Information about the everyday experiences of queer women in history comes in snips and scraps. Given that, it's easy for general histories of women's experiences to ignore or omit them entirely. The publication I'm drawing from today took the course of including such data among it's overall survey of primary source materials--an approach that helps provide the general reader with clues that there's more going on in history than a focus on "typical lives" often communicates. Neither of the written anecdotes in this collection are ones I've encountered before, though they may have contributed to general statements about legal cases or passing women in other works. And that gives you an idea of just how many similar examples are waiting out there in archives to be found, recognized, and made available to researchers. I'd love for someone to take on the research project of compiling primary textual sources on all the passing women and "female husbands" that were casually recorded in English sources of the early modern period.
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