Shreck, it is not at all obvious what WOW’s motivations are. You seem to be under the impression that “c’mon, anyone can tell!” is an adequately logical argument. It is not. Have you heard of the reflexive property in math? It is the final step of a proof, given as x=x or n=n or some such. What you are giving me is x=x without “showing your work” from the entire proof. This is basic stuff that children learn in grade school.
With regard to those who wish that Women of the Wall would stay home and exercise their understanding of Torah Judaism within their own walls, I will reiterate that if the charedim didn’t make such a fuss, the Rosh Chodesh service on the women’s side would be unremarkable. There is NO issue of kol isha and NO reason why women must pray silently at the Kotel while they are surrounded by noise. Women of the Wall observed Rosh Chodesh at the Kotel for twenty years in peace and quiet, and the group would be happy to return to that paradigm. As long as the mechitza says up– and there is no doubt that it will, no matter what the women want– the men do not have to be concerned with tznius. They should not be paying attention to the women’s side anyway. And, yes, the women may expose their elbows, but they are certainly not trying to attract attention by the way they dress. They are just wearing their normal clothing, which may not meet our standards of modesty, but last I checked there was no tznius police at the entrance to the Kotel. As I said before, I don’t pay attention to what the women wear, but I’m sure they did not show up in bathing suits.
Should the women focus on their obligatory mitzvot before taking on others? Perhaps, but let me point out that they do not meet every day. They only meet on Rosh Chodesh, which is a chag special to women. What this tells me is not that they disdain the woman’s tafkid, but that they want to fulfill it to the greatest degree possible. There may be individual women in the group who take on the men’s chiyuv of davening on a regular basis, but this is not characteristic of the group as a whole.
Finally, I want to point out that the kindest characterization of WOW that I’ve seen on this thread is “misguided”. Some other choice epithets include “wackadoodles”, “crazies”, “garbage spewers”, “nutcases”, “avoda zara worshipers”, “stroking their own egos”, “arrogant”, “conceited”, “ignorant”, and “worse than Moslems”, in addition to a comment that indicated the poster was “sick and tired of hearing about v’ahavta l’rayacha kamocha”.
Please. How are we growing from this? Is it really l’sheim shamayim? Is the lashon hara really l’toeles? Can we criticize others for breaches of tznius while we waste our time with slander and hatred for the purpose of making ourselves feel superior? It is not for us to judge Women of the Wall or anyone else. Only Hashem is the True Judge, and I for one trust Him to do His job.