Hugo Schwyzer

The Happy WASP Boy

Okay, I lied.  Here's one more post before I go off to a weekend of happy delirium, overeating, snowball fights, and reflective worship with two dozen fifteen year-olds.

So this post at Lucky White Girl led me to this post at Bitch Lab to this post at Listening for Change.  Topic: whiteness.  And at the last of these three blogs, I found this:

Yes, I know as well as the rest of us of the isolation we grew up with. White people don't sleep with their children. They don't play much and they don't hug much. They don't laugh much. And they spend most of the time trying to look good. We have beautiful cribs and curtains. We don't have much connecting going on.

Barb at Lucky White Girl wrote:

So what can we -those of us who recognize the emptiness of typical North American white culture- do to sate that desire for a cultural heritage we can be proud of, for a culture we -as progressives- can identify with?

But here's the thing I've realized in my life:  though there is much that is vacuous and materialistic about North American middle-class culture, that has damn all to do with skin color or ethnic heritage!  I grew up with a father who was a European war refugee and a mother who came from an "old" California family of German, English,and Scots-Irish ancestry.  I spent most of my time with my mother's side of the family, and they formed my values and my world view. 

Yes, we're WASPs.  If you want to stereotype one aspect of us, we're a Brooks Brothers wearing, Bloody Mary drinking, Buick Roadmaster station-wagon driving, fraternity and sorority joining, tennis-playing, mayonnaise and meat loaf eating, Junior League cookbook owning, monogrammed thank-you note writing, Town and Country magazine reading, English horseback riding, debutante ball attending, Social Register listed, pastel polo-shirt or sweater set clad clan.  Without apologies.

(I've rebelled against my family in some ways, mostly having to do with fashion.  I am the first tattooed man in several centuries of family history.  I'd rather wear Diesel, Energie, and Paul Frank than Ralph Lauren, J. Peterman, or Izod Lacoste.  But I can still "do it up" WASP style; you should see me in my seersucker suit!  My other rebellion, of course, is talking about the family in public.)

Yes, in our family, babies don't sleep in their parents' beds.  Yes, kids move away to college when they turn 18.  Yes, when I greet most of my male cousins, we shake hands instead of hugging.   Yes, we don't raise our voices at the table.  We chew with our mouths closed, keep our hands off the table, and don't interrupt each other. 

But you know what?  We laugh.  A lot.  And even if we don't live loud like something out of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", we adore each other.  Where on God's green earth is it written that the expressive and emotive cultures of the Mediterranean or Latin worlds are healthier than we quieter, more restrained WASPs?  I adore my wife's family in Colombia (we'll visit them soon), and I am always happy to be among my friends who come from more "colorful" backgrounds.  (Mine is one of only half a dozen inter-ethnic marriages in the family.) But that doesn't mean I'm ashamed of having grown up WASPy, of having been raised in a culture that valued understated elegance, self-restraint, self-reliance and a sturdy Protestant work ethic.

News flash, folks: Anglo-Saxon reticence is not a recipe for misery!  It's not inherently oppressive or misery making, at least no more so than any other way of doing things.   No culture has a monopoly on dysfunction; no culture has a monopoly on healthy child-rearing practices.  My ancestors were fortunate, and some of them probably made their money in ways that were cruel and exploitative.  But the sins of the fathers are not automatically visited upon the sons and daughters!  I can regret what my ancestors may have done without rejecting all of their values, all of their contributions, all of the wonderful pieces of a very real culture they bequeathed to me.

Next month, I'm going to gather with forty-odd family members for Easter.  We'll eat deviled eggs; we'll play croquet on the lawn; we'll wear pink and green and talk Cal football and the stock market and the war; we'll watch the children hunt for shiny plastic orbs in the grass and we'll catch up with each other.  There won't be a lot of yelling. No loud music will be played.  There will certainly be no dancing. No one will get drunk and fall down.  We'll all be in bed by 11:00PM and up not long after dawn.  We'll be cheerful, courteous, and gentle.  We'll have a wonderful time, all without raising our voices once.

At the end of the weekend, when I say goodbye to a few of my male family members, I'll shake their hands warmly, pat them on the shoulder --  and no more. And they'll know I love them and I'll know they love me and we've never once said it, nor are we likely to start.  But don't pity me -- I'll know that I'm treasured, and my family will know I treasure them.  Growing up WASP means that you learn that love is often understated, often silent, but no less perceptible and no less powerful as a result!  I've got a culture of which I am deeply proud, and a family whom I love with every fiber of my being. 

Shed no tears for this happy white boy.

UPDATE:  I've been away, but quickly going back through the comments I see some dangerous thread drift; I've deleted a few at my sole discretion.  This is not a forum for a discussion of race -- it's a post about WASPiness, not "white pride" or the history of race relations. I do promise a more thoughtful post on "whiteness"fairly soon.

Off for the weekend, and a note on women's jeans

I won't be posting again until Monday; I'll be on retreat with the All Saints confirmation class.  Try and keep the comments section civil!

I note that the Los Angeles Times has finally caught on to what I -- and a whole bunch of other guys -- have known for a while: tight women's jeans are in for men.

In the no-mercy world of fashion, skinny jeans are back. Some styles are essentially denim leggings — slim all over and tapered to just 5 inches across at the ankle. They should come with a warning label: Objects in mirror are even tighter than they appear.

