More on Jewish Lesbians

Just after I mentioned this 1999 study on Jewish lesbians in Toronto - Alienated Jews: What about Outreach to Jewish Lesbians? I heard about the launch of a new anthology, Keep Your Wives Away From Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires (straight from the lips of TheWanderingJew, who reports further on the launch's success over at Jewschool). That anthology deals specifically with the stories and experiences of women who identify as Orthodox, and it looks fascinating.

There has been a gratifiyingly large amount of work done on LGBT issues and inclusion in the Jewish community (BJPA has a growing collection), but much of it does tend to treat gay and bisexual men and women's experiences together, as though they were identical (and sometimes doesn't treat the T part of the phrase at all). Sometimes it is completely appropriate to not make distinctions, other times, more problematic, such as when the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards insisted on voting teshuvot which addressed gay men's and women's ordinations at the same time, even though the halachic issues involved diverge signifcantly.

Every study is limited by all kinds of real world considerations, and generally each new study is a valuable contribution. It is still disappointing that the 2009 study, Gay, Jewish, or Both? Sexual Orientation and Jewish Engagement, made no attempt to study the differences between men's and women's Jewish experiences and choices, except to note that "Men are about twice as likely as women to report that they are gay or bisexual (9.3% versus 4.5%)."