Monthly Archives: November 2010

For pleasure, for justice, and against shame: on acceptance as a prerequisite for growth

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The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.

– Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

While listening to Clarisse Thorn lecture in my women’s studies class last Thursday, this quote popped into my head. Though I didn’t mention it in my most recent post, it was already on my mind when I wrote about rethinking my dismissiveness towards the plight of men eager for “feminist dating tips.” One could substitute the word “feminist” for “spiritual” in the AA quote, I think, and get to the heart of what I’m wrestling with this week.

Theory has consequences. Ideas have an impact. That’s not a new insight for me or anyone else. But when it comes to writing about men, women, and feminist sexual ethics, I’m ever more keenly aware that those of us who seek to encourage the transformation of both the individual and society at large often end up inadvertently shaming the very people whom we are trying to inspire.

I wrote a three-part series a couple of years ago, praising Robert Jensen’s wonderful Getting Off. But when I actually assigned the book in my “Men and Masculinity” course, I found that Jensen’s radical anti-porn stance not only aroused disagreement (which is healthy) but shame (which isn’t). This past July, I wrote about rethinking my own anti-porn stance, and about my decision not to reassign Jensen’s book (which I still think is very useful) as mandatory reading for my masculinity course:

I loved Jensen’s thesis… Many of my students did too. But some of my students of both sexes who told me they viewed porn felt overwhelmed, shamed, guilt-ridden as a result. One young woman told me she had stopped looking at porn but felt guilty about the arousing images that still popped into her head. Another young guy, one of my best students, told me that he felt as if he’d been set up for failure, as if Jensen and I were positing abstinence from pornography as the sine qua non of being a decent male. “If I masturbate to porn can I still be a good man was the question I got from more than one anguished participant in the class. And if several of the students were willing to divulge such private pain to me, I can only assume that still others felt the same way but kept silent.

Clarisse is a well-known advocate for what is usually called “sex-positive” feminism, as well as an activist for BDSM acceptance. She takes the position that some folks may have an innate orientation towards BDSM, a stance of which I am deeply suspicious but not immediately dismissive. But watching my students’ reactions to her — and reading the emails and Facebook messages I got from several of them afterwards — I realized how important it is to have feminist voices that celebrate pleasure and desire. Theory matters to Clarisse as it does to me; justice matters to her as well. (In her real life, where she goes by her birth name, she is a committed activist for a variety of causes.) But though she recognizes that our culture is deeply corrupted by what is increasingly often called “kyriarchal” influences, she understands that all of us have to live and love and fuck and create and nurture within that culture. Just as ringing Sunday sermons in church aren’t of much use if they aren’t applied in the weekday lives of the congregation, so too a feminism that is heavy on inspiring classroom rhetoric needs to offer folks reassurance and encouragement in every other aspect of their lives.

One of the critiques that feminists of color had of mainstream white feminism a generation ago was that middle-class white feminists tended to prioritize “sisterhood” over all other values. Women of color who lived in what white feminists considered “patriarchal” and “oppressive” ethnic groups were encouraged to extricate themselves from their families and their cultures for the sake of individual happiness. Black, Latina, and Asian feminists insisted — quite rightly — on a different kind of feminism, one that could be synthesized with traditions and values that they held dear. What seemed hopelessly oppressive to well-to-do WASPy feminists was experienced very differently by many non-white women.

The same problem happens around sex. Continue reading →

NWSA 2010

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I’m going to be in Denver from Thursday through Sunday of this coming week to take part in the annual meeting of the National Women’s Studies Association. I’m speaking on a Sunday morning panel about Feminist Masculinities, a follow-up to our presentation in Atlanta a year ago. Here’s the overview of our session.

If any of my readers are going, let me know. Would love to meet ya.

And I’ll be blogging from the Mile High City as well…

Friday not-random Ten: ten favorite songs about California

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I’ve been so pleased by the way California bucked national trends this week; while much of the nation turned right, the great and good Golden State turned left. The campaigns I cared most about turned out as I had hoped, and if Jerry McNerney can hold on to his congressional seat in Northern California (he represents the land on which my family’s ranch is located and currently leads by a few hundred votes pending a recount), then every cause for which I worked or donated will have triumphed. (And also parenthetically, well done Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts and New York — some flashes of progressive defiance in your fine states as well. The coasts and Rocky Mountain High aren’t folding over to Tea Party mania.)

So, not a “random” ten at all, but ten of my favorite songs with California in the title. And nothing from the Beach Boys, the Eagles, or the Mamas and Papas (the most obvious choices). The order is random — it turns out I have eighteen songs with California in the title on my iTunes!

