HATING WOMEN AMERICA’S HOSTILE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE FAIRER SEX.
Author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Interviewed By Claudette Vaughan.

For anyone who has ever wondered where our popular culture is taking us, Hating Women is at once an electrifying social commentary and a clarion call for change. The Abolitionist-Online has always been a big fan of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s. The man himself is the host of TLC’s new series Shalom In The Home and author of 10 Conversations You Need To Have With Your Children, The Private Adam, Kosher Sex, and Why Can’t I Fall in Love? A noted rabbi, national radio host, and syndicated columnist, he served for eleven years as Rabbi of Oxfords University. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and eight children.

Abolitionist: Why did you write Hating Women America’s Hostile Campaign Against Women?

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: I wrote Hating Women… because we are becoming a misogynistic culture. I wrote it because the mark of a noble society is protecting those who are slightly more vulnerable, and women are slightly more vulnerable than men. They are men’s equals in every regard and in every respect. Women have a subtly to them from which men can learn. I think that that subtly is being exploited in our culture.

I believe that 60 years after feminism it is not too much to ask that women be respected for their brains and not their bust.

Abolitionist: In this age of sex crime not only are we seeing rapes and murders occurring frequently but we are seeing the most diabolical forms of sex crimes occurring i.e., women whose eye lids have been glued together before being raped, pubic hairs being burnt off by a rapist’s cigarette, beheadings of Mom after watching video games, mutilations of all descriptions and we are witnessing on the planet right now the largest sex slave industry of children and young women that the world has ever seen, then there’s the multi-billion dollar pornography industry – Stop me at any time!

Shmuley Boteach: Our culture and our society are not as they should be or as they could be. Our job is to make it healthier and to make it better. I’m troubled by the extent of the love of violence that is encaptured in these video games. We have to be enamoured of healthier things. I’m troubled by how our children are not being shaped or molded by positive influences. Very often they are shaped by destructive influences. Much of the classic violence we see is within the Video Industry. Another example is the sexual exploitation of women in the Music Industry. You shouldn’t have to expose your mid-rift or show your butt to get a recording contract. A woman should be judged of course by her voice and by her talents, not by her appearance. After all, this is the recording industry not the modeling industry.

It troubles me that on college campuses male students are not being encouraged to be gentlemanly to respect and honour women. It bothers me that there’s a culture of womenising that prevails on our campuses which are, after all, academic institutions. It’s about learning about life and one of the things we learn about life is to respect women and to respect love but instead we see is just casual sex and condoms being distributed. I would like to see a culture where men are told that a gentleman dates a woman without taking anything from her, not manipulating her. I don’t believe that’s what’s being encouraged today.

Abolitionist: We see it through the “teaching apparatus” of Hollywood movies, why is there a escalated and deliberate attempt to change how men view women and, it must be said, that the complicity of women in this is astounding. Yet my thoughts are that men are the prime target to promote a certain type of man that nominates sex over love, that has been conditioned to choose “fun”, through the hedonistic medium of “entertainment” and pleasure.

Shmuley Boteach: My next work that I’m writing right now is called Shalom In The Home named after my television series but I am also working on a book that will be published in September this year, God willing, called “The Broken American Male”. I think we live in a time of brokenness. I think that men are not leading healthy lives, pursuing destructive forms of addiction such as sports addiction. I mean I love sports myself but you can’t be addicted to sports. It’s just not valuable enough. I think that men are pursuing forms of addiction like pornography which is becoming addictive to American men. Depression is becoming more endemic with the American male. There’s all kinds of issues that can’t be over-looked that point to a modern male brokenness and it’s troubling.

Abolitionist: We have a very good TV channel in Australia called SBS. They run a lot of documentaries. Recently there was one on the actual making of pornography. I noticed the formula of “the good girl” in the West also coincides with the formula in the East and Middle East with its fixation of “good girls”, virgins and child brides as prizes for men. It sends the message that there are only two types of women or girls in the world: “good girls” or whores.

