Monthly Archives: November 2006

The apparent apostasy of Peter Singer, and a note on my father’s cancer and animal rights

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The animal rights community is processing the rather stunning news that Peter Singer, the renowned Princeton bioethicist, has pulled a remarkable about face and offered an endorsement of limited use of animal experimentation:

Singer… is quoted, on camera, backing the research of Tipu Aziz at Oxford University, in which cruel experiments on monkeys are carried out to develop surgery for Parkinson’s’. Mr Singer admits on “Monkeys, Rats and Me: Animal Testing”, which will be screened on BBC2 tomorrow, “It is clear at least some animal research does have benefits.” He goes on to say “I would certainly not say that no animal research could be justified and the case you have given sounds like one that is justified.”

The National Review, hardly an organ sympathetic to vulnerable creatures (with the possible exception of unborn humans) is gleeful at the possibility that Singer’s stunning change of heart could lead to a fracturing in the broader animal rights world. The Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group for the tobacco and factory farming industries, is similarly ecstatic.

Peter Singer is an enormously important figure; his 1975 treatise, simply entitled Animal Liberation, more or less established an entire movement. He’s an ethicist and a philosopher, but he’s also — like many good teachers — a provocateur, prone to the outrageous statement designed to stimulate discussion. His remarks to the BBC this week, remarks that seemingly undercut the work of the entire anti-vivisection, animal rights community, need to be understood in that context.

After my father died of cancer in June, I inherited a little bit of money. Among the things my wife and I decided to do with a percentage of that money is give to charities in his name. We gave to the non-profit hospice that cared so well for him, and we gave to a variety of conventional animal charities. (He loved animals very much; in the last days of his life, he wept at the loss of our beautiful chin Matilde, who had adored him.) We gave also to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the leading group in this country advocating for veganism and protection for all living things. PCRM doesn’t deny that there may be some benefits to animal research, but it denies that animal research is necessary for the discovery of cures; it further insists that no cure is worth the suffering inflicted on innocent research subjects who have not volunteered. That is a conviction I share. My wife and will not give money to medical foundations or to university programs unless we are absolutely certain that animals are not used for experiments. This has changed our giving pattern considerably.

I loved my father so very much. As we head towards Christmas, I can feel the grief at his passing flowering within me. I wanted my Dad to beat his cancer. I wanted him to live and recover, and I am still heartbroken that he didn’t. But I would not — not for a second — have supported animal research that could have saved his life. I hate cancer for what it did to our family; I hate cancer for robbing my future children of a relationship with their grandfather. But my hatred for cancer is trumped by my love for animals, for the rats and the monkeys and the dogs that share equally in the gift of creation and for which we humans are responsible. I will not support cancer research involving animals, and though the breakthroughs that have already come ought not be discarded, I am not willing to cause pain or death to any creature so that other families will not go through what my family went through this spring. I am not heartless or quixotic — I am honoring a commitment to creation, one that has led me to veganism, one that has reshaped how I spend my money, one that has transformed how I think about life itself.

I honor Peter Singer for what he has given to the cause of animal rights. If his off-the-cuff remark on television this week reflected a change in his views, then I am sorry for it. But the movement he did so much to create is not backing down, is not going away, and will continue to spread the good news of a plant-based diet and a cruelty-free lifestyle to all. And they are gonna get the lion’s share of my charitable giving.-

The first task for pro-feminist men: self-transformation

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Miss Ginger at Diary of a Freak Magnet will be hosting the next “Carnival of the Feminists” on December 6; please consider offering a submission.

One of Ginger’s suggested topics is what she calls the “Y Factor” — the role of men in the feminist movement. Few topics are nearer and dearer to my heart, so I’ll see if I can’t oblige again.

Once Lauren and I get some 1200 old posts categorized, I’m sure I’ll have quite a few that fit both into the “men and masculinity” and “feminism” rubrics. But there’s always room for more. Blogging is, I suppose, a bit like teaching: one returns to the same material, again and again, trusting that many will be hearing it or reading it for the first time.

