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Thursday, January 29, 2026 - 09:00
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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Full citation:
Mara-McKay, Nico. 2018. “Becoming Gendered: Two Medieval Approaches to Intersex Gender Assignment” in Prandium: The Journal of Historical Studies vol. 7, no. 1.
This is a fairly superficial paper comparing differing approaches to assigning gender to intersex people within Christian and Islamic contexts in the pre-modern period. (It’s an undergraduate paper, so the lack of depth is understandable.)
Although the default situation was for gender to be assigned at birth and remain fixed and stable across a person’s lifetime, in the case of intersex people, the assignment of gender might be delayed or reanalyzed (and potentially reassigned) later in life. Approaches to this analysis and assignment are discussed in theological, medical, and legal texts and had significant social and legal consequences for the individual.
The paper notes that the standard terms used in medieval texts for intersex people are “hermaphrodite” or “androgyne” but that these terms had a broader scope and application than specifically people with ambiguous anatomy, also covering behavioral attributes that were considered to cross gender categories.
The article reviews historic theories of gender development (one- and two-sex models) and how they affected whether intersex conditions were considered “natural” or monstrous.
Roman/Christian law codes typically specified that intersex people were to be assigned to “the sex which predominates,” generally in terms of anatomical development, but sometimes taking into account behavioral characteristics. Once assigned a gender, a person was not permitted to change unless a legal proceeding determined that the original assignment was in error. One significant concern in assigning gender was to avoid the possibility of sodomy. Anecdotes are given of cases where gender was reassigned later in life due to new information about the person’s anatomy.
Islamic law was concerned with maintaining gender segregation in society, however as children were not considered sexual beings under Islam, in completely ambiguous cases, gender assignment could be delayed until puberty. There were also possible arrangements for an intersex person to literally occupy a space between male spaces and female spaces in social contexts, to maintain appropriate separation, however if no clear evidence was available the person was usually classified as female.
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Saturday, January 17, 2026 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 333 - Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 19: Age Gap - transcript
(Originally aired 2026/01/17 - listen here)
I confess this is going to be a bit skimpier than my usual trope episodes. I had planned an entirely different topic for this month’s show, but it’s turning out to be far more involved and elaborate than originally intended. And on top of that I’m about to be traveling for a couple weeks, so I needed something I could put together quickly without a lot of background research.
So today we’re going to talk about age-gap romances. The “Our F/Favorite Tropes” series examines popular historic romance tropes from the point of view of female couples and considering both the similarities and differences from other types of couples. In literature, a trope is a recurring motif that is understood to carry a certain expected structure and meaning. The trope could be a situation, such as forced proximity, or a character type, such as the lovable rogue. It could be a type of relationship, such as a second-chance romance, or even a mini-script, such as a Cinderella story.
I tend to see discussions and tags for age-gap romances mostly in the context of contemporary lesbian romance, and there are solid historic reasons for that—but not because age-gap relationships don’t exist for male-female or male-male couples, but rather that they don’t tend to be viewed as noteworthy in those contexts.
Historically, the combination of patriarchy and the valorizing of female virginity at marriage has meant that male-female marriages default to the man being older than the woman. “Older” doesn’t automatically get classified as an age gap—a number that gets hotly debated and is variable depending on the absolute age of the participants. Patterns in age at marriage could differ considerably across time and geography. Europe tended to fall into two general patterns, the so-called “Mediterranean pattern” where women married relatively young, usually to significantly older husbands, leaving young men often in a lengthy unmarried state waiting to acquire sufficient wealth or social power to be competitive. A number of other economic factors tended to accompany this pattern, but we’ll stick to the age factor for now. The other pattern—the so-called “northern pattern”—involved the man and woman being of roughly similar age (though still the man was typically older), with women marrying later, typically after working outside the home to help accumulate a nest egg to set up the married household. But even in regions where the northern pattern held for middle and working classes, it was often the case that the upper classes married their daughters off younger to significantly older men.
Combined with the tendency of historic romance to concentrate on upper-class characters, this means that—whether it’s a classic by Jane Austen or written by a contemporary author—it’s normal to see a pairing where the woman is just coming out into society in her late teens or early 20s and the man is mature and established and well into his 30s. Austen’s Emma is 20 years old while her eventual groom Knightley is 37 and the near-parental relationship between them is considered unremarkable.
All of this is to say that an age gap in a heterosexual historic romance is not noteworthy enough to be considered a trope…unless it’s the woman who’s older, and then it becomes an entirely different trope, the “cougar” or “older woman.” It’s not the difference in ages that is noteworthy in that context, but the reversal of the expected difference.
I’m far less familiar with the typical patterns in male-male romance novels, whether contemporary or historic, but within history itself, from ancient Athenian pederastic relationships up through the libertinism of the 17th century, the standard expectation was for erotic relationships between men to involve a hierarchical difference, most often based on age, but also including status. The asymmetry aligned with expected sexual roles, with the older, more socially powerful man taking the dominant, masculine-coded role and the younger, lower ranking one taking the “passive,” feminine-coded role. This made for a dynamic and shifting framework in which younger partners “aged out” of their former role and were expected to take up the dominant role with a new, younger partner. In individual instances this alignment might not hold, or one might find a stable age-matched pairing, but such arrangements were a “marked state”—the non-default—and it was egalitarian relationships that were considered transgressive. Of course, this pattern is also driven by patriarchal dynamics, where only the dominant partner is considered truly masculine. Around the 18th century there also developed, in parallel, a culture of male-male eroticism that focused more on mutual desire and something resembling the idea of sexual orientation. In this context, age and status dynamics became less of a defining feature, though the hierarchical pattern still held in many contexts.
When we come to consider female couples in history, we have neither the socio-economic politics of patriarchal marriage dynamics, nor the tradition of aged-based hierarchy for male partners. Bernadette Brooten (in Love Between Women) takes the analysis farther than the evidence can likely support in concluding that female homoeroticism in the classical and early Christian world was rooted in non-hierarchical, egalitarian relationships. (In contradiction, there is that one, tantalizing reference to Spartan women engaging in something equivalent to male pederasty.) But throughout European history the two primary patterns for relationships between women are not based on age difference, but either on similarity—of age, status, background—or on the reflection of a male-female relationship with one partner performing masculinity to some degree, but where age is not a component of determining who takes that role.
