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Monday, December 10, 2018 - 07:00
This is the article that Donoghue references with respect to possible evidence of 18th century women in Amsterdam having meeting places for engaging in same-sex activities. The evidence is fairly tenuous but at least indicates that there may have been clusters of women who came together around this shared interest. But in considering the women discussed in this article one needs to keep in mind the nature of the record. When you’re looking at evidence for sexual behavior from trial records, one is necessarily going to be considering the lives of people who have done something they’ve been put on trial for. And in the way of the world, the question of who gets put on trial for transgressive sexual behavior is not neutral with respect to things like class and occupation. All of these women were poor, had marginal roles in society, and had a history of socially disruptive behavior.
Van der Meer comes to a tentative conclusion that there was a tradition of sex between women that was strongly associated with socially disruptive behaviors (e.g., drunkenness) and with prostitution. But I think he fails to consider the extent to which most women whose lives were detailed in court records had similar backgrounds, even when the offenses didn’t involve same-sex activities. These records certainly indicate that there was a general awareness of the possibilities (and techniques) of sex between women, and that people of that time don’t seem to have considered homosexual acts to require a specific and restricted interest in women as partners. But I don’t think that this set of data necessarily gives us an accurate picture of all sexual possibilities between women in that time and place, any more than the theories of late 19th century physicians about their homosexual patients did. A "respectable" middle-class woman who did not engage in public drunkenness or brawling wasn't going to end up in a court record discussing her sex life regardless of what went on in her bed. So a thoery of the development of lesbian identity in the Netherlands that looks narrowly at the evidence of trial records is going to come up with flawed conclusions.
But the larger historical picture is made up of small, specific individual topics like this. Then to see the whole, we need to put them together and take a few steps back.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Van der Meer, Theo. 1991. “Tribades on Trial: Female Same-Sex Offenders in Late Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 1:3 424-445.
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
This is the article that Donoghue references with respect to possible evidence of 18th century women in Amsterdam having meeting places for engaging in same-sex activities. The evidence is fairly tenuous but at least indicates that there may have been clusters of women who came together around this shared interest. But in considering the women discussed in this article one needs to keep in mind the nature of the record. When you’re looking at evidence for sexual behavior from trial records, one is necessarily going to be considering the lives of people who have done something they’ve been put on trial for. And in the way of the world, the question of who gets put on trial for transgressive sexual behavior is not neutral with respect to things like class and occupation. All of these women were poor, had marginal roles in society, and had a history of socially disruptive behavior.
Van der Meer comes to a tentative conclusion that there was a tradition of sex between women that was strongly associated with socially disruptive behaviors (e.g., drunkenness) and with prostitution. But I think he fails to consider the extent to which most women whose lives were detailed in court records had similar backgrounds, even when the offenses didn’t involve same-sex activities. These records certainly indicate that there was a general awareness of the possibilities (and techniques) of sex between women, and that people of that time don’t seem to have considered homosexual acts to require a specific and restricted interest in women as partners. But I don’t think that this set of data necessarily gives us an accurate picture of all sexual possibilities between women in that time and place, any more than the theories of late 19th century physicians about their homosexual patients did. A "respectable" middle-class woman who did not engage in public drunkenness or brawling wasn't going to end up in a court record discussing her sex life regardless of what went on in her bed. So a thoery of the development of lesbian identity in the Netherlands that looks narrowly at the evidence of trial records is going to come up with flawed conclusions.
But the larger historical picture is made up of small, specific individual topics like this. Then to see the whole, we need to put them together and take a few steps back.
# # #
Van der Meer presents the details and circumstances of trial records from several late 18th century cases in Amsterdam, Netherlands of women arrested for events involving sexual activity with women. Sodomy trials of men were not uncommon in this context, often occurring in “waves” when some particularly eager administration pursued the cases. But the conviction and exile in 1792 of Bets Wiebes for lying upon another woman “in the way a man is used to do when he has carnal conversation with his wife” appears to be the first case of that type known from records.
The trial of Bets Wiebes falls just before one of the periods of prosecutions for sodomy, and given that there were also three other trials for “tribadism” in the following years, they seem to have been part of a general uptick in pursuing moral offenses. One of the judges involved in the cases kept a private journal in which he describes the accused of engaging in “caresses and filthy things”, “sodomitical filthiness” or “evil malignities”.
In all, Van der Meer identified cases involving 12 women, out of a total of about 600 total people prosecuted for same-sex offenses in the Netherlands in the 18th century. Such prosecutions ended in 1811 with the introduction of the French penal code in Holland, which did not criminalize same-sex acts.
Prior to the 1792 prosecution of Wiebes, there were certainly references to women having sex with women, as in the following observation from 1750 by the former landlady of two Amsterdam women (age 50 and 60). They were “living as if they were man and wife...feeling and touching one another under their skirts and at their bosoms....yes, she had even seen how in broad daylight while committing several brutalities Mooije Marijtje lay down on Dirkje Vis, having both of them lifted their skirts and their front bodies being completely naked, Marijtje made movements as if she were a male person having to do with a female.”
Van der Meer also refers the reader to the cases involving both cross-dressing and same-sex acts in Dekker and van de Pol 1989. In particular, the famous case of Hendrikje Verschuur “the heroine of Breda” who joined the army as a man and took part in the siege of Breda in 1637. Hendrikje had sexual relations with several women, including Trijntje Barends about whom it was said “they had been so besotted with one another that they would have liked to marry if it had been possible.”
But the 18th c. cases described in the present article did not involve cross-dressing and the women involved were prosecuted specifically for sexual activity, though in some cases it came to light in the context of a different charge. As in the trial records of male sodomites, the sexual acts are recorded in explicit detail (providing a type of data that is otherwise rare for women). In general, reports of women’s same-sex activities come from popular literature or pornography and focus on the motif of unusually large clitorises or the use of dildoes.
The following are summaries of the trial evidence and background. In circumstances, the cases were all fairly different from each other apart from the sexual accusations. Although physical acts were discussed, the emotional relationships between the women were generally not noted unless used as leverage to persuade testimony.
Bets Wiebes & Martha Schuurman
Bets Wiebes was involved in a romantic and sexual triangle with two other women: Catharina de Haan and Bartha Schuurman. Wiebes and Schuurman lived together and had a sexual relationship, but Wiebes had begun a separate covert relationship with de Haan. Schuurman, in a jealous rage, murdered de Haan. Initially Schuurman accused Wiebes of the murder (and so was released) at which Wiebes went into hiding dressed as a man and with cropped hair in order to avoid testifying against Schuurman. When finally arrested, Wiebes claimed she was too drunk to remember what happened on the night in question, but Schuurman was arrested again for further interrogation and three months later Wiebes changed her testimony to accuse Schuurman, after which Schuurman confessed. (There were various threats of torture involved in these interrogations and confessions but torture was never actually used.) When asked about her shifting testimony, Wiebes indicated she was trying to protect Schuurman who had a child to care for.
Schuurman testified that she had been jealous of de Haan because of the “dirty lusts” that Wiebes had engaged in with both of them. She described how “during the time they had lived together, Bets Wiebes many a time had lain upon her in the way a man is used to do withen he had carnal conversation with this wife and that they had known one another in this way.” Wiebes denied the sexual relationship, even when neighbors testified that “she used to caress Schuurman’s breasts and put her head in her lap.”
Schuurman was executed (for the murder) and Wiebes was exiled from the city for 6 years (for the sexual offense).
There is more information about the backstory of these women. Wiebes seems to have had long-term behavioral problems. Her mother had her committed to a workhouse for habitual drunkenness and theft. On her release, her mother had re-married, so Wiebes needed a new place to live. Schuurman offered her lodgings, and when Schuurman’s husband died at sea, the two relocated to a cheaper place together and set up in business selling news broadsides.
Wiebes had met de Haan in the workhouse and paid her regular visits after they both got out, which made Schuurman jealous. Schuurman burst into de Haan’s house to find the two of them drinking together and began quarreling. The upset continued for several days, with Schuurman shouting that she’d “make short work of this.” Schuurman again showed up at de Haan’s house when Weibes was there, but in a more friendly mood, which made the other two suspicious. But Weibes left them together. Later, Weibes returned to the home she shared with Schuurman only to find both Schuurman and de Haan there. At the moment of her entrance, Schuurman stabbed de Haan to death.
A possible complication? The coroner later described de Haan as being naked from the waist up. And why was de Haan at Schuurman’s place at all? Might the final side of the “triangle” have been completed?
The extent to which Weibes was willing to protect Schuurman, even to her own peril, suggests a strong emotional attachment.
Gesina Dekker, Willemijntje van der Steen, Pietertje Groenhof, Engeltje Blauwpaard
These four women, who apparently shared a house, were arrested in 1796 but the circumstances of their accusation were unclear. The house was rumored to be “a place where disreputable people gathered” possibly a brothel. The house was said to be one where women came to caress and kiss one another and feel under each other’s skirts. Gesina Dekker admitted that she lay on the floor with Engeltje Blauwpaard who performed digital stimulation in her vagina. Groenhof admitted to taking part in the caressing “after having been seduced with coffee and alcohol”. Blauwpaard, though she denied the accusations, was said to be very jealous over Dekker.
Other authors have interpreted these events as possibly indicating that the house was a known meeting place for women to have sex with each other.
Anna Grabou
Arrested in 1797 after her neighbors complained about verbal aggression. Grabou seems to have been generally bad-tempered, but also prone to making indecent proposals to her female neighbors. To one she suggested that they should hook up for sex when Grabou’s husband was away from home, with additional comments that she wanted to see her naked. To another she made comments about what she looked like “below your skirt.” To a third, she said, “you have something in your being that attracts both male and female” and expressed her love. To a fourth, Grabou boasted that she had sex every morning with her maid and that the maid preferred her to a man.
Christina Knip
Arrested in 1797 for raping a 14-year-old girl with a dildo. She invited the girl into her home, threw her on the bed, and forcibly penetrated her with a dildo tied around her body.
Anna Schreuder, Anna de Reus, Catrina Mantels, Anna Schierboom, Maria Smit
Arrested in 1798 for their own protection from a mob. Neighbors had suspected Schreuder and Smit of unspecified activities for some time and spied on them through a hole from a neighboring room while they were engaging in sex. The neighbors later testified that the two had lain together with their lower bodies naked, had kissed and caressed each other “like a man is used to do to a woman”, had moved up and down on each other, and finally that one had lifted her leg over the other’s shoulder who had then performed oral sex on her.
Evidently the peeping went on for several hours, with other neighbors being invited to watch, until finally one of the watchers yelled accusations at them. Schreuder and Smit left the room but the neighbors assembled a mob outside the house until the constables came and took all five women to the police station. Schreuer at first confessed to the neighbors’ accusations but later recanted claiming the police had threatened her with mutilation. The neighbors also accused the women of singing banned political songs but this does not appear to have been converted into a legal charge.
