On the me too campaign and its ramifications (Column 117)
With God's help
In recent weeks, an aggressively conducted campaign called me too has been taking place around the world, in which various women (including many celebrities) have come forward with accusations against various people (they too are usually celebrities) who harassed them sexually in various ways, and sometimes even beyond that. In recent days it was reported that Boaz Arad, a teacher at Thalma Yellin who was accused of sexual relations with his students and whose case was publicized in the media, committed suicide, and this sparked a debate about the role and functioning of the media in the matter.
There are many troubling phenomena that find expression in this campaign. Freedom of speech is granted in it to only one side. It is conducted with religious fanaticism and verbal violence, without any willingness to listen. Its generalizations are sweeping, and it makes no distinctions between different acts, more or less legitimate. In the media court, a person's fate is sealed on the basis of a complaint alone, and following the “great success” there are demands that this is how things should also be done in the court of law (because it is hard to produce evidence. Therefore all wicked men should be convicted solely on the basis of a complaint).
Here I do not intend to enter into all those troubling aspects. My purpose here is only to argue that the male and female protesters are entirely right, exactly like the communists. Except that, like the communists, they too ignore that same marginal and negligible aspect that time after time returns to smack us on the head and shatter our oh-so-logical conclusions: human nature. These matters were already discussed in Column 8, and there will be a bit of repetition here, but because of the current relevance I thought it worth returning to them once again, and The study hall is never without a new insight. (there is no study hall without a novelty).
The fundamental argument
On the face of it, the women's argument is correct. The fact that they walk about in one way or another, wearing this or that kind of clothing, does not permit anyone to harass them. If I walk around in sandals that someone does not like, does that entitle him to harass me, comment on me, or harm me without permission? If we invoke another example that was discussed here in the past (see Column 8), the fact that Jews ascend the Temple Mount does not authorize Arabs to harm them and behave violently toward them. I noted there that men and women of the Left who protest the ascent to the Mount as a provocation allow themselves to take the opposite position with respect to the way women appear in the public sphere.
But even if we ignore that contradiction (if only because finding contradictions in MKs from Meretz and Labor and among fashionable media people from that same school would require an encyclopedia), the argument still stands: just as Arabs have no right to harm Jews, so too men have no right to harm women, whatever their appearance may be.
"Doing it in front of someone's eyes is like hitting"
Among my children, to this day, my immortal maxim remains current: “Doing it in front of someone's eyes is like hitting.” Its origin lies in a hard-and-fast rule in our house (except in most cases) that imposes a severe prohibition on siblings hitting one another. Now, there were a few provocateurs who cunningly followed the letter of the law while violating its spirit, and waved their hands in front of a brother's or sister's eyes as a despicable provocation. You will surely be surprised to hear that the latter could not restrain himself and violated the law (that is, hit the provocateur), and when they came to judgment before the Judge of all the earth (= me), I ruled decisively that doing it in front of someone's eyes is like hitting. That is, the verdict was that the provocateur was the one who started it (for those interested in the complex legal system that developed in our home, this was of course only an argument for mitigation of punishment. Even in such a situation, the law forbade hitting).
What does this have to do with our matter? Personally, I would be very happy if the culture of sexual freedom disappeared from the world (and no, I do not mean that we should all become Ger Hasidim), but that is not the aim of the campaign. After all, that is a dark, conservative, religious, chauvinistic approach, which the participants in the campaign condemn utterly. Why on earth should women be restricted because of men's urges?! The campaign wants to preserve sexual freedom, the right to dress and behave as one wishes without restrictions and in every place, while at the same time forbidding men to behave as they had grown accustomed to behaving within that framework. Not for nothing was it reported some time ago that a group of French women led by the actress Catherine Deneuve launched a counter-campaign, against the aggressiveness and lack of distinctions in the me too campaign, which in effect comes out against sexual freedom itself. Surely you were not surprised when this group was vilified at every turn, and there were even calls to ban publication of their letter (within the framework of the selective freedom of expression and open debate current in our parts). As noted, they argued that the campaign was aimed at sexual freedom itself, God forbid, and of course they were promptly bludgeoned over the head and told that nothing of the sort was true. Heaven forbid anyone should harm the sacred sexual freedom. The campaign is directed only against men's verbal and physical violence.
Actresses declare at every opportunity (while dressed in Mother Eve's attire) that they will go about in whatever way they see fit and wherever they please, and this still does not give anyone permission to comment on their uncovered body parts and the hidden desires conveyed through them. Any restriction on women's dress is met with sharp protest by the very same people who protest male behavior (as, for example, in the uproar over the dress code in the Knesset). And I argue, in a completely politically incorrect manner, that these claims are hypocritical and baseless, because “doing it in front of someone's eyes is like hitting.”
The Oscar ceremony
One of the high points of the campaign was at this year's Golden Globe ceremony, where they all wore black as a sign of mourning and solidarity with the oppression and harassment of women (except for those who dared deviate from the custom and, within that same freedom of speech, were met with harsh reactions and wall-to-wall condemnations). Let me remind you that this is one of those ceremonies in which women appear with their uncovered parts wrapped in almost nothing apart from their natural skin (this reminds me of what my late father used to say: that in the musical Hair only the director was clothed). I debated whether to bring some pictures here, and decided to leave it to the imagination of the readers. The material is available on Google, long may it live, for anyone who wishes to seek and gaze (from “eye”: And do not stray after your eyes. — do not stray after your eyes). My heart bleeds for these hypocritical female protesters, many of whom paved their way to the top by yielding to those very harassers, and now confess this in truly heartrending fashion. Is that not moving?![1] If there is any case to which Have you murdered and also inherited? (have you murdered and also inherited?) applies, I do not know what would.
The core of the problem
And still we have not really explained things. Even if there is hypocrisy here, what exactly is wrong with the claim itself? True, the women — and especially those actresses who protest the matter — make a very substantial contribution to these phenomena, and still, what is wrong in the basic claim that one person's private acts do not justify violent actions by another against him or her? Put differently: what is the difference between harming women because of their appearance and harming Jews who ascend the Temple Mount merely because they went up there? I argue that there are at least three differences: permissiveness, body language, and the urge.
Permissiveness
In a permissive society in which the social norm is that sexual relations are the birthright of every youngster, and in essence are seen as something entirely banal — just casual pleasure for a boy and a girl who want it — it is no wonder that these acts are treated lightly. The outcry over the depth of the injury done to women tacitly assumes a state of affairs that has long ceased to exist, as if sexual relations between two partners require intimacy and a deep bond, of which the sexual connection is only the peak and expression. If that were the case, one could accept the claim that sexual harm to a woman is a violent intrusion into her intimate and private depths. But in a society where such relations are a casual and incidental matter spoken of openly, where a boy or girl who has not experienced this feels abnormal and inferior, it is hard to understand how one can speak of such deep injury in an act of this kind.
Just so there is no misunderstanding, I accept that the injury is deep. My claim, however, is that society should draw from this the necessary conclusions about sexual relations and about sexual freedom and permissiveness in general. The act is not as banal as you present it, and there is certainly room to limit the legitimacy of free sexual relations. Sexual freedom is not as sacred as the campaign's supporters assume. You turned the act into something banal, and then you return to treating it as something taboo that requires sophisticated preliminary courtship dances. Imagine a society in which hitting were an accepted norm — could one come with serious complaints against someone who hits in an unjustified case? Well, of course it is not all right, but why make such a fuss over it?! One cannot have it both ways and then wail that one has been wronged. In truth, our own eyes see that one can; my claim is only that it is unreasonable and illogical.
Body language: "When You Say No, What Do You Mean?"
Precisely because relations between men and women are (or rather once were) a sensitive and intimate matter, they are built through subtle and delicate manners, which sometimes require great sensitivity to decipher. When a woman expresses a desire to have sexual relations in a conservative society, she will do so indirectly and in subdued language. But in a conservative society there are also clear rituals that help decipher the intentions of the parties. First and foremost, kiddushin (formal Jewish betrothal). When the relationship between a couple is formalized, this includes permission for and invitation to marital relations. A woman's agreement to marry constitutes consent that is not open to interpretation, and therefore there is here clear and unequivocal consent (and even there, sometimes there is a case in which a husband rapes his wife, but that is of course exceptional). Anything done without this ritual, even if there is consent, can be challenged on the grounds that Unspoken intentions are not legally significant. (unexpressed intentions have no legal standing). For that reason, in Jewish law, final intent requires expression in an act, both in transactions and in kiddushin.
By contrast, in our permissive society there are no such preliminary rituals. Without any contracts or acts of acquisition, any two people can simply get into bed together and that is that. It is no wonder that in such a society, in place of accepted rituals, preliminary courtship requires subtle and non-univocal body language. It is no wonder that part of deciphering relations and boundaries between the sexes requires body language and not only words. Sometimes the words say the opposite of what the body language conveys, because the language we use is a combination of mouth and body.
From this perspective, the demands of me too are trying to turn communication into something verbal alone, but that almost empties relationships of their intimate content. Even verbal language contains expressions that can be interpreted metaphorically, cynically, ironically, or literally. Knowing when it is this and when it is that is really not simple. If so, precisely in a permissive society, ambiguity is to be expected and must be dealt with. I can assume that in such a society there is considerable ambiguity in communication between two partners as they come to have sexual relations. Consent is not bound up with signing an agreement before a lawyer, or even with a clear verbal statement. Each side has to understand the subtext in order to decipher the situation correctly.