When there is a significant age difference within a specific couple, it may affect the types of models they use to enact and understand their relationship. In a different trope episode I discussed how some couples—particularly in the 19th century—adopted maternal symbolism in the context of age difference. In literary examples from at least the 16th century onward, age differences often appear in the context of mentorship, where an experienced older woman initiates a younger one into sexuality. Of course, these examples aren’t necessarily intended in a positive light! But it’s one context in which an age gap is made meaningful in the establishment and maintenance of a female couple. (It’s also a context that can be turned on its head to interesting effect, if a more experienced younger woman finds herself mentoring a “late bloomer” who is otherwise more established in life.)
As I’ve discussed in various other trope episodes, various scenarios carry with them the default expectation of maturity: the widow, the established businesswoman, the wealthy spinster taking on a companion. While these roles don’t require that a potential partner be significantly younger, including an age gap in the set-up changes the basic dynamics in systematic ways.
In each of these cases, the inclusion of an age gap is a choice, rather than a default expectation, which is what makes this element a trope rather than a part of the literary wallpaper.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- The historic and social context of age-differentiated pairings of various genders
- Why the “age gap” trope tends to be restricted to f/f romance
- Historic contexts for age-gap relationships
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPTuesday, January 13, 2026 - 08:00
The current cluster of articles I'm blogging are on general topics around gender and sexuality. This one addresses both transgender and intersex themes while also looking at a range of gender non-conformity.
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LHMPFull citation:
Crannell, Marissa. 2015. Utterly Confused Categories: Gender Non-Conformity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Western Europe.” Dissertation.
This is a dissertation exploring gender non-conformity in its various expressions, not all of which are relevant to the Project. The author’s thesis, as noted in the abstract is that “the fragmented approach historians have previously taken when examining the lives of gender non-conforming individuals has been inadequate and could be improved by envisioning the individuals not as individual anomalies or aberrations, but as participants in a long cultural tradition of gender non-conformity and transgression throughout western Europe.”
Both normative gender and gender non-conformity are culturally bound, tied up in concepts of gender and sex, but understood differently within different strata of society. Thus medical, religious, and popular concepts of gender could approach and define non-conformity in different ways. The fact that a theory of gender was expressed in specific writings didn’t automatically mean that all people had access to that theory. There are hints that medieval people considered gender a thing that could be “taught” and learned, rather than always being a natural phenomenon, and further that gender performance and physiological sex could affect each other materially.
The study covers 1300-1720 and focuses specifically on “individuals who lived for an extended period of time as a gender other than the one to which they had been socially assigned.” This excludes theatrical cross-dressing, and behavioral or sartorial gender transgression with no expectation of being read as a different gender. The author also excludes women who cross-dressed for a specific purpose without the intent to live permanently as the perceived gender. It does include people with ambiguous bodies (as perceived by authorities), but as the author notes we can’t always rely on the documentary evidence to know whether someone was genuinely intersex or simply perceived by the authorities to fail to conform to binary categories.
We begin with the required literature review, not only covering the source materials but queer theory in general. Some topics that are discussed in this section include the following. Medieval authorities paid more attention to bodies than behavior in assigning gender, which relates to narratives of physical transformation in connection with gender non-conformity, either as explanation or justification. Anxiety around gender non-conformity often took the form of concern for same-sex acts. Two key factors in gender non-conformity were clothing and occupation, as both were strongly gendered. Religion and magic were both prominent themes in gender non-conformity, including cross-dressing saints.
The study moves on to medical and legal theories of gender, which could be self-contradictory as well as conflicting between the two realms. Medical theories, in particular intermixed various models according to the purpose of the text. The chapter discusses the history of various medical theories of sex/gender in detail (including the one-sex and two-sex models), as well as the increasing reliance on direct observation in the 17th century. Humoral theory is discussed as well as the fascination in the 16th century and later with the role of the clitoris in understanding gender ambiguity of female bodies. Some medical models allowed for the possibility that bodily sex might not align with behavioral gender. The increasing reliance on anatomical knowledge in the 16th century and later gave more authority to physicians with regard to determining “correct gender” assignment.
Legal theories around gender allowed for less nuance and ambiguity than medical models. A binary classification must be imposed by some means and both rights and behavior were judged according to that classification. Legal gender assignment made little allowance for re-categorization as that would affect the legality of the subject’s prior life. The significance of this can especially be seen in rare cases where the law determined it was unable to assign either binary gender and therefore placed the subject entirely outside the law with regard to sexual and gender performance.
The idea of the “hermaphrodite” (whether genuinely intersex or simply uncategorizable) was a flashpoint for gender discourse, providing a testing ground for theories and a battleground for gender enforcement. Anxiety about hermaphroditism waxed and waned according to other social forces that gave gender ambiguity symbolic significance. While earlier attitudes gave it a quasi-mystical significance, the Enlightenment shifted it to a medical “problem” to be corrected to a less ambiguous alignment. Physiological ambiguity became a symbol of gender anarchy, and by contagion of social anarchy in general. The physical became conflated with the behavioral, with the term “hermaphrodite” being broadened to apply to any sort of gender-transgressive behavior.
A belief in the reality of physiological sex change informed medieval and early modern ideas about gender non-conformity. If a body changed physical sex, then gender categorization was expected to follow. Conversely, behaving according to a different gender category had the potential to cause physical change. Misogyny informed attitudes towards such transformations, with female-to male changes being viewed as “becoming more perfect” and male-to-female changes generally being considered impossible. Ideas about the mechanism of such changes often invoked humoral theory, or relied on the one-sex model in which all the organs of male or female were present and their superficial configuration could change by accident or spontaneously. Some religious texts supported the potential for such changes (but always female-to-male). Literature of all types featured sex changes as a trigger for or consequence of gender non-conformity. Sex-change narratives frequently occurred at puberty, pointing to possible medical explanations, but on a symbolic level they represented the malleability and instability of the body.
