I'll be blogging this article eventually, but wanted to toss out an extended quote simply because it so clearly articulates a transmasculine identity in a historic context when unfiltered, non-judgemental reporting of such things is rare. The article identifies the couple as "lesbian" because this is how the 19th century author categorized a relationship between two female-bodied persons. I've retained the female pronouns in the original text since this is a verbatim quote. The article is:

Engelstein, Laura. 1990. "Lesbian Vignettes: A Russian Triptych from the 1890s" in Signs vol. 15, no. 4 813-831.

“When only fifteen she first became aware that she was made to be a man, though mistakenly endowed by nature with female sexual organs. She experienced a man’s attraction for girls and women but none at all for men, whom she merely found pleasant and intelligent to talk to. She long ago recognized her peculiar condition, as she calls it. Though she realizes she does not resemble other women, she does not consider herself a monster but only an error of nature. All her feelings are exclusively masculine; she unconsciously, instinctively does everything in a masculine way. She would very much like to dress as a man and restrains herself only for the sake of propriety. She does not wear her hair in a feminine way and always dreams of herself as a man, sometimes even with whiskers. In the company of women she knows well, she feels entirely manly and is always in excellent spirits. In the company of men, by contrast, she feels shy and constrained, like a school child in the company of preceptors and teachers.”    

One of the aspects of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project that I’ve tried to emphasize clearly is that the “lesbian” aspect of the project derives entirely from my own purposes and primary intended audience, and not necessarily from the objective nature of the historic data itself. In fact, a significant fraction of the publications and data that the Project covers would be equally useful to someone interested in transgender themes and characters (especially FTM). One of the recurring concerns in studying historic sexuality is the difficulty (and often impossibility) of determining how specific historic individuals understood how their own desires and activities related to the categories of “male” and “female” and where the dividing lines might be between behavior and identity. And just as the LHMP does not require me to come to any conclusions about whether specific historic data “counts as lesbian” for me to identify it as useful in the context of this project, the fact of inclusion doesn’t detract from the usefulness of that same data to other compatible framings of gender or sexuality. In that context, it seems worthwhile to provide a brief list of covered publications that have particular relevance to transgender themes. (Obviously this only includes material covered so far. I will try to remember to update this periodically.)

* * *

Amer, Sahar. 2008. Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. ISBN 978-0-8122-4087-0

Especially chapter 3 focusing specifically on the story of Yde and Olive.

Anson, John. 1974. “The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origin and Development of a Motif” in Viator, 5: 1-32.

The entire genre of “female transvestite saints” falls considerably more comfortably under transgender rather than lesbian themes.

Benkov, Edith. “The Erased Lesbian: Sodomy and the Legal Tradition in Medieval Europe” in Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages. ed. by Francesca Canadé Sautman & Pamela Sheingorn. Palgrave, New York, 2001.

Specific case studies, especially that of Katharina Hetzeldorfer, raise significant questions regarding how the individual in question understood their own gender.

Braunschneider, Theresa. 2010. “Reforming the Coquette: Poly, Homo, Hetero in The Reform’d Coquet and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless” in Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. Beynon, John C. & Caroline Gonda eds. Ashgate, Farnham. ISBN 978-0-7546-7335-4

There is an episode of MTF gender disguise in one of the stories being analyzed, but not what I’d consider a solid transgender theme.

Bullough, Vern L. 1974. “Transvestites in the Middle Ages” in American Journal of Sociology 79/6: 1381-1394

A rather badly dated article. My summary covers FTM themes but the article itself is broader in coverage.

Bullough, Vern. 1996. “Cross Dressing and Gender Role Change in the Middle Ages” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage Garland Publishing, New York. ISBN 0-8153-3662-4

This article primarily concerns temporary, situational cross-dressing and gender play rather than issues of identity and long-term expression.

Clover, Carol J. 1995. "Maiden Warriors and Other Sons" in Robert R. Edwards & Vickie Ziegler (eds). Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge.

Clover’s thesis addresses the “maiden warrior” motif as a culturally sanctioned (though often temporary) cross-gender role and reviews similar themes in both literary and historic cultures.

Cressy, David. 1996. “Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England” in Journal of British Studies 35/4: 438-465.

A broad survey of cross-gender expression for many different purposes.