Such a situation is described in the much-maligned song "When You Say No, What Do You Mean?" Today that song is presented as the height of male chauvinism, sexual violence, and contempt for women's judgment. But in fact it describes a reality in which saying ‘no’ is not entirely unambiguous. In such situations there are refusals that should be understood like the refusal of a person to approach the lectern and serve as prayer leader — a refusal out of politeness whose real meaning is: yes, I very much want to (please press me a bit more). At the beginning of the Wikipedia entry linked above, Dan Almagor, the author of the song, explains that it is about the innocent courtship of a boy after a girl, expressing that same ambiguity of which I am speaking. Of course, nobody takes such an explanation seriously today. Among the men and women of me too, known for their extraordinary attentiveness, this is merely the apologetics of a chauvinist man. Incidentally, the criticism of the song began with Mishael Cheshin (a noted poet in his own right) in his judgment in the Shomrat rape case, and Dan Almagor, who succumbed to the spirit of the times, even added a politically correct stanza to the song following this (see there in Wikipedia ).
The urge
So far I have dealt with two differences between ascending the Temple Mount and women walking immodestly. I argued that in the latter context there is a background of permissiveness and there is body language; these two are not relevant to the question of ascending the Temple Mount. But there is a third difference, perhaps the most obvious one, and that is the urge. Like it or not, human beings have sexual urges, and we must take them into account. If a woman were to walk naked in the street, I assume there would be fewer people who failed to understand the person who raped her. That would still not be just or right, but it would nonetheless be understandable and predictable. The question here is one of degree: how much exposure counts as immodest. From this it is also clear that the claim that women alone should decide this is incorrect. It takes two to tango, and the fact is that if we live together (precisely if we are not Ger Hasidim), we need to agree on a status quo.
By contrast, ascent to the Temple Mount is not about urges but about ideology. There is another fact about human nature, whether you like it or not: ideology is something under our control, unlike urges. Urges sometimes push us to act against our will, but ideology is something we choose, and we have control over our actions. Therefore Arabs on the Temple Mount are required to control their violent impulses, even if they dislike Jews ascending the Mount. Men too are required to exercise self-control, but it is difficult to expect it to be complete. Anyone who thinks that women can walk exposed in the public square and there will be no exceptions who harm them is naïve or pretending to be.[2]
A distinction among the arguments: arguments for mitigation of punishment or for innocence
There are differences between the three arguments. The urge and permissiveness are arguments for mitigation of punishment, not for justification of the act. The argument from body language can also justify the act itself (that is, establish lack of guilt). In other words, as I wrote in Column 8, the arguments from urge and permissiveness do not remove responsibility from the assailant, but they do place contributory blame on the society within which he acts (and within that, also on the victims). Yes, yes — in a wholly politically incorrect way, I most definitely do also blame the victims. I am speaking here of an act that is violent and plainly unjustified (verbal harassment is a matter of social norm, and there there has been hysterical drift). Any person who commits a violent act and forces himself on a woman who resists should be held accountable for it, but a sane society does not place a stumbling block before the blind. If statistically such cases are liable to occur, one should act to reduce them as much as possible. Therefore, blaming the victim and society as a whole does not come instead of blaming the assailant, but in addition to it. If one demands (rightly) that men restrain themselves, one cannot do so while dressed in Mother Eve's attire, even if it is black.
Two further comments
In this context one hears claims about equality between women and men. Why is it demanded that women dress modestly but not men? To be sure, men are also subject to modesty requirements, but of course they are not similar to those imposed on women, neither in their level of detail nor in their intensity. Beyond that, the modesty requirements for men are not intended to prevent the stimulation of women, whereas the requirements for women are perceived as the price of taking men's urges into account.[3] Here I once again resort to our annoying human nature. There is inequality between women and men, both physically and emotionally and in terms of desire. If women were to feel threatened by men's lack of modesty (even if they had no ability to rape them), there would be room for the claim that men should take them into consideration. But as long as that is not the normal situation, the claim about equality in this context is nonsense (as are many equality claims that ignore reality and impose the ought on the is).
And one final comment. A good friend of mine once told me that he does not understand the religious and halakhic hysteria surrounding modesty. In Scandinavia, the atmosphere is very permissive; people do not make a big deal out of sex, and therefore everything is calmer. He argued that the obsession in religious society is a product of the laws of modesty, and not only their cause. I have not checked whether this is in fact how things work in Scandinavia, but let us assume for the sake of the discussion that it is. What conclusion follows from that?
The sublimation of sexuality is not meant to extinguish the sex drive, but to limit and channel it, and to keep it in the place where it properly belongs: between a man and his wife. If there is a mechanism that extinguishes the sex drive, that is not an advantage but a drawback. I told him that the Talmud relates that after the Men of the Great Assembly nullified the sexual impulse (the sexual impulse), not a single chicken egg could be found in all the Land of Israel. The sexual urge is a very important element in our existence. It is the basis of procreation and of couplehood, but Freud taught us that it is the basis of creativity and human activity in general. It would be a mistake to extinguish it. What we need to do is find the right balance, one that will not extinguish it but will restrain and limit it.
Summary: the proper combination
So why do I not recommend conducting relations between men and women like Ger Hasidim? Simply because that is hysteria in the opposite direction. A reasonable social model has to take three factors into account: human nature, the rights of the parties, and the ability to function in a normal society. It has to find a reasonable balance among all of these, and thus build the social fabric and social norms. When one makes only the restriction of the urge into the social norm, one arrives at the hysterical model of Ger. When one makes only women's rights the central norm, one arrives at the stupid and self-contradictory model proposed by the men and women of me too. Thus, every time someone wants to limit sexual freedom or women's style of dress, he is presented as a pathetic chauvinist, because in the background of the discussion there are only their rights. Conversely, Ger Hasidim point to the consequences of the permissive model (No one can be trusted regarding sexual impropriety. — there is no guardian against sexual transgression) as justification for their model. They too thereby ignore the additional considerations.
The correct model should strike a reasonable balance among these three considerations. The balance is, of course, a function of social norms (what counts as the ability to function, and what counts as a normal society), and it is a matter for social and public negotiation, and of course also between women and men. Therefore there is also room for disagreement about it. I am not claiming to have a clear and correct model in hand, nor even that such a model can be derived from what I have written here. All I am saying is that one can derive from my remarks what is not correct. My claim is that extreme models are problematic, and that the arguments leading to them present only one of the three facets of the problem as though it were the only one. That is where their mistake lies.
[1] In my view, this is not comparable to sexual demands made of an employee in an ordinary workplace. There she may be in distress because she will not find another job. But those actresses can usually find other work. They acceded to the demands as part of their desire (not entirely free) to use their sexuality as a tool for advancement. Again, I do not justify this, but the comparison to the harassment of a weak employee by her manager is, in my opinion, misplaced.
[2] I also discussed there the question that stands in the background of these matters: whether the victim has a right to do what he or she is doing or not. This is a subtle question, and it is difficult to state anything definitive about it. In essence it returns us to the plane of permissiveness (the social norms that determine what is permitted and what is forbidden), and I will not enter into it again here.
[3] Admittedly, my friend Nadav Shnerb wrote an article in which he shows that even the modesty requirements imposed on women are not intended to calm men's urges, but are self-directed requirements. See here.
Discussion
The claim about the effect of permissiveness is empirically testable. Are there fewer rapists in Haredi/religious society than in secular society? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no. And that proves that permissiveness has no effect.
In fact, you are repeating here Rabbi Ilai’s claim: “If a man sees that his impulse is overcoming him, let him wear black…” A claim that you yourself reject, in the name of the Rif and the Rosh, arguing that everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven. So why do you demand one thing from religion but let it slide in the social sphere?
I would say that Me Too is precisely the proof of the indictment of sexual permissiveness. People are convinced that sex comes with no price, until they discover that it comes with a heavy price. “The wise man has his eyes in his head” and should distance himself from any indecent act, and some say even from mixing with women (even though many are not concerned about mixing with women, for they are regarded in their eyes “like white geese” — and this is considered part of the normality of the world).
Rabbi, don’t you think that the attempt here is to normalize relations rather than create a distorted situation? To say that a woman walking naked in the street would increase the likelihood of rape is indeed recognizing reality — but are you claiming that her lack of clothing is enough to “reduce the rapist’s prison sentence”?
I’m shocked by the content of this post. You present it as though there is a direct connection between modesty and sexual harassment. Is that connection actually established? Where is the reference to harassment within Haredi and Religious Zionist circles? I have yet to meet a woman who has never been harassed in her life. No matter how modest she is. Why is that?
Arguments that link modesty and “provocative” behavior to harassment are the very arguments that make those women who were harassed feel guilt and shame for having been harassed. The Me Too movement is a movement that managed to bring so many women who lived in repression and with those same feelings of guilt to the understanding that they are not the ones to blame. With God’s help, it will lead to a change in men’s behavior, especially men in relations of authority/power vis-à-vis women and girls. God willing, it will reach Haredi circles as well and succeed in changing things there too.
I also disagree with the statement that “basically, Me Too’s demands are trying to turn communication into something verbal only.” I haven’t seen any such demand (maybe I missed something). But in the cases associated with the campaign, it is very often about power relations between the man, who is the boss/producer/actor/teacher, and the woman, who depends on him or sees him as an authority figure. However you turn it around, such relationships are problematic and can easily become relationships of coercion and exploitation. A teacher is forbidden to have a relationship with a student (even if she is not 20 years younger than him). A man is forbidden to put a drug in a woman’s drink. A commander in the army is forbidden to have a relationship with a subordinate, etc. I still haven’t heard of an innocent courtship ending up in court.
