Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 87
March 31, 2019
Review: Rainbow Bouquet (anthology)
The anthology Rainbow Bouquet edited by Farah Mendlesohn marks something of a reorganizational reboot for Manifold Press, which specializes in LGBTQ historical fiction. Given that focus, I was a little surprised that only half the stories in the collection have historic settings (and one is clearly future/science fictional). That’s not a comment on the writing, only that I had a bit of expectation whiplash.
The historic stories cover mythic/classical Greece, an unspecified medieval monastery, the 17th century London theater scene, Regency England, 19th century Russia, and an assortment of historical ghosts in a modern English setting. Most of the stories have a romance structure (including one asexual romance) and various genre infusions add interest to the plots. There’s a fairly good balance between representation of male and female relationshps, though only one story touches on potential transgender themes. I found the historic elements well-grounded, including the nature of the relationships and the types of obstacles they faced.
“Firebrand” by M. J. Logue was a particular favorite, depicting the rough, crude world of the 17th century London theater, where an aspiring playwright explores her attraction to women and just where she falls on the gender spectrum through the lens of gender-disguise plots and cross-gender acting. Humor adds a delightful leavening to Kathleen Jowitt’s “Stronger Than Death” when an assortment of resident ghosts (some of whom have discovered the post-mortem joys of same-sex romance) come to the rescue of a struggling hospitality venue. I liked how Erin Horakova used the stylings of 19th century Russian literature to trace the delicate and diplomatic negotiations of two men sounding out each other’s interpersonal relationships. Cheryl Morgan’s “The Poet’s Daughter” toys with an alternate origin for the stories of Odysseus, with some jabs at how women are erased from history, though the story felt a bit slow-paced and drawn out.
This is a good collection for finding new authors to follow or just to enjoy a variety of queer short fiction with a historical bent.
Major category: ReviewsTags: Reviews: Books
March 29, 2019
Floodtide is on its Way
Floodtide
I just hit "send". The manuscript for Floodtide has now officially been delivered to the publisher. And three whole days before the contracted deadline, too!
Yes, I'm kind of proud of that because, while I use deadlines to schedule and organize my project planning, I really dislike coming down to the wire. Things happen. Computers break. Networks go down. People get sick and don't have the energy to leave their beds much less do serious last-minute editing. (Wait, that was two weeks ago. Already ticked off that box.)
I haven't started a new writing project quite yet, although yesterday I had a fascinating idea for a contemporary fantasy/horror short story that's very different from my usual sort. I'd contemplate trying it for a palate cleanser except that what I really need to work on next is my paper for this years Kalamazoo Medieval Congress.
At this point, it will probably be a while before you hear any further substantial news. With this much lag time before the November publication date, I imagine other things will be ahead of it in the editing queue. If I'm lucky, edits will arrive sometime in June or July so I can get the next step taken care of before my international travel in August. But it is as the gods will.
Major category: Writing ProcessPublications: FloodtideTags: Floodtidewriting
March 27, 2019
Who's Publishing Lesbian-relevant Historicals?
bookreview.jpg
As regular readers (all six of you) know, every month my podcast does a round-up show that includes a list of new and forthcoming lesbian-relevant historicals (including historic fantasy). I get the content from three primary methods: 1) Buzz on the net; 2) Searching on Amazon using "released after" and keywords = "lesbian" + "historic"; and the topic of today's blog 3) checking the websites of those publishers who release relevant books often enough that they're worth checking individually.
But group 3 isn't actually a very efficient method and seems to be becoming less useful all the time. Why? Let me lay out some numbers and specifics.
I've talked previously about my aspiring database of relevant books. The older material in it is gleaned largely from goodreads lists and similar sources, so I know it's incomplete but it's likely to include the better known titles (and is more likely to be missing self-published book than ones with publishers, which latter is today's topic). But for the last year and a half or so, it's as complete as I can make it. Let's look at who's publishing these books and how often.
When I put together a "state of the field" survey at the end of 2018, I had 151 named publishers in the database (which includes single-author imprints, as long as they have a "publisher name" they're using). Of those, 94 (60%) only had a single title in my database. Obviously these are not candidates for checking in on regularly.
25 publishers have only 2 titles in the database, and only half of those published anything relevant in the last 5 years. These are spread across mainstream publishers (Harlequin Teen, Harper Collins), smaller queer/feminist presses (Less Than Three, Lethe, New Victoria), and singe-author imprints or at least, imprints where the only books in my database are by a single author (Golden Keys, Grove, Little Red WIngs, LZ Media, Riverdale Avenue, Sans Merci, Three Bunny Farm). So, again, not worth checking every month. I have to hope that their relevant books come to my attention by other means.
A similar pattern appears for publishers with 3 and 4 titles:
Three titles - 9 publishers, only 4 with any titles in the last 5 years, 1 mainstream (Tor.com), 1 small queer press (Riptide, though only one author from them shows up in my list), 2 single-author (Broad Winged Books, LoveLight).
Four titles - 8 publishers, 4 with titles in the last 5 years, 1 mainstream (Little, Brown and Co.), 2 small queer press (Shadoe - though only a single author appears, Supposed Crimes), and 1 single-author (Venatic).
That leaves us with 14 publishers for which I have 5 or more titles listed, of which 3 don't have anything in the last 5 years. That takes us down to 11. 1 mainstream publisher (Riverhead), 8 small queer/feminist presses (Bold Strokes, Bella, Regal Crest, Ylva, Affinity, Bywater, Spinsters Ink, Sapphire) and 2 single-author presses (AUSXIP, A-Girl Studio).
So those 8 small presses are my best bet for regular monitoring, right? Let's look at the logistics of their historical output and their website interface.
Bold Strokes - recent average is 0.5 relevant books per month. Website has new and forthcoming pages will full schedule as planned.
Bella - recent average is 0.3 relevant books per month. Website has new and forthcoming pages with full schedule as planned.
Regal Crest - recent average is 0.15 relevant books per month. Website has new and forthcoming pages with full schedule as planned.
Ylva - recent average is 0.06 relevant books per month (nothing in the last 2 years). Website has "new releases" page but not forthcoming.
Affinity - one book in the last 4 years. Website has "coming soon" page but not very useful.
Bywater - 2 books in the last 4 years. Website has "forthcoming" page.
Spinsters Ink - no books in the last 4 years (the one book 5 years ago gets them into this category at all). Included in Bella new/forthcoming pages.
Sapphire - recent average is 0.08 books per month. Website has "forthcoming" page.
All told, that's 8 websites to check, for an overall average of 1 book per month as output. During 2018, the year I started doing my "new and forthcoming" podcast feature, I averaged 8 titles presented each month. So even the combined output of the most prolific queer/women's presses only constitutes 1/8 of what I'm identifying. If there are publishers with a more significant output, I'm not finding their books at all (which would hardly reflect a good publicity strategy!).
