Monthly Archives: October 2011

Katie v. Barbie; Men and Pre-Orgasmic Women; Self-Mutilation; Shooting Tape; the Maleness of God

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It’s been a busy week, with midterms to grade, the release of Beauty, Disrupted on Tuesday and a trip to Atlanta to speak at the Men Stopping Violence gala this weekend.

Three posts worth noting: I wrote a piece at Healthy is the New Skinny about my partner and co-director of the Perfectly Unperfected Project, Katie Halchishick. Katie became the first model to appear nude in O (Oprah) Magazine with the release of their November 2011 issue; the work-safe headlining photo (which has been reblogged tens of thousands of times on Tumblr)is rapidly heading for iconic status. (It got picked up today by Italian Vogue online.) I’m excited for my colleague and about all the amazing projects we’ve got in the hopper for HNS.

As I settle in as a weekly contributor at Jezebel, my post yesterday focused on men’s response to female partners who have difficult orgasming. Excerpt:

Part of the problem, however, is that we often overestimate the degree to which men seek to give pleasure only to validate their own egos. When I was leading a workshop for college guys a few years ago, one said, “I don’t just want my girlfriend to orgasm to prove that I’m a great fuck. I want her to come because I want her to feel good.” He complained that women were too quick to assume that his focus on their orgasms was all about his own longing for affirmation. Several other guys nodded in fierce agreement.

But it’s also usually the case that men — like women — want to give pleasure for pleasure’s sake while also getting reassurance that they’re good in bed. It’s not an either/or, but rather a both/and. As I told the guys in that workshop, it’s great that you care so much about making women feel good. But whatever your reason for working to make your partner come, the chances are you’re going to be disappointed if it doesn’t happen. When you make your disappointment palpable, you make it a woman’s problem to solve. And at that point, it doesn’t really matter what your motives were for wanting her to orgasm. You’re setting her up to take care of you either way.

I wrote a piece ages ago (it’s moderately sexually explicit) for BodyTalk, a college zine based in the midwest; the piece called Shooting Tape runs here in Issuu format.

And I had a pair of pieces at Good Men Project this week; one about pain and one about needing, on occasion, to use male pronouns for God. Excerpt from the latter:

What I found frustrating was that the feminist theologians arguing for the primarily feminine aspect of God and the conservative Catholics wrapped in Marian devotion were essentially saying the same thing: maleness can’t be nurturing. My friend, the liberal Episcopalian, believed God was tender—and therefore female. My traditionalist Catholic buddies believed that a thoroughly masculine God had largely outsourced His compassion to Mary. Both ignored the obvious other possibility.

Of course, many people have excellent reasons to be put off by masculine language and imagery for God. For men and women who’ve had strained or abusive relationships with their own fathers, calling God, “Father,”doesn’t happen easily. For many straight Christian men, the romantic vocabulary of evangelical culture can also be off-putting. (One of the standard critiques of contemporary praise music is the ubiquitous “Jesus is my Boyfriend” theme in so many worship songs.) For people who have been wounded by father figures, or who struggle to imagine intimacy with a man, using exclusively male language for God can be a real barrier to spiritual connection.

But at the same time, we need to acknowledge the radical and simple truth that men can be as tender as women. A father can nurture his children with every bit as much love and devotion as their mother. A fully adult man doesn’t need women to intercede to remind him of his responsibility to be compassionate. But when our only vocabulary for gentleness is feminine, we don’t acknowledge men’s capacity to be gentle. And when we label every loving action of God as evidence of God’s femaleness, we miss the point that God’s male aspect is every bit as kind.

From self-mutilation to marathons to playing with my daughter: a note on pain

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Good Men Project runs a series this week on men and pain. Lots of great pieces. Here’s my contribution: No Gain in the Pain: Self-Injury, Endurance Sports, and Male Narcissism.

