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Monday, February 2, 2026 - 10:00
I really needed to have read this article before I wrote the trope podcast episode about familial models in f/f relationships.
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Full citation:
Loveday, Kiki. “Sister Acts: Victorian Porn, Lesbian Drag, and Queer Reproduction” in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 60, no. 2, 2019, pp. 201–26.
This article addresses the ticklish topic of the “sapphic incest motif” in erotic art and drama around the turn of the 20th century. Multiple themes braid together within this general context. The rhetorical use of “sisterhood” in support of feminist and sapphic communities. (It isn’t too far a stretch to assert the existence of sapphic communities at this point.) The use of actual or fictional family ties to defuse potential sapphic readings, as with actress Charlotte Cushman’s Romeo playing opposite her real-life sister’s Juliet. And the imagery of implied (or actual) family ties in deliberately erotic imagery, such as “French postcards” depicting nude women.
Focusing for a moment on Cushman’s Romeo: there was an entire industry of pop culture depictions of her and her sister in these roles, encompassing Staffordshire china figurines and lithographs. The mollifying factor of casting her sister as Juliet is contradicted by later performances in which her Juliet was played by at least two of her female lovers (Matilda Hays and Sarah Anderton).
Another thread in the public debates around the definition and perception of incest appears in the long consideration of an English bill concerning the legality of a man marrying his dead wife’s sister. Some have connected this concern to male pornographic fantasies and depictions of “having both sisters,” while pornographic images of pairs of women embracing raised the specter that the sisters might prefer each other instead.
The depiction or presentation of “sister acts” in art and on stage created a gradient of eroticism from explicit postcards to musical and comedy acts in with “sisterhood” could be interpreted as standing in for lesbian sexual relationships (even when performed by real-life sisters). The gradient was expanded further by Victorian attempts to re-define the historical Sappho’s same-sex desire as maternal in nature, focusing on the image of her as a teacher and mentor. [Note: At the same time, some women in erotic relationships used the language of mother-daughter bonds, with no actual familial basis.]
These tangled popular culture connections between family bonds and erotic connections carried over into early 20th century theatrical imagery, such as the vaudeville sister act known as Tempest and Sunshine who appear on the covers of sheet music publications with one sister in drag and the two in a romantic embrace, illustrating songs of courtship and love. Silent films in the pre-Hayes Code era were rife with imagery of “sisters” (whether in terms of the characters or the actresses) in eroticized scenes.
The author suggests that, rather than the ambiguity of “sisterhood” providing a deniable cover for lesbian eroticism, this imagery demonstrates that “any such invisibility or ‘deniability’ was produced in relation to an overwhelming abundance of visibility and plausibility.” That is, any deniability is being projected by modern critics rather than being attributable to the women participating in the production of these images at the time. (A large number of relevant early film titles are mentioned.)
Event / person:
Saturday, January 31, 2026 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 334 - Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 334 – Fiction Double-Header: Down By the Tumbling Stream by E C Hallewell & Where You Go by Jennifer Nestojko - transcript
(Originally aired 2026/01/31 - listen here)
Submissions for the 2026 fiction series close today, so this episode’s stories were bought as part of the 2025 call for submissions. When I had my choices narrowed down to only one more story than I had slots for, I noticed that two of the remaining pool, taken together, were still below the 5000 word limit so there was no reason to say no to any of them. (Mind you, I’m not saying that these two specific stories were going head to head for a spot. Simply that it gave me an easy out.) I tend to view the word limit more as a budgetary cap, though doubling up on scheduling does have its own complications. The only other time I’ve had a double episode it involved two flash fiction pieces by the same author. So I’ll introduce and air the first story, then have a brief musical transition, then introduce and air the second story. Don’t leave too early!
Rather than flipping a coin, I’ve arranged them in chronological order of the setting. “Down By the Tumbling Stream” by EC Hallewell is set in the Cumbria region of England in the early part of the 17th century, before the English Civil War. It’s a tale of yearning and barriers and second chances with quite a twist at the end.
EC Hallewell grew up in the Lake District, England, and now lives in Scotland with a small child and a large hoard of books. The lakes and fells of their childhood often sneak into their writing, as does the windswept Scottish coastline. They tend to write sad, slightly strange queer tales. When they’re not writing, you’ll find them taking long walks by the water – any water will do! You can find them on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/echallewell.bsky.social. See the links in the show notes.
We tried to arrange for a narrator with the proper local accent, but alas it didn’t work out, so I will be doing the narration for both stories.
This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it. This statement applies to both stories in this episode.
Down by the Tumbling Stream
By EC Hallewell
After the fourth time we slipped away, I knew we would be lovers.
From the melancholy hysteria of the harvest festival, we fled into the dark woods, laughing drunk, bumping shoulders and catching each other when we stumbled. Your hands were smaller than my husband’s, and so much kinder.
