Part One: “Do Me, Do Me Right”: part one (very long) of a three-part series on Christianity and sexual ethics

Part Two: “The battery that powers our lives”: more on sex, faith, justice

Part Three: “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear”: of Scripture, the Spirit, and Christian sexual ethics

I’ll be taking some time away from my regular writing gigs to be with Eira and our children. It is a very happy time.

As women integrate themselves into what were once all-male spaces (like universities, corporate boardrooms, and Congress), even the most ardent traditionalists have been forced to accept women’s intellectual equality with men.

As long as there are still a few remaining spaces in which women are not allowed, defenders of traditional gender roles can still resist the modern claim that men and women are far more alike than they are different. They may have to cope with alarming innovations like sexually assertive girlfriends or ambitious female colleagues, but in sports (whether as players or spectators) men who are uncomfortable with equality hope to find a space where biology is still destiny. When girls like Cassy Herkelman or Paige Sulzbach prove themselves capable of playing alongside boys, they demonstrate that the physical distinctions between the sexes are not as great as we imagined. For those already uncomfortable with women’s growing economic, sexual, and political power, this concrete evidence of their commensurate athletic ability is shattering. Forfeiting becomes the only way to sustain the illusion that men and women are fundamentally different; regardless of the outcome, to play against girls would demonstrate tacit acceptance of women’s equality.

Eating disorders — and the broader problem of poor body image — aren’t unique to women, nor can they be attributed to one single cause. But it’s undeniable that whatever the truth about men’s desires, young women’s perception of “what guys want” plays a huge part in the pursuit of thinness. While the fashion industry deserves some blame for perpetuating an unattainable ideal, men’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of their own desires is a key aspect of the problem. In other words, it’s not that all men — or even most straight white men — genuinely prefer skinny women. It’s that for a great many men, having a thin, conventionally pretty girlfriend is a way to win status in the eyes of other men. It’s not actually about what they themselves want. Put simply, men and women alike confuse what it is that men are attracted to with what it is that men imagine will win them approval.

Though Randall acknowledges that obesity among black women has many causes, she leads off by fingering black women’s expectations of what black men want. Her article raises two obvious points. First, if black women are fearful of losing weight because of how their black male partners will react, surely the same thing is true in reverse for many American white women who fear gaining weight. Second, Randall’s claim about black men’s preference for fat makes it clear just how much male desire for specific body types is driven by culture rather than by evolution. (No one has yet discovered an “I prefer fat women” gene that’s dominant in black men and recessive in white dudes.) And if it’s cultural, then — as Randall suggests in her article — it can be changed, can’t it?

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, since the mid-1990s, the bullying epidemic notwithstanding, teen suicide rates have been headed in the same happy direction as teen birth rates: down. At the same time, suicide rates for middle-aged men and women have been rising dramatically, with white males ages 45 to 54 at the highest statistical risk. Though the AFSP reports that women of all ages attempt to kill themselves more often than do men, men are far more likely to do so successfully—79% of all suicides in America in 2009 were by men. Much of that discrepancy is explained by favored methods—men, like Seau, tend to choose guns, while women are much more likely to attempt to overdose on prescription pills…

Middle-aged men are also particularly unlikely, as Fields wrote for GMP, to have strong supportive networks. For many straight, married men, their wives are often their only close friends. The culturally-driven inability to connect emotionally with other men and the false assumption that platonic friendships with women invariably threaten a marriage leave many men isolated. This is a particularly acute problem for professional athletes who have been members of closely-knit teams since boyhood. Much of the coverage of Seau’s death has focused on the violent collisions on the football field he’d endured since his childhood days in Pee Wee football. Whatever role those brutal hits played in his death, it’s worth considering an additional factor: loneliness. Seau retired from the Patriots a few months after turning 40; it marked the first time since he was 10 that he wasn’t on a team. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the sudden loss of camaraderie for the divorced Seau may have played as great a role in his despair as traumatic brain injury….

The whole article here.

If the wealth of Park Slope’s residents enables cheating by reducing moral inhibitions, the notoriously perfectionistic parenting ethos of the community elevates child-rearing to the sine qua non of marriage. In her novel Prospect Park West, Amy Sohn describes the Slope as a place where “marriage is a vehicle for procreation” and little more. “It’s a very undersexed neighborhood,” she claimed in an interview. Ashley Madison begs to differ. Park Slope may not be home to much in the way of marital fucking, but it is the City’s most fertile habitat for philanderers.

The news here is not that people cheat. The news is that we can see more clearly than ever that male infidelity is correlated with the conjunction of affluence and hyper-competitive parenting. The blame here doesn’t lie with cosseted kids or man-food withholding wives. The blame lies with privileged men who confuse their own choices with the chains of obligation, and who use their own sense of self-sacrificing heroism to excuse the inexcusable.

