4. Bulldaggers & Lady Lovers: The Bisexual & Lesbian Blues Legends

On this week’s episode, we discussed the black lesbian and gay subculture in the Harlem Renaissance throughout the 1920s and 1930s in New York. From growing up in poverty to traveling minstrel stars and eventually into nationally renowned recording artists, blues legends like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Gladys Bentley infused their music with sexuality and reality, hinting at the queer atmosphere of Harlem nightlife that included wild parties, flowing booze, and romps on the road. Many of them were known for their explicit or otherwise 'scandalous' lyrics that were full of innuendo and subtle (or not so subtle!) allusions to queer life and love. Plus, now we have a new lady to add to our Anne Bonny/Lizzie Borden ship: Bessie Smith!

Some Looks at our Queermos

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey

She's been described as 'ugly' but we think that's bullshit. She's gorgeous. (source)

The infamous "Prove it on me BLues" ad featuring Ma Rainey flirting while a cop looks on, suspicious. (source)

Ma Rainey and her wildcats jazz band, featuring Thomas Dorsey on Piano. (source)

An ad for Ma Rainey and the traveling minstrel show she worked with. (source)

Vinyl of ma Rainey's "dream Blues." (source)

Bessie Smith

Portrait circa 1920.

Empress of the Blues and Fashion icon. (Source)

YOu can tell she's extra just by the feathers.

See? Feathers. (Source)

From an advertisement featuring Bessie Smith. (Source)

Gladys Bentley

Bentley and bandleader Willie Bryant, April 17, 1936,
in front of posters for their Apollo show (source)

Advertisement for Glady's show at Mona's in San Francisco, featuring the descriptors "sepia piano artist" and "brown bomber of sophisticated songs" (Source)

Map of clubs in Harlem featuring the Clam House where Glady's performed. (source)

Speaking of Mona's here's an ash tray from the club and it's motto, "Where the girls will be boys." We love it already.

photgraph of the infamous Ebony article from 1952 where Bentley claimed to have turned straight due to hormone treatments. this and the rest of the article can be read here.

Ethel Waters and Ethel Williams

Ethel Waters in "On with the Show," 1929.

Ethel Waters and Fredi Washington in the 1949 play "Mamba's Daughter." IN the play, Washington plays Waters' daughter (though this still looks pretty gay).

Waters circa 1930s.

Portrait of Ethel Waters from 1943.

Waters in Pinky, the 1949 film she was nominated for an academy award for.

The only image we could find of both Ethel Williams (left) and Ethel Waters (Right). (source)

Alberta Hunter

Alberta Hunter, Jazz singer (we'll come back to the Jazz age, we promise!).

Alberta Hunter (right) performs Vaudeville. (Source)

Lucille Bogan/Bessie Jackson

Listen to the Dirty and/or Queer Harlem Renaissance Blues

Ma Rainey's "Prove it On Me Blues"

Ma Rainey's "Sissy Blues"

Bessie Smith's "Empty Bed Blues"

Bessie Smith's "Foolish Man Blues"

Gladys Bentley's "Worried Blues"

Lucille Bogan's "BD Woman's Blues"

Lucille Bogan's "Shave 'Em Dry"

Lucille Bogan's "Groceries on the Shelf"

Check out these mini documentaries about Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, courtesy of Biography.com for black history month.

And also check out the trailer for HBO's Bessie, available to stream via an HBO subscription.

If you want to learn more about these folks, as well as the history of queerness in the Harlem Renaissance, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles:

• Queers in Jazz History: Gladys Bentley

• ADVENTURES IN FEMINISTORY: THE HISTORY OF HARLEM'S 1920S LESBIAN BLUES SINGERS

• Women Who Paved the Way: Blues Singer Gladys Bentley

• Queer Music History 101: Lesson 1, 1926-1977

• “A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem” by Eric Garber

• Bulldykers and Lady Lovers: The Rumors about Lesbian Blues Singers Were All True by Meagan Day

Books:

• Mother of the Blues by Sandra Lieb

• Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Y. Davis

• Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay

• Bessie by Chris Albertson (excerpt in Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the USAed by Jonathan Ned Katz)