Under empty branches and a cloud-black sky, we walked until the din faded and the lakeshore willows gave way to hawthorn, ash, and oak. We came to Waters Meet and your bad hip was aching, so we crossed the beck to rest under the old rowan tree. Far overhead, the clouds parted, and the world lit up silver.
“I used to swim here when I was a lass,” you said.
“Aye, me too.”
We sat with shoulders pressed together, and watched the becks merge with a flicker and a swirl, catching starlight only to let it go.
True night was falling. Away from the festival, from our families, we might have been alone in the valley. Behind us, Skiddaw was a black wall; above us twined bare branches and then — the sky. A vastness veiled by scudding clouds.
“It’s almost too big,” you whispered.
I couldn’t reply, flattened by the mass of stars and their hard light.
“They’ll be singing the blessings by now,” you said.
“We could sing our own.”
“We should get back,” you said.
Before anyone noticed we were gone, and whispers flew from barbed tongues.
But to go back felt like failure. To give up the night and your shoulder against mine, and to wake in the morning wrapped in layers of skin like peeling paint, a wooden doll with an empty smile.
“We could go on,” I said.
“…We could.”
You hesitated, then brought from your pocket a small flask of fragrant juniper spirits.
“Made this for you.”
I held out a hand, but you lifted the rim of the flask to your own lips. Where it touched, it left an indent, one that would fit my finger if I were to press it there. You took a sip, then passed me the flask. With shaking fingers, I held it to my lips, inhaled the sharp berry scent, then drank. Liquid fire swirled around my mouth and shot to my stomach, setting me aflame.
“Is it good?” Your voice was low, rough from the spirits or from something I did not yet dare think about.
“It is.”
I tried to hand it back, but your fingers curled over mine and you pressed it to my chest.
“A gift.”
I swallowed. “Thank you.”
We went back to the festival, to orange lanterns and raucous song. The children of Hawse and Crossthwate were sleeping in piles like puppies in the warmth of the dying bonfires, watched over by mothers and aunts and grandmamas. And so, for a while, we sat beyond the edge of the light, bundled against the night in bright wool blankets.
We leaned closer over hot apple cider until your face blurred and the gaps nestled within our conversation grew longer. You told me you loved your husband, though you never wished to be a wife. You told me you loved your children, though you never wished to be a mother. I tried to understand, but the violent silence of my husband’s low stone cottage held few answers.
I asked myself again why you chose to run away with me, when you already had so much. And in a drunken haze I finally let an answer in when I licked cider from my lower lip and your eyes followed the movement and your own lips parted in a sigh.
But we were still too tame, creatures of our homesteads, dutiful daughters and wives.
And so we went home, and the long empty winter drew in. On the surface a wooden doll draped in undyed wool, underneath I dreamed of you as I darned shirts and whittled new spoons for my kitchen, pricking and slicing my wooden skin until I reached something real. My blood stained red the threads over my husband’s heart, and sank into the thirsty wood to touch every meal I made. I wanted to suck it out, but then my teeth would have been red too, and I was not ready for that. Instead, I sipped juniper and let your heat flow down into my belly, ran my tongue around the hole of your flask as my fingers slipped beneath my skirts.
Our villages were close enough to celebrate the harvest, to lend space on a cart for the sheep auctions over in Keswick, but in the hungry depths of winter we turned in on ourselves, shunned anything outside our separate circles of light, while out on the fells the starving wolves howled.
I saw you, once, in the distance. When the lake froze over and everyone rushed out in joy at the novelty of it. Away to the north, where the stream came down from Hawse. I recognised you from your stature, your feigned nonchalance, the way you held your bad hip as you skated across thin ice. You wove slow loops and occasionally span like the wind had caught you. I wanted to ask you to hold me, to teach me how to dance. But instead, I lent my niece a hand and pulled her along until she fell over from giggling, and then we went to my sister’s home for mulled ale and cake, while my husband chased blush-cheeked young women across the lake.
Spring came in waves; now unfurling, now shrinking from the frost, now tentatively opening again; a touch of bright colour where crocuses pushed up through the snow. Wood sorrel and wild garlic spread across the meadows and under the trees, and bright sap rushed in branch and twig and swelling bud. Green scents called my blood to run faster.
And, finally, the lake thawed completely and there was a new warmth in the air, and I dreamed each night of slipping into the water and drifting under the stars.
Lambing time came and went, and our villages prepared for May Day. The women hung garlands of yellow flowers and made grinning masks of twigs and grasses and green-stained wool; the men built great piles of wood on the shore by St Bega’s, ready to become blazing bonfires.
Young ones at the cusp of adulthood gathered in the lengthening evenings and thought their parents could not see the lingering glances, the pink cheeks and brushing hands.
