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(This is a modified version of a lecture originally presented at the SCA's West Kingdom Collegium, November 10, 2010. Copyright 2012 Heather Rose Jones, all rights reserved)
This article is one in a continuing series on topics and motifs of use to people creating historically-grounded characters that resonate with modern lesbians. That description is very carefully circuitous. The particular combination of attitudes, beliefs, priorities, and behaviors associated with a modern lesbian identity were not combined in the same ways historically and often had different meanings for people of an earlier era. The same is true, of course, of the attitudes, beliefs, priorities, and behaviors associated with a modern heterosexual identity, but people generally don’t feel the need for disclaimers on straight history.
In this article, I frequently use the word “lesbian” as a shorthand for “women who have sex with women” or as a translation for historic terms in other languages. This is primarily to avoid cumbersome phrasing and isn’t meant to imply anything about the self-identification of the women so labeled. One additional disclaimer I want to emphasize is that although my interest here is filtered through a lesbian lens, many of the items covered here could also be understood in a transsexual context, either in terms of how the historic figures understood their own lives or in terms of how modern people “use” that history. I don’t mean to erase this angle, but it’s not how I’m approaching the topic.
My underlying purpose here is primarily as a creator of fictional historic characters, and for that reason my research draws not only on factual historic accounts, but on historic literature, on art, and on the invented mythology of the age that described what people thought they knew about sexual activity between women, whether or not the specific activities ever happened. To some extent, I’m interested in the study of possibilities: what could people of the middle ages and renaissance envision women doing together and how did they understand those possibilities in context?
( Although this is a scholarly article, it includes explicit descriptions of sexual activities. It should probably be considered NSFW. )
This article is one in a continuing series on topics and motifs of use to people creating historically-grounded characters that resonate with modern lesbians. That description is very carefully circuitous. The particular combination of attitudes, beliefs, priorities, and behaviors associated with a modern lesbian identity were not combined in the same ways historically and often had different meanings for people of an earlier era. The same is true, of course, of the attitudes, beliefs, priorities, and behaviors associated with a modern heterosexual identity, but people generally don’t feel the need for disclaimers on straight history.
In this article, I frequently use the word “lesbian” as a shorthand for “women who have sex with women” or as a translation for historic terms in other languages. This is primarily to avoid cumbersome phrasing and isn’t meant to imply anything about the self-identification of the women so labeled. One additional disclaimer I want to emphasize is that although my interest here is filtered through a lesbian lens, many of the items covered here could also be understood in a transsexual context, either in terms of how the historic figures understood their own lives or in terms of how modern people “use” that history. I don’t mean to erase this angle, but it’s not how I’m approaching the topic.
My underlying purpose here is primarily as a creator of fictional historic characters, and for that reason my research draws not only on factual historic accounts, but on historic literature, on art, and on the invented mythology of the age that described what people thought they knew about sexual activity between women, whether or not the specific activities ever happened. To some extent, I’m interested in the study of possibilities: what could people of the middle ages and renaissance envision women doing together and how did they understand those possibilities in context?
( Although this is a scholarly article, it includes explicit descriptions of sexual activities. It should probably be considered NSFW. )
