Red Shoes: Jews and Sexuality

The other day in class I mentioned the red and black shoes with bells on them that Jewish women were sometimes required to wear. There is some info on red shoes and shoes with bells that I found through Wikipedia, but nothing terribly conclusive. Here's where that idea came from and what I have to say about it:

I'm a huge fan and avid watcher of this show called Transparent. It stars Jeffrey Tambour, who plays a transgender woman and father of three adult children. What I think is particularly interesting about this show is that it explores a wide range of topics and controversies within gender and sexuality studies. One of these topics is how Judaism and sexuality intersect, which explored in the storyline of the youngest daughter, Ali.

Ali explores her heritage and learns of her ancestors who were murdered in the Holocaust, and there are several scenes depicting the destruction of libraries and institutes dedicated to gender and sexuality studies. Sexuality studies seems like a field that is still so new and trying to find its academic footing, but in actuality there were entire libraries dedicated to the film before the 1940s. Just imagine how much more we might know if this information was not destroyed.

Ambivalence for the Blind

Goffman's discussion of societal benefits that blind people have bestowed upon them, like being asked to endorse perfumes and being regarded as having heightened senses, reminded me of my travels to Southeast Asia in 2012.


That's me, circa January 2012, riding in a Tuk-Tuk through Siem Reap, Cambodia.

My best friend, Natalie, moved to Singapore in 8th grade, so in my senior year of high school I flew to Singapore to visit her over my holiday break. Once I got there, her family took me and her on a week-long trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Siem Reap, Cambodia. In Cambodia, it was common to find massage clinics advertising things like this:



My surrogate family for the week (Natalie's family) and I indulged in the cheap massages a few times for two reasons: our feet were sore from traveling and the massage clinics claimed to donate proceeds of their business to help the local blind community. However, when I went back to research these "Seeing Hands" massages today, I found that these massages are sometimes falsely advertised and the massage clinics are actually exploiting the blind workers.

As people from a developed country visiting a not-so-developed country, perhaps we were searching for ways we could participate in the rich culture of Cambodia and at least feel like we were giving back to a community in need. That feeling may be innocent, but the truth is our actions and our money could have easily been spent doing more harm than good.

This is the interesting thing about stigma - we can't seem to function as a society without it. Privileged, upper class, seeing tourists need blind Cambodian masseurs in order to make themselves feel better about the obvious wealth inequality staring American tourists in the face as soon as they set foot in a less fortunate place. This is just like the Saints in Medieval Europe who needed the Black Death to continue wreaking havoc on communities near them so they would have subjects to publicly nurse, kiss, and heal and add holiness to their name.


Saint Francis kissing the stigmata wounds of Jesus

Stigma creates a stratified social hierarchy in which the lines are not always so clear or so set in stone. Labeling theory has claimed that this hierarchy is necessary for societies to progress. If that is true, then it is also true that no society will be without order, class, or other systems of rank. If my experiences in Cambodia and the lessons from Goffman have taught me anything, it's that there will always be people labeled as "other," and there will always be people in the "normal" whose normality will rely completely on the existence of "the other."

Not the Christians We're Looking For

In Huppert's "After the Black Death" the author describes the town of Sennely, using it as a model ordinary Early Modern society. I thought it was surprising that the people of Sennely were not as devoutly Christian as I had thought most in Early Modern Europe would be at the time.

He notes that "religion played a large part in the lives of the peasants, but it was a religion of their own, designed to satisfy local needs." I was surprised to find that universal Christiandom was not as conservative as some of the sects that we have now in the US.

I think there is a modern misconception that pre-modern life was somehow pure and untouched by the evils that plague societies today. And this is clearly not the case. Religion has a purpose according to most sociologists and that is to unite a society enough so it can function and have something of which to base its rules. But clearly, there is no "pure" form of religion because it was always molded into whatever the religious or even secular leaders needed people to believe or do at the time.

In short, this has mostly affirmed my beliefs as an atheist: religion is mostly just rules on how to not be a terrible person, clouded in a bunch of bullshit.

A Map for the Geographically Confused

A friend shared this interactive map of Europe on Facebook today. As a visual learner, I found it incredibly helpful! There are even extra facts in the map that pop up if you hover over a region.

http://www.worldology.com/Europe/europe_history_lg.htm

Slowest Reader in the Class

I was nervous to take this class in the first place, considering I was never any good at history classes through elementary, middle, and high school. But it counted towards my Sexuality Studies minor, it fit well in my schedule, and it sounded like an interesting topic. So I decided to delve outside my comfort zone and, so far, I'm glad I did.

Another reason I was hesitant to take this class, and still worry about, is the slow rate at which I read. As a young child, I was an avid reader. Then school started having required reading and that ruined the fun for me. I like to read, I'm just not very fast. I worry that will hold me back in this class but I plan to engage with the readings regularly through this blog.

Here goes something!