Sexuality vs. spirituality

Nancy Cott’s essay on passionlessness reminded me of a story I once heard from a rabbi. I had just started to get involved with a (Jewish) religious group at NYU, and spent a weekend visiting an Orthodox family in New Jersey. In the Orthodox community, women must dress modestly – skirts or dresses knee-length or below, and shirts that come up to the collarbone with at least elbow-length sleeves. Many religious communities follow stricter dress codes – clothing must cover everything from ankles to wrists. The rabbi leading the trip tried to explain the reasoning behind the rules with the following metaphor: During the night, the most beautiful part of the sky is the stars. The darker the night, the more brilliantly the stars seem to shine. During the day, we can’t see the stars, but not because they’ve disappeared; the sunlight is so harsh and bright, it overwhelms the stars and hides their presence. According to the rabbi, the same idea applies to women. Our physical presence, especially in immodest clothing, can be so overwhelming for men that it obscures our inner beauty – intelligence, morals, dignity, etc. So, just as the stars become visible when the sunlight fades, our best qualities will only appear if we minimize the distraction of our physical appearance.

Honestly, I don’t know if I buy that. Sure, it would be great if people could appreciate others’ virtues regardless of appearance, but why should women be responsible for men’s ability to do so? Of course I’m not advocating wearing a leather catsuit to co-ed class or a business meeting, but within the bounds of good taste, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect men to be able to look at my face instead of my chest without always having to wear turtlenecks.

The extreme forms of modesty found in religious Jewish communities have significant similarities to passionlessness. Both supposedly serve “women’s larger interest by downplaying altogether their sexual characterization…allowing women to develop their human faculties and their self-esteem” (Cott 139). Additionally, just as “Evangelical Protestants constantly reiterated the theme that Christianity had raised women from slaves in status to moral and intellectual beings…’exalted above human nature, raised to that of angels,'” Jewish women are also believed to be on a higher spiritual level than men (Cott 135). Still, I think passionlessness demanded a repression of female sexuality that Judaism’s religious modesty does not. Cott describes passionlessness as:

a world view in which women’s sexual nature was shadowed behind her moral and spiritual endowment [and] eclipsed her primitive and original power over men, the power of her sexuality. The evangelical view, by concentrating on women’s spiritual nature, simultaneously elevated women as moral and intellectual beings and disarmed them of their sexual power. 135-136

I think it’s interesting that 19th-century Protestantism set spiritual morality and sexuality as opposite and mutually exclusive traits. In contrast, Judaism recognizes a woman’s sexuality as a formidable force that’s inexorably linked to her spirituality. She is considered the spiritual center of her home because she bears and raises the children. Women cover their bodies because they are both sexual and spiritual beings, not because they must deny their sexuality to justify moral superiority. This last point reminds me of Foucault’s repressive hypothesis. Perhaps dressing modestly takes advantage of the repressive hypothesis’s ability to create or highlight something that wasn’t necessarily apparent before. If, as the saying goes, we all want what we can’t have, modesty may be another way of drawing attention to, instead of away from, a woman’s sexuality.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 27th, 2011 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Ariana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.