As we come to the end of the first quarter of 2011, I note it’s been a personally challenging start to the year. I’ve had a series of health difficulties, mostly revolving around a respiratory infection that has lingered for the better part of two months. Last week, I popped out a rib while coughing; it popped right back but the pain was excruciating. Middle age is certainly upon me.
It’s also been a terrific three months in terms of reaching new audiences. In late January, I was hired as a featured columnist at the Good Men Project, and my pieces there are regularly syndicated at Alternet, the Huffington Post, and The Frisky. We’re putting the finishing touches on Beauty, Disrupted: The Carré Otis Story, a memoir on which I was privileged to serve as collaborator. I’ve been doing some more speaking. And next month, this website will undergo a dramatic transformation to reflect those changes.
And with the good fortune of becoming ever more public, the criticism grows harsher. The hate mail has increased exponentially in the past three months. I won’t link to them, but google my name with the search term “mangina” and you’ll find plenty of men’s rights advocates (MRAs) working themselves into venomous fits. Most of what’s out there is laughable, a little of it is disturbing, and all of it is is par for the course.
Last week, however, one well-known MRA posted a Youtube video about me. It’s a typical rant of the sort I’ve heard countless times before: veiled accusations of sexual impropriety, cheap psychoanalysis, and misogyny. What was different was that this MRA put up a sort of slide show during his ten-minute talk, mostly using photos of me and my friends that I’ve put up on Facebook. In two instances, he included pictures of me with young feminists, including a group shot taken and reposted widely as part of Feminist Coming Out Day. (Strangely, he didn’t include the pictures of me dressed as a White Swan, which I would have thought would have been a source of great delight to that crowd.)
Two of the students who were in those pictures contacted me (it was one of the ways I first found out about the MRA video). They were horrified and creeped out by what was said in the rant, as well as by seeing themselves on the screen in this way. “Why are people so hateful”? one asked.
I reminded my students that activism comes with a price. Sometimes, college campuses can seem like sanctuaries; we need to remember that in the outside world, progressive ideas are still regarded with contempt and suspicion. There is a small but vocal group of men who regard feminism as the single most destructive ideological force in the modern world. Frequently hiding behind pseudonyms, these guys will say truly hateful , hurtful things. The goal is to shame, the goal is to silence, the goal is to use a heckler’s veto to derail thoughtful discussion. And sadly, I know that it sometimes works. Some young activists will reconsider a life of public advocacy when they see what can happen. And while it’s easy to tell people to grow a thicker skin, it’s heartbreaking that some folks will and do decide it’s simply too high a price to pay.
I’m lucky. The MRAs can’t threaten my job. (My division dean tells me the college gets regular calls and letters complaining about me, but they’re always anonymous and never from my own students, so they get ignored.) Most people who do this work don’t have tenure, don’t have the security I have as well as the steadfast support of an entire community. When an indignant anti-feminist reads about my curriculum, he can say “I’m going to complain to your college”, and I’ll happily help him by providing him with the address. That’s a privilege others don’t enjoy. Threats to someone’s livelihood can be very, very real.
The MRAs do work tirelessly to threaten my reputation. I’ve made it clear time and again that I’ve been sober for nearly 13 years and that I haven’t slept with one of my students since that time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: accuse me of something that happened before June 27, 1998, and it’s probably true. (I’ve forgotten a great deal, and remember other details all too well. One thing I will say is that my relationships with students, as unethical as they were, were with chronological peers, slightly younger or older. I wasn’t exactly a middle-aged lech chasing teens.) But while I am not perfect, I can proudly answer for my sexual boundaries since that date. Still, folks insinuate that I’m a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” yet (a common charge thrown at male feminists). And while that tired old charge doesn’t bother me, it does impact people around me.
One of my female mentees sent me a FB message yesterday. She asked if she should stop visiting my office hours so regularly. She’d seen the hate video, and though she wasn’t in it, had picked up on the cheesy intimation of sexual impropriety. She wrote:
You know I think you’re safe. I KNOW you’re safe. But I’m worried about your reputation and mine if I visit you so often. People see me coming into your office, or they see us walking to the Pass (where they sell sodas on campus). I worry that they’re talking about us and will think something is going on that isn’t. I still want to see you but I don’t want to damage your reputation. I also hate it that people might think something is going on that isn’t. I don’t want to be judged! What should I do?