Another claim you raised: “When the relationship between a couple is institutionalized, that includes permission and an invitation to sexual relations.” Surprisingly enough, even within a formally established relationship according to religion and law, there are cases of rape and harassment. (See the case of Esty Weinstein from the Gur Hasidic community.)
What this is about is how men perceive women, and how that perception causes behavior in which a woman is attacked/harassed/exploited.
The moment a man no longer feels that he is superior to a woman, that a woman is not an object/property/tool for sexual gratification, then perhaps things will change at the root.
Maybe in the case of Scandinavia that you mentioned, that is the reason there is no harassment there. I find it hard to believe that there is no sexual desire there. It’s simply that men see women as equal in value and rights.
And no, this has nothing to do with the provocations of those who ascend the Temple Mount. A woman is not a provocateur; she is a creature of the Holy One, blessed be He. One can discuss modesty and what is proper; one can talk about the bond between a couple and what the ideal is — but one should not link this to harassment.
“Can be tested” is theoretical. If your “to the best of my knowledge” were actually based on something, it could be useful.
A good intention the Holy One, blessed be He, joins to action.
Indeed.
I repeated Rabbi Ilai’s claim? Where? That really reads to me like a riddle.
I didn’t understand the claim. What I wrote was that impulses and the woman’s contributory fault are at most an argument for reducing the punishment, not for exemption.
Hello Tali. I didn’t understand what shocked you so much. But apparently the shock interfered with your thinking. So here’s a little free help.
Do you have any doubt that a woman dressed provocatively invites harassment? Do you have any doubt that in a permissive society it is harder to assess consent and prevent harassment? What does any of this have to do with harassment in religious society? Did I say these are the only factors? Of course harassment can happen without this too. What I claimed is that when a society has these as its norms, it is not right to come with complaints only against others but not also against themselves.
The fact that my arguments cause shame to this or that person does not seem relevant to me to their correctness. Arguments for punishing a murderer also cause him shame. So in your opinion should one not make those arguments? And I will preempt the expected demagoguery: I did not compare this to murder.
As for nonverbal communication, we disagree. You should also look at the campaign in column 8.
Relations of authority are indeed problematic. Who said otherwise? What I said was that in a permissive society and with revealing dress, this invites such acts. There is contributory fault.
As for rape and harassment in institutionalized relationships, I myself noted that in parentheses. Are you sure you read the right column? Beyond that, your argument again misses the point, because I did not claim that such cases do not happen in institutionalized relationships, but that in a permissive society the situation is more inviting for such cases.
Did you check and see that there is no harassment in Scandinavia? I have no details about that. But the claim about seeing a woman as an object or not is also beside the point. All these claims may be true, but they are not what I was talking about. The impulse does not turn off even if one sees the woman as a person and not an object. Therefore “the wise man has his eyes in his head,” and it is preferable not to increase the chances of a transgression.
I did not write that a woman is a provocateur. I wrote that an immodest woman is the father of all provocateurs, just like on the Temple Mount — and much worse, for all the reasons I listed.
In conclusion, after you get over the shock caused by my words, and try to think about them soberly, with your head and not your gut, you will see that none of your arguments was relevant to the discussion. Meanwhile, everything I said still stands.
Let me just add that one of my main aims on this site is to make people rethink things that seem self-evident in the idiotic public discourse that goes on here, instead of repeating worn-out slogans from that discourse.
I’ll address the three arguments:
A. The issue of impulse — in my opinion, you greatly exaggerate the “inability” of a person to control his impulses, and indeed most men do not sexually harass.
B. The issue of body language — as Tali noted, most Me Too cases are cases of relations of authority, where body language is irrelevant, because it is clear that the act is forbidden.
C. The issue of permissiveness — as long as there is no data (and I truly do not know of any serious study that has done this) regarding the rate of harassment in permissive societies as opposed to conservative societies, we have no good way to address the effect of permissiveness, because there are arguments in favor of conservative society (fewer unclear lines) and in favor of permissive society (a conservative society can intensify desire — like the example from Scandinavia), so it is impossible to reach a conclusion on the basis of these arguments alone.
When his honor speaks about impulse: the claim of impulse applies only according to Rabbi Ilai, where “his impulse overcomes him.” According to the Rif and the Rosh, who hold that a person must overcome his impulse, the claim of impulse does not stand. The fact that you have an impulse can only retrospectively mitigate the punishment, but it cannot be a justification ab initio. Ab initio, a person must overcome his impulse, and the fact that she started things off with immodest clothing is irrelevant.
I agree that a permissive society and unclear language are a great affliction, from which one who guards his soul should keep far away, and still I do not understand how the rabbi can bring in the claim of impulse when he himself rules against it following the Rosh and the Rif.
Obviously a person must try to overcome his impulse. So what? On that basis, one could abolish most of the prohibitions of placing a stumbling block before the blind.
With God’s help, 21 Shevat 5778. In a permissive society where the boundaries are unclear, a woman has now been given a tool to make absolutely clear to a suitor that “this is as far as it goes.” She can simply say to him: Me too? And he will understand that any further pursuit is criminal.
It is precisely the strength of the impulse that requires setting clear and unequivocal boundaries, so that anyone who crosses them is already in the category of an offender. The safeguards of the Torah and the Sages — the prohibitions of touching and seclusion, looking at women, etc. — Western society is not prepared to uphold. At least they will have the safeguard of the prohibition of harassment.
No safeguard seals things hermetically, but it does create a certain protection. And beyond the deterrent effect, a safeguard also has an educational message that increases awareness of the problem, and brings at least decent people, who are the majority of society, to proper behavior.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
1. Maybe write a post on why sexual promiscuity is negative?
2. I didn’t understand whether, in your view, there is less harassment in religious society. If there isn’t less, then we have proved that immodest dress and the like do not signal sexuality (because then there would be more harassment).
A.H., thank you. I truly forgot the example the Gemara gives for the case of placing a stumbling block before the blind: handing a cup of wine to a nazirite.
But I still feel I’m missing the rabbi’s clarification on this point — if not from the Torah perspective, then at least from the principled anthropological perspective, where on the one hand there is complete faith in man’s freedom to choose the good, as expressed by the Rif and the Rosh, and on the other hand the recognition of the blindness produced by impulse, which imposes a countervailing moral obligation not to cause a person to stumble.
In my opinion one must take into account the difference between male and female impulse with regard to sexual drive: as is known, a man’s impulse is triggered and aroused immediately, and even involuntarily, and in order to satisfy it he need only perform a purely mechanical act of stimulation. This is not the case for most women. One can illustrate to a woman the ordinary condition of a man as follows: put her in a state of constant hunger, and repeatedly lead her past bakeries and restaurants from which wafts the delightful smell of all kinds of food. Surely she would find it very hard not to reach out her hand and perform a mechanical act with her mouth and teeth… and the discerning will understand!
Yes, I do doubt that provocative clothing invites harassment.
Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the research (if you have any, I’d be happy to get references). “Provocative clothing” is a relative matter. If a woman walks in jeans and a T-shirt in Mea Shearim — that would be provocative clothing and would certainly provoke reactions. But if she walks in the same outfit on the beach in Tel Aviv, no one would bat an eye.
The women you mentioned in Hollywood who wore “provocative” clothing — maybe it is provocative in your eyes, but there that is the norm of dress, and I have no doubt that it is not the clothing that invites the harassment.
I’m willing to accept that provocative clothing may invite harassment of the kind of whistling in the street or an incidental caress. True, that too is harassment and it is unpleasant. But that is not at all the focus of Me Too, and it is also not what destroys a woman’s life.
Women who project insecurity, weak women, women who are new at a workplace, students of an admired teacher, patients of a doctor… these are easy prey for harassers.
A woman who projects strength and confidence will usually deter harassers, even if she dresses immodestly. But even such women, in certain contexts, become the weak ones, the needy ones… so this skips no one.
I highly recommend watching the video series “That’s Harassment,” which presents real harassment cases and makes it obvious that there is no connection to clothing. http://www.zematrid.co.il/
Maybe you have in mind someone who dresses and behaves provocatively and invites sexual attention, and then perhaps if she is harassed she really should do some soul-searching… but such cases are so marginal within this whole campaign…
You speak “rationally” and “with your head” about a subject you have never experienced. You have no idea what it is like to walk around in this world in constant alertness. If someone is walking behind you in the street, if someone is talking and is a little too close, if the boss calls you in for a talk… the fear is always there in the background… yes, even if he is religious and lives in a “conservative” society. I wish I could feel safe because I dress modestly.
At last, brave women want to change the order of things, are making their voices heard, and are saying enough. True, there are bound to be backlashes… but honestly, I was surprised.
For years and years women have suffered this behavior, living with scars on their souls. Individual women who tried to make their voices heard were crushed by the gears of the legal system and got responses like “you brought this on yourself.” And in effect that prevented others from filing complaints.
You cannot ignore the fact that your words are within the context of the larger story, and in that place you have put yourself with the silencers.
A. Where did I exaggerate? I didn’t say that impulse causes an offense deterministically. What I claimed is that impulse causes it statistically, and therefore among the population of all men there will be offenses.
B. Not correct. Even where there are relations of authority, the invitation arouses more. The proof is that people do it despite the fact that it is an offense. And the reason is that they assume there is consent on the part of the subordinate, and therefore that this is not a moral offense but only a legal one. But even that may be based on an implied invitation. Therefore there is no significance to the question whether relations of authority are involved.
