Tag Archives: Favorite Posts 2010

Don’t presume the Designer’s intent from the design: a long post on abortion, sexual ethics, and contraception in response to Jonalyn

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Jonalyn Grace Fincher offers a long and nuanced (though unquestionably pro-life) Christian perspective on abortion and body sovereignty in this post entitled “Listening to Both Sides.” She links to and quotes from the post I wrote one week after Heloise’s birth: Pregnant women, personhood, and paternal reflections. She had some nice things to say about my piece, but took issue with the central thrust of my argument, which revolved around women’s right not to be forced to endure pain.

I wrote: Giving birth — whether by ceserean section or vaginally — hurts. The recovery hurts. That point is being driven home to me daily as I watch my wife recover. She considers the pain well worth it, well worth it because this baby was longed for and wanted. But we both shudder, more than ever now, at the thought of compelling a woman to go through this process against her will.

Jonalyn responds by noting that the real pain isn’t just in pregnancy and childbirth.

During pregnancy I slept long and well. I easily coordinated elaborate outfits with accessories and make-up. I worked out or spend hours reading and writing without leaking milk. Then I had a baby.

It’s not merely the pregnancy that women must count as a cost, it’s the life after the birth.

I believe more women would refuse an abortion if they could serve nine months and be done with it. It’s not the pain of the nine months; it is the idea of a life to be responsible for, to be guilty about, to wonder as to the painful, happy, fruitful or fruitless future of your offspring.

That’s right, I think. It’s certainly not an argument against the legal right to choose an abortion. My point was not that abortion should be legal solely so that women can avoid the discomfort of continuing a pregnancy, nor that it should be legal only so that a woman can avoid the pain of birthing. Indeed, I support abortion rights for precisely the reasons Jonalyn mentions: “the idea of a life to be responsible for, to be guilty about”, and so forth. Whatever moral arguments can be brought to bear on the issue, I believe the state has a clear interest in not compelling women to take up those particular burdens against their will. And while a birth parent can surrender a newborn for adoption, it is simply an unconscionable overask to insist that every pregnant woman unready for motherhood choose adoption.

Jonalyn’s views on sex are deeply traditional; like so much conservative Christian writing on sexuality these days, they resonate with the vocabulary of John Paul II’s odious “theology of the body”, with the insistence that sex be focused on sacrifice and radical openness to new life. Jonalyn writes:

My concern is that pro-choice advocates remain intent upon driving a wedge between procreation and sex. I don’t think this is appropriately human, nor that God created our bodies and souls to permanently cleave sex away from procreation.

For the religious right (a group of which Jonalyn appears to be a member, albeit a winsome and reflective one) sex that isn’t procreative, or sex with the use of contraception, is a rejection of self-evident natural law, a rejection of both the design and the Designer. I come from an alternative Christian tradition, one that honors what Marvin Ellison calls “erotic justice”, something I wrote about at length in this post. I wrote:

Our sexual desires are indeed powerful. They can easily be misdirected or warped. But they can, by God’s common grace, be used as an instrument for justice. More than that, our bodies can be used to worship the aspects of the divine we find in each other. In the old Anglican marriage ceremony, a husband and wife would pledge their lives to each other, saying “with my body I thee worship.” We are called to worship only that which is of God; blessedly, God is found in each of us. When we have sex that is grounded in justice, grounded in enthusiastic and mutual desire, we are engaged in an act of worship. Not every act of sex in marriage is an act of worship, as most married folks can attest. And sex outside of heterosexual marriage, can be deeply worshipful.

The purpose of lovemaking is not to make babies. Pregnancy is simply an ancillary and occasional consequence of one particular kind of sex. Folks who say that procreation and sex can never be separated are like those who say that the primary function of the tongue is to prevent us from choking on our food. It is true that one function of the tongue is to protect large chunks of dinner from being lodged in our throats. But our tongues are there to taste, and we taste both to discern what is rancid and to delight in what is pleasurable. Our tongues are also necessary for speech. And sexually, tongues can bring delight to others. The tongue has many uses, many purposes, all important, all wonderful. We cannot discern a single purpose behind the Designer’s design. It is hubris — poltiicised and pleasure-hating hubris — to suggest that we can.

