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LHMP #461 Ragan 1996 The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality

Full citation:

Ragan, Bryant T. Jr. 1996. “The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality” in Homosexuality in Modern France ed. by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-509304-6

Ragan 1996 The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality

In general, this article feels like a fairly superficial survey/overview, rather than an exploration and presentation of new conclusions.

# # #

In 18th century France, philosophy and pornography intersected to a degree such that “philosophical texts” became a euphemism for sexual content, including a regular interest in same-sex relations. Among critiques of society and politics, enlightenment philosophers debated traditional understandings and condemnation of homosexuality. This included the radical idea that all sexuality was natural and morally neutral, and that the state should not regulate it.

Moral traditionalists cited biblical references while being hampered by a suspicion that being too explicit about what they were condemning might induce people to try it. Sodomy was characterized as a type of heresy.

Legal authorities discussed sodomy in much more specific and detailed terms, focusing on same-sex relations, rather than the alternate definition of sodomy as anal sex regardless of gender. The traditional penalty for sodomy was death by burning.

The traditionalist philosophical position was that same-sex relations were “un-natural” because they were unique to human beings and not found in nature among animals. [Note: Of course, this was a flawed premise.] Another theme was the necessity of a contrast of difference in the participants for love and sexual reproduction.

Religious and legal prohibitions had less practical effect to discourage same-sex relations than theory would suggest, in part due to a French tradition of anti-clerical sentiment, and a disinterest by the courts in fully prosecuting the existing laws, especially against the nobility, where libertine attitudes were prevalent. A study of executions for sodomy indicates that many involved some other violent crime. To some extent, the courts were more interested in regulating m/f sex, especially around the consequences of illegitimate births. [Note: The author suggests that people deliberately turned to same-sex outlets as a strategy to avoid pregnancy, but this feels speculative.]

Examination of m/m behavior in France between the Renaissance and the 18th century shows a similar path to what is seen elsewhere. Such relations were common, though rarely exclusive, and required strict hierarchies of age and class to be considered acceptable. Information about women is less accessible. Reasons involve fewer court cases, a lower public profile, and an overlay of prurient interest on the part of those writing on the subject. During this era, women who engaged in same-sex activity were not perceived as being unfeminine.

The article embraces Randolph Trumbach’s model of the emergence of a “four gender” model across the 18th century. This included the idea of fixed preference in desired partners, and a shift away from age-based hierarchies. One eventual result was that exclusive sodomites became viewed as effeminate, and exclusive sapphists as masculine.

Among men, social subcultures emerged, focusing on pick-up locations already associated with prostitutes, such as the gardens of the Tuileries, Palais Royal, and Luxembourg. In-group jargon, rituals, and practices developed. This was the context for the emergence in the 18th century of a philosophical/pornographic genre of literature.

By the late 18th century, the idea of exclusive orientation had become well established, invoking Plato’s symposium for support. This distinction was less prevalent in pornography, which often celebrated bisexuality. Pornographic works often involved characters discussing and debating various sexual acts and experiences.

As pornography was primarily written by men, this affected how f/f relations were depicted. The women are presented as being focused on m/f sex even when in the middle of f/f acts, and m/f sex is usually presented as a preferred option, when available. The attraction of one woman for another is considered understandable and natural, because the authors themselves desired women, and the attributes that they described women as finding attractive in each other (in the texts) were those feminine attributes that men found attractive. These attitudes also underlay pornographic texts that treated f/f sex as desirable while deprecating m/m sex. As the trope of the “masculine sapphist” was not yet prevalent, f/f sex did not at this time challenge gender roles.

The association of philosophy and pornography also influenced an assumed association of philosophers and homosexuals, leading to euphemisms like “the philosophical vice” for homosexuality.

There is an extended discussion of how philosophers analyzed different sexual attitudes in other cultures. This consideration did not inevitably lead to promotion of tolerance, but some did conclude that morality was simply a matter of arbitrary social agreement. If the idea of the “natural rights of man” were extended to sexuality, there could be no basis for prosecuting acts that were consensual and affected no one else’s rights.

Time period:

18th c

Place:

France

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 308 - On the Shelf for March 2025

Sunday, March 2, 2025 - 18:29

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 308 - On the Shelf for March 202 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2025/03/02 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for March 2025.

If you’ll forgive me for obsessing about it: it is exactly two months until my retirement date. Currently it’s a bit hard for me to think much about anything but getting all my day-job projects finished or handed off, getting all my retirement financial arrangements in place, and…well, there are other significant distractions in the world at the moment. So I feel like these “on the shelf” episodes have been stripped down to the bare bones lately. No new book shopping, no author interviews, no special book appreciation discussions, not much in the way of news of the field. I promise I’ll have more brain and energy for enriching these round-up shows very soon. (I do have an interview planned for next month, as it happens.)

But there is one exciting piece of news, in case you haven’t visited the blog to see it. We have a fiction line-up! When I had my choices narrowed down to the top six, I realized that I could take them all. Two stories were short enough that, when combined, they still met the 5000 word limit of my budget. And when I checked the calendar, I realized that I also needed a story for January 2026 (a month with 5 Saturdays, which is when I air fiction). So here is the line-up, in alphabetical order by title. (The release schedule has yet to be determined, but since the first story airs at the end of this month, it will be one that I do the narration for.)

