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Saturday, January 11, 2025 - 12:48
It's often the case that my bibliography includes not only substantial books on queer history, but the articles written by the same author as they developed the material--sometimes across decades. I have a couple articles by Turton in my list, and this one seemed like a good chaser.
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Full citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2022. “The Lexicographical Lesbian: Remaking the Body in Anne Lister’s Erotic Glossary” in The Review of English Studies, vol. 73, no. 310: 537-551.
One of the threads I’ve followed in structuring the Lesbian Historic Motif Project is the question of how women in history could have become aware of the possibilities of love between women. What models would they have? To what extent would they have viewed their own desires as part of a pre-existing tradition? We rarely have data as explicit and detailed as Anne Lister’s diaries, but they give us a snapshot of one type of possibility.
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It might seem odd to cover this article after covering Turton’s book (Before the Word Was Queer) that functionally includes material about Anne Lister, but “The Lexicographical Lesbian” goes into a bit more detail. And besides which, I’m a completist.
The theme of this article is the ways in which people acquire knowledge about sexuality, and how they use that knowledge to develop an understanding of their own sexuality. In the case of Anne Lister, we have a specific example of how she sought out vocabulary about sex, and especially about same-sex topics. She not only compiled a glossary for her own reference, but recorded how that exploration made her feel and how it affected self-understanding.
The paper begins with what seems like the requisite meditation on the use of the word “lesbian” in the context of historic studies, particularly considering Paula Blank’s “The Proverbial ‘Lesbian’” and its exploration of the usefulness of tracing the history of the word across time and different languages. [Note: this article is on my to-do list and maybe I should move it up the priority.]
Turton notes that the history of dictionaries has typically focused on a sort of patrilineal heritage – tracing the relationships between male-authored high-profile dictionaries – while ignoring the work of female lexicographers and studies on the language of marginalized communities (e.g., gay slang). But while these community languages were rarely incorporated into official dictionaries, the communities themselves can be traced through careful work.
In addition to examples of 18th century male “molly house” communities, Turton catalogs references to [the perception, at least, of] secret networks of women-loving-women, intersecting figures such as sculptor Anne Damer. He refers to Anne Lister’s “language play” as more of an individual, rather than community, project. [Note: Though we can’t know to what extent Lister’s many lovers either shared her vocabulary or picked it up from her.] In addition to Lister’s diaries, she compiled several “commonplace books” (a term for a sort of scrapbook in which people compiled useful or interesting information). It’s in one of these that she recorded her glossary of erotic language. The act of compiling it demonstrates that dictionaries—in addition to serving their authors’ stated purposes and audiences—have a separate life in how readers interact with them.
We now return to consideration of the historicity of using the word “lesbian” in a late 18th century context. Turton reviews, not only how various historians of sexuality have approached the question, but the historic evidence for use of the word (and related words) in something approximating the modern sense. (This is an interesting discussion on its own, and includes some more recent shifts away from the position against using “lesbian” in a historic context.)
Circling back to Lister’s thoughts, we see how she interpreted sexuality in large part via books and classical texts—though not as thoroughly as she sometimes claimed when discussing the topic with other women. (Lister frequently dissembled about her out experience and desires when sounding out other women about theirs.)
Lister was unusual (though far from unique) as a woman familiar with classical languages and interested in acquiring books generally considered appropriate only for male readers. The glossary she compiled allows us to trace both her sources (primarily Nathan Bailey’s 1721 Universal Etymological English Dictionary) and her active search for sexual vocabulary.
Having identified the words, which typically appear in the context of misogynistic and heteronormative assumptions, we get commentary on how Lister imagined herself into their linguistic context. With respect to the definition of Latin crisare (the movements a woman makes during intercourse), Lister recorded “thinking of these things after getting into bed in a state of great excitement for a good while & afterwards it is sad to confess another cross” [i.e., orgasm – Lister seems to have attached stigma to masturbation that she didn’t attach to sex with women].
Another angle to self-insertion (if you will forgive my double-entendre) appears in several passages in the diaries where Lister fantasizes or speculates about how she would act with specific women if she had a penis. Her glossary includes several anatomical terms involving the penis, as well as the clitoris. These fantasies did not extend to using a dildo, which she explicitly disparaged in one diary entry (while imagining the use of one and being familiar with classical references to them). She considered, but appears to have rejected, the trope of women using enlarged clitorises for lesbian sex, and explored her own anatomy to conclude that it was not unusual in structure (and therefore could not be an explanation for her desires). Several diary entries, as well as a recorded citation in her glossary for tribas led Lister to mull over the question of whether sex between women constituted adultery (if one of them were married, as her long-time lover Mariana was).
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Saturday, January 4, 2025 - 14:48
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 304 - On the Shelf for January 2025 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2025/01/04 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for January 2025.
And there it is—boom!—the start of another year. This is going to be a year of many changes for me, though perhaps fewer changes for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project at the moment. In less than four months, I’ll be retired and working on all my writing projects full time. It already feels like it’s still too far off and yet galloping down on me. I’ve already worked through about half of my retirement-preparation checklist and much of the rest are things related to my day-job that can’t be set in motion until I’m much closer to the date. I hope that this time next year, I’ll be able to talk more about my own fiction projects, which should have moved from periodic note-taking to active writing.
And since it’s January, we’re open for submissions for the 2025 fiction series for the podcast. So if you’ve been working on a story, it’s time to get it polished up and sent in for consideration. Every year I think that it would be hard to beat the previous season in terms of quality and diversity, but so far I’ve always been delightfully surprised. If you’re submitting a story, make sure to check the submission guidelines (see the link in the show notes) to make sure you’re aiming for the right target.
Publications on the Blog
This year I’ve had the impression that I’m falling down on my blogging schedule for the Project. In theory, my goal is to have at least one post per week, but there have been long gaps where I didn’t get anything up. Evidently I’ve made up for that with several flurries of posting, because when I went back and counted, I made 45 individual posts on books and articles, representing 6 books (usually blogged in multiple posts), 11 isolated articles and one collection of 15 articles, and one guest blog. I spent a lot of this year on research in support of specific podcast topics. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve started to focus the podcast on developing material for the sapphic history sourcebook. So rather than working through my backlog of general and random material, I’ve been going through my bookshelves and files to pull materials to fill in some of the blank spaces in my outline.
But there’s still room for indulging in books that are just plain fun. This month, it was Stephen Turton’s Before the Word was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930, which studies how vocabulary for queer subjects has been handled in dictionaries of the English language, leading up to a deep dive into the biases and gatekeeping that made the Oxford English Dictionary a badly flawed resource for the topic. Any time you hear someone confidently saying that “English didn’t even have a word for lesbians until the end of the 19th century” you’re seeing the damage done by over-reliance on a resource that deliberately and systematically censored the existence of women loving women. Ahem. I do get a bit passionate on this topic, because it pops up so much, not only in casual conversation among non-specialists, but even among historians. There are so many misperceptions about sapphic history, but I hope to whittle away at a few of them.
The winter holidays also gave me the time to read several other publications for blogging, so let’s see if I can keep the momentum going.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
And one thing that has constant momentum is the flow of new lesbian and sapphic historical fiction. I found one November book that hadn’t previously come to my attention.
Christmas At Caldwell House (The Caldwell Family #2) by Eden Hopewell is a short story following up on the author’s novel For Love and Liberty, set in early 19th century Philadelphia.
