Monthly Archives: August 2007

A note on being at home in Carmel

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I’m back in the office, busy working up my fall syllabi. (And for those of you who have seen my office, it’s just been cleaned, top to bottom. You won’t recognize it.)

My wife and I spent the weekend visiting my mom in what I consider to be my hometown, Carmel by-the-Sea. I was born in Santa Barbara, but following my parents’ divorce, my mother, brother and I moved to Carmel. It was 1973, and I had just turned six. A lot happens to a person between the ages of six and eighteen (the age at which I graduated from Carmel High) and so it’s that community that I call my home.

Carmel, in my childhood, was much more socio-economically diverse than it is now. It began its life as an artists’ community, and in my childhood, was filled with more “mom n’ pop” grocery stores and gas stations than art galleries. There were certainly plenty of wealthy people around, but there was also a notable “bohemian element”, a fine group of “hippies”, and more than a few people in the middle class. Growing up, I wore Tuffskin jeans and my mother drove (for years) a ’75 Ford Pinto. There were more Fords on the streets than Cadillacs or BMWs, and the streets were filled with children who actually lived in this fog-shrouded, woodsy paradise.

This weekend, with a car show in nearby Pebble Beach, I counted more than a dozen Bentleys. I saw no Ford Pintos, and very few Hyundais or battered old Toyotas. We’re down to two gas stations in town (from eleven thirty years ago), and we’ve got so many art galleries that my mother is convinced that they all serve as money-laundering fronts for the Mob. The high school today has 1/3rd fewer students than it did when I was a student. The streets are filled, as one wag put it to me recently, with “old people who’ve come to visit their parents.” There were very few children playing in the streets this weekend; the few children I did see were wearing Lacoste and Abercrombie rather than Sears, and they were all under the careful supervision of hovering parents.

On Sunday, we went through nearly a dozen “open houses”. Prices have come down a bit in recent months, but there’s nothing in my old neighborhood under $1.4 million (and that was for a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 1000 square-foot board and batten cottage.) Most of the newer places were in the range of $2.5-$5.0 million, and were largely devoid of charm. It was more than a little depressing, though we took not a little pleasure in making loud and censorious remarks within earshot of all available realtors. (What’s with all these damned pillars everywhere? OKOP don’t put up pillars.)

I never go to Carmel without walking the half-mile from my childhood home to “Tor House”, the stunning stone cottage built by my beloved Robinson Jeffers. Though his place is now a protected monument, what was once his isolated little corner of Carmel Point is now surrounded by the homes of others eager to claim (for several million dollars) their spot of paradise. But how can I condemn others for wanting to do as my family did? Those who got here first have no particular moral claim. Nevertheless, I always say the lines of one of Jeffers’ most famous poems to myself as I walk away. This part in particular is always with me:

…people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve…

I find more comfort in that than perhaps I ought.

Summer Reprint: Letting go of the Rescuer: a response to Charles on men, “damsels in distress” and pro-feminism

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I’m still on summer semi-hiatus, and will be back to regular posting by August 22.

The following was originally published October 18, 2005.

Gosh, I’m now averaging two letters a week from folks who have found this blog by searching for information about “older men, younger women” on the ‘net. Usually, I get letters from young women who are attracted to older men, or older men defending their interest in younger women, but yesterday’s letter from “Charles” was different. Here’s some of it:

The experience I am going through is a difficult one. I was very closely
involved with a (now) 23 year old for four years. We broke up this past
spring, largely because she was going to attend graduate school in another
country for several years and had not been faithful to me in the past. No
trust meant no relationship anymore, despite my great affection toward her
and bond with her. We still remain friends and I look out for her best interests,
which is why I was so distraught to hear that a 35 year old had
asked her out at a bar and she said yes.

I agree with you that, despite exceptions to the rule, younger women
dating older men is not very healthy. She is a beautiful girl who has no
trouble finding dates, so its not like this is the only opportunity she
has. She doesn’t seem to find it to be a big deal and kind of flippantly
says that guys are five years less mature than their age and girls are
five years more mature, so the ages (in her mind) kind of equal out. But
I have to disagree with that. His formative, adult experiences are much
more developed than hers. If you use the age of 18 as a baseline for
‘adulthood,’ than he’s been an adult about four times longer than she has.

