Orthodox Jewish newspapers erase women from Israel's cabinet
I know Ann already linked to this story in the WFR, but I thought it deserved a full post.
Two ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers have altered a photo of Israel's new cabinet, removing two female ministers.Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver were grouped with the rest of the 30-member cabinet for their inaugural photo.
But Yated Neeman newspaper digitally changed the picture by replacing them with two men. The Shaa Tova newspaper blacked the women out.
See the pics above: The one on top is the original, the second is the one that was altered. Women in politics are often made invisible, but this shit is ridiculous.
Posted by Jessica - April 06, 2009, at 11:00AM
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Just to clarify a bit -- this ridiculousness was not done by just an Orthodox newspaper, but a haredi one. The haredi are a small proportion of the Orthodox.
And it's not just women in politics they erase. It's women everywhere. They believe that it's a violation of the women's modesty to look at pictures of them, and so they cut them out of all pictures that they publish. They even cut out pictures of little girls, which makes no sense even within their modesty rules. (My aunt and uncle are within the haredi community. When I visited them and went to their synagogue or functions as a kid, the men there would play with me the same way they'd play with the little boys -- picking me up, holding my hand, whatever. When I got to be about ten or so, though, I suddenly went from "kid" to "female," and many of them wouldn't even look me in the eye anymore, but would talk to me with their eyes focuses somewhere to the side of my head, because, as a female, they believed that it would be insulting to me to look at me.)
With the newspaper that blacked out the women, at least that acknowledges that the women were there. This photoshopping makes it look like the women weren't there at all in the first place.
Just curious, because I don't know anything about the Haredi community (is that pc?), but in their culture was this done as a way to respect the women? As in, it would be an insult to a woman to be looked at in a photo? Because you mentioned they don't look women in the eye because it would be insulting, and that is violates a woman's modesty to be photographed.
It's still sexist, but that seems like an important difference.. Like a line between covering women up from head to toe in Islam so women don't arouse men, in comparison to women covering themselves up because they feel the need to protect their own modesty.
(Although... Whether the woman agrees with it or not I'm sure she likely has no say in the issue. Which is very sad.)
Well, kind of both, but the reason that gets talked about more often, at least in my experience, is protecting the woman's modesty -- it's insulting to look directly at a woman, because looking at her implies that you could be looking at her sexually, and women should be appreciated for what they say and do, not for what they look like. (A man can look at his wife, for instance, though, because that relationship is supposed to have sexual elements, and a man can look at his daughter or mother, because those relationships are presumed to be non-sexual to begin with. And just about all of this is really a matter of personal interpretation -- I've known people who grew up in the same community, going to the same schools, and some of them will look at women and others won't, and they all feel that they're following what they were taught.)
There is also an element of not "arousing" men, though, which I've never really personally experienced, but other people I know have. The "modesty police" that were a big problem in Israel a few years ago were mostly this -- they were attacking women in religious neighborhoods who were dressed "immodestly" (which sometimes just meant a short-sleeved shirt.)
This might make me take a Israel travel
I think it is a shame they are using photoshop for that uses, both you can find other Orthodox radical events daily..
If you're really interested in this, there's a book about the Jewish concept of modesty called Inside/Outside or Outside/Inside or something like that that gets recommended to pretty much every Orthodox Jewish teenager or young adult struggling with this. I read it, didn't agree with all of it, but for the most part appreciated what it had to say. I also liked that, with the exception of one chapter that applied only to women, it was written for both men and women, with the basic premise of, "Dress so that you look nice, but not so that you're calling attention to your body." (The very basic rules are, for men, pants past the knee and sleeves that cover the shoulder and upper arm, and for women, skirt past the knee, neckline at or above the collarbone, and sleeves at least to the elbow, though some groups are a bit more lenient with sleeve length for women and will allow sleeves that stop an inch or two above the elbow.)
