Me, too: Hamas sexual violence echoes in bedrooms across the Jewish world

I was speaking about the impact of October 7 on Jewish Australians to a largely non-Jewish audience. At question time, a prominent UK-born academic in gender studies took the microphone to express her bewilderment. The gist of her long speech was that she couldn’t understand why the attack had impacted me so profoundly. When the 2005 London bombings happened, she said, sure she was affected. But her life wasn’t upended. She did not – I’m paraphrasing but this what it sounded like – carry on, like I did…

My strongest response was a sense of feeling overwhelmed. There were far too many differences between the two tragedies, and their aftermath, to account for a short Q&A slot. But what was even harder to comprehend was how a feminist, who has made an impressive career advocating for women’s safety, could overlook one of the major differences and a key point of the night’s discussion – the systematic, medieval-grade-cruel sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas?

At the end of that event, another woman approached me, privately. A Jewish woman. She was speaking quietly, almost whispering: “What you said about the impact of October 7 on your sex life… Me too. I’ve been feeling the same. But I’ve never talked about this with anyone…”

Eros has always been a major part of who I am, as a writer and a woman. My Hebrew fiction was singled out in Israeli media for “sexual boldness”. My first book in English, The Dangerous Bride, was a memoir of my (mis)adventures in non-monogamy. I am not shy or squeamish about sex, and I’ve always been attracted to people who take risks with their sexuality. In my Israeli youth, I was fascinated when a close friend did a stint as a call girl. In Australia, I went to visit fetish clubs.