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Some Things Haven't Changed in Intersexuality

Thursday, October 1, 2026 - 10:41

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

The most significant thing that hits me as I read DeVun's history of the (European) attitude toward intersexuality is how little has changed. There is still a prevailing attitude that everyone must be shoehorned into either "clearly male" or "clearly female" and that the opinions and preferences of the person involved are of little moment. (One change is that in the pre-modern period, it appears that questions over classification and surgery appear to have been raised primarily on reaching adulthood, whereas the modern approach makes those decisions for newborn babies.)

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LHMP #581f DeVun 2020 The Shape of Sex Chapter 5

Full citation:

DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5

Chapter 5: The Correction of Nature—Sex and the Science of Surgery

The legal and social imperative for clear binary sex categories led medieval surgeons (starting around the 13th through 14th century) to propose “correcting” anomalous bodies. This chapter traces several different surgical traditions, in a context where manuals of surgery were attempting to create a more professional approach to the surgical field in general.

These surgical traditions addressed several types of non-normative bodies, including “hermaphrodites,” impotent men, eunuchs, and women with what were considered enlarged genitals.

Prior to the 13th century, surgery was considered less professional than medicine, learned by apprenticeship rather than formal study. But in the 13th century some practitioners in Italy and France began to professionalize the field, including the creation of manuals of practice. Much of this chapter focuses specifically on the Parisian surgeon Lanfranc of Milan. This was part of a more general increase in professionalization and regulation of healthcare. Surgeons were struggling to establish their field as independent from physicians, as well as expanding into new fields of application, including treatments that might be classified as “cosmetic surgery.” There was also an expansion deeper into women’s medicine, including reproduction.

Within this context, surgeons claimed expertise in how to evaluate ambiguous bodies to determine not only “what sex predominated” (in appearance and function), but how to modify the body to more closely resemble the norms of the assigned sex. (Note: DeVun is probably reflecting medieval attitudes and priorities and describing this as evaluation “whether or not the patient was masculine enough to achieve male status or two feminine to qualify.”]

Arabic texts were, as usual, a major source of theories and approaches, which included the removal of body parts that didn’t fit a binary category. The situations and surgical practices to address non-binary bodies are presented in Arabic manual side-by-side with techniques for circumcision and female genital cutting (of “normal” bodies). The latter can make it difficult to draw clear lines between “correcting” intersex bodies and modifying female bodies to control women’s sexuality. These Arabic manuals were translated and disseminated in Europe in the 12th to 14th centuries.

The surgical manuals recommended various methods for determining which sex to attempt to target. A common approach was based on how and where the patient was able to urinate. For bodies assigned female, the goal was to enable penetrative intercourse (and, theoretically, conception although hormonal considerations were outside their knowledge). This also involved removing any penis-like tissue on the assumption that it would get in the way. For a male-assigned body, the goal would be to close any unwanted genital openings.

A different approach assigned sex based on the method of sexual arousal. This would allow male assignment if the patient experienced arousal via any penis-like organ of whatever size. (Note: this was before the “rediscovery” of the clitoris as the primary source of female arousal in the 16th century.) This metric shifted the dividing line for sex assignment.

The manuals offered various cautions. The patient must not be prevented from urinating. Anything evaluated as a functional penis must not be removed. [Note: I’m avoiding discussing specific surgical techniques in detail as they are not directly relevant to the Project and reading them could be unnecessarily traumatic. Read DeVun if you’re interested.]

The surgical approach operated on the theory that all bodies actually had a binary sex and it was only a matter of modifying the anatomy to match it. The metric that sex could be assigned on the basis of arousal—which seems to have been applied in the case where determining whether a penis-like organ was sufficient to prove masculinity—has a parallel in tests for male impotence. If the subject could not be aroused by a woman to the point of erection (sometimes requiring ejaculation) then they failed the test. (Sometimes prostitutes were hired to perform the test.) [Note: this once again points out the overlap of intersex and lesbian issues, as the “arousal test” assumes heterosexual desire.] There is further discussion of impotence tests. A man judged to be impotent might be forbidden to marry (or have his marriage annulled) but would not result in him losing the legal status of a man.

The chapter also discusses the categorization of eunuchs, whether created or unintentional (which could include some types of intersex). Due to the importance of procreative potential insect classification, they could not be classified as either male or female.

The female equivalent of male impotence was generally an anatomical inability to receive penetration.

Surgical manuals distinguished non-binary bodies that were preponderantly feminine but had some masculine features from female bodies whose genitals were perceived to be excessively large. Although the motif of the macro-clitoral lesbian was yet to be established, Arabic manuals and European successors considered an overly large clitoris—especially when capable of erection—to be undesirable, and recommended removal. Avicenna does record a belief that a large clitoris could cause a woman to desire sex with women. Based on the wording, the rationale appears to be that because the organ resembles a penis, the woman will naturally try to use it as one, which by logic would require a female partner. But another rationale was that a male partner would find the organ offputting. [Note: The general belief in this era was that women derived sexual pleasure from penetration, therefore removal of the clitoris was not necessarily intended to prevent sexual pleasure.]

The evaluation of ambiguous genitals was based on additional factors besides shape and size. Stereotypes about maleness (strong, hard) and femaleness (soft, week) could position someone relative to male and female prototypes. “Softness” in men was associated with sexuality and effeminacy. Luxury and vanity were considered to make men less manly and thus a danger to the integrity of the state. The evaluation of conventional attractiveness was more often applied to female-classified bodies. One reason offered for removal of a large clitoris was that it was “ugly.”

The surgical manuals (as contrasted with a few of the legal texts) make no consideration of the patient’s expressed identity or wishes, the one manual note that in the case of those who were (anatomically) capable of taking either an insertive or receptive role in sex, “one should put to them…what nature they would want” and surgically remove the other option.

It isn’t clear to what extent sex-assignment surgeries were performed in the medieval era, or to what extent they were “successful” if so. There are very rare mentions of surgery being recommended to or performed on specific named individuals (as opposed to the theoretical advice in the manuals) but surgeons do seem to have been brought in as sex-assignment consultants, went available.

The complexities of evaluating non-binary bodies as detailed in medieval texts don’t rigidly follow the “one-sex” theory as detailed by Laqueur. For example, although the one-sex theory considers the penis analogous to the uterus (one being an inversion of the other), the surgical texts clearly compare the penis and clitoris when evaluating the “preponderance of evidence.” Nor was individual identity/preference as influential in pre-modern times as has been suggested by Foucault.

The final section of the chapter compares medieval and modern approaches to non-binary bodies, and finds little substantial difference in the underlying philosophy. There is also a discussion of the usefulness of interrogating medieval understandings of non-binary people through a trans lens. Given the way in which medieval thinking conflated sex, gender, and sexuality, identifying a medieval person as “transgender” is as anachronistic as identifying them as “homosexual”—which isn’t to say that the behaviors associated with either were not present, only that there was no cultural concept that matched those modern categories. [Note: see my essay on comparing cultural categories as “translating prepositions.”]

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Historic Classification of Sexual Ambiguity

Monday, September 28, 2026 - 12:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

If people today -- with the availability of modern medical understandings of sexual development and variation -- can have such difficulty fitting intersex people into their understanding of the world, just imagine how much more confused pre-modern people may have been. Though pre-modern people had the advantage of allowing for types of causation that had no actual biological basis. This chapter of DeVun reviews several of the stages of theorizing about non-binary bodies and how to deal with them that prevailed in the medieval era.

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LHMP #581e DeVun 2020 The Shape of Sex Chapter 4

Full citation:

DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5

Chapter 4: Sex and Order in Natural Philosophy and Law

Philosophy

When writing about actual intersex people (as opposed to mythic images) medieval authors of the 13th and 14th century ranged in tone from considering them monstrous aberrations, whose sexual activity could not be acceptable, to considering them natural variants, similar to twins and—and some opinions—no more varied from the norm (men) than women were. One key philosophical conflict was over whether someone who could not be clearly assigned to a physical sex and cultural gender could be categorized as “human.” This motivated an approach to intersexuality that it was a superficial defect, confusing the assignment of the individual’s “true” sex. There was no longer room for classifying people as a third category of “hermaphrodite” but only the need to determine the correct binary sex.

This approach drew on classical Greek and Arabic writings that were newly being disseminated. These interacted with the position of Roman and canon law regarding sex assignment. But these approaches were not consistent, beyond the recognition of only two sexes. Factors in category assignment might variously emphasize genital anatomy, sexual function, general appearance, personality, or even individual choice. In making the determination, individuals were slotted into a role that combined sexual identity, legal status, and social role.

The above summary is laid out in more detail in the following discussion, which traces the textual basis roughly chronologically.

