From January 2009.

Below this January 14 post on experience and numbers, bmmg39 writes:

…my view is that, often, people with little or no experience in a certain thing — it CAN be sex but it could also mean romantic love, or kissing, or slow-dancing, or whatever — often seek others with the same low level or non-level of experience. Someone who’s never “soul-kissed” someone else might not feel comfortable with someone who’s done that with a hundred people already. That doesn’t mean the first person thinks that there’s something wrong with the second; it means that the first person would like to be remembered fondly as someone else’s first experience in that department — with all the wonderful awkwardness and nervousness that is said to come with it.

The bold emphasis is mine. What bmmg writes sounds innocent and sweet enough. But the problem is clear: when one of our chief longings is “to be remembered fondly”, to be “someone else’s first”, we’re placing our own desires ahead of our partner’s. We’re using sex as a way of leaving a mark on another person’s body or heart, hoping — as humans tend to hope — that we won’t be forgotten. There’s no question that most of us would like to leave an impression on other people; perhaps it’s the historian in me, but there are few worse fears I have, to be honest, than that I will be completely forgotten! But bmmg makes the mistake of assuming that “first” equals “most memorable.” Ask around. Legions of people, particularly women, would rather forget their first experience of heterosexual intercourse. There’s not infrequently a world of difference between, say, the first partner with whom you had intercourse and the first partner with whom you truly felt close and safe.

When my wife and I were planning our wedding, she was hardly unaware that this was to be my fourth marriage — and her first. (Indeed, I have been the first husband to four different women.) A friend of ours did ask her, on one occasion, if it bothered her that she was doing something for the first time that I had done several times before. My fiancee, sensible as ever, said, “No, because this is the first time he’s doing it with me.” She was focused, bless her, on the marriage we were building together. She didn’t deny the reality of what had come before, but she rightly saw no reason to believe that prior experience on my part would diminish the unique intensity of what we were creating as a team. She knew better than to see me as a three-time loser and a has-been. So when we talked about rings and dresses and bands and caterers, she was aware — on some level — that I had had all those conversations before. But she was also clear that passion is not automatically killed by repetition; she knew enough to know that past behavior isn’t always the best indicator of future action. Above all, she believed that most of the time, the axiom of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” holds true: my ability to be a great husband in my fourth marriage was in no small degree a consequence of all the mistakes I had made in the previous three. Some folks hit a home run on their first at bat. Others… need to be sent down to the minors a time or three.

When a good relationship grows and endures, it does so in its own memorable ways. There is very little, from a purely physically sexual standpoint, that my wife and I could possibly do together that we haven’t each separately done with other people in the past. But that has damn all to do with the memories we create together and the marks we leave on each other. For heaven’s sakes, when I kiss my wife, I’m not comparing her tongue to that of umpteen other women; I’m fairly certain that she isn’t comparing my touch to that of her previous lovers! The tapes of what was are stored away. Why on earth would it matter that I’m not the first to make the woman I love call on the name of God in a moment of pleasure? It would only matter if I allowed my ego to trump my love, if the need to be the first was more important than the need to be the now. Continue reading →

From 2005, a post fusing sex education and progressive evangelicalism.

My lecture in women’s history this morning was about nineteenth century attitudes towards women’s sexuality.  It’s the same lecture I wrote about in this April 2004 post.   In addition to talking about clitoridectomies, and the shift to the "medicalization of morality", we wandered on to the topics of sexual ethics, masturbation and "contingent happiness."  (Hey, they were awake and interested, and I was on a caffeinated roll!)  We talked about the difficulties 19th century medicine had with the clitoris, as it represented women’s capacity for their own pleasure, unrelated to either a man’s delight or (at least directly) to reproduction.  We talked about the biological determinism problem: if all of our sexual organs are for reproduction, and sexual pleasure is about reproduction, why is the clitoris placed to be easily reached by a woman’s fingers — but not by a man’s penis during intercourse?  (I did not suggest that this was a problem to be solved, rather that it threw the proverbial "wrench in the works" of many 19th century theories!)

I shared with my students the classic feminist argument (ala Betty Dodson et al) that the clitoris is symbolic of women’s right to pleasure and fulfillment without being dependent upon another person.  While traditional sexual mores, and a considerable amount of religious teaching, stress that our sexual happiness ought always be contingent upon relationship with another (usually our spouse), some feminist theory sees the clitoris as the small, powerful, and physical manifestation of the larger truth that women as well as men have the capacity for pleasure "uncontingent" upon another.  The anti-masturbation screeds of the 19th and 20th centuries have always emphasized that our sexuality is not our own, that it belongs to God and our spouse.  The clitoris, with no direct function other than a woman’s delight, stands (sorry!) in stubborn defiance of the notion that our sexual happiness should always be contingent upon relationship with another.  In a very real sense, one can thus argue that female masturbation is an inherently feminist act.

