A Huge Step Backwards

Yamina campaign poster without party leader, Ayelet Shaked (TOI)

Once again, Shoshanna Keats Jaskol has hit a home run. I have had my disagreements with her in the past. But in most cases I think we see eye to eye. One of which is the current obsession about women by the right. An obsession that treats all women like sex objects.

One might think that the opposite is true. That women are seen as human beings in a community that extols the virtues of modesty. That the last way they would look at a woman is as a sex object. But if you think about it, that is exactly how they see women. How else can one explain the absolute refusal to publish a picture of even the most modestly dressed women -  or even a head shot?!

It happened again in Israel. This time Yamina party head Ayelet Shaked distributed campaign posters in Charedi neighborhoods that did not have her picture on it. She was obviously sensitive to their concerns about publishing pictures of women. But that would be the same as distributing campaign poster for Likud without having a picture of  Benjaimn Netanyahu on it. Or ‘Blue and White’ campaign posters without Benny Gantz’s picture.

I appreciate that Shaked had sensitivity to the wishes of others. She obviously did not want this to become a campaign issue. Nor did she want to lose any potential support the Charedi world might have for her rightist political party by alienating Chaeredi voters on an issue that is of little personal concern to her.

One of the points  Shoshanna makes is that some Charedi women tend to see value in not publishing pictures of women. She quotes one of them saying the following: 

“I don’t love it, but I’ve heard worse. I wouldn’t fight against this idea… The idea & the point is modesty. Not showing women’s and girls’ faces is one way people are trying to stay modest. … Putting women and girls on billboards is just not modest. That’s what makes them into sexual objects.” 

Shoshanna’s response is right on the money: 

She is one of a handful of women who I have heard express similar statements.

“What’s the big deal?”

“I would never want to be on a poster.”

“Women are meant to be behind the scenes.”

Every woman has the right to choose not to be on a billboard, magazine or advertisement — for herself. Beyond that personal choice, this is my message to every woman who says she does not mind if her face isn’t on a poster: This isn’t about you. 

How right she is. This is not about how anyone personally feels about having their own picture published. It’s about those who might want to have them published. Not because of any exhibitionist tendencies, but because of legitimate non sexual purposes. Like a campaign poster. Or an advertisement about a business they have that competes with men. Giving men a distinct advertising advantage when their ads feature their pictures - while ads by women are banned from featuring their pictures.

So as laudable as being sensitive to the concerns of others - even when you don’t agree with them - it contributes to the perception that erasing women from the public square is a religiously superior standard of modesty. Which can easily be interpreted as seeing all women as sex objects.

I too have heard Charedi women make the type of comments Shoshanna quoted. They laugh at the concern many of us have about the erasure of women. They don’t seem to care about it. It does not enter their minds at all that there is any problem with it. They understand it exactly the way the above mentioned women does. Which is that not showing women’s and girls’ faces is one way people are trying to stay modest. 

When challenged with the thought that the opposite is true… that by not featuring a pictures of even a woman’s face because of modesty is exactly what makes them sex objects… they seem to just shrug it off.

My only quibble with Shoshanna is that she says only a handful of women feel this way. Although I know that many Charedi women privately feel the way Shoshanna does - there are more than a handful of women that see avoiding all images of woman as a net plus. 

How can they not feel that way? These days this is is how they are educated to think from the time they are old enough to realize what sex they are. 

This is a modern day innovation. Beis Ya’akovs of the past had no problem with class pictures being taken, published, and distributed. Today, no respectable Beis Ya’akov will allow it. I am reminded of a mainstream Charedi elementary day school for girls here in Chicaago that did not allow fathers to see their 8^th grade daughters at their graduation ceremony, forcing them to sit behind a Mechitza. (The ‘joke’  was ‘How does it feel to sit behind a Mechitza?’)

Although women educated this way may not think of themselves as sex objects, they have been taught that all men do see them that way. And that they are therefore obligated to make themselves as invisible as possible. 

How far we have fallen from the ways of our parents and grandparents! We all talk about how much greater generations of the past were compared to ours. And yet in the attempt to emulate their ways we have taken a huge step backwards.