The first set of texts to consider derived from Aristotle’s writings, especially his works on animals, which emphasized systematic and hierarchical classification. Hierarchy included the elevation of male (active, spiritual) over female (passive, “mere matter”). Female inferiority was a basic tenant and informed both his reasoning and conclusions. Females were asserted to be “deformed” males due to defects in the reproductive process, but Aristotle held that all creatures had a true underlying (binary) sex, even when they diverged from the expected form for that sex.

Another aspect of this hierarchical system was the assertion that “superior” species had differentiated sexes and produced live young, while lower organisms might be egg bearing, or lack sexual differentiation, or even reproduce asexually. Therefore humans—being the pinnacle of the natural world—must have distinct and differentiated sexes.

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) brought the most widely distributed Arabic philosophy on the topic, building on Greek writings but synthesized in different ways. This stream built on humoral theory, which held that an individual’s sexual expression resulted from their balance of qualities (hot, cold, wet, dry). Although this balance generally resulted in distinct categories of male and female (with their associated behavioral and social features), it also allowed for intermediate forms.

Without some of the peculiar fixations of Christian writers, Islamic medical and anatomical treatises described a variety of intersex conditions, as well as a recognition of feminine men and masculine women. That isn’t to say that the Islamic tradition had a consistent and unified approach, as authors drew from different sources and interpreted them in different ways. But in general, the attitude toward non-binary sexes was neutral and descriptive.

Western Europe had lost direct access to Greek texts in the earlier medieval period, having only those previously translated into Latin. Around the 11th to 12th centuries, Greek writings began to be circulated as translations of Arabic works (which had drawn directly from the Greek). This introduced more diverse ideas about gender, along with treatises of how gender was determined, which could include the production of intermediate bodies. [Note: It must be remembered that most of these theories and explanations have no correspondence with biological reality—and when they do, it is usually mere coincidence.] Explanations for non-binary bodies included humoral balance, the location in the uterus where the fetus grew, and the proportions of “male and female sperm” that contributed to conception.

As the Galenic tradition of humoral influence that had been introduced via Arabic sources was increasingly supplemented by new translations of Aristotle in the 13th century, the European consensus on intersexuality also shifted to an emphasis on the binary. Writers such as Albert the Great explored new theories of fetal development within a naturalist framework, distinguishing “monstrous births” from ideas about “monstrous races.” He also rejected myths in bestiaries about hermaphroditic animals such as hyenas and hares, not based on observation, but deriving from hierarchical principles. “Higher animals,” by his theory, could not exhibit non-binary sex, except as an individual defective birth, and therefore these bestiary stories must be rejected as impossible.

Intersex fetuses, by his theory, developed due to “excess matter” in the genital region, in the same way that excess matter could result in twins. He held that individuals who appeared to have both male and female genitals actually had only one functional organ—indicating their true sex—while the other was equivalent to a tumor. And yet he also suggested the possibility of a person having both types of functioning genitals, and having a “complexion of the heart” (personality and secondary characteristics) balanced between male and female.

If these two factors, which ordinarily would signal the person’s true sex, failed to provide a clear classification, presumably some other method must be found. Albert also hinted at the possibility of surgical “correction” in some cases, though this idea did not come to the fore until later.

Alexander of Hales approached the topic of sex difference from a more theological point of view. Why did God create two sexes when it would have been more perfect to have only one (i.e. male)? His answer was that it was more dignified to separate the active and passive elements, to avoid the “confusion” of mingling them in a single body. Further, by having two sexes in a hierarchical relationship, this provided a model for other essential hierarchies, such as Christ and the church. Under this understanding, intersex people represented the confusion of active and passive, which violated divine order.

Law

While philosophers could argue about the nature of sexual categories and their symbolic meanings, the law had more practical needs. Regardless of whether one accepted the reality of non-binary bodies, those bodies needed to be classified as either male or female under the law for the purposes of marriage, inheritance, the ability to testify in court, sex limited occupations such as the priesthood, and many other aspects. Some early Roman texts suggested that intersex infants represented such an ill omen that death was the necessary response, but in post-Republican times a more individual approach was taken, setting presidents that continued in medieval times. (Islamic and Jewish law debated the question of gendered status within systems that acknowledged non-binary categories.)

The Roman law tradition assigned legal sex on the basis of which sex predominated. This could mean either the appearance of the genitals, or how they were able to function. These treatises acknowledged “hermaphrodite” as a category separate from male and female, so the instructions had to do with the practicalities of category assimilation.

Although anatomy seems to have been the first priority, some authors instruct that social behavior—participating in gendered activities and associating with a specific gender—can be considered. The ability to grow a beard was also key. Another author says that if anatomy provided no clear guide, it was acceptable for the person to swear as to which sex they would perform, as long as there was no subsequent change. Individual legal cases can provide examples of how these factors played out in real life. There is some indication of a preference for assigning maleness in ambiguous cases, as it was the “superior” sex.

The matter of sticking to one sex, once classified, was not only a legal matter but a moral one. If a person acted sexually as a man at one time and as a woman at another time, then one of those acts was “unclean.”

[Note: This brings in several motifs relevant to lesbianism, such as the “enlarged clitoris” motif which, if used for penetration, is viewed as acting as a penis. More broadly, if attributes such as behavior, social performance, or personality can be evidence of one’s “true sex” in the presence of ambiguous anatomy, then they are also indications of gender even when there is no anatomical question. In this way, the treatment of intersex individuals helps make sense of how same-sex desire was treated as evidence of cross-gender identity.]

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Just a Brief Reference to Hyena Gender

Thursday, September 24, 2026 - 11:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

Blog entry form is behaving oddly. Good thing today's post is brief and not particularly relevant.

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LHMP #581d DeVun 2020 The Shape of Sex Chapter 3

Full citation:

DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5

Chapter 3: The Hyena’s Unclean Sex—Beasts, Bestiaries, and Jewish Communities

This chapter looks at depictions in bestiaries of supposedly non-binary animals like the hyena, and how their symbolism was used to bolster anti-Jewish sentiment in the 12th and 13th centuries. As this is tangential to the themes I’m interested in, I won’t summarize it in detail, but there is a motif of comparing men who become “womanized” to the sexually ambiguous hyena, invoking concepts of “uncleanness.”

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Mythic Understandings of Non-Binary Identity

Monday, September 21, 2026 - 13:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

Although this book advertises itself as a history of non-binary identity, the initial chapters have a strong focus on "fictional" versions of non-binariness. While this can be uncomfortable reading for those looking for historic identification, it provides an important context for historic attitudes toward actual people whose sex or gender has not been easily categorizable.

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LHMP #581c DeVun 2020 The Shape of Sex Chapter 2

Full citation:

DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5

Chapter 2: The Monstrous Races—Mapping the Borders of Sex

This chapter connects an interest in non-binary people with a wider interest in “monstrosity,” especially as attributed to foreign (i.e., non-Christian) lands. These images depicted the “hermaphrodites” in the half-and-half version, alongside other imagined beings, such as people with their faces on their chests. By connecting these non-binary figures to other types of “monstrous races,” they were dehumanized—not a natural variation of humanity, but something else entirely.

This fascination that had begun in classical times evolved into something of a philosophical game among writers of the 12-13th centuries. In the absence of actual physical evidence for the “monstrous races” under discussion, they could be used to debate questions of the nature of humanity.

In this way, they participated in larger debates about the nature of self and other, where “other” was defined not only in terms of the physical form but of geography, with the nebulous concept of “the East” standing for the non-Christian world.

While these descriptions of “monstrous races” imagined species of beings who “bred true” as it were, there was a parallel fascination with the birth of infants with unexpected morphology to “normal” parents. While “monstrous races” represented an alien “other,” “monstrous births” were more commonly interpreted as portents or the consequences of individual parental behavior. In the 13th century and later, these two categories were clearly distinguished. “Monstrous births” could include what we would classify as birth defects, along with conjoined twins and intersex infants.

The two categories shared the function of being used to test and define the limits of humanity and various legal and religious consequences derived from that status. Following Roman law, intersex infants were classified as human, but the assignment of sex was a more difficult matter (discussed in a later chapter).

The Pliny-style half-and-half hermaphrodite was imagined to be able to switch back and forth between functioning as male and as female. This mythic figure (who continued to appear in medical art) was not ambiguous—rather it contained both sexes simultaneously.

Writings of this era conflate the concepts of sex, gender (including social gender roles), and sexuality. This conflation is relevant to historic beliefs about the interaction of gendered performance (including sexuality) and physiology.

The remainder of the chapter uses the Hereford Map and its depiction of “monstrous races” as a focus for discussing the religious debates and anxieties prevalent in Europe in the 14th century.

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 352 – Is Your Sapphic Protagonist Worried About the Wrong Things?

