Monthly Archives: November 2009

“The Fountainhead”, Muggledom, and a road to feminism: why I both loathe and appreciate Ayn Rand

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In my reprint of a post about young conservative students, I made a crack about Ayn Rand. Since Rand has been the subject of a pair of recent biographies, and has been much discussed on the right as a kind of ideological mother figure of the so-called Tea Party Insurrection against the Obama Administration, I think it’s time to say a bit more about her work.

I discovered Ayn Rand at 16. A friend of mine finished “The Fountainhead”, and came to me one morning before class: “This book has changed my life, Hugo, and it will change yours. Read it!” I liked and respected Lisa, and accepted the thick and battered paperback she proffered. I took it home, and showed my mother, a philosophy professor. She took one look at the book, grimaced, and then said “Darling, I won’t say anything. Make up your own mind.”

It wasn’t until I read “American Psycho”, many years later, that I had a comparable experience of near-instant loathing of a text, an author, a prose style, and a worldview. I was a young lefty at 16, struggling through John Rawls and Herbert Marcuse. My favorite novel that year was Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle” one of the most polemical works that the great local writer (I grew up on the Monterey Peninsula) wrote. Rand was ideologically and stylistically abhorrent to me at 16, and though it’s been years since I’ve picked up any of her work (I finished “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” through sheer acts of will in my youth), my general feeling of disdain on every imaginable ground remains.

But I’ve met many young people, more often women than men, who — like my friend Lisa in high school — find great inspiration in Ayn Rand. Generally, there’s a specific type of teen who falls in love with either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. She’s usually very bright, raised to one degree or another with the “pleasing woman discourse” (what I call “the Martha Complex.“) She often finds her classes dull and her teachers pedestrian. She suspects she’s destined for something extraordinary, that she’s somehow different from everyone else — but unlike the immensely talented dancer or athlete or actor, she doesn’t have one specific skill that stands out as a ticket to stardom. She vacillates between feelings of intense superiority — and feelings of equally intense guilt for the way in which she looks down on so many of those around her.

She picks up Rand, and suddenly it all makes sense. She is superior, one of the elect. She isn’t what a far more interesting and talented writer would call a “Muggle”. She has an exalted destiny, just as she had suspected. Rand inspires her; telling her that it’s time to throw off the chains of obligation and guilt which have left her confined and miserable. In an odd way, Rand — who would be exceedingly difficult to classify as a feminist — is often a gateway into feminism for some young women. It’s through reading Rand that not-insignificant percentages of young women begin to think seriously about what they want for themselves rather than what others want for them. Young women who have the false impression that feminism is about collective victimization find temporary inspiration in “The Fountainhead” — and in due course, when they encounter real sexism in the real world, they reluctantly concede that perhaps those nasty old feminists had a point after all. I’ve met a hell of a lot of strong young progressive feminists in their twenties and early thirties who were enchanted by Randian philosophy in their teens.

So yes, I think an infatuation with Ayn Rand is developmentally appropriate for adolescents. She flatters and inspires the bright and the isolated and the uncertain; she’s useful for helping some young people, girls in particular, break the deadly people-pleasing habit. So if reading “Atlas” or “Fountainhead” is what it takes to inspire the lonely, the introverted, and the insecure — then may the God that she rejected bestow blessings upon that poor unhappy soul that was Ayn Rand.

This post has been altered from the way it originally appeared earlier today, ill-considered references to comic books, Star Trek, and New Kids on the Block were deleted.

Call for book suggestions

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I’m revising my syllabus for my GLBTQ American history course in the spring. If anyone has any cool books on the various subjects contained within that vast category they’d like to suggest (that would work for a college audience) I’d be grateful. Can’t keep up with all that’s out there.

Eloquent in self-deprecation, inarticulate in self-celebration: on masculinity and the male feminist dilemma

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One great disappointment for me this fall was that I wasn’t able to attend the first annual National Conference for Campus-Based Men’s Gender Equality & Anti-Violence Groups, held the weekend of November 6-7 in Collegeville, Minnesota. My commitment to be at the National Women’s Studies Association in Atlanta the following weekend meant that I had to forego the men’s conference, and I regret that. Still, many of those who attended our panel in Atlanta had been present in Minnesota a week earlier, and my co-presenter Tal Peretz was hardy enough to have offered papers at both.