She also has had many of the problems that many young women interested in
older men seem to have, as you alluded to. Her father was almost
completely dysfunctional as a human being and was not a substantive part
of her childhood. She was raped at 13 to lose her virginity and she has
had a breathtaking number of sexual partners in an equally breathtaking
variety of ways, all of whom (with the exceptions of a few close
boyfriends) she didn’t like.

Should I not feel concerned for her? Should I not feel angry toward her?,
because I do. I do not have a problem with her dating and I want her to
be happy, but I am convinced this is not the way to achieve that
happiness.

Charles writes an interesting and heartfelt note, and it’s the sort of thing I’ve heard from other young men on this subject.

First off, there’s nothing wrong with being angry at someone who has cheated on you. Anger, particularly when it is expressed in healthy rather than destructive ways, is a normal response to injury. Once that anger festers into enduring resentment, however, it’s a good deal more problematic.

I’ve known quite a few men who share with Charles what can only be described as a powerful desire to “rescue” damsels in distress. The tell-tale signs of a man with a “knight in shining armor” complex are clear: he “looks out for her best interests”, and he expresses deep — and perhaps justified — anxiety about her early experiences and their impact on her subsequent sexual choices. I’m sure Charles is a very nice young man, and I wish him well. But ultimately, I think he’s having a difficult time separating genuine love and concern from a desire to control! Continue reading →

Thursday Short Poem: Jeffers’ “Shine, Republic”

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People get confused by the title of this poem; this Robinson Jeffers offering is easily mixed up with his more famous and far more often anthologized “Shine, Perishing Republic.” Jeffers, who was educated here in Los Angeles at Oxy and USC, became the great poet of the California coast. At turns tender and misanthropic, he’s a challenging and often disturbing writer. I grew up hearing my mother read his poems aloud. He and Auden stand alone above all others in my heart.

In a college frosh comp lit class, we were asked to each select a poem that reflected our political and social values. Knowing that most of my classmates would turn hard to the left, I picked this one, at least partly for the thrill of being contrary. I was never seriously infatuated with the ideology of “noble reticence”, but I did so enjoy tweaking my professor and my classmates with my outwardly sincere embrace of the reactionary worldview expressed herein. Still, there’s a part of me that does genuinely honor the true conservative instincts of Jeffers — the kind of outlook that embraces individual freedom, reverence for nature, and sees conservation of wildness as inextricably linked to authentic conservatism. And he’s smart enough to know that the pursuit of freedom is indeed beautiful, and always dangerous.

Shine, Republic

The quality of these trees, green height; of the sky, shining, of water, a clear flow; of the rock, hardness.

And reticence: each is noble in its quality. The love of freedom has been the quality of Western man.

There is a stubborn torch that flames from Marathon to Concord, its dangerous beauty binding three ages.

Into one time; the waves of barbarism and civilization have eclipsed but have never quenched it.

For the Greeks the love of beauty, for Rome of ruling; for the present age the passionate love of discovery;

But in one noble passion we are one; and Washington, Luther, Tacitus, Aeschylus, one kind of man.

And you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to prosperity, you were born to love freedom.

You did not say “en masse,” you said “independence.” But we cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also.

Freedom is poor and laborious; that torch is not safe but hungry, and often requires blood for its fuel.

You will tame it against it burn too clearly, you will hood it like a kept hawk, you will perch it on the wrist of Caesar.

But keep the tradition, conserve the forms, the observances, keep the spot sore. Be great, carve deep your heel-marks.

The states of the next age will no doubt remember you, and edge their love of freedom with contempt of luxury.

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Reprint: A long post on tradition, virginity, success, feminism, and a nonsensical double bind

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We’re in the last throes of summer, so I’m reposting some of my old favorites. This originally appeared on March 10, 2006.

Yesterday in my women’s history class, we began making our way through Joan Brumberg’s The Body Project.  I’ve been using the book for years and years, and it’s a huge hit with my students each semester.

