Decentering Sex: Rethinking Jewish Sexual Ethics

Abstract

Abstract My purpose in this chapter is to sketch an agenda for a Jewish feminist sexual ethics that, as my title indicates, has a major paradox at its core. Sexual ethics is necessarily about sex: sexual ideologies, sexual norms and behaviors, the shifting and conflicted attitudes toward sex in the history of a particular religious tradition, and questions of authority and the transformation of tradition. The very act of writing about sexual ethics, whatever the content, by definition places sexuality at the center of interest and discussion. Yet, there are many reasons to question and even undermine the centrality of sexuality as a topic of religious concern. Private sexual behavior is given too much weight, both in our society at large and as a subject of religious debate. Too much is heaped upon it, both as an explanation for our social ills and as the center of our personhood. Why address sexuality at all, then; and how can one formulate a sexual ethic that decenters sex? Is it possible for a sexual ethic to focus on the sexual ideologies that are part of our social fabric, rather than on the rights and wrongs of individual sexual behavior? Whatever the final answers to these questions, I want to explore the two opposing impulses that animate this project: the impulse toward creating a sexual ethic and the impulse toward decentering sex.