At the same time that I say all this, teach all this, and believe all this, I’ve got 1 Corinthians 7:4 running through my head:

The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

I’ve loved that line from Paul for two reasons.  One, as a pro-feminist, it is a reminder of radical equality in marriage.   Men and women both surrender their autonomy over the most precious part of themselves, and they are to do so equally.  It’s a nice counter-balance to other areas where Paul seems to imply the superior position of the husband in the family. 

But I also like the verse because it reminds me that in Christian marriage, we are called to live sacrificially for one another.  This doesn’t just mean sexually; as Cait points out, it’s 1 Corinthians 7:4 that allows her to have veto power over her husband’s desire to do dangerous things, like ride a motorcycle without a helmet.  It’s what gives my wife the right to demand that I see a doctor when I am ill; it is not merely my body that is ailing, but hers as well.   At its best, this ideal summons up a magnificent image of devotion, reciprocity, and mutual care.  It’s both deeply romantic and profound holy, and as a newly married man, I find it inspiring.

I don’t lecture to my women’s studies students about Pauline images of marriage!  My lectures in class are classically feminist in their emphasis on the notion that women’s overarching right to pleasure, individual happiness, autonomy and independence is the sine qua non of the movement.  In my marriage, however, and in my faith life, I’ve long since given up the notion that autonomy and personal pleasure ought to be the highest goals for myself or anyone else.  To the best of my clumsy and sinful ability, I am embracing sacrificial living.  My sexuality is no longer my own; I did surrender it to my wife as she surrendered hers to me.  We are not each other’s jailers, mind you, but we are committed to a joint vision of sexuality that is ours (rather than hers, or mine).  No, I’m not sharing any more details than that, but I can say it is a practice that is modeled on what I read in Paul.

So what do I want for my students of both sexes?  I suppose I reconcile the secular feminist ideal of autonomy and the Christian ideal of sacrificial loving in my own mind by suggesting that the former is a necessary precursor to the latter.  After all, we can only really give to another what we first know to be ours! Thus, I think that a healthy model of sexual development encourages young people, boys and girls alike, to take ownership of their sexuality and delight in their own bodies as sexual creatures.  They will experience their bodies as their own, a gift of God for their own wonder and delight.  I hope they will do so without shame.  Then, after a suitable period (which will vary from person to person), my hope is that they will find one person to whom they can make a lasting commitment.  In the safe and loving context of that commitment, they will offer their sexuality — their very body — as a gift to their partner.  And when they do that, they will live out the vision of 1 Corinthians 7:4 regardless of their individual religious beliefs. 

UPDATE from 2010: I’ve moved about three steps to the left since I wrote this, but stand by 98% of it.

This post originally appeared in March, 2006.

Here on the blog, I’ve touched on issues of race before: just over two months ago, my post "The Happy WASP Boy" generated some fairly heated responses. With tongue only partially planted in cheek, I wrote then:

But here’s the thing I’ve realized in my life:  though there is much that is vacuous and materialistic about North American middle-class culture, that has damn all to do with skin color or ethnic heritage!  I grew up with a father who was a European war refugee and a mother who came from an "old" California family of German, English,and Scots-Irish ancestry.  I spent most of my time with my mother’s side of the family, and they formed my values and my world view. 

Yes, we’re WASPs.  If you want to stereotype one aspect of us, we’re a Brooks Brothers wearing, Bloody Mary drinking, Buick Roadmaster station-wagon driving, fraternity and sorority joining, tennis-playing, mayonnaise and meat loaf eating, Junior League cookbook owning, monogrammed thank-you note writing, Town and Country magazine reading, English horseback riding, debutante ball attending, Social Register listed, pastel polo-shirt or sweater set clad clan.  Without apologies.

There was a lot of discussion in the comments, and it was pointed out to me by several people that my characterization of my family was less about skin color and more about class.  I think I was aware of that when I wrote the post, but honestly, felt awkward about writing about my family and my background in terms of class.  Where I come from, class is hinted at but never discussed: just in blogging about my family in these posts, I’ve violated some rules.  There are certain topics that aren’t to be talked about too openly, and issues of class and money are among them.

