women in judaism: modesty

This is from an email I sent to someone, that I don't think got through... it does represent some of the thoughts I have been having lately.
I also would welcome any comments
Please excuse any unclear phrasing; I am very busy right now.

email I wrote:

Hello,
Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the subject:

I am a woman who was brought up about as secular as possible, but am
now moving toward a more observant life, as I see the beauty of it and
find out more about it; this does give me more of a need for a
"cultural perspective" on things. While on a practical, subjective,
side of things I feel more self-respecting, and more like my true
self, when I dress more modestly--on the other hand, I was very
interested to research more the history of Jewish women from the more
distant past, to the times over the past few hundred years, and this
brought me to some conclusions that explain the strictness:

1) All women may have covered their hair when living in middle-eastern
countries, and so that was a "biblical" norm of modesty for the
surrounding culture as well.
2) When women were living in Eastern Europe over the past few hundred
years, and were in the shtetls and such places, the stability of the
Jewish community depended on not having conflicts with the surrounding
neighbors, and since--as in Native American cultures today on
reservations, for example--outside men would easily rape a Jewish
woman and not suffer the consequences of law, and Jewish men may not
have been able to fight back in any feasible way, since a conflict
would have put the community at risk as a whole: therefore, any act a
woman could do (i.e. especially stringent modesty, including covering
hair, and ankles, etc...) would definitely be of great worth to her
family and community!

I have come to a funny kind of understanding of Rabbinical law, that I
am not sure if what is quite held to be "Orthodox" but somehow I am
able to keep the two sides of things in my mind, in paradox, but
harmony: I feel like Rabbinical law could be objected to as not "being
required by G-d" in the sense that it has different interpretations,
and one person may argue with another as to details...but on the other
hand, when a community (especially such a large community as the
Jewish People) agrees to do things in one way, that agreement in and
of itself serves to strengthen any actions taken by any one or all of
the People. Why? It seems to me that since our job is to serve G-d as
best as possible in our role as an example and possibly light-bringers
to the world, unity must have strength. So in that case, any
"rebellion" unless for the sake of rebellion alone, does not serve
oneself or the whole.

All of this is not very well researched, or clearly thought out, but
it is the way I have been dealing with what, in modern society, can be
thought of as "superstition" or such.

Thank you again for listening.