Moving forward: an April update

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I got a note yesterday that, with the author’s permission, I’m posting in order to answer her questions:

I follow you on Twitter and have bookmarked your blog; additionally, I
have read many of your pieces at various other blogs. In particular, I
loved your piece for Relevant (Beauty vs. Sexuality) and the one you
wrote recently about Jesus coming as a man being essential to His
being the ultimate role model (I shed a few tears over that one). But,
I’ve also read a lot of backlash over your pieces, particularly from
the Christian community; at times, I’m ashamed to be a part of that
community but I am in no way ashamed of my Savior Jesus or being a
follower of His. I guess I just wanted to ask you this: where do you
stand, religiously? And how do you feel about your past- particularly
when it gets thrown into your face? How do you reconcile what
happened, the choices you made, with your current profession (speaking
on behalf of women)? Do you think people, particularly these victims
of abuse who claim you have no right to speak without identifying your
past, have a right to ask that? I suppose I would
just love to have some of my own confusion cleared up so I can
understand your platform. Please continue to write- though I may not
agree with everything you say, I do enjoy reading your writings very
much…

(I added the hyperlinks to Kayla’s note.)

I’ll get to Kayla’s specific questions further down.

It’s been a while since I’ve written an update on the huge controversy that erupted in December. I can’t imagine that many regular readers are unfamiliar with what’s gone on, but one of the best (if imperfect) summaries ran in The Atlantic in mid-February. It’s as close to a fair recounting of the situation as exists.

I did a video interview about the blow-up in January 17 with the Feminist Theologian, click here for links to the four-part series.

On January 24, lawyers for my employer, Pasadena City College, enjoined me from speaking or writing further about the two most controversial aspects of my past: my sexual relationships with students when I was an untenured faculty member in the 1990s and the events of June 27, 1998, in which in the midst of a drug binge, I tried to kill both myself and my ex-girlfriend with gas. As it was explained to me by the college’s counsel, the administration appreciates that my behavior as a faculty member has been above board for almost fourteen years. On the other hand, in my past writing I alluded several times to the fact that a previous PCC administration was well aware both of my unethical sexual relationships with students — and of the details of my murder/suicide attempt. I confessed both to several administrators after getting sober. Though none of those administrators are still employed by PCC, the feeling of the current college counsel is that rehashing the story cast the school in a poor light. In other words, why wasn’t I dealt with more harshly? The college wants to make clear that it takes sexual misconduct by faculty very seriously (“consensual” faculty-student relationships are now classified as misconduct thanks to a policy that did not yet exist in 1998), and as a result, would rather not have the regular reminders of their leniency in my case. Continue reading →

Food, faith, and fashion: an article in the Fuller Semi

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a short piece for Relevant, a Christian magazine, on Beauty and Sexuality. The same day it went up, the editor of Fuller Theological Seminary’s student magazine asked me for a follow-up piece for their spring special issue on faith and fashion. The issue went up yesterday, and my offering is here: Fashion and Food. Excerpt:

One basic truth that can’t be repeated often enough: created things can have more than one purpose. The tongue, for example: it exists to taste, to speak, and to prevent us from choking. It can also be used in kissing, or in lovemaking to give pleasure to another human being. It would be silly to rank those capabilities in any sort of hierarchical order. (Would “preventing choking” rank above or below “tasting for spoiled food”?)

What’s true of body parts is true of what we use to fuel that body. Yes, food keeps us alive. But it also is the greatest source of consistent physical pleasure that many of us will ever know; for most it is our first and last delight. The preparing and eating of meals can turn food itself into a spiritual glue that bonds communities together. And of course, food is a means of taking God into ourselves, as Jesus reminds us at the last supper. Food is many things.

So too with clothing. It exists to cover our nakedness, to keep us warm, to protect us from the rays of the sun. Uniforms of one kind or another help us distinguish certain professions or ceremonial participants: police officers, flight attendants, brides. Where clothing becomes fashion, however, is when garments move beyond the utilitarian need for comfort (or occupation signaling) and towards the provision of visual delight. The delight in gorgeous clothes and the body inside them is as natural as the delight in the taste of truly delicious food. Like anything truly beautiful, the purpose is to draw attention to a divine gift.