Cross-dressing occurred in many different contexts with varying levels of social acceptability according to context. Theater and carnival offered the most legitimate contexts. Outside of such contexts, cross-dressing was variously considered immoral, to violate sumptuary laws, or to be a form of fraud. Cross-dressing might be associated with specific other anti-social behaviors in specific cultures, such as the English tendency to see it as a symptom of sexual immorality, but simple cross-dressing, as such, was generally not illegal in the absence of aggravating factors. When set apart from everyday life, cross-dressing could be considered a positive act, as in religious mythology or literature. But in general female cross-dressing was viewed as an appropriation of male authority. Male cross-dressing occurred in theatrical and carnival contexts, but was also used as a literary motif to achieve access to a gender-segregated woman. Much more rare are narratives of male cross-dressing that can be read as positive transgender identities. In general, though, real-life female cross-dressers were motivated by economic advantage or in pursuit of a romantic relationship (either same- or opposite-sex). A new context for male cross-dressing came with the rise of male same-sex social venues (Molly houses) in the 17-18th centuries.
Moving from the realm of clothing to two other types of gender non-conformity, we have a combined chapter discussing physical male-coded characteristics (primarily facial hair) and male-coded behavioral characteristics, including sexual aggressiveness, bravery, and virtue. Such behaviors might, in some cases, be considered positive, with an underlayer of misogyny.
The conclusion sums up all the prior discussions and notes that gender non-conformity was a context in which rules and attitudes towards appropriate gender categorization were developed and tested. The author returns to a narrow definition of gender non-conformity (the intent to live as a non-assigned gender for an extended period of time) and identifies 36 individuals that fit the definition, noting the biases in the data and the “overrepresentation of failure” as successful lives left few traces.
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Saturday, January 10, 2026 - 11:23
The current group of articles I'm blogging are more generally addressing gender and sexuality. As I read through them, I found a high proportion that didn't pan out as being of interest, though I think that has more to do with having cherry-picked the more interesting-looking titles in the past. This is more historiography than history, discussing current work on the history of sexuality and evaluating their approaches. Not sure whether I'm gratified or disappointed that it didn't turn up any reading that I didn't already know about.
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LHMPFull citation:
Reay, Barry. 2009. “Writing the Modern Histories of Homosexual England” in The Historical Journal, 52, 1. pp.213-233
This is a historiography article, reviewing a variety of general histories of sexuality and homosexuality and evaluating them. The author sets out a principle that “the most useful sexual histories are those that provide depth of context without either assuming sexual identity or anticipating its complete absence.” The focus is specifically on the 19th and 20th centuries.
In general, the author approves of works that present homosexuality as a loose assembly of related understandings that neither present a unitary theoretical view nor a teleological development towards the modern state. In the covered period, contrary to Foucault’s idea of a “acts >> identity” shift, scholars have found parallel and overlapping understandings of both concepts.
The structure of comprehensive histories cannot help but create the impression of an evolutionary processes, even if none is intended. The differences in the available evidence for different eras (and different genders) can contribute to misleading impressions of the overall picture.
[Note: I feel a tiny bit of personal satisfaction that the author’s comment on Randolph Trumbach is that he is “certainly not the best guide to [the early modern] period,” as this aligns with my opinion.]
Similarly, the act of envisioning or naming a project “gay /lesbian history” itself gives at least the impression of imposing a modern lens on the subject, regardless of the historian’s intent. If—as some historians suggest—we would do better to study homosexuality in terms of a variety of different categories of desire and behavior, how do we assemble those categories in a meaningful way for study without implying a unified concept?
The author continues on to examine works addressing specific components of this “variety of categories,” including friendship (which frequently had socially-acceptable homoerotic dynamics). While male friendship dynamics frequently included cross-class aspects, this is less common among female friendships. Friendships among middle- and upper-class women in the 19th century typically included physical displays of affection and passionate language (e.g., in letters and diary entries). But these friendships existed in a continuum of social arrangements, from marriage equivalents to life-stage attachments, to relationships existing in parallel with heterosexual marriage.
Another element in this multiplicity of categories is the association between cross-gender presentation and homosexuality: i.e., male effeminacy and female masculinity. The author suggests that a pivotal point in these associations came around the turn of the 20th century when Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall became respective icons for male and female homosexuals. [Note: I’m extremely dubious about this assertion. These associations can be traced solidly back to the 18th century, at the least.]
In the early 20th century, public discourse around lesbianism was marked by incoherence and a general avoidance of naming the topic in question, even by those participating in it.
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Saturday, January 3, 2026 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 332 - On the Shelf for January 2026 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2026/01/03)
Welcome to On the Shelf for January 2026.
Submissions are open for the 2026 fiction series! Technically, you still have time to write something, polish it up, and get it in before the end of the month, though I hope you’ve been looking forward to this so long that you have it all ready to go. This year I’m going to try to relax about the process and not get too anxious about numbers. Submissions already started showing up on Day 1 and I plan to stick to promoting and not angsting. Remember to review the submissions guidelines on the website (linked in the show notes) to make sure your story fits our requirements.
The new year is a time for review and the Lesbian Historic Motif Project has a lot more to review than usual this year. Retirement meant that I have more time to devote to all aspects of the Project. I blogged 109 items this year, compared to less than half of that in 2024. I fit in more interviews than any other year since I stepped back from doing a weekly show. And I’ve had the chance to do more reaching out to do cross-promotion of other podcasts, exhibitions, and projects relevant to lesbian history. This year I’ve begun the actual work of turning all this research into an organized sourcebook for authors and discovered that I have maybe 80% of the material already written up in some form. And that work has been recognized publicly in the acknowledgements of a historic romance published by a major press.
I have some ambitious goals for this current year, but one that I have little control over is getting more visibility and a larger audience for the Project. That’s where you all can help. The audience for the podcast has remained fairly static, but there are occasional blips when some particular episode attracts attention. That generally happens when someone other than me talks it up in social media. Discoverability is, as they say, a bitch. No matter how much I post about the Project, I’m only reaching the first layer of people I have direct connections with. But each of you has another layer. And each person in that layer has another layer. It would be wonderful if together we could achieve some synergy and spread the word further. As far as I know, there is no one else out there doing quite what I’m doing for lesbian history and historical fiction. History podcasts and websites tend to focus strongly on the 20th century, or discuss specific individuals. Historical fiction is an afterthought—or overlooked entirely—on websites and media promoting lesbian fiction. And only a handful of isolated anthologies have provided a market for short lesbian and sapphic historical fiction. For the people out there looking for what we offer, they are unlikely to be finding it anywhere else—not in substantial quantities. And they may not know we exist unless you help spread the word.