The Men’s Gender Equality conference has received a fair amount of coverage in the feminist blogosphere, particularly thanks to Courtney Martin (author of the indispensable Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters), who attended the conference. Courtney, who has been immensely supportive of men doing feminist work, wrote a provocative piece in American Prospect after her return from Collegeville, noting what she sees as a “dangerous” problem: the absence of a clear explanation of what feminist men do as opposed to what they don’t:

This contemporary movement of gender-conscious young men is largely identifying themselves in terms of what they are against. They’re not rapists. They’re not misogynists.

They’re also not particularly effective in imagining what they do want to be. Case in point: back to (conference facilitator Ethan) Wong at the chalkboard. The negative associations with masculinity poured off the tongues of these feminist-friendly college kids. They’ve taken Women’s Studies 101. When their buddy says, “That’s so gay,” they spit back, “That’s a sexual identity, not a dis.” They let a few tears fall during the Take Back the Night March. They devour Michael Kimmel’s Guyland and proselytize about Byron Hurt’s documentary, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. This generation is saying no to toxic masculinity.

But what are these young men saying yes too? We’ve all failed to envision an alternative.

I didn’t read Courtney’s piece when it first came out, but several folks mentioned it to me at the NWSA conference, and I’ve received a couple of email requests to post a response. (I’ve seen at least one so far from a male feminist, AJ’s at Feminists for Choice.)

There’s a lot of debate among feminists of all sexes about whether masculinity, as a construct, can be redeemed and reimagined along feminist lines, or whether it needs to be abandoned all together. Allies are divided on the issue; the lads at Men Can Stop Rape famously created their Men of Strength campaign, seeking to offer young men a masculine counterstory in which something traditionally associated with maleness, physical toughness, becomes something pro-feminist. (Posters for the campaign featured young men of color holding their girlfriends tenderly, with the tag line “My Strength is not for Hurting.”) Robert Jensen, on the other hand, is a celebrated representative of those who regard masculinity itself as irredeemably toxic, a point he drives home vividly in his powerful Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, a book which deeply troubled Courtney Martin.

I don’t know if we can say it’s reached the point of a growing consensus, but there are a great many self-described male feminists who see masculinity (like its feminine counterpart) as something we perform rather than something that we are. Masculinity and femininity aren’t as tied to male and female physiological identity as we once imagined; they occur, as our transgendered friends are particularly good at pointing out, on a spectrum. Both males and females can “do” masculinity and femininity in terms of a kind of performance; both males and females can embody the positive traits traditionally associated with the former (strength and courage) as well as those linked to the latter (tenderness, the capacity to intuit).

The problem that Courtney is getting at is a real one. Most of us who are involved in anti-sexist work already acknowledge the fluidity of gender roles. We honor women’s capacity to adopt traditionally masculine dress and behavior. We celebrate men’s capacity to explore traditionally feminine roles. And though it remains a source of tension within feminist communities (a tension often inter-generational in nature), we are increasingly willing to acknowledge that women can be feminists while still delighting in normative female behavior. In other words, we’re clear that a feminist woman can wear make-up and get bikini waxes without compromising her feminist credentials. But there’s one area where we’re understandably more cautious: can a feminist male, particularly a het man, “perform” traditional masculinity without reinforcing toxic misogyny? Relatively few men who do feminist work are willing to say “of course”. And this creates the problem that Courtney Martin — and a great many other sympathetic observers of anti-sexist men — sees: a movement in danger of being defined by what it isn’t rather than by what it is. Continue reading →

Support Scarleteen

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We’ve all got dozens of charities near and dear to our hearts, and few of us have the resources with which to share generously with each and every one of them. But I’d love to plug Scarleteen, the indispensable sex education website run by the remarkable Heather Corinna and her amazing team. Read the fundraising appeal here.

A key excerpt from the appeal:

Engaged in over 4,000 conversations with young people on our message boards, providing them factual and friendly answers on contraception, sexual anatomy, safer sex, sexual health, masturbation, interpersonal relationships and other related topics; helping them through struggles like pregnancy scares or unplanned pregnancies, STIs, sexual harassment, rape and intimate partner violence or abuse; talking them through relationships and breakups, family conflicts, gender, sexual identity or body image issues and their sexual decision-making; discussing political issues pertinent to sexuality and youth rights. Most posts at the boards are answered within a few hours, some within minutes. Many of our board users return to the boards again and again for more help, to engage in deeper discussions or to talk with or support other users.

