female sodomy

LHMP #541 Roelens 2017 A Woman Like Any Other

Heather Rose Jones — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 19:45:48 +0000

This article concerns one of a number of female sodomy trials in the Low Countries in the 17th century, a time and place where there was an unusual level of concern for the topic. This interest can be connected to the increasing preoccupation with the role of the clitoris in sex and beliefs about its role in gender identity and same-sex activity. However the detailed testimony in the trial is also interesting for suggesting an unexpected self-consciousness by the defendants about their own same-sex desires—a topic for which evidence is difficult to find. Their testimony contrasted sharply with the theories about same-sex activity presented by other witnesses, which included abnormal physiology and witchcraft. This document points up the hazard of taking dominant discourses at face value with respect to how queer people in history thought about themselves.

The trial was held at Bruges in 1618 and concerned two women, Mayken and Magdaleene, and was sparked by an act of spite by Mayken’s husband. Having just been convicted of horse theft and sentenced to hang, his response was to accuse Magdaleene—whom he claimed to be a “hermaphrodite”—of having seduced his wife, Mayken, and convinced her to abandon him a year previously. To try to retrieve his wife, the man even went to a practitioner of magic and had him do a finding ritual that was supposed to locate her. He claimed that Magdaleene had similarly seduced other women and had been banned from at least one town because of it.

The night before his execution, the man was given the opportunity to “relieve his conscience” by providing more detailed testimony. He told how he had heard panting from the attic of the place he and his wife worked, and had gone up to find her lying together with Magdaleene who claimed they had simply been playing around tickling each other. He told his wife to stay away from her but later the two women were seen running naked together and bathing in a ditch near their workplace. Shortly thereafter, the two women disappeared. He also accused Magdaleene of having given his wife a potion to cause a miscarriage. None of this saved him from hanging, but it inspired a follow-up investigation by the town aldermen.

Witnesses included a parish priest who, six years earlier, had seen Magdaleene and an unnamed spinster “lying in bed and playing.” He also took a confession from a woman (unclear if it was the same one) who said she had a “carnal conversation” with Magdaleene who displayed “great affection and lust” and whom she said used “a rod” in this context and produced a quantity of cold semen. This last item invoked the image of how the devil was supposed to have cold semen when engaging in sex with human women.

The list of possible crimes was growing: being a hermaphrodite, sodomy with an instrument, being a poisoner or at least an abortionist, and engaging in witchcraft.

A month after the charges were first raised, Magdaleene and Mayken were located and brought in for testimony. Magdaleene was a widow and had an adult son. She used a variety of aliases and moved a lot, due to being followed by legal troubles. But she denied the charges brought against her.

Mayken testified that she’d left her husband because she was tired of his thieving and his threats to kill her. She hadn’t known about Magdaleene’s past legal troubles when they left together, but she did know that Magdaleene had committed adultery with her own husband—something he had neglected to mention in his final confession. The two women had traveled together across the Low Countries, though with one brief separation. Both women testified that there had been no abortion as Mayken hadn’t been pregnant, and the only potion involved was for a fever, after which that angle of questioning was dropped.

While various witnesses said that Magdaleene was a hermaphrodite, possibly caused by the devil, Mayken testified that her partner was “a woman like any other” with no physical abnormalities that she’d ever seen. Mayken reported that Magdaleene said she’d rather have sex with women than “with seven men” and that women begged her for it, and said further that there were more women who felt the same way she did. Mayken wasn’t always as eager for sex as Magdaleene was, at which the latter would list other women who had been more willing in the past.

Mayken reported on their sexual activity in some detail, describing that Magdaleene had “lain on her and had carnal conversation with her as if she was a man…doing her duty with great force,” but that she had never “felt something that would have been male” and although there would be some wetness when Magdaleene climaxed, it wasn’t much and she couldn’t say whether it was hot or cold.

While the trial pursued several lines of questioning related to potential witchcraft, other theories of the offense were pursued at the same time, and there was interest in how Magdaleene had begun this sexual career. She said she first became aware of female same-sex possibilities at age 9 when she saw several other girls engaging in intercourse together. Now confronted with Mayken’s testimony, she confessed to having had sex with her “on Mayken’s body, but not in her folds as men would communicate with women.”

As was usual for that era, Magdaleene’s testimony was confirmed under torture, where she confessed to sleeping with one of the other named women and “tasting her” but not going further because the woman was ill. [Note: This may possibly refer to oral sex, but I’d say it isn’t unambiguous.] She described another sexual encounter with a woman who’d asked Magdaleene if she was a man or a woman, but who was convinced she was a woman after they had sex. She continued to deny ever having performed witchcraft and evidently the investigators believed her and the torture was concluded.

Mayken was order to pray for forgiveness and was banned from Bruges for 10 years. Magdaleene was held in jail for another 2 years before sentencing. The final charges were restricted to abandoning her husband [note: but I thought she was a widow?], seducing women away from their husbands, and teaching them dishonor by libidinous acts. Her sentence was being banned from Flanders for life under penalty of death, beginning 3 days after sentencing.

The article continues with a survey of female sodomy charges in 17th century Europe, noting the unusual number in the southern Netherlands in the 15-16th centuries, often involving death sentences. This unusual rate of convictions fell off at the end of the 16th century, possibly due to shifts in popular knowledge about the sexual possibilities. In Mayken and Magdaleene’s trial, the word “sodomy” is never used, whereas it commonly appears in earlier records. One factor in this context is that sodomy had come to be defined narrowly in terms of penetration, therefore trials of women tended to focus only on cases where an artificial phallus had been used—something Magdaleene denied. Nor had Magdaleene cross-dressed or expressed anything resembling a masculine identity—other potentially aggravating factors in cases of f/f sex.

One factor in Mayken’s lesser sentence might be due to her testimony situating her more passively. She “endured” the sex and sometimes refused it, though she did not present herself as a victim.

The prevalent medical discourse around the role of the clitoris in female same-sex activity led the authorities to raise this issue strongly, hoping to ascribe Magdaleene’s desires to pseudo-masculine anatomy, although her partners rejected this framing. [Note: At this point in the article, the author discusses how the use of the term “tribade” specifically meant “a woman who uses an enlarged clitoris for sex” but I’ve been coming to strongly question this attribution, especially when projected back prior to the 16th century anatomists. But that’s a subject for a separate discussion.] In the 17th century, anatomical examinations were becoming an inherent part of accusations of female sodomy. The article digresses into explaining the Galenic theory of sexual development, popular ideas about spontaneous physical sex-change, and conflicts between medial and religious ideas about female sodomy, with several case studies listed. There’s an extensive discussion of the theories of demonologists about what types of sex devils preferred or avoided and the potential role of curses in the experience of same-sex desire.

The accusations that Magdaleene had abnormal physiology were discussed at various points in her trial, but her initial accuser was the only person who ever used the word “hermaphrodite” and at no point is there mention of a formal medical examination, suggesting that this was not a strong concern. But “hermaphrodite” didn’t have a narrow physiological definition at this time and could refer to any person who overturned gender roles, especially a woman perceived as dominant over men.

In all, the various discourses present in the trial demonstrate the variety of ideas and models of female same-sex desire that were prevalent at the time, whether in different parts of the population or existing as simultaneous beliefs. But what stands out as significant was how articulate and conscious Magdaleene was of her personal preference for engaging in sex with women and her awareness of other women with similar preferences.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Roelens, Jonas. 2017. “A Woman Like Any Other: Female Sodomy, Hermaphroditism, and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Bruges” in Journal of Women’s History, vol. 29 no. 4, Winter 2017. pp.11-34

Project ID number:

540

Event / person:

Mayken de Brauwere & Magdaleene Catherina Margaretha Linck & Catharina Margaretha Mühlhahn Hendrikje van der Schuur Marie/Marin le Mercis & Jeane le Febvre Des Hermaphrodits (Jacques Duval)Ambroise Paré Discours sur les hermaphrodits (Discourse on hermaphrodites) (Jean Riolan)Elena/Eleno de Céspedes Maria Duran

Blog post:

A Sexual Biography in 17th c Flanders

LHMP #476 Braunschneider 2004 Acting the Lover

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:32:46 +0000

Narratives of the lives and “adventures” of passing women were popular in 18th century British culture, purporting to provide biographies of women who lived as a man for some period of time, including: Hannah Snell, Christian Davies, Jenny Cameron, Anne Bonny & Mary Read, Charlotte Charke, Elizabeth Ogden, an unnamed “apothecary’s wife” whose story is appended to the English translation of the life of Catharine Vizzani, and Mary Hamilton whose story inspired the label “female husband” for those passing women who engaged in relationships with other women.

Despite being based on actual lives, and despite the assertion that each was “unique,” the stories as published became highly conventional, with certain fixed elements. One such element (the focus of this paper) is some type of erotic interaction between the passing character and another woman, either actively courting the woman or becoming the object of the woman’s interest (and usually delighted in so being).

There are two other contexts in popular culture of the time that feature cross-dressing women but do not include these erotic encounters: the “woman warrior” plot in which a woman typically dresses as a soldier to follow (or pursue) a male lover; and cross-dressing subplots in novels.

These erotic encounters in passing woman narratives raise and address questions about the relationship between gender and sexuality, and not always in ways that align with the supposed “lesson” such stories provided to the public. Previous scholarship on the genre usually addressed one of two angles: the challenge to stereotypes of gendered ability (Friedli, Dugaw, Wheelwright, Dekker & Van de Pol); or their situation within ideas of female homoeroticism in general (Lanser, Donoghue, Moore).

This article looks at how passing woman erotics disrupt an assumed correspondence between gendered social role and the object of desire. The author notes that 18th century attitudes did not assume an automatic connection between cross-dressing and homoeroticism and, in fact, to some extent passing woman stories act to reinforce heteronormativity, even as they question it. Further, they support an assumed principle that “gender difference must precede desire.”

The author cautions that passing woman narratives should neither be assumed to represent homosexual desire nor that they should be assumed to erase it entirely. Further, she argues that rather than “gender norms [being] defined through sexuality” these texts are part of an active process of creating those norms. The stories’ insistence on making erotic connections between cross-dressed women and normative women in pseudo-heterosexual relations act to separate masculinity (as a gender), with its concomitant orientation of desire toward women, from biological maleness. And it is this separation that creates a potential reading of female masculinity as tied to homoeroticism.

[Note: I’m skeptical about the claim that this is a process being established in the 18th century, because there is a very long historical tradition of associating desire for women with an assumption of masculinity, such that female-oriented desire triggered investigation into the potential masculinity of a female-presenting woman.]

The formulaicness of passing-woman erotic plots creates an expectation within the audience for such an encounter at any time a cross-dressing woman is introduced. In one version, the passing woman decides to court a woman (or women) either as a test of her passing, as a lark, or in active support of the strength of her disguise. And in the standard narrative, she is successful. The object of the courtship falls in love and pledges herself to the passing woman, often preferring that relationship to other rivals. The courtships may be presented hyperbolically or with a certain sly satire on conventional courtship rituals. But the essential element is that the courtship and its reception occur within a context where the two are understood to be man and woman.

This same formula holds when the normative woman initiates the courtship; it occurs within a context involving gender difference. An interesting doubled example is the brief description of the pirates Mary Read and Ann Bonny, when both are cross-dressing and each believes the other to be a man. In order to shift from desire to an active relationship, Bonny reveals her sex to Read (thereby establishing an assumed gender difference), only to have Read reveal her own sex, thus negating (within the narrative) the erotic potential. [Note: Compare a similar double-disguise plot in the play Gallathea, in which desire is sparked in both disguised women when they believe the beloved is male, that desire is challenged when both reveal their sex, but the desire outlasts the reanalysis that it is same-sex.]

The usual resolution of a gender reveal is that the normative woman’s desire evaporates and the previous desire is either reanalyzed as a good joke or an act of fraud. Here, though, we start seeing cracks in the façade. In the Jenny Cameron narrative, after Jenny reveals her sex to avert a duel with her rival for the girl’s affections, the girl immediately decides to marry the rival, lest she make a similar mistake in the future—that is, acknowledging the potential for her to again fall in love with a female-bodied person under the necessary masculine presentation.

A second type of resolution occurs when the passing woman concludes that the relationship is “impossible” (despite wishing that it were possible) and breaks off the courtship concluding that it “could not go beyond a platonick Love.” That is, the passing woman reciprocates the desire but chooses not to pursue it (and may or may not reveal her sex to her beloved). Here we find another distinction in how the narratives are presented. A passing woman who steps back from a homosexual relationship is typically presented as heroic and admirable (at least in that context, even if she may not be in other contexts).

In contrast, the third type—stories in which the passing woman continues to pursue the relationship, up to and including marriage and a sexual relationship—frame the passing woman as deceptive and fraudulent if the sexual relationship shatters the myth of "impossibilities." The classic example is Mary Hamilton.

Type 2 and 3 both challenge the idea that sexual difference is necessary for erotic desire (although the type 3 may frame the passing woman as mercenary rather than besotted), even if gender difference is still presented as essential. If is rare for the passing woman to reject the courtship or reveal her sex due to being horrified, disgusted, or simply uninterested. An essential part of the narratives is to depict the normative woman as desirable and (for all practical purposes) eligible. Rather, when the passing woman breaks things off, it is due to believing the next step (consummation) to be “impossible.”

Here, the passing woman narrative confronts the female husband narrative, in which that supposed impossibility is overcome. Now a different contrast in reception emerges: condemnatory narratives in which the female husband uses an artificial penis to overcome the “impossibility” and more neutral narratives in which some other means is used to side-step the question of consummation. It is this distinction in reception, Braunschneider argues, that works to help construct the normative relationship of gender and sexuality. It isn’t that desire can never precede gender difference, and it isn’t that the consummation of female homosexual relationships is literally impossible, but that when these principles are violated the narrative condemns them and frames the passing woman as monstrous and unnatural.

The judgement of the narratives is not based on the biological sex of the persons involved, but on the performed gender. The texts clearly assume—indeed, depend on—the audience knowing that the supposed “impossibilities” are, in fact possible, for key aspects may be provided only by implication or circumlocution. Thus, they create and acknowledge a space in which female-bodied people can desire each other and can consummate that desire. They simply define those possibilities as unacceptable.

A particularly convoluted example is offered to demonstrate the reductio ad absurdum of this program, contrasting what the participants in the scenario “know” versus what the narrator and the audience “know,” and how that knowledge shapes the presentation of the scenario. As long as the participants in the narrative “know” that an interaction is male-female, it is treated positively by the narrator, or at least as natural and expected, even though the narrator (and audience) “know” that the interaction is same-sex. At the same time, the passing woman is given a pass [pun intentional] on behavior that would be unacceptable in a man (such as abandoning their girlfriends without a qualm) because the alternative (continuing the relationship) would be unacceptable in a woman. The audience reception of the character shifts between treating her as a man and as a woman in inconsistent (but formulaic) ways, sometimes following the narrator’s “knowledge” that she is a woman, sometimes following the other characters’ “knowledge” that she is a man.

