This is the article that Donoghue references with respect to possible evidence of 18th century women in Amsterdam having meeting places for engaging in same-sex activities. The evidence is fairly tenuous but at least indicates that there may have been clusters of women who came together around this shared interest. But in considering the women discussed in this article one needs to keep in mind the nature of the record.
LHMP
Blog entry
For those who follow the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, you may be aware that our umbrella organization, The Lesbian Talk Show, has begun using a sponsorship (i.e., ad-insertion) service (to help cover hosting costs and other overhead). The various shows are still fine-tuning how to set up our episodes to play well with the sponsor messages. It should all run more smoothly after some minor format changes. Apologies for any unexpected listening experiences.
As I note at the beginning of this entry, I'm a bit uncertain about the viewpoint of this article. That's one of the reasons why I placed it at the end of the series on Indian topics, after several by authors working within their own cultural context. In general, I try to be careful about using sources for non-western cultures because of the colonial legacy even when western academics are studying gender and sexuality from a positive point of view.
Across many authors there’s a confusing assertion that lesbian possibilities have regularly gone from being considered impossible, to being recognized, then resulting in the demonization of demonstrations of affection. To some extent, this article deals with the reverse swing of the pendulum: how was that awareness suppressed again, such that there could be a later re-awakening of suspicion? Traub and Andreadis discuss how lesbian possibilities were identified and articulated in the 17th century, resulting in a genteel avoidance-discourse among authors like Katherine Phillips.
As the 18th century progressed toward the "sex panic" that presaged a massive shift in attitudes towards women's sexuality, we see how images of sexual license--both heterosexual and homosexual--came to be viewed as signs of the decay and collapse of civil society itself. In France, these images got caught up in the larger upheavals that led to the Revolution.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 81 (previously 28)d - Anne Damer - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/11/24 - listen here)
I couldn't do better for a blog title than the title of the article in this case. This article might seem an odd choice for a project focusing on women’s homoerotic relationships, given that it is concerned almost entirely with heterosexual adultery. The relevance comes in side consequences of the shift in attitudes towards women’s sexuality centered around the end of the 18th century.
Serendipity has once again set up a series of related entries on this blog. When sorting through the recent journal article haul from the Journal of the History of Sexuality, this one jumped out at me as relating to the topic of classical Greek romance novels. I think it reads well as a pairing with the summary of the Babyloniaka from last week. Gorman takes a complex look at the various messages--both intentional and inadvertent--sent by using the Greek romance as a template for early Christian "adventure stories" um...that is...apocrypha.
With the help of several online friends (yay twitter!) I tracked down various versions of this text in time to discuss in in my podcast on women loving women in classical Rome, so it only made sense to add it to my occasional series of LHMP entries with primary sources. I can't say that I was happy to find that the evidence in the story for women's same-sex marriage in ancient Egypt was not quite as solid as some authors (like Brooten) imply.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 77 (previously 27d) - Woman Plus Woman in Classical Rome - transcript
(Originally aired 2018/10/27 - listen here)
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