Hugo Schwyzer

"Your wife is quarter nigerian? Nice."

Four posts in one day today...

On August 22, I put up some links, including one to this excellent post on interracial relationships and children at Alas, A Blog.  I wrote, almost as an aside:

Someone recently asked me what my wife and I would tell our children (when, deo volente, we have 'em) about their ethnic heritage.  The long answer: Indigenous Colombian/Jewish/Nigerian/English/Croatian/German/Austrian/Scotch-Irish/Czech/Welsh/Spanish. Short answer: a beloved child of God and two adoring parents. 

It's funny: my wife is only one-quarter African (what would, in a racist era, have been called a "quadroon"), but that's the one-quarter that seems most fascinating to most folks.

As if to prove my latter point, Everchange wrote a comment this morning:

your wife is quarter nigerian? nice.

Now, as it turns out, Everchange is a Nigerian blogger, which helps me put the comment in context.  I admit, that before I clicked on the comment to find out who this person was, I was deeply annoyed.

My wife is one-quarter African.  I don't post pictures of her as I wish to protect her privacy.  To most people, she appears to be of mixed race.  Folks often ask her (or me) about her ethnic heritage.  When I give a full answer, it's amazing how often folks fixate on the African quarter.   I sometimes hear:

Wow, she doesn't look black. 

or, alternatively:

Yeah, I can kind of see it in her.

Both are verbatim quotes from our acquaintances.  The last one was particularly infuriating. Is blackness an "it" to be seen?  My wife's father was born in Montana into a family of Czech-Croatian ancestry (think Willa Cather novels), but hardly anyone focuses on that aspect of her heritage.  That strikes folks as dull by comparison!  Her mother's mother is mestizo Colombian, which also seems less intriguing than her mother's father's Nigerian background.

Race and ethnicity is not my field of expertise.  But I've been amazed, over the year of our marriage and our several years of dating, how my wife's perceived "blackness" and her African heritage are regularly singled out by my family and friends for unique scrutiny.  It's certainly reminded me of why using the term "exotic" for human beings ought to be a misdemeanor! 

Even in multi-cultural greater Los Angeles, black-white marriages and romantic relationships seem to attract significantly more attention and fascination than Asian-white or Latino-white or Latino-Asian couplings.  It's not surprising, of course, given that black-white relationships have a unique and special history, a history often charged with sexual stereotypes and horrific abuse.  But it's still quite eye-opening to encounter it as part of one's own life.

Children can look like both their biological parents, neither of their parents, or one of their parents.  Or they can closely resemble a grand- or great-grandparent.  It is with some curiosity -- and trepidation -- that I muse over how our future children's visual appearance and skin color will affect how they are perceived in the wider world.

More on ratemyprofessors: following "Tearfree's" example -- UPDATED

I got an email from a reader this morning pointing me to this post at Reject the Koolaid.  It's got a new twist on how those of us in the academy can respond to the ratemyprofessors phenomenon:

Just over a year ago when Tearfree’s daughter and a friend were discovering the wonders of Google and the Internet, they decided to look up their mothers on ratemyprofessors.com, a site they’d heard the adults heatedly discussing on more than one occasion.

Tearfree’s then 10-year-old daughter was, to say the least, distressed to discover some of the not-so-nice things written about her Mom there, and, like the loyal daughter she is, she took it upon herself to set the ratemyprofessors.com record straight. “I would love to have this prof as my BFF,” she gushed online as if she were at a slumber party. Tearfree’s daughter’s friend also added some equally kind words about her own mother.

The girls were so proud of the instant results of their handiwork that the next time they got together, they decided to boost their Moms’ ratings yet again. But this time their flattering postings were removed from the site. The girls had been unmasked as users making multiple posts about the same professor from the same IP address. They’d encountered just about the only barrier ratemyprofessors.com has.

We are not told, alas, where Tearfree teaches, or what her real name is.  But it certainly puts a new spin on how some of us may be getting our ratings.  It gets more intriguing:

Tearfree decided earlier this year that enough was enough.

