In my penchant for finding proofs to support my belief that American culture is cult-like and that the mainstream media is backed by evil people and bad agendas that cannot be relied upon, I decided to look up the actual numbers, statistics, and percentages of a popular race issues to see what they reveal.

This post starts off by describing and summarizing issues, then delves into listing the actual numbers. (If you just want the hard-core numbers, then feel free to scroll down to "A Look at the Real Numbers.")

And just for knowing, LOCD stands for "leading cause of death."

Note to Europeans: This blog uses "Asian" in the American way, which refers to people from the Pacific and the Far East (like Japan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc). I never refer to Indians, Pakistanis, or Nepalis as "Asian."

Okay, here we go...

So let's just look at one subject of lies and distortions propounded in America, and that's the claim that America is a racist society where women and minorities are being limited by discrimination and oppression, and that white males are "privileged."

Just to be clear: I'm not arguing whether racism exists; it does exist, unfortunately.

My problem is that it doesn't seem to be as a big a problem or as debilitating an obstacle as the mainstream media likes to promote.

So if you imbibe the mainstream media, you might start to think that white cops are one of the most prominent threats to non-white communities, especially to black communities.

You might think that racism in general and the "microaggressions" of white people are debilitating obstacles for the non-white communities.

However, as even the mainstream media admits (although it tries not to discuss it), the top killer for black males between the ages of 15-34 is another black male of the same age group.

This means that despite the Left's mantra of racism in America, a black male would actually be safest if you put him in an all-white neighborhood.

In fact, this statistic implies that if you would put every young black male in a solely white neighborhood, you would immediately halve the death rate of young black males.

And despite the attention spotlighting Black Lives Matter, an organization screaming against the racism (of which there is very little) of white police officers, the actual numbers are as follows:

• 1 in every 65 deaths of a young black male is caused by a police officer
• Around 60 out of every 65 deaths of a young black male is caused by another black male

Hm. 1 versus around 60.

Oh yeah, I would definitely focus on the 1 killer, not the other 60.

Especially since the cop was mostly likely defending himself or someone else, and not killing for revenge or anger or while drunk or high, I would definitely focus on that 1 cop.

Yeah, sure. That totally makes sense.

I can tell that the BLM adherents really care about black lives because they focus on the 1 black life ended by a cop as opposed to the other 60 black lives ended by non-cops.

Yeah, I totally believe that BLM cares about black lives. This totally proves it.

[sarc]

A lesser known but more alarming statistic is that homicide is the second leading cause of death for black children aged 1-4 (representing 15% of male deaths and 12% of female deaths) after unintentional injuries, which is the leading cause of death for this age group.

In contrast, the homicide rate for white children in that age group is half that for black children, while the homicide rate for Asian children aged 1-4 ranks as the sixth LOCD for males (2.7% of all deaths) and the fifth LOCD for Asian females (4.1%).

We all might want to analyze the Asian community to see how they manage to protect their little ones from homicide so much better than every one else.

Oh, wait, no. Instead, let's just keep analyzing why they're so good in math! Yeah, that's so much more important than preventing the murder of small children!

Interestingly, if a black male can make it to the age of 45, he's highly unlikely (or not likely at all) to be murdered or to kill himself. In fact, suicide doesn't rank at all for black men over age 45.

Yet that isn't true for other groups.

For example, there is a suicide rate (albeit a low one) for white males aged 45-64 and for Native American & Hispanic males aged 45-54 and for white woman aged 35-64, and for Native American women & Hispanic women aged 35-54.

In contrast, neither homicide nor suicide ranks at all for black females above the age of 45.

So if white males are so privileged, why are they killing themselves more than black males or black females?

Why are they so unhappy and so despairing despite the "privileged" color of their skin and their "privileged" gender?

And did you know that the second leading cause of death for male Native Americans aged 10-34 is suicide. Age 10?! Do you think that might be preventable? Maybe someone should create an organization to deal with that.

I also think that someone should take a look at the high percentage of death by homicide against Native American girls aged 1-4 (15% of all deaths, as high as for black males in that age group). Combine that with suicide as the #1 leading cause of death for teenage Native American girls (almost 40% of all their deaths result from suicide!!!).

But no, let's just fuss about how to refer to Native Americans (by their individual tribe? American-Indians? Native Americans? First Nations? Not Redskins, for sure!). Proper nouns are for sure more important the murdered babies or suicidal girls...

Right, mainstream media?

Let's look at Hispanics:

• The leading cause of death among Hispanic males aged 1-44 is "unintentional injuries."
• The second leading cause of death among Hispanic males aged 14-34 is homicide.
• The third leading cause of death among Hispanic males aged 15-34 is suicide. 

WHO exactly is killing and depressing all these Hispanic males?

And are you wondering about the statistics for the much accused privileged white males? 
Well,

• the leading cause of death for white males aged 1-44 is "unintentional injuries."
• Yet the second leading cause of death for white males aged 10-34 is suicide.
• Homicide is the third leading cause of death for white males aged 15-24.

Who is murdering or depressing these young men? White cops?

It's shocking that homicide and suicide rank above cancer, heart disease, and most illnesses. We hear so much about cancer-prevention and helping children suffering from diseases or disabilities, but the statistics show we should be equally concerned about children of all races and ethnicities either being murdered or murdering themselves.

It seems that America is a nation of misplaced priorities, and it's those misplaced priorities are being set by Leftists and civil rights groups under the guise of being oh-so passionately compassionate and concerned.

In contrast, the second leading cause of death (after unintentional injuries) for white females aged 15-24 is suicide. Homicide comes in far after white males, with it being the 4th leading cause of death for white females aged 1-9 and 15-24, while it's the 5th leading cause of death for white females aged 10-14.

For black females aged 1-34, the leading cause of death is again, "unintentional injuries." (For black females above the age of 35, it's either cancer or heart disease.)

Disturbingly, homicide is the second leading cause of death among black females aged 1-4 and aged 14-24, a more common cause of death than disease, birth defects, or suicide.

As stated above, for Native American females, suicide is the #1 leading cause of death between the ages of 10-19.

• Suicide comprises 30.3% of deaths of Native American girls aged 10-14
• Suicide comprises 39.4% of deaths of Native American girls aged 15-19

Meaning, Native American teenage girls are more likely to die by their own hand than by disease, accidents, or anything else.

Does that bother you at all?

It bothers me.

Yet when do you hear people talking about this?

Then suicide decreases to the 2nd leading cause of death (16%, after unintentional injuries) for Native American females aged 20-24 and then ties for 2nd place with chronic liver disease for Native American females aged 25-34 with 8.7% of deaths resulting from either one. (The ranking of chronic liver disease is unique to Native Americans compared with all the other groups.)

In contrast to the other groups, cancer makes an appearance as a leading cause of death for Hispanic females, which it doesn't for other races or genders. Hispanic females aged 10-14 or 35-44 are most likely to die of cancer, and not than unintentional injuries or anything else. Suicide becomes the second leading cause of death for Hispanic females aged 15-24 and the 3rd leading cause for the ages 10-14 and 25-34.

What does that mean? I don't know.

Furthermore, despite the hype about white privileged males, the above statistics show that young white males are killing themselves as much as or even more than reputedly disadvantaged groups of the same age, like black or Hispanic females.

Why is that? What's going on? And why is no one talking about that either?

It's been said several times on this blog that American culture is basically a cult nowadays. If you just rely on mainstream media, you will think that black males are in urgent danger of being killed by white cops.

And yes, you may also hear that the leading cause of death for a young black male is murder by another young black male. At least they get that priority right.

You will also hear lots of stuff on racism and worry about the self-esteem of teenage girls, their body image, general self-image, depression, rights, and eating disorders.

You will also be under the impression that white males are "privileged" as if they live on Easy Street and can be dismissed or ignored. Even more, media propaganda gives the impression that white males need to make way for less advantaged groups -- like females and all non-white groups (in other words, literally everyone else in the country).

In other words, we don't need to worry about white guys.

But do you ever hear that the second leading cause of death in young white males is themselves?

There is a lot of propaganda going on and a lot of distraction to keep us from looking at real problems.

So for example, if I wanted to look at the lives of American teenagers and how to help them, I would start by looking at the 4 LOCD (leading causes of death) within genders and racial/ethnic groups.

The following is based on a much more extensive breakdown along genders, ages, races & ethnicities, which you can see at this link:
https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/index.htm

And the initial breakdown looks like this:

So just looking at the ranking, I'm concerned that suicide is one of the top 3 leading causes of death in all groups, and even the top 2 or the leading cause of death in the case of Native American females.

Why on earth are young people in one of the best places to live killing themselves?

And because the 2nd and 3rd leading cause of death among white males is suicide and homicide (the same ranking, though not the same percentage, as for the truly underprivileged male Native Americans), I would immediately remove the classification of "privileged."

Unless, of course, you think it is a privilege to hate and despair of yourself and your future so much that you end your own life or you think it's a privilege to be murdered.

I'm also wondering what "unintentional injuries" are?

It's the leading cause or 2nd leading cause of death in all groups.

Does it mean that teenagers are clumsy? Living with irresponsible people? Driving badly or living in areas where people drive badly? Are they swimming irresponsibly? Engaging in daredevil activities? Sports? Eating spoiled food? Accidentally drinking bleach that someone stored in a water bottle?

Let's see what "unintentional injuries" kill teenagers in the USA...

You can read the full article on this subject and see all the graphs here:
https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/unintentional-injuries

Unintentional Killer #1: Vehicles
It was a bit difficult to get details on exactly what kind and how much of "unintentional injuries" kill teenagers, but motor vehicle accidents are the leading death by "unintentional injuries" in this age group. Now, motor vehicle deaths have gone down quite a lot for children and teenagers (perhaps due to safety features and improved medical treatment), but this still remains the highest cause of death for this age group.

Unintentional Killer #2: Poisoning
"Poisoning." It's not what you might think.

The 2012 statistic shows that 85% of "unintentional injury" of teens through "poisoning" is from drug overdose or alcohol poisoning (which I'm assuming means that the alcohol didn't poison them like drinking a bit of hemlock would, but that they drank too much alcohol at one time).

Now, you might think that drug or alcohol overdose is suicide (after all, it's self-inflicted and easily controllable), but it's only considered suicide if the person meant to commit suicide. If he or she only meant to get high or drunk, then the resulting death is an "unintentional injury."

Death by "poisoning" has actually increased in teenagers.

Because so much of it has to do with alcohol or drugs, it's a wholly preventable death.

And since there is no need to drink or take drugs (while there is a need to use motor vehicles), one wonders why teens are engaging in such self-destructive behavior.

I would also look at this "unintentional injury" in conjunction with the suicide rate and wonder why American teenagers are feeling so unhappy and so hopeless.

Unintentional Killer #3: Drowning
Knowing American teens as I do, I can't help wondering how many of these unintentional drowning deaths are alcohol-related.

Unintentional Killer #4: Other
What does this comprise? I'm not sure. Yet it ranks out above unintentional death by fire, suffocation, and other transportation (planes, trains, etc).

Cancer & Disease
I'm also concerned about the ranking of cancer in teenagers. While no one is sure about the exact causes of cancer, there are interesting theories.

Many studies show a correlation between cancer and lifestyle & diet.

Yet newer and more probing theories suggest a correlation between cancer and one's inner world. People who eat themselves up with envy, resentment, bitterness, and hatred (of themselves or others) can find the cancer eating up their own body.

Just off the top of my head,  I can think of at least 2 people I knew who died of cancer that seemed to come from rage and helplessness. One repressed her negative feelings, but one admitted not long before she died that she "knew" her illness came from an maddening situation that seemed to have no end or resolution in sight.

Even seemingly cheerful or serene people can repress such emotions while these negative traits eat them up inside without them realizing the existence of these feelings.

And heart disease in such young people? What's going on?

Pregnancy Complications
I'm also concerned about death from pregnancy complications.