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year—the blog had its 10th anniversary over a year ago. That’s a very long time on the web. No matter how long you’ve been following the Project, you’ve become part of something significant and meaningful. Together, let’s make it even greater.
Publications on the Blog
This month on the blog I’ve been working through a group of articles covering various Asian cultures, with a few other items thrown in. Wenjuan Xie offers a dissertation on transgender narratives in pre-modern China, while Matthew H. Sommer reflects on an apparent global shift around homosexuality as reflected in 18th century China. Adrian Carton provides an overview of same-sex relations in Asian history, and—because it appears in the same book—I also covered an excellent review of lesbian evidence in Early Modern Europe by Laura Gowing. Leila Rupp discusses the problems and pitfalls of studying same-sex sexuality on a global level. Gary P. Leupp draws connections between the rise of capitalism and the culture of homosexuality in 18th century Japan, while Gregory M. Plugfelder tackles a specific Japanese text presenting a complex cross-gender story. Shalini Shah offers a brief survey of women’s sexuality in the Mahabharata, and we finish the month with Manjari Srivastava’s survey of lesbian themes in 19th century Urdu poetry. The full titles and citations of these articles can be found in the show notes.
Book Shopping!
No new books were acquired for the blog, but I have one on order that will be filed under “useful occupations for a fictional heroine that you may not know women were involved in.” This is Sara Lodge’s The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective which studies actual detectives and their representation in fiction.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
The following works of historical fiction are being released in January or have been released recently.
Genta Sebastian gives us the second installment in the Clementine saga: Dreadful Sorry, Clemintine (Clementine #2) from Macoii Publishing. I’ve revised the cover copy slightly for conciseness.
It’s 1848 and the Dennisons are traveling as a married couple by covered wagon to reach the gold rush in California. Clem, a prospector and writer who’s passing for a man, is cautious by nature. A loner by choice, she makes plans and prefers being prepared, dealing with life on her own terms. She surprised herself when she proposed one night and was married the next. Kizzy, her spirited and impulsive wife, is unprepared for the dangers on the trail, but willing to do what it takes to chase her dream, leading her into unexpected adventures.
Their marriage was based on an agreement to reach gold territory, but they are falling in love—each believing the other will leave when they reach California. Can they overcome their insecurities and speak up in time? Or will the challenges tear them apart?
The doomed voyage of the Titanic continues to be an oddly popular setting for lesbian romance, as in Steel on Distance by N.J. Knox.
Melody Ashcroft has been raised to believe that virtue is something performed—measured in posture, silence, and the careful absence of want. Traveling aboard the Titanic as a lady’s companion, she moves through first-class society with practiced ease, never once stepping outside the lines drawn for her. Saralee Moore notices everything Melody has been taught to ignore. Older, observant, and quietly unafraid of truth, Saralee understands that correctness is often just another kind of confinement.
Sharing a stateroom and a life temporarily removed from home, their intimacy grows in glances held too long, hands brushing in passing, and conversations that circle around what cannot yet be named. Among women who prize reputation above honesty, Melody begins to feel the ache of living untouched. Saralee, who has already learned what it costs to want openly, knows desire does not disappear simply because it is denied. When catastrophe fractures decorum and survival strips society bare, the distance between them becomes impossible to maintain.
Nan Sampson continues the Magical Underground series with A Djinn and Tonic (that’s “Djinn” as in genie) from Last Chance Books, in which historic figures get tangled into magical adventures with a couple of witches, romping through the exploration of Egyptian tombs.
“Come at once. Carter’s unleashed hell in Egypt.”
It's New Years Eve,1922.
Parisian witch Celeste Bérenger’s seaside holiday plans with her partner Tolly are upended by a frantic telegram from Tolly’s ex-husband, begging for help.
Leaving the undead Lord Byron in a snit at being left at home, Celeste accompanies her partner to Egypt. There, faced with an ancient Celtic demigod trapped in a scarab ring, and the vengeful spirit of an ancient Egyptian priest hell-bent on destroying those who caused his death, Celeste and Tolly are plunged into a world of cursed artifacts, duplicitous sphinxes, and a deadly conspiracy.
The two witches must rely on their magic, their wits, a pair of independent donkeys, and the unshakeable power of their love to save a servant of the goddess Epona and stop a power-mad priest from conquering a nation.
And speaking of repeating themes, it feels like we’ve had a number of stories focusing on the world of professional dance in the last half year, now including Gold and Grace by Eline Evans.
Paris, 1926. Emilie has only ever had one dream, and that is to be a principal dancer at the Copenhagen Royal Ballet. A decade of hard work and determination has brought her from a childhood on the streets to dancing on a stage, but just when the position as soloist seems within reach, her frankness gets her fired.
Hoping to find a new position as a dancer, Emilie travels to Paris, where she meets the scandalous painter Gerda Wegener and her circle of bohemians. Among them are Aurélie, a beautiful cabaret dancer and courtesan, and the mysterious artist Isabelle. Emilie, who is otherwise no stranger to female company, is drawn to them both in a way she has never felt before.
Ballet de l’Opera hires Emilie as an ensemble dancer, but when her association with the seedier parts of Paris society becomes known, she’s fired once again. In need of money, she takes a job as a cabaret dancer until she can find another ballet position.
Emilie’s friendships with Aurelie and Isabelle develop into a romance between the three of them, but their situation becomes ever more dangerous as Aurélie’s rich benefactor, the powerful Bertrand, grows jealous and violent. When tragedy strikes, they set out on a perilous journey into French high society for revenge — a journey that might cost Emilie her newfound love and her dreams of becoming a principal dancer.
When I was listing upcoming Jane Austen-inspired novels for the last episode, I hadn’t yet encountered the description of Emma R. Alban’s next novel, Like in Love with You (from Avon) as “Mean Girls meets Northanger Abbey.” Based on the date of the setting this doesn’t appear to be connected with her two previous romances.
When country-bred Catherine Pine relocates to Bath in 1817, she and her mother come face-to-face with her mother’s arch nemesis, Lady Tisend, and her daughter, the wildly popular and gorgeous Lady Rosalie. Though once her very best friend, Mrs. Pine alleges Lady Tisend ultimately did her a great injustice. Twenty-five years later, she sees the perfect opportunity for retribution:
Catherine will win the favor of Lady Rosalie’s suitor, Mr. Dean. Together, Catherine and her mother will ruin the Tisends’ lives, secure Catherine a fruitful match, and launch a fully triumphant return to Bath. It’s the perfect plan for revenge. Only Catherine soon discovers that there’s more to Lady Rosalie’s mean streak than meets the eye. Lady Rosalie is by far the wittiest, cleverest, most intriguing young woman Catherine’s ever met, and she’s utterly smitten.