I thought of you.
The sun shone bright and hot on our festival. I chased shadows down to the water, stood under weeping willows and watched wavelets lap at smooth stones.
In the breathless quiet of this sanctuary, you came to me.
Our husbands were gone to drink ale with the other men, your children to splash in the water and beg sweet treats of the baker. Veiled from the festival by trailing branches with their deathly soft catkins, we were almost alone.
Yours were the only eyes that did not fill me with discomfort. When they caught me, I did not want to look away. They were brown and soft and filled with liquid luminosity, and I felt rather than caused the movement of my fingers, my feet towards you. Like a lodestone to a heart’s desire, every part of me was drawn to every part of you.
You fascinated and frightened me. Beneath your neatly embroidered blouse and pressed linen apron, beneath your learned smile and the dazzling true one, beneath your skin, there was something more, something else.
“Hello, you,” you said.
I melted like candlewax.
“Hello.”
And in those two syllables were the things I could not say with my human tongue: let me lay you down and unravel you; I want to understand every part of you – would you want the same of me? If I rest my fingers on your flushed cheek, will you kiss me? Do you think of me late at night, in your bath, when your lips touch a tumbler of cool water? I want you to shiver when my mouth brushes your skin.
A fire is in my stomach. Come, love, come, away from the music and the people. Down by the tumbling stream, hidden by bramble thickets and sharp coconut gorse, we can be alone.
The bank is green with damp moss and sedge. We sit, let our skirts soak through. Your fingers tremble as you reach for me; your eyes are wide as if you are afraid.
“We could go back,” I say.
“We could.”
With your fingertips, you trace the curve of my lips. Your words mingle with the hollow sounds of the stream. “You are like nothing I have known.”
I cannot speak. I let my lips fall open, take your finger between my teeth. As I bite down, you make a noise between a gasp and a moan, and heat rushes through me, undeniable. I reach for you and you for me and your lips are upon mine, as soft as I had imagined, and as hungry.
Slick tongues and teeth that leave marks; eager fingers seeking skin. With fumbling hands and panting breaths, we discard the trappings of humanity. My fingers brush your ribs, your tongue finds the hollow of my neck and you lick away a swathe of my skin. A moment of agony, then a soft warmth spreads.
Taking turns, we strip away layers with rough tongues that ache and burn. With each fresh revealing, there is further to go. We keep on and keep on, desperate in our need.
The sun scorches raw flesh and we slip into the stream, into cool water that dances over our heads as we tumble.
Claws emerge from the stubs of our fingers, and we rake at tattered remnants of the skins we have shed. The water carries them away, washes clean the brown fur underneath until it gleams in the fractal light.
At last, we are done.
The bank of the stream feels different under the thick pads of my paws. We drag weary limbs from the water and, spent, collapse onto the moss. Sleek furred bodies twined together, we nuzzle one another’s faces, drop gentle bites like kisses on round cheeks and black noses. In the warmth of the spring sun, we can close our eyes and finally rest.
We wake, and love the dance of the water, the heat of the sun on our bellies, fresh fish caught between sharp teeth. There is an echo, sometimes, in the empty night, of something left behind. But behind slips from our grasp like quick darting prey and we let it go, content to drift under the stars.
Jennifer Nestojko has been a regular contributor to the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast’s fiction program. “Where You Go” is the fourth story of hers that we’ve published. The setting is 17th century Germany and it shares the themes of yearning and second chances that the previous story featured.
Jennifer Nestojko is a writer and a teacher who lives near Monterey, CA. The past is full of stories, and the most intriguing are the ones that are hidden by other narratives. Jennifer wants to give voice to some of those stories and experiences, because they speak to the stories of those who are here now and may also be silenced by dominant narratives. She also just likes a good story and is excited to be part of this series.
Where You Go
by Jennifer Nestojko
The smell of warm bread filled the front of the house as Hilde removed the finished loaves and placed them on the work table, which was worn from generations of farm women preparing food for their families. Hilde loved the aromas that filled this part of her little domain and she loved the sense of moving in the same space as her mother and grandmother. She had grown up by this hearth, had shaped her first Easter loaves here, made her first soups and stews under her mother’s watchful eye. She wondered how much longer this would be her space. Too much had happened since summer’s heat and the harvest’s plenty.
Easter was just now past, with its baking and celebrations, and spring was moving forward. Hilde carefully covered the loaves with a cloth and looked at the flowers arranged in an earthenware cup in the center of the work table. That was Liesl’s work, and Hilde smiled to herself. It had been a hard autumn and winter, following the sudden death of Johan, and Hilde was gladdened by the sight of the flowers. Liesl was coming out of her grief at the death of her father.