• His Eye on the Sparrow and To Me, It’s Wonderful autobiographies by Ethel Waters

• Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters by Donald Bogle

• Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather by Stephen Bourne

• Queer in History by Keith Stern

• The Harlem Renaissance, by Steven Watson (free excerpt p124-144)

• Sapphistries by Leila Rupp

• Homosexuality in History by Colin Spencer

• Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies by James F. Wilson

Films: 

• T'Aint Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

3. Mei Ai Hold Your Hand? Homosexuality in Imperial China

On this week’s episode, we discussed Confucianism, Daoism, and their importance for understanding Imperial Chinese views of sex and sexuality, which contributed to the long literary tradition of male homosexuality. Like last episode, it was a context heavy episode, but we still brought plenty of tragic, romantic, and even some humorous stories of men and their lovers that shaped how Imperial Chinese men who had romantic and sexual relationships with other men understood themselves. Stories like Emperor Ai and the ‘passion of the cut sleeve,’ Mizi Xia and the ‘bitten peach’, and Long Yang and the ‘previously caught fish.’ If the shared pillow tree didn’t make you believe that these people weren’t as straight as some people might think, then maybe the shared eating of the women in harems did!

How do we know about these folks?

Despite the People’s Republic of China attempting to erase the long history of male and female homosexuality in China---dating all the way back to the Yellow Emperor of the 27th century BCE!---many, many records still survive. In the early dynasties, our knowledge of male homosexuality stems mainly from court records, many of which had separate sections for emperors and their male favorites. We also have a poetric tradition that spans almost all of Imperial Chinese history, though it isn’t always easy to suss out the gender of the person spoken about due to unique linguistic features in China. In the 16th-17th centuries, we finally start to get fiction that represents both male and female homosexuality in the form of books, short stories, and plays. Plus, lots of paintings! They’re also quite erotic so….many of the images below are NSFW. Maybe look at these when you’re in your apartment, not your cubicle!

Timeline of Chinese Dynasties

Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600-1050 BCE)
Zhou Dynasty (ca 1050-256 BCE)
Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE)
Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE)
Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties Period (220-589 CE)
Sui Dynasty (581-618 CE)
Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE)
Five Dynasties Period (907-960 CE)
Liao Dynasty (907-1125 CE)
Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE)
Yan Dynasty (1279-1368 CE)
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE)
Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE)

People and Poems we Didn’t have Time to Include

Wu Zao (1799-1862 CE, Qing Dynasty)

One of the greatest female and lesbian poets of the Qing dynasty and Chinese history. The daughter of a merchant and wife of a merchant named Huang, neither her father nor her husband were bookish or inclined toward creating great works of art. No one knows how she learned to read, write, play, music, and paint, because these were not usual skills for women in the merchant class to have learned. Instead of conforming to the expected lack of fine arts skills, she became one of the best writers, composers, and poets of her time. One of her operas, “The Image in Disguise,” regards the tale of a woman who wears men’s clothes, paints, and laments the constriction of gender roles for limiting her ability to use her skills (self-portrait anyone?). In her middle age, she became a Daoist (or Buddhist, depending on the source) nun.

Throughout her life, she had many romantic and sexual relationships with women and wrote several erotic poems to female courtesans, like this one:

FOR THE COURTESAN CH'ING LIN
To the tune “The Love of the Immortals”

On your slender body
your jade and coral girdle ornaments chime
like those of a celestial companion
come from the Green Jade City of Heaven.
One smile from you when we meet,
and I become speechless and forget every word.
For too long you have gathered flowers,
and leaned against the bamboos,
your green sleeves growing cold
in your deserted valley;
I can visualize you all alone
a girl harboring her cryptic thoughts.

You glow like a perfumed lamp
in the gathering shadows.
We play wine games
and recite each other poems.
Then you sing “Remembering South of the River”
with its heart-breaking verses.
We both are talents who paint our eyebrows.
Unconventional as I am,
I want to possess the promised heart of a beautiful woman like you.
It is spring.
Vast mists cover the Five Lakes.
My dear, let me buy you a red painted boat
and carry you away.

