The Evolution of Butch as a Lesbian Signifier
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 43d with Heather Rose Jones
An investigation across time of how the use of “masculine” clothing developed into a deliberate signal of women’s same-sex interests.
In this episode we talk about:
Historic Attitudes Toward Clothing Gender
How Gendered Clothing Confers Gender Characteristics
Cross-gender Garments Signifying Sexual Unruliness
Theatrical Contexts Interpreted as Sexually Desirable to Men but Also to Women
Male-coded Garments in Gender Play Combined with Same-Sex Erotics
Women with Same-Sex Interests Depicted as Behaving Mannishly
The Sartorial Stylings of Amazons and Bluestockings
Lesbians in Riding Habits
“Mannish” Clothing and the Decadent Movement
People and Publications (Links are to LHMP blog posts or podcasts unless otherwise noted)
Tournament with Cross-dressing Women 14th c
Hic Mulier
Mary Frith/Moll Cutpurse (podcast)
The Roaring Girl by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton
Julie d’Aubigny
Charlotte Cibber Charke
Charlotte Cushman (podcast)
The Convent of Pleasure by Margaret Cavendish (1668)
The New Atalantis by Delarivier Manley (1709)
The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu (1744) (podcast)
Memoirs of the Life of Count Grammont by Anthony Hamilton (1713)
Pamela by Samuel Richardson (1740)
Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson (1753)
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (1801)
Diaries of Samuel Pepys (1666) (Wikipedia)
Anne Damer (podcast)
Ladies of Llangollen: Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby (podcast)
Anne Lister
Eupheia by Charlotte Lennox (1790)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844) (Wikipedia)
Mademoiselle de Maupin Théophile Gautier (1835)
Nana by Émile Zola (1880)
Lélia by George Sand (1833)
Natalie Clifford Barney (Wikipedia)
Colette (Wikipedia)
Rosa Bonheur
Other References Used
Albert, Nicole G. 2016. Lesbian Decadence: Representations in Art and Literature of Fin-de-Siècle France. Harrington Park Press. (not yet blogged)
Bennett, Judith and Shannon McSheffrey. 2014. “Early, Exotic and Alien: Women Dressed as Men in Late Medieval London” in History Workshop Journal. 77 (1): 1-25.
Castle, Terry (ed). 2003. The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall. Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-231-12510-0
Donoghue, Emma. 1995. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801. Harper Perennial, New York. ISBN 0-06-017261-4
Donoghue, Emma. 2010. Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 978-0-307-27094-8
Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-688-00396-6
Lanser, Susan S. 2014. The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 978-0-226-18773-0
Loughlin, Marie H. 2014. Same-Sex Desire in Early Modern England, 1550-1735: An Anthology of Literary Texts and Contexts. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-8208-5
A transcript of this podcast is available here.
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
Links to Heather Online
Website: http://alpennia.com
Email: Heather Rose Jones
Twitter: @heatherosejones
Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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