He-Man-Woman-Haters Club

Let's talk feminism for a moment folks.

There's been two incidents recently that have given rise to the need to blog on this topic.

The first incident went as such.

I was out with a guy friend of mine and a friend of his. The entire outing the two of them were making sexist jokes. Wait, that's unfair. Sometimes they paused to make racist jokes too. Women, according to these jokes, are stupid, slutty, uncoordinated and generally lesser human beings. When I raised the issue with the boys, they asserted that one can make sexist jokes without actually being sexist. Indeed that the fact that they can makes jokes about women means that women have reached such a level of equality that we can now make fun of them. To which I pointed out that there isn't a category of white middle-class man jokes. Probz b/c they are the ones making the sexist racist jokes.

The second incident occurred today.

I was sitting on the lawn during a break at ulpan. I was chilling with a bunch of religious boys reading some 'ben ish chai' (I'm know I'm way too frum for my own good). Somehow a discussion about marriage begins.

For the purpose of this conversation M is me and SAH is Sexist Ass-Hole.

SAH - If two people want to be married you can be married to anybody at all. If you get divorced that just means that you didn't want to be married enough. It has nothing to do with the actual person that you are married to.

M - No way. I reckon that there are some fundamental things that I could not have in a spouse.

SAH - Such as?

M - Well, if he wasn't shomer mitzvot I think it would make it very difficult to be married to him.

SAH - Ok, fine then. But within the religious world you could marry anybody and make it work.

M - I still disagree. What if he refused to ever wash a dish or cook a meal? There's no way I could be married to a person like that.

SAH - Well then obviously you are going to get divorced because u don't understand marriage at all. Your entire role in the marriage is to cook and clean.

M - And what's a man's role?

SAH - My role is to put on teffilin, your role is to cook.

M - *look of aghast despair*

SAH - Well, I suppose if you were 8 months pregnant and couldn't get out of bed then I wouldn't make you cook me dinner. But otherwise a marriage won't work unless each person fulfills their role.

At that, the break was finished and I returned to class with continued aghast despair.

In class, another religious boy who'd overheard the conversation saw that I was still quite perturbed by the conversation and tried to explain to me that it's because the boy was orthodox that he was sexist. Because orthodoxy is inherently incompatible with feminism.

End of Story.

Beginning of rant.

OMG WTF!!!!

We weren't even talking about women layning from the torah and being rabbis (both of which I think are fine btw). We are talking about the division of labour within the household. Who the fuck are you to tell me or any couple how their marriage should work? If in one marriage the man cooks or in another the woman does, or they share it, what the hell is wrong with that? And who are you mr.20-something-singleton to be the authority on a functional marriage?

What makes me most angry about this, is that the boys hid behind their religion to support their bigotry. Well you know what? It's my religion too! And my G-d and my Torah doesn't obligate me to get married. No, b/c halachically that obligation is on the man. So too the Torah doesn't require that I have children rather the obligation is on the man. Oh and guess what - the same goes for the education of children. That too is the responsibility of the husband. So if we want to talk about halachically who is responsible for the home - oh that's right it's the man! But I'd never tell a man off for not personally looking after his kids b/c you know what? It's their fucking prerogative and I have no say in how they should live their lives or run their homes. So don't fucking tell me what I should and shouldn't do in the name of G-d. B/c I've read the sources, I know my stuff and there ain't nothing wrong with my husband and I both doing the cooking.

The biggest issue I have with these two stories is the lack of recognition of women's shared humanity with men. Boys/men frequently are so focused on the differences between men and women that they forget the commonalities. They forget that we both have brains that need stimulation. That we both want to contribute to the world and have a sense of purpose. That we all need to be part of society with friendships and individual identities.

The saddest part of these stories though, is the impact it will have on these boys lives. Because they will never really love a woman. They will love the way she makes them feel or the things she does for them but they will never understand her separate to her function to a man as a help-meet. They will never recognize her intelligence, her kindness, her wit and joy and compassion. They will never have a life-partner, somebody to navigate the world with and build a home together. Instead they will have a half-person who exists only as a vessel by which the boy can achieve. They will never really love and for that I feel sorry for them.

And thus ends my rant.

Not on a note of anger but in an exhale of pity.