M odern Irony # 1: The modern liberated woman living in today’s liberated society is apprehensive because modern liberated man who is liberated from any restrictions on his behavior is now implementing his liberation by intimidating liberated women whose concept of a modern liberated society did not include harassment from liberated men.
Modern Irony # 2: This liberated woman who yearns to have the (imagined) privileges of a man to dress like a man to command a salary like a man to serve in the armed forces like a man to be a CEO like a man finds that despite all her advances toward these goals she is nevertheless humiliated and aggrieved by liberated men precisely because she is not a man but a woman.
It makes the news almost daily: Men who live without limits on their activities inevitably consider women to be nothing more than things and objects and therefore engage in what is euphemistically termed inappropriate behavior. This is life in the 21st century: the age of smart phones and men walking on Mars — and men victimizing women. They obviously never heard of the halachos of inter-gender relationships.
In fact those who have no Torah connection invariably attack halachic gender restrictions as antiquated and out of tune with the times. “Bring halachah up to date ” they cry “bring it into the 21st century. We moderns are beyond these medieval restrictions.” To which I respond: If this is modern life may I book passage to the Middle Ages?