When I started doing a systematic search (not only of new books but of past releases I might not have in the database yet) I identified 45 presses, based on both what I already had in the database and on the current state of lesbian publishing. A quarter of those 45 don't seem to have ever published anything historic, but 75% of them have at least one title in my database.
I started this analysis today because I was Twitter-brainstorming other presses I should add to my list. But the conclusions point out something else: most queer/lesbian presses seem to have published occasional historical titles, but nobody is putting them out with any regularity, much less focusing on them. One of the things that helps raise the bar in a field is having a publishing team that knows the genre -- that knows how to identify and develop promising talent, that knows the field and reader wants and expectations, and that know how to market that specific genre. Nobody in the queer/lesbian publishing field has that expertise currently, nobody is developing that talent, and nobody--absolutely nobody--has any clue how to market lesbian-relevant historicals, even within the lesbian reading community, much less across the entire reading public.
We're starting to see mainstream publishing have more openness to featuring queer female protagonists. There's an explosion of queer historic fantasy coming from mainstream SFF publishers. And mainstream historical romance publisher are starting to dip their toes into the water of allowing their current straight-romance authors to put out the occasional f/f novella. But those shifts aren't going to open up the field to authors of lesbian historicals who either don't have access to those markets (e.g., authors who aren't going to start by establishing a career writing m/f historical romance) or don't have the genre-familiarity and skills to sell to them. And at the same time as this shift, we're seeing some of the main queer/lesbian presses appear to lose interest in the genre. Those "top 8 publishers" discussed above? In the first three months of new/forthcoming lists on my podcast for 2019, they've only provided 2 books for the lists. Below the average for the last 5 years. And the ones that have significant "forthcoming" web pages suggest that rate may drop more for the year as a whole. Lesbian/queer publishing has never been strongly invested in lesbian-relevant historical fiction, and the situation looks to be getting worse, not better.
And yet readers are clamoring for the genre. Readers are begging for these books. Somewhere, there's a disconnect.
Major category: ThinkingTags: publishingwriting
March 25, 2019
Beginnings and Endings
Floodtide
It's time for the return of Teaser Tuesday! Floodtide doesn't have enough chapters to post a teaser from each chapter weekly up to publication day in November. I plan to do regular Tuesday posts intended to stir up buzz and anticipation. Some will include teasers, some won't.
I have belatedly discovered that I'm most happy with how my books start and end when they have some sort of "bookend" scenes that refer to each other but somewhow stand apart from the rest of the narrative. Not everyone has been quite as enthusiastic. I got a few comments on the epilogue of Daughter of Mystery that readers felt it was unnecessary. (In retrospect, perhaps, but since I had no idea I was writing a series, I wanted to make it clear that Barbara and Margerit got their happily ever after.) But bookending DoM with brief omniscient scenes made it a lot easier to set up Barbara as a character at the beginning, and to provide that HEA promise at the end.
In Mother of Souls, I bookended the story with a description of the river dynamics of Alpennia as they related to floodtide, which provided a foreshadowing at the start of the part the weather curse would play, and a foreshadowing at the end of the main plot of Floodtide.
I didn't do this sort of bookending for The Mystic Marriage and, in retrospect, I think I would have had fewer problems around the concluding paragraphs (and been happier with the result) if I had. If I'd begun the story with some sort of stronger metaphoric connection between Antuniet's life and her alchemical work, and then ended more clearly emphasizing the connection in her mind between creating alchemical gems and developing strong interpersonal relationships. Maybe someday I'll write those scenes just as an alternate version.
But for Floodtide, I knew I was going to do bookends again, and I knew what the theme of those bookends would be because it was the very first scene I wrote. Searching back through my old LiveJournal entries, I was startled to remind myself that I write the opening scene of Floodtide in August, 2014. Almost five years ago. To be sure, that's because I wrote it when I was just barely starting the draft of Mother of Souls, but there's also that two-year gap in getting the books out.
Here's what I posted in 2014 as my idea for the opening of Floodtide.
* * *
You know the scent of lavender on the fresh sheets when you get them from the linen press for the housemaids to take up? You breathe it in, remembering the long rows of purple spikes in the summer sun. Then you imagine the smile on the Maisetra’s face when she settles in for the night on a new-made bed with that scent still lingering. That’s what I always imagined love would be like. But loving Nan was like the hours spent stripping the lavender spikes for the stillroom, back in Sain-Pol. The sharp resin climbed up your nose, making your head throb and ache, and the memory of it clung to your hands and your clothes for weeks so that you’d think you’d never be free of it. That was how they found us out: because I was never free of thinking of her. I‘d watch her from the laundry room door as she went up and down the stairs to the family rooms, and find excuses to call her over to ask about some mending she’d brought down. Then at night, even when we were so tired we could barely talk, we’d kiss and cuddle in the narrow bed we shared. My head was so full of her and it was never enough. We had to keep quiet so Mari would think we were only whispering about the day’s work. I didn’t think she’d rat on us; lots of girls in service have their bit of fun. I don’t think Mari told, but someone did. Old Mazzik the housekeeper took Nan back into her parlor and closed the door for a long time and when Nan came out she’d been crying and wouldn’t look at me. Then Mazzik took me by the arm without a word and dragged me across the yard and out the back gate and threw me down onto the cobbles.
* * *
And here's how the opening of the manuscript currently stands:
* * *
You know the scent of lavender on the fresh sheets? When you take them from the linen press, you breathe it in, remembering the long rows of purple flowers in the summer sun. You think of the smile on the maisetra’s face when she settles in for the night with that scent still lingering. That’s what I always imagined love would be like.
But loving Nan was like stripping the lavender spikes in Aunt Gaita’s stillroom back in Sain-Pol. The sharp resin filled my head and the memory of it clung to my hands and my clothes. I’d say the prayers to Saint Cheler with my aunt as we distilled lavender water and mixed herbs to add to the soap. Sometimes I’d get a warm stretchy feeling at the base of my belly, like the one I got during the mysteries at church.
When I was in the middle of the lavender harvest, I’d forget about everything else. I wouldn’t think about how lucky I was that Aunt Gaita picked me out from my brothers and sisters to learn a trade and teach me how to behave proper in service. I’d forget about tending the boiler where the linens were soaking. My mind would wander off and she’d box my ears and threaten to send me back home to mind the babies. I knew she didn’t mean it, but the scent was that strong it could drive everything else out of my head.
