violsva: The words "towsell-mowsell on a sopha"; a reference to The Comfortable Courtesan (towsell-mowsell)
This is a post I found in my tumblr drafts from last September.

Extremely fragmentary thoughts on Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668 - 1801

Donoghue mentions that the decrease of references to “female husband” cases in newspapers at the end of the 18th century is taken by some scholars as evidence that the practice died out. She doubts this very much, and indeed Alison Oram’s “Her Husband was a Woman!”, published about a decade after this book, focuses on similar cases reported in British newspapers in the early twentieth century, so I think it highly unlikely that there were no examples whatsoever in the century in between.

“On 14 December 1728 the Universal Spectator commented that every culture differentiated the sexes by dress for the sake of ‘decency’, and specifically ‘in order to prevent Multitudes of Irregularities, which otherwise would continually be occasion’d’.” (p. 90)

This seems to indicate a view that in the same clothes it would be impossible to differentiate the sexes - I am reminded of someone (but can’t remember who) pointing out that in Early Modern society the body was much less knowable than it is considered today, with even the poorest wearing at least two layers of clothes at all times, and shaping garments being normal, and clothes that hid or highlighted or enhanced certain features being usual for men as well as women.

“The radical sects formed in the seventeenth century, in particular, often allowed women to pull their friendships with each other to the centre of their lives. Quaker women such as Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers left husbands and children to travel and be imprisoned together.” (p. 151) (I don’t have anything to say here, just! Historic Quaker lesbians! Yay!)

“Nor is a study of erotica thankless work” (p. 183) – I’m just going to leave that sentence fragment there.
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The educational reformer Horace Mann tried to explain the feminization of the teaching profession in terms of women's natural proclivities. A woman was suited to working with young children, Mann claimed, because "she holds her commission from nature. In the well-developed female character there is always a preponderance of affection over intellect." But few women teachers saw the work that way. They often complained about their pupils' stupidity, loudness, and disinterest. Most women did not become teachers from a great desire to spend their days with children—they could achieve that goal by following the typical path of marriage and motherhood. ... Serving as a teacher offered middling-class young women a window of time in which to earn wages, live apart from their families, pursue intellectual interests, and still preserve their good names.
--Rachel Hope Cleves, Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America

In other words, 19th century women chose to teach because it was the option that meant they didn't have to deal with children 24 hours a day. Later on Cleves describes how outside of class times "the schoolhouse devoid of children" was a space where Charity Bryant could write and correspond with her friends without interruptions (unlike her father's house). (The circle of poetry-writing women Charity participated in in early 19thC Massachusetts actually sounds a lot like fandom, with Charity as something of a BNF, writing for her friends' effusive praise and having poems dedicated to her, but the book's gone back to the library now so I can't quote it.) ETA: [personal profile] breathedout has one of the relevant passages here.
violsva: The words "Oh, Sandy!"; a reference to The Comfortable Courtesan (Oh Sandy)
But censure is perhaps inevitable: for some are so ignorant, that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that nears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should the spectre appear in the shape of woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal.
-- Elizabeth Fulhame, An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting: wherein the phlogistic and antiphlogistic hypotheses are proved erroneous.

OH SNAP
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So I’m reading Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture, 1668-1801 by Emma Donoghue. The first chapter is on hermaphrodites (that being the in-period technical term, sorry), and I suddenly realized a possible explanation for some of the reports that I have never seen mentioned in any scholarly account.

The idea is that a woman, usually living normally but perhaps having intimate relationships with other women, would suddenly be revealed to have abnormally large genitalia (which was occasionally capable of impregnation). The period explanation was, at first, that she was a hermaphrodite, or later that it was an overgrown clitoris (which might or might not differentiate her from a “true” hermaphrodite–lots of contemporary confusion on this point). Modern authors point out that we can’t know anything about the reality of these people, but also suggest that the reports were exaggerated by the authors. Some of them probably were. Some of these people probably had what would now be called intersex conditions.

Probably because these narratives focus on the hermaphrodites’ femininity or lack thereof, (edit: and also because of what is perceived as more threatening to ideologies and gender hierarchy) I have never seen anyone suggest that perhaps a “man” had decided to live as a woman, and if discovered gave the explanation that she had been born as a woman with abnormal genitalia (which would, incidentally, be far less likely to result in criminal charges than calling oneself a man). In this case the “overgrown clitoris” that gave contemporary medical writers so much trouble and which modern scholars dismiss would simply be a normal (or small, or hypospadias, or whatever) penis. Discussions of historical transfemininity, as far as I have seen, focus primarily on queer male drag cultures and prostitution. And there does seem to be a general assumption that (unlike AFAB people dressing as men) it is simply impossible that AMAB people dressing as women would be able to pass for very long, despite numerous examples.

