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Saturday, April 27, 2019 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 103 (previously 33d) - Policing Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe - transcript
(Originally aired 2019/04/27 - listen here)
Within the past couple of months, there’s been some buzz in the book world about an upcoming fictionalized account of the life of 19th century physician Dr. James Barry that frames Barry as a heroic gender-transgressive woman who passed as a man in order to pursue a medical career. This framing was countered by many voices pointing out that Barry provided clear indications that he identified as male and tried to prevent that understanding from being challenged after his death.
Beyond the desire of modern people with a variety of identities to identify with the past, there is always a challenge to trying to decipher categories of gender and sexuality in the past, not only in terms of how individuals understood their own identity, but how that understanding was shaped by the models and categories offered to them.
The lazy way out is to sidestep the whole question by saying, “We can never really know how people in history identified” -- ignoring the fact that nobody ever says this about people who live normative lives. Or to say, “Well, understandings of sexuality and gender were different in the past” while silently assuming that straight cis people in history understood themselves identically to straight cis people today. But then we’re left with the question of just how we can sort out innate identity from strategic performance from culturally-imposed categorization.
Today’s essay continues the discussion I began two months ago in the episode on Unpacking Gender and Sexuality Categories. If you haven’t listened to that show yet, you might want to check it out before continuing with this one. In that show, I started from a very abstract consideration of how we interact with complicated categories of meaning and reference. How can we “translate” categories from one context to another when the categories are composed of bundles of independent features? In the realm of sexuality and gender, what are the different features that have been considered relevant in different cultures for determining both category structure and category membership?
This time, we’ll jump from the general to the very specific and look at a few particular cases of real people in history who came into conflict with their culture’s models for gender and sexuality. How did those conflicts shed light on those cultural models? How did people’s reactions demonstrate the specific ways in which the models failed to fit?
I chose individuals whose category membership was challenged in a legal context--or at least a legalistic one. That is, cases where people’s gender or sexuality were literally being policed by their culture. Due to the focus of this project, and therefore the nature of the data I have to work from, these examples will primarily focus on people who were assigned as female at birth, but where that categorization was challenged either by their behavior, their presentation, or their expressed self-identity. My focus here will not be on trying to determine their “true” gender and sexuality, as if that were a question with a simple and obvious answer. But rather to look at the types of evidence that were used at the time to try to answer those questions. I will, however, highlight parts of the data that suggest aspects of their internal identity.
I do want to give a content advisory here for some possibly disturbing discussion of persecution, legal punishments, forced medical examinations, and for the use of historic terminology such as “hermaphrodite” that would be offensive today. In general, when discussing people appearing in the historic record, I follow the pronouns used in the original documents, but this time I will use surnames or they/them pronouns to refer to the central figures being discussed here in order to provide a more neutral context for considering the evidence.
Anne Grandjean
A good example to begin with--if only because it contradicts some of our expectations for historic western societies--is that of Anne Grandjean, in 18th century France. Grandjean was born in 1732 and assigned as female at birth, was raised as a girl, and presented as female both in terms of dress and behavior. Around age 14, Grandjean began experiencing sexual desire for women. They confessed this desire to a priest, who told them that sexual desire for women meant that one was really a man. Grandjean was then instructed to wear male clothing and live as a man.
This attitude--that gender identity could be diagnosed via the object of sexual desire within an obligatory heterosexual paradigm--dates back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle recommended this method of determining the “true gender” of a hermaphrodite (in this context, most probably meaning an intersex person).
Grandjean followed their confessor’s instructions regarding dress, began using their father’s name, Jean-Baptiste, moved away from home, and--living as a man--married a woman named Françoise Lambert in 1761 after which the couple moved to Lyon. A year or so later, Grandjean’s gender identity was challenged by someone who apparently had known them as a child, and they were brought before the court.
A doctor performed an anatomical examination and testified that Grandjean’s genitals were female. Contradictory testimony was presented in court regarding whether Granjean experienced menstruation, with Grandjean’s lawyer presenting the case that they were a hermaphrodite. In this case, we appear to be seeing the term “hermaphrodite” used, not for ambiguous physiology, but for an overall combination of traits that were assigned to different sexes: including anatomy, desire, and presentation. (There is a very detailed discussion of hermaphrodite theory in a contemporary summary of the case published in 1765. I’m still working my way through the French text but will put it on my to-do list for the blog in my primary sources series.)
This time, the conclusion of the court was that anatomy, not desire, was the deciding factor and Grandjean was judged guilty of “profaning the marriage sacrament” by entering into a same-sex marriage. After being whipped at the pillory, further sentencing of banishment was appealed successfully and was converted to a requirement that Grandjean return to wearing women’s clothes. They were prohibited by law from cohabiting with Françoise Lambert or any other woman. Evidently the deciding factor in the appeal was that Grandjean argued they had entered into the marriage “in good faith,” having been re-assigned as male based on factors including their desire for women and lack of desire for men, and that the change in gender presentation had been done openly with the knowledge and approval of their parents and community.
I chose Anne Grandjean to lead off because of the wealth of factors the case illustrates.
One key element for understanding historic attitudes toward gender and sexuality is to know that certain societies--to different degrees and with differing levels of credulity--accepted the possibility of spontaneous change of physiological sex. (Or, in some variants, the possibility that individual behavior could cause a change of physiological sex.)
In western culture, this generally was restricted to the possibility that persons originally interpreted as physiologically female could spontaneously develop male characteristics. But the other direction was sometimes acknowledged as possible. Before rejecting this concept as ignorance and myth, it’s important to recognize that there are a number of intersex conditions that present as an initially female-appearing body that develops male-appearing genitals later in life. Without knowing the chromosomal or hormonal basis of such conditions, it wasn’t unreasonable for people in the past to think that such a change could happen randomly to anyone.
So, if a person was observed to have behavioral or emotional characteristics that were considered at odds with their original assigned sex, it was not uncommon to attribute it to a spontaneous physiological change and to investigate that possibility by medical examination. Combine this with a fair amount of ignorance regarding the significant variation in the appearance of “normal” genitals of all sexes, and there was a lot of room for conflicting or erroneous diagnosis.
In Grandjean’s case--as in a number of other cases where the possibility of ambiguous genitalia was investigated--the conclusion was that Grandjean’s anatomy was consistent with the understanding of “normal” female anatomy. But there were other cases where having a clitoris that was larger or more prominent than the examiner expected, resulted in a diagnosis that the subject was partially male in nature.
So what does Grandjean’s case tell us about 18th century French models of gender and sexuality? The biggest thing it tells us is that there wasn’t a single, universal understanding of how to categorize people. The same person, in two different contexts, was assigned to two different gender categories based on prioritizing different characteristics. In one model, anatomy, behavior, and social presentation were all considered less relevant than the object of desire. In the other model, anatomy was the only acceptable evidence for gender categorization, and even the slightest hint of male anatomy might be sufficient for assignment as male.
Grandjean’s case also tells us that gender was considered more negotiable than sexuality in this context. The court was willing to hear and consider evidence and arguments regarding the correct assignment of Grandjean’s gender. But there was no framework for authorizing non-normative sexuality. In the first category conflict, the concept of same-sex desire was so unthinkable to Grandjean’s confessor, that he was more willing to authorize a behavioral gender change than to recognize the possibility that a woman could desire a woman.
In the second category conflict, when Grandjean was re-assigned back to being a woman, the possibility of same-sex desire was acknowledged by having its expression prohibited. Not only was Grandjean required to separate from their wife, but they were forbidden from cohabiting with any woman after that.
This erasure of same-sex possibilities is a theme that co-exists with the often prurient interest in women’s same-sex desire. The law can authorize gender re-assignment but it declines to license same-sex relations, and sometimes declines to acknowledge their possibility.
This theme must be kept in mind any time we encounter someone in western history who was assigned female at birth but who presents as male in the context of a romantic or sexual relationship with someone presenting as female. Sometimes we have evidence for transgender personal identity apart from the available cultural scripts for sexual relationships. But often we need to consider that the superficial appearance of a heterosexual relationship may have been the only script offered to two women who desired each other. Not only in terms of what would be acceptable to society, but in terms of how they understood their own identity and desires. If your society has a category “people who desire women” and aligns that category exactly with the category “men”, what are the pathways open for challenging that equation?
Of course, we also have plenty of examples of two people with feminine presentation enjoying romantic or sexual relations. A clear example is the early 15th century French case of Jehanne and Laurence. In the trial records for that case, there is no indication that either woman was suspected of having male physiology or a male personality. Though it’s true that when describing their sexual activity, the act was framed as them acting “like a man with a woman”. The heteronormative script was still there, but neither woman felt the need to re-categorize herself in order to fit that script in the course of their relationship. Neither did the courts raise the possibility of a gender category change as a way to avoid acknowledgement of same-sex acts. It’s possible that this difference is a matter of shifts in the cultural understanding of sexuality, but the fact that both women were in heterosexual marriages at the time may have gone some way toward viewing the sexual acts as an isolated issue of behavior, not a matter of categorization.
Do we have evidence for Grandjean’s internal gender identity? Quite possibly. 18th century France was not exactly lacking in examples of gender-crossing performance. Any yet Grandjean is not recorded as having any aspects of male gender performance until after being instructed to change gender presentation in order to resolve the problem of their unacceptable same-sex desire. We don’t have any evidence of what sort of life Grandjean lived after the trial and appeal were completed. There are some parallel cases where the subject returned to masculine presentation later, and others where the subject is known to have remained female-presenting after the dust settled. In this particular case, the preponderance of the available evidence does suggest an internal female identity.