A year after their love defied society and sparked change in the Caldwell mill, Sarah and Abigail are building a life together. But Christmas at Caldwell House stirs more than holiday cheer—it brings unresolved tensions, lingering doubts, and shadows of the past to the surface.
As Sarah faces a bittersweet return to the city she fled, Abigail’s determination to create a holiday of unity is tested by old wounds and unexpected challenges. Together, they must confront the ghosts of who they were to protect the future they’re striving to build.
Several December books get included this month. First up is Bold Privateer, a short work (maybe novelette length?) by Jeannelle M. Ferreira that ties in very loosely with her novel The Covert Captain.
Charlie Linley is far from her family. Noor Bakri was stolen from hers. Together they work out what home looks like, in spite of the Royal Navy, the Revolutionary War, and themselves. Or: sometimes your government wants to blow you sky-high, your family is not what anyone expects, and getting by on hope looks like piracy.
The Bawdy Suffragettes by Sapphic Shelley from InkPour is another short work. Both the title and the author’s pen name suggest this may lean strongly toward erotica, but the cover copy had enough solid historical references that I figured I’d give it the benefit of the doubt. (Please note that I don’t exclude books from these listings for being erotic, but I don’t tend to include books where it looks like the historic setting is thin window-dressing on something that’s primarily erotica.)
Elizabeth follows the mysterious Jenny Farrell into the daring suffragette world of London after she burst into Elizabeth's structured world that morning like a ray of defiant sunshine, forever altering her perspective. Now, Elizabeth found herself entangled in Jenny's risky mission to spread awareness, though she couldn't deny the exhilaration of rebellion pulsing through her veins.
Little did Elizabeth know, this chance encounter would ignite an unbreakable bond and launch her down an unexpected path toward forbidden love. When their impassioned fight for equality introduces Elizabeth to the alluring Delilah, she's forced to confront desires she never knew existed.
The era between the world wars in England is the setting for Unspoken Verses by S.P. Blackthorn.
In the wake of World War I, two women in 1930s England navigate the tumultuous landscape of forbidden love, societal constraints, and the weight of family expectations.
Amelia is a gifted writer born into privilege, her future seemingly written out for her by her powerful family. Yet beneath her refined exterior lies a rebellious spirit, one that is drawn to Carina, a married woman living a quiet life by the river. Their love—unspoken but undeniable—flourishes in the secrecy of stolen moments, but as the world around them spirals toward change, so too does the danger that looms over their bond.
In the shadow of an oppressive society and a brutal war that refuses to end, Amelia and Carina must choose: continue their quiet rebellion or break free from the chains of their past. As the tension between them and their families grows, they must confront the most difficult choice of all—their own survival or the survival of their love.
The January releases have a nice spread of historic settings, beginning with the French court in the late 16th century. If you’re familiar with the tv series The Serpent Queen, this next book is set in the era when Catherine de’ Medici was pulling strings as dowager queen of France: A Traitorous Heart by Erin Cotter from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Paris, 1572. Seventeen-year-old Jacqueline “Jac” d’Argenson-Aunis is lady-in-waiting to her best friend and former lover, the French Princess Marguerite “Margot” de Valois, but she dreams of more. If Jac plays her cards right, one day, she’ll become a full member of the Societas Solis, a secret society of spies—just like her uncle and guardian, Viscount Gabriel d’Argenson-Aunis.
But it’s hard to think about her own ambitions while France is on the brink of war, and the only thing that might save the country is an alliance—a marriage between the Catholic Princess Margot and Henry, the awful son of the Huguenot queen. Who would be the perfect person to play matchmaker? Jac, of course.
Jac resents lying to her best friend almost as much as she resents the brazen and arrogant King Henry, but it’s her one chance to prove to the Societas Solis that she belongs among their ranks before her uncle can marry her off or worse. The more time Jac spends in the French Court’s clandestine corners, though, the more she starts to wonder if Henry is…not as terrible as she once believed. And the Societas Solis may not be what they seem.
Politics. Spies. Chaos in the French court. Perhaps even witchcraft? Everything’s more dangerous when love is involved.
Those Fatal Flowers by Shannon Ives from Dell braids together various timelines in a historic fantasy suggested for fans of Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint, and Natalie Haynes.
Before, Scopuli. It has been centuries since Thelia made the mistake that cost her the woman she loved. As the handmaidens charged with protecting Proserpina, the goddess of spring, Thelia and her sisters are banished to the island of Scopuli, cursed to live as sirens—winged half-woman, half-bird creatures. In luring men to their death, they hope to gain favor from the gods who could free them. But then ships stop coming and Thelia fears a fate worse than the underworld. Just as time begins to run out, a voice emerges, Proserpina’s voice; and what she asks of Thelia will spark a daring and dangerous quest for freedom.
Now, Roanoke. Thelia can't bear to reflect on her last moments in Scopuli, where she left behind her sisters. After weeks drifting at sea, Thelia’s renewed human body is close to death. Luckily, an unfamiliar island appears on the horizon—Roanoke. Posing as a princess arriving on a sailboat filled with riches, Thelia infiltrates the small English colony. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that this place is dangerous, especially for women. As she grows closer to a beautiful settler who mysteriously resembles her former love, Thelia formulates a plan to save her sisters and enact revenge on the violent men she’s come to hate. But is she willing to go back to Scopuli and face the decisions of her past? And will Proserpina forgive her for all that she’s done?
Told in alternating timelines, Those Fatal Flowers is a powerful, passionate, and wildly cathartic love letter to femininity and the monstrous power within us all.
Jane Walsh continues her series of Regency romances with Seducing the Widow from Bold Strokes Books
Miss Cassandra Belvedere and Miss Louise Sheffield were once debutantes vying for the same gentleman’s attentions. Bitter rivalry turned to passion—but at the end of the Season, Louise chose the earl instead of the girl.
Fifteen years later, Cass strides back into London Society to demand Louise’s help. After all, it’s the least she can do after destroying Cass’s life. Her family’s glove making business is in peril, and the elegant Louise, now the widowed Countess of Atwater, wields enough power to bring Cass’s gloves into fashion.
But Louise didn’t expect the attraction between them to burn stronger than ever, or that society would turn on her for associating with Cass. Bold, brash Cass has the real power—to unravel Louise’s strait-laced life and show her that their passion is worth fighting for.
Nothing could prepare them for the Season of a lifetime—or a second chance to fall in love.
In a similar setting, Theresa Meiningen offers a short seasonal story Her Ladyship's Christmas Companion. Alas, that the cycles of publicity mean that I almost never manage to promote Christmas stories in time for folks to read them at the right season!
Honor Holt has never been the sentimental sort. The daughter of a banker, she has always seen the world in facts and figures. With little desire to marry, and even less desire to remain in her father's home, she takes a posting as a governess in the countryside. There she hopes to find a career, or at least some decently fresh air.
But instead she finds Lady Jane Linton, the spinster aunt of Honor's charge. Quiet and plain, Jane has been relegated to caretaker of her nephew for much of his life, and she resents the sudden arrival of a governess meant to take her place. Tempers - and sparks - fly as the two realize they have more in common than they do apart. Will the pair of them manage to find the relationship they never thought possible? Or will these two 'queer' souls remain separated forever.
And all at Christmas too!
And now we skip to mid-20th century New York with The Songbird by Stacy Lynn Miller from Severn River Publishing.
