Many stories in Tanakh deal with the beauty (or simply the body) of a woman leading to objectification and violence. Obvious examples include:
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Sarah who is forcefully taken without permission into the harems of Pharoah and Avimelech without protest from Abraham (God is the protestor in both cases)
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Dina who is taken without consent by Shechem
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The beautiful captive woman who is taken into the home of the Israelite
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The concubine of the Givah who is gang-raped as her indifferent husband is
nearby, within the safety of a house
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Bathsheba who is sent for by David, taken into his bed and returned by his
messengers afterwards
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Tamar who is brutally raped by Amnon
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Vashti who is the first objectified woman to say no
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Esther and more
תנו רבנן המרצה מעות לאשה מידו לידה כדי להסתכל בה אפילו יש בידו תורה ומעשים טובים כמשה רבינו לא ינקה מדינה של גיהנם שנאמר (משלי יא, כא) יד ליד לא ינקה רע לא ינקה מדינה של גיהנם
The Sages taught: One who counts money for a woman from his hand to her hand in order to look upon her, even if he has accumulated Torah and good deeds like Moses our teacher, he will not be absolved from the punishment of Gehenna, as it is stated: “Hand to hand, the evil man shall not go unpunished” (Proverbs 11:21); one who hands money from his hand to her hand, even if he received the Torah from God’s hand to his own, like Moses, he will not be absolved from the punishment of Gehenna, which is called evil.
-Have you ever experienced an uncomfortable moment in an encounter with a man/woman at a time where it was distincty inappropriate (work, school, synagogue, etc.) under the guise of business as usual?
-How do we protect ourselves from such situations and how can we create boundaries that might prevent or protect from those situations?
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Sanhedrin 71a "...Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: There was an incident involving a certain man who set his eyes upon a certain woman and passion rose in his heart, to the point that he became deathly ill. And they came and asked doctors what was to be done with him. |
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And the doctors said: He will have no cure until she engages in sexual intercourse with him. The Sages said: Let him die, and she may not engage in sexual intercourse with him. The doctors said: She should at least stand naked before him. The Sages said: Let him die, and she may not stand naked before him. The doctors suggested: The woman should at least converse with him behind a fence in a secluded area, so that he should derive a small amount of pleasure from the encounter. The Sages insisted: Let him die, and she may not converse with him behind a fence. The Gemara comments: Rabbi Ya’akov bar Idi and Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani disagree about this issue. One of them says: The woman in question was a married woman, and the other one says: She was unmarried. The Gemara tries to clarify the issue: Granted, according to the one who says that she was a married woman, the matter is properly understood. Since the case involved a severely prohibited forbidden relationship, the Sages did not allow any activity hinting at intimacy. But according to the one who says that she was unmarried, what is the reason for all this opposition? |
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Why did the Sages say that the man must be allowed to die, rather than have the woman do as was requested? Rav Pappa says: This is due to the potential family flaw, i.e., harm to the family name, as it is not permitted to bring disgrace to the entire family in order to save the lovesick man. Rav Aḥa, son of Rav Ika, says: This is so that the daughters of Israel should not be promiscuous with regard to forbidden sexual relations. Were they to listen to the doctors’ recommendations, Jewish women might lose moral restraint. |
The Rabbis forbade even a simple conversation behind a fence because it involved a man using a woman for his own sexual pleasure. The end of the Talmudic discussion is particularly interesting because Rav Pappa and Rav Aha try to understand why such stringency is taken for an unmarried woman, given that no severe sexual prohibition exists (as compared to adultery or incest). Rav Pappa suggests the concern is for family honor – nothing to do with the objectification of the young girl, but Rav Aha takes the discussion in a different direction: The concern is for the moral character of the daughters of Israel. (Nechama Goldman Barash)
ברתיה מאי היא הויא ליה ברתא בעלת יופי יומא חד חזיא לההוא גברא דהויא כריא בהוצא וקא חזי לה אמר לו מאי האי אמר ליה רבי אם ללוקחה לא זכיתי לראותה לא אזכה אמר לה בתי קא מצערת להו לברייתא שובי לעפריך ואל יכשלו ביך בני אדם
The Gemara asks: What is the incident involving his daughter? He had a very beautiful daughter. One day Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat saw a certain man piercing a hole in the hedge surrounding his property and looking at his daughter. Rabbi Yosei said to him: What is this? The man said to him: My teacher, if I have not merited taking her in marriage, shall I not at least merit to look at her? Rabbi Yosei said to her: My daughter, you are causing people distress. Return to your dust, and let people no longer stumble into sin due to you.
Rabbi Yossi blames the victim and not the perpetrator--- this is similar to many of the interpretations of the story of Dina and Shechem, which blame Dina for going out to see the girls of the city. It is important to note that other interpreters reject this reading and blame Shechem or Jacob for not protecting his daughter. Here, Rabbi Yossi blames the daughter for her beauty when the men cannot help themselves.
--this story doesn't go over well in Rabbi Yossi's community, and he loses a prize student who chooses to go elsewhere to study, explaining to his new teacher that he couldn't learn with a man who acts so cruelly to his own children.