Men are being targeted too. Los Angeles-based premium denim leader 7 for All Mankind, which began selling narrow jeans in Europe a year ago, introduced its Slimmy line for men last fall and now has a style that's even slimmer.

It was young men who helped relaunch the trend at Levi Strauss & Co.

About three years ago, the San Francisco company that dressed America in denim noticed a subculture of "young rock 'n' roll guys" wearing narrow pants at music festivals, spokeswoman Amy Jasmer said. To get the look they were after, some bought girls' pants — which they dubbed "GPs."

"They wanted them just so skinny and tight," she said.

I bought my first pair of GPs three years ago, at a little store in South Beach.  The saleswoman convinced me to try them, and I've been buying pairs ever since.  Not all of my jeans are GPs, but quite a few are.  And no, I don't teach in the tightest of the tight pairs.

Still, I'm glad that the Times is on the ball.

UPDATE:  If you live in Los Angeles, and you want great prices on designer jeans (50%-80% off of Sevens, True Religion, Antik Denim, Diesel, Sacred Blue, etc.) you must go to Maria's Fashions at 134 E. Valley Boulevard in Alhambra.  Denim heaven, I promise.

Feminism, talking about the body, and self-acceptance

Maia at Alas, A Blog asks an interesting question:

The thing about blogs is they let people talk about whatever they like. So there are an awful lot of blogs out there about women's experiences. Sometimes I wonder if this could be used for something more. If the barrier between feminist blogging, which is primarily about other women's lives, and blogging on 'women's topics' where feminist women (and non-feminist women) write about their lives, could be broken down. What would it look like if feminists who were writing about body image issues and reproduction, linked more to personal stories on weight-loss blogs and mother blogs (and yes it's scary that those are the two female blogging topics that come to mind) and vice-versa? Because I do think that feminist analysis is stronger the more it links to women's experience, and I think talking about women's experience can be something more, it can be consciousness raising.

Emphasis mine.

In my women's history classes, we spend a great deal of time dealing with issues about "the body."  As I've mentioned many times, I use Joan Brumberg's vital The Body Project as a required reading in the course.  Of all the books I assign, it invariably provokes the strongest reactions.  What I like about it, of course, is that it offers a chance for students to learn basic feminist theory by applying it to an area of their lives with which they are profoundly and intimately concerned: their own bodies.   

The physical self-obsession that torments so many of my students is not going to be instantly solved by reading a  book or taking a class. It would be a lie to say that all feminists love their bodies all the time.  But feminists are equipped with tools to identify the lies about the body that permeate the media and the broader culture.  They can, particularly when given "body history", see the historical origins of our obsession with certain kinds of unattainable body types.  Above all, the most valuable thing about studying the history of the body is this: you learn that women have not "always felt this way."

I've heard from many students: "My mother hated her body, I hate my body, and I am sure my daughter will grow up hating her body. It's always been this way."  Well, no.   As Brumberg points out, few if any young women mention concerns about weight or appearance in their diaries (she used hundreds of diaries written over a century and a half) before the 1920s.  There are specific historical reasons -- Paul Poiret's sheath dress, the coming of the automobile, industrialization and the need for "sizes" in pre-made clothes -- that contribute to this sudden upsurge in anxiety and self-loathing.  And when we discover that there was a time, not so long ago, when women didn't feel this way about themselves, we lose that sense of hopelessness that there is no possibility for change.

But the feminist task must be about more than studying the history of the body.  As Maia points out, story-telling is an essential, if often overwhelming aspect of feminist work.  As we've all been saying for nearly half a century now, "the personal is political."  And I've found, through my classes, that one key way to get women who are suspicious of feminism engaged is to create a forum for a discussion about weight, beauty, and body issues.   Discussing one's physical flaws and detailing one's anxieties is a normative part of growing-up for a great many young women.  Feminist classrooms and feminist blogs can provide a safe place for that sort of sharing to take place. 

But the goal of feminist spaces is not merely to provide a safe place to vent.    Our goal has to be to help our sisters resist the cultural, social, and often familial messages about their bodies that leave them so unhappy.  Maia notes a couple of instances in the blogosphere of women writing about confrontations with their husbands over post-partum weight gain.  Feminists can listen sympathetically to these painful personal stories, offer encouragement -- and also offer tools.  In these discussions, feminists can remind everyone -- over and over again if need be -- that the demands of the culture (or of spouses) for a certain body type are unrealistic, unreasonable, and can be successfully resisted.  Rather than end discussions with a sigh and a "That's just the way it is, some things will never change", feminists can point out counter-examples, usually of women who have refused to comply any longer with the tyranny of slimness (or the tyranny of voluptuousness, or whatever.)

Of course, here's the kicker: if you're going to preach self-acceptance, you've got to be doing everything you can to be self-accepting.  And as many of us in this field know, in few areas is there a greater divergence between one's language and one's life than that of body self-image!  We all know many women and men who are wonderful to their friends, regularly reassuring them that they look terrific and they shouldn't worry so much.  Those same men and women frequently tremble -- alone -- before the bathroom mirror.  As the old saying goes, it's hard to give away something you haven't got!

From a feminist standpoint, learning to love one's body isn't just about boosting one's own self-esteem.  It's about providing an example to other women who need to know that self-acceptance is not a chimera, but a viable reality. That's hard work, I realize.  And I also know that it's difficult to take coming from a man whose body is perceived as fairly fit.  But as I've blogged many times before, I struggled with a serious eating disorder years ago.  I still have to battle body dysmorphia from time to time, though I've come a long way.  So though I cannot ever truly understand what it's like to live as a woman in a world of such cruel and contradictory physical ideals, I am aware of just how painful it can be to sense that one is "too big", "too small", too much". 

