J. Michael Clark

Faludi, Fight Club, and Phallic Masculinity: Exploring the Emasculating Economics of Patriarchy

Both Susan Faludis Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (text) and the film Fight Club (image) insist that men have been emasculated by consumerism; that the post-war legacy of the so-called good life has shifted men from active, heroic, confrontational roles into the passive, ornamental roles usually assigned to women; and that, without a Great Depression, or Great War, or any other dragon to slay, emasculated men have become imprisoned in their job cubicles and possessed by their possessions, often with not only negative, but even violent repercussions. Ecofeminism and ecotheology provide the tools for better understanding this idolatrous false god of consumerism, as well as for beginning to explore how the economics of plenty affect seemingly privileged men. Importantly, however, this study does not further privilege the already privileged, but seeks instead to understand how the globalizing economy negatively impacts both the human poor and the nonhuman ecosystems which altogether constitute our fragile planet (including population growth and environmental racism). Finally, the essay pushes beyond deconstructive criticism to explore “green” alternatives—at once returning to the masculinity/economics issues in popular culture, insisting on the need for both an economic theory and a value system that do not reduce all value to monetary terms, and seeking a renewed commitment to relational justice in ecosystemic communities. Here, Faludi and Fight Club part company, the latter focusing not on community but upon the heterosexist isolationism and individualism which others argue is a symptom, perhaps even a cause, and certainly not the solution for our current economic and environmental woes.

Men's Studies, Feminist Theology, and Gay Male Sexuality

My closest friend has publicly, albeit fondly, called me a “curmudgeon” on behalf of our community; at the same time he has labelled my spouse the “buccaneer” who provides the balancing spice and adventurc to my Virgoan seriousness (Cotton, 1990; Edmonson, 1989). These are labcls I have grown to cherish, because I believc I turn my curmudgeonly evaluations upon myself as thoroughly as I do upon my community, a commuhity which I dearly love, its foibles notwithstanding, a community toward which I remain ever loyal, my own criticisms notwithstanding. Yet, as a curmudgeon, I know I ask difficult questions. I ask them of myself. I ask them of my spouse. How could I not, then, ask difficult questions of the community I call my home? As a theologian, and as an unapologetically and unabashedly gay liberation theologian, I belicve that without asking ourselves difficult questions we will never achicve our fullest liberation. Gay and lesbian liberation is far more than mere sexual freedom, far more even then the achievement of certain political and legal rights and protections that arc far too long in coming. Liberation is somcthing more fundamental. To achicve our fullest, most complete, most thorough, and most genuine liberation requires thc transformation of who we are-the transformation, the redemption if you will, of our very being. I h o w of no other way into and through this process of transformation-of death and rebirth into a liberational future-than by way of confronting those things in the present that hold us back, those things that kcep us acquiescing and assimilating rather than radically transforming ourselves and the world. For this reason, thcn, I ask tough questions of myself, of my spouse, and of those whom I love as dearly as myself. In the prcsent context, therefore, I will be looking hardest

Profeminist Men's Studies and Gay Ethics

To discover and to name oneself as a gay man (or lesbian) may well be to take a giant step out, or be brusqucly pushed from, the mainstream, patriarchal, and heteroscxist culture where traditional moral discourse inhercs. “Traditional morality,” whatevcr that means, is probably simultaneously an cthical framework we reject in coming out as gay/lesbian as well as a moral realm that rejects us. Our movcmcnt to the margins, however, should in no way be construed as thc discovcry of a place where “anything goes”; to claim and to live out onc’s gayhesbian being as a mode of being with/in the world is not to live in an ethical vacuum. Sociopolitically, for example, it is not enough only to dcmdnd justice for what we are-for being gay (or lcsbian); we must also take responsibility for what we d e f o r how wc have been and for how we are-as gay men (and lcsbians). Or, as Beverly Wildung Harrison (1985, p. 11) succinctly puts it, “Do-ing must be as fundamental as being in our theologies.” Doing theology and doing ethics conflatc. As theology and ethics conflatc, particularly in feminist theory and profeminist gay male writing, one leitmotif emerges over and ovcr againaccountability. Wc dcvelop our accountability in and through the dynamics of our livcs as bodyselves-in-relation, whereby wc also come to understand both how we oppress each othcr and how to advocate on our own and

