Clarisse Thorn wrote a Thanksgiving post, in which she raises an all-too-familiar problem:
One very intense, very important issue I grappled with this week was having a friend email me to inform me that another friend — someone I like and admire a lot — has been credibly accused of sexual assault by a person who will never press charges. This has come up before in my life; every time it’s a little different, and yet so many things are the same: a person is assaulted, the news gets out among friends, the survivor doesn’t press charges, there is confusion among the friends about how to act, eventually things die down, and I feel as though I should have done more.
Clarisse wrote to an ex of hers for his take, and he replied:
Nobody is composed of unmixed goodness or evil, no matter how much of a paragon/fiend 1) they seem to be or 2) their principles require. People we respect and love are not forces of nature or avatars of their cause of choice, no matter how thoroughly they embody it to us… I can’t see how it could ever be good to allow things like this to just slide. Honestly, I’m not sure what else you can do but (as you suggest in one of your messages) politely ask your friend about their take on the story. If nothing else, it will demonstrate that people are paying attention to this thing…
I agree with Clarisse’s ex, both about the necessity of confrontation in some form and the wisdom of acknowledging that those around us are never entirely what they seem. (This doesn’t mean that most people are fraudulent, merely that we tend to see blacks and whites more clearly than we see shades of gray.) And I think this willingness to raise hard questions is particularly important for men.
I’ve often made the case that the true measure of a man’s commitment to gender justice doesn’t just lie in how he treats women, but how he interacts with other men when there are no women around. Most young women have had the utterly infuriating experience of having a male buddy, boyfriend, or brother who is sweet and sensitive when she’s alone with him — but who turns into a troglodytic jerk when other men are around. That sudden shift from kindness to doltishness can be chalked up to the homosocial pressure to be “one of the guys”, a pressure that tends to trump everything else in young men’s lives. And so I repeat the message that I learned a long time ago: part of being a good male ally lies in challenging the sexism of other men even when there are no women around. Actually, if there is a litmus test that distinguishes a boy from a man, that might be it: the courage to stand up to other men and to endure the homophobic insults that will surely come when he challenges the attitudes and actions of his “bros.”
Feminists often talk about “rape culture.” Rape culture doesn’t just mean a culture in which rape happens — it means a culture in which sexual assault is condoned, or excused, or minimized, or even actively facilitated. For example, fraternity parties to which young women are invited and encouraged to binge drink are part of rape culture, as they involve the use of alcohol and social pressure to undermine young women’s capacity to give or deny meaningful consent to sex. Rape jokes are part of rape culture, as is the loathsome use of “rape”idiomatically to refer to any action of domination or success. (An example I overheard in the hall last week: “Dude, I totally raped that test.”) But nothing — nothing — sustains rape culture like silence. And given that men are raised to be homosocial (meaning they place intense value on the opinion of their male peers), and given that it is men who are doing almost all of the raping, it is the reluctance of the so-called “good guys” to challenge other men that allows rape culture to survive.
A true story:
As I’ve written many, many times, I had a series of consensual sexual relationships with my adult students when I was first a professor at PCC. The fact that most of these students were my chronological peers (one or two were even older than I), and that the relationships were often initiated by those students does nothing to mitigate the unethical and irresponsible nature of what I did. It was an abuse of power, and all sexualized abuses of power fall on what might be called a “rape spectrum.” What I did wasn’t rape in that it didn’t violate the consent of the adult women with whom I was having sex — but it was on that spectrum nonetheless because the power imbalance may have had at least some impact on the capacity of these women to give meaningful consent. (I acknowledge agency, but also acknowledge the social and cultural pressures that can undermine agency.)
Here’s the point: my behavior was hardly a secret. I was drinking and using drugs with many of these same students, and at least in my case, substance abuse tended to render me indiscreet at best. In one among many infamous instances, I served as a faculty advisor for a week-long student government lobbying trip to Washington D.C in the spring of 1997. Seven female students went on the trip — and I had sex with four of them. Stories about what had happened (drugs and alcohol and group sex were also all involved) spread like wildfire across the campus on our return. I wasn’t tenured at the time, and could — perhaps should — easily have been terminated.