Meanwhile, Rosalie feels trapped in her perfect life as Bath’s favorite daughter and resident mean girl. There’s no challenge anymore, no excitement, no surprise. But when she notices newcomer Catherine gunning for her spot as queen bee, Rosalie finally feels a spark again. She determines to meet Catherine’s challenge with gusto, because Catherine ignites something in her. Something Rosalie absolutely doesn’t want to extinguish.
As their mothers force them into increasingly absurd contests of wit and feminine charms to win Mr. Dean’s affections, Rosalie and Catherine instead find themselves falling for each other, scheme, by barb, by catty jab…
Can their sizzling rivalry really become a match to last?
The Debutante Dilemma by Jane Walsh from Bold Strokes Books is the latest in that author’s extensive series of Regency-era romances. At least I’m guessing it’s a Regency? American heiresses marrying British nobility is a motif more belonging to the turn of the 20th century, so I may be wrong on that point.
Lady Emily Calloway has everything a debutante could want, including a fairy tale engagement to a fabulously wealthy lord. Her wedding should be the highlight of the Season—until her fiancé’s older brother announces his own upcoming nuptials. Society is riveted to learn that the heir to a dukedom will marry an unknown American.
Seething with envy, Emily is burdened with the task of introducing her rival to London Society…and is shocked to discover her own attraction to the beautiful heiress.
Miss Rebecca Tremblay might have left a trail of broken hearts behind her in New York, but she is determined to make a fresh start in London. Marrying a marquess will settle her restless ways, if only she can deny her forbidden desires for sophisticated and elegant Emily.
If Emily and Rebecca yield to their passion for each other, they must make a choice that will change their futures forever. Will ambition prevail—or their hearts?
We seem to have an abundance of second books this month. Rob Osler offers a second installment in his Harriet Morrow Investigates mystery series: The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (Harriot Morrow Investigates #2) from Kensington Books. I’ve trimmed down the cover copy for this one as well.
Chicago, 1898. In the midst of the Progressive Era, twenty-one-year-old junior detective Harriet Morrow is determined to prove she’s more than a lucky hire as the Prescott Agency’s first woman operative. But her latest challenge—a murder case steeped in scandal—could become a deadly setback . . .
The mystery has more twists and turns than her morning bike commute, with a muckraker found murdered in a southside tenement building after obtaining evidence of a powerful politician’s corruption. With the help of Matthew McCabe, her only true confidante at the agency, and growing more protective of her budding relationship with the lovely Barbara Wozniak, Harriet will need to survive rising threats to assert her place in a world that’s quick to dismiss her—and find a killer who’s always one step ahead.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading? It’s a fairly long list this month, in part due to the reading I did for the Jane Austen episode.
I checked out Rob Osler’s first mystery, The Case of the Missing Maid, and found that while it was competently written, the author went a bit overboard in showing off the detailed background research. I had listened to the first installment of Brittany N. William’s 17th century YA fantasy a few months ago and followed it up with Saint-Seducing Gold. I still love the setting and the diverse representation in the series but I felt the emotional beats were hammered at in a repetitive way. Even more disappointing was Susanna Gregory’s medieval murder mystery A Plague on Both Your Houses, which is unfortunate because I’d picked up four books in that series in an audiobook sale and now I’m disinclined to listen to the rest of them. In contrast, the reason I didn’t finish Alexandra Vasti’s Earl Crush (connected to her sapphic romance Ladies in Hating) was purely personal taste, having to do with the extreme proportion of sex scenes to plot. Fortunately, I finished the year on a positive note with Olivia Waite’s sci-fi mystery Murder by Memory, which has the bonus of a strong sapphic presence among the characters.
Interspersed with these were the books I read for the Austen episode, which had brief reviews in that show: Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie, The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks, The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub, and The Lady's Wager by Olivia Hampton.
Interestingly, retirement doesn’t seem to have drastically increased my fiction reading; I read about the same number of titles in 2025 as I did in 2024, with about a third of them falling roughly in the category of sapphic historicals, which is higher than the 2024 rate. I can’t help it—I reflexively count things and calculate statistics!
Author Guest
This month we’re happy to welcome M.K. Hardy to the show. We actually recorded this interview back in October, but because I had a couple interviews that tied in with specific other content, it got pushed back to this month.
(Interview transcript will be added when available.)
Show Notes
Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.
In this episode we talk about:
- Summary of the Project in 2025
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Xie, Wenjuan. 2015. (Trans)Culturally Transgendered: Reading Transgender Narratives in (Late) Imperial China. Dissertation.
- Sommer, Matthew H. “Was China Part of a Global Eighteenth-Century Homosexuality?” in Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 33, no. 1, 2007, pp. 117–33.
- Carton, Adrian. 2006. “Desire and Same-Sex Intimacies in Asia” in Gay Life and Culture, A World History, ed. Robert Aldrich. Universe Publishing, New York. ISBN 978-0-7893-1511-3
- Gowing, Laura. 2006. ”Lesbians and Their Like in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800” in Gay Life and Culture: A World History ed. Robert Aldrich. London: Thames and Hudson. 125-43
- Rupp, Leila J. 2001. “Toward a Global History of Same-Sex Sexuality” in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 10, No. 2: 287-302
- Leupp, Gary P. 2007. “Capitalism and Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century Japan.” in Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 135–52.
- Pflugfelder, Gregory M. 1992. “Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari” in Monumenta Nipponica Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 347-368.
- Shah, Shalini. 1991. “Women and Sexuality in the Mahabharata” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 52: 138-144.
