As an Orthodox Jew, both my wife and I observe our community's code of modesty (yes, these notions apply to men as well).

Our community also has a clear prohibition on physical violence - in or out of marriage. And women can own property, engage in business - basically acting and speaking in the public sphere without restriction, not on anyone's sufference.

Once you talk about beating women - or worse - all the fancy-pants talk is revealed for what it is: a smoke screen. The violent misogyny of Arab/Muslim society puts the lie to any folderol about "dignity" or "respect for privacy".

It's quite telling that radical Islamists cover women's faces, while no such restriction exists even in the most stringent interpretations of Judaism. Sorry: can't use "communal standards of modesty" to efface half the population's humanity - and their public voices.

Here's an interesting story...

My mother (Mexican) is mostly descendant from Arabs. When I was a child I lived with my grandmother and grandfather (briefly) while my parents sorted out their divorce. Picture this: living in rural Mexico in an Arab community.

My family was not Catholic, but whatever religion we were it was never outwardly stated for fears of persecution. Some people have told us were Jews but my mother says we were some type of Christians. I have never been able to verify the religion, I just remember peculiarites in my household. My great-grandmother would wear the all black chador.

But the thing I remember the most is...

the violence against women. Jesus Christ was it violent and constricting against any woman. I have no idea what went through my mothers head to leave me in such a violent place alone. I got my share of beat downs trust me. And there was no larger community to seek help, because like I said we were secretive.

And anyways it didnt matter what beat downs I got, because every other woman in my community was suffering the same thing regardless of age.

A favorite blog post.

Because western men usually treat their women better, we have been rewarded with our current gender feminist fascist regime.

No good deed goes unpunished!

Crid,
Thanks for that link. I chortled. Which is unusual for me. Snicker, yes. Chortle, not so much.

"When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual,"

No, they relate to you as a carpet.

If it's for modesty, why don't the men have to as well?

Naomi WOlfe's an imbecile as usual.

Even Wolfe's arguments just point out how completely the woman is viewed as her husband's property. Disgusting.

The modern American third-wave feminist in her own words.

Is there any longer a doubt that feminists hate women?

Naomi Wolf tries so hard to be outrageous and intellectual. It just shows how ridiculous and ignorant she is. She is not worthy of discussing.

She is not worthy of discussing.

Actually, she is, because some people actually respect her (none I respect) and share her point of view.

Modern feminism has embraced cultural relativism as more inportant than individual rights of women.

Sheesh. What's next? Maybe Naomi Wolf will write a piece about how a clitoridectomy improves a woman's sex life.

Oh, ok, Amy, if we must. She attempts to paint herself as outrageous and radical. What would really make me believe she is sincere in her thought process and not just seeking attention would be for her to pick up and move to Iran where she could wear this desirable outfit on a regular basis in her desire to feel sexy. When she tires of the anonymity and sheds her traditional garb, maybe she will find that there is something erotic about being whipped or stoned.

Muslim dress codes repress women, but there is also an insidious effect on men.

The separation of the sexes in schools, mosques, and really every where, insures that young men grow up never having had a normal conversation yet alone a normal relationship with a woman. Most, if not all, can grow to be 25 years old and still be a virgin. That is a lot of testosterone build up with no release.

Christopher Hitchens makes the point in his book "God is Not Great" that the genocidal fanatics of 9/11, like many of their fellow jihadists, were virgins. But since the Koran teaches unlimited sex in the after life, well, why not hasten along the end of a young life?

Listening to Naomi Wolf prattle on about thriving Muslim sexuality is like listening to Sean Penn blithering about the glories of Cuban health care. If Penn believed his own bullshit, he would leave forever the capitalist pig-sty that is Hollywood & move to Havana, where he could stand in line behind all the other Cubans waiting for their weekly ration of a pound of moldy rice and a pound of stale bread. Likewise, Ms Wolf would put on a tent and marry a Taliban.