But I wasn’t. I wasn’t confronted by a single member of the administration. One high-ranking “suit” stopped me in the hall one day, and said simply “We’re hearing some rumors about you, Hugo. You’re quite the rascal, apparently!” He winked at me, gave me a fraternal punch on the arm, and wandered off down the hall. That was as much pushback as I ever got. It was only after my drinking and drug use led me to a suicide attempt, a hospitalization, and a spiritual rebirth that my sexually inappropriate behavior stopped. And even when I came to the administration to make amends for the harm I’d done to the college (after making amends to the students involved), I was greeted as much with indulgent smiles as with censure and rebuke. “Glad you’ve worked things out, my boy”, was the comment I got from a female senior vice-president!
Should I have been fired in 1996 or 1997? Maybe. Should someone — a colleague or an administrator — have confronted me? Absolutely. Would I have stopped my behavior had I been confronted? Perhaps not (I was self-destructive enough to risk my career at that point), but it would have likely punctured my cocky sense of invincibility and entitlement. I was guilt-ridden but also grandiose, like most addicts. Confrontation might have saved quite a few people from confusion and heartache. But perhaps just as importantly, someone needed to confront me for the simple reason that I was doing something wrong, and someone needed to witness to that basic fact.
I keep that in mind when I encounter similar behavior to my own in my colleagues (which I occasionally do), I do have a talk with them, sharing my experience but also reiterating how destructive this behavior almost always is. Sometimes those confrontations are awkward (see this old post) but they are vital. And of course, sometimes I encounter situations like Clarisse’s, where I’m confronting not a colleague but an acquaintance of some sort about whom I have heard something very troubling.
I confront as I wish I had been confronted: kindly but forcefully, not allowing empathy to trump a commitment to justice and safety. I do it because I believe it can have an impact, but also because, as Clarisse’s ex wrote, it demonstrates that people are paying attention. Word by awkward word, our confrontations and interventions dismantle the wall behind which rape and abuse and exploitation can hide. Regardless of the outcome, we’ve got to — at the least — speak up.
Hugo,
“Seven female students went on the trip — and I had sex with four of them.”
And you actually *wonder* why you seemingly can’t get what other men are talking about, and why they don’t seem to get you, when it comes to sexual scarcity? Dude. Seriously…
“(I acknowledge agency, but also acknowledge the social and cultural pressures that can undermine agency.)”
And that means what? Professional ethics about refusal to engage in consensual relationships notwithstanding, consent or not-consent are really mutually exlusive. If your partners consented, they had agency, if they didn’t have agency, they cannot have consented. What’s a “rape spectrum”, I mean – I can accept that there are different degrees of personal disrespect, of lack of ethics – but consent is consent. If you didn’t rape these women, then you didn’t do anything on a “rape spectrum”, however problematic you deem your own behaviour.
Hugo, are you saying all relationships where there is a power imbalance are on the “rape spectrum” or is your point more nuanced than that? How does one determine when a sexual relationship with a power imbalance becomes a sexualized abuse of power? How do we determine when the person with less power (for whom the power imbalance may very well be what is attractive) is exercising sexual agency and when they are being taken advantage of? Assuming such a determination is even possible, are we even in a position of making it without being somewhat paternalistic?
Speaking of nuance, you say “What I did wasn’t rape” but then simultaneously place your behavior on the “rape spectrum.” How does one judge how far along that spectrum a particular action has to be before it’s called “rape?” At which points along the spectrum do we involve law enforcement? You state it wasn’t “rape” because you didn’t violate their consent, but does the power imbalance create a de facto coercive environment that calls into question that consent?
I don’t find easy answers to any of these questions, and I’m hoping someone else has perhaps considered them more carefully than I.
If you’d prefer the term “consent spectrum”, you can use that — and I’ll try and post about that topic soon. I do disagree, however, that “consent” and “not-consent” are always as black and white. It is indeed a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and I’ll make that case as best I can soon!