Hilde checked on the hearthfire. It was still cool in the evenings, though she thought bread and cheese would suffice for her meal. Liesl was at the spring festival in town and had been given enough coin to buy her supper and some trinket. Where would she be without Liesl, she wondered. No one quite knew what she had given up when she married so that the farm’s legacy could continue. She had been an only child, and she was grateful for Hans, her son. Liesl could marry well and move to her new home as its mistress. As Hilde busied herself about, doing the little clean up needed, she wondered what life would be like once Hans and his wife took over the house and she went to the cottage down by the brook. Empty. That’s what it would be. Liesl would be near, but starting her own life soon. As it should be, she thought to herself fiercely.
As if summoned by Hilde’s thoughts, the door to the house burst open and Liesl came running in, her face alight with excitement. She was followed by a new girl, someone Hilde did not know, though Hilde twisted her hands in her skirts, trying to hide the shock she felt at such a familiar face on such an unknown girl.
“Mutti, look” said Liesl eagerly, “This is Anne. She is here with the players.”
The players were a troupe of puppeteers who had fled from England some thirty years before and who traveled through the lowlands and high country, performing their plays and comedies. England had become hostile to players and their like, but they were well received wherever they went now. They came through the village every two or three years, always with new offerings as well as old favorites, such as Punch and Judy. Hilde had eagerly watched their plays once, when she was a girl. Before she was married. She had not gone down to the town festival for many a year, claiming to be needed at home when Johan took the children there. He had teased her about it, but she claimed to be just as pleased to have some peace for once.
“Welcome, Anne” replied Hilde formally, pleased to keep an even tone “Is there anything I can get you?”
“No, thank you,” replied the girl, with a soft curtsy. “I shall have my supper back at the camp. I need to help get ready for tonight’s performance.”
“It’s a small play adapted from the English stage,” offered Liesl. She turned admiring eyes to Anne. “I know girls can’t do the acting, but Anne helps make the puppets and the costumes and all. She let me sew up a gown today. It had velvet and little pearls.” Liesl laughed: “I liked it better than if I were the one wearing it.”
Hilde frowned. “Liesl, you should not be getting in the way.”
Anne smiled at Liesl, and there were secrets dancing in her eyes. Hilde felt the stirrings of alarm, watching Liesl carefully. Liesl seemed to be leaning in to Anne; they seemed far more familiar than expected for a chance encounter.
“Oh no, Liesl is not in the way. She is quite welcome and a great help,” replied Anne demurely.
Liesl took a deep breath and turned to her mother. “I have wonderful news! They have asked me to travel with them for the rest of their circuit. I have always wanted to see more of the world; isn’t this a splendid opportunity?”
“Are you mad, child?” Hilde asked. “What about Matz?”
Liesl frowned and reached for Anne’s hand. “Matz and I are dear friends, yes,” she responded. “But I don’t see why he should mind. He’s known of my wish to travel for years.”
I haven’t known, thought Hilde. I never knew this about my own daughter. The thought stung.
“What about his farm?” asked Hilde coldly. “He needs a wife. You know that.”
“Then he should find one,” said Liesl, with a little stamp. “It shouldn’t be me!”
“And why not?” responded Hilde, still more coldly. She felt a deep anger rising up in her. “It’s a good life. He’s a good man.”
“I don’t want that life,” said Liesl coldly, matching her mother’s tone. That stamp had indicated a more fiery response was coming, but Hilde had seen the little tug on the hand from Anne, and she knew her daughter was taking that cue. It made her angrier, seeing Anne’s face, framed by dark curls, with that famed English complexion. That face – she couldn’t look at her for long.
“You don’t have much choice,” replied Hilde.
“What if she does?” interjected Anne. “What if my aunt and my family can watch over her? She is quick with the work needed for the costumes and the set. We winter near this town, so she can come back then.”
Hilde was watching Liesl’s face – she caught the tightening of her lips. She did not mean to return for winter snows. She did not mean to return.
“No, impossible,” she said. “Say your goodbyes now. This is foolish.”
Liesl said nothing. She stared at her mother for a moment, then turned away and walked out of the house, almost pulling Anne behind her.
Hilde was stunned. What had just happened? Her anger did not die down; it seemed to grow until it hurt too much to contain. She did not know how to release it, and in a blind rage she did the only thing she knew to do in such a moment. She cleaned.
In less than a month she was moving to the cottage. Sophie, Hans’ bride of three years, was more than able to take over. Hilde started sorting her clothing, packing most of it into the chest that had stayed at the foot of the bed her entire married life. It had been a wedding gift from her aunt, the one who had never married and who had been the village seamstress for years. She was the one who had taught Liesl such fine handwork.
