Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (72 page)

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dominance deep in the universal male psyche (duBois 1988; see also Gottlieb 1989). I simply do not see in the talmudic texts a culture of men afraid of female power or of female sexuality, but I do see a culture in which men dominated women to ensure that male corporeal needs for sex and progeny would be met efficiently. Again, I am not arguing that misogyny was not present within the rabbinic culture, but only that it does not seem to have been a key symbol (Ortner 1973), as it seems to have been in some Hellenistic formations. A consequence of my discussion in this book, then, is that certain arrangements of gender asymmetry in culture may not be as intractable to determined desire for change as might at first appear to be the case in light of their apparent ubiquitousness. Material conditions gave them rise, and changing material situations can create the conditions for dislodging them. I hope to have shown here in some small way how one culture might find within itself the resources with which to preserve itself and continue its vitality while making also the necessary changes. And this, to me, is the task of a redemptive and consciousness-raising cultural critique.

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