There are few questions that I get asked more often than “What do you think the role for men in the feminist movement ought to be?” Relatively few men teach women’s studies courses at any level in higher ed, and those of us who do are rightly scrutinized. Folks want to know why we do what we do. Some just want to psychoanalyze the “strange beast” of the male feminist, while others are genuinely interested in discovering if we have something important and unique to contribute.

Someone — perhaps Jeff of Feminist Allies, since I’m fond of volunteering others — ought to organize a thread for pro-feminist men in which we tell the stories of how we became interested in doing this work. Some of us were raised by feminist mothers (and fathers!); others came to it through friends in high school or college; others were inspired by teachers or activists. I don’t know if anyone’s put together a compendium of “male feminist stories”, but they ought to. Someone might even come up with a book proposal out of it.

Speaking only for myself, the key foundation of what it means to be a male feminist goes beyond an ideological belief that eradicating sexism in the world is a good idea. The sine qua non of pro-feminism ought to be the commitment to match one’s language to one’s life. It’s one thing to give intellectual assent to a series of political positions (“sexism is bad”; “women should be paid the same as men”; “abortion should be legal”.) It’s another thing altogether to examine one’s own attitudes and behavior, ruthlessly determined to overcome one’s own sexist impulses and behaviors. Any man who publicly identifies as a feminist risks scorn from non-feminists, and justifiable suspicion from many women in the movement. A feminist man establishes his bona fides over time, and he establishes them less through his political work than through his commitment to personal transformation.

Radical feminists (in the authentic sense of the phrase) are always wary of the rhetoric of “bourgeous navel-gazing.” (And jeez Louise, am I a bourgeois navel-gazer, par excellence!) But let me be clear: I don’t see men’s personal transformation from sexist jerks into models of self-restraint, compassion, and kindness as the final goal of male feminism. Personal transformation is an ongoing process, after all; it is not an instant event. But the end result of the process is not just a “nice guy” or an “enlightened man”, but someone who is active in the struggle for global and local change.
I am convinced that our efficacy as “change-makers” is contingent upon our character. Despite what some folks see as a vaguely Puritanical streak in my writing, I’m not suggesting constant self-criticism that would make a Maoist (or an Inquisition confessor) proud. I’m advocating a commitment to exploring ways in which our goals and our practices can converge. I’m advocating a life that sees congruence between private and public acts as among the highest of virtues. I’m advocating tremendous patience with those who still struggle to reconcile their beliefs and their behaviors, and great sympathy for those who fall short of the mark time and again.

Once we’ve walked a bit down this road, we can start to become effective members of a larger feminist community. We can start leading by public example, exhorting and encouraging and challenging both women and men, but especially our fellow men. We live in a world where men are still given greater respect in many walks of life; we live in a world where our voices are more likely to be heard, at least in certain quarters — we can both lament that unearned privilege and take advantage of it for the cause.

Thursday Short Poem: Merwin’s “Vixen”

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This was the first Thursday Short Poem I ever posted, way back in July 2004. It’s coming up again because it was my favorite poem in my very late twenties, early thirties; recently, I’ve been putting up poems that resonated with key periods of my life. (This from adolescence, this from childhood.)

I love W.S. Merwin; he’s surely among our greatest living poets. His 1996 “Vixen” collection, based on his years living in a rural French farming community, sees him at the peak of his awesome powers. With little regard for punctuation, Merwin’s work is best understood when read aloud.

When I originally posted the poem, I wrote The first time I read it, I was standing in the Earthling Bookstore in Santa Barbara in June 1996, and I burst into tears right there. I read it aloud, softly to myself, over and over again, until the page was wet and I had to buy the book.