Her entire life seemed to fit into that one chest. Some of her garments were turned swiftly into rags for cleaning, and she had little jewelry. The cuckoo clock, her pots and pans, her household figures, all seemed to belong to the house rather than her. She had her good aprons, for holy days and festivals, and she had two dresses for church, and then her daily clothing. Her hands seemed to fold without her having any involvement. They went about their tasks quickly, not needing direction. Not needing her.
She focused so hard on not thinking the next thought, feeling the emotion beneath the anger, that she failed to hear a rapping on the door, nor did she hear the door open. She slowly became aware of the figure at the entrance to her room, watching her. Hilde looked up, knowing, almost, what she was going to see.
A woman of her own age stood there, dressed much like she was dressed. She had dark curls peeking out from beneath her coif and, even now, a clear English complexion. Hilde did not know how to read her expression. She did not know what betrayal was on her own face.
“I figured,” she began, and then couldn’t speak for a moment. “Anne?” she asked.
The woman kept her hands beneath her apron. “She is my niece,” she replied. “Unlike you, I never married. My sister died when Anne was an infant, and I have raised her as my own.”
“Mary,” began Hilde, and then stopped. Mary kept looking at her, her brown eyes more of a mystery than they ever had been.
“Mary,” she began again. “I had to. I had to. I had no choice.”
“No?” asked Mary. Then she sighed and reached out a hand to Hilde. Hilde looked at the outstretched hand a moment, then reached out her own, accepting the help to her feet.
“Ach,” she said, “those girls do not appreciate their youth.”
Mary was silent as they went out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She sat on the offered stool and calmly accepted a slice of warm bread with honey. Neither woman spoke for a few minutes, breaking bread together.
“I waited by the brook for you,” Mary said, her words like pebbles tossed into a pool.
“I told you not to,” replied Hilde, defensively. This wasn’t real; she had imagined this conversation for years when she was younger. It was mad that she thought it was happening now, that Mary was actually here, eating her bread.
“I know,” said Mary. “I was hopeful, and then I was angry.” She looked at Hilde. “Then, I was sad. I have looked for you when we have come to your town.”
Hilde looked away. “I could not go. I had made my choice.” The only choice, which made it no choice at all.
Mary sighed and reached across the table, taking Hilde’s hand. “Would it have been so bad to see me, so bad to speak to me in the marketplace?”
Hilde refused to meet her glance, but she gripped Mary’s hand tightly. “Yes,” she said.
After a moment Mary let go of her hand. She stood, straightened her skirts, and then walked swiftly to the door, opened it, and walked through.
Hilde stayed up all through the night, sitting in Johan’s old chair, which had always been the more comfortable. She did not bank the coals but kept the small fire in the fireplace going, watching the flames. She watched as the logs were consumed by flame, watched as they crumbled to ash only to be replaced by new logs. In the morning she knew the ashes would be swept away, by her, possibly to be of some later use in making soap or in the garden or for deterring pests.
Sophie was more than capable of such tasks, and she had more energy. Hilde could help here and there and she could keep the cottage, but such a role was nothing more than a burning down to embers before becoming ash and then nothing. Even in the midst of her bleak reflections, her lips twitched at the idea of becoming soap. That could be very interesting, actually, as long as she wasn’t used for dishes. She had had enough of washing dishes.
Hilde had been dozing in the chair, but woke as the door opened. It was Liesl coming home in the early reaches of dawn, opening the door quietly, as if hoping that her mother was still sleeping in her bed. Hilde had always been up early, but that was because Johan needed to see to the animals, and that was a task for Hans now. Sophie was the one waking early and Hilde sometimes woke just past dawn’s light. Liesl obviously hoped that this was one of those mornings as she tiptoed to the stairs. Hilde feigned sleep, and Liesl crept up to the loft. Hilde heard her moving about the room, and the thumps did not sound like the noises made when preparing for sleep. Like mother, like daughter, Hilde thought, wearily, remembering her own packing. Liesl was not planning to stay; she was sneaking out and leaving with her new friends. She felt the start of tears against her eyelids and swiftly suppressed them. She had much practice in keeping tears away.
“Well?” she asked, startling her daughter who was trying to miss the creaking boards on the stairs. Hans had been so much craftier at sneaking out. Liesl had never tried to do so, until now.
“Mother?” Liesl said, looking around the shadowy room, and finally spotting her.
“Were you going to sneak away, like a thief?” asked Hilde. “What, no goodbye?”
Liesl looked confused, came down the rest of the way, then stood, defiant. “You told me I cannot go. I am making my own choice. I won’t let you stop me.”
“That would be good dialogue for one of your puppet shows,” said Hilde, standing up. “I am sure I have heard those lines before.”
Liesl snorted. “You never go to the shows. What do you know?”
Hilde put her hand on Liesl’s hair, admiring the gold that still shone even in the muted light. Her own hair once was that shade. “Is it Anne?” She stroked her daughter’s braids, much as she had when Liesl was younger. “Do you love her?”