The percentage of teenage deaths resulting from pregnancy complications are as follows:

• Native American: 3%
• Black: 3%
• Hispanic: 1.1%
• White: 1%
• Asian: Doesn't even make the ranking

I'm assuming most of these girls aren't married and that these are irresponsibly conceived pregnancies.

And I'd look to Asian teens to see what they're doing, to learn why they don't die of pregnancy complications. Maybe discovering that can help the girls in other groups.

Homicide
What percentage of teen deaths result from murder?:

• Black males: 49.5%
• Hispanic males: 20.2%
• Black females: 17.9%
• Native American males: 14.2%
• White males: 8.6%
• Hispanic females: 8.5%
• Asian males: 6.6%
• White females: 4.9%
• Asian female: 2%
• Native American females: 1.5%

Oh, gosh.

This means that half the time you're looking at a dead teenage black boy, you're looking at a murder.

With Hispanic males and black females, around one out of every 5 or 6 teen deaths is a murder.

Who is killing these kids?

We know that young black men are the prime killers of other young black men, but who is killing all these black females and Native American males?

Do anyone really believe it's white cops or President Trump's rhetoric?

(It's not.)

Also, while the percentage of male Native American deaths via murder is high, the percentage for female Native Americans is lowest. But why? Is the reason reassuring or disturbing? For example, is it because Native American teenage girls are killing themselves before anyone else can?

It's all extremely disturbing and I don't understand why it's not being discussed more widely and frequently.

Also, please note that a larger percentage of white male death results from murder than Hispanic, Asian, White, and Native American females and Asian males.

Also, a white teenage male is twice as likely to be killed by a cop than an Asian teenage male.

What a tremendous privilege!

(Question: If white cops are racist, then why are they more likely to kill a white guy than, say, a Chinese guy?)

Suicide
What percentage of teen deaths result from suicide?:

• Native American females: 39.4%
• Native American males: 33%
• Asian males: 27.3%
• White males: 25.5%
• Asian female: 21.8%
• White females: 18.7%
• Hispanic males: 16.1%
• Hispanic females: 15.7%
• Black females: 9.2%
• Black males: 8.8%

This is so bizarre and disturbing.

This also leaves a lot of questions.

For example, is the percentage of black male suicide the lowest because black teenage boys are happier and more hopeful than everyone else or because other black youth kill them before they can kill themselves?

It also looks like, despite their "privileged" skin color and gender, white males are more deeply unhappy and despairing of themselves than white females, Asian females, Hispanics, and blacks -- some of the very groups generally considered underprivileged and disadvantaged.

Why is that? Why isn't their much-lauded white male privilege working for them?

It's all very disturbing with a lot of unknowns. (Unknown to me, at least. Likely, someone else knows.)

After reviewing all this, it's impossible not to be extremely concerned about Native American teenage girls.

As shown above, nearly 40% of Native American teen female deaths result from suicide. (And don't forget that the following cause of death is "unintentional injury," which includes a lot of self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose.) The suicide rate for preteen Native American females is also whoppingly high at 30% and the homicide ranking for Native American females aged 1-4 is one of the highest (around 15%, the same as for black males aged 1-4).

Yet we don't see anyone blaring: "Native American Girl Lives Matter!" even though I really think that someone needs to tell Native American girls that their lives actually matter a lot because they don't seem to be realizing this on their own.

The Asian male suicide rate is also alarming, especially taking into account that the next Asian male age group of 20-24 ranks suicide as the #1 leading cause of death, making up 34.6% of the deaths in that age group, which is not so different than Native American female teens.

Why is that?

Perhaps we need to approach Asian males on college campuses and hand them a "Your Life Matters" sticker.

Anyway, someone might want to look into that.

But I think none of this information will gain any mileage because it doesn't fit the agenda of the people disseminating the propaganda.

I don't think they care about anyone's lives.

Okay, you know how Mark Twain said, "There are...lies, damn lies, and statistics"?

All the above represent percentage of deaths, but another important indicator is percentage of population. And that's missing from all the above.

For example, if black male teen death was super low, then the fact that half result from murder means something different than if black male teen death in general is very high.

Also, within that abstract and varied category of "unintentional injuries," it matters a lot what percentage of the fatal injuries resulted from motor vehicle accidents caused by the other driver and also what percentage were drug- and alcohol-related.

So the above numbers tell a lot and are very disturbing, but they are far from being the whole story. A lot of information is still missing.

Also, there is a lot of background information missing.

Cultural background plays a huge part in the above statistics.

For example, Native Americans endure an exceptional status in America and many live on reservation where they are given the impression of self-governance, yet are really at the mercy of non-Native American bureaucrats. Many reservations endure dismal conditions and offer dismal futures.

Because they're nations living within a nation, they experience differences in lifestyle, identity, and status compared to other American minorities. For example, many tribes attempt some form of self-governance on their reservation. (The strength and success of this attempt varies from place to place.) And there are hundreds of treaties made by the American government with different tribes, which are still considered in force today (even though they've all been violated at least once, usually by the American government).

As another example, the Kickapoo tribe was able to travel back and forth over the Mexican-US border using their official tribal enrollment card instead of an American passport like every other American citizen. In 2011, Pascua Yaqui & Kootenai tribes issued Enhanced Travel Cards that can be used between the Mexican-US border and on US domestic flights. In fact, the Iroquis/Haudenosaunee tribe has their own passport (but this is not honored globally). Many feel like they possess dual citizenship with their tribal nation and the USA and lack trust toward the American government (even as many are reliant of US government programs).

Finally, different tribes don't necessarily like each other, so it's difficult to create "the" best plan for Native Americans as a whole. Just like Native Americans have a history of war and broken treaties with the US government, they also have a history of wars and atrocities between different tribes. To this day, for example, there is animosity between the Lakota Sioux tribe and the Crow tribe.

Other background factors are that some Asian cultures view suicide as the acceptable or even honorable option in certain situations, so that may impact the high suicide rate among Asians.

Those are just 2 examples.

I can think of a lot more questions and possible contraindications and contradictions by looking at the above, but this post is long & convoluted enough as is.

But anyway, it seems to me that people fed by the media will continue to badly misunderstand and misprioritize the real problems in America and will assume that the problems can be solved by shouting slogans, wearing nonsensical symbols, ignoring facts, focusing on their own group while ignoring the hardships of other groups who may be suffering a lot more, protesting against Ben Shapiro speeches, and heaping blame on President Trump & white cops.

Anyway, we see that the issues of concern in society are complex and take a lot of research, and are horribly misrepresented or underrepresented in the media.

But it's clear that white cops are not a major problem in these issues.

Neither are President Trump's tweets or Ben Shapiro's presence on college campuses.

And black people are not the only people deserving of our care and attention.

So why all the distraction from real problems and their roots?

Also, it seems that racism is not the core of today's worst problems, but self-hatred is, along with a lack of hope or meaning in life, a lack of respect & appreciation for oneself and for others.

It seems that this is a result of an increasingly Godless society, where values such as realizing that everyone (including yourself) is made in God's Image, and that Godly values like compassion, forbearance, humility, perseverance, and emuna are considered naive, superstitious, or inapplicable.

Related Post:
Why No One Needs BLM; We Just Need God

Another major lesson learned from the Pele Yoetz is to avoid pressuring people to bite off more than they can chew.

And many times, we don't know the limits or the capabilities of others.

Sometimes we have a good idea of another's limits or capabilities.

But other times, we just project ourselves onto the other person -- a form of arrogance for us and a discouragement to the other person.

So yeah, sometimes, we pressure others from from our own ego.

Other times, we're so enthused about a certain mitzvah and the way it's working for us, that we forget that the other person may not have the capability to do that mitzvah in the special way that we do.

(And if you find yourself faced with a high-octane enthusiast, I think it's usually best to just go along with them, tell them how great they're doing -- because you get reward for encouraging others & making them feel good about their mitzvot, mezakeh harabim, etc. -- and leave your own personal failings out of it. Just be happy for them as much as you can. Speaking from personal experience on both sides of this scenario... ;)

Anyway, we learn from the Pele Yoetz the importance of encouraging people that even the tiniest act counts for a lot.

For example, regarding Torah study, the Pele Yoetz repeatedly states the following throughout his book:

The Pele Yoetz does not mean that you shouldn't learn more than that verse if you're able -- on the contrary, he exhorts men to learn as much as they can, including Zohar!

But when a guy finds himself with even the smallest amount of free time ("even the short time it takes for a swallow of saliva"), he should say "v'achot Lotan Timna" (Beresheit 36:22) and earn overwhelming reward.

(That's pretty positive and encouraging, isn't it?)

The Pele Yoetz also stresses this regarding men who aren't learned or who barely know how to read; he encourages them with the above.

(And just for knowing, the Pele Yoetz also felt very strongly about the need teach women and girls how to both read and write: "And how good it would be if women were to learn the skill of writing, for then they could easily learn everything!" He also exhorts the women of his time to go to the women's section of a synagogue in order to hear the Torah lectures given there, quoting Shir Hashirim 2:9 as proof.)
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So this is very important:

• Don't overload or overwhelm people.

 

• Don't make people feel like if they can't keep up the pace or perform grand gestures, then their efforts are meaningless or worthless.

Encourage people by reassuring them that even the smallest & briefest mitzvah they carry out can reap unimaginable reward and make a significant difference -- as long as they mean to do it for Hashem.

Start out small -- start out miniscule and weak, if that's where you're holding -- then keep on going throughout your failures and successes, sure in the fact that even the tiniest briefest mitzvah reaps great reward and holds mind-boggling significance.

This is straight from Rav Eliezer Papo, a tremendous self-sacrificing tzaddik.

One of the obstacles for women to reading original sources is their discussion of women. And at some point, the Sage will mention women's daat kalah.

I think a lot of women don't know quite how to respond in their own mind to this, and I think there is trepidation or a lack of skills in looking it up. So a lot of people (including men) fall back on apologetics or trying to pretend it's not there or trying to understand it superficially (with all the negativity that implies).

But first, here's an explanation of daat (or daas, if you prefer):
Daat is very hard to translate because it means different things in different contexts. In some contexts, daat means “knowledge” or “mind,” but neither of those definitions relate to daat in this context.

In Kiddushin 80b, Rashi explains daat kalah as being more "easily swayed/influenced/seduced” by subjective factors.

So there you go.

And yes, men are also swayed by subjective factors, like their physical needs (which is why some men can "forget" really important things or behave irresponsibly and selfishly when they are tired or hungry or worse), but an observant person will see that it's still different than the way in which women are swayed and influenced.

For example, it's easier to convince women to act against their own interests or values or integrity or knowledge than it is for men IF the women are not firmly anchored in emuna.

This is why history is replete with out-of-wedlock conceptions and women functioning as "ladies of the evening" and more recently, the feminist movement and the female pro-abortion stance and joining military combat units. It's immoral men and immoral women taking advantage of such women's daat kalah for their own evil agendas.

In contrast, Chazal heaps praises on women's steadfast emuna and loyalty to Hashem, praising women for keeping the halachot they know more faithfully than men.

So steadfast emuna counteracts any downside to daat kalah.

The prime daat source—Chazal—imbues every person with a center of spiritual gravity to hold him or her securely in place. The more one learns AND internalizes Torah, the more daat he or she has.

Women don't completely lack daat, we are just daat-lite. Men have both daat and binah, but women are lighter than men on daat and heavier than men on binah, baruch Hashem.

And here is the truth with which many modern women understandably struggle when reading Chazal:
If you are female, you are innately light on daat.

Yes, you are.

But it doesn't mean that you can't achieve personal greatness.

Sara Imeinu was a higher-level prophet than her husband, yet she still had daat kalah.

Beruria was a screaming genius and a baalat emuna, yet she still had daat kalah.

Chana merited to birth Shmuel and is the prototype for tefillah, but she still had daat kalah.