Vixen

Comet of stillness princess of what is over
high note held without trembling without voice without sound
aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets
of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences
never caught in words warden of where the river went
touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished
window onto the hidden place and the other time
at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting
in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born
you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me
you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you
even now you are unharmed even now perfect
as you have always been now when your light paws are running on
the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you
when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and contradictions
that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications
as long as it lasted until something that we were
had ended when you are no longer anything
let me catch sight of you again going over the wall
and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures
guttering on a screen let my words find their own
places in the silence after the animals

This bit is so perfect, I memorized it and recite it to myself on long runs:

when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer when
I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and contradictions
that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications…

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Vincent Lugo (“Monster”) park

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For those of you who live in or near San Gabriel, there’s a battle going on to save “Monster Park” (Vincent Lugo Park) and its valuable playground. My colleague and office mate, Eloy Zarate, has a website up that explains a bit more about what’s at stake. He and his wife Senya have also got an online petition going; it will eventually be presented to the city council. In the interests of local historic preservation, sign on.

“I really like big guys”: culture, desire, and the awkward position of pro-feminist men

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I was talking to a female friend of mine yesterday; she’s just started dating a new fella, and the budding relationship appears promising. My friend is about 5’8″, and her new boyfriend is 6’5″. I knew her last boyfriend, who was her height — and so, as we chatted, I asked her if the height differential in this current relationship made a difference.

“Yes, I suppose it really does”, she said. “Being with a man so much taller and bigger makes me feel smaller, more feminine. Being in his arms feels wonderful because I feel the difference between us so much more than with Jack (her ex).”

My friend, who knows I teach feminism, asked “Do you think that makes me less of a feminist, wanting a man who can wrap me up and make me feel so feminine and protected?”

Almost from the start of 2006, the broad feminist blogosphere has been engaged in an intense period of self-criticism, culminating in October’s infamous “waxing wars.” I have no interest in reviving a lot of talk about feminist credentials. But my friend’s sense of delight in the size differential between her and her new guy — and her mild discomfort at what that delight might symbolize — is worth a post.

Of course, y’all know I’m going to share the inevitable personal anecdote. In college, I had a huge crush on a gal who lived in the same co-op as I did. She was my height (6’1″) and a broad-shouldered swimmer who had started her college career on an athletic scholarship but who had tired of the intensity of the competition. She was the consummate jock, and if I could be said to have a “type”, it was always the very athletic, tomboyish women. “Lisa” and I tried a romantic relationship, but it ended quickly; my interest in being more than friends exceeeded hers.

Lisa told me, even before we started dating, that she had doubts about our chances together: “I really like big guys”, she said; “I’m a tall strong girl and I like being with a man who makes me feel petite and feminine.” She liked dating tall linemen, and I was going through one of my “skinny stages”. I was already taking women’s studies classes at that point, and in order to make my case, I quite shamelessly used what I thought were sincere feminist tactics, saying something like:

“Lisa, you only want a stronger, bigger man, because you’ve been brainwashed by a sexist culture. You’ve been taught to be uncomfortable with yourself as a tall athletic woman, and so you want to be with an even bigger guy who can make you feel more traditional. You’re surrendering to the patriarchy!”

There might have been one or two grains of truth in what I was saying, but it was evident to both of us that my exhortation was colored less by a commitment to feminist principle and more by naked self-interest. And I had no reply when Lisa told me off, saying (and this I remember more vividly than my own words):

“Don’t be an asshole and assume that what I want stems from my oppression as a woman. If you were a real feminist man you would never try and channel my feelings and desires to serve your needs, and you’d never try and use feminism to guilt me into being with you.”

That was an uncomfortable “aha” moment, and it taught me an enduring lesson. Few things are more indefensible and pathetic than a self-proclaimed male feminist using the rhetoric of gender justice to try and “get” a woman to be attracted to him. Been there, did that, grew out of it.

Of course, this argument is really raising a very old question: to what extent are our romantic and sexual desires shaped by cultural and familial expectations, and to what extent are they genuinely organic, original, and unique to our “truest self”? (Yes, philosophers, I know, we can’t even be sure we have a “truest self” independent of outside influence!) I’ve raised this question before, writing about men, women, homosociality, and weight. There, I took men to task for being overly concerned with how the weight gain of their female partners would reflect upon their status as men.

