Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 4
August 2, 2025
Background for the Bluestockings
I've blogged several articles on sapphic aspects of Bluestocking culture over the years. Since I was blogging a different article in this special issue on Bluestockings, I figured I'd include this general introduction to their history as well. (I confess that I have something of a "thing" for brainy women in women-centered historic contexts.)
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #498 Pohl 2002 A Bluestocking Historiography About LHMP Full citation:Pohl, Nicole, and Betty A. Schellenberg. 2002. “Introduction: A Bluestocking Historiography” in Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1/2, pp. 1–19.
This is a high-level overview of the English Bluestocking movement(?), as part of a special volume of Huntington Library Quarterly on “Reconsidering the Bluestockings.” As such, it doesn’t touch much on specifically sapphic topics, but provides a useful context for various individual Bluestockings.
The article starts off with two quotes, roughly contemporary with the heyday of the Bluestockings: one from Elizabeth Montagu talking about how wonderful the experience is, one by Frances Burney semi-satirizing Montagu’s autocratic rule over her circle. These serve to illustrate the poles of opinion about the group.
The Bluestockings were informal salons, including both sexes (though generally organized and presided over by women), primarily drawn from the gentry and upper classes (though professing social equality). Their goal was education, intellectual conversation, and engaging in polite socializing. The peculiarly English character of this movement rested, in part, on its conservative Anglican foundations.
Not all Bluestocking salons were as rigidly hierarchical as Montagu’s, as Montagu herself noted with respect to those of her friend Elizabeth Vesey. But rumors of factional competition within the movement were often fictions invented due to anxieties about women’s prominence in the movement and the widening of women’s social roles in general in the 18th century.
The name “Bluestocking” has been traced originally to an incident during the “Little Parliament” in 1653 in reference to the simple dress of some members, but was taken up in the 18th century in reference to one Mr. Stillingfleet who, having turned down an invitation to one of Vesey’s gatherings due to not being in the habit of dressing up, was told “Come in your blue stockings!” as the garment was still a symbol of informal dress. In the 1750s and 1760s the term became common for certain salon circles in London, Bath, and Dublin. Originally informal afternoon receptions, they evolved around principles of merit-based invitations resulting in a certain limited social mobility, equality between the sexes, and intellectual conversation. In common with the French salon tradition, they were organized and presided over by female hosts.
By the 1770s, the term Bluestocking increasingly came to refer only to female members of the salons and began having a negative tinge, especially when used by those who felt excluded. A second generation of hosts arose, including a few men. In addition to in-person gatherings, Bluestocking culture was maintained by large quantities of correspondence among the members. The expansion of membership helped lead to the application of the term Bluestocking to any intellectual woman. But in the anti-intellectual backlash in reaction to the French Revolution in the 1790s, the term acquired a much more negative sense, as intellectual and politically active women came to be associated with dangerous radicalism. In a general sense, the word continued in active use into the first decades of the 19th century for intellectual and literary women, but with an air of social privilege and conservatism.
Taken as a whole, “Bluestocking” covered a wide range of practices and attitudes, but certain progressions can be identified. The early Bluestockings took a socially progressive approach, though still from a position of aristocracy, addressing what they considered corrupt and libertine practices at court. Though channeled through female leadership, they took a gender-essentialist view that “feminization” was a civilizing force. But this left them open to the reverse charge: that they supported “effeminacy” in public life. The tightrope balance between these two positions meant that even as Bluestockings supported greater education and opportunities for women, they felt the need to enforce rigid standards of respectability and morality, especially around sexual issues. Moving into the 19th century, this led to an emphasis on Christian philanthropy, to some extent ceding the literary and artistic field to the masculine-coded Romantic movement.
As the Bluestockings moved into the realm of history, there was a tendency for specific participants to be singled out as noteworthy, while the movement as a whole was marginalized. (And at this point, the article moves on to the historiography of the Bluestockings, rather than their actual history, followed by a summary of the volume’s other contents.)
Time period: 17th c18th c19th cPlace: England View comments (0)
July 30, 2025
Extracts Relevant to American History
This publication is wildly out of order in the numbering system for logistical reasons. Specifically: It had a lot of primary source quotations which I was mining for my vocabulary project, which took quite a while to process. It didn't make sense to read through it to create a blog entry then come back to process the vocabulary. But in order to create the entries in the vocabulary database, I needed to assign it a LHMP publication number. So I've been posting a bunch of later numbers while working my way thorugh the data entry for this one. More details than you wanted to know! I still have a large backlog of earlier material to process for the vocabulary project. (The hazard of adding sub-tasks to the Project.) But it's more practical to make sure I process the current publications as I post them.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #470 Katz 1978 Gay American History About LHMP Full citation:Katz, Jonathan. 1978. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. Avon Books, New York. ISBN 0-380-40550-4
This is a collection of excerpts from historic sources related to homosexuality in America. As with other publications of this sort, I’m mostly going to be cataloging the items of interest. Although it’s a very thick little paperback, the lesbian content is sparse. In fact, Katz notes, “In the present volume, Lesbian-related material is dispersed unequally within the parts, and not always readily identifiable by title—thus difficult to locate at a glance. For this reason, a female sign [i.e., the “Venus” symbol] is here placed beside the title of each text containing the most substantial references to women-loving women.” While this tagging doesn’t cover all the lesbian-related material, it provides me with a convenient way of skimming the rest.
The material is organized in thematic groups, and then chronologically within each group.
