Chapter 1: The Tribade, the Hermaphrodite, and Other “Lesbian” Figures in Medical and Legal Discourse
18th c
LHMP entry
The word “intimacy” is chosen for the focus of this book deliberately for its ambiguity of meaning. It reflects both openness within relationships and privacy protecting those relationships. “Intimacy” can both indicate close friendship and be a euphemism for sex.
Traub claims the title of this article is a “bait and switch” as she follows Halperin in treating “homosexuality” as such as only existing in the last 100 years, with “the lesbian” as an even more recent discursive invention.
Hatem looks at systems of institutionalized male control of female sexuality in 18-19th century Egypt, considering issues of class and ethnicity, as well as large-scale political shifts and disruptions. Moreover, patriarchal systems are not only about relations between men and women, but about how relations among women and relations among men support or resist power structures.
Part I - We “Other Victorians”
Introduction
Bray’s book was inspired by trying to understand the meaning behind various joint funeral memorials of pairs of non-related men. The study expanded to “the distinctive place friendship occupied in traditional society” in Europe from the 11th to the 18th centuries. The focus is on friendship as a public rather than a private phenomenon. He also touches on the relationship of homosexuality to same-sex friendship.
I’m going to start this summary by noting that the more articles I read from Randolph Trumbach, the grumpier I get. When the highlights on my pdfs are augmented by scribbled red pen notes saying “No! Wrong!”, it’s not a good sign. So I don’t exactly come into this summary with an unbiased mind.
Hitchcock starts from a demographic observation and works to build a picture of the social and historic context that may have motivated that demographic fact.
Faderman’s book came out of several articles she wrote on the topic of love between women, how that love was expressed in literature and correspondence, how and when love between women became pathologized by sexological theory, and how self-conscious lesbian identity arose within that context. The work had come from a very personal place for her: entering the lesbian social world in the 1950s at a time when that identity was still heavily stigmatized and working through the process in the decades that followed of embracing lesbian identity as a positive force.
Pages