The same formulaic inconsistency occurs when it comes to sexual relations. When Mary Hamilton’s narrative follows her through one wedding night in which she doesn’t have her “device” available, wherein her flustered embarrassment is treated sympathetically (although in a mocking way), followed by clearly condemnatory descriptions of the sexual relations she engages in when the “device” is involved—but only after her wife discovers the truth. Her relationship becomes “vile” and “criminal” not only when one specific sexual technique is employed, but when it is known by the partner to be employed. That is, so long as Hamilton’s wife believes she is married to a man, the marriage is successful. When the relationship is known to be same-sex (by both participants) its nature is treated as being materially changed.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Braunschneider, Theresa. 2004. “Acting the Lover: Gender and Desire in Narratives of Passing Women” in Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 45, no. 3: 211-29

Project ID number:

476

Introduction:

I sometimes provoke outraged reactions in certain quarters when I claim that it isn't possible to disentangle lesbian history from transgender history. But this article gets into the type of reason why I say that. (And I'll have an entire chapter in my book digging deeper into this topic.) What lies at the heart is that one strain (and there are others) of historic understanding of and reaction to a female-bodied person desiring another female-bodied person is to simultaneously force them into a heteronormative framework and then punish the "designated male" participant, not for homosexuality, but for gender transgression. We see this in contexts like the one discussed in the present article, where behavioral gender-crossing of some type is involved, but we also see it in the long history of investigating women expressing same-sex desire for signs of physiological masculinity.

Under a heteronormative framework, transness is far more legible and comprehensible than homosexuality. Thus, regardless of what identity models the people involved had available or adopted as their own, there has been a regular (though variable in strength) pressure to accept a trans framing. (This continues up through the late 19th century sexologists' conflation of trans and homosexual experiences under the "gender invert" label.) Even apart from the anachronism of applying current identity categories to historical people, this complicates attempts to neatly categorize historic people with regard to degrees/types of "female masculinity." If a female-bodied person could be labeled "masculine" for being intelligent, brave, strong, tall, athletic, honorable, independent, politically savvy, not conventionally pretty, etc. etc., then how do you trace a line between transmasculinity and accepting cultural brainwashing? (Please note: I am NOT implying that transmasculine identity is due to "cultural brainwashing." I'm saying that some people are trans men and some people have been labeled "unfeminine" for not aligning with certain cultural stereotypes.)

When I get negative reactions to my (admittedly provocative) statement about the entanglement of lesbian history and trans history, my impression is that some of it comes from assuming that I'm talking about trans women in lesbian spaces, whereas mostly I'm talking about the ambiguous classification of female masculinity. But when you come down to it, the historic people who reacted to a female-presenting person desiring a woman by accusing her of being "really a man, in some fashion" aren't that different from the modern bathroom police who see a female-presenting person who deviates in some way from a narrow definition of femininity and accuse her of being "really a man." And I wish more people were more familiar with the deep history of gender policing and the damage it causes.

# # #

Event / person:

Hannah Snell Christian Davies Jenny Cameron Anne Bonny Mary Read Charlotte Charke Elizabeth Ogden The True History and Adventures of Catharine Vizzani / Breve storia della vita di Catterina Vizzani (Giovanni Battista Bianchi)Charles/Mary Hamilton

Blog post:

Under What Circumstance is She Allowed to Be a Man?

LHMP #486 Oaks 1978 Things Fearful to Name

Heather Rose Jones — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 16:42:32 +0000

As with several other articles I’ve blogged in this run of American-themed publications, this one covers material that I’ve already discussed in more detail in a previous entry. (Godbeer, Richard. 1995. “"The Cry of Sodom": Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England” in <em>The William and Mary Quarterly</em>, Vol. 52, No. 2: 259-286)

As the title notes, the general subject is the legal and social treatment of sodomy (generally defined as same-sex relations) and buggery (most often applied to bestiality) in 17th century New England. Oaks notes that court records are the most important data source for this topic, but that this can skew our understanding as it only tells us about cases where offenses were identified and prosecuted. Even so, the legal records is valuable at the very least to correct myths, such as that sodomy usually received the death penalty.

The article notes that sodomy laws only applied to men, except for one New Haven code briefly for ten years starting in 1655 when female same-sex relations were included. Despite the theoretical harshness of the laws, the actual case outcomes show that sodomy was not punished more severely than other types of sex crimes, and that the death penalty was applied very rarely (and never to women). This leniency increased toward the end of the 17th century.

In relating the most commonly cited f/f case, that of Mary Hammon and Sara Norman for “leude behavior each with other upon a bed,” the article adds that Norman was also accused of “divers Lasivious speeches,” which may explain why her sentence required a public confession while Hammon was “cleared with admonision” which I read as telling her not to do it again. If the lascivious speeches were specifically in connection with this incident, then we may imagine that they may have specifically concerned f/f sex, though a later note indicates that Norman was also brought before the law for m/f sexual offenses in at least one case.

The latter part of the article is focused in great detail on accusations of bestiality.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Oaks, Robert F. 1978. “"Things Fearful to Name": Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeenth-Century New England” in Journal of Social History, Vol. 12, No. 2: 268-281

Project ID number:

486

Event / person:

Sara Norman & Mary Hammon

Blog post:

Didn't We Just Do Colonial Sodomy Laws?

LHMP #483 Godbeer 1995 The Cry of Sodom

Heather Rose Jones — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 16:22:10 +0000

While this article is (necessarily) focused primarily on m/m history, it does have useful details of the early legal history of female same-sex relations in America. I’ll be focusing on those details and so this summary won’t cover the article as a whole. The general approach is to compare the “official” (church and state) position on same-sex erotics with the evidence for how specific individuals were viewed within their communities, including some startlingly lax responses to men notorious for their sexual interest in other men.

Official discourse did not consider the issues of desire or specific orientation, being concerned only with the specifics of the acts and whether they were approved or forbidden. In Puritan-influenced areas of the colonies, sex outside of marriage of any sort was in the “forbidden” category, but to some extent equated with other moral concerns such as drunkenness.

In contrast, non-official records indicate a recognition that certain individuals had a specific inclination toward same-sex behavior. Without applying an anachronistic concept of sexual orientation, this does lean more towards a perception of “identity” rather than a focus only on “acts.” Furthermore, communities had a variety of attitudes towards sodomy accusations and were often unwilling to apply the (theoretical) official penalties, as long as essential social harmony was not badly disrupted. Sodomy was not approved, but might be considered less significant than other aspects of a person’s contributions to the community.

Clerical and legal references to f/f sex as a parallel with m/m sex were inconsistent. John Cotton (1641) referred to “unnatural filthiness…of man with man, or woman with woman.” This phrasing including “woman with woman” was also used by Thomas Shepard (1664), Charles Chauncy (1642), and Samuel Whiting (1666). In general, New England opinions on the definition of sodomy focused on the same-sex aspect rather than a definition of anal sex, which could be enacted between a m/f couple.

Legal codes, in contrast with clerical opinions, focused almost exclusively on m/m sex. Codes from Plymouth (1671), Massachusetts (1641), Connecticut 1642), and New Hampshire (1680) only penalize m/m sex. A draft Massachusetts law by John Cotton in 1636 included women, but this was not adopted. Only New Haven (1655) identified f/f sex as a capital crime. (All of these law codes specifically cited biblical language as the justification for considering these crimes.) The New Haven law was, in general, much broader in the sexual crimes it covered, including m/f anal sex, sex with prepubescent girls, and public masturbation as well as any non-procreative acts.

The article notes only two instances of women being charged in courts for sexual activity with each other. Elizabeth Johnson received a whipping and fine in 1642 in Essex County for “unseemly practices betwixt her and another maid.” [Note: “maid” here presumably means two unmarried women rather than a reference to employment?] Another case, commonly cited in the literature, was in 1649 in Plymouth Colony, against Sara Norman and Mary Hammon for “leude behaviour each with other upon a bed.” In neither case was the activity labeled as “sodomy” in the record. [Note: I believe from other sources that they received a warning only, but I’m not finding a clear citation.]

Only two men (and specifically men) are known to have been executed for sodomy in the colonial era, and in both cases this seems to have been motivated not only by the number of occasions they transgressed, but because they non-consensually targeted boys. In contrast, several cases are discussed where a man’s habitual sexual interest in other men was known to and tolerated by the community, even over a significant period of time, if the community felt that the situation was being adequately addressed by social pressure and a whisper network. (This topic gets a lot of discussion and details, but is not relevant to the Project.)

The article notes that during this same era, London was developing a subculture catering to men who had sex with men, including the distinctive culture of the “molly houses” that included cross-dressing and role-playing, creating a popular connection between sodomy and effeminacy. But this culture was relatively restricted to London and has not been identified either outside that metropolis in England, or in any of the developing cities in the colonies. Nor is there any evidence that the colonies associated cross-dressing with sodomy. Even so, there is at least some evidence for an understanding in the colonies of something resembling an orientation toward m/m sex. (There is insufficient data on f/f relations to conclude anything.)

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Godbeer, Richard. 1995. “’The Cry of Sodom’: Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England” in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2: 259-286

Project ID number:

483

Event / person:

Sara Norman & Mary Hammon Elizabeth Johnson

Blog post:

Lesbians and the Law in Colonial America

LHMP #450b Turton 2024 Before the Word Was Queer Chapter 1 – Legislating Acts

Heather Rose Jones — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 18:12:47 +0000

This chapter looks at how words are defined and cited, and the semantic frameworks they’re associated with, using “sodomy” and “buggery” as the working examples. [Note: my summary is going to give undue attention to discussions relevant to women.]

17 century definitions of “buggery” in legal dictionaries include both homosexual acts and bestiality. They often reference earlier penalties (burning), though that was no longer in force. Two factors contribute to obscuring the specific nature of the acts so named. The descriptions are often in Latin (despite the books being overtly intended for non-scholarly readers), and the sexual nature of the acts is usually not explicitly mentioned. That you get entries like:

“One describeth this offence to be carnalis copula contra naturam & haec vel per confusionem specierum, sc. A man or a woman with a brute beast, vel sexuum, sc. A man with a man, a woman with a woman.” (1652) The question of whether sodomy could be committed between women was actually a point of contention.

These legal texts might have more explicit descriptions of the act elsewhere (e.g., that it requires “penetration and the emission of seed”) while being vague in the glossary. This deliberate vagueness has been a general feature of discourse around homosexuality, with authors often referring to it as an act “not to be named” or “not suitable to be discussed.”

When examined in parallel with other sexual terms, such as “copulation” or “fucking”, there is a general pattern of focusing on men as those who “commit sex”, but also a silent assumption that sex occurs between a male-female couple. So “sodomy” is presented as something a man does to a man where the nature of the act is separately defined as something a man does to a woman. These patterns complicate the interpretation of buggery/sodomy, both in terms of the nature of the act and the scope of its participants. We’ll get back to that.

A 1596 glossary typifies this vagueness, defining buggery, as “conjunction with one of the same kind” or in a later revision adding “or of men with beasts”. This is a relatively judgment-free definition, especially in comparison with the later editions’ definition of “sodomy” as “when one man lieth filthily with another man.”

The cultural association of “sodomy” with biblical references, and "buggery" with the 1533 Buggery Act raises the question of whether word choice depended on the genre of the text. An analysis of the association of these words (in their dictionary entries) with terms associated with religion (e.g., “sin”), or law (e.g., “crime”) also considering association with nature (e.g., “unnatural”) finds a definite association of “sodomy” with religious contexts, but a unclear preference in context for “buggery.”

In general, judgmental language when defining sexual terms works to clearly distinguish approved acts (m/f procreative sex within marriage) from unapproved acts (everything else). At the same time, by identifying and listing unapproved acts, a dictionary recognizes their existence and possibility. Except when specifically addressing acts defined as same-sex, definitions of sexual offenses (such as fornication, incest, polygamy, prostitution), explicitly presented the act as m/f.

The buggery act of 1535 defined buggery as “a detestable and abominable voice…committed with mankind or beast.” The lack of specifics regarding the agent of this act, and the use of “mankind” (rather than, for example, “man”) left room for dispute over whether women were in scope. If “mankind” can refer to human beings of any gender or if the specified agent can be of any gender, then m/f sex is technically included in “buggery”. This is workable if the “vice” in question is something that can be done to a woman, as in a disputed 18th century case where the term was applied to anal rape of a woman. But that requires an additional layer of definition of the act that is often absent or taken for granted.

One position held that “mankind” should be understood as “humanity” not “male persons”. The question of whether the omitted agent could be female was addressed directly in the context of bestiality (“by womankind with brute beast”) and addressed in some expanded definitions of sodomy as “a carnal copulation against nature, two wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts.” Others argued a distinction that sodomy excluded bestiality, while buggery included it. By the mid 17th century, legal definitions of buggery settled on including bestiality (by a man or woman) and both m/m and f/f sex. But exceptions occur that do not include f/f ( by omission rather than explicitly). The inclusion of f/f sex is largely restricted to legal dictionaries, rather than general purpose ones. The most limited definition of buggery mentions only m/m sex and omits bestiality. [Note: Despite these published definitions, England was absent of actual prosecutions of f/f “buggery”.]

As a rule, definitions of “sodomy” are more restricted. Bestiality is not included, and when the gender of the participants is mentioned, only men are specified. This is attributed to the model of the biblical story where male-assigned participants are involved. [Note: one might dispute the gender of angels, but they were treated as male by the human participants.]

In some cases, sodomy and buggery were presented as synonyms, but more often, sodomy was considered a subset of buggery.

The chapter moves on to considering the specific nature of the acts involved. While some learned sources make reference (in Latin) to anal penetration, none of the surveyed dictionaries explained the physical act. Instead, vague reference is made to the “unnatural” aspect combined with lust, wantonness, conjunction, copulation. But when those terms are defined, it is always specifically in reference to m/f sex. “The active generation between male and female” etc. Such terms are either too underspecified for clarity (“to join together”) or too over-specified to include same-sex acts.

We return now to the observation that dictionary definitions of sexual terms assume a male agent. Definitions of sex acts typically involve an unspecified agent (understood as a man) doing something to a woman. These formal definitions, however, do not reflect the more expansive use of the words in everyday language, where it is seen that women can fuck and men can be fucked. These uses turn up in legal records of witness testimony, but are not reflected when formal legal dictionaries are drawn up. (This points up only one of the flaws in using dictionaries as a guide to real-world language.)

In the context of this androcentricity there is a brief discussion of Anne Lister’s annotations on a 1735 Latin-English dictionary that placed herself as agent in a sexual context. Some dictionaries were specifically aimed at a female audience. The book speculates whether a woman reading a definition of a sexual verb as “to carnally know a woman” might have been inspired to place herself in the role of agent – as we know Anne Lister did, given that she describes becoming aroused at such a text.

From the mid 18th century on, dictionary compilers dealt with their anxiety around this possibility by increasingly censoring and obscuring sexual language in order to avoid giving people (especially women) ideas. This self-censorship not only appears in legal commentaries and glossaries, but in court records themselves, where accused acts of sodomy/buggery are concealed under phrases like “an unnatural crime” or using severely abbreviated forms of the word such as initials or first and last letter, joined by a dash.