"a strong sense of public versus private"

Yes, so strong that when a school in Mecca caught on fire and the terrified girls inside ran out of their classrooms without their abayas, the Saudi religious police blocked the exits and forced the girls back inside to burn alive.

"of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband"

Stop the presses! A self-proclaimed radical feminist has declared that women have duties to God and their husbands! Am I the only one who's noticed that Western Christian & Jewish women who talk about such things are met with nothing but vicious scorn from Naomi & her sisterhood?

I could go on fisking this tripe line-by-line, but instead I'll just point out that the Google Ad next to this blog post is for "Quality Islamic Clothing at Low Price!"

Christopher Hitchens makes the point in his book "God is Not Great" that the genocidal fanatics of 9/11, like many of their fellow jihadists, were virgins. But since the Koran teaches unlimited sex in the after life, well, why not hasten along the end of a young life?

If he did, he was wrong.

Atta had a wife and kids. So did a few of the others.

I'll grant that the recruiters use the sex angle to recruit young male virgins with no hope of marriage to do the dirty work.

But among the many reasons the planners do this is so that they may horde the women to themselves.

Most of the frustration comes not from segregation of the sexes, but from polygamy.

Polygamous societies always have a surplus of frustrated young men. Do the math.

Back in the old days, many middle and high schools were sex segregated. There were a lot of positives for both girls and guys in having the school experience relatively free of sexual pressures and the resulting social pecking orders.

Amazingly, these poor, repressed people managed to date, figure out sex, marry, and have kids - with perhaps greater success and satisfaction than today's jaded youth.

Brian:

Wikipedia says this about Atta ( among other things ): Atta met a young Palestinian woman named Amal while he was in Syria. There was an initial attraction, but later, Atta spurned her saying that she did not have a correct orientation. Then Wikipedia states, "This was the closest thing to romance for Atta". No mention is made throughout the article of a wife or children.

I know. I know. Wikipedia has its
shortcomings. And there may be a link somewhere else to wife and kids of Atta as well as a link to wife and kids of other 9/11 hijackers. If so, please provide.

But my main point is that a vast majority of young Muslim men grow up as repressed as Muslim women, but for different reasons.

Ben-David: As you correctly say, Many American high schools were sex segregated yet students managed to date, figure out sex,etc. Dating, kissing, learning about sex through petting... which is what we American and Western Europeans take for granted while we are teenagers and early 20's...are expressly denied to young Muslim men.

Brian:
But my main point is that a vast majority of young Muslim men grow up as repressed as Muslim women, but for different reasons.
- - - - - - - - - -
... yes, but not because dating, kissing, and petting are denied them.

It's because they live in an oppressive society in which only wealthy men can marry, and women and children are beaten and treated like chattel... you could say they are repressed as much by their society's definition of manhood as by what it does to womanhood.

Nothing to do with being denied the opportunity to feel a girl up in a movie theater.

In my own Orthodox Jewish community, schooling was separate, and kissing-n-petting would get you ostracized. We socialized with girls in group activities, and only paired off for dating much later, when it was time to get married.

But we had sisters and female friends from our synagogue/youth group, and judging from the larger-than-average families we all seem to have figured out what goes where down there.

And judging by the overall stability of those marriages, we seem to have learned some things about relationships that the "liberated" have yet to learn.

... sorry, but I have very little patience with the notion that the sexual revolution did anyone very much good.

It caused much mischief, pain, and loneliness. It drove out intimacy, trust, loyalty, maturity, and modesty - replacing them with narcissistic, externalized, objectified relationships and a coarsened public sphere.

I've found a condescending attitude to previous generations' sexual knowledge/choices is a reliable marker of jerkhood among those born post-50s.... a good sign you've swallowed the boomers' self-aggrandizing bilgewater... yeah, man, we saved those poor repressed bastards with our funkadelic libidos...

