Livre d'Or

This is a subject about which I have a lot of emotional responses and not many good thoughts.

I know, first of all, that the issue of modesty in clothing is one that disproportionately affects women, and therefore that I cannot really know what it is like to be a, for example, Orthodox Jewish women who is subjected to the laws of tzniut, and kol isha ervah, and etc... I therefore try to form my opinions as much as possible by listening to women talking about how it affects them.

And I know that I have spoken to many, many Orthodox Jewish women who believe that the laws of tzniut empower them, and I have spoken to as many women who feel that the laws restrict them. So I think it's a hard thing to make a value judgement about either way.

I get very resentful of people who say that the only reason why Orthodox Jewish women observe the laws of tzniut in dressing is because they have internalized sexism. Except when it's being said by someone who grew up Orthodox. Which it rarely is, usually it's people who don't know the first thing about living life as an Orthdoox Jew who are saying things like that, but sometimes it is, and I of course don't want to say they're wrong.

And I think back to college, when one of the Rabbis at Hillel did a class where he took a bunch of us through the Talmudic discussions of kol isha ervah, and at the end of the class, people from much more traditional backgrounds than me were saying "Wait, that's it? That's the basis under which I have been making the modesty choices I have" I think it is very hard to read the halachic laws of modesty as they're written in the classical texts as being absolute in any fashion. They seem pretty damn clearly to me to be saying "Whatever society and culture you're living in, dress and act in a way that is appropriate and contextually respectful." Which is your basic approach to modesty as I'm understanding it, and which makes a lot of sense to me.

But in general I find it's a lot easier to be deferential to other peoples' sensibilities by being more modest than it is to be deferential by being less modest (though your friend that you show more skin for is an apparent exception). I do not observe shomer negiah, but I have lots of friends who took a while to realize this, or may still not realize it, because when I meet girls I don't know, I assume that they are shomer and don't try to touch them, and let them make the first effort to show that they are not. And this is my general approach to most questions of tzniut, to build a fence around my approach in order to try to be respectful to as many people as I possible can.

But it probably doesn't hurt that this approach is congenial to my general social conservatism, and so it's worth asking if this general approach of trying to be as accommodating as possible to people who are observing laws of modesty that I think are out of proportion is itself sexist or at least supportive of patriarchal attitudes. I don't really know how to answer that question.