Such words were also disappearing from ordinary dictionaries, such as Samuel Johnson’s (1755). Before that date, more than half of the studied dictionaries included “buggery,” while after, only 15.6% do. Entries for “sodomy” also declined somewhat, though appearing in well over half the texts both before and after. (This will be explored further in chapter 3.) Those entries that did appear from around 1750 to 1850 remove any explicit sexual reference and simply use phrases like “an unnatural crime.”

LHMP entry type:

Chapter

Parent:

Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1

Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1

Project ID number:

450

Project ID letter:

Sub-reference:

Chapter 1 – Legislating Acts

ISBN:

978-1-316-51873-1

Blog post:

Obscure Words and Obscuring Words

LHMP #448 Roelens 2015 Visible Women: Female Sodomy in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Southern Netherlands (1400-1550)

Heather Rose Jones — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 18:02:13 +0000

It is generally agreed on by historians that evidence for prosecutions of women for “sodomy” (however defined) are both rare (in absolute terms and compared to those for men) and often more lightly punished. Roelens explores a context that runs counter to this pattern: the Southern Netherlands in the 15th and early 16th century.

Roelens has identified 13 trials, involving 25 women, from court records in Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, Antwerp, Brussels, Louvain, and Malines in which women were tried for “crimes against nature” or “sodomy.” The article begins with a review of how the term “sodomy” in this era and the context for why it typically was not applied to women. Definitions typically centered around inappropriate penetrative sex, and often were worded in ways that assumed it was necessarily performed by a man. Law codes that addressed sodomy rarely included references to women, and sex between women was generally absent as a topic for secular law. Citing Murray 1996 and others, the following exceptions are noted: Orléans (France) in 1270, Treviso (Italy) in 1574, Portugal in 1499, Bamberg (Holy Roman Empire) in 1507. The Constitution Criminalis Carolina established by Emperor Charles V in 1532 called for the death penalty for sex between women but appears to have had little influence on local law codes. England’s “Buggery Act” of 1533 makes no reference to women.

Even in places where laws addressing sex between women existed, in theory, records of prosecutions were extremely rare. There were none in early modern Seville, none in 15th c Venice, none in two centuries of sodomy prosecutions in Florence, none in 15-16th c England and the Northern Netherlands. Elsewhere, records of prosecutions that might be due to f/f sex include France 1405, Rottweil 1444, Speyer 1477, Basque country 1503, Freiburg 1547, Geneva 1568, Portugal 1570, Valencia 1597, Gutenstein 1514, Spain 1409 & 1502, France 1533 & 1535, Grenzach 1537, and Italy 1580. (Looking beyond the period covered by the present article, there are a handful of Spanish cases in the 17th century of which only one was punished.) Outcomes ranged from acquittal to exile to execution. There is no indication of any systematic campaign of prosecution, though it must be taken into account that the “crime” is often referred to obliquely and may lie concealed behind ambiguous language. [Note: It was a common theme to refer to sodomy as an “unspeakable crime” with authorities treating that label literally by refusing to describe it explicitly.]

The preceding is the context in which the set of cases from the Southern Low Countries in the 15-16th centuries stands out. Women represented over 8% of the sodomy accusations there, and were punished with a severity parallel to male defendants. The cases are identified clearly, using terms like “buggery,” “unnatural sin,” “sin against nature,” and “sodomy.” The specific acts covered by this term can be identified from the records.

Some specific examples include:

Two women who confessed to “a certain great kind of the unnatural sin of sodomy with several young girls” evidently acting together
A woman and her daughter accused of committing sodomy with a servant girl

Punishments varied, and to some extent appear to have taken into account the agency of the accused. Corporal punishment (whipping) and/or exile were for participants seen as less culpable, either due to age, ignorance, or lacking power to refuse. Those viewed as having agency and intention received harsher penalties including execution. Out of the 25 individuals in the study, 60% were executed (usually by burning, similarly for male sodomites), 28% received either corporal punishment or banishment or both, and 12% were released with no penalty. This degree of severity was a new development in the 15th century, as seen by comparison with a 14th century case in Ghent where the women were allowed to pay a fine instead.

Most of these trials involved multiple defendants, and it’s possible that the trials of individuals involved solo acts under the sodomy umbrella, which could include masturbation and bestiality. (Sex with non-Christians could also be classified as sodomy because, as one 16th c legal scholar opined, Turks, Saracens, and Jews were the equivalent of animals, therefore sex with them was equivalent to bestiality.) Other types of transgressive sexual behavior were also treated more severely in the Southern Low Countries than elsewhere, including cross-dressing, which was not directly connected with sex between women. [Note: the one cited case of a woman committing “buggery” while dressed as a man doesn’t clearly indicate that her partner was female. See for example Bennett & McSheffrey 2014 where female cross-dressing is associated with sexual offenses involving male partners.] In contrast, women who committed (or were subject to) sodomy within marriage were not similarly prosecuted, lending support to the idea that the primary concern was behavior that contradicted traditional expectations of female behavior. (Married women who committed sodomy with female partners were treated the same as unmarried ones.)

Roelens concludes by exploring possible explanations for this localized preoccupation with female sodomy and its harsh penalties, particularly given that there was no actual legal basis for the prosecutions. Roelens posits that the unusual freedom, agency, and social power possessed by women in this era in the Southern Netherlands resulted in increased female visibility and scrutiny. As women’s freedoms and power decreased in the 17th century, prosecutions for female sodomy greatly declined (or rather, shifted to the Northern Netherlands, where the shipping economy that removed men for long periods of time resulted in greater female agency and power.) [Note: I’m not entirely convinced that this correlation indicates causation, but there is a general pattern across history of backlash against female empowerment.]

For reference, here is a catalog of the women and offenses mentioned in the article:

Maertyne van Keyschote, daughter of Adriaen (Bruges) committed sodomy with several young girls (Grietkin van Bomele & Grietkin van Assenede) with her accomplice Jeanne vanden Steene—the two perpetrators were flogged and exiled while their younger partners were only flogged
Marie de Valmerbeke and her daughter Belle Wasbiers (Ghent) accused by their servant Margarete Scoucx under torture of the “crime against nature”. Marie and Belle were burnt and Margarete was exiled.
Amele sMoors and her sister (Ghent) in 1375 paid a fine to escape prosecution for “that filthy work”.
Jozyne Quetieborne commited “the sin of sodomy” while in prison in Bruges for an unrelated crime. No partner is mentioned, so this may have been masturbation. Sentence not given.
Kathelyne Dominicle (Brussels) was executed for committing buggery with her dog. (The dog was also executed.)
Lysken Jans & Johanne Silversmeets (Brussels) whipped for sodomy having had “carnal conversation” with Turks.
Jehanne Seraes (Ghent) confessed to committing buggery “while in the clothing of a man” and was executed. (No partner is mentioned so the partner’s gender is not known, but it would be unusual for a woman to be described that way if a man were involved.)

This is, of course, not the full catalog of 25 women described in the article.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Roelens, Jonas. 2015. “Visible Women: Female Sodomy in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Southern Netherlands (1400-1550)” in BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review vol. 130 no. 3.

Project ID number:

448

Event / person:

Maertyne van Keyschote Grietkin van Bomele Grietkin van Assenede Jeanne vanden Steene Marie de Valmerbeke Belle Wasbiers Margarete Scoucx Amele sMoors Jehanne Seraes

Blog post:

An Anomalous Spate of Prosecutions for Female Sodomy

LHMP #313b Wahl 1999 Invisible Relations Part 1

Heather Rose Jones — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:33:24 +0000

Chapter 1: The Tribade, the Hermaphrodite, and Other “Lesbian” Figures in Medical and Legal Discourse

John Donne’s poem “Sappho to Philaenis” demonstrates how the image of sexual relations between women was contained by treating it as autoerotic (i.e., because it is based on similarity, the women in essence love themselves) and barren, while also safely locating women’s same-sex desire in the past. But works like this are part of a growing cultural awareness of female homosexuality. There is an increase in prosecutions of women for sodomy in France and elsewhere on the continent, alongside translations of classical sources mentioning tribadism, medical interest in the clitoris, concern with regulating non-procreative sex (especially masturbation), and the emergency of pornography as a literature, especially featuring sex between women.

These movements contradict the oft-cited presumption that sex between women was rarely represented before the 19th century. There is a wealth of representation in law, classics, medical, libertine, and erotic pseudoscientific texts, all of which fed into the new genre of pornography. French sources were particularly rich in these themes.

The idea that women could satisfy their erotic desires without men (which meant without pregnancy or risk of venereal disease) provoked anxiety for the institution of marriage and reproduction. This linkage of f/f sex with fears of marriage resistance and avoidance of reproduction began to link feminism with accusations of anti-maternalism.

France had, perhaps, the longest tradition of legal prosecution of f/f sex, though early laws confusingly transfer male-specific language to their discussion of female sodomy. Both the language of laws and the prescribed punishments were often worded in ways that obscured the exact nature of the acts being punished. Wahl mentions the medieval story of Yde and Olive as an example of anxiety about “what women do”. [Note: This seems a bit out of place in the timeline, but she’s recapitulating the entire French history of legal attitudes toward female sodomy.] French legal cases in the mid 16th to mid 17th century often revolve around gender disguise or suspicions of physiological hermaphroditism, which were interpreted under the definition of sodomy.

But the legal premise [as it had evolved by this date] that sodomy required penetration conflicted with the libertine position that female couples could not have satisfying sex because penetration was not involved. This may have contributed to the rising popular image of the “phallic clitoris” as well as a fascination with dildoes. These created a sexual transgression that was worthy of condemnation.

England stands apart in its absence of legal references to female homosexuality and a lack of prosecutions for it. One can find, in fact, a deliberate omission of f/f possibilities in statutes adapted from texts on both homosexuality and bestiality, where the originals treated men and women as potentially equally participating in both, but the English adaptation mentions women only with regard to bestiality. Various opinions are noted for this relative lack of legal interest in women’s same-sex activities. But England was also, in practice, more tolerant of m/m relations in this era, and in both cases tended to displace the image of homosexuality onto foreign cultures, locations, and individuals.

Legal discourse began to lean on medical “expert witness” to guide questions of gender/sexuality. French cases are cited where medical examination “saved” women from punishment for female sodomy by supposedly demonstrating that they were hermaphrodites.

There was a growing concern about a link between anatomy and f/f sex. In this context, a new theory arose that f/f sex and female masturbation could causeclitoral enlargement, not simply be enabled by it. This was linked to an Arabic tradition of medical writings that associated the clitoris with excess of female desire. The source of these texts then created an association of enlarged clitorises with Arabic, Egyptian, and African women and introduced the idea of treatment by clitoridectomy (though this “treatment” did not become an established European practice until later).

If f/f sex could create “masculine” anatomy that then enabled penetrative sex, then maybe it wasn’t quite so “barren” after all. When tribadism could be viewed as nothing more than mutual masturbation, it wasn’t dangerous to heterosexual institutions, but if it could replace the penis, that was another matter. This shift in imagery also created the idea that the effects of f/f sex were inevitably “visible” on the body. The idea of clitoral hypertrophy entered English texts in the 17th century but wasn’t accompanied by any call to create penalties against its supposed use. English texts often othered the phenomenon entirely and claimed that English women didn’t exhibit it. [Note: This may have been a consequence of English authors engaging in scientific observation and failing to identify actual examples, while still presenting foreign descriptions as fact.]

But with the influx of French culture at the restoration of the English monarchy, the idea of f/f desire as an “open secret” took hold in England. During this same era, the image of the hermaphrodite expanded from an anatomical concept to an allegorical one, representing the dissolution of gender boundaries and becoming an icon of sexual deviance. [Note: My reading has suggested that the metaphorical hermaphrodite arose as an image in England in the early 17th century, if not earlier, and was well established by the Restoration.]

Medical interest in both “normal” and “deviant” anatomy became a cover for prurient interests, and the boundary between medical texts and pornography became fuzzy. Another culturally relevant feature of these medical texts is that they increasingly appeared in the vernacular language, providing a wider reach into (literate) society. Focus on the clitoris came to replace the idea of the hermaphrodite as a representation of anxiety about lesbianism. If the clitoris gave all women the ability to satisfy themselves and each other, what of men?

The theory that stimulation caused enlargement of the clitoris turned attention to masturbation in general. 18th century texts encouraged schoolmistresses to keep an eye out for the practice among students. Such texts both denied that masturbation was common among women and spread the knowledge of its possibility. This is only one example of the generally contradictory nature of the genre.

Semi-pornographic “confession” letters about masturbation (and f/f sex, though the distinction was not always clear) tied sexual knowledge to the practice of reading, as well as well as to cross-class relationships. The framing of such activities as “masturbation” diverted attention from the homosexual nature of the context.

In the mid 18th century in England there was a rise of “female husband” stories. Images of female homosexuality expanded to include passing women and the demimonde of actresses and prostitutes. The idea of the clitoral tribade was split off to form an idea of monstrosity apart from everyday social experience.

Chapter 2 - Representations of the Tribade in Libertine Literature

In parallel with medical interest in the hermaphrodite and tribade, French libertine literature and “gallant” literature “rediscovered” the tribade via classical sources and Italian pornographic literature. Meanwhile, in England, poets such as John Donne and Ben Jonson used the images of the tribade or fricatrice in satire and erotic writing. Playwright and poet Aphra Behn used the idea of the hermaphrodite to explore f/f desire. These uses are not new, but expand on images of f/f desire in Renaissance and classical literature.

One can find several organizing themes within these literary representations, especially viewing f/f desire as a passing developmental stage that gives way to heterosexuality, or as a consequence of gender play or gender disguise, or as a mythological motif. Homoeroticism could be found in plays, romances, and poetry, with both men and women depicted as enjoying desire for both sexes.

Homoerotic themes on the stage are well studied. Wahl looks instead at the specific genre of libertine writings, that focus on explicitly erotic representations and use the tribade as a “scandalous” and transgressive figure. The authors are primarily male, with Aphra Behn being the notable exception in writing openly of f/f desire and interrogating the misogyny and gender constraints that her contemporaries were swimming in.

French libertine writers presented themselves as direct observers/reporters and took at least the appearance of a moral stance, following the tone of the medical literature. They set themselves u as judges of “natural” law to identify those who broke it. Historians often treat this genre either as erotic fantasies or as defamatory gossip while accepting the “amused tolerance” of their stance as sincere. Thus, these historians consider libertine writings on f/f desire to demonstrate its insignificance and inconsequentiality. Wahl argues for seeing a more complex reaction that reveals the men’s desires and fears around f/f sex.

Several specific texts are examined, starting with Brantôme, who pretty much catalogs the libertine views of female sexuality. He combines classical literary examples with contemporary anecdotes, depicting f/f sex simultaneously as a rediscovery of classical practices and as a foreign import from Italy. He adopts a geographic polarity: southern cultures are more passionate, northern ones less adventurous. But sexual knowledge could be transmitted between them like a disease. [Note: Of course, in turn, when English writers tackled the “transmission” theory of f/f sex, they saw France as the source of infection.]

