One of the themes that emerges from the individiaul biographies in this book is that the "female husband" phenomenon was primarily associated with working class people. (There are a few exceptions, such as Mary Diana Dods, as well as those who transed gender without marrying, which includes a few more examples of professional-class people.) On the one hand, the types of occupations these "female husbands" had challenged myths about gendered abilities even more strongly than middle-class professions would have.
LHMP
Blog entry
In some ways, this chapter feels like Manion is happy to play fast and loose with the theme of "female husbands" in order to cast a wider net on the subtitle "a trans history". The people transing gender to take up roles--whether temporary or long-term--as a soldier or sailor generally did not end up in marriages with women, though they might use flirtations with women as a strategy for gender acceptance. One perhaps unusual feature of the figures covered in this chapter is that they all had (auto)biographies published about their trans experiences.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 206 – Rosa Bonheur - transcript
(Originally aired 2021/07/17 - listen here)
I thought it would be fun to get back to doing some biography episodes. For this one, I’d like to give a shout-out to my friend Carl Cipra, who sent me a magazine article about French artist Rosa Bonheur which was sitting there on my desk waiting to inspire me for a podcast topic.
One of the interesting things Manion does in this book -- though I believe she attributes the practice to someone previous -- is using "trans" as in "to trans gender" as a verb. (I don't think trans has quite made it through all the grammatical parts of speech yet, but it's worked its way through preposition to adjective to noun, so verb was a reasonable next step.) Sometimes a particular bit of imagery or re-framing can click an idea into place, and trans-as-verb did that for me.
I inadvertently took a 2 month break in blogging this book, so it may make sense for interested parties to go back and review my coverage of the Introduction.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 205 - On the Shelf for July 2021 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2021/07/03 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for July 2021.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 204 – Early Modern Neo-Platonism and Same-Sex Relationships - transcript
(Originally aired 2021/06/19 - listen here)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 203 - On the Shelf for June 2021 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2021/06/05 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for June 2021. Happy Pride Month!
This month rather snuck up on me, what with one thing and another. I dropped the ball a bit and didn’t manage to get an author interview for this month. Fortunately, that’s not as fatal as it was back when I was doing interviews as separate shows!
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 202 – The Adventuress by Catherine Lundoff - transcript
(Originally aired 2021/05/29 - listen here)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 201 – Researching the Origins of Lesbian Myths, Legends, and Symbols - transcript
(Originally aired 2021/05/15 - listen here)
Introduction: The Joy of Research Puzzles
What do we know about history? How do we know what we know? And how do we go about figuring out the facts behind the things we think we know?
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