[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Arie Folger]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:24 AM, <T613K at aol.com> wrote:
> My father addressed that point, too.  I can't remember his exact words but
> the idea was that if you gave the women the option of either serving or not
> serving as witnesses, you would not have an equitable system.  It would
> introduce a level of arbitrariness to the legal system -- a male witness who
> is subpoenaed /must/ testify, but a woman gets to decide case by case
> whether she wants to testify or not?  Quite unfair, and it makes the whole
> legal process unpredictable.  Plus, maybe more important, it would remove
> from the woman the element of protection of her dignity and tznius, since if
> she /can/ testify at her own discretion, she will be pressured to do so in
> many cases.

Surely this raises the question whether the theory previously
expounded upon in this august forum is correct, namely that tzniut
underpins just about all behavior, and that for whatever reason, poor
men are sometimes obligated to sacrifice this behavior - a behavior
that both genders have in common - for the sake of the greater good. I
simply take note that you have brought tzniut squarely back on women's
backs, as one could imagine there being equally important public needs
for men's and women's testimony.

Furthermore, as I have demonstrated, the plain meaning of said derash
on Devarim 22:16 is that a woman cannot/should not/may not defend
herself against a male accuser, who accuses her of a capital crime.

IOW, we weren't talking about subpoena (well, R'n CL was, but the
derash isn't) but rather about the right to represent yourself in beit
din when defending yourself. Again, I do not analyze here whether such
is always the rule (that a woman does not speak up in beit din), and
RMS has argued why it may be a societal issue (in which case ours is
not a "real" derash, but rather an asmakhta), however, I find it hard
to argue that there are no halakhic/derash statements hampering a
women in court, ever. They may be non-binding, they may be restricted
to particular cases, we may rule according to a different opinion, vus
vais ikh. However, such statements exist and deserve to be taken
sufficiently seriously that we actually deal with them, rather then
apologize them away.

-- 
Arie Folger,
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