Godless Professors and the Subversion of American Youth

Did you know that universities are subverting the minds of America's young people by turning them into godless socialists? Dr. Mike S. Adams, a professor at University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is dispensing advice at Townhall to a father who is distraught about his daughter coming home with scary new leftist ideas. Jeff Fecke (h/t) has already taken down Dr. Mike bit-by-wingnutty-bit - including his coinage of the oh-so-clever acronym STD for "Socialist Teaching Disorder." I just want to zoom in on one little piece of Dr. Mike's take on university life:

First of all, I want you to understand that many of the crazy ideas you hear your daughter espousing are commonplace on college campuses. Nonetheless, it must have been shocking for you to hear that she supported Barack Obama in the last election principally because of his ideas about “the redistribution of wealth.” I know you were also disappointed to hear of her sudden opposition to the War on Terror and her sudden embrace of the United Nations. Most of all, I know you are disappointed that she has stopped going to church altogether.

Now that your daughter is not going to church it will be easier to get her to accept other policies based on economic and cultural Marxism. Socialist professors like the fact that average church attendance drops dramatically after just one year of college. God and socialism are simply incompatible. One cannot worship both Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.

(If you must, you can read the rest here.)

Although I'm not a real socialist - just a fan of redistribution, thanks to my pastor when I was 14! - I am one of those freethinking university professors. Scandalously, I think it's a good thing when my students start to examine their beliefs and preconceptions.

I just finished teaching a class on religion, gender, and sexuality that might well enrage Dr. Mike. I framed patriarchy in materialist terms and lectured on how poverty multiplies the odds that a woman will terminate a pregnancy. (Socialism!) We discussed the Gnostic Gospels and the struggle between heterodoxy and orthodoxy in Christianity. (Heresy!) We delved into the roots of the Christian valorization of virginity. (Sluttishness!)

At the end of the quarter, students were asked to write a short essay in which they discussed how their views had changed over the past ten weeks. Many of them said that the class upset their certainties. Some of them questioned their faith. How, after all, can you trust the Bible's authority if a politicized Church hierarchy - not divine revelation - determined which books became canonical?

So yeah. Dr. Mike would hate this class. So did one student (out of 85), judging from the final exam. She objected to the feminist framing of the material. She would have preferred ten weeks of Catholic dogma. She transparently didn't bother to engage with the material in any serious way.

The rest of the students - including many current and former Catholics - realized that they didn't have to follow any party line. Not mine; not any religion's. One young Catholic woman had a real crisis of faith mid-quarter. By the end of the quarter, she felt stronger in her beliefs than before. Another young woman who's planning to become a minister wrote of her past and present struggles with her faith.

Did I turn those students godless? Not by any stretch. And that was never my intent. If a person is going to embrace faith as an adult, they're going to have to find it themselves. They can't just continue believing a Sunday School version of it with colorful, sanitized pictures of Daniel in the lion's den and Jesus surrounded by fluffy lambs. They'll have to navigate their way from dogma to actual faith. That's exactly how some of my religious students used the class. They started questions and haven't stopped. And they have matured in their beliefs. (Interestingly, a number of them declare some affinity for Buddhist ideas, even as they remain in their own faith tradition.)

A substantially minority of my students wrote that they consider themselves agnostics or atheists. So did I convert them to godlessness? A few of them did begin to call themselves agnostics during the class, but most of them came into it already rejecting or questioning religion. Many of them felt liberated at being able to "come out" about their unbelief in their discussion groups - something they often had felt unable to do, until now.

These students took my class for one of two reasons. Some had grown up without any religion and felt they needed to close a gap in their education. Others were questioning their religious upbringing or had rejected it altogether, often in the wake of a loved one's death. (It's ironic and sad that religion seems so often to fail people at the very moment when it's supposed to provide the most comfort.) Disproportionately, the students in this second group had been raised Catholic. For most of them, the Church's condemnation of homosexuality was a serious dealbreaker, with its position on abortion and contraception coming in a close second.

This is why the Pope's statement on gender last Christmas made me crazy. There was some controversy at the time about what the English word "gender" connotes when used in Italian (as in the Pope's address), and I can't speak to that as an expert. I know about a dozen words of Italian and I wasn't raised Catholic. But the context - as well as some of the smarter commentary on this - convinced me that he was affirming the church's teachings on the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and traditional gender roles.

More importantly, the Pope was trying to shut down all discussion of all gender issues within the Catholic Church. This is exactly what's driving young people out of the Church. They see the condemnation of homosexuality and the hierarchy's refusal to even discuss it as contemptuous and inhumane.

Dr. Mike, his letter-writer, and (I'm betting) a lot of conservative parents want to short-circuit that discussion too. It's a terrible loss, because their kids want to have it. They need to have it. That goes for everyone from the young fundamentalist to the hard-core nihilist. (And yes, the range in my class was that wide.)

If Dr. Mike were paying attention to his students, he'd realize that whatever their professors do or say, they are at an age where they're bound to question their upbringing. A good university education should help them learn to think for themselves in a more thorough, systematic, and deeper way. It should prod them to question received wisdom and authority. It should expose them to a variety of viewpoints. (Yes, even Dr. Mike's.)

If that's subverting young people, then I'm blessed to be a part of it. One student sent me an email at the end of the quarter saying the class had changed her life; another said the same as she turned in her exam. I don't personally take too much credit, because the potentially life-changing work happened in the discussion groups, not in my lectures. But even so, staying on the job full-time this quarter through weeks of illness and fear was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'd worried that my students got cheated. I blubbed in gratitude when I read that email.

Oh, and as far as I know, I didn't convert a single student to Marxism. Nary a Trotskyist. Not even a mild-mannered socialist-feminist. I guess I'd better try harder.

Feminism, Sexual Revolution, and "Getting the Milk for Free"

Are men really from Mars after all? I kinda doubt it, but last night I got a comment that seemed to come straight from outer space. It appeared on a post I wrote last month on a study that suggests kissing alleviates stress for men and women. Amy wrote:

Sunglold, I don't know what rock you have been hidding under... but there is a massive difference in the way men and women think and feel about sex (and kissing).

In my experience, men and women are worlds appart when it comes to sex!

Men have at least 10 times more testosterone than women, and testosterone inhibits bonding and increases interest in casual sex and sex with a variety of partners. ...

Women strive for attatchment, bonding, love and commitment. Women can't understand why men don't have more feelings for them. But put simply, men just don't have as many feelings as women. [my emphasis]

I'll agree that in most Western societies, men are socialized to be less expressive with their feelings. That's not the same thing as not having feelings, however. Most of the men I've been close to have stories - sometimes over a decade old - about being painfully, painfully dumped by an earlier girlfriend. Most of them now have children and love them just as fiercely as any mother.

Denying that men can feel deeply amounts to denying men their full humanity. And they say feminists despise men?!

Women can get hurt in casual sex. So can men. Women can get their hearts broken by a lover. So can men. It happens to virtually all of us who aren't celibate. It even happens to celibate people, too! (Some of my worst heartbreaks came during my virginal teen years.)

Where Amy and other anti-feminists blame feminism for bringing on the sexual revolution and leading directly to the shattering of young female psyches, the history is much more complicated, and most of it has little to do with feminism. Heartbreak goes back at least as far as Sir Lancelot and Lady Guinevere. The sexual revolution on the 1960s had its roots in youth culture, drugs, and rock and roll. The advent of the birth control pill in 1961 enabled young women to try out sex - whether in hippie communes, bars or with a committed boyfriend - without fear of pregnancy paralyzing their pleasure.

Second-wave feminism was generally chilly toward the sexual revolution, at least as most young heterosexuals were experiencing it in the 1960s and 1970s. Nowhere in The Feminist Mystique did Betty Friedan suggest that the path to women's liberation required shagging anything that moves. By 1970, Anne Koedt was assailing men's sexual incompetence in "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm." The Redstockings saw men as well-nigh irredeemable; why would you want to sleep with the enemy? While the Redstockings Manifesto (1969) didn't go so far as to repudiate all relations with men, within a few years political lesbianism and separatism became a major current within feminism. Needless to say, none of these women were advocating casual sex with men, either. Third-wave feminism has generally repudiated separatism and criticized slut-shaming, but that's not the same as positively advocating hookups and casual sex for all women.