(At the synagogue where I grew up, we didn't have any of these rules directly, but did have a general "dress appropriately," with people free to interpret that as they wished. There were a few times that some people had issues -- like a bat mitzvah girl wearing a strapless dress raised a few eyebrows -- but nothing major. My mother's rules for what her daughters could wear to synagogue was skirt at least to the knees and no bare shoulders, but other girls my age wore sleeveless shirts. I remember my mother getting very annoyed when the rabbi's wife wore slacks to synagogue. For my bat mitzvah, the dress that I loved was long enough, but it was strapless. So we bought the dress, took it to a tailor to have spaghetti straps put on (my mom had seen way too many 12-year-old girls in strapless dresses having to spend the entire night pulling the dress up), and had a matching jacket made that I wore for the ceremony and then took off for the reception.)
You answered the exact question I had... if this was a cultural thing. Thank you! I love being beaten to the punch like this. :-D
Here's the link for where an ultra-Orthodox paper (I'm not sure if it's the same one) photoshopped all the girls out of a photo of a bunch of kids. http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/08/08/getting-the-girls-out-of-view-literally/
I think my favorite part of that image is the little boy on the far right with his hand on his chin, who gets duplicated, without a body, a bit higher up in the image, where he's totally out of proportion, so that it looks like there's a giant toddler head floating in midair. Also, toward the bottom left, there's an arm with no body, but that one isn't quite as obvious.
See, every world religion has its fair share of sexist and mysogynistic assholes.
I would really like to hear what those women thought of it. Did they believe that that was the right thing to do? Did they appreciate that the person cropping them out was doing right by them by protecting their modesty? If so, what are they doing serving on Israel's cabinet, supposedly a position of prestige?
There's a paradox in every paradigm, loves.
Thank you for posting. This will keep me thinking. :)
I'd imagine that they either got annoyed or just laughed it off. They're not haredi, so they don't believe that their modesty needed to be "protected" in this way. (At least, I'd assume they don't believe that. They're not part of the group that believes that as a group, anyway.)
How did they chose the guys that they shopped in, I wonder?
They're from the edges of the picture, cropped out in the photoshopped version. The body of the guy in the silver tie with his hands folded in front of him, second from the left in the original, actually shows up twice -- once with his head, shrunk down to cover the woman in the tan blazer, and once in its original position, with the head of the guy who had been next to him.
I'm wondering that too.
This is a goddamn shame. However, it doesn't surprise me, because every world religion does have misogynistic assholes. Eh.
It's interesting that this story was posted not long after Kim Kardashian's airbrushed pictures. Apparently within the patriarchy, you may only exist if you're physically perfect or not at all. Protecting modesty and airburshing photos, just two sides of the same coin.
I don't see how it matters what sect does this, its source is still religion. It's still unspeakably messed-up.
Because painting ANYTHING that broad with all the same brush is never fair. It's not fair to feminists, religious people, liberals, atheists, Republicans... the list could go on and on. Ruchama is right that it comes from a small faction of the far conservative end of the religion. The newspaper that completely removed the women is affiliated with one of the VERY controversial religious parties (Israeli politics are messy. Very, very messy.) I can't even find a website or wiki article for the other paper!
Don't judge everyone by one (not that large) group's action.
Was anyone painting anything with a broad brush?
I'm certainly not judging every religious person by this group's actions but it's important to acknowledge that religious beliefs can foster this kind of attitude.
It's like the left wing nowadays, especially feminists I've found, are too scared to speak their conscience for fear of being "unPC." Do we have to tolerate everything? No.
I find the actions of this minority to be abominable, on the same level as issuing fatwas for books that you disapprove of. But what's worse is the apologetics, the "It's not all of us" attitude. I just wish people would acknowledge that religion can foster this attitude and as the world becomes more connected these extremist attitudes are going to become increasingly dangerous.
This is the comment I took issue with:
"I don't see how it matters what sect does this, its source is still religion."
Yes, the actions of that minority are abominable. In fact, that particular minority has other actions I think the same way about. As a young Jewish woman, that minority sincerely PISSES ME OFF. But it also does not represent my religion. It pisses off most members of my religion that I know, for various reasons. Most Israelis can't stand that particular group. In this case, it isn't "It's not all of us", it's a case of "This really is a minority that many people are already working against for various reasons."