She did not take the route of more diplomatic colleagues who have appealed successfully to the managers of ratemyprofessors.com to take the worst stuff down. Nor did she follow the example of valiant professors from the social sciences who have performed complex statistical analyses of ratemyprofessors.com’s data and drawn all sorts of conclusions, including the highly obvious one that students are inclined to give top ratings to attractive easy markers. No, instead Tearfree decided she was going to go up against ratemyprofessors.com using their own dubious tactics. Thus, since the beginning of 2006, whenever she finds herself with a free moment while sitting in front of someone else’s computer – be it at the library or at her aunt’s place of employment or at the gym – Tearfree just writes herself a glowing ratemyprofessors.com review and posts it.

The only unsuccessful part of this strategy is that for some reason all the chili peppers she’s given herself, to indicate a scalding hotness rating, have failed to show up. Yet despite that small flaw, Tearfree now has one of the best ratemyprofessors.com ratings in the entire university, making herself an off-the-charts statistical anomaly and a possible footnote in that study that concluded hot easy markers almost always come out on top.

Love it!  I think my project for the rest of the day will be rating all of my colleagues, giving all of them chili peppers for hotness.  I will give them plaudits merited or unmerited, praising their pedagogy and their personal style to the highest heavens.  Then I shall rate myself as well. If those pesky MRAs who have figured out how to disguise their IP addresses will show me how to do it, then I can do it every dang day.   I'm fairly certain a small number of people have given me most of my ratings anyway, so why not add to their number with glee?

By the time I'm done, the social sciences division of Pasadena City College will have nothing but hot, brilliant, kind, helpful, erudite, inspiring faculty.

UPDATE:  I may think better of my Tearfree-inspired plan. If there are students out there who have found RMP to be genuinely useful, and would rather that I not conduct a campaign of insidious civil disobedience to boost the self-esteem of my deserving and undeserving colleagues alike, let me know.

More on "don't ask, don't tell", and male transformation

First off, I have a standing promise to link to any current or former student of mine who starts blogging.  (Note: this does not generally apply to Myspace blogs).  Connie Chung (young enough to have been named after the television news presenter) has waded into the 'sphere.  Welcome, Connie, and enjoy!

One of the immensely gratifying things about blogging is that every once in a while, it turns out that a post I wrote ended up being useful for someone.  I got an e-mail recently from a fellow named Thomas, and rather than summarize it, I'll quote it in its entirety:

I would just like to thank you for your article -  Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the Right to a Private History found after conducting a Google Search.

Your quote - 'We all have the right to have had a past, and to have that past without apology' is sheer genius, many thanks.

Basically, I have been with a girl for 6 months now, who is a few years older than me, I'm 23. Now, I have had my share of sexual partners, and I'm sure that my 'number' would bother her. Although, we both declared that we didn't want to have 'that' conversation, I think we both know that both of us have had a colourful sexual experience. However, this has been bothering me for a while.

After a few brief chats about previous partners and flings, I became increasingly frustrated with the fact she has got an experience. Don't get me wrong, because the other half of me was thinking - 'of course she has you fool, she's 27 years of age'. The strangest part of my frustration was that ex-partners don't bother me…that has an emotional attachment which I think is fair enough, it was the flings and brief relationships that bothered me…although I have been doing exactly the same thing.

I have become frustrated with my own damn frustration, so you can see how confusing this is!!

So, in an attempt to alleviate my annoyance, I tried to seek some text, maybe an article that may explain my frustration…your's did exactly that. I agree that you shouldn't ask and shouldn't tell, I wasn't going to go that far. Some of the articles I read talked about various medicines and psychological help…I don't need that, I'm not a nutter. I just wanted to read something that would take the haze away from my ridiculous thoughts - your quote has done just that.

As soon as I read it - I said 'that's exactly what I needed' out loud, catching a attention of a few work colleagues no less, whoops. I'm already thinking much more clearly about what the past, in terms of the 'you' and 'me' situation you talk about in your article…frankly, in terms of sex it means very little, if anything…and my sex life would probably not be as good as it currently is, if my girlfriend hadn't taken the options she had available to her.

Only 20 minutes later I'm thinking much more positively about my thoughts, I don't want to know where they came from, just wanted to see something to help me get rid of them…I struggle to come to terms with things I don't understand. These thoughts I didn't understand because I'm no virgin. My issue was that I know she deeply cares for me. She has difficulty expressing feelings of love in words, due to past experiences, however she says she loves me, and I love her back…I've been in love before, this is it again, but stronger. She also mentioned for the first time that she loved 'making love' to me, an absolutely massive step for her, so I had no doubts there, and trust isn't really an issue. I need to clarify and get some information to back up the sheer affection we feel for each other, rather than having negative thoughts all the time.

