Shiksa

Shiksa (Yiddish: שיקסע shikse) is an often disparaging term of Yiddish origin that has moved into English usage (as well as Polish and German), mostly in North American Jewish culture, as a term for a non-Jewish woman or girl.

Writer Menachem Kaiser argues in his essay "Anti-non-Semitism: An Investigation of the Shiksa" that "the pejorative connotation of 'shiksa' is fuzzy at best" because "'shiksa' today is used as often as not in winking self-reference".

Among Orthodox Jews, the term may be used to describe a Jewish girl or woman who fails to follow Orthodox religious precepts.

The equivalent term for a non-Jewish male, used less frequently, is shegetz.

Derivation

The etymology of the word shiksa is partly derived from the Hebrew term שקץ shekets, meaning "abomination", "impure," or "object of loathing", depending on the translator.

Several dictionaries define "shiksa" as a disparaging and offensive term applied to a non-Jewish girl or woman.

In Polish, siksa (pronounced [ɕiksa]) is a pejorative word for an immature young girl or teenage girl, as it is a conflation between the Yiddish term and usage of the Polish verb sikać ("to urinate"). It means "pisspants" and is roughly equivalent to the English terms "snot-nosed brat", "little squirt", or "kid".

In Defense of the Genre

In Defense of The Genre is the third full-length studio album by American pop-punk band Say Anything, released on October 23, 2007 through J Records as a double disc album. It debuted at number 27 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, selling 25,000 copies in its first week. The first single, "Baby Girl, I'm a Blur", was released October 2, 2007 on iTunes. The album artwork was provided by Jeff Smith, an artist primarily known for his work on the Bone comic series.

On September 19, 2007, fans could pre-order an autographed copy of the album with an optional Say Anything T-shirt. An extra booklet was packaged with the CDs, autographed by Max Bemis, Alex Kent, and Jeff Turner.

Background

Writing and plans for In Defense of the Genre began in March 2006 during Say Anything's extensive touring and promotion for the reissue of their previous effort, …Is a Real Boy. The band started rehearsing and piecing together the album through pre-production the next year in January 2007, until the record was finally completed half a year later in September. Max Bemis described in an interview that the record is more focused on "observations of other people", unlike ...Is a Real Boy's lyrical content revolving solely on Bemis and his problems. The record "picks up in my life where [...Is a Real Boy] left off because it is very autobiographical, even more so than the last record. Musically, it's different, more mature and somewhat more cohesive and poppy, but darker in a whole different way."