C. The factual question is not really important here. My basic claim is not statistical. Even if in a permissive society the phenomenon were smaller, permissiveness would still contradict the intensity of the complaints and the assignment of responsibility, as I wrote.
Hello Tali.
1. You have no doubt; I do, very much so.
2. I myself wrote that clothing norms and the decision about what is provocative are a cultural and relative matter. So what? My claim still is that provocativeness (relative and local) invites such harms.
3. Contrary to what you say, those provocateurs also complain about whistles and remarks.
4. Indeed, I have never experienced it, but that is irrelevant. I was not talking about whether harassment hurts and causes pain. On the contrary, I wrote that I am sure it does. I was talking about blame and contributory fault. Moreover, if it really hurts, then all the more so one should invite it less and provoke less. So why is that argument relevant to the discussion at all?
5. I’ll repeat what I already wrote to you. I did not write that if you dress modestly you can feel safe. I wrote that immodest dress increases the danger.
6. I am entirely in favor of women making their voices heard, and I am certainly glad they are finding the courage. And still I am critical of the contributory fault of society and of some of the women. I am also critical regarding the courage, especially with regard to the celebrities participating in the campaign. After they profited from their sexuality and got what they got, to come now when there is no longer any price to pay no longer seems all that courageous to me. But here it is certainly possible that my lack of personal experience keeps me from seeing it.
7. I did not place myself with the silencers. On the contrary, I join the protest and say that one should draw conclusions from it and not only beat on someone else’s chest. I do not accept placing the blame exclusively on the harassing men, especially when it is done by women who themselves contribute to it actively and significantly. I do not understand what follows from the fact that women have long been told they brought it on themselves. Does that prove that it is not correct to say so? In my opinion it really is correct (in the sense of contributory fault), and therefore I too repeat and say it. Not every woman and not in every case, and not only she is to blame. But there is contributory fault on the part of many women and of society in general, women and men alike.
That isn’t forgetting an example; it’s ignoring the essence. I am not speaking about a halakhic command but about an agreed-upon and clear moral and legal principle. When there is contributory fault, the blame is divided and one cannot blame only one side. Quite simple. Obviously assigning blame to the women or to society does not reduce the blame of the offending man. This has not even the slightest connection to Rabbi Ilai.
Shmuel,
1. There is no point in writing the post you request because that is not the subject here. I am not claiming that sexual promiscuity is negative, but that it has contributory fault in harassment.
2. I haven’t checked, but that is not important either. It is completely clear that social norms bear contributory fault for these harassments. They convey invitation and legitimacy. Even if there is much harassment in Haredi society, it is not because of conveying invitation, and therefore there the blame of the men would be more justified.
1) Write it independently of the article. I’m interested in what leads you to write: “Personally I would be very happy if the culture of sexual freedom disappeared from the world.”
2. But if there is no difference in the amount of harassment, then it is empirically proven that these things do not increase the difficulty, no?
With God’s help
Hello Michi!
I’ll begin by saying that I very much agree with most of what you wrote, and it seems to me I would say even more than you—
Indeed there is much less harassment in our community and in the Haredi community, no question at all. The question is what counts as harassment.
Most harassment in the Haredi community is in accordance with the norms of Haredi society — for many Haredi women, when a man forced flirtation on them in a side room in the shtiebel, that is considered (rightly) sexual harassment, but still it is a world away from harassment in the secular public.
Clearly, even in ultra-conservative society there are cases of severe sexual harm such as rape and the like, but the scope is smaller — not to mention that in the public sphere a Haredi girl can feel much more at ease than an average girl in a club. “I am willing to accept that provocative clothing may invite harassment in the form of whistling in the street or an incidental caress,” as Tali said, constitutes blatant sexual harassment in Haredi society, and I am willing to venture that these are the majority of the harassments that occur there (of course one must not minimize the gravity of the matter, since relative to that girl it constitutes a severe violation of her inner and outer modesty, but still there is great room to distinguish).
To compare the societies is simply demagoguery; it is falsehood and deceit. To say, as Tali did, “I have yet to meet a woman who has not been harassed in her life,” is a shocking statement in my view and, in my opinion, also not true. By the same token one could say that almost every conservative man experiences sexual harassment when a waitress with cleavage comes toward him (forgive the bluntness).
To say that the Me Too campaign is not the beginning of exposing the utter lie inherent in sexual permissiveness is journalistic acrobatics of a demagogic sort that a person of sound mind cannot tolerate.
And in general, maybe it is unpleasant to say, but today the average man’s coping with sexual stimuli is incomparably greater than a woman’s. True, in permissive society there may perhaps be “pleasure” in this for the man, but he suffers from it greatly as well — bosses who don’t dare comment to their female employee about inappropriate clothing, or don’t dare fire her, or if they distance themselves she complains of alienation, and when they come close she complains of flirting and not knowing boundaries. And if he wants the simple solution of not employing women, he will be accused of chauvinism and sexism (see, for example, IBM, which employs unqualified female managers so that there will be equality between the number of male and female managers, and similarly in many companies such as Intel, Teva, hospitals, etc.).
In religious society this is much more prominent — the man is the one who has to think two or three times before every place whether it suits him to go there, or whether he will encounter a hundred girls dressed in exposed three-quarters clothing and more than that (I lived several years in Eilat; every summer we would go down early in the morning to do shopping. I would not have dared go down later). Movies and series are (in my humble opinion) almost completely out of bounds, and the list goes on.
The Me Too campaign exposed the point of falsehood in the supposedly egalitarian and mature picture of this permissive society — if we thought there was no essential difference between harassment in the different societies, and that when permissiveness reigns the impulse is far less lustful, it turns out that almost all the “strong” women, all those women who serve as role models for female selfhood and for women’s ability to go far, gave up something very essential of themselves along the way. And now, after their careers are already in a very comfortable place, financially and in terms of image, and from within a large group of women and a very embracing and impressive campaign, they complain about things that are already old and irrelevant to their careers today. I haven’t heard any woman complain about something that happened recently (a current film or something).
I would add further that although impulse exists equally in all societies, the quantity of harassment, and especially its “quality,” differs essentially. In my humble opinion, the connection between impulse and sexual harassment is very small, and I will explain what I mean: the very existence of impulse and the need for sexual release, especially in light of the atmosphere of permissiveness that penetrates everywhere, is very great. But the distance between that and the ability to come and sexually harm someone, or to engage in sexual activity at all (hugging, touching, kissing), is very great.
For the most part, when a person experiences a strong sexual need, if he grew up in a society that allows this, he will find release through “the real thing,” and the deviation will be sexual harassment — that is, a failure to correctly identify what the woman opposite him is signaling, or some sort of thought of “well, she’s not such a righteous innocent, she’ll go along with it.”
But if he is in a conservative society, where socializing with a woman is itself “a thing,” he will satisfy it in ways that do not require a live connection with other women — wasting seed, and the like. True, it can happen that the matter goes beyond even that into more practical realms, but even then it is expressed more in going to prostitution, consensual relations (!!) with a “partner in sin” behind closed doors, and less in trampling all the ordinary forms of social expression. When a person is not used in daily life to being around “real” girls, even when his impulse is very aroused, unless he has some practical woman — a partner in sin, a paid woman, etc. — it is much, much rarer that this will lead to sexual harm of an innocent, unrelated girl.
I tried to make several points here, and even if my words are not properly organized, I hope they were understood properly.
I would be happy for your response and everyone else’s
Shmuel,
1. Briefly: sexual permissiveness leads to the devaluation of the physical bond between partners. It leads to the weakening of the family unit because of the ease with which relationships can be had outside it. It leads to complications such as diseases and unwanted pregnancies, and it bears contributory fault for harassment.
2. We have proved nothing, and I already explained this. In a specific case of harassment, when the clothing is immodest there is an invitation. If in Haredi and religious society there are other factors that offset this (and I don’t think that is the case), that proves nothing. As I wrote, at most you could say that with a Haredi harasser the woman would not have contributory fault.
With God’s help, 21 Shevat 5778
I fear that speaking of this causes more damage than benefit. Is it really our role to find merit for the offenders? Is it really our role to awaken feelings of guilt in the victims after the trauma they have undergone? And are there not those who were harmed despite dressing and behaving modestly?
If the intention is to encourage modest clothing and behavior, it would be better to emphasize the positive side — that modest behavior and clothing accord honor to a person, as Rabbi Yohanan called his clothes “my honorers,” and specifically Esther, who conducted herself with simplicity and modesty, merited that she “won favor in the eyes of all who saw her.”
And see Dr. Michal Tikochinsky’s article, “The Principle of Modesty,” on the “Shabbat Supplement – Makor Rishon” site, and the sources I brought there.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Hello,
I sometimes enjoy reading your words, but like Tali I think you are mistaken on this matter. What is especially disturbing is that apart from Tali there are no women participating in this discussion, and their opinion is not being heard, even though it is about them.
I have many years of experience working in sexual assault crisis centers in Israel and England, in various roles that I held alongside my work as an academic researcher. Despite the differences between the places and between the cultures (in England I worked in a conservative and poor city without cultural diversity, whereas in Israel I worked in Haifa, which is much more diverse in terms of class, culture, and religion), I did not see much difference between the nature of the assaults and the way they were treated. There are no precise quantitative studies on the subject, because as of today it is impossible to obtain reliable assault data due to the partial reporting in this area. The World Health Organization assumes that one woman in three worldwide has been raped, and almost all women have been harassed in one way or another, but the information is based on only very partial statistics indicating that the ratio between incidents and reporting in societies where sexual assault is forbidden by law is 1 to 10. Some organizations claim the ratio is higher (that is, that more women were raped and did not report it), and some claim it is lower. In religious and Haredi society, as in other conservative societies, reporting is extremely limited, so there is no way to estimate whether there is more or less sexual assault there either, and opinions differ in both directions.