“A Falling Star and a Flying Bird” by Rhiannon Grant
“An Encounter with a Lady” by Catherine Lundoff
“Down by the Tumbling Stream” by EC Hallewell
“Ma’am, This is a Fruit Stand” by Maya Dworsky-Rocha
“The House of the Women” by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
“Where You Go” by Jennifer Nestojko

The settings range from ancient Crete to the Victorian era. We have touches of fantasy, scenes of adventure and peril, and through it all lives revolving around connections and loyalties and love. And there were so many stories I wished I could include. As I’ve mentioned on previous occasions, the surest way to get into the “yes” pile when I’m reading submissions is for the story to have exquisite writing that grabs me by the throat. Each of the stories in this year’s season did just that.

Publications on the Blog

In February, the blog covered several articles in the collection Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance edited by Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Much like the collection Queering the Middle Ages, which I blogged last month, there was a disappointing lack of articles focused on women’s same-sex relationships—the closest being two articles focusing on transmasculine figures which were perceived as women by their societies.

In the current month, I have lined up several articles from the collection Homosexuality in Modern France edited by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. By “modern” France, the editors mean the 18th through 20th centuries, so definitely within the Project’s scope. I’m also listening to the audiobook version of Anne Choma’s tv tie-in book Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, so I’ll be blogging that as well, though not in the sort of detail I apply to academic works.

Expect the blog to ramp up significantly in the coming months. Soon. Soon.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

So you know how last month I commented on how few new fiction titles I’d found and how I expected there would be some catch-up on February books this month? Well, I only have 3 March titles, but a total of 22 new listings. A lot of that is due to multiple releases by only a couple of authors and I have some discussion on that, so I’ll save those books for the end of the segment.

In fact, let’s start off with a group of short stories that have been released in e-book format.

Canvas of Desire by Pippa Farthingale has a rather long cover copy for a short story.

In the heart of a sleepy mid-western town, where the rhythm of life was dictated by the rise and fall of the sun and the predictable cadence of gossip, Eleanor Vance felt an ache for something more. Cloaked in the constraints of her genteel upbringing, she drifted through gardens of roses and neatly trimmed hedges, struggling to reconcile the expectations of society with the powerful longing that stirred within her. Little did she know that a single art exhibit would shatter the facade of her everyday existence and lead her to the vibrant, uncharted territory of passion and self-discovery.

As Eleanor stepped into the town hall that warm summer evening, the air thick with anticipation, she was drawn not only to the brushstrokes and colours that adorned the walls but also to a captivating artist whose very presence seemed to ignite the space. Clara Dubois, a name whispered among the town’s elite with both intrigue and disapproval, wielded her palette like a key, unlocking the desires stifled beneath the surface of propriety. In that moment, surrounded by the murmurs of the elite, Eleanor would find herself at a crossroads, poised between conformity and the exhilarating allure of forbidden love. What transpired next would forever alter the trajectories of their lives, casting them into a whirlwind of emotions that neither could have anticipated. Thus began the journey on the canvas of desire, where art became the transformative bridge between a constrained world and the untamed realm of the heart.

My Heart On Your Sleeve by April Klasen takes place in the 18th century but the setting isn’t entirely clear.

At sixteen, Anne was in love with her best friend Isa. But Isa left her mantua maker apprenticeship to start a family with her new husband. Leaving Anne heartbroken. Thirteen years later, Anne never expected it to be recently widowed Isa coming into her dressmaker shop to apply for the apprenticeship on offer. Friendships are rekindled. And so are old feelings of love. But is Anne brave enough to give Isa her heart this time?

Taking advantage of a February release, we have Petals and Pages by T. Albright.

For Theresa, more is riding on this Valentine’s Day than the state of her heart. She’s entrusted the fate of her struggling stationary store to the new craze for handmade Valentine’s Day cards. Once a passionate artist, now all her focus is on making cards that people want to buy so she can keep her shop afloat for another week. But Theresa has also been secretly working on a Valentine’s Day card for her sweetheart Susan, to finally express the depths of her affection. When her project goes awry, Theresa’s insecurities surface and threaten to ruin their evening. Will Theresa find the words to voice what’s in her heart?

Moving on to the novel-length works, The Art of Unmaking by Parker Lennox from ONYX Publishing should have been included in last month’s listings, but it took me more time to track down a buy link for the book.

In 1922 York, England, Clara Bennett knows exactly who she's supposed to be. Or at least she thinks she does. As a promising young artist at the prestigious Fleming Academy, she perfects her style through classical training. Her days are filled with strict rules, proper techniques, and the weight of her mother's expectations. But when she encounters the mysterious Evelyn Price at a controversial exhibition, Clara's carefully ordered world begins to unravel.

Drawn into the mysterious Blackwood Society, Clara discovers art that defies reality itself. Torn between her rigid training and an intoxicating new freedom, she finds herself questioning everything she once believed. But the price of this freedom may be higher than she ever imagined, and the person she's becoming could be her very own undoing.

Clara will have to decide how much she's willing to sacrifice for greatness. Because as her art transforms, so does her heart—but nothing in the Society is quite what it seems, and some secrets are painted in shadows too dark to escape.

I’m always interested in early medieval stories with solid historic grounding, so I could wish that The Smith by Marine St. Jean could be purchased somewhere other than Amazon.

For eight years, Ama has been on the run and out of reach from the people who destroyed her life. Staying detached and moving quickly is all you can expect as a merchant-class woman with unnatural passions, even in the neglected areas of Gascony in the 800's.

But now a village that needs her skills, and more importantly, a woman who wants her heart, is trying to break through those walls. If they do, Ama is convinced disaster will follow. And if she learns the whole truth, Ama will lose her as well.

