Lot’s wife

There are days like this when the threads all come together, and I come undone.

Three days ago in Texas, thirteen middle school cheerleaders disobeyed their coach. She punished the 12- and 13-year-olds by making them do bear crawls for a mile around the track. The track was 125 F at the time. The girls received first and second-degree burns. One was treated at a medical center.

The nurse at the school who treated them all said nothing.

How is that possible?

I see a video by a woman on Instagram who has surgery on the same day her husband breaks his finger. They receive the same pain killers. She holds up the bottles for us to see.  He gets six. She gets two.

How does that make sense?

I see a link.

I give a public speaking assignment to subgroups. In one, the man takes all the time intended for the three of them. The two women offer him further support to help him tell his story better beyond the confines of their session time. He does not offer them the same.

I see a link.

George Orwell writes in The Road to Wigan Pier, “In this system the oppressors can imagine themselves innocent of crimes against a people, not by denying the crimes, but by denying the equal humanity of the people.”

In Wifedom, Anna Funderer reveals again and again how this same brilliant George Orwell, not only wrote his wife, Eileen, out of his biography, he also denies her centrality in supporting him financially, saving his life, etc. His biographers do the same. She writes, “There seemed to be no way for the biographers to deal with the anti-woman, anti-wife, anti-sex rant other than by leaving it out, sympathising with the impulse, trivialising it as a ‘mood’, denying it as ‘fiction’ or blaming the woman herself.”

He is, in the words of a friend quoted in the book, a sadist — one who uses sex to punish and humiliate, especially through having affairs with her friends to isolate her further.

Women are not equally human. That is how his adoring biographers can gloss over his affairs, his attempted rapes, his cruelty, and the support he took from women — without ever noting it — because you can be a good man, a great man even if you are abusive to women.

I learned recently of yet another tech business leader in our local eco-system with a history of sexual harassment. He continues to be invited to speak at events — even when the event organizers know of his history.

That’s possible because women aren’t equally human.

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, from all the people in the cursed city of Sodom, Lot is good enough to be saved. Abraham has begged for the city not to be destroyed if even 10 good people are found. Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, but Lot walks out.

In 19:8, Lot offers his two young daughters to the baying horde outside his door to protect two strangers.

And then Lot gets to walk out, because you can be a good man even if you are cruel to women, even if you are willing to heave your daughters out the door, as long as you save men.

Lot’s wife looks back and dies for it. He doesn’t even look back.

That’s the thread.

I suggest scissors.