Brantôme raises the question of whether f/f sex constitutes adultery. (A great deal of his work focuses on extramarital sex in general, in line with gallantculture.) He primarily presents f/f sex as a preferred alternative to adultery with men, but also alleges that it can be a symptom or a cause of uncontrolled desire in general. But then he sidesteps the implications of this by focusing on f/f sex as an outlet for virgins and widows, whose activities wouldn’t challenge the institution of marriage.

F/f sex is ok “in the absence of men”, but even depicting it as a “safe” outlet undermines the assertion that f/f sex can’t compete with m/f sex. He repeatedly fails to integrate the idea that f/f desire inevitably gives way to m/f relationships with the actual anecdotes he presents in which women are deeply devoted to each other.

Brantôme echoes Italian erotic literature in depicting f/f sex as an “apprenticeship” to unrestrained sex with men, linking tribades and prostitutes via voyeuristic anecdotes in which his descriptions focus on a male observer. Woven throughout Brantôme’s anecdotes are the message that women will be punished for their same-sex acts, not by an external justice, but as an inevitable “natural” consequence. Dildoes cause fatal injury, discovery brings humiliation.

Brantôme’s terminology for f/f sex is slippery. Though terms like “tribade” and “fricatrice” are used, they don’t clearly align with specific practices he describes and may be used allegorically in ways that remove actual women’s sexuality from the picture. We also see this in the poems by Donne, Woodward, and Jonson in which the female image of the Muse introduces the same-sex element. These (male) English poets, while using lesbian imagery, are not clearly speaking of f/f sex at all. [Note: And yet, even the use of lesbian imagery in a figurative sense reflects or creates an awareness of the possibilities in life.]

Wahl addresses two assumptions to contradict them: that female homosexuality was not an “available category” in early modern England, and that the few clear examples of f/f sex stand apart from other forms of transgressive sexuality. She specifically challenges Alan Bray’s assertion that female and male homosexuality were not linked in the early modern imagination.

She notes Traub’s contrast between “tribade sexuality” involving some degree of masculine performance, and “femme” desire, that had no physical signifier (whether in dress, in the use of a dildo, or in being marked on the body via the clitoris). “Femme” modes were easier to view as compatible with a normative life path ending in reproductive sexuality. Traub’s polarities are blurred in Donne’s poem “Sapho to Philaenis” and in Behn’s “To the Fair Clarinda”. These two works also bookend a period of relative tolerance for f/f sex, prior to the rise of satirical takes in the early 18th century. [Note: Given the relative paucity of material, I’m not sure how solidly one can speak of a “period of relative tolerance” when it also included things like Jonson’s attack on Cecelia Bulstrode.]

Donne envisions an “innocent” self-loving relationship between Sapho and Philaenis that explicitly contrasts with m/f sex as “leaving a mark”. The imagery is utopian. Behn blurs the polarities by envisioning a gender-fluid Clarinda who leans “masculine” when actively pursuing desire of a female beloved, while being viewed as a safely “innocent” target of a woman’s affection. The poem praises Clarinda in alternately male and female terms: female beauty, but male-coded behavior. She is desirable to both men and women because she is both male and female. Behn’s use of a plural subject as the observer intimates that all women might be drawn to Clarinda, and that they may remain innocent in that love as they love a woman, not a man.

[Note: It occurs to me that part of the “is lesbianism dangerous” dilemma for writers in this era boils down to a dual meaning of “inconsequence”. If f/f sex is inconsequential/unimportant then it isn’t a challenge to reproductive sex, but becausef/f sex is free of “consequence” whether pregnancy, venereal disease, or simply being categorized as adultery, it has inherent advantages over f/m sex. I think this is one of the things Wahl is arguing, but I wanted to restate it in my own words to fix it in my head.]

Behn’s references in the Clarinda poem to Chloris/Alexis (stock pastoral figures) and Hermes/Aphrodite raise the image of the hermaphroditic hybrid who can be lover to either sex while belonging to neither. But Behn can’t escape the cultural framing that views desire for a woman (or active sexual desire in general) as inherently masculine, while framing f/f relations as “innocent” and “friendship” as opposed to passion.

French libertine poets offer another angle on f/f love but one that fits securely with the assumption of ultimate m/f triumph. F/f bonds are defined within a conventional romance dynamic, but designed for a male audience. F/f love is not to be consummated, it is self imposed suffering, it falls short of “the real thing”. They do wrong to refuse themselves to men. But within this context, f/f love is depicted as tender, egalitarian, and bewildering to men.

The themes of an almost sympathetic tolerance of f/f love and an insistence on heterosexual conversion come to a point in the dramatic and poetic works of Benserade. Written for a libertine audience (both male and female) he ventures to depict happy f/f relations, as in Iphis and Ianthe (though only Iphis is consciously aware of the same-sex aspect), while still promising a heterosexual resolution. (The couple is allowed a happy wedding night as women, but Iphis’s sex-change is still required to make the marriage itself possible.)

Benserade also wrote about losing a female lover to another woman and this work sharply depicts the limits of male sympathy within the complex reasons why he finds the desertion offensive. He could bear losing his lover to a man, but is miffed that a woman’s love could be strong enough to steal her away. He consoles himself that his lover will inevitably be abandoned in turn for a man. He asserts that women are incomplete without a man and therefore two incomplete things can’t achieve completion together. [Note: In the male-authored texts comparing f/f and f/m love, one can see the underpinnings of a major motif in modern biphobia: that a woman who is capable of desiring both women and men will inevitably, at some point, choose men over women. Within the time-scope of Wahl’s study, this isn’t a question of “men can offer marriage and women can’t” because the entire debate concerns gallantrelations apart from marriage.]

In summary, these representations of f/f sexuality illustrate an increasing awareness of the potential for sexual and erotic relations between women, with a consequent concern for policing non-reproductive sexuality, represented in the form of the clitoris. Yet within this context, there are glimpses of the ability to imagine f/f love in utopian terms, even if “invisible”. The conflict is between visibility and consequent male anxiety on the one side, and invisibility and hence inconsequentialness on the other.

LHMP entry type:

Chapter

Parent:

Wahl, Elizabeth Susan. 1999. Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, Stanford. ISBN 0-8047-3650-2

Wahl, Elizabeth Susan. 1999. Invisible Relations: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, Stanford. ISBN 0-8047-3650-2

Project ID number:

313

Project ID letter:

Sub-reference:

Part 1: Sexualized Models of Female Intimacy

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

It's fascinating to see French and English sexual culture laid out in parallel so deliberately (and not simply because they're the cultures the author had available sources on). Given how closely connected these two traditional rivals were, the contrasts in social and sexual dynamics shed useful light on the diversity of sexual cultures even within a narrow scope. For an author of historical fiction, these contrasts can be extremely useful. Have your characters interact with people from a neighboring culture whose differences give you a chance to depict the attitudes of your setting and protagonists. Have them travel and encounter new ideas. Have them read books or letters that broaden their minds (or for them to disagree with!). Have your English women react with both shock and envy at the apparent social freedom of French ladies. Have your French characters find community among other women whose marriages offer them no sense of companionship or affection. Build up a slow burn with long affectionate letters of amitié.

# # #

Event / person:

Sappho to Philaenis (John Donne)To Mr. J.D. (T.W.)To the Fair Clorinda (Aphra Behn)Lives of Gallant Ladies (Pierre de Bourdeille seigneur de Brantôme)Iphis et Iante (Benserade)

ISBN:

0-8047-3650-2

Blog post:

Libertines on the Loose

LHMP #254 Blud 2017 The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 23 Jun 2019 17:56:04 +0000

Blud's book is focused primarily on philosophy and literary criticism, and employs a lot of theory jargon. This is not a book about historic substance and data, but an analysis that plays with ideas, using Old and Middle English texts as a unifying theme.

The thematic focus is on speech (around sexuality) as action, and the consideration of both speaking and unspeakability as themes in medieval literature. The first part looks at the concept of sin, the suppression of speech, and the meanings of speech and silence, of expression and suppression, exemplified by the Old English life of Mary of Egypt and the Middle English Ancrene Wisse (a manual for anchorites). The act of confession is discussed in the context of "unspeakable" sins, with special consideration of the absence of women in discussions of sodomy.

Chapter 1: Ancrene Wisse is an early 13th century book of advice for anchorites (women in religious seclusion). It demonstrates the contradictory attitudes towards "naming" sins in the context of confession when it advises not to be coy about describing your sins, but also not to be crude, e.g., no need to speak of "shameful body parts" by name. But at the same time, the (male) author is coy and reluctant to name the sins he warns the anchorites against. This reluctance to describe the "unspeakable" reflexively raises the specter of sodomy. Sexual sins are implied but not named when he warns against the influence of female visitors, or implies that lust can occur "without a man". But without specific naming, we're left to speculate whether masturbation or lesbianism is meant (or whether the author would have made any meaningful distinction between them).

Chapter 2: The chapter opens with a rehearsal of the case of John/Eleanor Rykener (a 14th century male-bodied person who engaged in prostitution as a woman). Rykener was accused of practicing "unspeakable vice" (vitium...nephandum) which seems an extension of the usual sense as Rykener's sexual activity followed heterosexual patterns (as a woman with men, and as a man with women).

The concept of "unspeakable sins" normally defaults to sodomy, but the association of "unspeakable" narrowly with same-sex acts was gradual, just as the concept of acts "against nature" was not uniquely associated with same-sex activity. At the root, "natural" sex acts were understood as procreative ones. But philosophical categories were mutable and the boundaries were contested. Was masturbation a type of hermaphroditism? (Because the individual took on both the active and passive roles?) Or was it a form of incest? (If the individual was viewed as inhabiting two distinct roles, because the relationship between the people in those roles--i.e., identity--was within a prohibited degree.) The label "sodomy" originally applied to any type of sex "against nature" and was a very broad category. Only gradually did the word shift to the very narrow sense of anal sex between men. This incoherence of meaning made the term both broadly applicable and evocative of the worst available interpretation.

The discussion turns to why the texts that are so preoccupied with same-sex acts so often entirely overlook sex between women. There is a sense that sex between women was simultaneously more shocking and less threatening than sex between men. Legal commentaries clearly included sex between women in the category of sodomy, even while paying little attention to it. The discussion includes the usual array of court cases involving sex between women: Katherina Hetzeldorfer, Thomasina and her concubine in 15th century London, as well as ambiguous cases that may involve intersex persons. Sex between women is in the awkward position of being stigmatized as sodomy but then erased from the default understanding of the term.

The next section of the chapter uses John Gower's version of Ovid's Iphis and Ianthe (in his Confessio Amantis) as an illustration of the "unspeakability" of love between women. Only the transformation of Iphis into a man at the end of the story solves the threat that the lovers might use the "thing which to them was all unknown" by enabling them to express love that does not cause "offense". Within the story, love between women is contradictorily presented as entirely natural and "against nature". It is neither punished nor allowed to exist. The two women do not participate in "unspeakable acts" because their bodies are re-aligned to the "speakable" before the acts can be performed. This contradiction also exists in the parallel Latin and English texts in Gower's work, which tell somewhat different versions of the events. (The chapter now descends into philosophical discourse.)

The next example is the contest between the personifications of Nature (for the feminine side) and Nurture (for the masculine side) over rights to the character of Silence in the romance of that name. The text observes that this conflict expresses very "modern" ideas about gender and identity. (The philosophical discussion in this section is a bit more accessible and interesting than in other parts.) The character of Queen Eufeme is also noted: she has a lover with a male body (and identity) who presents publicly as female, and she desires Silence (who has a female body but presents as male). Is Eufeme intended to be read as queer? Or are we meant to read only the official "knowledge" of her object of desire, i.e., that in both cases Eufeme understands her desire to be heterosexual?

The frustration of the queen's desire leads to accusing Silence of an "unspeakable crime." Overtly, this would be the (false accusation of) sexual assault the queen claims, but could the unspeakability of the crime be meant to imply the same-sex nature of the (fictitious) encounter? The text again moves into philosohpical analysis of the nature of female desire and women's "voice".

Chapter 3: This chapter is a discussion of gender motifs in medieval werewolf stories and is outside the scope of the LHMP.

Chapter 4: This chapter treats the motif of the literal removal of a woman's tongue as relating to the removal of her power of speech, using the tale of Philomela. This material is also outside the scope of the LHMP.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Blud, Victoria. 2017. The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-84384-468-6

Project ID number:

254

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

This book is a bit more on the "literary criticism" and theoretical side than I'm generally looking for. It's a fascinating read, but somewhat less useful for research purposes. Although the text itself was of marginal usefulness for the Project, the bibliography offered a lot of interesting leads for new publications to review.

# # #

Event / person:

Ancrene Wisse John (Eleanor) Rykener Katherina Hetzeldorfer Thomasina corseweaver Confessio Amantis (John Gower)Metamorphoses: Iphis and Ianthe (Ovid)Roman de Silence (Heldris de Cornuälle)

ISBN:

978-1-84384-468-6

Blog post:

Women's Speech and Silence around Sex

LHMP #244 Puff 1997 Localizing Sodomy

Heather Rose Jones — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 03:22:32 +0000

As can be expected from the reference to priests in the title of this article, it focuses mostly on relations between men. But there is some information on women within the more general context of “sodomy” involving clerical personnel.

The article focuses on the church’s role in persecuting “sodomites” during a period roughly between the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and the Reformation (ca. 1517). Puff demonstrates that there were a variety of approaches taken, depending on context and contradicting the impression that the chuch was uniformly hostile. As a rule, church personnel didn’t participate actively in sodomy trials and there is little evidence for systematic purging of sodomites from clearical or monastic positions. The bulk of the article reviews a number of individual case histories that shed light on the everyday reality that contrasted with the more theoretical evidence of penitential literature, among other sources.

Although there had been increasing concern about sodomy in penitentials during the 5th through 11th centuries, the consolidation of institutional power in the church that increased in the 12th century and later made it possible to address a number of deprecated practices, including simony, priests keeping concubines, and the poor level of priestly education. Also at this period, we see the first introduction in law codes of a death penalty for sodomy, although there is little evidence that it was implemented.

What Puff identifies in this research is that the picture described by earlier historians of church officials acting in concert with lay courts to deliver sodomites for prosecution and execution turns out to be a myth. That picture may have been true for heretics, but although sodomy was sometime conflated with heresy, sodomites were excluded from this church-state partnership of persecution. And even when theoretically included, actual court records paint a different picture than these normative records.

The titular phrase of this article “priest and sodomite” was not an established “social type” but rather emerged from certain specific points of conflict that reflect specific local and political circumstances.

[There is a great deal of fascinating detail in this article, but most of it is irrelevant to the theme of this blog, so I’m going to jump and skim to hit the points relevant to women.]

One contributing factor to the image of the “priest and sodomite”, as well as to accusations against nuns of sexual deviancy of various types, was the popular trope of the morally corrupt clergy. Anti-clerical sentiment, and especially anti-monastic feelings, were regularly expressed in popular tales, satire, and reform propaganda. While corrupt clergy certainly existed, the motif had the attraction of transgression against the clergy/lay social boundary. And the real-life transgression of the boundary between clergy and secular persons seems to have generated a disproportionate number of the legal actions against sodomites. If such relationships remained entirely in one group or the other, they were less likely to cause notice.