In the glamorous world of 1940s New York, Hattie James is a rising star, enchanting audiences at the iconic Copacabana Club. But her glittering life is shattered by a shocking phone call: her father, a respected diplomat, has been arrested for espionage, accused of aiding Nazi Germany. As her world crumbles, Hattie is plunged into a whirlwind of danger and deceit.
Following her father's dramatic escape and alleged betrayal, Hattie is coerced by the FBI to aid their hunt. Her mission: infiltrate Rio de Janeiro's high society and uncover the truth about her father's loyalties.
In the sultry heat of Rio, Hattie poses undercover as a singer at the Halo Club, owned by enigmatic Maya Reyes. Each performance at this vibrant hotspot brings her closer to the dark secrets entangling the city, and every note she sings could lead to her father—or to a trap set by those who wish to silence her.
When Maya’s sister suddenly goes missing, Hattie unearths a shocking connection between her father and the mysterious SS leader Heinz Baumann. With stakes higher than ever, Hattie finds herself thrust even deeper into a dangerous undercover operation that threatens to put more than just her own life at risk.
Other Books of Interest
I’m putting The Spirit Circle by Tara Calaby from Text Publishing into the “other books of interest” category because I cannot for the life of me figure out what time period the book is set in. (And when I went looking for hints in Goodreads reviews, it appears that even reading the book doesn’t entirely clarify the question.) So this may be a historical. I’m not sure.
For Ellen Whitfield, the betrothal of her dear friend Harriet to Ellen’s brother has brought both loss and solace. But when Harriet suddenly breaks off the engagement, ostensibly at the insistence of her deceased mother, Ellen is bewildered. And when she learns that Harriet is involved with a spiritualist group led by the charismatic Caroline McLeod, she fears losing her friend altogether.
So it is that practical, sceptical Ellen moves into the gloomy East Melbourne mansion where Caroline, along with her enigmatic daughter Grace, has assembled a motley court of the bereaved. Ellen’s intention is to expose the simple trickery—the hidden cabinets and rigged seances, the levers and wires—that must surely lie behind these visits from the departed.
What she discovers is altogether more complicated.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading in the last month? I somehow managed to fit in a lot more than usual. (In fact, between when I first started drafting the script for this show and when I finalized it for recording, I finished another book.)
Tasha Suri’s The Burning Kingdoms series comes to a satisfying conclusion with The Lotus Empire, which is a really tricky thing to do when you’re dealing with empire and colonialism and apparently-doomed friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-something sapphic relationships. It’s a fairly harrowing series, and I’m glad that the author managed to pull it off.
Somewhat less satisfying was the latest installment in Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock historic mystery series, A Ruse of Shadows. One of the things that hooked me on this series was the convoluted, multi-layered, unreliably-narrated plots that only made complete sense on a second reading. But either the plots have tipped over into merely bewildering, or I’ve lost interest in working quite that hard to follow the plot, because this time I just felt confused and uninterested. I probably will stop after this installment, but I still cherish how delighted I was with the first handful of her books.
As noted above, Jeannelle M. Ferreira has come out with a shortish work Bold Privateer, which is an independent prequel to her novel The Covert Captain. “Independent” as in, you have to be paying close attention and double-check some references to figure out that they connect at all, so if you haven’t read the latter, it won’t affect your enjoyment. As I noted in regards to the author’s recent collection The Fire and the Place in the Forest, for me the secret to Ferreira’s work is to experience it more as narrative poetry than as traditional prose. Her writing is impressionistic and lush. The story has a central sapphic relationship, set among violence but not tragedy.
I’m not sure whether it would be appropriate to call Hari Conner’s graphic novel I Shall Never Fall in Love sapphic, though certainly “likely to appeal to fans of sapphic regencies.” The plot is based to varying degrees on Jane Austen’s Emma, with a transmasculine character in the Knightly role. Lovely artwork, and I really enjoyed the first quarter or so of the story. Then it slipped into a beat-for-beat retelling of Emma, even down to much of the dialogue, and I enjoyed it less than I would have something entirely original. Don’t get me wrong: I love Austen-inspired queer re-workings, but I’m not fond of anything that borders on a search-and-replace approach.
I also would have liked to enjoy Emma-Claire Sunday’s regency romance The Duke’s Sister and I more than I did. The romance plot itself was fine, but I didn’t feel like there was much besides the romance plot—or at least not much beyond the bare bones of the plot-tokens necessary for the mechanics of the romance, like one heroine’s secret career as a portrait painter. While the story wasn’t in conflict with the historic setting, neither did it feel particularly embedded in that setting. Like a number of other mainstream sapphic historical romances I’ve read lately, the plot seems like a boat bobbing on the surface of the ocean of history, while the passengers remain dry.
So what do I mean by wanting historicals that are more immersive? I always come back to the example of K.J. Charles, whose Masters in this Hall was the only print book I read this month (as part of my program to fill in my gaps in her backlist). It’s a relatively short caper-style second-chance romance involving side characters from her Lily White Boys series, in which Christmas revels at a country mansion are the setting for trapping a villain and redeeming some reputations.
The last book, finished just this morning, is T. Kingfisher’s dark fantasy (almost horror) A Sorceress Comes to Call. The plot is – well, let’s call it “allusive of” rather than “based on” the fairy tale of the goose girl and her talking horse. There’s a horribly abusive mother (whose comeuppance is similar to the climax of my fairy tale The Language of Roses), a sympathetic ingenue, and a lovely second-chance romance involving an older woman. Big content notice for violence and coercion.
Looking forward to maybe shifting back to more print reading this year, what with the upcoming changes in my life.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Christmas At Caldwell House (The Caldwell Family #2) by Eden Hopewell
- Bold Privateer (The Covert Captain prequel) by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
- The Bawdy Suffragettes by Sapphic Shelley
- Unspoken Verses by S.P. Blackthorn
- A Traitorous Heart by Erin Cotter
- Those Fatal Flowers by Shannon Ives
- Seducing the Widow by Jane Walsh
- Her Ladyship's Christmas Companion by Theresa Meiningen
- The Songbird by Stacy Lynn Miller
- Other Titles of Interest
- What I’ve been consuming
- The Lotus Empire (Burning Kingdomes #3) by Tasha Suri
- I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner
- Masters in this Hall by K.J. Charles
- Bold Privateer by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
- A Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock #8) by Sherry Thomas
- The Duke’s Sister and I by Emma-Claire Sunday
- A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
- Call for submissions for the 2025 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
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPTuesday, December 31, 2024 - 10:50
It feels very tidy to finish up this book on the last day of the year. While 2024 didn't achieve my theoretical goal of posting a blog once a week, I did come closer than I expected, thanks to several bursts of productivity when reading for specific podcast topics.
2025, of course, is going to see a lot of change due to my retirement. I hope to plunge deeply into getting more material read and blogged, filling in the gaps in the table of contents for my sourcebook project, and of course getting back to writing the fiction that all this research is (theoretically) supporting.
In the mean time, I wish that everyone can look back at 2024 and feel happy with that you've done, and look forward to 2025 and find at least one thing to focus on that you believe will be to the greater good.
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LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Conclusion
This section discusses other dictionaries contemporary with or subsequent to the publication of the OED, and the ways in which they were indebted to it. This debt included reproducing some of its deficiencies.
But a new generation of dictionaries recognized the exclusion of the language of marginalized communities. The use of electronic corpus data revolutionized the ability to identify and include citations, reducing some of the bias inherent in funneling the editorial process through specific individual editors. Corpus data, however, adds a new veneer of objectivity onto a majoritarian approach that still has the tendency to erase or overlook word senses specific to minority communities.