And I'm also aware, every day of my life, that I owe my continued healing from those awful feelings not only to God, but to the men and women who showed me from experience that it was possible to learn to love one's body and rejoice in one's flesh.

Thursday Short Poem: Jeffers' "House Dog's Grave"

I'm putting up another fairly well-known poem this week: Jeffers' "The House Dog's Grave", a poem he wrote in tribute to his beloved bulldog.  I have had several friends and acquaintances who have lost pets this month, and this poem is in tribute to all of them.

When I was twenty, I held my little dachsund "Keiska" in my arms as the vet put her to sleep; she had been my dear friend since I was eight.  I read this poem a lot that painful June of 1987, and I still -- of course -- get tearful whenever I read it.  Jeffers was so rarely sentimental; if you know his body of work, it really stands out as utterly unlike anything else he did.  It's all the more moving as a result.

The House Dog's Grave (for Haig, an English Bulldog)

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you,
If you dream a moment,
You see me there.
 
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.
 
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no,
All the nights through I lie alone.
 
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read‚
And I fear often grieving for me‚
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
 
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
 
No, dears, that's too much hope:
You are not so well cared for as I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided...
But to me you were true.
 
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

Some very long thoughts on fantasy and masturbation

Second hot-button post ot the day, and the last one.

I've been promising a post about masturbation for a couple of days.  This is especially important because what I'm about to write is at least partially in contrast to what I wrote just seven months ago.  I have reread that post several times, and my own views have (as they sometimes do) evolved.  There were some things I wasn't ready to write back in August 2005 that I am ready to write now.  What I wrote then was largely based on what I was comfortable teaching; I didn't touch much (sorry) on how it is that I seek to live my own life.  Now, I'm ready to do that.

First off, I'm not writing to titillate or to offend.  I'm trying to balance several things together here as I write: my feminism, my faith, and my ever-evolving understanding of human psychology and sexuality.  But in the end, this post is going to be written from a spiritual perspective, one that will be sharply at odds with conventional feminist thought.

Below this post on Monday, my reader and student "Mermade" asked:

Is it possible to masturbate without lust involved? My boyfriend, who has struggled with porn and masturbation, says that it is impossible to masturbate without using some sort of lustful stimulation (except in the cases of children, which is an entirely different topic). Anyway, we know lusting creates many problems, problems which I have personally witnessed and been VERY hurt by. Therefore, if it is impossible to masturbate without hurtful lustful thoughts, should masturbation itself be endorsed as healthy if it cannot be done without damaging thoughts?

I have always wondered how feminism views women masturbating to porn depicting naked men (Playgirl, etc.) I am firmly against the sex industry and I wholeheartedly agree that men must give up their lust after women in order to be pro-feminist. However, I have scarcely heard about how people feel regarding women lusting and masturbating after men and whether or not feminism sees that as wrong. Granted, the porn industry is mostly aimed at men's interest. However, many women lust after porn as well, and I don't believe that's right either. (That kind of fits in with "me too" feminism). I would like to hear yours and other people's thoughts on that.

It's at this point that a great many of my secular readers, particularly feminist progressives, will start to get annoyed.  (I almost said "hackles up", but caught myself in time.)  In the secular feminist world in which I was marinated for years and years as a child, a college student, and a periodic activist, no one ever expressed any negative feelings about masturbation. 

And this always struck me as odd, frankly.  I've written a lot about pornography and the sex industry,and I've critiqued them using both a Christian and a feminist perspective.  I readily concede that feminism is divided on the ills of pornography; some feminists see all porn as problematic, while others prefer to draw distinctions between porn that demeans and objectifies women and erotic imagery in which women's pleasure matters, and in which women are active agents.  But here's what got me when I was in college, and what I could never fully understand when I was in discussion with my fellow anti-porn feminists: why is it wrong for men to purchase, view, and masturbate to pornography, but not wrong for those same men to masturbate to demeaning fantasies of women in their heads? If we aren't just objecting to the industry of porn, but also to the way in which men and women objectify each other, shouldn't we consider also consider the ethics of masturbation"?   That's what I intend to do here.

Mermade asks some serious questions, the sort that generally only get asked in religious circles (where the healthiness of masturbation is not taken for granted, as it is in the secular world).   Her first question is critical: Is it possible to masturbate without lust (or lustful fantasies)?  I suppose it's possible, but I don't think most people do. If there are folks who masturbate to orgasm while balancing their checkbooks, or while contemplating the Sensenbrenner immigration bill, I suppose that they'll write in to refute me, but I am fairly certain most people, men and women, use sexual fantasy as a key part of their masturbatory routines.

I can hear the chorus now:  Sure, Hugo, everyone fantasizes! It's natural and healthy, though!  Are you seriously going to question whether or not it's acceptable to masturbate?  Do you want to give all of your students a massive guilt complex?   Well, hold on a bit, folks.   I'm not denying that sexual fantasy is a powerful part of most of our lives, and a part of our lives that most secular voices insist we ought not even try and control. In the secular world,  ethics is about our actions, not the substance of our thoughts.  Fantasy, therefore, is nearly universally regarded as harmless; as long as we don't act on all of our fantasies (particularly when they involve boundary violations of one sort or another), we're told to enjoy our private reveries (with or without masturbation.) 