Obviously, it is in fact impossible to know the precise anatomy or self-understanding of anyone who lived three hundred years ago, and I am not claiming that this is the full explanation for reports of hermaphrodites. But if anyone has seen relevant scholarship on transfemininity, please tell me.
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The people who lived in House 16 [in Late Bronze Age Auvernier-Nord] must seem closest to modern archaeologists, however, for they were collectors and had 5 fossils and 2 polished stone axes from the by then remote Neolithic period.

-- Byrony and John Coles, People of the Wetlands: Bogs, Bodies and Lake-Dwellers
violsva: Geoffrey Tennant from Slings and Arrows, offering a skull (have a skull)
Vi: *looks up books about bog bodies*
Library Catalogue: Here is a book by an author with the same last name: Dark Money: Billionaires and the Rise of the Radical Right.
Vi: ...No, thanks, I'll stick to the Neolithic corpses, they're much less disturbing.
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The coverlet ... is about 50" wide and 67" long and displays a high level of competence in both design and weaving technique. It was woven by Kiersti Halvorsdatter Rø (1794 or 1795-1874). According to [Torbjørg] Gauslaa, people in the area remembered stories about Kiersti, a talented woman, good with her hands, who never married and was a prolific weaver. When she was twenty years old she fell from a barn loft and injured her hip, and for the rest of her life she needed help to get around. She had a difficult life, but her weaving shows that she found interest and satisfaction in her craft.

Six of the bands in the coverlet have woven-in text. The letters and numbers are elegantly designed. Two text bands near the top contain what Gauslaa refers to as a skjemterim (jesting rhyme). It isn’t clear who the message was for, but it shows that Kiersti had a sense of humor. “GJØR MIG EN MAGE OG SKIK M MIG DEN TIL BAGE DIN SKARV” (Make me a match and send it back to me you rascal) and “DETTE STYKKE ER JORT I MIT 55 AAR DEN FØRSTE NOVEMBER 1849 KIERSTI HALVORSDATTER RØ I VINGELEN” (This piece is done in my 55th year the first of November 1849 Kiersti Halvorsdatter Rø in Vingelen).

-- Norwegian Pick-up Bandweaving, Heather Torgenrud. The coverlet is in the Norsk Folkemuseum.
violsva: The words "towsell-mowsell on a sopha"; a reference to The Comfortable Courtesan (towsell-mowsell)
I have been working on the assumption that everyone who follows me here already knows this, but of course that may not be true:

The first volume of those memoirs I have been fanning over for 2+ years is now available in forms suited to several e-readers and also as a pretty bound volume HERE.

It is amazing. It is the memoirs of a very selective English courtesan of the early 19th century, with lovely setpieces, tangled intrigues, a wide range of realistically complicated characters, and a beautiful and perfectly fitted narrative voice. It also contains Utilitarian philosophers, historically accurate diversity, polyamory, Sapphistry (and sodomy), useful precepts for novices, and a wombatt.

It has been making me consistently happy for almost three years now. I love it so much.
violsva: The words HATPIN TIME, over a pearl topped pin; a reference to The Comfortable Courtesan (hatpin)
(Part One) (Part Two)

Okay, the last few chapters have a lot of eugenics and also a lot of unethical medical and corporate behaviour in general, which I’m not talking about because they just make me want to stab people. (If you thought eugenics was over with after WWII, well. I’m so sorry.) The US was totally happy to fund international birth control as long as it was being sold as population control rather than women’s liberation.

A lot of population control proponents thought that the major problem with the Pill was that it was being taken by white suburban middle class women, instead of the women who “most needed” it - but they didn’t actually trust that poor uneducated women could follow the complicated procedure of taking one pill every day. In context with their support of IUDs it mostly looks like they objected to birth control methods which required women to take them voluntarily.

Anyway, her argument is that the Pill created a new idea of non-sick women seeing doctors and taking regular medications, and being viewed by the medical profession as patients, even though they were technically healthy. Which probably had effects well beyond birth control.

The Pill was approved in May 1960 and became the most popular form of birth control in America by 1965, used by over 6.5 million married women … and some number of unmarried women whom the official statistics ignored.