When we were cynical teenagers, my brother and I came up with the terms OKOP and NOKOP.  OKOP stood for "Our Kind of People"; NOKOP (obviously) for "Not Our Kind of People."  We used the words ironically, expressing our chagrin at what we saw as the subtle elitism and snobbery of many members of our extended clan.  My cousins of my generation picked up the terms, and at times, the line between the sincere and the ironic use of the acronyms became blurred.  Someone would bring home a girlfriend to meet the family, and she would tie her sweater around her waist instead of draping it over her shoulders.  "So NOKOP", we’d mouth to each other over the family dinner table.   I once brought a friend to a Fourth of July party who wore a "Porn Star" baseball cap.    "She’s nice", said one cousin, "but a bit NOKOP, don’t you think?"  What began as an expression to poke fun at certain elements of class consciousness in our clan became instead a way of reinforcing those same elements.   That’s what happens, I suppose.

Of course, we’ve become a much more diverse family over the years.  Half-a-dozen of us are in interracial marriages with people from a wide variety of social backgrounds.   A great many of us don’t care about the things an older generation cared about; only a handful of my cousins still worry about who’s in the Social Register and keeping up expensive club memberships.  And well over half of us vote solidly Democratic — something that would have horrified our great-grandparents’ generation.  (My mother’s father and his brother were the only members of their entire family who voted for FDR).

For years and years, I struggled to come to terms with whether or not I wanted to embrace or reject certain aspects of my "class background."  At Berkeley, I learned quickly that others were allowed to say with pride that they were the first in the family to go to university — but I couldn’t say "I’m a fourth-generation Golden Bear" without being greeted with rolled eyes and epithets like "f-ing snob".  Those of us who were from "old families" (a favorite euphemism of the upper-middle classes) learned to conceal it — or openly disparage it.  When I lived in a co-op at Cal (I had become the first male member of my mother’s family in a century not to pledge a fraternity), I knew one other gal in the house who came from a similar background to my own.  We both made a conscious choice to make fun of our privileges.  We wore our Che Guevara t-shirts and wallowed in white guilt like pigs in a trough.

My sophomore year in Ridge House, I had a roommate named "Oscar."  Oscar was from a Mexican-American family in the Central Valley; he was the first in his family to go to college.  Oscar was active in MEChA, as well as the society for Hispanic Engineers and Scientists (two organizations that didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but that’s another story.)  He talked with great pride about his family and what it was like to grow up the son of agricultural laborers, spending half his childhood in Michoacan and the other half in rural Fresno County. But I didn’t want to talk about growing up spending my childhood in places like Santa Barbara and Piedmont and Carmel by-the-Sea. I felt awkward talking about taking trips to Europe to see relatives.  Where Oscar was proud of his family, I was ashamed of what I believed at the time to be unmerited good fortune and privilege. 

Oscar was a smart lad and a good friend; we went to church together.  One day he asked me: "Hugo, why are you so ashamed of who you are?"  I protested that I wasn’t, and he persisted: "You walk around apologizing for being a white boy from Carmel all the time.  It’s getting really old.  Your family is part of who you are, and you should be proud of your roots.  Period.  Even if you can’t pronounce your own name right."  (He insisted on calling me "Ooogo", rather than the English "Hugh-go" or the German "Hoo-go.")

I told Oscar it wasn’t that easy.   I said:  "People admire you for coming from where you’ve come from — they don’t feel that same way about white guys whose great-grandfathers went here.  It’s like I haven’t earned being here."   Oscar laughed and laughed:  "Shit, Oooogo, sometimes I worry everyone thinks I got in here because of affirmative action; you’re worrying you got in here because of your relatives’ influence.   We both doubt ourselves because of our backgrounds, as different as we are — that’s just classic!"  I laughed with him.   

And then I shared with him the terms "NOKOP" and "OKOP", and I believe I made his whole semester.    As soon as I explained the terms to him, he rolled on the floor in hysterics, gasping in two languages.  The English consisted of "Oh, you f-ing white people, you f-ing white people, I love you soooo much". As if this wasn’t bizarre enough, Oscar then picked up the phone in our room and called up a series of his friends from MEChA, telling them about me and NOKOP and OKOP. And if you were around Oscar or his friends in the 1986-87 academic year, you would have heard them using the acronyms constantly, often in exaggerated accents modeled on Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island: "Ernie, you ridiculous pocho imbecile, that outfit is soooo NOKOP."