Hashem set things up like this for everyone's benefit. Men are supposed to provide women with daat. It's part of the innate giver role with which Hashem imbued men.

A lot of men refuse to access their own daat, let alone let it overflow onto others, which is one of the major reasons why things have gotten so wonky in the frum world.

If women are lucky, they have fathers or husbands who are a healthy source of daat. This is a significant part of the male role in family and society. Unfortunately, many men don't know to fulfill this role properly and many women don't understand the importance of being receptive to this male contribution.

If you are a woman and you don't have the appropriate men in your life, or the men you do have are either amei haaretz or namby-pamby misers about providing you with your rightful quantities of daat, then you can turn to learning mussar on your own, learning a halacha a day, consulting with a rav (if he's right for you), or just turn straight to the Source Himself: Hashem (which is exactly what smart Jewish women have done for millennia, actually.)

But it's vitally important to note what daat kalah is NOT.

Daat kalah is NOT synonymous with being:

• stupid
• pathetic
• hysterical
• unworthy
• deserving of disrespect
• blindly obedient
• inconsequential
• an excuse to denigrate women (including a self-denigrating woman)

It CAN be the root of or exacerbate the above negative qualities, but it doesn't NEED to.

And again, this can't be said enough:
Daat in this context has nothing to do with intellectual IQ.

You (ladies) can have skipped 2 grades in elementary school, achieve early entrance to Harvard medical school, and graduate at the top of your class...and still be controlled by your daat kalah. (Yep. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty.)

On the other hand, you can be a regular student and get married out of high school and balance keeping house while sitting pregnant at your part-time desk job...and be wise beyond your years, a fountain of good middot, wisdom, and brilliantly applied binah. (I've seen this too and believe me, it's something to aim for.)

Please remember that in the same breath (or quill) that Chazal mention a woman's daat kalah, they also mention her extra binah, an ishah chachamah (a wise woman), an ishah maskilah (an intelligent woman), female prophetesses, along with the great emuna, fidelity, mesirut nefesh possible in women.

The Torah itself is compared to a Woman of Valor (Eishet Chayil), and other exalted holy female characterizations are:

• the holy Jewish neshamah
• the Shechinah
• Eretz Yisrael
• the Jewish people
• the Sabbath (Shabbat Kallah/Bride)

So in a nutshell, you can have daat kalah and still become:

• a prophetess
• a woman of great wisdom
• a woman of profound intelligence
• a holy woman
• a tzadekes (a completely righteous woman)
• the best adviser to your husband (so says Bava Metzia 59a)

On the other hand, a man has normal amounts of daat, but he can still be an evil pig.

So to sum it all up:

Women who allow their innate negatives to control them are a pain in the neck and damage society.

Men who allow their innate negatives to control them are a pain in the neck and damage society.

Women who use properly what Hashem gives them become a merit for the world (as the Kli Yakar says in Chayei Sara, that righteous women are as vital to the world as the rotation of the Sun).

Men who use properly what Hashem gives them become a merit for the world (like the 36 tzaddikim in whose merit Hashem allows the world to exist) 

So everything depends on what you do with it.

Chazal doesn't denigrate women, it states a fact for the benefit of both men and women. (And really, since they mostly expected men to read their words, they mostly wanted men to understand this IN ORDER for men to take proper responsibility.)

Well, if this was your issue (as it was mine at one time), I hope this helped.
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Related post:
Halacha: The Best Boost for Daat Kalah

May we all complete our tikkun in this lifetime without trials or tribulations.

A favorite excuse nowadays is to dismiss the works of holy Sages as being applicable "back then, but not for our times." Or to ascribe the Sage as being "on such a high level," "normal people" are incapable of emulating his example or following his advice "especially in modern times." Even frum people can err in these utterances and unnecessarily lower their own standards.

In fact, the Pele Yoetz was well-aware of this tendency to dismiss Sagely directives as "too hard" or "not for our times." So in his chapter called "Hatred," he discusses the commandment to love one's fellow to himself and states:

This concept is from the Gemara, actually, and Rav Papo is only one of many to repeat this point.

Yet how can we dismiss the words of a tzaddik on the level of Rav Eliezer Papo, who died for the sins of his people to save his city from the effects of a devastating plague?

Rav Papo was very close to Hashem and knew he exactly what he was talking about and who he was speaking to.

The other way people like to dismiss Sagely words is by attributing attitudes and insights to "those times" and "that culture."

Certainly, times have changed, technologically speaking, and women's opportunities have changed. So if the Sage is speaking purely from the standpoint of primitive methods (i.e. needing to arise early to toil at lighting a coal stove rather than flipping an electric switch or assuming that the vast majority of women are completely illiterate, if they were in his time), then you can dismiss the literal intention of his words without dismissing the wisdom.

But it's not something to be done automatically, either. We still need to scrutinize what he says so we don't accidentally throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Another big difference between then and now is the concept of a "minyan factory" or "shteiblach."

In some communities today, you can find minyanim all day long. Do you need to daven neitz at 4:08 AM? Do you need the latest Shacharit or the earliest Mincha? Do you need to daven Maariv at 3:15 AM? You've got a minyan!

As far as I know, even big cities of yore with thriving Jewish communities didn't have minyanim 'round the clock. All the more so, smaller communities that davened together at set times.

So a Sage from a century ago understood that if you didn't get up or out at a certain time, you missed your chance of davening in a minyan at all, which may not be true today if you're living in Jerusalem or Lakewood.

Yet we can still take to heart their basic encouragement to develop passion and alacrity for davening on time.

Dismissing the Sage due to cultural influence is also a mistake. Yes, Sages addressed the problems and issues of their times. But great people have the ability to rise above their times and be influenced by Torah values, not cultural values.

Case in point: Rav Papo lived in the Balkans under the Muslim rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Yet his admonitions toward every husband to treat his wife with great love and sensitivity and his blanket opposition to any kind of verbal or physical abuse toward the wife (even if the wife herself was wicked or abusive) certainly flew in the face of Balkan and Muslim values. Even today, neither religious Muslim attitudes nor the modernized Bosnian and Bulgarian attitudes toward women are up to the stipulations of Rav Papo.

As he advises husbands:

And regarding a really bad wife, he reminds the husband of what is written in Eruvin 41b:

Oh, and then there's this:

(He means that if women knew how to read and write, then they could learn everything they needed to know of halacha and mussar on their own.)

In 19th-Century Bulgaria & Bosnia under Muslim rule, where else could Rav Papo be getting such ideas...except from the Torah?

Clearly, there is no "cultural influence" happening here.

Just for knowing, Rav Papo also insists on very high standards for wives, but not as high as the standards he sets for husbands. Plus, he comes off as more sympathetic toward women with difficult or abusive husbands and offers them more practical advice than he does for men, including having a beit din stop the abusive husband with "a strong arm" and advises others to help the woman to get divorced if she wants, calling any divorce assistance "a great mitzvah" in such a situation.

As far as I could tell, the only advice he offers suffering men is to be really kind, sweet, loving, pleasant, and patient no matter how awful the wife is -- no strong-arming the wife or offering the husband divorce as an option.

(Perhaps men can insist on a "men's studies" curriculum in college where they can rant against this blatant double standard in Judaism, a clear result of this patriarchal religion dominated by dead white men.)

An example of the Pele Yoetz speaking to "the times" in which he lived is when he advises that one who doesn't understand Hebrew go to a sage to have the sage write out the entire work (I think it was the Pesach Haggadah) in Bulgarian so that the person can fulfill the mitzvah properly.

Needless to say, we don't need to pester our local rabbis to write out the entire Haggadah in Bulgarian. We have Artscroll English translations instead.

However, the spirit of the Pele Yoetz's instruction still stands: If you don't know Hebrew, you need to make sure you have a Haggadah in the language of your choice.

There are many other examples of exhortations and teachings that seem time- or culture-bound or far beyond our abilities, but really aren't.

Women in particular may have a difficult time with certain assumptions expressed in Chazal. One of the biggest changes between the olden days and now is women's education. Women today are fully literate and in the USA, women even comprise a larger percentage of college graduates than men.

Yet scholastic achievement doesn't affect a woman's daat compared to a man's daat. (Daat and IQ/education are not synonymous; a woman can be a top-level genius in, say, mathematical physics and still have daat kalah.) And women still have not (and will not) achieved equal representation in left-brained fields until Mashiach comes.

Furthermore, whether a woman uses her extra binah in a positive constructive way or in a negative destructive way depends on her character and knowledge of halacha and mussar, and not her academic knowledge or IQ.

Female readers struggle with certain statements of Torah Sages, and rather than trying to understand them in context, they often either dismiss them as a result of the times when women were illiterate (and sometimes, this is an appropriate dismissal, but not always) or they sink into self-denigration (even women with feminist tendencies can do this, ironically) and castigate themselves and their gender as truly not being intelligent enough or good enough or rational enough or whatever.

Yet rather than being superficially dismissive or superficially presumptive, it's best to try to just delve into understanding what a Sage really meant when you come across something that rubs you wrong.

I mean, if the same Sage mentions women as being chalushat haseichel (of weak intellect) and remarks on the downfalls of daat kalah as per Chava and the Nachash, yet goes on to praise women copiously throughout the rest of his early 17th-century work (yes, I'm talking about the Kli Yakar), and in fact praises women's loyalty to God, their emuna, their modesty and marital fidelity, their generosity, and their love of Eretz Yisrael as far surpassing that of men, and even declares that righteous women (nashim tzidkaniyot) -- specifically righteous women even in the face of righteous men -- are as essential to the world as the Sun itself...well, it's disingenuous to dismiss him or condemn him with the usual feminist blather and ranting.
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Related Posts:
Why We Need to Let the Pele Yoetz (and Any Old-Time Mussar) Penetrate Our Modern Life & How to Do It (the great saintliness of Rav Eliezer Papo and why we need to take his words to heart even in our days)
Halacha: The Best Boost for Daat Kalah
Kli Yakar on Parshat Chayei Sara (righteous women as the Sun; scroll down to the end)
Kli Yakar on Parshat Pinchas (women's love for Eretz Yisrael and other positive attributes)
Kli Yakar on Parshat V'Zoht Habracha (real and welcome equality after Mashiach comes)
You can find more by the Kli Yakar by clicking on: WOMEN
(Then keep going back to the earlier posts.)

Perhaps it's a good idea to talk a bit about women's real standing in Judaism.

As usual with anything that is authentic Judaism, it's not superficial. It's more complex and contains paradox.

So with that...

There's a very interesting incident described on page 101 in Rav Yehudah Petiya's book Minchat Yehudah (written around 1933) in the chapter on Parshat Ekev. This incident occurred while the rav was still living in Baghdad.

An elderly Jewish woman came to him with the following story:

She owned millstones and had been sifting wheat during in the morning hours when she found a date among the wheat. With the purest of intentions, she made the wrong blessing (she said borei pri ha'adamah instead of borei pri ha'etz) and ate the date.

When she returned to her sifting, she suddenly dozed off and saw an old man standing before her.

"Chen, chen lach, ishah tovah!" he greeted her.

(Chen is often translated as beauty, charm, favor, or grace and the phrase "Chen, chen lah" is found in Zechariah 4:7. So this old man used a beautiful expression of gratitude by saying, "Chen, chen to you, good woman!")

And this old man continued:
"And I give you thanks because you rescued me from the suffering I was enduring, even though you did not rescue me completely."

Then he disappeared.

So Rav Petiyah explained that the soul of this old man had been reincarnated into a date. And just by this simple yet pious woman eating the date, the old man ascended two levels together. As a date, he was at the level of tzomech (plant), skipped the level of chai (animal), and went straight to chai medaber (human).

Rav Petiyah states:

(Borei pri ha'adamah blesses the "fruit of the ground" -- usually vegetables. "Borei pri ha'etz blesses the fruit of the tree.)