Feel free to add your favorites in the comments!

1. “King of California”, Dave Alvin
2. “California Love”, 2Pac
3. “California Stars”, Billy Bragg and Wilco
4. “California”, Joni Mitchell
5. “California Cotton Fields”, Gram Parsons
6. “It Never Rains in Southern California”, Albert Hammond
7. “California Uber Alles”, Dead Kennedys
8. “California Sun”, Ramones
9. “California Sky”, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash
10. “Going to California”, Led Zeppelin

Bonus Track: “Hail to California” (The alma mater of the University of California, Berkeley)

The pro-feminist pick-up artist: rethinking a blind spot

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Clarisse Thorn, the noted sex-positive writer and blogger, came to speak to my women’s history class today. Clarisse was in Los Angeles on another engagement, and was kind enough to come and talk to my students about sex-positive feminist masculinity. We had a short and very amiable debate, as I challenged some of her positions. (More on that in a future post.) I look forward to getting some good feedback from more of my students, but have already had a few enthusiastic emails and Facebook messages.

UPDATE: Clarisse notes her visit here. Her post lists some links from each of our archives that cover some of the areas where we disagree.

Clarisse’s article on the pathologizing of male desire got a great deal of attention in the blogosphere last month, and there were over 100 comments in the debate about it here on this blog. A follow-up post has a still-active comment thread. Those two posts received more comments than any others I wrote in October. Clarisse is clearly an instigator of good discussion.

I took Clarisse to lunch to thank her, and in our discussion over various vegetarian goodnesses, we returned to this challenging theme of constructive sex-positive feminist masculinity. I talked about how frustrated I’ve been in my exchanges on the topic with many men, who — as my comment threads indicate — find my writing on the topic to be shaming, or unhelpful, or privileged. I’ve been asked before for “pick-up tips for feminist men”, a request I’ve resisted for both ideological and experiential reasons. I haven’t spent much time around the “pick-up artist” (PUA) and “seduction” communities, largely because I find their views to be deeply demeaning to women (as well as men). Clarisse has a more nuanced view, as one of her many interests is focused on “bridging the gap” between the PUA and feminist worlds. I’m leery that that gap can be bridged at all, but I’m open to discussion.

But in talking with Clarisse, I realized how often I’ve been unnecessarily contemptuous of those men who have sought out techniques and strategies for approaching women. I’m married, of course, and devotedly so. I’m obviously not looking for sexual or romantic partners. But even when I was single, I never had trouble “meeting” women, finding sexual partners, or getting into relationships. (I had tremendous problems making relationships work, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) Writing those words makes me uncomfortable; they seem filled with macho swagger. I’m not boasting of my sexual prowess, or at least, I’m trying not to. But though I have had myriad challenges in my life (particularly around drug and alcohol addiction), one problem I haven’t had since I hit college was finding sexual partners. Learning to be celibate was hard; learning how to be monogamous in thought and word as well as in body was hard. Unlearning flirting was hard. Getting laid — and every few years, getting married — was easy. Continue reading →

Is teaching a hazard to marriage? A reprint on academics and the myth of male weakness

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I’m going to do my best to have something new up soon. In the meantime, this 2008 post deserves a reprint.

Reader and blogger Treifalicious sends me a link to this PDF file of a 1999 study on college professors and divorce. Published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, it’s melodramatically entitled Teaching may be hazardous to your marriage.

The abstract:

Kenrick et al.’s experiments demonstrate that men who view photographs of physically attractive women or Playboy centerfolds subsequently find their current mates less physically attractive and become less satisfied with their current relationships. What then would be the
cumulative effect of being exposed to young, attractive women on a daily basis? Would there be any real consequences to the men’s dissatisfaction with their relationships? Secondary school teachers and college professors come in contact with more young women at the peak of their reproductive value than others do. The analysis of a large, representative data set from the United States indicates that, while men in general are less likely to be divorced than women, and secondary school teachers and college professors in general are less likely to be divorced than others, simultaneously being male and being a secondary school teacher or college professor statistically increases the likelihood of being divorced We contend that the contrast effect that Kenrick et al. find in their experiments is cumulative and has real
consequences.

It’s an almost laughable study, save for the fact that it’s, well, so bloody infuriating. Here’s the initial premise:

Few occupations and professions afford greater opportunities to come in contact with
women in their teenage years than teachers in secondary and postsecondary schools. These
teachers experience the cumulative effect of exposure to young, attractive women who are at
their peak reproductive value more acutely than people in most other occupations.