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Elena/Eleno de Céspedes
Our second case comes from 16th century Spain and again involves the intersection of performative gender, questions of anatomy, and the motivations of desire.
Elena or Eleno de Céspedes was born to an enslaved black woman in mid-16th century Spain and gained their freedom at age 12. They married a man at age 16, left him permanently shortly after, and bore a child that they left in a neighbor’s care and had no further contact with. De Céspedes later testified that the exertion of the birth resulted in the emergence of a penis-like organ that would thereafter emerge when they were sexually aroused, but was hidden otherwise. De Céspedes asserted that they later had successful sexual relations with women using this organ. Around this time, they began dressing in men’s clothing and pursuing male-coded professions, culminating in training as a surgeon, which included education in classical medical literature which they would later use to argue regarding gender re-categorization.
Due to a lack of facial hair, de Céspedes was sometimes thought to be a eunuch, which they denied. But evidently there was enough question on the point, that de Céspedes sought and received a judgment from the archbishop’s court of Toledo that they were a man and authorized to marry a woman. The evidence offered to receive this judgement is not recorded. But there was a specific marriage partner in question: shortly thereafter de Céspedes married María del Caño.
For some reason, de Céspedes’ gender category came up for question again and this time two medical examinations were required, one performed by a group of midwives who focused only on the genitals and proclaimed that de Céspedes had clearly female anatomy. The other was performed by a group of male physicians who examined both anatomy (with the same conclusion) and behavior, including facial features and speech mannerisms, proclaiming them clearly feminine as well. At this point, the court segregated de Céspedes from both the male and female areas of the prison and changed to using a grammatically female form of their name and using female pronouns in the records.
The charges against de Céspedes highlight the various category boundaries they were considered to have violated. They were charged with being an “unruly woman”, that is, with behaving in ways considered inappropriate for someone in the category “woman” (though perfectly appropriate for someone categorized as a man). They were charged with contempt for the sacrament of marriage by engaging in a same-sex marriage. And they were charged with committing sodomy by use of a dildo, contrary to their testimony that they had engaged in sex using a natural organ.
But was that possible? De Céspedes argued that it was. That they had indeed been female up until after the birth of their child, but thereafter had changed into a man--including the development of male genitals--but an injury had caused that organ to wither and fall off shortly before the legal charges were raised. The plausibility of this story was supported with citations from a wide range of respected medical texts, all of which considered a spontaneous physical sex change to be possible and natural.
The legal charges, de Céspedes argued, all depended on the category assignment of “woman”. But, they insisted, they had been a man at the time of the actions in question and so were innocent, even if they currently appeared to be a woman again.
Did the court take this defense seriously into account? In the end, the gender-based charges were dropped. The final conviction was for bigamy, because de Céspedes had failed to establish that their original husband was dead before marrying María. The shift from a charge of “contempt for the sacrament of marriage” to a charge of “bigamy” is suggestive. Either the court considered a marriage between two women to be sufficiently valid as to constitute bigamy, or the court considered that--at the time of the second marriage--de Céspedes was, in fact, classifiable as a man.
The central conflicts in the trial demonstrate that anatomy was considered the most important factor in gender categorization, though with some element of social performance. Even the shift to a bigamy charge supports this category structure. Presenting and performing as a man was never in doubt and was the basis of the gender-transgression charges. The shift in charges suggests the possibility that gender categories could be crossed and re-crossed by means of a change of anatomy.
De Céspedes was punished for bigamy by whipping and a public confession, followed by a period of public service as a physician at the Royal Hospital of Toledo. What happened after is unknown.
What remains is the question of why de Céspedes re-categorized themself originally.
Was there, in fact, an anatomical feature, later lost, that caused them to re-categorize themself? And then to enter into the difficult and elaborate process of performing a male life due to the appearance of that feature? Or was that an invention--perhaps one that de Céspedes convinced themself was true--in order to align their self-identity with their lived experience? The category shift was immediately followed by taking up male-coded professions and engaging in sexual relations with a woman. While the economic attractions of male professions have been a lure for many, sexual desire is a different matter. Apart from any other factors, it’s clear that de Céspedes experienced sexual desire for women. Was that desire the primary motivation for changing gender performance? Not only is it impossible at this remove to tease apart the possible contributing motivations, there’s no reason to assume that they can be separated.
Two other cases that share certain similarities make an interesting contrast to the outcome for de Céspedes. Half a century later, also in Spain, Catalina de Erauso ran away from a convent at age 15, put on men’s clothing, and began to engage in male-coded professions especially including travel to the New World as a soldier. Later in life, when in serious legal trouble, de Erauso confessed their life history to a bishop and returned to Spain to sort out the legalities of their life. This included traveling to Rome and getting explicit permission from the Pope to continue wearing men’s clothing and living as a man. This is a rare case where official sanction was given for a gender category change. Possibly one factor in this resolution is that sexuality never came into the question. Although de Erauso had engaged in some flirtations with women, they had never entered into a serious romantic or sexual partnership and never attempted to marry.
The other interesting contrast is the 17th century English case of the marriage of Arabella Hunt and Amy Poulter. Poulter was wearing men’s clothing and performing socially as a man at the time of the marriage, but testified, in essence, that their gender presentation had been a ruse for the sake of the marriage and denied being “a hermaphrodite”. That is, Poulter did not claim a change of gender category as the basis or justification for desiring and marrying a woman, although the courts offered this as a possible out. Similarly to de Céspedes, the court case involved a charge of bigamy as Poulter was still married to Arthur Poulter at the time they married Arabella Hunt. Although there are other motivations that muddle the evidence, it appears that the English court was willing to endorse gender re-categorization on the basis of any possible hint of ambiguous anatomy--although that re-categorization would have upheld the bigamy charge--but Poulter rejected that approach and clearly distinguished social gender performance from internal gender identity, incidentally upholding the existence of same-sex desire as a sexuality category.
Greta von Mösskirch
Greta von Mösskirch provides another example where the social models of gender leaned heavily on imposing compulsory heterosexuality at the expense of other data. Around 1514, in the region of Germany ruled by the counts of Zimmern, von Mösskirch came to the attention of a chronicler due to their disdain for the romantic attentions of men and their interest in romantically pursuing young women. The specific behaviors mentioned are loving them, following them, and giving them gifts. The chronicle then interprets this as “employing all behavior and manners, as if she had a masculine affect.”
What did that mean? Were there additional masculine behaviors other than the object of von Mösskirch’s romantic interest? Did they swagger around? Speak in a low voice? Adopt other cross-gender habits? There is no mention of cross-gender clothing. In the bare text we have, the implication seems to be that it was the romantic pursuit of women, by itself, that was interpreted as masculine behavior.
Von Mösskirch was spared formal legal investigation, but was the subject of an anatomical exam by the women of the town who suspected that their romantic desires must indicate an underlying male identity, or at least physical hermaphroditism. This suspicion was not upheld by the exam.
Only at this point does the chronicler, unable to deny the conjunction of female anatomy and desire for women, turn to alternate explanations. Perhaps it was fated in their stars. Perhaps it was simply bad morals. In any event, the possibility of a category of “women who desire women” was acknowledged in this case.
No formal action was taken to legislate von Mösskirch’s presentation or behavior. Anatomy was treated as the final word in determining their correct gender category, but there were no confounding behavioral or social factors other than romantic desire. In contrast to Grandjean’s case, the possibility of same-sex desire is not considered so threatening as to require correction, though we know nothing of von Mösskirch’s later behavior or life.
Thomas(ine) Hall
As with the case of Anne Grandjean, the experiences of Thomas or Thomasine Hall in early 17th century Jamestown, Virginia highlight contrasting and conflicting requirements for gender category membership.
To summarize a long and complicated life history, Hall was most likely intersex and had been categorized as female at birth but by later adulthood had developed a small penis and evidently had a very small, or no, vaginal opening. Hall lived a normative female life through childhood and adolescence. But when Hall was 24 and their brother was pressed into military service, Hall cut their hair short, dressed in men’s clothing, and went to join the English army in France. On returning home to England, Hall return to women’s clothing and took up the female-coded profession of needlework.
In connection with deciding to emigrate to the colony of Virginia, Hall again wore men’s clothing and engaged in male-coded professions there, but sometimes switched to wearing women’s clothing. The precipitating incident that brought Hall to history’s attention was an accusation of a sexual relationship with a neighbor’s female servant. At the time, Hall was presenting as male, which rendered this the ordinary moral crime of fornication. However--possibly as an attempt at defense--a former employer of Hall (at a time they were presenting as female) testified that Hall was actually a woman, despite the male clothing.
The various legal inquiries that followed evaluated Hall against two different gender category standards. Was Hall sufficiently male on a sliding scale to be categorized as such? Or did the presence of any male characteristics at all define membership? One curious feature of the debate is that neither behavioral presentation nor erotic desire seem to have come into the evidence. Hall’s desire for a woman--however problematic for moral standards--does not appear to have been considered evidence of masculinity. It is, perhaps, more understandable that Hall’s choice of clothing was not considered decisive, as they seem to have had no clear preference. But when interpreting the anatomical evidence, no clear standard was applied. The first judicial decision was that masculinity was defined by the ability to successfully perform penetrative sex. Hall had a feature interpreted as a small penis but evidently it was not functional for this purpose. They were a little bit masculine, but not sufficiently so to be awarded category membership. Hall was ordered to wear female clothing and perform female-coded labor.