But if there's one overwhelming thing that most of the world's great spiritual traditions agree on, it's this: our thoughts do matter.  In the Abrahamic religious tradition, the tenth commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Covet."  To "covet" is to long for, desire, lust after, envy, etc.   This commandment comes after earlier commandments about theft and adultery.  To borrow language from our Buddhist friends, It's clear that God is calling His people not only to right action, but also to right thought.  Jesus continues the theme in Matthew 5:28:  But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  It's difficult to look at Scripture and continue to insist that masturbatory fantasy is harmless!

Fleeting thoughts are impossible to control.  But it's one thing to have a fleeting thought, and another to "entertain" the thought for any length of time.  To paraphrase the famous line from Martin Luther, "I can't stop the birds from flying over my head, but I can stop them from building nests in my hair."  Fantasy and lust -- for anyone other than my wife -- is letting the birds build a nest on my head.  And I am convinced that that fantasy life is at odds with my spiritual and physical commitments.

I remember, several years ago, meeting two very different men who helped develop my views on masturbation.  One was a Dominican brother who was studying at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; the other was a very advanced yoga practitioner I met when I was in grad school at UCLA.  I became good friends with both, though I never ended up becoming either a Dominican or a yogi (hey, there's still time!)  The Dominican was just a few years older than me; the yoga teacher was in his forties.  And at different times, in different ways, the subject of masturbation came up.  Both men, despite their disparate religious traditions, were celibate in the truest sense -- they not only didn't have sex with other people, they didn't have sex with themselves.  The Dominican told me he hadn't masturbated since he was 17; the yogi had gone more than a decade without ejaculating.  (There is a school in yogistic thought that is big on sperm re-absorption and celibacy, but I can't remember which one it is.) 

As you might suspect, I had a hard time believing either man!  At first I though they were lying. Then, choosing to believe them, I began to suspect they were stark raving nuts. I argued with my Dominican friend, pointing out that God says nothing about masturbation in the Bible; I argued with my yogi friend, saying that it simply wasn't healthy to go that long without orgasm.    Both men were patient with me (they'd heard this sort of thing before).  My Dominican friend emphasized what I emphasized above -- our obligation to honor God with our minds as well as our actions; my yoga friend emphasized the extraordinary physical and psychic benefits of restriction and self-control. I wasn't convinced by either man, though I've never forgotten what they shared with me.

I've come to the following conviction in my own life: for me, as a Christian man on a radical spiritual journey, masturbation falls short of the mark.   All of my sexual energy (in thoughts as well as behavior) goes towards my wife.  Now, that's easy for someone in a relationship to say, of course.  I haven't posted on this before for that reason!  First of all, it's an intensely private subject.  Second of all, I know that my words in a public forum such as this have considerable power.  My goal is not to shame anyone. Please know, I don't tell the teenagers that I work with in my youth group not to masturbate; when the topic comes up in my courses on gender, I never make the suggestion that I think that masturbation "falls short of the mark."  This is a private conviction that I've arrived at -- and yet, it's such a vital part of so many people's lives and it's so intimately connected to other issues that we discuss on this blog -- that I felt compelled to address it here.

More recently, I've met several young men and women in a variety of spiritual traditions who have chosen not to masturbate as well as refrain from sex outside of marriage.  I've seen young celibate men (at their stereotypical sexual peak) choose to channel all of their sexual energy into other aspects of their lives; some are Kabbalists and some are Catholics but all are convinced that is indeed humanly possible to live without masturbation.  As one young man I know who studies Kabbalah put it, "I believe that the purpose of sex isn't necessarily procreation -- I believe it's sharing.  Sex is only truly appropriate and sacred when it is an act of sharing light and joy with another human being.  Masturbation is all about me, and my goal is to think less about me and more about the world I am called to serve.  It's very difficult to restrict, but it isn't impossible."

Do I think masturbation is a sin?  No.  Do I think folks ought to be ashamed of masturbating, or of sexual fantasies? Of course not.  But have I seen very real benefits in my own life and in the lives of others from giving it up?  You bet.  At nearly forty, I still have a strong and vibrant libido, thanks -- but today, all of it is directed towards one other human being, and that human being is not myself.  On my spiritual journey, I've come to the point where I find tremendous liberation not in following my impulses but in sublimating them.  (I'm just the latest in a very long line of men and women who have come to that same conclusion, of course.)

In the end, I chose to let go of masturbation and sexual fantasy because they were at odds with my vision of what it meant to live a life of servanthood and discipleship. I believe today that everything I do and say is an ethical issue. How I spend money, how I eat, how I vote, how I share my time, how I love, how I think, how I fantasize, how I use sexuality. It's easier, of course, to live up to these commitments as a married man -- but I have a large number of friends of a wide variety of ages who have made the same decision, and many of them are single.  They are not bitter and angry; indeed, though their lives are not without struggle, they seem more joyous and energetic than many of their peers who have not made the same decision.

I am convinced that good people can disagree strongly about this issue.  I am convinced that one can masturbate and be psychologically healthy.  But from time to time, folks like Mermade have asked me what my true feelings were about masturbation and fantasy.  And at long last, I feel comfortable and confident enough to offer my true answer in a public forum.

