James’s essay takes the form of a search. He wants to find out why his blissful little vacation at a place called the Chautaqua Lake Assembly Grounds left him feeling so unsatisfied.

I went in curiosity for a day. I stayed for a week, held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear.

And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying: “Ouf! what a relief! Now for something primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. This human drama without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things,-I cannot abide with them. Let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and sufferings. There are the heights and depths, the precipices and the steep ideals, the gleams of the awful and the infinite; and there is more hope and help a thousand times than in this dead level and quintessence of every mediocrity.”

I’m told that many students consider this essay one of the best things they’ve ever read. (Harvard had a wonderful panel in the essay’s honor a few weeks ago.) Ultimately, Traveler James tells us that the significant life must require idealism wedded with struggle. We have to “back up” our “ideal visions” he says, “with what the laborers have, the sterner stuff of manly virtue; it must multiply their sentimental surface by the dimension of the active will, if we are to have depth, if we are to have anything cubical and solid in the way of character.”

Did you catch that phrase, “manly virtue”? Yes, it’s unfortunate. But James clearly thought that his ideal, this strenuousness of life, was a universal good (and in fact, that’s central to one of his points, that “progress” through time, from one culture to another, doesn’t necessarily make our lives more meaningful. Struggle is a universal fact of a significant life.) And furthermore, James was writing in the at the turn of century, when the word “manly” wasn’t yet an embarrassingly outmoded word.  So we forgive him; his essay is universalist and sympathetic, and it’s beautiful.

You can’t say the same about Wagley’s “Defense of Manliness.” At a basic level, here’s an extremely frustrating read. One wonders in vain when reading her piece: Is manliness reserved for men? Is being a man a sufficient condition for manliness? A necessary condition?  And what does it have to do with modern American society (and Risk and mandolins and all the rest)?

Consider Wagley’s thesis: “Our culture emasculates men by stripping manhood of its corresponding virtues and reducing manliness to predatory sexuality. ” We have two lemmas here: first, that we have “stripped manhood of its corresponding virtues”; and second, that we have “reduced manliness to predatory sexuality.”

I think the second point is patently wrong. The fact that James still resonates with us is indication that the life of strenuousness and courage has not fallen out of favor. This seems plainly right. Senators authorize wars in order to not seem “weak”; firefighters run into collapsing buildings to save their fellow Americans. Who says we don’t lionize strength in America?

Which gets us to the first lemma in the sentence quoted above, which is that we have “stripped manhood of its corresponding virtues” (emphasis mine). This is unseemly. Wagley maintains that manliness “corresponds” with manhood. That only men can be manly. How else are we supposed to read sentences like these:  “Denigrating manhood harms society because when we assault manliness, we devalue men.” Here “men,” “manhood” and “manliness” are one in the same; we “denigrate” one and thus we “devalue” the other.

This is sexism plain and simple — and it’s also, one notes, a massive contradiction. If we value courage, bravery, endurance etc — as James does — than shouldn’t we want all people to exude these traits? Shouldn’t we want to extend them to women as well as men, to old people as well as young people, to everyone? So Wagley backtracks. She writes in response to Sam’s post: “I certainly hope that if nothing else, people might say I have some “manly” qualities myself!”

You read this and you think, Is she just totally confused about what the problem is? The problem is not the ideal; the problem is the word. “Manly” is an old-fashion and misogynistic word that undermines the very point that one might rightly be trying to make. It excludes and denigrates the very people one is trying to convince; it’s sexist and a waste of time and I simply wouldn’t recommend we keep using it. If Wagley has some idea of “nobility” in mind, then I suggest she reframe it in a way that all of us can benefit from hearing. I suggest she look to James as a model.

Photocredit: Wikimedia

As a dues-paying member of the Harvard Republicans Club, these accusations are worrisome. College Republicans are an essential part of the party network, providing energy, enthusiasm, and future leaders for our country. From experience, I can attest to the diversity of college Republicans throughout the country. These student organizations are the foundations and grassroots of the big-tent Republican Party, one that accepts people of all different backgrounds and views. It is clear that the Harvard Republicans and other campus Republican organizations have a large diversity of opinion and represent the impressive dynamic of the party throughout the country. The situation at Duke clearly detracts from the core message of the Republican Party: restoring freedoms by removing the burden of government. For the party to move on, it must hold firm to its values, not compromising on issues due to political expedience, and continue to offer compelling alternatives to Big Government liberals. But, it must also be a more accepting party and put aside potentially divisive and negative attacks on those of different shades. For Republicans are not defined by their gender, or sexuality, or religion, or socioeconomic status, but rather by the unfailing faith in America and her people.