Saturday, September 19, 2026 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 352 – Is Your Sapphic Protagonist Worried About the Wrong Things? - transcript

(Originally aired 2026/09/19)

Every historic romance novel needs some roadblocks and potholes on the path to a happy ending. The question is: what type? How do those barriers to love emerge naturally from the setting and the priorities of the characters? Considering contemporary romance for a moment, if one of your protagonists is part of a South-East Asian diaspora, then a conflict between family expectations and personal desires can involve more angst than if she was born into a middle-class white American family. The conflicting priorities of small-town versus big-city backgrounds form an entire romance genre. In the infamous lesbian pulp novels of the ‘50s and ‘60s, it seemed natural that self-doubt rooted in Freudian psychology might get in the way of love. But when we turn to lesbian romance novels set before the 20th century, it sometimes feels like the protagonists are worried about all the wrong things.

I’ve just been reading a really excellent sapphic historical mystery set in the mid 19th century. But at one point, one of the protagonists confesses to the other about her past romantic feelings.

“Once, when I was younger, there was a young woman who wanted, well, me… We wrote to each other for a time, but I couldn’t stand to see myself on the page, there for anyone to stumble over… Fear of rejection, of not being proper, of showing someone my innermost self, only to find they’re not interested at best or horrified at worst. That these are not womanly thoughts. That I am an unnatural woman and an unfit mother for having them.”

Let’s pick this apart. Two women have expressed…let’s call it “romantic” interest in each other (since it doesn’t appear it went further than that). They exchanged letters expressing their attachment. Our protagonist breaks it off because she’s anxious about several things. Other people reading her letters, for one. Well, this is a reasonable concern. In the mid-19th century, letters were often considered communal property, to be shared with family and visitors. (Think about some of the public letter-sharing scenes in Jane Austen’s books.) This was one reason why people sometimes destroyed correspondence or requested that others do so. But on the other hand, in this era there was a wide latitude given for women expressing intensely romantic sentiments to female friends in correspondence. Unless they were writing very explicitly sexual material (along the lines of what Anne Lister included in her encoded correspondence), it’s unlikely that any casual reader would consider the content “not proper” or “not womanly.” Far from indicating that a woman was unnatural and an unfit mother, the ability to feel and express love and affection for a female friend was considered a requirement for being properly womanly.

So the concerns this character sets out don’t really make sense for her context. What would have made sense as a reason to break off the connection? Maybe a realization that family obligations meant they had no hope of sharing their lives together, though this was something of a given. Perhaps a mis-match in the intensity of their feelings led one to jealousy. If they had engaged in anything that they might have classified as sexual activity (which would mean they’d gone beyond kissing, embracing, caressing, and sharing a bed) then one of them might feel religious scruples, but only if they’d gone beyond what society considered normal for intimate friends.

Let’s look at another example. I’m not giving book titles for these examples because the point isn’t to name and shame specific works, but to examine the underlying assumptions. This one is set in early 16th century Italy. Woman #1 (an aristocratic widow) feels attraction to woman #2 (her employee, an unmarried woman of the middle class) but notices that woman #2 is on very friendly terms with a young man. So she asks the young man if they have been lovers.

Pause right there: she’s asking if her unmarried female employee has been sexually active—something that would likely get her instantly fired. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The young man laughs it off, saying, “She prefers women and I prefer men.” At which woman #1 instantly thinks to herself, So she does prefer women! I have a chance!

The problem is that Renaissance Italy didn’t think about sexual orientation in this way. People were assumed to be open to sexual relations with either sex, given the right context. The complicating dynamics included things like age and social status. We have more concrete evidence for men’s relations in this era than women’s, to be sure. But romantic and sexual relations between men were commonplace—even expected—despite both legal and religious prohibitions. (A point that the text acknowledges.) It would be extremely rare for a man’s homosexual relationships to be an indication that he had no interest in (or history with) women. So not only is this supposed reassurance meaningless with respect to their hypothetical sexual history, but it’s meaningless with respect to woman #2’s potential openness to a same-sex affair.

What might make sense as a stumbling block for the widow’s sexual designs on her employee? Well, possibly that she was an employee, though goodness knows, workplace non-consensual sexual advances were hardly rare at the time. Perhaps more plausibly, despite the commonplace occurrence of same-sex relations, they were still technically immoral. (And possibly illegal, though that was less certain for women than men.) The best protection against consequences was the support of one’s hierarchical patronage network. Woman #2 would be protected from consequences as long as her employer was ok with it. But that employer, woman #1, risks consequences if her hierarchical superiors (that is, her male relatives) find out and disapprove. Disapproval could mean losing custody of her children and being sent off to a convent. So maybe they’d disapprove, maybe they wouldn’t care, but that’s what she should be concerned about.

Possibly the most frequent misplaced concern for historical sapphic protagonists is to overlook the traditions of romantic friendship and the degree of expected affectionate behavior between women. The use of a kiss as a sudden sexual awakening between formerly platonic same-sex friends makes no sense when kissing is an expected part of friendship. In this next example from the Regency era we have two young women who have been inseparable friends for 18 years, but it’s only when they are about to be parted for the marriage mart and one says, “I can’t imagine loving anyone as much as I love you” that they first kiss each other and recognize the act as erotic. The viewpoint character is immediately struck by guilt.

“I knew it was wrong. Aside from the dutiful kisses one bestowed on relatives, any sort of embrace was to be saved for marriage. We had been told so, over and again. The fact that we had been warned only from men meant nothing: love, physical love between two girls was so wrong, so unnatural as not even to be spoken aloud. We had broken a strict taboo. If anyone, ever, found out, we would be parted for life.”

This turns historic reality on its head. Was it true that “physical love between two girls was so wrong, so unnatural as not even to be spoken aloud”? At this time, for two young, sheltered, well-born girls? Quite likely. But if so, they wouldn’t have the concepts or the language to recognize what they were doing as forbidden “physical love.” But passionate kisses and embraces between women were not classified as “physical love” at this time. Rather (as discussed previously), they were part of the expected behavior between close female friends. The two girls could be kissing and embracing in the parlor with other people around and it wouldn’t be considered in any way odd, much less forbidden. The fact that they “had been warned only from men,” far from meaning nothing, was exactly the point. Kisses and embraces were only forbidden behavior in a heterosexual context. If a man wasn’t involved, it wasn’t considered sexual.

In fairness, the story does revolve around the very real roadblocks to the two young women’s romance: the intense social and family pressure to marry and then being subject to a husband’s control with respect to where one lives and whom one sees.

The sapphic historic romance field currently sees a lot of alternative history settings where the reader is signaled not to expect close alignment with the actual past. Given that, it can be hard to sort out when an author is writing implausible roadblocks from ignorance and when it’s a deliberate choice. And I sometimes feel guilty for being less critical of stories that aren’t really aiming for accuracy. Another Regency-era romance begins with the questionable set-up of a 26 year old unmarried woman with no mention of family wealth who attracts the marital interest of all the eligible gentlemen, despite outspokenly having no interest in marriage.

Her social success is a bit contradictory, for she notes, “[She] enjoyed flirting with men though they held no romantic interest for her, and she had a certain reputation among society matrons for being fast—she did like to sit at the gaming tables and laugh too much and drink too many glasses of wine. She suspected it was why she was never invited to the highest of highbrow events, and why many women in society ignored her at the events that she did choose to attend.” Now I’m sorry, attracting the interest of respectable men while being considered “fast” by the arbiters of society is just not how it works. Unless she’s simply an unreliable reporter of what type of interest the men have in her. But let’s move on.

During a ball, while hanging out with a small, mixed-gender group of friends, she ruminates to herself about her best friend, “They had been youthful lovers, kissing during stolen moments at their finishing school, then in a burst of excitement and passion during their first season. Every moment seemed so intense, so overwhelming, so very grown up—and their love had sizzled and burned bright. But after the first year or so, they had turned to being only occasional lovers while maintaining a close friendship.”

OK, so far. This is a quite reasonable background for the time period. Think about Anne Lister’s boarding-school romance with Eliza Raine, which had a similar arc. But then the talk—and remember that this is in a public space, regardless of how low the conversation might be—the talk turns to the protagonist’s current dissatisfaction after being dropped by her most recent female lover. Her best friend suggests, “Isn’t it time…to look to the future? And doesn’t that mean marriage?” A perfectly reasonable suggestion. But then a male participant in the conversation offers, “If you won’t consider marriage, then a dalliance must be what you need, darling. You need a woman in your bed to get over [insert name of her previous lover].” This is quite an indiscreet conversation to have in a public space. Our protagonist reflects to herself that the man and her best friend are the only ones “who knew of her amorous exploits with other women,” (er…other than the women themselves, presumably) but in the next moment she notes that, “The opinions of the sticklers of society never bothered her. London was large enough to find plenty of other women who were happy to pay a great deal of attention to her. Cautious about whom she invited to her bed, she took great care with her secret and was proud that no one in society seemed to guess at her proclivity for a beautiful woman.” But who are these “plenty of other women” if they are not “in society?”