But other community members considered that minimal anatomical feature to be sufficient to define masculinity and weren’t satisfied with this decision. One approach considered that the important outcome was for an ambiguous person to choose one binary gender and stick to it. Another approach demanded that it be the correct binary gender. The case was re-opened and this time, rather than evaluating Hall’s masculine credentials, the judge evaluated their feminine ones. This time the absence of anatomy for receiving vaginal penetration was considered the deciding factor. Hall was categorized as male.
But then the judge did something unusual: he required Hall to wear a hybrid outfit with elements of both male and female clothing. Hall had lived a life of serial alternating gender performance; but now they were required to settle on a fixed but ambiguous presentation. This left open the question of what gender-coded economic roles Hall was allowed to participate in, and which socialization rules they were to follow, and what potential sexual relationships were licensed. These are not recorded.
And what was Hall’s position on all this? When Hall was asked directly, “whether he were a man or a woman” they replied, “both.” Hall switched between gender presentations on multiple occasions when there seemed to be no social need or economic advantage--though there were some occasions when presenting as male was a clear advantage for both opportunity and safety. When Hall testified with their own life story, no reasons or excuses were given for these shifts, with one mystifying exception. When asked about the women’s clothing, Hall replied, “I go in women’s apparel to get a bit for my cat.” But what that might mean is unclear.
The combination of Hall’s ambiguous anatomy and their blithe disregard for fixed gender performance seems to have broken the ability of their contemporaries to achieve categorization. The existing category standards could not be clearly applied, and so Hall was not so much allowed to be non-binary, as required to advertise this state.
Catharine Vizzani
My final example, like the case of Greta von Mösskirch, did not technically come before a court of law, but came under the scrutiny of an authority figure who considered the issues of categorization and had some power of enforcement.
In 18th century Italy, Catharine Vizzani, having grown up assigned female and pursuing female-coded activities like embroidery, found themself in love with a young woman. After courting her in a female presentation, Vizzani began wearing men’s clothing and pursuing the courtship using a heterosexual script, including nighttime visits to her window. Vehement parental objections to this courtship--though it’s unclear whether gender issues came into it--led Vizzani to leave town hastily and take up a full-time masculine presentation, which included romantic and sexual relations with a number of women.
Vizzani’s parents supported and abetted them in this course of action, only mentioning Vizzani’s original gender assignment when they were berated for their “son’s” wild and dissolute habits by Vizzani’s employer. The parents had long been aware of Vizzani’s romantic desire for women, and had helped Vizzani establish themself in a male-presenting life, but had not recategorized Vizzani in their own minds as a man. Vizzani’s employer, having this information, chose not to interfere with either their social presentation or their romantic pursuits.
Vizzani’s adventures were eventually brought to a tragic end when one of their amours resulted in being fatally wounded by an agent of their lover’s guardian. Vizzani revealed their birth gender to the nuns giving them medical care and requested to buried in women’s clothes. After death, an attending physician investigated the possibility that Vizzani’s behavior and desires were caused by partially masculine anatomy, but the conclusion was negative.
Here we see a whole series of figures who had social authority over Vizzani--parents and employers--choosing to accept some degree of masculine categorization purely on the basis of social presentation and on erotic desire for women, even with the understanding that Vizzani’s anatomy was categorized as female. Vizzani, on the other hand, gives a certain amount of evidence for not categorizing themself as male, despite a long-term social performance as such.
Only after death was the question of anatomy raised as a potential causal factor. But on the other hand, among all of Vizzani’s romantic encounters, the question of marriage never came to a head, which might have reframed the concerns. That final fatal elopement was meant to have ended in marriage, but the possibility was cut short. So is this a case of category change being accepted on a basis other than anatomy? Or is it a case where gender-transgressive behavior and illicit sex were tolerated without full re-categorization? Did Vizzani change gender performance primarily to pursue their erotic inclinations? Or did they also have some degree of non-binary identity?
Other Framings
I hope these examples provide a way of looking at and thinking about the ways that cultures in history understood categories of gender and sexuality. I’ve looked at a very narrow range of data here: real-life cases where the correct assignment of a person to specific gender or sexuality categories came under the concern of the authorities, and where the conclusions of those authorities might be enforced on the person in question.
There are many other types of examples that can shed light on how people understood gender and sexuality. Medieval romances give us examples of characters who perform across genders and then are bodily changed to match that performative gender. One could see these as an acceptance that category membership could be established by performance and internal identity, with the miraculous anatomical change being merely a recognition of that. But one could also view such scenarios as treating anatomy as essential--that an anatomical change was necessary to make the category shift “true.”
Because of my focus on official challenges to category membership, I’ve excluded the formalized gender-crossing role described in the Balkans in the 19th century, where individuals assigned as female could, in certain circumstances either choose or be chosen to be re-categorized as men and were accepted and treated as such by their cultures.
Also excluded by my focus on specific individuals is the extensive medical and philosophical literature dealing with the categorization of persons with ambiguous anatomy. Nederman and True’s study on this topic in the 12th century, which I covered recently in the blog, notes a variety of approaches, that take into account how one’s anatomy best accommodates heteronormative sex, which gender the person is sexually aroused by (with assumed heterosexuality), or even which gender the person chooses to align with. What was required in all cases was that the person choose one gender to identify with and stick to it, and express their sexuality only within a heterosexual framework.
In summary, what we see in early modern Europe are a number of strong trends in categorization, all of which are contradicted in certain cases or certain circumstances. As a general trend, anatomy was considered the strongest aspect of gender categorization, but that could be contradicted by performative presentation, as in the case of Catherine Vizzani, or be trumped by the heterosexual imperative, as in the case of Anne Grandjean, or be granted special dispensation, as in the case of Catalina de Erauso. As a general trend, the heterosexual imperative was held to be so inviolable that apparent same-sex desire was seen as a reason to investigate gender re-categorization. We see this in the case of Greta von Mösskirch and Anne Grandjean, and it may possibly have been an internal motivation for reclassification in cases where desire preceded a change in gender presentation, as with Catharine Vizzani, Elena de Céspedes, and possibly Amy Poulter. But against this we have the case of Jehanne and Laurence where erotic attraction doesn’t seem to have raised questions about their gender identity. And we have cases where ambiguous anatomy created a category crisis when the individual diverged from a normative gender presentation, as in the case of Thomasine Hall.
There is no conclusion to this essay, no decision of which categories or classifications were “correct”. The message I want to leave you with is that gender and sexuality categories in history don’t always align clearly with modern understandings. And that the ways that people fit themselves into those categories--or broke out of them--could be individual and complicated. Yet they left these traces of that struggle, not for us to judge, but to appreciate in their variety.
Show Notes
A continuing look at the structure of categories for gender and sexuality in history, focusing on how specific individuals challenged category definitions.
Previous podcast in this series: Unpacking Gender and Sexuality Categories.
In this episode we talk about:
Anne Grandjean
- Primary Souce: Memoire pour Anne Grandjean, Connu sous le Nom de Jean-Baptiste Granjean, Accusé & Appellant. 1765. Imprimerie de Louis Cellot, Paris. Available for free download from Google Books.
- LHMP Links: Anne Grandjean
Jehanne and Laurence
- Podcast
- Primary Article: Benkov 2001
- LHMP Links: Jehanne & Laurence
Elen@ de Céspedes
- Primary Article: Burshatin 1996
- LHMP Links: Elena/Eleno de Céspedes
Catalina de Erauso
- Podcast
- Primary Article: Velasco 2000
- LHMP Links: Catalina de Erauso
Amy Poulter and Arabella Hunt
- Podcast
- Primary Article: Crawford & Mendelson 1995
- LHMP Links: Amy Poulter & Arabella Hunt
Greta von Mösskirch
- Podcast
- Primary Source: Chronicle of the Counts of Zimmern
- LHMP Links: Greta von Mösskirch
Thomas(ine) Hall
- Primary Article: Brown 1995
- LHMP Links: Thomas(ine) Hall
Catharine Vizzani
- Podcast
- Primary Source: The True History and Adventures of Catharine Vizzani
- LHMP Links: Catharine Vizzani
Other References
- Authorized gender-crossing in the Balkans - Horváth 2011 (will be posted 2019/05/13)
- Nederman & True 1996 - 12th century opinions on a “third sex”
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
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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Tuesday, April 23, 2019 - 07:00
The issue of character motivation weaves deeply through chapter 3 of Floodtide. Why did Dominique reach out to Jeanne to help Roz? Why did Jeanne agree to see what she could do? (These were covered in last week's teaser blog.) Why did Jeanne approach Margerit? (“Who did she know who kept a large enough staff that there would always be a place for one more? And who could not possibly object to the reason for the girl’s fall? The answer was obvious.” Mother of Souls ch. 12) Why did Margerit agree to give her a try? (In truth, Jeanne guilted her into it.) These are all questions that fall outside the reader's knowledge in Floodtide.
Rozild doesn't know that Maisetra Sovitre had to be guilted into offering her a position. But her initial reaction considers an entirely different motivation:
* * *
The lady’s voice was soft and kind but my mind started running over all the things a thaumaturgist might need a girl like me for. They did real magic with the mystery guilds, not just charms like the old women in the market did, or like Celeste had used to fix my leg. Mostly thaumaturgists were men. Men didn’t do charm-work, at least, you didn’t want to go to the ones that did. I’d never met a thaumaturgist before. But you knew about them from stories—the sort you told at mid-winter.
I must have looked afraid because when I managed to say, “Yes, Maisetra,” she laughed a little. A pleasant laugh that made me feel a little easier.
* * *
And Maisetra Sovitre can turn on the charm when she's not distracted.