So once again, thank you for your excellent words, I will keep a copy of your quote in my wallet and carry it with me as a reminder that often the past is not that important.

Well, it may be self-serving of me to quote Tom, but I've never been told someone carries around something I wrote in his wallet!  That's very nice.

I get a lot of hits looking for that July 2005 post.  An extraordinary number of men and women struggle to overcome their own anxieties and jealousies and obsessive thinking in regards to their current partner's sexual history.  Indeed, when I posted on the topic last summer, I don't think I realized just how pervasive the problem was!  The many comments -- and many, many e-mails -- I got in response convinced me that this is a significant issue for an extraordinary number of people!

What I honor about Tom's struggle in particular is that he was willing to cop to his own ugly double standard.  He was no virgin, and his girlfriend (though slightly older) hasn't done anything with her past partners that he hadn't with his.  Yet Tom, like countless men throughout the world, had been raised in a culture that conveys the message that women have a unique obligation to be virginal and virtuous.  To his great credit, he was at least as troubled by his own hypocrisy as he was by his girlfriend's past.

I've worked with young men like Tom.  I'm so often impressed by their willingness to go to any length to overcome their own learned sexism.  In a sense, they too are victims of the vicious cultural double-standard.  It's not much fun, really, to spend hours and hours consumed with dark thoughts about one's partner's past, not much fun to brood and obsess, not much fun to anxiously wonder how one "measures up."  Foolish and sexist men blame "experienced" women for "making them feel this way."  They preach a double-standard in order to spare themselves this sort of worry.

But a pro-feminist man (I don't know if Tom would use the label or not), knows better. He knows that the jealousy and the judgment he feels are his problem, not his girlfriend's.  And rather than berate her, or ask her endless, prying, nagging questions, or sulk quietly, he gets pro-active -- and seeks help to overcome his programming.

I think pro-feminist men have a special role to play in helping younger men do this work.  Too often, the burden of helping younger men work to transform their sexism falls on women.  Girlfriends and wives and sisters end up spending a great deal of time helping men they love let go of their double standards, acknowledge their male privilege, and work to become more authentically egalitarian.  To say that can get tiring for the women is, well, the understatement of the week!

Feminist men have an obligation to young men like Tom.  Not all 23 year-olds are as willing to work to transform as he is.  A vital part of male feminist work is creating opportunities for men in his position to talk openly about their fears, their obsessiveness, their anxieties.  And once the space has been created where that discussion can happen, we can propose solutions grounded in our own experience.  I'm glad that every once in a while, that can happen in cyberspace.

The Return of the Thursday Short Poem: Dunn's "John & Mary"

All of us who teach have favorite examples of accidental student genius.  They are archived and collected (see here ) and treasured, passed around among countless teachers.  Some are surely apocryphal.  Some are simple malapropisms, others -- as in this fine Stephen Dunn offering -- are not only unintentionally hysterically funny, but oddly poignant as well.  With school underway this week, this is a fine choice for my first Thursday Short Poem since coming off hiatus.

John & Mary

"John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met."
-- from a freshman's short story.

They were like gazelles who occupied different
grassy plains, running in opposite directions
from different lions. They were like postal clerks
in different zip codes, with different vacation time,
their bosses adamant and clock-driven.
How could they get together?
They were like two people who couldn’t get together.
John was a Sufi with a love of the dervish,
Mary of course a Christian with a curfew.
They were like two dolphins in the immensity
of the Atlantic, one playful,
the other stuck in a tuna net—
two absolutely different childhoods!
There was simply no hope for them.
They would never speak in person.
When they ran across that windswept field
toward each other, they were like two freight trains,
one having left Seattle at 6:36 p.m.
at an unknown speed, the other delayed
in Topeka for repairs.
The math indicated that they’d embrace
in another world, if at all, like parallel lines.
Or merely appear kindred and close, like stars.

I heart Chris Clarke: some thoughts on the "blog crush" and giddy admiration

Yesterday, in my little "random notes" post, I mentioned having a serious "blog crush" on Chris Clarke, who publishes Creek Running North and edits Earth Island Journal.