Where feminism made a difference was, of course, in opening up historically new educational and economic opportunities for women. These made it possible for women to defer marriage and to enjoy sex without bartering it for economic security. This, to my mind, was the real sexual revolution. It's just not the one people mean when they blame feminism for the failings of the hookup scene.

So yes, in a materialist sense, feminism enabled casual sex. But more importantly in the long run, feminism has opened the possibility of for us (men and women alike) to have sex only when we want to, not under duress, and not for economic security or survival. In a perfectly feminist world, no one would stay married against their will, for example, or submit to a spouse's unwanted advances. We don't live in that world yet. Plenty of people stay married for economic reasons. (Some of them are men.)

For those of us who aren't trapped by economics, feminism allows us to say no to the sex we don't want, and an enthusiastic, lusty, happy yes to the sex we do want. That's revolutionary, all right. It's just not identical with "the sexual revolution." It's also antithetical to the idea that anyone needs to participate in hooking up.

Contrast this with the bleak view of sex and men that Amy expresses at her blog:

Casual sex makes men LESS likely to commit, he’s not going to buy the cow when he can get the milk for free. At least the whores are setting the price for sex! Casual sex means no flowers, jewellery or chocolates. Engagement rings, marriage and kids will be even further out of your reach. Always wait as long as possible before sleeping with a guy; because once they get you, they don’t want you anymore.

(More here, including advice to flatter a man, then knock his ego back.)

Viewing sex as a commodity is almost certain to lead to heartbreak. I can buy my own chocolate. I can't buy love at any price.

And then there's a pesky little Kantian ethical issue with regarding sex, and by extension one's partner, as a mere means to an end. I don't much care whether the end is "getting some pussy" or "getting married." Either way, it dehumanizes and disrespects one's partner.

Amy expresses a lot of frustration with men who are users and losers and just general douchebags (my word, not hers). She has apparently had a run of bad luck, and I'm sincerely sorry to hear about that. She's also young and has a lot of time to meet someone who's kind and warm and interested in a real relationship. I hope she'll find her heart's desire.

My advice (not that she asked)? Stay away from the bars and the hookup scene if what you want is a relationship, because it's true that among college-aged people, more men than women will want to keep it casual (see Kathleen Bogle's Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus.) Don't play games; any guy worth loving is one who won't be impressed by manipulation and scheming. Avoid casual sex unless it appeals to you. If you do have casual sex, remember that you don't need to justify it by immediately deciding you're in love (thus preordaining later heartbreak). Be true to your own desires and respectful of your partners'; you might still get your heart broken, but you won't end up embittered.

And have patience. I was 28 when I met my husband, 30 when I married him. He was more keen on having children than I was. Fifteen years later, he may be getting the milk for free (or maybe it's the other way 'round?) but he's absolutely not a user or a loser. He feels as deeply as I do; he loves as deeply as I do. This isn't a fairy tale (and lord knows we've had our share of bumps and woes). It's just one example of how we don't have to be trapped by ideas that denigrate one gender or the other. For that, we can thank feminism's real sexual revolution.

Sungold = Angela Davis?

So Daisy just bailed me out when I've got too much grading and class prep, and no time to develop a thoughtful post: She led me to a quiz, Which Western Feminist Icon Are You? (Daisy was bell hooks, a very cool result indeed.)

Somewhat weirdly, I came up as ...

You are Angela Davis! You were the THIRD WOMYN IN HISTORY to appear on the FBI's Most Wanted List. You are a communinist, black power-lovin' lady who shook up the United States when you refused to lie down quietly to oppression. You WENT TO JAIL! Wow. You kick so much more ass than Foxxy Brown.

Hmmm. I checked the box for wanting feminism to reflect intersectional analysis. I also consistently checked the one on attitudes toward men that stated "Men are comrades and they're fun in bed." Otherwise, I tried varying a few answers. No matter how else I answered, I kept coming up Angela.

It's mysterious because I'm no communist, not even on those days where my socialist leanings swell and grow. I think black power alone is analytically inadequate just as feminism alone cannot explain the world. I've never been to jail (though I did once pick up a friend there) and while I may well have an FBI file, I'm not sure what the file would hold apart from "friend of people who know people who embrace lefty politics. Oh, and married to a furriner."

Much as I admire Angela Davis' body of work over the years, the one time I saw her speak was an unmitigated disaster. She was trying to use a laptop in her talk, and she was clearly overwhelmed by the technology, to the point where she kept getting tangled up and lost in what she wanted to say. (It was one of those feminist empress-has-no-clothes moments, because most of the audience rhapsodized anyway, even though the talk was largely incoherent, in my not-so-humble opinoin.) I had the feeling she'd have given a fine speech, if only she hadn't felt tethered to the laptop.

But Angela I am - never mind my evident whiteness or lack of kickassness. I'll take it as a compliment. Maybe as a challenge. At the very least, it's a reminder not to let my beloved laptop get in the way of actual communicaiton.

Twittering Feminism?

Last week, the little corner of the blogosphere that I follow was suddenly all a-Twitter: Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Hugo Schwyzer, figleaf, and Latoya Peterson at Racialicious announced that they had shiny new Twitter accounts - all but Hugo expressing various degrees of skepticism. (Skippy: "it's really kind of stupid, if you ask us.") This followed close on the heels of that Politico article revealing Karl Rove as the most popular twit in the political Twittersphere (thus proving Skippy right), and a blistering Alternet piece by Alexander Zaitchik proclaiming the birth of Twitter Nation and the death of intelligent discourse.

I'm a pretty hardcore Twitter refusenik (more on that in a moment), but all this chirping - combined with the recent shitstorm in the feminist blogosphere - made me wonder how Twitter shapes the hierarchy of issues and blogs. And so, when Feministe's latest installment in their response to the shitstorm appeared this morning, I seized on the chance to ask in comments about how Twitter and email function behind the scenes at Feministe. Both Holly and Cara (twice!) took a generous amount of time to reply. Their responses are worth reading.

Basically, Holly doesn't use Twitter at all. Cara says she uses it mainly for social contacts - commiserating and venting, keeping in touch with friends, and sharing links:

Some might call that networking, and I suppose that it is, in a certain way. Mainly, I use it to keep me sane throughout the day, to keep in touch with people, and because Twitter is just plain addicting. The people I follow are those with whom I had an existing relationship prior to/outside of Twitter, and those who have consistently responded to my tweets in thoughtful/amusing ways.

This all sounds much more banal than evil, to me.

I'm not meaning to suggest that this means we should all go back to sleep and set aside all of the issues that flared in the recent shitstorm. The feminist conversation about race that intensified during the past few weeks needs to continue. It's been going on at least since Ida B. Wells castigated Jane Addams for ignorance about lynching, and it probably won't be obsolete in my lifetime (unfortunately).

Nor am I suggesting the hierarchy of feminist blogs is unproblematic. The linkage map from the Feminist 2.0 conference shows that the "big" blogs benefit from upward linking; smaller blogs, not so much.

But accusations of intransparency seem ill-founded to me when all you need to do is ask. The Feministe bloggers have been hugely receptive to this. I was persuaded by Cara's portrayal of decision-making at Feministe (and I'm guessing at other group blogs) as decentralized, bottom-up, and often anarchic. This is plausible not just because I think Cara has shown herself to be trustworthy and credible over her career as a blogger, but also because none of these folks are blogging full-time. They just don't have time for more coordination. And maybe I'm naive or idealistic, but I see a real and importance difference between the process Cara describes and the way the mainstream media adheres to a narrow, often top-down agenda.

From that comment thread - and from glancing at the Twitter feeds for Cara, Jill Filipovic, Renee, Amanda Marcotte, and Jessica Valenti - you can definitely see that Twitter spawns networks, albeit pretty loose, informal ones. Nothing here suggests a vast feminist conspiracy. Rather, it looks to me as though people are using Twitter to avoid writer's isolation, swap interesting news items and posts, and comment on their cats' behavior. (That last use is especially laudable, in my book.)

The end result appears to be networks that look pretty familiar to me from academia, just more technologically sophisticated. These networks probably do matter a lot when it comes to putting together panel discussions, essay collections, and so on. In that way, they may also reinforce a sense of hierarchy, though this all appears pretty benign to me.

The alternative is not to eschew networks altogether; it's to open them up to be more inclusive. As a Twitter Luddite, I can't really judge whether that's happening, and anyway I think it's up to those feminists who've been marginalized in the past to say whether they feel included and what that means for them as bloggers or activists.