A regular theme across the trials appears to have been requests from the prosecution to be allowed to torture the women for confessions, which permission was never granted. Few of the women confessed to anything and most were released with a warning.
Susanna Marrevelt
This case never went to trial, but in a deposition, her husband’s uncle said he’d found Marrevelt and her maid embracing each other with “unnatural movements”, and one of the uncle’s servants said she’d seen Marrevelt and her maid touching each other’s genitals. Marrevelt's maid was also accused of fondling the other servant against her will, and took exception to this and pushed the other woman down the stairs, injuring her.
General observations
Many of the women in these accusations were married (as were many of the men prosecuted as sodomites) and in some cases had children. Most of them were impoverished, with marginal jobs, if any. Several had spent time in a workhouse for drunkenness or anti-social behavior. Some had worked as prostitutes, and in some cases their eventual sentence was for heterosexual sex work rather than homosexual acts. Unlike the men prosecuted for sodomy, the women don’t seem to have had a pattern of participating in a homosexual network, or having other behavioral characteristics suggesting a sexuality-related identity. The exception being van der Steen’s house, which may have been a regular meeting place for lesbian encounters.
Looking at the timeline of prosecutions of sodomites (including women), when the first wave occurred in 1730 there was a lack of public interest in the issue. People didn’t perceive sodomy as criminal and weren’t eager to turn their neighbors in to the authorities for it, even when they’d been aware of their habits for years. Generally the law was invoked when there was also verbal or physical aggression. But in some cases extra-legal punishments were committed by those same neighbors.
The women involved in these cases were often considered a bit crazy by their neighbors, though examples given of this may seem sane to us, as when Knip’s neighbor asked why she hadn’t married and her response was, “Just to fuck? I can do that myself.” The mob peeping at Schreuder and her partner may not have intended to involve the authorities at all, but that became unavoidable when a riot broke out. When Susanna Marrevelt’s husband was complained to by his uncle, he replied it was none of the uncle's business.
But that doesn’t mean that the women’s sexual activities were treated as of no consequence by their families. While Gersina Dekker was in prison, her husband began separation proceedings. Anna Grabou’s husband used the trial evidence to initiate a divorce. Overall, though, sex between women was treated less severely than sex between men with sentences being about half the length and often reduced further.
But as the century progressed, both law and religion began to develop a framing of sodomy as being part of an expected progression of moral failing. Once one had fallen into drunkenness, gambling, swearing, etc., sodomy was sure to follow. It represented “the world turned upside down” and in the last quarter of the century, stereotypical ideas of “manliness” became equated with the health of the state. This made sodomites a social hazard. Sex between women was not viewed as presenting this same social hazard.
There is a review of vocabulary associated with sex between women (including the mistaken claim that the word “lesbian” didn’t exist in the 18th century). In addition to the usual Latin terms (tribades, fricatrices, subigatrices) that were generally restricted to legal or theological contexts, the court records discussed here used vernacular terms translated as “tribadism”, “evil malignities”, “sodomitical filthiness” and two Dutch terms are mentioned: sodomieterije (sodomy) only once used in reference to a woman, and terms derived from the verb lollen (to foul) which the article notes as “no longer existing” evidently meaning in the modern language.
The verb stem lol- appears in a number of sex-related compounds with a sense of disapproval: lolhoeren (foul whores), lolder (sodomite, but apparently only for men?), lolhuis (literally “foul house”, brothel). Possibly by the 19th century, certainly in the 20th, the compound lollepot was used for lesbians and in contemporary word pot is used similarly to “dyke”. (Van der Meer suggests that like the origin of “bugger” in a reference to a specific religious heresy, lollen may have its roots from the medieval Lollard heretical sect.) While references to male sodomites tended to treat them as an identifiable behavior-based category, tribadism was viewed as part of a general pattern of female misbehavior associated with drunkenness and prostitution.
Although Dutch laws of the 18th century did not specifically include women under the topic of sodomy, commentary on the law indicated that individuals prosecutors considered that sex between women was covered. But although the prescribed penalty for sodomy was death, this was rarely the sentence unless anal intercourse was involved, which may explain why the women’s sentences were fairly lenient. Furthermore, all the cases that went to trial involved some sort of public nuisance beyond simple sexual behavior. There may also have been personal discretion on the part of individual prosecutors whether they chose to pursue women under the sodomy statute. After the French invasion of 1795 there was a period of increased prosecution of same-sex acts which seems to have been driven by the zeal of a specific official. Another aspect of the distribution of prosecutions was the large proportion of women’s charges that were for moral offenses, with a substantial increase in the last decade of the 18th century. These were frequently driven by the request of family or community that a person be confined for “immoral behavior” that was felt to be disruptive.
This increased focus on the role of individual morality in the context of social welfare and good citizenship was occurring throughout western Europe at the end of the 18th century. For men, the pressure was to avoid the appearance of effeminacy, for women, to avoid any association with prostitution. Because of the popular association of tribadism with prostitution, it came in for scrutiny as a general marker of immorality.
Lesbian Identity?
The final part of the article considers whether any of the court cases provide evidence for the existence of something recognizable as a “lesbian identity” in the modern sense, proposing a genealogy rooted separately in the traditions of romantic friendship and female transvestism that then developed a stage of butch/femme roles in the 19th century and eventually produced the modern lesbian identity. [Note: I’m going to go ahead and say that I think this is a flawed question to begin with and assumes a linear and teleological development of modern identity.]
The romantic friendship tradition in the Netherlands is represented by authors Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken who lived together in the last quarter of the 18th century and also courted other women both before and during their cohabitation. They were not perceived as having a sexual relationship or having any conceptual connection to the sort of women being prosecuted for tribadism. (The zealous prosecutor of the 1790s was a personal friend of theirs.)
The article also points to the long tradition of female cross-dressers documented by Dekker and van de Pol. But van der Meer accepts the claim of those authors that cross-dressing women who engaged in relationships with other women would necessarily have perceived themselves to be “male” and that this could only be considered a precursor to the development of a concept of lesbianism, rather than a type of lesbian identity itself. [Note: Van der Meer doesn't seem to consider the parallel question of the development of a concept of transgender identity.]
But the women being prosecuted in the 18th century don’t fit neatly into either the romantic friendship tradition nor the cross-dressing tradition. Van der Meer suggests that this third tradition should be considered: one organized around generalized lewd behavior and association with prostitution. He compares the interpretations of Faderman and Trumbach with regard to the various factors at play around 1800, and with regard to women’s sexual identities, and leans toward a suggestion that if the sexual component of lesbian identity is considered the most important, above romantic bonds or butch/femme-type partnerships, then his “third category” may be the actual true precursor for modern lesbian identity. [Note: there are so many flaws in this line of reasoning I hardly know where to start, so I’ll just end.]
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Saturday, December 8, 2018 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 83 (previously 29b) - Interview with Carrie Pack - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/12/08 - listen here)
Heather Rose Jones: This month the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast welcomes author Carrie Pack. Hi, Carrie.
Carrie Pack: Hi, nice to be here.
H: Carrie's YA novel Grrrls on the Side raises the question: Just how do we define historical fiction? I want to explore that a bit later in the podcast, but for now, why don't you tell us a bit about the book?
C: Sure, Grrrls on the Side is actually kind of, well, it takes place during the ‘90s during the Riot Grrrl movement so if anybody's familiar with that particular wave of feminism, these girls are very into their punk music, and their zines, and their feminist ideals. The main character, Tabitha, of course, kind of falls in love a couple times over the course of the book and discovering her own identity as a bisexual woman and an understanding kind of what that means for her, so it's a coming-of-age story and, apparently, the ‘90s are historical. [Laughter]
H: Yeah, so that's an interesting question of categories. You'd said that when we first talked that because it's set in the 90s for a YA market, that's considered historical. Is that because it’s history in terms of the target readership or history because you had to research it as history?
C: Predominantly, the first part of that. I lived it. I mean I was a – my main character is only a year older than me, so I was very familiar with. I mean I used descriptions of the lockers in the locker room of the gym of my high school, but my publisher was the one that said, “Well, this is historical YA,” and I was like, “Historical? It's the 90s.” I mean when someone calls your own high school experience, “historical,” I mean it just, you kind of go, “Oh, gosh, I didn't realize I'd gotten old.”
H: Yeah, I had that experience with another recent interview where the author was saying, “Well, this is set in the ‘70s, so it's really historical,” and I think it's like, “Oh, my god, that's me. That was my college years,” like, “What do you mean?”
C: Right, absolutely, and I think when we're talking about YA, it's kind of like you need to view it like classic cars, like anything over 20 to 25 years ago is considered a classic because if you're talking specifically about teenagers, they weren't even alive; it is historical to them so, yeah, I mean when you classify it that way – my book also got cross categorized though as women's fiction because there's a whole, you know, a lot of the people that I or my contemporaries definitely were very into it because they remember the time period. But, in general, when you talk about publishing, “historical” tends to be anything from pre-mid-century so like you're talking World War II or earlier, so it kind of just depends.
H: Because my personal definition is it's not historical if I was alive.
C: [Laughter] I think that's all of us which is probably why in YA it goes that way. I mean I did have to do some research, so it's not like I didn't do any, but, again, when you've lived the experience, it's a little easier to draw from your own personal. Since with Grrrls on the Side, I basically was giving myself a do-over. I didn’t know that I was bisexual until I was 35, so I didn't get to live my high school years as an out queer person. I didn't know it was an identity that I could have although I knew I wasn't a lesbian, you know what I mean? Like, I knew enough to know that, but I couldn't figure out why, why am I attracted to my female friends? [Laughter] But, because I was also attracted to boys my age, I thought, “Well, obviously, I'm not gay,” and that was the only two options that I knew of. I obviously wanted to give Tabitha her own experience that I didn't get to have.
H: Well, thinking about that and thinking about it as historical fiction because, okay, this is me as an old person talking, but you know it seems like sexuality and identity culture just changes minute-to-minute these days.
C: Oh, yeah.
H: The 90s are a different country in terms of kids these days, but so was it a challenge to try to represent the experience of sexuality in the 90s in a way that would both be true to the era and make sense to today's readers?
C: Oh, absolutely, absolutely, because any time you're writing historical, I think it's a good idea to remember that even though you're writing about a time period in the past, you're still writing for a contemporary audience so while there are things that might have occurred in that time period that at that time were widely accepted, we know in a modern society they're not. That covers everything from if you're writing historical and using the n-word to… or like what I had to do which was--and this is really minor for most of us--but for a modern audience, I had the word, you know when I was a kid there was a lot of, “Oh, that's lame,” but I had someone point out to me that that was ableist language. Now, for me, that's still something that I say and I feel in knowing that now I try to control it but that it could be construed as offensive among modern audiences, so I went back and took that out, but would a girl in the 90s have said that? Well, yeah –
H: Absolutely.