Doing the Work of Love: I. Men's Studies at the Margins

D o i n g theology is an inherently subjective activity. Even when theology appears to make putatively objective statements about the divine, those statements ultimately reveal far more about the particular theologian than they ever do about God. Richard Rubenstein (1966, p. 246) realized this over thirty years ago when he contended that theology communicates an inner world that the theologian suspects others may share, To preclude having our theological subjectivity degenerate into mere solipsism, more recent theologians have in fact emphasized this shared nature of our concerns, however partial that sharing may be. By describing the personal contexts from which we speak as completely and thoroughly as we can-by acknowledging the specificities of our individual “ecolocations” (Spencer, 1996)-0ur specifically located theological voices avoid gross universalization and polemic, functioning instead as invitations to relationship and dialogue (Morton, 1985, p. xxv). While no longer presuming any sort of static objectivity in the traditional sense, theological and intellectual integrity is now achieved in the dynamism of dialogical relation, in the creative exchange of our partial truths. One important contention to emerge from the creative exchange that constitutes feminist and profeminist gay theological dialogue has been that being and doing go hand in hand (Harrison, 1985, p. 11); in short, theology and ethics conflate as liberation theology moves dialogue away from any obsession with the divine toward a focus on human responsibility and accountability in-relation (Clark, 1989, 1997a). Such a focus again emphasizes the subjectivity of those engaged in theological ethics, as we make plain our ecolocations and “lay our bodies on the line” (Gorsline & Spencer, 1996) in order to use our individually embodied lives in-relation as our standpoint(s) for speaking prophetically both from and to our various com-

Men as Couples: Doing Our Homework, Creating Justice

A t the midpoint of my seminary studies twenty years ago, when my wife and I separated in order for me to begin my own particularly slow process of coming out as a gay man, I felt terribly confused and afraid-sexually, psychologically, and spiritually. After I left seminary in Atlanta to sort things out at my parents’ home in central Florida, I traveled to the gayand lesbianbased Metropolitan Community Church in Tampa in search of pastoral guidance. The pastor’s advice was that I should spend several hours in the local gay bathhouse, abandoning myself to all the sexual possibilities I had thus far been denied. I pondered his seemingly strange advice, but did not follow it. When my intended respite at home proved more suicidal than healingthat is to say, after my third progressively absurd and futile attempt to kill myself-I returned to the area of east Tennessee and southwest Virginia where I had gone to college. Here, in a non-family setting far more conducive to the healing I needed, I again sought out counseling, only this time from a secular therapist. Since there was no gayAesbian church in the area at that time, she recommended I drive the twenty miles to the nearest gay bar-then the only gay oasis between Knoxville and Roanoke. This advice I did heed and began ever so slowly to acquaint myself with other gay men. Here I also discovered homophobia-the egg narrowly missing my head only to splatter on my car just outside that bar a vivid reality check. When I returned to seminary after my nine-month hiatus, I found that my heterosexual friends kept their distance. One classmate even reported his suspicions to our shared bishop and thus began the process of virtually nullifying my earlier United Methodist ordination. In need of new friends, I sought out the fledgling university gay support group and there discovered

Phenomenology & Prophecy, Victimization & Transformation: Further Notes on Gay Ethics

coming out as a gay man or lesbian also entails finding oneself excluded from the mainstream, heteropatriarchal culture wherein traditional moral discourse inheres. Our exclusion by definition from so-called “traditional morality,” however, should never be construed as the discovery of a place where “anything goes” (Clark, 1995). Or, as Mary Hunt (1991) has indicated, our increasing visibility in the very midst of a homophobic cthos is not intended to give anyone “the impression that there arc no lesbian and gay sexual ethical parameters” (p. 89). Currently developing gay liberation theology(ies) must instead insist that to claim and to live out one’s gayhcsbian existence as a mode of being-witdin-the-world is not to live in an ethical vacuum: It is not enough only lo demand justice for what we are-for being gay or lesbian; we must also take responsibility for what we do-for how we are-as gay men and lesbians (Clark, 1995). Or, as Bcvcrly Wildung Harrison (1985) succinctly puts it, “Do-ing must be as fundamental as be-ing in our theologies” (p. 11). In short, doing theology and doing ethics conflate. That realization also informs the more recent work of Kathleen Sands (1994), who indicates that because “meaning is never simply true or simply innocent” and because “it is impossible to do nothing in the world,” we are called to “close discernment of what we arc doing and to whom” (p. 168). That discernment, that acknowledgment and acceptance of responsibility, that embodiment of accountability in-relation i s our ethical task. Unfortunately, gay men have only just begun to undertake this important ethical work and we are currently far from consensus in our approaches to the ethical question of “how?”