I told her that of course she could continue to come. I also told her that if she’d rather talk more on email, that was fine too — she needed to assess her own comfort level. But it left me sad and angry, angry not at her but at the success this particular nasty tactic had had in rattling a young person.
If no one hates you, you’re not doing your job. I first heard that truism from the late Senator Alan Cranston, of all people, though the sentiment is millenia old. I’ve always been proud to have the friends I have — and proud to have the enemies I do as well. We judge people by the company they keep, and by those who won’t keep their company. By that calculus, I’m blessed.
This sort of persecution for people who dare to express their ideas is horrible. All I can say is stay strong and remember that there are always a lot more intelligent, reasonable, kind people than there are nasty, threatening freaks. What you are doing is very important and this persecution testifies to the fact of how important your feminist work is.
I wish more people had the courage of being as open about their past personal failings as you have been.
The constant baseless accusations that you sleep with your students really piss me off, especially when they come out of the mouths of people who are otherwise whinging about “feminist ad hominems” and the like.
This sort of accusation does no one any good. Even if it were true (and I accept your word that they’re not), what good could possibly come from denouncing such a thing on YouTube? And these are the same guys who are generally saying that women should be allowed the sexual liberty to date whom they choose… right? So given that, why “out” two adults in a mutual relationship? If the student doesn’t think it’s a problem, why the hell should these guys? And if the student DOES think it’s a problem and it’s abuse of power, how is making some sort of arrant accusation on the internet going to help her?
Put simply, these accusations are rank bullshit.
Thaddeus, part of the problem is that Hugo does have a history of this kind of scenario as well as writing about older men and younger women in relationships. It makes an easy target of him, the old adage that people never change.
What’s interesting, 2ndnin, is that no one pays attention to what I’m saying about my past versus these older/younger relationships I write about. I slept with students when I was in my late twenties and very early thirties (I got sober at 31). Community colleges are non-traditional age wise (PCC average age is 26); most of the students I slept with (almost all) were about four to five years younger than I was. A 29 year-old professor sleeping with a 25 year-old student is utterly unethical. (As I wrote once, one of my most intense affairs was with a student three years my senior.) But it isn’t akin to what I’m talking about here. And yes, it would be worse if I had been a 43 year-old (my age now) sleeping with an 18 year-old. Equally unethical but infinitely more exploitative.
Just clarifying. The idea that I’m doing this to atone for my guilt for something I did is off the mark.
Here is what I can say in all of this: when the chips are down, when people really need someone to listen or they are in pain, they come to people like you. There is something about having a “history;” it makes us human, approachable, and ultimately a resource of compassion and hope.
i don’t recall how i discovered you on twitter, but i’m glad that i did. i became a feminist at PCC in 1986-ish. so long ago i can’t recall. there was a psychology teacher who wanted to sleep with me and if i didn’t have a therapist it would have continued a long line of distructive relationships. this prof knew i was vulnerable…he could see it. and was pretty unhappy when i told him that since only 15 weeks were left in the semester we could wait. (thanks to my therapist for that one) unfortunately i had to endure 15 weeks of passive aggressive abuse in class. fortunately, i’m better with that as a jewish girl from new jersey. being confronted by passive aggression is like steak to a dog.
i read all of your stuff and would welcome conversations. i have a theology degree in spite of being jewish, finally got a feminist psych degree, whole systems MA and miss great coversations about how life has changed now that i’m in my 50′s. there are truly stages in my feminist life.
thanks for your work.
In future, when you feel a cough coming on, make sure you are not twisted around, that your back is straight. I cracked a few ribs before I figured that one out (or found out that the pain was in fact from cracked ribs and not just “something torn loose”.) But I hope you are all better real soon.
As one who will never again fully be at home with the person who molested me 41 years back, I understand–sort of–those who might think less of you now because of what you might have done back when; yet your offenses seem smaller than what happened to me, and anyway if I ever had to attack someone seriously I would not hide behind my ‘nym. I have in other cases been the target of rumors by cowards and when I made clear that I didn’t give a rat’s rear and would go on with my life, they faded like snow under a hot wind. I can only repeat what Clarissa said, to stay strong and not give up.