I do think Twitter automatically tends toward hierarchy in its high-schoolishness, and that may be more problematic. People with any degree of prominence typically have far more people following them than they follow in return. The numbers start to look like a popularity contest. At the top of the pile - just like in school days - is the big bully, Karl Rove. But it's also true that four of the five feminist Twitterers I just mentioned have substantially more followers than people that they follow. The exception is Renee, who has over 800 in each category, and I can't imagine how she does it! Seriously, no one can expect reciprocity of people who are being followed by hundreds of their readers, and I'm not suggesting that feminists should be any different. I think it's worth noting the Twitter hierarchy, however, and asking how it might affect other hierarchies (not just the one in the feminist blogosphere).

As for me, I'm not going to start using Twitter, although I did squat a name for myself, just in case. I already fail to update my Facebook feed for months on end. I don't need another time suck, and Twitter strikes me as a huge one. Also, I (obviously!) don't gravitate toward short-form writing; if you think this post is long, you should see my dissertation. I'm not convinced that many people tweet well. While a few are inspired by the 140-character limit to be pithy and clever, most just stick to the mundane. At its worst, Twitter may be a machine for taking smart people's thoughts and making them simpleminded.

I suppose you could tweet in haiku form?

Kids are still awake
Heads unquiet, full of thoughts
Too much like their mom

That's my life at this very moment. Sorry, I no longer have a cat to report on. If I did, her hairballs would feature prominently. Yet another reason to keep me off Twitter.

The Sins of the Mother: Can We Just Leave Bristol Alone?

Look. I never thought Sarah Palin should get a free pass on 1) using motherhood as one of her chief qualifications for public office and then 2) telling America we had no right to know anything about her family. I sharply criticized Palin for getting on an airplane while leaking amniotic fluid. I thought it was reasonable for people to criticize her for marketing herself as a perfect mother when, clearly, she's not.

But back in September, when Bristol Palin turned up pregnant, I also wrote that criticizing her was out of bounds:

There's no room for schadenfreude. She shouldn't be made the poster child for the failure of abstinence-only approaches to teenage sexuality; we have too many such poster children already. She's going to face the difficulties of early motherhood with the added burden of publicity. She'll also find deep joy in her baby, I'm sure - a point too rarely mentioned for all the moralizing about "teenage mothers." She's embarking on an amazing adventure in one of the hardest ways possible. I wish her well.

Now that Bristol has given an interview and basically said, yes, it's hard but I love my baby, I don't really have anything more to say about her - except that I really feel for her when she lets slip that she mourns a chance to just be herself, for herself.

But darn it, too many people that I otherwise like and respect are amplifying the Bristol interview and making her into, well, the poster girl for the bankruptcy of abstinence-only education. Sure, Bristol herself said it doesn't work. That's worth reporting. But Rebecca Traister at Salon goes on to comment:

Bristol went on to make more (perhaps unwitting) feminist points about what, exactly, the responsibilities and consequences are for young women who choose (or are forced down) the path she took.

At Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte quotes Traister's article approvingly, adding:

For the rest of us [non-prolifers], of course, the whole thing is a horror show.

Both Rebecca and Amanda then go on to give Sarah Palin the drubbing she deserves. I'm all for that. I just wonder: Can't we call out Palin on her hypocrisy and failed policies without dragging Bristol any deeper into it? I mean, Amanda sees the problem when it's coming from the opposite direction:

Abstinence-only had been sold to the country as a teenage pregnancy prevention program, but the right wing reaction to Bristol made it clear that it was a teenage pregnancy inducement program, and Bristol was the poster child for its intended effects. [my emphasis]

Analytically, I agree with Amanda 100 percent on what the 'wingers were up to. Yet I think we can make this argument without making Bristol the poster child for a feminist critique of wingnutty views on sexuality. Otherwise, we're reversing the terms, not redefining them.

And we can certainly condemn the failures of abstinence-only without endorsing statements that hold Bristol up as a "perfect example " and assume we know just what went down between Bristol and her mother. In fact, we don't know whether Sarah Palin forbade Bristol to have an abortion.

Let's not make Bristol pay for the sins of her mother.

Life, the Feminist Universe, and Everything

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town links to a fascinating interactive graphic showing linkages in the feminist blogosphere. Kittywampus is on the map, much to my surprise! It's cool to be part of the feminist universe, even if I'm a white dwarf or a nebula. Heck, I'm just pleased not to be a black hole.

The map was part of a presentation at the Feminism 2.0 conference. If you're curious, you can check it out here. (You'll need to log in with username= fem2pt0 and password= linkfluence.) I haven't figured out the methodology behind it, but it seems to be based on ingoing and outgoing links, and I suspect this includes one's blogroll. They've also got a ranking of the top 30 feminist blogs, again based on links, as far as I can see. It's hard to tell how inclusive the map actually is, since the map structure doesn't allow for a comprehensive list of all the blogs it depicts. I saw lots of familiar names but missed a couple, too.

So my blog is apparently healthier than I am. However! I felt distinctly better today. My hands are steadier, and so is my brain. For the first time since my illness started on January 20 (yes, Inauguration Day) I gave a lecture without feeling like it was an out-of-body experience. I don't know if this improvement will continue, but I'm feeling greatly cheered.

I also saw my doctor again, and we're running lots more tests - twelve vials of blood yesterday, and two more tomorrow - so I feel like the medical wheels are turning. Up to now, the blood tests have been relentlessly normal. My doc is going to try to get neurologists who are experts in MS and vasculitis to take a look at my MRI. (There's really only one type of vasculitis that I could plausibly have, a fairly rare condition called benign angiitis of the central nervous system. If you follow the link, note that the scarier variants don't fit my symptoms, nor is anyone about to do a brain biopsy on me! BACNS is highly curable with strong steroids, and it doesn't normally recur.)

In short, I'm feeling stronger, physically, and hopeful, emotionally. After the dark places I've visited recently, it's the most brilliant feeling in the galaxy.

Dispatches from the Universe Where All Men Are Rapists

Oh dear. With friends like this, feminism doesn't need enemies. Thanks to this sharp takedown by Natalia Antonova, I checked out Maggie Hays' thoughts on rape, and I left with the feeling that Ms. Hays is living in a parallel universe to mine - one where men are the enemy and any woman who loves men is a traitor to the cause.

Did you know rape is the same as seduction? Here's what Ms. Hays originally wrote under the headline "Rape can take different forms":

- seduction: when a man persuades a woman to have sex with him, often subtly, through being kind, polite, chivalrous, etc.

- rape of our souls: when we, women, are not allowed to be ourselves because of having to conform to patriarchal feminine gender 'norms'. Whether we do it to "be liked" or not to be criticized, most of the time, we conform.

In response to comments - and after she'd apparently had a chance to think it over again, which is maybe scariest of all - Ms. Hays added:

Seduction is a form of male sexual exploitation of women. And I certainly do not condone when men screw women over, whether in an individual case or culturally. I will need to get back to this somehow, sometime: seduction does not feel like rape at all when a woman has fully accepted to submit to the patriarchy; that does not change the fact that patriarchal masochism is a destroyer of inner female energy. I think I should have called seduction 'a form of male sexual exploitation that intends to destroy female energy', but I will surely go back to that in a future post. ...

Seduction may not be exactly called rape, but it still generally does involve a man fucking a woman over and deceiving her. Damn! I've seen this happen to me and women friends so many times, I'm not crazy: I have heard them complaining about what assholes often men can be... Any form of sexual exploitation (even a subtler one) you don't really want to happen to you or that you feel shitty or depressed about the fact it has happened to you is a form of rape or male sexual exploitation of women somehow.

That's only adding nuance if you distinguish "rape" from "male sexual exploitation," which both the original post and her update gleefully fail to do. By the way, she does not use "seduction" as shorthand for "getting a woman shitty drunk so she can no longer consent to sex or say no." She includes kindness and politeness under its banner, for fuck's sake.

Now, if like me you think conflating all these things trivializes rape almost beyond recognition, you should go read Maggie Hays' original post (so you can see I'm not taking things out of context) and then check out Natalia's wonderful dissection of it. Here are a few of Natalia's juiciest bits:

The thing about seduction is - of course it can end up with you making choices that you may later regret. This goes for men and women. How many of us haven’t been charmed by a person who turned out to be a scumbag or asshole in one way or another? But the key word here is “choice.” I’m sorry, but the very definition of rape implies the absence of choice, one way or another.