Not unreasonably, John asked:

...what is a "blog crush"?

Am I right in saying you've never met the man?

A troll made a comment, since deleted, insinuating that my blog crush on Chris was evidence of latent homosexuality.  That's not worth responding to, but John's query is.

Lots of folks in the blogosphere use the phrase "blog crush."  (If someone can tell me with certainty who coined the term, I'd be happy to assign credit!)  As I understand it and use it, a "blog crush" refers to a profound degree of admiration, intellectual attraction, and a certain desire to emulate the writing style (or life habits) of the blogger on whom you are crushing.

In my post about student crushes, I wrote that in my experience, crushes on teachers are rarely about actual sexual desire.  I wrote:

we don't just get crushes on people whom we want, we get crushes on people whom we want to be like!   Students don't get crushes on me because they want to go to bed with me or be my girlfriend or boyfriend; they get crushes on me because I've got a quality that they want to bring out in themselves.

And that's also what I mean by a "blog crush."   I may be months away from turning forty (a milestone I eagerly anticipate), but I still occasionally find myself idolizing, in a breathlessly adolescent way, certain inspirational people whom I encounter in person or in cyberspace.   I call that a "crush." While crushes can have a sexual or a romantic component to them, those qualities are not essential to a crush.  A crush is about idealization, even when that idealization is tempered (as it ought to be at my age) by a realistic understanding of human nature.

When I first met my old pastor at All Saint Church, Scott Richardson, I immediately "crushed" on him.  He's now the dean of the cathedral at St. Paul's in San Diego.  Did I -- do I -- want to sleep with Scott?  No.   At my age, with both men and women, I'm able to separate a "crush" from its sexual and romantic aspects.  But I loved listening to his sermons.  I wanted to know everything about his life, how he lived, how he thought, how his marriage worked, what his favorite sport was, who his own heroes were.  I wanted to be near him, and to meet with him as often as possible.  I didn't want him sexually, but I saw in him qualities I was eager to bring out in myself.  I knew that like me, he was just another flawed human being -- but even in his human brokenness, I could see something glorious shining through and I wanted to be near that as often as possible.  I call that "crushing."

I could call it hero-worship, except that I am leery of using the word "worship" for anything other than God.  I didn't worship Scott, and I don't worship Chris Clarke.  Worship implies a hierarchical relationship that I don't think is present in the kind of crushes I'm talking about here.  "Crush" is a useful noun (and verb) because it captures the giddy admiration of the experience.

And I also use "crush", frankly, to play with people's homophobic anxieties.   I am happily married to a wonderful, beautiful woman in whom I delight and who (mirabile dictu) delights in me.  My sexual energy is directed towards her, and is not available for any other woman -- or any other man.  That said, I recognize we live in a world where there is an extraordinary amount of anxiety about male-male attraction.  Heterosexual men have a very hard time acknowledging their love for, or "crushes" (in the sense I use the term) on, other guys.  Part of pro-feminist work is creating a culture where men can speak more easily of their feelings for each other, and where acknowledging intense and profound admiration is not automatically construed as a reflection of sexual interest.

I have a "blog crush" on Chris Clarke because he writes beautifully.  He writes poetry and prose well, but there is a beauty in the grace with which he lives his life -- and in the values he embodies -- that I respond to instinctively.  Obviously, I have never met the man.  I suppose he could be a fraud, creating a false self on his blog page.  In that case, I have a "blog crush" on a phantom! But I suspect he is who he seems to be.  And his grace, his earthiness, his gift for language, his commitment to the environment are all things I deeply admire.  And as a consequence, I'm crushing on him, big-time.

Does anyone else get what I'm talkin' about here?

UPDATE:  Thinking more about this, I wonder if it's almost easier for some people to confess to a blog-crush on a same-sex blogger than on someone from another sex?  If I were to mention regularly blog-crushing on a female blogger (and there are many female bloggers for whom I have profound admiration), would that be interpreted differently?  I suspect so.

Random links and notes

Third post of the day for the second day in a row...   I have missed blogging!