Love and Rebellion (Forbidden Whispers #1) by Ericka Schmidt adds to the growing micro-genre of sapphic fantasy viking stories. I have yet to encounter a sapphic novel set in early medieval Scandinavia that has a purely historic setting, but the mythic settings are very popular.

In the unforgiving wilderness of Vestfold, Norway, where Viking clan laws reign supreme and a warrior's worth is measured by blood and steel, two shield maidens will ignite a rebellion that will challenge everything.

Freydis and Thorarna—bound by a love more powerful than any weapon, more dangerous than any battlefield. Forced into a life not of their choosing, traded like property in the brutal game of clan politics, they refuse to be silent. Mere breeding vessels? No. They are fire. They are storm. They are revolution.

When rival warriors claim them during the sacred selection ceremony, Freydis and Thorarna make a choice that will echo through Viking history: they choose each other. Their love becomes a defiance—a burning challenge to every tradition that seeks to break them.

But freedom comes at a price. King Harald's vengeance is swift and merciless. The Blood Eagle awaits those who dare to challenge the old ways. Hunted by their own people, pursued by Karina—a shield maiden consumed by a twisted obsession—their journey becomes a raw, unfiltered cry of female rage and unbreakable sisterhood.

Some loves are whispered. Some rebellions are crushed.

Theirs will be legendary.

Lately I’ve encountered a number of stories revolving around the “affair of the poisons” in the 17th century court at Versailles. This latest is The Witch of Versailles by Jessica Mason from Murmuration Books.

At the dawn of the reign of the Sun King, an ambitious actress turns to magic to advance her dreams, then poison to keep them alive. Claude de Vin Des Oeillets rises from the bottom of Parisian society in 1660 to become both servant and lover to Madame de Montespan, a marquise with grand plans for a place in the new paradise of Versailles and the bed of Louis XIV.

A spider in a web of court intrigue and secret affairs, Claude rises ever higher, into the orbit of the King himself, but finds she must resort to dark arts and dangerous alliances on behalf of the woman she loves to stay in his golden light.

Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women throws out some intriguing sapphic vibes, especially in the semi-autobiographical character of Jo March. But in The Other March Sisters by Linda Epstein, Ally Malinenko, and Liz Parker from Kensington Books, a different sister is the one who brings this story into our scope.

I’m sure you believe you know their story from reading that other book, which told you an inspiring tale about four sisters. It told you a story, but did it tell you the story?

Four sisters, each as different as can be. Through the eyes and words of Jo, their characters and destinies became known to millions. Meg, pretty and conventional. Jo, stubborn, tomboyish, and ambitious. Beth, shy and good-natured, a mortal angel readily accepting her fate. And Amy, elegant, frivolous, and shallow. But Jo, for all her insight, could not always know what was in her sisters’ thoughts, or in their hearts.

With Jo away in New York, pursuing her dreams of being a writer, Meg, Beth, and Amy follow their own paths. Meg, newly married with young twins, struggles to find the contentment that Marmee assured her would come with domesticity. Unhappy and unfulfilled, she turns to her garden, finding there not just a hobby but a calling that will allow her to help other women in turn.

Beth knows her time is limited. Still, part of her longs to break out of her suffocating cocoon at home, however briefly. A new acquaintance turns into something more, offering unexpected, quiet joy.

Amy, traveling in Europe while she pursues her goal of becoming an artist, is keenly aware of the expectation that she will save the family by marrying well. Through the course of her journey, she discovers how she can remain true to herself, true to her art, and true to the love that was always meant to be.

By purposefully leaving Jo off the page, authors Liz Parker, Ally Malinenko, and Linda Epstein give the other March sisters room to reveal themselves through conversations, private correspondence, and intimate moments—coming alive in ways that might surprise even daring, unconventional Jo.

For a while, cross-time stories with parallel storylines in different eras seemed to dominate these listings, though they haven’t been as common lately. But this month turns up Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

It was said that if you write to the Bridegroom’s Oak, the love of your life will answer back. Now, the tree is giving up its secrets at last.

In 1940s Germany, Sophie is excited to discover a message waiting for her in the Bridegroom's Oak from a mysterious suitor. Meanwhile, her best friend, Hanna, is sending messages too—but not to find love. As World War II unfolds in their small town of Kleinwald, the oak may hold the key to resistance against the Nazis.

In 1980s West Germany, American teen transplant Jenny feels suffocated by her strict parents and is struggling to fit in. Until she finds herself falling for Lena, a punk-rock girl hell-bent on tearing down the wall separating West Germany from East Germany, and meeting Frau Hermann, a kind old lady with secrets of her own.

In Spring 2020, New York City, best friends Miles and Chloe are slogging through the last few months of senior year when an unexpected package from Chloe’s grandmother leads them to investigate a cold case about two unidentified teenagers who went missing under the Bridegroom’s Oak eighty years ago.

I’m not absolutely certain, but the description for Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen from Poisoned Pen Press is giving me definite Dracula vibes.

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.

For this next group of books, I want to talk about how the publishing landscape makes me paranoid. A couple of times previously, I’ve talked about encountering books that gave off strong “generated by AI vibes”—I’m not talking about covers, but the text itself. So when I was researching new releases and I came across an author with no prior presence or other online footprint who released 7 titles within a single month, I definitely gave the books much closer scrutiny than I normally would. And that also pushed me to give closer scrutiny to a 3-title author and even a 2-title author (even though releasing two books in the same month wouldn’t normally strike me as suspicious).