Our protagonist is worried about finding true love with another woman but seems insufficiently concerned about how her behavior is likely destroying her reputation—whether in terms of her partying and gambling or in terms of her pursuit of female lovers. Maybe she genuinely is oblivious to how likely it is that she’s the subject of gossip on the latter point, but it should definitely be affecting the willingness of women who are otherwise interested in her but have too much discretion to act on it. Again, we can use Anne Lister as a reference point. In some ways, she was far more discreet than this protagonist in her public behavior, yet the whisper network definitely provided roadblocks to her romantic pursuits. She overcame them, but not through being oblivious. For another example, 18th century sculptor Anne Damer was so solidly rumored to have female lovers that saying a woman “visited Mrs Damer” was as much as an accusation. People talk, and talk has consequences.

So what should our rakish Regency protagonist be genuinely concerned about? She should be encountering a falling off of invitations, a shrinking pool of women willing to be seen in her company regardless of how they feel about her, and just maybe some more concrete consequences from loose talk in a ballroom.

Let’s finish up with a couple more Regency heroines—there are so many to choose from, after all! A restlessly married woman has gone visiting at a friend’s country home unaccompanied by her husband. She experiences mutual attraction to the unmarried friend she is visiting and they make arrangements for a secret tryst in one of their bedrooms, saying, “I want you in my room. Not tonight. Tonight is too crowded with eyes. Tomorrow. After the last light has been checked.” They sneak around, being careful not to let anyone suspect they spent the night together. Once again, this falters on the point of ordinary social behavior between female friends. It would be an ordinary thing for them to share a bedroom openly when visiting. We have examples from the 19th century of women writing to their married friends saying, “I’m coming to visit and we’re going to kick your husband out of bed so we can spend the time together chatting and cuddling.” It’s furtive behavior that will attract suspicion, not the maid coming in to stoke up the fire in the morning and finding them in bed together.

Here's a different scenario with a mixture of reasonable and unreasonable concerns. Two women have met socially and organized an excuse to spend more time together, but one is having second thoughts. “It had been a long time since she had felt so attracted to a woman, and she knew, too well, the consequences of that attraction. … She desperately needed to stay away from M. M. made her wish for things she already knew that she could not have. … Was it possible that M also felt that tug of physical attraction?” And then from the other point of view, “She liked G. A lot. In a way she shouldn’t. … She’d [previously] fallen in love with a woman who had chosen to ignore all the promises that she had made and marr[ied] a man.”

What are the plausible parts of this? First off, being attracted to another woman and being disappointed by promises to be together that were broken in favor of marriage. That’s solidly historical. One of the consistent through-lines for romantic friendships is disappointment that marriage disrupts the relationship. In the words of 17th century poet Katherine Philips, “marriage is the death of friendship.” Given that, we can also consider that “wishing for things she knew she could not have” is a reasonable anxiety. It’s an anxiety that shows up in love poems between women throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Until women began (re)gaining opportunities for economic independence in the later 19th century, the hope to live with a female romantic partner was difficult to realize.

Yet this reality was rarely considered sufficient reason to stay away from the object of affection. If having little hope for a life together was fatal to romantic friendships, the concept would never have gained any foothold. Is the protagonist reasonable to worry about whether the other woman returns her love? Maybe, but only in the ordinary way of things, not specifically because they are both women. Is it reasonable for the protagonist to think that she “shouldn’t” like the other woman “a lot?” No, this isn’t reasonable within the historic setting. This again sets history on its head. Her society would expect her to be attracted to at least one female friend. A lot. This should not be the focus of her anxiety or a reason to avoid the friendship.

In these examples I’ve focused a lot on misunderstanding the historic relationship between sexual desire and romantic love. Before the 20th century, there was no automatic assumption of a connection between the two concepts for female couples. That’s a different matter than saying that there was no connection. The plot requires that a sapphic protagonist who hopes for, or enjoys, a sexual relationship with another woman needs to have roadblocks to her happy ending, but those roadblocks shouldn’t include worrying that her society will jump to the wrong conclusion if they kiss or share a bed.

A delightful part of historical romance is seeing how relationship dynamics operate differently in the past—seeing how different rules and consequences for behavior shape the course of a relationship. We lose that delight when the dynamics and consequences reflect our modern society rather than the realities of the setting.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

How to make the conflicts in a sapphic historical romance more realistic

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

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

Links to Heather Online

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

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Angelic Androgyny

Wednesday, September 16, 2026 - 10:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

It's fascinating to me how solidly misogyny is embedded in early Christian culture that, even when envisioning the ideal state of humanity as androgynous beings "neither male nor female" there's still the unexamined assumption that once you have binary gender, it's necessarily hierarchical. This book will take a while to get to the aspects of non-binary identity that are relevant to the Project, but it's being a fascinating read.

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LHMP #581b DeVun 2020 The Shape of Sex Chapter 1

Full citation:

DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5

Chapter 1: The Perfect Sexes of Paradise

Christian theology of late antiquity promoted the idea of “primal androgyny,” that is, that human beings were created as androgynous beings (Adam before the separation of Eve) and that this non-binary state was the ideal state for humanity.

This concept fell from popularity around the 12-13th centuries, as androgyny became conflated with dual-bodied hermaphroditism and thus with monstrosity.

The chapter dives into scriptural interpretation of the two creation stories—one in which God created humans “male and female” in his own image, and the other hierarchical version in which man (Adam) was created first, with woman created from him.

One Jewish tradition viewed Adam as a fused, two-bodied creature, half male, half female (like the dual-bodied creatures in the Symposium) that was then divided into two beings.

This “primal androgyny” did not encompass gender equality. The conversion of the primal “both male and female” being into differentiated sexes produced a sexual hierarchy that would not be erased until the primal state was returned at the end of time. Then humanity would regain an angelic androgyny, neither male nor female.

These ideas were connected to the idea of sex and procreation as an unfortunate corrupted necessity after the Fall. In the mean time, androgyny could be considered an unobtainable ideal, to be approximated by celibacy.

Augustine of Hippo (4-5th c) was an early rejector of the idea of primal androgyny. He made no distinction between androgynes and hermaphrodites, associating both with ambiguous genitals due to an “excess” of sex rather than its absence. But it took much longer for Augustine’s views to take general hold. With the “12th century renaissance” in scholarly argumentation, Augustine’s views were expanded, arguing that two distinct sexes existed at the start of creation, even when Eve was still encompassed within Adam’s body.

The specter of dual-sexed hermaphrodites who could perform sex acts either as male or female became prominent in the 13th century. Such (hypothetical) beings implied sodomy. To address this, church law required intersex persons to adhere to one permanent gender role, according to how they were able to perform sexually. The concept of sodomy at this time had more to do with transgressing fixed gender roles than it had to do with specific sex acts.

In contrast to prior ideas about the general resurrection at the end times returning all to a state of angelic androgyny, now the position was that sex was an essential attribute that would be retained at resurrection, but that “defects” such as disability, racial difference, and intersexuality would be “corrected.”

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Why Am I Blogging a Book About Intersexuality?

Sunday, September 13, 2026 - 15:26

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

I hope to answer that question in an upcoming podcast. (Probably not this month -- not enough time, and I still have another book to cover before I'm ready to do it.) But the short answer is that questions of how historic societies thought about "same-sex" issues relates very much to their understanding of how the sexes are defined and differentiated.

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LHMP #581a DeVun 2020 The Shape of Sex Introduction

Full citation:

DeVun, Leah. 2020. The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-2311-9551-5

Introduction: Stories and Selves

The introduction opens with an anecdote about a 14th century Catalan person assigned female, but whose husband petitioned for annulment because she was anatomically incapable of having sex as a woman, due to atypical genitals, including a penis, a very small vaginal opening, and other anomalies. The account doesn’t include any follow-up or any personal testimony from the woman. The crux of the argument was that she could not be categorized as a woman because she could not perform sexually as a woman. DeVun then speculates on the social consequences of this event, including the possibility that—having been declared “predominantly male” she might have later adopted a male status.

Discourse about non-binary sex was prevalent throughout the early Christian and medieval periods, both in terms of how to categorize such persons and how their existence generated philosophical and legal debates. Within these debates, the experiences and thoughts of actual non-binary individuals are largely erased.

DeVun’s book is primarily focusing on the intellectual debates, and how thinking about sex binaries related to other social binaries, such as human/non-human, Christian/non-Christian, and in/out groups. The evidence around actual intersex people is included when available.

Non-binary sex participated in the definition of category boundaries by challenging them. An iconic symbol in the history of this process is the mythic figure of Hermaphroditus, typically portrayed as a fusion of bodies—half male, half female. The concept of hermaphroditism derived from this myth was not solely applied to bodies that appeared to partake of both female and male anatomy, but also stood for all types of category-crossing and fluidity. The idea of the hermaphrodite contradictorily undermined the rigidity of sex and gender binaries while also inspired the tightening of those boundaries and their enforcement.

