Highest Rated Comments


--Danger--28 karma

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

And there it is.

It's a good reminder. No matter how overwhelming it all seems, the moral obligation remains: while the suffering persists, we can't ever stop trying to end it.

I'm glad you have so much good in your life to keep you sustained. I feel really inspired by you. Thanks.

--Danger--27 karma

I know how urgently important your work is, but I have to ask: how do you, personally, on a day-to-day basis, deal with the gruesome horrors you must witness, discuss, and advocate about? Emotionally, how do you cope with having to see and knowing about all the cruelty and suffering?

--Danger--25 karma

I'm a slightly below average-height female who works out. Any of my male acquaintances, whether he's out of shape or not, can physically overpower me. It's not even a close match.

Women's lower body strength tends to be more closely matched to men's, while their upper body strength is often just half that of men's upper body strength. In a 1993 study exploring gender differences in muscle makeup, female participants exhibited 52 percent of men's upper body strength, which the researchers partially attributed to their smaller muscles and a higher concentration of fatty tissues in the top half of the female body [source: Miller et al]. Another study published in 1999 similarly found women had 40 percent less upper body skeletal muscle [source: Janssen]. Even controlling for athletic aptitude doesn't tip the upper body strength scales in favor of the female; an experiment comparing the hand grip strength of non-athletic male participants versus elite women athletes still revealed a muscle power disparity in favor of the menfolk [source: Leyk et al].

Source.

But that probably doesn't really explain the disparity between men who are killed by police and women.

To understand that, you should ask: what is the ration of male:female in people who get 911 called on them? And called on them for violent behavior? If it's mainly men who get 911 called on them, are we surprised if it's mostly men getting killed?

--Danger--24 karma

A lot of misinformation below so I'll answer directly rather than arguing with people who are wrong. Some haredim and/or orthodox women follow the injunction to "cover one's head before God." So men wear a skullcap, and it just became fashionable for the women to wear wigs as opposed to other kinds of head coverings--though you will also see haredi and/or orthodox women wearing other kinds of head coverings. Some people also have rules about modesty that they're following, but mostly it's to do with a religious rule about covering one's head. It is also why men wear head coverings (kippah).

The following article discusses the origin stories and why there are two reasons (a religious one about covering one's head before God and a social one about modesty): http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/hair-coverings-for-married-women/.

As a final aside, this is the 2nd time in 2 days that I have seen a whole lot of misinformation about Jews being circulated on reddit by people who claim to be Jews or who claim to know all about them. Why is this happening so much recently?

--Danger--7 karma

Since it's an article that attempts to give a broad overview of the many explanations and reasons for Jewish women to cover their hair, it includes this as well, but pretty far down the list. It's rabbis trying to say that hair is sexy b/c of a Bible verse about hair resembling goat fleece. You'd have to ask those rabbis why they think goats are sexy. To me it seems like rabbis who wanted to impose un-Biblical sexual conventions on women of their own day and they had to stretch to find a Torah passage to use. Your guess is as good as mine.