment we can make to our partners is the commitment to accompany them through all of the myriad short-term and long-term emotional, physical, and spiritual consequences of our sexual relationship. Though sharing responsibility for contraception is better than ignoring the matter altogether, and caring about another’s pleasure is preferable to using their body selfishly, most modern, secular codes of sexual ethics fail to account for the enduring effects of intense physical intimacy.

I am convinced that whether we acknowledge it or not, our sexual activity transforms us and affects us on the most profound of levels. When we open our bodies to others, we frequently are stunned by our own reactions — or those of our partners. We all know countless stories of people who end up falling in love with the person who was just supposed to be a fling, just as we know many stories of folks who fail to live up to their promises to love and support each other for life. Few of us, no matter how great our self-awareness or vast our experience, can confidently predict how each of our sexual partners will react to our love-making. And let me be very clear: I see both Christianity and feminism as demanding that each of us take responsibility for how our behavior touches the lives of others.

We can’t use verbal honesty as a means of avoiding that responsibility, either. For example, when we say to a prospective partner "no strings attached", but they end up feeling "attached" after we sleep together, we have incurred an obligation. To say "this is just a fling" with one’s tongue while making other promises with one’s body falls short of the mark of commitment. Our mouths are not the only part of our body we use to communicate, after all — we must take responsibility for how our actions are perceived as well as how our words are heard. And few among us can be completely confident in every instance how are actions in the bedroom will affect the hearts and minds of those with whom we choose to share our bodies.

At its best and highest, real commitment is the promise to be there to work through all of the ongoing emotional, spiritual, and physical consequences of sexual intimacy. Children are one obvious consequence, but emotional transformation is surely another. If one wants to get to the highest level of relational ethics it’s not enough, I’m convinced, to be a brief and fleeting agent of change or growth in the life of a sexual partner. We have to be ready and willing to continue to be present in the life of a lover, just as one’s lover is called to continue to be present for us.

Again, I’d rather folks be candid than not; I’d rather folks use contraception than not; I’d rather folks be willing to care for the immediate repercussions of intimacy than abandon each other. Any degree of caring or candor, no matter how small, is an improvement on recklessness, selfishness, and dishonesty. But in the end, I’m convinced that the highest form of commitment, and the one towards which we all ought to aspire on ethical grounds alone, regardless of our religious beliefs, is the commitment to be a loving, reliable, and enduring presence in the lives of those with whom we have chosen to be sexually involved.

Friday Random Ten

Posted on January 13, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

Copying countless others with a Friday Random Ten, here are the ten tracks that came up on my Itunes shuffle this afternoon:

1. "Bette Davis Eyes", Kim Carnes
2. "Bears", Lyle Lovett
3. "California Stars", Billy Bragg and Wilco
4. "This is England", The Clash
5. "Underneath your Clothes", Shakira
6. "These Thousand Hills", Third Day
7. "I’m so Happy I Can’t Stop Crying", Sting
8. "If I Ever Needed Someone", Van Morrison
9. "He Thinks He’ll Keep Her", Mary-Chapin Carpenter
10. "We Close Our Eyes", Oingo Boingo

My wife and I share an Itunes account. ~~Four of these songs are hers, six mine~~. Whoops, she reminds me that only two are hers. I’m so unhip, it hurts.

Bonus Track: "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward", Billy Bragg

Not much

Posted on January 13, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

No time for a post this morning; I may get one in this afternoon. If not, nothing again until Tuesday. The choice this morning is between a long blogging session and some much needed gym and trail time. And when pressed, I’d rather get my heart rate up for a couple of hours then let my fingers wander over the keyboard for a similar period. Call it an addiction, vanity, or an unfortunate anti-intellectualism, but there it is. Heck, I’m just incredibly blessed to be able to make such a choice.

I’m very much enjoying the interesting comments below the previous post, and I’m grateful to all who’ve weighed in.

A long answer to HL on pro-feminism and “getting laid”

Posted on January 12, 2006 by Hugo Schwyzer

l want to take a stab at responding to the query from Liberal Heterodoxy I mentioned yesterday. Given my position on older men/younger women relationships, and upon sexual ethics in general, he asks "How can a feminist man get laid?"

He receives some responses in the comments here and at his place. Many of the answers to his blunt but important question are very good, and I urge readers to have a look.

When confronted with a question like that from HL (that’s what others are calling him), I can’t answer solely from a secular, pro-feminist perspective. Though some of my more conservative friends consider me insufficiently orthodox (small "o"), my Christian beliefs inform both my feminism and my view of sexual morality. More than anything else on this blog, I’ve tried to make the case that feminist ideas about agency and pleasure and Christian ideas about restraint and commitment and radical giving are not ultimately incompatible, even if most of the loud voices in the culture wars insist that they are.