Loving Nan was like that. I was never free of thinking of her. I‘d watch her from the laundry room door as she went up and down the stairs to the family rooms, and find excuses to call her over to ask about some mending she’d brought down. I’d lean close and breathe in how lovely she smelled. Then at night, even when we were so tired we could barely talk, we’d kiss and cuddle in the narrow bed we shared.
Nan was the one who taught me what to do with that feeling in my belly. We’d never meant it to go further than the ordinary sort of keeping company. Most girls in service have a special friend. You get lonely away in the city with no family about. But it did go further. I was so hungry for Nan we’d be up late into the night, trying not to make noise and wake Mari in the next bed, and then stumbling bleary-eyed through the morning chores.
I don’t think Mari told on us. Why would she? But someone did. That morning Mefro Mollin, the housekeeper took Nan back into her parlor and closed the door for a long time. I watched the door until Nan came out crying. She ran upstairs without looking at me. Mollin saw me standing there and took me by the arm without a word and dragged me out the door, across the yard, and out the back gate then threw me down onto the cobbles.
* * *
It's longer and has more details, but for all intents and purposes, it's nearly identical to that original idea. Not all my openings stay that stable from first idea to final draft! But the image stuck, and I always knew that the closing images of the book would touch back on the lavender metaphor. I didn't always know how they'd do it, but it gave me a clear end-point to work towards.
Major category: TeasersPublications: Daughter of MysteryThe Mystic MarriageMother of SoulsFloodtideTags: AlpenniawritingFloodtide
Someone Write me a Tale of Witty Elegant Lady-Lovers in Medieval Andalusia
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
Even when Sahar Amer is largely recycling topics that the Project has covered from her before, there's always enough new material to provide intriguing glimpses of what's out there in the field of medieval Arabic same-sex literature. One of these years, if I continue the fiction series on the podcast, I dream of getting an own-voices story drawing on this material. (Or lots of them! But I don't want to dream too high.) The topic of women's same-sex relations in the Islamicate world has too often been treated through an Orientalizing or male-gaze lens when depicted in fiction. And as scholars like Amer note, the contemporary association within Islamic societies of homosexuality with "Western corruption" can be a bar to the exploration of these themes from within those societies. But there's such a wealth of tradition here. And it provides such a delightful contrast to the treatment of women's same-sex relations in the texts of Christian Europe in the same era.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #240 Amer 2009 Medieval Arab Lesbians and 'Lesbians-Like'
About LHMP
Full citation:
Amer, S. 2009. “Medieval Arab Lesbians and 'Lesbians-Like'” in Journal of the History of Sexuality, 18(2), 215-236.
Amer begins by tackling the Whorfian-tinged assertion that the lack of a specific terminology for lesbianism in medieval Europe contributed to a lack of modern scholarship about same-sex desire between women in that era, by noting that the existence of a diverse and specific vocabulary for the topic in medieval Arabic (sahq, sihaqa, musahaqat, al-nisa’, sahiqa) hasn’t resulted in a vibrant field of study. This is particularly disappointing given the significant surviving literature on the topic. Further, Amer notes, if you broaden the field of inquiry to include “lesbian-like” women (following Judith Bennett’s definition), the literature is even richer. The structure of cultural and social life in some medieval Arabic courts may contain unstudied spaces in which same-sex activity occurred that--if not “lesbian” by a strict definition--certain fall into the category of “lesbian-like.”
Medieval Arab Lesbians
The medieval Arabic vocabulary for “lesbianism” (sahq, sihaq, sihaqa) and “lesbian” (sahiqa, sahhaqa, musahiqa) arise from describing a behavior rather than an identity or orientation, coming from the root s-h-q meaning “to pound” (as with spices) or “to rub”, and thus being semantically connected to Greek tribas and Latin fricatrix.
Medieval Arabic medical theories included the idea that lesbianism was caused by an itch of the labia that could be soothed only by rubbing against another woman’s genitals. (These medical writings included versions of the 2nd century Greek writer Galen, and included a tradition that Galen’s daughter was a lesbian and had provided him with data on the topic.) This theory included humoral concepts of heat and cold to explain why sex with a man couldn’t scratch the itch in the same way. (al-Kindi, 9th c)
The scientific view of lesbianism in Arabic literature was as a medical category, with theories about the underlying cause that included maternal consumption of specific plants. (Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, 9th c) In this context, it was seen as innate, lifelong, and as morally neutral.
But although the etymology of sahq indicates an activity, the cultural context of the range of terms in medieval Arabic literature associates sahiqat with love and devotion, and in some contexts with an exclusive and supportive subculture of women who loved women. Legendary tales identify the “first lesbians” as an interfaith couple (Christian and pre-Islamic Arabic) in what is now Iraq. The earliest surviving Arabic erotic treatise (10th c) includes this tale of Hind Bint al-Nu`man and Hind Bint al-Khuss al-Iyadiyyah and places them in the 7th century. They were held up as an icon of love and loyalty.
The historicity of this story is less important than how it was presented in the Arabic literary tradition as a symbol of the greater love and devotion women have for each other than men have for women. Arabic literature embraced stories of female couples, twelve of which are named in the literary catalog Al Fihrist (al-Nadim, 10th c) although nothing except their names and the fact of their relationships is preserved. Amer provides a list of the titles of the twelve books (which are the names of the characters) with translations of what the names mean, if relevant. I’ll reproduce it here because I’ve never seen it spelled out before.
The Book of Rihana and Qoronfel (“Basil” and “Clove”)
The Book of Ruqayya and Khadija
The Book of Mo’ees and Zakiyya
The Book of Sakina and al-Rabab (“Calm” and “the Mistress of the Household”)
The Book of al-Ghatrifa and al-Dulafa’
The Book of Hind and Bint al-Nu`man (“India” and “the daughter of al-Nu`man”, the “first lesbian couple” mentioned above)
The Book of `Abda al-`Aqila and `Abda al-Ghaddara (“the Wise Slave Girl” and “the Treacherous Slave Girl”)
The Book of Lu’lu’a and Shatira
The Book of Najda and Zu’um
The Book of Salma and Su`ad
The Book of Sawab and Surur (“Justice” and “Happiness”)
The Book of al-Dahma’ and Ni`ma (“the Dark One” and “the Gift from God”)
Amer notes parallels with the Kama-sutra (from which some elements may have been borrowed) where lesbians formed groups, held meetings, and led schools of pleasure for other women. The 13th c Tunisian writer al-Tifashi offers descriptions of such a community and the teachings of its leader Rose [note: I assume this is a translation of her name]. Organized communities are also implied in the (otherwise negative) writings of Leo Africanus (15th c, from Granada but writing about Morocco) about a community of female diviners in Fez for which he uses the name suhaqiyat.
