Monthly Archives: June 2006

A final tribute to Matilde

Posted on by

I really do expect to be blogging about other topics very soon; I’m eager to respond to the ongoing discussion of  my "Pete" post from eight days ago.  Let that wait one or two more days, folks, and I’ll be back at it.

I’m writing this morning in thanksgiving for the life of our beautiful chinchilla, Matilde.   Again, I thank everyone who has commented or e-mailed with condolences since her sudden death this past Sunday morning; the sympathies of strangers and friends alike have been of great comfort to us. But if you aren’t interested in reading a eulogy for a chin, skip the post!

My wife and I brought Matilde home the very same week that I started up this blog.  My first entry here at Typepad was on January 13, 2004; "Matty" came home with us five days later.  Here’s my first brief entry about her.

It is almost axiomatic that it is a great good fortune indeed to be the sole pet of a childless couple!  Matilde came into our lives a few months before my wife and I were engaged, but well after we had moved in together. We had debated the merits of various kinds of pets, worried that a diurnal animal would be lonely given our hectic schedules.  We needed a pet that would be out and active in the evenings, and learned from some casual research that chinchillas would fit the bill.

When my then-girlfriend and I went to the Glendale Petco on January 18, 2004, we didn’t expect to come home with a new family member.   As is so often the case, we just "went to look."  But when the Petco guy opened up a small glass enclosure and brought out a little three-month old chin, my wife and I fell in love.  "She’s a very sweet and loving female", he said; "She’s quite gentle."   My girlfriend cradled her close, and within a heartbeat, we knew she was coming home with us.  I frantically bought every conceivable item she would need, and we were out of the store in ten minutes flat.  On the way home, as I drove and my girlfriend held the drowsy little one, I asked "What shall we name her?"  My beloved, without hesitation, said "Matilde".  (Spelled and pronounced the Spanish way.)  Eventually, her nickname became "Matty", and we developed half a dozen other silly names too private to share.

For the next two and a half years, Matilde was a central figure in our lives.  Every morning and every evening, we took her out of her cage for "family playtime."  In our condo, we have a spare bedroom that we call the "nursery" (it was decorated for a baby when we bought the place); it became "Matilde’s room."  We bought her the largest and roomiest chinchilla cage available, and kept her well-supplied with toys.  We struggled, oh how we struggled, to restrict her intake of treats!  She loved nuts and raisins, which are fine in moderation but dangerous in excess!  Like so many pets, she quickly became a charming and masterful beggar, perfecting that enchanting and compelling expression that always suggested that she might just starve if not given "a little something."  We gave her lots of "somethings."  (One comfort: talking with chinnie experts after her death, we were reassured that based on the circumstances of her passing, it was very unlikely that she died as a result of overfeeding.)

Our learning curve about chinchillas was steep. I had barely known such creatures existed before Matty came home; after she joined our little family, I became obsessed with learning more and more.  In due course, I realized that chins are one of the few domestic pets regularly slaughtered in this country for their fur.   Reading up on factory fur ranching (and watching one or two horrifying videos), we felt a desperate need to do something for chins not as fortunate as Matty.  In late 2004, inspired by Matty, we got in touch with the wonderful Adam and Sally Blacke, who run chincare.com and are renowned "rescuers."   

It is with Adam and Sally that my wife and I helped create the Matilde Mission: Pet Homes for Ranch Chinchillas, Incorporated.  Adam and Sally had already been running a highly successful rehoming project in Michigan; we were able to bring in some larger donors and save the lives of dozens and dozens of chins.   We have other projects in the pipeline, and indeed, I can assure you that even a small donation (tax-deductible) to the Mission will go to excellent use.  (See some of the "ranchies" that Matilde helped save!) 