- Srivastava, Manjari & Manjari Shrivastava. 2007. “Lesbianism in Nineteenth Century Erotic Urdu Poetry “Rekhti”” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 68, Part One: 965-988
- Book Shopping
- The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Dreadful Sorry, Clemintine (Clementine #2) by Genta Sebastian
- Steel on Distance by N.J. Knox
- A Djinn and Tonic (The Magical Underground #2) by Nan Sampson
- Gold and Grace by Eline Evans
- Like in Love with You by Emma R. Alban
- The Debutante Dilemma by author
- The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (Harriot Morrow Investigates #2) by Rob Osler
- What I’ve been consuming
- The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler
- Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. William
- A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory
- Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti
- Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
- Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie
- The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks
- The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub
- The Lady’s Wager by Olivia Hampton
- Call for submissions for the 2026 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
- This month we interview M.K. Hardy and talk about:
- Needfire by MK Hardy (US availability is limited)
- MK Hardy is a nom de plume for Morag Hannah and Erin Hardee
- Adapting the gothic template for sapphic stories
- Why Scotland is the perfect setting for gothics
- The benefits and complications of writing as a team
- Forthcoming: The Haunting of Avis Lovelock
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Links to MK Hardy Online
- Website: https://www.mkhardywrites.com/
- Twitter: @mkhardywrites
- Instagram: @mkhardywrites.com
Major category:
LHMPTuesday, December 30, 2025 - 15:00
This poetic genre looks fascinating, with complex social dynamics in its composition and reception. I really do need to track down the book by Ruth Vanita that's evidently the main source for this article.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Srivastava, Manjari & Manjari Shrivastava. 2007. “Lesbianism in Nineteenth Century Erotic Urdu Poetry “Rekhti”” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 68, Part One: 965-988
Looking at the endnote citations, this article leans very heavily on Ruth Vanita’s Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West, to the extent where I wonder if it might make more sense to skip this article and work harder to acquire a copy of the latter. (It’s been on my list, but I haven’t found a copy.) The article has a lot of typos, editorial oversights (like repeated phrases), and very odd word choices that either look like homophone errors or dictionary look-up errors. (For that matter, it makes me wonder if the near-doublet author attribution is another editorial issue.) So I’m torn, because Vanita is a well-respected scholar in the field of Indian queer history, but I’m not sure I have confidence that this article reflects that material accurately.
# # #
Rekhti is a genre of Urdu erotic poetry, spinning off from the formal, classical ghazal poetic genre. Rekhti differs both in the point of view of the poetic persona, in the subject matter, and in the use of language. Within Urdu culture (a southern Indian Muslim culture whose language has a strong admixture of Persian in an Indic base), traditional ghazal poetry had two modes: “Persian” in which the poetic persona is male and the beloved can be male or female, and “Indic” in which the poetic persona is female and the beloved is male. (The poets were overwhelmingly male in all cases. Historic writings refer to female Rekhti poets but their work was not preserved.) Rekhti poetry used a female poetic persona addressing, most typically, a female beloved, and the language used was everyday female-coded language rather than the male-coded and higher register language typically used in other ghazal poems. (Ghazal poetry was often written in Persian rather than Urdu.)
Rekhti poetry arose in the late 18th century, associated with a handful of prominent poets such as Rangeen, who is credited for naming the movement. Another prominent Rekhti poet, Hashimi, is credited with developing several of the key features, such as themes related to the domestic lives of elite women and the use of female-coded vocabulary and speech patterns. Other key themes include realistic language rather than poetic ambiguity, an allowance for using proper names (rather than always referring to “lover” or “beloved”), and a move away from idealizing the beloved to the point sometimes of criticism or mockery. By the mid 19th century, Rekhti poetry—while still focused on women’s domestic lives—moved away from sexually explicit language and motifs of lesbian sex.
The article discusses the vocabulary of female same-sex erotics contained in the poetry, some of which has either survived to the present or perhaps has been reclaimed. One set of terms derive from the root “chapat” (literally having to do with “to stick, to adhere, to cling to”), including “chapat,” “Chapti,” and “chapatbazi” referring to lesbian activity. “Chapatbaz” refers to a women who engages in sex with women. (A Victorian lexicographer in an 1884 Urdu-English dictionary veiled the meaning by using Latin: “Chapatbaz - Femina libidini Sapphicare indulgens; caoatbazi [sic, possible error for “capatbazi”?] Congressus libininosus duarum mulierum.”) Another British record of 1900 listed five terms related to lesbianism: dugana (or dogana), zanakhi, sa’tar, chapathai, and chapatbaz. “Dogana,” meaning “doubled” also refers to paired fruits enclosed together, such as a double-nutted almond. The sources and usage of these terms is described by the poet Rangeen, accompanied by descriptions of rituals used by the couple to define sexual gender roles within the relationship.
- Dogana – Twin or doubled (fruit). The couple shells almonds until they find a doubled nut, in which one kernel is embedded in the other. The kernals are given to a stranger who is told to distribute them to the women and the one given the embedded nut takes the “female” role.
- Zanakhi – Literally the wishbone of a chicken. The couple cook and eat a chicken together then break the wishbone between them and the one with the larger piece takes the “male” role.
- Ilaichi – Literally “cardamom”. The two women open pairs of cardamom pods and count the number of seeds. If one has an odd number and the other an even number, the one with the even number takes the “male” role. If both pods are even or both odd, they try again. Feeding each other cardamom is associated with sweetening the breath before sex.
Non-monogamous dynamics within women’s relationships is indicated by the term “sihgana” which refers to a female beloved’s other female lover, generally associated with jealousy.
In addition to Rekhti poetry using these special terms, the language of heterosexual marriage may be used for female couples, but also the language of fictive sisterhood.
The article provides multiple examples of poems (in translation) to illustrate prominent themes, such as a desire for secrecy or fear of discovery, and the context of love affairs, such as the practice of households sleeping in gender-segregated areas of the rooftop during hot weather.
Although later commentary sometime tries to downplay the gender dynamics of the poetry, arguing that the beloved should be understood as representing an ungendered God, the imagery of the poems clearly uses gendered clothing and descriptions.
The cast of characters within Rekhti poetry is almost entirely female—a social context that in everyday life might be found either within the women’s quarters of a family compound or in a courtesan household. The association of courtesans with lesbian relationships may related to sexual stereotypes of prostitutes, but the article also notes that courtesans were the rare women who had access to education, mobility, and control of their own finances. Some Rekhti poems include descriptions that strongly suggest a courtesan context. The setting of the poems is always urban, including when describing gardens.
