Hugo Schwyzer

PCC in the news

Not that I care all that much, but folks, let's be clear that Senator Kerry's now infamous remark about education and Iraq on Monday was made right here at Pasadena City College.  No, I wasn't in attendance at the rally that featured Kerry, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Phil Angelides; I was giving a lecture on the Roman gods and the role of paranoia in the expansion of the Republic at the time, and that struck me as far more worthwhile for my students.

If Kerry's remark ends up hurting Democratic chances of retaking Congress, I will be one disgruntled Pasadena City College Lancer.

I don't blog Iraq or national politics.  But those of you who do, and want to talk about Kerry's words on Monday, make sure you mention Pasadena City College.  The darned New York Times just talked about a "California college", and that was disappointing.  But a quick check of Google news shows at least some of the coverage of this minor tempest does include a specific reference to PCC.

"THE most desirable age for a man is 38"

In a comment below this post, Joe Smith writes:

A friend of mine, who is a serious mack daddy pickup artist, assures me that THE most desirable age for a man is 38.

Yeah, right.  Does this oracle of wisdom, this mack daddy, happen to be near 38?

Anyhow, folks, have at it.    My experience has been that what I find attractive has shifted as I age.  But this is clearly not the case for everyone.  So is there a "peak age" for desirability, particularly if we define desirability in terms that go beyond the merely physical? 

Also, folks: at what age do you think you were at your all-around most desirable?   At 39, I'm the happiest I've ever been -- and if happiness is a key component of attractiveness, I'd have to say now.   Though my body might be better now than ever, my features are not what they were in the mid-90s.  I peaked at 29, in late 1996 or early 1997.  Quite possibly the second weekend in March.

I am in the eleventh year of an ongoing decline.

"Cowboy up for Christ": the Godmen, muscular Christianity, porn, and saddle imagery

A long Reformation Day post.

Kristie, who also comments on this same topic, sends me a link to this Newsweek story: Godmen: Promisekeepers with an Edge. 

Godmen is, according to the organizers,  a series of testosterone-fueled Christian men’s gatherings across the country. Their purpose: to reassert masculinity within a church structure that they (the organizers) say has been weakened by feminization.

Uh huh.  Or, in other words, Godmen is about giving men who feel overwhelmed and challenged by a Gospel message of egalitarian justice a chance to worship God without having to let go of the very things that Jesus asks them to surrender.

According to the article, a "Godmen band" sings a song called "Grow a Pair":

  “We’ve been beaten down/ Feminized by the culture crowd/ No more nice guy, timid and ashamed/ We’ve had enough, cowboy up/ In the power of Jesus name/ Welcome to the battle/ A million men have got your back/ Jump up in the saddle/ Grab a sword, don’t be scared/ Be a man, grow a pair!”

I consider myself a charitable fellow, but it's impossible for me as a man, as a feminist, and as a Christian to read that without a very loud derisive snort. How do you reconcile "No more nice guy, timid and ashamed" with Matthew 5?  It is the fallen culture that celebrates aggression; it is Jesus who celebrates meekness.  The Godmen have managed to get it all exactly backwards.  Simply invoking the "power of Jesus' name" doesn't magically transform an essentially secular message into a Christian one.

The Godmen have much in common with at least some of the secular Men's Rights Advocates I encounter in the blogosphere.   For one thing, both Godmen and MRAs engage in the nifty trick of framing themselves as "oppressed victims".  Since at least the 1970s, both MRAs and white conservative Christians -- traditionally the greatest agents of injustice -- have tried to steal the mantle of "victimhood" from the genuinely oppressed.  In this perverse reframing, gays and lesbians who want marriage equality become the powerful forces of evil, imposing their will on a simple, God-fearing, and ultimately powerless majority. 

If there's one thing I loathe above all else it's the appropriation of the language of the oppressed by the oppressors themselves; all the Godmen are adding to this tired mix is the apparent imprimatur of our Savior Himself.   According to the Godmen, Jesus didn't come to build a "peaceable Kingdom".  He came, it seems, to restore traditional gender roles and act as a Savior to that most noxious of cultural archetypes, the "hen-pecked husband" in danger of drowning in feminist rhetoric.

