81 — Bamidbar: SWERP

This week, we brought it back around to pornoprophetics by talking about Hoshea. Jaz and Lulav disagree about what level of reality to read the haftarah on, but both agree that the plain reading of this text describes a really gnarly dude being abusive to a sex worker and to their children together. Due to discussion of sexual violence, including descriptions of physical & emotional abuse and mention of a book about sexual abuse of a child, as well as just us talking about sex and kink slightly more than is prudent, this episode is marked EXPLICIT.

Transcript available here. Production on this episode ran up to the wire, and only the first 18 minutes of the transcript is available as of release.

This episode's title is based on the acronym "sex-worker-exclusionary radical feminist" — much like TERFs and often overlapping, they disregard the agency and lived experience of the people they exclude from their feminism. Calling Hoshea a SWERP is more of a joke than an actual comparison to SWERFs, tbh.

The Shrieking Shack is a Harry Potter deepread podcast that just finished all seven horrible books, and which we have referenced frankly a lot on this podcast already. Tegan and Sara are sisters, which is not a euphemism, though they are both famously lesbians. Their music is often polarizing to lesbians — Lulav is a fan, but she knows others who are Deeply Opposed. Dean Kamen invented the Segway, which you definitely don't need to remember or know, but you can see both of them in this picture.

Jaz references The Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson — you can read an overview of conceptual metaphor on this Wikipedia page. Miguel James's "Contra la policía" is translated by Guillermo Parra on his blog here. Jaz promised links about humiliation play, but they are asleep after a long trip so check this space in the future. Lulav references Vladimir Nabokov, who has written several beautifully poetic books about super gnarly dudes, but Lolita is both his most famous book and the one that Lulav chooses to focus on in her comparison. Also, if someone has read the book and still refers to the titular character by the nickname the abusive narrator created for her or uses the word "nymphet", Lulav advises that you run real fast in the opposite direction.

If you're a current or former sex worker and have quibbles with or additions to the content of this episode, hit us up at kosherqueers@gmail.com.

This week's reading was Hosea 2:1-22. Next week's reading is Judges 13:2-25.

Support us on Patreon or Ko-fi! Our music is by the band Brivele. This week, our audio was edited by Lulav Arnow, and our transcript was written by JJ Jensen, who you can follow on Twitter @pantspossum. Our logo is by Lior Gross, and we are not endorsed by or affiliated with the Orthodox Union.