While the majority of Puff’s examples involve relations between priests and laymen, one case of a religious recluse, Katharina Güldin in Rottweil in 1444 involves an accusation that she practiced the “vice against nature which is called sodomy” with an unnamed lay woman. The case was recorded because city officials lodged a complaint to the deacon of Rottweil. The outcome of the case is not recorded.

[That, alas, is the extent of the relevant information in this article.]

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Puff, Helmut. 1997. “Localizing Sodomy: The ‘Priest and sodomite’ in Pre-Reformation Germany and Switzerland” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 8:2 165-195

Project ID letter:

244

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

There are always at least two layers of historic information about non-normative sexuality: the normative, prescriptive narratives of authorities, whether religious, medical, legal, or other; and the individual, concrete, descriptive accounts of everyday experience. It can be enlightening to see where and how these come into conflict. The cases where records acknowledge that actual human beings often fail to follow the paradigms the experts have set out. Or where we see the disconnect between the official model of how society was supposed to respond to sexual transgression, versus actual experiences and outcomes. Big picture histories too often lean entirely on the former and fail to represent the true variety of experience.

# # #

Event / person:

Katharina Güldin

Blog post:

How Hostile was the Medieval Church to Sodomy in its Ranks?

LHMP #232 Fernandez 1997 The Repression of Sexual Behavior by the Aragonese Inquisition

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 03:31:19 +0000

This is a data-heavy examination of cases under the Spanish Inquisition for sexual-related offenses during a critical period from the mid 16th century to the end of the 17th century. There is very little in the article that speaks directly to sexual activity between women, but it provides a context for attitudes and risks during that period.

The question being addressed is why there was a significant increase in the prosecution of sexual offenses in the Kingdom of Aragon beginning around 1560, and how and why that focus tapered off over the course of the 17th century. The official focus of the Inquisition was on eradicating heresy, but in the mid 16th century that focus expanded to overlap with the jurisdiction of episcopal and royal courts with regard to four categories of sexual offense that were considered to represent not simply moral offenses, but offenses against the natural order or against the sacraments. These four categories were solicitation, bigamy, sodomy, and bestiality.

The documentary record shows the court working its way through the process of categorizing offenses under these headings, and determining their relative gravity and appropriate penalties. Simple fornication (i.e., extramarital sex between a man and a woman) was a moral and legal offense but did not come under the scrutiny of the Inquisition under ordinary circumstances and so is not included in this data (although far more common).

A great deal of the article is taken up with detailed discussions of data trends, categories, and statistics, of which I’ll only hit the highlights. Overall, this increased focus on sexual offenses ran from 1560 through around 1620, then tapered off steadily until the end of the 17th century when the Inquisition functionally lost interest in the topic.

Of the four categories, the only one of relevance to the LHMP is sodomy, and even there the overwhelming majority of the cases involve relations between men. Out of 1829 cases included in the data overall, 691 (38%) fell in the category of sodomy. But of those, only 8 cases involved women, with 7 of them concerning sodomy in the context of a male-female relationship. Only one case (keep in mind, this is in the entire kingdom or Aragon in the course of nearly a century and a half) involved a female couple. The case occurred in 1656, the women were unmarried, and (if I’m reading the article correctly) the sentence was banishment from their home city for 8 years and being forbidden from cohabiting.

While this may seem like a small tidbit on which to include this article in the Project, it provides a context for other previous mentions of the prosecution of female couples within the authority of the Spanish Inquisition. Clearly the overall risk of coming to their attention, or of receiving a significant punishment, was low, despite the fearsome reputation of the organization.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Fernandez, André. 1997. “The Repression of Sexual Behavior by the Aragonese Inquisition between 1560 and 1700” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 7:4 pp.469-501

Project ID number:

232

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

As I mention in the discussion below, given how very little information this article has relating to women's same-sex relations, one might wonder why I bothered to include it. And the answer is, because often negative information is as important to understanding the context of people's lives in history as the positive information is. We often have an impression that women in sexual relationships were in constant danger of persecution and repression. That they must have lived in constant fear of discovery and the consequences thereof. But once you sift through the data in this article (and it's packed full of numbers and pie charts and trend graphs), the take-home message is that in the entire kingdom of Aragon in Spain, for the century and a half when the Spanish Inquisition was most fixated on the sexual lives of ordinary people, only one (1) female couple is recorded as being tried by the Inquisition for the offense of sodomy. And they were punished by exile and being forbidden to live together, not by death or even imprisonment. (Though exile was nothing to sneeze at.) While this data doesn't address how this compared with attention from the secular courts, and while it doesn't give us a baseline for how many women engaged in acts that might have been considered sodomy, we can make some reasonable extrapolations and suggest that legal prosecution of women solely for engaging in same-sex acts was not a major risk factor.

So when you're imagining the lives of your fictional characters and thinking of setting them in 16-17th century Spain, maybe--just maybe--the Inquisition isn't something that needs to be a constant threat looming over their lives. In fact, coming to the notice of the Inquisition must might be more historically inaccurate than otherwise.

# # #

Blog post:

No one expects...the jokes write themselves

LHMP #225 Van der Meer 1991 Tribades on Trial: Female Same-Sex Offenders in Late Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Heather Rose Jones — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 02:55:32 +0000

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.” [Note: On reviewing this entry to reference it, I realize that Van der Meer appears to have conflated Hendrikje Verschuur who did indeed serve in the army in the 1630s, with Maria van Antwerpen, who served in the army in male disguise in the 1760s and was nicknamed "the heroine of Breda" after her identity was discovered.]

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.]

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

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.

Project ID number:

225

Introduction:

[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.

# # #

Event / person:

Bets Wiebes & Martha Schuurman Mooije Marijtje & Dirkje Vis Trijntje Barents & Hendrickje Lamberts De Bredashe Heldinne Gesina Dekker & Engeltje Blauwpaard Anna Grabou Christina Knip Anna Schreuder & Maria Smit Susanna Marrevelt

Blog post:

Social Disruption in 18th c Amsterdam

LHMP #189 Trumbach 1991 London’s Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 22:27:57 +0000

[Note: I’d like to remind readers of my convention that my commentary and critique of articles is typically enclosed in square brackets, unless it’s clear enough from context that I’m speaking in my own voice. Otherwise non-bracketed text is meant to be understood as a summary of the article. I’d also like to acknowledge that articles such as this that treat historic individuals in a cross-gender or gender-ambiguous context will necessarily trade sensitivity for clarity when discussing both beliefs and realities about the relationship of bodies, identities, perceived identities, and orientations. I will usually try to rephrase an article’s language to something more neutral, but as we are not dealing with persons who can clarify their own preferences, the results will not always be satisfactory.]

Trumbach looks at shifts in the cultural understanding of gender and sexuality that appear in northwestern Europe around the beginning of the 18th century and that he sums up in the title of this article “from three sexes to four genders.” The modern western model of two biological sexes (man and woman) and two genders (male and female) does not hold through all cultures and has not been universal throughout western history. He associates the shift under consideration with the beginnings of an ideal of equality between the two “legitimate” genders and the rise of a recognition of a third “illegitimate” gender: the “adult passive transvestite effeminate male” who had an exclusive sexual orientation toward men, known in England as a “molly”.

[Note that this is not quite the same as a concept of a general homosexual orientation as it still focused exclusively on the “passive” partner who was assumed to have sexual encounters with “normal” men. Also note that "gender" is being used in this article to discuss a concept that combines features that we would today distinguish as gender presentation and sexual orientation. I believe the point that Trumbach is making with the use of the word "gender here is that 18th century English culture conflated gender presentation and sexual orientation in exactly this way.]

By the end of the 18th century, a parallel female role of the mannish woman-desiring “tommy” was becoming recognized. Trumbach asserts that at this time “sapphist” and “tommy” were used as the high and low culture terms for women with homoerotic interests just as “sodomite” and “molly” were high and low culture terms for men. Trumbach’s claim is that this “other female gender” was not completely recognized until the late 19th or early 20th century as women’s gender classification was driven more by their participation in sex with men than by their attitude toward sex with women.

[Note: There are certainly pre-19th century references to women who desire women constituting a “third gender” so I’m not sure exactly what Trumbach’s basis is for pushing the concept toward the end of the 19th century. I get the impression that--like many male historians--he’s treating the male experience as the default and evaluating women’s history in relation to how closely it matches that male experience. In this case, the phenomenon he's focusing on is the conflation of cross-gender presentation and same-sex desire as a combined social category, that is, the development of a female category directly equivalent to the "molly". In doing so, he filters out historical concepts and behaviors that don't participate in that combined category. So keep that in mind as I summarize this article.]

By this point (i.e., ca. 1900) western society had developed a system divided into four roles: man, woman, homosexual man, lesbian woman--roles that presumed only two biological sexes, that rejected a biological basis for homosexual behavior, and that no longer framed homosexuals within a transsexual structure (i.e., that one’s “true” gender was determined in contrast to the object of desire).

The 17th century paradigm--which was applied to both men and women--recognized two genders (male and female) but three biological sexes (man, woman, and hermaphrodite). Under this system, all persons were considered capable of desiring both genders, but “legitimate” sexual activity and desire occurred between male and female genders, and hermaphrodites were required to choose (and stick to) either male or female gender. Violation of this male-female requirement was stigmatized as sodomy, but sodomites were not considered a distinct gender based on their sexual relations. Further, acts of sodomy only violated the accepted gender system if they went against a gendered framework for penetration. As long as older, dominant adult men had penetrative sex with adolescent boys, and women had non-penetrative sex with each other, the gender system was maintained even during same-sex erotics. Persons who acted against this system (e.g., adult biological men who were penetrated or biological women who penetrated women) were not considered to be a distinct social class (gender) but rather were considered to be motivated by belonging to a distinct biological class (hermaphrodites). In the case of women, there was a persistent expectation that this biological class was identifiable by an enlarged clitoris. [Note: The failure of medical examination to uphold this concept in the case of women doesn’t ever seem to have disrupted the standing assumption.]

In the early 18th century, this system as applied to men underwent two shifts: from a 2 gender/3 sex system to a 3 gender/2 sex system, and from an expectation that sexual relations between men would involve an active adult man and a passive adolescent boy, to a system where some adult men who desired men took on “feminine” aspects of dress and behavior as part of engaging in those relationships.

This article focuses on what was going on with women in regard to these categorization shifts during this same period (the 18th century) particularly in London. Trumbach focuses on three topics: the concept of women as hermaphrodites, the understanding of cross-dressing by women, and the scope of “what male contemporaries would have considered to be actual sexual relations between women.” [Note: I use the precise quotation here to highlight that this analysis is assuming a male gaze for this shift in categories. I presume that to some extent this approach is due to the larger amount of male-authored material used as evidence. But I’d be happier if Trumbach seemed more self-aware of the problematic aspects. In the next section I’m going to quote Trumbach’s hedges for his assertions, because I think it’s important to recognize the degree of not-entirely-acknowledged personal speculation involved.]

Trumbach dates the emergence of the “sapphist” gender role to the latter half of the 18th century, emerging clearly only in the last quarter. In the earlier part of the century, women’s behavior was “likely” to be bisexual and their sexual activities with women focus on manual stimulation and avoided penetration. “Men speculated” that women engaging in penetrative sex with women were assumed either to have an enlarged clitoris or to use an artificial penis. “It is likely” that some female husbands who dressed as men and married women did use artificial penises, but “it is likely” that most passing women did not have sexual relations with women, and this is “probably true” even if they married.

[Note: that’s a lot of “likely”s and “probably”s. This entire section of the article strikes me as someone working hard to fit the evidence into his existing conclusions.]

Open cross-dressing, as on the stage, was aimed at appealing to men, not women, relying on the overt knowledge that the performers were women, while covert cross-dressing was intended to conceal the bodily sex. Only toward the end of the 18th century is there evidence of women using cross-gender appearance to appeal sexually to women. It is these women that Trumbach identifies as “London’s first sapphists of the modern kind”, in the sense that they were considered to be expressing a fixed, minority sexual orientation, rather than indulging in a more general possibility of same-sex desire that any woman could experience.

The “hermaphrodite” category was sometimes applied to men who took both an active and passive role in same-sex activity, but it was treated as more of a symbolic label than it was for women, for whom it indicated an expectation of anatomical anomaly. And as the 18th century progressed, the male category increasingly used “molly” instead.

For women, “hermaphrodite” could also be used in a metaphorical rather than anatomical sense, especially when attached to clothing that was felt to be too “masculine” in design, such as tailored riding habits. Here it is the clothing--not its wearers--that is considered to partake of male and female traits, and at least in the early century there seems to be no implication that women wearing “mannish” styles associated that fashion with desire for women. [Note: The early 18th century Memoirs of the Count de Grammont implies a relationship between Mrs. Hobart's "mannish" attributes and clothing and her predatory sexual interest in young women, but it's true that the association isn't as strong as it later became. And I think Trumbach has an unstated distinction between descriptions of "mannish" clothing being part of a stereotype of women's sexual deviancy, and the deliberate use of "mannish" clothing to express personal identity/orientation. Did the existence of the stereotype inspire homoerotically-inclined women to adopt masculine-coded clothing? Or was the stereotype an outgrowth of the earlier gender/orientation model that viewed female same-sex desire as a symptom of an essential "masculine" identity that also inspired cross-gender dressing? I think there's a lot more to investigate here, though it's questionable whether the data exists to be successful.]

The association of the concept of the physiological “hermaphrodite” rather specifically with women (as opposed to both women and men) is emphasized in the coverage of medical treatises on the phenomenon, such as Edmund Curll’s 1718 work, which focus entirely on physiologically female bodies that featured enlarged clitorises. He considered that hermaphrodites were inherently predisposed to transgressive sex and that sex with women was simply an extension of this. He also takes an exoticizing view of same-sex desire, considering hermaphrodites to be more common in hot climates, such as Italy and France. Unlike writers later in the century, he considered hermaphroditism to represent a distinct physiological (yet still female) sex that resulted in same-sex desires.

But hermaphroditism was not a stable category. A woman could become one as a result of masturbation, which was believed to enlarge the clitoris. Several “case studies” are adduced from the sensational tract Onania (which seems to have been a combination of anti-masturbation polemic and porno magazine letter column). Under this understanding of the relationship of physiology and sexual category, individuals can move between sexes by means of changes in their genitalia, whether spontaneously or as a result of stimulation.

The Onania also reflected the next stage of thought, citing writers who considered that so-called hermaphrodites were simply mis-categorized as to sex due to ambiguous genitalia. Thus, a girl with a large clitoris might be assigned as male (as in a case study related by surgeon John Douglas) and only later in life be re-assigned as female. In the case study this re-assignment was due to pregnancy. John Parsons, repeating the report in 1741, notes that in earlier ages the case would most likely have been reported as a change of sex, rather than an initial miscategorization.

It was mutability, rather than anomaly, that incited disapproval. Another physician, writing in 1771, noted a “hermaphrodite” who had lived as a man for at least 12 years, marrying a woman and living with her until her death; but after the wife’s death, the person began living as a woman and had married a man.