White guilt, religious zeal, and nature-worshiping misanthropy: why I am confused about immigration policy

Everywhere I go this week, folks are talking about the great immigration debate.  My students, my colleagues, my friends -- even strangers in Starbucks are animatedly weighing in on the recent demonstrations here in Los Angeles and the ongoing policy struggle in Washington.

I find that when I think about immigration, I have two equally powerful, emotional, visceral reactions.  Naturally, these reactions contradict each other.

Reaction one is rooted in my sense of myself as (on my mother's side) a sixth-generation Californian.  All four of my maternal great-grandparents, and two of my great-great grandparents, were born in this state.  Not many folks can say that.  When my ancestors arrived here (for the Gold Rush, mostly), they found a state of perhaps a million people.  When my mother was growing up, California had seven million; in my childhood, California had twenty -- and today, we have thirty-six million.

My childhood was divided between our house in Carmel and a family ranch in the hills northeast of San Jose.   For as long as I can remember, we've been making that two-hour drive between these two homes with some regularity.  And I've watched as field after field has been covered with new houses; I've watched the cattle and farms of my childhood (and I'm only 38!) disappear beneath "Redwood Estates" or "Glendalough Ranches" or "Belleview Manor" or whatever godawful pretentious name the developers have bestowed on their ticky-tacky tract homes.  (I grew up singing the "ticky-tacky boxes" song).  My mother and my grandmother bemoaned the loss of the rural, bucolic, and (I suppose) privileged life they had known, and I grew up bemoaning it with them.  In college, I studied the phenomenon of false nostalgia, and ruefully recognized myself as a first-rate practitioner thereof!

I've been a Sierra Club member for a long time.  If there's one "religion" my family shares, it's a commitment to preserving the environment.  Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Wiccans (I have three Wiccan cousins), we are all passionate "no-growth" types.   I was raised on the vaguely misanthropic nature-worshipping poetry of Robinson Jeffers, and as a child and an adult, some of my happiest times were and are in the mountains or on the beaches of my native state -- alone!  I may be an extrovert, but this extrovert recharges himself in wildness.

So I look at the population growth, and my first reaction is "Dammit, we don't need any more people! We need fewer Californians!"  I want to close the borders not only to immigrants from abroad, but from elsewhere in the United States.  When a drought comes again, as it will, where on earth will we get our water?  What will happen to our state parks as population pressures grow and grow?  What will happen to a way of life that even in my childhood I knew was vanishing?

So that's reaction one.  I think those thoughts for a while, and then another voice kicks in: "Hugo", I tell myself, "you're a snob and an elitist.  Your family got here first and stole more, and now you want to pull up the drawbridge.  Besides, affluent whites such as yourself consume more and waste more than most poor migrant families do; I'm fairly confident that Hugo (even with his conservation efforts) produces more garbage per annum than your average undocumented laborer. "

Of course, as I think those thoughts, my faith starts to kick in.  I ask myself the perennial question, "What Would Jesus Do?"  I recall Deuteronomy on welcoming strangers.  I think about the gospel of radical love that stretches beyond borders, and I end up overwhelmed with guilt for my initial xenophobia.  Instead, I cry "Throw open the borders! Make all God's children welcome!  The Lord will provide (the water, the food, the freeways); we all have plenty, let's share our abundance!" I launch into impassioned and self-satisfying rhetoric about the biblical imperative to love my neighbor (without checking his immigration status).  I get drunk on a satisfying cocktail of white guilt and religious zeal, and next thing you know, I want to chant "si se puede" and march in the streets, hire the next day laborer I see -- and when he's through, I want to overpay him, hug him, and invite his family for dinner.

I share these two reactions not to be self-deprecating but to be candid about the deeply emotional and confused nature of my own feelings about immigration.  Of course, I am capable of rising above both a reflexive nativism and a naive Christianity. I'm aware that saying "throw open the borders and welcome everyone, 'cause God will provide" is no more of a realistic solution than "build a really really big fence."   As a person of faith, I can't hide from serious policy issues behind either my beliefs or my fears, even though it is tempting to do so. It's clear that we do need a sensible border policy, and it's also clear that we have to a better job of addressing the root causes of migration.   Building an economically healthy and truly democratic Latin America is the only way to cope with the problem long-term.

But charting a sensible middle-ground course is difficult.  What is key, clearly, is that those of us who have emotional reactions to this issue -- and in Southern California, who doesn't? -- must be willing to consider intelligent, thoughtful compromises.  We must be honest with ourselves about our real fears, and be honest too about the long-term costs of the very solutions we propose.  And as we do this, we must be very, very kind to each other.

Boxing, MRAs, priorities

North Carolina beat Tennessee.  Darn it all.  My women's bracket is now nearly wiped out; please, Lord, let Duke beat UConn.

A friend points me to the ultra-MRA lads at the Nice Guys Forum; they're all very confused that I've started boxing.  In their infinite spare time, they've devoted a thread to me.  One of them writes:

All of that being said, I think I saw somewhere that Hugo was either considering practicing boxing or actually doing it. As someone who has sparred in contact fighting (including Thai boxing and grappling) I find it rather strange on his part. I though he criticized 'traditional' male activities like that . . . oh well.

Deal with it, fellas!  Really, I've been loving the boxing, though I still have a long way to go in learning technique.  My trainer Pepe has been amazing -- in two months, he's begun to transform my body and my skills.  Increasingly, I'm comfortable about the idea of hitting another human being without intending to hurt them.   If I think of boxing as "scoring points", I can imagine myself sparring with others without abrogating my commitment to non-violence. 

