[Avodah] Tzeni'us and gender roles

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:

> The modern aspect of this approach is  the "for both parties 
> to the marriage".  The Rambam is,  when he mentions "adam" 
> only refering to the male of the species.  In many societies 
> that indeed was the model - in fact as late in my husband's 
> parent's circles in Egypt that was indeed the model
> - there was typically an age gap of at least 10 years between 
> the husband and wife, because the husband needed to build up 
> his parnassa first, but a woman needed to be married off as 
> soon as possible.  And then he molds her.

In the interests of fully covering the topic as set out in the heading (ie
Tzenius and gender roles), and especially given the discussion on domestic
abuse taking place on Areivim, I should probably comment that, at least
according to my understanding, a lot of professionals who work in the area
of domestic abuse among the Orthodox community have a very negative view of
concepts such as kol kavuda bas melech penima because they see such concepts
as tools that are extremely open to, well, abuse.  The line between
"molding" as I have described it above, and "controlling" can be somewhat
fine - and ideas that a woman ought to be confined within the home and that
they are "in the wrong" for stepping outside it or of turning to the outside
world is clearly going to be of immense help to a husband or father engaged
in domestic abuse.  RMB is hence likely to find, among many (perhaps more
often women, but not always) a knee jerk negative reaction when they see a
man lecturing women of the virtues of tznius or bas melech penima.

That does not mean that such ideas and concepts should not be discussed -
but as part of the grappling that I am asking RMB to do, he probably needs
to consider the way that concepts can, and perhaps are (depending on the
extent to which anecdotal evidence is to be regarded as real evidence)
misused.  Note that we do have some history of the abandonment of not only
ideas but halachic concepts when they were being abused - such as the
situation with yibum and chalitza, where it is clear that the Torah
preferred the former, but that the later is now mandatory because, while the
ideal may be great, given that significant numbers are incapable of living
up to the ideal, the consensus is now that we do not allow it.  However this
is quite an extreme response, and one would need to consider whether the
concept was being abused sufficiently to require such abandonment.  It is
however yet another factor to consider - especially as a number of the
options I have provided to RMB as methods that counteract some of the modern
pressures (such as early marriage, limited exposure outside the family,
large age gaps between spouses, molding expectations etc) are often
precisely the factors highlighted by professionals as those that are risk
factors for domestic abuse.

Regards

Chana