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Comments on What should be our Modesty Policy?
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What should be our Modesty Policy?
Judaism Codidact is founded on being a site where people can turn to learn more about Judaism. While our heritage has what to say on intimate themes, it also emphasizes the importance of modesty.
While the prophet declares that the world only exists for the sake of procreation (Isaiah 45:18 with Gittin 41b.1 et. al.), his contemporary holds up modesty as being one of the foundations of the Torah (Micah 6:8 with Makkos 24a.25-26). At the same time that Rav Kahana declares regarding matters of intimacy that "it is Torah and I need to learn" (Berachos 62a.3), Rav Chanan bar Rava states that "Everyone knows why a bride enters under the wedding canopy, but whoever defiles his mouth, even a decree for seventy years of good is reversed upon him for bad" (Shabbos 33a.9).
How do we balance the need for modesty with the desire to learn?
- Mi Yodeya's policy is to outright ban any questions dealing with intimate themes in the name of modesty.
- Another option might be to allow any explicit themes, but all such questions need to be marked as such (i.e. preface the question title with something like [NSFW]) and avoid any explicit language in the question titles.
- Allow these types of questions, but require euphemistic or clinical language (perhaps in combination with #2).
- Perhaps a different solution.
Whichever solution you propose, consider that:
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As young as 13-year-olds are allowed to participate by the ToS, and especially in our culture may not have been exposed to this type of material before.
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Last week I posted this feature request on the main Meta for an NSFW filter. If that is implemented it may allow some more leeway for how such questions would be handled here.
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Some questions may themselves be innocent enough and can trivially be formulated to avoid any references to explicit themes; however they may also invite answers which deal with such themes more explicitly. So one thing you might want to address in your answer is whether such questions should be subject to whatever stringencies you propose (if any) to pre-empt any answers over the line.
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Allow them, but require clinical (or at least euphemistic) language.
Allow them: These topics are as important as any others in halacha and rabbinic tradition, and anyway people will naturally encounter them in learning (or just hearing the weekly torah readings!) and will naturally have questions arising from that learning.
But require clinical language: Clinical language emphasizes the educational aspect over the prurient. Some non-clinical language used in broader culture is demeaning to some, and we should do better. I strongly suspect that if we allow slang or crude language we will drive away people who would have otherwise productively participated as members of our community. And one who is mature enough to be studying these topics can use, or learn to use,1 clinical language while doing so.
Or at least euphemistic language: Clinical language is usually more clear, which is why we should generally prefer it, but if it's clear what's meant, euphemism is fine too. People will have different views of what's clear, so edits to clarify euphemism should be welcomed just like other edits to improve posts. Sometimes the clarity (or lack of it) comes more from context than from actual word choice, so people should use their best judgement and be flexible.
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From edits, for example. ↩
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