Please check out the other great articles at The Semi as well!

I’ll note that I’m particularly pleased to have been asked to be part of this issue. Fuller Seminary is near and dear to my heart. For many years, I lived walking distance from its flagship Pasadena campus. My most recent ex-wife got her Ph.D. from Fuller while she and I were wed. And Fuller’s long-time president, the great theologian and philosopher Richard Mouw, was my father’s very first graduate student some fifty years ago.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written for explicitly Christian audiences in explicitly Christian spaces, and it’s been a refreshing experience indeed. My appearance at Relevant was not without controversy. In that light in particular, I’m touched to have the continued support of the Fuller community and of the Relevant editorial staff.

The Appealing Absence of Empathy

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The Genderal Interest column this week: Do Women Envy Sociopathic Men? Excerpt:

There may be women who fall for dangerous predators because of the evolutionary impulses that Ramsland cites; others may be filled with the desperate quixotism that Seltzer suggests, believing that their love is powerful enough to tame even a serial killer. Many surely identify with strong female characters like Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson, SVU’s brave and relentless protagonist. But admiration for the cops and lawyers who keep the streets safe is only part of the draw. For many who have made SVU and CSI into two of the most successful scripted televisions shows of the modern era, the fascination may be less about attraction than about a strange kind of envy of the shows’ sociopathic villains. How many bright, talented, acutely sensitive young women have occasionally fantasized about having an internal “mute button” that could silence the judging, nagging, needy voices of all around them?

One obvious reason for the popularity of the Law & Order and CSI franchises among women has to do with women’s greater vulnerability to violent crime. Those who are at increased risk of being targeted have a vested interest in becoming students of predatory behavior, a point made in Gavin de Becker’s indispensable The Gift of Fear. But the specific fascination so many women seem to have with serial killers and sociopaths suggests that something more is at play. For those who feel pressured to people-please and to empathize with virtually everyone, the allure of those who never feel those obligations is powerful indeed.

Daring to Disappoint: On Choosing Happiness over Obligation

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Do the sacrifices of our parents, our ancestors, and our culture constitute obligations? I get that question in one form or another every semester in my women’s history class; my answer is always the same: a qualified but firm no. Rather, personal happiness is gratitude made manifest.

From 2006:

In a comment below last Friday’s post about virginity and expectations, a wonderful former student of mine named Connie writes:

Hugo, my question is this, how do we deal with the pressure of knowing our parents sacrifice so much so that we can succeed?

My parents have always given me everything I ask for and expect nothing in return except that I excel in my academics so that I can be successful, live a good life and help them out when they get old. What frustrates me is that this seems like such a simple request that I should be able to fulfill it with ease. Yet, because the notion seems so simple, there is more pressure and if I can’t do something as simple as studying and getting good grades, I am a failure. Having an education is simply not enough. I have to be at the top of my class. Sometimes I wonder if that’s part of my parents’ paradigm or mine because I am always striving to be the best. I guess I fear letting my parents down if I settle for average and as a result, I let myself down. I just want to be happy but I can’t be unless my parents are. I love my parents immensely and am forever grateful for everything they’ve sacrificed for me, I would just like to prove that to them and give them something in return.

Connie fits into the same demographic of many of the students I’m writing about: the child of Asian immigrants, raised with one foot firmly in this culture and another elsewhere, trying so hard to live up to what are, as she makes clear, intense and sometimes overwhelming expectations.

I’ve thought a lot about what it means to teach feminism to a classroom filled with young women whose parents believe that their daughters owe them something. It took me a long time to come to grips with just how crushing those expectations are that women like Connie describe. (I was fortunate: my parents told me that while they hoped I would do well, they would be perfectly satisfied if I merely earned the "gentlemen’s C".  Yes, when I was at Cal in the late-80s, some folks still used that expression without a trace of irony!)  And while male students from certain working-class or immigrant backgrounds also are hit with the burden of parental expectations for success, they usually get to escape the simultaneous requirement that they be virginal while earning straight As!