Liesl choked a little and blushed. “She is very kind to me, Mutti.”
Hilde sighed. “You love her like you do not love Matz.” She almost laughed at the shocked look on Liesl’s face. Mothers know nothing. They never had.
“Liebchen,” she said, and sighed again. Why was this so hard? “Liebchen, tell Anne to keep you close and keep you safe. You have my blessing.”
Liesl stared at her, trying to parse out the layered meaning in her mother’s words. Tears came more readily to her eyes than her mother’s; a few slipped down her cheek.
Hilde embraced her daughter. She had so much to say, and no words ready for the speaking. “Send word now and then,” she whispered. Liesl nodded. Hilde released her. “Come back and visit,” she said. “Anne as well.”
After Liesl had left, tears still in her eyes, Hilde felt a bit lost. Her anger had changed shape; it now tasted of grief as well. She had been angry for so many years, despite her good life. Her husband had been a kind man and a friend. Her children were gifts. Yet underneath it all she had been angry, and now she understood that her anger had always been paired with grief.
Soon she would be moved to the small cottage. There had never been choices for her, not really, not with so many expectations hanging on them. They were the expectations of others, but they were real and she had felt their weight. Now she was old and done and out of the choices she never really had possessed.
She drifted over to the small secret cubby beneath the stair; it had been her hiding place since she was five and her aunt had shown it to her. She opened it up and drew out an old box wrapped in cloth. She sat it on the table while she had her small breakfast. She missed her husband; his death had ripped a hole in her life and changed everything. She missed her daughter with a fierce ache that burned deep inside, even though she had left only an hour past. She missed her son, though he was nearby.
She missed herself, who she had been, who she was at different moments in her life. Who was she now that husband, daughter, and son were swallowed up into their adult selves or into death?
Hilde tidied up and, sick of her own company in that empty space, so familiar and yet no longer her own, she grabbed the box and walked outside, draping a cloak about her, for the morning was cold. She walked down to the brook, following the winding little path worn by many feet before her. The leaves were showing their new green and there were daffodils and tulips adding color against the boles of the trees. The brook rushed along, finally coming to a small pool and quieting its chatter. In the summer it was a deep brown with shafts of light through the trees turning the depths golden in spots. She loved it, even though it had always made her think of another pair of brown eyes. Johan’s eyes had been blue, similar to her own.
There was a spot where tree roots wove a comfortable seat, especially now since her backside was more cushioned than in former years. She nestled into it, feeling the comfort of its familiarity. She had come to the brook with children and spouse many times, but this space was her own. There were other pools, suitable for children swimming on hot days; this one was too small. It did not feel foreign to her, as her own house was becoming foreign. Had it been just yesterday that she was baking bread and remembering her mother and grandmother, had been thinking of her place in that long chain of women? Of course, she had still been aware of losing that place.
There was a soft murmuring of water here, not the laughing chatter or the louder rush amongst the rocks that could be found elsewhere. It soothed her, and Hilde listened to it for a long while before picking up the box and unwrapping it, gently folding the cloth and laying it aside. The box had been lovingly carved with small faces and trees and flowers, and she traced the face of one particularly amusing gnome that had always been a favorite.
She heard the steps down the path and knew who must be coming. This had been their meeting spot, so long ago.
“Open it,” Mary said. “I did not know that you had kept it.”
Hilde opened the box, removing the small puppet that was nestled within. Its face had been carved with the same care as the box, and it wore a faded dress of velvet. It had a crown on its head. “I would never have thrown it away,” she replied. “Never.”
She waited for Mary to respond with something pithy and bitter – you threw me away – but Mary just sat near her on a protruding root. They had once fit together in the nest of roots.
“It really should see the stage again,” Mary said. Hilde felt the ache inside of her grow.
“Liesl could make it a new dress,” she offered. “Since she will be leaving with you.” She could not keep the echo of loss from her voice.
Mary put her arm around her, drawing her close. Hilde held herself stiff for a moment, then relaxed. “I like the dress it has,” Mary replied. “It was made by the most amazing seamstress.”
Hilde laughed. “Liesl is much better at that than I ever was,” she said. “She has a better sense of color and her stitches are more even.”
Mary held her closer. “Liesl is Anne’s. You were mine.”
Hilde watched the water, not knowing what to say. She remembered the girl who had found love in the most unexpected way. She remembered their little staged shows here by the brook, with no audience but for a few robins and a saucy squirrel. There has been kisses exchanged, and more. The sun was making its way to the pool, lighting parts golden brown. She had once watched for nothing but the golden lights of Mary’s eyes and the shape of her smile. Now Mary was leaving and taking Liesl with her. For a moment she despised the cottage, which was a lovely cottage with roses and small windows and charming cupboards. It did not deserve such hatred, really.