UPDATE: A moderately critical response by KJ Dell’Antonia in the New York Times: Does Helicopter Parenting Drive Dads to Cheat?

One thing for which Obama is catching some heat is this reported exchange: When she (Cook) told him that she loved him, (Obama’s) response was not “I love you, too” but “thank you” — as though he appreciated that someone loved him.

I laughed in bemused recognition when I read that, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’ve had the chance to be on both sides of that awkward moment when one person confesses a devotion that isn’t fully reciprocated. I’ve been in Genevieve’s shoes, desperately in love with someone who liked me but did not feel deep romantic passion in turn. And I’ve been on the receiving end as Barack was, replying “thank you” to a woman because I knew that to lie and say “I love you, too” would be infinitely more cruel in the long run.

Miss Manners was once asked the question of how best to respond to an unreciprocated declaration of love? Her reply:

…making the other person feel good is not, as Miss Manners keeps telling you, always the object of etiquette. If you do not love the person making the original statement, replying kindly could lead to all sorts of dreadful complications, not the least of which is further and even more unfortunate questions, such as “But do you really love me?” or “More than you’ve ever loved anyone before?” or “How can I believe you?”

One needs therefore to make the lack of reciprocation clear while showing gratitude for the other person’s good taste…”Thank you” is not bad, although Miss Manners prefers “You do me great honor.”

Bold emphasis mine.

As far as I can see, the young Barack passed the crucial honesty test that many older folks fail miserably. It’s not easy; my experience jives with that of Auden, who made it clear in one of his most famous poems that it’s always harder to be the one who cares less:

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

When you’re not lucky enough to be the more loving one, the best you can do is answer as Miss Manners suggests and as our president did.

On Monday, Simon Borg, a writer for the league’s official site, MLSSoccer.com, said on the league’s official podcast… “It’s fine if you’re a female and you want to be a super-fan. Clearly go for it, that’s your choice. But there is something to be said for how appealing that might be to the other sex. Having a woman that’s such a fan, like painting your face, tuning in to every podcast. I don’t know how many males would be into that.”

Simon Borg is getting a good fisking in the comments section too, and from Women United FC.

For more background on this story and sexism in the MLS check out Alicia Ratterree’s great post at The Goat Parade. (She’s a Chivas USA fan, but it’s still worth reading.)

My column this week at Role/Reboot: Ten Things Every Man Should Know or Do by 30. Excerpt:

6. Don’t take women’s mistrust personally. By this age, you should stop saying inane things like “trust me” or “I’m not like the other guys.” Women aren’t mind-readers and in a world with as much sexualized violence as our own, we are guilty until proven innocent. Stop complaining and start taking steps to make yourself a safe ally and friend.

8. Be able to prioritize. Put your wife or girlfriend first. Put your kids (if you have them) second. Put your family (yes, that includes your mother) third and your career fourth. Yeats wrote: “the intellect of man is forced to choose
 perfection of the life, or of the work.” His poem leaves no doubt that choosing the latter is a recipe for misery.

The whole thing here.

I am intensely interested in the ways in which men position themselves as victims. I spend a lot of time reading the literature of many “men’s rights” and “fathers’ rights” groups. I spend a lot of time in conversation with men who are going through divorce (I am, if nothing else, an expert on starting over.) And I mentor a lot of young male students and boys from my youth group at church. And in conversations with many of these boys and men, I hear “narratives of helplessness” emerging.

From the older, angrier voices of the so-called MRAs, the narrative describes a world in which women (and their male “collaborators”) have usurped traditional male privileges for themselves. Men are at a disadvantage in the courts, in the business world, in academia. The MRAs see public space in the Western world as increasingly feminized, and they fancy “real men” (in whose ranks they invariably include themselves) to be under attack from a dark coalition of feminist activists, cowardly politicians cravenly surrendering to the cultural left, and a media that never misses an opportunity to demean and belittle traditional men. It all provides a satisfying sense of being “under attack”, which is why many — not all — men’s rights activists use, absurdly enough, the language of oppression and resistance to describe their movement.

There’s not much point in telling these men, “you know, you’re an oppressor more than you are oppressed”. The “you’ve sinned more than you’ve been sinned against” trope doesn’t go over well!. These men feel victimized, they feel exploited, they feel ignored, they feel – often — impotent. And too often, our feelings become facts. Too often, we conveniently ignore the ways in which we played the part of volunteers, not victims. Too often, we deny our own complicity in our own misery.