For so many young women from these backgrounds, sexual purity is less about a private spiritual decision and more about honoring an obligation to a mother and father who have invariably sacrificed so much so that their daughter could have a "better life."  Most of my first-generation students at the community college are acutely aware of just how hard their parents have worked to give them the chance at an education and a promising career.  Though their parents may or may not have strong religious beliefs, they almost always teach their girls that pre-marital sex represents a threat not merely to their daughter’s personal success but to the well-being of the entire family.  Just as in the most tradition-bound of societies, a daughter’s virginity is still all- too-often powerfully connected to the hopes and dreams and sacrifices of a mother and father who have come so very far and worked so very hard for a better life.

And virginity is also of course a symbol for all of the other things a dutiful and hard-working daughter owes to her parents.  In most traditional cultures, daughters and daughters-in-law will be the primary providers of elder care.  Connie writes that her parents expect her to take care of them when they get old. Of course, they’d probably like her to get married and give them grandchildren.  And if she marries a man from a similar background, his parents may expect their daughter-in-law to care for them when they become elderly.  And she’ll do this while holding down a terrific job of which her parents can be suitably proud, and being an excellent mother to their grandkids.  And somehow, women like Connie describe this as "a simple request"!

So you deny your sexuality through your entire adolescence, and put off sexual relationships until you’re finished with college.   Ideally, you find the husband (whom the ‘rents hope will be from the same ethnic group) just as you begin to climb the corporate (or medical) ladder.  You have kids while somehow holding down the job.  You prepare marvelous meals that reflect the best traditions of your ancestral cuisine, your hair and makeup are immaculate, your body is trim, your husband is kept happy, and two sets of doting grandparents are given well-behaved children.  You then begin to care for those grandparents while still holding down the job, still raising the kids, still cooking the superb whatever from the old recipes, still keeping your husband happy.  Sister, ain’t nothing simple about it!  From a feminist perspective, it looks like one long litany of sacrifice, one long list of obligations, one long reminder that as a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, one’s happiness is always contingent on the joy one brings to others.

I think I’m fairly close to accurately describing the pressures with which so many of my students contend.  But identifying the problem, and enumerating the pressures, is not the same as offering a workable solution.  And of course, there isn’t an easy solution.  Just as many folks have told me this week that when it comes to my comment policy I can’t please everyone, so too many of my students will have to make the hard choice to either continue to exhaust and deny themselves or to choose to rebel.  And it’s my explicit hope that they will choose the latter.

In advocating rebellion, I am not advocating dropping out.  I’m not advocating reckless or self-destructive personal behavior. I am advocating that these young women begin to ask themselves the hard question: what do I want?   I want them to begin the immensely difficult task of silencing those nagging internal (and external) voices that urge self-denial, endless sacrifice, endless sublimation. I want them to talk to each other, to seek support from other young women in similar straits — to plot strategy, share family war stories, and offer encouragement to take the first tentative steps of feminist rebellion.  This "feminist rebellion" will look different for different women.  For one, it might involve telling Mom and Dad she wants to major in history rather than chemistry or business.  For another, it might involve learning to masturbate — without guilt.  For another, it might involve choosing to move out rather than stay at home as her parents expect.  For another, it might involve bringing home a young man from a different ethnicity.  Or bringing home a girl.  If the parents are Catholic, it might involve becoming a Pentecostal.  Or if parents are Presbyterian, it might involve becoming a Buddhist.  The one thing all of these rebellions will have in common is that they will be small steps towards self-discovery and towards personal growth and joy.

Usually at this point, the young women to whom I’m directing this interrupt me:

Hugo, it’s so easy for you to say all of this!  You’re a man, you’re white, you have no idea just how hard it is to ‘rebel’!  You don’t understand the consequences of what you’re saying; you don’t have any idea of how much guilt I’ll feel if I disappoint my parents!

In one sense, they’re right.  I can’t truly know what it’s like to be a first-generation female college student, carrying the hopes and dreams of my parents and my ancestors on my shoulders, on my heart –or on my hymen.  Sure, I’m privileged in ways that I probably don’t even fully understand.  But I do believe that at the heart of the feminist project is this: women ought to have the right to pursue happiness.  That happiness will manifest differently in the lives of different women; some will find their most sublime joy in marriage and motherhood while others will find it in on an archaeological dig while others will find it in the arms of another woman.  And if feminists can agree on one thing, it’s this: the collective sacrifices of your parents, ancestors, and culture do not trump your own personal right to be happy.