(/eyeroll)

So, what could be written as a bodice ripper for a book of the month club... is taken seriously as reporting?

perhaps the most repressed group is actually Wolf's. I guess the first tip-off was her actually writing the part about wifely duties. I wonder how she feels about 9yr old little girls consumating their marriages... do they wear victoria's secret too? The whole thing makes me ill.

99 percent of women adopt the mores of the country they are in. Most American women would never go topless to the beach in America. Are they repressed? But when in some sophisticated foreign resort...well then maybe okay.
Would Amy Alkon go to a nightclub topless? Never! Is she repressed?
She would say not. But in a more libertine society, someone might say she was in fact repressed by the mores and laws of her society, which shame her into covering her breasts.
Crazy? Not really. In most Asian countries, women did not cover their breasts until Westernization. In Thailand for sure, and Japan. Rural farm women actually often worked with only a cloth around the genitals, or, totally nude (Japan).
Oddly enough, Asian women have become repressed due to Westernization--I bet Amy Alkon does not agree.
Why not? Alkon has adopted the standards of her society, and she thinks they are the right mores, despite her attempts at individuality.
Arab women do not feel repressed due to the dress. That is the least of their worries.
I prefer women walk around naked, at least until age 35. Too bad they are all repressed.

For my part, I am left wondering why every attempt to "better" society starts with worrying about other people's genitals and other people's money? Leave 'em both alone, and worry about your own.

I lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 1986 to 1990 with my now ex-husband. We were employees of Citibank. Saudi Arabia is obviously one of the more severe Muslim countries, and I, a blond American woman, wore the abaya loosly over my clothing, which was usually a little summer dress or something (the heat there is insane)just to avoid hassle. Believe me, I hated it. I did not wear a scarf except for the time I attended a weekly event in the old town - a beheading. I'm not joking. It's open to the public, like a medieval theme park.

I remember seeing women wearing their black abaya and head and face scarves, stumbling blindly across streets, or having to lift their face cloth (I can't remember what they call it) to read the label on a box of cereal in a grocery. I knew people in the medical fields that told me stories of horrible acne conditions due to sweating under all that black cloth. I also knew a few Saudi and other Muslim women personally through the bank and had many conversations with them about their distress regarding these abayas and head gear. They are not happy! These things are an outrage - and we also know that it is not from the Koran, but more or less a social constraint. There sexual repression and fear is a huge factor, no question.

Naimi Wolff is an apologist for these people. And even though we are aware that she writes nothing but drivel, those of us who know better should shout her down at every opportunity.

A friend of mine grew up within such a culture (but living in the UK) where she was forced to cover up ... to escape it, she moved to another country on the opposite end of the earth, changed her name, cut all contact with anyone she used to know, even her own mother and sisters, just to get away from it. I mean get that, that's how much she hated it and how badly she wanted Western freedom. I think few of us can even comprehend this.

"Would Amy Alkon go to a nightclub topless? Never! Is she repressed? She would say not. But in a more libertine society, someone might say she was in fact repressed by the mores and laws of her society, which shame her into covering her breasts."

There is *some* valid point in this, but let's face it, it's relative ... there are degrees here, ranging from mild to terrible.

Indeed, many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf

And had you the chance to interview those sacrificed to the glory of Mayan gods after a game of pitz they wouldnt have felt subjugated by their imminent deaths

