The typical focus on researching female same-sex desire in the early modern period centers around medical and legal records, the motif of physiological anomaly (the enlarged clitoris myth), and attempts to identify covert homoerotic themes in women’s writing. In contrast, pornography and popular culture (ballads and pamphlets) present a different view, even though they can rarely be interpreted as self-reporting of the women involved.
17th c
LHMP entry
The author notes a lack of attention paid to mid-17th century literary pornography, a telling absence in considerations of gender-related shifts in this era, while also noting that feminist analysis of pornography focuses mostly on contemporary issues and treats the genre as monolithic and inherently misogynistic.
This article examines the 17th century pornographic text L’Escole des filles (School for girls) not only as a sexual dialogue but as a satire (or at least reflection) of the fashion for pedagogical texts aimed at women and girls. This is illustrated (literally) by the frontispiece image in the 1668 edition, which depicts figures representing the two women in the dialogue studying a copy of the book itself in an academic setting.
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.
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.”
This is a startlingly (I might say unexpectedly) excellent and comprehensive survey of lesbian-relevant history in Early Modern Europe. That actually makes it difficult to summarize (as well as difficult to tag, though I’ll give it my best shot). I think I’ll approach it by noting themes and topics, without necessarily trying to compose complete sentences.
This study considers three categories of transgender experience. Although a variety of terms for these categories are noted, for convenience they are labeled erxing (two-shaped) corresponding roughly to intersex, nü hua nan (FTM), and nan hua nü (MTF). The period of study is primarily the Ming (1368-1644 CE) and Qing (1644-1911 CE) eras, though earlier material is also noted. The material is structured in five sections: an introduction discussing the source materials, a discussion of each of the three categories, and a brief summary of conclusions.
I downloaded this because I had a link to it, but in the end after reading halfway through I decided not to blog it in detail. It’s interesting and competent as an undergraduate paper, examining comparative imagery in the work of Katherine Philips and near-contemporaries especially John Donne. But the paper didn’t seem to have anything genuinely new in terms of the historic record.
Andreadis opens by providing evidence that in the 17th century, people were quite capable of envisioning same-sex marriage as a concept, even if only in counter-factual situations. Popular opinion tended to divide female homoeroticism into two populations: those perceived as deviant and assigned labels like tribade, confricatrix, rubster, or tommy, and those who conformed to social expectations while expressing erotically-charged sentiments but left no trace of related sexual activity.
Introduction
The book covers the imperial era of China (221 BCE to 1912 CE) plus a few earlier texts. The subject is “socially defined expressions of same-sex erotic and sexual attraction, enacted or imagined.” This is not “homosexuality” as such. Some texts may depict same-sex acts that don’t derive from erotic desire.
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