Trouble: 1566-1966
John Cotton (1636) – A proposed law for Massachusetts that would have included sex between women under the anti-sodomy law. William Bradford (1642) – A history of Plymouth Plantation that includes references to an outbreak of “wickedness” including sexual sins of a wide range of types. New Haven Colony (1655) – A law code that included female homosexuality among crimes punishable by death. Moreau de St. Mery (1793-98) – A French diplomat living in Philadelphia comments on lesbian relations there. Irving C. Rosse (1892) – A paper read to a medical society that detailed a variety of “perversions” prevalent in Washington D.C. It includes a reference to the availability of French lesbian literature, as well as two instances of lesbianism he became aware of through his practice. F.L. Sim (1892) – An “expert witness” report submitted in defense of accused lesbian murderer Alice Mitchell. Bertrand Russell (1896) – A description of Bryn Mawr president Carey Thomas and her interpersonal conflicts with her “friend” Miss Gwinn. Allan McLane Hamilton (1896) – A legal opinion in the context of relatives arguing that homosexuals were mentally incompetent to manage their own property, in order to gain control of that property. East Hampton Star (1897) – A news article about a female famer who “dislikes men and dogs” and had several times attacked men who trespassed on her property.Treatment: 1884-1974
James G. Kiernan (1884) – Case history of a young woman who engaged in “mutual masturbation” with women, treatment by cold baths, and eventual resolution by marrying the brother of one of her female lovers in order to “secure her companionship”. F.E. Daniel (1893) – Argument for “asexualization” (castration or removal of the ovaries) as a sentence for sexual crimes (including masturbation). The article notes that in one institution the practice was ended due to public outcry. Havelock Ellis (1895) – An argument that it is not possible to “cure” homosexuality and that abstinence is the best possible outcome, but that the associated “nervous disorders” alleged to result from homosexuality can be treated.Passing Women 1782-1920
(For this section, rather than listing by the author of the text, I’ll list by the names(s) of the subject unless not provided.)
Deborah Sampson/Robert Shurtleff (1782-1797) – Dressed as a man to enlist in the Continental army, fought in several battles, physical sex discovered during a hospital stay, honorably discharged, married a man and had several children. The subject of a fictionalized biography by Herman Mann which includes descriptions of some romantic (but non-sexual) encounters with women. (That is, whether or not the encounters happened, they were felt to be an essential element of a “passing woman narrative.”) Lucy Ann Lobdell (1829-91) – Excerpts from Lobdell’s 1855 autobiography from an era before Lobdell was living as a man. Also excerpts from the medical report regarding Lobdell’s insanity much later in life. Mary East/James How (1863) – it’s misleading to include this in a book on American history. The incident occurred in England in the early 18th century. This excerpt is from a later publication collecting up several incidents of passing women. Philip H. Sheridan (author) (1863) – Description of an incident in the American Civil War involving two female cross-dressing soldiers who had “an intimacy.” Anonymous doctor (author) (1867) – An article published in London but that makes reference to the United States, discussing gender transgression. Ellen Coit Brown (1879-82) – Description of an incident of female cross-dressing (not by the author) while attending Cornell University. Anne Morris/Frank Blunt (1894) – The sentencing for theft of an assigned-female person living as a man, who had also married a woman.Native Americans: 1528-1976
Francisco de Pareja (1595-1616) – Examples of questions asked by a priest during confession. Pareja was translating the Spanish version into a Native American language (Timucuan). Questions include topics of homosexuality for both men and women. Claude E. Schaeffer (1811) – An account of a female “berdache” in the Kutenai tribe in Montana. (In 1966 Schaeffer published an account of this person drawn from both English written sources and Kutenai oral sources. With care, it could provide a useful basis for details on this cultural practice.) Pierre-Jean de Smet (1841) – Account of a Snake woman who dreamed that she was a man and afterward began living as a man and was accepted as such. George Devereux (ca. 1850-1895) – An account published in 1937 of gender crossing among the Mohave, filtered through a Freudian lens. Edwin T. Denig (1855-56) – An account of a Crow woman who took on a male role, including taking four wives, and became a chief, but did not dress as a man.Resistance: 1859-1972
Dr. K. (1897) – From a footnote included in editions of texts by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, attributed to a Dr. K., said to be a female physician in America. Some comments on female homosexuality. Miss S. (1897) – A brief statement by an American lesbian included with her case history in Sexual Inversion by Ellis and Symonds.Love: 1779-1932
Margaret Fuller (1823-50) – A memoir and discussion by Fuller about a crush she experienced on an older woman at age 13, as well as various comments by her and her associates on her romantic relations with women. Sarh Edgarton & Luella J.B. Case (1839-46) – Excerpts from letters between the two “documenting an ardent, loving friendship, filled with vague yearnings.” Mabel Ganson Dodge Luhan & Violet Shillito (1879-1900) – Memoirs by Luhan (multiply married and hostess of a feminist salon) about various erotic encounters in her girlhood, primarily involving fondling the breasts of other girls. Willa Cather (1895) – A discussion of women poets, including Sappho, though the discussion of her as a love poet makes no reference to loving women.Time period: 17th c18th c19th c20th cPlace: USAMisc tags: cross-dressingcross-gender roles/behaviorbed-sharingcourt casesexologyemotional /romantic bonds between womenfemale husbandmarriage between womensexual techniquessexual/romantic desiremedical treatisesEvent / person: Havelock Ellis (Studies in the Psychology of Sex - Sexual Inversion)Deborah Sampson (Robert Shurtleff)Lucy Ann Lobdell (Joseph Lobdell) & Marie Louise PerryMary East (Mr. How)Margaret FullerWilla Cather View comments (0)July 27, 2025
Skin-Singer - Cover Reveal!
The collected skin-singer stories are now on their way to publication! I just pushed the buttons for the ebook and POD versions at Draft2Digital a few minutes ago. (I need to set up Kindle separately, so I haven't done that quite yet.) Official release date will be August 10 (assuming I did that correctly at the website).
This is my first professional (i.e., for-sale) self-published fiction, so I've been picking up a lot of new skills and experiences along the way. I worked with a fabulous cover artist: The Illustrated Page Book Design (Sarah Waites).
Next steps are to set up distribution for Kindle. (For various logistical reasons, as advised by more experienced people, everything is simpler if I do that separately from D2D.) Also look into distributing through at least one other outlet that D2D doesn't handle. Eventually I should set up a direct sale apparatus on my website, but that will take consultation with my web designers. I also plan to record it for audiobook.
Once I have buy links available, they will of course be added.
Major category: PromotionPublications: Skin-Singer: Tales of the KaltaovenTags: Skinsingerpublishing
A Haywood Duet
Part chance and part strategy, I'm in the middle of a sequence of pairs of related articles: 2 on linguistics, 2 on Eliza Haywood, 2 on bluestockings, 2 on anatomical issues.
