Monthly Archives: October 2008

Friday Random Ten: soundtrack for a high-mileage training week

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New and old goodies here. The bonus track is what I’ve been blasting on my iPod all week. #2 and #4 are by artists new to me within the past month or so; thank goodness for Pandora and Sirius satellite radio!

To remind everyone of the rules: random ten is determined by hitting “party shuffle” on the Itunes account. The bonus track is the song that you’ve had on your mind or in your head most in the past week.

1. “Orphan Girl”, Emmylou Harris
2. “Come on Get Higher”, Matt Nathanson
3. “Jesse James”, Bruce Springsteen
4. “Brokedown Palace”, Adrienne Young and Little Sadie
5. “Tonight You’re Gonna Lose Me”, The Lonesome Sisters
6. “Farther On”, Jackson Browne
7. “Dark Come Soon”, Tegan and Sara
8. “Turn Me On”, Norah Jones
9. “Heaven Now”, Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch, Fats Kaplin
10. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”, Prince

Bonus Track: “Welfare Music”, John Hiatt

“Pray to have Him hold you as a Lover”: thinking about Jars of Clay, Teresa of Avila, and erotic spirituality

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After I wrote my post yesterday on bisexuality, Neil (the pastor whose parishioner had spawned the initial query) responded in a note to me. In the post, I made clear my view that bisexuality could be a stable, healthy, lifetime identity for adult men and women. I also made the case that it need be no impediment to a monogamous relationship with either an other-sex or same-sex partner; what mattered was the degree to which the bisexual person was willing to focus his or her sexual energy in one particular direction.

I’ve got a long reply here. Because of the subject matter, it’s all below the fold. And as the kids say these days, it “may weird you out”, so use your discretion. Continue reading →

Twelve days out: of dollars and polls, and — finally — an Obama endorsement

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If the polls can be believed (and not all the polls agree), we are moving inexorably closer to a Barack Obama victory on November 4. Like many progressives, I fear a sudden disaster (either tactical or geopolitical) that shifts massive energy to the McCain campaign. I’ve learned to take nothing for granted; after the bitter disappointments of 2000 and 2004, I’ve become clear that it ain’t over until the votes are counted three times and the Supreme Court intervenes. (May it not be that close this time.)

I’m worried, too, that the great success of the Obama fundraising may have hurt other progressive causes. I mean that in two ways. Progressives in California who are committed to, say, better treatment for farm animals (Proposition 2); protecting access to abortion for our most vulnerable young people (Proposition 4) and preserving marriage equality for all (Proposition 8) have many causes to which to give. Obama has outraised McCain impressively; I can think of dozens of people who have given, and given, and given to the inspiring and transformational senator from Illinois. (I know many folks who have given to Obama who have never donated to a politician in their lives before.) This is all to the good, up to a point. Propositions 2, 4, and 8 are all likely to be close. Big agriculture interests in the Midwest are spending a fortune to defeat Prop 2, while national conservative groups like Focus on the Family have spent millions and millions to pass Prop 8. And in these battles, progressive groups are behind in fundraising.

At the same time, some conservatives have given up on McCain. Read the conservative blogs — it’s not just the likes of Colin Powell, it’s David Frum and Christopher Buckley and George Will and so forth. Not all have endorsed Obama outright, but many have been deeply pessimistic about McCain. The money isn’t flowing in to the GOP coffers as fast as it comes in for Obama-Biden. Frustrated right-wingers who want to salvage something are thus turning their attention to issues like marriage, abortion, and animal rights. Prop 8, which would ban gay marriage, thus benefits (perversely) from the national Republican ticket’s poor prospects. Continue reading →

Thursday Short Poem: Milosz’s “Tidings”

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The theme earlier this week was Western Civilization and its peculiar claims; in that vein Czeslaw Milosz’s famous poem seems worthy.

