Although this article concerns itself with evidence from 20th century ethnographic work, a number of researchers have suggested that the evidence of folklore and earlier historic references indicate that a recognized role of this type previously existed much more widely in various European cultures. (See, e.g., Clover 1995 covered previously.) The “sworn virgins” represent a trans-gender role, although one expressed with a broad range of variation in gender expression and identity.
sex between women
This tag is used for any general discussion of erotic physical activity between women or one where more specific terms are not mentioned.
LHMP entry
As the article title indicates, this primarily focuses on men. The bulk of the article focuses on a treatise on love titled “The Dove’s Neck-Ring about Love and Lovers”, written by Ibn Hazm in 10th century Spain. Ibn Hazm includes a scattering of anecdotes and discussions of love between men in a greater preponderance of heterosexual material, but also contains a single reference to love between women. The item is short enough to be worth invoking fair use and quoting Crompton’s paragraph in full:
The author is looking through 18th century civic records from Hamburg, Germany for data about same-sex relationships, primarily in legal contexts. The majority of the article covers male topics, but one particular example involving women is explored in some depth. The case of Ilsabe Bunck and Maria Cäcilia Jürgens initially appears in legal contexts, but later became sensationalized and is often treated in a moralizing or voyeuristic way.
This is a sourcebook of excerpts (in translation) from historic documents relating to France during the 16-18th centuries that relate in some way to same-sex relationships. The documents cover court records, personal correspondence, religious commentary, medical opinion, satire, and political polemic. While most items take an external point of view, some are (or purport to be) from the point of view of homosexuals themselves.
This article looks at the language of personal love and affection between medieval cloistered women. This social context provides an interesting window expressions of female same-sex desire due to three intersecting factors: the gender-segregated nature of their communities, the relative autonomy (economic and intellectual) women enjoyed within these communities, and the high degree of literacy among cloistered women (allowing us glimpses into their lives via their own words).
Several of the articles in Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages look outside the European sphere that the phrase “Middle Ages” normally implies. Malti-Douglas looks at the language and discorse around lesbianism in medieval Arabic texts, particularly as contrasted with the treatment of male homosexuality which is mentioned extensively in medieval Arabic/Islamic texts.
The category of acts understood under the label “sodomy” in the Middle Ages is confusing and difficult to define. The difficulty of definition is not helped by a tendency among medievalists to ignore entirely how the category might relate to women and to activities that women participated in. The medieval textual evidence adds the further confusion of whether “sodomy” did not apply to women, or whether it did but nobody cared about what they were doing.
Lanser examines the conjunction of the novel as a genre with "modernity" as defined in this work and considers its relationship to sapphic themes, despite the superficially overwhelming heteronormativity of the genre. One hallmark of the novel is the way in which it explores the contradictory imperatives of self-determination and socialization. The focus of the novel on the formation of couples and the subjective nature of desire opens the conversation--as previously seen with political and social conversations--to the inclusion or exclusion of sapphic subjects under that rubric.
In France in the later 18th century there arose the motif of secret societies of sapphists "more mysterious than the Freemasons" that existed to initiate women into lesbianism, to serve the pleasures of their members, and to achieve unsavory political ends. The existence of these formal organizations was purely fictitious. Their alleged membership typically included unpopular political and social figures. And their alleged purpose was ostensibly to disrupt the heterosexual organization of society, as an allegory for disrupting other social frameworks.
The chapter begins with a survey of the types of published materials that led Lanser to identify the late 16th century as a shifting point in the discourse around sapphic topics. In 1566 a Swiss writer provides an account of a French woman who disguised herself as a man, worked as a stable groom and then a wine grower, married another woman, was eventually unmasked, and was executed. He notes “how our century can boast that beyond all the evils of the preceding ones” and explicitly disclaims any connection between events such as this and the “tribades in ancient times”.
(by Rose Fox)
This chapter opens with an overview of the Chevalière d'Eon: MAAB, legally declared female by Louis XVI, wore men's clothes. Fascinating person. Transvestism was called "eonism" for a couple hundred years thanks to the Chevalière. "For several years, d'Eon's gender was the subject of numerous bets and legal proceedings." "D'Eon's story teaches us that as long as we live and breathe, the culturally mediated body is an unreliable agent of truth."
This article traces the relationship, documented in letters, between two black women during the period around the end of the American Civil War. Both women were free-born and lived the earlier part of their lives in Connecticut, but one of the two spent time in the south after the war as a teacher, so a wider variety of social issues came into their lives. The two correspondents were Addie Brown, a domestic worker, and Rebecca Primus, a school teacher.
David M. Halperin -- Halperin focuses specifically on the social and historic context of varieties of sexual activity in ancient Greece and takes the position that Brooten fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Greek sexual hierarchies and of the institution of pederasty (in its ancient Greek sense).
This article looks at the disconnect between Roman literary considerations of female homosexuality and their everyday reality. The period covered is the 2nd century BCE through the 2nd century CE. Various mythic origins were attributed to homosexual desire. One example is the story of how a drunken Prometheus , when creating humans from clay, attached sexual organs to the “wrong” bodies, thus creating individuals whose internal preferences were counter to their external organs.
Haley looks at Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans, including his portrayal of women who sexually desired other women, from the context of queer theory and a consideration of male gaze versus representation. Given the more classically-oriented audience for this collection, she helpfully starts with an explanation of queer theory and the examination of sexual identity as a social and political construct. [I think this may be the first time I've encountered the use of "Pomosexual" in a non-ironic way.]
I desperately desperately wanted to love this novel. Unfortunately, it fought me every step of the way.
Habib is a scholar of the history of sexuality, and particularly female same-sex desire, as reflected in medieval Arabic texts. This novel grew out of that research and weaves a complex portrait of the lives of several women recorded in 9th century Baghdad, at a time when it was possible--if not at all easy--for women who loved each other to make a place for themselves, sometimes in private but sometimes as public figures.
A catalog of reasons why women might take up grinding, essentially identical to the one given in al-Yemeni: due to physiological or esthetic issues, because she is slow to climax with a man, because of pain on intercourse, because she prefers smooth-cheeked kisses, because she has a dominant “masculine” personality.
He calls grinding an “illness” and offers various possible causes, including having an “inverted womb” (a variant on the clitoral hypertrophy motif), or a mis-match between the shape of a woman’s vagina and the shape of the penis. Another possible cause he lists is the mother’s diet during breast-feeding. Some women pick up the habit from having sex with concubines. Another explanation is that grinding is a natural appetite, derived from a variant of humoral theory.
An extensive legal/religious discussion/debate on the question of whether grinding [sex between women] is forbidden. The debate is largely framed as a discussion by “the father of Mohamad”.
He reviews various positions on whether female homosexuality is forbidden or permitted. Is it fornication? Is it worse than fornication? Is it not fornication at all? The conclusion is that it isn’t fornication because fornication is specifically define as unlawful penis-in-vagina sex.
A satiric poem from a man to his female rival for his beloved, using metaphors such as “you can’t patch a hole with a hole” and “what use is a hammer without a handle?” to argue the superiority of heterosex over grinding.
An anecdote about the female entertainer Bathal who, when singing to a male client, substituted a lyric in praise of "grinding" (sex between women). Her client contradicted her, but then requested that she finish the song and offers more lyrics that are in favor of grinding.
Pages