C: She absolutely would have and so I mean it's not – I don't want to ever tell anyone, “Oh, you can't write that,” but I think it's important to consider as a modern sensibility when you're, or a contemporary sensibility I guess I should say, when you're writing historically because there's language that would have been historically accurate, and then there's language that's just harmful. You can still be historically accurate enough without using modern language that wouldn't necessarily been have used in that period. Like, for example, I had someone ask me very early on if I was going to address trans issues because that was [Cross-talk].
H: Yeah, that's what I was just about to bring up. It’s another minefield where the attitudes and the language and just the understanding has changed so radically in the last couple decades.
C: Oh, absolutely, and someone asked me if I was going to address that and I said I didn't want to because it was such a different time even the terminology was different, but what I did do was put in some subtle contextual things about gender identity. Because I was really wanting to focus on the bisexuality aspect of it, I wanted to give examples of different expressions of that, and I have one girl who is very much equally interested in all genders. She does not really, you know, she falls for the person, she falls for the person, so in modern terms, she might refer to herself – she might even choose pansexual, maybe, even though I think bisexual still covers that, but she might choose that whereas I had another character who was probably more demisexual when it comes to women but also use the term “bisexual.” She definitely had to have a connection with a woman, but she certainly could appreciate and would not rule out a relationship with a woman but predominantly attracted to men. Then my main character Tabitha who’s predominantly attracted to women and only incidentally, occasionally, kind of would find herself interested in a guy, so I wanted to give those representations and also wanted to explore gender identity.
One of the girls is very, very feminine and another character is a little more butch and the kind of – I don’t want to say “struggles.” They don't really struggle with it, but the criticism they would get from their friends about that, the one girl being so hyper feminine, and wearing nail polish, and makeup, and, “Oh, you can't possibly be queer,” and the other one being butch, “You're too masculine,” and so those kinds of conversations were had, but, yeah, it's not – for me, I didn't know that I didn't think that I could do it authentically and in a way that wouldn't also be harmful to the trans community.
H: Yeah, yeah, that is a consideration. The issue of identities and how we talk about those identities, like you were talking about, yeah, well, bisexual versus pansexual. It means different things to different people. I know that in you talking about your own podcast, so you have a podcast called Bi Sci-Fi, and one of the things you first said to me when you talked about it was, “Well, it's not just bi, and it's not just sci-fi.”
C: Yeah.
H: And, I have that same thing with my podcast because I've got the word lesbian emblazoned over everything because for me it's a good brand, but I always make it very clear that I'm not talking about the narrow definition of lesbian. I am using that to stand in for, you know, women whose primary emotional and romantic relationships are oriented towards other women within the context of the story that I'm talking about, but it’s way too wordy.
C: Right.
H: So, thinking about that kind of – I don't want to say “labeling” because that brings up a different way of thinking about it but “branding,” thinking about branding and what are the difficulties you have in using bi as a brand on your podcast and trying to communicate that you have a broader interest?
C: I mean I think you kind of said it. I think exactly what you said which is you have to kind of give the short description and then a long description. Ultimately, it came down to a branding thing for me. I had a Twitter chat that I'd started with a group of friends that was called Bi Sci-Fi because we all identify, I think almost all the authors identified as bisexual and or had main characters in our novels that were bisexual, and so we had started a Twitter chat. Bi Sci-Fi was a great… you know, it's a rhyme first of all.
H: It rhymes. [Laughter]
C: Yeah, and I had been forever trying to come up with an idea for a podcast. I just felt like I don't know what I would want to talk about. I don't know, and I just realized I had such an interest in speculative fiction in general. I kept the brand that I already had going, and I identify as bisexual, so it worked for me and also Queer Sci-Fi was taken so [Laughter] yeah, yeah, Scott Coatsworth and Angel Martinez have a wonderful…
H: Yes, I’m part of the Facebook group for that.
C: Yeah, absolutely, they have a Facebook group. They have a wonderful blog and online presence, and it's great branding, but I can't steal their name. Then there's nothing, you can’t like, “Queer Spec Fic,” you know, it doesn't roll off the tongue so, yes, there's always the long explanation. What I always say is that it's queer positive speculative fiction. If the author is an ally, if they write and they write spec fic, if the author identifies as queer and write spec fic, if the characters are queer and in the spec fic, I will cover it because I think that, for me, the biggest draw to speculative fiction of all kinds is the possibility for everything and nothing to exist at once. If you identify as agender, or trans, or gay, or just identify as queer, there is a place for you in that realm of fiction. The long and short of it is that I wanted to keep my branding from the chat, and it was a catchier name but that I’d always have to explain this, always. [Laughter]
H: So, what do you envision as the scope of your show? Why don't you talk about it a little bit?
C: Yeah, sure, right now it's mostly just me and other authors chatting about what we write and what we read, but I hope to, eventually, also have fans come on and talk about what they love and things that they're doing. I had someone message me wanting to talk about the new Doctor Who because now that the Doctor is a woman that canonically makes her pansexual or bisexual so that opens up a whole new realm. The Doctor is married to a woman and has been multiple times in canon, so I think that, for me, is – I want to explore how fans look at other spec fic, and I'd like people to come on and talk about movies and television as well, comics and things like that. Right now, it's really geared toward the written word, towards fiction, but that doesn't mean that I won't go there in the future but, for right now, it's a lot of authors talking about what they write and why they write it, and how that reflects our ideal, I think, of what queer fiction should be.
H: So, you’ve written both the, whether you want to call it contemporary historical for Grrrls on the Side, but also you've written a pair of speculative books, I know.
C: Right.
H: I think one of them is just about to come out or just came out or…?
C: Came out in August, yeah.
H: Okay, yeah, and I was interested in what's your experience of the different flavors of the book world between speculative fiction and realistic fiction?
C: In my experience, this is my personal experience, I don't want to say that this is necessarily a universality but that I found it harder to kind of break into adult speculative fiction than it was in any place in YA. The YA community was much more welcoming to my book. Now, I don't know. That could simply be the way that it was pitched, the way that it was marketed. I couldn't even tell you but so, for me, that's kind of where I found the difference to be, and I think because even though it is technically, like we were talking about it being historical, it's contemporary historical. It's more modern, and there's not the elements of speculation on top of it whereas my other, that duology is time travel. Both have won awards, both the historical contemporary and the time travel, but the YA book sold a lot better. I don't know if one market is clamoring more for the FF YA because that's certainly a place where – the YA community is, right now, very, very into their women loving women stories so that could be it, too. I don't know. That's been my experience, but both technically are contemporary. I mean they both, again, one is contemporary historical and the other one is contemporary science fiction, but they take place in very modern contemporary societies.
H: So, what was it like to research this book? I mean I know you said that it represents your life to some extent, but what parts of it did you have to research?
C: I mean the easiest stuff was, of course, looking into music and looking into my cultural references in the time period, but I think my favorite thing that I had to look into was and writing these zines from the point of views of characters who are having these, basically, if you've never read a zine especially ones from the 90s very much like just screed about whatever the writer wanted to rant about. There's one that is actually my favorite segment that I wrote in the whole book, and it's called “Of Mice and Menses” and my character is ranting about how her period has been commodified. In other words, it's the idea that she menstruates every month is both asexual and hyper sexualized, and she has to pay for these things that she doesn't understand and are obviously created by men, and I had to look up when wings were put on maxi pads.
H: [Laughter] Oh, my god, I'm thinking of the entire history of experimental menstrual products that I lived through.
C: Right? This is a generation that, thank God, did not have to deal with the sanitary belt, right? Although I am very familiar because my mom obviously dealt with that, and just a variety of different things and the horror of reading the packaging on tampons and worrying about toxic shock syndrome, but the thing for me that's always been baffling is the wing on a maxi pad. It serves no purpose. It does not keep it from leaking. All it does is get caught in your pubic hair and stick to your thighs, pardon my bluntness, especially if you don't have a thigh gap, that thing is just going to stick to things. So, literally, that's what my character is venting about, but I did have to look it up, and, thankfully, they were added to pads in the 80s so I was not like – I was pretty sure that I remembered them being on pads when I was a teenager, but I couldn't be sure, so I had to look it up and it was sometime in the 80s. Obviously, that was invented by a man, obviously, someone who had never worn a maxi pad in their lives.
H: [Laughter] Anything else you had to research in that way to get the details right, the realism?
C: Well, the most fun, I think, was getting to read old zines. There's a book called, I believe it's called The Riot Grrrl Collection. I'm trying to see if I can see it on my shelves here, but it's literally a collection of zines that has been compiled. It's everything from some of the more famous ones like Bikini Kill and those very early Riot Grrrl zines to some obscure ones. There's some in there from black women and other people of color, and all of the elements of that. For me, that was the most fun was going back through and reliving it through that… first-person historical accounts is essentially what you're reading.
H: It's sort of proto-blogging in a way.
C: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, yeah, when I explained what zines are to teenagers and young adults, I teach college right now, and so my students weren't alive. They were born in ’95, ’96. When I talked to them about it, I always say, “Well, it's blogging, but it was before the internet was wide enough spread that people blogged, pretty much.” It was the bridge between journaling and blogging, and so, yes, photocopying your clip together magazine pieces and type or handwritten journal entries and things like that. It's fun to read these young women, and it was mostly driven by young people, young people in the punk scene were the forefront of these zines. I mean zines have a longer history than that, of course.
H: Yeah, fan zines in the science fiction community, yeah.
C: Absolutely, going all the way back to the original Star Trek series, and maybe even prior to that, but to see, again, it's like if you're researching past presidents and you pull out their letters and you can go find letters from Thomas Jefferson and his journal entries, and things like that. It's the same thing but instead of it being about the day to days of a politician, it's about the day to day of a teenage girl. It's amazing. One of the best, as a matter-of-fact the epigraph of my book is a quote from a book about Riot Grrrl. It is, “The 90s were a rough time to be a girl,” I'm paraphrasing here but, “so little has changed,” and it's true.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to write this book is that, yeah, that was 20 years ago, but you would be surprised how little has changed in that intervening time for young women to be… they’re taunted, they’re oversexualized, they’re infantilized, and treated like their opinions are the bottom of the barrel. It's always like, “Oh, yeah, some teenage girls.” I mean we saw it with Taylor Swift. She voices her political opinion and there's other issues with that, but the primary thing that people were pointing out was like, and I think there was – who was the politician that was like, “Oh, well, 13-year-old girls can't vote.” Her fans aren't 13, and that's not an insult. 13-year-old girls are allowed to have opinions.
H: Yeah, any other projects that you're working on currently that you are able and willing to talk about?
C: Well, I'm still trying to finish up a contemporary horror novella, but, in the back of my mind, I do have another historical I wanna conquer. Back in my recent fandom past, I wrote a historical M/M for a fandom that I was in and what sparked it was it takes place during the Gilded Age which is basically the late Victorian period but in America, and what I love about that society was how easy – and this is the time period where Oscar Wilde was at his peak of his running around Europe, looking at the way society was structured was that men socialize with men and women socialize with women, and you only were really with the opposite sex once you were married, and how easy that really was for gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals to have relationships, have companionships with same gendered genders.