1.  Just a minute or two ago, I was eating lunch in the faculty "party room".  A colleague came in, looked at me curiously, and asked what I was having.  "A tofu-vegie burger on rice cakes", I replied enthusiastically.  She visibly shuddered and said in a firm voice "Out, Hugo, now.  Take it and all that it means away!"  I know she was joking.  But it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened.  It's interesting how publicly eating a restricted, healthy vegetarian diet tends to arouse hostility in folks -- even when your mouth is full with food, and not full of sanctimonious preaching.

Should I wrap my tofu vegie-burgers in Burger King wrappers to give them the illusion of cheerful carnivorousness?  Should I put my little bag of organic fruit and nuts inside an M&Ms wrapper?

2.  I am pleased that yesterday's post on marriage and Michael Noer has received many visitors.  It even got linked in a discussion forum at Forbes magazine.  How did the discussion begin?  With an anti-feminist linking to a picture of me in a mickey mouse costume, declaring, "this is your brain on feminism."  Sigh.  And dammit, the costume wasn't even finished yet when that photo was taken!

3.  Typepad reveals who links here.  One young woman wrote a post early this morning that sent some hits my way: Hugo Schwyzer and his paternalistic views on feminism.  Despite the title, she seems to agree at least in part with my theses about older men, younger women and student crushes.  I'm wondering if I shouldn't try and develop the latter post into an article.  But for what journal?

4.  Some of what I've read and enjoyed today:

Mermade on the BVM.

Chris Clarke lists the activities of his day last Friday.  I may have logged more miles, but he did far more work.  My blog crush on him just grows and grows.

5.  One of my students has started a company, Silver Jewelry, with an interesting twist: free stuff.  Visit them and check it out.  No kidding, really free. 

Schwarzenegger on our side, however briefly

Governor Schwarzenegger continues to mystify as he lurches from left to right and back again.  He upset some social conservatives today by signing Senate Bill 1441 into law.  In part the bill bans discrimination in state operated or funded programs on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

It instantly makes California the most progressive state in the country on the issue of sexual orientation discrimination -- and it comes from the pen of a Republican governor!  The right is appalled.  Here's the conservative Flash Report response, and the response from CNS.  The heart of the issue may revolve around whether Christian colleges that discriminate against "out" gays and lesbians can allow students to use state-based financial aid to help with tuition. 

I'm delighted the governor signed this bill.  Those who want Caesar's money need to play by Caesar's rules.  Sometimes Caesar uses his money the way you'd like to have him use it... sometimes not.  Either way, it ill-behooves a Christian institution to insist on a right to state support even as it flouts the will of that state's elected representatives.  Freedom of worship and of conscience does not equal an entitlement to funding.

In a state like California, it makes good political sense to infuriate both left and right regularly.  It is a classic falsehood to suggest that the best and the wisest of our leaders occupy the moderate center, but in California, pretending to occupy that center wins you elections.  By oscillating across the political landscape, pleasing and maddening both liberals and conservatives, Schwarzenegger is positioning himself to win in a rout this fall.

Faith and feminism: another post on reconciling the two

I've been asked to post about a topic nearer and dearer to me than virtually any other: the compatibility of evangelical Christian faith with strong feminist commitments.  It's one of the questions I regularly get from colleagues, students, friends, readers, and family members: "How, Hugo, do you reconcile these two seemingly contradictory commitments?"   So at the risk of repeating things I've written in various places in previous years, here goes.

Let me start by linking to two posts on the biblical concept of "ezers" (often translated as "helpmeet.")  Here's my January 2006 post; here's Shawna Atteberry's wonderful piece from this past Sunday.

One of the great risks inherent in being a professor is pedantry.  (I once said that to a student, and she looked at me in horror, having confused "pedant" with "pedophile".)  And where my pedantry kicks in is when I insist on explaining to people that what they think the bible says about male and female roles is usually based on a few isolated passages quoted out of context.  Similarly, what most people think of when they think of "feminism" is often more of a media distortion than an accurate depiction of a movement committed to radical justice and equality for all.

In a way, evangelical Christians and feminists are both largely defined -- at least in the public imagination -- by their enemies.  It's very easy to caricature either group.  The secular left tends to see all evangelical Christians as intolerant, homophobic, jingoistic Republicans; many on the right tend to see active feminists as shrill, angry, humorless, godless liberals.   The public pronouncements of leading figures in both movements are regularly quoted out of context in order to reinforce an image of extremism.  And of course, both "feminists" and the "religious right" are regularly invoked as dangerous spectres in fund-raising by both conservatives and progressives.