I know how we made Heloise. I’m fairly certain I remember the specific night she was conceived. After years together as lovers, after still more years of all kinds of sex with all kinds of other people, my wife and I were ready and open to the possibility of conceiving a child. What we had worked assiduously to prevent was now something that we ardently sought. This wasn’t a contradiction, or a sign of hypocrisy. We were at a new season in our lives, emotionally and spiritually and financially equipped to be parents. Was the sex we had when we were trying to conceive different than the sex we had had when we weren’t? Of course it was. But we weren’t magically transformed into better people because after so many years of being sexually active humans, we were finally having intercourse to procreate.

Pleasure still mattered. The opportunity to worship the divine in each other still mattered. The fact that I wasn’t wearing a condom (always, for umpteen reasons, my favorite form of contraception) didn’t mean that I loved my wife anymore than the times I’d been inside her with one on. Sex made the daughter whom I love with all my heart. But as wonderful as she is, as wonderful as all the little darling babes of the world are, they are not the only reason, should not be the only reason, need not have anything to do with the reason why we bring our hands and mouths and genitals together with those of others.

As a husband, a father,a teacher, and a Christian, I know this as I know few other things.

Contra Arizona: in defense of ethnic and gender studies, and in defense of resentment

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I’m in San Jose Airport, waiting for a flight back down to Southern California. It’s been a whirlwind three days with family and friends in Carmel, San Francisco, Yountville and several places in between.

Much has been made, and rightly so, of Arizona’s recently passed law banning the teaching of ethnic studies courses in public schools. The wording of the bill, signed by Governor Jan Brewer, barred the teaching of courses that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people; are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals”.

The second of those three points is a valid one, but it’s a straw person. In my quarter century in academia, I’ve never seen an Ethnic Studies course that wasn’t welcoming of all students — including those whose ethnicity was not the subject matter. I took a number of Ethnic Studies classes at Cal in the 1980s (particularly in Chicano Studies, where I took courses with Cherrie Moraga, Norma Alarcon, and Gary Soto); in at least one of those, I remember being the only white feller in the class. And I was never made to feel unwelcome, nor did I ever get the sense that the courses were filled with “insider information”. I loved my Chicana Feminism class (taught by Alarcon), and appreciated that I was neither ostracized nor patronized by the professor or my fellow students. The work I did in those classes began with my willingness to suspend my own suspicion, to avoid the temptation to be defensive, and to recognize the multipliciities of privilege that had shaped my worldview. I bring the insights I learned in those courses into my own teaching every damn semester. Teaching a student body that is close to 80% non-white, I can say with certainty that I would be a much poorer and less imaginative professor had I never taken those courses.

I’m concerned that the Arizona law represents a serious threat to Women’s Studies as well. It’s obviously impossible to teach my primary gender course, Women in American Society, without talking about the ways in which women — as a class, and not merely as individuals — have been oppressed. What many consider the founding document of First Wave feminism, 1848′s Declaration of Sentiments opens its third paragraph with words that might cause trouble under the Arizona diktat’s first requirement, that resentment ought not to be promoted against any particular group of people:

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

The use of the singular is a rhetorical device, modeled on the Declaration of Independence. But it drives home the point that sexism has been both institutional and highly personal: it has been taught in the schools and in the home; it is promoted and defended in public, and lived out cruelly in private. Men as a class — and men as individuals — have oppressed, exploited and marginalized women for centuries. This is as much a fact as two plus two equalling four; no rational person, confronted with the evidence, could deny that fact. The degree to which that sexism remains a problem in the Western industrialized world is a subject for debate, but that it existed at all, and existed for a very long time, certainly isn’t. And no one, perhaps particularly a woman, can absorb the history of how women of all classes and backgrounds were brutalized and silenced by systems and by loved ones without being filled with something very much like resentment.

The very word resentment is important: it comes from the Latin sentire, “to feel”, and from re, meaning “again”. Resentment means to feel again — or, more loosely, to be reminded of old injuries. To teach history well, we who serve Clio must be agents of resentment, stirring up anger and grief as we demand that the wounds inflicted in the past be remembered, and even felt, again. To be a woman or to be black has historically meant a particular vulnerability to injustice. Those students who have no sense of the past (which is to say, almost everyone before they study history) need to connect themselves to the experiences of their ancestors, feeling their pain as well as their joy. That is what it means to “resent.”