The other thing I'm in the middle of that I'll be posting more about in the near future is my first self-published book project. I just received the final versions of the cover art this morning and will be completing the set-up process in Draft2Digital. My target was to have the book out for Worldcon (just because it makes a useful deadline). Not sure if I'll have hardcopies in time, but the ebook will definitely be available. Oh...what's that you say? What is the book about? Well, let's save that for it's own separate post.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #497 Ingrassia 2014 ‘Queering’ Eliza Haywood About LHMP Full citation:Ingrassia, Catherine. 2014. “’Queering’ Eliza Haywood” in Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. 14, No. 4, New Approaches to Eliza Haywood: The Political Biography and Beyond: 9-24
In this article, Ingrassia challenges scholarship that views 18th century novelist Eliza Haywood’s work as depicting only heterosexual relationships and instead points out and discusses many aspects of her fiction that represent a wide spectrum of relations between women that range from the homosocial to the homoerotic. [Note: This article has a lot of literary theory jargon, which I tend to find of less interest, so I’ll mostly be focusing on the discussions of the content of Haywood’s work.]
Just because an author is working within a heteronormative framework doesn’t negate other underlying themes. Analysis that ignores those themes simply because they don’t represent the overt message of the work distorts our understanding of the era and the work. [Note: Another key factor here, though Ingrassia doesn’t state it explicitly, is how bisexual erasure works to cover up sapphic readings. As noted in the introduction to The Lesbian Premodern, there has long been a tendency to categorize a historic person as “lesbian” only in the complete absence of heterosexual relationships, while a historic man may be categorized as homosexual on the basis of any homosexual relations.] Thus same-sex intimacies in works like The British Recluse have been dismissed because they occur in a context where the two women are sharing their past betrayals by the same man. The two women admire each other from the moment they meet, then bond through a sharing of grief. In the end, they become a bonded couple living in “perfect tranquility, happy in the real friendship of each other” and shunning heterosexual relations. The details of their shared life from that point is not presented, only their attachment. This has allowed scholars to dismiss the motif as simply “female friendship,” ignoring the vast scope of experiences such a phrase contains in what Ingrassia calls a “failure of the historical imagination.”
Ingrassia observes that Haywood routinely “critique[s] and resist[s] heteronormative structures” with her characters finding ways to escape or transform those structures to exist outside of gender restrictions. The central relationship of The Rash Resolve presents a woman betrayed in a heterosexual relationship (with the aid of a female accomplice) who finds solace, safety, and emotional intimacy with a rich and beautiful widow.
In other works, Haywood emphasizes intimacies between women without the need for a precipitating event that turns them against heterosexuality. In the mosaic text of The Tea Table the connective tissue is the relations between a group of educated and literary women who support each other’s creative endeavors. In a wildly different context, The Masqueraders details the amorous adventures of a rake, whose female partners take even greater enjoyment in then sharing stories of their experiences with each other.
In The City Jilt two women who are intimate and loyal friends scheme together for financial revenge on one woman’s faithless ex, after which they (temporarily) renounce men and live together for a time until one is compelled by necessity to marry again. There are other examples of female intimacies embedded within otherwise heterosexual frameworks. In The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, the two title characters, engaged since childhood, are oddly indifferent to moving their marriage along, wanting a chance to enjoy the adventures of single life first. For Jenny, this consists of circulating in female spheres: living with two sisters in Bath, sharing gossip with friends (including an anecdote about the madcap adventures of a married woman which includes an “adventure in Covent-Garden—where she went in men’s cloaths—pick’d up a woman of the town, and was severely beaten by her on the discovery of her sex” in a rough acknowledgment of potential same-sex erotics, before the woman returns to her husband for enthusiastic make-up sex. She is background to the main story, but presents an illustration of imaginable possibilities.
This theme—of a secondary character illustrating wider erotic options—also occurs in The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless in an episode late in the novel in which Betsy becomes instantly fascinated by Mademoiselle de Roquelair on encountering her in a shop. “There was something in this lady that attracted her in a peculiar manner…delight in hearing her talk…longed to be of the number of her acquaintance.” She attempts such an acquaintance and is rebuffed, but later Roquelair appears at her door, late at night in dishabille, confiding that her lover—Betsy’s brother—has thrown her out and asking for assistance. An imaginative space is opened in which Betsy’s fascination is rewarded by intimate friendship, but instead Roqualair moves in, becomes the mistress of Betsy’s husband, and supplants her. But this conclusion is made possible by Betsy’s flash of desire and attraction.
Time period: 18th cPlace: EnglandMisc tags: female comrades/friendsemotional /romantic bonds between womenEvent / person: Eliza HaywoodThe British Recluse (Eliza Haywood)The Rash Resolve (Eliza Haywood)The Tea-Table (Eliza Haywood)The City Jilt (Eliza Haywood)The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (Eliza Haywood)The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (Eliza Haywood) View comments (0)July 26, 2025
Tea with Eliza Haywood
I've been trying to figure out how to write a podcast on Eliza Haywood without actually having to read a bunch of 18th century novels.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #496 Ingrassia 1998 Fashioning Female Authorship in Eliza Haywood’s ‘The Tea-Table’ About LHMP Full citation:Ingrassia, Catherine. 1998. “Fashioning Female Authorship in Eliza Haywood’s ‘The Tea-Table’” in The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 287–304.
I’ve been meaning to track down as much queer-aligned scholarship on Eliza Haywood as I can find, with the aim of doing a podcast on her. (Mind you, it would make sense to actually read a bunch of Haywood’s fiction for that purpose, but working my way through older literature is a bit of a slog.) Catherine Ingrassia seems to have made Haywood a focus, so her work may end up being a large part of any essay I do.
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This article looks at contrasting concepts of “woman writer” and “professional author” in the 18th century, using the lens of Eliza Haywood’s writing, and specifically the discussions around writing and authorship contained in her work The Tea-Table. In the early 18th century, resistance to the idea of women as “writers” (which had influenced many women to circulate their work only in manuscript among private social circles) was shifting to resistance specifically to women as professional writers, i.e., ones who aspired to make a living at it. The feeling (other than masculine jealousy) was that for a woman to become the sort of public figure that came from professional authorship was immodest and destructive of domestic happiness.