I suppose that’s true enough, though I can’t say I think much of the term “peak reproductive value.” No offense intended to teenage moms out there, but in my experience, those who choose to make babies in their thirties often (not always) have more “valuable” resources (time, patience, finances) than those in their “peak” reproductive years.

But then the study’s authors lose me completely. They note that those who teach are slightly more likely to stay unmarried after they divorce, though the difference with the general population is barely significant. But then this whopper:

We believe that there are two possible interpretations for this finding. First,
subsequent to divorce, male teachers and professors may remain unmarried because they prefer
to pursue a series of affairs with female students without marrying them. Second, they may remain unmarried because, due to the cumulative contrast effect, any adult woman they might meet and date after their divorce would still pale in comparison to the young attractive women with whom they come in daily contact.

“Pale in comparison”? Continue reading →

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Thursday Short Poem: Moore’s “Silence”

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There are more than a few good poems about class and what I sometimes call the OKOP/NOKOP distinction. This famous one from the great Marianne Moore captures the admirable (but for some, alienating) WASP fascination with taste, restraint, and hospitable distance.

Silence

My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat –
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth –
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “`Make my house your inn’.”
Inns are not residences.

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California love

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I love you, California, you’re the greatest state of all.
I love you in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall.
I love your fertile valleys; your dear mountains I adore.
I love your grand old ocean and I love her rugged shore.

– “I Love You, California”, Francis Silverwood (the state’s official anthem)

Throw it up
Let’s show these fools how we do this on that west side
Cause you and I know it’s tha best side

Yeah, that’s right
west coast, west coast
Uh, California Love
California Love

– “California Love”, Tupac Shakur

I’m a sixth-generation Californian on my mother’s side. And I’ve never been prouder to be a native son of the Golden State than I am this morning. While much of the rest of the nation swung hard to the right, Californians moved triumphantly left. We replaced a Republican governor with Jerry Brown, a quirky but undeniably progressive figure who was first elected governor when I was seven. (My father was Jerry’s philosophy T.A. at Berkeley in the early ’60s.) By a much wider margin than many anticipated, we returned a proud and unapologetic liberal, Barbara Boxer, to the senate. Both Democrats had to beat enormously wealthy Republican dilettantes; both did so handily. Pending the results of the attorney general’s race, Californians have elected Democrats to every statewide office, and even gained a seat in the state legislature.

Though we did not vote to legalize pot for recreational use, Californians voted overwhelmingly to reject Proposition 23, which would have suspended implementation of our landmark emissions law. Over 60% of voters chose to reject the appeals from big oil and other polluters; Proposition 23 even failed in famously conservative Orange County. I couldn’t be more thrilled and prouder of my fellow state residents.

All of this splendor for California comes on the heels of a glorious World Series, where the San Francisco Giants bested a team from the reddest of red states, the Texas Rangers. (I’m an Oakland A’s fan from childhood, but Bay Area pride triumphs in my heart.)

Yesterday, I spent five hours at the polls, working with the Feminist Majority’s “protect choice” campaign. Staying a careful 100 feet from the voting booths as required by state law, I stood with student volunteers (mostly my students, I’m proud to say) at a northwest Pasadena polling station and handed out literature for Barbara Boxer. We were jeered and cheered, but it was fun (and, as it always is, deeply moving) to play the part of activist on election day.

Exhausted and sweaty, I then drove over to the Beverly Hills offices of Feminist Majority for a victory party, where student volunteers and professional organizers gathered to celebrate California’s triumphs and to shake our heads in wonder at the choices made by Americans in other states. We found moments to cheer from other parts of the country, of course; I was especially heartened by the victories of Barney Frank and Raul Grijalva, two progressive congressmen who had been targeted by the right. The strangest moment came when we all stood and clapped for Harry Reid’s upset victory in Nevada. Reid, whose record on women’s issues is mixed at best, was applauded less for his own virtues than for his success in defeating a particularly extreme “Tea Party” candidate. Conservatives may be rejoicing today, but they would be rejoicing far louder had they sacked Reid and Boxer. There is no small satisfaction in denying them the fullness of their triumph.

But as we think about triumphs, it is good to reflect upon what John Pitney, writing at the National Review, remembers from Nikos Kazantzakis:

“A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You’ll ask me why. It’s because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.”

Filled with healthy dollops of both hope and despair, and staggering on three hours sleep, I’m off to teach.