* * *
She had a nice smile—the sort that made you think she didn’t know there were bad people in the world. Certainly that she didn’t think you could be one of them.
* * *
But in every good cop/bad cop scenario, there needs to be a bad cop. What does Margerit Sovitre's housekeeper, Charsintek, think of the new prospect?
* * *
She looked stern and sour like housekeepers always did. I wondered if the work did that to them or if you had to be that way to get hired for the position.
“So. What can you do, girl?” she asked. No questions about why I was looking. That would come later, I thought.
“I was a laundry maid,” I recited. “And helped out downstairs. I can do mending and fancy sewing. I’d like to learn dressmaking,” I added. “That’s why I came to Mefro Dominique.”
She harumphed and began quizzing me on the work, asking me how I’d deal with this stain or that kind of tear in a dress. I showed her the place on the sleeve of my chemise where I’d mended it so tiny you couldn’t even see it had been torn, except that the thread was a little darker.
I kept waiting for her to ask, Why were you let go? What did you do? Let me see your references. She never did, so I knew Mefro Dominique must have told them about all that. But then why would they consider me at all? A woman who dressed like Maisetra Sovitre could have her pick of maids. The housekeeper gave another harumph and left me standing there while she went out into the front of the shop.
* * *
For that matter, what does Charintek think of her employer's personal life in general? Charsintek was part of the Old Baron's staff. She watched Barbara grow up. Once things had sorted themselves out in Daughter of Mystery I suspect she was happy to integrate the almost motherly affection she'd always felt for Barbara with the respect she owed her new employer. As for their personal lives...
* * *
“I want you to be certain of one thing Rozild Pairmen,” she said softly, but I could tell from the way she used my whole name that there was nothing soft about what she was about to tell me. “Maisetra Sovitre has a kind heart. Nobody’s going to bother you about why you left your last place.”
I knew she didn’t mean at Mefro Dominique’s. I’d expected this warning since we first set out.
“But don’t you do anything, I mean anything to dirty the maisetra’s good name. If I hear you’ve been causing trouble in the household, you’re gone. Like that.” And she snapped her fingers in my face.
* * *
The essence of Charsintek's attitude is loyalty and protectiveness. Does she approve of same-sex relationships in general? No--or rather, the question is irrelevant. Margerit and Barbara's relationship isn't her business to approve or disapprove; but Roz's past is a potential source of discord and scandal. The two aren't the same at all. Charsintek is loyal to the family of Tiporsel House and that's what's important.
Roz isn't in that same place of loyalty yet--she doesn't know if she'll ever get there, but her brain has already recalibrated to her sudden good fortune...
* * *
The maisetra left in her little town-carriage—I’d already started thinking of Maisetra Sovitre as “the maisetra” —and Mefro Charsintek set a good pace from the shop up along the river [toward Tiporsel House].
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TeasersPublications:
FloodtideMonday, April 22, 2019 - 07:00
There are always at least two layers of historic information about non-normative sexuality: the normative, prescriptive narratives of authorities, whether religious, medical, legal, or other; and the individual, concrete, descriptive accounts of everyday experience. It can be enlightening to see where and how these come into conflict. The cases where records acknowledge that actual human beings often fail to follow the paradigms the experts have set out. Or where we see the disconnect between the official model of how society was supposed to respond to sexual transgression, versus actual experiences and outcomes. Big picture histories too often lean entirely on the former and fail to represent the true variety of experience.
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LHMPFull citation:
Puff, Helmut. 1997. “Localizing Sodomy: The ‘Priest and sodomite’ in Pre-Reformation Germany and Switzerland” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 8:2 165-195
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
There are always at least two layers of historic information about non-normative sexuality: the normative, prescriptive narratives of authorities, whether religious, medical, legal, or other; and the individual, concrete, descriptive accounts of everyday experience. It can be enlightening to see where and how these come into conflict. The cases where records acknowledge that actual human beings often fail to follow the paradigms the experts have set out. Or where we see the disconnect between the official model of how society was supposed to respond to sexual transgression, versus actual experiences and outcomes. Big picture histories too often lean entirely on the former and fail to represent the true variety of experience.
# # #
As can be expected from the reference to priests in the title of this article, it focuses mostly on relations between men. But there is some information on women within the more general context of “sodomy” involving clerical personnel.
The article focuses on the church’s role in persecuting “sodomites” during a period roughly between the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and the Reformation (ca. 1517). Puff demonstrates that there were a variety of approaches taken, depending on context and contradicting the impression that the chuch was uniformly hostile. As a rule, church personnel didn’t participate actively in sodomy trials and there is little evidence for systematic purging of sodomites from clearical or monastic positions. The bulk of the article reviews a number of individual case histories that shed light on the everyday reality that contrasted with the more theoretical evidence of penitential literature, among other sources.
Although there had been increasing concern about sodomy in penitentials during the 5th through 11th centuries, the consolidation of institutional power in the church that increased in the 12th century and later made it possible to address a number of deprecated practices, including simony, priests keeping concubines, and the poor level of priestly education. Also at this period, we see the first introduction in law codes of a death penalty for sodomy, although there is little evidence that it was implemented.
What Puff identifies in this research is that the picture described by earlier historians of church officials acting in concert with lay courts to deliver sodomites for prosecution and execution turns out to be a myth. That picture may have been true for heretics, but although sodomy was sometime conflated with heresy, sodomites were excluded from this church-state partnership of persecution. And even when theoretically included, actual court records paint a different picture than these normative records.
The titular phrase of this article “priest and sodomite” was not an established “social type” but rather emerged from certain specific points of conflict that reflect specific local and political circumstances.
[There is a great deal of fascinating detail in this article, but most of it is irrelevant to the theme of this blog, so I’m going to jump and skim to hit the points relevant to women.]
One contributing factor to the image of the “priest and sodomite”, as well as to accusations against nuns of sexual deviancy of various types, was the popular trope of the morally corrupt clergy. Anti-clerical sentiment, and especially anti-monastic feelings, were regularly expressed in popular tales, satire, and reform propaganda. While corrupt clergy certainly existed, the motif had the attraction of transgression against the clergy/lay social boundary. And the real-life transgression of the boundary between clergy and secular persons seems to have generated a disproportionate number of the legal actions against sodomites. If such relationships remained entirely in one group or the other, they were less likely to cause notice.
While the majority of Puff’s examples involve relations between priests and laymen, one case of a religious recluse, Katharina Güldin in Rottweil in 1444 involves an accusation that she practiced the “vice against nature which is called sodomy” with an unnamed lay woman. The case was recorded because city officials lodged a complaint to the deacon of Rottweil. The outcome of the case is not recorded.
[That, alas, is the extent of the relevant information in this article.]
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Saturday, April 20, 2019 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 102 (previously 33c) - Interview with Zen Cho
(Originally aired 2019/04/19 - listen here)
Transcript pending.
Show Notes
An interview with fantasy author Zen Cho.
NOTE: This month’s On the Shelf incorrectly announced this month’s guest as Molly Tanzer. The Molly Tanzer interview will appear at a future date.
In this episode we talk about:
- The Malaysian influences in Zen’s fiction
- 19th century English literature and engaging with colonial legacies through fiction
- Her favorite historic eras that may see stories in the future
- The challenges of researching less-represented historic eras and regions
- Being inspired by the gaps and omissions in mainstream history
- The similar challenges of writing queer characters and writing non-Western characters
- Books mentioned
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
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Links to Zen Cho Online
- Website: zencho.org
- Mailing Lists: Subscribe
- Twitter: @zenaldehyde
- Facebook: Zen Cho
- Instagram: Zen Cho
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LHMPFriday, April 19, 2019 - 19:26
It's a bit of an impulse thing. Evidently Patreon is changing it's contract structure in a few weeks to something a bit less beneficial to users, but people with an account set up prior to that are locked in to the current structure. Since I'd been toying with the idea of a Patreon for a couple of years, this information made me think it might make sense to set up an account, even if I didn't seriously intend to push it.
You see, I feel a bit weird about soliciting financial support through venues like Patreon because I don't need the money. Even with the added expenses of the audio fiction series (royalties + narration fees), and commissioning podcast transcripts, I'm quite capable of funding the thing out of pocket. But on the other hand, having a Patreon gives people an opportunity to make a concrete statement that they find what I'm doing valuable and worth supporting. And since I've currently set up only a single support tier ($1 per month) with no benefits other than good will and thanks, it's not like I'm going around begging people for more than a token statement.
In theory, between the fiction series and commissioning transcripts of the interview shows, I'm out of pocket about $150 per month. (This doesn't count general overhead for the blog. I certainly wouldn't ask people to underwrite my rather extravagant book-buying habits. And the podcast hosting is currently covered by The Lesbian Talk Show which has it's own Patreon.) This is, if you will forgive me, only slightly less than my coffee shop budget.
So I'm not asking people to support the LHMP Patreon because I'm in financial need, or because the blog and podcast won't continue without the support. Trust me, they'll keep going as long as it makes me happy to do them. But if you support things on Patreon already, and you find the LHMP (especially the podcast) of value to you, and you wanted a concrete and low-effort way to give me that feedback. Then pledging a dollar a month on Patreon is one way to send me that message. The message that you find what I do valuable is far more important to me than the money.
Oh, and here's the link.
If you have any ideas for Patreon benefits for higher support tiers (that wouldn't involve significantly more time for me), feel fee to suggest.