But caricatures contain at best only tiny slivers of truth.  Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell do not speak for all evangelicals (and as anyone who knows anything about these two knows, they frequently don't agree with each other on major theological points.)  Andrea Dworkin is almost always misquoted and misconstrued.  And neither side -- secular liberals or evangelicals -- regularly bothers to take the time to listen seriously to their brothers and sisters whom they demonize.

Fine, so we should stop misrepresenting each other.  All well and good, but is it possible to be both an ardent feminist and a committed Christian?  With every fiber of my being, I believe so!

Sometimes, one still sees the old bumper sticker: Feminism is the radical idea that women are people.  As bumper sticker slogans go, it's a good one, and not far from the mark.  I teach feminism as the notion that women are full and complete human beings, radically equal to men in every aspect of our existence.  Feminism argues that biological differences may be real, but they are never grounds for establishing worth or dignity.  Furthermore, in and of themselves, biological differences are not a suitable foundation for automatically excluding any human person from any particular pursuit in which he or she may have an interest.  Men have within them the capacity to nurture and love in the domestic sphere; women have within them the capacity to initiate and create and build in the public domain. Feminism is about offering both men and women the chance to become fully human and develop all of their gifts, unconstrained by rigid social conventions about gender roles.

And of course, no one embodies this radical egalitarianism better than Jesus Himself.  (Mind you, I am no reductionist.  I'm not going to suggest that Jesus was just a nice proto-feminist man.  He is my Lord, He is my Savior in the classical, theological sense of the terms.  His death on the Cross is the single Great Fact of my existence, and it is the source of my redemption.  This is not the place for me to "witness", but let me be clear that I am not offering a watered-down gospel here!)  What Jesus did, time and time again, was shatter conventional ideas about men and women.  In his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, when he heals the woman with an uncontrollable blood flow, when he asks Martha to stop doing traditional women's work and just sit and be -- in these instances and countless more He treats women with the same radical love, care and concern that He does men.  And famously, when He saves the woman caught in adultery from being stoned to death, he isn't condoning that particular sin -- rather, the best theological explanation of the story is that Jesus refuses to allow a crowd of executioners (all men) to punish a woman for the very same sin they have committed with impunity.  Jesus has no time or patience with sexual double standards.

Of course, folks who see feminism and Christianity as irreconcilable will quickly start pointing to passages throughout Scripture that make the case for women's subordination.  Most of these passages will be quoted out of context.  (For example, quoting Ephesians 5:22 without quoting 5:21, its controlling purpose, first.)  But frankly, biblical exegesis is hard work.  No one does well to throw quotes about willy-nilly, "proof-texting" their way to an argument.  Many passages in Scripture that deal with women (particularly in the epistles) need a lot of study and a very good understanding of both koine Greek and the first-century context in which they were written.  This blog is not the place to do that.  The best place where this sort of work is being done is the Priscilla Papers, the quarterly scholarly journal of Christians for Biblical Equality.  CBE is the best resource for thoughtful, well-written and impeccably defended pro-feminist exegesis.

I know that many of my feminist sisters grew up in homes that were religiously abusive.  So many women who come to feminism as adolescents or adults come only after having had intensely problematic experience within the church.  One of the classic paths to secular feminism, after all, is a series of disheartening experiences within a male-dominated, patriarchal church community.  As a Christian, I grieve that so many of my sisters and brothers have been so poorly served in the wider church.  I grieve that they have heard the gospel misrepresented by pastors and parents. I grieve that they have learned that a faith in Jesus ought to lead one to submit to unjust, socially constructed gender roles -- when our Lord Himself so explicitly overturned those very roles.  Too many people assume that Christianity preaches a message of liberation through sublimation and self-denial, a message that is antithetical to the feminist notion of autonomy and fulfillment.  But independence and agency can coexist with a commitment to Christ.   Scripture tells us that we are called to the Cross, it is true -- but Scripture tells us also that God wants to give us what we deeply desire.   Learning to live with paradox is part of living as a mature Christian.

Truth be told, I do want every Christian to embrace feminism.  And truth be told, I believe that while salvation may come to all, and it may come by many names, it always comes through Christ. There's no contradiction there for me, and though that may reflect my own inability to adequately think the issue through, I am convinced as a scholar, a believer, and as a man that a faith in Jesus as Savior of the world and a simultaneous belief in the basic tenets of secular feminism is not only possible, but highly desirable.