Seduction is not coercion. A man who makes you feel like wringing out your panties is not a rapist by definition. Why the hell do I even need to point this out to anyone? ...

It’s true that women are supposed to regret their bad choices much more than men. What Maggie Hays is doing is essentially perpetuating this idiotic double standard, and turning around and calling it feminist.

The other ridiculous assumption being made here is that a woman couldn’t possibly go out of her way to seduce a man.

That’s right. The many times that you and I have done this, girls, we were:

a) Blinded by the Patriarchy’s shiny penis and unable to understand what it was we were doing, b) We were, in fact, raping ourselves, or c) Unknowingly replicating the evil behaviour of evil, dirty males, forever compromising our precious purity. Well, I’m glad all of that has been cleared up!

This is disgusting, because it’s a huge trivialization of rape. It’s like those people you sometimes meet, the people who can’t handle anyone disagreeing with them ever, so they say things like: “Stop talking to me! Stop assaulting me with your disagreeable rhetoric! You’re no better than a rapist!”

(But really, go read the whole thing here.)

I especially appreciate that last point because it reminds me of Elaine Scarry's argument (in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World) that using the word "torture" figuratively minimizes the horror of actual torture. Since I read that book, I've been pretty scrupulous about reserving "torture" for the kind of shit that's gone down in Guantanamo Bay.

If you don't want to follow me on that tangent, though, consider this item from today's Columbus Dispatch, which is just logically impossible in Maggie Hays' parallel universe:

The Scioto County sheriff's office is investigating two separate cases of young boys being sexually assaulted by older boys.

Three juveniles have been charged with rape in the first case, in which a 7-year-old boy was sexually assaulted in a West Portsmouth neighborhood. Detective Jodi Conkel said the assault occurred on Dec. 15 in a vacant building that is being renovated into a church.

Conkel said the boy often hung around with the juveniles, and detectives think the boy could have been assaulted more than once. Two of the suspects are 12 years old and the third is 14.

In a second case reported Wednesday, a 16-year-old Wheelersburg resident is accused of raping three young boys, ages 3, 5 and 10, while they were visiting his home.

The teen has a juvenile record and is being held in a detention center pending a court appearance, Conkel said.

Conkel and Scioto County Prosecutor Mark Kuhn refused to release the names of the juvenile defendants in each case.

This is just horrifying. I have two young sons. One is five, the other nine. At the risk of sounding like someone who's watched too much Faux News: the law would have to protect the perp from me if anyone harmed my boys.

Maggie Hays would have me believe that only women are victims of The Patriarchy. The victimization of boys is simply impossible and incoherent in the framework she presents: All men are assholes, assholes = rapists, and all women are victims. She has no way to even recognize the existence of boys as victims. In comments, she makes clear that she'd been a victim of rape (and I am deeply, sincerely sorry to hear that). Her experience does not, however, give her the right to nullify the equally valid experiences of others.

I'm hoping someone will plug the wormhole between Maggie Hays' universe and mine. Of course, if hers is a female universe, she might call that rape, too. (And yes, I realize that's a juvenile remark, but I'm gonna make it anyway.)

The Out-of-Control (Feminist?) Classroom

Control freak kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Historiann raises an interesting question of where professors experience the most control: research or teaching. In response to an MLA survey that contends professors, and especially women, may overinvest in teaching because it offers them a sense of control, she writes:

At least in my experience, research is the only area in which I have near complete control–not in the classroom, where someone else designed the rooms, and someone else determines the number of students and the number of courses we teach.

I agree completely. If I'm researching and writing, it's just me, the sources, and my ideas. Sure, someone else will eventually judge my work, but the process feels like it's within my own control. If I produce good work, it redounds to my credit. If it's crap ... well, there's no one else to blame. (Hmmm ... academic writing is a whole lot like blogging, that way.)

But teaching? There, the lack of control goes far beyond the conditions that Historiann mentions. Most importantly, the process of teaching escapes our control. We can steer, nudge, cajole. We can't totally direct it, however. In fact, I'd suggest that relinquishing control is sometimes necessary for effective teaching.

Teaching women's studies has forced me to wrestle with my inner control freak. (So has parenting, but that would be a whole 'nother post.) Let's just say my control freakery is not vanquished, but most days it's, well, under control. When I was interviewing last spring for my current job, the hiring committee posed this question, which I've been mulling over ever since:

How has your teaching changed now that you're in women's studies instead of history?

The big difference, for me personally at least, is that I've put more emphasis on discussion. In my lectures, I've increasingly taken an interactive, Socratic approach. I'm actually not convinced that such an approach is at all specific to feminist pedagogy. I think it's often just part of good teaching, period. But feminism definitely demands that the instructor repeatedly question the basis of her authority and how she expresses that authority in the classroom. This doesn't imply the professor has no special authority, a point that the occasional student - willfully? - misunderstands, only that she's obligated to draw on her education and experience to make that authority transparent and legitimate.

Teaching in the humanities often feels risky and humbling, anyway, because what you know is always dwarfed by what you don't. This is exacerbated when you throw touchy subjects such as sexual violence and abortion into the mix. I'm not saying that German history (my other areas of expertise) is uncontroversial, but at least there's a basic consensus that the Holocaust was a Bad Thing. There's no such consensus in women's studies.

It's often those out-of-control moments, though, that allow everyone to learn - me included. This past quarter in one of my intro classes, when one of my male freshmen boys insisted that being gay is a "lifestyle choice," other students had to articulate why they disagreed. My role was to make sure no one got hurt - including the guy who sparked the discussion - and otherwise to keep out of the way. This, by the way, is something I learned years ago as a T.A. in grad school, the first time I had to deal with a homophobic comment: other students can be far more effective teachers than me if I stay off my soapbox. That original incident actually occurred in a history course, which underscores the point that voluntarily and mindfully "losing" control can be useful in lots of different settings.

Or take the "cunt" discussion that erupted on the last day of my other intro class this fall. I'd previously talked with my theory class about reclaiming it and other pejorative terms, such as "bitch" or "queer," and we'd had the kind of reflective that made that group a huge pleasure to teach; they were advanced students with a basic commitment to feminist politics. But the intro class is a different beast, full of freshmen and business majors with little previous exposure to feminism. And so I was totally taken by surprise when one of my students - an outspoken Evangelical Christian feminist, and no that's not an oxymoron - wanted to end the quarter by discussing what's so offensive about "cunt" and why women might be able to use the word proudly.

I'm not sure I nudged that particular discussion in a fruitful direction. The other students weren't quite ready for it, and I really was ambushed by it, myself. A few of them were visibly embarrassed. And yet ... I'm willing to bet that at least one of them, sometimes in the hazy future, will think back on that discussion and feel just a bit less shame about her body.

Of course, none of this means you can just walk into a classroom unprepared. Quite the opposite. You need experience, confidence, and a pretty solid knowledge base.

And of course, I'm probably bloviating about the control issue precisely because I'm not prepared for winter quarter, which starts a week from today. :-)

"I Just Wanted to Vote for a Woman"

I'm starting to think that if John McCain had picked a female VP candidate who was slightly less wingnutty, he'd have picked up a slew of disenchanted Democratic women.

While making my volunteer phone calls for the Obama campaign today, I spoke with a woman who firmly said yes, she was supporting Obama in the general election, and yes, she'd definitely vote. When I followed up by asking if she might be interested in volunteering with the campaign, she just as firmly said, "Definitely not! I was a Hillary supporter and it just about broke my heart. I've been waiting to vote for a woman my whole life."

I made a few sympathetic noises about feeling the same way since sixth grade and appreciating Clinton's candidacy. (I left out the fact that in sixth grade, *I* wanted to be that woman running for the presidency. My, how things change.)

This unleashed a torrent of words that came so fast I may be misquoting, but the gist was: "Oh, when Sarah Palin was announced, I thought YES! I wanted to vote for her so bad. I just wanted to vote for a woman." But then she looked into Palin's positions and couldn't quite stomach them, being a good Democrat and feminist.

Two things I took away from this: One, while we might wish Obama were still running against John McCain, de facto he's running against Palin. She's getting roughly three times as many Google hits as McCain. At McCain rallies this week in Cedar Rapids and Youngstown, audience members began streaming out during McCain's speech; Palin had already spoken and they'd gotten what they came for.