Abuse & Theodicy in Gay Theology & Ethics

T h c Angel of Death proved a ubiquitous intruder in our lives during the winter and spring of 1995, abusing family and friends alike in ways both symbolically prescient and painfully real. Before the new year had even begun, my father placed my decreasingly mobile, 89-year-old grandmother in a nursing home, severing her ties to the only relational ecosystem she had known for over half a century. My spouse Bob and I had but begun to realize the dying process implicit in “our” granny’s forced relocation, when the young lover of an older gay friend and mentor died of an insidious cancer which had invaded his already AIDS-ravaged immune system. Fresh from that memorial service, we paid our first visit to granny in hcr ncw rcsidcnce and were deeply saddened by the obvious diminishment in her embodied quality of life, a diminishment hastened at least in part by my father’s earlier abuse by neglect and ineptitude. While we were visiting granny, the oldest of our three dogs died unexpectedly, following some minor skin surgery; her involuntary nervous system no doubt still impaired by residues of the anesthetic, her stomach literally turned, quickly killing her in the space of some twenty minutes. Within only a couple of weeks of burying our beloved if cantankerous Abigail beneath a blanket of snow she would have loved to romp in, we learned that Bob’s best friend and the designated executor for his will, a friend whom Bob had just visited the day before, had died suddenly in the wee hours, succumbing to his very first round of AIDS-related pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. A return visit to granny demonstrated to us just how much an individual can decline in a Mere six weeks, losing virtually all remaining independent mobility and becoming dependcnt not just upon a walker, but upon wheel chairs and nursing assistance for the simplest and most personal of tasks. At this point my father put granny’s longtime home on the market and Bob and I became accomplices in its dismantling. Gradually dispossessing our granny meant the slow death of the only constant family home I’ve known

HIV/AIDS, Aging, and Diminishing Abilities: Reconfiguring Gay Masculinity in Literature and Theology

Two recent novels (Maupin, 2007; Holleran, 2006) introduce new concerns for the intersection of gay theology and mens studies relative to long-term HIV/AIDS survival and aging. These novels also revisit the conflict between whether sexuality and promiscuity or friendship and fidelity best constitute gay identity (issues also revisited in another recent, nonfiction text: Krondorfer, 2009). As an invitation to a conversation on these issues, this essay will explore the following: What do body image and sexuality mean for men whose bodies are re-shaped by long-term reliance on antiviral medications? What does the extant mens studies literature say about bodily changes and masculinity? How might the confluence of HIV/AIDS, long-term survival, and aging begin to nuance gay theology and mens studies?

Queering the Apocalypse: Reading Catherine Keller's Apocalypse Now and Then

This essay examines the meanings of gay marginalization/ghettoization and HIV/AIDS through the lens of Catherine Kellers (1996) most recent work, Apocalypse Now and Then. As I read her text about Johns text, like the rabbinical commentators of old, I literally inscribed the margins of her text with my responses and insights, creating a marginal text from/with my own marginalization as a gay male (eco)theologian and (sexual) ethicist living with HIV/AIDS. This essay reads off those edges and reads from the margins, weaving together these multiple texts in order to create a speculative, interpretive tool for understanding multiple margin(alization)s within the further (con)text(s) of liberatory religious studies and ethics, mens studies, and queer studies.

(Em)Body(d) Theology: Exploring Ecology and Eschatology

Because my theology has progressively interwoven feminist thought and sexual, gay male cxperience, I have realized that our sexuality at its best is not only an urging into relationship with another person, but also an urging for justice in all relationships, including our relationship with the earth itself (see Heyward, 1984, 1989; Nelson, 1983, 1988, 1992). Following James Nelson, for example, I have suggested that our sexuality is a complex nexus of emotional, psychological, and spiritual, as well as bodily experiences: making love to ourselves, befriending one another, expressing our love for our special beloveds, and moving us both to encounter the divine and to seek justice not only in the bedroom but throughout our lives. The erotic, or more concretely in our experience, our sexuality, becomes a meaningless, genitally reduced notion unless we understand the erotic as part and parccl of our urges toward mutuality and human(c)ness. Our fundamental need for connectedness, love, and self-affirming acceplance--our erotic and sexual drivc toward connectedness with all things-undergirds our quest for mutuality and, through thc realization of that quest, empowers our efforts to establish justice in d l relationships, not just our sexually expressed ones. In other words, our sexuality is not so much about where and how we put our genitals, but is rather something that permeates our lives and that both urges us toward and sustains our relationships-vcn those that are not genitally consummated ones. As the powcr of relation, our sexuality cnables-nay, compels-liberation& justice-secking activity in the world. Nelson (1992) reiterates this idea when he says that the divinc Eros is “that fundamental energy of the universc that is the passion for connection and hcncc the hunger for justice and ycarning for life-giving communion” (p. 186). This erotic oncness also shapes our deepest valuing and acting in the world. While Nelson merely suggested in an earlier book that “compassion ... is intimately related to our sexuality” (1983, p. 13), more rcccntly he has forthrightly argued that our embodiment as scxual beings is in fact foundational to our capacities to feel (and to enact) compassion (1992, pp. 45, 116117). Our sexual embodiment is actually necessary for us to be moral crea-