I do not hold this belief in contradiction to my Christian faith.  Rather, it is reinforced by it.  In Matthew 10:35, Jesus makes it clear that service to God is always more important than duty to family:

For I have come to turn  a man against his father,a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.

While Jesus is referring specifically to what it will cost to follow Him, the broader implication is clear: in the final analysis, there are things that matter more than loyalty to one’s parents.  Honoring mom and dad is indeed one of the commandments, but honor is not a synonym for obedience.  The Christian journey is partly about discovering the unique purpose for which we each were made, own’s own unique role in building the Kingdom; the feminist journey is about essentially the same process.  Though both feminism and Christianity are about building community, they are also about an ultimately solitary journey of transformation and joy.  As a Christian and a pro-feminist, a teacher and a youth leader, I want to build community while encouraging young folks to set out on their own personal journeys.

I have no illusions that the feminist project will be an easy one for most of my students.  But the choice, ultimately, is often a stark one: a lifetime trying to live up to a crushing set of obligations or a series of difficult but ultimately liberating confrontations with one’s family.  Those confrontations don’t have to take place all at once; some rebellions will be private and small and secret while others will be major and dramatic.  But in the end, big or small, these rebellions need to happen.  And we who care about feminism, who care about the lives and the happiness of young women, have to not only encourage rebellion, we have to walk with them through it and be with them as they cope with the fallout of telling the truth about their own wants, hopes and desires. To the best of my ability, that’s what I’m trying to do.

In the end. we can comfort ourselves with this: the greatest way we can honor our parents may not be through living up to their hopes and expectations.  The greatest way in which we can honor them is to choose to live lives of personal happiness and public service.  Their sacrifices, like the sacrifices of their parents before them, were not in vain if we reject their values: our personal choice to be happy, even if it scandalizes and bewilders our family, is nonetheless a testament to all that they gave up for us.  Whether our parents accept that or not, we can use that thought to encourage and reassure those who are tormented with guilt or doubt about claiming their own happiness on their own terms.

But it still isn’t easy.

A Male Feminist Dilemma: When Your Wife Insists on Taking Your Last Name

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My latest at Role/Reboot addresses that evergreen issue about marriage and last names. In our case, it was my wife who insisted on taking my surname after we were wed — presenting me with at least a momentary male feminist dilemma. Excerpt:

One of the unhappiest aspects of the last name debate is that most defenses of one’s own choices end up sounding like harsh judgments of other’s different decisions. Many of those who do defend the traditional practice of having a woman take her husband’s name suggest that to keep separate names indicates a lack of unity. That’s obviously unfair: Commitment has far more to do with devotion than nomenclature. At the same time, my wife regularly encounters pushback from women and men alike who are astonished at her decision to take my surname. Just last month, at a party, an acquaintance of ours gaped in astonishment upon learning that Eira was a Schwyzer too. “But you seem so independent,” she gasped. My beloved cocked her head to one side, took a deep breath, and firmly set the woman straight.

There’s a lot to criticize about a simplistic “I choose my choice!” feminism. Our choices are never made in a vacuum; rather, they are mediated by a host of complex—and frequently sexist—cultural influences. This is why we should always discuss options and explore alternatives. At the same time, however, we can’t fall victim to analysis paralysis. We can’t live out our inherently messy private lives in perfect political consistency.

Read the whole thing.

Ayn Rand, Muggledom, and a Road to Feminism

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An earlier version of this post appeared in November 2009.

In my reprint of a post about young conservative students, I made a crack about Ayn Rand. Since Rand has been the subject of a pair of recent biographies, and has been much discussed on the right as a kind of ideological mother figure of the Tea Party, I think it’s time to say a bit more about her work.

I discovered Ayn Rand at 16. A friend of mine finished “The Fountainhead”, and came to me one morning before class: “This book has changed my life, Hugo, and it will change yours. Read it!” I liked and respected Lisa, and accepted the thick and battered paperback she proffered. I took it home, and showed my mother, a philosophy professor. She took one look at the book, grimaced, and then said “Darling, I won’t say anything. Make up your own mind.”