Scripture calls us to war.  But it is not a war to be fought by men only, and it is a war to be fought with prayers, not swords.  And war is, in the end, only a metaphor for the intense struggle we all fight on behalf of peace.  Paul, in Ephesians 6:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Paul's audience would have known better than any modern one what a shield and a helmet looked and felt like.  And the shields and helmets and swords Paul speaks of are entirely spiritual, to be used in congruence with a gospel of peace.   Paul and Jesus take classic symbols of masculine aggression and artfully turn them into tools for building a peaceful, just world.    For Paul and Christ, means and ends are radically, divinely congruent: peace is built peacefully with the shield of faith and a sword of the Spirit.  To mistake the physical sword for the spiritual one is an old and tragic mistake, one that Christians have been making since, oh, the early fourth century.

For the Godmen, pornography and masturbation are apparently the "worst" sins in which a man can engage.  (In the Newsweek article, they are mentioned several times as a particular focus.)  This is in keeping with much right-wing Christian rhetoric about the necessity of "purity."  At first glance, but only at first, the Godmen's hostility to porn seems to match that of certain wings of the feminist movement.  But the similarity is, I have come to realize, only superficial.

I've never been to a "Godmen" service.  But I've been to a few Promisekeepers events, and I've also got a strong grounding in secular feminism.  Frankly, I don't know many other men who have spent a considerable amount of time in both evangelical and feminist circles, and who feel genuinely at home in both.  (What was it old Walt Whitman said about contradictions?)  I've heard lots of talk about pornography in both camps.  And while the hostility to porn is often nearly identical in intensity, what undergirds that dislike of commercial sex is fundamentally different.

While the feminist anti-porn movement is concerned with the impact porn has on both women and men, groups like the Godmen only pay lip service to concepts like "exploitation" and "dehumanization."  What conservative Christian men's groups find so troubling is that an addiction to porn and masturbation leaves men feeling weak, powerless, and vulnerable.  In particular, for the vast majority who are heterosexual, it is the intensity of desire for women that leaves many men feeling dependent upon their girlfriends and wives (as well as the images on their screen.)  Thus a man who can resist pornography and sexual "sin" is a man who can stand up to women and resist their challenge to transform himself.  Feminists don't like porn because porn sends a fundamentally destructive message about who women are.  Godmen don't like porn because it is a visceral, shameful reminder of male weakness, one that stands at odds with their self-flattering vision of strong, bold, Christian warriors.  One group's opposition to porn is grounded in justice and a desire to see our common humanity acknowledged; the other's in the rhetoric of masculine autonomy and independence.

I am a Christian, washed clean in Christ.  I believe myself to be a new creation, one who still struggles mightily to follow my Master.  I am a feminist, committed to the notion that we are called to see men and women as radical equals.  I am a man who understands that his strength comes not from his testicles or his Y chromosome or his bravado, but from the Spirit that is given equally to all of us, male and female. 

The Godmen band use the image of the saddle and "cowboying up."  But the New Testament image of the saddle is of Saul of Tarsus, proud and cruel, thrown from his saddle and left sprawling in the dust of the Damascus road.   Saul became Paul -- and became a true Christian -- not when he climbed on his horse but when he fell from it. And men become followers of the Savior when they too are willing to be left sprawling in the dust, blinded and overwhelmed, surrendering all they have to Him.

Stealing quarters and defacing Ronald Reagan: why Hugo got kicked out of prep school

From the "stories I've never told" file:

In 1980, at the age of thirteen, I began attending the York School, a private Episcopalian college prep day school in Monterey.  The school had grades 8-12, and I entered in the eighth grade.  I lasted six months, and was kicked out ("dismissed") from school in March 1981 (just days before John Hinckley shot Reagan, for those who remember the era).