Conservatives ask that students take pride in the accomplishments of the Americans who came before; the authorities in Texas have done all that they can to rewrite our history to encourage uncritical adulation of manifest destiny and the American project. To encourage pride is to encourage an emotional response to history; to encourage resentment is the same thing. Whoever we are, we can find much in the history of our forebears to give us pride. But an honest account of the American experience will make clear that for most of our history, those who weren’t white men generally suffered far more than those who were. To ask that the less-pleasant aspects of the past be expunged for fear of stirring up negative emotion is profoundly irresponsible and profoundly at odds with the job of the historian, which is to invite both intellectual and emotional responses to the narrative of what was.

If we Americans are who we say we are, we are surely secure enough to lay open the books and tell the darker aspects of the national story with the same rousing passion with which we tell of our triumphs. And if we do that, there will be a great deal of resentment on the part of those who identify with the abused, the victimized, and the ignored. That is exactly as it should be.

I’m a history and gender studies professor. I stir up resentment. The day that stops happening is the day I’ve begun to fail at my job.

The first promise I could keep: of school photos and comforting the inner child

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Earlier this week, I had an interesting conversation via email with an old friend of mine from middle school. He had added me on Facebook after noting we had many mutual contacts; we went to Carmel Middle School together from 1978-1980. I barely remembered him.

He reminded me, not in a cruel way, of what an unhappy boy I’d been in those years. I don’t know many people who regard the years between 11 and 13 as the most fulfilling of their childhood, but I was an awkward, unpopular, thoroughly alienated kid in the sixth and seventh grades. My old acquaintance still has our seventh grade yearbook (mine is long lost), and mentioned looking at my photo again recently, and seeing how evidently miserable I was. Minutes before the photo was taken one morning in September 1979, I’d had my backpack stolen. (I found it later in a trash can; it had been taken more out of puerile cruelty than greed.) In the picture, it’s clear that there are tears in my eyes. The yearbook photographers could airbrush out the skin blemishes that had already begun to ravage my face, but they couldn’t do anything about the pain in my expression.

The yearbook may be gone, but I have a copy of that photo. Indeed, that picture of me at age twelve was on my bureau for several years after I got clean again in 1998. Days after being discharged from what I pray will be my last hospitalization due to drugs and alcohol, I found a 8×10 color glossy print of that terrible photo tucked into some family papers. On an impulse, I stuck it on my mirror. A few days later, I put it in a frame.

I wanted to remind myself, each day, of the unhappiness that had been so much a part of my youth. I didn’t do it in order to wallow in self-pity. I did it because I decided, at 31, that it was time to heal the wounds of that scared and lonely and angry little boy. Despite his pain, that little boy had persevered in school, finding refuge in books. He had found refuge in animals and in nature. As isolated and alienated as he felt, and would feel for years, he had had hope — hope that someday things would be different, that he would be happy, that he would feel as if he had purpose and that he belonged. That hope had sustained him.

But that little boy was already an addict. When that seventh grade picture was taken, he hadn’t yet found drugs and alcohol. (He would find them soon, within a year.) But he had found compulsive masturbation, he had found sugar, he had found self-mutilation. He knew how to alter his mood to grant him a temporary reprieve from what was in his head. And many of those behaviors would only get worse, far worse, over the ensuing two decades.

When I made the decision in 1998 that I had to get sober, that I had to give it all up (drugs, booze, sexual acting out, self-injuring), I found strange comfort in that picture of my boyhood self. I remembered the old saying that “the boy is father to the man”, and decided (perhaps it was because I’d read too much John Bradshaw) that I was going to be the father to that terribly unhappy boy whose face I looked at every morning. During that long strange summer of detox and celibacy and growth, I looked at that boy every morning. I usually spoke to him, as I dressed for the day: “Don’t worry, Hugo, I’m here. We’re going to make it.”

My peers and I are transitioning into middle age with varying degrees of self-acceptance. I have friends and acquaintances who are still haunted by what they endured three decades ago and more; the scars of childhood and puberty don’t always heal. But for me, one key tool in my own growth, in my journey from being ruled by an unhappy and lonely inner child to being an inner and outer adult, was my commitment to that little boy whom I once was. I could not undo the hurt that had been done. But I could remember his desperate hope that things would get better, and I knew I could make those hopes real. As narcissistic as it may sound, that memory of my childhood self became a key instigator of my adult transformation.