I contend Westernization has in fact repressed Asian women, who used to enjoy the freedom of walking around shirtless like men--in the muggy heat, that is no trifle. I can't imagine putting on a bra in the heat. Now, they do in Thailand, where they walked shirtless a century ago.
We all know nudity was much the norm, even public nudity, in much of the "uncivilized" world, prior to Westernization. Bathing often a community event. Any number of explorers recounted being approached by people who refused to wear clothes.
The effing missionaries (usually Catholic) put an end to that wonderful freedom, along with other "modernization."
In fact, Amy Alkon is deeply repressed--unable to walk around nude, if she chose to. She is so repressed, she has no desire to walk around nude, no matter how hot and muggy it is. Represion works best when it is so deeply ingrained, people inist they prefer it. Now, is it so hard to understand why Islamic women like their dress? For the same reason Amy likes hers. She has been brainwashed into it.
It makes equal sense to rail against Western repression of Asian women, as it does to rail against Moslem repression of Islamic women. Degree? Of course, life is terrible for people in Islamic nations, and not so bad in SE Asia, China and the Far East.
But the principle is exactly the same.
Like I said, I wish women walked around naked, but mostly I wish nobody felt they had to cover up their boobs, butts, faces or anything else, on a hot muggy day. But we do--unlike our ancestors of just a hundred years ago (not in America, but Asia).
Amy, pop out the boobs, and stop waa-waaing about the Islamics until you have freed yourself and your sisters in America!

"When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual,"

And nothing says individuality like looking and dressing the exact same as everyone else

Amazingly, these poor, repressed people managed to date, figure out sex, marry, and have kids - with perhaps greater success and satisfaction than today's jaded youth.

Posted by: Ben-David

And they loved it so much that they had their children brought up in the same manner.

Oh wait, well I guess if they completely destroyed the system they were raised under they didnt enjoy it that much, did they Ben?

Someone recently sent me a joke. It was a picture of a bunch of nuns with machine guns. The caption read: When the martyrs got to heaven, they didn't quite meet the virgins they were expecting."

Amy,
would it be possible to move the "posted by" to the top of a comment?

It would help me to avoid reading even one maggoty syllable of the pullulating preciosities of pustulent pusillinamity emitted by our sacerdotally-enhanced friend. And vice versa, I'm sure.

And upgrade the spell checker, while you're at it. It seems to have a restricted vocabulary.

--
phunctor

lujlp:
And they loved it so much that they had their children brought up in the same manner.

Oh wait, well I guess if they completely destroyed the system they were raised under they didnt enjoy it that much, did they Ben?
- - - - - - - - - - -
Actually, there's a renaissance of (freely chosen) Orthodox Judaism in both America and Israel.

The vast majority of American Jews are descended from Eastern-European Jews raised in gentile-imposed poverty and ignorance.

Most of them did not consciously abandon Judaism. They never knew very much - and latched on to the freedoms and goodies available in the US, desiring to assimilate like all immigrants.

Many of their children - mostly well educating, and having done good for themselves in the New Country - are now exploring and embracing Judaism of their own free will.

It's a trend that's been steadily growing since the early 70s - and has even affected "progressive" streams of Judaism, which are now re-embracing traditional forms of ritual and prayer.

I like Chester's reply; if only because it's an obnoxious & infantile non-sequitor.

>>I've found a condescending attitude to previous generations' sexual knowledge/choices is a reliable marker of jerkhood among those born post-50s....

That cuts both ways, Ben-David.

"Jerkhood" is not confined to the younger generation when making blanket statements about sexual mores.

I find it hard to warm to the proscriptive intolerance of the orthodox - no matter where I find it.

"I experienced it myself. I put on a shalwar kameez and a headscarf in Morocco for a trip to the bazaar. "

If she put on a shalwar kameez, a Pakistani garmnet, to wear in Morocco, she's one of two kinds of ignorant - either she doesn't know what she was actually wearing is actually called, or else she doesn't know Morocco form Pakistan. either way it just about zeroes out any validity in whatever argument she is going to make.

There is only one valid reason for wearing a pup tent, the climate. In a lot of those places, you cover up so you don't get sand-blasted. That much makes sense. all the rest is just a habit gone rancid.

"The vast majority of American Jews are descended from Eastern-European Jews raised in gentile-imposed poverty and ignorance.

Most of them did not consciously abandon Judaism. They never knew very much - and latched on to the freedoms and goodies available in the US, desiring to assimilate like all immigrants."