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LHMPTuesday, April 16, 2019 - 07:00
Because Floodtide is written solely from Roz’s point of view, there are a lot of details that she (we) don’t have access to. Like why in the world Dominique would go out on a limb to try to get Roz another position in service? And how did she arrange for Margerit Sovitre, of all people, to consider her?
Fortunately, if one has read Mother of Souls, the answer to the second question is laid out there, although purely in passing.
* * *
[from Mother of Souls]
Jeanne skimmed over the contents of her own messages with a broadening smile but she waited until Antuniet sat back and looked up before sharing them.
“This is curious, Toneke. My dressmaker begs the favor of a word with me. You remember Mefro Dominique? I wonder what that could be about? It certainly isn’t a dunning letter!”
* * *
But the question of “who” Dominique approached for help doesn’t entirely answer the question of “why”. Why did Dominique think/know that Jeanne would be a soft touch to help a girl who’d gotten in trouble for a bit of same-sex hanky-panky? And what gave Dominique the impression that appealing to her would be taken kindly as opposed to being seen as a great impertinence?
It’s one thing to have a reputation that “everyone knows, but everyone pretends not to know,” though at the time of that scene in Mother of Souls, Jeanne and Antuniet were cohabiting and had visited Dominique’s shop together on several occasions. But it’s quite another thing to have your dressmaker make it clear that she’s well aware of the truth of the rumors about your personal life.
When I was writing Mother of Souls I was thinking that perhaps it was rather forward of Dominique to approach her. But while putting together this month’s Alpennia newsletter, something else clicked into place. (By the way, if you aren’t subscribed to my monthly author newsletter, you’re missing out on some fun stuff.) Dominique was featured in this month’s “Who’s Who in Alpennia” item and it forced me to pin down some details of her chronology.
In 1798, Dominique has been in Rotenek for about 4 years and is about 16 years old. She has recently become independent of the French family who brought her to Alpennia, and is struggling to set herself up as a dressmaker, handicapped by being outside the Rotenek professional organizations. (Craft guilds lingered as an economic force in Alpennia well past their era in our timelime due to the strong connection between professional guilds and secular mystery guilds as social clubs.) In 1798 it is a year after the events of “Gifts Tell Truth,” Jeanne is coming out of her multi-year funk, she is starting out on developing her reputation as a social “influencer,” and she has come to the understanding that she prefers women over men in bed (though she enjoys both).
Jumping ahead to the era of Daughter of Mystery and later, Dominique is clearly Jeanne’s favorite dressmaker, and Jeanne throws a lot of business her way (enough that she can ask for the occasional discount for a needy friend). I think it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Jeanne’s patronage and connections were a big factor in helping Dominique get established at the beginning of her career. And it might not be beyond the allowable limits of speculation to guess that they might have briefly enjoyed a somewhat closer relationship...
A past history of that type might excuse certain liberties. (And would go some way to explain Dominique’s perhaps surprising broadmindedness regarding Roz’s indiscretions.)
Now you know one of the secrets of my complex character histories: half of it isn’t planned at all! This would not be the first or tenth or twentieth time that I’ve looked at my characters from a new angle and realized I’d planted the seeds for some aspect of their lives two books earlier without noticing.
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TeasersPublications:
FloodtideMonday, April 15, 2019 - 10:00
If I’d paid attention to the contents of this article before scheduling it, I might have saved it to cover after reading the book it’s commenting on: Carolyn Dinshaw’s Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. And I’ve compounded the problem by scheduling it next to an item by Dinshaw, again talking about Getting Medieval. Given that this article is Hollywood’s personal reaction to reading Dinshaw, it’s going to be of somewhat less relevance and usefulness than covering Dinshaw’s book itself. (Which I really need to do.) This is a byproduct of my habit of pulling a group of miscellaneous articles to cover and not wanting to set them aside for a more logical time. My habit of pre-scheduling publications before reading them in detail is also how I've ended up scheduling an article for a couple weeks from now that's written in French. I can manage academic French--just barely--when it's on a topic I'm familiar with. But I've kept pushing that one farther and farther back in the queue and now it's butting up against the end of the Journal of the History of Sexuality group. Ah well, I do these things to myself.
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LHMPFull citation:
Hollywood, Amy. 2001. “The Normal, the Queer, and the Middle Ages” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 10:2 pp.173-179
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
If I’d paid attention to the contents of this article before scheduling it, I might have saved it to cover after reading the book it’s commenting on: Carolyn Dinshaw’s Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. And I’ve compounded the problem by scheduling it next to an item by Dinshaw, again talking about Getting Medieval. Given that this article is Hollywood’s personal reaction to reading Dinshaw, it’s going to be of somewhat less relevance and usefulness than covering Dinshaw’s book itself. (Which I really need to do.) This is a byproduct of my habit of pulling a group of miscellaneous articles to cover and not wanting to set them aside for a more logical time. My habit of pre-scheduling publications before reading them in detail is also how I've ended up scheduling an article for a couple weeks from now that's written in French. I can manage academic French--just barely--when it's on a topic I'm familiar with. But I've kept pushing that one farther and farther back in the queue and now it's butting up against the end of the Journal of the History of Sexuality group. Ah well, I do these things to myself.
# # #
[This is from the same group of papers commenting on Dinshaw's Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern as entry #242 by Dinshaw herself.]
Hollywood expresses an appreciation for how Dinshaw articulates a queer desire “for partial, affective connection, for community, for even a touch across time” and how that shapes how queer historians approach their topic. [This is a theme that is certainly aligned with the purpose of the Project.]
Dinshaw argues for a middle ground between searching for a complete identification with the past and treating history as unalterably “other” (citing as epitomes of these positions, John Boswell and Michel Foucault).
Instead, Hollywood is attracted by Dinshaw’s argument for an incomplete but fulfilling identification with aspects of the past, centering around the concept of queerness--which she then goes on to interrogate as a slippery and problematic concept itself. What she settles on is an acceptance of historic “queerness” as a defiance of the norm and the normative, rather than a clearly definable set of identities or sexualities.
From this, she reviews the history of how statistical norms have been applied to sociology, starting from the 19th century. Does human variety represent a failure to achieve an ideal of perfection? Or does every aspect of humanity exist within a distribution around a statistical norm? And how do we read that norm? Descriptively or prescriptively? This 19th century idea of a behavioral “norm” as the reference for correct behavior contrasts with earlier appeals to “nature” as the guide for acceptable behavior.
The disruptive figure of Margery Kempe is examined with regard to the category “queer”. She’s something of a darling of the queer studies field, but despite some passing allusions to “luring wives away” (more overtly to join her religious movement) there is little of sexual transgression in her life except in the way she rejects and challenges normative heterosexuality. Is that enough to place her in the category of “queer”?
As I say, a very brief article that mostly ruminates on Hollywood’s reactions to the book without adding significant new material. But it does remind me to move Dinshaw up in the queue.
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Saturday, April 13, 2019 - 09:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 101 (previously 33b) - On the Shelf for April 2019 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2019/04/13 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for April 2019.
No, you aren’t imagining things, this month’s On the Shelf episode is airing the second Saturday of the month, not the first Saturday. Horrors! It’s all due to the timing of our 100th episode special last week.
A hundred episodes. Wow. That would have been hard to imagine when I first started doing this podcast. But then, when I first started collecting materials for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project--although I wasn’t calling it that yet--I figured that it would be a short-term project because, after all, there wasn’t that much to be known about queer women in history, right?
I think there’s a general lesson to be learned about the amount of what we currently know on a topic compared to the amount there is to be known. Maybe it’s on a personal level: just because you personally aren’t aware of books on a particular topic, or written by a particular group of people, doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. But the lesson also operates on a societal level: just because we don’t currently have available information on a topic doesn’t mean it might not be out there to be discovered. And--somewhat more carefully--just because information about a certain topic hasn’t survived directly doesn’t mean that understanding about it can’t be teased out of the material that has.
Now, don’t interpret that as me saying that everything and anything is possible in history and the absence of evidence for it means nothing. That’s not what I mean at all! But we need to look at the reasons for absences, for erasures, for gaps--whether it’s a matter of what gets published in history books or of what and who gets published in current fiction. Don’t assume that if you can’t find a particular type of story to read that it’s because it isn’t being written. The current fiction market is a maze of individual communities and ongoing discussions. I can’t count the number of times I hear people begging, “Why isn’t anyone writing X?” and then I turn around and see, “I want to keep writing X but everybody tells me it doesn’t sell.”
Before you take any of those impressions as fact, reach out and listen broadly across the world of books. You might hear some delightful things.
Publications on the Blog
So what have we been discussing on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog lately? In March, the theme was mostly 19th century people, with articles looking at author Eliza Lynn Linton who combined militantly reactionary social politics with some surprisingly sympathetic proto-lesbian characters in her novels. She’s a good example of looking beyond the superficialities to tease out an understanding of sexuality in the past. Another article looked at the sources that Anne Lister had for exploring and expressing her understanding of her own sexuality, with a challenge to theories that see only explicit namings of identity as true representation in the past. The article on Lord Byron’s sexuality was a bit disappointing, given that it invoked the slang term “Tommies” in the title. I’m going to explore the history of that term in the Ask Sappho segment later.
The last of the March blogs and the April entries don’t follow an identifiable theme. This is the inevitable fallout of coming to the end of the set of articles pulled off JSTOR from the Journal of the History of Sexuality. Having started off with almost 30 articles to consider, it was fairly easy to find thematic groups. But now I’m left with the handful that didn’t fall into a convenient grouping: another of Sahar Amer’s explorations of lesbian-like figures in medieval Arabic literature, a discussion of how the 12th century Renaissance examined gender categories, a couple of meta-commentaries on Carolyn Dinshaw’s book Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (which has pointed out to me that I really need to move that book up in my reading list), an examination of secular-clerical interactions around accusations of sodomy (both male and female) within the church, and a look at gender-crossing figures in medieval French romances.