The conflict between dictionaries as descriptive versus prescriptive continued, as compilers questioned the appropriateness of accepting words considered to be slang or not yet established in the lexicon. For example, in the 1970s, dictionary editors could still debate whether “gay” should be added as an acceptable formal equivalent for “homosexual.”
But the shift to electronic/online editions of dictionaries made the process of updating easier and more rapid.
Crowd-sourced dictionaries such as Wiktionary give marginalized communities more theoretical input, but de facto biases in the volunteer editors still affect the result. Crowd-sourcing can also open the potential for trolling and abusive content, particularly seen in the Urban Dictionary.
The presumption of authority given to the OED can result in users giving deference to its gaps and flaws, even in the face of counter-evidence. Hence the persistence of the claim that there was no identifiable lesbian identity in English until the 1920s, despite clear evidence of vocabulary for f/f sex in the 18th century and earlier. (The OED 3rd edition has corrected these omissions, but the myth of “no word for lesbian before the sexologists” persists in both formal and informal discussion. [Note: I regularly find myself countering this myth in social media spaces to this day.]
Further citations for queer vocabulary could be included if dictionaries expanded to include private correspondence among queer communities, where words are often well established long before they make their way into published material. This method could help fill in apparent discontinuities, such as the gap in OED citations for sapphic/sapphist between 1900 and 1933. Current citation sources also result in a bias toward male authors in citations for f/f terms, which in turn can result in a bias toward negative contexts.
This chapter ends with a summing up of the relevance of lexicography to studying queer history.
There are two appendices. The first is a transcript of Anne Lister’s hand-compiled glossary of sexual vocabulary. The second is a table, organized by headword, of the queer vocabulary in the dictionaries studied for this book.
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Monday, December 30, 2024 - 09:52
While the purpose of this book is not entirely to lead up to how the OED became the thing that it is, this chapter feels like everything was leading to this moment. Without understanding the long history of editorial moral anxiety over the content of dictionaries, the specific choices made in compiling what was intended to be a neutral "scientific" record of the English language might seem more sinister than they were. And yet here we are: a work that purports to objectivity and yet systematically and deliberately erases, obscures, and vilifies f/f sexuality. There is a lesson here for all historical study of female same-sex relations. So much of the information has come down to us was filtered through the goals and biases of people who had a deliberate agenda along those lines. It doesn't mean that the historic data is useless, but rather that--as many queer and feminist historians have pointed out--it must be read "across the grain" to account for those biases.
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LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Chapter 5 – Taxonomizing Desire
This chapter focuses on the philosophy, history, and development of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) specifically. The creation of the OED was a monumental project, delivered alphabetically in fascicles (separate installments of a larger work, meant to be bound into a single volume when complete). The fascicles were released beginning in the 1880s and completed in 1928, followed by a supplement in 1933 to catch up with developments in the previous half century.
The editors touted it as the “supreme development” of lexicography, “permeated…through and through with the scientific method.” This “scientific method” referred to use of historic data to trace the emergence and development of words and meanings. The process included massive numbers of volunteers identifying and contributing quotations from written sources to assist in creating the histories of words. However, like science itself, this method was deeply rooted in the Anglocentric and male-centered biases of its (white, male, English) editors. In addition to racial and gender biases, they carried over the mission of imposing a particular view of sexual morality on the contents.
The censoring of “bad words” was challenged by reviewers even at the beginning of the project, but the effect was not entirely due to editorial choice. A slang dictionary published in the 1890s unsuccessfully sued a printer for refusing to typeset the book, due to the “indecent” language it contained, but the courts determined that there was no inherent right to publish indecent language. This had a chilling effect even on the authors of scientific works.
Sexual matters, including same-sex acts, were a subject of popular and legislative interest during the period when the OED fascicles were being released. High profile legal cases such as the Wilde and Asquith trials and controversies over literary works by Swinburne and Hall placed this “indecent” vocabulary in the public record even as it was being refused a place in the dictionary.
Despite this censorship, the OED contained much more same-sex vocabulary than any previous dictionary. But even in terms of reproducing same-sex vocabulary present in earlier dictionaries, the OED is spotty. And sexual senses of words like “lesbian” were omitted, despite clear examples of usage in earlier works. As in earlier dictionaries, definitions were obscured and made vague, with references to “lewdness” or “unnatural lust” without specifying details. Tracing cross-references of words used in definitions, such as “copulation,” continued to provide circular and dead-end paths, due to heteronormativity. Another deliberate deficiency was the omission of citation quotations for specific senses of sexual vocabulary, or the source of a citation might be given, but not the text itself. For example, the OED’s working notes included a citation for “tribadism” from an edition of the 1001 Nights that had a neutral/positive tone, but this was in conflict with the negative definition it would have been attached to, and so was omitted.
In general, citations for f/f sex are drawn from medical and legal texts rather than literature and non-professional genres. This contributed to the continuing tradition of displacing the concrete specifics of f/f sex into other places and times.
The next section of this chapter explores the publications of sexologists as a source of neologisms for same-sex topics. The publication of sexology texts met with many of the same moral objections and barriers that explicit dictionaries (such as slang dictionaries) did. This new sexual vocabulary was, in general, not included in the original edition of the OED, thus omitting “homosexual” and “inversion” (in a gender/sexual sense). The OED became more open to such vocabulary as time passed, resulting in greater inclusion of sexual vocabulary toward the end of the alphabet.
The 1933 supplement to the OED had as its stated mission to include words and senses that had emerged in the previous half century. Thus the supplement added words such as “masochist” and “pervert” but continued to exclude others, notably “lesbian” and “lesbianism”—an exclusion that was protested (in vain) at the time.
Drafts of definitions show the ongoing battle between those trying to impose moral judgements on the sexologists’ vocabulary and those working to retain their less judgmental medical senses. (There is much more discussion of the definitions of same-sex vocabulary within the writings of the sexologists themselves.)
The next section of the chapter looks at how queer writers and communities created new senses of existing words, such as the common use by female couples of the language of marriage, the specially emphasized use of “friend” by female couples, etc. However the preference of the OED for published sources rather than private correspondence made it highly unlikely that such senses would be considered for inclusion.
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Sunday, December 29, 2024 - 19:34
Genre turns out to be a key factor in whether lesbians are documented in dictionaries.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Chapter 4 – Dissecting Matter
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. Certain material was not considered appropriate for a female audience, even health workers such as midwives, and manuals aimed at the household market clearly understood their audience to primarily be women. Thus there was a concern to exclude material considered inappropriate for women to read. Within this context, the medicalization of sexuality began to emerge as a site of social control.
Non-normative sexuality could be seen as either a cause or a consequence of health problems. For example, the condition known as “malthacos” listed in a medical dictionary of 1745 is described as being associated with “molles” and “tribades” and discussed both as a congenital defect and an acquired vice, but is classed as a disease. In common with general dictionaries, the discussion of such words in medical texts either assume the reader knows what “molles” and “tribades” mean or leave it to guesswork for the reader to figure it out. The classical sources from which the medical dictionaries harvested “malthacos” saw it as a transgender condition—men taking the role of women, and women that of men—rather than homosexuality in the modern sense. But even this specificity is lost in the vague description of the medical dictionaries.
