I wouldn’t call myself a rabid feminist. In fact, sometimes I’m so downright feminine that I put Stepford wives to shame. But today two things happened that made me want to whip off my bra and light it on fire right in the middle of my college’s lobby.
Let’s start in the classroom. In one of my many English classes, we were discussing a short story we read in which the main character is a woman. She’s fierce and chooses to become a werewolf in order to kill her husband, who’s been drunkenly whipping, beating, and otherwise abusing her since their wedding night. The point of this story, according to our professor, was to respond to the male-dominated stories of earlier decades. Anyway, one of the students in my class had an issue with the heroine.
“I don’t understand why this woman is such a great person,” she complained. “She doesn’t even have any redeeming qualities. Like, she’s not even pretty!”
Now, to begin with, the lady in the story is pretty awesome. Did I mention she turned herself into a wolf and killed her abusive drunk of a husband? I would consider that a redeeming quality. But let’s get to the more basic idiocy of my classmate’s statement (and, no, I don’t feel bad calling her statement idiotic): being pretty is a redeeming quality now? This entire story is built around empowering women over men and teaching us lessons in feminism, and my classmate is upset because the heroine’s looks aren’t attractive enough to redeem her?
Okay, so one girl in one of my classes at Stern thinks strong women aren’t good, and values looks over assertiveness. But that’s just one girl. Right?
Well, I was on my way to the cafeteria when I passed a sign for an event tomorrow night. The caption on the sign read “What would it be like to be the wife of a world leader?” To be fair, the event is a lecture, the speaker being the wife of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. But I still take umbrage with that tagline; is this all we college women aspire to now? Not to change the world ourselves, but to marry someone who will?
Like I said, I’m not a raging feminist. But I do think women and men should be treated equally; I believe women can be powerful based purely on ability and not looks; I think women can and should work to change the world; and I definitely don’t think I’m going to college right now just so I can find some ambitious husband to marry while I look pretty for him. But apparently not everyone agrees with me (a tragedy in its own right, but especially when it comes to something as basic as gender rights).
Did any of what happened today happen because I’m in an Orthodox school surrounded by Orthodox women? I don’t know. I do know that feminism sometimes feels like it hasn’t hit certain sects of Judaism quite yet, Modern Orthodoxy not excepted. Just last week I was in a meeting where the (left-wing Orthodox) rabbi I was meeting with assumed my male subordinate was in charge for no other reason than that he was male.
On the other hand, many fellow students were outraged at the sign, and many to whom I’ve told the other story were horrified as well. So I can’t make any conclusive remarks about the population of Modern Orthodox women in general. But I can complain about them once in a while.