So I checked all the reading samples, and looked for other signs, such as releasing books across wildly different genres. The writing was…not superb, but definitely not bot-like. So I asked my professional writers group for a reality check and learned that there’s a specific indie writer strategy being recommended where you release a lot of titles in a short period to get Amazon juice. So…ok, I guess? I confess I don’t really understand the purpose of saving up 7 novels and then releasing them all at once. Especially if you’ve never published before. Generally it’s a good thing to step up your writing chops with each new book. But you do you, if it works for you. But for what it’s worth, for this particular book booster, coming out of nowhere and publishing a lot of books all at the same time does make me suspicious in the current circumstances. With that said…

Marina Tempest has released a duo of decidedly alternate history romances in a series entitled “Lesbian Pirates”—which provide exactly what it says on the tin. It isn’t clear if these have connected storylines.

In Bitter Winds Victoria Walsh lost everything when she was falsely accused of treason - her commission, her honor, and her family legacy. Now she commands a pirate vessel, leading her own loyal crew while searching for evidence to clear her name. She never expected her path to justice would lead her back to Eleanor Cavendish - the admiral's daughter whose troubled eyes at Victoria's trial suggested she alone saw the truth. Eleanor has spent six months investigating the corruption that destroyed Victoria's life, gathering evidence against the powerful men who framed her. But when their worlds violently collide, they're forced to flee together into a storm that will either tear them apart or forge an unbreakable bond.

Cursed Scar puts cold, cynical Captain Quinn Tanner in the path of Lady Diamond Haverford, a brilliant, beautiful noblewoman who is hiding dangerous secrets of her own.

V.C. Sterling has burst onto the scene with two different series, which appear to be thematically connected rather than involving continuing characters or settings. There are currently 5 books in the Roses and Rebellion series, which all appear to have Victorian-era settings.

In The Duchess's Companion, A widowed Lady Beatrice Pembroke fights against the expectation that she will remain in the shadows. Eva Blackwood, hired as her companion for her return to society comes with secrets—including her attraction to her employer. Together they navigate the treacherous world of aristocratic scandal, old enemies, and new conspiracies.

In A Lady's Reckoning Catherine Balfour escapes the clutches of London’s most feared physician and seeks refuge in the misty streets of Bath. Hiding under a false name, she finds sanctuary at Elinor Langston’s clinic—a place where the city’s forgotten can find healing. But safety is an illusion. The man she fled, Dr. Somerton, has eyes everywhere, and he will stop at nothing to reclaim his prized apprentice. Catherine and Elinor must risk everything to expose his crimes.

Lessons in Compassion pits Miss Eliza Townsend against Sophia Harcourt, sent as a council inspector to evaluate the orphanage Eliza struggles to maintain. As their battle of wills unfolds, so does an undeniable attraction—one neither of them can afford.

In The Lady's Secret Marianne de Lacy hides her scandalous past and uses her wealth to fund a radical new school for working women. But when rumors of her illegitimate birth begin to surface, her carefully constructed world threatens to crumble. Juliet Fletcher is a journalist who should be exposing Marianne, not falling for her.

A Lady's Final Stand introduces that potentially unhistorical element of a female ex-soldier, though perhaps there’s a background that makes the motif plausible? Margaret Hale hired as bodyguard to Lady Beatrice Foswell finds herself in a battle of wits with her employer among whispers of conspiracy in the halls of Parliament.

V.C. Sterling’s second series, Velvet and Vice, involves stories set during Prohibition at a speakeasy named The Velvet Viper.

In Whiskey & Lace Evelyn St. James is a socialite trying to escape the gilded cage of a respectable marriage when she meets Frankie Malone, a sharp-tongued, whiskey-slinging crime boss who rules her empire with steel and charm.

The Velvet Viper returns as the setting for Gin & Sin featuring a romance between dancer Dahlia LaRue and the club’s enforcer, a woman of few words and fierce loyalty.

Our final multi-book release is Delilah Kent’s Regency-era Scandal & Sapphire series, which looks to be somewhat on the erotica side.

In The Lady & The Thief Lady Eleanor Harrington is betrothed to a duke, but when she catches a mysterious thief in her family's garden, her carefully planned world begins to unravel.

The Heiress & Her Governess tackles the somewhat questionable topic of a governess-pupil romance when Charlotte Fairchild takes responsibility for the rebellious heiress Isabel Sinclair.

In The Widow & The Wallflower Margaret Langley newly freed from a cruel marriage finds solace in the most unlikely place—a small bookshop tucked away from the watchful eyes of the ton, where she encounters the proprietor Eliza Finch.

Other Books of Interest

I’ve placed one book in the “other books of interest” category because although some reviews and lists suggest that the book has sapphic content, I can’t find a trace of it, and the author’s past releases have been similarly cagey on the topic.

The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes from William Morrow Paperbacks follows the career of WPA editor Millie Lang when she finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal. She’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work.

Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.

More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. Alice thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes.

Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

What Am I Reading?

And what have I been reading? Only a couple of audiobooks this past month. One of them was the second in a sapphic space-mystery series by Malka Older: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. These are novellas set in a colony constructed around Jupiter after humanity fled an uninhabitable Earth. Murder mysteries get solved by a detective and academic duo who are also negotiating a revival of their romance. The books are enjoyable and have a fun time grounding the mysteries in the worldbuilding.

I finally got around to reading the highly praised The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, which came out a number of years ago. The novel asks the question: can a naïve and brilliant golem who has lost her immigrant master on the voyage to America and a metal-working Jinni newly freed from magical entrapment find their way together in early 20th century New York and foil the schemes of the sorcerer who wants to re-enslave them both? This was beautiful and heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant and I don’t know what took me so long to come back to it, given that I’ve owned a hard copy since it first came out.