DeVun works within modern academic frameworks, noting when pre-modern concepts echo modern experiences as well as those points where the pre-modern is alien. One of the points of contrast is the various meanings attached to the word “hermaphrodite,” which influence the modern rejection of the term for intersex persons. There is an extensive discussion of modern activism around intersexuality and related transgender topics. DeVun points out the overlap of these two concepts in the pre-modern category of “hermaphrodite” whereas they are considered distinct in modern definitions. For the purposes of clarity, DeVun uses the modern word “intersex” and “transgender” as analytical terms, but retains the language used in historic texts when discussing those texts. She uses “non-binary” to encompass both groups as well as a wider set of persons who diverge from normative understandings of male and female. She points out that while “hermaphrodite” is now deprecated, in the medieval period it defined a conceptual category that is not equivalent to any specific modern category, and therefore cannot be avoided in a historic discussion. Further, there is not a clear, linear, teleological development of modern ideas and categories in this field. Some older ideas bear similarity to modern ones without a traceable genealogy.

The book is structured chronologically, tracing the rise and fall and recycling of ideas about non-binary sex across the ages.

The remainder of the introduction summarizes the structure of the contents. [Note: as usual for my approach, I may skim more briefly through material that is less relevant to my central project.]

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 351 - On the Shelf for September 2026

Sunday, September 6, 2026 - 16:53

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 351 - On the Shelf for September 2026 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2026/09/05)

Welcome to On the Shelf for September 2026.

It’s been quite a month! The first week of August I was in Orlando for the Golden Crown Literary Society conference, the last week was in Anaheim for the World Science Fiction Convention, and on top of that I started a much more intense physical therapy schedule for my broken arm that can eat up as much as 4 or 5 hours a day (though I backed off on it a little for the conferences).

This was my first time back at GCLS since 2015 and I was able to manage my expectations better and had a good time. I talked up the Project with a bunch of people, sold some books, made contacts for future interviews, and got to watch a spectacular lightning show during the outdoor welcome reception. (Outdoors, but under cover!) It’s still inescapable that the GCLS community is focused around contemporary romance and assumes that’s what people are there for, but the rest of us can fit in around the edges.

Worldcon was…well, Worldcon. It’s the home of my heart. I had lots of hanging out with old friends and new acquaintances, while entirely failing to connect with other friends. I was on 4 panels, including one on using queer history in speculative fiction. Several excellent queer-focused panels. I had a new book release for the convention—nothing queer related, however. This was The Theory of Related-ivity: A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category. You might have encountered an earlier version of it on my blog (if you read the blog), but now it’s out as a book with expanded data and contributions from community commentary. I’ll be looking for another data-nerd project to tackle, given how much fun I had with this one, but not in the immediate future.

The broken arm continues to mend. The physical therapy is grueling, but I’ve gotten most of my range of motion back and my grip strength is improving by leaps and bounds. Kids, try to avoid doing this at home.

I will once again remind folks that we’re doing another fiction series next year and will be open for submissions in January. Spread the word and don’t wait for the last minute to start writing. This will be the last fiction series, so don’t miss out.

News of the Field

The big book-related topic of the moment is the next phase of the Anthropic class action copyright settlement. The process for payouts to class members has kicked off and authors are dealing with reconciling conflicting claims for rights in their works. I imagine publishers are also dealing with this, but the authors are the ones sharing tips and cautions in social media. Romance author Courtney Milan has been invaluable for her detailed and knowledgeable explanations of the process, and she and Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware have provided resources for authors working through the process. There’s also a good explainer for the process on the Authors Guild website. I link several good resources in the comments, although given the timelines they will soon be obsolete.

Publications on the Blog

I took another one of my inadvertent vacations from blogging articles, though in my defense it’s only been 3 weeks since the last On the Shelf episode and one of those weeks was spent at Worldcon. I have a couple of books I’m reading on intersex topics which will be my focus this month and possibly the topic of the next podcast essay.

Book Shopping!

And although I’ve bought a fair number of books this month, none of them were non-fiction works for the Project.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

There are a lot of new releases in lesbian and sapphic historical fiction since I last posted, so as usual I’ll be condensing the cover copy a bit in some cases. We’ll start off with a series that shows up across August and September: the Still Sisters series by Gabi Prevot set among Appalachian moonshining during Prohibition.

The Copper Line (Still Sisters #1) introduces us to the Friermuth sisters who are said to make the best liquor in the Allegheny valley. They say it quietly, because saying it loud is how a woman ends up in a photograph. Susie runs the still and keeps the recipe in her head, where nobody can subpoena it. Florence runs the truck and the room and the smile, and she is very tired of being the pretty half of an arrangement. Between them they have four years, one shotgun, one pistol, and a boss named Boyd Kessler who owns their copper and takes his cut in whatever he likes. Then a new barmaid turns up and things get complicated.

The Bitter Cut (Still Sisters #2) brings another newcomer to town—one who’s looking for the person responsible for her husband’s death from a bad batch of shine.

There are also two related short stories set several years before the first book: “The First Tin” and “The Yard Light,” exploring the sisters’ early years in business and the start of some relationships found in the books.

For the rest of the August and September books, let’s run through them in chronological order of setting, more or less. We have a small cluster of stories with classical settings and then a jump to the 18th through 20th centuries for the majority of them.

The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald from Sourcebooks Fire takes us to the heart of the Trojan war.

Love caused this war. At least, that's what the stories will say. No one believes Cassandra’s visions of an alluring, lonely girl who is going to start a war. Helen fled Sparta in pursuit of love, though it's proving more elusive than she'd hoped. Her beauty and intelligence are no match for the politics of the Trojan court, especially when one princess with fiery amber eyes is determined to be rid of her. When war finally strikes, fate brings Cassandra and Helen together in ways not even the gods could have foretold. Together they will change their destinies or be the ruin of all that they love.

Locusta by Emily Dexter from Hay House LLC skips ahead to the Roman conquest of Gaul.

Locusta is the last of her kind—a Druid whose communion with the spirit world grants her the dangerous gift of identifying and wielding deadly substances. When Roman soldiers attack her home and slaughter her mother, Locusta is captured and enslaved, taken to the heart of the empire where political plots abound and death commands a high price. Her strange talents soon catch the attention of the Roman elite, and she becomes ensnared in a double life—poisoner by night for the cunning Domina Decima, and lady-in-waiting by day to Livia, the Emperor’s ambitious niece. As Locusta plants the seeds of revenge against those who destroyed her home, her connection with Livia deepens into a passionate, forbidden romance that threatens them both.

Sweet Mother, I Cannot Weave by T.D. Cloud takes its title from a poem by Sappho but appears to be set in imperial Rome as well.

Laelia Naevius is cursed by the goddess Venus: every single man her father offers her hand to dies before they can make it to the altar. She supposes she should be upset by this—the gods only know her father is—but she doesn't want to get married at all. How could she? She's too busy staring at another girl. And not just any girl—a gladiatrix. What is a girl to do when every man betrothed to her dies before they can marry? Well, Lady Jihane is no man, so... maybe that?

Empress, Goddess by Morgan H. Owen from Gallery YA continues the story begun in Gladiator, Goddess.

Rome has crowned a new empress, but the gods are far from finished with her. Claudia’s rule is fragile from the moment it begins. Assassins stalk the palace, the Senate turns against her, and ancient deities manoeuvre for power. Forced into dangerous political alliances and a marriage she does not want, Claudia must hide both her doubts and her forbidden love for her fiercely loyal bodyguard, Gia. As rival claimants rise and divine war looms, Claudia is pushed to choose between authenticity and authority, love and survival. Every decision tightens the trap – and the cost of power may be higher than she can bear.

And now we skip ahead to the later 18th century and a fictional biography about the Ladies of Llangollen: My Betterhalf by Genevieve Sinclair. I’ll note that the cover art has hallmarks of generative AI, but the text does not.

They wanted Eleanor for a convent. They wanted Sarah married off to a man she never chose. Instead, two Irish gentlewomen chose each other — defying their families, their fortunes, and everything expected of them, in a devotion so real it would become one of history's most documented love stories.

A Study in Silence by Elizabeth Louise is a Regency romance.

Lady Rosamund Mostyn has spent two years perfecting the art of the safe true thing. A young widow managing a great house, a grieving daughter, and a family that will not stop asking, gently and then not so gently, why there is still no portrait of the husband she lost. She has learned exactly how much of herself a room requires, and how much must stay locked in a drawer upstairs, where no one thinks to look. Then her sister-in-law, tired of a gallery with a missing face in it, hires painter Marguerite Sorel to finish what grief interrupted. What begins as a commission becomes something neither woman has a discreet enough word for.

A Match for Lady Adelaide by Verity Fairbanks from Inked Pages tackles the Regency marriage mart from the point of view of a woman who prefers not to marry and one who makes marriages her profession.

