{"id":19963,"date":"2013-04-23T10:23:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T15:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19963"},"modified":"2013-04-23T10:23:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T15:23:03","slug":"im-beginning-to-wonder-if-lesbians-are-the-thirteenth-tribe-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/23\/im-beginning-to-wonder-if-lesbians-are-the-thirteenth-tribe-of-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"“I\u2019m beginning to wonder if lesbians are the thirteenth tribe of Israel”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the New Statesman<\/em>, Eleanor Margolis<\/a> ponders the cultural similarities between Jews and lesbians:<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be a devoted Woody Allen fan to be aware of the \u201cJew as hypochondriac\u201d stereotype. Not only is it one of the core themes of Jewish humour, it\u2019s true. I grew up in a household with a medicine cabinet that looked like a branch of Boots. Lesbians are identically health-obsessed. I\u2019ve learned the hard way never to ask a fellow-gay girl about her physical wellbeing. Aside from shagging other women and feasting on organic legumes, we love absolutely nothing more than discussing our ailments. In great, often gory, detail. If a lesbian has a yeast infection or diarrhoea, she will tell you. In fact, the frankest discussions I\u2019ve ever had about my bowel movements have been with my lesbian friends (and my mother. Natch).<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

So, aside from our shared hypochondria and foodiness, what else suggests that the Book of Lesbians might be missing from the Old Testament? Well, a hobby practiced by many a Jew is discussing, often to the point of argument, \u201cwho\u2019s Jewish\u201d. Similarly, we lesbians are keen to identify others like us. \u201cIs she\/isn\u2019t she gay\u201d discussions are a regular fixture at lesbian dinner tables and they often get heated. What Jews and lesbians have in common here is a desire to claim people as our own. If there\u2019s someone we want on our team and there\u2019s even the slightest hint that they might be Jewish\/lesbian, we will fervently, and often speciously, argue that they are so. For example, there\u2019s a longstanding lesbian obsession with the sexuality of boyish Canadian actress Ellen Page. And when rumours about her having dated Drew Barrymore surfaced a few years ago, we said a collective and triumphant, \u201cTold you so\u201d. <\/p>\n

Another thing. In the same way that the more religious of Jewish parents don\u2019t want their children to marry outside the religion, lesbians are often suspicious, dating-wise, of bisexuals. There\u2019s a fair bit of prejudice towards women who aren\u2019t fully-fledged lesbians. Rest assured, bi buddies, I don\u2019t remotely condone this. But to some lesbians, it seems, bi girls are a no-go. What\u2019s more, I\u2019ve seen a certain amount of stigma attached to gay women who, like me, slept with men pre-coming out. A gay girl who has never had sex with a man is known on the scene as a \u201cgold star lesbian\u201d. Read: \u201ckosher lesbian\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the New Statesman, Eleanor Margolis ponders the cultural similarities between Jews and lesbians: You don\u2019t have to be a devoted Woody Allen fan to be aware of the \u201cJew as hypochondriac\u201d stereotype. Not only is it one of the core themes of Jewish humour, it\u2019s true. I grew up in a household with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,11],"tags":[446,196,255,43],"class_list":["post-19963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-religion","tag-judaism","tag-lgbt","tag-sexuality","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5bZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19964,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19963\/revisions\/19964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}