a jewish woman's metamorphosis - part 2

there are so many facets to this issue and i'd like to toss some ideas on the table, stream-of-consciousness-style:

i wonder about the paradox in the expectations of a good jewish woman - this madonna/whore complex (just to clarify: that term is one of contrast - those two terms are not synonymous. why? b/c the madonna in question is the virgin mary, not "esther.") that we're expected to juggle gracefully. it is quite a psychological leap and there's a price: either in the inability to make the switch or in being disturbed by the polarity of the images and how that impacts on our self-image. when did this paradigm enter into jewish consciousness?

another one of the issues at hand is the fact that girls/women are sexual beings. that's one concept that gets lost in the whole discussion! we are not only capable of enjoying sex, but we also crave it and yearn for it. we feel attraction and arousal and desire and many of the things a man feels, we just have diff. motivators. whereas men have a physiological factor to their need for sex, women mostly have an emotional/psychological motivating factor - but that doesn't disqualify the need. it is there. and it is a proverbial pink elephant in girls' upbringing/education. everyone tries to pretend it's not there and you know it's there. at best, we ignore it or at worst, feel guilty about it and that leads to other neuroses... but to write women off as frigid or "'not interested" is ridiculous b/c that's not the way G-d made us! S/He created us with desire too... the question is what do we do with it?

(related tangent: if a women is "not interested," it is easier for the husband to write off that "she's frigid" rather than realize that she finds him unattractive b/c he's gained a lot of weight, or that she's emotionally (and thereby physically) divorced from the relationship b/c she feels neglected/abandoned/unsatisfied... it's easier to point the finger at her rather than take a good look in the mirror. it's easier to say the symptom is the disease, rather than dig deep and painfully and treat the disease...)

of course a crucial part of the issue is the fact that men are playing the victim in order to whitewash their own immorality and weakness. "she drove me to it..." how many times was that used as a justifiable excuse for physical abuse til we finally realized that it's b.s. and it's b.s. in this case too. the question is, how do we get jewish men to take responsibility for their actions and how do we get jewish women to take responsibility for their identities?

women are not lobotomized by nature - only by nurture!

then there's the whole mars/venus factor in this discussion... next entry?