When I hit the bag, or my trainer's mitts, I'm not fantasizing about hurting people. I'm not venting or letting out anger. When I started all of this training, I worried that it might make me more aggressive, or at least encourage violent daydreams.  (I've posted about this in an explanation of why I stay away from video games).  Happily, boxing three mornings a week with Pep leaves me tired but peaceful. I feel more in tune with my body than I have in a long time, and I rejoice in that.

When I add up how much money my wife and I spend on things like Pilates sessions and gym memberships and private boxing lessons, it's a considerable expense. (And I'm about to add yoga into the mix.)  I go through a pair of running shoes every six to eight weeks. And yet, we don't spend much on our cars.  I don't spend anything on alcohol, because I don't drink and my wife has only a rare glass of wine.  We don't own a stereo system.  I have no idea what a Blackberry really does, or what Bluetooth is. Our TV is adequate, but unimpressive.  I have zero interest in spending much on entertainment, and realize that the amount of money I spend each week on working out is no more than some of my friends spend on going out.  We all have our priorities, I suppose!

I've got some more thoughts on immigration coming tomorrow.  And a long post about masturbation percolating in my head too, though that may wait a day or two.  And one about the first woman priest I knew well.  Sigh.  And now I've got dinner to make and a chinchilla to entertain and a wife to embrace -- and I'm getting up at 4:30 tomorrow morning to go hit things before the sun comes up.

Student crushes, part two

In a comment below last Friday's post on student crushes, Ryan writes:

There is, also, a reciprocal phenomenon that few of us talk about: the crush on the student. Let me first explain what I mean by crush, here, because it's almost explicitly not sexual. Lord knows that my sex life was awkward enough at that age--I certainly wouldn't want to revisit it with a 15 years older body. But there are students with whom I become temporarily fascinated. Just as students find that there can be something intoxicating about the presence, the experience, the passion of someone at the front of the classroom, there is something similarly invigorating about the potential, the excitement, the newness of a really compelling student. I regularly develop these crushes. They've never grown into anything more than an occasional email correspondence after the student has gone, but the crushes do go both ways, and they more we try to divorce them from taboo sexuality (which seems to have little to do with it at all), the more we can address what they are, which is excitement about the very act of teaching and learning, personified in teachers and students who seem to embody those ideals.

An excellent idea for a follow-up post!

Like Ryan, I scrupulously avoid sexualizing my students.  (Frankly, at this point in my life, that's not difficult to do.)  But like Ryan, I get an occasional crush on a young (or not so young) student.  Not only are these crushes not sexual or romantic, they also aren't primarily about my ego, either.

I mentioned this topic to a colleague yesterday (I'd sent her the first post on student crushes), and she laughed at me.  "Hugo, you just like the students who soak up your every word.  You get crushes on your proteges as extensions of yourself.  You're such a narcissist!" I was hurt, and I told her so.  Lord knows, I am relentless in my self-criticism -- but after reflecting for some time on what she said, I'm convinced my colleague got it wrong.

What I mean by a crush on a student is this: every once in a while, no more than once or twice a year, I will have a young man or a young woman in one of my classes whose life and ideas and personal growth becoming powerfully interesting to me. I can't always tell who it's going to be, mind you!  It's not automatically the "best and the brightest", and it certainly (I can't stress this enough these days) has damn all to do with physical attractiveness.  It can happen equally often with men or women.  But suddenly, often out of the blue, I will find myself caring desperately about that one particular student's development.  I daydream about that student, and look forward eagerly to their office visits and to their emailed questions and the stories they tell about their lives.

I know lots of my students read this blog, so let me be clear about something: you are all precious to me. I rejoice when you do well, I agonize when you don't (and I wonder what I can do to help you do better.)  I think about you more than you realize, and even though you surely imagine that you are just a sea of faces and names to me, please know that you are far more than that.  I take seriously my obligation to teach all of you, to challenge you, to stimulate you.  And I worry, more often than you know, that I am failing you.

But my overall concern for all my students doesn't mean that one or two don't get under my skin.  And I think Ryan is right when he says that these "crushes" are all about recognizing potential.  With such students, there's a sudden realization of just what kind of extraordinary human being this person is on the verge of becoming.   And with that realization, there comes an intense curiosity to see how it will all develop.  With some students more than others, I become emotionally invested in their success, not because their success reflects pleasantly on me as a teacher,  but because they have stolen my heart.  When I become not merely a teacher, but also a mentor (as I do with quite a few of my students), I feel incredibly privileged and excited.  I've stayed in touch with many of these "mentees" (again, folks, of both sexes) for years and years.  Some of these crushes last a long, long time.

When I graduated from high school in 1985, my favorite English teacher (Mr. R) wrote something in my yearbook that I still treasure.  It was a simple poem with a straightforward rhyme scheme, and here's how it  finished  here's the whole thing:

Of all the kids that I have taught
for lo these thirty years
a couple I consider naught
and others bore to tears

And some I shall remember
long after they depart;
and one or two a very few
have filched this fellow's heart

But though I really love them all
and have a spot for each,
you ought to know before you go,
you're why I love to teach.

Mr. R was in his late fifties; I was barely 18.  I loved him, and I felt loved by him.  He signed lots of yearbooks that final day in class, and I confess I found ways to sneak peeks at my classmates', just to make sure that he hadn't written the same thing in each one.  He wrote nice things to all his students, but I was the only one (or so I tell myself) who got those lines. I can't tell you how much they've meant to me over the years, and the thought that he cared especially for Hugo still touches me today.