Haywood’s 1725 The Tea-Table: or, A Conversation between some Polite Persons of Both Sexes at a Lady’s Visiting Day challenges these ideas, showing a (fictional) literary circle enthusiastically sharing and commenting on each others’ literary output. The work included a number of the metafictional works (all written by Haywood, of course). The Tea-Table was intended to be a periodical, but was not continued. Haywood not only wrote professionally, but had her own print shop and engaged in the hands-on work of publishing and distributing her work.
The Tea-Table challenges the idea that a female domestic space (the “tea table”) concerns itself only with trivial gossip, instead creating a vision of a supportive female-centered community (though it doesn’t entirely exclude men, as long as they align with the interests of the women) focused on literature. Her fictional community is not simply “female centered” but is specifically one that valorizes and prioritizes connections between women across a wide range of manifestations. They comment on how society expects them to spend their time competing and criticizing other women and then reject those activities.
There are implications—those never outright admissions—of female romantic partnerships, or simply a rejection of heterosexuality, among the women. The hostess is described as having arranged her life so as to be able to avoid male bonds. She has a “long intimacy” with another member of the circle, and in the final episode of the story, she receives a letter from a long-absent female friend who will soon be returning—new which transforms her with happiness. One of the poems shared is a eulogy written by one woman on the death of her female companion. All these connections are taken as expected and usual by the women of the circle.
The narrative voice praises the beauty of women at the table, and the only positive intimate relationships in the narrative are between women, while the literature they share with each other touches on the hazards of being female in society: marital unhappiness, betrayal by men. They have carried these texts on them, not only to share, but to read for their own sake, and to receive suggestions for improvement or polishing. Their reading is a collaborative experience, repeating favorite passages, and overlapping in their commentary.
When the tea-table conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a woman who only wants to discuss fashion and gossip, the disruption and rejection is clear. And the cooperation and reciprocity of the literary sharing is specifically contrasted with the competitive air of male writers, desperate for attention.
Throughout the work, casually references and citations demonstrate Haywood’s familiarity not only with the standard literary canon, but with the publishing community of her day. Yet Haywood’s role itself—the female professional author—is not represented in The Tea-Table. Her characters are all writers, but not authors, sharing manuscript works, not published texts.
Time period: 18th cPlace: EnglandMisc tags: emotional /romantic bonds between womenEvent / person: The Tea-Table (Eliza Haywood)Eliza Haywood View comments (0)
July 23, 2025
The Oldest Use of "Lesbians" Not Referring to Lesbos
Debate over the question of whether you can have "lesbian identity" without the use of the word "lesbian" as a type of person sucks a lot of oxygen out of the discussion of queer history. After all, a number of other words were clearly in use for a long time to describe women who have sex with women. But because the specific word "lesbian" is so iconic and is often a theoretical sticking point for questions of continuity, this one specific text bears a disproportionate amount of weight.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #495 Cassio 1983 Post-Classical Λεσβίας About LHMP Full citation:Cassio, Albio Cesare. 1983. “Post-Classical Λεσβίας,” The Classical Quarterly, n.s., 33:1, pp. 296-297.
I’ve made a lot of references to this brief commentary in discussions of the history of the use of the word “lesbian”. This article doesn’t so much add any new information as provide the receipts for those mentions.
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This is a very brief philological note about the appearance and context of the Greek word “lesbiai” (lesbians) after the classical period. It begins by noting usage of the verbs “lesbizo” and “lesbiazo” that refer to fellatio, not to same-sex relations. He also notes Lucian’s reference connecting women from Lesbos with same-sex relations (in the Dialogues of the Courtesans). He discounts a claim (which I reviewed at one point and discarded as irrelevant) that there is a reference to “lesbizo” referring to tribadism in the 15th century. But then he claims that French and Italian uses of “lesbian” in a (same-sex) sexual sense “do not seem to occur before the nineteenth century” evidently overlooking or silently discounting Brantôme and others. And (as usual) claims the same for English, citing the OED.
But the meat of this note is the 10th century commentary by Arethas on Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus Paedagogus. The base text by Clement reads:
Γυναΐκες άνδρίζονται παρά φύσιν
“women act as men against nature”
[Note: I’m transcribing this from a badly pixelated scan of a xerox and I’m not at all certain that the diacritic marks are correct. Corrections welcome.]
And Arethas’ commentary reads:
Τάς μιαράς τριβάδας λέγει, ‘άς και ‘εταιριστρίας και Λεσβίας καλοΰσιν
“the unclean tribades (tribadas) who are also called hetairistriai (hetairistrias) and lesbians (lesbias)”
[Note: Cassio declines to give translations, being of a generation who believes that if you can’t read Greek and Latin directly you have no business calling yourself an academic. I’ve drafted these translations by comparing a number of online sources.]
Cassio notes “There are strong reasons for believing that Arethas was not drawing on ancient sources for his comments…except for one instance; so his note is likely to reflect current [i.e., 10th century] Byzantine usage.” He concludes, “Clearly the ill repute of Lesbian women in antiquity was not exclusively due to their alleged propensity to fellatio, and female homosexuality may well have been regarded as typical of Lesbos, though tribads from other parts of the Greek world are also known.” He cites Lucian as a potential inspiration for this association, given its unambiguous reference to women from Lesbos having same-sex relations.
Time period: Classical Era10th cPlace: GreeceMisc tags: lesbiantribadehetairistriaiprimary sourcesEvent / person: Clement of AlexandriaArethas View comments (0)July 21, 2025
Once Again We Pick At the Use of the Word "Lesbian"
Because I enjoy doing clusters of related publications, here's the first of two talking about the semantics of the word "lesbian."
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #494 Blank 2011 The Proverbial ‘Lesbian’ About LHMP Full citation:Blank, Paula. 2011. “The Proverbial ‘Lesbian’: Queering Etymology in Contemporary Critical Practice” in Modern Philology 109, no. 1: 108-34.
A great deal of this article isn’t directly of interest, so much will be glossed over. The “proverbs” in question are various Greek adages in reference to people from Lesbos that mostly are not in reference to female same-sex relations. [Note: I’ve seen some arguments that some of the interpretations are more ambiguous that indicated here, but I’ll stick to summarizing what’s in this article.]