I’ll be finishing up the last couple of articles from the Journal of the History of Sexuality in May, and then it’s time to go back to tackling some of the books that have been calling my name.
Book Shopping!
Speaking of which, I have a couple new acquisitions for the blog. One is A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969, edited by Noam Sienna. While the relative male and female representation in the collection is predictably unbalanced, this is a topic I’ve been searching for material on for quite a while. I’ve also received a review copy of Precious and Adored: The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson Whipple, 1890–1918. The 19th century is full of intriguing correspondence between Romantic Friends that would no doubt provide interesting reading. In this case, that interest rises to the level of academic attention and publication because Rose Cleveland was the sister of US president Grover Cleveland.
It feels a bit odd to be offered review copies of works I can use for the blog. This is the second one I’ve received--the other hasn’t been blogged yet, though I reviewed it. Mind you, I’m not receiving them personally because of the blog, but rather through The Lesbian Review website. It makes me wonder whether it would make sense to reach out to publishers about review copies in the future. On the one hand, if I find a book useful as a personal reference, I really prefer to keep a hard copy. On another hand, this sort of non-fiction publication often comes with a painfully high price tag, though I’m usually willing to pay it. It’s an interesting thought, but I’m so backlogged in material already on my shelves to cover!
Author Guest
This month’s author guest is Molly Tanzer, who writes weird fantasies that straddle the line between historical and paranormal, sometimes with a touch of romance. We’ll be talking about a couple of her books: Vermillion and Creatures of Will and Temper as well as discussing her research.
[Note: the schedule changed after recording this. the April guest is Zen Cho. Molly Tanzer appears in May.]
Essay
This month’s essay will return to my mini-series on historic models and categories of gender and sexuality. This time I’ll be looking at the real-life stories of some specific people who stepped outside the norms for gender or sexuality of their day, and what the reactions of those around them can tell us of what those norms were. When someone doesn’t fit neatly into a culture’s gender and sexuality categories, what features of their life are considered most important in trying to classify them? How does their culture try to restrict or change their life to better fit those categories? And how do their reactions to those attempts give us information about their own internal identity?
When considering people in the past, there can be a temptation to take one of two extreme positions: either to try to match them up with our modern categories--to “claim” them for a specific modern identity--or to throw our hands up and say, “We have no way of knowing how they would identify.” Both extremes tend to ignore the admittedly scanty evidence we have of their own testimony and lives. We may not be able to know for certain how they understood themselves, but we can make approximations. And when we try to fit them neatly into the boxes we’re familiar with, how is that better than what their own contemporaries tried to do to them?
I hope you’re enjoying these philosophical musings. I may have one more show in the series before returning to more biographical shows.
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
Time for new and forthcoming books!
I’ll start with some books that came out back in February that I’ve only just found out about. I wouldn’t have known about this first one except for a reader’s mention that it includes a lesbian relationship.
The Huntress by Kate Quinn from William Morrow Paperbacks starts with the World War II story of the Russian “night witches”, female bomber pilots who have been captivating the imagination of a number of historical authors lately. The book’s blurb doesn’t mention the same-sex content, so I don’t know how extensive it is or which of the characters mentioned here is involved.
Bold and fearless, Nina Markova always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack the Soviet Union, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy lines, Nina becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, and only Nina’s bravery and cunning will keep her alive. Transformed by the horrors he witnessed from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials, British war correspondent Ian Graham has become a Nazi hunter. Yet one target eludes him: a vicious predator known as the Huntress. To find her, the fierce, disciplined investigator joins forces with the only witness to escape the Huntress alive: the brazen, cocksure Nina. But a shared secret could derail their mission unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it. Growing up in post-war Boston, seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride is determined to become a photographer. When her long-widowed father unexpectedly comes homes with a new fiancée, Jordan is thrilled. But there is something disconcerting about the soft-spoken German widow. Certain that danger is lurking, Jordan begins to delve into her new stepmother’s past—only to discover that there are mysteries buried deep in her family . . . secrets that may threaten all Jordan holds dear. In this immersive, heart-wrenching story, Kate Quinn illuminates the consequences of war on individual lives, and the price we pay to seek justice and truth.
There are a few other February books that I’m only now hearing about.
Sleight of Hand by Ilse V. Rensburg aka Jason Hes published by Sera Blue sets a supernatural story in the era between the two world wars.
Destroy the magicians. Destroy all unnaturals. New York City. 1926. Demento, a young magician with a sinister past, becomes the target of a secret organisation when a string of bizarre murders leaves the nation perplexed. Gwen Cavanagh, an agent of the October House, is sent to investigate the brutal crimes. She poses as an eager magician’s assistant, wanting nothing more than to relish Demento’s demise. What both ladies discover not only shakes the very fabric of their realities. It could bring about the end of the world, as their journeys take them through the crumbling nickel empire that is Coney Island, to the ritzy ballrooms of the American upper-crust, glamorous theatre halls, and the soulless alleyways of Hell’s Kitchen.
One of my favorite f/f fairytale retellings takes on Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”. S. T. Gibson has tackled the same material in the self-published Robber Girl. The specific historic era of the setting isn’t clear from the cover copy.
In a Sweden wracked by war and haunted by folk stories so dark they can only be spoken of in whispers, Helvig has been raised by her brigand father to steal whatever treasure catches her eye. When her men ambush a strange girl on the road with hair pale as death and a crow perched on her shoulder, Helvig cannot resist bringing home a truly unique prize: a genuine witch. Drawn irresistibly into the other woman's web, Helvig soon learns of Gerda's reason for walking the icy border roads alone: to find the Queen who lives at the top of the world and kill her. Anyone else would be smart enough not to believe a children's story, but Helvig is plagued by enchantments of her own, and struggles to guard the sins of her past while growing closer to the other woman. As Christmastide gives way to the thin-veiled days when ghosts are at their most vengeful, the two women will find themselves on a journey through forest and Samiland to a final confrontation that will either redeem them or destroy them entirely.
My usual Amazon keyword search for lesbian historicals turned up A Vengeance of Spies: A WW2 Novella by Manda Scott, which is self-published. Although the cover copy doesn’t confirm the search-term results, I’ve read a number of Manda Scott’s previous mysteries and they often have queer female characters so I’m willing to trust on this one.
My dear Elsa— You are grieving and I am sorry, but there are things you need to know… Because this is not only a confession. It is an accusation. So, in case you get no further, here is the bald fact. I killed your grandfather. War hides many secrets and some of them are better kept. But the secret of Hut Ten was never that kind: it could have been leaked and a life would have been saved. One man could have made that difference. He didn’t - and vengeance has taken forty years to catch up with him. Set in the same world as, A Treachery of Spies.
The month of March gives us books from a variety of time periods.
A delightfully surprising entry into the field comes from Courtney Milan in the self-published Victorian novella Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure. This is part of an ongoing family saga series but can be read independently.
Mrs. Bertrice Martin—a widow, some seventy-three years young—has kept her youthful-ish appearance with the most powerful of home remedies: daily doses of spite, regular baths in man-tears, and refusing to give so much as a single damn about her Terrible Nephew. Then proper, correct Miss Violetta Beauchamps, a sprightly young thing of nine and sixty, crashes into her life. The Terrible Nephew is living in her rooming house, and Violetta wants him gone. Mrs. Martin isn’t about to start giving damns, not even for someone as intriguing as Miss Violetta. But she hatches another plan—to make her nephew sorry, to make Miss Violetta smile, and to have the finest adventure of all time. If she makes Terrible Men angry and wins the hand of a lovely lady in the process? Those are just added bonuses.
Diana Robbins has put out Liliana, a self-published novel set in late 19th century Hawaii. I can’t tell from the cover copy how the book handles the rather serious issues of colonialism at that period, given that we’re offered an upper class white Bostonian as our viewpoint character.
Liliana, a historical novel set in the year 1891, is the journey of Lillian Baldwin, a woman whose humble behavior is astounding for a lady so breathlessly beautiful. Her passion for the Hawaiian Islands catapults her into a brave decision; to leave Boston for the paradise she has only experienced through literary tales. It is there she meets an educated, handsome Hawaiian woman. The secrecy in which they must live is ultimately compromised with unimaginable consequences.
Usually these book listings stick to English language works, but the following title popped up in my search and doesn’t appear to have an English translation. I thought it looked interesting enough to include. Forgive my dreadful accent in German.
The book is Die Frau des Zuckerhändlers by Nathalie C. Kutscher from Telegonos-Publishing. The following is the German cover copy:
Bailee Winters’ Leben ist die Hölle. Gekettet an die Ehe mit einem grausamen Mann lebt sie in einem goldenen Käfig. Doch dann rettet die Bordellbesitzerin Jade ihr Leben. Zwischen den ungleichen Frauen entsteht mehr als nur Freundschaft. Es ist eine Verbundenheit, die tiefer geht als alles, was sie kannten. Schon bald überschlagen sich die Ereignisse und ein folgenschwerer Fehler zwingt Bailee auf eine gefahrvolle Reise nach Amerika.
Sorry.
A rough English translation might be:
Bailee Winters' life is hell. Chained in marriage to a horrible man, she lives in a golden cage. Then brothel owner Jade saves her life. Between the very different women, there arises something more than friendship. It is a bond that goes deeper than anything they knew. Soon, events overtake them and a momentous mistake forces Bailee on a dangerous journey to America.
