DEUT1185 Views of Women in Jewish and Mainstream Culture. As a feminist, a historian, and a Jew, I feel the obligation, in the interest of social justice, to look carefully at all these issues and more when attempting to answer questions like these. [Referencing case hypothetical--AJL]. I know from my intellectual and historical work that, in general, patriarchies (I use the word here in the anthropological sense to denote cultures whose order [Greek arche] is ruled by males [Greek patri]) have tended to limit women's sexual behavior in the interest of easing tensions among men about sex, property, and inheritance. This pattern clearly holds true within the traditional and much of contemporary Judaism. It is historically, as well as currently, true that notions of female sexual “virtue” in Judaism, or in any cultural group, often depends primarily on whether women conform to these patriarchal priorities. Not surprisingly, women who act with sexual autonomy have traditionally been vilified, although the degree to which this is true has changed overtime. We see it in Torah: Deuteronomy 22[:21-ajl] authorizes death by stoning of any woman “proven” to have falsely presented herself as a virgin at marriage, and the virtuous Tamar in Genesis 38[:24:ajl] is initially attacked for her “whoredom” until she manages to prove that her actions were purposeful and just. We still see it in stereotypes of “Nice Jewish Girls” who do not have sex before marriage (and even then only do it because their husbands want them to), and in depictions of “Jewish American Princesses” who use sex to manipulate men into giving up money and gifts. The deep-seated suspicion of how women use their sexual agency presents itself in numerous ways. We see it reflected in traditional rules and customs, many of which are not exclusively Jewish, that prohibit women and girls from doing things that might be construed as sexually charged self-presentation: singing or dancing in front of men, for instance, or sporting uncovered hair or legs. We see it in mainstream culture and stereotypes that get applied to sexually assertive women (e.g., that they are sluts, nymphomaniacs, or gold diggers), and those that get applied to sex workers (e.g., that they are sexually indiscriminate or habitual criminals). ... The fight against sexism, misogyny, and the refusal to grant sexual autonomy has for many years been part of my understanding of what is required for tikkun, the repair of the world we live in. The patriarchal attitude toward the “appropriate” relationship between biological sex (maleness/femaleness) and sexuality, which simultaneously insists that women accept the chore of tending to men's sexual desires and demonizes women's autonomous sexuality, represents one of the most fundamental manifestations of social injustice in human cultures. It is old, pervasive, and very slow to change. (By Hanne Blank)
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