I keep looking over to the bookcase in my home office that contains all the hard-copy books I’ve acquired in the decade since I moved in, but have failed to read yet. Soon. Soon.

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

The 2025 fiction line-up
Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Blackmore, Josiah and Gregory S. Hutcheson. 1999. “Introduction” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495
- Blackmore, Josiah. 1999. “The Poets of Sodom” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495
- Gerli, E. Michael. 1999. “Dismembering the Body Politic: Vile Bodies and Sexual Underworlds in Celestina” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495
- Perry, Mary Elizabeth. 1999. “From Convent to Battlefield: Cross-Dressing and Gendering the Self in the New World of Imperial Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495
- Burshatin, Israel. 1999. “Written on the Body: Slave or Hermaphrodite in Sixteenth-Century Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
Other Titles of Interest
- The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes
What I’ve been consuming
- The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
Twitter: @LesbianMotif
Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

Website: http://alpennia.com
Email: Heather Rose Jones
Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 307 – Our F/Favorite Tropes: Sword-Lesbians and Horse-Girls

Saturday, February 15, 2025 - 16:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 307 – Our F/Favorite Tropes: Sword-Lesbians and Horse-Girls - transcript

(Originally aired 2025/02/15 - listen here)

I was lying awake brainstorming for this month’s podcast and thinking about topics for the “Our F/Favorite Tropes” series and it occurred to me that a panel topic from last year’s Worldcon made a good springboard. The central theme of the tropes series is to examine how popular historic romance tropes can work differently for female couples than for mixed-gender couples, but I’ve also been throwing in a few tropes that don’t necessarily have a direct correspondence. Furthermore, a sub-theme of the tropes series is that tropes exist because of a specific social and historical context, and don’t make as much sense outside of that context. The necessary socio-historical context is a negotiation between the text and the reader—if the essential elements are present from either side, then the trope can ring true. Anyway, today we’re talking about sword-lesbians and horse-girls.

Tropes—as understood in romance literature—refer to a motif or scenario that recurs often enough across multiple works that it develops its own associated expectations or resonances. It could be a situation, such as “only one bed,” or a mini-script, such as a training montage. It can be a type of relationship structure for the protagonists, such as “friends to lovers,” or it can be a character type or occupation, which is the sort we’ll be talking about today. I thought it would be fun to juxtapose horses and swords, not only because they’re both based on character types, but also because many of the cultural resonances have similar roots in the tensions around the gendering of attributes and interests. And both rely on very specific cultural dynamics for their validity, but it can be the reader that brings the necessary dynamics. Here I’m going to be reprising some topics I’ve covered in the past, but examining them from a different angle.

So let’s start with horse girls and why they just naturally fit into sapphic narratives. The traditional theory about why horses and girls go together in fiction tends to lean on two motifs. One is the idea of the horse as best friend—the friend who is affectionate and supportive, but will never compete with you in human interactions. The girl can project her own emotions and motivations onto the horse-friend. Even if we move into the realm of fantasy horse-friends and horse-analogs that have human levels of sentience, the relationship remains eternally separate from human connections and therefore can never be disrupted by them.

The second layer of the horse-girl is the idea that a person marginalized by gender and often relatively powerless in society can develop a relationship with this large powerful animal in which she is the one in control—the one who guides the horse into lending her its power. Thus the horse-girl represents a fantasy of alliance with a powerful being outside of human gender hierarchies that creates at least a temporary illusion of mobility, freedom, and agency.

But the horse-girl motif isn’t simply an intersection of female characters and the presence of horses. In a historic or social context where everyone interacts with horses as an everyday function, the specialness of the horse-girl as distinct from other girls becomes diluted. And in a hypothetical context where interactions with horses are not variable based on gender (the gender of the person that is, not the horse), then the specialness of a horse-girl as opposed to a horse-boy is eroded.

So how does sapphic romance fit into this? Here I think we need to circle back and look at the historical gendering of horsemanship. The idea that horses and girls go together like…well, like a horse and carriage is relatively recent. (And by that I mean, within the last century or so.) For quite a long time, the riding of horses was coded as inherently masculine. You can see that as early as classical Greek images of Amazons, who demonstrated their defiance of expected gender roles not only by wielding weapons, but by riding horses. At regular intervals across western history, ideas about modesty and propriety have put barriers in the way of horsewomen in the form of restrictions on posture and dress. To some extent women accepted this gendering, such that when they developed a riding culture, they adopted and adapted hyper-masculine styles, borrowing from military uniforms for the tailoring and decoration of riding habits—at least for the part of the habit above the waist.

Riding—and especially hunting and racing—were considered the purview of men. To the extent that women claimed a space to participate, they were often viewed as unfeminine, or were permitted on an isolated basis as “not like other girls” rather than allowed entry as a class.

Within this context, the horse-girl has stepped outside the restrictions of gender in ways similar to the lesbian. She has claimed masculine prerogatives and privileges. In a context that frames same-sex relations in terms of gender difference, the horse-girl has positioned herself as a natural partner for a woman, regardless of where that woman herself falls on the butch-femme scale. As I noted in the trope episode on bluestockings and amazons, a stock character type in the 18th and 19th century was the pairing of the masculine horsewoman and the more feminine bluestocking. But those eras also give us the image of groups of horsewomen riding out together in their military-tailored habits, in defiance of the pressures to remain passive home-bodies.