Al-Tifashi describes teachings about sexual practices, such as the a woman should “snort heartily while wiggling lasciviously” during sex and that lovemaking should be accompanied verbally by “wheezing, panting, purring, murmurs, and heartbreaking sighs.” He also includes a detailed, step-by-step description of a sexual technique called “the saffron massage.” [Note: I’ve included a translation of the full passage in this entry for Amer 2001.]
The presence of this material in medieval Arabic literature does not negate the predominance of a male focus in that literature, or the phallocentric point of view from which much of the lesbian material is written. But what is notable is that lesbianism is not presented as a sin or crime, and that it is included as a topic worthy of intellectual discussion. It is included under the generally positive attitude toward eroticism, including the view that sexuality is essential to religious piety. This contrasts with Christian ascetic attitudes toward sexuality which influenced Western attitudes in general.
Within the larger picture of Islamic sexual morality, the most vehemently condemned sin is adultery (zina) which is defined specifically as a man having heterosexual vaginal sex with a woman he does not have legal rights to (i.e., she isn’t his wife or concubine). Zina is universally condemned while homosexuality (liwat, which refers to male relations) is treated more ambiguously even when viewed negatively. The social focus on the cult of female virginity and preserving the “sexual honor” of women, meant that lesbianism was at times encouraged (as in ibn Falita, 14th c) as helping to preserve women’s sexual honor, because only heterosexual activity could damage that honor.
Legal attitudes began to shift in the later medieval period. In contexts where homosexual behavior did come under scrutiny, attitudes varied widely, as the Qur’an did not mention specific penalties for it. Local custom might treat it harshly, or distinguish between married and unmarried, active and passive, when assigning penalties. But note that this discussion applies specifically to liwat which was defined specifically as anal penetration by a man. Activities such as kissing and caressing or intercrural intercourse did not fall under the same penalties even if discouraged.
Within this context, sahq was generally classified as less serious than liwat and the least serious form of zina (if classified as zina at all) and penalties--if they existed--were much less severe. In many legal compendia, sahq is not addressed at all.
Sexual Categorization
All of this being said, it’s important not to equate medieval Arabic concepts of female same-sex sexuality with modern Western concepts of lesbianism and sexual identity. Despite the proliferation of terms for various sexual practices and identities (ones relating to women that were not previously mentioned include mutazarrifat “elegant courtly lady-lovers”, nisa’ mudhakkarat “masculinized women”) there are no medieval Arabic terms for the unmarked state of bisexuality or for heterosexuality. (That is, a specific orientation toward homosexuality was considered a marked state in terms of vocabulary.) The contemporary Arabic word used generically for “sexuality” didn’t acquire this meaning until the early 20th century, when it was used for Arabic translations of Western sexological texts. The adoption of Western medical/psychological theories of sexuality has led to the replacement of traditional Arabic terms for sexual variety with terms that offer literal translations of concepts like “homosexual”, “heterosexual”, and “queer”.
Medieval Arab Lesbian-Like Women
When we expand the scope of interest to “lesbian-like” women in medieval Arabic literature, we encounter entire genres of cross-dressed heroines, female warriors, Amazons, slave girls dressed up as boys, sufi rituals, and women’s courtly traditions, all of which may have provided space for homoerotic expression. Many of these contexts have been recognized in medieval European writings as related to homosexual expression (“second-degree homosexuality” as labeled by one scholar) but have not been viewed similarly in the study of medieval Arabic writings.
One could argue that, given the direct and explicit treatment of homosexuality in Arabic literature, the need to search for it in more tangential forms is unnecessary. But such writings provide a richer and more complex understanding of same-sex sexuality.
Such examples include the 9th c tradition in the caliphate court of Baghdad for ghulamiyyat, slave girls who dressed as boys. The superficial purpose was to hijack male same-sex desire and bend it toward de facto heterosexual practice. While the fashion did not directly include women’s desire for ghulamiyyat, it could have offered a context for stepping outside gender expectations (and was imitated by some upper-class women of Baghdad).
Female cross-dressing is relatively common in medieval Arabic literature, not only poetry addressed to ghulamiyyat but also folk romances (in the same genre as the Thousand and One Nights) dating from the 11th century on, which include many examples of cross-dressing women warriors and Amazons. These include characters in the story of Qamar al-Zaman and the Princess Boudour, or stories of the island of Waq, inhabited exclusively by women. (A list of story titles covering similar themes is given.) The presence of cross-dressed heroines typically gives rise to ambiguous situations of desire or identity, and sometimes include women who express disinterest in marriage alongside erotic interest in women. “I do neither long for marriage nor for men, but my heart has an inclination for the ladies,” says the character Alûf in one tale. (These characters often end up marrying men anyway, given the nature of the genre, but the tales offer same-sex love as an alternative, if only in theory.)
One of the most significant and interesting cultural practices in this context is that of zarf, a tradition translated as “courtliness” or “refinement” that had its origins in Medina in the pre- and early Islamic era and spread to major urban centers. The tradition (practiced by both sexes) focused on sophistication in clothing, food, language and home decoration, as well as valuing intellectual debate around topics of love, expressed through poetry, song, dance, and stories.
Women were important in the development of zarf culture, holding literary salons in which the elite of different classes mingled. While these women did not necessarily have homoerotic interests, they enjoyed an independence from male control that created possibilities. And in some contexts, the term mutazarrifat (reined/courtly ladies) was clearly used as a synonym for (or at least an allusion to) “lesbians”. The 11th c Andalusian Wallada, daughter of the caliph of Cordoba, was an archetype of the upper class praticioner of zarf and an example of the degree of women’s sexual freedom that was possible in that era. She is known to have had at least one named female lover as well as male lovers.
More common among the known practitioners of zarf were qaynas (“singing slave girls") who, because of their social status, were more free to express themselves as part of public culture and who achieved fame via intellectual skills and beauty. Their connection to lesbian-like categories comes from being described as mutazarrifat, the same terms applied to cultured upper-class women with lesbian-like interests. [Note: Amer doesn’t give specific examples, but if you follow the tag “zarîfa/tharifa” more specific textual examples can be found.]
Modern Implications
Amer concludes with a discussion of the difficulty of researching homoerotic topics in historic Arabic literature--and especially the difficulty for female scholars--due to censorship, suppression, misogyny, and the historic dominance of male scholars in the field of translation and publication. Works that touch on lesbianism have been made unavailable, have had those sections removed during publication, either due to modern prejudice against homosexual topics in general, or because the material was being translated and published by men who were narrowly interested in male homosexual topics. All this means that there’s an untapped wealth of medieval Arabic material about women’s same-sex eroticism waiting to be shared.