Greek proverbs using words relating to Lesbos to refer to fellatio, or to deprecated sexual practices in general, were familiar to, and quoted by, Renaissance authors such as Erasmus. This article asks the question whether those senses continued to be associated with “lesbian” in the same-sex sense, even though the non-same-sex uses were functionally obsolete in the Renaissance and indeed into modern times. Contemporary use would appear not to invoke these other sexual implications at all, but Blank explores the question of whether it’s reasonable or possible to pick and choose etymological heritage in this way. To what extent is past usage a baggage that a word cannot leave behind. [Note: One could ask similar questions without some of the negative aspects about contemporary uses of “gay” or “queer”.]
The article spends a fair amount of time discussing the nature and history of etymological inquiry, and how “folk etymology” has always been a part of the conversation. Then we get a lot of discussion of queer theory and attitudes toward historic connections across time. Fifteen pages later, we get back to the history of the use of “lesbian” to refer to female same-sex relations, inspired by the popular understandings of the poet Sappho of Lesbos. There’s an interesting quote from David Halperin (who, in general, comes off as hostile to "queer continuity" positions) when he notes that, although the use of the word in this sense is relatively modern, the word itself “is in that sense by far the most ancient term in our current lexicon of sexuality.” But the article then repeats the prevalent erroneous claim that the word didn’t develop this sense until the late 19th century, although there has been regular use of “lesbian” in other senses (including the literal “person from Lesbos”) during the intervening time.
Blank refers to “the survival of alternative ‘lesbians’ well into the Renaissance and beyond.” [Note: This may be overstating the continuity, considering how much of the classical material in which it “survives” dropped out of sight for long periods, only being brought back into circulation as part of Renaissance scholarship. So I question the framing “survival…well into the Renaissance” as indicating any greater continuity of non-same-sex usage than the appearance of same-sex usage during roughly the same era with the renewed interest in Sappho’s work and reputation.]
Early Modern Greek and Latin lexicons reiterate the derogatory sexual senses of words deriving from Lesbos and notes that these continue to appear in Greek lexicons into the 19th century, though Blank notes that these senses do not appear to have migrated into vernacular languages. Earliest English dictionary citations are for “related to Lesbos” and an architectural tool called a “Lesbian Rule.” [Note: But see Turton 2024 on the deliberate and systematic exclusion of vocabulary for female same-sex relations from English dictionaries up until the early 20th century.]
Blank questions any earlier citations in which associations with female same-sex relations can be attributed to literal reference to “women from Lesbos,” as in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans distinguishing between “associations” and “denotations.” Thus, for example, Brantôme’s reference to “such women and lesbians in France, in Italy, and in Spain, in Turkey, Greece, and other sites” is considered an association rather than a new denotative meaning. Because the passage makes specific reference to the term being inspired by Sappho of Lesbos, she (and Halperin) consider it still a geographic/ethnic term rather than having acquired an autonomous definition related to same-sex relations. [Note: I strongly disagree with this analysis of Brantôme's use.] And, she notes, new meanings always arise out of polysemous ambiguity. [Note: This may possibly be the only point in the Project where a publication by my dissertation advisor gets a reference in one of the articles I’m reading.]
After discussing how one cannot simply treat the same-sex meaning of “lesbian” as entirely uncontaminated (my term) by earlier senses relating to other types of deviant sexual behavior, Blank questions whether that means we should reject it entirely for same-sex use, to which we can add the anachronism of using a 20th century definition when discussing sexuality in earlier ages. She asks, “If we want a real neologism for female homosexuality, a word that means ‘one thing and one thing only,’ we could consider abandoning ‘lesbian’ and creating one. That might solve the persistent dilemma facing scholars who work on the history of same-sex female desire.” [Note: I have so many issues with this suggestion that it’s hard to know where to start. Is a neologism invented in the 21st century going to eliminate the problem of it coming embedded in 21st century definitions of sexuality and identity? If writers have been using words derived from Lesbos to refer unambiguously to female same-sex relations since at least the 10th century (a commentary on Clement of Alexandria), then how are all those centuries of use not pertinent to considering “lesbian” to have a heritage of use crossing over a wide span of understandings of sexuality and identity? It can be very hard not to feel like people are saying “you have this word that has a rich, unique, beautiful history—'by far the most ancient term in our current lexicon of sexuality'—and we’re going to find every argument possible for taking it away from you.] Several other approaches are discussed, including terms like “proto-lesbian” or “lesbian-like” that only marginally address the concerns. She concludes by suggesting that we can’t claim rights to “lesbian” in the modern sense without also embracing all the other meanings the word has had, even ones in direct contradiction—and this is the choice Smart eventually supports. I’m going to quote part of the conclusion extensively because I want to quote it in my book and this is an easy way to keep track:
“Our current use of ‘lesbian’ goes back to Lesbos, I would add, because we keep talking about the word as if it were an island of language, curiously untouched by the full range of its past and therefore its present meanings. We treat it as an island, perhaps, because our vernacular lexicon has relatively few terms for female same-sex love and desire; apart from slang words such as ‘dyke,’ or ‘femme,’ or ‘butch,’ ‘lesbian’ is practically all we have, and we are protective of it. Though we may alternatively call ourselves ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual,’ such terms are, for some, invariably and problematically gendered male.”
[Note: I should be clear that I agree on many of the points of Blank’s article: that the specific “female same-sex relations” sense of “lesbian” is not original to ancient Greek, that the word has had a variety of senses over the centuries, and that one should not pick and choose among those in order to imply a teleological development of the dominant modern English meaning. But as often happens, there is a tendency to hold same-sex usage to a disproportionate standard of evidence and certainty, while accepting other definitions based on “common knowledge” that has actually been questioned. And it never helps when the same-sex evidence relies on a chronology that is simply incorrect.]
Time period: Classical EraRenaissance (general)Early Modern (general)19th c20th cMisc tags: lesbianEvent / person: Sappho View comments (0)July 15, 2025
Sexology as Chicken or Egg?