Tidings

Of earthly civilization what shall we say?
That it was a system of colored spheres cast in smoked glass,
Where a luminescent liquid thread kept winding and unwinding.
Or that it was an array of sunburnt palaces
Shooting up from a dome with massive gates
Behind which walked a monstrosity without a face.
That every day lots were cast, and that whoever drew low
Was marched there as sacrifice: old men, children, young boys and
young girls.
Or we may say otherwise: that we lived in a golden fleece,
In a rainbow net, in a cloud cocoon
Suspended from the branch of a galactic tree,
And our net was woven from the stuff of signs,
Hieroglyphs for the eye and ear, amorous rings.
A sound reverberated inward, sculpturing our time,
The flicker, flutter, twitter of our language.
For from what could we weave the boundary
Between within and without, light and abyss,
If not from ourselves, our own warm breath,
And lipstick and gauze and muslin,
From the heartbeat whose silence makes the world die?
Or perhaps we’ll say nothing of earthly civilization.
For nobody really knows what it was.

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A very long post about bisexuality, fidelity, fantasy, masturbation and desire: a response to Neil

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One of my readers, “Neil”, is finishing up an M.Div and busy working as a pastor in a small congregation. He’s doing a lot of counseling. He wrote to me a few days ago:

So I’m reading your blog procrastinating from household chores
on my day off and come across (no pun intended–really) one of your
posts on masturbation.

I’ll get to the point now: In my pastoral work, I recently
had a conversation with a married bisexual man–whose wife knows he is
and did even before they got married. Masturbation has come up in the
context of “I’m married to my wife and want to be entirely faithful to
her, but what do I do with my desires for men?” I wonder what your
perspective is on orientation and fidelity for bisexuals in a
Christian context.

Since this topic may not be what everyone wants to read about, the remainder of the post is below the cut. Continue reading →

100/100, not 50/50: of percentages, insurance companies, men, women, and apportioning responsibility in relationships

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Somehow, the comment thread below my post on Facebook and boundaries got turned into a discussion of the degree to which each of us is responsible for helping those around us resist temptation. I’ve dealt with this issue before, particularly here and here.

In the thread below the Facebook post, Sam and I debate the degree to which the actions of other folks can be considered to be mitigating factors in considering our own responsibility (or guilt) for the choices we make. Examples included someone deliberately trying to encourage me, a recovering alcoholic, to resume drinking — or a woman trying to seduce a man she knows to be married or otherwise unavailable. That discussion can continue.

But the thread made me think about percentages. We often talk about basic math when it comes to relationships. We talk about “each doing our part” or how making something work requires that we “split things 50/50″. And many folks speak of longing to find their better half. But as the great relationship gurus tell us, our understanding of numbers, fractions, and relationships is poor. When it comes to making a relationship work, John Bradshaw points out famously, it’s not about addition — it’s about multiplication. In other words, two “half people”, each feeling incomplete because of childhood wounds, will invariably come together and make things worse. It’s not “one half plus one half makes one”, it’s “one half times one half makes one quarter.” When we haven’t done our work to develop self-awareness, autonomy, and the ability to differentiate, then the relationships we end up having will be chaotic, turbulent, and often soul-scarring. If we want a sense of unity and wholeness, we need to fix ourselves first. 1 x1 = 1. Multiplication, not addition. It’s a cute way of understanding a basic but important concept.

I think the same thing is true with percentages. Here’s something three divorces and four marriages have taught me: if I am doing 50% and expecting my spouse to do 50%, then the marriage will (one way or another) founder. It’s not 50/50, it’s 100/100. I need to be 100% responsible for my behavior. My wife cannot, cannot, cannot “drive me to drink”; I cannot “make her depressed” without her active consent. I am completely responsible for myself, and she for herself, and we need to do everything we can to make the relationship work. I say to people “We split everything 100/100″, because though that may not make sense in terms of arithmetic, it captures a basic truth about what it takes to make a relationship not only survive but be vitalized, dynamic, and ever-changing.

To get back to the example from the original thread: I am 100% responsible for my sobriety. If I choose to drink as a result of a fight with my wife, that’s on me. If I choose to drink because someone is nagging me to have a beer, that’s on me. At the same time, if my wife is cruel and vindictive in a fight, she is 100% responsible for her choice of words. She can’t “make me” drink; I can’t “make her” say mean things she doesn’t really believe. If either of us behaves badly in an argument, we each understand that healing and moving forward requires that each of us take full responsibility for our own behavior and our own words. The vital and living organism that is a marriage is created by and sustained by two equally responsible individuals who are equally responsible for its success or failure.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that all unhealthy behaviors are equivalent. If I cheat on my wife, for example, I am 100% responsible for having made the decision to do so. If my wife loses her cool when she finds out and throws a vase against the wall, shattering it in her anger, she’s 100% responsible for having done so. Obviously, the cheating is fundamentally worse because it involves a more explicit violation of the marriage vows; breaking a vase and sleeping with someone else are not entirely equivalent. But no matter what someone does to us or says to us, we don’t — as adults — get to say “but he made me do it.” My infidelity, were it to happen (which it hasn’t, no fear) would be 100% my fault, even if my wife hadn’t slept with me in six months. And her breaking the vase, were it to happen (which it hasn’t), would still be wrong and 100% her fault, even if she did so immediately after discovering me in flagrante with her sister.