Gee, Ben, logical argumentation isn't your strong point, is it? You contradict one paragraph in the next. First you say this "ignorance" - if you want to call abandoning Middle Eastern customs for Western customs "ignorance", and then in the next paragraph you said they were ignorant to begin with and freely abandoned the rest on their own to assimilate. Make up your mind.

The thing about the chador, to me, isn't that it removes the sexuality -- what it does is remove the humanity, in total. When I see a black blob walking down the street, it's difficult to remind myself that there's a human being under there. And who the hell knows, really? Is it really a woman, or a man pretending to be a woman? Or maybe it's a robot? How would you know? And I think that's really the point of the chador: to strip the humanity from the women who have to wear it.

And besides, coming from the South, we were always taught that upstanding citizens did not go about in public masked and robed. And I don't see where the robes being black rather then white makes any difference.

Wear this tent in public so no one can see what you look like... Now, dance for me, b*tch!

Where do I sign up for that kind of life?

Gee, Ben, logical argumentation isn't your strong point, is it?
- - - - - - - - -
Is it?

I said shtetl Jews were ignorant and limited, and left off traditional practices when they came to the US because IN THAT IGNORANCE they didn't really appreciate their heritage enough to cling to it, against the natural forces and new experiences of assimilation.

Not sure what you were reading - or what you were smoking while reading it...

Blarg, I read like 40 pages of those comments, and people do not seem to get the difference between us and them. As I see it, women who wear head covering in Europe are either old or trying to make a statement. I can cut some slack to the old stretched-out vagina algerian cows that randomly populate France today, but to hell with the young smug bitches covering their bodies, as if they have gold plated cunts.

Look, fine, women are repressed in the brown countries, whatever, doesn't mean we need to accept this backwards shit here in the West.

This subject really pisses me off. I do not give a tinkers fart for the plight of the women in the middle east, and for these so called enlightened converts to try to tell me that I am the intolerant one, to change my mind on how I live my life, in the land of my anscestors....bitch, please.

>>Even Wolfe's arguments just point out how completely the woman is viewed as her husband's property. Disgusting.

That is disgusting. Everyone knows men are supposed to be the property of women, the normal order of things.

In a society where it is believed that women are the strong and independent equals of men, yet millions of men are forced to work for fragile, helpless dearies to pay child support far beyond actual needs for kids, and allegedly for kids half the time they are not allowed to even see.

To pay life-time alimony while living in a sleeping room, while she lives rather well and takes nice vacations.

To owe money for periods of time when the men were ill or unemployed.

Marcia Clark had the guts to file for an increase in child support, I repeat, child support during the OJ trial because her daily beauty shop trips for the trial increased her cost of living. Note also that she was making nearly twice what her ex-husband was making. Then explain why HER expenses are relevant to "Child Support". (Hint! You can't!)

Yeah, that is disgusting to think a woman is the property of a man, when men are supposed to be the property of women.

Marcia Clark had the guts to file for an increase in child support, I repeat, child support during the OJ trial because her daily beauty shop trips for the trial increased her cost of living. Note also that she was making nearly twice what her ex-husband was making.

That ain't guts. That's gall.

'pleasure and sexuality, both male and female, should not be displayed promiscuously - and possibly destructively - for all to see'

Really Ms Wolf? Then why are MEN allowed to display themselves so 'promiscuously' in public? They don't cover their hair, legs, arms or faces. Why are they never harrassed and assaulted for failing to cover everything but their hands and faces, and in some countries, EVEN their hands and faces? What kind of otherwise 'promiscuous' behavior do they engage in in private? Do they get to walk around nude in front of the family, while the women are allowed the 'promiscuity' of short sleeves, non-confining clothing and uncovered heads, but only indoors, and only in front of their husbands, children and female friends and relatives?

This isn't insight, it's an elaborate justification for misogyny.

You would cease to find yourself contented with the trade-off of being able to wear evening dresses to the coffee shop under your chador, veils or burkha, if the chador, veils or burkha covering your pretty clothes were compulsory, and not a temporary game of dress-up.