It was originally tested in Puerto Rico, because the scientists involved wanted to be away from the American press. Then the Puerto Rican press wrote articles accusing them of using poor people of colour as guinea pigs for a medication they wouldn’t test on white people, which was true.

And apparently in 2001 when she was writing the most popular form of birth control was female sterilization. Which, unlike the Pill, was usually covered by insurance, and meant you didn’t have to worry about losing your insurance later. ...I am trying to find a polite way of saying “Your country is a barbaric hellscape.”

She’s writing a history of the market, rather than really a social history. She does point out that most capitalist historians focus on the success stories rather than the millions of entrepreneurs who went out of business for whatever reason, and she in contrast gives cases on both sides.

I got less interested as the book got closer to the present, and I am dubious about some of Tone’s conclusions based on the information she herself provides. But in general excellent, glad I read it.
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(Part One)

America was the only country in WWI which did not supply its soldiers with condoms. Instead they got education on moral hygiene and post-exposure chemical prophylaxis, which didn’t work (and was also extremely painful).

That said, about 5.6% of drafted men entering the Army had VD. Before the war this would have disqualified them; once they started drafting people and realized the disease rates that rule was quietly discarded. The propaganda, of course, still blamed licentious European prostitutes.

Soldiers were required to seek prophylaxis after exposure, so contracting VD was punishable by court martial. As a result, most of them just used condoms anyway. (They could get them from the rest of the Allies … who were buying from American manufacturers.)

The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery claimed until the 30s that chemical prophylaxis had a nearly 100% success rate - this and the inaccurate gynecological knowledge from earlier make you wonder what modern doctors are getting horribly terribly wrong.

What I’m getting from this book is that abstinence-only sex ed is a specifically American idea, and a very old one. I guess because everyone else exported their Puritans there. (Not saying that other countries don’t discourage nonmarital sex; just that they are willing to acknowledge it happens.)

Tone argues that the fact that WWI made people actually talk about VD led to greater acceptance of (male) sexuality, and in 1918 physician-prescribed birth control was legalized for the prevention of disease (and life-threatening pregnancies) only. This was in the trial of Margaret Sanger’s first clinic; she tried to argue that women had a right to have nonprocreative sex but this was ignored (there was also an earlyish example of eugenic thought).

Anyway, the immediate result was a whole bunch of condoms for sale (to men) everywhere, labelled “for the prevention of disease only,” which V. F. Calverton called “an intelligent adaptation to an unintelligent morality.” (108)

And eventually in the 1930s the army started distributing condoms to soldiers, having changed its sex ed philosophy from “Real Men are chaste and continent” to “Obviously Real Men cannot be expected to control their sex drives.” As of 1937, the FDA started quality testing them.

I found out why Dutch caps were called Dutch caps! Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs’s work promoting the made-in-Holland Mensinga diaphragm. I still don’t know why condoms were “French”, except of course that everything to do with sex was French.

Wow, you can just watch Margaret Sanger and other medical professionals (in this area mostly female) building up the authority of the mainstream medical profession. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certainly a thing.

“Feminine hygiene” was a term coined by advertisers who still couldn’t legally say “birth control.” And it made up 85% of American contraception sales in 1938. Tone seems to assume that “feminine hygiene” always mean birth control in this period, and does show that the idea that it was needed comes from Victorian and later reframing of sperm as germs to get past the censors, but lots of people today use douches for “hygiene” and I don’t think that’s entirely an invented desire.

In the 1930s 70% of Americans supported medical birth control.

But birth control clinics were understaffed, concentrated in urban areas, and completely incapable of keeping up with the demand. And also lots of women were uncomfortable discussing it with doctors, but mail order was discreet and Lysol had lots of non-contraceptive uses. (Also, doctors were frequently untrained in contraception and unlikely to help unmarried women.)

That said, advertisers were totally happy to use spurious medical authority. Door-to-door saleswomen claimed to be nurses, and Lysol published a series of “Frank Talks with [Nonexistent] Eminent Female Physicians.” Again, respectable periodicals refused to publish advertisements for actual birth control, but “feminine hygiene” was okay, even if the ad copy was not at all subtle about its purpose.

And, this being the mid-20thc, the hypothetical tormented wives in the ads weren’t worried about economics, or careers, or their physical health. No, it was how will you appeal to your husband, once the “natural strains of marriage” take their toll on your appearance? And if you’re worried and irritable all the time, well, no wonder if he leaves you.

And since the manufacturers never actually said they were selling birth control, once it failed or caused horrible chemical burns you couldn’t sue them. At least, you couldn’t sue the huge companies, but regulators were happy to shut down small businesses.