It is Brumberg who first drew my attention to statistics about menarche, marriage, and the loss of virginity.  She points out that a century ago, girls menstruated for the first time at an average age of 16 and got married at an average age of around 21.  Today, girls menstruate at an average age of just under 12 and get married for the first time at just over 25.

(A quick note about statistics.  The problem with teaching statistics — especially with something like menarche — is that very, very few folks end up being "average".  Almost every girl seems to have a sense of herself as being "early" or "late"  — a Goldilocks effect, I suppose!)

Here’s where it gets interesting.  A century ago, the time between the onset of puberty and marriage was but five years; today it’s close to fifteen. If a contemporary young woman is trying to "wait" until marriage to lose her virginity, she is waiting — in a very real sense — three times as long as women did in her great-great grandmother’s era!   She’s got three times the frustration of coping with unexpressed sexual feelings and longings, three times as long to struggle to live up to a cultural and religious standard of purity.  Forget trying to live up to the standards of one’s ancestors; today’s young women who remain committed to virginity are trying to accomplish something that has, from a demographic and physiological standpoint, never been achieved before.

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Jealousy, manipulation, eros: fisking David Zinczenko

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Plenty of other folks in the blogosphere rip apart garbage like this, but “4 Harmless Ways to Make a Man Jealous” is too awful to resist. Besides, I’m still on vacation, and not in the mood to explain why, say, this erstwhile Episcopalian is now attending Lake Avenue Church, or giving money to Republicans for Environmental Protection and the John Edwards campaign at the same time. As fascinating as they might be to a select few, my political and theological peregrinations are not always fit material for blogging.

Anyhoo, on to the jealousy bit: David Zinczencko, author of the wince-inducing Men, Love, and Sex: the Complete Users Guide for Women offers, at Yahoo Health, this treat:

The jealousy card. You know it well, and chances are you’ve played it on more than one occasion.

It does wonders, doesn’t it? Make a guy jealous, and he’s back in the palm of your hands, treating you better, paying more attention to your ups and downs, and cleaning the bathrooms twice a week (with rubber gloves). Genius.

At the risk of being labeled a traitor to my gender – but as a favor to my female friends – here are some surefire ways to safely and compassionately poke your partner with the jealousy stick without risking more serious issues.

Leaving aside the issue of the split infinitive (a grammatical failing that even the LA Times has permitted since the Shelby Coffey era), what the heck does it mean “to safely and compassionately poke your partner with the jealousy stick”?

Apparently, it means four things:

1. stay up later than he does, so your man will worry that you’re online, perhaps flirting with another man in cyberspace.

2. go out for drinks with friends, leading him to worry that you’re “comparing notes” on his prowess.

3. visit ESPN, and talk sports knowledgeably; he’ll fret that you’re chatting with — and connecting with — your male co-workers.

4. compete with him in something physical, and beat him at it — arouse his competitive streak.

And yes, this ends up on the “health” section at Yahoo.

My wife? She stays up later than me because she’s a night-owl, and she’s actually doing work on the computer. She regularly goes out with friends. She watches sports with me and without me and is passionate about football (both kinds). She talks about sports with other men when I’m not around. And she boxes and spars with male trainers and, if she were so inclined, could easily beat me up. (Though I could outrun her.) Am I jealous? Uh, no. Is this a strategy on her part to get me to do the dishes? Not a chance.

Zinczencko’s tips would be risible if they weren’t so dangerous. The danger in what he’s suggesting doesn’t just lie in the prospect that these strategies could backfire. Rather, the danger lies in perpetuating the myth that male desire is inextricably linked to the absence of trust. What Zinczencko is saying, if you think about it, is that men are more attentive and devoted when they feel just a wee bit insecure.

(I partly addressed this back in March with a post about the “men should love their wives more than their wives love them” thesis.)

