One of the themes that I find really valuable in this collection of essays is poking at the question of whether and why it is important to find connections between historic modes of sexuality and the modes familiar to modern producers and consumers of historic research and theory. Given how prominent and foundational Lillian Faderman has been in the field of lesbian history, I always feel a bit guilty when I describe my winces at certain of her approaches, though in this essay I think she addresses the underlying premises of those winces fairly directly. One that is stated outright in this article is "can there be lesbian identity in the absence of sexual activity?" Faderman seems to argue for a negative answer both explicitly in this article and implicitly in much of the discussion in Surpassing the Love of Men, and the obvious reason that this position makes me wince is that it erases the concept of asexual lesbians. If one erases them in the historic record, the obvious implication is to erase them in the modern experience as well. I can understand the position that the complex prototypical model for lesbian identity includes erotic desires and activity between women, but any position that requires it as a necessary defining characteristic is a position that erases my own existence.
A second point the Faderman makes in this essay--one that I'm far more on board with--is that it's important not to get too fixated on lesbian identity as publicly transgressive of social norms. To allow for women who are outwardly conforming (or at least not outwardly non-conforming) but whose lives embody emotional and erotic experiences that can only be seen as lesbian. One of themes promoted in the modern lesbian community is that the state of being a woman who loves women is inherently and existentially transgressive, no matter how it is outwardly expressed. When applying this principle to women in history, we shouldn't overlook or dismiss lesbian lives simply because they were not engaged in a public confrontation with heterosexual expectations. This is a theme that has significant effects on lesbian historical fiction. Modern readers are deeply attached to characters who are outwardly transgressive: passing women, outlaws, women in male-coded professions. Our fiction should have room for stories about the more subtle rebellions of simply existence as well.
Comments2
"Our fiction should have room
"Our fiction should have room for stories about the more subtle rebellions of simple existence as well."
I love this.
It's something I feel very
It's something I feel very strongly about, and where I see problematic reflexes in the attitudes of modern readers. I see a lot of readers contradictorily clamoring for stories of transgressive women in history and not wanting stories about "nice, polite, conforming feminine women", while protesting that they aren't interested in stories about women "who had to pretend to be men". (Which is quite a different thing thatn stories about trans men, of course. In the actual historic record, the two can be difficult to distinguish, but in historical fiction we're privy to the characters' own understanding of their identity.) Unfortunately, those conflicting requirements often narrow the field down to women with modern sensibilities, who establish a overtly gender-bending presentation, plunked down in a historic setting where both of those features are only tenuously plausible. (There certainly were some historic women who created an overtly gender-bending presentation, like Moll Cutpurse, but it was a real tightrope walk.)