Lesbians Until Graduation and Jewish Liminal Space
(For Rachel, because I think better when you're around.)
We're considering doing an article on the L.U.G. phenomenon at work. These are my thoughts on the matter.
At first, and mainly to one potential author, the issue seemed to be that there are a significant number of women who "turn straight", especially in their immediate post-collegiate years. And this is a much-talked about phenomenon in the gay world--there are definitely jokes, and bitter stories, about "hasbians". The feminist issue here is not to hard to find: I (along with many other, smarter people, including one author in BITCHfest, my new definitive guide to post-'90s feminism) would posit that what's really at work here is not that women are "turning straight" but that a societal need for bounded sexuality makes people "switch" categories that never really fit in the first place. I think it's safe to say that a lot of the anxiety comes from queer people who feel that their identities are under attack (even in this day and age, coming out is stressful, even traumatic, for many; it's also hard to feel really secure when people across the country are voting on whether or not your desire to be legally coupled could result in the destruction of the nuclear family), and a sort of tribal, you're-one-of-us-or-you're-one-of-them mentality really comes into play. Forcing people to fit into a binary, despite everything we know about human sexuality existing on a spectrum, is not only repressive, but it distorts some of the basic realities of life.
The Jewish angle is a little harder. Susan Schnur pointed out to me that a lot of the discussion about this "phenomenon" takes place at coastal, liberal undergraduate institutions, where Jews generally comprise a large percentage of the student body. Totally agreed--although I think that this takes place everywhere, and only gets theorized to pieces in some places (there's also something a little classist going on in here). But I think that there's more.
Jewish culture is definitely couple-minded and family-minded. Our institutions and community functions are largely family-driven. The desire to be permanently coupled is very Jewish, and maybe this makes people "decide" to go straight--or just to pick an easily understood sexual orientation--as soon as society is ready to perceive them as "single adults" (instead of "students"). Even a lot of institutional gay Jewish life is what I would call "gay" instead of "queer", there being an understanding that if you're there, you're gay. Not a lot of room for ambivalence. Anyone who's been recently can also tell you that Jewish singles events are not for people who enjoy being single--they're for people who are currently uncoupled and seeking to change that. I think all of this stress on coupling creates an atmosphere that, however consciously or unconsciously, makes people (women, especially) feel that they have to commit to an identity that will most easily facilitate finding a partner, and often, "queer", "undecided", "sometimes I date boys and sometimes I date girls" isn't that identity, so they go with what's most prevalent, most prominent, or easiest.
And, finally, this is a Jewish-feminist issue because one of Jewish feminism's lasting legacies to Judaism was its encouragement to explore liminal space. I think Judaism is--or appears to be--a very cut-and-dry religion that really functions by separating things into discrete categories (kosher vs. traif, priestly class vs. not, etc.). And what the texts didn't solidify, thousands of years of tradition did. But J-fems really challenge that--sometimes by calling for direct confrontation with text or rituals, and sometimes just by pointing out that there are ways of doing Jewish that may appear radical or "wrong", but that just exist in a somewhat marginal space within Judaism. (I think the tallit piece in the Fall issue--Schnur-authored, of course--showed this so, so beautifully. Susan basically said that there are more spaces that can be sacred than meets the eye, and that it's possible that men and women perceive the sacred differently. I don't like the essentialism here, but there's something beautiful about the validation it provides for women/people in general who experience the holy outside of traditionally-bounded places, times or experiences.) And maybe the "phenomenon" of Lesbians Until Graduation just demonstrates that there are still frontiers left for us to work on.
So let's get started.
Kol tov...
We're considering doing an article on the L.U.G. phenomenon at work. These are my thoughts on the matter.
At first, and mainly to one potential author, the issue seemed to be that there are a significant number of women who "turn straight", especially in their immediate post-collegiate years. And this is a much-talked about phenomenon in the gay world--there are definitely jokes, and bitter stories, about "hasbians". The feminist issue here is not to hard to find: I (along with many other, smarter people, including one author in BITCHfest, my new definitive guide to post-'90s feminism) would posit that what's really at work here is not that women are "turning straight" but that a societal need for bounded sexuality makes people "switch" categories that never really fit in the first place. I think it's safe to say that a lot of the anxiety comes from queer people who feel that their identities are under attack (even in this day and age, coming out is stressful, even traumatic, for many; it's also hard to feel really secure when people across the country are voting on whether or not your desire to be legally coupled could result in the destruction of the nuclear family), and a sort of tribal, you're-one-of-us-or-you're-one-of-them mentality really comes into play. Forcing people to fit into a binary, despite everything we know about human sexuality existing on a spectrum, is not only repressive, but it distorts some of the basic realities of life.
The Jewish angle is a little harder. Susan Schnur pointed out to me that a lot of the discussion about this "phenomenon" takes place at coastal, liberal undergraduate institutions, where Jews generally comprise a large percentage of the student body. Totally agreed--although I think that this takes place everywhere, and only gets theorized to pieces in some places (there's also something a little classist going on in here). But I think that there's more.
Jewish culture is definitely couple-minded and family-minded. Our institutions and community functions are largely family-driven. The desire to be permanently coupled is very Jewish, and maybe this makes people "decide" to go straight--or just to pick an easily understood sexual orientation--as soon as society is ready to perceive them as "single adults" (instead of "students"). Even a lot of institutional gay Jewish life is what I would call "gay" instead of "queer", there being an understanding that if you're there, you're gay. Not a lot of room for ambivalence. Anyone who's been recently can also tell you that Jewish singles events are not for people who enjoy being single--they're for people who are currently uncoupled and seeking to change that. I think all of this stress on coupling creates an atmosphere that, however consciously or unconsciously, makes people (women, especially) feel that they have to commit to an identity that will most easily facilitate finding a partner, and often, "queer", "undecided", "sometimes I date boys and sometimes I date girls" isn't that identity, so they go with what's most prevalent, most prominent, or easiest.
And, finally, this is a Jewish-feminist issue because one of Jewish feminism's lasting legacies to Judaism was its encouragement to explore liminal space. I think Judaism is--or appears to be--a very cut-and-dry religion that really functions by separating things into discrete categories (kosher vs. traif, priestly class vs. not, etc.). And what the texts didn't solidify, thousands of years of tradition did. But J-fems really challenge that--sometimes by calling for direct confrontation with text or rituals, and sometimes just by pointing out that there are ways of doing Jewish that may appear radical or "wrong", but that just exist in a somewhat marginal space within Judaism. (I think the tallit piece in the Fall issue--Schnur-authored, of course--showed this so, so beautifully. Susan basically said that there are more spaces that can be sacred than meets the eye, and that it's possible that men and women perceive the sacred differently. I don't like the essentialism here, but there's something beautiful about the validation it provides for women/people in general who experience the holy outside of traditionally-bounded places, times or experiences.) And maybe the "phenomenon" of Lesbians Until Graduation just demonstrates that there are still frontiers left for us to work on.
So let's get started.
Kol tov...
posted by Di Freye Froy at 11:52 PM
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