PCC in the news

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

I don’t often take note of the goings-on at my college, but here are three news items worthy of promotion:

Pasadena City College is awarded a $1.7 million grant to train students to work with embryonic stem cells; we’re the only community college in the state to receive the funding. The biology department was divided, with my colleague Joe Connor in strong opposition to both the grant and embryonic stem cell research in general; the majority of his fellow profs lobbied hard for the money. Cal Tech, located across the street from our campus, is assisting us.

My colleague Richard McKee, a legendary gadfly, is now on the hook for $80,000 in damages after his latest lawsuit. I’ve been hearing about Rich since I came to the college in 1993; he’s the sort of person who evokes both admiration and fury in equal measure. If nothing else, he’s certainly a fine example of what one can do with the protections afforded by tenure.

And after years of coming close, the Pasadena City College Lancers won the California state women’s basketball title. Greg Smith, the assistant coach and veteran PE professor, is an old and beloved friend of my wife’s. We are thrilled for him and for the team.

Yes, we need a White House Council on Men and Boys — but not for the reasons you think

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

A shorter Saturday night post.

Conservative culture warriors Kathleen Parker (she of Save the Males) and Marybeth Hicks have opined in complaint this week about President Obama’s creation of a White House Council on Women and Girls.

Both determined anti-feminists, Parker and Hicks wonder why the president hasn’t created a council on men and boys. Parker:

Where’s the White House Council on Men and Boys? Okay, let men fend for themselves. But boys really do need our attention, not only for themselves but also for the girls who will be their wives (we hope) someday. We do still hope that boys and girls grow up to marry, don’t we? Preferably before procreating?

Certainly, the Obamas seem to have this hope. A model family, they undoubtedly want their girls to excel and, eventually, to marry equal partners. But boys won’t be equal to girls if we don’t focus some of our resources on their needs and stop advancing the false notion that girls are a special class of people deserving special treatment.

Hicks:

A council on men and boys would promote stable marriage as the best avenue to improve the lives and living conditions of America’s women and families. A council on men and boys would address the crisis in American manhood that results in the scourge of infidelity, divorce, lack of commitment and fatherhood with multiple partners….

Such a council would work to train a new generation of boys to become real men, who honor and uphold women as equals in the workplace, the community and the home – not because the government regulates such an attitude, but because it’s right.

A council on men and boys also would address the underlying problems that create â€œwomen’s issuesâ€ such as child care, inadequate pay and domestic violence. These aren’t â€œwomen’s issues,â€ but issues related to the systemic collapse of the American family.

Sigh.

And though I’m not sure I’ll ever say this again, but I agree with Parker and Hicks. At least, I agree that a Council on Men and Boys would be very useful, and I would love to see President Obama create just such a White House department. But of course, the vision I have for such a council is worlds apart from that sought by these two conservative pundits. Continue reading →

Priorities

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

So many posts to write… so little time. Heloise Cerys Raquel kept us up all night, not that I really mind, and when she finally fell asleep around dawn, I grabbed an extra hour of snoozing — and missed the hour when I would have been posting.

Errands and shopping today, lots of appointments together as a family hither and yon. Happiness, exhausting happiness.

I’ll squeeze something out soon. (A post, not another child.)

An open letter to Kyle Payne

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

I was one of several bloggers who got an email yesterday from Ren at Renegade Evolution, noting that Kyle Payne is apparently out of jail and back to blogging as a feminist voice in the ‘sphere. Kyle was sentenced to jail last August following a plea bargain in a case of sexual assault against a young woman at Buena Vista University in Iowa. At the time of the attack, Payne was working as a dormitory advisor and a very public anti-rape feminist activist at the university. Throughout the period between his arrest and his sentence, Payne continued to blog as a feminist — and his mea culpa, when it came, was rightly dismissed as self-involved and narcissistic.