No Man's Chattel self-published by Lee Swanson steps outside the more popular times and settings for lesbian historicals.
The thought of trading her subservient role in her father’s home for that of being the dutiful wife of someone she had never met caused her to shudder with revulsion. No, she thought to herself, what I crave is the opportunity to adventure across the sea, to behold strange and wondrous sights far beyond the city walls of Lubeck. To do that even once would almost be worth submitting herself to a loveless marriage based solely on familial advantage. But not quite, she admitted to herself. For if there was one thing of which Christina Kohl was certain, it was that she wanted her independence even more than adventure. Yet, these can only be childish dreams for a daughter of a wealthy merchant in 14th century Lubeck, Germany. Even at sixteen-years-old, Christina grudgingly accepts her existence is to be shaped and limited by the men who do and will control her life. When unexpected tragedies befall her family, however, she is presented with an unlikely opportunity to at last become her own person. The freedom of her new life is fraught with peril as she attempts to succeed in a role for which she is ill-prepared, all the while keeping secrets that, if exposed, will certainly bring shame, financial ruin, and perhaps even death. “No Man’s Chattel” is an exhilarating coming-of-age novel set in the medieval commercial centers of Lubeck and London, England. It is not so much a story of the societal norms of the era as of one young woman’s struggle to defy them.
The next book looks like something of a romp and has a rather awkwardly complicated title: *S h e r l o c k i a n * Desdemona Valentina - A Femme Fatale Mystery - 1 (Desdemona Valentina Mysteries) self-published by S.L. Freake. (If you’re reading along in the transcript, yes, the very odd letter spacing and punctuation is part of the title.)
Join sapphic, Private Detective/Civilian Consultant to Scotland Yard; Desdemona Valentina with her colleague and moon eyed friend on their adventures while sleuthing and ‘detecting’ hardened yet upper-crust, jewel thieving, sexy criminal Eden Benedict. Can Graham, Valentina’s colleague keep her out of the cat house long enough to solve a case? This girl’s got an appetite for solving crime and almost anything in a skirt! Get in on the blackmailing between a closet lesbian Princess, marrying for money and freedom and the cross dressing that some are driven to, to get ahead in a man’s world of 1888 London, England.
I have to confess I have something of a weakness for the late 17th century, so I’d be tempted to check out this next book if I could find a way to buy an epub version: Today Dauphine Tomorrow Nothing self-published by Saga Hillborn.
France, 1696. Adélaïde of Savoy is only ten years old when she arrives at the glittering court of Louis XIV to be married off to the King’s grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne. Eager to please and charmingly youthful, she soon enchants both the aging monarch and the nobles--but it turns out her grand marriage is not everything she hoped for. As she grows older, Adélaïde discovers that rivalries and twisted conflicts lurk beneath the glamours surface of Versailles. Europe is rumbling, the most powerful nations are on the verge of bloody war. The people of France are divided; the commoners live in squalor, while the elite surround themselves with decadence. Colette, the daughter of a paint craftsman, has escaped her abusive home to become a servant at Versailles. When she encounters Adélaïde, both girls think they might have found love at last--but what could be the consequences of such a forbidden relationship?
Moving on to April books, we have a cross-time story Love’s Portrait by Anna Larner from Bold Strokes Books.
Newly appointed art curator Molly Goode is committed to diversifying her museum’s collection. When Georgina Wright, the museum’s aloof benefactor, asks for Molly’s help in identifying the provenance of a 19th century portrait of social activist Josephine Brancaster, Molly welcomes the opportunity, even if it means spending time with the standoffish financier. But passions soon flare as the women uncover the heartbreaking story of doomed lesbian love behind the watercolor painted by Josephine’s lover, Edith Hewitt. As their love blossoms, Molly is determined to display Edith’s portrait of Josephine and to tell their story in the museum, but she needs the influential Georgina to help convince the board. When an unforeseen twist in the painting’s provenance forces Georgina to confront her own painful past, will history repeat itself, or can Molly and Georgina’s love prevail?
The burgeoning field of lesbian pirate novels gets an addition from Bonnie Wormsley in The Cursed Heart from Regal Crest. The precise date and setting of the story is unclear from the cover copy.
Katherine Tanner is the captain of the pirate ship The Widow, which prowls the seas by night preying upon innocent ships. With her faithful tiger companion Saida by her side, Katie boards a ship one night with her crew to find something unexpected – a young blonde woman held captive in a filthy cell. She frees the young woman and brings her aboard The Widow. Katie soon realizes she has a strange attraction to the young woman, whose name is Hannah. When the ship makes port the next day, Katie thinks Hannah will leave. She is secretly relieved when Hannah decides to join her crew and allows the young woman to stay with her in her quarters. As the mutual attraction between them continues to grow, will Katie and Hannah be able to overcome their pasts and learn to trust and love one another?
There’s a tie-in novel for the upcoming BBC miniseries about Anne Lister titled Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister by Anne Choma, published by Penguin Books. This book and the series appear to be unrelated to the 2018 book of the same title by Angela Steidele, translated by Katy Derbyshire. When I talk in my blog about there being something of an Anne Lister industry going on these days, these multiple publications are the sort of evidence I’m working from.
Anne Lister was extraordinary. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist, whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife. This book introduces the real Gentleman Jack, featuring unpublished journal extracts decrypted for the first time by series creator Sally Wainwright and writer Anne Choma.
I’ve been trying to figure out how I can get ahold of the mini-series to review without having to subscribe to the BBC cable channel. I may have to make friends with someone who watches tv more than I do.
This next book sounds intriguingly different in setting. God's Children by Mabli Roberts is published by Honno Press.
'Kate Marsden: nurse, intrepid adventurer, saviour of the lepers or devious manipulator, immoral and dishonest?' As she lies on her deathbed visited by the ghosts of her past, who should we believe, Kate or those who accuse her of duplicity? Memory is a fickle thing: recollections may be frozen in time or distorted by the mirror of wishful thinking. Kate’s own story is one of incredible achievements, illicit love affairs and desperate longing; those of her accusers paint a very different portrait – of a woman determined on fame and fortune. The reader navigates a narrative as fractured as the Siberian ice Kate crosses in search of a cure for leprosy, and as beautiful as Rose, her lost love, as the full picture emerges of a life lived when women were not expected to break the mould.
Well, that’s it for this month’s book listings. If you have an upcoming release or know of one that you think I may not stumble over on my own, drop the blog a note and let me know.
What Am I Reading?
I’m always trying to think of new little regular features I can include in the On the Shelf show and it occurred to me that I could let listeners know what queer historical stories I’ve read recently. Of course, this means I’ll expose myself if I go through a reading slump! I try to review everything I read, but if you’re interested in those thoughts, check out my blog. I won’t be doing detailed reviews here, just mentioning titles.
So what have I been reading in the last month or so? First off was an anthology, Rainbow Bouquet edited by Farah Mendlesohn, from Manifold Press. This collection of queer stories includes both male and female protagonists, and about half the stories have historic settings. It’s a recent release and is probably a good introduction to some of the authors that Manifold Press publishes.
I also zipped through the brand new novella, Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure, by the well-known historical romance author Courtney Milan, which was mentioned in the new books segment. Although Milan has included some lesbian--or lesbian-coded--background characters in previous books, I think this is her first foray into centering a story on a female couple.
At the moment, I’m I just finished reading Miranda in Milan, a historical fantasy novella by last month’s author guest Katharine Duckett. And I have recently started reading The True Queen, by Zen Cho, who will be appearing in a future podcast interview.
What historical stories have you been enjoying lately?
Ask Sappho
This month’s Ask Sappho question is from Eden on facebook, who asks, “What’s the history of the slang term ‘tommy’ for a lesbian? And how is it connected to ‘tomboy’?”
This is an excellent question. If you’re familiar with the modern use of “tomboy” to mean a girl who behaves in ways stereotypically associated with boys, especially in enjoying active, outdoor pursuits, then it might seem natural to associate “tomboy” with the image of a young butch lesbian. But the connection, if there is one, is somewhat more muddled.
In fact, in the written record, “tomboy” has a much older lineage than “tommy” in the sexual sense. Using the Oxford English Dictionary as my source, in the mid 16th century we find “tomboy” used to mean “a rude or boisterous boy” as in the quote “Is all your delight and joy in whiskying and ramping abroad like a tom boy?” But not long after the earliest known application to men, we find is used for women, meaning “a boisterous woman” as in the following example from 1579, “Saint Paul meaneth that women must not be impudent, they must not be tomboys, to be short, they must not be unchaste.” And more specifically, it means a woman who behaves like a romping, boisterous boy. So: a girl who behaves in masculine ways, especially in a wild, uncontrolled manner. This sense appears continuously up to the present. I know that I was called a tomboy as a child for enjoying things like climbing trees and for preferring pants to skirts.
There seems to be a connection here with the use of “Tom” for a generic male person or animal, much the same way that another common male name “John” gets used for the generic man. But a “tomboy” isn’t simply a generic boy, but one who has characteristics associated with an uncontrolled masculinity. And the transfer of the term to women again emphasized behavior that was considered both masculine and uncontrolled.
Curiously, the Oxford English Dictionary has about 8 different senses for the word “tommy” but none of them are the definition of “female homosexual”. One could imagine several possible explanations for this. Perhaps they considered it a slang word rather than one in ordinary use. Or perhaps the compilers of the dictionary were uncomfortable with the sexual implications. In fact, there is documented evidence that the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary deliberately excluded language about female homosexuality. I even have a link about this in the show notes. The first edition of the dictionary didn’t even include the word “lesbian” at all, and it was deliberately excluded.