Both the AMA and the FDA refused to condemn Lysol etc., even after the FDA started testing condoms. Pregnancy wasn’t a disease, so prevention of it wasn’t the FDA’s business. The AMA told women who asked them about birth control to talk to their family physicians, because they couldn’t discuss it through the mail.

“It is a common saying in the drug trade that the sale of condoms pays the store rent.” (Norman Himes, 1936, qtd. on pg. 190)

In 1882 Julius Schmidt was a homeless disabled German Jewish immigrant. In 1890 he was prosecuted by Anthony Comstock for selling condoms. In 1940 he was one of the largest condom manufacturers in the country and his products were endorsed by the US Army.

Youngs Rubber (Trojan) emphasized their reputability by saying they sold only to drugstores (as opposed to other condoms, which were offered by shoeshiners and bellhops and street peddlers) and tested all of their products. However, they had all this merchandise hanging around that had failed the tests … so they sold those to whoever wanted them as manufacturer’s seconds.

And a lot of customers didn’t bother paying extra for first quality manufacturer-tested condoms, and just tested them themselves at home.

All of these companies employed large numbers of women. The factory workers, and especially the saleswomen pretending to be nurses - and thus middle class - who were they? How did their jobs fit with the expectations that “nice” girls didn’t know anything about sex?
violsva: The words HATPIN TIME, over a pearl topped pin; a reference to The Comfortable Courtesan (hatpin)
Anthony Comstock was such a deeply unpleasant person that near the end of the first chapter I checked the index to see how much longer I’d have to put up with him. But it turns out that the next chapter was full of judges and prosecutors and other officials who also thought he was an asshole (and refused to convict or harshly punish people under his law), so that was nice.

Lots and lots of anti-abortion free love proponents. (And some anti-”unnatural” contraception ones, too, which. IDEK.)

The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice included lots of prominent and wealthy citizens, some of whom happened to own contraceptive-selling businesses which for some strange reason never got raided or shut down. “Freethinkers dubbed the NYSSV the “Society for the Manufacture and Suppression of Vice” and boycotted [its President] Colgate’s products for years.” (29) Most of the people prosecuted for selling birth control were women, immigrants, and/or Jewish.

Today in Awesome Historical Women You Probably Haven’t Heard of, Sarah Chase.

Comstock was so well known that people sold birth control devices under the name “Comstock Syringes”, which meant they could avoid prosecution by not actually saying they were for birth control. A+.

At least from the 1860s, and probably before, a man in New York City who wanted birth control could walk into a pharmacy or a “rubber shop” and walk out with a package of condoms, even though after 1873 the US had the most restrictive contraception laws in the west. A woman who wanted birth control could get it by mail order anywhere in the country. (Though it was mostly only advertised in publications aimed at the working class.) This was almost certainly even more true in most of Europe (definitely in London).

However, condoms seem to have had about a 50% failure rate (note that that’s the % of pregnancies after one year of use, not the breakage rate). Douching was extremely popular and also basically useless. “Womb veils” (diaphragms and/or cervical caps) were probably more effective, but it’s hard to tell because so much depends on sizing and details. IUDs worked and were available but generally needed doctors to insert them and also were deeply unsafe.

I wonder how many women had major gynecological issues in this period and just ... dealt with them, lived through them, spent days in bed sometimes, did all the housework while in unspeakable pain because that was just their life and no one could do anything about it. (I mean, throughout history, but in this period specifically so much of “women’s medicine” seems to have been just making things worse.)

The 19th century understanding of ovulation was that it probably happened around menstruation, which means that lots of doctors recommended only having sex during what they thought was the “safe period” and lots of couples followed their advice and immediately got pregnant. (Timing of ovulation discovered in the 1920s; modern rhythm method described in 1930.)

On the other hand, “Doctors’ remonstrations against withdrawal, which linked it to insanity, impotence, blindness, and a host of other ailments, may have persuaded some men not to try it and others to “change their minds” at the last minute. Although modern science has invalidated such prophecies of doom, they may well have had a placebo effect on Americans in an earlier era. In 1895, one woman complained that her husband, a physician, had practiced withdrawal only to complain of being entirely “worn out [the] next day.”” (72) Men.

Evidence that some mothers told their daughters about birth control, at least in the pre-wedding Talk: I did not expect this.