It's very interesting that this sincere albeit simple & unlearned elderly woman possessed the ability to completely rectify a lost soul, and even her incorrect blessing still managed to achieve near-rectification. Rectifying souls is what kabbalists on the level of Rav Petiyah do. There are famous stories of tzaddikim rectifying souls by focusing on the special profound kavanot of a blessing before biting into a fruit.

But a simple elderly lady who doesn't even know the correct blessing?

Rav Petiyah offers an astounding reason for this:

The spiritual physics here are intriguing.

Men can rectify souls only after lots of learning, mind-focus, and inner purification.

But women can rectify souls just by making a sincere blessing (even if it's the wrong one).

Even more intriguingly, the brief description in the book indicates a particularly simple old woman, a woman who owns millstones and sifts wheat, rather than crochets or embroiders or cooks and bakes like other ladies her age. She's a woman so illiterate and ignorant, she doesn't even know the correct blessing even when the blessing is obvious. (Some blessings are more complicated, like needing to say "ha'adamah" over a banana rather than "ha'etz," but a date blessing is fairly straightforward.)

Furthermore, there's also a chance that she didn't really know Hebrew. Iraqi Jews spoke a form of Judeo-Arabic, which utilized many Hebrew terms (in much the way Yiddish utilizes many Hebrew terms), but she still may not have understood the literal meaning of the all-Hebrew blessing -- which, if true, means that she couldn't have said it with basic kavanah of the literal meaning, which makes it even more incredible that just her sincerity and purity counted for so much.

Finally, unlike the tzaddikim who made specially focused blessings over food, knowing the food often possessed souls in need of rectification, this elderly Jewess had no idea about this possibility.

Yet she was a sincere and pious Jewish lady, so Hashem gave her the merit to achieve a powerful kabbalistic accomplishment without her even realizing it.

But as implied by Rav Petiyah's words above, an illiterate ignorant man could never have achieved the same thing.

Yet there are even deeper and more enlightening implications in this story.

For around a century, there has been increasing back-and-forth about women's role in Judaism, the variations of it, in comparison to men's role, how a woman's role adjusts to modern times, and so on.

Likewise, there are Jewish laws purely based on gender that either forbid or permit men or woman to do or not do certain things.

And grounded knowledgeable frum women pleasantly explain that they don't feel the need to engage in men's mitzvot, and that they're even happy they don't bear the same yoke men do. (And men presumably prefer going to a minyan 3 times a day & learning the Daf Yomi to enduring monthly cycles, pregnancy, birth, and menopause.)

Yet it's even deeper than that, according to Rav Petiyah.

For example, because women are mostly forbidden to wear tefillin, this means that women don't NEED to wear tefillin in order to achieve whatever men achieve by wearing tefillin.

In other words, WOMEN CAN ACHIEVE what men achieve WITHOUT specifically male mitzvot.

When I took a tznius class years ago, the speaker explained that a married woman covering her hair is equal to a man donning tefillin shel rosh. Covering your elbows is equal to tefillin shel yad.

Unfortunately, due to the spirit of the times, whenever people talk like this, it sounds like apologetics and patronizing appeasement, like how you try to get a child to do a "biiiiiiig mitzvah!".

(This is despite the fact that specialized photo technology has revealed special changes in the auras of women before and after covering their hair and in the auras of men before and after donning tefillin -- link at the end of the post.)

That's why I like to take sources from before these modern movements. The above story may have been published in 1930s Jerusalem, but it occurred in Baghdad much earlier. Needless to say, turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Iraq was not a bastion of feminism, so we need not suspect that Rav Petiyah was just trying to bulk up women's egos. It's also clear that he wrote the book expecting men to read it, not women.

So we can take his words to heart in the innocence, sincerity, and wisdom with which they were intended.

There's another point here that often gets lost in the crowd.

Judaism is not a dry, intellectual collection of scholarship.

The entire point of halacha is for the SOUL.

The soul is eternal. This World is a narrow, finite, dim world of only 3-dimensions.

The real world beyond this consists of several different levels and many different dimensions imperceptible and unimaginable to us in our current state.

Our life in this world is finite, 120 years at most.

Beyond that, there is eternity.

This is why the focus needs to go deeper than feel-good or feel-contemporary academic-based arguments, even though a genuine and deeper focus becomes impossible when faced with an opposition that is agnostic at best, and immature, petty, superficial, and glory-seeking.

I want to point out that Sara Imeinu did not don tefillin nor did she undergo bris milah, wear a kippah...yet she achieved a higher level of prophecy than Avraham Avinu and merited to speak directly to angels.

Chana was never and could never be counted in a minyan or lead prayers as chazzan, yet she merited to be the model of prayer for all generations and produced Shmuel Hanavi, who was only second to Moshe Rabbeinu (H/T to informed reader Bracha), achieving more than her illustrious husband, Elkanah. Also, it's interesting to point out that Chana initially achieved the level she did without performing the traditional women's mitzvot connected to giving birth, nursing, and Jewish child-rearing.

Furthermore, holy women achieve their holiness despite regularly entering into a state a spiritual tumah called niddah.

Yes, there are mitzvot traditionally considered in the male realm (like learning Chumash with commentaries), but that women are not only permitted to do, and even receive Heavenly reward for this. (As Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg explained, a woman receives the reward for one who is not obligated in the mitzvah while a man receives the reward for one who is obligated in that mitzvah.)

But as stated above, there are also gender-based prohibitions for both men and women. Those who transgress these prohibitions aren't doing themselves or the Jewish community any good.

Each person has been given the tools he or she needs in order to reach his or her maximum potential.

No one wants a surgeon performing surgery with an electric chainsaw and no one wants logs cut with a scalpel.

You need the tools meant for YOU.

And you'll find your personal tools within your gender, personality, innate character traits, state of health, life situation, culture, and much more.

Hashem is Perfectly Just and has the spiritual physics set up exactly right for each person, regardless of gender, to achieve whatever potential Hashem has set for him or her.

It's not about women "settling" for second place or being second-best.

It's about women resisting the pressure to expend the time, mental gymnastics, money, and sweat to go digging for gold among rocks in a distant place when she has a field sown with diamonds in her own backyard.

Rav Yehudah Petiyah (also spelled Fatiyah) was born in Bagdad in 1859 and passed away in Jerusalem in 1942. He was humble and deeply compassionate Jew of tremendous spiritual stature and abilities. To learn more about him and his book Minchat Yehudah, please start here:
Minchat Yehudah Part I: Teshuvah & What Happens After You Die

For a good explanation and photos of the auras of Jewish men before and after tefillin and Jewish women before and after hair-covering, please see:
The Human Aura (may it be a zechut & an ilui neshama for Menachem ben Reuven -- formerly, I had him identified by his mother's name as per Sefardi minhag, but thank you to Neshama who reminded me that Ashkenazi minhag is different, and thank you to Stella for going out of her way to supply his father's name)

Please click on WOMEN to read more about the holy Jewish women mentioned above.
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P.S. Regarding the feminist tides against Torah Judaism: There is a lot more to say, like how some of the leading feminist rabble rebelling against Jewish tradition don't even believe in God, so what do they care about Torah and mitzvot and where women pray and how? They are obviously disreputable hypocrites and rapacious autocrats, may Hashem have mercy and atone for us all.

While writing about the different personalities in Tanach, I realized that I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Rebbetzin Holly Pavlov for her masterpiece, Mirrors of Our Lives: Reflections of Women in Tanach.

It's a deep, scholarly, mind-blowing book that delves into several different personalities of Jewish women in Tanach and, with power and depth, explains some hard-to-understand events that occurred, like Rachel Imeinu's death after birthing Binyamin.

Anyway, before I read Mirrors of Our Lives, I never noticed the pronounced differences between the personalities of the Imahot (Matriarchs) and their marital relationships. Therefore, I certainly didn't realize what they had to teach us in this regard.

What Rebbetzin Pavlov inspired me to realize was that despite some presentation to the contrary, there are different ways of being a great Jewish woman and different ways of being a great Jewish wife and different styles of marriage dynamics -- all of which can be very good.

(There are also different ways of being a great Jewish man, as we see throughout Tanach.)

Until then, I'd been receiving a narrower view. This depends on your community and the books you read and the shiurim you listen to, but if you aren't careful, you can imbibe a narrow interpretation of what's acceptable or emulable.

Some people can make you feel bad for being an assertive, driven type while others can make you feel bad for being less driven and more contemplative.

Some people have more physical energy while others possess more mental energy.

Some advisers emphasize the importance of balance, but that often ends up trying to make everyone the same by, say, advising driven people to scale back and contemplative people to up their game.

Yes, it's true that driven people may need to scale back a bit at times and that contemplative people should up their game at times, but it's really yishuv hadaat we should aim for as our guide. Meaning, we should look to channel our capabilities and vibrancy in Torah ways rather than try to smush them this way or that in the futile struggle to achieve the ever-elusive "perfect balance."

The goal is not to be a Stepford Yid.

For example, Sara Imeinu came from the exact same background as Avraham Avinu. They worked mostly as equals, a hand-in-hand partnership. He represented chessed and she represented gevurah, and they acted very much as two halves of a whole. They were both solidly in the center of the world, reaching out to the society around them. Sara Imeinu was very assertive, bringing the idea of a second woman to fulfill the promise of progeny for Avraham Avinu, then ordering Hagar and Yishmael out when their presence proved a threat to her son Yitzchak. Chazal even notes that her level of prophecy was higher than that of her husband's.

Rivka Imeinu's relationship with Yitzchak Avinu seems almost the exact opposite of the first set of Patriarch-Matriarch. She was chessed, he was gevurah. She was the daughter of a rasha, he was the son of a tzaddik. They are the only couple who never brought in another woman to deal with the lengthy infertility. And from the moment Rivka Imeinu leaned off her camel and covered her face before Yitzchak Avinu, their relationship displayed a different dynamic. Though full of mutual love and trust, Rivka Imeinu held onto to a certain reserve with regard to Yitzchak, a reserve which comes up repeatedly.

At the same time, Rivka Imeinu and Yitzchak Avinu are the only couple described as "metzachek" in Parshat Toldot. Chazal gives interpretations for this word and that scenario, but its root is "laugh." In this otherwise serious, self-contained, reserved couple, there was happy affection.

Yet despite all their differences and contrasts, all four of these people are considered models of good Jews and their very different marriages are also considered equally good!

Both Sara Imeinu and Rivka Imeinu are considered ideal women and both Avraham Avinu and Yitzchak Avinu are considered ideal men.

And you can continue on examining the different personalities and marital dynamics in all the relationships of the rest (Leah Imeinu and Rachel Imeinu to Yaakov Avinu), including those of Zilpah and Bilha to Yaakov Avinu.

But the book helped me learn that you don't have one model.

There isn't one ideal.

Sometimes, people present a narrower view of Jewish ideals and models simply because they are projecting too much of themselves or their own desires onto their audience. This is certainly not intentional and I'm not sure that it's even avoidable. We see things how we see things, and how can one imperfect human being completely avoid bias and personal blindspots?

This is why I feel it's so important to do your own research and delve in as deep as you can. You may be limited by language, time, and concentration capabilities. (These also vacillate as your personal situation vacillates throughout your life. One life-stage is conducive to heavy-duty immersion in scholarship while another stage gets you overwhelmed just by reading a magazine sidebar.)

But whatever you can manage at any stage is still really good.

Some of the classic commentaries (like Rashi, Ramban, and some of the Kli Yakar) have been translated into English. There are also books (like Mirrors of Our Lives) and articles that delve into detailed descriptions and analyses of a particular personality's facets and events.

There are also shiurim that bring you deep into different personalities and events.

So even if you can't manage 12th-Century Hebrew (or English translations of 12th-Century Hebrew), there are still other and more digestible options, as described above.

And rather than others (including this blog ;-) telling you what you should get out of a certain role model or event in Tanach, I think it's ideal if you extract it yourself as far as you can using whatever tools you have.