Even the candidate herself may have started to believe she's heading the ticket, if this clip is any indication (via the HuffPost):



The second thing I learned from my short chat with one of Hillary's mourners is that there really are two basically different conceptions of feminism afoot in this land, and this is what the McCain campaign failed to exploit.

I think many self-identified feminists still see working for women's advancement as the purpose of feminism. That's obviously very central to it, but to my mind that can't be the whole story. I like bell hooks' definition of feminism as a struggle against sexism. If you take that as your standard, it's immediately evident that women can uphold sexism, too, and you don't have any obligation to support them. It's equally clear that men can be excellent allies. And it's glaringly obvious that no feminist should support a wingnut, no matter how many X chromosomes said wingnut might carry.

Palinofeminism

So much for my foray into reporting gossip. I stand by my judgments of the past few days, but my usual mode is analytical, not judgmental. And if I weren't still so frozen with fear that Sarah Palin could actually become our president if McCain wins and dies, I'd write on something warm and fuzzy. Instead, I'm gusting uneasily alongside the Angelus Novus.

And so you get one more post on Palin while I await her speech at the convention.

It's occurred to me that Palin's ill-advised plane flight is - in a curious way - a stepchild of feminism. In her own way, Palin is a feminist. Seen through this prism, Palin's membership in Feminists for Life is actually a pretty accurate description of her politics. She believes women can work and wield power while raising a family. So do I. Her nomination illustrates the breadth of the consensus on women rising to the highest ranks of politics.

Exhibit A for this consensus: Rudy Giuliani just asked his convention - to thundering applause: "How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to be with her children and be vice president? How dare thay do that? When do they ever ask a man this question?" Not only Phyllis Schlafly but a host of evangelical women see no problem with Palin combining motherhood and presidential campaigning.

But because Palinofeminism is so superficial, it falls immediately into the hoary trap of equality versus difference that has plagued feminism ever since the Woman Question emerged. Historically, European feminists have tended to emphasize differences between men and women while agitating for a society in which those differences - especially childbearing - would not relegate women to second-class status. Anglo-American feminists, by contrast, have put more stress on the equality of men and women.

This historical divergence is schematic, of course, and you can find individual figures who departed from the main current of feminism in their countries. Still, the distinction is real enough that it helps explain why Germany and France and Sweden accommodate motherhood with generous legally-mandated paid maternity leave - and the United States does not.

Now, present-day American feminists are no longer so naive as to believe that a little suffrage and a pinch of formal legal equality will produce actual equality in society. The work of Joan Williams, for instance, shows how further progress toward gender equality will be blocked as long as the American economy demands "ideal workers" with no domestic responsibilities. As long as we deny that care-giving and mothering are profoundly gendered in both idea and fact, women will be systematically disadvantaged in the workplace and public life.

But the many, many American women who pursue a career despite otherwise conservative ideals aren't much aware of these more nuanced approaches. They're usually ignorant of the history of the equality versus difference debates. And so they're condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. They compete with men on men's terms. If the job calls for them to be manly, they'll be downright macho - no matter how feminine their face or figure.

They don't see that women can never win on men's terms. They don't realize that we have to change the standards and definitions to reflect the importance of reproduction and care-work - or we'll never succeed in the public sphere. This is more than a little ironic because the same folks often trumpet the sanctity of the traditional family and male headship of the family, never mind that the economy (far more than feminism) has totally undermined both.

Of course, we can't know exactly why Sarah Palin chose to fly home after her water broke. We do know she was determined to give her speech regardless, come hell or broken water. We know she revealed her pregnancy only in the seventh month. We know she announced her return to work when baby Trig was just three days old. Through this arc of events, Palin showed she wouldn't let maternity interfere with her public duties for more than 48 hours.

Former Massuchusetts Governor Jane Swift, the first governor to give birth in office and the only one before Palin, followed a similar trajectory during her pregnancy with twins. She too worked during their infancy - and got in trouble for misusing government workers as her personal babysitters. She decided against running for reelection because of the subsequent bad publicity. Her career foundered on maternity - in part because she felt obliged to carry on as if nothing had changed.

The press has bandied about the Thomas Eagleton comparison in the past few days - and who knows, perhaps Palin too will be forced to withdraw (although the way the Republicans are rallying tonight, I doubt it). But I think the stronger analogy is to Swift's story. Swift herself sees the parallels between Palin's situation and her own.

Seen through the lens of Palinofeminism, both these women's choices make a lot of sense. I'm not snarking here; I'm sincerely trying to understand. If you feel you must compete on men's turf and on masculine terms, then you don't acknowledge the changes a pregnancy brings. Yes, most women can do their usual work throughout pregnancy. (I finished grading exams about five days before the Tiger was born.) Yes, many of us balance full-time work with an infant, though it's often a psychotically sleep-deprived time.

But most women make some some compromises with our schedules, demand some concessions from our bosses, and make space in our lives for that small but needy new human. If you're a hard-driving ambition woman, your compromises will likely be smaller. If you're a high-powered Republican woman - much less one in the macho state of Alaska! - there's precious little latitude for even imagining compromise. Things aren't a whole lot easier for high-powered Democratic women; but it's probably significant that women like Hillary Clinton deferred their political ambitions until their children were no longer little.

The people who pay most for Palinofeminism are the women themselves who try to do it all. Sure, it helps set an impossible standard for the rest of us, and so it harms women as a class, too. But really, it's those unreconstructed 1980s-style superwomen - and their families - who pay the price.

And yes - when men try to do it all at once - they, too, pay by not ever really knowing their children. But feminists have been saying that for a couple generations now.

The Chinese Century

I know that other feminist bloggers are bemoaning the sexism of Olympic uniforms or the sexist neurosis of gymnastics. And I agree with them pretty well across the board - even though I still adore watching the gymnasts.

It's just that I think there's an even bigger issue encapsulated in these Olympics, and it too has feminist ramifications:

Future historians are likely to look back and see the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the start of the Chinese century.

That conclusion comes not from the careful historian in me who included thousands of footnotes in her dissertation, but the ready-for-prime-time bloviator who pronounced the American century dead a few months ago. Okay, I can't see the future any more than you can, dear reader, but my goodness, the future is here.

Demographically, China is the world's largest nation.

Economically, China is arguably the world's most dynamic nation. Oh, and it owns so much of America's debt, it could squish us like an insect any time it chose. It won't choose to do that just yet, because if it were to destroy the dollar and our economy, China would be left holding lots of worthless debt.

Politically, China is about as authoritarian as it's ever been.

Athletically, it's kicking the rest of the world's ass. Now, I don't get passionate about the Olympics, and I haven't even seen much of the gymnastics (I've been buried in work), but even I know that China's haul of gold medals is making history. When I checked just now, China had 39 gold medals to the United States' 22. If you click that link, their total will no doubt have edged higher.

Why should this matter even to those of us who are tuned out to the Olympics?

Well, the ability to mount a first-class team of Olympic athletes isn't magical. It's not genetic. It's not even a matter of national character or optimism. Apart from those sports (like running) where little equipment is required, Olympic success depends crucially on a country's wealth and - failing that - its ability to marshal resources.

China's gold medals show just how well it's able to extract and mobilize resources, even under conditions of fairly modest wealth. This is why future historians are likely to look back and say: The 2008 Olympics proved that China had arrived - that this century, the twenty-first, would belong to China.

Why is this a feminist issue? Well, as China becomes the dominant world power, other nations will come under tremendous pressure to play the game on its terms. Much as American military and economic prowess pushed other countries to adopt democracy in the twentieth century, China's growing might will create similar pressures to pursue its model of authoritarian capitalism in the twenty-first.

And if I'm right about this, we'll not just be importing Chinese surveillance technologies, as Naomi Klein argues in Alternet this week. We'll be flirting with a more authoritarian form of government that will be far more comprehensive than the cameras and biometric ID cards Klein describes. The mounting energy and environmental crises are going to severely test the American capitalist model, as well as our commitment to democracy and human rights, flawed as they've been. China's ascent will make its model look increasingly attractive if the American economy collapses and the rule of law begins to break down.

But feminism, and indeed all movements to increase equality and freedom, depend on democracy. Feminism can't thrive under an authoritarian regime.

And this is why the Chinese century - like peak oil, like global warming - needs to be viewed as a feminist issue. All of these things are already upon us. All of them threaten American freedoms far more than al-Qaeda will ever do.