While earlier legal policy had recognized the possibility of change of physiological sex, it had required everyone to choose a single behavioral gender and stick to it. This emerging view of physiology in the 18th century held that actual sex change was not possible, and therefore to avoid sodomy it was necessary to correctly identify which sex a person was and require them to perform the corresponding gender. Another case study is offered: Thomasine Hall was christened as a girl but then at age 22 joined the army as a man and went to America . In that country, Thomasine again lived as a woman, but when examined was found to have male genitalia. (Trumbach suggests the likely explanation that Thomasine had an intersex condition in which male genitalia developed in late adolescence. But in general as Trumbach is interested in subjective social categorization, he doesn’t touch much on intersex conditions as a factor in the data.) The American court took the rather unusual approach of sentencing Thomasine to dress partly male and partly female, which would seem to contradict the requirement to “pick one and stick to it.” [Note: for those who would like to follow up on this case and its unusual legal context, see Wikipedia as a starting place.]

John Parsons briefly acknowledges the possibility of such mis-assignments of male individuals, but in general treats all hermaphrodites as basically female. As women, he argued, there was no point in requiring them to choose a gender--they had one. But this position combined with the expectation of heterosexual desire to argue that the category of “hermaphrodite as tribade” was non-sensical. Even women with enlarged clitorises were women and therefore should naturally desire only men.

What this meant was that rather than using hermaphroditism as a reason and excuse for apparently-female persons desiring women, desire between women was now considered to have no biological basis and therefore must be viewed as simple moral deviance. [Note: This is, of course, not a new and previously unknown understanding, but to some extent a return to an earlier position. As seen in other research, the fascination with the idea of the “macroclitoride hermaphrodite” was a Renaissance invention and superseded a previous model of same-sex desire as potentially available to all persons but morally deviant.]

As the category of hermaphrodite was receding as a framework for women who desired women, there was not yet an equivalent to the masculine “molly”, i.e., women who were socially (rather than biologically) disposed toward desire for other women. Such a category would become necessary, and was filled with the concept of the sapphist/tommy, representing women whose desires had been corrupted toward an inappropriate object.

The next section of the article specifically looks at the association (or lack thereof) between women who cross-dressed or passed as men, and women who desired women. John Cleland, in his translation of the life of Catherine Vizzani, suggested that cross-dressing women were predisposed to same-sex desire, but this suggestion doesn’t seem to hold for most 18th century cross-dressing women in London. (Keep in mind that Catherine Vizzani was one of those “hot blooded” Italians.) Trumbach asserts that for most of the 18th century, there was no specific association between female cross-dressing and lesbianism, in contrast to mollies (men cross-dressing as women specifically in the context of same-sex relationships and activity).

[Note: in order for this particular conclusion of Trumbach’s to be demonstrated, it is necessary for him to re-categorize a significant number of “female husbands” or to deny that their relationships had any relation to sexual desire. While it's true that documented motivations for "passing women" in this era are diverse, Trumbach goes out of his way to downplay the possible role of same-sex desire. I’m going to do a lot of critique interwoven into this next set of data.]

Trumbach notes that although there were women who courted and married other women in 18th century London and “may have tried” to have sexual relations using a dildo (as documented for Mary Hamilton and for Catherine Vizzani), this specific sexual act cannot be proven. [Note: Trumbach seems to ignore the issue that England had no laws against performing a sex act with a dildo, unlike a number of continental cultures where trial records document such sex acts clearly and in detail during this period and earlier. This seems to me to greatly weaken his conclusion that 18th century English cross-dressers were not engaging in penetrative lesbian sex simply because there’s no mention of it in the record.]

“Female husbands” in 18th century London were normally charged with fraud rather than with a sexual crime [there being no sexual crime on the books they could be charged with]. Examples of fraud charges include:

Sarah Ketson who courted Ann Hutchinson in 1720 as “John”
Constantine Boone who was convicted of a fraudulent marriage to a woman in 1719 (and later was identified as a hermaphrodite)
In 1773 a younger woman (presumably passing as a man) married an older woman for the sake of £100
In 1777 a woman (presumably passing as a man) convicted for marrying 3 different women

Other cases suggest that whatever the initial understanding may have been, the relationship was still found acceptable to both parties once the gender disguise was known. Sarah Paul was abducted by a man for sexual purposes at age 13 and dressed as a boy (Samuel Bundy) to conceal her identity. She escaped him and went to sea as a man, then returned to work as a painter, at which time she courted and married Mary Parlour. Mary soon discovered her “husband’s” physiological sex and took no action at first. Some ambivalence entered their relationship, for Mary later had “Samuel” arrested for fraud, but then refused to appear in court to support the charges and kept her husband company while in prison. The only outcome was that the magistrate burned Sarah Paul’s male clothing and ordered her never to appear as a man again.

Such relationships were sometimes successful enough to last until death. John Chivy was married to a woman for nearly 20 years and was not discovered to be physiologically female until after death. Mary East was the husband of a couple married for 36 years, running a public house and holding parish offices, and only discovered to be physiologically female after her wife’s death in 1766. Trumbach notes that there is no direct evidence whether their relationship was also sexual, though he notes that East’s susceptibility to a blackmail attempt suggests the possibility of more than simple gender disguise--or at least that the suggestion of such was a threat. In some cases involving simple gender disguise without marriage, the woman testified directly to an economic motivation, citing the better employment opportunities for men.

Simple economic gender disguise was treated inconsistently by the law, with many examples coming from military contexts. Some women, on discovery, received punishments including whipping or hard labor, while others were turned into folk-heroes and granted celebrity status, such as Hannah Snell and others. The popular media showed a certain prurient interest in the details of behavioral disguise, e.g., the use of instruments to allow male-style urination, or the need to perform the expected flirtatious interest in women. But the startling observation is how many of these known passing women in the military were not arrested in connection with their discovery.

Given the expected gender segregation of society, another motivation for women cross-dressing was to facilitate illicit interactions with men, whether sexual or merely social. Sally Salisbury dressed as a man for drunken and violent sprees with a group of young aristocratic men. A woman who served as coachman to Lady Ann Harvey cross-dressed in order to conceal her illicit marriage to another servant in the household, was only discovered due to pregnancy. Catherine Meadwell developed a male persona to better facilitate an adulterous (heterosexual) affair.

Trumbach spends a fair amount of time discussing the life and autobiography of actress Charlotte Charke, but although he notes the “complications” of interpreting her motives, he sets out his default position by stating that she “probably” began cross-dressing to facilitate her second, secret marriage (to a man). In contrast, her travels with a female friend as “Mr. and Mrs. Brown” are attributed merely to safety. Charke’s cross-dressed courtship of several women, her flirtations with prostitutes, and her stated discomfort with traditionally female occupations are considered to be balanced by the fact that she bore a child within marriage. [I can't help but hearken back to Trumbach's statement that women's erotic identity during this period was defined by whether they had any relations with men, not by the existence of relations with women. It's hard to find any clear distinction between Trumbach's own categorization strategy and his reporting of historic categorization strategies.] Trumbach sensibly points out that Charke’s hostile satirization of an effeminate male homosexual cannot be interpreted as a general hostility to same-sex relations as the two situations were not considered in any way equivalent at the time. But he concludes by noting that there is no proof that she ever engaged in “what would have seemed to her to be sexual intercourse with another woman.” [Note: this leaves aside the question of what she engaged in that would not have been categorized as "sexual intercourse." But there's a consistent through-line in the historic western treatment of female same-sex erotics that "it isn't sex unless it closely mimics heterosexual penetrative intercourse." In some eras, this interpretation left a lot of latitude for "acceptable" female same-sex erotic activity. But when this same definition is echoed by modern historians--in combination with a definition that "woman cannot be classified as lesbians unless they engage in sex," you get a lot of erasure where perhaps the majority of women with same-sex erotic interests are defined out of the category of "possible lesbians."]

Trumbach then sums up his not-entirely-proven conclusion that the majority of cross-dressing women in this era did it for economic reasons or for safety, but that a minority were motivated by a sexual attraction to women. Also his counter-position that the majority of women who had same-sex relations (whom he labels “libertine”) did not cross-dress or take on masculine behaviors. [Note: I’m not saying that I think his conclusions are necessarily false, only that they feel decidedly under-proven.]

Moving on to the specific topic of sexual relations between women, Trumbach reiterates one of the key factors in the English historic record: there was no law against it. Under English law, sodomy was illegal, but it was defined narrowly as either bestiality or anal intercourse. This leaves no scope for evidence of sex between women to be found in the legal record, abandoning the field largely to literature and gossip.

The imagined sexual activities of women in fictional accounts are largely written by men (most often in pornographic contexts), with one exception being by Delariviere Manley. The accounts may involve women of all life situations--young unmarried girls, married women, prostitutes. Somewhat obviously, the latter two groups are depicted as also enjoying sex with men, even in cases where they prefer women.

Manley’s satirical work The New Atalantis stands out in content. It features a “new cabal” of aristocratic women who have affectionate and romantic relationships with each other, though lip service is given to considering actual sexual relationships to be “going too far.” The characters in the narrative also acknowledge the difficulty of entirely avoiding marriage to men, even when they reserve their romantic love for their female friends. A few women are described in the work as being mannish in affect, though not in dress. And one is depicted as cross-dressing in order to visit prostitutes in company with her female lover. Overall, the depiction is of a group of women who have primary romantic attachments for other women, sometimes including sexual relationships, but who accept that marriage to, and sexual relations with men are also an unavoidable part of life. [Note: Trumbach seems to assume that the reader knows that Manley’s work was a thinly veiled roman à clef, with most of the fictional characters being easily connected with her real-life social circle. This makes the fictional nature of the relationships less of an argument for discounting them.]

More common in literature are male depictions of sex between women as an adjunct to sex with men, as in Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, in which lesbian seduction is used to “train up” a new prostitute. An interest in sex with women is presented as an “arbitrary taste” to be enjoyed when available but not pursued exclusively.

Gossip among the fashionable classes of London was another source of evidence for women’s same-sex relations, although perhaps not any more reliable in the details than literature. The nature of Manley’s novel provoked speculations. It was commented on that one married woman traveled with a female companion because she bore “affection to her own sex.” Sexual puns were made to comment on the public affection shown by one woman to another. And women who pursued amours with other women were reported with an implied expectation of sexual activity. The state of marriage was irrelevant in this context. Being married was neither a guarantee of disinterest in women, nor a bar to acting on that interest. Conversely, the possibility that affairs between women might disrupt heterosexual marriages was a spur to the sharpness of the gossip, but not an assumed consequence.

The flavor of this gossip was parallel to that seen in the late 17th and early 18th centuries regarding sodomy between men, prior to the development of the molly role. Male rakes were expected to sexually pursue both women and boys. It was immoral but not scandalous. Similarly, these 18th century women generally had sexual relations with both men and women. There were economic pressures for the former that can’t entirely be discounted, but in general bisexuality was the expectation for “libertine” women. They were the subject of gossip for unchastity, but not for the nature of their partners. The suggestion of deviance was reserved for the rare examples of women who combined same-sex desire with masculine behavior (as for a few characters in Manley’s novel).

The use of dildoes for sex between women is another topic where fact can be difficult to extract from the available literature, which betrays a male-centered fixation on penetrative sex as being qualitatively different from other options. Thus, in Henry Fielding’s fictional account of Mary Hamilton, she is depicted as despairing of enacting her marriages to women without the use of an artificial penis (the discovery of which led to her exposure).Cleland’s translation of Catherine Vizzani’s memoirs also fixates on her use of an artificial penis in her affairs with women (while also addressing the previous era’s expectation that such desires were driven by anatomy in the form of an enlarged clitoris). In fact Cleland’s writings straddle various tropes. His Vizzani text expresses some surprise that Catherine did not have the expected anatomical cause, while highlighting her use of penetrative sex with an instrument, inspired by “some error in nature”, but then his Woman of Pleasure embraces the new framing of lesbian desire being “infectious” as it were, potentially stimulated in any woman via “corruption” by an experienced practitioner and not involving a pseudo-male partner. For Cleland, Vizzani’s cross-dressing was not a cause of her sexual interest, but rather a more serious transgression that took same-sex interest too far. In Cleland and some of his contemporaries, we can see these first hints at a female parallel to the molly: a minority of women who removed themselves from the category of “female” entirely and into a new category that would become labeled as “tommies” or “sapphists”.

[Note: While I've always been aware that Cleland's translation of the Vizzani text revised several sections relating to her sexual relations, I wasn't aware of some deeper and more questionable motives in his revisions that are explored in Donato 2006, which is among the articles I have lined up to cover in the next few months. Cleland very much cannot be viewed as a neutral observer of women's sexuality, in case there was any question.]

Another triangulation on the emergence of this new category comes from the gossipy diaries of Hester Thrale-Piozzi. Thrale had something of a fixation on identifying and recording male homosexuals (she considered herself to have a special ability to detect such inclinations even when concealed) with near-universal condemnation. She also commented on (real or imagined) sexual relations between women, particularly in Bath and London, but was less consistent in her reactions. She repeated an accusation that the French Queen Marie Antoinette had been the head of a Sapphic sect. She initially praised poems honoring the friendship of Miss Weston and Miss Powell, then later speculated salaciously on why Miss Weston had been averse to marriage and had made a fuss about another young woman. In 1795 Thrale went so far as to say that “whenever two ladies live too much together” they were suspected of “what has a Greek name now and is called Sapphism.” But at the same time she had difficulty imagining what such women could actually be doing together. She was one of a number of people who made crude jokes about the sexual reputation of Anne Damer, as well as noting that Damer had also adopted various men’s dress accessories.

Thrale’s inconsistency also shows in her attitude toward famous passionate friends Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. The majority of Thrale’s commentary on the “Ladies of Llangollen” is positive and she engaged in friendly correspondence with them, despite how well they fit Thrale’s criteria for being “unclean birds” as she puts it elsewhere. [Note: Trumbach states that Thrale “never made any negative judgment of them” but Donoghue cites a lesser known diary entry in which Thrale did refer to the two as “damned sapphists.”] Other contemporaries of Butler and Ponsonby were less hesitant to comment on their relationship and Butler considered a lawsuit against a newspaper article that suggested some irregularity to their relationship by describing her as “tall and masculine--always wears a riding habit” while describing Ponsonby in more conventionally feminine terms. In context we see a suggestion of the stereotype of “mannish” lesbian, and Ponsonby certainly reacted as if they description implied something unacceptable.

Trumbach suggests there was a distinction that Butler and Ponsonby did not “project [their relationship] as sexual” while Anne Damer, enacting a similar gender transgression in her dress and a liking for pretty younger women, “clearly projected her affection for women as sexual.” [Note: the evidence in both cases for this “projection” seems to come from how their contemporaries reacted to them.] “It is likely” Trumbach says, that this difference in projection derives from whether the women themselves identified their feelings as sexual in nature.