Zinczenko argues that jealousy inspires men to be more attentive and devoted than they would be otherwise. Indirectly, it’s a great argument for the homosocial thesis: the notion that men are always competing primarily with other men, with women as the tools in that competition. According to Zinczenko, when a man feels that “his woman” is attracting or connecting with other men, his urge to defeat his rivals will be aroused and he’ll be more interested in meeting her needs. Stripped down to its essentials, the Zinczenko case is that men are at their most loving when they need to secure what is theirs from predatory male rivals. Defeating other men is thus more important than achieving authentic intimacy with a woman. That’s homosociality in a nutshell.

For Zinczenko and his ilk, male anxiety is a necessary predicate for devotion. Wise women, he suggests, ought to know how to arouse that anxiety to just the right “boiling point”, at which they can secure attentiveness, but not violent possessiveness. It encourages women to be manipulative by reminding them that men need to be manipulated. A certain element of distrust, Zinczenko suggests, is sexy. Indeed, the only way a man won’t take you for granted, he implies, is if he isn’t absolutely certain of your commitment to him. Anxiety fuels eros.

But anxiety and doubt are the enemies of real love, the kind that transcends eros and approaches agape. Zinczenko sells both men and women short with this little tidbit of advice. He sells men short by denying our very real capacity to love what we know we can trust; he sells women short by encouraging low-grade deceit — rather than forthright honesty — as the most effective relationship strategy.

Men, like women, are capable of loving what (and whom) they know. Jealousy, mystery and anxiety are catalysts for fleeting arousal, not sustained intimacy. Sooner or later, anyone being manipulated will resent the hell out of it; anyone who feels she has to do the manipulating in order to get what she wants will resent the fact that she can’t get it in any other way. Jealousy, David, is never, ever harmless.

If we want what is lasting and enduring, we must demand better from ourselves and from each other. And “better”, in this case, looks a lot like radical candor.

Why divorce is scarier than unwed motherhood: some thoughts on class, children, autonomy, marriage and “Promises I Can Keep”

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A little over a month ago, I picked up a copy of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. I heard about it from Lauren, who wrote a long post about the book by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. Lauren was inspired by a review of “Promises” written by Bitch Ph.D.

This is a powerful and important book. There are few groups in our society more consistently stigmatized than poor women (of any race, but particularly non-white women) who have children out of wedlock. Those of us in the middle class make a wide variety of assumptions about the motivations of the women who do become unwed teen mothers. Some of the assumptions are cruel in their falsehood (think of the “welfare queen” stereotype perpetuated by President Reagan). Others are both benign and clueless, such as the assumption that “these girls” just don’t know about birth control. And of course, in most such discussions, the role of the males who father these children is ignored.

One of the best aspects of “Promises I Can Keep” (and this gets touched on by both Lauren and Bitch Ph.D.) is its authors’ insight into how poor women interpret getting pregnant and having a child at a young age.

As I’ve blogged more than once, I got my high school girlfriend pregnant. We were very much in love; she was my “first” in every sense of the word. We knew about birth control, of course, but our use of protection was at best intermittent. When she got pregnant, we briefly fantasized about keeping the baby, about getting married, or about putting the baby up for adoption. But I was getting ready to go off to college, and she had another year of high school ahead of her. We both had dreams and plans and expectations that would have been derailed by a child. My girlfriend knew perfectly well that even if we chose adoption, carrying the baby to term would mean missing school, public embarassment (from which I would be conveniently immune), and it would mean the heart-wrenching surrender of a child she had carried for nine months. At barely sixteen, she was understandably not ready for all that. She had an abortion, and I was with her — as much as any man can be with a woman — as she went through it.

But of course, abortion appeared like the best alternative at the time because we both wanted and expected college. Our social class and our privilege made terminating the pregnancy the best possible option, because having a child would (especially in my girlfriend’s case) mean an end to (or at least a severe postponement of) of our ambitions. For many poor wonen, there are no social expectations of college and career to be derailed. The appeal of an abortion is thus considerably diminished.

Indeed, Edin and Kefalas point out that many poor women have a “radically different view” of abortion:

Virtually no women we spoke with believed it was acceptable to have an abortion merely to advance an educational trajectory… most believe that abortion is ‘the easy way out’ To them, ‘doing the right thing’ or ‘taking care of your responsibilities’ means bringing the pregnancy to term. And adoption is, to almost all, simply out of the question — it is generally viewed as ‘giving away’ your ‘flesh and blood.’