The problem with “consent” as a model for sex is that it implicitly portrays sex as something that one person wants, and that another person provides for whatever reason.
My wife asked me to do the dishes (normally her job) – I consented. I was doing her a favor. I asked her to carry some boxes downstairs (normally my job) – she consented. I didn’t want to do the dishes, and she didn’t want to haul boxes; we did each other a favor.
But sex isn’t housework, or shouldn’t be. If we have sex, it should be because we desire to be intimate with one another.
The consent concept is sensible in the narrow context of prosecuting sexual crimes, where we do not really care about the enthusiasm levels of the participants, but rather, whether one person was forced to do something sexual. Coercing someone into sex is a crime.
Outside that context, it’s a gross way of looking at sexual relationships.
Personally, I find that consent is overrated. Give me some surprise sex.
I’m with SamSeaborn. It’s a great post, and an important set of points you make, and I am eager to hear more about the consent or rape spectrum. BUT OMG! Group sex with your students, sleeping with four of them on a trip! Even though I get the context in which you shared this to make a point about rumor and lack of confrontation, I can only say wowsers. This information does tend to distract the reader from the rest of your points. I appreciatre that your’e not being boastful, but SamSeaborn is right in saying that it does make the point that you may have trouble identifying with guys whov’e had a hard time getting any sexy time.
Should I have been fired in 1996 or 1997?
Yes. No “maybe” about it. The fact that you turned your life around couldn’t have been foreseen back then. I’m glad you have your job now, but knowing what they knew then, the administration should have canned your untenured playboy ass back in the day.
I think that you talking of your past behavior as being on the rape spectrum is entirely appropriate. “Consent spectrum” to me sounds less “real” and serious.
The substance abuse issues added another level of potential abuse related to “consent” where intoxication might further interfere with potential consent.
You were and are a professor who can: 1.) Give good/bad grades related to a student’s “behavior”, 2.) Write recommendations or not for students, past and present and similar things which show your potential power over students.
The students at PCC, as anywhere, include students who’ve been sexually abused in their past, as well as simply others who might hear of your “reputation”.
I wonder how many of the men who see things simply as “simple consent” have spent quality time with others who’ve been abused and can’t simply “forget” the past. The question is not: “did you rape them?”
A Men’s Project at: https://sites.google.com/site/amensproject/ is a (recently begun and growing) attempt I’ve made at helping others find resources to encourage groups and projects trying to reach us men on issues such as these.
Thanks!
George
A Men’s Project
Yeah, Hugo, stop making all the other guys jealous. ::sigh:: then again, any guy who read that whole awful (subject matter, not writing quality) post and the first words out of his mouth (or rather, keyboard) are in reference to how lucky you’ve been sexually…probably not a guy whose take on rape culture is going to help anybody, so no loss to the convo overall.
Geo, that’s why I use the term “rape spectrum” in the first place. But regardless of the adjective, it’s the concept of the spectrum that’s so important, and I’ll try to flesh it out.
Lisa, I’m always thrown when folks talk about me being “lucky” sexually. IMHO, I was lucky when I figured out how to be monogamous. My promiscuity hurt a lot of people and didn’t make me happy. Some folks may sleep around happily, but it wasn’t something I could do without feeling as if I was violating some part of myself. Do I think everyone needs to be monogamous? Heck no. Do I realize that I’m happiest when all of my sexual energy is in one relationship? Hell yes. That was where my luck was, not in getting laid easily and often!
But yeah, I take your point!
Oh, and Clytemnestra, you may well be right. I may well have deserved firing. I am so glad I wasn’t,but concerned about the reasons why I wasn’t.
Interesting post. I agree that the 4-out-of-7 anecdote is a bit distracting from the overall point, but hey, maybe it’s colorful enough to get more people to read this
I look forward to the post on the “consent spectrum”. I have a lot of thoughts about that but also a lot of trouble phrasing them in a way that feels feminist and aware.
If you were sleeping with students while they were actually in your classes… yeah, you should have been run out on a rail. Given where you are now, it’s probably good you didn’t, but still.
lisa: If the only words out of a guy’s mouth are about how lucky Hugo got, I’d agree. But most guys, maybe the vast majority, would take greatest notice of that part. After all, what’s more attention-grabbing than the thing most outside your personal experience or reality?