What is known is that beyond the highly important moral question, those who were sexually assaulted — even if they were not violently and brutally raped in a physical sense — suffer real psychological harm (rates of depression, anxiety, drug use, and suicide among women who were harassed are far higher than average), and this in turn also causes considerable economic harm, which serves as the basis for tort claims.
Contrary to your position, no connection has yet been found between clothing and the extent of sexual assault. This is a common argument in public discourse and a basis for sharp disputes, but it has no evidentiary basis one way or the other. Since it is known that most sexual assaults do not occur in the public sphere, it may be assumed that clothing, or any other activity in that sphere, has little influence. Likewise, regarding representations of women in film and popular culture, which have changed in recent decades, it is not clear whether and what effect these representations have on attitudes toward women in general and on women’s self-perceptions, and even less so regarding sexual assaults. The research suggests that all these factors have many and contradictory effects, and it is very difficult to create an overall picture.
What does emerge from the literature is that there is a connection between a woman’s social, personal, and familial capital (though not always economic capital) and the likelihood that she will be vulnerable to sexual assault and recover from it. That is, someone who has a solid support network socially and interpersonally will be able to resist harassment more effectively, and someone for whom this network is weaker will have more difficulty doing so. In this sense, a society in which one can talk about sexual assault without shaming and accusations, and can help complainants both with legal aid and, even more so, with personal and social support, will be a society with less sexual assault. Food for thought.
Many thanks for the information. And yet, the phrase “when you say no, what do you mean?” could not arise in a non-permissive society. In a permissive society there is room for interpretations even of saying “no.” Beyond that, in my remarks I was not dealing only with the clothing of a particular woman who was harmed, but with general social norms. When one turns sexual relations into something banal and trivial, we should not be surprised by these results. Women who objectify themselves and then complain (like many of the various actresses) do not arouse empathy or sympathy in me. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
I relate with very limited trust to studies of this kind that explain to me that every third woman in the world has been raped. You may accuse me of closed-mindedness, but on its face that seems to me nonsense. It may be that in worldwide statistics (which include places and societies where rape is an everyday occurrence) this is the figure, but here I am convinced it is far from that. Perhaps this is part of my lack of trust in those disciplines (the social sciences and humanities).
Paragraph 2, line 2:
…that Rabbi Yohanan called his clothes “my honorers” (Shabbat 113b)…
You claim that this is enough for a reduction in punishment, as I wrote, and I think that is a huge ethical concession; the demand in the context of personal space should be absolute, if only in order to create a sane synthesis.
The discussion mentioned the problematic nature and heightened risk when there are “relations of authority.” In today’s conditions this cannot be prevented in workplaces and the like, but a man who is in such a situation must be doubly careful to maintain the halakhic distancing measures: not to behave frivolously with a woman, and not to conduct “friendly conversations” with her that are unrelated to work.
All this is when the woman is in the framework voluntarily. But a reality of “relations of authority” in a place where the woman cannot leave the framework whenever she wishes is already a halakhic problem in itself, and for that reason the rabbis of Israel forbade the drafting of girls into the army, as explained in the responsum of Rabbi Avraham שפירא of blessed memory, which I cited in my response to the article on “Drafting Girls” on the “Shabbat Supplement – Makor Rishon” site.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
Hello Rabbi. Could you please sharpen the claim about banality? — Indeed there is a contradiction in the discourse regarding sexuality, and perhaps this gives men more freedom to harass over something “without significance,” but perhaps the initiators of the campaign came to declare that even if we see sexuality as something banal, still no sexual relation of any kind has any legitimacy when it is done without consent?
Of course that is the campaign’s goal. I merely noted that there is a contradiction between a permissive atmosphere and sexual freedom, which turn sex into something banal and trivial, and the intensity of the protests as though this were an assault on the very core of one’s soul. The protest itself is of course legitimate, for even in something banal there is no justification for harming anyone without permission.
Here it is claimed that the feminist struggle really is also against sexual permissiveness
https://www.facebook.com/yehuday30/posts/10213710462409624
I disagree. He claims that that should have been the struggle, but in practice it is not. And I will explain why it is not (he is making a fundamental mistake).
Feminists are not struggling against permissiveness; they only demand the woman’s consent. Permissiveness does not mean that a man may do whatever he wants without needing consent, but that everything is permitted as long as the parties agree.
That is precisely why there is no cooperation with the rabbis, because these are different struggles.
What I claimed here is that there is some contradiction in the position of the women fighting (not in the struggle itself, but in its intensity: presenting relations as something very intimate and profound contradicts a permissive stance), and there are hints of this also in Yifrah. But in my opinion he is mistaken in identifying permissiveness with non-consent, as above.
It’s nice that you sensed the parallel to the Temple Mount faithful, but the distinction is incorrect. Religious-nationalist emotion invites a reaction similar to sexual impulse. Would you lighten the severity of someone who attacked you for injuring the apple of his eye on the site (on emotional, not ideological, grounds)? Moreover, many women dress revealingly for reasons of comfort and beauty, whereas you often create deliberate provocations (which I enjoy very much, by the way).
Paragraph 1, line 3:
…and not to conduct “friendly conversations” with her…
Paragraph 2, line 2:
…it is already a halakhic problem…
In my opinion there is a certain missed point here.
Feminism is not the cancellation of permissiveness, and MeToo is not only protection for women.
It is the castration of men. A woman ought to want her husband to have an impulse directed toward her when she is his wife.
When one lives in a mixed society and every man meets every woman, a conflict is created.
At first (as happened until the campaign), the man does what a man does (when he encounters revealingly dressed women) — he harasses.
Afterward (with the campaign), the women rebel, denounce the men, and the men within mixed society — are castrated.
Their impulse learns to be indifferent, cut off, and lame.
Seemingly, what could be better than that?
But the loser is the woman; her man no longer has a living impulse directed toward what it was primarily intended for — to maintain proper, healthy, fruitful marital relations.
In the end, we achieved the mixing of the sexes, women’s self-exposure (and men’s too if they want), but the impulse of both sides is damaged.
In conservative society, when a man is among men — he develops masculinity within himself. When a woman is among women — she develops femininity within herself. And when the man meets his wife (and vice versa) — there is a match of a masculine man and a feminine woman; nothing could be more wonderful than that.
He gives as an example a protest against the giant pictures of Bar Refaeli in Terminal 3, which are certainly consensual, and also prostitution, which is also consensual — even if often that consent is the result of distress.
It’s nice that you sensed it was wrong, but it is in fact correct. One is not born with religious-nationalist feeling; one chooses it. And even if one does not choose it but gets swept into it — that is the fault of the person who did not bother to choose, but simply followed the herd. Therefore the responsibility is solely his. By contrast, one is born with sexual impulse and does not choose it. Of course there is still responsibility to control it, but the distinction remains valid (there is contributory fault).
This is not related at all to the question whether the provocations are deliberate, but to their very existence.
Here we are dealing with the public domain. Therefore this is not a protest against free sexuality but against its effects on those who are not interested in it. This is about women’s rights, not permissiveness. They have no problem with Bar Refaeli’s decision to objectify herself however and as much as she wants. The problem is that when her pictures are hung in the public domain, this objectifies women in general, including those who do not want that, and leads to problematic consequences (harassment and rape). Therefore, in my view, this is not a protest against permissiveness but against chauvinism. The protesters have no problem whatsoever with free sexual relations of any kind and type between anyone who wants and anyone who wants, under any circumstances and in any situation. They have no problem with revealing clothing or even no clothing at all. The problem is only the impression created in society at large, which affects those who do not want it. Therefore this is not a protest against permissiveness.
Try enlisting them in a protest against consensual sex between an unmarried man and woman, or even a married woman. You’ll get smacked on the head for violating women’s rights and autonomy. Try enlisting them in a protest against sex of various perverse kinds. Again, you’ll get smacked down.
I agree with the content but not with the spirit of the words. I think it coarsens the impulse but does not castrate it. This touches on what I wrote in the column about my friend’s proposal (the Scandinavian model).
You said they only demand explicit consent, and that is very inaccurate. They object in principle to the objectification of women even with consent. I’m not saying that this is also your struggle, and Yifrah also said that the motives are different. There definitely is some attention here to women’s contribution to the situation, even if it is very far from what you would want. Ultimately you too accept the value of freedom, and if they too truly accept the claim that provocative female behavior can lead to harmful things, then the principled distance becomes much smaller.
There is also room to emphasize that in a materialistic world that sees sexual impulse as something lying at the basis of male life (Freud), combined with the dominant conception in psychology and now also in neuroscience, which holds that most of the decisions we make are forced upon us (in psychology, in the sense of traits of the soul; or in neuroscience, in the sense of materialism), something that in effect takes from us responsibility for our actions — then the obvious conclusion is that men are coerced in everything having to do with sexual impulse. Indeed, all men are potentially predatory animals, and the most foolish thing to do is to arouse them with revealing clothing and then place the responsibility on them afterward (“Go complain to the Craftsman who made me!”)…
With God’s help, 27 Shevat 5778
To David — greetings,
There is a remedy against the evil inclination, as our Sages said: “I created the evil inclination — I created the Torah as its antidote,” and as Maimonides instructed: “He should direct himself to matters of Torah and wisdom.” In any case, even if, God forbid, someone fails, let him not roll the responsibility onto “the woman whom You gave to be with me,” but rather do as David did, who said “I have sinned,” and took all responsibility upon himself, as explained in Psalm 51, and thereby established the yoke of repentance.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
With God’s help, 27 Shevat 5778
It happened in the year 5707 that a young man proposed marriage to a young woman, and despite her absolute refusal, he continued to pressure and harass her. In her distress, her family turned to the neighborhood rabbi, Rabbi Yeshayahu Meshorer (Sha’ar), and he wrote her a poem to deliver to the harassing suitor, so that he would understand that her refusal was final. And indeed the poem had its effect, and the young man stopped bothering her.