Dekker, Rudolf M. and van de Pol, Lotte C. 1989. The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe. Macmillan, London. ISBN 0-333-41253-2 (Link is to Part 1 - see also Parts 2 & 3)

There are a great many case studies included here that are ambiguous in terms of how the individuals understood their own identities (especially given that their personal testimony was typically given in the context of trials when answers may have been tailored for personal safety).

Dickemann, Mildred. 1997. “The Balkan Sworn Virgin: A Cross-Gendered Female Role” in Islamic Homosexualities - Culture, History, and Literature, ed. by Stephen O. Murray & Will Roscoe. New York University Press, New York. ISBN 0-8147-7468-7

As I note in my summary, this article and topic fit far more comfortably within a cross-gender analysis, though still relevant to my core project.

Donoghue, Emma. 2010. Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 978-0-307-27094-8

Chapter 1 (Travesties) covers themes of cross-gender expression that create ambiguous contexts for erotic desire.

Dugaw, Dianne. 1989. Warrior Women and Popular Balladry 1650-1850. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-16916-2 (Link is to Part 1, see also Part 2)

A great deal of information on cross-gender performance in popular culture, though primarily covering individuals who appear to understand themselves as female.

Gonda, Caroline. 2010. “The Odd Women: Charlotte Charke, Sarah Scott and the Metamorphoses of Sex” in Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century. Beynon, John C. & Caroline Gonda eds. Ashgate, Farnham. ISBN 978-0-7546-7335-4

Actress Charlotte Charke not only was famed for her “trouser roles” but engaged in cross-gender performance in her personal life, including presenting herself as husband to her female romantic partner.

Hotchkiss, Valerie R. 1996. Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-8153-3771-x

A broad survey of themes and motifs.

Merrick, Jeffrey & Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. 2001. Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-510257-6

Although my summary only covers the material involving individuals born female, the male material is more extensive. Case studies and literary examples include cross-gender performance and identity.

Rictor Norton (Ed.), Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. Updated 7 September 2014 . (Accessed 2014/09/13)

A wide variety of relevant material. Go to the original web site to side-step the filtering I did for my own summary.

Puff, Helmut. 2000. "Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477)" in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies: 30:1, 41-61.

Detailed account of an individual whose life could be viewed equally as cross-gender or lesbian.

Roche-Mahdi, Sarah. 1999. Silence. Michigan State University Press, Lansing. ISBN 0-87013-543-0

I included this on the general theme of cross-dressing and the “nature versus nurture” debate. Despite the romance’s resolution with Silence taking up a female role, the character’s life has very strong transgender themes.

Sautman, Francesca Canadé. “What Can They Possibly Do Together? Queer Epic Performances in Tristan de Nanteuil” in Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages (ed. By Francesca Canadé Sautman & Pamela Sheingorn), Palgrave, New York, 2001.

As with Silence, the motifs of gender transformation in this medieval romance have significant transgender relevance.

Shank, Michael H. 1987. "A Female University Student in Late Medieval Krakow" in Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society: 12:373-380.

Another case study of a cross-dressing/passing individual with multiple possible interpretations.

Westphal-Hellbusch, Sigrid (trans. Bradley Rose). 1997. “Institutionalized Gender-Crossing in Southern Iraq” in Islamic Homosexualities - Culture, History, and Literature, ed. by Stephen O. Murray & Will Roscoe. New York University Press, New York. ISBN 0-8147-7468-7

As I note in my summary, an article I’d approach with suspicion, but useful as a pointer to research possibilities.

Whitbread, Helena ed. 1992. I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791-1840. New York University Press, New York. ISBN 0-8147-9249-9 (Link is to introduction, see also the various entries by year.)

Anne Lister was interpreted by some of her contemporaries as coding male in dress and behavior, although there is no indication I can find of actual cross-dressing. There are also significant themes concerning to what extent loving women requires one to identify as male.

Woodward, Carolyn. 1993. “’My Heart So Wrapt’: Lesbian Disruptions in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 18:838-865.

The two protagonists discussed here enjoy extended travels and adventures presenting as male, including interacting romantically with women as such. The novel includes significant internal debate regarding whether one must be male to love and engage in a romantic relationship with a woman.

So I was going to drop a whiny little facebook post to the effect of "I've got no valentine and my fictional lovers are having a fight"[1] but then I decided it would be more productive to natter on about some of the issues I run into when plotting semi-fluffy semi-serious semi-historical lesbian romance novels (never mind that so far I've only ever finished first drafts for two of them -- I've got a whole drawer full of fits and starts and research notes).

