Apropos to my last post (How a Southern Gentile Learned About Judaism from Sassy Magazine and Horny Teenage Boys), I'll also confess that I managed to get through an entire high school career of dating Jewish boys exclusively (to recap: I was an atheist in a town dominated by evangelical Christians) without realizing that "shiksa" was an offensive word.

From the soc.culture.jewish FAQ (I can't imagine much has changed since 1996):

Shiksa and Shaygetz are the Yiddish derivative of the respective feminine and masculine Hebrew words for something unclean, dirty. The appellations are customarily applied to gentiles who do things inimical to Jewish interests, such as vandalizing Jewish buildings, robbing Jewish kids of their lunch money, or becoming romantically involved with Jews :-). The root is "sheketz", which refers to house rodents and lizards. They impart ritual impurity, and therefore the term lends itself to the same kind of idea. Some have taken to using the term to refer to Christian women in general. If Christians were using the term against Jews in English, they would be saying "Filthy Jews" or "Dirty Jews", and we Jews would rightly be offended.

Is that not the most passive-aggressive happy face ever? Filthy bitch :-)

A quick Google search of this post's keyword brings up the blog of one Shiksa from Manila,

who in her first post remarks "For the record, I didn’t mean to deliberately get myself a Jew. I did not lurk around corners and grab one out of synagogue. It was not my intention to contribute to the diminishing numbers of the Jewish people. Just happened that way. Asking a person’s religious affiliation is hardly dinner conversation, especially not on a first date and certainly not until you’ve had sex more than three times."

(Wendy Shalit would certainly disagree with the latter, but more on that tomorrow).

In her last post, Shiksa from Manila remarks, in disheartening fashion:

I was under the impression that by virtue of my marriage to Glen (my good Jewish egg of a husband), I--a gentile, a Catholic and every possible non-Jew name you can call me--was a shiksa. I knew, understood even, what the word meant. What its implications were. By embracing its usage, I thought I was removing its ability to hurt me. It is a slur after all in certain circles. Among Catholics, it would be called self-flagellation but that's okay. At least I'm using my own whip on myself, no one else's.

Except that I don’t look the part. What did people expect? I am the girl from Manila, not Ipanema. Just when I thought I could have a say on how people viewed me by openly declaring myself a shiksa, it turns out that I cannot claim the name for my own. The name simply doesn’t fit. And if it doesn’t fit, presumably, you’ve got to quit.

Ethnic. That’s what I am I was told.

Not even being able to reclaim your own slurs? My college women's studies class could've had a field day. By which I mean they could've all agreed that racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia are all oppressing us in intersecting ways, and that lesbian separatism was probably the answer.