I will bring here a few excerpts from the poem:
How have you erred in your imagination… …and how have you sinned with your lips like the ancient scout, O hidden one,
How did your ears grow heavy from hearing the echo of my refusal, and how did your eyes grow dim, to see my rebellious shoulder turning away…
Behold, my heart is as far from you as a bowshot… and why have you opened your mouth without restraint?
And what have you to do climbing the heights of the mountains, if your place is set aside below in the forests…
The sages of the Talmud established in clear and measured language: a woman is betrothed only of her own will and with clear understanding,
And to the man they advised: descend from your lofty rank, and take a woman lower than you in station…
Do not tarry and do not multiply words; every additional word adds to my suffering,
Do not make me send you more such poems, which would shake even the hearts of donkeys
Fly away from here, be swift as eagles, and know that our ancient sages say:
A hint is enough for the wise, and for a fool a fist.
Remember: do not continue to harass me day or night, for the matter of pairing is decreed from above,
And no person of understanding should act by force against it, Heaven forbid, and thus may the Lord shine His face upon us forever
The full poem appears in Rabbi Dr. Moshe Gabra’s book, Rabbi Yeshayahu Meshorer zt”l — His Life and Teaching, published by the Institute for Research on the Sages of Yemen, Bnei Brak 5778, pp. 707–709.
Regards, S.Z. Levinger
The gaon Rabbi Yeshayahu Meshorer (1918–1998) came up from Yemen at a young age and was a disciple of the gaon Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap, who ordained him as a rabbi. He served for about forty years as a dayan and av beit din in Petah Tikva and as a member of the Great Rabbinical Court. His biography and some of his Torah teachings in halakhah and aggadah were collected in the aforementioned book by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Gabra, Rabbi Yeshayahu Meshorer zt”l — His Life and Teaching, Bnei Brak 5778.
S.Z.L. —
Thanks for the poem!
Very יפה.
S.Z.L., very nice indeed!!
One could engage in pilpul here regarding the law of “he coerced her and she became betrothed,” but this is not the place.
True, but that has no significance. They will answer, as always, that the campaign is meant to influence men deterministically and offset the effect of the stimulus.
I have several comments regarding what was said; I’ll write some of them, since some of what I wanted to say has already been said:
1. First, and in my view it is very important to sharpen this point — even if there are some logical contradictions or unrealistic demands in this campaign, or in discourse against sexual harassment in general, in my opinion it is important to emphasize that such a campaign and others like it — and more broadly this great eruption (and blessed one, in my opinion) of women talking about things they have gone through and continue to go through all the time (the celebrities and actresses were only those who opened the gate; the real campaign was carried out among the general public that usually remains silent) — its real meaning is not in defining some kind of social doctrine, but in the relief it brings and in the ability it gives women (and men of course; I’m speaking about women because it’s more common and because the campaign focuses on them) who were harassed to feel that they are allowed to talk about the traumas they experienced, which in many cases scarred them horribly. This campaign is not a philosophical article or the presentation of a principled doctrine (although of course it certainly comes out of some worldview, and presumably it is worthy to discuss that) — its importance lies in the ability to give a voice to people whose pain was silenced and is still silenced, to allow them to say “I was hurt” without people immediately trying to examine where they were at fault. In that sense, before getting into all the arguments — it is an important campaign, one that prompts thought about ourselves, about sexuality, about the relationship between women and men, about boundaries, and in fact about everything you discussed in the column. I know that your aim in the column was different, and that you are addressing reality at the level of the worldviews underlying it — and therefore it is important for me to emphasize that in my opinion the importance here is social and psychological for millions of women, men, and children, and therefore in a certain sense the discussion you raise here contains something that, at least in my view, is marginal (for the time being).
2. I’ll set aside the question whether revealing clothing invites harassment or not, because as people told you — there really is no evidence one way or the other, and in practice it is clear that if non-revealing clothing reduces anything, then it will be in the “gray” area — whereas the truly destructive sexual harms are in the pitch-black area, and no modest garment will change them. Even so, I will set that aside, because for the sake of discussion I am willing to accept the basic assumption that revealing clothing invites harassment, at least in that gray area. The very significant point, in my view, is that it is really, really important to be careful with your language when you describe that argument. Because just as sexual permissiveness enlarges that gray area — it also turns revealing clothing into something innocent. When a teenage girl goes to buy clothes, she does not necessarily think, “How am I going to dress in a way that will make men want to sleep with me?” She goes and buys what the store sells. And what do stores sell to girls? Tank tops, belly shirts, short pants, and so on. That’s what there is. Therefore, the use of the word “blame” is very loaded in this context, certainly when things are done innocently and not as a defiant “I’ll dress however I want and you had better not even think of looking at me.” As someone who works quite a bit with girls and women who have suffered rape and sexual harassment, I can tell you that their sense of guilt over what they went through is something so deep, so absurd (to the point that one can hear an educated adult woman describe the rape she went through at age six as something she is guilty of), that it is impossible to speak about this subject without understanding that it comes from something very deep within society (and here I entirely agree with you, that the fact that sexuality is a very powerful force in the soul leads to very powerful consequences when one is harmed through it). In addition — in my view it is important to be careful for the reason I wrote in the first comment. Even arguments that have a basis and are even correct on the philosophical level have consequences on the psychological level. And this is an area where one should be very careful in choosing one’s words. One way I know to describe it is to distinguish between “blame” and “responsibility” (you can choose other words, as you know) — a teenage girl who got drunk in a club and went up to a strange man’s apartment to sleep there behaved irresponsibly, because her behavior is dangerous. But if she was raped, the blame is on the rapist: he chose to commit the crime, even if one might perhaps find mitigating circumstances (say) in the fact that he may have thought she was interested or convinced himself of that. Blame is for a crime, for a wicked act, not for stupidity or dangerous behavior — that is an important sharpening, because when a woman feels guilty for being raped, it is not “necessarily” just “I’m stupid for not being careful” (it is also that, but not only that), but very much “I’m disgusting and impure and worthless.” So in my view it is important to be careful here both at the level of word choice and at the level of description: what do we mean when we say “blame.” And I will add one more thing — you speak of sexual permissiveness causing women to behave freely, but ask almost any woman what she feels when she walks down a dark street at night. It is to live with a constant consciousness of “I need to be careful not to be raped” — something very foreign to men. So perhaps the permissive atmosphere does not really cause women to behave in ways that “invite harassment” — at least not consciously.
3. In addition, and as a sharpening of the second point — one must draw a sharp and clear distinction between the blame of society and the blame of private individuals. This confusion happens on both sides: when a person blames the atmosphere of sexual permissiveness for increasing harassment, people get angry at him for blaming women who supposedly wanted it; when people blame “rape culture” for it — others claim that they are blaming all men. But neither of those things is true. The question is what social norms will reduce this phenomenon, since society currently encourages sexual harm (whether through permissiveness or through leniency toward men, or both). Again, in my opinion there is value and importance to sharpening this distinction, among other things because of the sensitivity of the subject, but also for the sake of truth.
4. One more relatively marginal point, but one that in my view is still significant, regarding the difference between demands for modesty from men and from women: the fact is that men’s clothing does not correspond to their sexuality. Go out into a secular street and see how men dress ordinarily — if it is an especially hot day, they wear a T-shirt with short sleeves (not a tank top!), knee-length shorts, and sandals. And clearly these are airy, non-tight clothes. Women, by contrast, wear blatantly uncomfortable clothes, all of which focus on their sexuality. Men’s clothes are comfortable and functional. If women wore men’s clothes — they would, on the whole, be fairly modest. But all women’s clothes — religious and secular alike — deal constantly with their sexuality: either because they must cover it or because they must expose it. The reason there are no modesty demands regarding men’s clothing is simply that men’s clothing is modest. Modest simply because it is in no way connected to their sexuality. Men’s clothing is modest in the same way that the chairs and tables in their house are modest. And I emphasize this point not merely as a side note, but in order to stress how deeply rooted in us is the feeling that women are sexual creatures and men are — well — human beings. This campaign, alongside all the discourse on this subject, first and foremost in my opinion causes people to think about these things, to understand and sharpen the simple fact that sexuality is part of life but is not supposed to dictate it. And even if there are perhaps extreme, intemperate, or foolish statements in this context (and in what context are there not?), they are in my view a healthy expression of a pendulum swing of some kind, which I hope, with God’s help, will stabilize into a better and freer society, in which sexuality is part of life but does not blind us to questions of boundaries, morality, and reciprocity — and in addition, and I know I am insisting on this point — to know that just as worldviews and intellectual discourse shape society, so too the way we talk about things carries significant psychological weight, and it is important to be careful with that.
Hello.
1. I accept the comment. I wrote that I have nothing against the campaign, but I do have comments about the atmosphere in which it is being conducted and about its goals. Just one thing: in my opinion, the point I raised is not marginal at all. In order for the campaign to succeed and not cause harm, it is very important to take it into account.
