Reviews for Hating women

The average rating for Hating women based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-11 00:00:00 Courtney Lee I’ve only read 60 pages, and it’s probably unfair of me to review the book on the basis of that (which is why I'm not rating it), but I’m not likely to complete it, so I will post my thoughts thus far. I disagreed with some of Rabbi Boteach’s thesis in his chapter on protecting femininity in his book “Ten Conversations.” His book “Hating Women” is that chapter writ large, and my problems with it are thus even larger. I agree that there is an increasing misogyny in our culture that accompanies media portrayals of women as existing primarily to service men sexually. I agree that the sexual revolution had the negative social consequence of elevating the importance of a woman’s sexuality so much that it, rather than her virtue, is sometimes taken to be her most defining characteristic. I agree that women in general have become too tolerant in general of the degradation of women. I agree that, in our modern society, women have lost too much dignity. So I agree, more or less, with his complaint, and I think the complaint needs to be made and made passionately. But I’m not sure the solution is to attempt to idolize women and worship femininity, which is what Rabbi Boteach often sounds like he is advocating. He laments that women have become “ordinary” in modern times, but of course they have. Women are not divine goddesses. They are human beings. The romantic myth that women are superior, angel-like, ever-nurturing, utterly selfless, never-catty creatures capable of redeeming men, healing the world, and halting wars with their tender sighs cannot long persist in a world where the sexes are permitted the freedom to mix and compete with men at work and in the academy. The myth can only be kept alive by a strict separation of the sexes. Such a separation may indeed keep the myth alive for some men and may indeed restore the dignity of women to some degree, but one cannot reasonably propose that as a workable solution to the problem of misogyny on a nationwide basis in today’s society. Rabbi Boteach waxes nostalgic for the days when femininity was worshipped and extols ancient cultures for valuing the feminine so much more than we do now; but the same cultures that worshipped the “divine feminine” subjugated women in temple prostitution and allowed them few if any legal rights. Veneration of the feminine simply does not historically correspond with a more just treatment of women, and yet his central thesis is that virtually all of the ills of the modern age, from war to unruly children to political partisanship to bad reality television, can be attributed to a lack of veneration of femininity. So, for example, he lauds the cult of the Virgin Mary within Catholicism, because this expresses adulation of the feminine, which should, presumably, according to his thesis, mean a better world. But are women in fact treated better by men, on average, in Catholic cultures where veneration of the Virgin Mary is more common than in Catholic cultures where it is less common? He doesn’t bother to consider such questions. The correlation is obvious to him, so therefore it must be true. He calls the lack of veneration of women the “principle reason for the world’s devolution.” Of course, this begs the question as to whether or not the world has, on the whole devolved. I am sure there are detailed, convincing, rational arguments to be had on both sides. But I know this: blindfold me and tell me I am going to be born a woman, and I can choose to be born in the 1st century, when men worshipped goddesses; in the 11th century, when knights were inspired to grand deeds by their veneration of ladies; in the 14th century, when men like Dante idolized women like Beatrice; or in the 21st century, when Britney Spears danced half naked on the stage and Janet Jackson bared her breast at the Super Bowl, and…I’m still going to choose the 21st century. Rabbi Boteach is right that there is nothing “liberating” about strutting around in a bikini in a beauty pageant, but what he seems to overlook is this: I don’t HAVE to strut around in a bikini in a beauty pageant. The western world hasn’t, in terms of just treatment of women, really devolved; where it has devolved is in human dignity, and what happens to women as a result is a general, and not a particular, consequence of our general loss of dignity as a people and a culture. He acknowledges that women were ill treated back in the days when femininity was idolized, but he thinks we can reclaim the idolization without reclaiming the subjugation. I’m not sure that’s possible, but, even if we could, I’m not sure we should necessarily want men to idolize women in a Dantesque fashion. Respect them, certainly, but idolize them? (He of course never uses the word idolatry, but I don’t know how else to label what he seems to be describing in these pages with regard to his adulation of womankind.) Yes, women should be more dignified. Yes, men should be more dignified. Yes, a man is best when balanced by a woman. Yes, women are a civilizing influence in society. But women are not gods. As John Donne (or St. Augustine?) said, woman was not taken out of man’s foot, to be subjugated by him, but nor was she taken out of his head, to be lord over him. She was taken out of his side. She too is flesh and bone. I feel that, so far in this book, Rabbi Boteach is too hard on men as a group and idolizes women too much as a sex. There are feminists who seek to masculinize women, and feminists who seek to feminize men. Rabbi Boteach strikes me as the latter variety. But it is really a sense of masculine honor, and not androgyny or femininity, that inspires men to behave honorably toward women. Perhaps I am misunderstanding Rabbi Boteach to some extent. I can only say how the argument appears to me thus far, and it appears to be an argument for idolizing women and feminizing men in order to solve all of the world problems. It holds for me hints of the goddess-worship, female-superiority, men are unnecessary, sisterhood of femininity version of feminism to which I simply cannot relate. Although putting women on unrealistically high pedestals is certainly better than putting them on their knees, it is not the silver bullet answer to the world’s woes or even to women’s woes. What we suffer today is not an issue of female superiority going unrealized. It is an issue of men and women both abandoning their human dignity and forgetting that they were created in the image of their Maker.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-03-17 00:00:00 Chris Bishop Nothing would make me happier than for this to be required reading in every high school in the country. It's such common sense, I don't understand how anyone could argue with it. For instance, I have always wondered how 89% of the men in the U.S. can look at porn and then walk into the workplace and treat women like their equal. It's not possible. And look at the books and movies that promote the gentleman hero, such as yes, just admit it, Twilight, that are huge hits that women become obsessed with. Why should that be the fantasy instead of the reality? Thank-you, Rabbi Shmuley, for putting so many of our social problems into a clear argument for a return of the mystique of femininity.