But curiously enough, the horse-girl as a stock literary character emerges as horses become less a part of everyday life. With this shift, horses become something of a “special interest,” differentially available to young women based on either socio-economic standing or within increasingly smaller subcultures where horses still had viable functions. In parallel with the marginalization of horse culture, that culture became less masculine-coded. So there is a narrative tension between the horse-girl as gender outlaw and the horse-girl focusing on the personal and individual dynamic between rider and steed. The modern literary horse-girl is generally not coded as potentially sapphic (even though she may be coded as a tom-boy). It is the intersection between the older image of the sapphic amazon (in its early modern sense) and the more modern motif of the horse-crazy female protagonist that gives meaning to the trope of the sapphic horse-girl.

By the way, in recognizing this image of the lesbian pursuing masculine-coded interests, I want to emphasize that this is only one of the archetypes of female same-sex desire in history. There is another entire group of archetypes that emphasize attraction based on feminine similarity. But this is the archetype that connects our two topics today. So let’s turn to the sword-lesbian and set this up with the context of the panel discussion I referred to.

At last year’s World Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, I was on a discussion panel titled “Sword Lesbians: Discuss” with Ellen Kushner (author of The Privilege of the Sword), Samantha Shannon (author of The Priory of the Orange Tree), and Em X. Liu (who was a finalist for the Astounding Award for best new writer). This means that the panel was considering the trope of the sword-wielding lesbian not within the realm of historical fiction, but primarily within speculative fiction. Which raises not simply the question of “why lesbians with swords” but “why swords at all” given the scope of the possible settings.

There were a lot of great discussions during that panel, and I won’t try to summarize what other panelists said—much less remember all the great books that were recommended—but here are my thoughts on the central topic, which lay out why the sword-lesbian is a historically-rooted trope regardless of fantasy or science fictional settings that, in theory, should be free of real-world assumptions about gender and sexuality.

Within the historic context, and particularly in literature, the sword is not simply a weapon, but a symbol. There are many possible weapons that a protagonist could use, often to better effect in any particular situation. The sword is a weapon of the elite—it represents an upper class warrior, whether due to the difficulty and expense of obtaining a sword in very ancient times, or due to the time and training required to master it in medieval times, or due to its inherent irrelevance for serious combat in more modern times. The associated social status is why mounted cavalry officers carried swords up through the first World War—cavalry, because the horse, too, reflected upper class resources. The caché of the sword is why dueling with swords remained a viable, if rare, practice into the 20th century.

So one context the sword-lesbian operates within is an association with high social status, perhaps even aristocratic status if her culture has such a thing. She needn’t actually have that status, but by picking up a sword she lays claim to it.

The other thing she lays claim to, of course, is a penis. We all know that swords are phallic symbols, right? It says so right there on the tin. This returns us to the symbolic context that assumes that desiring a woman is an inherently masculine act. By picking up a sword, our heroine as much as states her right to desire women and to act on that desire. It also gives her the right to be desired by women. I examined a number of examples in historic literature where these dynamics are made explicit in the podcast episode on female knights.

All this makes sense for fiction in a real-world historic setting, but what is the logic behind the trope of the sword-lesbian in a purely fantasy setting, or a space opera? My own personal opinion is that the sword-lesbian can only be meaningful within a context that reflects both heteronormativity and sexism. Even if those attitudes are not features of the secondary world of the setting, the trope derives its meaning from the background of the reader (and author). Whatever our own personal beliefs and experiences regarding gender and sexuality, our literary expectations have been shaped by a society that assigns gender to sword use and considers same-sex desire to be a marked state.

To be meaningful as a trope, as opposed to a simple character description, the sword-lesbian must be a transgressive figure. She must be understood as clearly standing outside social norms and expectations. This makes her dangerous and desirable, but also occasionally vulnerable. Without sexism, it is not a marked action for a woman to bear a sword. Without sexism, she does not transgress any norms and attracts no special attention. Without sexism, a sword is not a penis.

Without heteronormativity, there is no special meaning to a woman adopting male-coded symbols. Without heteronormativity, there is no motivation for assigning masculinity to people who desire women. This doesn’t mean that in a speculative secondary world that was free of sexism and heteronormativity that there would be no women who happened to be lesbians and happened to use swords, but that the specific dynamics and relationship to society that we invoke with the label “sword-lesbian” would not exist. Not any more than being a girl and living in California makes you one of the California girls that the Beach Boys sang about. But I digress.

It's this contextual meaning that gets to the heart of romance tropes. And it’s one of the reasons I enjoy developing this series of episodes. (Because if there’s one thing I love, it’s over-analyzing something.) As I discussed in the first trope episode on “only one bed,” the trope loses its meaning if there is nothing marked or special about your two protagonists sharing a bed. That act is highly meaningful if there are expectations and taboos and consequences to sharing a bed. But while the social meanings assigned to two women sharing a bed can be vastly different from those assigned to a man and a woman sharing a bed, the trope still exists in sapphic romance because those resonances exist in the reader’s mind. Even if the author presents bed-sharing between two female protagonists as utterly expected and non-sexual within the story’s setting, the reader sees that single bed being introduced and sets up expectations that will either be fulfilled or turned on their head.

In the same way, the horse-girl and the sword-lesbian draw their meaning as tropes from the social forces, symbolism, and expectations assigned to their actions and situations, and especially those expectations that make their existence transgressive against social norms. And if they’re going to transgress, how about we set the two up on a date and let them transgress a few more norms together?

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

The trope of the horse-girl
The trope of the sword-lesbian
How these tropes are negotiated between story setting and reader expectations
This topic makes reference to the following episodes:

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
Twitter: @LesbianMotif
Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

Website: http://alpennia.com
Email: Heather Rose Jones
Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

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Love is Love and Trans People Have Always Existed

Friday, February 14, 2025 - 08:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

I don't usually get quite so political in my blog titles, but the rage has to spill out somewhere.