2. Even when I speak about revealing dress, it is said in degrees. Someone who goes in the accepted dress of her place indeed is not likely to arouse special thoughts. But nowadays the boundaries are being breached more and more, especially by celebrities who do it intentionally and then complain. After all, even today you see provocative clothing despite the fact that the norms themselves have already changed. The whole idea of those special outfits is provocation, and everyone tries to outdo the other. I also do not accept the claim that a teenage girl buys what is sold. She too can distinguish between types of clothing, and she need not buy everything that is sold. Again, that does not mean there is no blame on the offender, but sometimes there is contributory fault or responsibility on her part as well.
By the way, the distinction between responsibility and blame was discussed at length in one of my previous posts (43).
3. Agreed. There is blame on society, and within that also on private individuals. Society is responsible for the accepted norms and the boundaries, and the individual is responsible for what he himself does (what kind of clothing he wears).
4. I completely agree with the distinction you made between women’s clothing and men’s clothing, and we all cooperate with it (especially the women).
A few weeks ago, in one of the forums or blogs where people write about culture, a discussion on this topic came up. Most of the writers, perhaps all of them, were not religiously observant. The Me Too campaign was in the background, and I dared to ask about the connection between clothing and harassment, and between the issue of blurred boundaries on this topic and harassment.
I asked whether there is no blurring of boundaries. Whether the fact that so many women experienced this, and some of it from a friend, a close acquaintance, a boss, “as a joke,” does not happen because of blurred boundaries.
I wrote this:
“I come from a Haredi home. No man offers me his hand or a hug. Not an employer, not a boss, not a neighbor. And yes, they tried twice to touch me, but they were immediately sent flying. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that touching is harassment… it is not acceptable in any way, no touch of any kind. There is no blurring. Even if he touched ‘as if,’ or casually, he’s going to get thrown out. The boundaries are so clear that anyone who even slightly touches them is ostracized, and it is also clear to me that someone who touches me is not my friend but a harasser.”
I stressed that I was not advocating Haredi boundaries in Hollywood. Nor in Tel Aviv. But perhaps, perhaps clearer boundaries would prevent that blurred area between friendly, buddy-buddy touching and harmful touching. In both directions: for those who harmed, because the boundary would be clearer to them, and for the victims.
I wrote that someone who wants deliberately to harm will not be stopped by a clearer boundary. Of course they answered me that there are also harms in Haredi society (I answered that that is true, but not “friendly” ones), and more than in other societies (that needs checking), and that free women want to work as they wish, along with answers in the style of “I’m not interested in someone setting boundaries for me.”
I wrote again that I was not trying to impose unrealistic boundaries. I read the discussions and the media coverage and realized, somewhat surprisingly, that my experience and that of religious women is different. There is no harassment on a “friendly” basis. That was what I was talking about.
I raised the hypothesis that perhaps gender boundaries spare the need for self-defense and distance the pseudo-legitimate forms of harassment. Most complainants, even in the Israeli media, describe harassment by someone close, a friend or a boss, and it is somehow “okay.” Such harassment lies in a blurred zone between fun and harassment. And here perhaps it is permissible to formulate a clear code.
After an argument that included claims against Haredi society and against boundaries in general, there was agreement that indeed, in a gray area where it is not clear to the harasser whether it is okay or not, it could help. Still, the people responding to me had several claims because of which they choose freedom.
“There are among us… those who want to work, advance to senior positions, and do things in our lives that gender separation does not allow us to do.” There was fear of sending women back to the kitchen. I answered that refraining from touch does not preclude working opposite and alongside a secular man. Quite a few Haredi women work with a secular boss. (And remain protected.)
They argued that setting boundaries does not help. “Even in very segregated societies there is sexual violence, and numerically it is quite similar to non-segregated societies.” To that too I responded.
And then they asked me whether it would not be better simply to educate better instead of setting boundaries. Might not a small, simple prohibition such as “don’t touch” expand over time into a prohibition on working together, studying together, and even walking together on the same sidewalk, as happens in the extreme parts of Haredi society?
A few other concerns came up. Because of them, the women participating in the blog argued, freedom is preferable. The fear of unreasonable boundaries, of insulting boundaries, the fear of returning to rights as they were in previous centuries — all these lead them to prefer freedom, even if the price paid is harassment. The fear of returning to such an oppressive place is so great that they are willing to pay that price for it.
Hello Miriam. So what is the conclusion? From your words it emerges that both sides allow their fears to dictate their position and the way they would run society. In my view that itself is the mistake of both sides. I understand the fears, but in my opinion it is not right to act only according to fears. In the post I proposed a balanced policy (the three considerations), and in my view that is what is right. Reasonable dress but not hysterical separation, and of course also severe sanctions against harassers of all sorts. Working together and studying together, and normal life, are certainly possible. And if there are concerns, deal with them directly and do not enter into hysterical defensiveness — neither on the conservative side nor on the liberal side.
I tried to write that even in permissive societies people recognize the problems, but claim that this is the least problematic method that can be found, like democracy.
And as a practical conclusion, a conclusion in Hollywood is not the same as a conclusion in Beit Shemesh. Every society must find its own balance in the rules by which it operates.
It may be that the celebrities’ campaign in Hollywood, with all its shortcomings, is a necessity in such a society that objectifies women, and it is a counterweight to the extremity of the harassment they experience.
Thank you for responding!
1. I didn’t argue that this discussion is marginal in itself; I argued that the “goal” of the campaign (it is hard to speak of a goal in this context, because what happened was a spontaneous eruption “from below,” and it would be more accurate to ask what its cause is rather than what its purpose is) is to give a voice to people and women who were silenced and even blamed for the harms they suffered. But it is really less important to decide what is marginal and what is not; my main point was to distinguish between the conception behind the campaign and its emotional significance and an understanding of where it comes from — and from that also derives its importance in my eyes.
2. I don’t think a teenage girl cannot distinguish between revealing and non-revealing clothing. I do think that when she dresses that way, it is not provocation (in the sense of an intention to be defiant). In many cases she dresses that way quite innocently, because that is how women dress, without thinking too much about what it means. Clearly there are other cases as well, but it seems to me that in a great many cases clothing regarded as revealing is seen by many people, men and women, simply as something “fashionable” (among other things because of what I wrote afterward, that you really can’t get away from it when it comes to women’s clothing — almost no one designs women non-sexual clothes). The discussion you referred to in column 43 also speaks about an inciter — and it seems important to me to distinguish between an inciter who intends to cause harm and intends to influence reality in a certain direction, and someone who influences things without even noticing it. In my opinion, most everyday clothes considered revealing are worn without any intention to create sexual stimulation — at most the aim is “to look nice.” Maybe I am mistaken, but in my view one must distinguish between an inciter or provocateur and a situation of provocation without intent.
3+4. Certainly changes in norms will come through the activity of private individuals — Me Too itself is an example of this 🙂
If people recognize the problems, then all the more so it is important to address them. And I will repeat: when one lets fears alone dictate policy, that is problematic. Liberal societies fear becoming Iran and therefore behave incorrectly. And conservative societies fear becoming Hollywood and again behave incorrectly.
2. That is why I argue that she has contributory fault, even if she did not do it intentionally. Beyond that, the stimulus is a consideration in choosing the clothing, and one cannot and should not ignore that. And even if it is done without intention, that is exactly why I wrote — to bring awareness to the consequences, so that perhaps the contributory fault will be reduced.
3-4. I was talking about who creates the problems, not about who should solve them. But I agree that people can contribute to the solution as well.
A correspondence that took place on WhatsApp regarding the post:
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So-and-so:
Regarding Me Too: I want to comment on the wording of your first response to Tali. Your language is not respectful. Not to you, and certainly not to her. All the more so since she (1 = as you know. 2 = like any woman) writes from her heart’s blood.
Your substantive and respectful wording in your second response to her reads as though it was written by a different person, even though it is equally assertive and decisive in the same degree of intensity as the first response.
Since I’m writing and reading on this tiny screen, I’ll respond to one additional point in your words, one that also touches on the essence, in a separate message.
I agree with most of your distinctions and most of your points.
I also agree with a substantial part of Catherine Deneuve’s claims, which are receiving an ever stronger echo in the U.S., and it will grow and grow. [It is self-evident why only women open their mouths and speak on this “kind” of issue. Any man who opens his mouth and expresses support for them will be suspected, in my eyes (and in the eyes of everyone), of madness, and his words will therefore have no value].
I do not accept the argument that one should take into account the greater intensity of men’s sexual desire, which is stronger than women’s:
From where are these words derived? To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing.
And even if you insist that indeed this is so, since when is there in the Torah (!) even a faint sign that God changes the law between men and women (in those commandments or prohibitions in which women are obligated)? I do not recall any leniency or stringency given on account of sex to men or women. This is certainly so in matters of modesty and nakedness. Let the Song at the Sea and the Song of Deborah testify.
When we are forbidden to eat or drink, when we are forbidden to covet (!) or murder, there is no consideration of man’s impulse. It is forbidden, period! Even the captive beautiful woman, enticing as she may be, was not permitted by the Torah until she was made ugly, etc., despite the turmoil of battle, the distance from home, the bloodlust that clung to him, and so on. Forbidden!
It was the Sages who began “taking account” of the aggressive sexual impulse of males, and decreed upon women that they not provoke men.