Hashem guides each person in the way they need to go.

When you sincerely try to understand, you merit Heavenly assistance. (This Heavenly assistance can still be a process, BTW, and not instant illumination, frustratingly enough.)

Hashem gave us the Torah with all its breadth and depth in order for us to enhance and elevate ourselves, and not to confine or repress ourselves.

May Hashem grant us all blessing success in our soul's journey.

Chana was very different than many of the other awe-inspiring personalities that appear throughout Tanach.

In fact, she doesn't seem to be known by an official title like so many others, such as Sara Imeinu or Esther Hamalka or Devorah Haneviah; even though Chana was definitely a prophetess, she's not colloquially known as "Chana Haneviah." She's sometimes called "Chana, mother of Shmuel Hanavi" when there's a need to clarify which Chana is being discussed, but in my experience, she's usually referred to as simply "Chana."

(In fact, I think people even tend to forget that aside from epitomizing tefillah, she was actually a top-ranking prophetess. Like, "Who were the 7 main prophetesses again? Sara, Devorah, Miriam, and...oh, Chana was one, right?")

Just for knowing, the 7 are: Sara Imeinu, Devorah Haneviah, Miriam Haneviah, Queen Esther, Chulda Haneviah, Avigail (wife of David Hamelech) and...Chana, mother of Shmuel Hanavi! And it's true that a lot of people forget about Chuldah Haneviah and Avigail too, but also Chana.

So as far as I know, Chana had a nice frum upbringing in a nice frum environment. She enjoyed a strong marriage to the noble and influential Elkanah from the Tribe of Levi, who loved her very much.

But because it seemed that Chana couldn't have children, Elkanah then married Penina, who went on to have 10 children. That's a whole list of accomplishments right there!

Elkanah brought the Jewish people closer to Hashem, and Chana was a quiet and seemingly passive helpmate in her husband's activities.

Chana and Penina likely would've gotten along fine except that Penina mistakenly assumed that Chana's infertility was due to a lack of heartfelt desire and prayer on Chana's part, so Penina decided to start making pointed comments to arouse Chana to a place of desperation for children (and desperation for a halt to Penina's hurtful treatment) and thus effect heartfelt prayers on Chana's part.

Astoundingly, there doesn't seem to be any record of Chana responding to Penina's barbs.

Instead, Chana continues to pray quietly to Hashem.

In fact, Chana doesn't even mention her distress or confide in her husband. Being an attentive husband, he notices on his own and tries to comfort her, but again, she doesn't respond and instead turns to Hashem.

(BTW, it's worth emphasizing Chana's determination to NOT report Penina's hurtful behavior to Elkanah. Certainly, a tactful report of Penina's treatment could be considered lashon hara l'toelet -- the beneficial purpose being that Elkanah would both judge Penina favorably for her good intentions yet at the same time, understand that her behavior needs to be stopped. In a display of mind-boggling strength of character, Chana neither responds to Penina's barbs nor does she speak lashon hara about Penina -- not even l'toelet.)

Finally, after facing a misunderstanding from a local Kohen as she prayed at the Beit Hamikdash, Chana finally gets pregnant and births Shmuel Hanavi.

She remained a stay-at-home nursing mother for the next couple of years, even refusing to go on another pilgrimage during that time.

Later Chana praises Hashem at length, prophesies a bit, has even more children, and then...we don't hear much about her again.

In fact, throughout most of Chana's story, she's a stay-at-home wife who davens a lot, who eventually becomes a stay-at-home mom who davens a lot, and achieves prophecy at times.

It's hard to know what else she did, though we can assume she engaged in chessed in her community, made meals for those sick or recovering from birth, gave to the poor, etc.

However, that's not what she KNOWN for. We never hear about it.

Today's secularists would call her a passive breeder tied to the stove, no identity of her own, blah, blah, blah. They would criticize Chana for not being more assertive, blame her for giving off "doormat" vibes that allow Penina to "bully" her, and so forth. They'd label her as a "masochist" or a "co-dependent" who needs expert guidance by a licensed therapist.

On the other hand, even in the frum community of that time, Chana doesn't seem to be known for running organizations, and working full-time so her husband can learn while keeping up a beautiful home, a beautiful appearance, and beautifully appareled children, or giving shiurim, etc.

Chana doesn't even go down in history for her very real status as prophetess or for anything else we consider important (whether it's talking to angels or running a soup kitchen or heading a prestigious girls seminary).

Did others speak about her as "Oh, Chana. She is always SO together! And she accomplishes SO much!"? Or did they say, "Oh, Chana. She's such a tzadekes. She's so holy, I'd like to get a bracha from her"?

(Or did they know anything about her at all? After all, she was very quiet and didn't get out much. Was she well-known in her own time?)

Interestingly, as quiet and unremarkable as Chana seems to be at superficial glance, her impact on Klal Yisrael resounds until today. In fact, we extract some of our most fundamental laws of prayer directly from Chana's method of prayer.

And until today, we learn that Chana's very name (and therefore her essence) represents the 3 fundamental laws for Jewish women:
Challah
Niddah
Hadlikat neirot for Shabbat and Yom Tov

And she produced one of our greatest prophets: Shmuel Hanavi.

In other words, Chana is mostly either silent or she's talking to Hashem. If I'm not mistaken, the one time she speaks of her pain to anyone else is only after she's confronted AND misunderstood -- by Eli Hakohen. And even then, she's very thoughtful and considerate in her response to his misinterpretation of her holy behavior.

(Remember, when her husband asks her why she's sad, if he's not better to her than 10 sons, Chana doesn't reply, doesn't even take that opportunity to finally reveal Penina's mistreatment. It's only when Eli Hakohen mistakes her for a brazen lush does she speak up -- and even then, she corrects his misconception with humility and sensitivity.)

Again, it's important to emphasize that this post is not denigrating more extroverted, visibly accomplished, energetic people.

We need ALL kinds!

Why?

Because this is what Hashem wants.

We need the Devorah Haneviahs who sit outside under the palm tree, available for mediation and peace-making, who then later ride out to war as the leader.

We need the Yaels who are piously cunning and handy with a tent peg.

We need the Sara Imeinus who engage in non-stop hospitality, outreach, teaching, and who are in general very assertive and fearless in face of fellow prophets, angels, and kings.

Hashem imbued the above people with those abilities because He WANTS them to utilize them in that manner.

But as mentioned in a previous post, the above have become the main types presented for emulation simply for practical reasons: Their stories are more "tellable" and their actions & accomplishments more noticeable.

But our tradition proves to us that we also need the Chanas and the Leah Imeinus.

A person behaving with true goodness and genuine humility regardless of their situation and environment is effecting a HUGE impact for good and sweetening din.

But who will ever know about it?

No one -- except the Only One who matters: Hashem.

The sincere spiritual efforts wrangled with unseen in near silence can spark impacts of such magnitude, their reverberations are reaped for eternity.
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A big challenge is being the person Hashem wants you to be.

Your society may have other ideas about what you are supposed to be doing and in what direction you need to move, but these ideas may be in direct opposition to what Hashem actually put you here for in the first place.

Likewise, well-meaning friends and "experts" can push you down a path that is all wrong for you.

People locked into their own personality and drives can struggle to see how your needs differ from theirs.

There are different ways of being good and different expressions of holiness.

Sara Imeinu was a strong, assertive, proactive personality.

She grew up in a tough environment, surrounded by powerful occultism and degenerates, yet she worked her way up to the level of Prophetess.

She actively assisted Avraham Avinu with his astounding hospitality and generosity. She reached out to teach the women of their time while Avraham Avinu worked with the men.

Sara Imeinu selflessly insisted that Avraham Avinu take in Hagar, and then with equal conviction, she insisted that Hagar and Yishmael be evicted when their presence proved a threat to Yitzchak Avinu.

As the first Jewish woman in the world, the leading Matriarch of the Jewish people, and a person of lofty righteousness and holiness, we should certainly emulate her.

But the question is do you need to be EXACTLY like Sara Imeinu?

What if you innately lack some of the qualities she personified or your personal situation isn't conducive to her type of accomplishments?

Leah Imeinu lived a quiet life undercover of earth-shattering events that kept occurring around her. Just in the plain text of the Torah, we hear from Rachel Imeinu far more than we hear from her sister Leah.

Leah quietly grew up in the spiritual darkness of ancient Mesopotamia with her sisters as some of her only allies. Yet she held strong to her emuna. She seemed to have spent much of her time in prayer to avoid marrying the awful Esav. Later, she received special signs from her compassionate sister Rachel Imeinu and quietly married Yaakov Avinu without Yaakov initially realizing she wasn't Rachel.

She was also the only Matriarch who was fertile from the outset.

And she never seemed to play the active role that even the seemingly more passive Rivka Imeinu played, when Rivka Imeinu orchestrated the birthright being given to Yaakov rather than Esav.

In fact, the most assertive act she committed was to offer a trade with Rachel Imeinu over the dudaim and then to quietly go out to meet Yaakov later. Oh, and then later she offered Zilpah the opportunity to marry Yaakov Avinu when Leah Imeinu saw she was no longer producing children.

Also, Leah Imeinu davened for her last pregnancy to be a girl so that her sister would have the merit of birthing more Tribes. Again, this was a powerful act with long-ranging global consequences (because it basically gave Yosef Hatzaddik to Rachel Imeinu and also gave Dina more masculine traits while Yosef received some feminine ones), but this powerful act of selflessness occurred in near silence privately between Leah Imeinu and Hashem.

And though Yaakov loved Leah, his love for his true zivug, Rachel, was so strong that Leah seemed hated in comparison -- a dynamic which, again, she accepted quietly, though we see from the names she gave her children that Yaakov's relationship with her meant a lot to her.

So at a superficial glance, Leah Imeinu's life seems to be one of quiet genteel passivity.

Yet Leah's role in Jewish history is firmly established. She is forever known as by the title of Leah Imeinu, the mother of Jewish royalty and Mashiach, and is the only one buried beside Yaakov Avinu.

Yet she was so different than Sara Imeinu.

As far as I know, there is no record of Leah Imeinu engaging in copious kiruv or continuous hospitality.

Leah and Sara were very different and both played very different albeit vital roles.

Yet they are both called "Imeinu."

I can imagine some of today's advisers and experts "helpfully" encouraging Leah Imeinu:
"Look at Sara Imeinu! THAT'S your goal. She reached a higher level of prophecy than her husband, so you need to do that too. You need to keep on pushing yourself until Hashem tells YOUR husband, 'Listen to the voice of Leah!' -- like how He told that to Avraham Avinu regarding Sara Imeinu. If she can do it, then you can too! You just need the right attitude. Oh, and by the way...Sara Imeinu spoke with angels and NEVER used dudaim. So just keep that mind too. Okay?"

Or:
"Leah, you really need to take charge of your family. I mean, ALL the other Imahot did so. Look at Sara with the whole Hagar and Yismael dynamic. Or Rivka Imeinu taking charge to make sure that Yaakov got the birthright. Or your own sister, Rachel Imeinu. I mean, she gave you signs, argued with her husband, demanded some dudaim...and for eternity, she'll be arguing with God on behalf of the Jewish people. If they can do it, why can't you? You need to more like everyone else if you ever want to be happy."

This can happen when the adviser isn't aware of the person's soul root, and isn't even aware of the vast difference in journeys people are meant to take through life.

There is nothing wrong with an impressive list of practical accomplishments if that's what you're meant to do.

If Hashem gifted you with a vibrant, dynamic, energetic personality, then go for it!

I'm not putting down vibrant accomplished energetic types.

The people running gemachim, giving shiurim, running chessed organizations, teaching, innovating, making hospital rounds, hosting at least 10 guests at every Shabbos meal, and more are vital to our community!

I've personally benefited from their activities, as many of us have, and they are surely doing what Hashem meant for them to be doing and will be richly rewarded for their numerous & valuable accomplishments.

I'm grateful they exist!