Please vote

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I won’t post tomorrow. When I’m not teaching, I’ll be volunteering with GOTV (get-out-the-vote) efforts with the Feminist Majority’s Barbara Boxer campaign. In an old post of mine about “voting memories”, I wrote about my “love affair” with elections. And even if the polls look especially dismal this time around for we of the left, that love affair continues.

Of course, my endorsements here.

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The crowded cloud of witnesses: on ex-lovers, memories, and the call to grow

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A reprint from November 2008.

I’ve got a remarkable number of friends going through divorces or break-ups right now. And a week or so ago, one of those friends asked me a question I often get: “How did you survive three divorces?” The question is usually half-facetious, half-serious. I have the quick and facetious answer down pat: “I’m the King of Starting Over”, something I’ve blogged about in the past. I know better than most how to move out of a shared space and begin a new life with rented furniture! Three divorces before my 36th birthday (still, and one hopes always, a standing family record) have given me a great many interesting stories about “new beginnings”.

But last week, my friend asked me a question I get far more rarely: “How, Hugo, do you deal with having been in love with so many women? Where do they all ‘go’ in your head and your heart?” My friend is an evangelical cradle Christian; his soon-to-be-ex wife was his first love and his first lover. He can’t imagine ever being as intimate with anyone in the future as he was with her. He’s worried that memories of his first marriage, and his first romance, will haunt any future relationship. He repeated his question: “Where do all these past lovers ‘go’?”

There’s a great line in Jane Hamilton’s otherwise over-wrought A Map of the World (which was turned into an underrated Sigourney Weaver/David Strathairn film). I don’t have the book or the movie handy, so I’ll quote it as I remember. Near the end, the lead character (who has gone through unspeakable tragedy piled on unspeakable tragedy) says of her past loves: “They’re always with you, just not consciously. They’re right beneath the eyelids.” I may be misquoting the line, but the point is reasonably clear: the past is something you heal from, something you get over, but also something you carry with you. And the lovers and exes whose bodies you knew and whose lives you shared are gone — and in some sense, need to be gone — but their influence on your own life continues.

One of the Apostle’s loveliest images is of a “cloud of witnesses” urging us on. Whatever St. Paul meant, I’ve long cherished the idea that I am watched over, and perhaps in some sense even protected, by those who have gone before. I think of my father, my grandparents, and countless other friends and relatives who have “gone to join the great majority” on the other side. As a Christian, I believe not only in a life to come but also in the promise of being reunited with deceased loved ones. I also believe, based on Scripture and on hope, that I am watched over and cared for by these witnesses. I’m not practicing some sort of ancestor worship, never fear — but though my great hope is in Jesus, my quiet comfort is also in the presence of those who cheer me on. (I know this isn’t a comforting image for everyone. I had a friend who was raised with the belief that the dead could see you, and she grew up with a genuine phobia about going to the toilet, worried that dead people were going to watch her poop.)

In any case, I don’t just apply the “cloud of witnesses” image to the dead. Continue reading →

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Supporting Pathfinder

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It’s election day tomorrow, and once again, my California endorsements are here. I’ve given time and money and energy to the Barbara Boxer campaign. I’ve been working with Feminist Majority’s Boxer team, and am pleased and proud that several of my students are now paid campaign workers devoting countless hours to re-electing a champion for women’s rights to the senate.

But in our relentless focus on protecting abortion access in the USA, we are all prone to forget that reproductive justice is a global issue. And while many agencies do great work abroad in promoting family planning and women’s health, I want to give a special shoutout this Monday to Pathfinder International. From their site:

Pathfinder International places reproductive health services at the center of all that we do—believing that health care is not only a fundamental human right but is critical for expanding opportunities for women, families, communities, and nations, while paving the way for transformations in environmental stewardship, decreases in population pressures, and innovations in poverty reduction.

In more than 25 countries, Pathfinder provides women, men, and adolescents with a range of quality health services—from contraception and maternal care to HIV prevention and AIDS care and treatment. Pathfinder strives to strengthen access to family planning, ensure availability of safe abortion services, advocate for sound reproductive health policies, and, through all of our work, improve the rights and lives of the people we serve.

Today only, November 1, Pathfinder has a challenge grant: every gift (up to $5000) will be matched by a generous anonymous donor. You can donate securely online here.

Whatever the outcome of the election tomorrow, the battle to secure a brighter future for women and girls worldwide will continue. With small budgets but great resolve, organizations like Pathfinder are fighting for the most basic and important right of all, that of reproductive health. Please join me in standing with them.

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