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LHMP #460 Burshatin 1999 Written on the Body

Full citation:

Burshatin, Israel. 1999. “Written on the Body: Slave or Hermaphrodite in Sixteenth-Century Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495

Burshatin - Written on the Body

Because of the ways that I define the scope of the Project, I end up including a lot of transmasculine content. I often say that there is no lesbian history without transmasculine history, regardless of how the historic individuals understood their own identities, because of they ways that society assigned masculinity to the desire for women or to any sort of transgressive behavior by women. But there are some individuals who--while shedding fascinating light on issues relevant to lesbian history--very clearly understood themselves to be men and demanded that society treat them as such. Eleno de Céspedes is one of those people and regardless of the language that I and other researchers sometimes use in trying to communicate the facts of his life, I want to recognize that.

# # #

As might be expected given the author and subject, this article covers much the same ground as Burshatin 1996. The current article focuses on Céspedes’ position as a challenge to various sovcio-political doundaries: gendr, race, national, and sexual.

The official structures that documented and prosecuted Céspedes’ case both framed the narrative in specific ways and documented the subject’s own framing and identity claims that constructed a very different story.

Born female to an enslaved Black mother, Céspedes achieved freedom, became male, served in the army, and trained as a surgeon. After marrying a woman, Céspedes was recognized by a former army comrade who knew of the gender crossing, and was then charged with sodomy—specifically, engaging in penetrative sex using an instrument. In contrast to that secular offense, church authorities were concerned with the act of marriage. This latter became the focus of the trial. In the end, the conviction was for bigamy, because Céspedes could not offer proof that the husband they had married (prior to gender-crossing) had died before their subsequent marriage to a woman.

[Note: This is reminiscent of a similar instance in England, where the conviction for bigamy can be interpreted at some level as recognition of the “validity” of marriage between two assigned-female people.]

There were a number of complicating factors. Céspedes offered a defense of being a “hermaphrodite” who had undergone a physiological sex change. But medical examination contradicted this claim. There were side charges that the appearance of masculinity was due to magic. Céspedes’ sentence was harsh in absolute terms (two sessions of public whipping, a public confession, then public service as a surgeon), but this was aligned with typical punishments for bigamy at the time (and to some extent, more lenient than usual).

The article traces several parallel processes of “self-fashioning,” not only of gender but of occupation and economic status. Racial self-fashioning was beyond Céspedes’ ability, but they moved across a permeable racial boundary by manipulating other aspects of identity.

The article goes into much more detail regarding the racial/religious politics of 16th century Spain and how Céspedes maneuvered through them.

Time period:

16th c

Place:

cross-gender roles/behavior

Misc tags:

transgender identity

marriage between women

Event / person:

Elena/Eleno de Céspedes

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The Lieutenant Nun Strikes Again

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 - 21:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

Next to last article from this collection and then we move on to Early Modern France.

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LHMP #459 Perry 1999 From Convent to Battlefield

(For other publications on this topic that have been reviewed in more detail, see this tag.)

Full citation:

Perry, Mary Elizabeth. 1999. “From Convent to Battlefield: Cross-Dressing and Gendering the Self in the New World of Imperial Spain” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495

Perry - From Convent to Battlefield

The two articles that deal most solidly with Project-related topics are both about trans-masculine individuals. Both are solidly within the fuzzy scope of the Project, but it does continue to point up how absent certain content is from this collection.

# # #

This article reviews the rather unusual experience of Catalina de Erauso, whose gender-crossing received far more acceptance than usual. The author considers the interpretation of Erauso as a trans man. The discussion covers both Erauso’s biography and the fictional versions of their life and discusses the process of “becoming male.”

Both types of sources include women being romantically/sexually attracted to Erauso, but Erauso avoided such entanglements, evincing some degree of erotic interest in women but never carrying through to a sexual relationship.

Fictional accounts tend to dodge the question of Erauso as a colonial warrior, focusing instead on Erauso’s confession of identity and the receipt of official approval and license to continue presenting as male. Erauso’s past life as a nun may have helped mitigate moral concerns regarding the gender-crossing. Despite having lived a rather contentious and violent life as a soldier, Erauso could be depicted as “pure and virginal.”

Erauso became something of a folk hero due to this open category-crossing, but this was enabled by official approval and there being no aggravating sexual factors.

Time period:

16th c

Place:

cross-gender roles/behavior

Misc tags:

transgender identity

Event / person:

Catalina de Erauso

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La Celestina Deserved Better than This

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 - 18:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

Yeah, this time I got nothing.

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LHMP #458 Gerli1999 Dismembering the Body Politic

Full citation:

Gerli, E. Michael. 1999. “Dismembering the Body Politic: Vile Bodies and Sexual Underworlds in Celestina” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495

Gerli- Dismembering the Body Politic

OK, I guess I’m spite-reviewing this. Despite there being a female homoerotic encounter in a key scene in Celestina, Gerli’s article fails to take any notice of it at all. (Other articles in the collection do make reference to it.) See this tag for background.

Time period:

15th c

Place:

La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas)

Event / person:

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2025 Fiction Line-Up

Monday, February 10, 2025 - 12:41

lhmpodcast.jpg

The contracts have been sent out and returned, so it’s time to announce the 2025 Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast fiction line-up! Thank you to everyone who submitted.

When I had my choices narrowed down to the top six, I realized that I could take them all. Two stories were short enough that, when combined, they still met the 5000 word limit of my budget. And when I checked the calendar, I realized that I also needed a story for January 2026 (a 3-shows month).

