There's an entire genre of articles on the theme "why is it so hard to find historic evidence for female same-sex relations?" It covers everything from the types of erasures and displacements that Faderman talks about in this article, to the deliberate and selective exclusion of f/f vocabulary from the Oxford English DIctionary (which continues the process of erasure to this day, as people relying on it to be complete and detailed). Time after time you get slapped in the face with the understanding that f/f relations were erased because people considered them shameful and embarrassing.
LHMP
Blog entry
I like setting myself little challenges for the Project to keep up my momentum and to avoid the sense that it's become an endless march from one random publication to the next. Thus, I alternate between thematic groupings and simply working my way through what's left in a folder or on a shelf. Doing an "every day" push for Pride Month helps kick-start me out of a period of distraction where other projects take priority. At this point, I have enough written up to continue posting every day into mid-July.
In the group of articles I've been reading lately, there are two interesting meta-topics: scholars talking about the process of research and their relationship to their subjects, and philosophical questions about the nature of "romantic friendship." I have some thoughts on the latter, which I'll put in the comments that display with the entry itself.
As noted previously, the number of the entries is going to get a bit weird for a bit. But since I don't expect that much of anyone besides me pays attention to the numbering, this is no big deal. The most relevant part is that I've identified which article I want to slot into #500, so now I have to keep track of that as I fill in what comes before.
This finishes up Cleves' book on Charity and Sylvia. As I noted in a previous blog, the entry numbers are going to be a bit jumbled for a while, both because I'd accidentally skipped a run of numbers and because I've already assigned a number to a book that's taking some time to write up, for logistical reasons. In the mean time, I have a bunch of short articles ready to go, which will take me through the end of Pride Month, after which I won't hold myself to the "post every day" schedule. It's been a fun challenge, but I have other projects that need to move forward as well!
When constructing fictional narratives of the past, we often run into absolute statements along the lines of "women couldn't...," "women didn't...," "women always..." But when we look at the detailed truths of history, we usually find a lot of "women couldn't unless they..." and "women didn't typically..." and "women always...except when..." Once we get past the falsity of absolute statements, we need to get past a blythe assumption of exceptionalness, fighting our way to a nuanced particularity of the circumstances in which some women could, did, and didn't--with an understanding
One of the things I love about the level of detail in this biography is how it shows the day-to-day interactions among family and community. Yes, C&S were accepted and cherished by their community, but that doesn't mean everything was constant sunshine and roses. They had family squabbles.
No extra commentary today. I've been bopping all over the place getting my bike tuned up and meeting up with friends in Sacramento and I'm exhausted.
After I finish up Charity and Sylvia, the numbering on the LHMP entries may get jumbled for a while. I realized that I'd skipped a run of numbers and need to go back and fill them in.
I hope that some of the listeners to the podcast have been intrigued enough by the quick synopsis it gave of Charity and Sylvia's lives to follow up with the more extensive summary presented here in the blog--or even to track down a copy of the book for the full story. I don't often coordinate the blog and podcast quite this closely, but it's often the case that I'll do a run of articles on a theme in preparation for working up a podcast.
Pages