In total our boards have over 43,000 registered users who have posted over 60,000 topics: all have been answered by one or more of Scarleteen’s staff and volunteers. Our boards are fully moderated and a safe space for young people. To help protect our users from potential harassment, they may not share personal information like full names, e-mail addresses, messenger or social networking handles or personal webpages. Managing and moderating the message boards often requires the bulk of our staff and volunteer time.

Answered nearly 100 column-length young adult questions in our Sexpert Advice section, which is also syndicated weekly at RH Reality Check. There are around 900 Sexpert Advice columns in total published at the site. However, our advice queue typically has over 500 questions waiting for answers. In order to catch up with this backlog, we need the funds to acquire more staff to handle the high demand for the longer, in-depth answers our advice column provides and our users are seeking there.

There is no other site as comprehensive, as candid, as safe, and as committed to the physical and emotional well-being of young women and men as is Scarleteen. Visitors come from all over the world looking for one place that will tell them the truth; more than half of Scarleteen’s visitors come from abroad. I urge you to join me in supporting Scarleteen’s vital work.

Men, feminism, and suspicion: a report on our NWSA panel

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I’m in Atlanta, taking a break from presentations at the National Women’s Studies Association meeting. (I also need to get away from the exhibitor’s hall, before I buy so many books that I won’t be able to fit them in my suitcase home.)

Brian Jara, Tal Peretz, and I were the panelists for a discussion entitled Men in Anti-Sexist Activism: Problems and Potential. Brian teaches gender studies at Penn State; Tal, a graduate student at USC (and former student of Brian’s) is writing a dissertation on men doing feminist work. Our panel ran from 8:15-9:30AM — which meant a 5:15AM start for those of us whose body clocks are on Pacific time! The three of us had anticipated having ten to fifteen folks come to hear and participate; we were thrilled that more than forty showed. At the beginning, we asked the audience to pose questions for us about men and anti-sexist activism. Most of the questions asked for suggestions for more ways about recruiting men into doing anti-sexist (and explicitly feminist) work; others asked about ways to address the “white knight” or “pedestal” phenomenon, the dynamic in which men expect praise merely for being males doing this kind of work.

Brian noted that he’s fundamentally suspicious of men who come into his women’s studies classes and get involved in feminist clubs on campus. This isn’t out of his territorial desire to be the only male feminist (the one who can soak up the approbation); rather, it’s rooted in his experience of seeing so many men come into this work with motives ranging from the sexually predatory to the expectation that women’s studies is an intellectually undemanding “easy A”. Tal and I echoed Brian’s concern, acknowledging our own experience encountering men in feminist spaces whose motivations for being there are less than salutary. At the same time, we stressed the importance of encouraging men to explore feminism and start doing feminist work. The point, as I emphasized in my brief oration from the table, is to frame the reality of that suspicion as a reason for more men to get involved in anti-sexist campaigns in the classroom, on campuses, and in the “real world.”

I’ve written before about the “guilty until proven innocent” dynamic, most recently in this post on the “Schroedinger’s Rapist” question. We’ve got to recognize two things, I reiterated today: first, the reasons to fear men are legitimate, grounded in tragic reality more than in unjustified paranoia. Second, that sense of being feared, of being viewed as a potential predator at worst and cluelessly insensitive at best does real damage in the lives of an extraordinary number of men. We underestimate the degree to which young men are cognizant of the way in which they are constantly viewed with suspicion, and we often fail to take account of the toll that exacts on psyches and self-esteem. A great many young men work desperately hard, with varying degrees of success, to prove their “safety” and trustworthiness to a select handful of women. (Frequently, though not always, there is a sexual agenda that drives that effort.) Few young men recognize the solution lies in transforming an entire culture; an individual commitment to being a “good guy”, no matter how sincere and consistent, will do little to change a world in which many, perhaps most, women are raised to fear — again, with good reason — a great many, if not most, men. What’s “in it” (anti-sexist work) for men is not of course just the chance to be trusted, what’s in it for all of us is freedom from sexism, objectification, harassment and sexual violence. Continue reading →

“Bless your lil’ right-wing heart”: loving me some young conservatives (reprinted)

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One more reprint before I boogie off to Atlanta. This one comes from November 14, 2006.