In contrast to general dictionaries, medical dictionaries had a particular fascination for f/f sex and especially with how it was performed. Given phallocentric assumptions, this focus centered around penetration and the use of the clitoris as a penis analogue. A particular interest was the relationship between anatomy and sexuality—how transgressive sex could change the body, and how aberrant anatomy could drive a person to participate in transgressive sex. The discussion touches on venereal diseases and intersex anatomy, but returns to the clitoris as its main example.
Discourse around the clitoris focused on it being an analogue to the penis, both in shape and function (with regard to pleasure). Variation in size of the clitoris was recognized by medical authorities and was use to reanalyze the theories of prior eras about “hermaphrodite” (intersex) bodies in order to fit them into a gender binary. But the more a clitoris fell outside what was considered the norm, the more it was treated as a medical condition to be addressed by prevention or correction. “Abuse” of the clitoris for pleasure—whether solo or with another woman—was thought to cause it to enlarge. But, in turn, the prevailing opinion was that a woman with a clitoris large enough to engage in penetration would be drawn to f/f sex. These beliefs appear at least from the 16th century on, although explicit terms for the women involved only begin to appear in medical dictionaries around the 1720s.
In addition to concerns about a variant clitoris causing/enabling f/f sex, medical texts alleged that it might interfere with m/f sex. For this, surgical removal was suggested lest it “hinder the enjoyment.” Given that the erotic sensitivity of the clitoris and labia were recognized in medical literature from at least the 17th century, the “enjoyment” being referenced was clearly that of the male partner. It isn’t clear to what extent this surgical approach was actually practiced in England. As with many topics, discussion in the medical dictionaries typically displaced the practice into foreign regions (Egypt and Arabia), and some texts specifically note that English women rarely have the anatomy that would require it. Another displacement intersects with anti-Catholic sentiment in connecting clitoral enlargement with f/f sexual activity in convents.
These general themes come together in a 1719 medical dictionary to explicitly attribute clitoral enlargement to engaging in f/f sex. A 1722 edition of the same work is the first of this genre to include a headword relating to f/f sex: “confricatrices” glossed as “lustful women who have learned to titillate one another with their clitoris.” The authors asserts the word was in common use (though probably mostly in Latin). A 1663 medical text had included it as a Latin word and glossed it with “rubster” (which presumably means that the word rubster was familiar to its readers).
A central theme in sex writing in the 17-18th centuries is that “sex” is defined by phallic penetration. Therefore, to the extent that authors discuss “sex between women” they are concerned only with practices that include penetration. [Note: I want to emphasize here that this doesn’t mean that women weren’t engaging in non-penetrative erotic activities, simply that those activities weren’t going to be discussed by medical authorities.] However discussions of “confricatrices” sometimes discuss their activity in mutual terms, not distinguishing an active/passive contrast. Other authors view such acts as asymmetrical and driven by the deviant anatomy of one woman, whose partner simply benefits by avoiding the risk of pregnancy. The possibility of either partner being inspired by an active desire for a female partner is not considered.
Although some historians of sexuality assert that the “macroclitoral” woman ceased to be of interest after the mid 18th century (based on the dismissal of erotic desire as a factor) Turton notes that medical texts of the later 18th century continue to repeat the motifs that enlargement of the clitoris is both caused by and results in erotic stimulation, with regular reference to “the tribades…of the ancients” or fricatrices, with reference to a preference for female partners.
This conjunction of motifs continues to appear in medical manuals of the 19th century, although there is a shift to emphasis on enlargement as a result of stimulation, thus making it a behavioral issue rather than an anatomical one. In addition to blurring distinctions between masturbation and f/f sex in connection with clitoral enlargement, some texts (e.g., one of 1791) mention the use of a dildo (using Greek “olisbos” and Latin “coriaceus”) as a source of sex-related ailments of women.
Anne Lister gives us a useful practical contrast to these professional assertions. She writes that she doubts that classical tribades all used dildos and she herself refused to use one (interestingly, she associates it with “sapphic” practices, suggesting that she had some clear distinction in mind with respect to her own practices). Explorations of her own body, inspired by medical texts discussing the clitoris, indicate that her own was not of notable size. Her comments on this exploration also suggest that the dictionary editors who worried about women “getting ideas” from explicit texts were not entirely wrong!
(There is a brief discussion of some additional vocabulary related to m/m sex, but I’m not entirely ignoring m/m topics, they simply aren’t the focus on this chapter.)
While earlier medical dictionaries had converted Greek and Latin terms into English forms (in parallel with practices in general dictionaries which sometimes created new English vocabulary from Greek/Latin words), the Victorian era saw a preference for retaining the original Greek and Latin words, and coinages from them, as a sort of “international scientific vocabulary.” The cross-cultural exchange of medical writing in the 19th century resulted in the establishment and spread of a common vocabulary for sexual topics, sometimes altering previous understandings of the meaning. As an example, some terms that in classical sources had referred to same-sex topics specifically were reinterpreted as referring either to homosexuality or masturbation with no distinction made. These medical definitions of sexual vocabulary were then projected back onto the classical texts in which they occurred, changing the context in which those takes were understood. Thus all words for participants in f/f sex were defined as meaning “tribade” and tribade was defined as a woman with an enlarged clitoris who takes an active role in sex with another woman. [Note: I have seen histories of sexuality that appear to accept these 19th century redefinitions as reflecting actual usage in other eras, especially in terms of concluding that “tribade” has always universally meant “a woman with a penetrative clitoris” from classical times onward. I view this with skepticism, especially given the semantic origins of the word.]
Medical theories of the effects of homosexuality on the body were invoked by legal bodies in respect to men suspected of sodomy, in contrast to the primarily medical (and moral) focus of concerns about women.
The author notes that this persistent and increasing medical discourse around homosexuality in the 18-19th centuries rather undermines the idea that sexology represented a dramatic shift in the late 19th century. He connects this observation with Traub’s “cycles of salience” in which concepts recur periodically in different forms across the centuries. The focus of sexology on psychological rather than physical models was the most distinguishing feature of the late 19th century. [Note: But even sexological theories about homosexuality placed a strong emphasis on somatic markers of orientation – the mannish woman, the effeminate man.]
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the physicality and materiality of dictionaries themselves – how they were printed, their size and scope, cost and distribution, and the resulting effects on accessibility to various potential readerships.
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Friday, December 27, 2024 - 14:21
When Turton lays out the details of how vocabulary for f/f sex was deliberately omitted, obscured, and removed from dictionaries -- especially in comparison to how vocabulary for m/m sex was handled -- it becomes clear how badly queer historians have stumbled in relying on dictionary entries as evidence that "they didn't even have a word for it." One of the things I'm working on for my Sapphic Sourcebook is a collection of these vocabulary items, along with the dates, sources, and contexts, to help provide authors with a counter to the "common wisdom."
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Chapter 3 – Silencing Sex
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.
One can trace the fate of censored vocabulary when dictionary authors incorporated existing source material but filtered out specific topics and words that are identifiable by their absence in the resulting output. This can be seen especially when Latin-English dictionary contents that included words for f/f sex such as “fricatrix” or “tribas” are incorporated. E.g., a Latin supplement to a late 16th century dictionary includes “fricatrix” glossed vaguely as “she that useth unlawful venery” and more explicitly “tribas” as “such filthy women as abused their bodies one with another against kind.” The source material was incorporated into various 17th century works with similarly informative glosses. But later dictionaries derived from this material begin to omit these terms.