I was dismissed because I was caught stealing money from the boys' locker room on campus, but that wasn't the only strike against me.  I was failing algebra and chemistry, and had a reputation as a trouble-maker.  On a very conservative campus, I had distributed copies of the Socialist Worker, and had openly defaced a Republican campaign poster (signing my name to my handiwork) days before Reagan defeated Carter in the tragic November 1980 election.  I was not a popular boy -- sullen and quiet in the classes I didn't like (math, science); boisterous and obnoxious in the classes which I enjoyed (English, geography, Latin).  I have no doubt that the school was grateful that I gave them an excellent and justifiable reason to dismiss me when I was discovered pilfering change from other student's clothes.

A note about the theft: I wasn't stealing bills.  Indeed, I left the "real money" alone.  What I wanted -- all that I wanted -- was change for the soda machines.  Cokes cost only a quarter, and I was as addicted to caffeine then as I am now.  It was a sad little incident.

In any event, the Monterey Peninsula is very small, and was smaller in 1981.  As in any small-town community, word of my dismissal from York (I was the first student kicked out in three or four years) spread rapidly.  My mother admitted to some understandable embarrassment, and I had to endure much teasing when I was forced to re-enroll in the local public junior high school just before the end of my eighth grade year.  Everyone knew I had been kicked out of York, and was now back at the same middle school I had left the previous June.

Over the years, the rumors about what had led to my dismissal grew more and more elaborate, to the point that I was said to have been dealing drugs, or -- my favorite -- caught having sex with another boy in the showers.  (Whether this non-existent partner of mine had been dismissed as well was never clear.)  Alas, the truth was far more prosaic.

Why tell the story now?  Well, it's a small part of my life, and it was a terrific learning experience for me.  I learned that I had a defiant, rebellious streak that could be harnessed for good but which could also get me in a great deal of trouble.  I learned that my recklessness had consequences, and could hurt people who loved me.  Indeed, this was the first time I realized that my carelessness and defiance did have a very real impact on those around me.  It took me another twenty years to truly grasp what that would mean, of course.  And when I run into kids in youth group who are struggling with authority, working way below their potential, and getting into trouble, I can tell them my story of being thrown out of prep school and establish some reasonably good bona fides.

I learned, thank goodness, to knock out the stealing habit -- though the soda addiction has proved far more difficult to kick.

Time is money, money is time: reflections on class, fun, and volunteering

Typepad is, once again, in full-on "wonky" mode.  It is very annoying.

I read this post at Lauren's and the post here that inspired it.  The question revolves around whether "fun" is largely subject to class and patriarchal culture -- read Lauren's post to understand a particularly powerful "yes" response.

It would be absurd to say that the blogosphere is a classless environment.  On the one hand, it's hard to tell from reading a particular blog what the owner's financial circumstances are.   The look and design of a blog may reveal more about the creative skills and technical expertise of the individual blogger than of his or her finances.  But when the subject turns, as it did at Lauren and Twisty's, to "fun" and "recreation", then yes, class issues become evident.

Reading Lauren's post, I was reminded of something my mother always said -- and still says -- to me:

"I don't know if time is money, but I do know that money is time."

What mama means by that is this: the goal of time may not be to make money, but perhaps the greatest gift of having money is time.  Time to think, time to take leisurely walks, time to train for marathons, time to exercise, time to read novels, time to travel, time to write books and create chinchilla charities and volunteer.  When I was in college, I was expected to work during my summer vacations (and I had many jobs, including working a 2:00AM-10:00AM shift for the Carmel Dept. of Public Works).  But during the school year, I wasn't expected to have a job.  Some of the free time that gave me I wasted; some of it I spent taking long walks and reading, reading, reading.  I had time to reflect, time to absorb, time to simply "be."  It was a magnificent gift my family was able to give me.   Money and class were reflected not in my clothes or my wrist watch but in the hours I was able to spend in coffee shops or lying under trees.  Money made time, and my life would not have been the same otherwise.

Now that I am older, I feel an obligation to be a "good steward" of both time and money.   While volunteering is not a luxury of the prosperous, the more resources one has, the more time one can give to one's community.  For example, my wife and I have housecleaners handle many tasks around the home; among the things we do with the "time saved" is volunteer with elementary age children in South L.A. two days a week (that's her gig) and work with a high school youth group (my primary volunteer responsibility.)    And then there's the chinchilla charity and other less regular volunteer opportunities.

