This is the last article I had flagged to finish before writing the "Lesbians and the Law" episode for the podcast, though of course there are many more publications relevant to the topic that I haven't yet read. One of the eternal truths of this project is that I can never wait to know "everything" before writing on a topic. That's going to be a real pain point when I work on my sourcebook--there will always be "one more thing" I want to research.
LHMP
Blog entry
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 01 – A Very Long Malaise by L.J. Lee - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/11/30 - listen here)
This article fits in well with the question of what the actual legal issues are when lesbianism is part of the context of a legal case. When you dig into it, the central usefulness of Pirie & Woods vs Cumming Gordon is not what it says about whether two specific women had a lesbian relationship, but rather the amount of detail it provides about legal and social attitudes toward lesbianism at the time.
Sometimes tracking down a key publication can take a bit of work. This one was published in a journal that my local university library doesn't subscribe to, and the isn't in JSTOR (the online portal for academic articles). In the end, I had to temporarily subscribe to the journal to be able to download this one article. (The subject of the journal doesn't have directly to do with gender or sexuality, so it's unlikely that any other content is going to be relevant.) The things I do for my Project!
This finishes up Derry with the final chapters and my overall thoughts on the book.
One fascinating thing that Derry's study demonstrates is that with respect to the English legal treatment of lesbianism, the situation got steadily worse across the 20th century before it got any better. So much for the illusion of a progressive century!
I've finished writing up the remainder of this book, so expect the final blogs on it in the next couple days.
One subtext to the history of English legal handling of lesbianism is a rebuttal of any notion that laws and attitudes have historically moved in a consistent direction. It's particularly important to keep this in mind when writing historical fiction set before the 20th century. (This applies generally, but particularly in England.) There was a scene in the tv series Gentleman Jack where Anne Walker freaks out over the thought of legal prosecution for her relationship with Ann Lister.
Once again, I'll save my overall thoughts for the end of this set of posts. (In part because I want to get the posts up and haven't yet solidified what I want to say, overall.)
In this second chapter of Derry's book on legal aspects of lesbianism in England, the focus is on situations when "female husbands" (i.e., assinged-female persons living as men who married women or presented themselves as being married to women). In fact, a great deal of the pre-20th century focus of Derry's work is focused strongly on the specific topic of how the law (and the newspapers) dealt with "female husbands," while lesbianism that took other forms was not generally of interest to the law. More on this when I do my concluding discussion of the book.
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