Even after the concept of a female “tommy” role developed, it was not as heavily stigmatized as the “molly” role. Women, in general, did not engage in their sexuality publicly and there is no evidence of a female subculture in taverns or public spaces equivalent to the molly houses. [Note: Other authors such as Donoghue have identified references to some evidence of public culture of this type.] Trumbach identifies several other general shifts that occur in the late 18th century with the rise of the “tommy” role: a falling off of interest in female actors taking on male roles on stage [but note various 19th century actresses famous for their “trouser roles” such as Charlotte Cushman], a greater difficulty for women passing as men and less interest in their stories, and the near-disappearance of the motif of an enlarged clitoris being used to explain same-sex desire. By 1800, Trumbach asserts, this new configuration had settled into a system of two types of bodies (male and female) and four genders, two “legitimate” heterosexual ones, and two stigmatized homosexual ones.

LHMP entry type:

Paper

Parent:

Epstein & Straub 1991 Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity

Trumbach, Randolph. 1991. “London's Sapphists : From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture” in Body guards : the cultural politics of gender ambiguity edited by Julia Epstein & Kristina Straub. Routledge, New York. ISBN 0-415-90388-2

Project ID number:

189

Sub-reference:

Trumbach, Randolph. “London's Sapphists : From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture”

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

There's a lot of meat to chew on in this article, and I think that Trumbach's exploration of shifts in how same-sex desire was understood and classified during the "long 18th century" is both fascinating and valuable. But at the same time, I see a lot (and I mean, A LOT) of flaws and weaknesses in how he frames and presents the data and his conclusions. Which I have commented on at great length interspersed with my summary of the article. To some extent, he seems aware of these flaws, for he uses a lot of "hedging language" like "seemed," "likely," "probably." But if I didn't have a fairly extensive existing familiarity with the data (and--I'll admit--a very different personal engagement with the data and its interpretation) I might have taken his conclusions more at face value. To be somewhat fair, the article was published in 1991 which was at the leading edge of the deep work in gender/sexuality history that we can now take for granted. But articles like this (and a critical reading of them) are a useful lesson in the importance of questioning not only the data but its interpretation.

# # #

Event / person:

Anne Conway Damer Charles/Mary Hamilton The True History and Adventures of Catharine Vizzani / Breve storia della vita di Catterina Vizzani (Giovanni Battista Bianchi)Charlotte Charke Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby (The Ladies of Llangollen)Hannah Snell Marie Antoinette The Female Husband (Henry Fielding)Onania or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (Balthazar Bekker?)The New Atalantis (Mary Delarivier Manley)Sarah Ketson (John) and Ann Hutchinson Sarah Paul (Samuel Bundy)John Chivy Mary East (Mr. How)Hester Thrale Thomasine Hall

ISBN:

0-415-90388-2

Blog post:

Tommies and Sapphists in the English 18th Century

LHMP #154 Linkinen 2015 Same-sex Sexuality in Later Medieval English Culture

Heather Rose Jones — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 19:32:14 +0000

Introduction

As with most general works on same-sex sexuality (and especially ones authored by men) this book is overwhelmingly focused on male sexuality. There is also the tendency usual in this context to suggest that texts, situations, and commentaries that don’t specifically include women can be extrapolated to them.

[For this reason, I’ve largely passed over the sections discussing generic texts. Most of them were created by men, for a male readership, and with the assumption that male sexuality was the only topic worth writing about. So I have strong doubts that they can be taken as providing relevant information for female study. The chapters that focus exclusively on men have very short summaries.]

This study looks not only at the nature of medieval same-sex sexuality and attitudes toward same-sex relationships, but also how accusations of sodomy were used to stigmatize men for political reasons. The final section of the book takes a more positive look at how the omissions and silences in the historic record suggest “implicit possibilities for love and desire” both in spite of and because of medieval attitudes toward the topic.

The book is primarily taken from written sources (descriptive, moralistic, literary) but also some visual art.

Chapter 1: Framing condemnations

This is a general discussion of the concept of sodomy in the general sense of sex “against nature”. Some texts discussing sodomy specifically include women having sex together, but more often there is no explicit inclusion. Even texts clearly discussing woman-woman sex don’t necessarily use the term “sodomy”. Despite the title of Helmut Puff’s paper on the 14th century trial of Katherine Hetzeldorfer, the trial records and interviews never use the term “sodomy” for what she was accused of. Or any specific categorical label at all.

Theologian Peter Abelard, in reference to Saint Paul’s famous text, suggests that the sin in woman-woman sex was that women’s genitals were intended for the use of men “not so women could co-habit with women.” That is, women’s homoerotic activity was not a sin in itself, but a sin against masculine prerogative, access, and authority.

Medieval versions of Ovid’s story of Iphis and Ianthe, e.g., Gower’s, focus on the transformation of “unnatural” female/female love to “natural” male/female activity via a miraculous bodily sex change. Female/female love, though portrayed as real and genuine, is still treated as “vain” and a state in need of correction.

Much of the anxiety around same-sex sexuality was an extension of general concern with transgressing gender boundaries and roles. The central sin in sodomy (other than being non-procreative) was a man “turning himself into a woman” in taking what was considered a passive role in the act. Women need not be thought to be having “unnatural” sex to be condemned for claiming masculine roles. A story is given from Knighton’s Chronicle of women dressing as men to take part in tournaments in Berwick (on the Scottish border) in 1348. [This is a reference I’ve been trying to track down a good citation for, since it provides a fascinating historic rather than literary precedent for women openly cross-dressing in the medieval period.] “A rumor arose and great excitement concerning some armed women taking part in the tournament. They were all very eye-catching and beautiful, though hardly of the kingdom’s better sort.” And “neither fearing God nor abashed by the voice of popular outrage, they slipped the traces of matrimonial restraint” and seemed to have been punished by nothing worse than bad weather which was held to be God’s punishment on them. Their offense was claiming a masculine presentation and taking part in masculine activities, but it was an offense against gender, not sexuality.

The vague references in penitentials to “a woman sinning with a woman” may have had broader concerns than penetrative sex. The French court records concerning Jehanne and Lawrence are discussed (where the activity appears to have been tribadism). In general, though female same-sex acts are virtually absent from the legal record. There are essentially no English examples up through 1500.

Chapter 2: Silencing the Unmentionable Vice

What do the silences in the written record mean? In primary sources, it can mean the simple absence of data, but in secondary sources it can mean that historians aren’t asking the questions that would lead them to find the existing data. For women’s same-sex activities, that silence is even deeper, not only the silence around same-sex sexuality but the silence around women in general. The author briefly discusses this as an observation but doesn’t really dissect the reasons why.

In primary sources, even the avoidance of topics can provide clues. Moral instructions and penitential manuals often specifically recommend against “giving people ideas” by being too specific in questioning them regarding their activities. In this context Ancrene Wisse (a manual for anchoresses--lay women devoted to pious seclusion, but living in the community and with regular social contacts) notes several contexts for the possibility of sexual sin and warns “Anchoresses have been tempted by their own sisters.” [Please note: this is not a suggestion of incest, but rather the use of “sister” to refer to fellow anchoresses.]

Chapter 3: Stigmatizing with Same-sex Sexuality

Close personal relationships among the powerful, especially those that suggested political corruption, often attracted accusations of sodomy. (Much discussion of King Edward II.) This chapter is concerned exclusively with relations between men, as women were far less often in a position with that type of authority and similarly less likely to have an opportunity to extend benefits to close same-sex friends. [A couple of notes: Recall that this work focuses specifically on medieval England. Accusations against powerful women that their close personal friendships might be tainted with same-sex desire occurred, for example in Iberia, and in later centuries in England, see e.g., Queen Anne.]

Chapter 4: Sharing Disgust and Fear

This chapter discusses the public performance of disgust and fear around (men’s) same-sex activities as a means of communicating and enforcing social standards.

Chapter 5: Sharing Laughter

When same-sex relationships were a topic of humor, it was usually mean-spirited mockery, but that label could apply to entire genres of medieval humor, especially when sexual or scatological or involving gender reversals (which were either punished, or appeared as punishment for some other transgression). Like expressions of disgust, humor was a means of expressing anxiety as well as communicating cultural attitudes. Examples of material covered here are fabliaux, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (which are often borrowed from fabliaux), satirical songs and poems. Visual humor of a sexual or scatological type is often found in marginal manuscript art.

Chapter 6: Framing Possibilities

The author ventures into controversial territory in this chapter by asking, “Where are the possibilities within the evidence for non-condemnatory attitudes towards same-sex relations?” He focuses primarily on attitudes towards same-sex friendship and love (rather than sex) but with the question of whether these institutions might have allowed for expressions of desire as well, even though the accepted medieval discourse about the love of friends considered the two to be incompatible. (He notes that the vocabulary used by defendants in medieval sodomy trials came from the realm of sex and sin, not love and affection.)

Silence around same-sex desires and acts allowed for the possibility of their unremarked presence. The inability to name--or avoidance of naming--same-sex sins allowed for individuals to express same-sex desire secretly and without condemnation. English law lacked explicit statutes against same-sex activity until the 16th century (and then only against men), and social privilege could protect the participants from consequences and scrutiny.

The silence is even deeper around women’s sexuality, leaving even more possibility for women’s same-sex relations to go unremarked and thus uncondemned. The avoidance of naming specifics, e.g., in Lollard anti-clerical polemics referencing acts “shameful to speak of” and the “most horrible sin possible” or women “having sex with themselves...or inanimate objects” made it possible to be ignorant of what was meant. [It occurs to me to wonder whether in the original language it would be possible to distinguish between “themselves” as reflexive or mutual.]

Women’s activities were typically considered of concern only as they affected men. If their same-sex activities were considered irrelevant to the lives of men, would they have been mentioned in the literature at all? One gendered activity that does come in for regular negative attention is gossip, and women’s close friendships regularly came under male suspicion in this context.

Anchoresses are warned against the temptations of lust, noting it can come “in the eye, or with the mouth, or with the hand...and many unseemly and unnatural things.” This passage is closely followed by the abovementioned acknowledgment that an anchoress might be tempted by “sisters”, i.e., by other anchoresses or religious women. Concerns about religious women sinning with men were usually described explicitly, so the lack of specificity in these passages seems to exclude a male presence. These sensual temptations are presented in parallel with ordinary, everyday concerns, as if they are both expected and of no special moment. The text Hali Meidenhad (Holy maidenhood) similarly suggests sensory temptations: that lechery may come through sight, speech, kisses, and feeling by the hands.

Instructions to confessors for soliciting details of sins in confession (and this is specifically in a context concerned with sexual sins) suggested that prompts for details should begin with vagueness and then suggest the penitent offer details. If there were a partner she is prompted to explain it was “this sort of man...a married man, or an innocent thing, or a woman as I am.”

One same-sex context the author suggests [that I have some skepticism about] is that as “lust” was personified in these Latin texts as linguistically female. So while discussions of men's temptation were linguistically heterosexual, this usage could lead to discussions in which a female Lust tempted a female virgin, which might have presented ideas to a previously ignorant reader. [I’m not discounting the potential for arbitrarily gendered words to both reflect and shape cultural concepts, I’m just skeptical.]

Continental records of this era, including penitentials and medical manuals, are more explicit about sexual activity between women using manual stimulation or dildos. Some medical manuals even recommend that midwives use stimulation to orgasm in some cases to promote female health.

The literary imagination offered female same-sex relations in works such as John Gower’s version of Ovid’s Iphis and Ianthe.

The final part of the chapter is focused on the romantic implications of elevated “noble friendships” and is centered almost entirely on men. The discourse around friendship at the time (written entirely by men, of course) considered friendship only possible between equals, and thus impossible between those of the same gender.

After a discussion of male friendships being celebrated on joint grave memorials, there is a brief mention of two examples of female pairs on joint grave memorials. A funeral brass of two women in the mid 15th century commemorates Elizabeth Etchingham and Anne [actually Agnes] Oxenbridge, two unmarried women of local aristocratic families who were buried and memorialized together, despite 30 years separating their deaths. Another case of female co-burial in 15th century London provides no information about the women other than their names: Joan Isham and Margery Nicoll.

The chapter ends with a discussion of how these close loving friendships were understood at the time. Andreas Capellanus (The Art of Courtly Love) presents the apparently contradictory positions that the love of men for each other (in friendship) is elevated over what they feel for women, but elsewhere he explicitly excludes the possibility that courtly love can exist between people of the same sex. This is not contradictory if you understand “courtly love” to be sublimated sex, but reintroduces ambiguity in analyses that point out that courtly love relationships were often ways for men to create transitive bonds with other men (i.e., with the husband of the woman they are paying court to).

Conclusions

No new information is introduced in the conclusion.

LHMP entry type:

Stand-alone

Linkinen, Tom. 2015. Same-sex Sexuality in Later Medieval English Culture. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam. ISBN 978-90-8964-629-3

Publication summary:

Pretty much exactly what it says on the label.

Project ID number:

154

Event / person:

Jehanne and Laurence Katherina Hetzeldorfer Metamorphoses: Iphis and Ianthe (Ovid)Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)Knighton’s Chronicle Ancrene Wisse Elizabeth Etchingham & Agnes Oxenbridge Joan Isham & Margery Nicoll

ISBN:

978-90-8964-629-3

Blog post:

Same-sex Sexuality in Medieval England

LHMP #149d Velasco 2011 Lesbians in Early Modern Spain Chapter 4

Heather Rose Jones — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 02:03:19 +0000

This chapter focuses on three specific individuals whose gender and sexuality brought them celebrity status in 16-17th century Spain: Catalina de Erauso, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Elena/Eleno de Céspedes. In comparing them, we can see the influence of race and class on how gender transgression was received.

Catalina de Erauso ran away from a convent in Spain at age 15 before taking final vows, began living as a man, and had a violent and turbulent career in the Spanish colonies of the New World before deciding to tell her history publicly. She returned to Spain where she was greeted as a celebrity and successfully petitioned the crown for a pension, went to Rome where she received dispensation from the Pope to continue wearing male clothing, wrote her memoirs, and eventually returned to the New World where she lived in relative obscurity working as a mule driver for twenty years until her death. [I’ve abbreviated her background due to its more detailed coverage in Steptoe & Steptoe 1996 and Velasco 2000.]

Elena/Eleno de Céspedes was a black enslaved person in 16th century Spain who, after a failed marriage and giving birth to a child, began living as a man and eventually embarked on a successful career as a surgeon. Eleno testified that he had undergone a spontaneous physical change of sex and, after obtaining testimony supporting this claim was given persmission to marry a woman. This assessment was later challenged and a second examination did not support the claim of male physiology. Following that, Eleno was tried for sodomy and “consorting with demons” along with “contempt for the sacrament of marriage”. The eventual conviction, somewhat confusingly, was for bigamy. That is, Eleno had failed to provide documentation of the death of Elena’s husband prior to Eleno marrying a woman. Eleno was sentence to whipping and to serving a sort of community service providing medical care in a hospital for indigents, whose administrator later complained of the crowds of curious people who came to see the celebrity. [For more details, see Burshatin 1996.]

Queen Christina of Sweden may seem an odd person to become a celebrity in Spain, particularly as she never actually traveled there. Spanish connections were a major influence on Christina’s decision to covert to Catholicism (necessitating her abdication from the Swedish throne). Christina had a lifelong habit of crossdressing and her romantic interest in women, including specific members of her household, was open knowledge. But these issues that Spanish culture, in theory, disapproved of, were overlooked due to her social rank and the high-level approval of her in Spain because of the coup her conversion was considered.