Why? Why did they not tell the men that if they did such and such their punishment would be karet, or that they would be ostracized from the camp for the rest of their lives, or that they would have no share in the world to come? Or 39 lashes twice a week?! Surely that should have been enough to restrain every impulse and every desire?!
Was it the Torah that permitted wearing black and going to another city? Were these not the men who found a “workaround” and arranged for themselves (and only for themselves) a legal way to have sexual relations with those who “are not permitted to us”? They marry them, and immediately after quieting the impulse they divorce them! Quite a thing!
I was joking a little in my words (for leniency in sentencing, see what the hands of the clock indicate — especially the smaller one among them), but that is how it seems to me.
But the entire post is fascinating and interesting.
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Michi:
Briefly, because of the medium (I am an email person).
1. I agree that there is no exemption from punishment for the offender, but there is contributory fault. This is not only halakhah but legal and moral logic. You certainly know that better than I do. Does a murder victim who provoked the murderer bear no share in the blame in court? Therefore the halakhic discussion and blaming the male-oriented sources of it are not relevant here.
2. Does the gentleman deny that men generally react to an exposed woman differently from the way women react to a muscular man in a tank top? If not because of a difference in impulse, then perhaps because of lack of power. But it is still a difference.
3. As for the wording: indeed I was angry that I took the trouble to write a post against the slogans, and then the commenter comes and repeats them as is. There was not one argument in her words that was not answered in the original post. My impression was that the holy rage from her heart’s blood did not necessarily stem from personal experience, but no less from the brainwashing we are all undergoing these days. But I accept that even so I should have restrained myself more.
A few weeks passed, and I went over the post and the comments again and thought it proper to clarify and apologize to Tali. I did so by email, but I thought it proper to put the matter here as well. Here it is before you:
Tali, hello.
I just looked again at my post about the Me Too campaign, and again at the comments. In my email the commenters’ email addresses appear (on the site they do not), and suddenly I saw that it was you (I didn’t know that in real time). That stirred me again, and I thought it proper to clarify and apologize for the style of my words.
The first time I wrote sharply to you because I thought (and still think) that the arguments were mainly emotional and most of them were not substantive. I understand (though of course not from personal experience) that the issue is charged and painful, but as I wrote to you, one of my goals on the site is to conduct a different kind of discourse from what is customary in public. Something based more on relevant arguments and analysis and less on emotions. My feeling was that your response took us back to emotional discussion.
I think that if you read the content of my replies, you will see that they were all substantive, though at times said with sarcasm (that is my mode of expression. You know me. I also wrote this in the clarification to the site’s readers on the first page. I also invite others to write that way toward me. Style does not matter to me, as long as the arguments are reasoned and substantive. But sometimes I forget that not everyone feels that way).
In any case, beyond the clarification and the pointing out of my underlying assumptions on the site, I thought it proper also to apologize to you for the style. Women are in a different place from men in this discussion, and therefore, at least in this context, it would have been proper to take their feelings more into consideration — which I did not do.
I hope my apology will be accepted, even though the disagreement itself remains.
Tali replied:
Hello,
I accept your apology. It is true — women are in a different place in this discussion, and I am glad for the apology.
In my first response I did indeed write in a very emotional way. But after things settled, I reached a conclusion (which I also mentioned in one of the responses), and that is that society’s contributory fault lies not in its being permissive, but in the status of women and the objectification of women. This relates to things that you too mentioned — revealing dress, billboards. But these are only symptoms of how women and men view women. And that should not be the focus, because as stated it is only a symptom.
Maybe this is not science, but your arguments were not based on research either… In a society where women are valued beyond their bodies, there is less harassment. I witnessed more harassment as a ***, from religious men, than in my current workplace ***. Even though here, the society is as permissive as one can imagine (a man sits with me in the office who defines himself as polyamorous…)
But unlike ***, here women are valued according to their intellectual abilities (just one example among many abilities women have, by the way).
I understand that men have an impulse, etc.… but most men will not harass women, even if those women walk around in very revealing clothing.
The harassers are those who think they have a right to harass. That means that women are creatures of a lower rank, intended for men’s enjoyment, and therefore it is their right to touch them.
Lately there have been many discussions about women in physics. Needless to say, there are very few (2% female faculty, about 10% women students).
Of course there is more than one reason for that; the big problem is education and society’s attitude toward women. The message women receive from a young age is: you are pretty, play with dolls, cook in the kitchen, take care of the doll… and there is simply no end to the examples. It is so sad.
So women grow up with those examples in their heads, and men too grow up with the same ideas. And all this leads to the bleak situation of the current female image in our society.
In religious and Haredi society, women are indeed “protected” by modest dress and do not objectify themselves in public. But there too the objectification exists in different ways. I don’t think I really need to spell it out. You yourself testified to examples you had in mind regarding women learning Gemara.
And therefore it is not surprising that there is harassment in those societies too, and not a little.
And to that I wrote back:
Hello Tali.
First, I am glad that my apology was accepted.
Of course objectification is in the background, but I never claimed that only the aspects I pointed to are to blame for the situation. I claimed that they too are to blame. I would assume that in two societies with identical norms and attitudes toward women (in terms of objectification), one permissive and allowing immodest dress and the other not — there would be a difference in the rate of harassment. If only because, as I wrote in the post, permissiveness turns the sexual act into something banal and therefore it loses some of its deep significance and the need to be preceded by serious relations, and also causes the harm not to be perceived as so serious. It becomes like a light bump on the fender, since sexual relations are not anything special or serious.
True, my remarks too are not based on studies (and I doubt how many serious studies there are in these areas, because it is hard to isolate these parameters), but I do not claim necessarily to speak from a scientific point of view. Rationality and scientificity are two different things. What I intend on the site is to conduct rational and logical discussion based on assumptions and plausible arguments (which of course can also turn out to be incorrect. As stated, the “studies” in these fields are not worth much more in my opinion).
The claim that in religious and Haredi society women are objectified in different ways is true, but it actually proves the opposite. Despite the objectification, you will not find sexual harassment there (sexual abuse, of course yes, behind closed doors. In my estimation that is a result of excessive repression of the impulse, which causes it to burst out in an uncontrolled way, not of objectification). Therefore I argue that this is a matter of norm, and the norm there is modesty. I would assume that a woman who walked there in immodest clothing (by their standards; modesty is a matter of time and place and society) would have an increased likelihood of being harassed.
By the way, polyamory is not necessarily permissiveness in the sense in which I am speaking. The question is how much depth in a relationship is required as a condition for sexual relations. It may perhaps be possible to conduct deep relationships with several partners, and then polyamory is not permissive in my sense; that is, it would not lead to an increased likelihood of harassment.
Well then, goodbye and thank you for the letter,
Continuation from Tali:
Because we believe that the truth is with us, it is so easy for us, the religious/Haredi, to exempt ourselves and say “it doesn’t happen among us” (or in your formulation, “despite the objectification, you will not find sexual harassment there [in Haredi society]”).
Instead of letting this Me Too wave wash over us too, and condemning the phenomena of harassment that exist among us, we entrench ourselves and say it doesn’t happen among us… (or it doesn’t happen in that way, only like this and that, only rapists and psychopathic pedophiles, etc., etc.)
So true, in religious/Haredi society boys and girls don’t go out to get drunk in discos, and so there is no chance someone will put a date-rape drug in their drink, and among us “the sexual act is not banal” — agreed. But there are other phenomena of sexual harassment.
We too have what to learn from the gentiles, and it would easily have been possible to “Judaize” the campaign and give every religious and Haredi girl who was harassed support and confidence to come forward and complain. To let her understand that she is not to blame.
That is why I wrote to you that you placed yourself with the silencers. Because the moment you logically connect immodest dress or immodest behavior to sexual harassment, even at the level of society and contributory fault, etc. — you cast stigma on the woman who was harassed, who will then have to live with the shame and, in most cases, will not complain.
By the way, there is an awakening in Haredi society too, such as the site “Do Not Be Silent,” but there are many rabbis and opinion leaders who come out against this campaign. And that is a shame.
And to that I replied:
Hello Tali.
I am really not one of those who believe all the truth is with us, and I also do not think we are good at everything. After all, I explicitly wrote that there is sexual abuse and perhaps no less of it than in general society.
But I am not willing to let goals, however good they may be, dictate what I say. I try to say what I think, and I do not enter into calculations of whom this silences and whom it does not. In my eyes, those very considerations are themselves intended to silence other voices (like mine). If in my opinion there is contributory fault, then it is important to me to say so. And if there are some who will be silenced because of it — too bad. But I am not willing for people to silence me because of that.
We certainly do have things to learn from the gentiles, but not everything is worth learning from them. There are things one should not learn from them.
I do not know your site “Do Not Be Silent,” nor the arguments of those who oppose it. But there too I would examine the arguments on their merits and not only through their consequences (whether they silence someone). To some extent, claims like yours silence those who oppose the site, and that too seems wrong to me. If everyone puts forward his arguments freely, that would be best. And if there are problems, one should deal with them as such, and not by silencing correct but “harmful” arguments.
I remembered that I have a post (column 6) related to the matter, in which I discuss freedom of speech even in relation to Holocaust denial: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A9-%D7%94%D7%91%D7%99%D7%98%D7%95%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%97%D7%A9%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%AA%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95-%D7%98/
It seems that the founder of the campaign was King Ahasuerus, who rebuked Haman: “Would he even… with me too…?” And in English: With mee too?
Faithfully yours, to every people and province, from me, Harbonah, state’s witness 🙂
I’d like to respond, “His lips should kiss” — but I’m not sure that fits in this context.