As long as he follows, “Damn, you really did that?” with, “Anyway, to get to the point,” or similar, his mind’s no less likely to be in the right place.
Well meaning though I think this piece is, I think that you miss a significant point: rape and sexual assault are implicitly and intrinsically violent, coercive and invasive. Consent is a useful litmus test for a court of law, but not a useful concept for thinking about sexual violence.
What you did was grossly inappropriate. But, your students were not children, and can and ought to be assumed to be adults possessed of some agency. Having taught, I understand well the force of the student crush, particular if one hasn’t the maturity or the perspective to see it for what it is. If your students were anything like mine (and, in my experience women students pursue their male instructors much more aggressively than male students pursue their female instructors), these affairs were entered into freely. I also, unfortunately, am well acquainted with teacher crushes. Yes, it was awkward, and, yes, my grades sufferred because one of my instructors hadn’t the grace and maturity to separate his grading from his ego. It was, however, not exactly a destructive, violent experience which will require years of therapy.
As you said, we are very much an either/or society, and I understand how in your desire to condemn your own bad behaviour, you have conflated it with sexual violence. But, arguably, equating unethical behaviour with rape is liable to make the latter seem less serious rather than the former more abhorrent. But then, I think that the modern tendency to ratchet up the rhetoric tends to degrade our discourse overall.
Thanks, Hugo. I have an old friend who needs to be confronted about something similar and none of my other friends want to do it, so this post really hit home. It will be interesting to see him when he comes in at Christmas. I’m not looking forward to it.
I’d probably say something about Sam’s comment but it’s offtopic and Hugo can open up another topic if he wants to.
Hugo, in terms of that “rape spectrum” thing I think Latoya Peterson voiced a very similar concept on the Yes Means Yes blog. She termed it “not rape”. Things that are not rape in the legal sense of the word but are still super sketchy.
Also, have you examined your privileges regarding the reasons you weren’t fired? Not only your male privilege, but your other ones too (white/able-bodied/etc).
Jay, thanks for the reminder — I did read the Peterson piece and want to link to it when I write.
Yes, I’m very aware (it’s come up in my other posts about my past) that my whiteness and my class background (and the whole cis-gendered and abled thing) did indeed protect me from consequences.
@Buttscratcher–you can consent to surprise sex.
@Meh Neustein
Can you?
There was the recent court case in Ontario that hinged on “advance consent.” I’m not certain where the law stands on whether you can, in fact, consent to something in advance (particularly when the act it to take place when you’re unconscious).
R. v. J.A., 2010 ONCA 226
@corn: As best I can tell, that case revolves around whether or not the woman actually consented to what happened while she was unconscious. She testified that she did, but the judge apparently took her answer from original questioning- that it was the first time they had discussed it- and used that to conclude discussion of the act occurred, but not actual consent. In that case, there’s no reason to believe consent could not have been given ahead of time.
Of course, they were already engaged in sex when he choked her unconscious (consensually), so I don’t know how you might adjust that to deal with, for example, someone who’s sleeping. I suppose there’s no real way for something sexual done to a sleeping partner to be consensual. You just have to know each other’s boundaries well enough to be aware of what’s acceptable along those lines.
@Jezebel, “rape and sexual assault are implicitly and intrinsically violent, coercive and invasive.”
Err, are they? Implicitly and intrinsically violent? Because I see a much more complex and variable set of events and scenarios being encompassed by what we term “rape”, at least when we define it as “intercourse without consent” and then go and acknowledge that “consent” is itself a complicated concept.
This is a really thorny issue, and I, like Clarisse I think, have struggled with appropriate ways to articulate it that still sound aware and avoid the “blame the victim” trope.
@corn, I.. do not think that trial is a good example of “surprise sex.” I mean… I am not an expert at reading trial transcripts, but the best that I could figure, Spiffy’s interpretation sounds about right. And this is one of the difficulties that the courts (that case is canadian, but the US courts struggle with this too) have in trying to determine what sorts of things you can actually consent to, especially when you tread into BDSM and edge play. Dangerous waters, legally speaking.
