Sexual conservatism

שו”ת › Category: general › Sexual conservatism

asked 9 years ago

Hello Rabbi Michi,
I’ve recently heard women claiming that because conservative upbringings have taught them to be ashamed of their bodies, they are sexually inhibited and need to work on themselves in order to have fun with their partners.
To me, it sounds a bit imaginary… especially when it comes from secular women (who claim that there is enough conservatism there to oppress..)
If anything, I think that exposure to supermodels, and the lack of warmth and love that is very common in our generation, are causing this.
What does the rabbi think?

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מיכי Staff answered 9 years ago

peace I hope you are well and that you are making progress in your research. Secularism is a very general description. It encompasses many different populations. Beyond that, there are of course different standards for different women (some would consider it an oppressive requirement to cover something of their body on the street). Therefore, it is possible that such attitudes exist in the secular public as well. In the religious public, it is probably more prevalent (the case of that former Gur Hasidic woman who committed suicide was only recently published). None of this contradicts your own words either. This is not a question that has one correct answer and no other. By the way, I assume that in any type of society/education, problematic products would emerge, since there is no perfect education that suits all types of people and women. Society always imposes limitations and constraints, and naturally, it does not suit all of its members. A (secular) friend once told me that the purpose of modesty laws is to prevent forbidden acts, to take the opposite approach: general permissiveness in the Scandinavian style. He claims that there are fewer problems and fewer forbidden thoughts. I told him that I’m not sure he’s factually right, since I have a feeling that indulgence repels him, not turns him off. It makes the act banal and empties it of its content. I feel that this is the situation in an overly permissive society, including ours. It is possible that even in such a society the urge exists and the actions are done without inhibitions and without shame, but the baggage that accompanies it is fueled by all of this, and therefore it doesn’t really exist. But beyond that, even if it were factually correct, his assumption is wrong. The laws of modesty are not meant to extinguish the urge or to suppress it. It seems to me that it is more appropriate to channel it. Freud already insisted that the sexual urge, the libido, is very important to all of our functioning (although his psychoanalysis seems to me to be a speculative hallucination, and has no understanding of science whatsoever). Extinguishing it is disastrous on many levels.

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י.ד. replied 8 years ago

The clothing advertised at the end of a lifestyle that allows one to retrospectively bless the joy of being in one's home at a wedding with a mixed yeshiva is particularly impotent because in his opinion, a mixed yeshiva weakens the urge instead of keeping it in check. The problem is precisely that there are people for whom sexuality is like pale geese and does not provoke the opposite sex.