As you read through the posts on Jewrotica, it’s easy to see how people have various interpretations and stories for “sex.” As such, it becomes very important to define the various elements that encompass sexuality. Sexuality is about the “UALITY” (pronounced YOU-ality). The YOU-ality is about who YOU are and includes all the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors you have when it comes to being male or female and how that affects your relationships with others.
Sexuality is also understood by five guiding elements: sensuality, intimacy, sexual identity, sexual health and reproduction, and sexualization.**
Sensuality involves our level of awareness, acceptance, and enjoyment of our own or others’ bodies.
Intimacy is the degree to which we express and have a need for closeness with another person. Its components are caring, sharing, liking, loving, trust, vulnerability, self-disclosure, and emotional risk taking.
Sexual Identity is how we perceive ourselves as sexual beings. Its components are biological gender, gender identity, gender role, and sexual orientation.
Sexual Health and Reproduction relates to attitudes and behaviors toward our health and the consequences of sexual activity. Its components are behavior, anatomy and physiology, sexually transmitted infection, contraception, and abortion (spontaneous or induced).
Sexualization involves how we use our sexuality, which may include manipulating or controlling others. Its components are media images/messages, flirting, seduction, withholding sex, sexual harassment, incest, and rape.
When we become familiar with these five elements of sexuality, we learn to recognize which parts of our sexuality we are more comfortable with than others. For many people, their experiences around learning or reading about sexuality have been riddled with guilt and shame. The feeling of “guilt” can limit one’s sexual expression and erode the ability to fully connect with another person.
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
Learning about sex and what’s right and wrong when it comes to sex from a Biblical standpoint was an eye opening experience. I completely enjoyed it and think something like this could be a very cool thing to bring to even high school aged Jewish youth groups.
Bedside Reading with Jewrotica was funny, sexy, and hot all at once. The readings were honest about all kinds of sexuality, but the highlight of the evening was definitely the confessions, written by audience participants. Nobody knew who wrote them, and most were tell-alls that would make your bubbe blush. Unless your bubbe was very, very cool. Then maybe she’d make YOU blush!
I’m so glad that Jewrotica is represented here at Jewlicious! It’s bringing voices that need to be heard in the Jewish discussion and Jewish climate environment.
Such an amazing experience! The Sarah Lawrence Jewrotica workshop was more than I could have ever expected – a comfortable, safe, sultry environment where participants clearly felt good about sharing or listening to each other’s intimate experiences and relating them to sexy stories from the Torah. From the moment the workshop began, Ayo had a sweet presence that was kinetic and spread around the room; her storytelling abilities had everyone enraptured and made the conversation topics relata… Read more
While many people fear the “sex talk,” Jewrotica offers an opportunity for writers and audiences to speak about sexuality in a open and safe space. When I attended a Jewrotica reading, I heard stories that reminded me that love takes many forms, and that expressing it is a vital part of who we are as a people.
At Jewrotica’s Evening of Bedside Readings, students declaimed monologues on sexual encounters that had a Jewish twist. At Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the speakers pushed their own boundaries by performing a range of explicit narratives that challenged how the audience thought of the relationship to Judaism and sex. During the speakers’ preparation, the arguments about which narratives would be appropriate forced students to take a stand and voice their opinion on their own beliefs about Judaism an… Read more
Jewrotica was everything I had dreamed of and more: sexy attendees, tantalizing confessions, and well-written literature to boot! More importantly, it empowers us Jews to reach inside and own our sexy selves and heritage!
I stepped out of my comfort zone to be a part of this. I was glad to open up the topic of sexuality in my community. We are trying to build a safe space to talk about sex. The result I am most happy about coming from this event is that hopefully now my friends know they can come and talk to me, that I can be their ‘safe space’.
I love the inclusiveness – there is something for everyone, in and out of the Jewish community.
I’m Heshy Fried from Frum Satire and I am very, very frum. And I completely support Jewrotica – it’s doing a service to the frum community. We need some sort of kosher sexual education. Jewrotica even has a system that allows frum filters to filter out certain things to make it PG for us. It’s mamish Torah. It’s like The Little Midrash Says for sex.
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