People can change, at least if they are not pedophiles; they haven’t found a cure for that yet. (I don’t know if I was the only victim of that creature or not.) I think your students are in good hands now, and any that you once harmed are safe somewhere else.
I myself was never approached sexually by a teacher or counselor; they messed with my head in other ways, not all intentional.
I WOULD say that the fact that you’ve done these sort of stupid things before, Hugo, should make you a hell of a lot less prone towards making some of the rather absolutist and moralist statements that you make.
Cleaning up your own act and finding Jesus doesn’t mean that you’ve become a moral authority on matters sexual and a lot of your claims seem to be rooted in morality because they are certainly not rooted in science.
Take the idea that a relationship between a 43 year old and an 18 year old “would be infinitely worse”, for instance. Having been an 18 year old in just such a relationship (and my wife having been another), I’d have to say that depends an awful lot on the two people involved. I CERTAINLY wouldn’t want to pass blanket judgement on something like that without knowing a hell of a lot more. But I get the feeling that not only are you happy to judge such a thing, you’re even willing to judge someone like me who is not.
Frankly, I think you’d be better as a pastor than as a social scientist. But then again, social science’s ranks have always been filled with people who’d probably have been better off as religious or political leaders, so I guess it’s par for the course.
If Mr. Creepy keeps up his act, you might consider contacting campus security or possibly talking to an attorney about some sort of harassment, IIED, or defamation claim. That being said, it’s good that you have a chipper attitude about it, though I’m sorry if some of your students are, understandably, creeped out.
I have to ask though, regarding the claim that “[t]he idea that I’m doing this to atone for my guilt for something I did is off the mark”, you’ve said before that some of the work you did in terms of crafting PCC’s harassment policy was part of Step Nine for you (in essence, please correct me if I’ve substantively misquoted you). You certainly invoke your own personal history often enough, and it’s significant enough in terms of what it contains that you’ve shared, that it’s a fair question to ask what role it plays in your current work and worldview. That isn’t to go all the way to hurtful and baseless insinuations of present improprieties without proof, but those are besides the point (most of the people who follow your work probably aren’t within 20 miles of PCC anyway). It does, however, raise the question as to what extent you might see your past reflected in other men’s behavior, rightly or wrongly, and whether your perspectives are excessively colored or blinkered by your own experience.
That is the beauty of the attack Hugo. People will read the headlines and make their assumptions from those, and then your posts become moral/ethical sugar dusting over your past rather than useful information.
Your past shouldn’t be relevant but as with most things in life it can be used to discredit you. Thankfully you have the support of the staff and your superiors so you don’t need to really worry what a few odd types think / write.
Thaddeus, please. You’re playing the same game that the MRAs play with every male feminist. We’re doing one of three things, according to the basement brigade”
1. We’re gay (and in their eyes, not “real men”)
2. We’re sexual predators, wolves in sheep’s clothing, disguised PUAs
3. We’re atoning for a sense of shame at being male.
I’ve heard that stuff for 25 years, dude. It’s very old. You’re confusing my academically transgressive relationships with chronological peers with my discomfort with age disparate relationships. You accuse me of ignoring evidence, then you freely psychoanalyse someone you’ve never met. (Goodness, lad, how many comments have you put up at GMP today?)
Yes, Tom, writing the consensual relationships policy was part of a Ninth Step amends. But don’t confuse that with this issue. (As I wrote a long time ago, I’m “peer-sexual”, meaning that in my personal and hardly universal experience, I’ve generally been turned on by women my own age.) See this post: Does the Libido Mature?
Huh?
Hugo, I don’t think that that you’re gay, a predator, or atoning and I’ve made that very clear.
I DO think that someone who has been brought up a communist, became a Troskyist and then, later on in life, found Jesus has a pretty clear cut view of the world as a struggle. Furthermore, given your background, I don’t think it at all unusual that you see said struggle in binary, dichotic terms – good guys and bad guys, to not make to fine a point of it.