The old "to whom much is given, of whom much is expected" adage is loaded with class implications.  It is easy to make fun of the traditionally female "professional volunteers" of an earlier era.   Groups like the Junior League and others raised money for hospitals and for the homeless, visited the sick, tutored in under-performing schools.  Yes, they sometimes did so in pearls and sweater sets.  Yes, they often went lunching or shopping when they weren't volunteering.  But for the most part, they used their time and money to make the world a fundamentally better place -- and in cities and towns all across this country, the benefits of their "community spirit" survive.  Many of the older women I knew growing up lived this life: not "earning" a living, but running the non-profit boards, manning the soup lines, organizing the benefits.  They used the time that their money gave them, and they used it wisely.

Until the revolution comes, and while Jesus continues to tarry, those who have had the good fortune to benefit from the system have a moral obligation to share.  Tithing to charity is part of sharing (and going above the 10% tithe has been a successfully met goal for us in '06); tithing "time and talent" is also, I am convinced, an ethical responsibility.

And working to create a society where more people have the luxury of time to create and invent and rest is absolutely vital.

Announcing Dudley, Joonko, Gabriella, and Ninotchka

I am delighted to report that as of yesterday, we have five chinchillas living in our home.  Dudley, Gabriella, Ninotchka, and Joonko flew in from Detroit to join their new sister Chihiro, whom we adopted just over one week ago.

Yesterday was a bit of a nerve-wracking day.  Adam and Sally, our friends and colleagues with the Matilde Mission, drove the chins from their home in Jackson, Michigan to Detroit Metro Airport yesterday morning.   We had had a special carrier built to carry all four chins, but at the airport, the Northwest Airlines luggage representativs refused to clear it.  Fortunately, Adam and Sally had brought two back-up carriers -- one each for Dudley and Joonko (who have been a pair for years), the other for Gabriella and Ninotchka (who have been together for almost a year.)  Dudley, by the way, is a neutered male: the others are all females.

As soon as they had dropped the chins off for their flight to Los Angeles, Adam and Sally called us with the waybill number.  We promptly went on line to track our new babies' progress -- and horror!  The airline website told us that the four chins had been placed on a plane to Phoenix, Arizona.  Could one possibly send heat-sensitive animals to a worse place?  Fortunately, the same webpage revealed that that mistake had been quickly corrected, and the little ones were on the right plane to LAX.

We drove off to the airport early yesterday afternoon, filled with nervous excitement.  We first went to Terminal 2 in the main airport complex, but were told by an unpleasant man at the Northwest Baggage Service that our chinnies were "freight, not luggage" (who knew there was a difference?) and would be delivered to an off-airport cargo site some two miles away.  As we turned to go back to our car and drive to that site, the Northwest fellow said, nastily, "Enjoy your new coats."  Trust me, a complaint will be filed.  I have a very easygoing nature about most things, but not about "pelting humor."

Thankfully, the good folks at the Northwest Cargo Office were much nicer.  When we got there, and told them about our chinnies, the woman behind the counter immediately made special arrangements to send a truck and driver right on to the tarmac to meet the plane and bring our babies directly to us.  While we were told it normally takes 1-2 hours to get freight off the plane and to the Cargo Office, our four new kids made it to us in a fraction of that time.  Flight 327 from Detroit landed at 2:40,and though we were two miles from the plane’s gate, we had the chins in our car, ready to go home, by 3:05PM.

Dudley and Joonko share one very large (60-inch high) cage; Ninotchka and Gabriella share one only a tiny bit smaller. They are all positioned to see their cartoons (which run 24-7), and their cages are filled with hay and chew toys and exercise saucers.  The three girls were exhausted last night, but Dudley insisted on coming out to play.  Unlike the others, he’s had some experience being shipped before, so perhaps being on a plane didn’t wear him out the way it wore out his three female companions.