H: Oh, yeah, I am constantly trying to impress this upon my listeners and my blog readers that you don't have to go through shenanigans to get your two same-sex people together because that would be the norm of life for them.
C: Absolutely, it would not be – and one of the reasons why Oscar Wilde was ever “caught” was kind of because a noble had kind of a personal vendetta, but, otherwise, it was not rare that, you know, no one thought twice about him hanging out with young men all the time. Also, they didn't have, the way we do in contemporary society that view of homosexuality. It wasn't defined, so it wasn't really – if you had a gay uncle, it was just kind of like, “Oh, well, he's just that way,” and really was just we just don’t talk about it.
H: A confirmed bachelor.
C: A confirmed bachelor, absolutely. [Laughter] My mom tells a great story from when she lived with, I think probably in the 60s, and they had neighbors down the street who she called, “the bachelors,” and she didn’t realize until many years later that they were a gay couple because, again, it was a don't-ask-don't-tell kind of thing, and we just didn't talk about it. There were quite a few young men and young women who engaged in these kinds of relationships. So, I kind of was thinking I wanted to maybe make it a two-parter of a gay couple and a lesbian couple, kind of having that opportunity to explore these relationships because of the structure of society and how that was not noticed as an impropriety because they were forced into these same-sex social groups. So, that's my dream project. [Laughter]
H: If you get around to writing the lesbian couple, drop me a note. Let me know.
C: Definitely, definitely.
H: So, other than your podcast which I will put the links to in the show notes, where can listeners find you online?
C: Sure, the easiest way probably is I'm on Twitter. I'm @carriepack on Twitter, and that's probably the easiest way because it's a good direct communication, but, basically, I'm on all social media so anywhere you can find a person named Carrie Pack, it’s likely me, likely. [Laughter] There are others out there. They're scientists though. They're much cooler than me.
H: Yeah, I think I found a website for you as well, probably linked from your Twitter, so I'll put links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Carrie, for joining us this month.
C: Thank you.
Show Notes
A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.
In this episode we talk about
- The riot girl movement of the 1990s
- The importance of girls in zine culture
- Writing near-past fiction
- Sensitive writing for the contemporary reader
- Carrie’s podcast: Bi Sci Fi for queer-friendly speculative fiction
- Different experiences with SFF and YA books
- Researching the facts of your own past
- Books mentioned
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
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Links to Carrie Pack Online
- Website: http://www.carriepack.com
- Twitter: @carriepack
- Twitter: @biscifi
Major category:
LHMPMonday, December 3, 2018 - 08:00
Across many authors there’s a confusing assertion that lesbian possibilities have regularly gone from being considered impossible, to being recognized, then resulting in the demonization of demonstrations of affection. To some extent, this article deals with the reverse swing of the pendulum: how was that awareness suppressed again, such that there could be a later re-awakening of suspicion? Traub and Andreadis discuss how lesbian possibilities were identified and articulated in the 17th century, resulting in a genteel avoidance-discourse among authors like Katherine Phillips. Lanser and others examine a similar dynamic in the 18th century leading to the "sex panic" of the 1790s that rolled over into an erasure of female sexual possibilities in general in the 19th century...only to have a focus on lesbian possibilities revived in the late 19th century with the decadent movement and the sexologists, who once again raised the spectre that any close female relationships were suspect.
It almost makes me wonder to what extent this apparent pendulum swing is a real phenomenon in lived experience and to what extent it's an artifact of changing fasions in "official discourse." Were there actual ups and downs in the average person's awareness of the possibilities of female same-sex relations? Or were there only ups and downs in the degree of official scrutiny those possibilities were given? Other authors have pointed out that shifts in the attitudes of the patriarchal establishment toward relationships between women were often dictated by the extent to which those relationships defused or exacerbated women's challenges to their authority.
When Craft-Fairchild asserts "the lack of a coherent, codified model" of sapphic identity in the 18th century, could we not just as reasonably assert that 18th century English writers did not have a single stereotype for "real lesbians" while clearly having an awareness of desire between women? Rather than this lack of coherence indicating the absense of a sense of lesbian identity, might it rather indicate that 18th century lesbian identity was rooted in the experience of desire itself and had as wide a variety of expressions of that desire as were available for heterosexual desire? Does "lesbian erasure" come from the absence of a single, agreed-upon stereotypical image? Or does real erasure come from the idea that there must be a single, agreed-upon sterotypical image in order for "lesbian identity" to exist?
I think these are questions that might usefully be considered by comparison to 20th-21st century concepts and images of lesbian identity. Is there currently a "coherent, codified model" of lesbian identity of the sort that Craft-Fairchild is looking for in the 18th century? Or are there many different flavors of identity that connect to each other by a variety of similarity-links without the need or ability to define a sharp-edged category? (I'm always happy to insert cognitive approaches category theory into a discussion!)
One significant challenge that articles like this one raise is against the idea that "absence of evidence" for unambiguous lesbian-like identities can ever be considered evidence of absence. But another important challenge is to the idea that an overall picture of historic concepts of same-sex love and desire can come from studying individual historic periods. If any given defined historic period appears to recapitulate a cycle of covert identity, growing awareness, public identification, demonization, and suppression, then maybe we need to stop thinking in terms of "development". It's reminiscent of Traub's concept of "cycles of salience" (Traub 2011) as well as Lanser's point that in every age lesbianism was framed as being both "an ancient vice" and "a new fashion" (Lanser 2014).
When I started this Project, I truly thought of my own work as being the isolated summary and presentation of individual publications, but more and more I find myself developing my own over-arching image of the state of sapphic consciousness across time and space, and find myself challenging more narrow conclusions based on focused data. Not that I think there is a single unified field theory of lesbianism, but that I have an image of the connections and continuities as well as the disruptions and disjunctions that helps me make sense of how individual women in different times and places might have understood their own lives. It's a rich tapestry and has a lot of space for making up new stories that are woven seamlessly into the existing ground.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Craft-Fairchild, Catherine. 2006. “Sexual and Textual Indeterminacy: Eighteenth-Century English Representations of Sapphism” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 15:3
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
Across many authors there’s a confusing assertion that lesbian possibilities have regularly gone from being considered impossible, to being recognized, then resulting in the demonization of demonstrations of affection. To some extent, this article deals with the reverse swing of the pendulum: how was that awareness suppressed again, such that there could be a later re-awakening of suspicion? Traub and Andreadis discuss how lesbian possibilities were identified and articulated in the 17th century, resulting in a genteel avoidance-discourse among authors like Katherine Phillips. Lanser and others examine a similar dynamic in the 18th century leading to the "sex panic" of the 1790s that rolled over into an erasure of female sexual possibilities in general in the 19th century...only to have a focus on lesbian possibilities revived in the late 19th century with the decadent movement and the sexologists, who once again raised the spectre that any close female relationships were suspect.
It almost makes me wonder to what extent this apparent pendulum swing is a real phenomenon in lived experience and to what extent it's an artifact of changing fasions in "official discourse." Were there actual ups and downs in the average person's awareness of the possibilities of female same-sex relations? Or were there only ups and downs in the degree of official scrutiny those possibilities were given? Other authors have pointed out that shifts in the attitudes of the patriarchal establishment toward relationships between women were often dictated by the extent to which those relationships defused or exacerbated women's challenges to their authority.
When Craft-Fairchild asserts "the lack of a coherent, codified model" of sapphic identity in the 18th century, could we not just as reasonably assert that 18th century English writers did not have a single stereotype for "real lesbians" while clearly having an awareness of desire between women? Rather than this lack of coherence indicating the absense of a sense of lesbian identity, might it rather indicate that 18th century lesbian identity was rooted in the experience of desire itself and had as wide a variety of expressions of that desire as were available for heterosexual desire? Does "lesbian erasure" come from the absence of a single, agreed-upon stereotypical image? Or does real erasure come from the idea that there must be a single, agreed-upon sterotypical image in order for "lesbian identity" to exist?
I think these are questions that might usefully be considered by comparison to 20th-21st century concepts and images of lesbian identity. Is there currently a "coherent, codified model" of lesbian identity of the sort that Craft-Fairchild is looking for in the 18th century? Or are there many different flavors of identity that connect to each other by a variety of similarity-links without the need or ability to define a sharp-edged category? (I'm always happy to insert cognitive approaches category theory into a discussion!)
One significant challenge that articles like this one raise is against the idea that "absence of evidence" for unambiguous lesbian-like identities can ever be considered evidence of absence. But another important challenge is to the idea that an overall picture of historic concepts of same-sex love and desire can come from studying individual historic periods. If any given defined historic period appears to recapitulate a cycle of covert identity, growing awareness, public identification, demonization, and suppression, then maybe we need to stop thinking in terms of "development". It's reminiscent of Traub's concept of "cycles of salience" (Traub 2011) as well as Lanser's point that in every age lesbianism was framed as being both "an ancient vice" and "a new fashion" (Lanser 2014).
When I started this Project, I truly thought of my own work as being the isolated summary and presentation of individual publications, but more and more I find myself developing my own over-arching image of the state of sapphic consciousness across time and space, and find myself challenging more narrow conclusions based on focused data. Not that I think there is a single unified field theory of lesbianism, but that I have an image of the connections and continuities as well as the disruptions and disjunctions that helps me make sense of how individual women in different times and places might have understood their own lives. It's a rich tapestry and has a lot of space for making up new stories that are woven seamlessly into the existing ground.
# # #
A comparison of the popular reactions in 18th century English literature to “sapphists” as contrasted with male homosexual institutions like molly houses gives the appearance of unconcern about women’s relationships, as does the absence of English laws against sex between women. When women in same-sex relationships ran afoul of the law, they were typically charged with fraud. Nor were women who cross-dressed as men treated with the same public scorn as effeminate men. Various scholar have suggested that it was possible for people in that era to be entirely ignorant of the sexual possibilities between women.
Terry Castle’s The Apparitional Lesbian took a contrasting position: that lesbians were absent from the historic record because they generated an anxiety too extreme to be articulated. Other scholars, such as Elizabeth Susan Wahl assert that homosexual possibilities between women were an “open secret” during the 18th century that was encoded into a variety of literary genres while still being elusive. Similarly, Valerie Traub maps out how 17th century English texts used a set of classical idioms, tropes, and motifs to create a means of making female homoeroticism intelligible, but that very visibility led to increasing social sanction. Knowledge about female same-sex possibilities then cast suspicion on forms of intimacy such as bed-sharing, kissing and caressing, and close friendships that had previously been considered “chaste”.
Harriette Andreadis argues that this conflict provided an impetus for inhibiting open discussion of same-sex relations by the mid-17th century. Accusations of female same-sex relations could be used for social control to support a binary, heteronormative sexual imperative. This resulted in a self-protective evasiveness among women writers who depicted eroticized female relationships.