The reason why I'm focusing more on the Leah Imeinu personality is because in today's society, there is steady pressure for women to be out there and physically moving and producing visible tangible accomplishments.

Part of the reason for this is practical: Stories of people who achieve tangible visible accomplishments are enjoyable to read. There's plot, there's action...but conversely, it's admittedly boring and disappointing to read something like:
Shani suffered shalom bayis problems and infertility. So she davened.
Then she davened some more.
And even more!
She spoke at length to Hashem exactly like she spoke to her best friend in the world.
She did this for hours every day.
Shani also made sure to thank Him for at least 100 things every single day.
But her shalom bayis only improved minimally and she never had children.
Yet she never gave up on Hashem and rose greatly in emuna. But who ever noticed? It's not like she went around giving shiurim or writing books or blogging about her spiritual growth.
Anyway, she probably sweetened tons of din with her heartfelt connection to Hashem, but we can't know exactly how or what because only tzaddikim on the level of the Arizal can perceive such things.
Sorry for the not terribly satisfying story of a tzaddekes in our times.
The End.

Actually, Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender does include stories of people like this in the books of his lectures, Words of Faith. But that's very unusual and he's the only person I know of who has done it.

So practically speaking, lecturers and writers must include interesting stories of accomplishments or else people won't read their articles or attend their shiurim.

But logically speaking, are visible tangible "out there!" accomplishments that what Hashem wants for every single woman?

According to the way less "out there" women like Leah Imeinu or Chana, mother of Shmuel, are lauded in Tanach, it seems that this isn't the ideal path for every single woman.

It depends. It's something that each person needs to figure out on her own.

So it stands to reason that there's nothing wrong with being a quiet inward-focused person if that's what you're meant to do.

But what if Sara Imeinu had tried to be like Leah Imeinu?

And what if Leah Imeinu had tried to be like Sara Imeinu?

Then we all would have lost out.
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Related articles:
Shechem, Yosef, and Dina
Loneliness & Rejection as Aspects of Mashiach
Different Courses for Different Horses

As mentioned in a previous post, I really wonder how much of the kind of male chauvinism occurring in American society prior to the feminist movement was actually a result of advertising and Hollywood projection, rather than innate male tendencies or traditional societal attitudes.

The feminists leading their way in the Seventies would've grown up in the Forties and Fifties -- right smack in the middle of Hollywood's ever-growing movie list and also when TV was becoming popular. By 1955, half of American homes possessed a TV.

That's a pretty powerful influence.

To compound things, this Forties/Fifties generation was raised by America's first film-going generation. In the 1920s, most Americans went to movie theaters on a weekly basis, with all the Hollywood influence and cultural impact this implies.

(Just as a quick example: The heavy makeup, shorter skirts, and suggestive dance moves popular in the films had an immediate impact on the fashion and dancing of the average girl in the 1920s. The movies also influenced women toward smoking, drinking, and public displays of affection, acts that were unacceptable before.)

Because women were portrayed so badly in film and TV -- and because men were also  portrayed negatively when interacting with women -- it seems that decades of showing abusive men and exploited women as good or normal might have influenced general society, no?

The earlier black-and-white films touted as "innocent" by many today (including some frum people who should know better) were actually worse in some ways than modern films. Yes, the violence wasn't as graphic and the male-female interactions weren't as explicit and the language wasn't as crass, but the disdain for women was extremely obvious and so bad that a smidgen of it was no longer acceptable by the Seventies (even as all other aspects worsened, as mentioned).

For example, it was common in older movies for a woman to become hysterical (often with good reason, but still exaggerated compared to how normal women behave in the same circumstance). At that point, her husband or boyfriend would give her a ringing slap in the face. This was portrayed as good or necessary. (This kind of scene was no longer acceptable by around the Seventies.)

Now, in real life, how many times do you see women literally becoming hysterical? Rarely, right? Yet this was common in the movies. What further confused and disturbed me as a little girl was how, logically speaking, the woman seemed to have good reason for her hysteria: She felt genuinely frightened or threatened, sometimes she was being lied to and manipulated by the very guy who hit her for her own supposed good, and so on.

Even worse, the slapper was often portrayed as a good guy. So you had the "good" guy slapping a woman who was rightly upset.

Hmm...

In another old black 'n' white film (lauded as "progressive" for its predominantly black cast), a woman slouches on the sidewalk pining for her rogue boyfriend to take her back. Just then, he walks by with his new girl on his arm. When the lovelorn woman throws herself at his feet and hangs onto his arm, he smacks her back down onto the pavement. The girl on his arm just sniffs and they continue on with their stroll. The pining woman continues to sing of her grief over the scumbag's rejection.

Now, I ask you: Is the above scenario normal?

Yes, I know there are dysfunctional people like this. But I'm asking if it's normal.

After all, would a normal woman still want a man who just whammed her to the pavement? (And do normal woman yearn for cold-hearted abusive men who cheat on them?) And from the replacement girl's side of things, wouldn't you be unnerved if your man smacked down his distraught pitiful ex right in front of you? Wouldn't that imply something disturbing about his character?

Also, again, the women's distress was justified. All she wanted was for him to marry her, a very decent and wholesome desire. She was willing to give him everything in return, yet he rejected her. And when she showed rightful distress over this, he attacked her as if she was a disgusting bug. And rather than realizing that he was a violent miscreant whom she was better off without, she continued to warble piteously about his rejection.

The messaging there is pretty awful, yet we are supposed to accept it as normal.

Ben Shapiro has often explained Hollywood's methodology:
Hollywood creates a likeable or sympathetic character, then makes that likeable sympathetic character do something the viewer would normally find repugnant.

And that is how Hollywood changes society's values.

This is the problem in a nutshell.

On the old TV shows and movies, I also remember a couple of times when a woman was physically abused by her husband or boyfriend. Again, the husband was a popular character on the series or the lead in the film. So again, you have someone you like doing something demeaning and abusive. Even worse, it's presented as comic and the studio audience is laughing uproariously. So not only is abuse okay, it's also funny and entertaining, and judging by the woman's scripted reaction, made her like him more.

Another confusing scenario that occurred often in the old reels was how the female lead would be pursued by the ideal guy: good-looking, responsible, steady, and treats her respectfully. However, there was also a cad in the film who was handsome but without any other redeeming qualities. Yet the female lead would always fall for the cad and reject the attractive decent guy who very much wants her and wants to marry her!

I remember finding this very disconcerting as a child.

It was so blatantly disturbing and irrational that Gloria Steinem capitalized on this exact experience in her books. Tapping into this experience garnered her a following of women who remembered being disconcerted girls watching the kind of roguish man she should avoid being portrayed as the hero while the heroine makes a terrible life choice by choosing him over the truly good guy -- and this was portrayed as a happy ending.

And again, Hollywood was not portraying normal life. Traditionally, girls were brought up to AVOID this exact scenario. Since the 1700s, literature (both fiction and non) and caring relatives warned girls against falling for cads. The stable good guy in pursuit of marriage was the desirable one.

But not in Hollywood.

Both the men and women in Hollywood tended to find marriage suffocating. They found exciting and physically attractive people far more alluring than good-looking people of good character. The Hollywood stars and staff valued negative emotional drama over fulfilling life dramas, such as weddings, childbirth, family dinners and holiday gatherings, etc.

And they brought this warped attitude into their art, which they then projected onto the entire world.

As a teenager going into the 1990s, reading Gloria Steinem's description of this experience suddenly brought back forgotten memories of these films and the confused, disconcerted little girl I was while watching them.

All the more so, for women who'd grown up in the Forties and Fifties, for whom these types of films were the only fare.

Harassment and unwanted touching also appeared commonly in older films. And again, it was often the hero or the likable character indulging in it. Furthermore, it was also portrayed as funny, and not as threatening and traumatizing as it would be in real life.

For example, I was a huge fan of the Marx Brothers movies. I loved them as a child and watched them repeatedly. At the same time, it bothered me how Groucho Marx was always stringing along that older wealthy lady for her money. It was portrayed as amusing and acceptable to reject a woman merely because of her looks (even though Groucho Marx was extremely unattractive himself) and to use her just for her money and connections.

This reflects the real Hollywood moguls until today. In the latest present-day scandal, for example, you saw the repulsive-looking mogul exploiting beautiful young women who would otherwise never come near him if he hadn't been wealthy and influential.

Hollywood bigwigs have often been ugly immature creepy men who viewed women in a disturbing manner. And that's also what they portrayed in their movies.

Hitchcock, for example, described actors of either gender as "cattle" and was just plain gross with women off-set.

Hollywood screenwriters and producers were always pointing the cameras at themselves, so to speak, justifying their own immoral behavior and deplorable values.

In another scene, Groucho Marx starts mauling the cabin maid whose come to arrange the linens in his ship cabin. She looks obviously unhappy about it, but he doesn't give a hoot. I remember feeling shocked that she seemed totally resigned to his gaggle-eyed, grinning groping. She didn't seem surprised or horrified and did nothing to defend herself, didn't try to move out of the way, leave, push his hand, slap him, complain, delicately fend him off, nothing. She didn't even freeze up; it was all business as usual.

Again, the scripted behavior did not reflect a real-life response.

Note: I'm not saying that her response would never have happened, I'm saying that it wasn't a normal response to a man mauling a woman as she's carrying out her job. Many women would be shocked and freeze up, or some other kind of traumatic reaction.

Furthermore, she was his subordinate. There was an implication that as the maid, she had no power and that putting up with his mauling was part of her job.

And it was really creepy that he was so enthusiastically enjoying himself when she so obviously was not.

Yet the film portrayed it as funny. We were supposed to laugh at this and think it was cute, like an endearing little boy who caught with his pudgy little hand in the cookie jar.

Mauling a helpless maid isn't endearing or funny -- unless you are a degenerate.

But again, as the audience, you liked the Marx Brothers. Everyone did! Yet they committed immoral acts as part of the fun. And that's exactly what breaks down the viewer's inner defenses.

Children's movies didn't escape this either. I remember in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang looking on with horror as a cackling man poured wine down the front of a protesting woman's low-cut dress. It seemed scary to the little girl I was because I wouldn't want someone doing that to me. Yet again, this was portrayed as comic and not as vulgar or appalling.

In the The Little Princess (1939), Shirley Temple recites this whole sonnet (completely unrelated to the plot) about a guy smooching a girl who doesn't want it at all, but it's presented as funny and acceptable. I also found that very disturbing as a child. For girls, it's scary to think that someone can just grab you or force himself on you in some way.

So when you have an entire generation (or more) of boys growing up watching this behavior (which was traditionally considered appalling) as merely funny and cute (something a woman will definitely tolerate), how does than affect males and their own behavior toward women?

Seriously. If you read earlier memoirs and the like, grabbing at women just wasn't considered appropriate. (It was more something that drunks did, and drinking & drunken behavior also used to be looked down on.) Novels and moral literature abounded with cautions to girls about such men and men weren't supposed to behave improperly around women.

(Remember how men used to watch their language around women, remove their hats, and say "Ma'am"?)

Of course, abuses and exploitation occurred in society prior to Hollywood.

No one can deny that.

My point is that in a society founded on the principles expressed in Mishlei/Proverbs (as America once was), all the above was not acceptable and considered very inappropriate until Hollywood came along and said that it's actually not bad at all; it's not only acceptable but it's even funny and something all the cool guys do.

In a 1940s movie, the hero was a handsome young college student fighting a Nazi spy. Yet in one moment completely out context, a demurely dressed blonde student quickly passed by the hero and his group of friends. In response, they craned their necks to make demeaning catcalls at her before turning back to a very serious conversation of national security.

And again, her facial expression (and did the speed with which she passed by them) showed that the attention was completely unwanted.

So you have the likable attractive hero suddenly harassing an innocent young woman who's obviously very unhappy with his treatment. It also indicates that it doesn't matter whether the woman intensely dislikes such treatment. It's okay anyway! Her feelings are totally irrelevant.