Throughout our working experience with the Blackes, we’ve always felt inspired by Matilde herself.  It sounds absurd, I realize; a skeptic would say that we were simply inspired by the love we felt for her, not by anything she herself actually did.  But in ways that I cannot explain or fully articulate, both my wife and I felt encouraged, challenged and motivated merely by being near Matty.  "It’s as if she’s telling us to save her friends", we regularly said (and still say) to each other.  It was more than just her enchanting facial expressions, her gentle nuzzles, her playfulness. I’ve had many pets in my life, and though I’ve loved them all, I’ve never felt — until Matilde — that they were actively involved in making me a better person.  Inexplicably, but marvelously, I believe Matilde did just that for me and for us.

My wife and I were married in September 2005.  Our marriage is a blessing to us; we grow closer and stronger every day.  But like many couples who contemplate marriage, we went through some hard times in the year leading up to our wedding.  On two occasions, we briefly considered separating or calling it quits.  The more serious of the two quarrels happened during one of Matilde’s "out times"; as she bounced around the room, her "mama" and I fought and cried and discussed calling everything off.  As the tension escalated, Matty obviously grew more and more anxious.  She ran from one of us to the other, more eager than usual for attention and stroking.  Most intelligent pets can sense their guardians’ emotions; Matilde could feel our anxiety and our sadness.  Though we didn’t talk about it until later, both my wife and I began to sense the same thing in the middle of the argument — as best she could, this little ball of fluff was doing everything in her power to heal her family, to hold us together.  When she was in my arms, she would look at my fiancee plaintively; she’d then bounce over to her and gaze at me with the same haunting, heartbreaking expression.  My wife-to-be and I worked through our crisis (I don’t even remember what it was about now), and we have always, always, given the credit to Matilde for pushing us through it and keeping us together!  We might well not be married today had Matty not been there for us.

I have been an animal lover since I was very small.  When I first became a Catholic in college, one great obstacle to my conversion was my deep and abiding conviction that animals had eternal souls just as people do; like so many others, I wasn’t interested in a heaven that didn’t include other creatures.  I was comforted by a priest (a good liberal Paulist) who pointed out some of the passages in Scripture that are familiar to many folks who have considered this issue. For example, I learned that God doesn’t just make covenants with humans:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:  "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."

And though I know there are many ways to read the following famous passage, I am clear that "whole creation" means exactly what it seems to mean, that all living things are partners in waiting:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

There are other passages in Scripture that offer comfort and reassurance that animals have eternal souls, but these are the ones that always resonate with me.  (And folks, this is not the post in which to debate theology!)

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that in ways that I cannot explain, my wife and I will be together again with our "first daughter", our "baby girl", our amazing chinchilla.  Thanks to this blog, her charity work — and to my wife’s penchant for showing pictures of Matilde to absolutely everyone — it is quite possible that Matilde had become among the most famous chins in the world by the time of her death!  That may be a tribute to the nuttiness of her "parents", but our commitment to celebrating her both before and after her death was a consequence of the tremendous love and spiritual energy that poured forth from her tiny body.

We will have other pets — including chinchillas — sometime soon.  For now, we are letting ourselves grieve the loss of this exceptional little one who touched us in ways that even we veteran animal lovers found unique and surprising.   Sitting at my computer this morning, not only can I recall the feel of her fur beneath my fingers, I can feel her living presence very near me now.  In my grief, that presence is a source not only of comfort, but of profound inspiration.

Tuesday update and links

Posted on by

Just a short post this morning to offer thanks once again for all the kind notes about Matilde and my father.  It really helps, more than people realize.

I’m off to visit Dad again today.

The grief over Matilde is still very fresh; my wife and I have cried a lot together.  Funny, isn’t it, how one’s grief is at once assuaged and compounded by the grief of one’s spouse?  She and I shared an intense love for this sweet little creature, and I am comforted when we cry together; at the same time, it makes my heart ache all the more to know that my wife is hurting.

I may be taking a hiatus from the blogosphere, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been discussed so much by others in one week:

Ralph Luker points out that I am quoted (not as I would wish) at National Review.