And another: A BITTER RAIN FALLS IN MY GARDEN

A bitter rain falls in my garden
in this autumn that is ending.
I barely have vague poetic feelings
that I cannot gather together.
They disappear among the dark clouds
and the reddish leaves.
After the yellow fall of the day
the cold moon wakes up
amid the melancholy fog.
I will not lower the blinds of mottled bamboo
from its silver hook.
Tonight my dream will follow the wind,
enduring the cold,
towards the jade tower of your divine body.

(Note the “jade tower” metaphor, like the use of ‘jade’ as a way to describe beautiful men in the 3 Kingdoms and 6 Dynasties period.)

More information about her can be found in Women Poets of China by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung.

Bai Juyi (772-846 CE, Tang Dynasty)

Portrait of Bai Juyi by Chen Hongshou of the Ming Dynasty.

We mentioned Bai Juyi in our discussion but didn’t have time to include the long, romantic poems he wrote to many of his fellow officials. Regarding happy nights with a fellow official, he wrote:

We are fond of the moon, and nights sleep side by side;
We love the mountains and on clear days view together.

When one of his ‘friends’ sent him a bolt of cloth, he wrote the following poem:

Thousand li (of distance), friend’s heart cordial;
one strand, fragrant silk purple resplendent.
Breaking the seal, it glistens
with a rose hue of the sun at eve---
the pattern fills in the width
of a breeze arriving on autumnal waters.
About to cut it to make a mattress,
pitying the breaking of the leaves;
about to cut it to make a bag,
pitying the dividing of the flowers.
It is better to sew it,
making a coverlet of joined delight;
I think of you as if I'm with you,
day or night.

To his friend and fellow official Qian Hui, he write the following poem about a frosty winter night they spent together:

Night Deep---the memorial draft finished;
mist and moon intense piercing cold.
About to lie down, I warm the remnant last of the wine;
we face before the lamp and drink.
Drawing up the green silk coverlets,
placing our pillows side by side;
like spending more than a hundred nights,
to sleep together with you here.

Bai Juyi and his friend Yuan Zhen made what they called the “Green Mountain pact” to retire as Daoist monks once they’d gained enough money. Unfortunately, Zhen’s untimely death prevented them from fulfilling their pact, inspiring the following melancholy poem:

My body is harassed by closeness to the Throne,
my heart bound by fame and righteousness.
Nights of moon and times of blossoms,
seldom encountering delights of the wine cup.
There was only Gentlemen Yuan
who came in leisure and drank with me.
He took my hand and sang drunkenly
in carefree spirits, and at times we laughed and joked.

This year you were appointed Censor;
two months ago you went to Loyang.
Since parting I still have not smiled,
and dust fills my wine cask and ladle.
A scented breeze---night fragrance ended;
cassias and rain---the last blossoms fall.

Autumn’s intent, one sighing solitude,
our beings apart, both lonely and forlorn.
How much more so, aging in the bright sun;
we have repudiated our Green Mountain pact.
Who knows my heart as I think of you?
It’s a captive falcon and a caged crane.

These and more poems and information about Bai Juyi (and others!) can be found in Passions of the Cut Sleeve by Bret Hinsch.

If you want to learn more about these folks, as well as the history homosexuality in Imperial China, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles:

• Brief History of Same-sex Relationships in China

• Comrades of the Cut Sleeve: Male Homosexuality in China (full PDF)

• Speaking LGBT Chinese

• Homosexuality in China

• Tu’Er Shen, patron deity of homosexual love

Books:

• Passions of the Cut Sleeve by Bret Hinsch

• The Culture of Sex in Ancient China by Paul Rakita Goldin

• Sex in China by Fang Fu Ruan

• Sexual Life in Ancient China by Robert Hans Van Gulik

• Sapphistries by Leila J. Rupp

• Carton, Adrian. "Desire and Same-Sex Intimacies in Asia". ay Life and Culture: A World History ed. Robert Aldrich

NSFW Erotic Art of the Ming and Ching Dynasties

Male lovers, note the 'active' participant has a darker skin tone than the 'passive' one.

Male lovers, once again the skin tone distinguishes the partners.

Gretchen's personal favorite because of the guy reading a book while he's having sex.

Woman peeping on male lovers, just like the wife of Shan Tao in the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove" story.