I think that a lot of what I read of your stuff comes from this sort of unexamined moral space and, given that you seem to be highly motivated by your moral beliefs – to the point of using them as sociological model for your scientific work – I think you’d be better off as a pastor or a policitian rather than a social scientist.
That is a COMPLETELY different critique from gay-baiting you or claiming that you’re atoning for abusing de leeetle geerls. Frankly, I think you probably feel that you’ve ATONED. And, like most people coming from fundamentalist mental space, this makes you feel that you can clearly divide the world into good and evil factions because you were once tempted by evil.
As for psycho-analyzing you… Friend, that’s an interesting accusation coming from a guy who makes his living by writing about what supposedly motivates men he’s never even met. But let’s be clear about one thing here: I’m not analyzing your psyche, I’m analyzing your philosophical position, based upon what you write on several internet forums. I never see you take any ambiguous positions, Hugo. In everything you write, there are always clear-cut oppressors and clear-cut oppressed and never do the two positions switch sides. And
Regarding your supposed “academically transgressive relationships”, which you seem to feel I’m making a big deal about, what part of “Put simply, these accusations are rank bullshit” are you having a hard time understanding?
I DO find it interesting that you seem to feel the need to publically talk about what was apparently a mutual relationship with a student who was several years your senior, as if this was some huge transgression but then, simultaneously almost, talk about why it’s not such a big deal after all. It’s almost as if you have publically castigate yourself for being a sinner (but not TOO big a sin, mind you – one that you can be forgiven for) as a prerequisite for having the moral highground for your preachings about masculinity. As I understand it, this form of American rhetoric is one of the most classic out there. As anthropologist Adam Kuper remarks, it’s at the base of the American myth of authority for every social movement ranging from born-again Christianity to the GLTB crowd.
I don’t think you’re much of a feminist, Hugo, but I DO think you’re a king-hell neo-puritan.
I mean “puritan” in the historical-philosphical sense, not in the popular “ew, sex is evil” sense.
Finally, regarding my comments on the GMP, yeah, I make a lot of them. Given that you’re a pretty prolific blogger and comentator yourself, it strikes me as odd that you would be shocked by this.
Thaddeus, I apologize for the remark about how often you comment. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I shouldn’t have insinuated that there was. As a columnist at GMP, I welcome your comments, your repeated visits, and your continued contribution.
That said, your vision of my motives and my weltanschauung doesn’t match up with how I see them, and the gulf seems sufficiently vast and the time so limited that I think I’m going to let you have the last word on my neo-Puritanism or what have you.
I was just in Brazil (Rio and Sao Paolo) last month. Had I known you then, I would have suggested a cold something (Antarctica Guarana for me) in Ipanema or Barra…
So where is this Youtube video? I could not find it – I’m not sure who a “famous MRA” might be.
I’m not going to send him the link love, but if you must, tweesdad, google search on youtube for “Bernard Chapin” and look for his video “Mangina Masochist.” (I’d been calling him Bertrand Chapin for a while, my bad.(
And an update: the lads have found the Black Swan/White Swan photos: http://whatmenthinkofwomen.blogspot.com/2011/04/hugo-schwyzer-whose-pretty-princess.html
And people wonder why I won’t debate them.
[Facepalms at the swan fotos on the MRA blog]
Yeah, that was inevitable, I suppose. Slow on the uptake, however.
Just one question though: it seems to me that you feel vaguely insulted by these fools when the call you a fag or a mangina. Why not just say “Is that supposed to be some sort of veiled come-on? sorry, honey, but I’m happily married”?
I mean, they supposedly LIKE vaginas, right? So isn’t it interesting that they think it’s insulting to call someone one?
Let’s see if he has the guts to print my comment.
Next time you come down, be sure to look me up. I’ll be in the SF Bay area in May 2012 at the LASA conference, where we’ll be hosting a series of events and tables regarding sexual diversity, repression and the State in Brazil. You should come on up!
For today only (April 1st), you can press the “1911″ butto on the YouTube screen and hear Mr. Chapin the way he should be heard…
Love his Canuck accent by the way. I keep on expecting a map of the Great White North topop up behind him.
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