Time period: Post-Roman/Early MedievalMedieval (general)7th c9th c10th c11th c14th cPlace: IslamicateIraqMoroccoSpainArabicMisc tags: sahqzarîfa/tharifamedical treatisescourt casesex between womensexual techniquesemotional /romantic bonds between womensexual/romantic desiremartial activityamazonscross-dressingcross-gender roles/behaviorvocabulary (miscellaneous)Event / person: The Book of HindNuzhat al-Albâb fîmâ lâ Yûjad fî Kitâb (The Diversion of the Hearts by What is Not to Be Found in Any Book) (Ahmad Ibn Yusuf al-Tîfâshî)Leo AfricanusQamar al-Zaman and the Princess BoudourWallada
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March 24, 2019
What Do Awards Mean?
Alpennia Logo
(This is an essay I've had kicking around in draft for a while, but the first couple paragraphs exaplain why I decided to polish it up and post it.)
I've been watching the most recent Twitter conversations about the Romance Writers of America RITA award process, specifically the ways in which it demonstrably reinforces a very narrow (and very very white) vision of award-worthiness, in part due to the crowd-sourced "popular choice" nature of the process. In the past, it hasn't just been a matter of clearly excellent books by authors of color and/or featuring non-white characters getting overlooked, but of books with immensely problematic themes and characters getting elevated.
I have no dog in that fight. I'm decidedly removed from the RWA award process, primarily because I have yet to write anything that would be solidly recognized as "a romance novel" in structure. But also because the very tentative steps RWA has made toward acknowledging and accepting queer romance wouldn't make me feel welcomed if I did. (And those steps for the most part fall solidly in the field of "women writing m/m romance" so even the current level of acceptance doesn't feel welcoming to me.) But this post isn't specifically about RWA or about romance, it's about how an award system -- any award system -- gains or loses prestige, and consequently gains or loses value to both the authors and readers who use it as an index of excellence.
What the RITA awards are flirting with is embracing irrelevance.
Very few awards achieve prestige from the start. You can't build it in by fiat, though you may be able to get a leg up by borrowing an existing level of prestige either via the founding organization, the decision makers, or the initial works and people who are recognized.
If you are a well-known, well-respected book-related organization and you decide to create a new award or awards program, you can start with existing prestige that will be lent to the recipients of the awards and coast on that momentum until the award program itself either justifies the borrowed respect or fucks up enough to lose it.
If you begin a brand new award program by bringing in highly respected judges with a track record of reliably evaluating and identifying excellence in writing (for whatever interpretation of "excellence" you're aiming for), then people are going to start with a certain level of good will toward the outcome of your process, even if (or especially when) awards go to unexpected or unknown works and writers.
If you start an award program that recognizes the excellence of works or writers that your audience already considers excellent...well, this one's tricker. How transparent is your process? Are you going to be perceived as trying to borrow glory or ride coattails? Are you also recognizing less known works and authors within a process that leads people to check them out and agree that they share characteristics with the already-famous winners? This method can work, though people may reserve judgment a bit longer.
But if you're an unknown, with a selection process that involves people of unknown or unproven judgment (which may include crowd-sourced judgment), presenting awards to works or authors who don't have an existing track record of performance...well, let's just say that the prestige and value of your award will need to prove itself over time and in the pudding. (An example of a relatively new award that has yet to establish this sort of track record--and consequently hasn't yet developed the prestige it hopes to attain, is the Dragon Awards given out in a number of genre categories at Dragoncon.)
If you're an existing awards program that regulary, consistently elevates works that have glaring problems, or that regularly and consistently overlooks eligible candidates that the majority of your audience considers to be better than the works/authors that won, you're flirting with losing whatever existing importance you have in the field. And if writers of recognized excellence decline to participate in your award system, sooner or later, your award winners might start thinking that what you're offering isn't much of an honor after all.
But how is an author--especially a brand new author or one who doesn't have the benefit of mentors in the field--supposed to navigate the multitude of book awards to determine which are worth their interest (and especially, which are worth the expense of participating)? How do you figure out which awards or nominee/finalist lists are going to mean something to your audience in the long run and which boil down to empty self-congratulation? And especially, which will be a red flag to people in the know that you're either naïve or think that your audience is?
Anyone can create an award. Anyone can hand out certificates and shiny gold "award winner" stickers for your book covers. In fact, there's practically an industry built around this awards program model. But let's look at a few examples, just to explore some of the possibilities. Because outside of simple name-brand recognition there aren't hard and fast rules for identifying awards the confer respect and awards that maybe send a message you didn't mean to send.
Being an award nominee or finalist (never mind winner) can provide at least three types of usefulness for your career as an author.
The actual cachet of having an independent entity say, "This is a book that we consider to be worth your attention."
Internal permission to talk about your book--especially useful for those of us who feel guilty any time we do self-promotion. Nomination/finalist/award status is a socially permitted context for doing so.
Convincing your audience that you have received #1 regardless of the status of the award in question.
Within these purposes, the different types of status (e.g., nomination vs. finalist) and the nature and exclusivity of the award itself will affect reception of your promotion to the extent that your audience knows about differences in that status/nature. For the undiscerning audience, "My book is has been nominated for the Arglebargle Award!" may be impressive. The more discerning audience wants to know exactly what the process is to be nominated for the Arglebargle and whether there is any filtering involved. If they feel that the Arglebargle (or the status of "nominee") is functionally meaningless--and especially if they suspect the author knows that--then the claim can have the opposite of the intended effect.
For example, among Science Fiction and Fantasy awards, the Hugo Award is pretty far up there in terms of established prestige. And being a Hugo Finalist is usually treated as being only very slightly less prestigeous than being a winner. But being a Hugo "nominee"? There's a reason that "nominee" isn't an recognized status for the award, because everyone who's a paid member of the relevant conventions is a nominator and all it takes is one person (including you) putting your work into the nomination process to technically be a "nominee". (Though it takes a certain threshold for you to be able to prove it, as even the list of the long tail of nominations that is released after the awards are presented has a numeric cut-off below which titles/names are not identified.) So while it certainly is A Thing for some people to puff themselves off as a "Hugo nominee" because their best friend Bob said they nominated them, it's a thing that will tend to attract derision.
Similarly, there are well respected book awards that require an entry fee for consideration (though see more about entry fees below) as well as submission of copies of the work for consideration. Technically, anyone who pays the fee and submits their work is then "a nominee" for the award. But it does seem a bit odd for an author to treat that status as being an honor it itself. (There's a fuzzier line where maybe your publisher has selected specific works to submit for consideration for the award and has paid the fees. In that case, it may well be a mark of your publisher's confidence in your work to do so, and something to be pround of. But it still isn't a status that has emerged from the award selection process itself.)
Let's talk about award entry fees. Fees exist for a very practical purpose: manageability of the numeric logistics. (Also: profit. But we'll get to that.)