Kyle has served the jail portion of his sentence, though he still has nearly ten years on parole. Though I won’t link to his blog, it appears he has begun blogging again about gender and justice issues as if nothing has happened; Ren apparently learned of him because he links (or linked) to a number of feminist blogs. Though a valid argument can be made for ignoring Kyle’s return, Ren and Natalia and Outis have all made the case that that tack is too dangerous. People encounter feminist bloggers in a variety of ways, frequently through search engines. Having a young budding feminist read Kyle’s blog, and perhaps contact Kyle, without some awareness of his background — that’s too great a risk to take.

I wrote to Kyle yesterday, asking him to remove a link to this site from his blog. I’m following that up with a few more thoughts today. Continue reading →

Thursday Short Poem: Barenblat’s “Threshold”

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

Poet and rabbi Rachel Barenblat blogs at Velveteen Rabbi, and I’ve been a fan of hers for years. She’s also a poet whose work has been published in various places, most recently in the Swedish journal Frostwriting. Rachel went through a miscarriage not long ago, and like so many, has found solace and a way out in writing verse. Here’s a link to more of her poems on this painful theme.

Here’s one from Frostwriting which made me cry with empathy and shudder with familiarity when I read it.

Threshold

After a week
something shifts.

No longer thinking
â€œon Friday I was stillâ€¦â€

We return to the life
we already know

and love, evenings
by the fire again.

Wine and coffee
and raw yellowtail

and if I stay up too late
reading about wolves

no one chides me.
We set aside plans

for converting a room
reshaping our days.

I remember how
to resent my curves.

It comes to seem
like a dream, impossible

that we ever hovered
on this threshold

or imagined ourselves
ready to go through.

Off today

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

No posting today, but I’ll see if I can’t get back at it tomorrow. Several posts in the hopper, including a follow-up to the post immediately below and a tribute to the Brooks Brothers suit.

But I plan to start with a post about Kyle Payne.

And not entirely unrelated, here’s a great reflection at Rusty Parts about God’s anger.

The road out of serfdom: gender roles and social democracy

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

Charles Murray, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the infamous “Bell Curve” study from a few years back, weighs in with this month’s load of good old-fashioned hooey: The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism. Murray makes his living from an organization devoted to the defense of the indefensible: that unbridled American capitalism, married to conservative Protestant religious values, is the last best hope for humankind. He does his wealthy patrons proud in this essay and lecture, attacking the Obama Administration for its apparent zeal to remake the USA in the image of Western European-style social democracies.

Would that it were true; as fond as I am of our new lad in the White House, I doubt even he can move this country that far to the left in the short time he has been given. I’m certainly fond of Western European style social democracy; I hold an EU passport as well as an American one, and have close family scattered across half a dozen nations of that splendid continent. I’ve seen the strengths and weaknesses of the systems in Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom in particular and have found much that is enviable. But I’m not a political scientist nor an economist, and will leave the arguments over the specifics of the welfare state to those better equipped to defend them.

There’s much that is risible in Murray’s defense of the American “free enterprise system”, but nothing so jaw-dropping as his thesis that working class males need weak public institutions in order to feel like, well, real men:

When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesnâ€™t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: â€œHe is a man who pulls his own weight.â€ â€œHeâ€™s a good provider.â€ If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesnâ€™t.

To paraphrase a line from a fine old Guns n’ Roses song, “You’d better start sniffing your rank condescension, Chuck.” Murray, probably intentionally, is repeating one of the Great Lies of Masculinity: men — particularly working-class men — only feel useful and valued when the women in their lives are weak and dependent. In other words, Murray is peddling the myth that male responsibility is inextricably linked to female vulnerability. Provide a social safety net that permits women to survive on their own, that allows them to raise their children without the “good provision” of a hard-working man, and all sense of purpose magically vanishes from the lives of these lads, or so he argues. Continue reading →

“Boob Wars”: reflections of a new father on breastfeeding, class, and feminism

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

In the thirty years or so since I entered puberty during the Carter Administration, I’ve spent quite a bit of time contemplating women’s breasts — and my own (not to mention other men’s) fascination with them. But in the last few months, as a first-time father and partner to a breast-feeding mother, that fascination has morphed into a new kind of reverence. And I’ve become aware of what might, for lack of a better term, be called the “boob war” — a sub-conflict within the larger “Mommy War” that continues to rage, exasperating and frightening and dividing women. And into this fight comes a bombshell article in the new Atlantic Monthly: Hanna Rosin’s The Case Against Breastfeeding. More on the article later. (Cap taps, belatedly and with apologies, to Rod Dreher and to Scott.)