It wasn’t until I read “American Psycho”, many years later, that I had a comparable experience of near-instant loathing of a text, an author, a prose style, and a worldview. I was a young lefty at 16, struggling through John Rawls and Herbert Marcuse. My favorite novel that year was Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle” one of the most polemical works that the great local writer (I grew up on the Monterey Peninsula) wrote. Rand was ideologically and stylistically abhorrent to me at 16, and though it’s been years since I’ve picked up any of her work (I finished “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” through sheer acts of will in my youth), my general feeling of disdain on every imaginable ground remains.

Rand’s objectivist philosophy advocates for a kind of reckless heroic individualism, where what she calls the “second-handers” (those who lack the substance or courage to be great) can be ignored or used by the heroes who can and do anything they like to accomplish their dreams. It’s not just contempt for mediocrity, it’s contempt for mundanity, domesticity, and the lives that most people actually lead. Not to mention that Rand famously justifies rape (Howard and Dominique’s first sexual encounter in the book). It’s an ugly vision of women needing to be fucked hard by a strong and powerful hero in order to find herself.

But I’ve met many young people, more often women than men, who — like my friend Lisa in high school — find great inspiration in Ayn Rand. Generally, there’s a specific type of teen who falls in love with either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. She’s usually very bright, raised to one degree or another with the “pleasing woman discourse” (what I call “the Martha Complex.“) She often finds her classes dull and her teachers pedestrian. She suspects she’s destined for something extraordinary, that she’s somehow different from everyone else — but unlike the immensely talented dancer or athlete or actor, she doesn’t have one specific skill that stands out as a ticket to stardom. She vacillates between feelings of intense superiority — and feelings of equally intense guilt for the way in which she looks down on so many of those around her.

She picks up Rand, and suddenly it all makes sense. She is superior, one of the elect. She isn’t what a far more interesting and talented writer would call a “Muggle”. She has an exalted destiny, just as she had suspected. Rand inspires her; telling her that it’s time to throw off the chains of obligation and guilt which have left her confined and miserable. In an odd way, Rand — who would be exceedingly difficult to classify as a feminist — is often a gateway into feminism for some young women. It’s through reading Rand that not-insignificant percentages of young women begin to think seriously about what they want for themselves rather than what others want for them. Young women who have the false impression that feminism is about collective victimization find temporary inspiration in “The Fountainhead” — and in due course, when they encounter real sexism in the real world, they reluctantly concede that perhaps those nasty old feminists had a point after all. I’ve met a hell of a lot of strong young progressive feminists in their twenties and early thirties who were enchanted by Randian philosophy in their teens.

So yes, I think an infatuation with Ayn Rand is developmentally appropriate for adolescents. She flatters and inspires the bright and the isolated and the uncertain; she’s useful for helping some young people, girls in particular, break the deadly people-pleasing habit. So if reading “Atlas” or “Fountainhead” is what it takes to inspire the lonely, the introverted, and the insecure — then may the God that she rejected bestow blessings upon that poor unhappy soul that was Ayn Rand.

David Beckham Makes Over Burger King — and Makes Middle-Aged Men Swoon

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At Role/Reboot this week, my reflection on a certain new Burger King ad featuring the most famous metrosexual of them all, David Beckham. Excerpt:

Just a few short years ago, Burger King, their sales slumping, ran their infamous “I am Man” ads. The ads celebrated rebellious masculine carnivorousness with such vigor that some thought they were a campy parody; alas, they were all too real. The commercials failed to revive BK’s fortunes, a predictable result of a campaign that insulted men and completely ignored their female customer base.

Times change. Having ditched the machismo and their iconic king, BK is back with a new round of advertising, focusing on their expanded, lighter, less meat-focused menu. One new ad features David Beckham attempting to order a Real Fruit Smoothie. The woman behind the counter is so smitten by Becks she freezes; when her older male manager comes to assist, he too falls for the charm of the globe’s most famous soccer player.

More on what this means for changing sexual attitudes — and changing fast-food menus — here.

As an LA Galaxy fan, however, this is what had me swooning this month..

