PenceFence
Women journalists covering Pence’s trip to Israel are being subjected to gender segregation.
[O]n Tuesday, female journalists were particularly perturbed to discover that they had been relegated to covering Pence’s spiritual stop at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, from the other side of a fence.
The Western Wall — the outer wall of the raised esplanade that is called the Temple Mount by Jews and al-Haram al-Sharif by Muslims — is currently under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Western Wall Heritage Foundation. According to custom, the plaza is divided by gender, with men praying on one side of a barrier and women on the other.
“According to custom,” of course. It’s always “according to custom.” That’s how it works. It is our custom to treat women as inferior beings. Next question?
For Pence’s visit to the wall, the foundation set up two platforms side by side straddling the barrier. As Pence prayed on the men’s side, however, it was impossible for the female journalists to see above the cameras and microphones held by their male colleagues.
“It was the same situation during President Trump’s visit to the Western Wall in May 2017,” said the foundation in a statement. “We reject any attempt to divert the discussion from the important and moving visit of the US Vice President and his wife at the Western Wall.”
Moving shmoving. Their god hates women.
Female journalists covering the event disagreed, however, coining the hashtag #pencefence on Twitter.
Tal Schneider, a prominent Israeli journalist, tweeted: “Separation at the Western Wall. The women stuck in isolation and can not photograph, work. Women journalists are second-class citizens. The American women photographers are frantically yelling at the representatives of the White House. #PenceFence
Pence no doubt approves. He won’t work with women without a chaperone, thus handicapping women who work for him and women who need to meet with him as part of their jobs. PenceFence indeed.
Was Mrs. Pence relegated to the other side of the mechitza?
I’m sure she was. It’s GOD’S RULE.
Christian Taliban, aided and abetted by the Jewish Taliban.
Much like with Senator Cotton and non-offense at blatant racism – when Pence is participating in blatant sexism, it’s not a pass for the offense, it’s an indication that the same damn vice is Cotton’s and Pence’s. They just have company in it.
Valid complaints in principle, but in practice there’s not going to be any news from Pence’s time praying at the wall.
Sex, actually. “Gender” is the rationalization for the separation.
Lady M:
Can we take it then that without the barrier in place, lust would rule all over the shop and there would be nothing to see but an undulating carpet of fornication?
The mind boggles.
Omar, the idea of Pence being part of an “undulating carpet of fornication” horrifies and traumatizes the reader – at least one with a “mind’s eye”. I cannot unthink this….thanks for nothing.
I visited the Western Wall 38 years(!) ago as part of a trip to the eastern Mediterranean I took in high school. One of the guys in our group ended up on the “women’s side” of the barrier. He’d been engaged in conversation with his friends and he just followed them along to the wall, not realizing his gaffe until after. The heavens did not open, the earth did not quake. That would have only happened if one of the female students had ended up on the MEN’s side.
This was in my waning deist days; I actually wrote out a little prayer/wish/request and shoved it between the stones. Seemed to be the thing to do at the time. Didn’t take.
Did you ever get over that?
Well, it was mostly wishful thinking and symbolic at that point; it’s not like I expected it to work. I vacilated between agnosticism and atheism for years, finally realized that atheism made more sense to me; the existence of gods should be a discoverable property of the universe. The “problem of evil” goes away if you no longer have to make excuses for an allegedly omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient being who doesn’t seem to give a shit. In this case, absense of evidence is actually pretty good evidence of absense, certainly for theism.
I got set on the path I took by a grade three teacher. Not her intention, either. Back in the mid-late 60’s there was still a fair amount of overt Christian teaching in the nominally public school system, so the occasional Christian hymn would be part of daily opening excercizes.One of those songs was “God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall.”
God sees the little sparrow fall,
It meets His tender view;
If God so loves the little birds,
I know He loves me, too.
He loves me, too, He loves me, too,
I know He loves me, too;
Because He loves the little things,
I know He loves me, too.
It did not follow that God’s seeing the sparrow showed that he loved it. I always wondered why God did not catch the sparrow. Thus, unwittingly, my grade three teacher set my little eight year old self on the path that led to my current disbelief.