In any event, pictures will be up soon.The move to the new blog site will happen in the near future, and I hope to have a paid Flickr account for easier viewing of chins and other things.  Here's an old (June 2005) picture of me with Dudley, taken when we flew out to Michigan to meet Adam and Sally and form the Matilde Mission.  We had no idea when the pic was taken that he would someday come home to us.  Of course, we had no idea we would lose our Matilde so young.

My wife and I are very, very happy.

Off 'tll Monday

I have seven classes worth of midterms to grade, and we've been working hard to get the house into "chinchilla shape".  No posting until Monday.  I've written a lot in the last few days though, and so I shan't feel guilty about being away for a few days.

A note on professional boxers and shin splints

Yesterday at the boxing gym, I met this young professional fighter.  Vicente's a great guy,  and we had a nice chat -- and to my considerable pleasure,  I was able to give him some knowledgeable advice about overcoming shin splints.  From the knees up, I have no doubt this fellow could destroy me in any athletic competition he could name.  But for an old man, I have some pretty damn strong lower legs from years of hill running, and I haven't had shin problems in years and years.  My trainer, Pepe, asked me to give VIcente some tips, and I was immensely flattered by the rapt attention I received from this 2004 Olympian.  (I know, I'm shamelessly name-dropping and bragging.)

Key to overcoming shin splints: hills, hills, hills.  Shins hurt when the calves aren't as well-developed as they should be.  Just as building strong abs is the best way to deal with lower back pain, building strong calves helps cure shin splints.  And running uphill builds calves like nothing else.

In any event, my boxing training is really coming along.  Only problem: with the new nearly vegan diet, I'm losing muscle as well as fat despite all the protein supplements.  More legumes, more tofu, more push-ups.

Vicente fights next November 10.  I may have to finally start watching boxing.  But what of my pacifism?  Can it coexist with a love of pugilism?

More chinnie pics, and a note about cartoons

Two new pictures of Chihiro here and here.  No, she doesn't look much like Matilde, at least not to anyone with a discerning eye for chins.  Note the very different nose and the longer, narrower ears.  Chihiro Pango Massionfruit Schwyzer is a sweet little girl, a bit on the shy side, but very playful.  Her new relatives may arrive this weekend, and we'll be in chinnie heaven if all goes well.

One thing about chinchillas: they love to watch television.  We learned this from our friends the Blackes, who have rescued hundreds of chins and have many, many as pets.  And not just any television: cartoons.  We got cable hooked up on Tuesday in what will be the "chinnie room" at home, and Chihiro spent the night watching Boomerang, the classic cartoon network.  (We don't think she's ready for "Adult Swim"; we'd rather have her watching Penelope Pitstop and George of the Jungle.)

If you love your chins, and can afford the cable or the dish, give them cartoons.

Closing the doors: men, aging, younger women, and ego

I posted last Thursday about my friend Sean and his experience with a Starbucks barista less than half his age.  As you'll recall, Sean had thought the young woman was flirting with him; it turned out that she was "checking him out" in hopes of introducing him to her mother.  Sean was bemused and crestfallen, but has promised to call the mom (whose number he was given.)  I'll give an update when I get it.

A number of folks asked again what a man Sean's age (my age, just on the cusp of 40) would see in a young woman of 19.  The socio-biology crowd usually trots out the fertility argument: older men are attracted to younger women because they can more easily conceive our children.  I have very little time for evolutionary biology as an explanation for human behavior, but then again, I'm trained in the humanities and the social sciences!   

In any case, let me offer a different explanation: the fragility of the aging male ego.  Sean and I -- and a number of my other male friends -- are in our (very) late thirties and early forties.   And though some of us are straight, and others of us are gay, and some of us are married, and some of us are fathers, and some of us are doing what we love and others hate what they do -- all of us are acutely conscious of getting older.  The signs of our aging show up in countless ways.  They show up in the lines on our faces; the grey on our heads, beards, chests; the thickening of our middles.  The signs show up in other ways, too: our parents are becoming more frail.  We are starting to worry more about mom and dad than they worry about us.  For many of my peer group -- as for me -- our parents are dying.  I can think of half-a-dozen friends who have lost their dads in the past couple of years, just as I did in June.