It was unthinkable that that unhappy twelve year-old should have nothing more to look forward to than a lifetime of addiction. It was too much to bear to think that he should spend the rest of his days oscillating between pathetic expectation and crushing disappointment. He needed more and he needed better. And by God’s grace (and the 12 steps, therapy, and a hell of a lot of hard work), that sullen and isolated and hurting little boy saw his deepest wish come true.

I recommend this technique to everyone. Take out that embarrassing picture of your childhood self at your most awkward and most miserable. Put it somewhere prominent. And make that kid a promise that their pain will not endure forever. In ’98, I was a man who had broken all of my vows and promises a thousand times over. And as it happened, the first promise I could keep was to an unhappy little boy who needed so badly to know that everything — everything — would get better.

“A relentless catalyst for the other’s growth”: a positive definition of monogamy

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What does monogamy look like?

I got that question, phrased precisely that way, from a friend recently. He wasn’t asking for a definition, and he wasn’t asking for a defense of the institution. He was asking about living it out in practice.

I told my friend I wasn’t necessarily the best person to ask; though long a defender of the principle, until well into my thirties I proved capable of honoring monogamy only in the breach. Fidelity didn’t come naturally to me, something I’ve noted before. My friend told me that this was precisely why he was asking who it was he was asking — I had a “before and after” story he found moderately compelling, and he trusted that my relationship with my wife today is as it appears to be: faithful on both sides.

I’ve touched on this issue before in various posts, but I’ll summarize a bit today. First off, monogamy needs a positive definition. It can’t be summed up by what one doesn’t do with other people. I’ve never liked the “I’m monogamous because when I’m in a relationship I’m not sexual with other people” stance, not because I disagree with the statement, but because it’s far too limiting. Monogamy is about where we direct our physical and emotional and sexual energy, and not just where we don’t. In other words, monogamy is as much about single-minded devotion to one other person as it is about scrupulously avoiding sex (or emotional affairs) with others. If the energy isn’t flowing towards our partner, then we can’t claim we’re really monogamous if all we’re doing is keeping it bottled up. Monogamy and sexual self-denial are very different beasts.

Bottom line: monogamy is as much about how I love my wife as it is about how I don’t express that particular kind of love to others. It is defined by intensity as much as by exclusivity. That intensity has waxed and waned over our nearly eight years together; it has been profoundly impacted by the birth of our daughter. But it remains more than shared bank accounts and parenting duties and the enduring pledge not to be sexual or romantic with others. Our relationship is, at its core, a contract of mutual support and a pledge to act as a relentless catalyst for the other’s growth. And if you know me, or you know my wife, you know just how relentless we can be.

Your body is never the problem: a letter to a sixteen year-old on clothing, style, and creepy old men

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Rachel, who blogs at Musings of an Inappropriate Woman, poses this question from her 16 year-old self: how do I stop creepy old men from hitting on me? Rachel writes of a recent encounter with her favorite advice columnist, Melissa Hoyer:

Me: “OMG, I loved you column! When I was 16, I was going to write in to asking for advice. I wanted to know how I could dress differently to stop attracting creepy old men and start attracting guys my own age instead.”

Melissa Hoyer: “Er, I don’t think I would have been able to help you with that one.”

Rachel explains:

At the time, I had come to the conclusion that the reason I was attracting more attention from men who were 18 or 20+, right through to 40 or so, than guys my own age (the ones I was actually interested in) was because I dressed in manner that was too “adult”. I wanted to write to Hoyer because I was searching for a way to reconcile my desire to dress in clothes that I felt an aesthetic affinity with, with my desire not be designated an “adult” – an identity I was far from ready to take on at 16 – or a piece of meat because of it.

It was a question that was about far more than fashion, though – and I suspect that’s the reason Hoyer told me she wouldn’t have been able to answer it (although I like to think she would have been touched had I ever sent it off). At its heart, it was a question from a girl/young woman trying to come to terms with and navigate her own objectification.

As a feminist and a father, a professor and a former youth leader with years of experience working with teens, I thought I’d take a shot at answering Rachel’s query.

If I were writing to a 16 year-old named Rachel, I’d say:

Dear Rachel,

I wish that I could offer you specific fashion tips that would guarantee that creepy older guys wouldn’t hit on you. For that matter, I wish I could share with you how to dress in a manner that would assure that your peers wouldn’t frequently judge you, either to your face or behind your back. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to ensure those things — because the sad truth is that no matter how you dress, no matter what you wear, you will be perceived by some men as a target for their unwanted advances.