Religion can foster all SORTS of different attitudes. It depends on what a particular group does with it. Having read a good hunk of the Old Testament fairly recently, you can quote selectively to make it tolerant or intolerant.
This seems like as good a time as any for the old joke: Two Jews are stranded on a desert island. How many synagogues do they build?
Three. One that one goes to, one that the other goes to, and one that neither of them will set foot in.
I forgot that one! It's funny in it's truth.
Religion can foster all SORTS of different attitudes. It depends on what a particular group does with it. Having read a good hunk of the Old Testament fairly recently, you can quote selectively to make it tolerant or intolerant.
Isn't it funny then that intolerant is the choice so many religious people make?
The thing is that religion gives people the permission to believe really ass-backwards things. Because, in order to have faith, you have to accept irrational beliefs. Once you accept one irrational belief (say the existence of a perfect being who created the world just for you and those of your faith) then you open the flood-gates to this sort of crap.
It's just misogyny but when it's associated with religion, it's misogyny with God's Goodhouskeeping Seal of Approval.
This comment really bothers me. I'm not sure how to respond to it, because to me, well, God ISN'T irrational. I understand that others do feel that way, and I respect that, but... to say that believing in God (in a far more complicated way than what your comment about who God is indicates) is irrational and opens your mind to misogyny to me isn't a logical jump. Now, if you had said some parts of Judaism are misogynistic, I would not argue... but, I DO take exception to "you believe in God, ipso facto it's easier to be a misogynist".
Do you have any idea how condescending it sounds to hear you call my beliefs "ass-backwards"?
I'm going to stop there, because anything else I say will just be pissed-off about the post, not anything substantial.
You can be as pissed off as you like but you can't claim that your belief if God is rational (ie. based on reason or evidence). Your belief in God must be based in faith because there is no evidence for the existence of God. If there was, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Incidently, the 'ass-backwards' ideas I was referring to are ideas like 'you can't look at a woman without going mad with sinful ideas.'
Ah, literally erasing women from history. Call me intolerant, but these ultra orthodox guys need to grow up. If you're not mature enough to look at a woman without seeing her as some hyper-sexualized creature, you have issues! I'm sick and tired of men using religion to justify misogyny and sexual hang-ups surrounding women. Why should women have to be erased and suppressed simply because a few ultra-religious men are too immature to see them as fellow human beings?
Incidentally, it's amusing that ultra-orthodox publications don't censor the images of men (so as to prevent women from having immodest thoughts). The male gaze is normative, as usual. Same thing with the veiling of women in Islam.
I wish men would get over themselves. They should just be who they are and stop repressing their sexuality. The straight ones just basically want to sleep with as many women as they can. But, they have created all of these complex and repressive religions (most mono-theist religions were written down by men) to try to control themselves.
I think the world would be a much better place if we all put our cards on the table. Men want sex. They can orgasm easier than women so they have more of an incentive to keep coming back for more. For some women, orgasm isn't that easy. We don't always want to come back for more because it wasn't that good in the first place. Women tend to want love and adoration because they are being satisfied sexually. I mean if women had to orgasm during intercourse to get pregnant, I don't think we would be facing the population explosion we are facing now.
I think the difference in how orgasm works for the genders is the basic reason for religion and thus the control of female sexuality.
I personally am not religious because according to the Big Three (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), I am shit out of luck because I was born a woman.
While I don't approve of this personally, I feel like it's a lot more complicated than we're making it. We haven't asked what these women think, or what the men's intentions were. Probably, as another commenter put it, they were trying to "protect" these women.
Is that patriarchal? Yes. Is it a deeply entrenched part of the religion? Yes, and those are always the hardest to change.
However, I feel like this strays seriously into the position of enforcing beliefs on another culture without letting them change it themselves, just like the Western perception of veils in the Muslim world. For most of us, this is not our culture we are critiquing. If we were to dive in there and demand they print those newspapers with the unaltered versions, we would be seen as busybody outsiders, and with good reason.