Piny at Feministe, McBoing at Punkass Blog, Sheelzebub, and Violet at Reclusive Leftist (as well as many of their commenters) are not happy with me for reasons that will become clear when you glance at their posts.  There is much to respond to, but not just yet.  Let me make it clear, however, that I don’t expect folks to "take it easy" on me because I’m going through a hard time with the loss of Matilde and my Dad’s illness.  I’d like to think that even my harshest critics are sympathetic to my grief, and can separate annoyance and anger at my public pronouncements from an actual hostility towards me as a person.

So, I do promise some vigorous yet charitable responses to all of this sometime soon.  But for a little while longer, my focus needs to be elsewhere.

Short Monday update

Posted on by

My wife and I are very grateful for the many people who have written kind emails to express their condolences on the sudden loss yesterday morning of our beloved "baby girl", Matilde.  Those we’ve talked to who know about this sort of thing are convinced it was sudden heart failure.

I didn’t allow comments on the initial Matilde post because, frankly, I know that some folks are dismissive of those of us who give our hearts so completely to little animals.  I had one conversation on the phone yesterday with a man I like and admire, but who was completely unsympathetic.  I didn’t want that experience repeated on the blog.  But I think I may have misjudged my readers, and I am sorry about that.  This comment thread is open.

Yes, it’s a very hard June: my father is dying and we’ve lost our adored chinchilla very suddenly.  But I am absolutely convinced that both my father and Matilde are watched over and cared for by a loving God who is wise in ways that I am not, and whose kindness is more expansive than I can comprehend.  After the final "no" of this life, there comes a "yes" beyond…  That much I believe without a shadow of a doubt.

Folks, feel free to continue to comment on other posts on this blog as well as here. I will return to regular posting very soon; I just need a day or two more to reflect and grieve before moving forward.  I’ll have some longer thoughts up on Matilde and her life with us by the end of the week.

Of course, my father’s health remains an even more central concern, and prayers for his comfort and his peace are immensely appreciated.  I’ll keep my readers posted.

This is my favorite picture of Matilde.  Here I am with Dad in October ’04.

And UPDATE to the update:

I can’t tell you how much the expressions of sympathy in our email and here on the blog mean to my wife and to me!  Thank you!  I do promise a longer reflection on Matilde’s wonderful, brief presence in our lives soon — but for this evening, include this photo of her final resting place.  We buried Matty in the garden of some very dear and kind friends of ours; she’s underneath a large rock at the foot of a fine young fig tree.  Yes, we’re thinking of finding (or commissioning) a small ceramic/stone sculpture of a chinnie to mark the spot permanently.

Matilde

Posted on by

This morning just before 8:00AM, quite unexpectedly and suddenly, our beloved and adored chinchilla Matilde died.  She was only a little more than two and a half years old; chinchillas can easily live to be ten or twelve.  She went very quickly and peacefully, and we have no idea what caused her death.  As recently as last night, she had been bouncing around with her customary enthusiasm.

We are, of course, absolutely devastated.

Matilde’s sudden death comes at a time when my dear father is also very seriously, terminally ill — a subject I have avoided blogging about until now. This is thus a very difficult time indeed, and I will be taking a short hiatus from posting as a result.  I’m not opening this thread for comments, as I recognize that not everyone who reads this blog is sympathetic to those of us who form passionate and intense bonds with animals.  Rather than risk opening this thread up to the cruel and the thoughtless, I’m going to leave it closed. I do appreciate the many sweet messages that folks have sent to "Matty" over the years, as well as the contributions to her charity — the work of which will of course continue.  Thanks in advance for your kindness and understanding.

I’ll post more about this when I’m more composed.  For now, my wife and I are comforting each other as best we can.

“The only good penis is a soft one”: some long reflections on pro-feminism and male heterosexuality

Posted on by

Sorry, this will be long.  But nothing again until Monday! And please note — some four-letter words are in this post.  Feel free to skip.