You may have heard people say things like “girls who wear short skirts are asking for ‘it’”. By “it” they may mean anything from rape to crude comments and penetrating stares. But as you may already have noticed, girls aren’t immune from harassment when they’re wearing simple or “modest” garb either. I’ve had plenty of students who’ve been accosted while wearing sweatpants or long dresses. I’ve had Muslim students who chose to wear head coverings, and they’ve been harassed both religiously and sexually. The bottom line is that there’s nothing you can wear that will guarantee respect from others. And the reason is that the root of this problem isn’t skin or clothing, it’s our cultural contempt for women and girls.

Have you noticed the way this works yet? If a girl is thin, she’s accused of being “anorexic”; if her weight is higher than the cruelly restrictive ideal, she’s “fat” and “doesn’t take care of herself” or “has no self-control.” If she wears cute, trendy clothes she “only wants attention” and if she wears sweats and jeans, she “doesn’t make an effort.” If she’s perceived as sexually attractive, and — especially — if she shows her own sexual side, she’s likely to be called a “slut.” If her sexuality and her body are concealed, she’s a “prude.” As you’ve probably figured out, the cards are stacked against you. You cannot win, at least not if you define winning as dressing and behaving in a way likely to win approval (or at least decent respect) from everyone.

The advice I’m going to give may sound clichéd, but it’s important nonetheless: you should dress in a style that makes you comfortable. Continue reading →

“Male feminists are mostly gay”: more on myths of lust and humanity

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I’ve posted many times before on the stereotypes male feminists (or, if one prefers, male feminist allies) encounter. Nearly a quarter-century after I first took a women’s studies class, and after more than a decade and a half of teaching the subject, I still regularly encounter the following assumptions:

1. I’m gay
2. I’m straight and sexually predatory, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, using the class to “pick up chicks”.
3. I’m filled with masculine self-loathing, desperately using feminism to get validation from women.

Most male feminist allies encounter at least one, if not all three, of these fairly often. In this post, I’d like to tackle the first stereotype.

The assumption that men who teach women’s studies (or merely express a strong interest in gender work and activism) are gay is a deeply held and pervasive one. Of course, it’s a different stereotype from the other two on the list. There’s something wrong with a man feigning feminism in order to get access to women; there’s something unhealthy about adopting feminism as a strategy for winning approval. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with being gay, and by constructing this list, I don’t intend to suggest that there is. (There’s an analogous stereotype about female feminists, that they are lesbians and man-haters, but that’s another topic.)

I don’t mind if folks question my sexual identity. I make it clear that I’m married to a woman and that we have a child together, but I don’t go any further to establish heterosexual bona-fides. I call myself Eira-sexual, and explain why here and here. But there is something about the assumption of homosexuality that troubles me deeply, and that’s the implication that men who are sexually drawn to women are incapable of seeing them as true equals.

The notion that gay men and hetero women are natural allies is deeply held — and reinforced by countless films and television shows. These friendships are indeed often very precious and enduring. But the problem with our discourse about these friendships is that they reinforce a number of assumptions, chief among the the idea that sexism is rooted in heterosexual desire. As many women know well, gay men are perfectly capable of the same degree of sexism as their straight brothers. The problem of misogyny is rooted in something that runs deeper than desire. We can, it turns out, despise what we aren’t attracted to as much as what we are. And while I certainly don’t think my gay brothers are especially sexist, I reject the notion that their queerness gives them any particular insight into or empathy with women’s experience. Those who are acculturated as males will have to overcome a hell of a lot of sexist programming, almost entirely irrespective of the direction of their libidos. Continue reading →

Older Men, Younger Women, and Older Women’s Sexual Invisibility: a response to Rachel

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I’ve been meaning to respond to some of the questions raised in the thread below this post, particularly those raised by Rachel. In this comment, Rachel turns away from the narrow issue of professor-student affairs to the broader issue of older men, younger women relationships, challenging what she sees as my refusal to see younger women’s potential for agency. Rachel asks:

And why is it so terrible it needs effuse apology that a man enjoys feeling virile and brilliant as he enhances the intellectual and sexual life of a younger woman surrounded by men her age who don’t know what they want out of life, are still selfish in bed so can’t (or won’t expend the effort to) pleasure her the way she deserves? In many ways, May-December romances can revitalize the lives of both parties involved.

