• historical overview of affection and eroticism which preceded contemporary identifying labels
• inclusive of cultural historical gender and practice

ancient historical overview

• ancient Egypt: same-sex manicuists Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, buried together at the Necropolis at Saqqara, Egypt in a pose correlating to husband-wife depictions
• 700 BCE, Sappho, Lesbos, Sapphic meter
• paiderastia (or pederasty): love between a man and a boy;
  • Greek concept, Iliad; “heroic love”
  • 360 BCE, Symposium; erastes and eromenos
• by 1000 CE: liwat (Islamic pederasty) between luti and amrad or murd mu’ajirin; “ideal love”
• 794–1185 CE, Heian period: wakashu-do, courtly same-sex desire, pederasty
  • ending by 1854
• 1644–1911, Qing dynasty: catamites, male-male opera theatre culture
  • deemed feudal excess in postimperial 20thc China

gender variance globally

• two-spirit: nadle (Navajo), Ihamana (Zuni), winkte (Lakota); berdache (postcontact European term)
  • We-Wha, circa 1886
• hijras in India and Pakistan; biological male, live as women
  • linked to eunuchs; intersex, transsexual, castrated males
  • prostituted, communal households with chelas and a guru, cultural performers at weddings and male births, entreat deities to bestow fertility on male
• pre-Christian African identities in the corporal, psychological, relational, spiritual sense; unique to African culture and language; nonheteronormative societal and familial roles
• gender is a “liminal space”; third gender expressions
  • Dagara: gender is an exhibition of energy and spirit over biology; nongender-specific clothing and expression
  • Azande, Sudan: “male wives”
  • Nigeria: “female husbands”
  • Yoruba, Guinea Bissau: matriarchal arranged marriage
  • Amhara, Ethiopia; Igbo, Nigeria; Otoro, Sudan: non-binary and binary gender identities
  • Nuer, Ethiopia: male bodies and feminine clothing and societal roles without sex change — gender determined by role and cloth
  • Dogon, Mali: duality of male and female spirits in one body; twin divinity; certain body parts are gendered within the same person

Judeo-Christianity

texts

• Torah, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: abomination of same-sex sleeping
• Genesis 19: sodomites, Sodom
• New Testament, Romans 1:25—27, I Corinthians 6:9: castigation from Paul’s epistles, but absence from Jesus
  • ambiguity: malakoi and arsenokoitai vs. paideraste
• David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi

Roman Empire

• Lex Scantinian: financial crime
• 200CE: Saints Serge and Bacchus “joined in life”
• Lex Constantinian, 400CE: fatal crime
• 600-1500CE: Offices of Same-Sex Union in Greek, Serbian Slavonic (Eastern Orthodox Christianity), and Latin
• 900CE: affectionate documents concerning Serge and Bacchus, pronubus Jesus
• Middle Ages, 1400CE: sodomy → heresy; peccatum mutum, silent sin, immodest love
  • female-female sexuality regarded as a “lesser offense”, preliminary to marriage, bud not condoned, especially if in a non-Christian practice
  • cross-dressing and female-female behavior likely linked to 1300–1700CE witch burnings in Europe

Other European Cultures

• 1101CE: Anselm declaration against clerical marriage → increase in sodomy
  • → excommunication → rumors → peccatum mutum
• Italian Renaissance, 1400CE: rekindling of ancient philosophy of male beauty and pederasty
• Middle Ages, 1400CE: restriction of women in society → covert mulier cum muliere fornicatio
• 1477: mulier cum muliere fornicatio, Katherina Hetzeldorfer
• 1631: Alcibiades the Schoolboy, “first gay novel” because of literal writing of homosexuality and mlm in text

“Modern” Culture

• 1600s: Madame de La Fayette, Katherine Philips, Michel de Montaigne and Éstienne de la Boëtie “sacred bond”
• 18th century+: “romantic friendships”
• 1778+ (53 yrs): Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler
  • Irish; eloped to Wales → “Ladies of Llangollen”
  • “Although the ladies themselves wrote that their relationship had nothing to do with sex (which they euphemistically called Vulgar Eros), it is nevertheless true that literary proto-lesbians such as Anna Seward and Anne Lister visited them and wrote admiringly of their Welsh ménage, and the writer Hester Thrale Piozzi called them “damned sapphists” “(Stanley 163)
• Anne Lister, 1791–1840: Yorkshire landowner “love and only love the fairer sex”
  • “literary proto-lesbian”
• 1811: Marianne Wood and Jane Pirie case
  • Scottish schoolmistresses with a school for girls; accused of improper conduct libel
• romantic friendship seen as benign or salutary; appearance of asexuality for upperclass women
• 1885: Criminal Law Amendment Act outlawed same-sex for men, but not women
• “The poet Emily Dickinson, for example, wrote to her friend and future sister-in-law Sue Gilbert, “If you were here—and Oh that you were, my Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us, and your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language” (Surpassing 175). Interestingly, Dickinson’s niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi cut this passage from her 1924 edition of Emily Dickinson’s letters; by that time, the popularization of Freud had put an end to the assumption of female innocence.”
• emphasis on white, upper class women privilege to romantic friendship and Boston marriage
• 1850+, Boston marriage: “a long-term monogamous relationship between two otherwise unmarried women” (Lilian Faderman)
  • women’s colleges popular in Boston area
  • unmarried professional women who formed intense relationships with other women
  • Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman
  • Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith

Homosexual subculture

• 1553: Buggery Act (slang for anal intercourse; sodomy act)
• 16thC: some prosecutions; hampered by assumption that Rome was “cistern full of sodomy”
• 17thC: “gay subculture” of Court of James I
  • 1617 debate on kingly affections and morality
  • waned into 18th century by Puritan influence
• 1700: Royal Exchange, “Swarthy Buggerantoes”
• 1720: same-sex subculture
• 1726: Mother Clap’s Molly House raid and trial leading to executions and death
  • exposed other molly houses and cruising areas
  • safety returned after Society for Reformation of Manners was under fire for “officious meddling”
• 18thC: “molly subculture”
  • molly: effeminate man who engages in transgressive gender play
  • transvestite balls in Portugal
  • men in new fashion in France (ribbons/powder)
  • men in female nicknames in Holland
  • cross-dressing in Italy
  • growing homophobia; public hangings, pillory, large fines/sentences
    • high sodomy punishment rate
• 19thC: urbanization; anonymity increased
  • Berlin: cabarets and clubs
  • Amsterdam: houses of prostitution
  • NY/London: molly taverns
  • gay from prostitute meaning → men interested in sex with other men and gay girls
  • tommies: boyish or passing women