So is wanting a “big strong man who will make me feel delicate and feminine” something feminists ought to try and talk women out of? Can we presume to distinguish between a woman whose innate sexuality gets turned on by “big guys” and a woman who likes being with bigger men because she’s uncomfortable with her own size, and longs to feel smaller? Can we insist that women’s erotic desires be shaped and informed by their feminism — and thus work in conjunction with their ideals, not in opposition to them?

Here’s where I drive many of my male critics in the men’s rights movement nuts. When I write about male heterosexual desire, I am adamant that it can be channeled. When discussing what men want, I am quite comfortable — because I am a man — in suggesting that men can master and redirect their libidos. I post a lot about older men and younger women in this regard, and regularly make the case that one key thing men can do is match their desires to an age-appropriate partner. I’ve also made a case against porn, and against male fat-phobia. But I am not willing to make the same demands on women.

Is it because I think women ought to be held to a lesser standard? Of course not. But I’m a great believer in the notion that men ought to hold other men accountable. When men do try and hold women accountable, even in the name of feminism, it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish a righteous motive from a self-serving one. Too many women have been told too often what to do by too many men. Women’s transformation and accountability needs to take place in community with other women, not at male behest. Do I think that women ought to think critically about the ways in which our culture shapes their erotic drives, particularly when it encourages pleasure in submission and a sense of “being small”? You betcha. Am I troubled that we live in a world where so many women are taught to find particular pleasure in being overpowered, overwhelmed, “swept off their feet”? Of course. It may be my place as a teacher to raise uncomfortable questions, but that’s as far as I ought to go.

Explicit judgment and direction are things I choose to reserve for the men in my life, not because I am filled with self-loathing or dislike masculinity, but because I believe in the importance of same-gender accountability. And, most of all, I am leery of having any man — no matter how well versed in feminist rhetoric and praxis — telling a woman what she “ought” to want. Lord knows, I spent years wishing that more women would eroticize cross-country runners instead of football players! It’s damned hard for any man to ever escape the charge of blatant self-interest when this topic comes up, and though it’s been nearly twenty years, Lisa the swimmer’s cutting words still echo in my brain.

Uncomfortably numb

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Feministing links to this article about female cyclists and loss of genital sensation. It jives with what I’ve heard from some women I know who ride regularly. The study also found, I was delighted to read, that no such problem occurred in a control group of women runners.

I cycle rarely these days. I enjoy the bike, but it doesn’t give me the same high, the same rush, as running. The article above suggests that many women might be well-advised to consider reducing saddle time, or at least invest in extra padding in the shorts. (Too many folks, both male and female, ride without sufficient padding in the right places.)

Matilde Mission Update

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All six of our chinchillas are doing very well at home. There’s a lot of cleaning and monitoring involved in having six chinchillas, but it’s more than worth it. I will get around to pictures eventually, but time is not on my side these days.

As many readers know, my wife and I started a charitable foundation to support chinchilla rescue: The Matilde Mission, named for our beloved girl whom we lost in June. Our first fundraising campaign at the beginning of 2006 did fairly well, and we can report that the money raised has gone to good use.

Our project coordinators, Adam and Sally Blacke, saved 16 chins from a pelter in Michigan last month. Some were in poor condition, and the Mission has absorbed the cost of medical care as well as housing and food for these sweet ranchies. Read the update here. Ranch chinchillas who live with pelters live in tiny cages, without toys or wheels or ledges or shelters. It takes a while to acclimate the little ones to their new, safe, infinitely more fun lives.

Our hearts belong to Flipper, who was named for the broken wrist he came with from the pelter. The Matilde Mission saw to his medical care, and he’s recuperating well. Here’s a picture.

Folks, I imagine that chinchilla rescue doesn’t rank high on your list of charitable causes. Yet in a world filled with unnecessary human and animal suffering, anything we do to alleviate pain and provide joy and comfort to our fellow creatures is God’s work. The Matilde Mission is a 501(c)3 tax-deductible charity, and we welcome your donations — from $5 to $250 — through our safe and secure network.