Many women are feminists in the Middle East - whether they be Muslim, Jewish or Christian - however, their priority might not be being printed in newspapers or taking off their veils. Their priority might be equal education or health or jobs or sexual education. And they have every right to not care one way or the other. Or to be deeply hurt!
Let's ask these women what THEY think about it. I feel squicky talking for them.
As a side note, though, I do wonder who they get to do the photoshopping! I wonder if it's someone not part of the religion - after all, to do that much looking at someone to photoshop them out (and it takes a lot of staring at someone's face in extreme detail to make them disappear -- I work in Photoshop and clone things out all the time, albeit mostly trees and such) would be disrepectful.
Is this a case of hiring someone who doesn't believe the same thing so as not to do something untoward? Or sacrificing their beliefs for the "greater good"? Weird to think about.
I was wondering about who did the photoshopping, too. The best solution that I've got is that a woman did it. They wouldn't have a haredi man do it, because, like you said, he shouldn't be looking at the picture that much. They wouldn't have a Jewish non-haredi man do it, because they don't believe in asking or hiring a Jew to do something that they think is forbidden for Jews to do. I seriously doubt that this paper would hire a Muslim. There aren't that many non-Jewish non-Muslim people in Israel, and it's a small enough population that it would be kind of tough to find someone who's in that population, wants to work for this paper, and has photoshop skills. So that leaves a woman.
I think it's an interesting expression of the rule about gazing upon women to edit in men from somewhere else. I have a small love affair with Judeo-Christian thought (forgive the pun), so I find this really interesting.
I'm really uncomfortable by all the comments that are just roundly lambasting either all monotheism or Orthodox Judaism because of this one example of a fringe sect of Orthodox Judaism. It's an admitted minority within a minority, and so isn't justified by the whole.
I'm uncomfortable with those comments because religion can be a constructive element in lives and communities. It's something which can fundamentally tie people together and help with action. Right now in our society, religion is a force of Conservatism on the whole, but it hasn't always been this way. Christianity was, in its earliest form, a liberal, fringe sect of Judaism which promoted many anti-government ideals (the attack on the merchants in the Temple, anyone).
Religion itself, I think, isn't really the problem. I think it's people's interpretation of religious text which is the problem.
To you who pain all of Orthodox Judaism as like the papers who did this -- would you like me to categorize every Evangelical group as like the Westboro Baptist Church? Because that's a lot of what you're doing.
It's really unfair and a bit disheartening.
As someone eloquently put it in response to my comment, once you open your mind to an irrational belief then it's like opening the floodgates.
And you know, I'm entitled to my beliefs. I'm even entitled to comment about my beliefs. I wish someone would defend *my* beliefs as quickly as those apologizing for religion. Because you know, if given the chance, the fundamentalists in the world would forcibly change my mind, and all nonbelievers' minds, but I would never force anyone else to change their beliefs. Does anyone else think it's hypocritical how quickly liberals will defend the religious freedoms of those who would take them away the fastest but never step up for the secular humanists? And I've never encountered an atheist who would take away religious rights, no matter how ridiculous, as long as no one is harmed by them.
And no, this isn't just one example. Go read Pharyngula on any given day for examples of religious lunacy. Read the new issue of Skeptic, it just had a fabulous article about children being allowed to die by religious parents who reject medical science.
Maybe it's time we took a step beyond religion. Maybe it's time we stopped seeing Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc., and built a community on our common humanity instead of clinging to ancient tribalism.
How are secular humanists' freedoms being attacked in the US in a way that other non-Christians aren't? (Or elsewhere, how are the non-religious being attacked in a way that non-majority-religion are not?)
OK, I did a bit of googling, and found that to join Boy Scouts, you have to profess a belief in G-d, but any religion is OK, as long as it's some religion. Is there anything else? I don't agree with the Boy Scouts having that requirement, but I don't agree with many of the Boy Scouts requirements. Is there anything else that requires just some religion, with no specification of which one?
(And actually, from my days in Girl Scouts, the allegedly "non-sectarian" prayers were obviously Christian, even if they didn't specifically mention Jesus. When a few other Jewish girls and I proposed a prayer which was definitely Jewish in structure and phrasing but didn't say anything at all that actually contradicted Christianity, we were told that it was "too Jewish.")