This is the second of the two papers on the history of sexology that I pulled out in preparation for a podcast.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #493 Chauncey 1982 From Inversion to Homosexuality About LHMP Full citation:Chauncey, George, Jr. 1982. “From Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance” in Salmagundi 58-59 (fall 1982-winter 1983).
This article focuses on the end of the 19th century as the era when a medical model of homosexuality replaced a religious/moral model, creating the conditions for the idea of belonging to a sexual minority. Starting with the first publication of a medical paper on “sexual inversion” in Germany in 1870, the next few decades saw increasing interest from medical professionals in the topic. However Chauncey argues that a direct connection between medical publications on the topic ad the rise of self-conscious identities is far from established, or that homosexuals accepted the medical model uncritically. In particular, that view—that sexology invented homosexual identity—ignores preexisting evidence for subcultures and concepts of identity, even when documented in the medical literature itself. The author notes other issues that complicate this connection, such as the restricted social class that most medical studies were drawn from. He recommends non-medical and more personal records, such as diaries and letters, as a field that would provide balance.
Rather, Chauncey suggests, medical literature in America (the article’s focus) could be understood as a response to social change around sexuality at the turn of the century, rather than a driver of it. Medical literature initially conceived of “sexual inversion” as a broad and diffuse category of behavior that deviated from normative sexual and gender roles. Only later, several decades into the development of sexology, was homosexual desire distinguished in this literature as a distinct concept, rather than being considered a simple consequence of an underlying gender identity.
Further, sexology did not develop in a social vacuum. The challenges that the women’s movement made to normative gender roles and the increasing awareness of urban gay male culture are among the factors causing social anxiety that medical sexology claimed to explain and manage. A parallel is drawn between the rise of the idea of “social Darwinism” and challenges to racism and colonialism. One of the implicit purposes of sexology was to justify male supremacy as biologically determined. And this helps explain some of the differences in how the field treated male and female homosexuality.
The heart of this article is a review of 85 medical publications in the USA between 1880 and 1930, discussing how they reflected and responded to changes in society.
The medicalization of sexuality can find roots in pseudo-scientific theories that shaped the Victorian era about male sexual agency and female sexual passivity. Within this framework even women who expressed active sexual desire within a heterosexual marriage were seen as suspect. This lesbianism was inherently deviant as it required at least one of the female partners to experience and express active sexual desire. Active desire was a masculine trait, therefore a woman expressing sexual desire for a woman was behaving in a masculine fashion. [Note: This idea dates far earlier than the Victorian era, of course.] As a consequence of this pre-existing framing, sexological literature described the sexuality of lesbians as a sort of pseudo-male aggressiveness. A corollary was that just as male sexuality was understood to be aggressive and uncontrolled (the onus was on women to “control” men either by being virtuous and untouchable, or by being prostitutes and unconditionally available), lesbian desire was assumed to be uncontrollable and thus required professional treatment to suppress it.
Nineteenth-century gender roles went beyond what happened in bed, therefore the required “feminine passivity” extended to social roles and interactions, and “inversion” was assumed to apply to all manner of behavioral interactions and personal presentation. This could be identified even in childhood by a preference for play associated with a different gender. A 1921 article asserted that female “inverts” could be identified by wearing male-coded garments like tailored suits (even those that included a skirt), certain hair styles, an aversion to corsets, by drinking, smoking, whistling, and being “very independent in her ways.” (Similar assertions were made about identifying male inverts.) In this all-encompassing view of gender identity, researchers could be contradictory. Havelock Ellis, while claiming that transvestism was separate from homosexuality, nonetheless claimed that lesbians typically had some degree of “masculinity” in their clothing, alongside “…brusque, energetic movements…direct speech…masculine straightforwardness and sense of honor…” alongside “a dislike and sometimes incapacity for needlework and other domestic occupations.” [Note: It’s hard not to connect these opinions with the classic “not like other girls” traits of supposedly progressive literary heroines, who habitually reject corsets and despise needlework. Gender essentialism comes in many forms.]
Early versions of the “inversion” theory of homosexuality meant that the object of desire was less relevant than gender presentation. A “masculine” woman was an invert even if happily married to a man (who then would be assumed to be effeminate to some degree, or else he wouldn’t be attracted to her). But by 1900 this had shifted to distinguish homosexuality more clearly from gender presentation, as in Freud’s language about “sexual object.” But this shift was more solidly and earlier applied to men than women and became part of arguments for tolerance and acceptance of male homosexuals, while the same was not argued for lesbians. Even as men were allowed to be “manly” and yet desire men, women were still being characterized as generally “masculine” if they desired women.
Early sexological literature functionally ignored the femme partner of women identified as “inverts,” treating them as passive objects who simply accepted the attentions of their partner, much in the same way that the wives of “female husbands” had been viewed over the previous couple of centuries. Toward the end of the period under consideration, these femme partners were increasingly viewed as actively choosing to engage in lesbian partnerships, rather than being hapless “victims” of the aggressive sexuality of the “actively inverted woman.” But the underlying assumption supported the idea that a femme partner could be “saved” by the intervention of a Real Man.
It can be easy to see how this assumed gender-role-binary works to reinforce itself by ignoring or shoehorning likely counterexamples. If lesbians are always inherently masculine, then a femme-femme couple will be overlooked by those trying to identify lesbians. A quote in the article from Havelock Ellis notes, “we are accustomed to a much greater familiarity and intimacy between women than between men, and we are less apt to suspect the existence of any abnormal passion.” [Note: And if both partners participate in female masculinity—whether in dress, or in behavior—it was common to assign one partner as the more masculine, based in minor differences in occupation or personal habits. This can be seen even before the application of sexological frameworks when partners in Boston Marriages are analyzed to determine “which was the husband and which the wife.”]
Once the shift from “gender inversion” to “sexual object” became established in the first decade of the 20th century, and “passive lesbians” became a topic of greater interest, the medical establishment turned their attention to pathologizing intimate same-sex friendships in single-sex institutions such as schools, convents, and gender-segregated work environments. Now that these relationships were a topic of study, surprise! researchers found that partners might alternate the “husband/wife” roles, or even claim “that they did not think of it in that way.” (Quoted from a 1929 study.) Such relationships had, of course, existed previously, but had been outside the scope of study due to not overtly challenging gendered behavioral norms.