1924 study found that 2/3 of respondents had used some form of birth control. Also mentions “one woman from a small Midwestern town whose determination [to gain information] led her to the doorsteps of the community member she believed possessed the most expertise: the “keeper of a brothel.”” (78)
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Due to the Hardwicke Marriage Law of 1753 and the New Poor Law of 1834′s Bastardy Clause, the legal status of women in England became significantly worse than it had been in the early 18th century. The Marriage Law meant that men could not be required to support their spouse if the marriage was not legal, and made engagements less legally binding, and the Poor Law removed the requirement that men support their illegitimate children as well.

(Previously, parish authorities had been all for men taking responsibility for their children, because that meant they didn’t have to.)

Consanguineous marriages were voidable, but not actually void unless challenged in court during the spouses’ lives. That is, although the marriage was illegal, the children were legitimate if their parents died without a court case declaring that they weren’t.

“Men and women had to write [wills] carefully; courts assumed that the word ‘children’ referred to legitimate ones only, with rare exceptions. In addition, the common law assumed that a contract given to support future illegitimate children was against public policy (encouraging the birth of illegitimates) and was therefore void. Only settlements written after the birth of children, and specifically mentioning those children, stood.” (23) That is, you could write a will leaving your property to “all of my children” and the courts would not actually give it to all of your children.

Also, one of the things men in not-technically-legal marriages objected to the most was that they had to use their wife’s maiden name on official paperwork. This really bothered them.

In Scotland it was easier to get a divorce than in England, but English courts did not recognize Scottish divorces; so a child of a subsequent marriage could be legitimate in Scotland but illegitimate in England (and therefore unable to inherit English property).

People assumed that a bigamy trial counted as a divorce. Prisoner: So I can get married again once I get out of prison, right? Judge: *facepalm*

Some couples (including working class couples) actually tried to draw up their own divorce contracts, where they agreed they were free to remarry; the courts did not accept these.

People, especially women, insisted on marriage ceremonies even knowing they were illegal; I wonder if (as well as the obvious desire for propriety) the women hoped that having gone through the ceremony meant their husbands would be more likely to support them, or more likely to be forced to support them if they were deserted. (Legally, it didn’t.)

Because a married woman’s property was actually the property of her husband (until 1882), if she left him she or her lover could be charged with the theft of whatever she took with her.

So you know Mary Elizabeth Braddon? Author of Lady Audley’s Secret, the novel about how bigamy is horrible and awful and probably leads to murder, even if your husband literally walked out on you and your child and moved to Australia? That Mary Elizabeth Braddon? Yeah, it turns out she lived for over a decade with her publisher John Maxwell while his wife was in an insane asylum. You’d think they’d have mentioned that in 19th Century Literature.

Weird case of Richard Carlile, who wrote a book on birth control (in 1826, btw) and then had five children with his wife and four children with his partner Eliza Sharples, even though he couldn’t afford to support them and he resented Sharples’s focusing on her children instead of radical philosophy.

It’s surprising the number of people who were very clear about the fact that their problem with, for example, Marian Evans (George Eliot) and George Henry Lewes wasn’t the cohabiting or the adultery, but specifically that they were open about it. (In many cases because it would ~*hurt the (free-thinking/feminist/etc) movement*~ if there was any scandal.)

“The Randolphs were ostracised for being too radical on the one side, and not progressive enough on the other.” (202) Now where have I seen that before?

Man, Françoise Lafitte sounds awesome. (Wikipedia only mentions her as Havelock Ellis’s “companion.” You can download an article by Frost about her here.)

Basically, the definition of marriage is about as fixed as for any other social construct. But the vast majority of the people in this book would not have said they were cohabiting. They called themselves married (many had in fact had weddings), and the fact that the government disagreed didn’t change that.
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Finished

A MCU fic with a decent but not very deep plot, low on rationale for character motivations. Pretty good period AU, though.

Unsettled by AxeMeAboutAxinomancy: As podfic, comfort listening during physical health issues this weekend.

(My cutoff for fics to count as "books" for record keeping purposes is somewhere under 25,000 words.)

Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey: Comfort reading. I think this is the low point for her copyediting and it's improved since here. (Having one section of my brain complaining about typos and punctuation and consistency errors actually makes it better for comfort reading in some ways, because there's more there to occupy me.) I don't like any of the villain pov here; come to think of it, she cut that out of some of the later books in this series entirely, which is probably a good idea.

Victorian Families in Fact and Fiction by Penny Kane: On the Victorian demographic transition as expressed in the literary evidence. Excellent, clearly differentiates between factual and literary sources and what can be determined from them. And as I said a couple weeks ago, the Victorian era was fucking terrible, people. (Primarily: child labour, (lack of) education, and patriarchy.) (The thing is, we know about the patriarchy (in fandom), and there was a lot of other Really Terrible stuff happening too that gets ignored.)