The question is merely, how will we respond?

Parenting between the Cliffs of Risk and the Rocks of Pragmatism

Cliffs and rocks at Big Sur, California, photo by Flickr user Ed Yourdon, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yesterday in comments on my feminist homeschooling post and at her own blog, Marcy of Marcy's Musings suggested that my arguments against long-term withdrawal from the paid labor market were driven by a politics of fear. She pushed me to keep thinking about this, since they way I mix my feminism with my parenting is definitely not driven by fear. It’s a balance between risk-taking and pragmatism, which recognizes that "choice" is illusory unless you've got a clear picture of the trade-offs.

Honestly, a lot of people (feminists or not) might say I take a few too many risks. Too many years in grad school? Check. In an "impractical" field? Check. Married a foreigner whose training is in philosophy? Check. Rode home the other night on my bike after midnight - alone - through the big city of Berlin? Check. In other areas, though, I'm boringly risk-averse: I won't talk on a cell phone while driving, and I'm very careful with my kids' safety.

We all take risks - some smart, some stupid - and the trick is to figure out which risks are worthwhile. Marcy recognizes, for instance, that her decision to stay home with her kids through their school years entails a financial risk. She doesn't deny it, though she reduces it mostly to the risk of divorce, while I see the issue as broader: a spouse can also die or become disabled while kids are still young. My husband narrowly escaped death twice, and he went through a prolonged period of disability.

My story is far from unique. The Sungold family tree indicates why it's important for women not to become too dependent financially over the long term. One grandma was divorced from an alcoholic husband in her early twenties. (Circa 1912! Imagine the scandal!) She raised her two daughters alone until she met my grandpa nearly two decades later and then gave birth to my dad. One of my dad's half-sisters was divorced while her daughter was still tiny. His other half-sister was widowed in her early fifties. My maternal grandma was widowed while still in her early forties, with four children to support, the youngest (my mom) only six years old. Both my mom and her sister were divorced while they still had young children at home. Their two brothers remained married to the same women into old age.

So, in those two generations, only two of eight women enjoyed a husband's support throughout their childrearing years. (And those two were farm wives who worked from dawn to dusk and beyond.) It's not that the women in my family are unusually flaky, either; those who divorced did so only under considerable duress. While none of the women in my family chose single motherhood, they still had to find ways to cope, financially and emotionally. For instance, both my grandmas were teachers, and that's how they held their families together.

My family tree suggests why it's neither pro- nor anti-feminist to say that women run greater risks the longer they're completely financially dependent on a mate. The risks are simply a pragmatic reality.

Now, Marcy interprets my argument as saying

women shouldn't have the freedom to do what we find fulfillment in, if it means we might be dependent on the men in our lives, because if those men should fail, we will be in serious trouble. We should follow the current cultural pattern and go to work so we will have a "safety net" in case our husbands should walk out on us.
(Read the rest here.)

No, what I'm saying is something different. I'm suggesting that we need to balance a quest for fulfillment with awareness of the risks of long-term dependence, which grow over time. Only if we're realistically aware of the risks can we make informed and conscious choices.

I'm not at all arguing that mothers should take six weeks' maternity leave and then plunge back into work full-time. I'm not inveighing against stay-at-home parenting. My own choices have tilted in that direction since my first baby was born. I chose to take the financial risk of parenting first - and working for pay only secondarily - during my kids' preschool years. I believe kids need intense attention while they're very young. As infants, my boys got that almost entirely from their dad and me. Starting from around their second birthday, they went to daycare half-days with six other kids and a wonderful caretaker; they loved it, and I could work part time. Only now, with both kids in school, am I returning to work full time. I'm lucky I'll still be able to pick up the kids after school, since I can grade and prep classes at home. My work responsibilities have allowed me to spend lots of time with my kids, and to enjoy the sort of self-fulfillment that Marcy describes. I was lucky that my husband supported (and quite literally subsidized) this arrangement. Other people make other choices, and that's okay too, as long as their choices are conscious and well informed.

Indeed, failure to recognize the importance of active, involved parenting - and its rewards for children, mothers, and fathers - poses very significant risks of its own. The truth is, most jobs are a hell of a lot less interesting than mine, and it's very common for parenting to be far more fulfilling than paid work. That goes for most of men's jobs, too, although lots of fathers still find their fulfillment through the breadwinner role - sometimes too narrowly, at the expense of closer relationships with their children.

Where I differ from Marcy is mainly in the length of time we're spending outside of the paid labor force. The risk here is that re-entry into the labor force becomes increasingly difficult, the longer you've been out. For women, this has historically translated into a substantial risk of poverty in old age or upon their marriage ending. (One of my aunts is in precisely this position now, at age 76.) If the kids are still at home, they're hurt by poverty, too.

In other words, I'm arguing that we need to consider the long-term perspective in our decisions. For me, it made sense to roll back my career to spend lots of time with my little ones. That was a risk and a trade-off. It struck me as worthwhile - and it was. But I see how its costs continue to rise over time. The choice to homeschool, if it means two decades or more outside of the labor force, carries risks and sacrifices that would be too costly in my life. Above all, my children would depend on me completely if my mate's health failed again.

Other folks are free to take that risk, and for some parents whose circumstances are different than mine, it may make sense. However, it would be misleading to portray these significant risks as minimal or to argue that homeschooling may be a more feminist choice than relying on the public schools. The only feminist choice, I'd say, is one that's thoroughly informed.

Finally, I really haven't addressed the elephant in the room: socioeconomic class. It should be clear, though, that the capacity for real choice depends on a certain level of prosperity. In many families, both parents must work in order to avoid eviction and keep the utilities on. That's when choice - even to take a brief maternity leave - can become an unattainable luxury. And that's why poverty has to be a central issue for feminists. That would be a whole 'nother post.

Feminist Homeschooling: Why I Don't

Student kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

As I mentioned yesterday, the Feminist Underground is running a cool series on feminist parenting. The latest post is a spirited argument by Rachel Allen in favor of feminist homeschooling, which was originally published in its entirety by California NOW. The core of her argument is that schools are basically racist, sexist, homophobic engines of conformity that magnify the most pernicious aspects of the mass media. Homeschooling offers her a way to counteract those forces while maintaining a work-at-home career as a feminist activist.

In principle, I think homeschooling can be made compatible with any worldview. In my little town, as in most of America by now, the homeschool community is composed partly of fundamentalist or conservative Christians, partly of lefty/alternative/neo-hippie families. I also know people with non-ideological reasons for homeschooling: they have gifted or speech-delayed kids who are served poorly with by their local school, or they faced a bullying problem that couldn't be resolved.

In practice, however, I think feminist homeschooling is a thorny issue, if only because it requires one parent to be mostly at home. Rachel Allen is lucky in that she works from home. I know another political activist in my neighborhood who strikes a similar balance. Most of us don't have that much flexibility.

As a university professor I have more flexibility than most workers, but I couldn't homeschool unless I had a nanny to carry much of the burden. I still have to show up for my classes and meetings. This year, I've got a rising third grader and kindergartner. With both kids in public school, I'm looking forward to going full time (and having my own health insurance!) after nearly a decade of part-time work.

For work reasons alone, then, I wouldn't homeschool unless I felt there was no other tenable solution. Of course, I realize that I'm lucky to have work that's personally rewarding and reasonably remunerative.

And this points to the crux of the problem of reconciling feminism with homeschooling: While the kids may be getting an anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic education, the stay-at-home parent is still usually a mother. If she works from home for pay, she rarely earns enough to survive financially if her marriage or partnership were to end. So homeschooling as a solution that's feminist for the children is much harder to defend on feminist terms for the parent.

I don't think that staying home to parent is inherently anti-feminist. I did it myself when my kids were little, and it's important, honorable work. It's just that the longer you stay out of the labor market, the more precarious your financial position will be - and if that situation persists for a couple of decades, the stay-at-home parent is likely to be very vulnerable, financially. Sure, there are ways to mitigate this by working part-time or from home, or by taking turns being the at-home parent. But the fact remains that as Ann Crittenden has shown so persuasively, staying at home has very steep, long-term costs.

I'm the last person to measure worth and happiness solely in financial terms (otherwise I wouldn't have spent all that time in grad school). However, I see lots of female students hoping to be stay-at-home parents without much awareness of the attendant risk of poverty, and I suspect many mothers decide to stay home with the assumption that divorce or widowhood won't strike them personally.