The Earl of Wychcombe owes fourteen thousand six hundred pounds he cannot pay, and he has found only one way out of it: his sister. So he engages Miss Georgiana Fell, the most honest woman in London and the most expensive, to see Lady Adelaide Merrick married by Michaelmas. Adelaide has run her estate since she was twenty and can tell you precisely what the law will do to it on the morning she takes a husband. She is not refusing a man. She is refusing to be erased. Georgiana has placed forty-one women in nine years, and she has never once been wrong about what happens to the ones nobody places. Neither woman is wrong. And by the time Georgiana Fell understands what she has actually been selling for nine years, she has already been paid to hand Adelaide to somebody else.

Time Never Waits (Chathom Chronicles # 1) by Samantha Calcott & Melinda Lauer from Partners in Crime Book Services is the only sapphic book so far in this romance series.

Rose Mowbray, daughter of the Third Earl of Rothesay in Chathom County, knows few things for certain after enduring loss as a child. One thing she does know is that her best friend will always be by her side. Winnifred Warwick, daughter of Lord Warwick, knows many things for certain thanks to a keen mind and easy life. But the thing she knows above all is that she’s madly in love with her best friend.

Her Lady's Companion by Odette Valehart is another book with a generative AI cover but no other hallmarks of AI production so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt on the text.

Eleanor Hartley takes the position of lady's companion at Ashcombe Hall out of necessity — a genteel occupation for a woman with no fortune left and a younger brother's school fees to pay. She expects long evenings of reading aloud, quiet correspondence, and the practiced invisibility of good service. She does not expect Lady Georgiana Ashcombe. Widowed young, independent in a way few women of her station are permitted to be, Georgiana has spent eighteen months learning to wear grief like armor. She does not expect to feel anything at all for her new companion — certainly not this. In a world that offers no safe word for what grows between them, Eleanor and Georgiana must decide whether the life society allows them is worth more than the one they actually want.

The Crooked Medium's Guide to Terror (Crooked Medium #2) by Stephen Cox takes us into the world of Victorian spiritualism.

London 1882. A carpenter is killed by a train - an eerie, brutal crime. Flamboyant spiritualist medium Mrs Ashton and her sapphic partner Braddie seek justice for the widow. A charismatic rival medium takes London by storm. Dock-lass Maisie sees her frightening prophesy of vengeance. A noble family is devastated, but worse is to come. Outgunned and bewildered, the three confront a deadly conspiracy. They risk losing everything.

A Ruin of Roses by Corinne Astier gives the second-chance romance a dark turn.

Lady Rosanna Meighan is trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience but the past is a ghost that refuses to stay buried. When a pressed violet arrives at a high-society gala—the signature of a love she was forced to abandon a decade ago—Rosanna discovers that her former flame, the now-ruthless businesswoman Millie McArthy, has returned. And Millie is willing to use blackmail to achieve her retribution.

The Last Telegram of Mrs Hudson by Mattea Orr from Head of Zeus asks the question, what if Sherlock Holmes inherited his deductive powers from his mother? There’s a second book in this series coming in a few months.

Heart-broken, widowed, and penniless, Katherine Hudson never wished to become a lady's maid to the eccentric Violet Holmes, mother of a precocious seven-year-old Sherlock. To keep her beloved family out of the poorhouse, Hudson trades her telegraphic career for a job in service, just like the one that cost her father his life. She quickly discovers, though, that working for the recently widowed Lady Holmes demands far more than learning the latest hairstyles. Instead, she engages in a most scandalous and unladylike activity: investigations. When a body shows up, Hudson will need to dodge her budding feelings for Lady Holmes and unravel a family secret.

A Deadly Entanglement (Harriman & Mancini Mystery #2) by Cathy Pegau from Minotaur Books continues the adventures of an industrialist and private detective in early 20th century New York.

Margot Baxter Harriman is organizing a fundraiser for the crowded, overworked city charity hospital, hoping to do good and give back–until a body falls past a third-floor window. The nurse’s death is quickly ruled a suicide, but fellow nurse CeeCee Foxmoor isn’t so sure: this isn’t the first suspicious death. As Margot’s friend and the live-in partner of investigator Rett Mancini, CeeCee’s concerns draw both Margot and Rett into an undercover scheme to untangle the threads behind the deaths everyone else is ready to overlook.

The Borderless Sky by Kim Kirkley hints at the unexplained.

England, 1924. A handshake. A murder. A secret that cannot be named. He shook her hand. That was all. A handshake — and then he was dead. She saw what no one else saw. She wrote it down. She told the truth. Nobody believed her. A love story wearing a murder mystery's coat, set in the fog and candlelight of 1920s England — and somewhere else entirely by the time it ends. Two women. An arrangement that is not what it appears to be. A killer no one suspects. And a truth that will cost everything to speak out loud.

There’s lots going on in the 1920s this month, including The Marigold Room by Josephine Bray from Inked Pages.

Twenty-two steps below West Forty-ninth Street, the Marigold Room has a pressed tin ceiling, ninety-six seats, and a rule nobody has ever written down: what happens on the floor is nobody’s business. Ottilie Reisz has held that door open for eleven years. She has also never been photographed, never owned anything, and never once put her name to a single piece of paper in this city — because the lease is in a dead man’s company, and she has no right to sign a word of it. Vivienne Lasker writes a syndicated column and has a mother in a sanatorium she cannot afford. Her editor is offering two thousand dollars for the name behind the Marigold Room, and Vivienne is very good at her job.

You Made Me Love You by K D Jensen is a story about discovering what your dreams really are.

Mary Willis thought flying was Ellie Bradford's dream. She was wrong. When thirteen-year-old Eleanor Bradford is abandoned by her parents in the small South Carolina town of Harper's Grove, the Willis family gives her something she has never truly known: a home. And in Mary Willis, Ellie finds a love that will shape the rest of her life. As the girls grow into women, their lives take different paths during World War II, but the war helps them come to understand what has been there between them all along—and that the dreams they chased weren’t their dreams after all.

The Quiet Fields by Zinnia Bradley is a mid-century coming of age story.

Pennsylvania, 1956. Seventeen-year-old Ruth Miller has always known what is expected of her: help on the family farm, finish school, and someday build the kind of life a young woman in Alder Creek is supposed to want. Then Claire Whitfield arrives. What begins as an unexpected friendship slowly becomes something deeper—something neither of them has the words, or the freedom, to name. As the years carry Ruth from rural Pennsylvania to Newark and eventually New York City, she begins to discover a life she once could not have imagined. Through friendship, heartbreak, art, loss, and love, Ruth must decide how much of herself she is willing to hide—and what it means to finally live on her own terms.

Other Books of Interest

There are a few titles where identities are ambiguous enough I wasn’t sure about classifying them as sapphic. The first two are in K'Anne Meinel’s Crazy Woman series from Shadoe Publishing, which alternates what pronouns are used for the protagonist. Crazy Woman and Women of Adventure follow the life and loves of Shelby. Stolen as a child from St. Louis, a little girl is raised by mountain men in the Rockies. Raised a boy, thinking as a man, with a man’s taste for women, Shelby knows she is a woman but identifies and lives as a man. His first wife teaches him how to love, but the consequences of her death give Shelby the nickname “Crazy Woman.” A second wife is new to loving a woman, but she accepts the challenge. But the fur trade is dying off, family ties compete with the pull of the mountains, and the desire for a child tests their marriage.

In Hearts on the Table by Susan Metallo from Candlewick the setting may be World War II but the plot has a definite Shakespearean flavor. It isn’t clear whether there’s sapphic attraction outside the gender-disguise shenanigans, but I’m always game for a Twelfth Night variation.

Violet is used to winning—with her mathematical mind, no one stands a chance of beating her at cards, or much of anything else. So, when her wrathful father threatens to marry her and her trans twin brother Seb to the highest bidders, she’s certain they can escape England, even with a war on. But before they reach safety in Italy, a U-boat sinks their ship, and Violet washes up on a small island, on the wrong side of enemy lines, desperate to find her missing twin. And you can guess where the plot goes from there.

What Am I Reading?

So what have I been reading lately? When I was reviewing my book log to write this up, I realized I’d missed a few books I read back in May (which should have been part of my June-July catch-up episode). These included a typically delightful K.J. Charles m/m Regency, How to Fake it in Society, in which a likeable nebbish stumbles into an unexpected fortune and gets tangled up with an equally likeable fake aristocrat who promises to help him find his feet in high society.

I also listened to The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri which tackles the power of story and has several poignant queer romance threads. As part of my reading for the Hugos I listened to “Automatic Noodle” by Annalee Newitz which is about a group of robots setting up a fast-food shop in a post-war dystopia. In fact, a fair amount of the Hugo-finalist short fiction this year poked at ideas around artificial intelligences and fabricated personalities with an oddly positive spin, considering the contemporary landscape and discourse around generative AI.