Thanks to this post from Amanda and the latest Carnival of the Feminists,  I came across this terrific piece on pro-feminist men and sexual desire at Saucebox.  Based on a graphic but articulate exchange with a male feminist friend via email, Kiki writes:

…for many men (like my friend) who believe in the humanity and autonomy of women; who believe in a woman’s right to be regarded as a whole person who is more than just the sum of her tits, ass and pussy; who believe that a woman’s cultural and societal worth encompasses more than her value as a sexual object; who do not believe that women innately “owe” men sex by virtue of our existence; but yet who also find much of their thoughts, desires and behaviour at least partially driven by their innate sexual attraction to women — attempting to uphold feminist ideals of not objectifying women may often seem like an impossible task.

Kiki’s friend had written:

Genetically, Darwinistically, biologically, I am forced to be obsessed with women’s bodies. Yes, forced. I can control how I act on that obsession, and the obsession doesn’t include the urge to hurt women physically. But there is absolutely no changing the feelings… And in this place and time, the people whose respect I crave the most are always telling me that my very inner core is dirty, shameful, evil, wrong, disrespectful, backward, brute, and unevolved. But I can’t change it. So I’m stuck in perma-shame… I still feel like I’m acting through all of life. I have to pretend that the evidence of my respect for women lies in the supposed fact that I don’t want to fuck most of them.

Kiki gives a terrific response, and I urge those of you haven’t done so yet to read it.

I’ll admit, this comes on the heels of my rather breezy post on Tuesday, in which I discussed my conversation with an ambivalent potential pro-feminist male student.  Reading Kiki’s post gives me a chance to think about this topic of male sexuality and pro-feminism more deeply.

Kiki’s friend does sound like a great many young pro-feminist men I know.  I honor his eloquent candor, and his willingness to admit his suspicion of his own inner fraudulence.  It reminds me of something that I heard an admittedly very young feminist woman say in my very first women’s studies class.  Her words have stuck with me for twenty years, and I remember how shattered I was when I heard her say:

Sometimes I get so angry at men, I think that the only good penis is a soft one.

I still think it’s a (mildly) clever line.  The whole class laughed when my classmate said that — and I chuckled along, albeit nervously.  She was saying something similar to what Kiki’s friend is writing –  that sexual desire for women is somehow fundamentally incompatible with a real commitment to living as a male pro-feminist.  Kiki parses her friend’s words, and makes a nice point:

…where it gets problematic for me is when we start to conflate socially constructed demonstrations of sexual desire with the innate sexual desire itself, which then causes us to assume that the method by which the desire is demonstrated is in itself a biological inevitability, and therefore exempt from criticism.

That’s right on.  From both a Christian and a pro-feminist standpoint, it’s absurd to suggest that straight men who are committed egalitarians shouldn’t have strong libidos.  Actually, my classmate (and some folks who misunderstood Andrea Dworkin) notwithstanding, I hear very few serious feminists condemning male sexual desire per se.  Feminists, like Kiki, are critical of how that desire is shaped and by the culture; they are adamant that the presence of even intense arousal is not an excuse for objectifying behavior.  In other words, it’s one thing to be aroused by the idea of naked breasts, another thing  altogether to stare down a classmate’s blouse in the middle of history class!

From a pro-feminist standpoint, what we’re fighting is not the reality of horniness (a condition hardly unique to men, as Amanda and others have pointed out); what we’re combating is the myth that male sexual desire is uncontrollable.  Of course, all pro-feminist men, like Kiki’s friend, admit that they can control how they act on what he calls his "obsession" with women’s bodies.  And frankly, in a world where countless women are raped and harassed and molested on a daily basis, feminists are a good deal more concerned with changing men’s behavior than with policing their thoughts.  Jeez Louise, what a blessing it would be to have so solved the problem of actions that we can begin to ask questions about what goes on in men’s thoughts!  Kiki again:

Feminism has no objection to the existence of male sexual desire. Feminism does not wish to make men asexual. Feminism does not assert that men cannot respect women or treat them as equals unless they abandon their sexual desire. Feminism does not wish to make men ashamed of their natural and healthy sexual desire for the female body. Feminism does not wish to squelch your lust. Feminism does not think you are a bad person if you find yourself wanting to fuck a woman. Feminism does not condemn you for having a sexual appetite.

