Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > August > 18 > Entry
Men in front, women in back
If you’re a woman, and you get on the 15A, don’t sit in the front.
“I didn’t even know it was a segregated bus and people started yelling at me to move to the back,” said Mamit Asras, 22, a secular Jew waiting for a bus in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. “I was in shock because it was a public bus.”
The Israeli national bus cooperative, Egged, opened a second gender-segregated bus line in Jerusalem earlier this year after ultra-Orthodox Jews shut down streets demonstrating for more segregated buses.
Last year, the company created the country’s first gender-segregated bus line, also in Jerusalem, which was opposed in petitions by secular Jews.
But several women waiting at a bus stop in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, told me they preferred to sit in the back of the bus.
“The more the better,” said Hani Zonenfeld, 17, of the busses. “At noon time, when it’s really crowded, it’s much more modest.”
By keeping the sexes apart, unmarried men and women won’t incidentally touch each other.
“The most important thing is the touching,” Zonenfeld said.
But, why put the women in the back?
“Women,” Asras said, “always get the bad part of the deal.”
Comments
By GeoffDawg
August 19, 2008 12:55 PM | Link to this
meh.
By Sol
August 19, 2008 1:22 PM | Link to this
OYE!
By Soulfinger
August 19, 2008 1:52 PM | Link to this
I agree…meh.
By parentof4
August 19, 2008 2:29 PM | Link to this
The only sense of putting women in the back is so that the men can stare at them when they are walking to the back of the bus. They want to prevent accidental touching, not looking like you are walking down the Bus Walk.
By SecularHumanist
August 19, 2008 3:07 PM | Link to this
This just shows that the Jews are no better than the Muslims. It is unconscionable that the US has propped up the Israeli regime for so many years.
By Troglodyke
August 19, 2008 3:58 PM | Link to this
Actually, it just shows the ridiculousness of religion, period. Xtians tend to think they are so much more forward-thinking than this, but Xtianity is as guilty of subjugating women as the other 2 Abrahamic faiths.
So much concern about “what god wants.” As if anyone could really know, given that so much of religion is completely contradictory, baseless, and full of silly rules.
I’m so glad to live in a country where I can live by secular laws. We have too much religion here, too, but, at least for now, those of us who choose not to believe have way more freedoms than nonbelievers elsewhere.
By The Oddball
August 19, 2008 4:03 PM | Link to this
I would lay down my life for my Jewish cousins, but what is true of these Orthodox folks is true of fundamentalist Muslims and Christians and every other society that puts women in the back of the bus: So long as women are held down, a society will never rise to meet its full capabilities.
By whoever
August 20, 2008 2:39 PM | Link to this
lol