There’s a common assumption about men who commit sexual assault on a college campus: That they made a one-time, bad decision. But psychologist David Lisak says this assumption is wrong —-and dangerously so…

He found them by, over a 20-year period, asking some 2,000 men in college questions like this: “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated [on alcohol or drugs] to resist your sexual advances?”

Or: “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used physical force [twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.] if they didn’t cooperate?”

About 1 in 16 men answered “yes” to these or similar questions….

It might seem like it would be hard for a researcher to get these men to admit to something that fits the definition of rape. But Lisak says it’s not. “They are very forthcoming,” he says. “In fact, they are eager to talk about their experiences. They’re quite narcissistic as a group — the offenders — and they view this as an opportunity, essentially, to brag.”

What Lisak found was that students who commit rape on a college campus are pretty much like those rapists in prison. In both groups, many are serial rapists. On college campuses, repeat predators account for 9 out of every 10 rapes.

And these offenders on campuses — just like men in prison for rape — look for the most vulnerable women. Lisak says that on a college campus, the women most likely to be sexually assaulted are freshmen.

Some people seem to believe that campus rape is an “unclear” or “difficult” issue. They say that alcohol sufficiently complicates our judgments, and that, for this reason, the term “rape” is often not appropriate. This article utterly destroys that case.

Stated most strongly, the “rape is a tough issue” argument says that anti-rape campaigns do not emphasize enough the sovereign choice of the female. Women need to be clear about their sexual choices. Sex — like all matters of the human heart — is naturally mixed-up and full of indecision, and part of what it means to believe in the equality of the sexes is to believe that both women and men are strong enough to make their desires decisively clear. They argue that “yes, maybe, I don’t know” cases, infused with alcohol, are not rape. They say we shouldn’t be labeling rapists retrospectively.

But the fact is, we’re not! As this article explains, the vast majority of rape cases are, in fact, pellucidly clear. They involve repeat offenders who know the sexual choices of their victims, and they in turn know that they’re violating those choices. The face of campus rape is not the drunk girl and guy who do something that they kinda sorta regret. The face of campus rape is the man who subdues and violates his victim.

To my mind, the arguments about the “confounding” effects of alcohol are more than just canards — they’re close cousins to the blame-the-victim arguments that have been trotted out to exonerate rapists all around world and all throughout history. For the vast majority of cases– alcohol or no alcohol, peers or strangers — rape is not ambiguous.

In his critique of that column, the Harvard Salient’s Dhruv Singhal begins by criticizing my evidence of anti-atheist bias in America. I had cited a study that documented 25 child-custody cases over five years in which a non-religious parent had been deemed less fit than a religious one. In my column, recognizing that this might seem paltry, I explained further: the study looked only at cases that reached appeals courts, which most custody cases do not; and it documented only instances in which the judge explicitly cited lack of religion, which biased judges would not always do.

President Dawkins?

I recognize that this last point is speculative, though I believe it is sound. But Singhal never acknowledges the first point. My point was not that there are “five child custody cases a year involving apparent discrimination.” My point was not even that there are many more than that, which there undoubtedly are. Rather, the point was to show that, even among educated people like judges (in divorce courts, and all the way up to the Supreme Court, as I showed in the first half of the column), anti-atheist bias is a pernicious force, one that causes tangible injustice to some number of people.

The poll numbers cited elsewhere in the article, which Singhal likewise never mentions, were meant to show that anti-atheist prejudice is also a force among the general public. The strongest evidence for this, even stronger than the poll numbers, is that there is only one acknowledged atheist in national elected office. Why is this good evidence? Not primarily because it suggests that voters are rejecting openly atheistic candidates for office, but because it suggests that atheist candidates, knowing they would be rejected if they revealed themselves as such, stay in the closet. To paraphrase Arnie Vinick, the fictionalized John McCain knockoff from the West Wing: if you demand religious demonstrations from your politicians, you’re just asking to be lied to.