So that’s clear, then.

Let me, as a man, put it in a slightly different way:   What makes a man a pro-feminist is not his thoughts, but his actions.  His virtue lies not in the content of his daydreams, but in the substance of his behavior.   Pro-feminism is not about the negation of desire — it’s the denial of the lie that a man can’t control his actions.  Furthermore, the job of a pro-feminist man is to recognize that his desire doesn’t carry with it any right of access to women’s bodies.   His lust imposes no obligation on the women who are the objects of that lust.  No matter what a woman wears, no matter what she looks like, no woman is responsible for how men react to her.  A woman doesn’t have the right to ask him not to want (in the privacy of his own thoughts), but she does have the right to demand that he not make her responsible for satisfying his desires.

When my classmate said the lines that form the title of this post, I suspect she was responding to the old canard that "a hard dick has no conscience."  Perhaps based on her own experience, she had decided that that was in some way true – and thus, ruefully, remarked that the only good penises were soft.  But as a pro-feminist, I reject the false dichotomy that suggests that to see women as radical equals with thoughts and feelings and agency of their own  means that one can’t also experience intense arousal towards those same women.  Desire doesn’t automatically vitiate respect.

Now, regular readers will know that when I "wear my Christian hat", I take a slightly different approach.  In my March post on fantasy and masturbation, I wrote:

But if there’s one overwhelming thing that most of the world’s great spiritual traditions agree on, it’s this: our thoughts do matter.  In the Abrahamic religious tradition, the tenth commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Covet."  To "covet" is to long for, desire, lust after, envy, etc.   This commandment comes after earlier commandments about theft and adultery.  To borrow language from our Buddhist friends, It’s clear that God is calling His people not only to right action, but also to right thought.  Jesus continues the theme in Matthew 5:28:  "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."  It’s difficult to look at Scripture and continue to insist that masturbatory fantasy is harmless!

Fleeting thoughts are impossible to control.  But it’s one thing to have a fleeting thought, and another to "entertain" the thought for any length of time.  To paraphrase the famous line from Martin Luther, "I can’t stop the birds from flying over my head, but I can stop them from building nests in my hair."  Fantasy and lust — for anyone other than my wife — is letting the birds build a nest on my head.  And I am convinced that that fantasy life is at odds with my spiritual and physical commitments.

From a Christian pro-feminist standpoint, I have to do more than merely control my actions.  In this case, I admit that I see Christian pro-feminists (small group that we are) as called to a higher, more demanding standard than our non-Christian brothers.  From a secular pro-feminist position, the main goal is to get men to understand that their desires are not women’s problems to soothe!  Just getting that point across to some lads is plenty work enough, thanks.  But as a Christian, I believe God calls me to holiness and restraint in the substance of my thoughts as well as in my behavior.  Yes, I have (even at my advanced age) a healthy and boisterous libido — and I direct that energy towards one person.  It’s easy now because I’m in love with my wife, but I have known what it is to not be in love and still exercise control over my thoughts.

The same spiritual mentor who encouraged celibacy in my life taught me the "three-second rule."*  When I saw an attractive woman, or experienced a sudden sexual thought, he told me that I was free to have that thought for three seconds.  After three seconds, it was time to take conscious effort to change my thinking.  He taught me a prayer I used constantly back in those days.  Whenever I found myself idly lusting, my director told me to pray: 

Lord, show me this woman as you see her, not as I see her.  Help me to treat her as you would have me treat her, not as I desire.  Guide my thoughts, Lord.

And you know — it worked.   My own spiritual journey today has led me to the point where I believe that I am accountable to God, to my wife, and to my community for every aspect of my sexuality.  That includes my thoughts as well as my actions.  But I can separate my spiritual desire for holiness from my pro-feminist convictions.   Thus, while wearing merely my pro-feminist hat, I can urge men to exercise control over their behavior while not asking them to take responsibility for their fantasies.  As a Christian, I go further and insist that we ought to submit even our most private reveries to God’s sovereignty.