Many men make the mistake of equating the role of the oppressor with a sense of personal fulfillment. If they really were oppressing women, they assume, if they really were part of a dominant class, they’d experience a greater degree of happiness and satisfaction. After all, if there really was a patriarchy, isn’t it supposed to benefit men? If men really did systematically take part in the dehumanization and degradation of women, wouldn’t more men feel the tangible benefits of that oppression for themselves? In other words, they ask the plaintive question over and over again: “How can I be an oppressor when I feel unhappy and powerless?” If most men are leading lives of “quiet desperation”, then surely those same men cannot also be agents of injustice. Right? So goes this line of thinking, or more accurately, this line of emotional reactivity.

Fourteen years ago, I began three interrelated journeys: I committed my life to Jesus Christ. I drank my last drop of alcohol, and turned to a Twelve Step program for recovery from my various forms of acting out. And I began to work to do more than espouse a superficial egalitarian philosophy — I began to make the effort to match my language and my life, to live a life of radical justice. Now it’s true that alcohol hasn’t passed my lips in nearly a decade, but I’ve had plenty of slips and falls on my walk with Christ. I’ve had quite a few struggles as I’ve sought to live in to an authentic pro-feminism. Growing up and taking responsibility isn’t easy.

One thing my faith, my feminism, and my recovery program all taught me: I was the architect of my own adversity. I couldn’t blame God. I couldn’t blame my parents’ divorce. I couldn’t blame my genetic inheritance for my predisposition to become an addict, and I couldn’t blame my hormones for my chronic infidelities. I certainly couldn’t blame the women I’d married. My misery was a result of a series of choices I made. Hormones and family history helped shape those choices, but the final decisions were always mine. I came to realize that my sense of my own helplessness was an illusion, one I used to justify my bad behavior and one I used to justify a chronic refusal to change.

It’s true that men are frequently oppressed by other men. When a group of older boys or male coaches ridicule a young man for crying or showing fear, that’s a way in which men are complicit in their own oppression. The older lads who torment a younger were themselves tormented when they were his age. The “be a sturdy oak” rule, a rule that teaches men to be alienated from their own inner emotional terrain, is one that is almost entirely enforced by other males. The little boy who is beaten for showing fear or for weeping is not responsible for the beating he endures. But when he grows older, and belittles other men for showing those same emotions, he is making a choice. He has transitioned from victim to volunteer. The fact that he is too frightened or too ignorant to make a different choice doesn’t change his responsibility to make a better decision, and it doesn’t mitigate his own complicity in the perpetuation of a very Great Crime.

The first task of authentic men’s work is helping boys and men get in touch with their own ancient wounds. Men need to re-feel the old injuries inflicted upon them. They need to rediscover the tears they suppressed. They need to go beneath the anger (most men have a considerable amount of anger not too far from the surface) to the root cause of their pain. And once they’ve dragged all that garbage out, then they need to be encouraged to understand themselves as active agents with a choice:

“So your father never showed you how to be there for his family? That’s terribly painful. But your father’s script isn’t yours. If you follow his example, it is not because it is your ‘destiny’: it’s because you are consciously ignoring alternatives. If you do to others what was done to you, you have become not only an oppressor, but a victimizer who has made a decision to be one.”

This is true in the big things and in the little things. The fact that we don’t raise men to be as in tune with their own emotions, to be as perceptive and intuitive as their sisters, doesn’t mean that men are destined to be shallow and obtuse. It’s appropriate for a grown man to express frustration when his own vocabulary for his feelings isn’t as deep and broad as his female partner’s; it’s not acceptable for him to shrug and say “Well, it’s the way I was raised” or “Well, that’s just the way my brain is wired.” To say those things is to be complicit; to insist on one’s own inability to transform because of one’s biology or one’s childhood is to buy into the seductive lie of our own helplessness.

I’m not big on self-acceptance. Really, I’m not. What I’m big on is self-love. Too much self-acceptance leaves me believing the idea that I’m okay as I am, even when I’m not particularly happy and I’m not making the world a better place. Self-love reminds me I’m a precious child of God. Heck, I’m God’s favorite! (And so are you, you, you, and you.) Self-love reminds me I’m worthy of joy, but that the world doesn’t owe me happiness. Self-love reminds me I am called to share with others, to live in community with others, to work to change and transform and heal the world and myself. My Jewish friends call this mandate tikkun olam. The Christians I worship with call it building the Kingdom.

But we can only heal the world and build the Kingdom when we know we have been given the power to do it. And if we buy into the lie of our helplessness, our oppression, our victim status, the world doesn’t change. We stay miserable, or maybe just vaguely dissatisfied. Our relationships are, at best, just okay. And we settle for so much less than we could have.

*An earlier version of this post appeared in 2007.