The medical approach to homosexuality shifted in parallel with general medical trends. Where doctors in the 1880s had ascribed inversion and other “nervous disorders” to a physical cause with physical symptoms that could be treated, and argued that homosexuality was pathological rather than criminal, as the 1890s progressed, the “somatic cause” of nervous disorders was increasingly ascribed to congenital defects, which could be managed but not cured. An extreme version of the congenital theory was to classify inverts as biological hermaphrodites, with “structural cellular elements of the opposite sex.” This helps explain the undue interest doctors took in recording the genital anatomy and menstrual habits of patients being examined for lesbianism. This physiological approach faded early in the 20th century but lingered in a form of “psychic hermaphroditism”—the “male soul in a female body” explanation (initially raised as early as the 1860s by Karl Ulrichs). As eugenics became a popular theory, homosexuality was frame as part of a general “degeneration” of civilization to a less evolved state. [Note: Of course, eugenics and theories of degeneration applied to many other social anxieties, such as non-Anglo immigration.] Early proponents of gay acceptance in the 1910s countered this with arguments from Classical civilizations, which of course focused only on male-male relations.
Class issues infiltrated the medical literature in how patients from different social strata were differentially diagnosed: middle-class patients being identified as suffering from illness, while working-class patients were written off as immoral. Lesbianism was claimed to be rife among domestic servants (who might teach it to the children of their employers) and especially among prostitutes where it was assumed to go hand-in-hand with general criminality.
The congenital theory of homosexuality promulgated by Havelock Ellis and others was in the ascendent around 1900, but began to be challenged by Freud and his followers who saw it as an acquired condition due to interactions of family dynamics. (Though many professionals worked with a mixture of the two approaches.)
The article most to a conclusion with a consideration of why gender/sexuality became a topic of medical interest at the specific time when it did, and why the focus shifted in the ways it did. The author focuses strongly on the lesbian angle (in addition to the increasing visibility of gay male subcultures), in the context of challenges to Victorian sex/gender stereotypes and the “resexualization” of women at the beginning of the 20th century. The women’s movement in the late 19th century challenged social and political limitations placed on women (and were achieving a certain amount of success in that field). Declining marriage and birth rates among the white middle class and the intrusion of women into previously male-only fields, created what some identified as a “masculinity crisis” in the decades around 1900. There was a perception that women were having undue influence on society and in the workplace. Within all of this, the identification of women’s challenge to assumed norms as a “disease” enabled authorities to undermine and stigmatize it, rather than having to address the challenge on its merits. Not only were the women who challenged gender restrictions themselves “diseased” but their dismissal of domestic and material duties produced another generation of degenerates. Within this framework, gay men, rather than joining the crusade against the New Women, were rejecting their own masculinity and contributing to the degeneration of society. And to a limited but meaningful extent, the women were “winning.” Meaningful female employment increased. Campaigns for suffrage and prohibition were successful. [Note: Whatever one might think about the advisability or lasting impact of Prohibition, it was a symbol of female political power.] Women were once again recognized publicly as sexual beings. And professional attachment to the idea that gender roles were natural and inherent began to weaken. Within this context, shifting professional concern from “inversion” to “homosexuality” allowed a backing off from the unstoppable aspects of these changes while narrowing the scope of persecution to more marginalized groups. Women could be actively sexual, even outside marriage, but only heterosexually. The homosocial bonding that had supported suffrage and other aspects of the women’s movement could be stigmatized, weakening political momentum. Homosociality was replaced by a greater acceptance of mixed-sex socializing, including “dating culture” and the promotion of marriage as a woman’s primary social context.
Thus, Chauncey concludes, while the shifting medical discourse from 1880 to 1930 did not drive these social changes, it provides a fertile field for studying them in all their intertwined complexity.
Time period: 19th c20th cPlace: USAMisc tags: sexology View comments (0)July 14, 2025
Sexology: When It All Changed
In addition to tackling some USA-related articles, I've picked the rise of sexology as this month's podcast topic, hence the choice of a couple of items on this topic to post. Sexology and its consequences are about half the reason why the Lesbian Historic Motif Project cuts off around 1900. The other half of the reason is that information on lesbians in the 20th century is so much more plentiful that it would swamp earlier material (and the earlier material is where my heart is). But mostly, models and understandings of lesbianism changed significantly around 1900. It wasn't an instant change or an unprecedented change, but it marks a difference that writers and readers of sapphic historicals should keep strongly in mind. (Listen to the podcast next week for more on this.)
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #492 Black 1994 Perverting the Diagnosis About LHMP Full citation:Black, Allida M. 1994. “Perverting the Diagnosis: The Lesbian and the Scientific Basis of Stigma.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 201–16.
This is an overview of the rise of sexological theories about female homosexuality. The field consistently made connections between homosexuality and neurosis in women, as well as connecting the former with “inversion” or masculinity. Different part of the field gave different weight to ideas of genetic versus behavioral causes. There were also systematic ways in which the sexological approach to homosexuality differed for men and women. But the overall concept pressured women with homoerotic feelings to consider themselves mentally—and perhaps physically—ill.
Much of the theory came out of the idea of “neurasthenia”—an idea that ills in one part of the body could produce effects in a different part. Thus “unnatural” exertions of the mind (i.e., women thinking too much) or reproductive system (i.e., non-normative sex including masturbation or lesbianism) could cause chronic physical ailments of all sorts, and conversely, that all manner of physical ailments could be traced back to objectionable mental or sexual activities.
This combined with eugenicist theories that some women had a genetic predisposition to “sexual inversion,” which encompassed both female masculinity and homosexuality. To varying degrees, this genetic predisposition was thought to produce masculine attributes or even create a “third sex” that was no longer female but not fully male. In any degree, it was considered to predispose the woman to homosexuality.
Such was the acceptance of these theories within the field that diagnosis ignored possible non-biological factors. The genetic aspect led sexologists to believe they were arguing for tolerance of a condition that the woman couldn’t help, but in practice, homosexuality was depicted as a dangerous “disease” that could, at best, be suppressed in the individual. The only cure and only moral path was complete abstinence.