What is Singhal’s response to the under-representation of declared non-believers? First, he points out that they aren’t alone: women and African-Americans are under-represented too. Since one point of my column was to draw something of a connection between anti-atheist bias and the more familiar forms of sexism and racism, I heartily accept this point. But then Singhal implies that“prejudice alone” cannot account for the under-representation of atheists, just as it supposedly cannot account for that of women. But this is where those never-acknowledged poll numbers come in. A majority of Americans wouldn’t consider voting for an atheist for president, more than say the same about Muslims and Mormons and women and homosexuals and everyone else. Likewise, a majority of Americans hold an unfavorable view of atheists—more than for any other minority. Most recently, a poll came out showing that 7 in 10 Americans who practice a religion would be bothered if their child married an atheist, and 27% would never accept the marriage.

In light of these numbers, Singhal’s insistence that the dearth of atheists is “not the product of bigotry” starts to look a little pale. Call it whatever you like, you might even just call it “distrust,” but it’s clear that many Americans have a big problem with atheists.

The rest of Singhal’s article can be summed up: “But atheists do it too!” Of course it’s true that some atheists have said some nasty things about believers. And naturally, if Bill Maher had written a column for the Crimson lamenting how everyone hates atheists, one might be justified in pointing out some of his more insulting diatribes. But Maher didn’t write that column, so I don’t see the relevance of his comments.

When Singhal does return to my actual column, he says that I “apparently” assume something that I do not: that prejudice against atheists is a “religious prejudice,” rather than a “scientific prejudice.” It seems that Singhal believes that a religious prejudice is one held against religious people (his example is anti-Semitism) while a scientific prejudice is one held against a scientific theory, like climate change or evolution.

Singhal is entitled to his own terms, of course, but he assumes what he wants to prove: he wants to show that atheism is a religion because it is the victim (so, supposedly, say I) of “religious prejudice.” But if religious prejudice is simply defined as prejudice against a religious view, then Singhal’s argument is circular. So, let me clarify: prejudice against atheists is prejudice against atheists, not anything else. Does this mean that I forfeit the protection of the “aegis of religious bigotry,” as Singhal says? I guess so. If the only kind of prejudice we should care about is prejudice against religious groups, then I guess anti-atheist prejudice is fine and dandy. But I think that we should care about all sorts of different prejudices.

There seems to be a hidden definition of “bigotry” at work in Singhal’s article. It is captured by the subtitle: “If anti-atheist prejudice is bigotry, then atheism is religious.” Let’s try some other examples with the same form. “If anti-black prejudice is bigotry, then being black is religious.” “If anti-female prejudice is bigotry, then womanhood is religious.” “If anti-gay prejudice is bigotry, then homosexuality is religious.”

It seems that the goal of Singhal’s article, judging from his title, is to show that atheism is a religion like any other. He wants to enlist me in this argument; he thinks I have provided all the proof he needs by contending that there is such a thing as “anti-atheist prejudice,” or, if you like, bigotry. My point, and it really is a very mundane one, is that this argument doesn’t wash, whether or not you believe, for other reasons and with other arguments, that atheism really is a religion.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of mrccos

But was this ever really a debate about public policy? If it were shown that abstinence-only education actually reduced teen pregnancy, would Berkeley types change their minds, or would their belief in what Douthat calls the “naturalist” view of sex continue to guide them? I think the latter. My intuition is that people who like abstinence-only education like it because they really, really don’t want their kids having sex, period, and people who like comprehensive sex-ed like it because they think teen sexuality is acceptable, maybe even desirable. It seems to me that the public-policy debate was always a proxy.

Should moral values be imposed on the most local level possible? (Douthat says the issue should be “intensely local.”) I’m pretty sympathetic to that argument, but note that this isn’t really an argument for federalism, but for localism. There are a lot of variations between towns in the same state; Austin residents are probably going to feel differently about sex-ed than many of their fellow Texans. So, what Douthat’s argument logically leads to is a very fine patchwork of different sex-ed policies (or marriage policies, or abortion policies, or what have you).