Shmuley Boteach: That’s a very good point. The reason why pornography focuses on “the good girl” is because that’s more erotic {to the male}. It’s the woman who’s mysterious, available. It’s the woman that is erotic because the man feels, “Look how desirable I am. I brought up a transformation in her. Moments ago she was chaste, prudish, now she’s flinging herself at me because I’m so desirable”. But it does point to a desired corrupt concept that is “virtuous”. Pornography is a particular virus in our culture and it’s becoming more and more contagious. It points to many things. Number one: it points the absolutely boredom in the marital bedroom which is a shame. It points also to the denigration of women which is becoming common in our culture. It points also to the male obsession with variety as opposed to finding one woman erotically exciting. It points to the male need to objectify women, to love them in all their facets. Pornography is making women into all cover and no book.

Abolitionist: You said in your book that we as humans are becoming immune to the degradation of women as we view it as nothing more than harmless entertainment. How much is Hollywood responsible for this?

Shmuley Boteach: It’s about exploiting people and their lives offering them a fantastic view of a Hollywood illusion which is much more glamorous than their lives. That’s why people love reading about celebrities. It’s actually a subtle expression of self-loathing. It’s like “My life doesn’t matter but Angelina Jolie’s life really matters because she’s famous”. We denigrate ourselves by trading in our lives for a fantastic Hollywood creation that’s just an illusion. It’s an illusion on many levels. First of all most celebrities lives really are terrible, very sad and tragic as we have seen with Anna Nicole Smith and Brittany Spears. In addition, it’s an illusion because the really special life is where you make the ordinary extraordinary. It’s where you make the everyday miraculous. It’s a natural miraculous where everyday is unique. So that’s what we have to start doing in our lives not lusting after fame. Of course we need money to live, God willing, professional ambition is not a sin. I hope the people will be wealthy and be well, God willing, but we can’t be obsessed with that. We have to try and find blessings in our lives and really appreciate where our blessing are which is mostly with our family and our friends and our relationship with God.

Abolitionist: In Chapter 1, “Fall of the Feminist Dream” you said, “women are nowadays portrayed (and allow themselves to be portrayed) as stupid, shallow, parasitical bimbos, sex slaves to men for money and gold diggers. You asked the question: Is this what feminism fought for? Is it?

Shmuley Boteach: I made the point in my book that feminists fought for women to be taken seriously and that was a very noble pursuit. I consider myself a feminist. I think women must be treated as men’s equals. They are different and we have to recognise gender difference and I think that’s essential because women have so much to teach men. I don’t want to see the masculination of women, I would much rather like to see the feminization of men. Feminism fought for women to be taken seriously and by any measure are they being taken seriously today? For the most part, no. Look in America we have 3 famous women who are taken seriously. Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice.

Other women such as Brittany Spears, Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton are basically a male creation and they aren’t taken seriously. They don’t even realise the degree in which they forfeited their individuality to become a male fantasy.

Abolitionist: This new world order wants women, as you said in your book, “as a walking male orgasm ideal”. This world, you said, is being created where “things that should be deemed shocking are treated as innocuous and commonplace”. What do you attribute to this normalizing of naked women everywhere on billboards, book covers, t-shirts etc where it’s all now commonplace in the West and accepted. How do you think that occurred?

Shmuley Boteach: The abnormal is being normal. Divorce is an abnormality. Today divorce is commonplace. That’s not good. That’s not healthy. Pornography should be fringe but it’s becoming mainstream. It’s offered in all the best hotels nowadays. It makes much more money than Hollywood. At football games in the United States the men score touchdowns, the women jump up and down in lycra and pom poms – the cheerleaders. I don’t think we should normalize this stuff. I think that what should be normal is that which is healthy. Respect for women, gentlemanly behaviour so that people are really respected and valued and are unexploited.

In America forty years ago a child in the South could not have a drink of water from a white water fountain. That’s not right and we corrected it, thank God. That was abominable! You can’t exploit people because of difference. I fear we are living in a world where women are being exploited because of their differences. And I also fear that women are not even aware of their exploitation. They are using their sexuality to get ahead and in the process you wake up one day and you’ve become a man’s sex toy. It’s not a pleasant thing to be because it really is like contempt.