The calculation changes, of course, if you live somewhere with poor schools. We're lucky in that our local elementary school is quite good. The teachers are smart, dedicated, and fairly progressive. Though I live in predominantly white Appalachia, the student body is multiethnic and multinational, partly because the school serves the university's graduate student population, partly because binational families like mine gravitate toward its diversity.

Diversity is of course no safeguard against racism, sexism, or homophobia. I know of at least one incident where a racist joke was told at recess. Lunchtime conversation too often revolves around gender stereotypes. The teachers can't police all of this, and so it's up to us parents to talk to our kids after school and discuss why those things aren't okay.

Homeschooling would shield my kids from hateful and stereotypical comments. On the flip side, though, they wouldn't learn how to respond to racism and sexism, which my rising third grader already does pretty effectively. The school environment is also much more diverse than our local homeschooling community in terms of race, nationality, social class, and parents' educational level.

I fully agree with Rachel Allen that there's pressure to conform even in most progressive schools. One of our jobs as parents, I think, is to help kids learn to distinguish between mindless conformity and the necessity to get along and work well with others. So far, we're all doing okay, but I'm well aware that striking this balance won't get easier over time.

Temperamentally, homeschooling would be a tough fit for my kids. My older son, the Bear, wouldn't want homeschooling; we've talked about it, and we both know it would turn into a contest of wills, me nagging, him resisting. He also needs more stimulation than any one parent could provide, and he gets that primarily from the other kids at school, plus frequent playdates and oodles of informal teaching after school. The Bear's curiosity never sleeps. (For that matter, the Bear would literally prefer never to sleep, and he's been that way since the day he was born.) Even with all the activities that homeschooling families pursue together, we'd still come up short.

I can imagine certain circumstances where homeschooling might be the least-bad choice for us: if one of my boys was getting severely bullied and was unable to learn; if he was so terminally bored that his grades were suffering (their dad dropped out of school, actually, for that reason); or if we moved somewhere that had lousy schools. But for now, I'm grateful that my kids are in good hands at their school. We've been lucky to have good, close relationships with their teachers. I'm eager to finally put more energy into my own work (feminist and otherwise) after nearly a decade of dialing back those commitments.

Not least, the kids get along better when they're not together 24/7, and for that reason alone, we're counting down to August 26. (I am that LOLcat!)

I'd love to hear what others think about feminism and homeschooling. I'd bet there are as many perspectives on this as there are parents.

Kyle Payne Redux, and More Fun with Blogrolling

Remember the case of Kyle Payne, the self-appointed advocate for survivors of sexual violence who exposed and photographed the breasts of a passed-out woman whom he was supposed to be helping? Well, he's written a long and kiss-assy letter on his blog, which I won't link to directly, but you can find the link at The Curvature, where Cara dissects Payne's letter beautifully. Jeff at Bookworm (jfpbookworm) dismantles his non-apology apology almost line by line, and does it so well I have nothing to add. So go read their posts already.

Well, I guess I have just one question - not really a thought - and that is, can someone ever regain trust after violating it so flagrantly? I don't think Mr. Payne ever can. Even in his long letter - which I honestly think is aimed more at the judge than at feminists or his victim - he acts as though events simply happened to him. Clearly, aliens swooped down and inhabited his body for a few minutes.

But the question is still one I wonder about, partly as a student of history where it's not just individual but collective guilt, responsibility, and accountability at stake. What crimes - and what circumstances - render someone irredeemable? I'm not sure this can be answered in the abstract, since circumstances do matter. And yet we make such judgments regularly, whether in our personal relationships or through the criminal justice system or even on the level of international sanctions.

Anyway, inspired by Cara and Jeff's excellent take-downs , I decided it was time to update my blogroll:

• Cara's The Curvature
• Jeff's Bookworm
• Lindabeth's Don't Ya Wish Your Girlfriend Was Smart Like Me
• The Feminist Underground (Habladora and more - okay, I actually added them a few days ago - but let me toot the horn for their newly launched series on feminist parenting)

Happy reading!

Men, Feminism, and the Curious Case of Kyle Payne

A young man named Kyle Payne - an über-douche of a blogger who calls himself a feminist - has just plead guilty to photographing and filming a young woman's breasts without her consent. Belledame, Renegade Evolution, and many others (see their blogs for a long list of links) have exposed all the sordid details of this. I won't rehash it here in detail.

The short version is that this guy was an RA at a college in the Midwest, and he was also a sexual assault survivors' advocate. He exploited his positions of trust to violate a young woman's privacy and right to bodily self-determination. The charges he copped to are lesser than an actual assault charge, but no one seems to be disputing the facts.

The astonishing thing is that this dude has kept blogging as though nothing happened. Really, you gotta follow the links above.

The little piece that I'd like to address here is what this means for men in feminism. And frankly, I think it matters not a hoot. Guest-blogging at Feministe, PhysioProf writes:

First, what the fuck is up with men calling themselves feminists?

I don’t call myself a feminist, because it’s not my call whether I am or not. It’s women’s call. I try not to be a fucking misogynist asshole and do what I can to reduce gender inequity in my professional and personal life, which includes trying to call out myself and other men on misogynist shit.

Making a big melodramatic display of tagging oneself with the “feminist” label seems like transparent male cookie-seeking at best, and cover for some seriously nefarious wackaloon shit at worst, as in the case of our male feminist sex criminal friend Payne. (Of course, maybe tagging myself with the “I don’t call myself a feminist” label is just more subtle cookie-seeking! HAHAHAH!)

Y'now, this is just not a relevant lens. Consider this: I knew a guy in college who seemed as painfully milque-toast as he was shy. Several years after graduation, while he was working as a grade-school teacher, he got busted for circulating child porn on the Internet. (He served several years in prison and actually showed up at a reunion I attended last fall - creepy.)

Does he represent all teachers? Does his story lead anyone to wonder whether all male teachers are potential child abusers? Of course not! (Well, actually it's not all that long ago, some 30 or 40 years, since that fear lurked among American parents. But I think we're past that by now.) Maybe my acquaintance chose his occupation to gain closer access to kids. But there's no reason to overgeneralize.

As for Mr. Kyle Payne, as soon as he violated that woman's trust, he burned his feminist credentials forever. He is not a feminist. Maybe he chose his causes out of conscious desire to fool women and gain their trust. Maybe it was more complex and he wasn't aware of the nasty soup of aggression and desire that drove his supposed politics.

Whatever the truth about Kyle Payne's motives, he never was a feminist. He was a total phony. And his case says nothing - nothing! - about men in feminism, or what men should call themselves - whether allies, pro-feminists, or just plain feminists - if they sympathize with feminist causes.

I think it's still difficult for sympathetic men to figure out how to place themselves with respect to feminism. I remember debates about this all through the 1980s (and clearly the issue goes back longer than my adult political memory, to the feminist-separatist scuffles of the 1970s and beyond). Even today, my best-intentioned students seem to struggle the most with how they fit into a women's studies classroom.

Calling yourself a feminist is risky enough for women, who fear being marginalized as ugly, lesbian, man-hating, humorless, etc. For men, it means putting their masculinity on the line. That's ironic, since risk-taking and courage are both hallmarks of conventional masculinity. But I really respect any man who's willing to claim the label for himself - as long as he's doing it in good faith.

Any man who treads into this territory is going to hits some speed bumps. Women are still rightly concerned about men co-opting the movement or the debate. I've written about how that can occasionally happen in women's studies classes when men reach near-parity in terms of sheer numbers. The same is true for any manifestation of feminism, not just its academic flavors. Some men still have a really hard time letting women take the lead. (Of course, some women don't play well with others, either - this is obviously not only gendered.)

Men also face a double bind when it comes to their motivations. Figleaf discusses how men who approach feminism with a rescue mentality can put women right back up on the good ol' pedestal. He argues that men may be wiser to ask what's in it for them - namely, better relationships with everyone they love and freedom from roles that constrain men as well as women. I think he's right, in general - and yet, anyone who suspects bad faith in his position can easily say, well, this is just making everything all about the menz again.

I start from the assumption that the vast majority of men who call themselves feminists are coming from a good place - that they, too, care about humanity and justice and kindness and fairness. Sometimes I may disagree with them, just as I disagree with quite a few women who are feminists. Sometimes their style may annoy me - ditto, too, for some of the women. But I tend to impute good faith until I see strong evidence to the contrary.

