Male privilege in action

Oh, what a wonderful world we would live in if only menschlichkeit (being a decent person) were the guiding light in our social interaction with others (“Plane talk,” Comment & Features, April 22).

Rabbi Avi Shafran surely knows that life is never that simple. He completely fails to put the issue in its right context. Perhaps I can help him: When a woman is asked to move once aboard an airliner in order to accommodate the wishes of a man who does not want to be seated next to her because she is a woman, this is male privilege in action.

It is the same male privilege that is seeing women removed from billboards, magazines, newspapers and photographs in general (yes, even Holocaust photographs). It is the same male privilege that is putting up signs demanding “modest attire” or segregated sidewalks despite the Supreme Court having declared this illegal. It is the same male privilege that is failing to find a solution to the problem of “agunot,” those Jewish women whose husbands refuse to grant them a religious divorce.

It is the same context in which a request to move, simply because I am a woman, must be seen.

The creeping misogyny with which we are confronted in Israel today does not allow us the luxury of practicing menschlichkeit. Perhaps Rabbi Shafran should be requesting it from the men who treat women in this way! ELLIE MORRIS

Aseret