Some reflections -- and questions -- about the end of country radio in L.A.

A third post for my first day back.

While my wife and I were on vacation in Northern California eleven days ago, Los Angeles lost its one commercial country music station.  On August 17, KZLA suddenly switched from a country to a "rhythmic pop" format.  (No more Gretchen Wilson, but yet another outlet for the Black-Eyed Peas.) 

The Los Angeles Times had an editorial on this yesterday.  The reasoning behind the switch is summarized here:

The format change, as in other big cities that no longer have country stations, stems in large part from changing demographics. A top executive at Emmis Communications, which owns KZLA, told The Times that 60% of the local audience is Latino, Asian or African American, while "country fans are about 98% Caucasian." The top slots in Arbitron's local radio rankings have been dominated in recent years by stations offering Spanish programming, hip-hop, R&B and pop hits, while KZLA's ratings have been mired just outside the Top 20.

Now, I am not devastated by the loss of KZLA.   I love country music, mind you, but commercial radio rarely played the artists I like.  I have little time for Toby Keith, Keith Urban, or Faith Hill; I'm much more inclined to listen to old Merle Haggard, or new Tift Merritt.  More importantly, I have access to a computer with a broadband connection -- and I own an Ipod.   Rather than endure the extraordinarily narrow range of choices (and the endless commercials) on broadcast radio, I can listen to the songs I want when I want them -- at work, at home,  in the car.  Of course, I have to pay for them, but it's worth it.

Black, Latino, and Asian teens -- who seem to be the primary audience for this rhythmic pop format that took over the country station -- have less disposable income.  They are less likely to have satellite radio subscriptions, less likely to have access to internet radio.  "Free" commercial radio is a far more important source of entertainment in their lives.  Perhaps this is why we have five or six stations in Los Angeles now that play that maddeningly awful Gnarls Barkley "Crazy" song, and none that will play the latest from Tim McGraw.

On the other hand, perhaps there are other factors at play.  Country music is often associated with working or lower-middle class whites.  Since the 1970s, the white working class in Los Angeles has been headed east -- to the so-called Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.  They have lots of country stations out there, as well as a very popular site for NASCAR racing.   Perhaps KZLA simply couldn't cope with a shrinking audience of white listeners.  The impact of satellite radio and the Ipod, combined with "white flight" to the eastern suburbs of the Inland Empire, made the market too small.

And there is still another question at hand.  Why are so many young people of all races attracted to rap and rhythmic pop,and so few kids of color drawn to country?  You'll see many more young whites at a Peas concert than you will see young African-Americans or Latinos at a Brooks and Dunn show.  Country has failed miserably at attracting young people of color, particularly in urban areas.  Conversely, hip-hop has done famously well at drawing in many young whites, even in suburban and rural areas.  Is there still a legacy of racism around country music, forty years after the great Charlie Pride smashed the color line in Nashville?  Or do the sounds and melodies of country music (whatever the sub-genre) have little to attract young urbanites?   To flirt with a racist stereotype, is it because country is perceived as undanceable by many young people of color -- an audience for whom music that is danceable is the sine qua non?

One of my favorite recent "pop" country songs is "Redneck Woman", a major hit for Gretchen Wilson a year or two ago.  It's a humorous, boisterous, celebration of a particular kind of life: rural, unpretentious, candid, bawdy, hard-working.  I listened to it the same way I listened to the marvelous Don Williams track from a quarter century ago, Good Old Boys Like Me.  (Famously quoted in "Primary Colors", it features an homage to Thomas Wolfe and Tennessee Williams, indicating that "good ole boys" can have intellectual aspirations as well.) Both songs celebrate a kind of life that is familiar to me, albeit from a slight distance.

But I wonder, do these songs come across as having racist, unwelcoming undertones?  Are there still folks out there who confuse "redneck" and "good old boy" with "racist" and "intolerant"? Is that why my students (85% non-white) don't listen to Gretchen Wilson, while white kids in West Texas enthusiastically download Snoop Dogg? 

I've got a CD playing on my office computer now -- the heavenly voices of Ricky Skaggs and Emmylou Harris in bluegrass duets fill my office.  I can't imagine many of my students would be much interested.