Let’s agree to disagree about whether there ought to be blanket rules against professors sleeping with students whom they are currently supervising. (I think there ought to be, Rachel and a few other commenters aren’t quite so sure.) Let’s also stipulate that when we refer to “May-December” relationships, we’re talking about relationships between women Rachel’s age (25) and men two or three decades her senior (she mentions men 30 years older than herself). Is there a reason why 25 year-old Rachel and 50 year-old Ludwig shouldn’t have an affair, one in which Ludwig “enhances Rachel’s intellectual and sexual life” while she helps him to feel “virile and brilliant”?

Look, I’m not the sex police. I’m not going to stop age-disparate couples on the street and write them citations for violating what I regard as an acceptable chronological difference. I know full well that relationships between older men and younger women have worked quite well for both parties, even when the age gap is as significant as a quarter-century. And of course, from a psychological standpoint, I think a safe assumption about these relationships is that the potential for damage decreases as the younger woman’s age increases. I’m more concerned about a 30 year-old man dating a 20 year-old woman than I am about a 25 year-old woman dating a 40 year-old man, even though the gap in the latter relationship is larger.

That said, even if the relationship between Rachel and Ludwig is mutually fulfilling, that relationship doesn’t take place in a vacuum. When the happy pair stroll the streets or canoodle in sidewalk cafés, others will observe them. Now, it’s true that we shouldn’t let societal disapproval condition our actions. If Rachel were white and Ludwig were black, they might meet with considerable hostility, particular in certain communities. That wouldn’t be a good reason for the two of them to avoid having a relationship. Sometimes people need to be discomfited; sometimes people need to be challenged to rethink their assumptions.

But we also live in a culture in which older men/younger women relationships have a way of reinforcing the sexual invisibility of older women. Rachel’s words are telling; she implies that an older man might feel more “virile and brilliant” with a younger woman. The unspoken but obvious assumption is that he might have a more difficult time feeling that way with a woman his own age. I touched on that in a 2006 post:

So many older men hit on younger women for reasons that have little to do with sex and everything to do with a profound desire to reassure ourselves that we’ve still got “it.” “It” isn’t just physical attractiveness; “It” is the whole masculine package of youth, vitality, charm, sex appeal, and, above all else, possibility. When a 19 year-old flirts with a 39 year-old , it feels like the world is reassuring the fella that there’s still time, there are still new opportunities, still a chance to be young.

Rachel seems to be asking, “what’s wrong with reassuring the man he still has “It”? And my answer is that that it is based on a fundamental devaluing of the older man’s female peers. I always advise younger women who date older men to ask their lovers how they feel about women their own age. Frequently, the older lads will complain about the ways in which older women are “bitter”, “demanding”, “jaded”, or have “let themselves go” (meaning that they have tired of trying to live up to an unattainable ideal.) Whether the Rachels of the world are conscious of it or not, they are being set up in opposition to the older women that they themselves will soon be. And while I would not go so far as to say that the Rachels are taking from older women what is rightfully theirs, I think it’s fair to say that when Rachel sees it as normal and healthy that older men feel more “virile and brilliant” with younger women, she’s directly contributing (as are her lovers) to the depreciation of older women’s worth. Continue reading →

Parental notification reconsidered — and rejected — by the father of a daughter

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A friend, noting my past opposition to laws that would require teen girls to notify their parents before having an abortion, asked if my views had changed since Heloise was born. He’s not the only person to assume that becoming a father to a daughter would shift my views. And his assumption was that I would want my daughter to be forced to tell me (or her mother) if she became pregnant and wanted to terminate that pregnancy.

I gave him a one-word answer: no.

I’ve been pro-choice for almost all of my life, save for a brief period (from 2000-2004) during which I flirted with the “consistent life ethic”. When I was under the influence of the Mennonites, with whom I worshipped for a few years, my pacifism became so strong that it included opposition to abortion as well as to capital punishment, war, and factory farming. What seemed congruent with the spirit of Jesus, however, was really just a longing for a kind of perfect consistency. And my opposition to legalized abortion foundered on the rocks of hard reality.

When one of the 16 year-olds in my youth group came to me for help with an unintended pregnancy, I realized that in my gut, I had never for a moment stopped believing in a woman’s sovereignty over her own flesh. I helped pay (quietly) for that young woman’s abortion. And her parents, whom I knew well, were never told. My youth grouper wasn’t ready to have that conversation; all I could do was offer to be present when she told them. She was adamant that she couldn’t tell them (for a while, I was the only adult who knew), and I didn’t push any further.

