I’ve never heard a heterosexual man say how proud and confident he is in his sexuality.
I’ve never heard a white man say how proud he is to be white.
These public pronouncements are extreme over-compensation for the shame much of the population must feel inside.
I’ve never heard a Jew with any background in Torah pronounce himself "a proud Jew." Only ignorant non-observant Jews ever call themselves proud Jews. The more a Jew is steeped in Torah, the more likely he is to pronounce himself "a simple Jew."
People secure in their sexuality never pronounce on how proud and confident they are in their sexuality.
(Do confident secure people write about themselves? Not so much.)
So what’s with all these Jewish singles columnists doing pronouncing on their pride in their sexuality?
First, we had Orit Arfa at the Jewish Journal. Now we have Mia Rut writing on Jewcy.com: "Who knows if it was only the cheap booze, the illicit things being smoked in the hookah room or the mystery of my hidden face, but perhaps the strong, confident sexual woman I have been suppressing doesn’t need a mask to interact with the world. Yes, the economy is still going to suck, I’m still not sure where my career is going and heck, even what city I’m going to end up in, but last night reminded me I should be living my life to the fullest – every chance I get."
When I blog about using self-talk to prop up my confidence at LimmudLA, that’s precisely because I am bedeviled by shame.
So what is going on with Orit Arfa and Mia Rut? I theorize that Sex and the City is to blame. By nature, women are sexually modest and not given to flings and to public pronouncements about their sexuality, but the modern mood is that women should feel as free as men to experiment sexually. Deep down inside, this does not feel good to them, so to prop themselves up, they have to take making public pronouncements about their confidence in their sexuality.
