Over the past several years, since the #MeToo movement has gained prominence, reckonings around sexual misconduct and harassment have taken place throughout the global Jewish community. Continuing the momentum of this movement is hard while so many other issues, including the ongoing pandemic, occupy our space. But this work is far from over, and an open call for authentic testimony reminds the wider community that this culture has lasting, negative effects.
From Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bella Abzug, to Tiffany Haddish, #MeToo and local politics.
Thus, when I ask students to respond in writing to The Red Tent, one question is, “Is Diamant’s midrash a feminist one? Can the redefinition of (possible) sexual assault as consensual sex be a feminist enterprise?
The particular section of the Torah that we read at this time of year addresses issues including menstruation and childbirth. This part of the Torah is, indeed, a bar or bat mitzvah student’s worst nightmare.
We think of the #metoo movement as a contemporary phenomenon. But in truth, women have been speaking up for a long time. Millennia, at least.
Radical empathy will let us see past the surface and imagine the various steps that a person in crisis must take. In the case of a high-profile #MeToo accuser, these could include costs like hiring lawyers, losing time from work, paying for cross-country flights to testify.
Many of these accused abusers have not performed anything close to adequate teshuva. Nor, really, has society at large.
What does matter – what is absolutely clear – is that in the power structure of the university environment, she violated her position.
It seems that women are being targeted on multiple fronts, almost as if #MeToo and its power have provoked a vicious backlash
To what extent will we able to separate the research from the researcher, and should we? With what sort of contextualizing footnotes do we now cite his work?