We fight our aging in a number of ways.  In my case, now that I am seven months from 40, I've revamped my diet (I'm achingly close to being a true vegan). I work out a great deal, and have dropped fifteen pounds since my dad's funeral in early July.  I also make sure to eat my veggies, and I check my skin assiduously for growths and bumps and moles.  (Running shirtless in  Southern California risks turning Hugo into a melanoma farm.)  I won't bother with worrying about wrinkles or grey hairs, however.  My pride dictates to me that diet and exercise are the "right" ways to fight aging; cosmetics and (heavens forfend) plastic surgery are the "wrong" ways.   Forget the Botox, pick up the boxing gloves.

But it would be disingenuous to insist that my buddies and I are all fighting against death.  Yes, we want to be healthy; yes, we want to live long enough to see our grandchildren graduate high school -- even if we don't reproduce until our fifth decade.  We want to outlive our fathers.   Yet there's more to all of this effort than keeping ourselves healthy, and it ties in with what was going on with Sean and his barista last week.  We not only want to be fit and youthful, we want to hold on to the world of "limitless possibility" that so many of us associate with our teens and twenties.

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 (as Sean thought the barista was flirting with him), 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.  What was so painful to Sean --even as he laughed about it -- was that while he imagined the barista saw him in the category of "potential boyfriend", she saw him as "potential step-dad."  Where he wanted to present himself as filled with erotic potential, she apparently saw him as "safe" and "nice" and "perfect for my mom."  He was using  Starbucks gal as a gauge to measure whether he still had "It", and she gave him a very clear answer: No.

I am absolutely convinced that many of my peers (and men older than myself) chase younger women for precisely this reason.  It's not that women our own age are less attractive, it's that they lack the culturally-based power to reassure our fragile, aging egos that we are still "younger than our fathers", still hot and hip and filled with potential.  Inspiring romantic or erotic desire in women young enough to be our daughters becomes the most potent of all anti-aging remedies, particularly when we can display our much younger mates to our peers.   By comparison, the famous little red sports car reveals only the size of our pocketbook; attracting a girl barely out of her teens reveals the enduring power of our youthful appeal.  And for those men who are desperately afraid of losing out on possibilities, afraid of closing doors, afraid of the humble acceptance that things have changed forever -- then there is nothing, nothing more compelling than significantly younger women.

Women our own age know us.  Really well.  A man my age finds that "lines" don't work as well on women around 40 as they do on women around 20.  Experience is not the best teacher, but she's not a bad one either; most single women in our peer group have heard it all before, six times over.  And when we string together sentences filled with eloquent bullshit, our female peers will smell it and call us on it.   While some younger women can also see through our sad little facades, the less experienced she is, the better our chances of deceiving her.  And when we deceive her, we get the chance to see ourselves through her eyes, as we would like to be seen: heroic, decisive, strong, sexy.  Women our own age are less likely to buy what we're selling without a thorough test drive.  (Yeah, the metaphors are flyin', but you get the point.)

As I near 40, I find myself constantly quoting the lines from the Donald Justice poem:

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

One of the most important doors to close is the door marked "everlasting youth."  Part of growing up is learning to accept that our choices are finite, that our youth is temporary, that the sexual desirability we may have had (or wished we had had) at 25 is gone, or at the least, significantly changed.  Another door we  must learn to close is the one marked with the unwieldy phrase: "constantly in need of validation and reassurance."  This doesn't mean we won't always need affirmation from others, but the kinds of affirmation we need will change.  Whether we have "It" can't matter anymore; whether we are loving, kind, safe, generous, and reliable will.  The world doesn't need us to be sexy in middle age.  The world doesn't need us to be "on the prowl".  The world needs us to close softly the doors to our past, to embrace our aging and changing bodies, to embrace our families (in whatever form those families come) and to embrace the great adventure that only promises to get better and more glorious. But it will only get better if we close those doors. 

And part of closing those doors is loving younger women as our daughters, not as gullible potential partners who offer us the chance to believe in our own immortality just a little longer.