Question: When I have sat to watch a movie with my husband…..and the camera focuses in on a womans body part….I get very upset emotionally. It feels as if to a very very slight degree that this woman just sexualized my significant other. This hurts as I guess I hold our sexuality very close. I discipline my mind, which doesn’t seem too hard, but if something should start to tempt me to entertain ideas of other men…..I just refuse to go there out of love and respect for my husband. And of course I have no idea what he thinks or anything….but it still hurts that a beautiful woman with her personal body parts is there on the screen tempting him. Going along with it seems like I just gave in, conceded that is life. Or, I have a Dream: Of a relationship where both parties are in love and everyone else falls away….respect, kindness, and tenderness rule their lives. Sex at no time is shared. Thoughts are brought into restraint…. IN this day and age with all this tech media stuff…I ask… Are there people like me?

Answer: In answer to your question, “Are there people like me?” the answer is YES. There are millions of people like you. We are called WOMEN. A woman wants an exclusive relationship with the man she loves, and does not want him to be attracted, even momentarily, to other women. There is a popular song, I Only Have Eyes for You. The title epitomizes the way a woman feels towards the man she loves and the way she wants him to feel about her, too.

Now, about the type of movies you are watching: Devout Jews make every attempt to “guard their eyes,” and watching inappropriate movies can be problematic. Men in particular are drawn to what their eyes see—that is their nature. A woman tends to be attracted to a whole man, preferably a man she knows. If she is in love with a man, she is not usually attracted to other men. Women are generally not attracted to random body parts, even of a very good-looking man. When we women look at a picture of a man, we are usually not attracted to a nude man, whose status cannot be determined. We tend to be more attracted if the man is wearing something that indicates who or what he is; a woman may be drawn to a man in a well-cut business suit, or in a military uniform, or wearing a white doctor’s jacket.

Men are different, they are hardwired differently. A man can be in love with a woman and still be physically attracted to other women. A man can be aroused by glimpses of random body parts. Of course, not only movies and TV shows, but even magazine covers at the checkout line, or a woman walking by with a slit in her skirt or an unbuttoned blouse, can attract a man’s attention. It is not possible to ensure that your man will never, ever look at another woman or female body parts. But this I can tell you: men who live in a community and society where women generally dress modestly, and where photographs of scantily dressed women are not readily available, will have much less of a temptation of “roving eyes” that rightly troubles you. This is a strong argument in favor of living as part of a religious community. Such a community offers tremendous protection to women—and to the men they love.
—Toby Katz