Why Guys Loathe the Word “Creep”

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The Genderal Interest column this week at Jez looks at the real reason guys hate to be called “creepy” — and why the word is often useful. Excerpt:

At the heart of the “anti-creep shaming campaign” is a concerted effort to discourage women from relying on their instincts to protect themselves from harm. Laying aside its likely etymology, calling a dude an “asshole” is a way of labeling him a jerk. Plenty of people can be jerks without being predatory. On the other hand, calling a dude “creepy” labels him as a potential threat; a creep may not be imminently violent, but there’s almost always a sense that he shows consistent disregard for a woman’s physical or psychological space. This is why, as Wakeman wrote, “it’s a really freaking dangerous idea to twist a woman’s open, honest communication about her boundaries/expectations into ‘creep shaming’ that victimizes men.”

Though the word may be occasionally used unfairly (for example, to describe a physically unattractive guy’s genuinely respectful attempt at striking up a conversation), “creepy” serves a vital function. No other word is as effective as describing when a man has crossed a woman’s boundary; no other word forces a man to reflect on how his behavior makes other people feel. A guy can disprove accusations of being weak by displaying strength (often in foolish ways.) But a guy can only disprove the charge of creepiness by fundamentally altering his behavior to be more genuinely respectful of women.

This, of course, is why some guys hate the word so much; it forces men to reflect carefully about how they make women feel. No wonder then that so many guys are campaigning against “creep-shaming.” After all, the sooner the term becomes socially unacceptable, the sooner men can get back to not having to think about women’s boundaries.

“Feminism Made Women Too Picky:” Male Entitlement, Male Rage

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From May 2009

We recently debated the “problem” of men “never feeling hot.” (Note: The subject of my piece in Best Sex Writing 2012 as well.) Commenters of all sexes shared painful stories of feeling unattractive and unwanted. No question, it’s hard to live with the sense that one is physically undesirable, particularly in our beauty-obsessed culture. The psychic toll that sense takes on men and women alike is real and undeniable. But where it gets really ugly (intended word) is when we see flashes of male entitlement, part of what is often called the “Nice Guy” syndrome. That entitlement manifests as the angry, indignant claim certain men make that women “should” see past their physical shortcomings and their social ineptness: Why can’t they see what a nice guy I am? Why are women such superficial bitches? Many women have been on the receiving end of hostile, sometimes whiny tirades such as these. Whatever sympathy might be possible for the unlovely and the awkward vanishes utterly in the face of such astounding entitlement.

I wrote last fall against the tired old “male responsibility requires female vulnerability” thesis peddled by an array of social conservatives from Brad Wilcox to Kay Hymowitz. The thesis is that men “need to be needed”, and in the absence of feeling needed (by women) they will behave badly. Therefore, women need to make themselves vulnerable and dependent, forcing men (or giving them the opportunity) to take charge, to play the role of the knight-in-shining-armor, to feel indispensable. To listen to the right-wingers tell it, once men are given the sense that they are indispensable, they will shape up and fly right, illegitimacy and crime will vanish, the rise of the oceans will cease, and all God’s children will say “Amen.” Or something like that. Of course, in order for men to feel indispensable, women will need to surrender, become docile and nurturing rather than independent and ambitious. We’ve heard this hooey a million times before, but like supply-side economics, this belief in the “responsibility for vulnerability” transaction remains a difficult bogeyman to slay. Continue reading →

The Peter Pan Presidency

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This week’s column at Role/Reboot looks at Ann Romney’s recent ad about her husband, the presumptive GOP nominee, and her remark that at times he was more like another son than a husband. Excerpt:

That the campaign sees boyish naughtiness and mischievousness as selling points for the GOP nominee says as much about our contemporary culture as it does about the Romneys. What it says is that we live in a culture that celebrates everlasting boyhood as never before. In an earlier era, there was a clear demarcation line between male child and male adult. While women remained perpetual “legal children,” under control of their fathers and husbands, boys eventually crossed a threshold into adulthood from which there was no turning back. (Some put that threshold later than others; the Athenians famously believed that only men over 30 could be counted as true grown-ups.) St. Paul famously wrote, “When I became a man, I put away childish things.” The Romneys apparently don’t agree with that definition.

Thinking of the fulsome adultness of President Obama (and the allusions to puerility on the part of his two predecessors), one wonders too if being a Peter Pan president is something only rich white guys can afford.