One of the secondary damages of the war is the self-imposed gender shattering by Israeli society.
From every direction, it is evident that beliefs about equality, female or male roles, balanced parenting and a lack of judgment regarding different types of families are shattering the ground of practical reality and setting us back years. On both the front and the home front, subject to the indications of terrorist organizations and neighborhood charitable organizations, as opposed to T.L.H.
Advertisement of hagisswords iron, photo: screenshot
True, there is one sector in which the fierce sacrifice of our fallen soldiers catapulted us forward in the time tunnel – Lieutenant Sagi Golan, who fell in battle at Kibbutz Be'eri, left behind his fiancé Omer, and their touching story made the system nervous and made it recognize LGBT spouses of fallen soldiers in Israel's wars. The law of continuity for the use of deceased sperm was also induced.
This would not have happened without favorable media coverage, since heartbreaking articles illustrate problems, put issues on the agenda that become an agenda, and from there the path to consensus and even change is short.
Puppy you
During the war, you see more news. At first, the commercial channels feared that the war would depress advertising budgets, but profit and rescue are always available from elsewhere, and there are organizations that diversify the advertisements, such as Haggis, whose new advertisement for their collaboration with the Israel Midwives Association is a window into the current Israeli mainstream.
Until the war, we liked to think that childbirth was a song for two, now we see women in their ninth month going up the stairs alone, arriving alone at the maternity ward, having a video call with the baby's father in the delivery room because he is in the reserves. An exciting advertisement that certainly causes a significant segment of the population (pregnant challenged / single mothers / single women in general, same-sex couples, and much more) to envy even the seemingly harsh reality seen from the screen.
When we return from the commercials to the studio, the exciting receptions for women and children are discussed again, and the volume of coverage of the men who remained in captivity is presented as uncorrelated to the disaster that is happening in reality. A correlation is recorded only between the glorification of mothers at home and the elimination of captive men from the discourse.
Is the new equation women getting along on the home front – men getting along in captivity?
We are proud of our soldiers, the report releases pictures of tanks and female fighters who have taken up a line on the border, and the media echoes the war of the sharp and clever observers who were trampled under full-fledged generals. A responsible society does not pride itself on militaristic feminism when it is convenient and celebrates the return of abductees in a more sophisticated way. One that doesn't turn the Bibas songs they like to call "mother lioness" a formidable bargaining chip, but one that focuses on, for example, the return of our soldiers, whose abuse they endured cannot be imagined but only inspired on Telegram.
Fighting like lions
One of the loathsome words that is making a comeback now is "lioness." This is, of course, a description of a woman who does everything for the children - that is, her "puppies". And what about the lions? Oh, they get by on their own. Like the quote of the fighter that Yoram Taharlev incorporated into his monumental poem: "Maybe we were lions / But whoever still wanted to live / He was not allowed to be / On Ammunition Hill."
Community communities hang signs on reservists' homes that say "This is where a family of heroes lives" to strengthen families whose father went to fight.
I am intrinsically grateful to them, partly because there are many families in which the father or mother does not serve in the reserves, and partly because it is difficult to sacrifice routine for the sake of a lofty idea and be dust at the feet of the cabinet. But how to tell them that there are hundreds of thousands of families in Israel where the father (sometimes the mother) is not present, not always by choice, and the salary depends only on the parent who remains. There are heroes outside the consensus - it is worth remembering this after the war.
The gender paradox, which tries to be politically correct but can't ignore the situation, appears in the fine print of Operation Haggis and Midwives: "Hey baby, you don't know yet, but your mother is a lioness... A home visit (!) after giving birth will be given to any woman who was uprooted from her home (!!) as a result of the fighting and/or a woman who is alone, or a man who is alone, due to the recruitment of her spouse." Sexually confused? So do we. Men are entitled to maternity leave even if they have not given birth. The advertisement reinforces the image of the woman giving birth who will meet with a midwife. Therefore, the gap from the fine print – which the Equal Service Act requires – is large.
And after the baby is born, one can only hope that he will not be kidnapped to Gaza, and if he is kidnapped, it is better before the age of 19. Because once an armored vehicle that was kidnapped was the child of all of us, but according to the new Israeli consensus, a man aged 19 and over is no longer considered a child. Our maternal and feminine feelings should probably be limited, this is the order of the day. Longing for children is exciting when Sinwar agrees to release them, but if we need another strategy to free our daughters who are soldiers or our soldier sons, it's a different story. And if our sons or husbands are in the field, and international law attacks them alongside the enemy, here too the love of a mother or wife becomes a little more complex.
Until two months ago, we were leaning into the convention that fathers are as important in family life as mothers. In order not to quarrel with the oppressor, we aligned ourselves, and women became a caregiver and feeder while the males were at the front.
Surprise: women and men are not the same. We exaggerated when we tried mercilessly to prove the opposite, now we are exaggerating the regression. It seems that the gender atmosphere has also become the result of political considerations.
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