We all affect those around us. We all stir up emotions and desires and fears in the folks to whom we are closely connected.. Sometimes, it seems as if we are toy animals on a baby’s mobile; touch one of us, and all the others jiggle and sway in reaction. If a loved one dies, I’m going to feel a great deal of pain. I have little control over that. But feelings and actions are too very different things — feelings are predicates to actions, but we have a cerebral cortex (most of us) which, if we choose to use it, acts as a gateway between the impulse and the deed. We can pretend that part of the brain isn’t there, we can imagine we are “weak”, but in the end, what we choose to do in relationships with friends and family and lovers is our responsibility. Continue reading →

Six boring things

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Mermade tags me with a meme.

Meme Terms and Conditions
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. List six unspectacular things about you.
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.

But there is so little about me that is boring!*

1. Though my favorite color is pink, I own no pink boxers or boxer briefs.

2. I won a fifth grade spelling bee by correctly spelling the word “polyester.” How ’70s is that?

3, I learned to drive on a 1980 Datsun B210.

4. I am very loyal to Shell gasoline, and will pay more to buy from a Shell station.

5. I like phone numbers with only even digits, and go out of my way to request them.

6. I rented tuxedos/morning coats for three of my four weddings, but only at my second wedding were the socks included in the rental.

All who wish tagging are tagged, following my meme policy.

*This is humor.

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A long post about Western Civilization, story telling, my mother, Robinson Jeffers, and rejecting narratives of exceptionalism

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In this post last week, I suggested that I was going to take a couple of months away from blogging about animal rights and veganism. I asked for suggestions as to what I ought to blog about, and my former student Paul threw in “Western Civilization.” (I just threw back the famous, and perhaps apocryphal, Gandhi crack about it being a very good idea.)

Each semester, I teach six classes, and offer four different subjects. Every term, without fail, I offer women’s studies and a second Humanities or Gender/Sexuality history course. I also teach my Ancient Western Civilization and Modern Europe courses. These latter two are my “bread-and-butter” offerings, and between the two segments of Western Civ, I have far more students in these intro level classes than I do in my two (slightly more advanced) Gender Studies courses. But I don’t blog very much about teaching Western Civ.

I grew up familiar with the traditional narrative of Western Civilization. My mother taught philosophy, humanities, and religious studies at Monterey Peninsula College until her retirement in 2003. For nearly thirty years, she was a key component of MPC’s legendary Gentrain program. Gentrain (General Education Train of Courses) was and is an interdisciplinary program in Western Civilization, from its Mesopotamian origins down more or less to the present day. My mother started teaching in the Gentrain program in the mid-1970s, when I was about eight years old. And like so many teaching parents, she gave her children the same lectures she gave to her students. On long car trips (in our 1975 Ford Pinto), my mother would regale my younger brother and me with stories she had learned from her colleagues in the program as well as her own material. I don’t know what other kids heard on their car rides, but we heard lectures about Socrates, Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, and even Abelard and Heloise. (The last of these became my favorite of my mother’s lectures. For better or for worse, I have a heavy dose of Peter Abelard in my soul.)

My father and mother were both professors; they had met in the graduate program in philosophy at Berkeley in 1962. My father thought very deeply; his lifetime work was on the philosophy of language, and he wrote papers (and one well-received book) on Kant, Wittgenstein, and nearly impenetrable topics like “Sentience and Apperception.” My mother, a Gemini like her firstborn son, was and is a generalist — she liked great sweeping narratives. Though she wrote a fine dissertation to get her Ph.D (on Hobbes), she loved teaching intro classes in Western Civ more than anything else. And she passed that love on to me.

