“The way to rectify corrupt sexual mores is by replacing them with a healthy code of sexuality, not by advocating asexuality”

The way to rectify corrupt sexual mores is by replacing them with a healthy code of sexuality, not by advocating asexuality.

Classical tzniut is too often predicated on the negation of people’s sexuality, creating a public space which is radically asexual. They achieve that by cloaking and covering up every bit of a person’s sexual identity. There isn’t, as a result, even a whiff of exposed sexuality. The public sphere is completely asexual.

Such an ethos is wrong and misconstrues the essence of halakhic tzniut, because it fails to recognize that being too tzanua is no less wrong than not being tznua enough.

Chareidi tzniut norms are therefore not the solution. They replace one wrong with another.

We need to instead seek other solutions, ones that do not make the victims of sexual misconduct responsible for the behavior of the perpetrators, by advocating the complete erasure of people’s core sensuous identity.

Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, Facebook post (18 October 2018) [https://www.facebook.com/ysoscher/posts/10155778341258639]