Crowd-sourced award systems, where large numbers of people have volunteered to participate in the nomination and selection process, and who obtain works to evaluate out of their own pockets manage these logistics by the distributed and voluntary nature of the system. There will be overhead for data management, the physical awards, and the context of presentation, but it's more or less a fixed cost and doesn't increase with the numer of potential works/people eligible for consideration.
At the opposite end of the scale, a juried award where a relatively small number of people have committed to read and judge all eligible works has to have some system for making that a manageable workload. Even in the rare case where the judges are being compensated for their time. The system might involve a separate pre-filtering process (of unspecified nature). It might involve procedural hoops that need to be jumped through that not only reduce the number of people who consider it worth the effort, but that--when applied by many award systems--reduce the number of awards systems an author is willing/able to do the work of submitting for. (It used to be that the sheer cost and effort of mailing in multiple physical copies of a book for consideration was enough of a hoop. E-books have changed this dynamic significantly.) But a very practical system that not only sets an entry filter but also supports the incidental expenses of the award system is to have an entry fee. It forces authors to consider not only whether the award itself would be worth the investment should they win, but also forces them to consider which of the many existing fee-based award systems it might make sense to focus on. Ideally, ones their works are suitable for and that would provide genuine prestige from being associated with.
It's easy to calculate that if an author can enter a book award program with no fee, and can submit e-books for consideration, and IF the award program has genuine prestige and no way to crowd-source the work of evaluation, it's going to burn out the judges on the first go-round. We hear a lot of bashing of "gate-keepers" these days, but gates are a way of keeping logistics to a manageable number. It's going to happen one way or another or it isn't sustainable.
If some respectable award systems require entry fees, does that mean that having an entry fee shouldn't be used when judging whether to enter your work for award consideration? Absolutely not. But it does mean you need to look at two factors.
Does the award actually convey prestige? I don't mean "Could you get some publicity mileage out of being able to say your book has won an Arglebargle Award?" I mean, "Have you ever heard of any of the previous winners or their authors? Have previous winners been recogized in other contexts besides the Arglebargle? Do previous winners show any other signs of being quality books that you would be proud to be associated with?"
Can you follow the money and see how it works? How transparent are the numbers involved? How many books are submitted for consideration? What percentage end up as winners/finalists/honorable mentions? Other than the entry fee, what other financial "opportunities" does the award involve? Are winners/finalists encouraged to pay for special certificates or award stickers? For publicity packages?
Yes, I'm calling out a specific awards system business model here. It's one that I see a lot of new and especially self-published authors lining up for, not realizing that experienced professionals wouldn't touch those awards with a ten foot pole. There are a LOT of awards out there that use this model. Often they identify themselves with a specific city or region, or have some other distinguishing "faceplate". But the model is so cookie-cutter one would be unsurprised to find that many are fronts for a single organization or are franchises of some sort. (Or, I know for a fact, some are set up by well-meaning but naïve people who think this model is simply an accepted practice and don't realize why they get a lot of side-eye for it.) Here are the hallmarks to look for:
The award has a lot of categories. A LOT. They are highly-specific categories. A single book is likely to fit into several of them.
The entry fee is startlingly high. Like, in the $100 range. Though you may get a "discount" for entering the same book into multiple categories at a time.
Each of the many categories has a single winner but may have many finalists. The award organization treats being a finalist as being almost as good as being a winner. Finalists are encouraged to think it's a great achievement.
There is no transparency regarding how many works were submitted to any given category. There is no way to know whether, in fact, there were any submissions that are NOT winners or finalists. The selection process for winners and finalists is opaque. This may be framed as protecting the judges' privacy, but for all you know, they drew slips out of a hat.
Winners and finalists are strongly encouraged to buy book-cover stickers proclaiming the book's achievement. Minimum order, 100 stickers. A brief and unscientific survey of current award programs of this sort indicate that they charge anywhere from $20-$40 for each roll of 100 stickers. A quick check of a promtional sticker printing services suggests that the award organization might be paying as little as $2 for each of thos 100-sticker rolls. Winner and finalist certificates for your wall are usually also offered at a similar mark-up. Do the math.
Rather than end on that note, I want to get back to the question of how, as an author, you evaluate whether to focus your efforts (or your hopes) on a particular award program. (And for many of the most prestigeous award programs, you have absolutely no control over whether your work will be considered. So it's a matter of "hopes" rather than "efforts".) One approach is to look at past winners and finalists of the award and ask yourself, "Is this company I would be proud to be in?" And perhaps more importantly, "Is this work that I would proud to lose to?"
This is where we circle back around to the current RITA controversy. And to similar backroom discussions about other award programs. An award program can embrace its own irrelevance if too many people look at the works being recognized--or the works being excluded--and find that the answer is "no."
I'll confess that when my debut novel came out, I put it in for consideration by a variety of award programs. (Though none of the "buy our finalist stickers" ones!) In part, it was simply the exhuberance of being a real author and wanting that experience. In part it was feeling out the landscape. But I also took a look at the results, the track records, and the contexts of those award programs and made some different choices going forward.
Only one of my books has won an award: the Gaylactic Spectrum Award given to Mother of Souls. I look at the past winners and finalists of the Spectrum and I can sincerely say that I would have been proud to have lost to any of them. That's what makes it possible for me to be proud of winning.
Major category: ThinkingTags: awards
March 20, 2019
Floodtide Has a Cover
Things move very quickly once we get into discussions of cover design! What do you think?
(I confess I do feel left out of "cover reveal culture", which doesn't seem to be a thing among lesbian presses. I always find out what my cover looks like when it pops up online.)
ETA: Almost forgot -- I also have cover copy!
The streets are a perilous place for a young laundry maid dismissed without a character for indecent acts. Roz knew the end of the path for a country girl alone in the city of Rotenek. A desperate escape in the night brings her to the doorstep of Dominique the dressmaker and the hope of a second chance beyond what she could have imagined. Roz’s apprenticeship with the needle, under the patronage of the Royal Thaumaturgist, wasn’t supposed to include learning magic, but Celeste, the dressmaker’s daughter, draws Roz into the mysterious world of the charm-wives. When floodwaters and fever sweep through the lower city, Celeste’s magical charms could bring hope and healing to the forgotten poor of Rotenek, but only if Roz can claim the help of some unlikely allies.
Set in the magical early 19th century world of Alpennia, Floodtide tells an independent tale that interweaves with the adventures.
