This finishes up the cluster of articles I've been reading on lesbianism in pornography. The current article points out an interesting contrast in the view of lesbian sex depicted in pornography versus that depicted in "learned" texts, especially medical manuals.
LHMP
Blog entry
Because the LHMP entries aren't set up to include images (I could have sworn they were, but I'm not seeing the controls currently), in addition to including a link to the Wikimedia Commons file for the engraving of Read and Bonny, I'm including it here.
Just two more posts from the group of articles on pornography. Then I'll have a fun series on a primary source, which will tie in with a planned podcast. (Got to get working on that podcast script!)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 336 – Aye, There’s the Rub - transcript
(Originally aired 2026/02/21)
This podcast is going to include discussions of sexual techniques, as well as vocabulary. Just FYI.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 335 - On the Shelf for February 2026 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2026/02/09)
Welcome to On the Shelf for February 2026.
Having concluded that I'm going to postpone the On the Shelf podcast for a day or two in hopes that I'll get all the story contracts back and can announce the line-up in the show, I'm finishing up the last of the current prepared set of blogs with this exploration into why lesbian convent pornography was quite so popular in 18th century France.
Two points make a line and two posts clarify which cluster of articles I'm working on currently. Yes, it's a pornography theme again.
I really needed to have read this article before I wrote the trope podcast episode about familial models in f/f relationships.
This is a fascinatingly detailed article and quotes extensively from the original records. (This added a number of items to my growing database of f/f-related sexual vocabulary.) I'm always interested in evidence that the historic understanding of same-sex sexuality was varied and subject to challenge.
Ouch! I hadn't meant to skip posting blogs while I was traveling, but somehow I got distracted, despite having everything lined up and ready to go. It might seem strange that I spend so much attention on research into historic intersex issues, given that my topic is lesbianism. I'll discuss the "why" in detail in my book, but the simple explanation is that ambiguous gender creates a context for understanding how people defined and reacted to gender anomaly. And one of the historic attitudes toward same-sex desire was that it was a gender anomaly, rather than a sexual orientation.
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