Tribade and fricatrix had already naturalized in French and English by the early 17th century, along with the calque “rubster” and the variant “confricatrix.” But when citation contexts are given for these terms, they emphasize distance in time (classical references) or space (e.g., Turkish examples). The attempt to distance sapphic terms from the English usage of the era of the publications is contradicted by use of the same words in poetry and theater from the early 17th century on.
As dictionaries became aimed at a more general readership in the 18th century, the significance of the f/f acts referred to is undermined, using phrases like “in imitation of intercourse,” or the words are excluded entirely.
There is a comparison of the f/f vocabulary recorded in Anne Lister’s diaries with the vocabulary admitted into dictionaries of her era. Similarly, the writings of diarist Hester Lynch (Thrale) Piozzi are noted as a source for the use of explicitly sapphic terms (in a documentary context) in the late 18th century.
One more general cause of the exclusion of sexual language during the later 18th century and after was a shift in libel laws that discouraged publication of more explicit language, especially when applied to specific individuals. Libel laws could also be used against the publication of “obscene” books, even when the language was not describing specific individuals. Thus, for nearly a century from the mid 18th to the mid 19th centuries, the inclusion of entries for same-sex topics fell to almost nothing. One dictionary of 1775 runs counter to this trend, with a large number of entries for sex-related topics, including same-sex ones. [Note: Turton doesn’t point out that this dictionary contains only m/m terms, based on my review of the listings in the appendix.] Despite this relative wealth of word entries, their definitions obscure the nature of the acts they reference.
Around the 1870s, there is a return to inclusion of m/m-related words in general dictionaries, but no similar return of f/f entries. When words such as “fricatrice” do make an appearance in general dictionaries, their glosses erase the same-sex aspect and simply define them as indicating a sexually loose woman.
During the period of absence, such words continued to be included in specialized medical dictionaries, and this was an era when same-sex attraction began to be medicalized.
Medical dictionaries were much more interested in tribades and fricatrices than any general reference works had been.
Discourse of the 18th century reflected the general dictionaries’ aversion to specifics, claiming that there was no vocabulary available for female same-sex acts, and using circumlocutions such as “liking her own sex in a criminal way.” [Note: Keep in mind that “criminal” in this case is being used by analogy to illegal m/f and m/m sex acts, while there is no indication that law courts considered f/f sex to be criminal. See Derry 2020 on this topic.]
Some of this lack of same-sex terminology in general dictionaries was made up for in a new genre: glossaries of cant and slang terms, which became popular in the 18-19th centuries as transgressive entertainment aimed at a male readership. While cant terms for m/m sex and its participants were frequent and imaginative in these books, vocabulary for f/f relations is virtually absent from them. Even at a time when “female husbands” were a stock topic of popular media, language for them is not included in cant/slang dictionaries, except to the extent that one might read it into words attributing masculinity to specific women. But mannishness is not directly associated with f/f sexuality in the definitions. The closest that slang dictionaries come to directly addressing f/f sex may be in entries referring to boarding schools and dildoes that hint at f/f possibilities.
This doesn’t mean that slang terms for lesbianism were absent from the historic record entirely. The later 18th century is when we have clear attestation of terms such as sapphic, sapphist, tommy, and (game of) flats in clearly sexual senses. (These are collected in some modern slang dictionaries, but were not included in slang dictionaries at that time.)
This deliberate omission can be seen, for example, in the revision notes for one 18th century slang dictionary that references “game at flats,” but then omits the phrase in the actual published version of the revised dictionary.
[Note: there is a discussion of a variety of slang terms for various sexual practices where the dictionary entries do not adequately indicate what the acts were – which makes me think of some of Anne Lister’s terminology, such as “grubbling” – suggesting that there may well have been a rich slang vocabulary for f/f sex that is entirely lost to us.]
In the 19th century, slang that originally had been presented as belonging to criminals and the lower classes shifted to being framed as associated with fashionable elite men. In this context, terms for f/f sexuality are not only not embraced, but those tangential references previously found (such as dildo) are flagged as obsolete, or even as entirely spurious. Even when included, we are told that the words refer to non-existent things.
Only finally in 1890 did a slang dictionary finally admit such terms as “cunnilingist,” “fuck-finger,” and “lesbian.”
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Thursday, December 26, 2024 - 11:01
This chapter picks up a theme we've seen regularly across time and geography, where everyone attributes the origins of same-sex sexuality to "foreigners" and as something that only happened long ago (or at least, has only recently arrived in the speaker's home territory).
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Chapter 2 – Estranging English
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 establishes the principle that dictionaries have a moral mission to exclude words that represent concepts that should be excluded from English culture. Or at least such uninvited word usage should be presented with appropriate judgment noted. (Chapter 3 will specifically explore how the strategy was applied to language for f/f relations.)
This chapter looks at how dictionaries excluded or marginalized language for transgressive sexuality either specifically situating them as foreign (via etymology) or as displaced in time and space (via citation choice). The high status of classical literature posed a problem that might be handled more subtly.
Entries for “sodomy” invoke both strategies, emphasizing the foreign origin of the word, and its reference to biblical eras (taking the later equation of Sodom with m/m sex as a given). Similarly, etymologies of “bugger” that traced it to Bulgaria, even if simply via analogy of the punishment by burning , applied both to heretics (via a specific heresy attributed to Bulgaria) and sodomites.
It was common for dictionaries to ascribe the origins of both the word and the practice to specific foreign origins. A 1670 law dictionary assigns those origins to Italy, and specifically to Lombardy. [Note: Although the book doesn’t mention this, there may be additional relevant stereotypes associated with Lombardy, long associated with Italian banking practices. But it may be simply that Lombardy was the most familiar region of Italy when viewed from distant England.] Not only were claims made that foreigners brought the word/practice to England, but that visiting foreign climes could result in Englishman picking up both.
Terms related to “pederasty” underwent similar treatment, with the added complication of the esteem in which classical civilizations were held. Definitions of pederasty conflated it with sodomy (specifically with “boys” as a target) but the inherent contradictions in this equivalence resulted in ambiguity, due to the positive connotations of pederasty in classical texts. Further, pederasty was often defined as desire for boys, not specifically referring to a sex act. As usual, definitions that assume a male agent (without specifying one) created space for understanding the word in ways not intended. The scope of meaning for “boys” or “children” used in these definitions did not necessarily align with the “beardless adolescent” of classical reference.
The chapter explores a variety of other terms for a male receptive partner, with their supposed origins. Most are of clearly non-English origin and fit with the pattern of distancing. One exception, in some definitions, is “leman”—a word that is found for a non-marital sexual partner regardless of gender. Some dictionaries connected it with French “le mignon” (which would imply a grammatically male partner) while other propose an English source meaning “lie-man, one who lies with a man,” including female partners.
The author suggests that a m/m definition was prevalent in the early 17th century, but gave way to a more general sense by the 18th century, at which point new etymologies were suggested, either French (l’aimant(e)) or Germanic (leof-man). As a proposed Germanic origin takes center stage, definitions that focus on m/m senses have disappeared.
[Note: I think the book has failed in not noting the earlier usage of the word in a generic sense, and its Old English origins incorporating the non-gendered sense of “man=person” with the meaning “loved one”. As it stands, the text implies a same-sex meaning was original and only later supplanted. But I may be misunderstanding the book’s intent, as it may be trying to say that in the 17th century (when dictionaries were beginning to be a thing) the same-sex sense was prevalent, rather than suggesting that it was the original meaning.]
