Part of the overarching theme of this study is the tension between “respectability politics” and the essential reliance the suffrage movement had on women willing to disrupt social norms, specifically including norms of sexuality and gender presentation. The resonances with the “lavender menace” confrontations of the 1970s are inevitable (and noted specifically in the conclusion).
cross-gender roles/behavior
Any context where a person engages in actions or fulfills a social role that is socially designated for a different gender than the one they are assigned. This may be a covert part of an overall presentation or may be in open contradiction to their assigned gender.
LHMP entry
Introduction
The author points out that this is an inescapably political book and should be read in that context. He points out that the question of “who is queer” is not at all straight-forward [pun intentional] in a historic context, and that queer figures have been silently and invisibly embedded in US history far deeper than most people are aware.
We start with an overview of the events of the story. A medieval Irish abbot falls asleep on a hill at Easter, wakes up as a woman, encounters a supernatural female figure, goes to a nearby monastery where he meets, marries, and has children with the “erenagh” of the monastery. [Note: “erenagh” was a post, often hereditary, that served as a sort of business manager for the monastery.] On another Easter, he falls asleep on the same hill as previously and wakes up as a man. He returns to his original home and is told by his wife that he’s only been gone an hour.
Introduction: Who is the Lesbian?
For the purposes of this book, “British lesbian history” begins in the late 18th century. It was unclear to me if this was simply a chosen scope based on the source material they wanted to present, or if the authors believe there is no lesbian history prior to that date. They assert that “lesbian identity” is a late 20th century concept. “Women…did not necessarily have a language to describe themselves as lovers of women.” [Note: we can take it as given that I disagree with that position.]
As might be expected given the author and subject, this article covers much the same ground as Burshatin 1996. The current article focuses on Céspedes’ position as a challenge to various sovcio-political doundaries: gendr, race, national, and sexual.
(For other publications on this topic that have been reviewed in more detail, see this tag.)
This article reviews the rather unusual experience of Catalina de Erauso, whose gender-crossing received far more acceptance than usual. The author considers the interpretation of Erauso as a trans man. The discussion covers both Erauso’s biography and the fictional versions of their life and discusses the process of “becoming male.”
The central premise of this chapter Is to examine how the law came to acknowledge the existence of sexual “indecent assault” by one woman against another. But the case used to illustrate this concerns a midwife who was hired to examine the virginity of an underage girl being procured for prostitution. The case had a number of complicating factors. The men doing the procuring were anti-prostitution activists and journalists, working to demonstrate how easy it was to obtain such victims. One focus of such campaigns was to raise the female age of consent from 13 to 16.
Changes in understandings of Lesbianism in the 18th century can be illustrated by newspaper and legal accounts of “female husbands,” for example, the famous case of Charles/Mary Hamilton. Hamilton’s case was not particularly unusual, but the attention given to it was. Hamilton was working as a quack doctor, who courted and married the daughter of his landlady. Two months later, the bride announced that her husband was a woman and a legal inquiry resulted, including depositions by both partners.
Derry begins by contradicting the myth that Queen Victoria was the reason there were no laws in England against lesbianism. There are three problems with this myth: no such law was proposed; if it had been, the queen wouldn’t have any power to block it; and such a blockage wouldn’t explain the earlier absence of such laws. But the lack of specific laws doesn’t equal the “benign neglect” suggested by some historians. The main policy against lesbianism was silencing. Laws would recognize lesbianism as “a thing,” whereas silencing was aimed at preventing it from being imaginable.
Introduction: Shifting Sisters
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