A colleague of mine (a poli sci prof) and I were chatting in the hallway yesterday, talking about last week’s election.  She and I are both solid liberals, and we expressed our satisfaction and relief at the national and local results.  And then she said something interesting: "You know, as much as it pains me to admit it, some of my best and brightest students are the most politically conservative.  They often seem more articulate and passionate than the others."  I agreed that all things considered, my experience in recent years had been the same.

No, I’m not going to make the argument that the most intelligent and insightful of students are natural conservatives.  Rather, I’m convinced that most young people are, at heart, naturally rebellious against authority.   Though Pasadena was once a reliably Republican town, it is so no longer.  And I know full well that with a few exceptions, my colleagues on this campus are reliably and nearly uniformly left-wing.   Oh, there’s the odd Libertarian or two, and I have one colleague who still hasn’t outgrown his fascination with Ayn Rand.  (This is a sign, mind you, of developmental disability.  When you’re 19, you are permitted to find the Fountainhead inspiring and brilliant.  If you still find it so when you’re 39, instead of seeing it correctly as turgid, overwrought garbage, then you are experiencing some form of mild intellectual retardation.)  Many of my senior colleagues are veterans of the civil rights or "brown power" movements.   We sit around sometimes and swap stories of various protests we’ve been involved in over the years.  I know of only one tenured member of my department who voted for Bush in ’04; he was not only outnumbered by the Kerry voters but by the Nader voters as well.

Bottom line: it’s tough to rebel on this campus by moving to the left.  On the other hand, "coming out" as a young conservative allows you the wonderful thrill of tweaking the noses of your elders, a temptation that many of the young find difficult to exist.    In my childhood, lefties drove around with bumper stickers that said "Question Authority."  Well, their children and grandchildren are doing just that — except that in order to do so in a truly satisfying way, they’ve got to challenge their mostly left-wing teachers and professors.  Not for one second will I concede the intellectual superiority of conservative ideas or values; I merely acknowledge that on campuses like my own, it’s "more fun" to be a young Republican thanks to the cachet of counter-cultural rebelliousness that it carries.  Trust me, I’m not going to spoil the fun for these lil’ right-wing whipper-snappers; if they like, I’ll happily play the liberal foil for them.

Continue reading →

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Affirming and redirecting: a post about marriages, friendships, emotional affairs, and how Tolstoy gets it wrong

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SamSeaborn asks a question:

a female friend recently asked me over to her place for coffee – she’s like a sister to me and she’s been married for a couple of years. Now she tells me how she’s sexually unhappy in her marriage that she’s wondering about cheating… and obviously felt very guilty about those thoughts. I’ve liberated myself quite a bit from my Catholic guilt, but this is a dilemma for me.

Is there a morally sound way of action for her when she wants to be with her husband (whom I don’t know as closely as her) but he can’t give her what she wants sexually and she can’t even speak to him about this, otherwise she wouldn’t turn to me to talk about these things… her happiness is important to me, and her happiness is very likely tied to a morally sound solution of this issue. So, as someone who has clearly thought about this kind of problem – if you have any idea how to address something like this, I’d really appreciate a brief reply.

First off, let me say that I think it’s important for married heterosexual folks to have friends of all sexes. I think it’s terrific that Sam has a friend whom he thinks of as a sister. At the same time, I’m not the only person who will read his query with a small bit of concern. Infidelity isn’t just about sexual activity with someone other than a spouse; emotional affairs can be as — if not more — toxic than those that are consummated physically. I wrote about the trap of emotional affairs here, and defined it thus:

(An emotional affair is) a non-physically sexual relationship characterized by mutually intense psychological intimacy, accompanied by words or gestures that traditionally are reserved for one’s romantic partner. That’s a vague definition, of course; emotional affairs are notoriously difficult to define. (One thinks of the perhaps apocryphal Potter Stewart remark about knowing obscenity when he saw it.) The slipperiness of the line between “good friend” and emotional “lover” allows those involved in these affairs a great deal of plausible deniability, both to themselves and to those around them. “We’re just friends”; “It’s totally innocent”; “You’re reading too much into this” are the sorts of things that can be said with genuine sincerity in response to suspicious queries from others.