This kind of portrayal stamps approval on such behavior.

Another popular classic movie from 1954 had the hero leering at a dancer who lived in an apartment across the street from him and had no idea she was being spied on by the creep.

And in one of the first scenes, his girlfriend played by a particularly beautiful actress came to visit. She had everything: beauty, wealth, good manners, and high social standing. Yet she sat there knitting while he treated her with utter disdain. At one point, she showed disappointment about being kept on his string instead of him committing by marrying her.

He waved his hand at her and told her, "Aw, shut up." (This would've been considered appalling manners in the 1950s.) And in response, she just pouted, but didn't leave or even get huffy with him. Instead, she kept on sewing. (Message: Even if you have nothing to offer, you can treat super desirable women like flies, and they'll totally accept it.)

Now at this point in America, it was completely acceptable and even laudable to marry your serious girlfriend. The vast majority of American men in the 1950s married between the ages of 22-23.

And this was not just considered a good thing, it was considered the manly thing to do.

Getting married demonstrated highly regarded traits like responsibility, maturity, and the ability to shoulder weighty duties like holding down a job and making enough money to support a family. Remaining faithful was also expected and respected.

But to the men of Hollywood, marriage was like a prison. Populated by men who valued immorality and considered women playthings, their leading men had to be crass creepy cads because that's what they were too.

The other problem with this scenario was treating an extremely desirable woman like dirt. This is a common theme in older movies. The female stars of Hollywood consisted of some of the most beautiful women in the world. Most men of that time would be thrilled if such a woman wanted them and would marry them in a second.

Yet in the movies, the leading men repeatedly treated these most desirable women with appalling disdain.

Again, this is not how normal men instinctively relate to women who are beautiful, rich, refined socialites. But in Hollywood, this was considered appropriate and normal behavior because the men running Hollywood were (and continue to be) abnormal jerks.

Even when the script implied that the young beauty was breaking all social mores by giving him whatever he wanted, he still treated her like dirt. Again, this was confusing as a youngster because it seemed like these men were unpleasable. Even when she gave him everything he wanted, he still didn't like her. Yet he was the good guy?!

And as always, such behavior was portrayed as amusing and totally acceptable.

Unlike feminists, I don't believe in letting guilty people off the hook just because of their gender. This means that Hollywood actresses also share the blame. Yes, these women were usually exploited. But in their private lives, they also behaved with unrepentant immorality.

They were sort of like the Hollywood women today who complain of harassment, but did and do nothing about the child abuse rampant in Hollywood, and continue to star in roles that demean women.

Unfaithful to their own husbands and cheating with married men and producing a baby from that adulterous union, neglecting or abusing their own children, and in general behaving like horrible narcissists, the beautiful stars known as "America's sweethearts" bolstered Hollywood's lack of morals.

Even in their old age, they showed no remorse. You can find interviews with these elderly stars in which they applaud today's lack of morality, complaining that "back in those days," they needed to hide their infidelities so as not to harm their popularity. One former star said the reason she kept getting divorced and married was because in "those days," it wasn't acceptable to live with a man, so you had to marry him.

They were often awful mothers too.

So again, you had women who held no respect for real women's roles (like that of a faithful wife or nurturing mother) acting out her own decrepit value system. And rather than striving for a truly fulfilling role in real life, like becoming a doctor or a teacher, these actresses played out their real selves backstage, by using men and being used by them.

This next example has nothing to do with women, but it shows how far back Hollywood was comprised of corrupt people and was already warping traditional values.

Let's take a 1928 Laurel 'n' Hardy film. It starts off with an escaped criminal followed in hot pursuit by a comically furious policeman.

So immediately, the film encourages you to sympathize with the law-breaking criminal against the law-upholding cop. Then something heavy falls on the cop, and it's supposed to be funny and good, because the cop (who is behaving with courage and justice) gets punished and the criminal gets away.

Later, Laurel 'n' Hardy end up with hermit crabs up their trousers. Most of the movie consists of this joke, that these grown men are getting "nipped" on their rump specifically by the crabs, and keep thinking the other man is the one who's pinching him there.

Not only is the humor preschoolish, but it portrays bizarre assumptions and behavior. What grown man would "nip" another grown man in normal society? Can you imagine the men of Little House on the Prairie or Caddie Woodlawn behaving in such a manner -- even as a joke?

Who would think up this kind of scenario? (Hint: A creepy perv.)

Then Laurel 'n' Hardy needed to adjust their pants in the alley way, and when they come out together zipping up their pants, they accidentally do so in front of shocked passers-by.

This is vulgar however you look at it. If you're an innocent, you'll see it as, "Goodness, two men were caught looking like they'd been relieving themselves in a public alleyway!" But if you've grown up in modern American society, you'll see that the implication of two men coming together out of an empty alley way while zipping up their pants as...?

You tell me what the script was hinting at.

My point is that even way back in the Twenties, Hollywood was already really gross and projecting their degeneracy and vulgarity and immaturity onto the silver screen.

And it used humor, which is the best way to break down defenses.

Because then they can claim they're only kidding. I mean, what's wrong with you? Can't you take a joke?

Or they can accuse of you of having the dirty mind. I mean, sheesh, is that what YOU really think when you see two men coming out of the alley way? Get your mind out of the gutter, you family-values hypocrite.

See what I mean?

One of Hollywood's slogans is that they're merely portraying real life.

Yet again, all the above were against social norms.

The "real life" Hollywood likes to portray is its own degenerate narcissistic meaningless life.

However:

• Catcalling and harassing women was considered unacceptable in normal society, especially when the women's dress and behavior reflected ladylike propriety.
• Not wanting to marry (and especially not wanting to marry a highly desirable woman with every asset in the book) wasn't considered normal or desirable.
• Touching women inappropriately or forcing yourself on women was also not acceptable.

And this list goes on.

This doesn't mean that such things never happened--tragically, of course they did! But as long as such behaviors were frowned upon, they were limited.

Yet once Hollywood portrayed these behaviors as innocent, amusing, and even idealized, that portrayal affected the moviegoers and TV audience.

How could it not?

I remember as a teen that we spoke like the characters we watched on TV. Our slang, inflection, and attitude were all copied from our entertainment media. And we certainly absorbed their values, especially since outside of religious communities, the only values we ever encountered were the ones epitomized in our TV, movies, and magazines.

Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that a young man who has spent his life watching leading men and heroes harassing and disrespecting and even hitting women as comic relief or as a necessity or uncontrollable act might absorb this attitude?

And what about their effect on the girls and young women watching them?

Remember, these movies went on for decades.

Going to the movies was considered an innocent American pastime, like picnics and white picket fences. There was little social criticism of the content.

Sure, film and TV faced a censorship board, but they didn't censor everything and anyway, Hollywood considered it a badge of honor to do everything it could to circumvent these censors.

How must it have been for the girls who were suffering from an abusive father, a father who slapped their mother, or who were harassed or touched/kissed inappropriately by someone, to see their trauma and violation displayed on the big screen -- and portrayed as funny, endearing, or justified?

That sounds pretty traumatic to me.

So I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the leading feminists and passionate proponents evolved from dysfunctional backgrounds:

• Gloria Steinem lost her mother at very young age and her father wasn't able to be the kind of parent Gloria needed
• Germaine Greer's mother likely suffered Aspergers, which drove Germaine from the home by age 18
• Betty Friedan's mother was an unhappy housewife who mourned her loss of career
• Simone de Beauvoir's high intelligence was complimented by her father as, "Simone thinks like a man!" -- implying that high intelligence cannot be a feminine trait.
• Several suffered from philandering fathers
• Many impassioned feminists suffered abuse from men when they were young girls

Other feminists don't seem to have grown up in a dysfunctional family, but their adult behavior is so dysfunctional, it makes you wonder.

For example, the extremely popular feminist Alice Walker reports positively on both her parents and her teachers, even as she grew up in impoverished segregation and a brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. Yet she was an appallingly neglectful and insensitive mother to her own daughter. At one point, Alice even informed her daughter that she had "chosen" to love her (implying that her daughter wasn't innately loveable, but rather someone that Alice needed to force herself to love). This deeply hurt her daughter.

Just as bad, Alice Walker published a famous poem in which she compares her daughter's birth to other "calamities" in her life.

How would YOU feel if your celebrity mother described your existence in her life as a "calamity" AND announced this to the entire world?

When her daughter asked for an apology for the years of pain caused by Alice, Alice refused and insisted she was no longer interested in the job of mother.

There is something clearly wrong with a lot of these "womyn."

(If you missed it, this previous post explains why a woman who is supposedly pro-woman & fights for women's "rights" can still be so cruel to other women, including her own female child.)

And like I said, Gloria Steinem used the disturbing Hollywood portrayals to touch women and bring them to her side. But once she had innocent women in her grasp of pseudo-empathy, she offered destructive solutions framed in pretty pictures.

Sociopaths are shockingly skilled at feigning empathy (in the short-term; over the long-term they start to sound weird because they're just faking it). They know which buttons to press and how to play the victim.

(Remember, Nazism started and continued on the fuel of a victimhood mentality. This is the way fascist movements gain and keep momentum. Communism did the same.)

In summation:

• Any chauvinistic attitudes or oppression that already existed in society was enthusiastically fanned by Hollywood and glorified as normal or desirable or funny.

 

• Rather than assuming that society was always rife with awful misogyny and that a man's natural inclination is to oppress women unless he has a feminist around to make him behave, it makes more sense to take a look at the role Hollywood played in glorifying the mistreatment of women.

 

• Hollywood embraced certain mores and behaviors generally considered immoral or unacceptable, and presented them as funny, acceptable, or even ideal.

 

• Hollywood productions were never innocent and clean. In the world of films and TV, there are no genuine "good ol' days" to return to.

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For a related post:
America's Scary New Direction - Part 11: Entertainment Propaganda
Note: Radio, which both preceded and paralleled film, was also a problem, as was Vaudeville, on which the first films were based. Furthermore, while this post focused on American film and TV, the film/TV industry in other countries was similarly problematic.

Note: If you choose to comment, please use coded language or purposely misspelled words to mention topics that, say, you wouldn't discuss around children because my filter is fickle and can block me from seeing my own post if it picks up on certain words. Sorry for the inconvenience!
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For a long time, I also held the view that many frum women hold: that while feminism brought a lot of bad stuff, it also served as a conduit for some good things too.

They claim when that there were real problems within society that needed to be fixed, and we've all benefited from those positive changes that came along with feminism.

The problem is that while yes, there were real problems that needed to be fixed, it isn't actually true that feminism was the answer, and that the positive changes since the feminist movement resulted purely from the feminist movement.

The misogynist or limited aspects of society were already changing even before feminism officially bombarded the scene.

In an interesting book called Let Them Journey: Uniting the Past with the Future, we meet the British daughter of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Etta bat Shlomo HaLevi (her last name wasn't mentioned), who qualified as a barrister (a common-law lawyer) in 1944 while she was a married woman with 3 young children.

(She wasn't the first female barrister, but she was one of a tiny minority of female barristers.)

She was the only woman in her class and yes, she did have to put up with a snipey comment from her lecturer and active obstruction later from another barrister to whom she was apprenticed. (This type of barrister is known as "a barrister principal.")

Yet rather than indulging in flamboyant protests and slogan-chanting, she simply put her nose to the grindstone to prove her professional worth.

And it worked!

Through Etta's intelligence and competence, she turned her barrister principal around & he ended up sending her work out as his own, assuring her a place in the barristers' chambers. (Yes, I know that copping her work as his own is far from ideal, but it could be that this was the common practice with their male apprentices too, and not only acceptable, but even complimentary. It's not clear to me either way from the context.)

Anyway, as a working barrister, she argued her cases with intelligence, grace, and tenacious patience before male judges against other male barristers, winning the judges to her side.