There is a discussion of how there is an abundance of terms for a receptive male (same-sex) partner in contrast to fewer for the insertive partner, who is in many ways, assumed as the default. [Note: compare with Latin vocabulary where the insertive partner is simply a default “man” while there are specific terms for different types of receptive partner.] The projection of a “passive” role onto the receptive partner is parallel by grammatically passive constructions. The receptive partner “is fucked, is hired, is abused, is kept, is loved.” The exception being “semantically passive” constructions where he “suffers [an act]” which is a wording also found for female partners in m/f sex.
The lexicographers’ emphasis on foreign origins for words about non-normative sex extended to the quotations selected to illustrate them, which situate the subjects of the quotes distantly in time and space, rather than using equally-available passages referring to persons and events in England.
As a classical education could not help but touch on mythological examples of m/m love, the treatment of these situations and characters in dictionaries intended for scholars is instructive. At the same time that dictionaries are defining “ganymede” (as a noun) as a receptive male sexual partner, they describe Ganymede (the mythic character) simply as being “beloved” by Jupiter. This creates a circular logical failure when the same books define “love” in heterosexual terms. Though, again, this requires the lexicographers to exclude usage in which “love” and more explicit sexual terms are clearly used in same-sex contexts.
The treatment of Sappho and other classical women is included in this chapter, although f/f language in general is treated in the next chapter. Classical dictionaries discussing the Calisto myth focus on how Jupiter tricked her into sex, but omit that the disguise relied on an assumption of f/f desire (involving Diana). The latter motif comes to be admitted in 18th century references.
Treatments of the Iphis myth up through the 19th century give her no agency, despite Ovid’s text clearly depicting her as a desiring agent.
Sappho—in general early modern discourse—is handled in three ways: as a poet, in the Phaon story, and as a lover of women. Literary references of the time clearly acknowledge the last, but dictionary entries largely do not, with a few exceptions in woks aimed at an elite male audience, rather than a general one. “Aimed at” does some heavy lifting, as even dictionaries that explicitly describe their readership in male terms may have women in their subscriber lists.
In contrast, dictionaries that present themselves as aimed at a female readership omit reference to Sappho’s same-sex loves.
By the mid 19th century, dictionary references to Sappho might include rejections of the claims about f/f love (to “redeem” her reputation), while a few began acknowledging it. And, of course, any acknowledgement of Sappho’s same-sex reputation could take comfort in the knowledge that she was long ago and far away.
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Tuesday, December 24, 2024 - 10:03
In reading about the history of how dictionary publishers deliberately obscured or silenced discussions of sex -- especially of non-normative sex -- I can't help but think of the current (and periodic) panics over controlling the access of children to information about sex and gender. The attitude prevalent in the early modern period that simply knowing about certain sex acts could "infect" someone with an urge to commit them is still an underlayer to current concerns. "If school libraries include books that recognize the existence of non-approved genders and sexualities, that's tantamount to seducing kids to be something other than straight and cis!"
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Chapter 1 – Legislating Acts
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.]
17 century definitions of “buggery” in legal dictionaries include both homosexual acts and bestiality. They often reference earlier penalties (burning), though that was no longer in force. Two factors contribute to obscuring the specific nature of the acts so named. The descriptions are often in Latin (despite the books being overtly intended for non-scholarly readers), and the sexual nature of the acts is usually not explicitly mentioned. That you get entries like:
“One describeth this offence to be carnalis copula contra naturam & haec vel per confusionem specierum, sc. A man or a woman with a brute beast, vel sexuum, sc. A man with a man, a woman with a woman.” (1652) The question of whether sodomy could be committed between women was actually a point of contention.
These legal texts might have more explicit descriptions of the act elsewhere (e.g., that it requires “penetration and the emission of seed”) while being vague in the glossary. This deliberate vagueness has been a general feature of discourse around homosexuality, with authors often referring to it as an act “not to be named” or “not suitable to be discussed.”
When examined in parallel with other sexual terms, such as “copulation” or “fucking”, there is a general pattern of focusing on men as those who “commit sex”, but also a silent assumption that sex occurs between a male-female couple. So “sodomy” is presented as something a man does to a man where the nature of the act is separately defined as something a man does to a woman. These patterns complicate the interpretation of buggery/sodomy, both in terms of the nature of the act and the scope of its participants. We’ll get back to that.
A 1596 glossary typifies this vagueness, defining buggery, as “conjunction with one of the same kind” or in a later revision adding “or of men with beasts”. This is a relatively judgment-free definition, especially in comparison with the later editions’ definition of “sodomy” as “when one man lieth filthily with another man.”
The cultural association of “sodomy” with biblical references, and "buggery" with the 1533 Buggery Act raises the question of whether word choice depended on the genre of the text. An analysis of the association of these words (in their dictionary entries) with terms associated with religion (e.g., “sin”), or law (e.g., “crime”) also considering association with nature (e.g., “unnatural”) finds a definite association of “sodomy” with religious contexts, but a unclear preference in context for “buggery.”
In general, judgmental language when defining sexual terms works to clearly distinguish approved acts (m/f procreative sex within marriage) from unapproved acts (everything else). At the same time, by identifying and listing unapproved acts, a dictionary recognizes their existence and possibility. Except when specifically addressing acts defined as same-sex, definitions of sexual offenses (such as fornication, incest, polygamy, prostitution), explicitly presented the act as m/f.
The buggery act of 1535 defined buggery as “a detestable and abominable voice…committed with mankind or beast.” The lack of specifics regarding the agent of this act, and the use of “mankind” (rather than, for example, “man”) left room for dispute over whether women were in scope. If “mankind” can refer to human beings of any gender or if the specified agent can be of any gender, then m/f sex is technically included in “buggery”. This is workable if the “vice” in question is something that can be done to a woman, as in a disputed 18th century case where the term was applied to anal rape of a woman. But that requires an additional layer of definition of the act that is often absent or taken for granted.
One position held that “mankind” should be understood as “humanity” not “male persons”. The question of whether the omitted agent could be female was addressed directly in the context of bestiality (“by womankind with brute beast”) and addressed in some expanded definitions of sodomy as “a carnal copulation against nature, two wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts.” Others argued a distinction that sodomy excluded bestiality, while buggery included it. By the mid 17th century, legal definitions of buggery settled on including bestiality (by a man or woman) and both m/m and f/f sex. But exceptions occur that do not include f/f ( by omission rather than explicitly). The inclusion of f/f sex is largely restricted to legal dictionaries, rather than general purpose ones. The most limited definition of buggery mentions only m/m sex and omits bestiality. [Note: Despite these published definitions, England was absent of actual prosecutions of f/f “buggery”.]
As a rule, definitions of “sodomy” are more restricted. Bestiality is not included, and when the gender of the participants is mentioned, only men are specified. This is attributed to the model of the biblical story where male-assigned participants are involved. [Note: one might dispute the gender of angels, but they were treated as male by the human participants.]
In some cases, sodomy and buggery were presented as synonyms, but more often, sodomy was considered a subset of buggery.
The chapter moves on to considering the specific nature of the acts involved. While some learned sources make reference (in Latin) to anal penetration, none of the surveyed dictionaries explained the physical act. Instead, vague reference is made to the “unnatural” aspect combined with lust, wantonness, conjunction, copulation. But when those terms are defined, it is always specifically in reference to m/f sex. “The active generation between male and female” etc. Such terms are either too underspecified for clarity (“to join together”) or too over-specified to include same-sex acts.