Communicating with a partner about sex isn’t always easy. Clearly, Sam’s friend is unhappy and frustrated, and has every right to feel the way she feels. But Sam’s certainty that she “can’t” talk to her husband about sex is offered a bit too quickly. It may not be easy, it may not be pleasant, but unless there’s a clear and present danger of being physically injured as a result of raising the subject, one of the responsibilities of a married person is to bring ze grievances — in a loving but honest way — to ze spouse. If she “can’t talk” to her husband about it, the inevitable solution will be either prolonged depression or some sort of affair, either physical or emotional or both. Neither is a “morally sound” option. Marriage doesn’t impose a contractual obligation to suffer indefinitely in frustration and silence; marriage also doesn’t impose (as I’ve written before) an obligation to provide sexual satisfaction. Marriage does impose the obligation to communicate, to compromise where possible — and when not possible, to choose to end the marriage through divorce rather than through an affair or “frozen martyrdom”.

I take Sam at his word that he doesn’t have a carnal interest in his friend, and he isn’t (as Job puts it), “lurking at his neighbor’s door” waiting to step in as the answer to a sexually frustrated woman’s prayer. But I think he does have an obligation to call her out on her flat insistence that communication with her husband is impossible. It may be that this woman’s husband is so intransigent and unreachable that any attempt at counseling or conversation will fail. If that’s the case, then divorce is the morally sound and psychologically responsible option. After the divorce proceedings are begun and the husband has been informed that the marriage is over, then she’s certainly free to look elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. But it’s part of Sam’s job as a friend to point out these options.

Good friends listen to each other and affirm each other. They know that sometimes a companion needs to “dump”, and doesn’t need a solution proposed. (We all know the classic axiom about men and women in conversation, and the traditional American male desire to “fix” a problem immediately.) But good friends, true friends, challenge and push each other. They affirm feelings and validate frustration — and in a loving way, nudge one another towards making important changes. Sam’s friend is stuck, and simply talking about her frustrations to him is unlikely to get her “unstuck”. A loving and firm push in one of two directions — towards either counseling or divorce — is the most helpful thing Sam can offer. Continue reading →

Reprint: The self-flattering fantasies of the aging man

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I wrote this post in 2006, when I was a whipper-snapper of 39.

On the subject of men and aging, a friend of mine told me a wonderful story yesterday.  With his permission, I repeat it.  My buddy "Sean" is 39, just as I am, and single.  He goes to a Starbucks a few miles from here almost every day, and in recent weeks had been smitten with a very attractive, outgoing young barista there.  She’s a Citrus College student and is about 19.   For his (our) age, Sean is a handsome fellow; we originally met at the gym.

In any event, Sean and his young barista had been getting friendlier and friendlier, and Sean had been thinking of asking her out.  (He didn’t tell me this beforehand, knowing my strong feelings about older men/younger women relationships.)  In any event, on Tuesday afternoon, the pretty barista asked Sean a question after taking his order. 

Barista: "Uh, can I ask you a personal question?"  (Sean told me he was "stoked" when he heard this, thinking she might be getting ready to make the first move.)

Sean: "Sure."

Barista:  "Are you single?"

Sean (now sure the gal is interested, and getting very excited): "Yes, sure am!"

Barista: "Well, I know this is weird, but you seem really great and I really want to introduce you to my mother.  She’s really awesome, and I think you two would be perfect together."

Sean confessed this to me, and was more rueful and chagrined than devastated.  I gave him a very hard time, of course, laced with compassion and humor.   Until Tuesday, it hadn’t been driven home to him how younger women (mostly) see guys our age.  But he’s starting to get that we are not as we were, and that’s not only not a bad thing, it’s pretty awesome.  Sean says the barista gave him her mother’s number, and he’s considering calling.  (She’s prepared her mom for the possible call.)  I hope he does at least give it a chance, and I’m hoping that this little episode has ended his fantasy of eternal youth once and for all!

In any event, I’ve heard similar stories before (why do I think this scenario was in some sitcom, once?), but never from someone so close to me.  And since like many 39 year-olds I’ve been ruminating a lot on getting older lately (and writing a lot about age-disparate relationships), this anecdote came along at just the right time.

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