Major category: PromotionPublications: FloodtideTags: promotionFloodtidecover
March 17, 2019
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 32d - Laudomia Loves Margaret (Reprise)
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 32d - Laudomia Loves Margaret
(Originally aired 2019/03/23 - listen here)
This week, I’d planned to do the next installment discussing the various ways people in history created definitions and categories for gender and sexuality. But I’m in the middle of novel revisions and came down with a miserable head cold during a critical free weekend, as you may be able to tell from my voice, and I simply don’t have the time or brain power to write a new show. So instead I’m going to reprise another of the early episodes. I hope you enjoy this essay, whether you’re one of the lucky people who’s heard it before or whether this is your first time. This show originally aired on December 31, 2016.
[Note: I have not transcribed the poems that are quoted in the podcast for copyright reasons. The translations I used are from: Eisenbichler, Konrad. “Laudomia Forteguerri Loves Margaret of Austria” in Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages (ed. By Francesca Canadé Sautman & Pamela Sheingorn), Palgrave, New York, 2001.
In Plato’s myth of the origin of love--a myth that accounts for both opposite-sex and same-sex love--he describes how all people were originally part of a double body, split from each other and eternally seeking their other half. In his 1541 dialogue titled “On the Beauty of Women”, Italian philosopher Agnolo Firenzuola expands on this, saying: "Those who were female in both halves, or are descended from those who were, love each other’s beauty, some in purity and holiness, as the elegant Laudomia Forteguerra loves the most illustrious Margaret of Austria, some lasciviously, as in ancient times Sappho from Lesbos, and in our own times in Rome the great prostitute Cecilia Venetiana. This type of woman by nature spurns marriage and flees from intimate conversation with us men.”
Now I’m curious to know a lot more about Cecilia Venetiana, but alas this is the extent of her footprint in history. However we know a great deal about Laudomia Forteguerra and Margaret of Austria. Firenzuola was a contemporary and friend of theirs and no doubt was careful in how he described their relationship. The Seigneur de Brantôme, writing half a century later in France, and knowing only rumor and gossip, asserted that their love fell in the lascivious category. What evidence do we have to search for the truth between these two claims?
Laudomia was a member of the ruling families of the republic of Sienna in Italy. You must understand that 16th century Italy was far from a unified country. It was made up of a lot of separate states, often at war with each other. Large chunks were ruled by the Vatican, known collectively as the Papal States. Other chunks were ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor, who controled lands in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, and elsewhere, in addition to Italy. Other parts of Italy were independent, such as Florence under the Medicis or Mantua under the Gonzagas.
Sienna was another one of these states, ruled by a coalition of noble families and struggling to maintain their independence from the greater powers all around them. Laudomia Forteguerra, as I have said, was Siennese. She was famed for being beautiful and educated--a true Renaissance woman in every sense of the term. Scholars dedicated books to her and her own poetry was highly praised. Among those poems are five sonnets, addressed and dedicated to Margaret of Austria, expressing her devotion, admiration, and love.
I’m unable to pronounce Italian well enough to give you the original version. The translation, alas, does not rhyme and scan. But here’s the sense of one of her poems.
[Poem: Alas for my beautiful sun]
But who is Margaret of Austria? And why is Laudomia writing her poetry?
In 1521, a serving woman named Johanna Maria van der Gheynst, became the mistress of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. For those not familiar with the intricacies of the genealogies of 16th century royalty, you know how Queen Elizabeth the first of England’s older sister Mary was married to King Phillip II of Spain? Well, Charles V was Phillip’s father. It gets really complicated and I’ll try to keep the political discussion simple.
So Emperor Charles had an affair with a servant and a year later she produced a daughter, who was named Margaret and placed in the care of her aunt (Charles’s sister), also named Margaret of Austria, who was serving as governor of the Netherlands at the time. (When I first encountered this description I was, I confess, a little stunned. Wait: a woman was governor of the Netherlands? So obviously there’s a lot about Renaissance history that even I, an amateur historian, have somehow missed.)
An emperor’s children are never insignificant, even the bastards--and for the first several years of her life, Margaret is referred to in the household records simply as “the little bastard”. When Margaret was three, there were thoughts of betrothing her to a bastard of the Medici family. The Medicis were extremely important in Italy at this time, not only ruling Florence, but supplying several popes. It’s also important to know that 16th century popes were not exactly a model of propriety and virtue. You’re going to meet several bastard sons of popes in this story. But I get ahead of myself.
As I said, when Margaret was three, there was talk of betrothing her to a Medici. When she was four, she was briefly betrothed to the heir of the Duchy of Ferrara. When she was seven, it’s back to the Medicis again, but a different one. This time she was betrothed to the pope’s nephew (some said, actually his son) named Alessandro, a man ten years her senior with a terrible reputation. But this was business. Margaret the bastard would become Duchess of Florence, bringing an extensive dowry of lands and the military support of the Holy Roman Empire not only for Florence but for the Medici papacy.
The year after that, the Empire occupies Sienna and establishes a military garrison there. Remember Sienna? Where Laudomia lives? They aren’t happy about this.
When Margaret is eight, her future husband, Alessandro dei Medici travels to the Netherlands to meet her. This is also the first occasion when she meets her father the emperor face to face. The marriage is scheduled to take place four years later and preparations are made for a grand procession to convey Margaret to Italy. She settles in Naples for the interim.
And then the pope dies. He is succeeded by a member of the Farnese family who ruled in Parma. Now the Medicis aren’t looking like quite the same hot property that they were before. There is some dithering about the marriage but the Florentines apply pressure and Margaret marries Alessandro when she’s 13. Although she is installed as Duchess of Florence it’s quite likely that this is still a marriage in name only. Child marriages among medieval and Renaissance nobility often came with an understanding that the marriage wouldn’t be consummated until the bride was a reasonable age--something that isn’t always understood from the bare facts.
Whatever the nature of Margaret’s marriage, it didn’t last long. Alessandro, as I’ve said, had a terrible reputation, both personally and politically. Half a year later, he was assassinated by his own cousin to the cheers of the citizens of Florence.
Margaret doesn’t have long to enjoy her widowhood. The next year she is betrothed to Ottavio Farnese. Remember that the new pope is a Farnese? This is his grandson. Margaret is sixteen and this time she’s older than her future husband, by four years. She’s on record as despising him and trying all sorts of things to get out of the marriage. But she is taken to Rome in preparation, and as she travels to Rome, she passes through Siena and spends three weeks there.
Remember Siena? Where Laudomia lives? At this time, Laudomia is 23. She is married and has produced a son. And we know that Laudomia and Margaret meet on this occasion.
A contemporary of theirs says they also met three years earlier and describes it this way:
At their first meeting, “as soon as Laudomia saw Madama [that is, Margaret], and was seen by her, suddenly with the most ardent flames of Love each burned for the other, and the most manifest sign of this was that they went to visit each other many times.” On one of those subsequent meetings he describes, “They renewed most happily their sweet Loves. And today more than ever, with notes from one to the other they warmly maintain them.”