That result might have the virtue that people will usually be ruled by laws they morally approve of. But it might also entail that people will self-segregate in communities that share their values, and thus contribute to the already-vast divide between social liberals and conservatives. It might contribute to the feeling, which I hear a lot from my liberal friends and family, that we don’t or shouldn’t really share a country with people who are so incredibly different from us. It’s harder to feel that way if you share a community with such people, and see that, in addition to favoring laws you disapprove of, they also make good Little League coaches and friendly neighbors.

In other words, federalism, taken to its extreme, might just threaten our national unity. I realize this is a hyperbolic conclusion for a little blog post about sex-ed, but I do generally think that this is the divide: Do you prefer proximity in law-making, or e pluribus unum in culture?

Photo credit: flickr stream of 9.81 meters per second squared

Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, by Lauren Winner, Brazos Press, 2006. $14.99.192 pg.

Sex is a hot topic and is a reliable standby for talk shows, TV shows, and magazines; but is our culture really having any discussion about sexuality? In Lauren F. Winner’s book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, Winner proposes a sexual revival in the most unlikely place: the Christian church. Proposing that a vast set of truths uncomfortable to pop-culture hedonism are being ignored, in this view sex is not what we see on the big screen: a self-serving, individualistic practice, but instead something inextricably social. This view of sex invites a discussion of the consequences of modern sex and the consequences of churches’ refusal to discuss it, and urges for an honest national argument over sexuality.

Confused churches

Real Sex battles three mainstream attitudes toward sexuality: the repressive, rearguard attitude of many churches, apparent in their purity balls and dogmatic abstinence, the free-for-all carnival of pop-culture, and the growing justification of that pop-culture attitude within the church in the face of the old intransigence. Unlike many Christian commentators, Winner’s fix isn’t simply a cut and paste of rules from the canon of Christian thinkers, nor does she ignore teachings that are difficult to reconcile within a modern world. Instead, she argues that the sex becomes something different when viewed from the context of a larger redemptive story: God’s love and work within the church.

Consequently, Winner has little to say for a skeptical audience that isn’t sold on the Bible. Rather, she tries to understand the teachings of the Bible within society today. Given the predominantly Christian character of America, the failure of churches to provide a healthy alternate view of sexuality is a big problem. The author decries the tendency to either simplistically condemn sexual activity or generally avoiding the topic of sex altogether, creating the impression that sexuality, sex, and even bodies, are sinful things.

An outline for a new debate about sexuality

A new dogma of sex

Though Real Sex is aimed at a Christian audience, its arrival at a time when believers find themselves largely powerless may convince them to attempt a second sexual revolution. Unlike the free love revolution of the 60’s, however, Winner’s book emphasizes freedom to love within the context of sexual responsibility.

Society views sex in an individualistic manner, “yet when we realize that sexual love is a primary force in constructing a household, and that households are primary components of constructing community, it begins to appear, indeed, that sexuality should have a public, communal face.” Culture must develop its relationship with sexuality from public discussion, especially discussion within the religious public; while the current treatment of sexuality is obviously dissatisfactory for Winner, the old censorship of public discussion, and its prudish successors, didn’t work. The primary question is what the conclusions of discussion will be; implicitly, they will be substantively similar to what Christians already believe entering the discussion, and this attitude may prove problematic in the real world.

Social sexuality

If this new public discussion is to occur, however, a likely area will be sex education, which today is primarily concerned with what type of “protection” to use against pregnancy, whether it is abstinence or contraceptives. According to Winner, despite abstinence programs, 52% of girls have sex before they are eighteen. Preaching isn’t working because it lacks the communal aspect of sexuality that can only be found in a discussion of sex. So if America’s teenagers are going to participate in sex, then they should be encouraged to contemplate what sexuality is.

This new approach reaches beyond the school doors, however, into churches, temples, and homes. If discussions of sexuality are to be instituted within the schools, society first has to be comfortable with sending their teenagers to school to discuss sexuality. America can’t reach that comfort level until the rest of society begins the discussion, and if the church takes that role, it may get to influence the outcomes. Real Sex is a first step to creating a new understanding of sexuality within the context of a community; the only question is whether society will listen to participants that already have the answers.