“Surprise sex” could mean many things. If it’s your lover waking you in the night so that you start making love while half asleep, that can be incredible: or incredibly annoying, even violating.
As to your main point, a huge yes. The sad thing is that I think women don’t have a lot of credence with men when they do confront them about these things. Other men usually do, which is what makes what Hugo is advocating here all the more crucial.
And I thought I’d heard most of the rumors about Hugo, but the Washington orgy is a new one. (The one you’re legendary for has to do with AGS and getting kicked out of the Asilomar conference center!)
Hugo?
That was one of the ugliest reality checks I’ve had all year. After all the bullshit people accuse me of for being poor and single…And you got away with THAT?!? Because of your family connections!!
At least you got your shit together…
But just knowing things like that happen all the time…I could get so fucking Thelma&Louise on that. Don’t ever introduce me to any of your colleagues. Please.
I’m not convinced that Hugo’s class background played a role in his superiors turning a blind eye. Maybe his whiteness did, a bit. And obviously I don’t know the situation beyond what he has been said, but it’s a well-known fact that teachers and professors essentially have license to do whatever they want.
That’s not really meant as a positive statement, because tenure is so immutable that it can even protect teachers from borderline criminal activities (not that this was criminal… creepy and sketchy, perhaps, but certainly not criminal). Of course I do see the usefulness of tenure for the many hardworking and earnest professors- it’s an ambiguous issue.
Perhaps it would be better if only certain “connected” teachers were granted such protection… but that’s not the case.
THe original trial court judge based her ruling on the testimony that was never entered into evidence, which the appellant court found problem with. The appellant court agreed that the way the guilty verdict was entered was flawed, but then took up the matter of whether the guilty verdict was nonetheless appropriate given the facts or should be vacated.
All of the reporting of this trial I have read get the facts wrong; unfortunately you really do have to read the trial decision (including the dissent) to understand the context of the verdict. And what that verdict hinged on is whether advance consent is durable during unconsciousness.
The appellant court found that she had consented in advance to both the asphyxiation and the anal penetration with the dildo while she was unconscious. The court also concluded that while she hadn’t specifically consented to being tied up, that was an activity that happened on prior occasions with her consent. They also found that after she came to, se did not withdraw her consent to being tied up, anally penetrated with the dildo, and proceeded to have intercourse.
With those facts in play, the questions the appellant court attempted to resolve were (1) did the choking to unconsciousness constitute aggravated assault and (2) is consent durable after losing consciousness.
This court found that consent is durable, but others have found the opposite.
One of the questions about consent that this case raises is the ability not only to consent, but also to revoke consent. Is advance consent meaningful if you have no ability to later revoke that consent? The legal issue surrounding this has to do with the commentary found in the decision, specifically that with advance consent (which the law doesn’t specifically recognize) there is no de facto protections from one party later claiming sexual assault.
So if you normally don’t mind your boyfriend waking you with surprise intercourse, and one day you’ve had a fight and are pissed at him and he wakes you with surprise intercourse you might rightly feel like he’s assaulting you. And that boyfriend has no “legal” basis to say you’ve consented in advance because there’s no “legal” precept of advance consent.
Dan Savage has advocated for the idea that cohabiting partners are in a state of “implied consent” by which I understand him to mean that each partner can be considered to be consenting to initiation by touching. That doesn’t mean either partner is obliged to put out, only that verbal consent need not be obtained each and every time. Each partner still has the ability to reject the initiation, and the other partner is obliged to heed that rejection (adhering to No means No).
Advanced consent, implied consent, enthusiastic consent… it doesn’t seem so black and white to me at all.
Tak, if you read closely, all of this happened while I was untenured. I was legally granted tenure on August 15, 1998, after I had stopped sleeping with my students and gotten sober. All of my inappropriate behavior pre-dated the grant of tenure.
To the extent that I tended to attract a “boys will be boys” response from many seasoned administrators, that was privilege of many different sorts.