Is this an untenable position?  Perhaps.  But I work in both secular and Christian settings, and I am comfortable with a foot in each camp.  Whether that makes me a hypocrite or not is for others to decide.

* I’ve often shared the "three-second rule" with young men I work with in high school, as well as with the fellas in my women’s studies classes.  This semester, during a class discussion, one of my guys referred to it as the "thirty-second rule", which he considered difficult enough.  English was not his first language, and he had misheard me — when he realized I meant a tenth of that time, he was rather shattered!

“Hey, put a shirt on!”

Posted on by

The run up Brown Mountain — through heavy mist — was a delight.  Just as I was reaching my car after the hard 13-miler, someone in a passing car yelled "Put a shirt on!"  (I always run shirtless if the temperature is over 50, not out of a desire to display my paleness but out of a commitment to comfort).  The words stung.  I don’t know if the yeller was critiquing my body, suggesting that it was the sort that shouldn’t be out shirtless, or if they were generally opposed to folks exercising bare-chested.  Either way, I was surprised at how much it hurt!  And it reminded me again of how much worse this sort of thing is for women.  Incidents such as this morning’s are rare indeed in my life — but they are ubiquitous in the experience of the women I know and run with.

Of all the nursery rhymes I grew up hearing, one repeats a great lie:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.  Would that that were true!  For years, that rhyme led me to believe that I was oversensitive when I allowed other’s remarks to get under my skin; it also (in my younger days) made me less sympathetic to those who complained about the pain of verbal harassment.  But I’ve come to recognize that that simple rhyme repeats a great lie.  Broken bones often heal faster than broken spirits.

I cheered up in Pilates; my wife and I do a joint training session, and my wife — soccer fanatic that she is — brought a small portable television which she managed to watch even while doing our usual demanding contortions on mat and "reformer."  And as I sit here typing this, Ecuador has just scored a goal against Poland, and my wife is outdoing Andres Cantor in her vocal reaction… It’s going to be an exciting month….

Friday Random Ten: Praying for Wayne Rooney’s foot edition

Posted on by

The World Cup starts today.  I’m writing this post on a Thursday night, and setting it up to be published early Friday morning.  By the time this appears, I’ll be halfway up Brown Mountain doing my long run of the week.  Normally,I’d do this on a Saturday – but the England-Paraguay match begins at 6:00AM PDT, and my wife and I aren’t missing that for the world.  She’s more soccer-mad than I, which tells you something.

Anyhow, this FRT has eight of my songs and two that belong to my wife.  1, 5 7, and 8 are long-time particular favorites of mine.  Annika mentioned the Alarm earlier this week, and inspired me to rediscover my love for their early goodness.  3# is my favorite song of the week.  And looking at the titles, I think I can figure out a theme that has to do with the World Cup, or maybe I’m just very tired…

1.  "Estranged", Guns n’ Roses
2.  "Furious Angels", Rob Duggan
3.  "Favorite Year", Dixie Chicks
4. "You Sexy Thing", Hot Chocolate
5.  "There You Go", Caedmon’s Call
6.  "Good Ol’ Boys" (Dukes of Hazzard theme), Waylon Jennings
7.  "Walk Forever By My Side", The Alarm
8.  "Lord Reign in Me", Vineyard UK
9.  "Green Fields of France", Dropkick Murphys
10.  "These Old Bones", Dolly Parton

And a Bonus Track from a band that no one but my brother will know:

"Ghosts of Cable Street", The Men they Couldn’t Hang

A short history note on AIDS and marriage: UPDATED

Posted on by

For someone who teaches gay and lesbian history, I’ve been remiss in not commenting on two major events this past week: the somber marking of the 25th anniversary of the "discovery" of AIDS (at nearby UCLA), and action in the US Senate around a Federal Marriage Amendment.