Lots of things that get left out of standard pop-historical imaginings. Some of them less terrible: for example, Victorians had very late marriages (mid to late twenties, later in the middle classes and for men) and numerous remarriages after deaths of spouses. ("Two out of every five men across Europe in the nineteenth century who survived to age 50 had married and produced families more than once.")

...Huh. Come to think of it, that makes Watson's hypothetical multiple marriages a bit less implausible.

The Comfortable Courtesan by Clorinda Cathcart: Man, I'm so glad this exists. And it's officially ended, and comforting and lovely and impressive and just go read it. It hasn't been on my weekly posts before because it's just been kind of background to my life: of course I'm reading Madame C-'s updates. And it's finished, and I am sad, but it's there to be reread whenever.

In Progress

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie: I glanced at the introduction to this (never read the introduction) and apparently Christie's thrillers are deprecated; I like them, and while this is clearly early and implausible it's fun.

I also have a book about Miss Marple as a character that I am going to start on.
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This is a transcript of the April 8th, 2017 episode of Footnoting History by Elizabeth Keohane-Burbridge and Lucy Barnhouse, done for [tumblr.com profile] teaforlupin. The original podcast can be found here.

Read more... )
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In Progress

Further poking at Cotillion, another Lackey, and a Regency romance, with limited focus on anything.

Other

Read On Being Ill and Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf, and then spent a few hours with her narrating my interior monologue. (And then at the library read Hermione Lee's introduction to the former, which was helpful, at least in terms of "No, I did not hallucinate the end while half-asleep." (That's certainly not a criticism of the essay.)) I don't know what to say about Woolf, except that I want to read more and kind of wish I had at University; her outlook and voice are so unique and also infinitely relatable, at least for me.

Library

Read the first half (late Victorian and Edwardian) of Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain Since 1880 by Lesley A. Hall - what struck me was the sheer number of people with different goals involved in the various movements covered, and also that despite technical dates of publication major books on sexuality (eg Havelock Ellis) might have basically no circulation whatsoever for years afterwards. And also the focus on the difference the courts and other organizations had between "acceptable for a specialized audience" and "acceptable for the general public." Also there seems to have been a lot going on in the BMJ and the Lancet at the time.

Also flipped through Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918-1960 by Kate Fisher, and even that much gave a wildly unexpected view of the matter - specifically that, in terms of actual practice among working class couples, the husband was expected to be in charge of birth control and family planning decisions. This seems to have been because of a combination of ideas of headship in marriage, valuing of sexual ignorance in women, and the fact that the easiest forms of contraception to access (withdrawal, abstinence, and condoms) required some degree of male participation anyway.
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Putting this on Dreamwidth as well as Tumblr:

So I’ve been thinking about soulmate AUs. The kind where your soulmate’s name is written on your skin. How would that start? When would that start?

Not with the beginning of writing. For centuries, in China, in Sumer, in Egypt, in Mesoamerica, writing was used for accounting or religion, and nothing else. Most people would never be able write their names or recognize them if they were written. Only royalty, gods, and perhaps some property owners would.

Individual scribes might have had signatures. For that matter, for all we know individual Paleolithic artists might have had signatures. But most people wouldn’t. What would happen the first time someone was born with an unknown symbol on their hand?

Probably it would be an isolated mystery. Remember, in most of these scenarios there’s no actual guarantee that you’ll ever meet your soulmate (although most people seem to end up with one from the same general area. Which is statistically unlikely). No one would know what it meant. Maybe people with symbols would be seen as special, or divine, or demonic.

And then it might start happening more often - or stop happening, if writing stopped being used (like in Greece after 1200 BCE). But most of the time still no one would know what the symbol meant. And most people wouldn’t have symbols, because most people’s soulmates wouldn’t know how to write.

(Sometimes I think the theory is that people would have a thumbprint instead of a soulmate mark? But this would be basically useless for matching purposes - you would have no idea where to start. So from that point of view the first people with actual names would just have them instead of the thumbprints that everyone else had and didn’t know the meaning of.

Incidentally, using thumbprints for recognition isn’t universal in non-literate societies either. European society didn’t realize that fingerprints were unique until the late 19th century. In a lot of places, they weren’t used until people were already using signatures, and needed an option for illiterate people. Also, while they are an identifying mark, they really have no relation at all to your name. For most of human existence, having a physical marker of your identity really wasn’t that important.)