Abolitionist: You mentioned in Hating Woman… there’s a war against old women, fat women and a male perspective of so-called “ugly” women. There’s been a huge move in the West and East to get men to dump their first wives and to marry a much younger women which in turn has destroyed some terrific marriages. What are your thoughts?

Shmuley Boteach: I believe we live in a time of the tyranny of the beautiful which is what I call it. It’s where those that are beautiful, and by the way I mean those who are beautiful by subjective societal norms, are given preferential treatment. There are so many studies done about this. For example: If you lose your wallet, you have an 80% chance of having it returned to you in the mail if you are beautiful. We have long known that there are certain industries that really cater to the beautiful – flight attendants to women who are cocktail waitresses. I think that women today are ashamed to even talk about their age. They will talk about almost every aspect of their personal lives but they tell you how old they are. That they are ashamed that they lived, that they breathed, that they loved and how could someone be ashamed of just living? What’s wrong with saying, “I am 50 years old”. And the answer is, if you are 50 years old and you’re a women, you’re treated as if you’re past it.

Abolitionist: Isn’t Barbie and Bratz geisha? Designed for men, shockingly passive, known for their looks and breasts and is the male sex toy fantasy to do exactly what they like with. You have made the same observation with Hollywood role models and cosmetic surgery. What do you think going on behind it all?

Shmuley Boteach: I don’t think geisha in our time still provides sexual services but yes, the idea that a woman is a means to an end. The idea that a woman lives for a man’s pleasure, that’s degrading – subordinate status. We have to alleviate woman to, at the very least, be equal to men.

Abolitionist: Somebody once said that naked women in the west and burka-ed women in the Middle East, were never meant to be either extreme. What are your views on the terrifying assault on women with so-called "honour killings" - gendericide?

Shmuley Boteach: They are abominable. The killing of any innocent human being is the great abominable – there is nothing greater let alone a man killing a woman, that’s just despicable. And look at the way we subvert language. We call it a “honour”killing. There’s nothing honourable about killing.

Abolitionist: Tell us about your next book.

Shmuley Boteach: It’s just come out. It’s called Shalom in the Home. It’s a very special book that’s based on my television series. It’s on Foxtel in Australia. On every Tuesday night on the Discovery Home and Health Network. I go around the country in the US trying to help families in crisis and we actually actually did an Australian family with Tracy Grimshaw on A Current Affair last week. You can watch it on the Channel 9 website.

Abolitionist: You’re doing great work Shmuley. Where’s it coming from? Your Jewish roots?

Shmuley Boteach: The Jewish religion has always been very focused on the family. Very focused on taking the light of God into the darkest spaces.

Abolitionist: How does Jewish scripture see evil and how it manifests in the world?

Shmuley Boteach: The Jewish understanding of evil is we are a monotheist religion; we’re not a dualist religion. We don’t believe in Lucifer and the Devil. We believe that people become evil through their actions and not by bargaining with the Devil, or their souls aren’t being sold to demonic powers. It’s human actions that makes one evil. We believe if you do evil things, slowly but surely you become evil yourself.

Abolitionist: The ritual initiations of the Greater Mysteries of the Western Esoteric Tradition – the Kabbala – is based upon the principles of the Tree of Life. This sophisticated understanding of evil – known as Klippoth in Judaism – is translated as “husks” meaning shells without soul. This is really what your work is about Shmuley – that western society is becoming like “empty shells”. And that comes about by trying to degrade the divine feminine principle of God, the Shekinah. They are trying to make all of us empty husks in this life.

Shmuley Boteach: Absolutely. The idea is that which conceals God is evil because God is meant to be revealed in our world. Our actions can conceal God. When I feed the poor I feel God because I am doing a Godly action, I’m showing my Godly soul. I’m showing kindness, I’m showing human fraternity, I’m showing that we all have one Father in Heaven. When someone, God forbid, murders especially in the name of God, then he is absolutely concealing God, that’s the husk. He is denying God. He is saying, “He is not my brother”. He is saying, “We have no common origin”. That this human life that I have taken has no sanctity. So it’s the absolute denial of God.