Marry someone who will push you: another reason Michael Noer gets it so very wrong

I come late to this topic, but perhaps better late than not at all.

A short op-ed in Forbes Magazine last week aroused a justifiable storm of criticism across the blogosphere.  Written by editor Michael Noer, the piece was entitled Don't Marry Career Women. Among Noer's gems of wisdom:

Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

For our purposes, a "career girl" has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research).

Amanda, Jill, and the Happy Feminist do a superb job of taking down Noer's risible thesis from a variety of perspectives.  I won't try and duplicate what they've done, and I recommend their posts with enthusiasm.  I am pleased that Forbes has added a rebuttal piece by its Silicon Valley bureau chief, Elizabeth Corcoran, entitled Don't Marry a Lazy Man.

What annoyed me so much about Noer's essay was his assumption that men ought to see marriage as a way to make their lives easier.   I haven't read most of the research to which he refers, but for the sake of discussion, I'll grant that it's accurate.  (Others more willing to wade through sociological treatises can share their thoughts on this.)

As any responsible historian will tell you, marriage has meant different things at different periods in our history.  For educated, prosperous professionals, marriage has never been less "necessary" as a means of survival.  Never before have so many women been less economically dependent upon their potential husbands.  This is, from a feminist standpoint, good news.  For some, it heralds the end of marriage.  Social conservatives who long to preserve a traditional understanding of marriage worry about women's increased autonomy; some feminists who are suspicious of the institution of marriage altogether long for what they hope will be its inevitable demise.

But I'm going to argue that marriage -- particularly marriage between two individuals who have sufficient resources to make their union a choice rather than a necessity --  is a great and powerful vehicle for personal transformation and growth.  This is perhaps especially true for men.  Noer gets this magnificently wrong:

In classic economics, a marriage is, at least in part, an exercise in labor specialization. Traditionally men have tended to do "market" or paid work outside the home and women have tended to do "non-market" or household work, including raising children. All of the work must get done by somebody, and this pairing, regardless of who is in the home and who is outside the home, accomplishes that goal. Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker argued that when the labor specialization in a marriage decreases--if, for example, both spouses have careers--the overall value of the marriage is lower for both partners because less of the total needed work is getting done, making life harder for both partners and divorce more likely.

From a pro-feminist standpoint, there are few greater enemies of social progress than marital "labor specialization."  Relationships built on mutual dependency and need (wife needs financial support, husband needs dinner cooked and baby's diaper changed) do little to challenge either party in the relationship to develop their full human potential.   The feminist ideal is one in which marriage becomes a supportive framework in which both men and women can become competent in a wide variety of arenas both in and out of the home.  A rigid belief in "labor specialization" robs both sexes of the chance to complete their own journey of transformation into the best people they can possibly become.

It's not surprising that women who have careers and incomes of their own seek divorce more often.  After all, women who do rely largely on their husbands for financial support have far more incentive to stay in an unhappy, emotionally empty, or even abusive marriages than do their sisters who have independent resources!  And of course, the fewer financial and educational resources a woman has, the more power she cedes to her husband. Men who know their wives can afford to leave them have a potentially powerful incentive to continue to work at the marriage that their brethren who control their family finances do not.

All marriages experience some sort of labor specialization.  One spouse might do the dishes one night, while the other feeds and cares for the pets.   Things get done faster when the various day-to-day obligations of living are shared.  But the greatest potential for growth comes when those burdens are regularly switched.   

The goal of a marriage is not comfort, but growth. It might be more comfortable for some men to work outside the home but never do a load of laundry; some women might be more comfortable handling all the cooking but never pursuing a profession in the wider world.  But when we only do what is comfortable, we atrophy.  If we only lift the weights that are easy to lift, we will never build muscle. If we only run until we begin to sweat, and then stop, we will never finish a race. If we only do those tasks that our culture, parents, or peers suggest that those of our gender ought to do, we never become the complete human beings we have the chance of becoming.

My advice to men: marry a woman (or a man) who is going to push you.  Marry a partner who will accept your pushing in return.  Traditional gender roles are easy and comfortable (particularly, perhaps, for men.)   Marry someone with whom you can do things you've never done, so you can become what you've never been, and have things you never thought you could have.