Did Mr. R have a crush on me?  Given the sexual and romantic connotation of that word, I suspect he wouldn't have said so.  But in the broader sense, I believe he did -- and it was mutual. I wanted to be near him (I ate lunch in his room more times than I can count).  I lived for his approval, and he seemed so genuinely interested in me. I recognize Mr. R in myself with certain "kids" today.  I'm not ashamed to say I "crush" on some of them, especially given the literal meaning of the word.  To have a crush, in one sense, means to give the object of your crush the power to break your heart. I've had my heart broken more than once by a student.  I've been to a funeral or two, and taken a call or two from county jail. I've watched bipolar students go off their meds and tumble into pits of despair.  And some of these students I've loved more than others, and their setbacks have, in a very real emotional sense, crushed me; their triumphs, on the other hand, have sent my spirits soaring.

Every once in a while, I think about stealing Mr. R's poem and giving it to a special student who has "filched this fellow's heart."   I haven't done it yet.  But I think about it. 

A quick response to Roger about feminism and faith

My fellow blogger Bill Ekhardt points me to this post at the Christian A-Team Blog: An Introduction to Feminism.  Written by a fellow Christian named Roger, the post offers what promises to be a thumbnail sketch of the history of feminism.  It's the usual sort of screed, frankly.  It contrasts the "good" nineteenth century feminists (Stanton, Anthony et al) who merely wanted legal rights for women with the nasty Sixties feminists (Friedan is singled out) who demanded actual equality with men.

The second form of Feminism is sometimes called the “second-wave,” while I prefer Radical Feminism. This form emerged in the 1960’s and sought (quite consciously) to establish functional equality between men and women. According to its proponents, women not only can do everything that men can do, but they should do everything men can do. This sort of Feminism has been incredibly damaging to the culture and its members.

Precisely how "functional equality" damages the culture is not something Roger bothers to explain; apparently we are to take it for granted.  The comments aren't much better, with a Christian blogger I respect referring to Friedan as a Stalinist.  That's so wildly off base, I don't know where to start.   (For folks in the Christian world, that's like calling Benny Hinn a strict Five Point Calvinist, or calling Gene Robinson a Fundamental Baptist.  Sheesh.)

I don't usually take the time to go after anti-feminist attacks on conservative Christian websites.  But the A-Team blog has some good stuff on it -- it's not your usual, run-of-the-mill rants of the sort you find in the commentary section of World Net Daily.   More importantly, I'm trying to distinguish between a useless engagement with those who are utterly hostile to feminism, and creating dialogue with those whose understanding of feminism is based on distortions, half-truths, and fear.

Roger would do well to become familiar with Christians for Biblical Equality, a terrific non-profit dedicated to reconciling feminist principles of justice and egalitarianism with the Gospel.  The statement of beliefs on radical equality is endorsed by everyone from Richard Mouw to Bill Hybels to Ron Sider.  An excerpt:

The Bible teaches that woman and man were created for full and equal partnership...

In the church, spiritual gifts of women and men are to be recognized, developed and used in serving and teaching ministries at all levels of involvement: as small group leaders, counselors, facilitators, administrators, ushers, communion servers, and board members, and in pastoral care, teaching, preaching, and worship. 

In so doing, the church will honor God as the source of spiritual gifts. The church will also fulfill God's mandate of stewardship without the appalling loss to God's kingdom that results when half of the church's members are excluded from positions of responsibility.

Hmmm.  And Roger said that the worst thing about feminism is that According to its proponents, women not only can do everything that men can do, but they should do everything men can do.   Well, CBE -- made up of far better biblical scholars than Roger and I will ever be -- has made it clear that when it comes to family life and church life and public life, women and men are equally called to all responsibilities.

I look forward to Roger's next post, where he explains why most of the faculty of Fuller Seminary have betrayed the fundamentals of Christian faith by insisting on biblical equality!  Feminism's call for full integration of women into all aspects of the culture and human endeavors is utterly congruent with the biblical understanding of gender and sexuality.

Whenever I doubt the possibility of reconciling faith and feminism, I pray.  I also have a look at the principles of CBE, grounded as they are in Scripture -- and in the radical notion that God calls women and men alike to full and equal participation in the Kingdom.

Another really long one on pro-feminism and the sex industry: UPDATED

I'd like to respond to some of the comments in my post below about stripping.

One of the important things I need to remember is to articulate a specifically male pro-feminist perspective on issues like stripping and sex work.  Rather than just respond one by one to all of the criticisms of my strong anti-porn, anti-strip club stance, let me offer an overview of where it is that "I'm coming from" on this issue.

First off, it is damn near impossible for a man to take an anti-porn, anti-stripping stance without being perceived as being anti-sex worker.   Some of this is my own fault.   Either I'm construed as arguing that all female sex-workers are victims who need to be rescued, or folks assume that I see them as selfish narcissists who are "letting down the feminist side".  I'm trying to avoid taking either stance, and I'm not doing a very good job so far.  So while I regroup and prepare for another post on that subject, let me deal with the aspect of this issue where I do feel far more comfortable: writing about men who "consume" porn and other products of the sex industry.