So, I’m not interested in providing men — or women — with advice on how they can "get laid" outside of the context of a loving, committed, mutually sacrificial relationship. I’ve toyed many times with writing my own list of "dating tips", based on personal experience. But I’ve shied away from doing so for several reasons. One, it would come across, I think, as very narcissistic (and I get charged with that enough as it is.) It’s true that in my adult life, for any number of reasons, finding partners has not been difficult. But no one really needs me to rehash my dating and marital "war" stories. Too many people I know and love would much rather I consign those narratives to the past, and frankly, so would I — I’m not interested in revisiting, over and over again, the triumphs and disappointments of a turbulent youth.

The other reason I won’t offer advice on "how to get laid" to anyone is my reluctance to separate sexuality from broader issues of intimacy and commitment. Though I recognize that it’s possible, from a secular feminist perspective, to reconcile casual, uncommitted sex with a radical belief in gender justice and equality, I have no interest in providing a rationale for it. There are plenty of articulate, interesting, voices in the secular blogosphere who can and do articulate a pro-sex feminist case. I respect many of these voices, even as my understanding of sexuality — informed as it is by the church, Scripture, tradition and personal experience — is different and more restrictive than theirs.

With all that said, here’s the best answer I can give to a fellow like HL who wants to "get laid". The first thing you ought to do is ask yourself a basic question: Why should a woman — any woman — have sex with you? I don’t intend that question to be flip or demeaning; I mean it very seriously. And I don’t want an answer that goes into graphic detail about your (real or imagined) special and superlative sexual technique! Seriously, what are you really offering of value? Is it the promise of physical pleasure? Temporary companionship to assuage (and ultimately exacerbate) loneliness?

Really, I’m offering more or less the same advice here that I offered in this post two months ago on self-transformation. That post was focused on the broader issue of figuring out why someone ought to consider us worthy of dating or marrying. HL’s question is more narrowly about sex, but my answer is still the same. From my perspective — and this is only my own, not some edict from the pro-feminist high command — a man who wishes to be an authentic pro-feminist while getting laid regularly by different women outside of the context of a committed relationship is living out a contradiction where his language and his life don’t match.

I recognize within me a temptation to make pro-feminist principles easier for young men to embrace. I’d like to say something shallow and simple like "Hey, dude, as long as you are honest and sincere about your intentions, you can fuck around all you like — just make sure to say nice things about respecting the humanity of your sexual partner, take equal responsibility for contraception, and be good in bed." It’s tempting to give young men a free pass, the sort that allows them to indulge their sexuality with a clean pro-feminist conscience. But as far as I’m concerned, that amounts to giving men a license to objectify and use women as long they cloak their selfishness in pro-feminist rhetoric!

I can hear the howls of protest already: "Hugo, aren’t you being incredibly paternalistic by suggesting that women are ‘objectified" and ‘used’ by men? What about women’s sexual agency? What about women who want casual sex from men and nothing more?" Look, I’m not denying that plenty of women have libidos that are not entirely wrapped up in romance and dreams of commitment! I have no false illusions about female sexuality, or about the ability of women to use others for their pleasure. But as a pro-feminist man, my first task is to witness to my brothers and call them to account. What would be patronizing is if I were to focus my advice primarily on young women — and it’s because I want to avoid that sort of charge that I direct my words to the fellas.

In the pursuit of sexual fulfillment, verbal candor is not enough for an authentic pro-feminist. Real honesty, real integrity, comes only when the actions of our bodies, the words on our lips, the thoughts in our heads and the deepest desires of our hearts are all congruent, all matching, all in harmony. At its best, pro-feminism is about more than paying lip service to the idea of gender equality. It’s about seeing all human beings — including those human beings whom we find incredibly desirable — as extraordinarily precious. It’s about recognizing that all of our actions — how we eat, how we spend our money, how we make love — have real and enduring significance, and a real effect on the lives of other equally precious living creatures. When we really grasp that aspect of pro-feminism, we can’t help but be awed by the huge responsibility we have to be mindful of everything we do. And there is nowhere we need to be more mindful and careful than in the explosive and exciting world of sexuality, where our carelessness and our selfishness has such great capacity to harm others and ourselves.

So I’m sorry, I can’t offer advice to anyone on "how to get laid". If that refusal makes my version of pro-feminism seem unappealing or strangely puritanical, so be it. But I’m not going to compromise what I believe to be essential principles about sexuality, humanity, and justice for the sake of winning a greater number of young men to the pro-feminist cause.

UPDATE: Long and provocative response from HL here.