And Geni, I’ll confirm my role in getting AGS kicked out of Asilomar, something about which I do feel twinges of guilt still!
Look for my post on the consent spectrum soon!
It is still quite black and white because while there are many different ways in which a person can demonstrate consent, ultimately the issue is whether a person did or did not consent. The “spectrum” seems to deal with the issue of whether a person is capable of giving consent, which is a murky issue because one can easily deny the consenting parties’ agency or exaggerate someone’s agency by suggesting that the person inherently gives consent due to some miscellaneous factor.
@Ari rape is about domination, not lust; a realisation that generally helps people to get away from the propensity to blame the victim.
Consent is a tricky, slippery, legal concept. When thinking about rape legally, in a court of law, then considering consent is probably unavoidable but, as you noted, problematic. In a daily and/or ethical context involving adults, however, think about willingness.
If it helps to put this in perspective, the inquisition burnt conversos because it cared about consent; the early medieval church let reluctant, insincere and wavering converts walk away (even encouraged them to do so in some cases) because it cared about willingness.
“One of the questions about consent that this case raises is the ability not only to consent, but also to revoke consent. Is advance consent meaningful if you have no ability to later revoke that consent? The legal issue surrounding this has to do with the commentary found in the decision, specifically that with advance consent (which the law doesn’t specifically recognize) there is no de facto protections from one party later claiming sexual assault.”
This may be the case legally, but it’s insane. If you consent to an act that you know will render you unable to later revoke consent to other acts- which you have also consented to- you have by any logical standard given full consent. As long as your partner doesn’t do anything outside what you’ve said you’re ok with, the idea that you can still turn around and have him (or her) not just arrested, but convicted of sexual assault, is breathtaking.
I laughed when I read your confession about the DC trip. Just when I think that no one could possibly understand or relate to my wilder days, you surprise me. Very few people talk about those sort of experiences, but you did. Thank you for that.
But it also make me sad. Because even though you have had similar experiences to mine, I cannot use you as a role model for contextualizing my own experiences.
As I have watched the videos for “it will get better†I have come to appreciate the value of sexual role models. Dan Savage has said that part of what he had wanted to do was show gay kids in rural areas examples of gay adults who have survived the bad years. He says that when he was a teenager in Chicago, he was lucky to be able to see a gay couple walking hand in hand down the street. It was enough to let him know that he needn’t be ashamed of who he was. And as I watch those videos, I really get how important role models are when contextualizing one’s sexual life or experiences.
But here is the thing about non-bdsm wild hetero-sex. When people talk about having engaged in wild sex, it is almost always as you did, in the context of confessing some sort of inappropriate or destructive behavior. If a person is gay, they have role models for contextualizing their sex life as healthy; if a person is into bdsm, there is now support for them categorizing that as healthy and as a respectable choice for sexuality. When people relate their experiences of those kinds of sexual behavior, it doesn’t come with the disclaimer of “but I was acting out back then.â€
But it seems to me that wild sex is almost always equated with “acting out.” This makes it, almost by definition, something to be ashamed of. There is no support for contextualizing it as something appropriate to that time in our lives, let alone a joyful, enriching experience. If I were to tell my feminist friends that I was a lesbian, they would be happy for me. If I told them I was into bdsm, most would not bat an eyelash. If I said that my husband and I went to a key party last weekend…well, I don’t even need to tell you how well that would go over.
I seriously doubt that I will ever engage in wild sex again. (Wow, writing that made me cry.) But even if I never do it again, being a person who has done it will always be a part of my identity. Why? Because, it is not accepted by our society. Therefore, for as long as I live, someone can dig up my history and try to use it to shame me. And even if that never happens, I will always know that I am not like other women; I am a woman who has walked on the wild side. Even though I did so without drugs and with my equals who all gave enthusiastic consent, there is no way of embracing that when everyone else who admits to similar behavior always contextualizing it as “acting out.”