Fortunately, we can turn to other sources than the dictionary to find clear examples of “tommy” indicating sexuality. The earliest known clearly sexual example is from an English poem published in 1773 that reads in part:
“Woman with Woman act the Manly Part,
And kiss and press each other to the heart.
Unnat'ral Crimes like these my Satire vex;
I know a thousand Tommies 'mongst the Sex:”
In that same decade, a satirical poem addressed to sculptor Anne Damer, made extensive reference to Sappho and her homosexual proclivities, calling her “the first Tommy the world has upon record” in a context that makes it clear the term is equivalent to “lesbian”.
I can’t find clear evidence for how long the term was in common use. Sarah Waters uses “tom” in the same sense in her Victorian novels. But it would take a more extensive search through obscure literature to create a full map of the word’s usage.
In any event, the connection between “tommy” meaning lesbian and “tomboy” is unclear, except that they likely both derive from using the common male personal name Thomas to stand for generic masculinity, and thus to label gender-transgressive women.
Show Notes
Your monthly update on what the Lesbian Historic Motif Project has been doing.
In this episode we talk about:
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Articles on 19th c women
- Lesbian-like categories in Arabic literature
- 12th c European gender categories
- Commentaries on Dinshaw’s Getting Medieval
- Accusations of sodomy within the church
- Gender-crossing in medieval French romances
- Book Shopping for the blog
- A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969, edited by Noam Sienna
- Precious and Adored: The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson Whipple, 1890–1918
- This month’s author guest is Zen Cho (originally announced as Molly Tanzer who will appear next month)
- This month’s essay topic is: Policing Gender and Sexuality
- New and forthcoming fiction
- The Huntress by Kate Quinn (William Morrow Paperbacks)
- Sleight of Hand by Ilse V Rensburg aka Jason Hes (Sera Blue)
- Robber Girl by S. T. Gibson (self-published)
- A Vengeance of Spies: A WW2 Novella by Manda Scott (self-published)
- Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan (self-published)
- Liliana by Diana Robbins (self-published)
- Die Frau des Zuckerhändlers by Nathalie C. Kutscher (Telegonos-Publishing)
- No Man's Chattel by Lee Swanson (self-published)
- *S h e r l o c k i a n* Desdemona Valentina - A Femme Fatale Mystery - 1 (Desdemona Valentina Mysteries) by S.L. Freake (self-published)
- Today Dauphine Tomorrow Nothing by Saga Hillborn (self-published)
- Love’s Portrait by Anna Larner (Bold Strokes Books)
- The Cursed Heart by Bonnie Wormsley (Regal Crest Enterprises)
- Gentleman Jack (Movie Tie-In): The Real Anne Lister by Anne Choma (Penguin Books)
- God's Children by Mabli Roberts (Honno Press)
- Ask Sappho: What’s the history of the slang term ‘tommy’ for a lesbian?
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
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPTuesday, April 9, 2019 - 07:29
For a reader, the backstory and characteristics of a character should appear to be “just how things are”. But from the writer’s side, it’s a careful process of designing that character’s history, abilities, and skills so that they have exactly what they need to fit into the role they’re required to play.
I had to fine-tune parts of Roz’s backstory carefully to give her enough experience with dressmaking to have developed an ambition to learn more, and enough sewing skills to make up for starting an apprenticeship at such an advanced age (all of sixteen!).
The sewing skills were the easy part. It seemed quite natural that someone who had been trained (and had experience) as a laundry maid would have basic mending skills. And further, given her early training from her aunt in small-town environment, it was natural to expect that she’d have experience and training in the whole gamut of types of mending and basic sewing she might need. In a fully-staffed house in the city, more of the fine mending might be covered by personal maids and valets, but it would be plausible that Roz had had a chance to pick up a broader experience. For one thing Aunt Gaita wasn’t necessarily training Roz for the specific position she started in, just for an entry-level household position of some sort.
In the first draft of Floodtide, the prior interactions between Roz and Dominique were simply to give her a foot in the door. A basis for why--having found herself by chance on Dominique’s doorstep--she took the plunge and asked for work.
* * *
I’d been sent to the dressmaker’s shop when the maisetra’s gown needed making over, and then again when the young maisetras wanted ball gowns in a hurry and the dressmaker needed extra hands for the sewing.
* * *
But in that first draft, it didn’t occur to Roz to aspire to the dressmaking trade herself until she was in the middle of begging to be taken in off the street. It was after she landed her half-time apprenticeship that she fell in love with the work.
Among the feedback from the beta readers was a suggestion that it needed to be clearer that Roz had specific and deep-rooted aspirations in that field. An indication that landing a dressmaking career would provide her the same fulfillment that Celeste got from working on magic charms.
So now, when Roz has been wandering the freezing streets all night, and finds herself at dawn--by pure chance--standing in front of Dominique’s house-cum-shop, it becomes a cruel irony to remember that taste of creating beauty.
* * *
Oh the colors! And the feel of the fine fabrics in my hands! Watching cloth turn into something beautiful, even though I was only doing the plain sewing. All the lace and ribbon and buttons, better than sweets and bonbons. That week had been like being in heaven and I dreamed that maybe some day I could climb up from washing and mending to that kind of fine sewing. It came back to me now. Now that the dream was farther away than it had ever been.
* * *
And so, instead of the idea of becoming a dressmaker being presented as a spur-of-the-moment thought as she’s begging for work, it becomes a cherished secret, offered up in a moment of vulnerability.
* * *
There wasn’t any point in dancing around with her. I was tired of telling half-truths so I said it plain. “I’ve been let go. I’ve been starving and freezing and I don’t know what to do. I can work. I can sew, plain or fancy, whatever you need. Or I could scrub floors, if that’s what you need. I can cook a little.” It struck me that I hadn’t seen any sign of a housekeeper or maid of all work when I’d been here before. It was a tiny place that wouldn’t need much keeping, but you’d think they’d have someone to come in. “I want to learn to be a dressmaker.”
I heard Celeste make a rude noise but Mefro Dominique shushed her.
“You wish to learn to be a dressmaker,” Dominique said, looking me up and down again. ... “The thing is impossible.”
* * *
But this is a story of impossible things coming true.
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PromotionPublications:
FloodtideMonday, April 8, 2019 - 07:00
The main focus of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project is, of course, research on specific topics that fall within the historic scope of the Project. But the question of what gets studied, by whom, and in what context is affected by the trends, fashions, and politics of the modern academic community. Who is doing that primary research? Who are they in conversation with (or arguing against)? What topics will be accepted as appropriate to the scope of their academic careers and which ones can they only tackle if they have job security? What are the frameworks within which topics of queer history can be discussed? How does the existing academic language shape both what is studied and how it is interpreted?
These are all questions that play out in meta-discussions that sometimes are interesting enough on their own to make it into this blog. (Or, more often, appear in collections that also include primary topics, such as the wonderful The Lesbian Premodern collection that I had so much fun with.) Discussions like this one remind me that there are some foundational texts that I haven't covered yet, in part because they're so foundational that you can glean the gist of their relevant content simply from the way other authors react to it. But there are a couple other reasons why I've put off tackling some key works like Foucault, Boswell, Cadden, and Dinshaw. In some cases, it's because they were created before the major surge in queer historical writing and focus on issues that feel like they're taken for granted now. In some cases it's because they focus so heavily on male topics (or heterosexual topics, or both) that I know I'll spend a lot of reading time for very little relevant content. (And will spend a lot of time commenting on how the arguments and conclusions of the work unwarrantedly assume the centrality of male/hetersexual issues.) But maybe I should identify a couple months to focus on these foundational, theory-heavy texts and just get them out of the way.
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LHMPFull citation:
Dinshaw, Carolyn. 2001. “Got Medieval?” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 10:2 pp.202-212
This, and next week’s article, appear to come out of a conference session inspired by Dinshaw’s book Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Which I have not yet covered. In general, this article is meta-commentary on the topics of the book, rather than discussing new data or interpretations.
Dinshaw discusses the context in which she wrote the book, including as a response to John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality in conversation with Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality. A central theme is the search for an “affective connection” with history, not necessarily a mimetic identification.
In this paper, Dinshaw addresses three questions about queer history and community raised in the papers of the session. [The paper appears to be something of a cumulative response presented at the end of the session--a not uncommon format for such conferences.] 1. How do you write about the daily lives of women in history without erasing their particularity in the construction of a unified Other? 2. If queer historians are identifying and constructing a queer community across time, who gets to be in that community and who decides? 3. Where can this historic queer community be identified and “how can its power be unleashed?”
In addressing these questions of queer identity and community throughout the past, Dinshaw notes conflicting positions, interpretations, and evidence. Foucult tended to view queer men in the past as isolated and connected only by their exclusion. Boswell, in contrast, believed he had found positive, self-aware communities. But so much of this prominent theorizing was founded exclusively on male lives and male experience. What about the lives of medieval nuns that illustrate loving erotically-tinged relationships that were integrated with their religious communities? And what counts as “queer” once the concept expands from same-sex relationships? Who--or what--is queer in the context of queer history? (This ties in with Hollywood’s 2001 discussion of normative versus “natural” in the definition of queerness.)
The last part of Dinshaw’s essay is something of a call to action in how to use the concept of queer history and queer community across history as a force for developing a self-image that goes beyond the history of oppression and persecution.
As I say, meta-commentary, but interesting to see the discussion among those who are producing the literature I review here.
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