So here is the line-up, in alphabetical order by title. (Release schedule has yet to be determined.)

“A Falling Star and a Flying Bird” by Rhiannon Grant
“An Encounter with a Lady” by Catherine Lundoff
“Down by the Tumbling Stream” by EC Hallewell
“Ma’am, This is a Fruit Stand” by Maya Dworsky-Rocha
“The House of the Women” by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
“Where You Go” by Jennifer Nestojko

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The Poets Know We Exist

Sunday, February 9, 2025 - 14:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

I'd meant to roll out the articles in this collection a bit more regularly, but -- having written them all up -- I keep forgetting to post them! Here you go.

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LHMP #457 Blackmore 1999 The Poets of Sodom

Full citation:

Blackmore, Josiah. 1999. “The Poets of Sodom” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495

Blackmore - The Poets of Sodom

This article discusses genres of poetry that reference homosexuality, especially “songs of scorn and malediction,” though these are sometimes more teasing in tone than slanderous. The article discusses 36 poems, of which 3 make brief passing references to the potential female same-sex encounters of prostitutes in military camps.

A soldadeira (camp prostitute) has an older female companion “a que quer ben, e ela lhi quer mal (whom she loves but who doesn’t love her)”. Dona Ourana (a prostitute) is warned off of sex with women (not quoted). Maria Leve (another prostitute), it is suggested, prefers living among young women.

A fourth poem has a more extensive reference in which the poetic speaker addresses a woman named Mari’ Mateu, comparing their shared desire for cunts in a teasing and relatively neutral way that is unambiguously sexual.

E foi Deus já de conos avondar aqui outros, que o non an mester,

E ar feze-os muito desejar a min e ti, pero que ch’ és molher.

Mari’ Mateu, Mari’ Mateu, tan desojosa ch és de cono com’ eu!

(And it was God who made cunts in abundance here, for there is no lack, and Who also made both ou and I want them even though you’re a woman. Mary Matthew, Mary Matthew, as desirous of cunt as I!)

Time period:

Medieval (general)

Place:

Portugal

Misc tags:

sex between women

sexual/romantic desire

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Queer Iberia - Yet another queer history collection

Sunday, February 2, 2025 - 10:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

Because I don't have enough distractions at the moment, I'm working on a couple of retrospective tasks related to the Project. One is an editorial review of all previous publication blogs to make sure that my commentary that is directly related to the publication is located in a field that will always be viewable in conjunction with the publication. When designing the back end of the Project, we...um...sort of overcomplicated things. (Something for which my web consultants may not have forgiven me yet.) The thing is, when migrating the original publications over from LiveJournal, I noticed that there were often three types of content in a Project post: the summary of the publication itself, my meta-commentary about the publication, and unrelated information that I just happened to post on the same day. I wanted to keep that structure, to some extent, so when we created the data structure for this website, there's the main publication summary, and introduction field intended to be my meta-commentary, and then each Project post has an "envelope" that's the actual blog post, which should contain any non-Project information--that is, any information that isn't relevant to understanding the Project post.

Well, I haven't always been consistent in sorting out the data that way. In part, this is because I don't always have any "unrelated" information to post, but I abhor a blank blog text (even though it never actually displays as blank -- the blog always "contains" the LHMP content). In part, my meta-commentary tends to have a very fuzzy relationship to the Project content and there isn't always a clear answer to "which field should this go in."

So, knowing that I've had meta-commentary that ended up in the blog field (and therefore doesn't display if you're reading a publication post from the LHMP search functions), I decided to go through it all and pull out any Project-related commentary and copy it over into the "introduction" field associated withe the publication entry. (The fact that this ends up duplicating some content between the blog "envelope" and the publication post doesn't matter, because I doubt anyone is going to be reading old blog posts as blog posts.)

The other task is less of a housekeeping project. I've long had notes towards a glossary of vocabulary and terminology from primary sources that related to sexuality and same-sex topics, but I haven't been collecting it systematically from the publications I've blogged. Since this will be important for the sourcebook, I'm now going back and pulling material from publications I've already read. The idea is to provide a sense of how women in history would have described or expressed same-sex desire and erotics, or how those around them might talk about it. Due to the nature of the sources, very little of this will be candid "own voices" data from women who desired women, but it will be the closest approximation I can manage. So as part of my workflow for new publication posts, I'm including pulling this sort of data. And I'll start going through the 400+ previous publications to pull from them as well. This isn't as daunting as it might seem because many books and articles don't include quotations from primary sources, and I'm restricting the scope narrowly.

Just a few things I figured I could add to my non-existent spare time, rather than waiting the 87 remaining days until retirement.

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LHMP #456 Blackmore & Hutcheson 1999 Introduction

Full citation:

Blackmore, Josiah and Gregory S. Hutcheson. 1999. “Introduction” in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Duke University Press, Durham. ISBN 9780822323495

Introduction

The introduction reviews the background and thematic connections of the papers in this volume. The focus is overwhelmingly on masculinity and sodomy, although several articles in the section “The Body and the State” focus on women (or female-coded figures). There are a total of 15 articles of which four have at least marginal relevance to the Project. However the two that have the strongest focus on female-coded individuals both concern transmasculinity.

This collection evolved out of a set of thematic sessions at the International Medieval Congress (Kalamazoo) and the contents point to the hazards of how scholarly networks silently constrain the scope of interest for such projects. If particular areas of interest are not included within a scholarly network, it becomes difficult to solicit work on those areas—or even to notice that they are not covered.

Time period:

Medieval (general)

Renaissance (general)

Place: