Revisiting the Gay, Jewish Bicycle-Rider

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the analogy between gays and Jews in John Boswell’s scholarship in order to analyze the role of Jewishness in the construction of the field of history of sexuality. Boswell argues that Jews and gays have a similar social status throughout history until contemporary times, when gays continue to struggle while Jews have found a measure of social acceptance. The difference between them, according to Boswell, is that Jews pass down survival knowledge from within Jewish families, while gays are not generally born into gay families. While critiquing the sexual, racialized, and gendered politics of Boswell’s analogy, this article will argue that the current antitrans political moment requires us to return to the fundamental questions that Boswell poses about the relationship between history, the historian, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and communal survival.