Excerpt:

The worst pain I’ve known in my life has been self-inflicted. That makes me a lucky man indeed. I’ve watched loved ones die of cancer, and seen the horror of pain that isn’t chosen. I’ve watched my wife give birth, and seen how pain can be inextricably bound up with the gift of new life. I’ve learned that there’s nothing redemptive about choosing to suffer needlessly. My pain—whether inflicted with a razor blade or with a 50-miler through the mountains—never alleviated another person’s hurt or contributed to the well being of the world.

I’m grateful to have the scars I do. More than once, when mentoring a self-mutilating teen, I’ve established rapport simply by rolling up my sleeve. I’m grateful too to have logged the miles I did, as it helps establish credibility when I’m challenging another middle-aged marathon junkie whose running is jeopardizing his marriage. Pain, in the end, did give me “gain”—if only because it equipped me to talk openly and honestly with others trapped in the self-absorbed world of the self-injurer or compulsive exerciser.

There is enough pain in life we don’t choose. And I’m done adding my own self-indulgent hurt to the world’s suffering quotient.

“Beauty, Disrupted: A Memoir” in stores tomorrow

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Beauty, Disrupted: A Memoir hits the shelves tomorrow, October 11. The autobiography of supermodel Carré Otis, it tells the story of her meteoric rise in the 1980s, her explosive relationship with Mickey Rourke, and her struggles to overcome a life-threatening eating disorder and a heroin addiction. I co-authored the HarperCollins release.

Beauty, Disrupted also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the dark side of the modeling industry, where the sexual and emotional abuse of minors was (and still in some cases is) rampant. Carré names names, not out of vindictiveness but out of a commitment to the healing power of truth. Most models who have written their memoirs have taken care to protect key industry figures, even those who were — and are — notoriously abusive. This book goes where that book doesn’t.

And of course, it’s also a memoir of transformation. Carré recovered from her multiple, intersecting addictions. After years of hard spiritual and emotional work, she’s reached a place of remarkable peace; she and her second husband have two wonderful daughters and a stable life in Colorado. How she got to the place where she could get out of herself and give back to the world, how she healed from sexual trauma and violence, and how she became the happy and loving activist she is — that’s also the story of this book.

It’s a fascinating thing to be a collaborator on a memoir. For the year we were writing this book, my task was to be a partner but not a director, making sure that her story and her voice came through. As I learned as a professor assigning autobiographies, it’s easy to tell another person’s tale — but much more challenging, and much more important, to help them tell their own. A collaborator has to know what questions to ask, and how to form the answers into a readable narrative. My own insights were useful in helping form the right queries — but not in constructing the replies. As someone used to my own voice, the challenge was to make myself disappear, letting the power of my partner’s memories form the story. I needed to know when to “step up” as a collaborator — and when to “step back” and let the memoir take shape organically. It was an exciting process.

I’m proud of this book, and look forward to a variety of such collaborations in the future. For anyone interested in celebrity, in an unprecedented degree of insight into the modeling or fashion industries, in the anatomy of a toxic yet strangely tender marriage, or in a classic narrative of recovery and transformation, Beauty, Disrupted won’t disappoint.

Carré will be on the Today Show tomorrow, October 11 — and also that same day will appear for the entire hour with Anderson Cooper on his new program. Check your local listings. For more, visit the Beauty, Disrupted site.

Affirmative action for boys means perfectionism for girls

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My piece at Jezebel this week looks at how “affirmative action for men” drives perfectionism for young women: Women Are The Real Victims Of The So-Called ‘Men’s Crisis’. Excerpt:

Young men… are collectively rewarded for their absence of academic ambition and community spirit. By the intensely competitive standards of college admissions, what might seem like a lackluster volunteer record from a high school girl (say, 5 hours a week reading to the blind) seems positively heroic when it belongs to a guy. The more time the mass of young men devote to the gym or to playing Call of Duty, the more the shrinking number of even moderately ambitious dudes benefit; they become the chance for a selective school to keep its gender ratio from becoming too female-heavy.