FWC,
Remember that in this context, I wasn’t just talking about having lots of fun sex – I was talking about having group sex with my students at an event where I was supposed to serve as an advisor. The acting out to which I refer didn’t lie in the sex — it lay in the refusal to take seriously my responsibilities as a professor who ought to have been a safe non-sexual mentor rather than a boisterous party boy. That characterized all of my sexual relationships with students during the mid-1990s.
I can say I’ve had sex, including multiple-partner sex, that I would describe as joyous and life-affirming. Not all the sex I had outside of a committed monogamous relationship was “acting out.” Again, as in today’s post, it’s a spectrum not a dichotomy. I don’t go into a lot of details because the salaciousness tends to diminish rather than enhance the impact I’m trying to have. I’m not a Dan Savage figure who wants to be known as primarily a sex educator; that’s one hat I wear. And because I need to be able to move into different arenas, and because of my family and friends (especially my daughter) I am very careful with what I disclose publicly about my past. And in that abundance of caution, I tend to overemphasize the unhealthy aspects of my pre-sobriety sexual life. It was more complex and rich than that.
Hugo, I think your Heloise will probably be freaked out by what you’ve already shared here, at least at some point in her teenage years. But she’ll get over it. Girls idolize their Dads, then are disgusted by their Dads, then love them all over again as they progress through adolescence. (Have you ever read Second Sex? Dumb question, I’m positive you have, but there’s a great section on fatehrs and daughters there.)
As one of your current students, albeit an “older” one, I appreciate that you’ve changed, and I’m only a little bit sorry that I didn’t know you back in your “wild oats” faze, when you were no doubt a very hot mess. I also appreciate the obvious devotion you have to your family, it shows in your face when you mention them as well as in your words. That’s impressive and inspiring. Few men who lived that kind of promiscuous life style give it up, and those who do are mostly prudish fundamentalists or filled with resentment and longing to go back to their old ways of life. You’re neither, as far as any of us can know, and that’s really appreciated.
FWC,
I wasn’t knocking Hugo’s sex act, or yours if it’s similar. We’ve all had–um, interesting experiences, haven’t we? This is where I have to keep quiet too. I know people try to drag out histories like that and use them against people. It’s who he did that stuff with and how that bothers me. He crossed lines that weren’t just sexual.
I have a problem with public figures using public money to exploit girls who are barely legal, and then hearing about how their higher-ups wink-winked and nudge-nudged about the whole thing. I’m amazed Hugo could still teach in that condition. If I ever caught a prof doing something like that with my daughter AFTER I PAID HIM TO TEACH HER I’d run his frikkin nuts up a flagpole!
Sorry Anna, I have to politely disagree with you here. Hugo, you’re wise to be cautious about what Heloise might find out about you. Don’t tell her about that type of corruption until she’s much older, if at all. There are some things we just shouldn’t tell our kids before they learn what REAL hatred is. Our families are our identities, our tie to our broader community, to continuity and history, to our own feelings about how we belong or don’t belong in the world. If she finds that behaviour shameful, and she will if she doesn’t experience something much more shameful to compare it to, it will damage her ability to relate to you and to other authority figures.
What I’m saying is it’s not enough to be proud of our kids. We have to be the people that they’ll be proud to emulate. We have to do what we can to make them proud of us too. Drunken orgies with public money are bad bad bad in the eyes of a young girl who looks up to you. If she ever has an experience with gut-wrenching betrayal, forgiveness and the lengthy healing process that comes afterward, she may become resilient enough to forgive you and still continue to hold you in high regard. But that depends on a lot of things I can’t even guess at. Nor can you right now. Wait until she’s an adult, or don’t tell her at all.
Now with that said, (to your face and not on some Hugo-hater gossip blog I might add) I agree with Anna’s last statement. You’ve weathered it well. I HAVE experienced enough real hatred to know that it’s not warranted here. I still like your blog, Hugo.
Xena, true story: one mother of one young woman I was involved with did complain, and sadly, she was told that since her daughter was a legal –and consenting — adult, nothing could be done. She tried to get her daughter to file a sexual harassment case, but the daughter insisted this is what she had wanted, and they had an epic family battle over agency of the sort we have on this blog all the time. I made amends to the mother later and she received them civilly, asking me to have nothing to do with her family ever again. The daughter and I stayed in touch for years.