More recently, my broken arm having recovered enough to allow me to return to bicycling, I listened to Cathy Pegau’s A Murderous Business—a mystery set in early 20th century New York where a woman who has inherited ownership of the family business hires a female PI to dig out corruption in the firm.

Before I was released to bicycle again, I was putting in time at the gym on the treadmill which somehow called for something much more fluffy, and I’ve been listening to some P.G. Wodehouse, including Right Ho, Jeeves!

My drive down to Worldcon in Anaheim gave me a chance to listen to T. Kingfisher’s eerie portal fantasy The Hollow Places, followed up with the more comic Nine Goblins. T. Kingfisher, in her alter ego as Ursula Vernon was the toastmistress at Worldcon and filled the spaces around the Hugo Award announcements with a litany of weird and disturbing animal facts, which was exactly the job she was hired for. You should have been there.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

My non-fiction book The Theory of Related-ivity: A History and Analysis of the Best Related Work Hugo Category
Resources for the Anthropic class action settlement
- Authors Guild explainer
- Writer Beware resource page
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
Other Books of Interest
What I’ve been consuming
- How to Fake it in Society by K.J. Charles
- The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
- Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
- A Murderous Business by Cathy Pegau
- Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
- The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
- Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher
Call for submissions for the 2027 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.

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
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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 350 – Love for Love’s Sake by Shannon Lippert

Saturday, August 29, 2026 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 350 – Love for Love’s Sake by Shannon Lippert - transcript

(Originally aired 2026/08/29)

I have never made a secret of the fact that I have a real thing about late 17th century French bisexual opera-singing swordswoman Julie d’Aubigny. But that also means that I have a high bar for fiction about her life. Shannon Lippert took on that challenge and delighted me with a story set towards the end of Julie’s life, during her all too brief period of mature happiness with the Marquise de Florensac.

Shannon is a writer of poetry, plays, and prose, a performing artist, a director, and a troublemaker. Their work has appeared most recently in Scholarly Pursuits (an anthology by Duck Prints Press) and All Shall Be Well: New Poems for Julian of Norwich, as well as in What Rough Beast by Indolent Books, Glittership, and Unfading Daydream. Their theatrical works have been performed in New York City. They produced a reading of their work The Sibling Plays as a fundraiser for TransLifeline, and co-produced three productions of My Immortal: Live, a karaoke-style semi-improvised performance of the worst fanfiction ever written. Shannon was part of Random Access Theatre's inaugural cohort in 2024. Shannon was twice a semifinalist for American Shakespeare Center’s New Contemporaries. You can find links to her blog and social media in the show notes.

I will be your narrator for this story.

This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.

Love for Love’s Sake

by Shannon Lippert

“To make sure I understand you, you were possessed to come to my door because you heard I was beautiful?”

“Not just beautiful,” replied the woman in a man’s breeches standing at the center of the receiving room. It was late, the sun having departed some time ago, so the stranger’s features were obscured, but there was no ambiguity about the ample bosom daringly peeking out over the half-buttoned waistcoat, nor the sultry contralto voice, nor the way she had introduced herself: Mademoiselle d’Aubigny. “I heard you were the most beautiful woman in France. I thought that would be a sight to behold.”

At that, Therese la Marquise de Florensac had to laugh.

“Maybe once. When I was young and unwed.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Mademoiselle d’Aubigny. She seated herself, uninvited, at one of the lounge chairs. “I find myself partial to women who’ve had the time to learn what they want, and unlearn the shame they might feel when they pursue it.”

“Do you,” said la Marquise. Not a question. She knew she was being flirted with, would have thrown out a man for the audacity (if she’d even let him in to begin with—unlikely). She found most attempts at charm rather cloying. Had no need of a companion, nor a friend, nor a visitor. And this stranger, this Julie d’Aubigny, had all the trappings of a complete scoundrel. Probably after money.

She should have thrown her out.

“Would you care for a drink?” She asked instead.

“Ah, you speak my language.” Julie winked.

“I hope brandy will do.”

Julie merely shrugged, and la Marquise stepped out to speak to the servant stationed faithfully by the door. Once the serving-girl was gone, the room felt heavier. Therese liked the receiving room. When she’d married, it had been the first room she’d decorated, wanting to control the face she showed the world. There was a sculpture of Athena on one end, face carved from cool white marble, her spear and shield accented with gold paint that flickered in the light of the fireplace.

“I was her once,” Julie said, pointing at the statue.

“Athena?”

“One of the first Operas I did when I got here. Tricky high notes, that one. They weren’t writing roles with me in mind yet.”

The serving-girl returned with a tray, pouring two glasses of brandy. The girl had chosen the cheaper glassware. Not a bad guess, especially for a guest wearing improper attire. But something about the plain glass in Julie’s hand felt wrong to Therese.

“That will be all for the evening. You’re dismissed,” she said to the girl. Not rude, because rudeness for rudeness’ sake was unbecoming. But there was a fleeting frown on the girl’s face. Therese knew she must be wondering why her mistress was sending her away when there was still a guest in the house. What if something was needed?

Well, la Marquise was determined not to need anything more.

She sat across from Julie, lifting her own glass daintily, as she had been taught to do when she was small, prepared for a life of pointless decadence as the wife of someone wealthy. She hadn’t been prepared for his premature death. Therese didn’t miss her husband, who had hardly been present when he’d been alive, but she missed having something to do. Places to go, things to talk about. Without him, she had very little. All of her interests had been his, the people she’d entertained in this house had all been his guests, everything that needed to be done was dictated by his schedule and whims.

“You’re preoccupied,” said Julie.

“Am I?”

“You haven’t asked about the breeches.”

Therese looked the woman up and down. “Do people usually ask?”

“People aren’t sure what to make of me. Sometimes they’ll insist I’m a man, especially if I introduce myself with my blade first.”

Therese thought that was rather crude, but didn’t say so. Instead she said something very crude in return. “I suppose you wear breeches so people will ask about them.”

It was too forthright, but it made Julie laugh. “Oh, that is a good one! At the start I wore them because the man I was traveling with told me I’d be safer that way. A woman on the road invites danger, he said. But after a while I missed the danger. You know why I kept the breeches anyway?” She asked with a wiggle of her brows. “They’re remarkably comfortable.”

Therese took a sip of brandy. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Would you like to?” Julie asked. “You can get into my breeches any day you’d like.”

Therese almost choked. “You are shameless, Mademoiselle.”

“Often. What use have I for shame?” She leveled her deep brown eyes on Therese, tossing her golden hair over her shoulder. “What use has anyone for it?”

Therese didn’t have an answer for that. Which is probably why Julie ended up staying the night.

“You should marry me,” Julie said in the morning, limbs tangled in the very expensive bedsheets on la Marquise de Florensac’s bed.

“Don’t joke,” said Therese. “It’s unkind.”

“I never joke about matters of the heart,” insisted Julie. “Marry me.”

“How? It’s not as if the church will have you.” Over the course of their extremely enthusiastic night, Julie had recounted a rather sordid tale about a nun, a corpse, and a convent fire. “And I suspect the breeches alone will not be enough to convince them you’d make an adequate husband.”

“I like to think I’m more than adequate,” Julie replied, wiggling her fingers. “Let’s have a wedding then. All anyone wants is a party anyway. I’d wager you throw excellent parties.”

“There was a time when I threw the best parties in Paris.”

“See?” Julie rolled on top of Therese, kissing her with a courtier’s skill and a poet’s passion. It was intoxicating. It was distracting. “It would give you a reason to throw a party. You should marry me.”

Therese didn’t feel like arguing, not when she’d been awake all night and yet felt no fatigue, only hunger. And not for breakfast, either. She held Julie close and refused to answer one way or the other on the subject of marriage, certain the other woman would lose interest soon enough.

Julie did not lose interest.

Three weeks later and it was clear that the little swordmaster was infatuated. Therese had no illusions—Julie was clearly the kind of person who fell in love earnestly and often. Paris was littered with hearts the woman had broken, as well as noses. She navigated the world with the kind of insatiable passion that Therese had yearned for once.

“Will you marry me?” Julie said over glasses of wine at a banquet.

“Will you marry me?” She asked again at a dress fitting (from which the singer had abstained).

“Will you marry me?” She asked after an afternoon at the theater.

After a walk in the garden. During a visit at the wigmaker’s shop. At the picnic following a hunt. Half of polite society (and all of impolite society) had heard Julie’s refrain. They thought it a marvelous joke: look at the silly woman pretending to be a besotted gentleman. The kind of farce they found enchanting onstage and off.

Therese did not, as a general rule, find persistence charming. She should have ended it.

“Is there not still a warrant out for your arrest, my sweet?” she would say instead. Or if the afternoon was bright: “How can you speak of marriage when the day is so warm?” In some ways it was easy to pretend she was like all the other members of la noblesse—seeing Julie as a clown, an entertainer without a soul. Their lives were filled with amusements and diversions, they weren’t able to see anything else. But Therese knew better, and she knew Julie would tire of being dismissed eventually. And that would be the end of it.

