Abandoning The Sisterhood?

So to be honest, I’m a bad feminist.

First, I’ll tell you the external reasons that would make Mary Wollstonecraft turn in her grave and then I’ll tell you the internal ones that would make Tamar Ross shudder.

Firstly, as you know, I'm domestic. Cooking, cleaning, crocheting, the whole deal. I’d prefer to do any of those tasks rather than play contact sports or go hunting. I wear make-up and am pretty scrupulous with grooming.

Additionally from a religious perspective I’m a bad feminist. I wear skirts. Even when exercising. Necklines and sleeves to the letter. I’ve never layned, never been a shaliach tzibbur and I don’t always do a women’s zimun. Yes, I’m going to be a lawyer but a family lawyer for goodness sake. I’ll spend all my time arguing over who gets the kids and then getting paid like a teacher (who am I kidding I could probably work as a garbage collector and get paid more than a teacher here, and get more respect).

It doesn’t get much better when we take a look inside my head. Sometimes staying at home appeals to me. Making quilts, knitting jumpers, baking my own bread. Not having to compete for grades. Not having to write essays or finish readings. Not having the pressure of having to be financially independent. I could just get somebody with a Y chromosome to pay for all my stuff. All the decisions could be made by him. I wouldn't have to pick how much of my income to invest and where. I wouldn't have to work out tax stuff (tax...ewww).

I suppose that sometimes I can't be bothered fighting for equality. Is it really worth all my effort everyday trying to be taken seriously? Can I really be bothered telling another person off on the bus? I could work 60 hour weeks but I still won't get paid the same amount as a guy working half that. I could know shas off by heart and hilchot shabbat from the tur to ovadia yosef but I still won't be a Rabbi. Sometimes it just too hard.

Sometimes I just want to take the easy way out. To just be a nice maidel. To give in to patriarchy.

The truth is though, that you can never go home. A woman once educated can't forget what she's learnt. A person once liberated can't go back to slavery. Once you've been to the knesset you can't go back to the kitchen.

Sorry Ms. De Beauvoir. I'll try harder.

Maybe I'll start by changing my blog to the marital-status-neutral littleMSbogan?

How I am not a Man

I’ve recently spent at least 10 hours studying the laws of war. I will be spending at least another 40 hours studying this topic before December. This experience has taught me a very important lesson.

First: that sometimes it doesn't matter if the lecture is in English, you can still have no idea what's flying.

Second: I am not a man.

As much as I am in many ways just as component as a man and have the same natural entitlements and obligations as a man when it comes to violence we are talking about apples and oranges.

I am quite simply not violent. I will never use force to get what I want. Additionally I have never been nor am I likely to ever be in an army or a war. As such, the world of perpetrating violence is not my world and I can't understand it.

Now if we want to talk about victims of violence I get it. Without actually having experienced any significant violence against myself, I still know what it’s like to be afraid and know that I have no real means of defence.

I know that this is not the experience of all women. Obviously not. The fact that I’m 5 ft nothing and just a smidge over 50 kgs and generally adorable makes me inherently vulnerable. But additionally violence simply wouldn’t be an efficient method for me to get what I want and that’s why I use other methods to get my way. Like smiling, hair twirling or logical arguments. I don’t think ever about using violence and I can’t understand people who do use it. It simply doesn’t run through my decision making process ever. Even if other people threaten violence with me, counter violence doesn’t even play in my mind as a means of defence.

As such, there is a whole part of the world, of the man’s world, that is not part of my world. Now this realisation is significant in two ways

1) It’s something, which is at least partly biological (though also cultural) that differentiates me from the masculine, this is an uncommon reality b/c in most other ways I am the same as men, b/c ultimately we are all just people

2) I probably cannot be a human rights lawyer, at least where human rights relate to war or conflicts. B/c I just don’t get violence or war. I don’t understand it and hence would make a totally shit lawyer in this area. Goodbye potential job opportunities in the middle-east.

So does it bother me to not be a violent man? Not really. But it would be nice if even men weren’t violent in the first place.

Rosh HaShanah

Sorry y'all for the delay in postage but it turns out the new year took a freaking long time to pass and apart from that I have essays and final exams n shite like that atm as well. Yeah, I know, basically my life sux.

But not as much as other people's. And that will be the topic of today's post.

So I was in a Yishuv, that shall not be named, for chag.

Lets just say that almost nobody there does the following things:

1) owns/watches tv

2) reads novels

3) reads newspapers

4) listens to anything other than Eviatar Banai or Miami boys choir

5) goes to university

6) uses contraception

But it could be any yishuv you say? Yeh well, I guess you'll never know then.

Anyways so while I was there I went out to lunch with a ladyfriend of mine. We went to a she-friend of mine who is married to a rabbinical student and is quite pregnant. And very much fulfills the above criteria for settlement resident.

As I was saying, we went there for lunch. Indeed there were 10 people at the festive meal. 5 boys and 5 girls. Of these there were 3 couples. Every single married woman at the table was within a year of her wedding and with child. There were 2 singles of each gender. How convenient.

Now the hostess is quite smart and funny and generally awesome. But not at the table. In fact none of the female participators of the meal said a single thing throughout the entire 4 courses. All they did was clear dishes and replace them with the next course. While the boys sat at the table.

In the kitchen however it was a different story. These young women were funny and smart and insightful. They even had opinions and personalities.

Once or twice I made the mistake of speaking when I had not been spoken to. The entire table went silent and stared until I'd finished speaking and then continued with the conversation. They discussed what I'd said but pretended that I hadn't said it. But rather a voice from the heavens gave that opinion and it was now up to the rabbinical students to interpret it.

Essentially this bothers me because women are people too. When you don't think or don't express yourself, when your options are limited financially, socially, religiously, educationally and by children, it's difficult to live up to your full potential. It's hard to life up to your full humanhood.

Obviously there were other experiences of my new years celebration but that lunch definitely made the strongest impact on me.

Accordingly, I have a bracha for us all. May we all merit and strive to our full potential and contribute to the best of our abilities to making things better. Yay!

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.