Alas none of this correspondence has survived, only the poems. Here’s another one of the poems that Laudomia wrote for Margaret.
[Poem: Happy plant]
Margaret continued on to Rome and set out to win the hearts of the people of Rome (who weren’t all that fond of the Farnese pope, and by association, of her future husband Ottavio). She has her own villa there in Rome, which she fills with scholars and artists. Although she tries to delay the marriage, she is tricked into receiving a ring that is then held to be a token of her acceptance. Relying on the support of the people of Rome and the political indifference of her father the emperor, she refuses to consummate the marriage.
By this time, Laudomia has finished writing her sonnets to Margaret.
Political satires at the time accused the Farneses of all sorts of sexual vices and Margaret was accused of being a lesbian in this context, an accusation that may have been mere mud-flinging or may have been based on actual knowledge. What was definitely noted was that, although Margaret did obey her father’s ultimatum and produced twin sons for her husband, she returned to living separately from him after that. And in an age of sexual scandal, her name is never associated with any male lover and at least one political commenter notes that she has no interest in men. (He intended it as a positive comment on her virtue.)
Italian politics are getting even more violent. Margaret takes up her position as Duchess in Parma and finds herself besieged by her neighbors the Gonazagas. Ironically her father the emperor supports them in this because Margaret’s husband has started playing political footsie with France. Let’s skip the details of what France is doing in all this, except to note that Siena--remember Siena?--is also calling on French support against the Holy Roman Empire and it, too, comes under siege as a result.
During the siege of Siena, Laudomia is recorded as having valiantly organized the women of the city to help strengthen the city walls. But eventually the combined forces of Florence and the Empire win out and Sienna falls.
Laudomia never appears by name in any records after that date. The only tantalizing clue we have is that 18 years later, Laudomia’s second husband makes a will that makes reference to a living wife. (It is possible, of course, that he has remarried.)
After all the political uproar settles down for a bit, Margaret and Ottavio make peace with the emperor and Margaret travels to the Netherlands with her one surviving son to place him in the guardianship of her half-brother Phillip, in whose favor Charles has just retired from the imperial throne. Margaret ends up staying in the Netherlands and even serves a couple of stints as governor there before eventually returning to Italy to spend the rest of her life.
This is all a great deal about politics with not quite so much about the love between Laudomia and Margaret. But we know a great deal more about the former than we do the latter. We do know that they met and that they loved each other, by some understanding of the word “love.” We know that contemporaries who admired them considered their love to be that of two souls finding their other half. We know that Laudomia wrote poems to Margaret that used the language and imagery of romantic love--imagery that would be considered to imply sexual desire if used from a man to a woman. And we know that Margaret was notorious for disdaining and avoiding sexual relations with her husband, even when that avoidance caused significant personal difficulties.
That seems quite enough as a basis for imagining what a love affair between two Renaissance noblewomen might look like. I have *ahem* imagined just such a thing in my short story “Where My Heart Goes” which is included in the historic romance anthology Through the Hourglass, edited by Sacchi Green and Patty G. Henderson. And I even dared to imagine how to give them a happy ending.
Major category: LHMPPublications: Where My Heart GoesTags: LHMPpodcast
February 27, 2019
Look! Listen! It's me at SBTB!
Sometimes you send a query out into the universe and the universe says, "We'd love to have you on our podcast!" Check out this episode of the Smart Bitches Trashy Books podcast, where I talk about the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, the current field of lesbian historical fiction, and many other things. If you aren't familiar with Smart Bitches Trashy Books and you're a fan of romance novels, you should definitely check out their website and podcast.
Major category: PromotionTags: podcastLHMPguest-blog
February 24, 2019
Lord Byron is not as relevant as I thought
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
I’ll confess that I thought this article was going to be a lot more relevant to lesbian history than it was, given the inclusion of “Tommies” in the title. I’m including this brief summary because I already had the article scheduled, but the content is solidly focused on male issues and topics. In that context, it’s a fascinating look at shifting images of masculinity and the part that institutionalized male homoerotic encounters and relationships played in those images. But the reference to "tommies" is minor and entirely in relation to male desires.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #239 Neff 2002 Bitches, Mollies, and Tommies
About LHMP
Full citation:
Neff, D. S. 2002. “Bitches, Mollies, and Tommies: Byron, Masculinity, and the History of Sexualities” in Journal of the History of Sexuality 11:3 pp.395-438
Neff looks at shifting concepts and images of masculinity in England through the lens of Lord Byron (1788-1824) who stands in for an era when both masculinity and aristocracy were receiving increased scrutiny as privileged classes. Interpretations of homoerotic elements in Byron’s biography have been contested ground as he fails to fit neatly into the modern categories of sexuality. Neff declines to take a position on categorization and instead looks at the details of Byron’s life that raise the question in the first place.
In Western concepts of gender and sexuality, the 18th century is viewed by some historians as the era of a shift between the view that male and female represented a continuum of a single category, to a view that they represented entirely distinct categories and, in that case, what the definite distinctions were. In parallel was the development of a distinct category of “adult men with homosexual desires” as an identity rather than part of a continuum of behavior. [Note: The timepoint when we see this shift from “acts” to “identities” has been moved around by different historians, with the identification of new types of evidence. Neff gives a nod to some views that “identities” can be identified much earlier than the early modern period.]
Part of the older system included traditions of homosocial environments (such as all-male educational institutions) creating “male” and “female” roles, that could have sexualized as well as gendered aspects. Within these contexts, age or status influenced the acceptability of “female” roles, but participation in the system did not change men’s self-perception in terms of gender identity.
Prior to the emergence of the “molly” identity for men with homosexual desires, the performance of masculinity could encompass the “fop”--the man who delighted in exaggerated or sophisticated esthetics. But it later came to be associated with femininity and cast suspicion on the fop’s sexuality.
Byron’s public reputation took hits from this shift (though it was scarcely the only hazard) as he continued to operate within the older model where such flamboyance was unrelated to assumptions about one’s sexual role.
[Note: There is a fascinating digression about coded language in Byron’s correspondence that referred to sexual desire for, and encounters with, young men. It’s a useful reminder of contexts in which non-normative sexuality can be erased or denied in the records simply by taking textual evidence ruthlessly literally.]
The discussion of “tommies” (typically understood as referring to women with homoerotic desires) occurs in the context of Byron’s relationships with women who engaged in masculine cross-dressing, with the suggestion that they provided a bridge to Byron’s underlying preference for male partners.
And...that’s pretty much the point when I gave up on the article and skimmed to the end without finding anything else that made it more relevant. Sorry. You can’t win them all.
Time period: 18th c19th cPlace: EnglandMisc tags: Tommy (as slang for lesbian)
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