Of course, we never had any sense growing up that there was something superior about Western Civilization. Unlike many of the reactionary voices one finds in academia today, my mother never suggested that 5th century BC Athens or 15th century Florence or 18th century Paris were somehow more important than their counterparts outside of Europe. I never got lectures from her on medieval Mali or the Han dynasty, but she made clear that was because the West was her area of expertise. For my mother, bless her liberal heart, familiarity did not breed delusions of superiority. And it was from that tolerant but focused perspective that I narrowed in on European history in my leisure reading as a boy. Continue reading →

A note on Facebook and boundaries

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In web-related news, the BBC reports:

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.
Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to “single” days after he had moved out.

It’s a horrible story, but it’s got me thinking.

I’ve been on Facebook since June 2007. My “friends” range from current and former students to many and assorted family members, former youth group kids, colleagues, fellow bloggers, old pals from high school and college, friends from the animal rights community, Kabbalah students, and blog-readers from around the world. I love Facebook for reconnecting me with old companions and enabling me to stay in easy and rapid touch with so many people. I was on Myspace several years ago, and left it for many reasons, detailed here. Facebook seems “cleaner” in every sense , and I appreciate that I don’t feel vaguely like a “dirty old man”. Fully a third of my 900+ contacts on Facebook are older than I am; the ranks of the middle-aged on Facebook seem much more noticeable than on other social networking sites.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are tremendously valuable to the “taken” and the “single” alike. But for those of us who are married or in other sorts of committed relationships, it’s critical that we be aware of the many ways in which these sites can encourage flirtation. Especially because of my status as a professor and youth leader, I try to be cognizant of the signals my words and images on Facebook send. It’s been a learning curve — on my old blog, I posted pictures of me from races I had run. Given that I tend to run shirtless any race where the temperature is above 55 degrees, several of the photos were of my pale, sweat-soaked form during and after various marathons. What I wanted to project was athleticism, but was told by quite a few people that the images came across as vaguely sexual — as if I were trolling for affirmation at best, and perhaps much more at worst. I took those images down.

The kerfuffle over the shirtless running pics taught me an important lesson about the gap between intent and perception. I ought to have known better. In other instances, particularly about male-female communication in contemporary culture, I’ve written and lectured and led workshops about that very same, frequently problematic gap. And given that I have a past, pre-conversion history of ethical boundary violations with my students, I ought to have been especially attuned to the subtle ways in which I am capable of deceiving myself as to my own real agenda. I needed some trusted friends to hold me accountable in this “new medium” of social networking. Continue reading →

A hiatus from AR blogging: taking a topical time out

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No, this is not that kind of hiatus. I’ll be blogging fairly regularly for at least the next month or so. The hiatus of the title is topical: I’m going to give the subjects of veganism and animal rights a rest for a while. After reading the tone of my own exchange with Amanda below this post, I realize I’m just not in a good place to be a winsome advocate for other creatures.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t seem to exercise the same degree of calm and irenic thoughtfulness on animal-related issues that I like to think I am able to provide on at least some other topics. Though I’ve been involved in the animal rights community for many years, it’s only recently that I’ve made veganism and AR work a more explicit focus here on this blog. Though my commitment to animal liberation and to veganism is undiminished, I recognize that my feelings are sufficiently intense and my beliefs sufficiently out of the mainstream that I am in danger of alienating a great many people if I continue to write as I have written. (See some of my more recent posts and their comments sections.) I have received private emails from friends and fellow bloggers whom I respect, folks who are a bit concerned by what they see as an increasingly radical public position on my part. One friend, an attorney, has advised me that it’s not wise to be even obliquely supportive on this blog of “direct action” for animal liberation. I have no particular wish for a long interrogation by the FBI about where some of my money goes.

So until at least 2009, no more posts about animals (except, perhaps, some cute stories about chinchillas). No more posts about veganism. Just as I needed to take a year away from posting about abortion, I need some time to rethink how I make the public case for animals and for a plant-based diet. I’m a nice and moderate fellow on so many issues, but somehow, when I write about animals, my inner zealot emerges. I try to sound like Leo Buscaglia, and I come across like Girolamo Savonarola. It’s time to give this particular topic a rest.

And hey, I’m open to taking requests on the usual topics: relationships, gay history, feminism, men in feminism, older men/younger women, Christian faith and gender justice, and so forth. Suggest away, please!