Only somewhere with at least moderately widespread literacy would someone be able to look at a mark and go “Oh, that’s my friend Imhotep’s name. What a coincidence!” And only somewhere with widespread literacy would Imhotep’s soulmate also be able to write their name. Most early languages were logographic, and in cuneiform names specifically were almost always logographic, so you wouldn’t even be able to sound it out.

Phoenician (starting 1050 BCE) was the first widespread writing system, and was simple enough and common enough that sailors could write in it. It was also the first phoenetic script which would allow you to easily approximate the pronounciation of the writing on your skin.

But still, most people wouldn’t have symbols. Most people would never meet anyone with their name on their skin.

This would be a problem in AUs where you never feel sexual attraction to anyone who isn’t your soulmate. Imagine religion and culture in a world where almost everyone is functionally asexual.

How long would it take, until someone realized that if people’s names matched up, they had some kind of bond? How long would it take before this was a generally accepted theory?

Also, how long before this was seen as at all important, given that most people with the status to know how to read would also have arranged marriages?

But once it was generally accepted, suddenly literacy would become a lot more important. People would demand to learn how to write. (Some people would learn that their soulmate’s name wasn’t in the local writing system. What happens then?) People would want to give their children more unique names (ancient Rome had about thirty given names for men total, and they named their daughters “first Julia” and “second Julia.”)

Anyway, around ancient Rome or so, when there would not only be a lot of literate people but also a lot of people able to recognize foreign alphabets, suddenly there would be a huge drive for 1) more literacy and 2) better long distance communication, so you could find the Caius or Ξανθίππη or שָׂרָה who had your name on their skin. And as this idea became more and more widespread, so would this desire. The same thing would be happening in China and Ethiopia and India.

This would revolutionize world history. There would be strong motivations both for exploration and for making peace with foreign cultures. Everyone in Rome with a Jewish soulmate would want to make sure they wouldn’t be killed before they could meet them. Everyone with a soulmate in a strange language would want to know at least what language it was.

Come to think of it, these are also all good reasons for why people wouldn’t believe in soulmates. Your soulmate can’t be one of the hated barbarians, so that symbol doesn’t mean anything!

And that’s leaving out the fact that lots of people still wouldn’t have a soulmate who could write, and completely ignoring the existence of polyamory.

So getting to a modern society with everyone just knowing that that was your soulmate’s name would involve a really complicated history, probably nothing at all like ours. And there would be huge pressure to ignore the existence of soulmates at all.

No conclusions here, just taking an illogical premise way too logically.
violsva: Illustration of Holmes and Watson, seated, with the caption "Cut out the poetry, Watson" (Holmes)
queerwatson:
trying to read a book by a straight man that discusses how holmes and watson might have been queer, more like a discussion of how ‘feminine’ watson apparently is (???) and overuse of the word homosexual

queerwatson:
also blatant misogyny around every corner
my fave!!!!!

I have actually been having Thoughts about this recently, and they may not be very coherent thoughts, but oh well.

Watson actually does a lot of things that are traditionally coded as feminine, and especially so for Victorians. He’s giving huge amounts of his time to support Holmes, both by assisting in his investigations but more importantly by writing stories and therefore publicizing Holmes and giving him clients. And this is completely in line with the Victorian wife, who might seem passive but was absolutely supposed to be supporting her husband’s work in her own, social arena. See An Ideal Husband. Agatha Christie (born 1890) writes in her autobiography about how much of a woman’s life was completely determined by her future husband’s career, and this is certainly the case for Watson. (because he chooses for it to be the case.)
And a lot of what Watson does as Holmes’ doctor looking after his welfare would be completely appropriate for a wife as well. Watson accepting Holmes’ quirks but insisting that he take care of himself and rushing to his side when he’s ill. And in fic of course there’s even more of this, and also of Watson being Holmes’ moral compass, which was absolutely a wife’s duty.

But Watson does all of this as an absolutely proper English gentleman who fulfills all the roles of a proper English gentleman as well. When Holmes says there’s no one better than Watson to be a jury (ABBE), he means that Watson is worth twelve other men. And also that he is moral and wonderful and has good judgement. And of course Watson is a doctor and a soldier and these were both heavily masculine roles.

…I should have a conclusion here, but basically, John Watson! Man who is totally comfortable taking a “feminine” role in relationships without worrying about his masculinity!