Moments passed, and then it seemed as if an unspoken question had been answered. Mary sighed and stood up. “I must be going; we will be travelling by nightfall.” She turned towards the path.
Hilde also stood up and watched as Mary started up the path. Something within her shifted, or perhaps she finally heard the question Mary had been asking, and she cried out. “Mary – Mary,” was all she could say, and then twenty years of withheld tears erupted, and she bent over, shuddering with sobs.
“No, no, dearest,” Mary murmured, rushing back, holding her, pressing kisses onto her hair, onto her neck, rubbing her back. Hilde held on tightly, trying to stop her sobs. Finally, she quieted, and tried to step away. She looked into Mary’s brown eyes, and then Mary pressed her lips to hers. The years fell away for just a moment.
After, Mary brushed aside her own tears. “I heard Liesl’s story,” she said. “When she said she had a choice, that she wanted a choice. I thought, so many years ago, that you had made a choice, but you really didn’t see that there was one, did you?”
Hilde nodded. No, she had been tied to this place, but she found that she was no longer angry that Liesl had choices, even if her own were over or had never been.
“Dearheart,” Mary said. “So much has changed. I am hopefully wiser as well as older, and I stopped being angry years ago.” Mary cupped Hilde’s face in her hands, looking tentative, but hopeful. “Would you wish to come with me now? This time?”
Oh, Hilde thought. She did have choices. She smiled up at Mary, a shy smile that became a grin.
“Well,” she said. “It’s a good thing that I have already packed.”
Show Notes
This quarter’s fiction episode presents two stories:
- "Down By the Tumbling Stream" EC Hallewell, narrated by Heather Rose Jones.
- "Where You Go" Jennifer Nestojko, narrated by Heather Rose Jones.
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 EC Hallewell Online
- Bluesky: @echallewell.bsky.social
Major category:
LHMPFriday, January 30, 2026 - 10:00
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.
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LHMPFull citation:
Roelens, Jonas. 2017. “A Woman Like Any Other: Female Sodomy, Hermaphroditism, and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Bruges” in Journal of Women’s History, vol. 29 no. 4, Winter 2017. pp.11-34
This article concerns one of a number of female sodomy trials in the Low Countries in the 17th century, a time and place where there was an unusual level of concern for the topic. This interest can be connected to the increasing preoccupation with the role of the clitoris in sex and beliefs about its role in gender identity and same-sex activity. However the detailed testimony in the trial is also interesting for suggesting an unexpected self-consciousness by the defendants about their own same-sex desires—a topic for which evidence is difficult to find. Their testimony contrasted sharply with the theories about same-sex activity presented by other witnesses, which included abnormal physiology and witchcraft. This document points up the hazard of taking dominant discourses at face value with respect to how queer people in history thought about themselves.
The trial was held at Bruges in 1618 and concerned two women, Mayken and Magdaleene, and was sparked by an act of spite by Mayken’s husband. Having just been convicted of horse theft and sentenced to hang, his response was to accuse Magdaleene—whom he claimed to be a “hermaphrodite”—of having seduced his wife, Mayken, and convinced her to abandon him a year previously. To try to retrieve his wife, the man even went to a practitioner of magic and had him do a finding ritual that was supposed to locate her. He claimed that Magdaleene had similarly seduced other women and had been banned from at least one town because of it.
The night before his execution, the man was given the opportunity to “relieve his conscience” by providing more detailed testimony. He told how he had heard panting from the attic of the place he and his wife worked, and had gone up to find her lying together with Magdaleene who claimed they had simply been playing around tickling each other. He told his wife to stay away from her but later the two women were seen running naked together and bathing in a ditch near their workplace. Shortly thereafter, the two women disappeared. He also accused Magdaleene of having given his wife a potion to cause a miscarriage. None of this saved him from hanging, but it inspired a follow-up investigation by the town aldermen.
Witnesses included a parish priest who, six years earlier, had seen Magdaleene and an unnamed spinster “lying in bed and playing.” He also took a confession from a woman (unclear if it was the same one) who said she had a “carnal conversation” with Magdaleene who displayed “great affection and lust” and whom she said used “a rod” in this context and produced a quantity of cold semen. This last item invoked the image of how the devil was supposed to have cold semen when engaging in sex with human women.
The list of possible crimes was growing: being a hermaphrodite, sodomy with an instrument, being a poisoner or at least an abortionist, and engaging in witchcraft.
A month after the charges were first raised, Magdaleene and Mayken were located and brought in for testimony. Magdaleene was a widow and had an adult son. She used a variety of aliases and moved a lot, due to being followed by legal troubles. But she denied the charges brought against her.