Clearly, photographing a passed-out drunken woman's breasts is evidence enough. But let's not turn Kyle Payne into a symbol of anything other than sexual violence.

You Can Call Me Professor Sungold

Okay, I'm enough of a stickler for titles after my sojourn in Germany that I'd better qualify that. You can call me Visiting Assistant Professor Sungold.

Technically, I didn't quite get the job I interviewed for, but I'm still very, very happy with the outcome. I was offered a job I didn't know existed: a visiting gig that's renewable for up to three years. It's full time, but honestly it won't be that much more work than my current purportedly half-time deal. It carries benefits, which means I won't have to depend on my spouse anymore for health insurance. (He's now healthy, but his medical history is complicated enough that it's been nerve-wracking for him to be our sole safety net.) And here's the fun part: I expect I'll get to teach some new classes. Yay!

Oh, and I'll be making more money than I've ever earned in my life. This doesn't mean much, since the last time I had a full-time job (not a grad student stipend, not freelance contracts, not adjuncting work) was twenty years ago, and I was working as a pseudo-engineer at the time. So if you adjust for inflation, I was still "better off" before I quit my job for grad school in 1988. But let's pretend we're ignorant of basic economics and just celebrate my good fortune, okay? The dean was far more generous than I expected, and I'm tickled pink.


Another internal candidate who's already done a three-year visiting stint got the original job, and I'm pleased about that, too. She's smart, a fine teacher, and dedicated to the program. For a number of reasons that I won't go into here (because they belong to her story, not mine), hiring her represents exactly the commitment to fairness that I think Women's Studies ought to stand for. I'm not at all surprised to see this coming from my chair and colleagues. They're wonderful people in every way. I don't just respect them intellectually and politically, I like them very much for human reasons, too. Hovering in the background is a nice measure support from our dean, which portends well for the future of our program.

I don't know what'll happen for me after the next three years, but it opens some doors without slamming any shut. This could be a step toward a permanent position, especially if I do a good job. And from there, who knows? An endowed chair in feminist blogging? Empress of the universe? Wherever it ends, I'm feeling giddily, awesomely happy.

Chives/hardy geraniums, yellow rose whose name I forget, and Will Goodwin clematis from my garden. Actually the roses are my husband's babies, which is why I'm usually clueless about their names.

Rape as Rebellion?

Photo by Flickr user Captain Midnight, used under a Creative Commons license.

Why do (some) men rape?

It's not an academic question. If we knew why it happens, we might know how to stop it.

Figleaf is proposing that rape may be a form of rebellion against patriarchy. I nearly always agree with him, but I'm not at all convinced by this. He recognizes that it's a completely self-defeating form of rebellion, and he's not in any way excusing or condoning, just trying to understand it. But I think it's much more plausible that at least some rapists - not necessarily all - are motivated by resentment at feeling excluded from the perks of patriarchy. That's not at all the same as rebelling against patriarchy per se. (To stay within his frame of reference, I'll going to use the term patriarchy here, even though it's problematic, as I've already discussed, and I'd much rather substitute "male privilege" for it.)

One difficulty here is that it's folly to think there's a single motivation common to all rapists. Figleaf starts from Susan Brownmiller's assertion that rape is an act of violence. Brownmiller's work set the paradigm for virtually all feminist thought about rape since the mid-1970s, and it's been a highly productive lens. But I think her re-framing of rape as violence - crucial as that was in undermining the view of it as mere sexual deviance - can't capture the whole spectrum of possible motivations. Of course, rape always includes at least an implicitly violent component, even if it occurs while a woman is passed out and cannot possibly resist. But if we want to understand why rape happens, I think we need to think about the various meanings and motives that may lurk behind it. The urge to commit a violent act may not always be paramount.

To start what I consider the least important motivation, I'm willing to at least consider a possible role for biological factors, even though I'm skeptical of evolutionary psychology that claims men will try to spread their seed as widely as possible by any means necessary. After all, people created laws, religion, and ethics to contain our most destructive impulses, and men are just as capable as women of abiding by these basic principles of civilization. If biology alone is a suficient explanation, then why do the vast majority of men never commit rape? Still, since I'm trying to cast a wide net here, I'm willing to concede that there may be some biological predisposition. (I'm not willing to grant that testosterone accounts for this. The relationship between testosterone and aggression is by no means a simple linear one.)

Rape can be a form of male bonding, particularly in contexts like fraternities or bars. This is most obviously the case where gang rape occurs (and applies at least partly to the example figleaf cites). But male bonding can also be in play when a man commits an assault on his own but later brags about it to his buddies. There's nothing remotely rebellious about any of this. Participation in a fraternity gang rape, for instance, is a way to establish one's patriarchal bona fides, not to lash out against any system of privilege.

At least in a few instances, rape can be a way to get sex if a man perceives no other options. Prison rape is probably the most obvious example of this, but heterosexual men who feel that no woman would have them may also use this perception to justify rape. Again, I'm not saying this negates the element of violence, only that the desire for sexual release may be part of the mix. Rape as a means to sex is not rebellion against patriarchy - not in any form. Instead, it's rebellion against one's perceived exclusion from its privileges, and particularly from masculine sexual entitlement. This motivation is not about real needs, but about perceived entitlements.

Men may indeed be acting out resentments against individual women or against women as a class. Nearly two decades ago, I knew a man who'd recently been divorced. I had an experience with him that was not entirely consensual. Maybe I'll write about that in more detail some other day. But it was clear to me then, and it's still clear now, that he was acting out his anger against his ex-wife and his more generalized sense of sexual deprivation. The mix of motives here is similar to those guys who perceive no other sexual options, except here the man resents not getting as much sex as he thinks he's entitled to. Plain old misogyny plays into it, too, since resentments aren't necessarily limited to sexual ones.

Other systems of oppression may play a role. Insofar as men feel boxed out of the benefits of patriarchy, as figleaf suggests, we need to think about the intersection of different oppressions. A man who has experienced racism or classism or discrimination based on age or ability or any other "isms" won't likely to see himself as a beneficiary of patriarchy. He may harbor resentment that then gets turned against someone who's lower than him in the food chain. This can occur even when a man is not evidently oppressed; white, middle-class men may still feel cheated of the patriarchal privilege that they think ought to be their due. What counts is the perception. But again, this isn't rebellion against patriarchy per se, it's merely acting out against a feeling of not getting one's fair share of the patriarchal goodies.

But I think figleaf's on a much more productive track when he discusses entitlement:

The problem with the myth of (hetero) sexual scarcity isn't "stuff like this wouldn't happen if women just put out more." Because women *do* "put out" more than ever before without much affecting the myth, or it's consequences, one bit.

Instead the problem with the myth of sexual scarcity is that you wind up with a *climate* of wherein men feel not desperate for sex with women but *entitled* to whatever they can get. But it's a funny sort of "entitlement." Entitlement, no question about it, but an astonishingly alienated kind.
(The rest of his post is here.)

I think alienation enters into it because masculine sexual entitlement really is ultimately more about power than about pleasure; that's the common thread in all of the motivations that I just outlined. And that's why it's partly irrelevant if women say "yes" to sex now more than ever before - and partly just more infuriating to some men, who see their power slipping away.

The power to say yes encompasses the power to say no. And that poses a huge and fatal challenge to the very idea that men are owed sex. In the face of this challenge, men have a choice: either change their thinking and embrace enthusiastic consent as the prerequisite to sex - or simply take what's not freely offered.

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This is the sort of post that really needs footnotes because a whole lot of other people's ideas flow into it. Here are the main ones. Sorry to be so nerdy but they aren't things I can just link to. If you were to read just one of them, I'd suggest going straight to Michael Kimmel at the end of the list.

On rape as violence: Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (New York: Bantam, 1976).

On evolutionary psychology: Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000)

On male bonding and fraternities: Patricia Yancey Martin and Robert A. Hummer, "Fraternities and Rape on Campus," in Feminist Frontiers, ed. Laurel Richardson, Verta Taylor, and Nancy Whittier, 5th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 444–53; and A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade, “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?” in Men's Lives, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner, 5th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), 167–77.

On masculine sexual entitlement: Michael S. Kimmel, "Clarence, William, Iron Mike, Tailhook, Senator Packwood, Spur Posse, Magic … and Us," in Men's Lives, 540–51.