I’ve written about that before. And now that I have a daughter, a daughter whom I love with an intensity that takes my breath away, have my views changed? What if Heloise Cerys Raquel were pregnant at 16? Would I want her to come to me? Of course. But if she couldn’t come to me, for whatever reason, I would not want the state to compel her to do so. I would hope that she would find someone like, well, me — a teacher or a youth leader whose counsel she trusted. I would hope that if she chose abortion, that she would have easy access to a skilled medical provider — and to friends to support her through the process. Continue reading →

“I can’t trust your praise”: the unintended fallout of professor-student affairs

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I spoke too soon. I feel compelled to write another post on the teacher-student dating thing, in response to this question below yesterday’s post, from “Pounding Sand”. PS asks:


Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds as if this question is being couched in the understanding that the professor is both older than the student, and male. There’s also the implication that all other students in the hypothetical class are aware of the affair between student and professor.

So if the affair is a discreet one, and no one else is privvy to the situation, wouldn’t that mitigate the perception of other students that the affair is effecting their interests? In the case of age equivalence is ther any room to consider the relative experiences of the lovers. In other words, the relationship between a thirty eight year old female student and a thirty year old, or thirty eight year old male professor, perhaps draws a somewhat different picture of ‘imbalance’ than the relationship between a forty year old male professor and his twenty year old female student, or an older female professor and younger male student. Put another way, who’s zooming who?

I’m not advocating either/or, but I’m interested in the both the perceived inequality vs the actual.

During what — for lack of a better term — I call my “acting out years” (from 1995-1998, when I was having affairs with students), I dated one woman who was older than me. I was 29; she was 32.

“Claire” was a returning student, coming back to college more than a dozen years after dropping out. She was very bright, but like many of those who return to college after years away from academia, anxious about her abilities. Her story was a familiar one: she’d been a clever but underachieving high school student, more interested in social activities than intellectual ones. Claire had gone off to a Cal State campus for one year, and partied her way onto academic probation and into eventual dismissal. She had married at twenty, had a baby, and stayed home with her daughter for several years. By the time she came to Pasadena City College, she had been divorced for two years and her daughter was in fifth grade.

In her thirties, much to her surprise, Claire had discovered she loved learning: she loved books, writing, ideas. What had bored her to tears at 17 fascinated her at 32. Her passion was matched by her ability. (It is not always so.) She earned top grades on every test she took and every paper she wrote. And she was funny; lovely; she sat in the front row. Our affair started during the second semester Claire was my student, in early spring of 1997.

Claire and I were discreet. Of course, she wasn’t the only person (or, for that matter, the only student) I was dating. Neither of us wanted a serious relationship. None of her classmates knew; even as word spread across campus of my reckless and sordid indiscretions with others, no one discovered what was happening with Claire.

Claire eventually transferred to a nearby liberal arts college renowned for recruiting promising non-traditional students; I wrote her a glowing letter of recommendation. And it was when I handed her a copy of the letter of recommendation that I realized yet another damaging aspect of teacher-student affairs, something that goes to the heart of the question Pounding Sand poses.

Claire looked at the letter and smiled. Her smile faded, though, and I asked her what was wrong. I’d praised her exceptional abilities (particularly her writing skills) to the heavens; I’d meant every word I’d written. Claire said: “I wish I could believe that all of this was true.”

“Of course it’s true!”, I exclaimed.

“Is it? Don’t you feel as if you have to say these things after everything that’s happened? How can I know that you mean this?”

I was horrified, and, I confess, indignant. “Christ, Claire, you earned your A in the classroom. I can’t believe you’d doubt that. I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.”

Claire remarked, calmly but with an edge in her voice, something to the effect that a professor who was so cavalier about sleeping with his students could hardly be self-righteous when his integrity was questioned. I could tell she wanted to believe that the words I’d written about her intellectual promise were true. I knew damn well that they were true. If I’d never come within ten feet of her, her dazzling, witty prose; her work ethic; and her insights would have earned her the highest grade in the course. In my mind, our sexual relationship had nothing to do with her academic ability, save that that unusual ability was one of many things that had made her exceptionally attractive to me.