Thus we find an apparent contradiction where female homoeroticism is expressed in a variety of 18th century genres while simultaneously beginning to fade to deniability. The anxiety around same-sex discourse affected the authors as well as their audiences, resulting in an ambivalent and indeterminate treatment of lesbian-like characters. This article looks at the nature of how that ambivalence and indeterminacy was expressed. Rather than taking a position that textual same-sex desire existed but has been erased and must be re-discovered, Craft-Fairchild looks at the textual nature of the presence of same-sex desire.
Were women “struggling to find a language with which to define their love for one another”? Or were they using the approved models of female friendship to conceal or dodge the issue while still expressing those emotions? Was lesbian identity being developed or was a developed model being concealed? If 18th century texts appear to present an incoherent articulation of same-sex desire, is that due to the incoherence of the writers or of today’s readers? Craft-Fairchild argues that the apparent tolerance of the 18th century sapphist was due to the lack of a coherent, codified model that defined her. This same lack is what makes her difficult for modern readers to identify.
The first case study is Delariviere Manley’s The New Atalantis (1709), which ridicules the lesbian behavior of “the new Cabal,” a fictional cadre of women who have turned their emotional focus on each other. The resulting relationships are varied in nature, including both mannish women and traditional feminine ones, “butch-femme” couples as well as “femme-femme” ones, hierarchical relationships and egalitarian ones and with a variety of expressed motivations for disdaining men (or embracing both men and women).
Manley’s text both asserts that female homoeroticism is an “impossibility” while simultaneously treating it as a threat. The all-female society is presented in both utopian and satirical lights. She sees the line between female friendship and “irregularity” as both impossible to identify and clearly transgressible. Manley’s text asserts both that the “real” sapphist can be identified by physical signs (masculine appearance and behavior) and that one can be both traditionally feminine and inclined toward women.
The second case study is John Cleland’s Fanny Hill in which the innocent Fanny is initiated into sexual pleasure by an older prostitute, Phoebe, who is described variously as having “an arbitrary taste” for women that she takes the opportunity to gratify, while also taking pleasure “without distinction of sexes.” While Fanny is depicted as preferring to move on from her female initiation to the “more solid food” of men, Phoebe is assigned a contradictory array of motivations for her active interest in same-sex erotics. Nor is she depicted as being in any way masculinized. Rather than resolving the problem, Cleland simply abandons the character.
The third case study is Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband, a highly fictionalized story of Mary Hamilton, a woman tried for fraud for marrying another woman while in male disguise. Fielding presents Hamilton as being traditionally feminine and attractive, as being innocent and properly brought up, but then being “corrupted” by a relationship with an older woman after which she had a fixed interest only in women. The actual court records of Hamilton’s case make it clear that the legal charge was fraud and that there was no suggestion of a sexual crime, while Fielding’s work revolves around a prurient interest in the sexual possibilities of her life.
Fielding lays out an incoherent theory of “natural” versus “unnatural” desire which fails to justify how Hamilton could be diverted to the “unnatural” despite having no physical or psychological predisposition before her own seduction. Fielding simultaneously asserts that such women will always turn back to preferring men when the option is available (illustrating the point with several of Hamilton’s partners who abandon her for men), but consistently depicts Hamilton herself as steadfastly preferring female partners, with no implication that she would have been unable to attract a man if she chose.
Perhaps the perfect encapsulation of male anxiety, as voiced by Fielding’s character, is when she offers her female partner “all the pleasures of marriage without the inconveniences.”
The anxiety provoked by the inability to “read” sapphism is illustrated by a fantasy by Jonathan Swift, who imagines a system of evaluating female virtue by means of the myth that a lion would not attack a true virgin. Thus all communities (he asserts) should keep a lion handy by the church. A woman would not be absolutely compelled to offer herself for the test, but if she refused she would be assumed to be a whore. He then spins a tale in which a woman embarked on the test believing herself secure, but when the lion attacked, as she was torn to pieces, she confessed “I am no true virgin! Oh Sappho, Sappho!” The text emphasizes the lack of any identifying signifier of sapphism other than the magical senses of the lions. The sapphist moves invisibly through society with no identifying characteristics, but the strength of the anxiety her existence provokes is measured in the viciousness of the fictional punishment she is subjected to.
Even condemnatory texts such as Manley, Swift, Cleland, and Fielding could not serve up a coherent image of female homoeroticism. But positive descriptions of women in committed relationships fared no better in characterizing their subjects. Susan Lanser asserts that women such as the Ladies of Llangollen or Anne Lister created an acceptable image of “lesbian” relationships but that the acceptability of intimate female relationships depended on manipulating the conventions through which they were interpreted. Positive depictions of female erotic relationships drew on the language of friendship and heterosexual romance, but in wavering between them might participate in their own erasure.
The anonymous The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu presents an example of the difficulty of interpreting textual intent, in part because the anonymous nature of the text and a lack of contemporary critical commentary makes it hard to determine the author’s intent or the expected reception. The story embeds the spicy tale of same-sex flirtation and love within an incoherent jumble of other literary genres, making it possible to overlook--or even deny--the sexually transgressive nature of the text. The protagonists (Alithea and Arabella) regularly disparage heterosexual marriage, but in a manner that is consistent with expected reactions for women of their class. Only their expressions of physical admiration and desire for each other then move their reactions into sapphic territory. The story is rife with expressions of physical affection between the two, teasing references between them to being lovers or each other’s husband, but avoids using any vocabulary that makes unambiguous reference to lesbianism (terms such as sapphist, tribade, fricatrice, etc.). And the two regularly pay lip service to same-sex love representing “impossibilities” and lamenting their inability to truly play the part of a husband. This leaves the reader suspended between an interpretation of the text as a covert lesbian love story and a misogynistic satire that denies the possibility of love between women.
There are parallel ambiguities in the fictionalized autobiography A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke by an actress best known for performing both “breeches roles” (roles in which a female character dresses in male clothing) and actual male roles. Charke cross-dressed off the stage as well at times in a variety of circumstances, including a long stint living as “Mr. Brown” in company with a female companion. Like the Richelieu story, the text combines multiple genres and refuses to adhere to a coherent through-line. Charke hints at a heterosexual context for her cross-dressing (which she refuses to disclose in detail) and depicts herself as dodging any attempt at consummation of romantic encounters with women while cross-dressing, but then relates in detail the loving and marriage-like relationship with Mrs. Brown. While critics have offered a number of events in support of Charke’s heterosexuality (marriage to a man, assertions that she didn’t share a bed with Mrs. Brown) Emma Donoghue points out the double standard that if a man and woman engaged in the relationship laid out for Charke and Mrs. Brown there would be no doubt it was a romantic and sexual one.
Across multiple 18th century texts, sapphic figures are presented in ambiguous and inexplicit terms that allow for plausible denial while requiring a significant amount of effort and hand-waving to perform that denial. Homoerotic relations between women were presented indirectly, both due to the lack of a consistent and coherent social model, but perhaps by the women themselves as a self-protective measure. Although explicit language was available to identify women involved in same-sex erotics, that language was avoided in more elevated literary registers both because it was taboo, and possibly because women writing of their own lives did not view themselves in the negative light associated with those terms. In doing so, they may have participated in their own literary erasure.
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Event / person:
Saturday, December 1, 2018 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 29a - On the Shelf for December 2018 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2018/12/01 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for December 2018.
December starts with a reminder that the podcast will be open for fiction submissions during the month of January. We’re looking for lesbian-themed historic short stories of up to 5000 words. We pay professional rates both for the story and to the narrators. See the link in the show notes for full details and please publicize this call to other venues so we have an even harder time choosing among the wonderful submissions than we did last year.
Conference
If you’re interested in the geekier academic side of researching and writing historical fiction, you might want to know about the Historical Fictions Research Network. They have a website and online journal at historicalfictionsresearch-dot-org and will be holding their fourth annual conference in Manchester England in February 2019. The website says the following about their conference:
“The Historical Fictions Research Network aims to create a place for the discussion of all aspects of the construction of the historical narrative. The focus of the conference is the way we construct history, the narratives and fictions people assemble and how. Recent keynotes have explored the experiences of excavations at Treblinka; the use of DNA to reconstruct historical narratives; explorations of memorial practices at battle fields; cookery as a means to explore the past; new insights resulting from a computer based re-construction of the battle of Trafalgar; and a discussion of new approaches at the Petrie Museum. We welcome both academic and practitioner presentations. We welcome people working on prose, drama, visual art, reception studies, musicology, museum displays, film, tv, gaming, wargaming, graphic novels, transformative works and any other areas engaged in the construction of narratives of the past.”
Publications on the Blog
In November, the blog started off with a mini-theme of classical Greek romance novels, starting with a translation of The Babyloniaka by Iamblichos, discussed in the podcast on sexuality in classical Rome, and a Christian adaptation of the genre for the apocryphal acts of the saints, where the romance arc is mapped onto two Christian women, Xanthippe and Polyxena.
Following this, I began a series of articles about the late 18th century to go along with last month’s essay on sculptor Anne Damer. These included the social and political forces that resulted in the Sex Panic of the 1790s, which precipitated a shift in English images of the feminine ideal to a domestic, sexless maternal figure. Another article looked into the contents of the French Mémoires secrets, a sort of politically-tinged gossip rag about doings at the French court in the time leading up to the Revolution.
Continuing the 18th century theme in December, we have an article on representations of sapphism in 18th century English literature. And as a contrast to sexuality among the middle and upper classes, Theo Van der Meer digs through legal archives in Amsterdam to turn up case histories of women who ran afoul of the law in the context of sexual relations with other women.
Fiction Series
I haven’t settled on what publications to cover at the end of the month, but I have a couple of books on the history of same-sex relations in India that would go nicely with the last of our original fiction series for 2018: “At the Mouth” by Gurmika Mann. Mann has written a delightful, if bittersweet story of young love and making hard choices.
Book Shopping! Oops, Movie Shopping!
I have no new book acquisitions to talk about, so I’ll take the time to talk up a new movie that listeners should definitely track down. The Favourite, starring Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone is a costume drama set in the early 18th century about England’s Queen Anne and her romantic friendships with two of her courtiers: the brillliant and politically savvy Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and Churchill’s protégée and eventual rival for the queen’s affections, Abigail Masham. I can guarantee you at least a bit of homoerotic tension, possibly even more. It’s hard to know without having seen it yet. The movie is likely to have limited distribution in art-house theaters, though it’s already won some major awards, so do your research and track it down before it goes away.
Essay
And because it’s as good an inspiration as any other, I’m going to do the December essay on Queen Anne and the rumors of lesbianism that surrounded her intimate circle of favorites. I’ll have a book recommendation or two that tie in with the topic. And I may possibly rope in a guest to discuss the movie with. No promises, but I’ll do some sort of review to let you know what I thought of it. Would listeners be interested in regular episodes about historic movies of lesbian interest? Let me know--I have quite a collection on video, and if there’s enough interest I could do mini reviews on occasion.