If you do a Google search for "overcoming porn" or "stop going to strip clubs" on the Internet, you're going to find that virtually the only organized groups challenging men to change their behavior are religious organizations.  There are dozens and dozens of Christian ministries in this country calling men to sexual accountability; Promise Keepers chief among them.  They do important work, and I have many friends in these groups.  Heck, I've even belonged to one or two of them.  What these groups do get right is that they understand that the sex industry doesn't just hurt those who are the paid workers within it; it has devastating consequences for the consumer and his family.

But outside of the religious blogosphere, there is very little male writing about the problem of the sex industry.  Furthermore, I almost never read posts about porn addiction/sex addiction on feminist blogs.  We debate legalizing prostitution, and we all wax eloquently (or not so eloquently) about "gazes" and "subjectivities" and "perfomativities" and "agency."  We all sound very sophisticated!  But the reality is that millions and millions of American boys and men are spending hours staring at porn and masturbating to it, they're spending a fortune at strip clubs, and they are experiencing very real consequences.  When feminist blogs do address these consequences, they understandably approach them out of concern for the women who are negatively impacted by men who use porn or visit strip clubs or consume sex workers.

But as a man who cares deeply about other men, I am grieved by how few non-Christian resources there are for men who are struggling with issues of sexual compulsion.  (If that seems too strong a word, please understand that I've met a lot of guys in my day -- and I've met very, very few whose sexual behavior around porn/prostitutes/strippers wasn't compulsive to one degree or another.  The power of sexual imagery and fantasy is so great that it tends to to turn folks who are remarkably self-controlled in other areas into embarrassed, ashamed addicts.)  As a Christian, I have lots of resources if I choose; my friends who don't share my faith commitment (and are not likely to convert) have far fewer.

One conversation pro-feminist men need to have with each other revolves around our own feelings and experiences with the sex industry.  If you're a pro-feminist man, you can't live your life in compartments. I simply don't believe it's within the range of human possibility to see women as autonomous agents of worth and value, with desires and wants of their own on the one hand -- and at the same time be viewing images of hundreds of images of women on your computer  or gazing hungrily at a naked stripper gyrating on a stage. If sex touches us so deeply, it defies reason to suggest that any of us can keep our private behaviors from bleeding over into everything else we do.  That's not just a Christian notion, that's sound psychology.   But before we can all agree on that, pro-feminist men need to share their stories around the sex industry, not to shame ourselves but to see how universal our experience has been -- and to see the damage it has done.

What I don't like about the state of the male pro-feminist blogosphere is that so many folks spend a lot of time deflecting the conversation away from their own behavior.   Lots of men comment on lots of feminist blogsites, and because these men hold solid opinions on reproductive rights and other public issues, their pro-feminist credentials don't get challenged.  Now, I'm the last person to challenge anyone's credentials about anything, but I do believe that there's got to be more to being a pro-feminist man than holding a certain set of political and social convictions. To put it another way, I don't just want to know what you believe, I want to know what you live out in your private life.  And if you're a heterosexual pro-feminist man, I want to know if your sexual behavior with women (in reality or fantasy) matches your public commitments.   Tom, Dick, and Harry can wax eloquently in the comments sections of dozens of blogs about egalitarianism and justice.  But I want to know, what do they look at on their computers when no one is around?  And, even more importantly, how does what they look at affect their relationships with women? 

To put it really bluntly, if you want to be a pro-feminist man you've got to honor your commitments with your mouth, your mind, your heart, your hand, and your penis.  Few of us will do this easily at first; learning to live with that kind of integrity (or wholeness) takes a long time.  But once you do get there, you become a resource for other men who are leading double or triple lives, filled with shame and embarrassment and a deep sense of their own weakness.  Through a hell of a lot of work (and even more grace), I've created a life for myself where there is no discrepancy between my public pronouncements and my private behavior.  I have accountability partners who know every website I visit; I like knowing that I will be challenged if they see something on my browser report that doesn't seem right.  If my students, my blog readers, my friends could watch me on a hidden camera, they might see me singing silly songs to myself, or talking to my pencil or picking my nose, but they wouldn't see me directing any of my sexual energy anywhere other than towards my wife.  And even if -- God forbid -- I were to be single again, I am confident that my commitment to staying away from the sex industry would remain firm and absolute.

That last paragraph sounds boastful.  That's not my goal!  Look, without getting into hurtful details, I've made a huge number of mistakes in this area.  I've lived a quintuple life based upon privately objectifying the very class of human beings whose dignity I was publicly defending.  That didn't work so well; heck, it nearly killed me to know what an absolute and utter fraud I was.

So the upshot of this very long post is this: men who care about feminism need to be willing to match their language and their lives.   When it comes to discussions of sex work and sexuality, we mustn't hide behind academic jargon. We can't issue sweeping defenses or condemnations of the sex industry without first being honest about our own personal responses to that industry.  That doesn't mean that every male pro-feminist blogger has to go public about his private life (not everyone has tenure!)  But it does mean that when it comes to something so profoundly powerful as sex, it's absurd to pretend that any of us can discuss this without our own experiences, fantasies, and sense of shame coming into play.

UPDATE:  As always, some folks just don't want to discuss this issue head on.  This is not a thread to discuss the role of women in sex work.  This is a thread focusing on men as consumers, as customers, as clients -- and how the sex industry (stripping and porn in particular) shapes their lives.  This is not a male-only thread, but it is a thread that focuses on the impact on the male consumer and those around him.  If you want to comment on the impact on female sex workers, the earlier post is the place to be.