Mayken testified that she’d left her husband because she was tired of his thieving and his threats to kill her. She hadn’t known about Magdaleene’s past legal troubles when they left together, but she did know that Magdaleene had committed adultery with her own husband—something he had neglected to mention in his final confession. The two women had traveled together across the Low Countries, though with one brief separation. Both women testified that there had been no abortion as Mayken hadn’t been pregnant, and the only potion involved was for a fever, after which that angle of questioning was dropped.
While various witnesses said that Magdaleene was a hermaphrodite, possibly caused by the devil, Mayken testified that her partner was “a woman like any other” with no physical abnormalities that she’d ever seen. Mayken reported that Magdaleene said she’d rather have sex with women than “with seven men” and that women begged her for it, and said further that there were more women who felt the same way she did. Mayken wasn’t always as eager for sex as Magdaleene was, at which the latter would list other women who had been more willing in the past.
Mayken reported on their sexual activity in some detail, describing that Magdaleene had “lain on her and had carnal conversation with her as if she was a man…doing her duty with great force,” but that she had never “felt something that would have been male” and although there would be some wetness when Magdaleene climaxed, it wasn’t much and she couldn’t say whether it was hot or cold.
While the trial pursued several lines of questioning related to potential witchcraft, other theories of the offense were pursued at the same time, and there was interest in how Magdaleene had begun this sexual career. She said she first became aware of female same-sex possibilities at age 9 when she saw several other girls engaging in intercourse together. Now confronted with Mayken’s testimony, she confessed to having had sex with her “on Mayken’s body, but not in her folds as men would communicate with women.”
As was usual for that era, Magdaleene’s testimony was confirmed under torture, where she confessed to sleeping with one of the other named women and “tasting her” but not going further because the woman was ill. [Note: This may possibly refer to oral sex, but I’d say it isn’t unambiguous.] She described another sexual encounter with a woman who’d asked Magdaleene if she was a man or a woman, but who was convinced she was a woman after they had sex. She continued to deny ever having performed witchcraft and evidently the investigators believed her and the torture was concluded.
Mayken was order to pray for forgiveness and was banned from Bruges for 10 years. Magdaleene was held in jail for another 2 years before sentencing. The final charges were restricted to abandoning her husband [note: but I thought she was a widow?], seducing women away from their husbands, and teaching them dishonor by libidinous acts. Her sentence was being banned from Flanders for life under penalty of death, beginning 3 days after sentencing.
The article continues with a survey of female sodomy charges in 17th century Europe, noting the unusual number in the southern Netherlands in the 15-16th centuries, often involving death sentences. This unusual rate of convictions fell off at the end of the 16th century, possibly due to shifts in popular knowledge about the sexual possibilities. In Mayken and Magdaleene’s trial, the word “sodomy” is never used, whereas it commonly appears in earlier records. One factor in this context is that sodomy had come to be defined narrowly in terms of penetration, therefore trials of women tended to focus only on cases where an artificial phallus had been used—something Magdaleene denied. Nor had Magdaleene cross-dressed or expressed anything resembling a masculine identity—other potentially aggravating factors in cases of f/f sex.
One factor in Mayken’s lesser sentence might be due to her testimony situating her more passively. She “endured” the sex and sometimes refused it, though she did not present herself as a victim.
The prevalent medical discourse around the role of the clitoris in female same-sex activity led the authorities to raise this issue strongly, hoping to ascribe Magdaleene’s desires to pseudo-masculine anatomy, although her partners rejected this framing. [Note: At this point in the article, the author discusses how the use of the term “tribade” specifically meant “a woman who uses an enlarged clitoris for sex” but I’ve been coming to strongly question this attribution, especially when projected back prior to the 16th century anatomists. But that’s a subject for a separate discussion.] In the 17th century, anatomical examinations were becoming an inherent part of accusations of female sodomy. The article digresses into explaining the Galenic theory of sexual development, popular ideas about spontaneous physical sex-change, and conflicts between medial and religious ideas about female sodomy, with several case studies listed. There’s an extensive discussion of the theories of demonologists about what types of sex devils preferred or avoided and the potential role of curses in the experience of same-sex desire.
The accusations that Magdaleene had abnormal physiology were discussed at various points in her trial, but her initial accuser was the only person who ever used the word “hermaphrodite” and at no point is there mention of a formal medical examination, suggesting that this was not a strong concern. But “hermaphrodite” didn’t have a narrow physiological definition at this time and could refer to any person who overturned gender roles, especially a woman perceived as dominant over men.
In all, the various discourses present in the trial demonstrate the variety of ideas and models of female same-sex desire that were prevalent at the time, whether in different parts of the population or existing as simultaneous beliefs. But what stands out as significant was how articulate and conscious Magdaleene was of her personal preference for engaging in sex with women and her awareness of other women with similar preferences.
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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.
Major category:
LHMPFull 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)
Major category:
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.
Major category:
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
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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.
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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.
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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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