But what I haven’t seen much of this week is commentary that explicitly connects the AIDS crisis to the contemporary struggle over gay marriage.  This is unfortunate, given that most historians believe that the former played a huge role in giving birth to the latter.  (A good primer with which to start: George Chauncey’s Why Marriage?).   If there is one terrible and obvious lesson that any disease teaches, it is the lesson that we are all vulnerable and dependent.  AIDS wiped out a generation of healthy, independent, often young gay men — and it left hundreds of thousands of others struggling to survive. 

As all of us who have fallen ill know, when we are very sick, we need others.  We need our brows wiped; we need our shopping done; we need help getting to and from the bathroom.  AIDS, arriving as it did with such suddenness and violence, rendered helpless and needy countless men who had previously been autonomous and independent.  The victims of AIDS were physically and financially exceptionally vulnerable.  This vulnerability naturally led first to the call for domestic partner legislation that could get more sick men access to insurance — and then, in due course, to the call for full marriage equality.

Marriage offers many things.  Among the most universal qualities of marriage — as heard in marriage vows across this country — is the promise to love and care for one’s spouse in sickness and in health.   Of course, friends and other family members can care for you when you’re sick, but there are clear social and financial benefits to being cared for by a spouse in particular.  There’s also a powerful sense in our culture, accurate or not, that a spouse has a special and unique obligation to provide a radically high degree of care.  When all others have abandoned you, the desperate hope is that the spouse will still be there, right to the very end.

This week, we marked 25 hard years since AIDS first emerged.  This week, we were able to give a very small cheer when the Senate rejected (again) the Federal Marriage Amendment.  But we all need to do a better job of reflecting on how these two events are connected, and how the bitter lessons of AIDS made the struggle for marriage the central focus of the modern American gay and lesbian rights movement.

UPDATE:  Vacula points out that I have unwittingly written essentially the same thing — right down to relying on the same book — as Jonathan Rauch did this past weekend in the New York Times.

Sigh.  This is why I write about the subjects I do — when I take on broader, less particular themes, I end up invariably saying what has already been said better and earlier somewhere else.  That’s an old lament, huh?

Adjuncts, hiring committees, hotness, and the potential abuse of RMP

Posted on by

After reading this morning’s nice piece at Inside Higher Ed on my colleague Yves, I did some catching up on old articles on the site.  I found this post from a month ago: Hotness and Quality, another essay about the Rate my Professors (RMP) phenomenon:

If you’re not sexy, you might want to be easy.

At least if you’re a professor concerned about your rating on RateMyProfessors.com. James Felton, a professor of finance and law at Central Michigan University, and colleagues looked at ratings for nearly 7,000 faculty members from 370 institutions in the United States and Canada, and his verdict is: the hotter and easier professors are, the more likely they’ll get rated as a good teacher.

As far as students — or whoever is rating professors on the open Rate My Professor site — are concerned, nothing predicts a quality instructor like hotness.

Felton found a positive correlation of 0.64 (0.00 means there is no correlaton whatsoever, and 1.0 describes a perfectly linear relationship) between the “hotness” and “quality” — quality is a composite of “helpfulness” and “clarity” — ratings on the site. “Hotness” is determined by evaluators choosing “hot” or “not hot,” with each click counting as either +1 or -1. “Quality” is on a simple 1-5 scale. (Felton may be an exception on the correlation — while he doesn’t get any hotness points from RateMyProfessors, he does well on quality.)

Well, that’s moderately interesting.  It’s clear that the ratings are hardly reliable, particularly considering that anyone — including other faculty members with an axe to grind — can rate professors.  There doesn’t seem to be any reliable way of preventing the system from being totally abused. 