She also developed a method for dealing with juries, which consisted of repeating her point 6 times, a method which persuaded them to vote in favor of her clients.

So as a lone woman working in a male-dominated profession, she not only became a barrister, but a highly successful barrister -- without feminism or employing feminist tactics of social change.

She became successful because she possessed innate talent and because she worked very hard, both mentally and practically.

Meanwhile, back in America: The woman feminists love to hate, Phyllis Schlafly, worked her way through a prestigious university and earned such high marks and so impressed her professors with her intellectual brilliance that Harvard Law School was willing to accept her around 1944 even though at that time, Harvard Law School was not accepting female students. (Officially, Harvard Law School did not start admitting women until the 1950s.)

Phyllis didn't know this. She assumed that Harvard Law School had suddenly started accepting women prior to her admittance, and had no idea they'd made an exception specifically for her based on her intellectual qualifications and remarkable analytical abilities. (Nonetheless, she decided to go work in Washington D.C. instead.)

Again, this exception was made for Phyllis based on her phenomenal competency, and not via the feminist movement, which hadn't even revved up yet.

In fact, opportunities and expectations for women had been changing since the 1920s.

On the other hand, even prior to official advancements for women, American women enjoyed many freedoms and rights. 19th-Century pioneer women, for example, had the right to own their own land and proved up both land claims and tree claims, same as men. They carried pistols and rifles and worked in stores and newspaper presses, among other jobs.

At the same time, no one can deny the social and official limitations women faced when trying to engage in traditionally male activities and professions. In addition, the way women were portrayed in movies, TV, and ads really was a problem, such as floor wax ads featuring a women in full makeup, set hair, an insipid smile, and heels while waxing a kitchen floor. (And those were just the more innocent portrayals of women in advertising.)

Many movie & TV portrayals of women were just awful, making light of women being groped, harassed, or disdained by one of the male leads or women being exploited or physically abused in a way Hollywood portrayed as justified or funny.

Because Hollywood had been projecting their trash and corruption since at least the 1920s, it's hard to say whether the legitimate feminist complaints were a product of society or whether such deplorable male behaviors and attitudes were inculcated into society by Hollywood.

Who was around to remember society before Hollywood? And those who were old enough to remember, did they have any way of expressing themselves?

(The post after this one will detail Hollywood's role in the mistreatment of women.)

Another friend of mine remembers female police officers (in uniformed skirts) in the 1950s. She explained that female officers were necessary for arresting female offenders because it wasn't thought appropriate for men to deal with a female offender the way they dealt with male offenders (i.e. patting them down, touching or wrestling with her in the process of putting on handcuffs and getting the female perp into a police car).

The truth is, women's journeys through traditionally male professions initially mirrored the Jewish journey of upward mobility in America. Schools of higher education placed quotas against Jews and many upscale clubs while companies rejected Jewish membership and participation.

In fact, when the intermarried Groucho Marx wanted to use a beach associated with an upscale club that did not allow Jews, he pleaded with them by quipping, "My kids are only half Jewish. Can't they at least go in the water up to their knees?"

(Ironically, his children weren't Jewish at all according to halacha and should've been allowed entrance as full-fledged non-Jews. But try reasoning with antisemites about such things...anyway, such discrimination was the wake-up call Groucho got for spitting on Torah Law.)

The point is that Jews and other minorities faced discrimination by putting their nose to the grindstone and working their way to the top. They proved themselves, first by "working twice as hard to be considered just as good," and then making a name for themselves to the point that, for example, Jews and Chinese are stereotyped as hard-working, good in school, smart, and successful. Yes, Chinese people must face down the stereotype of "being good at math," a stereotype that dogs them at every step.

What's so awful about that?

And why couldn't women have done the same?

(In fact, Yetta bat Shlomo HaLevi did so for herself. A male barrister who lost to her after a hard fight in court told another barrister, "I was Yettaed."

I realize that many women who've been traumatized by the chauvinism of yore cannot see that things were already changing and would continue to change without the official blitzkrieg of the feminist movement.

(If you've been traumatized, you want things to change YESTERDAY. The pain is unbearable and you feel like you can't bear it for another moment.)

Many also couldn't see that the chauvinism was incited and encouraged by more modern influences, like Hollywood. (Yeah, feminists criticized Hollywood, but couldn't see that men themselves weren't the innate problem, but that Hollywood was.)

The rejection and discrimination many women experienced caused profound trauma, which is why no matter how much they see their daughters and grand-daughters facing traumas of their own brought on by feminism, such as premarital wantonness, abortion, much increased violence & abuse against women & girls, a sharp upturn in brutal female violence, low self-esteem, confusion, eating disorders, marital difficulties, suicide, depression, and much more, they continue with their mantra of:

"But when I was a girl, we were told we could only be teachers and nurses rather than doctors & lawyers!"

This is despite the fact that most of them -- and most men, for that matter -- don't aim to become and indeed don't become lawyers or doctors.

But it's the principle that bothers them.

Disturbingly, this principle bothers them more than the killing of unborn babies and the effect that has on the aborting mother, or the rampant wanton behavior popular among young girls for decades now, the increased violence and violation against females and children in general, with its higher incidence of low self-esteem and depression and self-destructive behaviors among females, and the savage assaults girls commit in growing numbers.

In fact, these feminist sympathizers seem to feel that being discouraged from being a doctor (which again, most of them didn't want to be in the first place) is worse than actual hands-on abuse or violation of girls, which became much more common in the wake of feminist advancement.

(BTW, I don't deny that if you really yearn for a certain calling and you were born with the abilities to excel at the calling, that it's not devastating to be blocked from your heart's yearning simply because of your gender and societal expectations. It IS devastating! But that still doesn't justify all the abuses and harmful ideas that came along with the freedom to fulfill your own calling.)

Isn't it ironic that feminism came under the guise of wanting to stop the abuse of women and girls, and ended up at the forefront of facilitating such abuse?

Yet if you confront feminists with this, they'll merely make 2 points:

• (1) No, there is EXACTLY the same amount of abuse going on, but just that back then, it was rarely reported.

It's true that sxual abuse was vastly underreported. (It's still underreported today, BTW.) But there is nothing to show that levels back then were even close to today's levels. Furthermore, there are social realities that facilitate abuse, which weren't as common back then. Also, assault on dates happens often enough today. Are you trying to tell me that in the 1950s, "date assault" was also common? (I'm not arguing whether it happened at all, I'm asking whether it was common.) Feminists also claim there is an epidemic of male students violating female students on college campuses. Did this same alleged epidemic exist also in the 1950s?

(Yes, I realize there were far fewer women on campus back then than there are now. But were the women who were on co-ed campuses being taken advantage of while drunk and assaulted in the numbers they are today?)

And what about some serious brutal assaults and murders committed by teenage girls, something almost unheard of prior to the feminist movement? Female violence has risen 250% since 1973. Is that progress?

• (2) At least today, we have resources to treat victims -- and that's a feminist accomplishment.

This is true that today there are more official resources. Yet it seems that the plethora of resources developed due to an ever-rising need for them. (Meaning, an increase in abuse led to an increase in the need for organizations to handle it. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these resources is questionable. Some therapists do wonderful work with victims, some don't. Ditto with organizations.)

And how well did those trained professionals and resources work out for, say, the 16-year ordeal of the Rotherham girls? Or for abused Muslim women and children in these "progressive" Western countries when courts or social services side with Sharia law?

As another example: Look at how feminists scream assault about acts that sometimes aren't even actually assault, yet ignore the thousands of cases of very real and horrific exploitation and assaults on vulnerable young girls from Rotherham, England to Yazidi girls in the Middle East?

In the Rotherham case, we see that having women in professional positions doesn't automatically help females. (That was one of the big claims of the feminist movement.) This is because we need good professionals, regardless of gender. Mothers, female social workers, female councilwomen, female staff in care homes, female directors, female cops, etc. did little to nothing to protect female victims.

Yes, Rotherham was exposed and prosecuted by several female professionals (along with their male colleagues) and several mothers also took action, but the mere act of having females in traditionally male professions or having females involved at all did not automatically prevent or help the abuse and exploitation of females. Having GOOD women (and men!) in professional positions is what ultimately helped.

(In fact, even after all the facts came to light, a female MP and Jeremy Corbyn supporter, Naz Shah, retweeted and liked the following post in 2017: "Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.")
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Most notable case-in-point: In response to the poisoning of a Russian double-agent, England's female Prime Minister:

• IMMEDIATELY launched investigations
• expelled 23 diplomats
• is taking measures against an entire COUNTRY

Yet her initial response to the Rotherham horror?

• Accused authorities of "dereliction of duty"
• Blamed several factors
• Promised to appoint a chair to investigate

And that was only after the whole thing went very public. Remember, the initial abuses went on for 16 years.

(And yes, I realize Theresa May was "only" Home Secretary at the initial expose of the crimes, but my point is that she still had the power to do more and could also take Prime Ministerly action now. Yet from then until now, her response toward the crimes against the girls has been weak in comparison to what she's apparently capable of.)

Let's hear it for grrrl power! [sarc]

In short, many women mistakenly credit feminism with the progress we like when that progress was already happening anyway. And as for the very disturbing casualties of the feminist movement? Well, they seem to just think it's an unavoidable pity.

And anyway, we see that the mere act of having a woman in a position of authority does nothing to help victimized women or stop the victimization of women and children, unless she happens to be a GOOD PERSON.

Just like with men.

The more I learn, the more I realize that emphasizing the "good" aspects of feminism while minimizing the bad aspects is like doing so for any fascist movement.

I know that sounds extreme, but I hope you'll read yesterday's post to understand why one might feel this way: The Only "ism" You'll Ever Need.

Likewise, I was already seeing the ravages of feminism as a pre-teen, but I was brainwashed into thinking that it was either good or that the 1950s (and all time prior) were even worse. And I can't help noticing a steady decline in female well-being since my own girlhood. The problem is that women and girls are still being fed the same slop I was, and cultishly insist that their suffering is either good or at least still better than the pre-Sixties upheaval. And like with me and the girls in my generation, they're continuously conditioned to believe that the genuine problems that did exist could only be solved by feminism, and any worsening of society is simply a necessary and unavoidable evil.

The fact that the bad stuff was already improving and the role that Hollywood actively played in increasing the mistreatment of women from the early 20th Century is ignored and even denied.

But the truth is that we've benefited from feminism the way that Germans benefited from Nazism or Communists benefited from Communism (i.e. free health care, free education, housing, and some initially poor revolutionaries achieved high status, leadership, and wealth).

NOT because opportunities for women is a bad thing (they aren't), but because those opportunities were already opening up and presumably would've continued to do so had not feminism come along to slash things open like a mega-monster jeep on spiked wheels.
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For specific examples of Hollywood's role in corrupting society's attitude toward women, and in polluting society in general, please see:
How Hollywood Corrupted America.

Related links:
The Relationship Between Multiple Partners & Anxiety, Depression, Substance Abuse Disorders: A Cohort Study (You can scroll down to the end for the tables and results.)
How Childhood Abuse Leads to Wanton Behavior
More Statistics on Child Abuse, Or, Why Single Moms Should Probably Stay That Way
(Clarification: I definitely think divorce is the best solution is some situations and I also have known of several superb stepfathers. HOWEVER, from a purely statistical point of view, introducing strange men into one's home -- whether it's a boyfriend or a new husband -- statistically raises the chance of abuse of one's children, and increased child abuse has been one result of the increased divorce rate -- even though practically speaking, it's not always true. In secular society, divorces often (not always, but often) occur unnecessarily or without taking the child's well-being into consideration. The increased secular divorce rate and the not-dire reasons for this increased divorce rate are a direct result of feminism.)

Myrtle Rising related links:
"America's Scary New Direction" series (for specific correlations to Nazism, please see Part III and onwards)
Breaking Out of the Big Lie about Motherhood
When a Woman's Right is a Moral Wrong
Creating the Victim Mentality: A How-To Guide