SO: this is obviously a cruel and and offensive story. Victim blaming, it seems, is literally the 'oldest trick in the book'.
Read more: http://forward.com/life/385449/why-are-people-pushing-back-against-the-metoo-campaign/
I know your intention was not to offend. I actually really like you. But I want to help you understand why your question was not ok.
It was not ok because what I heard you saying was 'You can't all be using the *regular* definition of sexual assault and harassment. There's just too many posts. They must be using some special snowflake overly broad definition." I want you to see how this spits in the face of those brave enough to come forward *for your sake*, to help *you* see the magnitude of this problem. We didn't do this for fun - its REALLY not- and we are already plenty aware.
It was not ok because what I heard you saying was that the sexual harassment and assault that happened to many of us was probably "normal" and that we were making too big of a deal. This should go without saying, but there's really no such thing as acceptable levels of sexual harassment. Implying otherwise contributes to the culture that makes all this possible.
It was not ok because what I heard you saying was that I needed to recount what happened to me in more detail before you could decide whether it 'counts' as 'real' sexual assault. In case it's not clear, that's not ok, because you aren't the arbitor of that. As long as it felt not ok to me, it's not ok. And it wasn't.
It was not ok because I felt I needed to share details of one of the occasions, and then I had nightmares all night. Those are the stakes -minimally- when you ask people to share more details than they want to. It's never okay to push someone to do that kind of emotional work.
It's not ok because I'm still thinking about it, and I bet you aren't.
It was not ok, because honestly the only acceptable response, really, is "I'm so sorry - what can I do to stop this epidemic of abuse?"
I want you to know this is real, and really does happen to the vast majority of us.
ETA: I want to highlight another problem with the question : it implies there is some answer I could give that would let you off the hook. Like if we wer "just" catcalled or propositioned at work, you don't have to do anything. But there's not. As long as, according to us, we've been abused or harassed, there's a problem that needs addressing. Whether we've been groped or our body has been commented on or we've been forced sexually, there's a problem, and you are implicated.
(Rabbi Sarah Mulhern
I said Me Too, and so did a lot of women. And it’s an important conversation. And I want more than men to stop raping people. Or really, people to stop raping people.
I want men to stop talking over me in conversation. To ask me for my opinion, actually, instead of assuming they know more than me on a given topic. Especially if it’s an expertise of mine.
For that matter, I want to be able to offer myself as an expert in a conversation without being questioned, invalidated, wondered about.
I want it to be okay to tell a gentleman I’m not interested in him, without having to say I have a (fake, made up) boyfriend.
I want to be able to hug new male acquaintances when I meet them, without worrying it’s going to go on a second too long, or a hand is going to wander.
I want to be able to lean on a friend’s shoulder and cry, to hold him close and know I am safe and protected, not providing an invitation for anything else.
I want to walk down the street without needing to look both ways, where I can smile at the guys smoking on the corner without it being interpreted as a come on, because I like to say hi to people, because we’re all divine and that will heal our society.
I want to be able to go upstairs to my apartment, say goodnight to my neighbors without having to say “we” and talk about a fake partner that lives up there with me.
I want to be able to speak in a meeting or at a prayer without people staring down my shirt, because dressing modestly is not a protection and everyone needs to be held accountable.
I want to pray in Jewish or other spiritual environments without it always being about a powerful, charismatic man.
I want little girls to know the value of their bodies, and protect them and cherish them, without feeling the need to undergo pain to look a certain way—dieting, purging, waxing, plucking, squeezing into the tightest pants, doing anything they don’t actually want to do but feel they have to do.
I want to say goodbye to the older, creepy-ish men in my life to whom I have compassion without needing to do the awkward head-twist to avoid having one planted on me.
I want to be invited to participate. To join that team, to organize that event, to run that business, to have a seat on the table. I don’t want to be dismissed because I’m not wearing a dress and heels, or looked up and down because I don’t fit the category of that girl you’ll hook up with when the project is over. I want to sit at the table with you because of what I bring to it.
I want to meet someone, and find them attractive, and spend time getting to know each other without any transactional expectations.
I don’t want to feel guilty if I don’t give a man what he wants or expects.
I want young women to approach the bed of a lover with anticipation and cooperation. With full communication and safety. To know it’s okay to just cuddle for a night.
But right now, I’m scared to do most of these things.
It doesn’t matter why I said me too. It’s not up to us to judge others. What’s real assault, what’s harassment, what’s the extent of a woman’s rape trauma. It’s not up to us to judge.
We all carry the trauma, because the Divine feminine, in her diminishment, lives inside all of us.
She lives inside male bodies and female bodies and cis bodies and trans bodies and gender non-conforming bodies and everything in between.
And she’s been torn apart, hurt, diminished all this time.
The Shechinah lies crying and bloodied, and battered.
And today, finally, we’re listening to her voice.
So, stop talking over me.
Please, listen to my voice.
Rishe Groner is a writer and strategist living in Brooklyn. She is the founder of TheGene-Sis.com, a post-Hasidic embodied approach to self-transformation.