(My parents and my girlfriends’ parents both knew about the abortion — and they all said we were “doing the right thing.”)

The other fascinating part of the book I want to blog about today is the attitude that so many poor women in the study have towards marriage. Far from being contemptuous of the institution, the women whom Edin and Kefalas interview have an almost reverent attitude:

Poor women almost universally believe that marriage should be for life, and deride others who ‘get married just to get divorced.’ Most believe that marriage vows are sacred and ought to be held in the highest regard.

What’s fascinating, of course, is that the fear of divorce is much greater than the fear of having a child while still an unmarried teenager. That’s absolutely the reverse of how those of us raised in the comfortable, secular middle-class view the two issues. While most people in my social milieu weren’t divorced three times by thirty-five and married four times by forty as I was, more than half of the marriages in my extended family have ended in divorce in the past four decades. During that time, no woman in my entire extended family (and I am thinking now of dozens and dozens of second, third, and even fourth cousins) has had a child out of wedlock. During that time, only one woman in my family (a token evangelical) has had a child before at least the age of 27. We have had more babies born to women over 35 and even 40 than to women under 30.

So the secular WASPy middle-class might be accused of having a cavalier attitude towards marriage, though no one I know, including myself, got married “just to get divorced.” (I always expected my marriages to last, even though the first three all ended before the second anniversary.) We know that divorce is difficult and painful, but also entirely survivable. Having a child before one is grounded in a career and financially prepared to care for it seems infinitely more frightening to Our Kind of People than a failed marriage. (Or two. Or three.)

What’s helpful to me about a book like this is that it offers invaluable insight into what is, for me, a remarkably alien world. My feminism is sincere, but it’s also thoroughly white, and upper-middle class. Though my Christian faith reminds me that community is not unimportant, my feminism sees independence, personal responsibility, and autonomy as three essential components of human happiness. I want the young men and women with whom I work to become kind, thoughtful, educated and independent people. I want them to be well-educated, and exposed to ideas other than those with which they were raised. My classes at the community college, after all, are filled with single mothers in their teens, twenties and thirties. I see how exhausted and burdened they are. I honor their sacrifices, but I want their example to be cautionary!

But this book reminds me — as do many of my feminist colleagues — that not all young women are eager to embrace this feminist vision of personal autonomy. What I see as liberation, they see as alienation from the familiar (in both senses of the word). And rightly, they know that in the current economic climate, the odds of achieving real prosperity (the sort that enables a life of privileged individualism) are far too long. “Promises I Can Keep” makes the case that these young women who choose to raise their children outside of marriage aren’t nearly as short-sighted as many of us in the prosperous middle class tend to believe. What we often see as “failures of imagination” or an “inability to escape a dysfunctional culture”, these women often see as the best and most rational choices they can make given the options available.

So it’s an interesting question to ask young women:

Which seems to you more frightening?
1. having a child while young and unmarried
2. getting married and then divorced.

For the affluent middle-class, #1 is the easy and obvious answer. But for a great many others, it’s clear that the second is perceived as a much more significant, and thus scarier, personal failure. I’m going to find a way to work this discussion in to my women’s studies classes soon.

Wandering over to Lake Avenue, and a great Mouw post on faith and science

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I’m taking an extended break from All Saints Pasadena, and have been wandering back to the Warehouse community at Lake Avenue Church. I attended intermittently in 2001-2002, and will be heading back there on quite a few future Sundays. I’ll post some of my reasons for this transition another time.