“Narratives of suffering overcome”: admissions essays and a lamentable trend

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It’s a frantic week around these parts. The deadline for applications to all University of California campuses is November 30, and I have a great many students who are desperately finishing up their personal essays. UC doesn’t ask for letters of recommendation or examples of scholarly papers; the only thing they want — besides grades and test scores — are a series of personal essays.

It’s been a decade since California did away with affirmative action by passing Proposition 209. Race can no longer be considered as a factor in admissions to public universities, a change that seems to have led to declining black and Latino enrollment at the most prestigious schools (Berkeley and UCLA). What the end of affirmative action has meant, of course, is a huge rise in the significance of the personal essay. While a student’s ethnicity is no longer automatically factored into an admissions decision, a student is free to mention their racial background in their essay. And judging from the large number of essays I see (I am often asked to help craft admissions essays), an exceptional number of my students do just that. The hope, apparently, is to make a legal, oblique appeal to “diversity.”

This is not a post about the wisdom or merits of affirmative action. But count me among those who has always considered class to be as important as race; I’m a fourth-generation Cal grad from an educated, prosperous family. I’m also white. Obviously, I didn’t need or deserve any affirmative action from the state; my culture and my class had already bequeathed to me more than I deserved. But I went to school with a kid whose parents were Spanish — pure Castillian — and wealthy as could be. He shamelessly (and accurately) checked the “Hispanic” box back in the affirmative action days; I also went to school with poor whites from the Central Valley. Descendants of “Okies” and “Arkies”, they shared my skin color but not much else. Race is often linked to class, but not inextricably.

In any event, I digress. My point is that far too many of my students insist on writing essays that I can only describe as “narratives of suffering.” About half of all the essays I see are blatant appeals for sympathy, usually based on a constellation of socio-economic, racial, and historical factors. Some of these essays are poorly written, but many are actually quite good. They all follow the same game plan: tell the reader about all the obstacles you’ve overcome. If your parents are immigrants, mention it. If one of your parents drinks, or is in prison, don’t hide it — wallow in it! If you moved around a lot, if you grew up surrounded by drugs or violence –share, share, share! It’s the modern version of the apocryphal story about “walking fourteen miles every day to school, in the snow, uphill both ways.” It’s shameless, it’s vulgar, it’s repetitive, it’s tiresome,and it seems to work.

I’ve been in the teaching game long enough to notice that these “narratives of suffering endured and transcended” have gotten much more common in recent years. I did notice a sharp uptick after the end of affirmative action in 1996, but it would be wrong to suggest that only ethnic minority students employ this technique today. Even the relatively small number of my students who come from what might be thought of as “privileged” backgrounds (white, middle-class families where college education is a multi-generational norm) have fallen prey to the seductions of competing in the “suffering Olympics.” If one’s family wasn’t disadvantaged economically, perhaps an inspiring tale of battling anorexia will suffice. (Indeed, the “let me tell you all about how I overcame my eating disorder strategy” is one I’ve now seen three times in the last few years. It suggests a trend.)

I can’t remember much about what I wrote in my college essays when I was a high school senior twenty-two years ago. (I applied to just two schools: Cal and Vassar.) I think I wrote mostly about my love of history. They weren’t very interesting essays, but I remember being told that the point was to convince an admissions committee that I could write well and that I had a certain amount of intellectual ambition. And though I was hardly underprivileged, I was a chubby, clumsy, unpopular teen who grew up as a child of divorce. By the time I was a senior in high school, my problems with alcohol and depression were already emerging. I am sure that had I wanted to, I could have crafted a serviceable sob story, demonstrating both my facility with the English language and my capacity to transcend my own special and important misfortunes.

