Negative connotations or not, that’s pretty clever.
I personally don’t know whether shiksa is offensive or not, but I do think it is hurtful.
I (white male) lived and worked in India for a few years. It was quite common for my colleagues to refer to me as ‘that gora’ (white skin) or ‘the firang’ (foreigner). They weren’t trying to insult me as such, but they were emphasising my otherness. They were highlighting that I wasn’t like them and therefore didn’t deserve their respect. I note that they weren’t implying that I was worse than them on any racial, nationality or class level, but just that I was different. It was hurtful at a time when I was trying to fit in and to make friends.
I see shiksa in the same sort of way.
My roommate in college was Jewish, and he had a non-Jewish girlfriend. He and his friends treated her totally as a sex object. The things that they would say about her behind her back were really abhorrent. Their nickname for her was Mike (I won’t explain this on the assumption that many dopers know what this refers to and I’m not entirely sure I’m allowed to post it).
His attitude (he said as much) was that this shiksa was just for sex, and that when we wanted to get serious, he would find a Jewish girl. So this ‘otherness’ was justification for him to disrespect her.
Yes, race is a social construct, and different societies can construct it differently.
Reading the thread and relation of the Sh- word and being Jewish or not, I wonder if this is going to fall into the status of the N- word. Specifically:
If a Black person uses the N- word in a non-insulting way it is OK. If a non-Black person uses it, no matter the circumstances it is offensive and racist and the user must be shunned. The comparison would be that Jews can use Sh- as long as it is meant in a non-insulting way but non-Jews can never use it.
When I lived on Guam I was called a haole often. Almost every time it was intended to be an insult. (It was often combined with profanity.) Keep in mind I lived there between the ages of 12 and 15, so you can imagine the kind of people I regularly interacted with.
(Yes, haole is Hawaiian but it has been used on Guam for generations.)
It was definitely interesting as a white male American to live in a place where I was the minority and an often disliked one. (Interesting to remember it, awful to live through especially at that age.) I don’t think a lot of people like me have ever lived through being marginalized for their race every day for years.
I haven’t lived in Hawaii since I was 2 so I can’t say for certain how the term is used there, but from what I can tell it doesn’t seem to be derogatory. Despite my personal experiences with the term, I wouldn’t find it to be generally offensive or triggering if it was used on this board.
Since non-Jewish women seem to have been on the forefront of reclaiming the word, and taking pride in their Shiksa status, I don’t think this analogy holds. Since Shiksa refers to non-Jews, having Jews be the only people who can use the term doesn’t make sense.
This is clearly not true.
That can be said of a lot of words but let’s examine this one.
First, the word itself translates literally to ‘abomination’ or ‘destable thing’ but that is hyperbole. Sure, there are fanatical people who might use it literally but in general it is intended to exaggerate the idea of someone from an insular community marrying an outsider, yet not in the sense of some concepts where such people are cast out and shunned. It has over time become more and more of a joke about Jewish mothers tearing their hair at the thought of their precious son marrying outside the faith. This is not a word that can be understood with a dictionary definition outside of the cultural context.
Next, let’s look at the effect of using this word in both offensive and non-offensive manners. Simply enough there is none past some personal hurt feelings which I think are seriously misplaced. A ‘shiksa’ wouldn’t typically understand the word, and when informed of it’s meaning would be told it means a non-Jewish woman. And further detail is more likely than not to be flattering to the subject. I’ve never heard of a women in tears or more serious displeasure from the term. Someone using the word non-ironically to refer to any person is simply being rude. The use of the word doesn’t promote religious bigotry or hatred of any kind, which is why it has become non-offensive in contemporary usage.
Repeating that doesn’t make it so.
It is non-offensive to some people using it currently. It is still offensive to others.
Again, that can apply to any word.
I doubt it’s going to come up in regards to any word that you used in that sentence. And I’d be surprised to have it come up in regards to any I’m using in this answer.
Missed the edit window:
Just because someone wants the term to be offensive when given or received doesn’t put into the ‘offensive’ bucket.
I have a friend who was meeting his wife-to-be’s family for the first time. Her father said in Italian “What is he, a Jew?”. That was a common misimpression Benny had heard many times. In this case he said, in Italian, “No my family is from Calabrese”.
Is ‘jew’ an offensive word? I’m sure that was the intention on her father’s part.
Not capitalizing “Jew” is often offensive; but you might have just made a typo.
And just because someone says it isn’t doesn’t take it out.
There isn’t one single bucket. As has been gone through in this thread, I believe multiple times: the “bucket” for use within one’s family/social group may well be one thing and the “bucket” for use at a comedy show be another and the “bucket” for use on these boards be a third.
I’m not ever sure that it is so much the group of people that are using it is the anticipated audience.
When I hear Schiksa I translate it into “a woman who would not be acceptable to a traditional (or to be more explicit, bigoted) Jewish Mother.” Now whether or not this is derogatory depends on whether you think not being so acceptable is a bad thing.
With the exception of the OP it seems that most of the objections to this word are coming from people with strong connections to Jewish culture. Having direct experience with such bigotry directed against non-Jewish women they would see this as a slur.
However for people outside that culture where being non-Jewish is not a bad thing, it becomes less of an attack on the woman, then it is on bigotry of certain Jews. So I view Doc Cathodes post as saying, “my partner who is non-Jewish and so probably not acceptable to certain Jewish mothers”, which I see more as a bit of light self deprecation poking fun at certain aspects of his own culture.
As an analogy I would compare it to “Social Justice Warrior”. Is it a slur? Well to a conservative audience yes it would be. To a liberal audience it would be seen as an ironic dig at how conservative view that person, and possibly as a badge of honor.
Right. For a strongly majority group, the insults from an strongly minority group tend to roll off like water from a duck’s back (I remember a similar thread about the word “cracker”).
As to support for the word, it all boils down to one fact: Yiddish is fun. I’m personally meshuga for sentences peppered with it. And I don’t mind if I’m called a schmuck, a schlemiel, a schlimazel, or a hasenpfeffer incorporated.
I’m just going out on a limb here but I’d bet that your assumption is wrong. I’d bet that most people have no idea what you’re referring to.
We only judge ourselves by our intentions. We judge others by their actions because their true intentions are unknowable.
Yeah but you can’t change your race, right? You can change your Jewishness by converting. If a shiksa converts to Judaism, she is then fully Jewish and any children she gives birth to after that are automatically Jewish. (At least that’s what Google tells me.)
Race doesn’t seem like something you can change in your children by converting to a different religion.
(Google answers defines gringo as derogatory/humorous, shiksa as often derogatory, and gentile doesn’t mention derogatory at all. Before this thread I had assumed shiksa and gentile were both equally inoffensive, but apparently not.)
When my non-Jewish friend’s non-Jewish wife converted to Judaism, she and her husband and their children were termed “Noahides.” From what I understand, they’re considered Gentiles who agreed to live by the Seven Laws of Noah, and it dates back to Old Testament times. So strictly speaking, still not Jewish.