And at Richard Mouw’s site, he takes on the issue of faith and evolution, and how he — as an evangelical — came to embrace the latter while remaining firm in the former. He writes of what helped him:

…I was immensely pleased to come across a wonderful paragraph in a scholarly essay, published in the early 1990s in Christian Scholars Review, by Ernan McMullen, who taught in the Notre Dame philosophy department for several decades. Father McMullen affirms that over a period of millions of years, there have been “uncountable species that flourished and vanished [and] have left a trace of themselves in us.” The Bible, he says, sees God as preparing the world for “the coming of Christ back through Abraham to Adam”; but is it too much of a stretch, he asks, “to suggest that natural science now allows us to extend the story indefinitely further back?” And then this wonderful passage: “When Christ took on human nature, the DNA that made him the son of Mary may have linked him to a more ancient heritage stretching far beyond Adam to the shallows of unimaginably ancient seas. And so, in the Incarnation, it would not have been just human nature that was joined to the Divine, but in a less direct but no less real sense all those myriad organisms that had unknowingly over the eons shaped the way for the coming of the human.”

I love that. That makes this evangelical animal rights activist very, very happy.

Three favorite vegan places in Los Angeles — and the Saturday Random Ten

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My current top three favorite places to get great vegan food in Los Angeles:

1. Rahel Ethiopian Veggie Cuisine, 1047 South Fairfax (in the heart of Little Ethiopia). If I had to spend the rest of my life subsisting on one kind of food, it would be Ethiopian. My wife and I are on the Westside a lot, and eat here at least two or three times a month for either lunch or dinner.

2. Madeleine’s Bistro, 18621 Ventura Blvd, Tarzana. It’s a schlep out to the deepest, darkest part of the West Valley, but it’s worth the drive. Easily the most elegant vegan restaurant in greater Los Angeles; lots of good vegan wines as well, or so my wife tells me. I just have a Virgil’s in a chilled glass. (And yes, thanks to the animal fats used to coat casks, not all wines are vegan.)

3. Fattys Cafe, 1627 Colorado Blvd, Eagle Rock. For those of us in Pasadena, this is much closer than the first two; it’s a quirky, fun place in the up-and-coming Eagle Rock district near Occidental College. Unlike my first two choices on this list, it’s not pure vegan at Fattys — but most dishes can be made “strictly vegan”, and they’ve got some really interesting things on the menu. We come here a lot.

All three restaurants are highly recommended.

And a day late, the Saturday Random Ten:

1. “Ain’t Talkin’ About Love”, Van Halen
2. “Someday, Someway”, Marshall Crenshaw
3. “Wreck of the Day”, Anna Nalick
4. “Mandolin Rain”, Bruce Hornsby and the Range
5. “Samson”, Regina Spektor
6. “Runaway Train”, Rosanne Cash
7. “The Cruel War”, Dolly Parton and Allison Krauss
8. “Up in Heaven” (Not Only Here), The Clash
9. “Oh my Sweet Carolina”, Ryan Adams
10. “Clear as a Bell”, Rosie Thomas

Bonus Track: “Tuesday’s Gone”, Lynyrd Skynyrd

REPRINT: Relinquishing Control: Some Thoughts on Men, Women, and the Domestic Sphere

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It’s a warm summer Friday, and I have little interest in a thoughtful post, or a Friday Random Ten, or anything of that sort. So reprinting an old post seems the worthy thing to do.

This post originally appeared November 30, 2005:

The comments below this post continue to come in, and there’s an interesting exchange worth following up on.

Stacer wrote:  it can be very hard for women to relinquish control over what is traditionally her domain, especially if she was raised traditionally and/or has family members who pressure her in that regard.

I replied: Helping wives to relinquish that sort of control is a task that men, especially those who also come out of a conservative background, ought to consider embracing.

Caitriona asked in response: Uhm, just how do you propose that men "help" their wives relinquish control in these areas?

This is getting into some tricky stuff.  Let’s see if I can wade through it.

I’ve known a fair number of women who have been raised with the notion that the home is their domain.   The cooking, the cleaning, the childcare, and the general presentation of the household are things they see as entirely, or nearly entirely, within their bailiwick.  While many feminists have rightly asked their boyfriends and husbands to "step up" and take an active role in domestic tasks, many traditional women have not.  In some instances, they don’t ask because they don’t expect their male partners to be interested or willing to help.  But in other cases, these women have bought in to the notion that their very identity as wives and mothers is inextricably linked with how they "keep house."

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