How about teaching Creationism in schools? How about all the government money going to religious organizations? How about tax-exempt status being conferred on churches?
There are definitely priviliges conferred upon the religious in the US that are government sanctioned. Forget about that whole separation of church and state.
I really suggest that you read Pharyngula. It does a pretty good job of chronicling teachers in America being threatened with losing their jobs for not being Christian and the lunatics like the one teacher that burned the image of a cross into their student's arm.
Good point about the tax-exempt status (though can't other non-profits apply for that?), but all your other examples aren't about privileging religion over non-religion, they're about privileging Christianity over non-Christianity.
And priviliging Christianity over non-Christianity is ok...?
No, of course not. What I'm saying is that you can't frame most of those examples as religion versus non-religion, because plenty of religious people are on the same side of them as the atheists.
You know, if I saw your beliefs being insulted, I would defend them.
Also, I've run into atheists who want to abolish religion. Not many, and maybe some grew more temperate with age (they were high schoolers, as was I). I also read a book that called teaching religion to children "child abuse" (I wish I could remember what, but I don't own it, I borrowed it about a year ago). No, religion isn't in any danger in our society, but to say that no atheist wants to get rid of religion isn't accurate, either.
And just as an odd FYI:
Jewish fundamentalists have one critical difference from other fundamentalists. They want to make all Jews believe their way (which is wrong, of course... annoys the heck out of me), but they don't try to convert non-Jews.
I wouldn't abolish religion, but nothing would make me happier than if one day everyone stopped devoting their time, money, and brain to god and saw that there is so much to be in awe of in the universe without a deity.
I *do* think that raising your child religious is child abuse. A child can't choose what it wants to believe. If a child grows up and wants to pick a religion then that's fine, but I see nothing worse than filling a child's head with stories of sin and damnation and giant whales. It takes away their ability to choose and at worst can be fatal. Check this out--a sixteen-month-old was starved to death for not saying "amen." Another good article is in the current issue of Skeptic, "When Faith Kills: Christian Healing v. Scientific Medicine." It tells about the Nixon family in Altoona, PA. They let 2 of their children die, one from an ear infection and one from diabetic ketoacidosis because they chose to pray over them and annoint them with oil as opposed to actually treating their illnesses.
Moxie... I agree those cases are child abuse, the ones where parents refuse medical treatment, or use abusive punishments. But to say all religion is child abuse? How the heck does that work? Not all religions are the same, heck, not all of them even have damnation. Judaism has a concept of sin, but damnation is very, very vague (and almost non-existent), and I don't remember it even coming up until I was a teenager, BECAUSE it's so vague. A couple of my Methodist friends argued against hell. Eastern religions are different yet again (but I don't know enough to know how they view damnation).
At one point you claimed you weren't painting all religion with the same brush. Then you come and use fairly extreme examples of small minorities to argue why *all* religion is bad.
Oh, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to reply if you reply to me. I'm heading to my dad's house later today for a Jewish holiday.
Religion indoctrinates children with a certain worldview before their minds are developed enough to choose their own philosophical outlook. It's not something I would prosecute, except in extreme cases like the ones I mentioned, but it's not fair to children. They should have the right to choose.
Every night on my commute home I see this family of Jehovah's Witnesses giving out Watchtower in Newark Penn Station. It's a mom, dad, and a little girl of about 7. Newark Penn is just about the grossest place on earth, full of junkies, lunatics, and criminals. Do you think that girl could say "no" or protest being there? Not when her "soul" is at risk. My family used to be J.W.'s and I am so glad that we got out of that because there are few things more mortifying to an 8 year old than going door to door and trying to convert people who clearly don't want to talk to you.
I was just using the idea of damnation because that resonates the most with me. I remember being scared in church, before my family joined the J.W.'s and we were Episcopalian, because I never felt anything close to being holy or god's grace. Is it fair to expose children to this before they can even make a logical decision for themselves?