The term “Mommy Wars” generally refers to the public and private debates, common among the middle and upper-middle classes of the developed world, about what makes a “good” mother. For years, the chief front in these wars has been the battle over daycare and work outside the home, though other conflicts rage in areas like nutrition and natural childbirth. As a women’s studies professor, I of course had a professional acquaintance with these battles — but as a first-time father these past few months, I’ve gotten an entirely different perspective. As a man, my cultural and physiological privilege immunizes me from attack; yet as a devoted partner and father and feminist, I cannot help but be involved.

When we first announced to people that we were expecting a child, we got (along with the hugs of congratulation) many queries and unsolicited nuggets of advice. In particular, my wife was regularly asked about her plans for nourishing the baby; whether she intended to breastfeed, and if so, for how long. The merits of “pumping” versus “not pumping” were presented with bewildering detail; and, at least in our social circle, the evils of infant formula were repeatedly stressed.

We chose a midwifery team and a pediatrician based on recommendations from friends and a series of interviews (trust me, we were thorough in the latter). The pediatrician we ended up choosing is a delightful man, a fellow vegan with a prominent reputation as an opponent of a slavish adherence to the vaccine schedule and a proponent of both breastfeeding and attachment parenting. He charmed us with his attention and his devotion and his irreverance, as well as his conviction that child health and animal rights can be entirely compatible commitments. When we first met with Dr. G. weeks before our daughter was born, we also met with his professional lactation consultant, who promised to come in the hours after the delivery to help my wife breastfeed. It was clear that in this practice, formula at any time in the first six months — even the first year — was considered tantamount to child abuse. Continue reading →

Father Joseph Martin, 1924-2009

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

Today would be my father’s 74th birthday. He’s been gone almost three years, and I think about him almost every day. That he never got to hold his granddaughter Heloise Cerys Raquel is a source of great sadness; the hope that I have that he sees her now is a great comfort. And most importantly, I pray that the gentleness he bequeathed to me comes through my words and my fingertips when I hold my baby girl.

Today I note the passing, too, of an influential figure in my recovery from addiction. Many an alcoholic or addict who went through treatment in the ’80s or ’90s will recognize the name “Father Martin”. Joseph Martin’s “chalk talks” about alcoholism, depression, and anger were marvelously insightful and comforting. His common-sense approach to the disease of alcoholism (and I remain a passionate adherent of the disease model) continues to shape how I think about my sobriety, though I haven’t seen any of his tapes in over a decade. Along with John Bradshaw and Leo Buscaglia, Father Martin was one of those popular (and often amateur) psychologists whose writing and whose VHS tapes were script and soundtrack for my recovery. Joe Martin saved a lot of lives, and made a lot of lives better. May there be joy and laughter as he comes to the far side of the Jordan.

Comment policy again

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Hugo Schwyzer

It’s been a couple of years since I last announced a comments policy, and many of my readers are new since then. Please remember that this is a feminist blog, and open primarily to feminist and feminist-friendly commenters; those whose worldview is fundamentally hostile to feminism are asked to refrain from posting.

There are so many fora for free-wheeling discussion on the ‘net; I get tired of having the fundamental premises under which I blog questioned. That doesn’t mean I only want yes-women and yes-men — but I’m looking for thoughtful commentary and criticism from those already in the tent of gender justice, egalitarian spirituality, and so forth. I’d rather have fewer comments, but from those who want to move the discussion forward, and only those who accept the basic worldview can do that. (Right now, it is a bit like hosting a blog about evolutionary biology, and having creationists hijack the discussion. That gets old.)

In the future, I will designate certain posts as “feminist-friendly only”, particularly posts dealing with subjects such as pornography, domestic violence, abortion, and so forth. One anti-feminist can derail a thread very easily, and to the best of my ability as a tired moderator, I’m not gonna let that happen as often.