We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

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.

75% of handprints in Palaeolithic European cave art were made by females.

Dean R. Snow, Sexual Dimorphism in European Upper Paleolithic Cave Art

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.

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.

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.

(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?

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.

This is a transcript of the April 8th, 2017 episode of Footnoting History by Elizabeth Keohane-Burbridge and Lucy Barnhouse, done for teaforlupin. The original podcast can be found here.

( Read more... )

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.

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?”