Claire transferred, graduated, remarried, and moved away. She ended up in law school, and is now an attorney. I made amends to her in 2001. Our conversation was civil but brisk. She told me that while she had enjoyed my classes, and not been unhappy with our relationship outside of class, she was angry that our affair had made it impossible for her to turn to me as a mentor. Claire hadn’t seen me as a “younger man” (we were less than three years apart, after all), but as her professor. I had something she wanted, and what she had wanted most was intellectual validation. I gave her that, but it came wrapped up in a sexual relationship. As a result, she had had a very difficult and painful time trying to decide whether her As were earned, and whether my consistently laudatory feedback was truly deserved.

A woman who had grown up being told she was “pretty” but “not very bright”, Claire was a late bloomer as a scholar. And by having a sexual relationship with her, I robbed her of the chance to bask in the uncompromised praise she had so indisputably earned. At her four year school, Claire had found other mentors with whom she didn’t have affairs; she had come to trust that her talents were genuine. She hadn’t been able to get that from me. Whatever fleeting pleasure she had derived from our affair had left a lingering hurt in the form of self-doubt. And the fact that she was three years my senior in no way mitigated my responsibility for causing her that hurt.

It’s been a dozen years since I slept with a student who was in my classes. And of all the people whom I hurt by my selfish, narcissistic behavior during my acting out years, Claire was one of those the memory of whom has haunted me the longest. The amends I made to her may have been sufficient; it was the best I could offer. But she is one of those who has spurred me not only to change my life, and change it radically, but to be such a public and vehement advocate for banning “consensual” sexual relationships between profs and students.

So, PS, when it comes to the ethics of teachers dating students, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what the ages of the parties involved are. When the person with whom you are getting naked is also the person evaluating your work and your intellectual ability, the potential for crippling self-doubt will always be there.

Rebounds and transition figures: doing it right after a divorce

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Another email, from Mallory. She writes:

I was married at 27 to my college sweetheart. This man checked all of the boxes dreamed of on the surface – doctor, boy scout-esque from a nice family – all of the family, etc. were thrilled when we were married. However, quite quickly after the wedding things fell apart and he told me essentially that he was not ready to grow-up and had to go find himself. I picked up the pieces, moved to another country with a business opportunity, and started over.

I started dating a man that is very fun, we have a great time together; he’s one year younger, we are very attracted to each other, he stimulates me intellectually and I care about him a great deal. However, I do not see it going towards a serious relationship and/or marriage. This is primarily for a mis-match in ambition levels, he is not willing to move countries, and I am not convinced he is fully ready to take on the responsibilities of a relationship on that level (needless to say a big sticking point after the last relationship).

Currently I do not want to be married, but I am ready to care for someone deeply again.
Being in my 30s, divorced, but not interested in dating lots of men, I feel like it should be okay to have a lighthearted relationship – but I cannot quite shake this feeling of maybe looking like the overweight, middle aged comb-over guy in the red Porsche when dating someone I have no intention of being serious about.

When does it become counter productive to engage in flippant relationships? Am I listening to society too much, or not enough to my gut?

Though I am fond of marriage (I’ve done it four times), I don’t think lifelong monogamous commitments are the only sort of relationships worth pursuing. I’ve come to believe, instead, that at different seasons of our life we may need different sorts of relationships to help us grow. And one of the most important kinds of relationships we can have after a divorce is with a “transition figure” who can help us process the lingering wounds and doubts that almost always remain in the aftermath of the end of a marriage.

I’m not talking about using people. I’m not talking about relying on one’s own pain as an excuse to deal cavalierly and recklessly with another human being. One basic dating maxim for grown-ups: our past history of suffering doesn’t vitiate our responsibility to avoid hurting others. It’s not enough to simply say “I’m on the rebound, watch out!” and then, having broken the heart of the person with whom we rebounded, to exclaim “What did you expect? I was on the rebound!” Nothing we’ve endured gives us the right to disregard our responsibility to consider how a sexual relationship we’re having may affect the other person emotionally. Misleading another person into believing that what is temporary might turn out to be permanent is bad form indeed, particularly for those old enough to know better.

That said, I think there’s a distinction between a “rebound” and a “transition relationship”. The difference lies in three things: our willingness to assume complete responsibility for our own actions, our honesty — in both word and deed — with the other person about what we can and can’t offer, and our own internal clarity about what purpose this relationship plays in our life. If we’re scrupulous about these things, “transitional relationships” which are time-limited but intense can be enormously healing for those who have them. Continue reading →