Here’s what’s more disturbing: the article suggests that RMP could be used by hiring committees to check up on applicants.  Suppose someone who is an adjunct prof at one or more colleges is applying for a full-time position.  Isn’t it quite possible that a member of the hiring committee might let what he or she reads at RMP influence his or her feelings towards the applicant?  I don’t know what percentage of the profs rated at RMP are adjuncts, but I would suspect that at least a healthy percentage are not full-time employees — and that many of those would someday like full-time posts.

I haven’t sat on a hiring committee in a few years.  The last time was in 2000, before the advent of RMP.   Applicants with teaching experience were allowed to submit sample evaluations from their classes if they chose; most did so.  Obviously, these were on paper rather than on the ‘net, and the applicant controlled which evaluations the hiring committee got to see.  Naturally, they excluded hostile or unpleasant or irrelevant comments.   I can tell you that while they weren’t a decisive factor, these evaluations played a small part in our decision-making.

I’ll probably be on a couple of hiring committees next year.  I suspect I will be able to resist the temptation to "check up" on the ratings of those adjuncts who will inevitably apply for tenure-track positions.  But I wonder if my colleagues will be similarly restrained.  This prospect genuinely concerns me. Perhaps hiring committees will have to take oaths similar to those taken by jurors — the sort where jurors are charged not to do any independent investigations while they are impaneled. 

A second post on Yves Magloe: UPDATED

Posted on by

I spent some time on the phone yesterday with Rob Capriccioso, a reporter who works for Inside Higher Education.  Thanks to Ralph Luker from Cliopatria, Inside Higher Ed had gotten wind of my blog post on Monday about my colleague Yves Magloe.  Capriccioso’s story runs in today’s Inside Higher Ed: Mentally Untenured.

As soon as I have an update on the situation, I will share it here on the blog.  I can say that I am comfortable with my decision to share publicly of my own battles with mental illness.  There is a dreadful myth that those who battle various mental illnesses cannot hold down regular jobs, particularly in a profession such as mine.  This myth is persistent;  Joel Sax linked to my Monday post and got this anonymous comment from someone who called himself HR Guy:

I’m with a K-12 school district. Teachers with mental health problems are not just “inconvenient”, they can be dangerous to themselves and to the students. As a school HR person, we definitely want to get these individuals out of the classroom. Ninety percent of the time, they’re not good teachers anyway.

Well, I suppose a paranoid schizophrenic in a full-blown episode could present a potential danger.  But the vast majority of those of us who deal with things like bipolar and unipolar depression, serious personality disorders, and so forth are capable — with professional help — of functioning effectively and safely.  And of course, I take umbrage at the suggestion that 90% of the time, those of us who have a history of mental illness make lousy teachers!  No, I’m not "fishing for compliments".  I’m quite confident in my abilities, thanks, and I am grateful to God and to this institution that I am allowed daily to do something I love and at which I believe I am pretty damn good.

I’m sadly certain that the attitude of that anonymous HR guy on Joel’s blog isn’t all that different from the attitude of those who chose to terminate Yves Magloe. 

I’d also like to point out a couple of key differences between myself and Yves.  Yves is, according to the accounts of mutual acquaintances, a shy man.  I’m an ENFP.  Yves is a native of West Africa, and at the time that he fell ill, had no family in the United States.  I’m a sixth-generation Californian with a large extended family. Each time that I fell ill, dozens of family members and friends rallied to my side.  Even at the darkest moment of my struggles, I had zealous advocates standing with me, running interference for me, and making sure that I got the best possible care.  Yves — whose temperament is more withdrawn and whose background less well connected — did not have access to those resources.

And I am still teaching, with tenure — and Yves is fighting to get his job back, as well as to get this institution to recognize the real nature of mental illness.  He is in my prayers, and I ask all of you who can do so to continue to contact those in power here at the college on his behalf.

You can email the college president, James Kossler, here.

You can email the head of human resources, Jorge Aguiniga, here.

Contact the board of trustees by going here.

UPDATE:  The Board of Trustees declined last night to consider rehiring Yves.  I assume the next step is litigation.   I’m also told that mental illness will be a topic for general discussion at the next board meeting on June 21.