These three people had three very different receptions by the Spanish authorities. Eleno was a person of color whose life as a man included marriage to a woman and (at least the accusation of) performing sex with an artificial penis. Eleno went to significant lengths to establish an official male identity in the face of physical signs of female sex. An interesting contrast to Eleno is the situation of the nun María Muñoz, who developed male physical characteristics (possibly as a result of an intersex condition) but manufactured signs of femaleness (such as apparent evidence of menstruation) in order to conceal the issue and continue to be accepted as a woman.

Eleno’s transgression (in addition to being non-white) was laying claim to male priviledge despite anatomy. In contrast, although Catalina (white and upper class) didn’t dispute the judgment of female status once her story was told, even in the context of requesting permission to continue performing as male. Catalina never tried to marry a woman. There were several situations where the possibility of marriage was raised and Catalina deceived the potential brides for her own gain, but in all cases these women were mestizas and this may have contributed to a lack of concern over their experience.

Christina’s interest in converting from Lutherinism to Catholicism motivated positive reactions to her from Spanish authorities, despite regular comments in the Spanish diplomatic correspondence on her masculine appearance and rumors of her affairs with women. These were sometimes coded in phrases like “not being the marrying type.” After Christina’s abdication, Spain was excitedly preparing for a visit from her in 1656 when everything fell apart at the last minute due her choice to support Spain’s enemy France in certain concerns. Spanish rhetoric about her made an abrupt change from praise to satire, focusing specifically on romors of heterosexual affairs, including a fictitious illicit pregnancy, but curiously avoiding mention of her relations with women.

This omission of the lesbian rumors was not universal. There was a thinly veiled depiction of Christina as the character Cristerna de Suevia in the play Afectos de Odo y amor, which portrays her using the stock character of a mujer esquiva, a woman averse to love and marriage, and to men in general. The character in the play is defending her right to rule as a woman, in conflict with the antagonist/romantic lead Casimiro. The play toys with implications of same-sex desire in giving Cristerna a lady-in-waiting named Lesbia, and setting up a bait-and-switch marriage plot in wich Cristerna agrees to marry Casimiro’s sister (that is, within the play this is overtly a same-sex marriage plan). When Cristerna has committed to the marriage, the sister substitutes in her brother Caisimiro and Cristerna inexplicably capitulates all her feminist positions and declares that women should be men’s vassals.

LHMP entry type:

Chapter

Parent:

Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville.

Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0

Project ID number:

149

Project ID letter:

Sub-reference:

Chapter 4: Transgender Lesbian Celebrities

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

The blog comes around again to Catalina de Erauso, who kicked off the current thematic grouping. It's an odd trio: Catalina the cross-dressing soldier of fortune in the New World, Eleno de Cespedes the transgender doctor who began life as a slave, and Queen Christina of Sweden who became the darling of the Spanish aristocracy (at long distance) when she decided to convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism--a decision that made them willing to overlook her long-rumored romantic relationships with women. And I am now imagining a buddy movie...

# # #

Event / person:

Catalina de Erauso Elena/Eleno de Céspedes Queen Christina of Sweden Afectos de odio y amor (Pedro Calderón de la Barca)

ISBN:

978-0-8265-1750-0

Blog post:

Early Modern Spanish Gender Outlaw Celebrities

LHMP #149c Velasco 2011 Lesbians in Early Modern Spain Chapter 3

Heather Rose Jones — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 04:47:07 +0000

This chapter looks at evidence regarding lesbian activity that can be found in specific court cases, as well as perceptions of the role of lesbian relations in criminal activities and contexts. The point here is not that lesbians were inherently criminal in early modern Spain (though some official opinions were that one type of deviant behavior was expected to lead to other types), but that the nature of legal records can provide a wealth of detail that is not available for other contexts.

The conflicting professional opinions on female sodomy in Spain played out in criminal prosecutions. The outcome of trials could depend both on the specific nature of the behavior and situation as well as on how successful the accused woman was in contesting the charges. The summary of this chapter will largely be brief outlines of the cases.

Ca. 1400 a woman dressed as a man served as a judicial official and married two women (presumably sequentially). She was convicted of sodomy because she used a penetrative instrument for sex, but recognition of her government service resulted in leniency. Specifically, she was hanged rather than the prescribed sentence of being burnt to death. The accusation had come from her second wife.

In 1502 in Valencia a woman passed as a man and married a woman, using an artificial penis made of lambskin for sex. She had also had sex in that way with other women. Her gender was discovered in the context of an accusation of theft. She was sentenced to hang but was pardoned on the basis of a legal technicality with regard to how the trial was handled. In a number of these cases, it is an open question whether the “femme” partner was truly ignorant of the sex of the passing woman or whether she was relying on the legal tendency to focus on gender transgressions rather than the sexual relationship per se.

In 1503, two women--Catalina de Belunçe and Matiche de Oyarzún--were accused of having sex “like a man and a woman”. No other specifics of the offence were given and there was no mention of the use of an instrument. Only one of the pair was sentenced to banishment and confiscation of her belongings, but with capital punishment if she returned from banishment. But rather than accepting this leniency, she appealed to the royal court, claiming innocence and that no evidence had been offered. The charge had been based on “public reputation” of her activities. She impugned the witness and accused the prosecutor (the local mayor) of a profit motive in pursuing the case. She was pardoned, the sentence reversed, and her possessions were returned to her. The true story behind the case is hard to decipher. Why was her partner not also accused (given that there doesn’t appear to have been a “butch-femme” dynamic in the accused behavior)? Who was the witness?

In 1560, the Inquisition in Aragon debated whether a case involving several women fell under the category of sodomy as no sexual instrument had been used, though there was genital contact (which was described in heterocentric terms). They ended up not prosecuting.

In 1656, the Inquisition in Aragon judged a case against a 28 year old widow Ana Aler and a 22 year old laundress Mariana López who were accused of sodomy by nosy neighbors (two men and three women). The specific behaviors involved were hugging, kissing, putting a hand under the skirt to touch the genitals, expressions of jealousy followed by protestations of loyalty and pledges of love. The women were said to follow each other around. It was claimed that Ana boasted of having sex with “the best woman in Zaragoza” who was willing to pay her for it, but it’s unclear if this was an actual reference to female same-sex prostitution or just boasting. The neighbors testified they overheard the sounds of passion and sex talk , “Give it to me, I can’t wait any longer!” as well as to seeing the women lying on top of each other and evidence of “emission of semen” (i.e., orgasm). Although there was no evidence of a penetrative instrument being used, the verdict was still labeled “sodomy” but the sentence was limited to whipping and exile and the women were forbidden to live in the same location in the future.

Inés de Santa Cruz and Catalina Ledesma were arrested in 1603 in Salamanca as “bujarronas” (female sodomites). They had previous sodomy convictions in Valladolid. A complex background story emerged from the trial. Inés had at one point claimed to be a nun and was soliciting donations and assembling a group of “wayward” young women to take them to a convent (the implication being a house of penitence for reformed prostitutes). The suspicion was that instead she was recruiting for the sex trade. The sexual accusations against Inés and Catalina included use of a penetrative instrument and they were given a death sentence which was appealed and reduced to whipping and banishment.

Among the details of the testimony it emerged that the two women had enjoyed a long term domestic partnership “eating at the same table and sleeping in the same bed.” Their love for each other was public knowledge. Catalina had left her husband to live with Inés. Among the witnesses was a maid from Catalina’s father’s house where the two lived for a time. The detailed testimony reveals the witnesses’ fantasies as well as facts. The existence of sexual activity was assumed from overheard activity including panting and grunting and comments like, “Does that feel good?” as well as love talk.

The defendants admitted to the sex but each tried to frame her own role as less culpable based on minor technicalities such as who was lying on top. The sexual acts they admitted to included rubbing vulvas together and manual stimulation. They were inconsistent with regard to the use of an instrument. (Witnesses said they had used an instrument made of cane, but Inés described one made of leather that they stopped using because it was painful.)

During one temporary separation, they may have had sex with other women and there was reported discussion of the advantages of lesbian sex: no pregnancy, it was more pleasurable than heterosexual sex, they found men repulsive. In this context, Catalina reported on knowing of other female couples in the convent where she stayed for a time. Much of the evidence may have come out during fights between the women. Catalina felt that Inés was stalking and harassing her to renew the relationship, though witnesses said their relationship ran hot and cold and was not one-sided. Inés seems to have been the more jealous and controlling. Neighbors described them as being so close a couple “like man and woman” that all attempts to break them up failed. All this happened over an extended period of time during which their relationship was public knowledge. The neighbors would insult them (and they each other) with terms like bujarronas (female sodomites), puta bellaca (cheating whore), somética (fem. sodomite), bellaca baldresera (dildo-wielding scoundrel). Velasco compares their reported behavior to modern patterns of domestic violence among lesbians. Inés was significantly older, more economically stable, and was the more aggressive and controlling. The trial was instigated when Catalina went to the authorities to complain about Inés’s violent behavior.

Despite the admitted use of a penetrating instrument, they were not given the death penalty and had received similarly lenient treatment in a previous trial. Velaso notes that these trial records contradict the idea that sexual relationships between women were invisible but also contradict the idea that they were tolerated or considered insignificant.

In 1745 in Colombia, two mestiza seamstresses named Margarita Valenzuela and Gregoria Franco had a long-term public romance that was disrupted by the reappearance of the father of Margarita’s child. This resulted in a conflict that came to the attention of the law. Gregoria was banished for a short term and warned not to reinitiate the relationship on penalty of permanent banishment.

In 1597, the Inquisition in Mallorca found a 30 year old single woman Esperanza de Rojas guilty of various offences, including practicing love magic to re-attract the passion of two women she’d been sexually involved with while all three were at a home for fallen women. She was sentenced to whipping and exile with the mitigating factor that she had acted in anger. The major concern was the accusation of demonic magic and the recorded testimony included specifics of the rituals. These included claims that she used Jewish and Muslim prayers as well as using a demonic statuette as a focus. The nature of the rituals was consistent with descriptions of heterosexual love magic at the time. Esperanza claimed she had learned the rituals from another woman while traveling to Rome and Naples.

Further investigations by the Inquisition at the institution where the three women had lived that took place in 1597-8 turned up other accusations of same-sex activity. Catalina Lebrés was accused of “illicit relations with other female residents.”

Velasco spends some time discussing the nature and context of female penitential institutions in early modern Spain. Their general purpose was to control women who were not successfully under patriarchal authority. There were concerns about women’s misbehavior inside the institutions, but that concern might either focus on, or be oblivious to, the possibility of lesbian sex. Overcrowding was a regular concern, as well as the potential for women to learn new forms of criminality from the other inmates.

Concerns regarding the potential for sexual relations between women were shared by religious penitential institutions and regular convents. Convent rules often proscribed sleeping together or forbade two nuns to be alone together behind closed doors. The code word for the concern was “special friendships”. Specific behaviors that were considered a sign of danger were talking together at night, sleeping together, hugging, “joining their faces together.”

Another intersection of concern is the long historic association between lesbianism and prostitution, dating as early as Roman times (Lucian, Alciphron). Velasco notes the contrast laid out in a 16th century Italian text on women’s friendships by Firenzuola, that contrasts the “chaste” love between Laudomia Forteguerra and Duchess Margaret of Austria with the lascivious love of Sappho and of “the great prostitute Cecilia Venetiana.” But within the same century, Brantôme in France imputed a more sexual relationship to Margaret and Laudomia, and grouped them with a noted Spanish prostitute in Rome, Isabella de Luna, who kept a mistress. Moving our attention back to Spain, there were conflicting opinions whether the existence of legal brothels successfully kept men away from sodomy (by making women available) or whether one sin would breed other sins and thus men who frequented brothels were more likely to move on to sodomy.

The intersection of prostitution, love magic, and “medical” manual stimulation, as well as the possibilities of sex between women appear in Fernando de Rojas’ La Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea more commonly known as La Celestina. Velasco spends some time reviewing the details and implications of this work.

There was an association of witchcraft and lesbian desire, along with aspects of heresy. Several authors repeat a description from Leo Africanus of North African sahacat witches, who seduce or pleasure other women under the guise of medical treatment. (It isn’t clear whether the repetition of this motif is in reference to Africa or gives the appearance of generalizing it to Spain. Note that sahacat is from the Arabic root sahq with the same general meaning of rubbing as fricatrix.)

The chapter concludes with one last case study in Mexico of an accusation of lesbian seduction (or predation) by a female couple of their female boarder, who then used witchcraft to try to take revenge on the couple.

LHMP entry type:

Chapter

Parent:

Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville.

Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0

Project ID number:

149

Project ID letter:

Sub-reference:

Chapter 3: Criminal Lesbians

Introduction:

[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]

Using the records of court cases to research lesbian lives in history is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they often present a wealth of detail not found in any other type of record unless--by miraculous luck--a personal diary or set of candid correspondence is unearthed. But conversely, court cases, by their nature, present a skewed view of people's lives. They show people in conflict and distress. They arise when relationships go bad, or were never particularly good in the first place. They are typcially the records of only those classes of people who aren't able to conceal their activities through priviledge, or to evade legal penalties if concealment is impossible. It would be all too easy, when looking at the trials of criminal lesbians, to conclude that lesbianism inherently leads to criminality. (Consider as a parallel how early psychiatrists studying homosexuality in their patients--patients who had come to them for help with severe problems--concluded that homosexuality was an inherently deranged condition. Because, after all, all the homosexuals they knew were people with serious emotional problems!) With that caveat, the court records studied here provide a rich and extensive (sometimes very extensive) record of the details of how some women lived together in romantic and sexual partnerships. Of what some of their sexual practices were. And how their relationships were sometimes viewed by the neighbors and family members who were aware of them.
One interesting take-away is that these romantic relationships between women were sometimes public knowledge in their communities, and sometimes apparently accepted by their families. (At least, that's the implication when they are living as a couple in a family member's house.) And although the cases that came before the law demonstrate that any sort of sexual activity between women was considered worthy of punishment, the severity of that punishment depended strongly on the specific sex acts involved. Reading between the lines, there seems to be plenty of scope to imagine lesbian relationships that never came to the interest of the law for the simple fact that they never turned sour enough to disrupt the community, and where the women lived openly as a couple with at least tolerance from family and neighbors.

# # #

Event / person:

Catalina de Belunçe & Matiche de Oyarzún Ana Aler & Mariana López Inés de Santa Cruz & Catalina Ledesma Margarita Valenzuela & Gregoria Franco Esperanza de Rojas Catalina Lebrés Laudomia Forteguerri Margaret Duchess of Austria/Parma On the Beauty of Women (Agnolo Firenzuola)Lives of Gallant Ladies (Pierre de Bourdeille seigneur de Brantôme)Cecilia Venetiana Sappho Isabella de Luna La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas)Leo Africanus

ISBN:

978-0-8265-1750-0

Blog post:

A Vast Wealth of Detail of Spanish Lesbian Lives