This chapter compares the dearth of entries for f/f sexuality in general dictionaries in the 1750-1850 period with the wealth of discussion on those topics in medical dictionaries. The appearance of medical dictionaries as a genre aligned with an explosion of vernacular publishing in the health field in the 16-17th centuries. These were aimed not only at non-specialists, but at health workers outside the academic elite—people who didn’t have access to Latin literature. The publishing establishment operated as gatekeepers in terms of what material got published and how it was presented.
sex between women
This tag is used for any general discussion of erotic physical activity between women or one where more specific terms are not mentioned.
LHMP entry
This chapter opens discussing how dictionaries explicitly presented themselves as censoring inappropriate language when aimed at an audience that included women. This sort of comment shows up as early as the later 18th century. Even the nature of what was being censored is censored, with explanations that it is aimed at “inelegant” words, rather than objectionable or obscene ones.
This chapter begins exploring the assertion that languages bear an essential relationship to the nature of their speakers, and that deviations of the language from this essential quality can be attributed to foreign influences. This idea appears in the introduction to a 1676 dictionary. The naturalization of words is paralleled to the naturalization of citizens and must be a strongly policed. Ethnic stereotypes are ascribed to languages along with the people who speak them. English, of course, is assumed to be neutral, moderate, and free from excess.
This chapter looks at how words are defined and cited, and the semantic frameworks they’re associated with, using “sodomy” and “buggery” as the working examples. [Note: my summary is going to give undue attention to discussions relevant to women.]
Sossang and Danji: 15th century Korean maidservants in love—a guest-blog by L.J. Lee
Copyright (c) 2024 by L.J. Lee, all rights reserved. Contact the author for permissions.
Content warning: Sexual violence and stalking, enslavement, corporeal punishment, sexism, violent lesbophobia, classism
Introduction
It is generally agreed on by historians that evidence for prosecutions of women for “sodomy” (however defined) are both rare (in absolute terms and compared to those for men) and often more lightly punished. Roelens explores a context that runs counter to this pattern: the Southern Netherlands in the 15th and early 16th century.
The defamation lawsuit brought by Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie against Lady Cumming Gordon in the early 19th century is often cited as concerning accusations of lesbianism against the two women. But This article looks at the details of the cause as illustrating points of Scottish legal procedure.
Chapter 7- Allen: Sexual Offences Prosecutions in the Late Twentieth Century
[Note: I think I’m succeeding in a briefer, high-level summary for the remaining chapters. These notes may be more random and unconnected.]
[Note: it is actually rather hard to do a very condensed overview of these chapters that are of less interest to the Project. I’m trying to get much more high-level for these last few chapters.]
A 1957 committee considered potential changes to the legal treatment of “vices”. One goal of the changes was to keep activities in this category, such as prostitution and homosexuality, out of public view. Even decriminalization was not intended for the benefit of the accused, but to suppress knowledge of the activities.
By the 1920s, certain sexual offenses between women were criminalized, but not the generic “gross indecency”. “Female husband” disappeared from the record with respect to sexual offenses, but the case of Victor/Valerie Barker signals a new direction of medicalized approaches, combined with anxiety over single women in the wake of World War I and the glimmerings of visibility brought by the obscenity lawsuit over The Well of Loneliness. This was a short-lived visibility ended by a rejection of sexological arguments for acceptance.
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