Man peeping on a woman masturbating with a dildo tied to her foot. Woman's gotta do what she's gotta do to get pleasure!

Woman peeping on another woman masturbating. (we told you peeping was a thing in erotic art.)

Two women using a dildo.

Three women using a dildo.

Old woman selling dildos to young women (omg this is the best. #goals).

Woman using a strap-on with a man, just like the funny story we told of the couple who didn't know what to do on their wedding night and the other couple who wanted the woman to penetrate the man!

man with two women.

All these and more can be found at the Wikimedia Commons Chinese Erotic Art page.

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

2. Cloistered Queers

This week, we talked a lot about medieval views of sex and sexuality, including the practice of brother-making that very likely had a romantic component to it, if not a sexual one as well. It was a pretty context heavy episode, but all that set the stage our large cast of love poem/love letter writing, highly suggestive mystical vision having monks and nuns: Alcuin, St. Anselm of Canterbury, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Baudri of Bourgeuil, Aelred of Rievaulx, Benedetta Carlini, and other monks and nuns with 'special friendships' with each other. Tender words caressing little breasts making you want to die? Licking inmost parts? Quoting gay Greek mythology in love letters? Arm-sized dildos? Visions of the wound in Jesus' side that sound remarkably like a vulva? Jesus and John being married? These monks and nuns were definitely not as straight as people think.  

How do we know about these folks?

As we mentioned in the episode, a lot of our information about the individual people comes from love letters and poems written from one monk or nun to another. While some have been lost due to history or religious purges, we still have some pretty awesome letters lying around. We quoted from a few in our episode, but there are so many more and they're too good and too gay not to share in full.

Oh, and make sure you check out Humon's Tumblr comic about monastic views of sex and sexuality. It's accurate and adorable.

Alcuin to Arno of Salzberg (c. late 700s)

Carolingian manuscript, c. 831 with Rabanus Maurus (left) and Alcuin (middle), dedicating his work to Archbishop Odgar of Mainz (right).

Love has penetrated my heart with its flame,
And is ever rekindled with new warmth.
Neither sea nor land, hills nor forest, nor even the Alps
Can stand in its way or hinder it
From always licking at your inmost parts, good father,
Or from bathing your heart, my beloved, with tears.
Sweet love, why do you inspire bitter tears,
Why do bitter draughts flow from devotion's honey:
If now your sweetness, world, is mixed with bitterness,
All prosperity will alternate rapidly with misfortune,
All joys be changed to sad lamentation;
Nothing lasts, anything can perish.
Therefore, world, let us flee from you with all our hearts,
As you, ready even now to perish, flee from us.
Let us seek the delights and ever-enduring realms
Of heaven with your whole heart, mind, and hand.
The blessed hall of heaven never separates friends;
A heart warmed by love always has what it loves.
Therefore, father, abduct me with your prayers, I beg you;
Then our love will never be estranged.
Look with joy and with a gladdening heart, I pray,
At these little offerings which great love sends you,
For our gentle Master praised the two copper coins
The needy widow put into the temple's treasury.
Sacred love is better than any gift,
And so is steadfast faithfulness which flourishes and endures.
May divine gifts follow you, dearest father
And at the same time precede you. Always and everywhere farewell.

(Source, includes other love letters)

Anselm, to Gilbert (c. 1077/78)

Illumination of Anselm from his manuscript of meditations

Brother Anselm to Dom Gilbert, brother, friend, beloved lover

            . . . sweet to me, sweetest friend, are the gifts of your sweetness, but they cannot begin to console my desolate heart for its want of your love. Even if you sent every scent of perfume, every glitter of metal, every precious gem, every texture of cloth, still it could not make up to my soul for this separation unless it returned the separated other half.

          The anguish of my heart just thinking about this bears witness, as do the tears dimming my eyes and wetting my face and the fingers writing this.

          You recognized, as I do now, my love for you, but I did not. Our separation from each other has shown me how much I loved you; a man does not in fact have knowledge of good and evil unless he has experienced both. Not having experienced your absence, I did not realize how sweet it was to be with you and how bitter to be without you.

