Nature vs. Nurture: The Personal Saga

Recently I told a close friend of mine about my proclivities. At first she simply listened with intrigue in her voice, but a few days later she called me up--she was worried about me. She was worried that I could be putting myself in danger; she was worried that I was unhealthy in my desires. She wanted to know why I felt a need to be submissive--why I enjoyed being pushed to my limits. She wanted to know if there was anything in my past, my childhood, that could be the source of my kinks.

I loved the fact that she asked me tons of questions and pushed me to explain myself. I love the fact that she made me think about the origins of my personality. I love the fact that she gave me a venue to talk about what I had been thinking about for a while:

Nothing made me this way,
I have always been submissive
I have always enjoyed aggressive romance.

When I was a child one of my teddy bears dominated one of my other bears into sex. I had fantasies of being forced to have sex from the time I had any notion towards sex. Throughout high school, I was thought of as a good girl, but in truth I could be cajoled to do almost anything...almost--as long as a boy had an aura of command about him. As soon as I became romantic with a boy, I would become exceedingly demure. My friends and I loved to play with handcuffs and once I found myself cuffed to my boyfriends bed just as the rest of our friends were clearing out. I cannot even begin to describe how disappointed I was when he uncuffed me.

Then, a handful of years ago I had a boyfriend who gave me a wee swat on the bum while we were fooling around. I gasped in an over dramatic way and he loved it. And I loved the fact that he loved it. It never went any further than that but it certainly planted a seed within me. I asked my next boyfriend if he would spank me. He said no. And then I was with a man who was a dirty, dirty boy--it both scared and titillated me. And yet another dirty, dirty boy--this one very dominant. I was entranced by his demeanor and the excitement of it all. That summer I moved, but before I did, I bought a book of spanking stories. Randomly, I opened the book to a story about a woman who was utterly beaten while hanging on a St. Andrew's cross. When I had finished the story my first reaction was, "Wow! I don;t think I could ever take that. I am so impressed." Sure, it occurred to me that most people would have found the story upsettingly violent--I found it to be something to strive for.

I have since had the opportunity to play with a few people. I currently have two amazing partners, including Spiritually Playful. I have had my limits pushed to places I never thought possible. I have been blessed with chances to truly bask in sub-space.

And I have come to see that nothing made me this way. I have always been submissive. I have always fantasized about aggressive romance.

The Jewess: Sexually Repressed or Sexually Charged?

Throughout the ages, Jewish women have been the focus of many a sexual fantasy. As early as the Book of Esther, it is the Jewish girl who gets the kings attention for her ravaging beauty and intimate skills. In the Talmud, the rabbis are obsessed with the sexual appetite and sexual potency of Jewish women. In fact, they do everything they can think of to encourage Jewish men to “service” their wives as often as possible so that their wives’ longings do not get the better of them.

The Third Reich portrayed Jewish women as lascivious; much like the rabbis of the Talmud, the Nazis cautioned the Germans to beware the Jewish woman’s sexual appetite. The picture is an example of the Nazi propaganda regarding Jewish women. The text at the side of the picture says: "This puzzle-broadsheet was destined for the French soldiers in the bunkers of the Maginot-line. The German propaganda assumed that the curiosity of the soldiers would become bigger if they had to look for the different pieces at first. Once put together the pieces made up one of the most astute agitational pictures of the ‘paper war’: The demure English virgin, ‘Times’ gets a knowing reply from the mirror by the sluttish whore, ‘Semit[e]’.

At the same time we have been portrayed as repressed, repelled by sex, and downright frigid. Marcy Sheiner, in her introduction to The Oy of Sex, offers a joke that really brings the idea of this oxymoronic way of thinking about the Jewish woman’s sexuality:

"Q: How do you get a Jewish girl to stop fucking?
A: You marry her.
This, one of my all-time favorite jokes, first heard as an adolescent, can be interpreted several ways. On the surface, it says that Jewish women only "put out" to get the brass, or gold, ring. On the other hand, it tells us, frankly, that Jewish girls like to fuck. Unburdened by the Christian admonishments against carnal pleasure, the Jewish girl is more likely to rejoice in her sensuality. This is, of course, a positive identity, one we can at last proudly claim. On the other hand, it feeds the stereotype of the Jewish girl as slutty."

Last week I talked about how the entire nature of Jewish thought leads to a religion that is simply more sex positive. Well, in turn, Judaism has the potential for producing women who are more sex positive. It helps that, even if it hasn’t always been for good, we have been encouraged to think of ourselves as sexually carnivorous creatures!

I can make all of the obvious statements about how every woman is different and some Jewish women love sex and some hate it; some Jewish women are kinky and some as vanilla as extract! But I have been in many a conversation with many a man who has been with both Jewish and non-Jewish women and they seem to have a very particular impression of Jewish women: we like sex.

I, in all my Jewess-ness, love sex.

In the words of a close friend of mine who insists that he had slept with enough Jewish girls to know that, “Jewish girls take it up the ass.”