So my chosen genre -- to the extent that I have one (at which point I insert the usual disclaimer about feeling like a fraud when I write about my "writing process" given that I've only had a half dozen short stories published) -- encompasses both the historic fiction and historicish-fantasy genres, but always centers in some way around a female same-sex romance. Because, at the heart, what I want to write are all the books I never got to read when I was younger because nobody published that sort of thing at the time. (Not that those are the only books I wanted to read back then -- but they're the ones I wanted and couldn't get.) But I have zero interest in writing "coming out" stories in the sense of stories where a major theme is the protagonists recognizing and coming to terms with the fact that their relationship is not "normal" (or at least not typical) for their society.

In the case of the pure fantasy settings -- even the medieval fantasies clearly spun off of real-world settings -- I have the option of simply saying, "Same-sex romance is no big deal in this culture; deal with it." My real love, however, is real-world historic fiction, albeit of the sort that allows the same sorts of liberties with the historically "typical" that opposite-sex historic romance takes. And in that context, you have to set the modern reader up with a plausible context in which your characters are not spending half their time going, "Ack! What are these feelings I'm having? This cannot be!" But rather they can just go, "Hmm, that's interesting!" and get on to dealing with the other plot-hurdles I throw in their path.

You might think this would necessarily result in completely unhistorical storylines (that's "unhistorical" even in the context of historic romance parameters -- which are rather forgiving when you get down to it). But when you start looking beyond the modern conceptions of same-sex relationships and start looking in history for Judith Bennett's lesbian-like categories, you start finding a lot of models for plausible historical romance protagonists. Although the fictional characters developed from these models may not be in any sense "typical", since when do actual, ordinary, realistic historic people end up as protagonists in historic romance novels?

Having eliminated "O woe! Our romance is Unnatural and therefore we must resist it for approximately 75% of our time on the page!" as a plot-hurdle, we're left with the problem that the historic romance genre thrives on keeping the protagonists apart. And we've just removed a major and obvious method of doing so. Where do we turn now? When you come to think of it, there are only a few categories of Keeping Lovers Apart that are necessarily restricted to opposite-sex couples. Even the tried and true motif of "there are social/economic/class reasons why we cannot marry!" works just as well if you substitute "live happily together" for "marry". (In fact, if the sole question is what sort of difficulties we can put in the way of our protagonists living happily together, you actually have a much larger inventory of roadblocks for a female couple than for an opposite-sex couple, since the issues of economic and legal independence may come up, depending on the particular historic setting.)

So in my various historic romances -- both drafted and only plotted -- what have I come up with? Well, there's always the good old-fashioned "my people are at war with your people". I use that one in my Romano-British romance (tentatively titled "The Rebellious Heart") which boils down to "I love you my darling Roman officer's daughter, but first I must go off to join Boudicca's rebellion and slaughter your people!" There's a touch of it in an as-yet untitled story set on the Welsh border around the 12th century, but that one is a bit more along the lines of "My darling English invader, I will console your loneliness while your husband is off on crusade ... oops, he's back!" While one doesn't want to overdo it, I use a "passing" motif in one 15th c. story, where the roadblock boils down to "we love each other, but do I dare to reveal my secret to you in hopes that you'll still love me as a woman?" Now there's one you can't do in a conventional opposite-sex romance!

My current project (Daughter of Mystery), while not strictly historical (since there's a bit of magic and alternate history thrown in), relies on good old fashioned class barriers. In the first part of the story, Barbara is functionally an indentured servant to Margerit, serving as her bodyguard. They have both developed secret and hopeless passions for each other but are quite nobly refraining from acting on them; Barbara, because it's her job to keep Margerit away from scandal, not to drag her into it, and Margerit because she's hyper-conscious of the power imbalance and doesn't want a lover who might only be acting on orders. The tables get turned later on because -- as we've known from the start -- Barbara is actually of significantly higher birth, and when she comes into her own then Margerit turns insecure about their difference in status while Barbara is the one worried about wielding undue influence.

In none of these stories is the same-sex aspect of the relationship treated as "normal" and unremarkable, but in none of them is it the primary source of conflict and angst driving the romantic tension. Given the wealth of options available, it's hardly needed for that purpose.