          But you have gained from our very separation the company of someone else, whom you love no less – or even more – than me; while I have lost you, and there is no one to take your place. You are thus enjoying your consolation, while nothing is left to me but heartbreak.

(Source, including more of Anselm's love letters)

Boudri of Bourgeuil to Walter (c. early 1100s)

May an exchange of letters always unite us while we are apart,
And may this letter now bring me into your presence.
Let my letter now greet you, repeat my greetings,
And repeat them a third time to please you even more.
Lately I received a sweet poem from Walter
Which, since you wrote it, has touched your hand.
I received it with thehonor it deserves
And immediately called you to mind with my love.
Now my poem gladly returns your visit,
And I pray that you cherish me with your love.
If you wish to take up lodging with me,
I will divide my heart and breast with you.
I will share with you anything of mine that can be divided;
If you command it, I will share my very soul.
You will be lodged completely within my breast
And will continueas the greatest part of my soul.
Meanwhile I will humbly pray for good fortune
Until conversationrevive us.
A different garment – if you haven't considered it – would bring that about:
The name of monk would make such conversation endure forever.
So that you could long enjoy our true love,
Another life would change your visits,
Whether the love of God or fear of punishment or both
Commend monastic life to you.
In case you decide to come to us as such,
I have ordered our men to accompany you.
And ifrumor has told you that I am about to visit you,
That hangs in doubt – it might be possible or it might not.
For now, therefore, hurry; "Procrastination harms the ready."
Anticipate tomorrow; do what you should today.

(Source, includes other love poems)

Bavarian Nun Love Poems (c. 1100s)

The first letter, which we read in the episode:

I am weighed down with grief,
For I find nothing
I would compare to your love,
Which was sweeter than milk and honey,
And bycomparison to which the gleam of gold and silver seems tawdry….it is you alone I have chosen for my heart...
I love you above all else,
You alone are my love and desire…
Like a turtledove who has lost her mate
And stands forever on the barren branch,
So I grieve ceaselessly
Until I enjoy your love again

And the second letter, in its full, entirely gay entirety:

To G., her singular rose,
From A.---the bonds of precious love.
What is my strength, that I should bear it,
That I should have patience in your absence?
Is my strength the strength of stones,
That I should await your return?
I, who grieve ceaselessly day and night
Like someone who has lost a hand or a foot?
Everything pleasant and delightful
Without you seems like mud underfoot.
I shed tears as I used to smile,
And my heart is never glad.
When I recall the kisses you gave me,
And how with tender words you caressed my little breasts,
I want to die
Because I cannot see you.
What can I, so wretched, do?
Where can I, so miserable, turn?
If only my body could be entrusted to the earth
Until your longed-for return;
Or if passage could be granted to me as it was to Habakkuk,
So that I might come there just once
To gaze on my beloved’s face--
Then I should not care if it were the hour of death
For no one has been born into the world
So lovely and full of grace,
Or who so honestly
And with such deep affection loves me.
I shall therefore not cease to grieve
Until I deserve to see you again
Well has a wise man said that it is a great sorrow for a man to be without
            that
Without which he cannot live.
As long as the world stands
You shall never be removed from the coreof  my being.
What more can I say?
Come home, sweet love!
Prolong your trip no longer;
Know that I can bear your absence no longer.
Farewell.
Remember me.

(From John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (c. late 1600s)

Sor Juana's book A Celebration of and Posthumous Works by the phoenix of Mexico and Tenth Muse, the Mexican poet, Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz

A luminary Mexican nun who was an early champion for women's rights to education, her letters to Vicereine Maria Luisa de la Paredes of New Spain: 

But, [Maria Luisa], why go on?
For yourself alone I love you.
Considering your merits,
what more is there to say?
That you’re a woman far away
 is no hindrance to my love:
 for the soul, as you well know,
 distance and sex don’t count

 Can you wonder my love sought you out?
 Why need I stress that I’m true,
 when every one of your features
 betokens my enslavement?

Another poem, entitled "My Lady": 

I love you with so much passion,
neither rudeness nor neglect
can explain why I tied my tongue,
yet left my heart unchecked.

The matter for me was simple;
love for you was so strong,
I could see you in my soul
and talk to you all day long.