Another mother responded in a way you’d find odd: http://hugoschwyzer.net/2010/03/22/i-dont-want-your-amends-of-consensual-relationships-happy-memories-collective-harm-and-montblanc-pens/
I do respect my daughter’s future sensitivities. I’ve worked with teens almost since I was one, after all, and know how parental TMI can sting. But there’s no escaping that Heloise has a Dad whose public and private personas overlap — I first started writing about my past when a PCC Courier story in early 2005 about my work on developing a consensual relations policy “outed” me as a prof who had once slept with his students. I could let rumors fester, or get in front of the story, and I chose the latter.
My whole life story is bound up in a classic redemption narrative. I was a drug addict and an alcoholic who nearly died of my addictions. Everything I am today is a gift, as I did indeed very nearly die at least twice, only to be saved by medical and law enforcement intervention. In my mind, I was saved for a purpose — to do with this new chance as much as I could. This is a common enough story, but it’s a powerful one regardless, and it’s such an indispensable part of my life, my NOW makes no sense without some understanding of my THEN. Heloise will learn about that THEN in small stages (it can hardly be kept from her forever that Mama is Papa’s fourth wife.) She’ll never know the most sordid details — gosh almighty, there’s so much about my past, particularly my sexual past, that I don’t share on this blog, take my word — but to know and the man who lived long enough to help raise her and love her with all his heart, she’ll have to know a healthy chunk of his story.
I’ve read the story about Marie. I think it was the first post of yours that I read, actually. That one didn’t bother me so much. It’s unethical and not something I would do. But if my daughter wanted something like that I’d grit my teeth and deal with it.
I was talking about the trip, paid for by parents(?) gvt. money(?)and the substance abuse. Maybe the orgy would have happened with or without the substances, but it’s a little out of the ordinary for college age girls to willingly go looking for an orgy when they’re NOT half-lit. Especially with a prof. Girls that age don’t like to share.
Something about where that would fit on your consent spectrum just rubs me the wrong way. Are you still in touch with any of those girls?
These were women who were essentially my same age, Xena — remember, community colleges have an average student age of 26! I was 29 at the time. And the group sex experience and the drugs/alcohol were not simultaneous, and I’m not gonna get more specific than that. That’s why I didn’t move it further along the spectrum.
I’ve made amends to three of the four (the fourth I was unable to track down). I’ve spoken to only one of them in the last few years.
As I’ve said many, many times, the man I was before June 27, 1998 is a very different man than I am today. I was a scholar and in some ways a decent guy, but with a dark and needy and addictive side that ran my life. I did things I deeply regret — though I want to be absolutely clear that there were lines, particularly around what I’ve called the “right third” of the spectrum, that I believe I did not cross. No one has ever suggested that I did. But do I know for sure? How can I, when so much of that period of my life is a blur.
In any event, you’re welcome to contact me by email if you’d like to discuss it further, but additional discussion here will be way too distracting from the points I’m tryin’ to make.
Ok, Hugo. I was trying to keep that in line with the post, but if it’s too far off-topic I’ll drop it.
Email me if I’ve made you feel like I’m not grasping something and you want to clarify or justify anything.
After all, what’s more attention-grabbing than the thing most outside your personal experience or reality?
Yes, that’s why the part that grabbed my attention was the cultural discussion: Actually, if there is a litmus test that distinguishes a boy from a man, that might be it: the courage to stand up to other men and to endure the homophobic insults that will surely come when he challenges the attitudes and actions of his “bros.â€
That is totally outside my experiences with my “bros”. One of us, at 20 years old, slept with a 16 year old girl who lied about her age, claiming to be 18. She looked older, but still we teased him about that for years. If one of us had bragged about date rape we would never have talked to him again, at least, if we didn’t beat the crap out of him first.
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I think there’s a big difference between being against date rape and being against the standard sexist/homophobic remarks that are common in everyday speech. They’re usually not intended in a malicious manner, of course, but nonetheless they have a negative effect.
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