* Hugo Schwyzer on the plight of the male volunteer in children's ministries:
Simply because I am a man, people will assume that I am fundamentally weak. They will assume that I am incapable of exercising self-control. They will worry I have a hidden sexual agenda with them or with their children. Not everyone will assume this, but many will. And because I am a male feminist who has been so forthright about my views on everything from youth ministry to the ills of the porn industry, a not insubstantial number of folks seem to be awaiting my “Eliot Spitzer moment”, when I will be caught doing something fundamentally at odds with my professed values! (You’ll be waiting a while, friends.) I’m not trying to prove my own personal purity for the sake of my ego, of course. Rather, I’m absolutely committed to living out the simple but challenging principle that we can match our words and thoughts and actions, both private and public. We can live lives that are coherent, justice-centered, and whole. Part of living that way, as a man, is not complaining about suspicion, but rather understanding that it is our job to accept with cheer the task of proving ourselves innocent, proving ourselves trustworthy, proving ourselves to be who it is we profess to be.
You often hear (or I often hear, anyway) how important it is for men to take part in children's ministries, and how critical it is to have male role models, who are dependable and can provide boundaries and affection at the right times. It's impossible, in my experience, to be one of those people and not have the set of considerations Schwyzer mentions. If you're committed to helping, you have to welcome that scrutiny as a challenge you'll meet happily, or else you'll burn out.
* Jerry Fodor zings Steven Pinker from awhile back. My first philosophy TA was a student of Fodor's, so I recognize a number of the concerns, and the argumentative style. Philosophy of Mind is no longer my overriding interest, but it was an entertaining reminder.
* Reading about what you already know. The comments, as usual, are interesting.
* Norm on the use of philosophy:
Philosophy itself, indeed, encourages a questioning frame of mind. It should also encourage those who practise it to perceive that moral issues that divide intelligent people can have complexities to them, especially where they concern alternative courses of action that are both – or all – costly in human terms; and should encourage them, likewise, not to pretend in such circumstances that their own preferred view just stands out boldly in the facts, as if it had been written there by a Superior Hand. It should encourage these attitudes, but evidently doesn't always do so. That is not the fault, though, of philosophy, merely of the fallible humans that we all are, including even those who are philosophers.
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