How unwisely my ardent love,
which your glorious sun inflamed,
sought to feed upon your brightness,
though the risk of your fire was plain!

Let my love be ever doomed
if guiltyin its intent,
for loving you is a crime
of which I will never repent.

And yet another, "Don't Go, My Darling", in what seems like the most dramatic post-breakup "fuck you wait no don't leave me" to exist:

Don’t go, my darling, I don’t want this to end yet.
This sweet fiction is all I have.
Hold me so I’ll die happy,
thankful for your lies.

My breasts answer yours
magnet to magnet
Why make love to me, then leave?
Why mock me?

Dont brag about your conquest--
I’m not your trophy.
Go ahead: reject these arms.

That wrapped you in sumptuous silk.
Try to escape my arms, my breasts--
I’ll keep you prisoner in my poem.

(Source, from Leila J. Rupp's Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women)

Hildegard of Bingen (c.1098-1179)

St. Hildegard of Bingen and Her Assistant Richardis” by Lewis Williams

 German nun, mystic, poet, healer, and scientist who fell in love with her sister nun, Richardis von Sade, wrote in homoerotic ecstacy about the Virgin Mary, and in a case of "she who doth protests too much", wrote a series of morality plays arguing against the love between women, yet FULL OF THEM and waxing poetic on the divine nature of femininity. SHRUG. 

From one of Hildegard's letters to Richardis, begging her to return to be with her instead of her position as an abbess at a far-away convent:

Now, again I say: Woe is me, mother, woe is me, daughter, “Why have you forsaken me” (Ps 21.2; Matt 27.46; Mark 15.34) like an orphan?  I so loved the nobility of your character, your wisdom, your chastity, your spirit, and indeed every aspect of your life that many people have said to me: What are you doing?

Now, let all who have grief like mine mourn with me, all who, in the love of God, have had such great love in their hearts and minds for a person- as I had for you- but who was snatched away from them in an instant, as you were from me.  But, all the same, may the angel of God go before you, may the Son of God protect you, and may his mother watch over you.  Be mindful of your poor desolate mother, Hildegard, so that your happiness may not fade.

(From Selected Writings of Hildegard of Bingen)

From her writings on the marriage to God as a union between souls alike two lovers:

Creation looks on its Creator like the beloved looks on the lover.
The soul is kissed by God in its innermost regions.
With interior yearning, grace and blessing are bestowed.
It is a yearning to take on God’s gentle yoke,
It is a yearning to give one’s self to God’s Way.

She also wrote "Symphonia", a collection of songs devoted to the Virgin Mary, extoling her love and passion for the holy mother, calling her "the greenest twig" and praising her womb as the creator of all things. 

"The Universe" by hildegard of bingen. uh huh okay hildegard that doesn't look like anything we've seen before sure

She was also fascinated by women's health, and her medical writings were perhaps the first to ever describe the female orgasm: 

When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.

HOLY WOW, HILDEGARD. 

Some other images of our cast of queerios:

Aelred of Rievaulx - 1110-1167, Cistercian monk and abbot of Rievaulx

Illumination of Aelred from his manuscript, "The MIrror of Charity."

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz - c. 1651-1695, Hieronymite nun, poet, philosopher, and self-taught scholar

Portrait of Sor Juana by Miguel Cabrera, c. 1750.

Jesus' Side Wound, aka That Sweet Side Pussy

Jesus' wound and Jesus as 'man of sorrows' in manuscript from france c. 1375.

Wound of Christ in Psalter and Prayer book of Bonne de Luxembourg, 1345.

Side Wound from a Book of Hours from England and the Netherlands, 1410.

From a nun's prayer book made in Southern France between 1275 and 1300, Christ displaying the wound in his side to a nun in prayer, historiating the initial D(omine) of the Hours of the Passion (Domine labia mea aperies, O Lord open thou my lips).