Oscar met my parents and my aunt on one occasion, and was gracious as could be.  Though he and his friends enjoyed ribbing me, he was also sending me a very positive message: I shouldn’t take myself or my family so damned seriously.  Oscar taught me that my "white guilt" and my "working class chic" were both affectations that only reinforced my image as an earnest, clueless, elitist.   More than anyone else, Oscar believed that we are simultaneously products of our family background and our own unique choices.  He urged me to always separate the two, and he taught me that shame and guilt ought only be associated with the latter, never the former.  "Your family’s your family, man", he’d say; "Love them, be proud of them, and don’t pretend they aren’t who they are."

I haven’t heard from Oscar in over a decade; last time we talked, he was back in grad school pursuing a second Ph.D. — and I had just started teaching at PCC.   As he always did, he brought up NOKOP and OKOP.   The last time we talked, I had just gotten my nipples pierced (it was an impulse) and I shared the rather painful news with him.  He shrieked with laughter; "Ooogo, even I KNOW that has to be soooo NOKOP."  I agreed that indeed it was, and that my family would not take it well.   "Man", Oscar snorted, "you’re going to be all right."

I rarely use NOKOP or OKOP except in jest any more; neither do my cousins.  I don’t worry about whether or not my name is in the Social Register, and I’d rather tithe to God than pay dues to the Valley Hunt or the Jonathan Club.  But I don’t pretend, either, that those things were not at least a part of my heritage; I don’t deny my background any more.   My family taught me early on not to boast or brag — OKOP don’t draw attention to themselves.  But Oscar taught me that there is no virtue in being embarrassed by one’s heritage, and he taught me that constant apologies were just another sign of privilege.  Living in happy gratitude for one’s heritage –  with the assurance that one is neither above or beneath any other person because of that heritage — is what he urged. And it’s Oscar’s words I still try and follow these days.

From November 2005.

In my women’s history class, we talked at length last week about the idea of the "internalized audience."  The conversation evolved out of a discussion we were having about Lynn Phillips’ Flirting with Danger, which I am using in class for the first time this semester.

Phillips talks about the problem so many young women struggle with: separating their own desires from those of their families, friends, and the broader culture.  For many of the women Phillips interviewed, the internalized audience is omnipresent, but never more so than when engaging in sexual activity.   The make-up of the audience varies little from young woman to young woman: mothers and fathers, friends and family members, teachers and pastors and peers.  Each member of the audience has his or her own set of expectations for how the girl ought to behave, and gradually, those expectations have crawled deep into the psyche.  Raised to be acutely sensitive to the wishes and values of others, most young women "internalize the audience" by adolescence if not before.  (Mom really can be everywhere!) And of course, once young women begin to interact sexually with others, the "audiences" begin to make conflicting demands. Writing of the college-aged subjects of her study, Phillips notes:

Often women became so consumed with the conflicting expectations of various outside audiences (families versus boyfriends, college friends versus neighborhood friends) about gender-appropriate and developmentally appropriate behavior, that the notion of their own needs and sexual desires was all but erased from consideration.

As I suggested to my students, while Phillips discusses the notion of the internalized audience primarily in sexual terms, it’s possible to see the problem of the audience in other areas as well.  For example, it’s clear that many women subordinate their own needs and desires around food in order to be pleasing to those around them. A "good girl" has a muted appetite for both sex and food; a carefully cultivated thinness and an absence of sexual subjectivity are both ways to "please the audience."

Some of my more conservative students argue that the internalized audience serves a healthy social function for young women.   Those  "all-seeing eyes" and those "voices in the head" help hold girls and young women back from making poor decisions (lie pre-marital sex, the big "no-no" for my traditionalists).  But of course, waiting for marriage doesn’t guarantee a woman will be free from that sense of the internalized audience!  Many married women who did "wait" have reported that they too struggle with sexual guilt, even as they make love with their own husbands.  And some married women may still find it difficult to think clearly about their own desires, having been raised and conditioned that their sexuality exists to provide joy and delight for another.  "Waiting" is not the panacea its proponents crack it up to be.

Thus I’m convinced that one of the most important feminist tasks is helping young — and not so young — women to quiet that internalized audience.  Quieting, mind you, is not the same as dismissing.  All of us, at times, can be comforted and strengthened by the memory of what some loved one or respected person has told us.  On occasion, it’s appropriate to ask:  "What would so-and-so say if they could see me now?  What advice would they give?"  We ought on occasion to consider the wishes and beliefs of our culture, our faith (if we have one) and our parents.  But though these ought to be factors in our decision-making about food, sex,and pleasure, they ought not to be the decisive ones.  Helping young women listen to their own desires, separate from those of the large and loud audience, is a key feminist goal.

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