A weave of sexuality, ethnicity and religion: Jewish women of the San Francisco Bay area embracing complexity

Abstract

This thesis is based on 31 interviews and one focus group conducted with Jewish bisexual women and men in the San Francisco Bay Area. While there is much academic discussion and theory about interlocking oppressions of race, class, gender, and sexuality, I explore the complex ways that these systems weave together with religious and ethnic identification in the lives and speech of study participants. Interviewees discuss their multiple and shifting identities, difficulties that they encounter in conceptualizing the intersection of their ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation, and demonstrate the ways that these identifications intermingle in their speech and stories in spite of these difficulties. They compare the liminal status of both Jewish and bisexual identifications on the boundary of privilege, and their decisions about passing or acting in solidarity with the oppressed. Participants' experience and practice of both Jewishness and bisexuality are changed and influenced by each other.