So, my beloved students, I’ll be happy to read your essays before you pop them in the mail this Thursday. I want you to do well, and I hope you get in to the school of your choice. Write whatever you (and your counselor, who probably knows the admissions committees better than I) think best. But if you want my two cents, talk about your accomplishments, your goals, and your dreams outside of the context of your own narrative of disadvantage and oppression. I’m all for sharing stories, mind you! But when appealing for admission to a selective university, consider that constructing a narrative that is obviously designed to elicit sympathy is, well, pretty poor show.

A note on Diana and “The Queen”

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It’s a rainy morning here in Pasadena, I’m behind on a great deal of paperwork (anyone who has been in my cramped, messy office can understand why), and I’m adjusting to posting here at the new blog.

I’m way behind on my emails. My wife and I were away with my family in Northern California for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I didn’t check my inbox until yesterday afternoon. It will be a while before I get back to everyone who’s written. Thanks for understanding.

I promise a more serious post later today — about race, class, affirmative action, and student essays for college admission — but for now, a note about the film The Queen. We saw it last night and loved it; Helen Mirren was marvelous, of course, but Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair nearly stole the picture. Sheen bears only a slight resemblance to the PM, but he nailed his mannerisms and the inflections in his voice, particularly when stirred up or excited. It’s a marvelous picture. It’s at movies like this that I remember that one of the gifts my late father gave his children was the right to a British passport. My brother, alone among the four of us, chooses to make his home in England, but the rest of us feel at least some attachment to the nation that gave my father’s family refuge in the darkest days of the 1930s. I am Her Majesty’s subject, and have the documents to prove it.

The film, of course, deals with the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death in the late summer of 1997. As luck would have it, I flew into Manchester Airport on the very day Diana died — Sunday, August 31. I was traveling to a medieval history conference at Durham University, and had to drive the several hundred miles from Manchester to Durham in the pouring rain. It was my first experience of driving on the “wrong side” of the road, and to do so in a downpour, jet-lagged, while listening to the BBC coverage of the terrible accident and its aftermath was positively surreal. It was an amazing thing that my life didn’t also end on the same day that Diana’s did!

I was 14 when Diana and Charles married; six years younger than the Princess, I had an almost obligatory crush on her from the time their engagement was announced in February 1981. I was exactly the right age to be mesmerized by her. I followed her story for years and years, and like many, was saddened by the divorce. (The separation from Charles came in the Queen’s annus horribilis of 1992, the same year my first wife and I split up.) And I can say without question that if the 9/11 terrorist attacks are the single most shocking event of my lifetime, Diana’s death in that Paris tunnel ranks a close second. No shuttle explosion, no assassination attempt, no earthquake — no other historic happening is as vivid in my memory as those stunning days in 1997.

I signed two condolence books: one in Durham, and one in Carlisle. In one day, after the conference let out, I drove all over the north of England, seeing everything from the Lake District to Hadrian’s Wall to Fountains Abbey to York. I gave a paper at the conference (it ended up being published here), but I barely remember what the damn thing was about. That week was about Diana and the extraordinary reaction to her death.

…and in with the new blog.

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Welcome to hugoschwyzer.net! After nearly three years with Typepad, I had longed to leave behind the “Movable Type” format and join the cool kids who use WordPress. It’ll take me a while to become familar with the format, so things may be wonky here for a week or two.

I was tired of the old “hugoboy” URL; getting a proprietary and eponymous site seems more professional, particularly as I aim to increase my readership. I was also eager to offer the best new feature of this blog: categories! Scroll down on the right, and you can easily find a wide variety of topics from which to choose. I got several complaints that it was difficult to find things in my archives; this should make it much easier. The categorization process is not complete, but should be finished in the next couple of weeks.

The look and design of this blog is entirely thanks to Lauren, formally of Feministe and now of Faux Real, Tho! Lauren moved all of the archives from Typepad over here, and has also handled the exhausting work of categorizing 33 months of old posts. I’ve been a verbose old boy, and she’s done an extraordinary job of imposing organization on chaos. Anyone needing a “blog-redo” would be well advised to seek out Lauren.

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