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”
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
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