According to Pediatrics, 140 children died in 1998 as a result of conditions that were treatable because their parents chose not to get medical intervention. Just one death is too many, and all the soup-kitchens and clothing drives can't just cancel that out.
"And I've never encountered an atheist who would take away religious rights, no matter how ridiculous, as long as no one is harmed by them."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
And now you have.
I vary between agnostic and atheist with my mood, but lets not pretend that the hands of anthropomorphized non-belief are any cleaner than that of anthropomorphized belief. We've just had less time to get them dirty.
Omg, the old "Stalin was an atheist" game. Stalin wanted to be a priest, he studied ta a monastary, that's probably where he learned about torture.
ANYTHING in the hands of a totalitarian system can be dangerous, feminism could be used to hurt people if it were in a totalitarian system.
"ANYTHING in the hands of a totalitarian system can be dangerous, feminism could be used to hurt people if it were in a totalitarian system."
Yes, which suggests that the problem is totalitarianism, not religion, not atheism and certainly not feminism, no?
There are always individuals who are going to do bad things and use their ideology, whatever it is to justify it. What's more worrisome is the reverse, when ideology is used not to excuse personal excesses, but to encourage them. However, I've seen no evidence that religious ideology is any more subject to this than any other ideology.
Since when did practicing the tolerance we want others to exude onto us become a questionable ethical model?
I'm not saying that these beliefs are any more or less valid than your own. I was expressing the idea that I was uncomfortable with the idea just it's just totally ok to slam all religion and all belief in something higher just because this one small group of religious followers believe in photoshopping women out of existence. This part is not the example of the whole, yet had been treated as such by previous commenters.
I would say, in response to the floodgate response, if you don't open your floodgates, your crops will die from drought. Not everything makes sense, and that's what religion fills in. Nothing can explain all -- not even logic.
Who said anything about intolerance? Again, if people have the right to practice what ever outmoded rituals they believe in, just not at the expense of others.
No one is forcing people to buy this newspaper and, more importantly, no one's suggested that these people be an absolute authority. I think they're doing just what you said their doing. They're choosing to exercise this belief in their way -- outmoded or not.
And, for the record, if someone was to troll around saying that all agnostics or atheists were such-and-such a way, I'd be making a lot of the same argument. Religious belief is a communal choice -- both in the sense of the community being centered around a religious belief or around religious beliefs, and in the sense of your religion you choose gives you a community of relatively like-minded people.
It's as much grabbing at air as it is the experience that, even if you're grabbing at air, you're doing it together.
I think I might be desensitized to weirdness like this, when my first thought is 'who are the two guys who got to displace the women?' How do you qualify for something like that? (Setting aside the pristine bizarreness of a newspaper presenting a picture that never happened entirely.) I mean, would any old guy do? Who made that call? Could I have substituted my two favorite football players, if I were the newspaper EIC? Are they actual politicians, and the sham is simply pretending they were at a global economic event they never attended?
How does this decision even get made?
I know I'm coming to this discussion a little late, but I had to have a good think on this one. I was raised Orthodox, but not haredi, and I still mostly practice Orthodox. I don't like the newspaper's actions, but these newspapers represent a small fraction of society -- a marginalized group that most Israelis don't agree with. It's interesting how some of the comments here rejected the assumption that this paper speaks for all Jews, or religious people, but not the assumption that this paper speaks for Israelis. I have a lot of family there, and I visit Israel often. It's one of the few places in the Middle East where Muslim women are full citizens who can vote, along with everyone else, including the extremist religious folks, just like in the USA.