Author Guest
This month’s author guest will be Carrie Pack, whose YA novel Grrrrls on the Side looks back at the riot girl movement of the 1990s and the rise of zine culture. The ‘90s may seem just a blink of an eye ago to some of us, but for the target teenage readership of the book, it’s ancient history. Carrie will also be doing our book appreciation show this month.
[Sponsor break]
Recent Lesbian Historical Fiction
For this month’s list of new and forthcoming historical fiction, I’ve turned up 9 books, starting with several I missed when they came out in October. Because lesbian books often don’t have Amazon listings or advance publicity until they’re actually released, the timing of when I put these shows together means that I may not be able to mention a book until the show two months later. If you know of any upcoming lesbian historical books, or if you have one coming up that has a scheduled release date, drop me an email to make sure I include it. People are starting to get the word that the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast is a go-to resource for information about books, and I’d like to make it as complete as I can.
Back in October, we have book 2 in Olivia Lark’s “The Flowers” series, published by Three Bunny Farm Press. The title is Lavender Inn and it’s an independent story from the first of the series and is set in the 1890s somewhere on the Atlantic Coast. Here’s the blurb.
As Lavender Inn shakes under the hurricane's onslaught, other storms whirl within. Clara Winslow's struggling seaside inn needs a successful society wedding, but a big storm will take it out of her hands. Wedding guest Tillie Walker is stylish and kind, but she is harboring secrets, secrets that could get in the way of the growing fascination between her and glorious, windswept Clara. Can a catastrophe be the salvation of two women near ruin? Lavender Inn is a standalone romance set in 1890, with the kind of tender happily-ever-after readers enjoyed in Daisy Crown.
October also saw a couple of stories about hard-riding western women in male-coded professions.
Naomi Muse’s self-published Whiskey and Cinnamon has the following description:
Sloan had a hard enough time being a female bounty hunter in the West. With only her trusty steed Whiskey by her side, she went through town after town righting wrongs. Her methods worked well until she encountered the Franklin brothers terrorizing the women in a small town. Sloan always had a soft spot for women, and she will not let these ruffians have their way with them. Will enlisting the help of a local legend be enough to defeat her new foes?
Red Hope brought out The Triple L published by Little Red Wings.
In 1878, Landen Morrison is a wandering cowgirl with an ugly past that keeps finding her, even when she rides into Texas. She goes to the town of Paris, looking for work, alcohol, and sex but she accidentally lets her guard slip around Raleigh Baylor, the only female Ranger in Paris, Texas. Despite her attempts, Raleigh watches Landen leave Paris but is later shocked to learn Landen has suddenly joined the infamous Sam Bass Gang. Several train robberies later, a war ensues between the rangers and the Bass Gang, one that includes a personal battle of justice and betrayal between the two opposing women. As the conflict comes to a bloody end, the truth of Landen's lies is revealed. Can Raleigh's love conquer Landen's dark past, or has she lost her forever?
Author Emilie Blondel has two self-published erotic stories either out or just coming out. They appear to be in the short story range and look to have a fairly high heat rating.
In “Her Royal Servant” beautiful blonde Anne-Marie was born into a lowly life, working on a small market in the city of Paris. She dreams of one day escaping, and although she knows she can make an extra livre or two by giving the young men of Paris her favours, she has never felt interested in the company of men. When she buys herself a flirtatious new outfit one day, spending all her meagre savings, she is surprised to discover that it is not just men who seem interested in her now. In fact, she attracts the interest of one of the wealthiest, most beautiful women in the whole of France. When she is taken back to the Palace of Versailles, in order to be this gentlewoman's special servant, she is amazed how good it feels to finally find someone worth serving. Her world, from now on, is full of majesty.
And coming out in December from the same author is “Bellatrix's Slave”
When innocent eighteen-year-old Aurelia is told by her father that she must attend the Colosseum with him, to watch a gladiator fight, she is not pleased. Until, that is, she discovers that the gladiators are hot, strong, powerful women... The winning gladiator, a muscular and dominating warrior named Bellatrix is told that she may choose a man from the audience to be her slave for the night. But she chooses a woman. She chooses Aurelia. Aurelia soon learns what it is like to be completely under her Mistress' control...
November releases include another erotic short story, “The Queen's Gift” by Lara Zielinsky, published by LZ Media.
The brief blurb tells us: “Pirate Captain "Bloody Mary" Flint diverts Lady Anne Coleridge from her fate as a lady in waiting to the English Queen. A lesbian romantic adventure on the 18th century high seas.”
Hard on the heels of Vanda’s third book in the Juliana series is book 4 Heaven is to your Left published by Sans Merci Press. Here’s the blurb:
It’s 1956. In Heaven is to Your Left Alice (Al) and Juliana arrive home from a successful run at Le Lido in Paris, only to be greeted by Dan Schuyler who has threatened to reveal to the world the nature of their “immoral” relationship. Under this threat Schuyler has gotten Juliana to sign a contract with him to be in a Broadway play. Now, the control and manipulation begins. Al seeks a way to free Juliana from this man’s clutches. She turns to Max, accomplished businessman, owner of two night clubs, to help her. There must be something he can do; he has friends who are gangsters. Still, Max does nothing. Or does he? Al knows she has to act. She knows gangsters too.
There are two December releases in addition to the short story previously mentioned. Lily Maxon offers a novella that sounds like it has either a Regency or Victorian setting, the self-published A Lady’s Desire.
Lady Sarah Lark has never had much interest in any of the suitors that surround her. She’s decided that, instead of choosing a husband, she’ll save her pin money and travel like she’s always wanted to. However, her plans are interrupted when her family invites her cousin’s widow, Winifred Wakefield, to stay with them.
S. D. Simper offers us a re-imagining of Sheridan LeFanu’s classic lesbian vampire tale, in Carmilla and Laura published by Endless Night Publications. Here’s the blurb:
In the late 19th century, Laura lives a lonely life in a schloss by the forest, Styria, with only her doting father and two governesses for company. A chance accident brings a new companion, however – the eccentric and beautiful Carmilla. With charm unparalleled and habits as mysterious as her history, Carmilla’s allure is undeniable, drawing Laura closer with every affectionate touch and word. Attraction blossoms into a temptation Laura fears to name, a tantalizing passion burning brighter than the fires of hell. But when a mysterious plague begins stealing the lives of young women in her home and the village beyond, Laura wrestles to reconcile the truth – that the gentle, fragile woman she loves may be a monster cast out of heaven. Carmilla, the classic vampire novella written by J Sheridan LeFanu, receives new life in this gorgeous retelling, centered on the provocative, controversial leads of the original, Carmilla and Laura.
Ask Sappho
For this month’s Ask Sappho segment, I thought I’d pass on an interesting archaeological find that might spark some story ideas. I got this story from the website Ancient Origins, who cite articles in Discovery News and Mail Online among their sources.
The find comes from the latrine of an 18th century school of swordsmanship in the Baltic city of Gdańsk now part of Poland. Among finds such as wooden practice swords, broken pottery, and jewelry, they found a well-preserved leather dildo. It is about 8 inches long, is stuffed with hair, and has a carved wooden tip. The archaeologists suggest that given the location of the find and the construction of the object it was more likely “used for personal pleasure than for ...ritual.” The article has a more extensive discussion of the history of dildos both as ritual objects and as sex toys, if you’re interested in following the link in the show notes.
But when I read this article, I immediately thought of various historic records of female-bodied persons using an artificial penis as part of living a male role, including for having sexual relations with a woman. People like Katherina Hetzeldorfer in 15th century Germany, Eleno de Céspedes in 16th century Spain, Catherine Vizzani in 18th century Italy, and Catharina Margaretha Lincken in 18th century Germany. My imagination went spinning off into a gender-disguise story: a young woman who aspires to be a swordswoman masquerades as a man to enter the school, and then...
Well, someone will have to take up the tale and tell us the rest of it. 18th century Gdańsk was quite a happening place, with plenty of opportunity for adventure and peril, as well as the challenges of disguise and--dare we hope it--romance? In fact, there’s still time for someone to give it a try for next year’s fiction series!
Show Notes
Your monthly update on what the Lesbian Historic Motif Project has been doing.
In this episode we talk about:
- An academic resource about researching historical fiction: the Historical Fictions Network and their upcoming conference in England in February 2019.
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Classical Greek romances with f/f themes
- Articles about the Sex Panic of the 1790s and the social and political anxieties in England and France leading up to it.
- F/f sex in 18th century legal records in Amsterdam
- Possibly some tie-in publications on historical sexuality in India
- A gorgeous lesbian-interest costume drama The Favourite about Queen Anne of England, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, and Abigail Masham.
- This month’s essay topic is: Queen Anne and the rumors of lesbianism that surrounded her favorites.
- Announcing this month’s author guest, Carrie Pack
- This month’s audio short story will be: “At the Mouth” by Gurmika Mann
- New and forthcoming fiction
- Lavender Inn by Olivia Lark (Three Bunny Farm Press)
- Whiskey and Cinnamon by Naomi Muse (self-published)
- The Triple L by Red Hope (Little Red Wings)
- “Her Royal Servant” by Emilie Blondel (self-published, short story)
- “Bellatrix's Slave” by Emilie Blondel (self-published, short story)
- “The Queen's Gift” by Lara Zielinsky (LZ Media)
- Heaven is to your Left (Juliana book 4) by Vanda (Sans Merci Press)
- A Lady’s Desire by Lily Maxon (self-published)
- Carmilla and Laura by S.D. Simper (Endless Night Publications)
- Ask Sappho: an amusing and intriguing archaeological find, courtesy of Ancient Origins
- A reminder about opening submissions for our 2019 fiction 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
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPTuesday, November 27, 2018 - 07:58
It wasn't quite meant as a direct exchange, but December's LHMPodcast guest is going to be Carrie Pack, and I'm appearing on her podcast show BiSciFi. Check it out!
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PromotionMonday, November 26, 2018 - 10:00
As the 18th century progressed toward the "sex panic" that presaged a massive shift in attitudes towards women's sexuality, we see how images of sexual license--both heterosexual and homosexual--came to be viewed as signs of the decay and collapse of civil society itself. In France, these images got caught up in the larger upheavals that led to the Revolution. It becomes difficult to decipher exactly what the women of the French court were actually doing with each other, as opposed to what they were accused of doing as a symbolic displacement of hostility about other aspects of society and politics. The more I read about this era, the less I'm certain that I know. In some ways, the image of sapphic chaos in the later 18th century French court feels like a preview of the image of lesbian decadence that would bloom a century later. While attitudes towards relationships between women in western Europe share some trends and similarities, the specific form they take in particular countries is often shaped by local politics and anxieties. The Revolution not only employed the image of lesbian relations as an example of the destructive nature of uncontrolled women (whether in the aristocracy, or later among revolutionaries), but reaction to those images then shaped attitudes in England and elsewhere as we've seen in this current series of articles.