(In the context of associating lesbianism with prostitutes, there is a translated quote from a 12th century commentary on the Kamasutra talking about male homosexuals then adding “women behave in the same way. Sometimes, in the secret of their inner rooms, with total trust in one another, they lick each other’s vulva, just like whores.”)
British colonial rule had multiple effects on Urdu language and poetry, including suppression of erotic poetry and stigmatizing of practices seen as gender-transgressive, such as the use of female pen names by male poets. These effects continue to impact how Rekhti poetry is understood and discussed by modern scholars. The article discusses the differences between stereotype and reality regarding female seclusion and female poetic performance in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The article concludes with a consideration of the extent to which Rekhti poetry can be understood as reflecting actual women’s lives as opposed to the interpretation that it represents male fantasies of women’s lives.
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Monday, December 29, 2025 - 08:00
It's hard to tell whether the content in this article is thin because there isn't much to say or because of the overall superficiality of the work. I'm guessing the latter, as other articles and books I've found on India have been richer.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Shah, Shalini. 1991. “Women and Sexuality in the Mahabharata” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 52: 138-144.
In addition tot he superficial nature of this article, there were numerous editorial problems with it, leading me to question the professionalism of the parent publication.
# # #
This article is very short, more a set of presentation bullet-points than a full article. Only one small section is relevant and that material is given rather odd connections to Classical Greek motifs. Given that the whole article is somewhat cursory, I feel more forgiving of the briefness of the material.
The article notes “There is only a solitary reference to relations between individuals of the same sex. In the Anushasana Parva Panchachuda tells Narada that when women find no males at hand, they satisfy each other’s desires.” This is also a reference to another publication describing “solitary women who would dress up their female friends as males and passionately embrace them.” The author suggests these practices were due to the segregation of women in polyamorous patriarchal households.
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Sunday, December 28, 2025 - 10:05
In the last couple years I've moved my non-LHMP book reviews over to Dreamwidth to keep a certain separation between my voice as an author and my voice as a reader. But I want to give this one a bit more visibility.
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is not simply my favorite book of the year, but is my candidate for Best Book of the Year overall. This is not simply a book about history but is a book about the process of history. It demonstrates the fractal messiness of the people, places, and events that we try to tidily sort into specific eras, and especially how all those people, places, and events are braided together into a solid fabric. Palmer doesn’t shy away from pointing out how thoroughly our understanding of history is shaped by the prejudices and preoccupations of historians; she embraces this aspect noting at every turn how her own take is shaped by her love of the city of Florence and especially its most controversial son, Machiavelli.
But what makes this book great is the humor poured into the cracks around the politics, violence, and art. (A recurring feature is little comic dialogues that summarize key events in a narrative style familiar to anyone on Twitter or Bluesky. I desperately want to see these presented in visual format, whether as live theater or animated shorts. It’s hard to pick a favorite line, but the top two are “Maria Visconti-Sforza: I’m standing right here!” and “King of France: You Italians are very strange.”)
The book concludes with what I can only describe as a stump speech for the importance to the contemporary world of studying and understanding history, embracing the necessary messiness of “progress,” and the hope that we can indeed continue the Renaissance project of reaching for a better world.
This is a very long book, though paced in manageable chapters. When I decided to read it and found that the audiobook was the same price as the hardcover, I went for audio (at over 30 hours!) and listened to it while taking the train home from the International Medieval Conference. The narration is top-notch, capturing the emotional range of the text perfectly. The side benefit is that the combination of material, voice, and length made it perfect to add to my “sleep-aid audiobooks” collection, which means I get to enjoy it over and over again (in the bits and pieces I consciously hear). But of course I bought the hardcover too, not only so I could get Palmer to autograph it, but because I needed to be able to track down my favorite bits and check out the footnotes.
Major category:
ReviewsWednesday, December 24, 2025 - 09:00
Fiction isn't necessarily a good guide to how a culture thinks about sex and gender--indeed, in some cases social anxieties are worked out in fiction in ways that would not be tolerated in real life--but it can be a space where we see the culture thinking about the subject. This medieval Japanese tale gets even more convoluted than the most extreme of Shakespeare's cross-gender plots.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Pflugfelder, Gregory M. 1992. “Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari” in Monumenta Nipponica Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 347-368.
This article explores the relationship between physiological sex, social gender, and sexuality (in the sense of sexual interactions) within a 12th century Japanese fictional work. The basic plot (as I’ve assembled it from various parts of the discussion – so I can’t guarantee complete accuracy) is as follows:
- Two children, one physiologically female and one physiologically male exhibit behavior and interests that don’t align with their expected genders.
- After some resistance, their parents agree to raise them as the genders that align with their behavior, not with their physiology.
- The two are socially successful as adults in their behavioral genders, although the mismatch between sex and gender is kept a secret.
- Himegimi (presenting as a man) marries but keeps the relationship non-sexual although he has romantic feelings for his wife as well as for other women.
- Himegimi has a close male friend, Saishō, who initiates (what he believes to be) homosexual erotics. Himegimi is not interested. In the course of this, Saishō discovers Himegimi’s biological sex, at which he rapes Himegimi (putatively due to uncontrollable desire) resulting in pregnancy.
- Himegimi can no longer maintain a male social role and is sequestered by Saishō and pressured to take up a female presentation. After the birth, Himegimi abandons the child and flees.
- The other sibling, Wakagimi, has been living as a woman sequestered in the women’s quarters. She is indifferent to male attempts to seduce her but enjoys a sexual relationship with the princess she serves as companion to and gets her pregnant.
- When Himegimi disappears, Wakagimi decides she must go after, but cannot do so in a female role and so takes up a masculine social role.
- From then on, the two siblings continue in the gender roles that now align with their physiological sex. The various marriage arrangements get sorted out somehow with this new alignment.
Keeping in mind that this is a fictional narrative, the authors discusses various observations about how sex, gender, and sexuality are treated within the tale, as well as noting other ways in which these factors have interacted in fictional and historic narratives.
The tale may be a reworking of an earlier version and is clearly set in a “historic past” relative to the date of composition. This has unknown consequences for determining whether it reflects social attitudes of the composition date, however the gender roles as depicted do align with 12th century court culture. The authors discusses various translations and scholarly studies of the work that introduce modern interpretive frameworks that are more judgmental about the situation than the original text is. Within the text, the siblings’ situation is potentially embarrassing because it’s unusual, not because of the sex/gender elements. A parallel is created with secondary characters who are similarly “unusual” due to their parentage, and whose difference is similarly kept a secret.
