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.
sex between women
This tag is used for any general discussion of erotic physical activity between women or one where more specific terms are not mentioned.
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 focuses on the highly specific genre of 18th century French erotic “convent novels,” part of the larger genre of libertine literature. Within the field of libertine novels, clerical themes—especially those relating to nuns and convents—are more common than references to prostitution and brothels. Such works combine the double-taboo of sex and religion. And the focus on convents brings in a third transgressive element: lesbianism. The author argues that there are enough similarities of theme and content to declare the “libertine convent novel” an identifiable genre.
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.
Rekhti is a genre of Urdu erotic poetry, spinning off from the formal, classical ghazal poetic genre. Rekhti differs both in the point of view of the poetic persona, in the subject matter, and in the use of language. Within Urdu culture (a southern Indian Muslim culture whose language has a strong admixture of Persian in an Indic base), traditional ghazal poetry had two modes: “Persian” in which the poetic persona is male and the beloved can be male or female, and “Indic” in which the poetic persona is female and the beloved is male.
This article is very short, more a set of presentation bullet-points than a full article. Only one small section is relevant and that material is given rather odd connections to Classical Greek motifs. Given that the whole article is somewhat cursory, I feel more forgiving of the briefness of the material.
I went into this article expecting there to be functionally no content on female homosexuality. I was only slightly wrong. The general context of the article is an assertion that the increasing visibility of (male) homosexuality in Japan as well as in Europe, China, and elsewhere have a common factor in the evolution of capitalism and the resulting “commodification of sexuality.” I’m not exactly convinced, but on the other hand, after reading the first couple paragraphs I started to skim to see whether there was any mention of women at all.
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 is a high-level survey of same-sex relations in China, Japan, and India. The article primarily covers male relations, so the following is rather brief.
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