[1] But they get to have great make-up sex in the next chapter ... albeit off-stage. This is romance, not erotica, after all

(because if I don't do it now while the thoughts are fresh, it ain't gonna get done)

( Getcher spoilers right here! Fresh piping hot spoilers! )

And it’s queer studies afternoon!

Session 435: Queer Friendship

Glittery Things: The Rhetoric of Sanctity and Female Homoaffective Desire in Hali Meidenhad and The Passion of Saint Margaret (Adin Lears, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Graduate Center, CUNY)

Purity is linked to the beauty and purity of precious stones. Holy people are described as being like gemstones and objects venerated as sacred were deemed less worthy if not adorned with gems. Books such as Hali Meidenhad were “sales pitches” to women for a cloistered life, with the attractions including homoaffective relationships that were both passionate and – technically – chaste. It helps to distinguish between “erotic” and “sexual” concepts, where the former does not necessarily impinge on chasteness. Women are encouraged to meditate on female figures whose physical beauty is presented as reflecting inner sanctity, contrasted with the effects of a worldly life, in the form of pregnancy, which is presented as detracting from attractiveness. The virgin bodies presented in texts such as S. Margaret can be viewed as women’s gift to women readers, creating homosocial relationships in parallel with the worldly gift-economy. These virgins also take on male characteristics such as agency (Margaret’s freeing herself from the dragon by the sign of the cross, a magico-religious act traditionally reserved for male figures) and impenetrability.

The Queer Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry (Jennifer N. Brown, Univ. of Hartford)

In the text, a priest (probably a disguised form of the author Jacques de Vitry himself) takes the hand of the holy woman Marie d’Oignies in a gesture of spiritual friendship that turns, in the moment, to an erotic stimulus, re-framing their relationship from priest-penitent and follower-holy woman to man-woman. The author then goes on to blame the episode on Marie for being so naïve and pious that she didn’t understand what effect she might have. He describes her metaphorically as a skin (drum-head?) stretched so tight between two crosses that she was dried out of fleshly feelings. A divine voice intervenes saying, “Do not touch me” which Marie disavows understanding of, but Jacques obeys. Thereafter he withdrew from her in order to control his response. [me: I’m still waiting for the queer content here … ah, ok] The “perversion” here is the desire of chaste for chaste and the erotic triangle between Jacques’ desire, Christ’s jealousy, and Marie as passive and unwitting object between them. [me: hmm, still doesn’t sound that far outside traditional heterosexual narrative structures] We get a flashback to Marie’s life as a new bride (who would rather have led an ascetic religious life) mortifying her body as penitence for not having control over that body (in the marriage bed). Jacques, as her confessor, had access to these intimate details of her life, helping set up the conflicting ways in which their relationship was framed. But while praising the holiness of her life (in his writings) as a model for all women, he simultaneously cautioned other women off from emulating the specifics of her practices.

Transitioning from Transvestite Relationship to Transgender Friendship: Expanding and Re-reading Lives of the Cross-Dressed Saints Using the Lens of Transgender and Friendship (E. James Chambers, Ball State Univ.)

There are 80 cross-dressing female saints recorded across medieval Europe. Discussion of the relative appropriateness of “cross-dressing” vs. “transvestite” vs. “transgender”, depending on whether the term imply an erotic purpose to the action or the degree to which the identify or simply the outward appearance of the other gender is taken on. [me: he’s making some broad-brush generalizations about the personal fulfillment opportunities for women in various social roles that are beginning to annoy me] The motivations behind the female cross-dressing in the saints’ lives are broad, from avoidance of female sexual vulnerability to her parents’ desire for maintaining control of economic resources (if only sons are allowed to inherit). One common theme in the stories is the dilemma of the cross-dressing women as inducing an apparently opposite-gender desire in women they come in contact with. Conversely, the CD woman, if operating in an all-male environment (e.g., monastery) may engender unwanted same-sex desire in the men around her. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on desire itself as unwanted rather than on the specific genders involved. Another dilemma comes when the CD women are offered male authority roles (e.g., abbot of a monastery) and are torn between self-doubt regarding taking authority over men and the hazards of “outing” herself as a woman. Transitioning back to a female life often (although not invariably) results in an Unfortunate End. [me: I kind of lost the overarching thrust of the paper in the details of the examples. Bad listener! Bad!]