The story presents several factors as contributing to gender identity: internal behavioral and temperamental factors (i.e., “behaving like” a boy or girl), which can be modified by personal pragmatic choice (which happens later in the tale, though motivated by external events), fate or destiny affecting birth characteristics (the cause of the siblings’ behavioral preferences is ascribed to a tengu taking revenge for a wrong done in a previous incarnation), and socialization or habit (even after changing gender presentation later in the story, the two siblings retain some attributes of their prior identities due to habit, while in other ways they seamlessly adopt the behaviors of their public gender). Essential factors in establishing and maintaining a gender identity are the clothing and grooming habits assigned to the relevant gender, as well as being granted appropriate ritual signifiers by their parents, such as names and gendered ceremonies.
Behavioral gender is depicted as simultaneously deriving from innate features (their childhood preferences), but also being an automatic consequence of inhabiting a gendered role. When Himegimi is secluded during pregnancy and changes to a female presentation, this is accompanied by the appearance of stereotypically feminine mannerisms and behaviors, as if these were an automatic consequence of putting on the costume.
This is not a story about sexual or gender confusion. The siblings’ childhood behaviors are not ascribed to any physical abnormality. And when they inhabit their various gender roles, they inhabit them fully, not only aligned with social expectations, but exemplars of the role. The only exception being when it comes to aspects of sexual performance where anatomy becomes a factor.
The article critiques earlier studies of the narrative that try to shoehorn it into modern western gender and sexuality frameworks. Although claimed by modern Japanese homosexual movements as an early example of homosexual literature, the situation is both more complicated and simpler. Rather than being subversive or decadent, the tale is strikingly conservative and normative.
The article then explores other stories with similar themes. Another 12th century tale (possibly influenced by this one) involves a physiologically female child raised as a boy due to divine instruction. The character succeeds socially as a man, attains high rank, marries a woman, but then switches to a completely feminine presentation, eventually becoming empress. As in the previous story, although there is misalignment between physiological sex and gender identity during part of the story, the gender performance in each case is aligned with social expectations. This contrasts with mythological and fictional stories involving partial or complete cross-dressing that isn’t aligned with the public gender identity. In these cases the cross-gender performance is usually temporary and to provide the character with empowerment (and primarily involve women adopting male signifiers). In other cases, this sort of overt gender-crossing is presented for humorous purposes. While the preceding involve unambiguous sex (physiology) but ambiguous gender (performance), medical and historic literature includes cases of ambiguous sex (generally interpretable as intersex, from a modern framework) but an unambiguous performance of a specific gender. The author found no narratives in which sexual ambiguity was combined with gender ambiguity.
The sexuality dynamics within the story are complicated and tricky to judge from within the story’s own ethical/moral basis, and later scholarship has often interpreted them from anachronistic frameworks. As the author notes, “If ‘homosexuality’ is taken to mean sexual relations between two males/men or two females/women, each cognizant of the other’s sex and gender, then ‘homosexuality’ does not exist in the world of Torikaebaya.” However there are erotics between people of the same sex and between people of the same gender, but not both at the same time. Himegimi is frequently involved in same-(physiological)-sex relations while in male gender. Wakagimi is not, as gender-segregation practices meant that she did not socialize with physiolocial men. Himegimi has an arranged marriage to a woman (same sex, different gender) but keeps the relationship platonic (presumably to avoid detection). Himegimi is attracted to a number of other women. These relationships involve the formulas and rituals of a sexual relationship without the sex acts. (In an echo of what I call the “convenient twin brother” motif, several of these women later have sexual relationships with Wakagimi after he takes up a masculine gender, and don’t notice the difference.) All these female partners believe themselves to be in a cross-gender relationship, although the reader of the tale knows them to be same-sex.
Somewhat in contrast, Wakagimi attracts the erotic attention of various men (cross-gender, same-sex), but refuses them. It isn’t clear whether this is Wakagimi avoiding a same-sex relationship or following the mores for a virtuous woman. The question is further confused by Wakagimi’s sexual relationship with the princess (cross-sex, same-gender) in which the princess is apparently naïve enough not to realize what’s going on. A similarly complicated situation occurs when Saishō, still enamored of Himegimi, sees male-presenting Wakagimi and pursues him believing him to be male-presenting Himegimi. That is, Saishō believes the encounter to be cross-sex, same-gender, while Wakagimi understands it as same-sex, same-gender. Same-gender desire is an inherent part of the cultural context. Saishō is initially attracted to male-presenting Himegimi and initiates a sexual encounter under that understanding—one which Himegimi tries to reject. (It strikes me that the protagonists both resist male same-gender interactions. Himegimi refrains from female same-gender sex, but Wakagimi does not. It feels like there are some gendered undercurrents going on, but I’m not confident enough to put interpretation on it. The author makes similar speculations about cultural attitudes toward male versus female desire.)
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Monday, December 22, 2025 - 10:00
I can't say I'm disappointed in how skimpy this article was on f/f issues, but only because I had very low expectations to begin with.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Leupp, Gary P. 2007. “Capitalism and Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century Japan.” in Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 135–52.
I went into this article expecting there to be functionally no content on female homosexuality. I was only slightly wrong. The general context of the article is an assertion that the increasing visibility of (male) homosexuality in Japan as well as in Europe, China, and elsewhere have a common factor in the evolution of capitalism and the resulting “commodification of sexuality.” I’m not exactly convinced, but on the other hand, after reading the first couple paragraphs I started to skim to see whether there was any mention of women at all. In the last couple pages, we find “We know little about premodern and early modern female-female sexuality in Japan, although many scholars have asserted that lesbianism flourished in the Imperial and shogunal harems.” (The statement cites two sources, one another article by the same author and the other a publication in Japanese.) The author goes on to assert that, like male homosexuality, female-female relations in this era were “commodified” and consisted of female prostitutes who catered to women. Two fictional examples are provided involving prostitution or the sexual use of a maidservant by her female employer. There was a minor fashion for artwork depicting lesbian sex, usually involving a double-ended dildo. Although such art was intended for male consumption, there is evidence that such sex toys were not a mere fantasy. All in all I found this article rather unsatisfying and dismissive, though I will follow up on the other referenced publication.
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