The traditional “stressors” in so many young women’s lives – the obligation to care for family, the burden of chasing an unattainable physical ideal, the pressure to be sexy but not sexual, the worry about “running out of time” — all these were present well before the current frenzy of anxiety over the end of manhood. These familiar worries have now been joined by the depressing reality that young women have to be far more accomplished than young men just to receive equal consideration in college admissions.

Read the whole thing.

Anxious custodians of our own images

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My Thursday post at Healthy is the New Skinny is up: Pictures Don’t Tell the Story. Excerpt:

Most young people are both fascinated and repelled by their own image. I can remember when I was a teen, decades before digital cameras became popular, studying family snapshots with dismay. My parents and siblings and cousins always looked good, at least to my eye. But I hated how I looked on film; it upset me when someone would say “but you looked great” when all the evidence seemed to be to the contrary. Is that really what I look like, I’d wonder, fearing the answer was “yes.” And on the rare occasions when I found a photo of myself I liked, I clung to it.

It’s both easier and tougher now. On the one hand, phones and cameras give us a chance to assess instantly whether we like a picture – and those we hate can be quickly deleted. On the other hand, these film-free cameras mean young people are photographed much more often than in the past – and thanks to Facebook, those photos are seen far more quickly by far more people than was possible before. That means teens have to work much harder to be good custodians of their own image. And it means that there’s a lot of potential for meanspiritedness as well as fun in sharing embarrassing or unflattering photos of friends.

Hugo on the Jesse Lee Peterson Show

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I’m going to be a guest on conservative Christian minister Jesse Lee Peterson’s radio show Wednesday morning, from about 8:00-9:00AM Pacific Time. I’ve tangled with him briefly before, and so I imagine our discussion of masculinity and the boy crisis will be heated. I may even get a word in edgewise.

Jesse and I were both born on May 22. I suspect that is all we have in common. Tune in!

Listen here. And the podcast will be here a day or two later.

Policing, Prisons, and Privilege

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Good Men Project is running a special section this week on men and prison. My contribution is They Always Call Me Sir: Policing, Prison, and Privilege. Excerpt:

As someone concerned with sexual justice and ending rape, the reality of a racist justice system has shaped how I think about solutions to the problem of violence against women. Feminists and their allies have fought hard to stiffen penalties for domestic abuse and sexual assault. Getting law enforcement to take sexual violence seriously (and to stop slut-shaming survivors) is tremendously important. But while rapists deserve punishment (and, if possible, a chance for restorative justice), we should all be concerned that those punishments will be meted out more severely to poor and dark-skinned men.

The struggle to end sexual violence can proceed simultaneously on many fronts. We need to change hearts and minds as much as laws; we need to rethink our dim view of the male capacity for self-regulation and our outdated obsession with what rape victims wear. But ensuring that rape is taken seriously as a crime involves shifting the views of cops, D.A.s, and judges as well. If those of us who advocate for the victims of violence don’t remember that the prison-industrial complex punishes some perpetrators much more severely than others, we’re trying to solve one problem while compounding another.

Read the whole thing.

The Slut-Shaming of Amanda Knox, updated

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Amanda Knox has been freed by a court in Italy. I am immensely relieved and pleased, and my reasons why are in this GMP post today: Amanda Knox Freed, But the Slut-Shaming Goes On. It concludes:

When I look at the face of Amanda Knox, I see someone who looks a great deal like many of the students I taught. When I hear the details of her private life discussed with both salacious enthrallment and feigned repugnance, I think of the experiences of so many of my students who went abroad with me. When I hear the twisted, groundless narrative that the prosecution offered, something along the lines of “American girl is sexually curious and open about it and she smoked pot: therefore it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to stabbing one’s prudish roommate to death”, I’m enraged and indignant. What happened to Amanda Knox — and I am nearly as convinced of her innocence as her parents — could have happened to a dozen young women I knew and taught in Italy.

Make no mistake, I grieve the loss of Meredith Kercher and the horrible way she died. But I have little doubt that if Knox had been a little less pretty, a little less sexual, and a little less American, she’d never have spent a day in prison for her roommate’s murder.

I rejoice in her freedom today.