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LHMPFull citation:
Merrick, Jeffrey. 1990. “Sexual Politics and Public Order in Late Eighteenth-Century France: the Mémoires secrets and the Correspondance secrète” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, 68-84.
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
As the 18th century progressed toward the "sex panic" that presaged a massive shift in attitudes towards women's sexuality, we see how images of sexual license--both heterosexual and homosexual--came to be viewed as signs of the decay and collapse of civil society itself. In France, these images got caught up in the larger upheavals that led to the Revolution. It becomes difficult to decipher exactly what the women of the French court were actually doing with each other, as opposed to what they were accused of doing as a symbolic displacement of hostility about other aspects of society and politics. The more I read about this era, the less I'm certain that I know. In some ways, the image of sapphic chaos in the later 18th century French court feels like a preview of the image of lesbian decadence that would bloom a century later. While attitudes towards relationships between women in western Europe share some trends and similarities, the specific form they take in particular countries is often shaped by local politics and anxieties. The Revolution not only employed the image of lesbian relations as an example of the destructive nature of uncontrolled women (whether in the aristocracy, or later among revolutionaries), but reaction to those images then shaped attitudes in England and elsewhere as we've seen in this current series of articles.
# # #
This article is an examination of the intersection of private and public morality within the ancien régime of France (i.e., the monarchy prior to the Revolution), and how the image of the family as a “miniature kingdom” created parallels such that transgressions against the state and transgressions against family members could be considered parallel. In turn, legal structures viewed the state (as embodied in the monarch and the legal system) as backing up paternal authority over family members with regard to clandestine marriages, female adultery, and the misbehavior of wives and children.
But this understanding can be seen most clearly when it is perceived as a failed system: in the later 18th century, patriarchalism (in both the state and family) was replaced by paternalism as secular authorities withdrew from the enforcement of morality. The perception of this as failure is woven throughout two collections of reports about moral transgressions and sexual scandals of the French court known as the Mémoires secrets and the Correspondance secrète, covering events of 1762-1787. Neither objective news reports nor simple personal memoirs, these documents assembled information about personal behavior from many sources but were selective and sensational in what they chose to include.
The collections are of interest to the Project due to a significant focus on sexual misconduct: “reports about homosexuality, unmanly men and unwomanly women, unruly and unchaste wives, marital separations, and misconduct involving members of the royal family." The conflation of private and state matters meant that these behaviors were seen as failures of the state itself.
Homosexuality, in particular, was seen as an index of the moral state and the references provide a view of the French vocabulary of the era regarding sexual preferences. The authors “recognized that pederasty and tribadism had always been popular among men and women respectively” but framed such practices as being newly popular and more open. The extensive anecdotes about male homosexuals provide evidence of something resembling an organized subculture, cutting across class backgrounds.
References to tribades, however, associated them more narrowly with theatrical performers and the associated fields of prostitution and pornography. Among the featured subjects were actress Françoise-Marie-Antoinette-Joseph Saucerotte, known as Mademoiselle de Raucourt, who enjoyed the patronage of Queen Marie Antoinette. She was said to dress like a man when sexually involved with women, and like a woman when involved with men. She was said to have “married” the singer Sophie Arnould.
The editorializing on lesbian inclinations (and the specific word “lesbian” is used at least once) asserted their essential bisexuality, but also noted that men sometimes acknowledged that a man was not capable of retrieving the affections of a lover who had turned to other women. Sex between women was not viewed as criminal (since the law didn’t recognize the possibility of sex with no man involved) but rather as “vice”. Sexual relationships between women disrupted the patriarchal social order by removing women from the marriage economy.
The vast majority of this article is concerned with topics unrelated to lesbianism, so the following is a very small item from a much longer discussion.
While the Mémoires secrets were preoccupied with sexual indiscretions, the authors also traced shifts in the part sex played in public opinion about various members of the court. Entries in 1776 condemned scurrilous verses that questioned Louis XVI’s virility and that “criminally” misrepresented the friendship between Queen Marie Antoinette and the princesse de Lamballe (they were rumored to be lovers). Public opinion attacked the queen from a number of angles, including her participation in the government, but a running them was sexual voracity with both men and women and with persons of all classes. She came to represent the archetype of the “disorderly female” who symbolized the ruin of society.
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Saturday, November 24, 2018 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 81 (previously 28)d - Anne Damer - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/11/24 - listen here)
Usually when I choose a podcast topic based on a book I’m reading, it’s one of the non-fiction works intended for the blog. But this time I was inspired by reading Emma Donoghue’s Life Mask, a novelization of the life of late 18th century aristocrat and sculptor Anne Damer. Donoghue’s fiction is sometimes very close to a history text--hmm, I mean that in a more complimentary way than it may have sounded. In any event, women like Damer also feature heavily in Donoghue’s academic writings. She is one of the major research sources I used for this essay.
Anne Conway Damer illustrates two significant issues of the 18th and 19th centuries in western Europe: the difficulty of defining and identifying lesbian-like women, and the ways in which accusations of lesbianism were used to control and punish women whose lives challenged patriarchal structures and prerogatives.
Born Anne Conway in the mid-18th century to an aristocratic British family, her associates were titled peers, high-ranking military officers, members of parliament, philosophers, authors, and artists. In such company, and at such a time, politics shaped her social life. Her family and close friends were members of the Whig party, who favored constitutional monarchism, the supremacy of parliament, and embraced progressive causes such as abolition and religious tolerance, while also being closely tied to the power of the hereditary aristocracy. 18th century British politics were complicated. And politics could also be vicious, especially with regard to women with social power and prominence. Women such as Damer’s friend the Duchess of Devonshire were active in supporting favored political parties but were often repaid by having their personal scandals made public. Sexually tinged gossip and innuendo were a favorite tactic for undermining such women.
Following a typical life course for women of her class, at age 19 Anne married John Damer, the son of Lord Milton who, if things had gone very differently, might eventually have inherited the title of Earl of Dorchester from his father. The couple were set up with a fairly generous income from their families, which John Damer burned through at a furious rate. Several years after their marriage, Anne separated from him--in that era, divorce was rare, though available to the wealthy and well-connected, as it required a special bill in parliament. Two years later, heavily in debt and having been refused further financial help by his father, John Damer committed suicide in a rather scandalous fashion. Gossip later implied that Anne’s disinterest contributed to the act, although any rational assessment of their marriage would put all fault on his side.
Anne had an interest in sculpture--not just as an admirer, but as an artist--and began devoting herself to this artistic field, despite the physicality of the work being considered unfeminine. This was not, mind you, a profession by which she might support herself, but fortunately she had family money to rely on. She worked in a neo-Classical style, specializing in portrait busts in terra-cotta, bronze, and marble, and featuring people in her social circles, as well as creating architectural decorations including works for her beloved theaters. In addition to her aristocratic circle, Anne had a number of close friends in theatrical professions including actors Sarah Siddons and Elizabeth Farren. We’ll come back to that friendship with Farren in a little bit.
It was during travels on the continent to study art, in the years immediately after being widowed, that rumors began to circulate that Anne Damer was a lover of women. The rumors were propagated by a number of satirical publications that mentioned her using pseudonyms in such ill-disguised form that there was no question who was intended. In addition to being referred to as “Sapphick”, she was called a “Tommy” in a very early example of this slang term being used for a lesbian. There was no solid evidence that she was sexually active with women, but even in the face of powerful friends taking publishers to task for printing the satires and verses, the rumors continued for two decades before gradually fading.
Whether there was any basis for sexual accusations, Damer’s life gives ample evidence that her strongest emotional ties were with women. Some of her rumored lovers were women with whom she had very close friendships that could reasonably be classified as romantic. But simply having intense emotional friendships with other women was not something that automatically brought accusations of lesbianism in the later 18th century. So what was different about Damer that attracted those accusations?
During the 18th century, there was a complex and unstable relationship between various types of homoerotic relations between women. Coming out of the libertine philosophy of the 17th century, one strain of thought held that all women were potentially bisexual and that while relations between women that included erotic behavior were as morally questionable as unsanctioned sexual relations between women and men, they were not necessarily qualitatively different. This attitude was a favorite of pornographers writing primarily for the male gaze. Sexual relations between women were titillating and scandalous, but not considered “deviant” unless same-sex desire was combined with masculine behavior or presentation. Hold on to that thought for a moment.
Another strain of thought came out of a culture of intensely sentimental female friendships, such as those that complicated the socio-politics of Queen Anne’s court and administration in the early 18th century, or that lay behind the rumors of Queen Marie Antoinette’s lesbianism. This movement featured effusive public and literary expressions of affection and devotion, using the language and symbolism of romance, but without a necessary implication of a sexual component. And yet such effusively public displays of affection could put a woman at risk of other suspicions if people were casting about for a reason to disapprove of her.
Somewhat separate from both of these themes was a tradition of sexual activity between women of the working classes that was considered to be a spontaneous byproduct of loose morals and excessive sexual desire. It wasn’t necessarily associated with romantic love or any particular preference for women as sexual partners. And an entirely different strain of thought came out of the pseudo-medical theory that sexual desire was determined in polar opposition to one’s underlying gender identity and that desire of an apparently-female person for women was actually evidence of that person having a masculine physiology. This theory was losing popularity by the 18th century and the medicalization of same-sex desire wouldn’t be revived until the end of the 19th century. In general, women of the upper classes tried to distance themselves from these images of purely erotic relationships between women, whether because they saw a genuine distinction of kind, or because of the potential impact to their reputations.
Yet another historical thread that existed independently of all these frameworks, but that might invoke them for explanatory purposes, was the tradition of passing women and “female husbands” who might have economic motivations, but did not exclude the possibility of same-sex erotics. So as you can see, the question of same-sex relations between women was quite complex in the later 18th century with issues of class and politics playing as much of a role as gender identity and erotic desire.
Among the upper classes, public accusations that close friendship had slid over into lesbianism generally were politically motivated (whatever the factual basis in any particular case), such as the attacks against Queen Marie Antoinette of France. One of these days, I need to do an episode about her. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that public rumors of lesbianism shifted significantly towards the bohemian set rather than the aristocracy. Anne Conway Damer overlapped both camps and may have fallen afoul of an intersection of the libertine reputation of the aristocracy with the loose morals of the artistic set.
One can understand, perhaps, why the question of “did she or didn’t she?” mattered to Damer’s contemporaries. It’s a bit more problematic for those of us studying history today to place such a heavy emphasis on the question of whether or not Damer engaged in activities that she--or we--would consider sexual with the women she was romantically attached to. It is a fact that very intense romantic friendships were acceptable and even praised during her lifetime, so long as they avoided the rumor of erotic activity. Damer failed to avoid those rumors, but it is unclear whether her denial of the label of “Sapphist” was due to an absence of an erotic component to her relationships, to a narrow definition of erotic activity, or simply due to self-preservation.