That was not the end of it.

Weeks passed, then months. A bedroom in the house became Julie's bedroom. La Marquise was never seen in public without her pet singer on her arm. It was disastrous, madcap, reckless. And still, Therese did not end it.

Julie drank, often to excess, and it made her sloppy. Never with her sword, the skills she’d worked into her muscles were impossible to forget. No—Julie was sloppy with herself. She battered her heart against Therese’s impermeable barricades, the constant refusal in the face of a barrage of proposals.

“You should cease,” Therese snapped one night, scowling at her reflection in the mirror at the dressing-table. The Paris season was almost over, the entire court would be departing for Versailles shortly. Therese had not yet decided whether she would also go, or whether she would prefer to become an irrelevant widow. That decision was not what was making her unhappy that evening.

It wasn’t Julie, either. Julie, strewn across the opulent bed, wearing the crown of Athena that she’d pilfered from the costume shelf during her most recent performance. Julie, with her lips stained red from too much wine, her coppery hair tangled and unruly, her cheeks flushed, her autumny skin looking too cold and sallow in the fractured moonlight. Julie, who had once again asked for Therese’s hand in marriage. As if marriage was something either of them could share with one another.

“Will you tell me why?” Julie asked.

Therese sighed. “I have given you many reasons why.”

Julie sat up, a little wobbly. “Many reasons. None of them yours.”

Therese frowned. “Will you not pick one?”

Julie shrugged. “I prefer the truth.”

Therese was silent.

Julie did not wait long before continuing. “I’d understand if you didn’t want me here at all. A good gentleman should know when he’s become undesirable,” Julie would usually say such things with a wink, but not tonight. Only la Maupin would become soberingly serious when drunk. “But you’ve opened your home to me. Given me rooms across from yours, even though you never bid me use them once the servants have been dismissed for the night.”

“Perhaps I only want you for your amusing qualities, and you’d do well to emphasize them instead of badgering me.” Therese set down the hairbrush she hadn’t been using.

“I’ve had lovers like that,” Julie agreed. “Maximillian in Bavaria was like that. Only wanted me when I was singing. Preferred me in pants roles, too, the devil. He treated me like a pretty little songbird, tried to keep me like a pet in a cage. And then he’d had enough of me and—” she gestured vaguely “—he tried to bribe me to leave. But that was different,” she said, gazing at Therese with sparkling eyes. “He never loved me.”

Therese frowned. “Perhaps you never gave him the chance.”

Julie shrugged. “He didn’t deserve one.”

For a few moments, Therese thought that was the end of it. That Julie was too drunk to remember what she’d been asking, or too tired. They’d been at another never-ending party that evening, and they were both tired. But then Julie stood, wavering slightly, still catlike in the way she closed the distance between them. She lay a hand on Therese’s shoulder.

“From the first night we met, I knew what I felt for you. A burning, beautiful love. I knew you didn’t feel the same, not right away. People rarely do.” Julie closed her eyes, as if banishing a world of hurt. “I love so immediately, so intensely. I’m used to waiting for others to catch up. Even though some never do.”

Despite herself, Therese placed her hand on Julie’s. Felt the callouses from the pommel of a thousand hours of swordplay. Therese wanted to comfort the other woman. To see her stop fighting so very hard. “Julie…”

“You’ve changed, Therese. What you feel for me has changed. The way you look at me.”

Therese nodded, giving away too much. “You see what you wish to see,” she said, contradicting every inch of her body which yearned to hold her lover in her arms.

“Then tell me you do not love me,” Julie said, her voice suddenly harsh and true. No longer playful, no longer a pretty little toy or a swooning heroine. “Stand up and face me and tell me that I have no place in your heart. And I will never ask you again to marry me.”

Therese was still. She could not do it. Could not lie, could not even stand.

The quiet of the night stretched between them.

“You break my heart, Marquise,” Julie said, heading for the door.

That, Therese could not accept. “Don’t leave,” she said. She was standing now, didn’t remember getting up. Nor did she realize she’d crossed the room, stumbling over the curling fabric of her dressing-gown to stop Julie from opening the door. But now Julie’s hand was in hers, warm and filled with life.

“I do love you,” she said, forcing herself to look into Julie’s dark brown eyes. “I don’t know when it began, but I have loved you for a very long time.” She swallowed. “And I am ashamed to admit it.”

Julie reached for her, stroking her cheek. “What use have we for shame, dear one?”

Therese realized that she was crying, that Julie was wiping away a tear. She shuddered. “Everything, Julie. Everything.”

Julie pulled her close, tried to hold her, but Therese refused. “I cannot keep you here any longer. You have no future with me.”

Julie stiffened. “Why? If you love me, then why? No law of man can stop me, no court that has tried to detain me has ever succeeded.” She cupped Therese’s cheek in the palm of her hand. “Why will you not even see yourself happy? Do you truly believe that no one would want to spend the better part of your years with you? Why?”

Therese trembled. “Because a higher power has seen fit to ensure that no one will.”

Julie shook her head. Didn’t understand. Therese forced herself to explain. To end it. “It was that wretched summer. You were gone, far from Paris. From the sickness that swept through us all. It took my husband fast.” Therese felt the words dropping from her lips like stones. “It left me to linger. To fester,” she snarled. “But anyone with consumption knows not to plan for tomorrow. And I know better than to take anyone else with me.”

“Oh my love,” Julie was murmuring in her ear, wiping her cheeks, kissing her forehead.

Coaxed into bed, they lay beside one another until the sun rose, and then for some time longer.

“I suppose you tried the royal touch?”

Therese grimaced. “No one thinks they’d be desperate enough for it until they actually are desperate,” she replied, pulling herself up to sit with her back against the headboard. “Yes, I went on the appointed day and received his curative touch in exchange for coin. That night I woke up coughing so violently I bled through a dozen handkerchiefs. Whatever blessing the Sun King has to offer, it was too good for the likes of me.”

“His blessings have as much teeth as his curses then. Figures.” Julie rose as well, stretching. “So all of this time, months of my badgering, you were afraid to say yes to me because you feared that I would love you too much?”

Therese flushed. “That is not… entirely true. I feared that I would disappoint you.”

Julie gave her a scathing look. “Because I would love you too much and grieve when you eventually die?”

Therese returned the look. “Perhaps.”

Julie reached for her, a hand on her knee. “I fear it’s too late for that.”

Therese didn’t know where to look. Gazing at Julie was too painful, but looking away from her was somehow worse. She settled on staring at Julie’s hand, the scars from too many close calls littering her knuckles.

“I should have turned you out that first night. Ever since I…I have lived alone, retired from public life, been the devout widow grieving her husband while I waited to be reunited with him in heaven. Until you arrived on my doorstep and began drinking my wine and dragging me to parties and—”

“And loving you, Therese.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes. And that.”

She felt Julie shifting, felt the other woman’s fingers underneath her chin. Therese opened her eyes, drinking in the sight of Julie. An impossible woman who dressed like a man and sang like an angel, with a devilish smile and a beautiful soul.

“If you do not wish to marry me, I will respect your decision,” Julie said, sincerity making her dark brown eyes sparkle. “But you must respect my decision to stay.”

Therese covered her mouth for a moment, because she wanted to say yes and of course and please never leave me even though it was selfish. When she finally had control of herself, she said instead, “It will be ugly. When my husband died, it was awful: the stench of it, the pain.”

Julie shrugged. “I’ve seen ugliness and death before. Been the cause of it enough times because I was impulsive or vain or just bored.”

“Julie…”

“It will be different. I know that. Anyone else I’ve killed…” She shrugged. “I’ve never looked back. You will not be like that. Seeing you die will hurt.” Then her face took on a look that Therese knew well. It was stubborn. The look Julie wore just before she challenged someone to a duel or stepped onstage to perform. “I know what I face, and if you, Therese la Marquise de Florensac, think for one moment that Julie d’Aubigny is too much of a coward to care for you with honor as you pass from this world, then you don’t know me at all.”

Therese reached for her, fingers stroking Julie’s lips. “I know you, my love.”

Julie smiled. “Good.”

Julie looked away for a moment, searching for something. Failing whatever it was she was hunting for, she returned her gaze to Therese. With a cunning grin, Julie removed the pin from the jacket she hadn’t removed the night before. She twisted it in her fingers, bending it into a small loop.

“There, ‘til death do us part then?”

There really was no deterring her. Therese threw her head back and laughed. “Very well, Julie,” she said, kissing her. “If that is what you want.”

Show Notes

This quarter’s fiction episode presents Love for Love’s Sake by Shannon Lippert, narrated by Heather Rose Jones.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

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

Links to Heather Online

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

Links to Shannon Lippert Online

Website: shannonlippert.wordpress.com
Bluesky: @shannonxl.bsky.social

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