Due to this connection being made between lesbianism and mental illness, there was a general social shift to suspicion of any emotional relationships between women that were viewed as symptomatic of lesbian potential. And it was considered impossible for lesbian relationships to be happy and successful, even if deriving from an inherited predisposition. (For that matter, any behavior that deviated from the norm could be classified as “neurotic.”)
These theories of lesbianism as mental illness driven by genetic predisposition, developed by male professionals, based on case studies of women who had sought treatment for unrelated reasons, were then promulgated as fact. Any apparent contradictions could be explained away due to the inherent complexity and ambiguity of the theories.
(Male) sexologists such as Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and Hirschfeld, while arguing for tolerance and compassion for male homosexuals, exhibited a distinct hostility toward lesbians and saw them as imitating men. This theoretical framework created a stereotype of the lesbian that included male-coded personality traits, an interest in active sports, a preference for male-coded hairstyles and clothing, and which fastened on the old myth of clitoral enlargement as either a cause or consequence of sex between women. Even when specific case studies of their patients contradicted this stereotype, sexologists dismissed their own recorded observations and searched for evidence of “neurasthenia” or “morbid” behavior.
Freudian theories of sexuality developed out of the field of sexology, further elaborating them based on the supposed dynamics of parental-object attachment. As with his predecessors, he could not work past the assumption that women’s resistance to gender-based social repression was itself a psychological “problem” to be cured. Thus, one patient’s “masculine” attributes and her desire for women was connected in his diagnosis with her feminism and “rebell[ion] against the lot of women in general.” The Freudian position that lesbianism was a toxic and “irreversible” abnormality persisted from the 1930s to the 1970s. Contrary evidence made no difference, as when one client of a prominent Freudian psychologist resolved her depression and suicidal thoughts only after accepting and embracing her lesbianism, but was dismissed with “but she’s still a lesbian.”
The basic Freudian position was that lesbianism was driven by envy of the penis (and what it stood for) leading to appropriation of masculinity to the extent possible, especially in terms of sexual object. Thus, went the theory, even if a lesbian achieved a successful relationship with a woman, she would be unhappy because her entire nature stemmed from an unaddressed (and unaddressable) frustration).
Some historians posit that by the early 1920s, lesbians were internalizing the message that not only were their sex lives dangerous and perverse, but their underlying love of women was equally perverse even if never acted on sexually. Interviews with women in this era give evidence of pervasive internalized homophobia that was not generally prevalent in society in earlier decades. The iconic example of this is Radclyffe Hall’s fictional alter ego in The Well of Loneliness. This era saw the rise of greater covertness and secrecy about lesbian relationships, even by those who had not succumbed to negative views of themselves. This, combined with socio-economic patterns regarding public socializing, contributed to the illusion that lesbians were less common than male homosexuals, and made lesbianism less easily studied (and thus, less studied).
[Note: One aspect of the sexological theories that is given little consideration in this article, but is discussed in other articles, is femme invisibility.]
Time period: 19th c20th cPlace: GermanyEnglandUSAMisc tags: sexology View comments (0)July 12, 2025
New Research in Trans Studies
Today's article is a survey of recent research in trans (and to a lesser extent, intersex) research on the middle ages.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #478 Wingard 2024 The Trans Middle Ages About LHMP Full citation:Wingard, Tess, 2024. “The Trans Middle Ages: Incorporating Transgender and Intersex Studies into the History of Medieval Sexuality”, The English Historical Review, cead214, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead214
This article is a survey of recent work in trans and intersex historical studies covering the medieval period. Wingard notes that these topics have only been seriously included in book-length studies since 2020, following something of a hiatus in queer medieval history publications in general since the early 2000s. This particular survey focuses on work that studies “lived experience” via documentary sources and non-fiction texts, rather than a broader scope that includes literary and artistic materials.
Queer medieval history has revolved around three topics: identity, community, and repression. The first involves identifying individuals where there is probable evidence for sexual, romantic and intimate acts classifiable as queer, though the evidence rarely addresses interiority. Wingard notes the debt owed to approaches developed for women’s history to identify methods and approaches for marginalized subjects.
The field involves several significant theoretical disagreements of approach and method. One position argues against the concept of “persistent sexual identity” being meaningful in the medieval period, much less a clear binary classification of homosexual and heterosexual. In this context, “heteronormativity” is not a useful interpretive framework. Another position (which the author holds) is that while medieval concepts do focus more on acts than identities, there is a clear privileging of male-female relations, which are uniquely classified as “natural.” The result is difficult to distinguish from heteronormativity.
Studies into medieval community again hit a clear divide between those who reject Boswell’s image of an “international gay subculture” and those who more narrowly identify specific contexts for networks and normalized practices among queer men. [Note: And with regard to “communities” the discussion is entirely focused on men.]
The third theme relates to repression and persecution and the forces and logics that drive fluctuations in official attention to queer practices.
Having laid out the map of the field of queer history in general, Wingard discusses a number of very recent publications that explore new ground specifically with regard to trans and intersex studies. [Note: I’m not going to list individual titles, but many of them are on my shelves and will be blogged at a later date.] This field is moving on from anecdotal studies of specific individuals, to studies that address larger theoretical questions, such as philosophical and medical understandings of transness and intersex. These questions are relevant to the study of sex and gender in general because they challenge the nature and definition of sex and gender categories.
Trans history is based on several key principles: that gender is socially constructed, that biological sex itself is—to some extent—socially constructed (i.e., that societies have had different focuses and frameworks for determining how to classify someone as biologically male or biologically female), and that “individuals whose gender identity does not line up with their assigned gender at birth have always existed in all human cultures,” and have used various strategies to negotiate that mismatch. Wingard notes that using a trans history approach to these questions is productive regardless of whether the subjects of study can be considered “transgender” either by modern definitions or by some medieval analog. The parallel to Judith Bennett’s “lesbian-like” approach is noted. Several specific historic individuals are discussed to illustrate these points.
Intersex history also speaks to the social construction of sex and gender, as well as the agency that intersex individuals had to manage their own classification, within certain limits.
Time period: Classical EraPost-Roman/Early MedievalMedieval (general)Place: EuropeMisc tags: transgender identityintersex View comments (0)