Oh wait, yes, I did have a conclusion. This is why people underestimate Watson. Because his contributions are stereotypically feminine and therefore ignored. Taking care of people and supporting them cannot possibly be important even though they are the most important. So it’s assumed that Holmes doesn’t need him or that he’s incapable because he doesn’t do flashy things. But Watson isn’t flashy, that’s the point. Except when he’s shooting things for Holmes, but I suppose those authors ignore those moments?

So - yes these are coded feminine, but obviously they aren’t inherently so, and also devaluing them sucks and is still sexist.

Also! he’s doing all this for someone who is in every other way coded as more feminine than he is! Which is neat!
violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (Default)
In my head, somewhere, there’s this muggleborn Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, who loves history. And she’s so excited about History of Magic, she reads all the books she can find, she looks for how it fits in with muggle history…

And then she gets to Hogwarts and realizes that wizards don’t care about history. At all. Class is taught by a ghost who doesn’t care about anything modern and seems surprised when he realizes students actually exist, no one cares if they fall asleep in class, everyone has been assigned the same essay topics every year for the last five hundred years. It’s all about rebellions and wars and treaties, and there’s no social history at all.

And her first couple years she just deals with it, because, hey, new fascinating world she’s learning all about, she can deal with one poorly taught class.

But what made me think about this was the title of Harry’s essay in third year. “Witch-Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless - discuss.” Because look at that from the point of view of someone who knows something about the motives behind witch-hunts.

So that’s when she loses it and spends the whole summer researching and writing an essay on the historical effects of magical existence on muggles. How wizards let people scapegoat other muggles and especially women for things muggles wouldn’t believe in if there weren’t real wizards everywhere. How pureblood wizards were happy to screw up the lives of the muggles living near them and then avoided all consequences because hey, they had Flame-Freezing Charms if the worst happened, what did they care if someone else was caught and died horribly instead of them. How even today muggles were falsely diagnosed with mental illnesses because wizards weren’t careful enough with their Disillusionment Charms, or because wizards thought Memory Charms were the solution to everything no matter how they affected the victim.

And she hands it in at the start of the year and a week later she gets summoned to the Headmistress’s office.

And Professor McGonagall smiles at her and says “This is a bit unusual, but would you be interested in a TA position?”
violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (books)
The rented room is dim and the sheets are stained and the blinds on the dusty window are broken and the lowering sun turns everything yellow and eye-straining.

Jane makes tea on the chafing dish and pushes her hair back. The wave has grown out entirely, twisting just the ends where they fall over her shoulders, unfashionably long and distracting.

“I could cut it for you,” says Sherlock, draped across the bed, between drags on her cigarette.

“It wouldn’t look any better.”

“I’ve done mine, yours wouldn’t be more difficult.”

“I mean, it’d still be straight. Boring.”

Sherlock shrugs. Jane pours the tea into chipped cups and brings one to the bed for Sherlock. Sherlock shifts her head to stay out of the sunlight.

“You’re not going to be able to afford to go to a salon any time soon. Or even a home kit.”

“Dammit, Sherlock -!”

“I’m sorry, dear, but we both know it.”

“Fine. I’ll cut it myself.”

“When I’m offering to help?”

Jane sighs, pours herself more tea, looks away.

“Maybe.”

Sherlock rolls her eyes expressively at the ceiling and stubs her cigarette out in her empty cup. “Maybe we’ll get a case.”

“If we do, it’s going to the rent.”

“We can make rent.”

Silence.

“Jane!”

“I don’t know. I thought we could. But - do you have anything you’re hiding away?”

“Of course I don’t. I’m not keeping secrets from you.”

Jane’s lips move. She rarely swears out loud, but it’s clear enough.

“Dammit,” says Sherlock. “Fine. We’re going out tonight, dear.”

Jane stares. “Out where?”

“Friends of mine. Do we have anything for dinner?”

Jane makes a face. “Tea. Oatmeal.”

“Tea it is, then.”

*

Jane watches Sherlock change into trousers without much surprise, and throws her threadbare coat on at Sherlock’s request.

“Don’t take it off.”

“All right.”

“And bring all the money we have.”

“What! Sherlock!”

“We’ll make more.”

“Where are we going, Sherlock?” Jane’s wary. Sherlock’s trousers, she thinks, eliminate the worst possibilities, but that just means she has no idea whatsoever what she intends.

Sherlock smirks a little. “Allison’s.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Come on. And for God’s sake call me Holmes.”

Sherlock turns with a flourish of her coat and starts off down the hall, and Jane, as always, follows after her.

May 2025

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