We return now to the observation that dictionary definitions of sexual terms assume a male agent. Definitions of sex acts typically involve an unspecified agent (understood as a man) doing something to a woman. These formal definitions, however, do not reflect the more expansive use of the words in everyday language, where it is seen that women can fuck and men can be fucked. These uses turn up in legal records of witness testimony, but are not reflected when formal legal dictionaries are drawn up. (This points up only one of the flaws in using dictionaries as a guide to real-world language.)
In the context of this androcentricity there is a brief discussion of Anne Lister’s annotations on a 1735 Latin-English dictionary that placed herself as agent in a sexual context. Some dictionaries were specifically aimed at a female audience. The book speculates whether a woman reading a definition of a sexual verb as “to carnally know a woman” might have been inspired to place herself in the role of agent – as we know Anne Lister did, given that she describes becoming aroused at such a text.
From the mid 18th century on, dictionary compilers dealt with their anxiety around this possibility by increasingly censoring and obscuring sexual language in order to avoid giving people (especially women) ideas. This self-censorship not only appears in legal commentaries and glossaries, but in court records themselves, where accused acts of sodomy/buggery are concealed under phrases like “an unnatural crime” or using severely abbreviated forms of the word such as initials or first and last letter, joined by a dash.
Such words were also disappearing from ordinary dictionaries, such as Samuel Johnson’s (1755). Before that date, more than half of the studied dictionaries included “buggery,” while after, only 15.6% do. Entries for “sodomy” also declined somewhat, though appearing in well over half the texts both before and after. (This will be explored further in chapter 3.) Those entries that did appear from around 1750 to 1850 remove any explicit sexual reference and simply use phrases like “an unnatural crime.”
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Sunday, December 22, 2024 - 10:51
If someone told you there was a sustained conspiracy to suppress lesbian history, would you believe it? Or would you consider the idea a bit paranoid? When you look at the history of how words for f/f sexuality were handled across the long history of dictionaries of the English language, it's hard to find a more accurate word than "conspiracy" to describe the systematic obscuring, suppression, and censorship involved.
Having read a lot of primary sources, I always found claims about the supposed recency of vocabulary for lesbianism to be dubious, but the first acknowledgement I found that the OED--supposedly the official record of usage and history--could not be relied on for this topic was in an online article that I blogged as LHMP #245. So when I saw announcement of Turton's book, I got very excited to see a longer exploration of this topic. And as a bonus, the book includes an extensive appendix of all the dictionary entries that do exist. (Which I will file away for future reference for my own chronology of terminology.) It took a while to get around to blogging this book, despite my intense interest, because other publications were prioritized to support podcast topics. But here we are at last.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Introduction
How many times have you seen a claim along the lines of “people didn’t even have a word for lesbianism until the late 19th century” with a reference to the dated citations in the Oxford English Dictionary? This book shows why that impression is totally wrong-headed, due to deliberate and selective editing and suppression of words for female same-sex sexuality in the long history of dictionaries of English.
The book begins with an anecdote about the OED updating its entry for “marriage” when the (British) marriage equality act was passed, and how this was framed in the press as participating in a “change of definition”. This is followed by an anecdote from a slander case in 1942, which argued that “lesbian” could not be slanderous, as it was (incorrectly) asserted that the word didn’t exist in English when the relevant law was passed--an argument based on citations in the OED entry for “lesbian”, which was not included in the first edition published in 1908.
Does the OED reflect or prescribe usage? Or something else? Despite the lack of the sexual sense of “lesbian” in the first edition of the OED, the word was definitely in use in that sense. The relationship between language and its dictionaries is complex and falls somewhere in the middle ground between documentation and prescription. Dictionaries are not neutral entities, especially in contested fields, such as sexuality. This book will explore that relationship and its history in English.
The author uses the example of “queer” in a sexual sense to trace how words entered the dictionary and from what sources. The earliest current citations are one from 1894 in a letter by the Marquess of Queensbury, then after a gap of 20 years, two newspaper examples in California. But the 1894 example is ambiguous in meaning and only clearly intended as negative, while the 1914 examples are clearly in the context of homosexuality. The origin of new senses can be hard to pin down due to polysemous senses, and shifts in application.
There is a discussion of what falls under the author’s use of “dictionary” as opposed to other types of reference works, then a similar discussion of the scope of sexuality as discussed in this work. This is followed by a review of previous literature and a history of dictionaries as a publishing genre.
A review of queer historiography challenges the supposed clear dividing line at the “invention of homosexuality” in the late 19th century. Definitions in dictionaries, in addition to negotiating the balance between descriptive and prescriptive, also reflect societal judgments and norms (and tend to be inherently socially conservative). Thus, when the 1914 OED defines “tribade” as “a woman who practices unnatural vice with other women” it is not providing a value-neutral reflection of the word (or even an objective description of usage), but is telling the reader how to think about the subject. It is also obfuscating the specifics of meaning, contributing to silencing the topic. It is likely that many readers of the definition would have been unclear on the specifics of the denotation, while understanding the judgment. “Lexicographers favored disapproval over detail.”
An absence in the dictionary can reflect nonexistent words, or ignorance of their records, or a deliberate withholding of knowledge.
The remainder of this introductory chapter lays out the plan of the book’s methodology and structure. The first four chapters look at specific “cultural discourses” in an overlapping chronology.
1. Conceptual frameworks, in which sexuality was discussed and interpreted, focusing on the words “buggery” and “sodomy.”
2. Sexuality as driver of national imagery.
3. Dictionary as gatekeeper, by defining or excluding words and meanings.
4. The treatment of transgressive sexuality by medical texts, especially for female, same-sex topics.
This takes the chronology up to 1884 when the fascicles of the OED began to be published.
5. Looks at the OED specifically, including the 1933 supplement.
This is followed by a discussion of current lexicographic concerns and approaches.
Place:
Sunday, December 15, 2024 - 16:31
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 303 - Interview with Margaret Vandenburg - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/12/15 - listen here)
When I set up an interview with Margaret Vandenburg about her novel Craze, I was planning on the sort of short book-release-related interview that I normally include in the On the Shelf episodes. About ten minutes into recording, I realized that we were both having far too much fun to cut the discussion short and decided to make the interview its own episode.
Margaret Vandenburg’s life parallels that of the protagonist of Craze in loose terms. Raised in a western state, she spent time abroad, then settled in New York City. She had an academic career at Barnard College specializing in modernism, postmodernism, and gender studies. Her fiction has covered a range of topics and settings, but today we’ll be focusing on her most recent novel, about an art journalist who returns from time spent in the salons of 1920s Paris to land in the middle of queer New York during the Roaring Twenties.
In the next hour we have a wide- talk about books, the cycles of history, and the meaning of queerness.
[A transcript will be added at some future date.]
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Too many things to list individually
- Books and people mentioned
- Magnus Hirschfeld
- Virginia Woolf - A Room of One’s Own
- Margaret Vandenburg - An American in Paris
- Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
- Virginia Woolf - Orlando
- Chappell Roan
- Oscar Wilde
- Emma Donoghue – The Pull of the Stars
- Gertrude Stein
- Michel Foucault - The History of Sexuality
- Golden Crown Literary Society
- Olivia Waite - Feminine Pursuits series
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 Margaret Vandenburg Online
Major category:
LHMPPages