Part of the explanation for the accusations against Damer may lie in masculine jealousy over her successful career as a sculptor--a profession that lay outside the acceptable roles for women. As noted previously, women who trespassed on what was considered masculine territory were kept in line with the suggestion that there was perhaps something a bit too masculine for comfort in their personal lives as well. The turn of the 19th century marked a shift from “mannish” styles of dress being considered a symptom of an underlying masculine personality in a woman, to the deliberate use of male-coded garments as a statement of personal style, or as a social signal, by women with romantic interests in women. And here, too, Damer may have crossed the line in ways that attracted suspicion. A contemporary wrote: “The singularities of Mrs Damer are remarkable — She wears a Mans Hat, and Shoes, — and a Jacket also like a mans — thus she walks about the fields with a hooking stick.”
Damer also seems to have attracted some ire for her close friendship with actress Elizabeth Farren, who was involved in an extended platonic courtship with the Earl of Derby, who had the unfortunate burden of a still-living wife. Under ordinary circumstances, one would have expected the actress to take up a comfortable position as Derby’s mistress. The rumor mill required some stronger explanation than personal morals for Farren’s apparent chastity. Romantic interference by Damer was suggested. The following epigram about Farren was written by a theatrical rival but seems more pointed at her friend:
“Her little stock of private fame
Will fall a wreck to public clamour,
If Farren herds with her whose name
Approaches very near to Damn her.”
Farren took the rumors seriously enough to drop the friendship in order to preserve her own reputation. Farren’s prudence and strategy eventually triumphed when Derby became free to marry and she became a countess.
One of the sources of rumor about Anne Damer’s sex life was the notorious gossip Hester Thrale-Piozzi who had something of a fixation about being able to identify both men and women with homosexual inclinations. Despite being close friends with a number of famous romantic female couples, Thrale wrote that, “whenever two ladies live too much together” they were suspected of “what has a Greek name now and is called Sapphism.” She was among those who made crude jokes about the sexual reputation of Anne Damer, claiming that it was a byword in London to say that a woman with sapphic interests “visits Mrs. Damer.” In her private diaries, Thrale noted Damer down as “a lady much suspected for liking her own sex in a criminal way.” (Note, however, that lesbian sex was not actually a criminal act in England, unlike sex between men.)
Later, Damer developed a devoted partnership with author Mary Berry which lasted until her death. She met Berry through a mutual friendship with Horace Walpole, a close family friend. (After Walpole’s death, Berry would become his literary executor and Damer inherited his property of Strawberry Hill.) The two women traveled together on the continent and were frequently together in England. An acquaintance commented somewhat snarkily, “The ecstasies on meeting, and tender leave on separating, between Mrs Damer and Miss Berry, is whimsical. On Miss Mary Berry going lately to Cheltenham, the servants described the separation between her and Mrs Damer as if it had been parting before death.”
References to Damer and to Strawberry Hill as a den of sapphic love are included in a long anonymous poem published in 1778 entitled “A Sapphick Epistle” which includes a litany of women accused of such interests, all written up in a mocking complaint so stuffed full of allusions and coded references as to be nearly indecipherable. To say nothing of being very bad verse. Ordinarily I enjoy including relevant bits of poetry in these podcasts, but this one just goes on and on with no real point to make and I’ll spare you.
We have a unique window on how Damer viewed the question of her relationships with women due to extensive portions of her correspondence and journals being preserved. In particular, we have significant exchanges with her later romantic friend Mary Berry that specifically addressed the sexual rumors regarding them and raised the question of whether they should change anything about their relationship to try to damp down the gossip. In the end, the answer they came to was “no” and the two continued to live as a couple, for all practical purposes, until Damer’s death, after which Berry referred to herself as being “widowed”.
Damer’s correspondence makes it clear that she considered the accusations of lesbianism to be false and baseless, but it is open to question whether this was a rhetorical position, a matter of self-deception, or simply a matter of definition where she did not categorize her relationships with women as falling within the scope of what she was being accused of. Emma Donoghue speculates that, given that the prevalent definitions of sex at the time required the participation of a man, it’s not impossible that Damer did have erotic interactions with women but did not consider her actions sexual.
In any event, she clearly enjoyed romantic relationships with women. What she didn’t enjoy as comfortably as many of her contemporaries was the ability to indulge in them free from public scorn and suspicion. The reasons for that difference are not entirely clear. Perhaps it was due to her clear disinterest in marriage after the tragic end to her first experience of that state. Perhaps it was her entrance into the field of sculpture which was considered an exclusively masculine preserve. Perhaps it was simply a convenient weapon for personal and political enmities. Time and again, through history, when women have reached out to embrace lives independent of men, the accusation of lesbianism has been used to push them back again. Not until that accusation loses its power will women be truly free.
Show Notes
A short biography of 18th century sculptor Anne Damer and her rumored lesbian relationships.
In this episode we talk about
- The novel that inspired this episode: Life Mask by Emma Donoghue
- An overview of Damer’s life and career
- Her close friendships with actress Elizabeth Farren and writer Mary Berry
- The complicated landscape of women’s same-sex relations in the 18th century
- Why Damer may have been unusually vulnerable to accusations of lesbian relations
This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:
Some specific sources that discuss Anne Damer’s sexuality:
- Donoghue, Emma. 2010. “'Random Shafts of Malice?': The Outings of Anne Damer” in Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. Beynon, John C. & Caroline Gonda eds. Ashgate, Farnham. ISBN 978-0-7546-7335-4
- Rictor Norton (Ed.), "Mrs Piozzi's Reminiscences, 1770s-1790s", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 20 April 2003
- Rictor Norton (Ed.), "A Sapphick Epistle, 1778", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. 1 December 1999, updated 23 February 2003
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
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPFriday, November 23, 2018 - 19:29
For those who follow the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, you may be aware that our umbrella organization, The Lesbian Talk Show, has begun using a sponsorship (i.e., ad-insertion) service (to help cover hosting costs and other overhead). The various shows are still fine-tuning how to set up our episodes to play well with the sponsor messages. It should all run more smoothly after some minor format changes. Apologies for any unexpected listening experiences.
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LHMPWednesday, November 21, 2018 - 07:50
After some dithering, I decided to see only one show on this trip to New York. (There always seems to be a non-zero chance that either Lauri or I will get a cold while I'm visiting, and besides I wanted to manage at least two dinner meet-ups with friends. So maybe sometimes I don't have to over-schedule my visits?) We decided to walk down from Lauri's place to the theater district and pick a place for dinner along the way, which ended up being the Oxbow Tavern. Food served in a very trendy presentation (truffle foam around my pan-fried hallibut) but quite delicious.
We'd considered several possible shows to see, but I settled on The Lifespan of a Fact as being of nerdy interest (central conflict involves the process of fact-checking a magazine essay) and because Cherry Jones was performing and Lauri likes her (and I'd enjoyed her performance a few years ago in The Glass Menagerie). Oh, and also this guy named Daniel Radcliffe. The third performer was Bobby Cannavale who I confess I'm not familiar with. All three gave stunning performances and inhabited their roles perfectly.
So here's the premise: older female magazine editor assigns eager young white male (Harvard graduate) intern to do the rush fact-checking on an essay about a suicide in Las Vegas by a middle-aged author who sees himself as a Serious Meaningful Writer (a writer of essays not of articles thank you very much). Eager young intern is eager and sets out to check every single fact in the essay. Not just spellings of names and places, but every single potentially verifiable statement included in the piece. Because it's his first serious assignment and he wants to do it right. This leads him into an extended clash with Serious Meaningful Writer for whom the details of the fact-like-objects exist to serve the larger emotional narrative.
The play is about the conflict between truth and story. Between the importance of journalistic reliability and trust and the need to construct narratives that give a meaning to the otherwise senseless things that happen every day. The editor serves, not only to propel the conflict (by overly impressing the importance of the fact-checking job upon an impressionable and ambitious intern) but as go-between and moderator between the other two characters, while representing the inexorable approach of the press deadline as well as debating the competing requirements of business and principle.
The themes of the play resonated strongly with me both as a linguist and a writer: the ways in which language shapes our understanding and interaction with the world, how we impose meaning on what is often an arbitrary and random existence, and the slipperiness of "truth". (Ok, so I had a bit of a geekgasm when one bit hinged on dissecting the semantics of a preposition.)
Radcliffe plays an excellent Eager Young Thing, with that air of Ivy League priviledged assumption that truth is truth and is knowable. Cannavale has the air of a toned-down but still gritty aspiring Hunter S. Thompson -- not so much in the drug-fueled gonzo style, but with that sense of journalism as performance. And Jones tackles the archetype of the hard-driving editor who wants one more triumph to rest on. (It occurs to me that we have an actual archetype of the older middle-aged female magazine editor that needn't be read as representing any particular real person. How delightful.)
I won't give away some of my favorite twists in the show--including the final resolution. But overall, my favorite element was how the audience is asked to understand and agree with both positions in the conflict. Neither is right or wrong in absolute terms, and yet they are incompatible. The ultimate irony, of course, is that the play itself, while based on an actual true story, has adapted, changed, twisted, and distorted that original truth in the service of narrative. (The original multi-year interaction is compressed down to 5 days, the writer's home and day-job prestige status are shifted, as well as all the much more minor changes required for theatrical purposes.) Perhaps that makes the show come down unambiguously on the side of narrative over truth, but not in a way that undermines the balance within the show itself.
The Lifespan of a Fact is playing at Studio 54 and is worth consideration if you're in NYC and want to take in a show.
Major category:
ReviewsTuesday, November 20, 2018 - 09:40
It is that time of year in writingdom: the time of reminding people what fiction we have put out into the world in the current calendar year. Purely for people's curiosity and amusement, of course. Not at all with any expectation or pressure for people to consider our works for award nominations.
I am relieved to be able to report that I succeeded in having one work of fiction published in 2018:
I currently have two works out on submission, but even if accepted by the current venues, they wouldn't come out this year.
But wait, there's more! This year I have also become a publisher of fiction, via the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. As works of historical fiction, these aren't relevant to those readers who are currently considering SFF award nomination season, but I'm very proud of my authors (as well as being proud of myself) and want to put them out there. The fourth story in the set won't be released until the end of December, so it doesn't have a link yet.
- "One Night in Saint-Martin" by Catherine Lundoff (aired 2018/03/31)
- "Inscribed" by V. M. Agab (aired 2018/06/30)
- "Peaceweaver" by Jennifer Nestojko (aired 2018/09/29)
- "At the Mouth" by Gurmika Mann (to air 2018/12/29)
When we get closer to the actual end of the year, I'll do my year-end summary "What Hath She Wrote?" post, which details blogging, reviews, and other stuff that allows me to feel accomplished.
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