What Ori said about male gaze really got to me, because when you're raised in a faith sometimes you don't see through its blind spots. I'm obviously biased, but the Judaism I was raised with -- complete with the long skirts and the Yiddish and Hebrew spoken along with English -- is a pretty good religion in which to be a woman. We have our own side of things, our own gaze. Yes, sometimes I'll take a step back and realize that I'm using male gaze, but more often than not, I feel lucky that I'm not as confined. Maybe the society is really patriarchal, but men in Judaism have a lot more that they have to do to fulfill religious obligations. There are so many positive female role models in Judaism -- from Deborah the prophet to Esther to Ruth, who are not just the wives of important men, but characters in their own right. And the many religious Muslim women I've spoken to also don't feel that the veil is just about male gaze. Jewish and Muslim men have their own dress code -- it's just not as noticeable, because while secular guys cover up, secular women don't. My not wearing just a tank top is not more than my boyfriend not wearing just a wifebeater -- but while American culture doesn't demand that my boyfriend show his body, it does demand that I show mine. Therefore, my modesty is noticeable, whereas his is not. Christianity is a religion of peace on paper, but it hasn't always acted that way. Just because a religion or society seems paternalistic and male-gaze-normative, doesn't mean that's how it always operates. I'm really glad I read the comments here -- they've made me think a lot.
And Ruchama -- that's always been one of my favorite jokes.
Phew. Sorry for the long comment.
Huh... I didn't realize I didn't mention it didn't fit all Israelis. I guess it was so intuitive to me, I didn't realize I didn't say it. I also have some family in Israel, though I don't visit much (I've been to Israel twice, once as a kid, and again fairly recently, though as a kid I was there for two years.)
I grew up Conservative, but my uncle is Modern Orthodox, and I've been to multiple Chabad services. In some ways, I think HAREDI dress codes specifically are more restrictive for men than for women. In particular, the groups where men are wearing the full black suits with black hats and long black coats in the middle of an Israeli summer, while the women are wearing light cotton skirts and long sleeve shirts. And the religions do encourage their own, female point of view. They may be more gendered, but... it also creates a trading-off of who is more important, to some degree.
And some of the most interesting discussions about sex I had was in an all-female group led by the local Chabad rebbetzin (rabbi's wife).
Hmm, I'm really starting to think about male vs. female gaze when it comes to Jewish sexuality. and Judaism is very odd when it comes to female sexuality. The gaze thing is not because females are less sexual, just they are less easily distracted. The Talmud has a bare minimum a husband must offer sex to his wife (and no such minimum for the wife offering to the husband) based on the husband's profession. Sex outside marriage is not allowed, but within marriage, it's considered something to be enjoyed and a gift from God. So, while it's not entirely sex-positive, Judaism allows for a much stronger female sexuality than some of the gender roles I hear discussed here regularly.
Boy, did I get off topic.
If we were to actually get fully off topic, I could probably go on for hours. The topic of religion and feminism, particularly Judaism and feminism (and Israel and feminism), is something I've devoted so much time to, and continue to devote time to. (By the way, Jewish marriage law, in addition to the offering sex thing, also discusses at great length the importance of a woman's sexual satisfaction, to the point where she can divorce him if he doesn't satisfy her in bed. The marriage canopy is so holy that the bride and groom are can give blessings, they are exempt from praying before bed on their wedding night so they can focus on sex, and it is encouraged on holy days, because it is considered holy. Not all Judaism or Jews are sex-positive, but there's lots of space for it. And Israel had a female prime minister what, fourth or fifth -- in the 1970s?)
I'm always kind of afraid of issues like the whole newspaper thing, because while it may be the patriarchy asserting its control, the way religious Jewish society -- especially religious Israeli Jewish society works is so different than American society. Thus, the way attitudes manifest themselves are totally different. I think these newspapers are the flipside to ads that portray nearly naked women nearly everywhere in the States you go. Haredi society is more similar to American 19th century attitudes, if anything -- with women on a pedestal. I am biased, but I guess this just doesn't bother me more than the looks I got in college for wearing sleeves and skirts in the summer -- how dare I insist on not allowing others to see me sexually? The attitude of "women should always be willing to submit views of their body to public male gaze" isn't necessarily better than "women should be protected from outside influence and we should prevent them from seeing what they could become". Different, but not better, and I'd frankly be happy to do without both.
Also, as I forgot to mention it, have a wonderful Passover. Chag sameach!
This is just another example of society trying to keep women back. All around the world women are starting to hold positions of power, but men cannot seem to be able to handle that women are being put on the same level as them. This is the 21st century, not the 19th century.