Interestingly enough, the discussion regarding the erotic nature and treatment of Christ's side-wound extends even to some of our monk friends, including Aelred of Rievaulx, of whom we spoke! His meditation for his sister on what she should do in thinking of the moment Christ received the wound from the spear piercing his side: 

Then one of the soldiers opened his side with a lance and there came forth blood and water. Hasten, linger not, eat the honeycomb with your honey, drink your wine with your milk. The blood is changed into wine to gladden you, the water into milk to nourish you. From the rock streams have flowed for you, wounds have been made in his limbs, holes in the wall of his body, in which, like a dove, you may hide while you kiss them one by one. Your lips, stained with his blood, will become like a scarlet ribbon and your word sweet.

In this, he is referencing The Song of Songs, one of the most erotic spiritual texts in which a groom says to his bride:

My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall, show me thy face, let thy voice sound in my ears: for thy voice is sweet, and thy face comely...  (2:14)
Thy lips areas a scarlet ribbon: and thy speech sweet... (4:3)
Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my bride, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes... (4:9)
Thy lips, my bride, are as a dropping honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue... (4:11)
I am come into my garden, O my sister, my bride, I have gathered my myrrh with myaromatical spices: I have eaten the honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk... (5:1) 

Who's the bride and who's the groom when it comes to Aelred speaking to his sister of Christ? Hmm?

Other folks we didn't get a chance to dive into during the episode due to time constraints but you should look up (part 2, anyone?):

"Gay" Monks & love letters:

Walafrid Strabo (c. 808-849)
Marbod of Rennes (c. 1035-1123)
Notker Balbulus (c. 840-912)
Salamo III, bishop of Constance (c. 860-920) and Waldo
Egbert and St. Boniface (letters c. 716-20)
Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (c.1090-1153) and his friend Archbishop Malacy of Armagh)

Mystic/religious women & homoeroticism in medieval texts:

Hadewijch (d. 1248),  who wrote poems to her beguine sister Sara and wrote on God as the female personification of love
Bieris de Romans
Julie D'Aubigny (c.1673-1707, who will get her own episode!)

If you want to learn more about these folks, as well as the history of medieval sex, sexuality, and cloistered communities, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles:

• When A Medieval Knight Could Marry Another Medieval Knight

• Were Same Sex Marriages a Thing During the Middle Ages?

• The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages

• People With a History: Online Guide to LGBT History (includes thorough bibliography)

• Homosexuality and Catholicism (includes thorough bibliography)

• Historical Inaccuracy: No Homosexuality in Medieval Europe

• Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality

• Same-Sex Relations in the Middle Ages (includes bibliography)

• Best Beloved Brother: Gay Love Letters of Saint Anselm

• Gay Love Letters of Medieval Clerics

• The Gay Love Letters of Baudri of Bourgeuil

• The 600 Year Tradition Behind Same-Sex Unions

• Swords, Satan and Sexuality: Queer Nuns of the Past

• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Nun who loved a countess in 17th-century Mexico City

• To Queer or Not to Queer: Hadewijch’s poetry as a case study for a queer read of history

• Christ’s Womanly Wounds

• Hildegard of Bingen and Richardis: Medieval mystic and the woman she loved (contains links to hear Hildegard's music!)

Books:

• Boswell, John. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe

• Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

• Brown, Judith. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy

• Krueger, Derek. “Between Monks: Tales of Monastic Companionship in Early Byzantium” in Journal of the HIstory of Sexuality #20 (2011): 28-61.

• Rupp, Leila J. Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women

• Rictor Norton, My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (Full Text available online)

• Hildegard of Bingen, Selected Writings

If you like cloistered queers, you might also like...

• Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s novel Sor Juana’s Second Dream, which was then adapted into a play, “The Nun and the Countess” by Odalys Nanin

• 1990 film, I, the Worst of All (Yo, la peor de todas), won Argentina’s Academy Award entry for Best Foreign Language Film.

• Netflix series “Juana Ines”, 2016 produced in Mexico

• 2009 film from German feminist director Margarethe von Trotta called Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen

• Lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage's play "Artemisia and Hildegard"

Illumination from the Passional of Abbess kunigunde of bohemia.

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

1. Were Some Pirates Poofters?

This week, in our first episode, we introduced you to the dramatic pirate quartet of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, John “Calico Jack” Rackham, and Pierre “the pansy pirate” Bouspet! Two women eschewing stereotypical gender presentation, dressing as men, then falling in love each thinking the other is a man? Anne kicking Jack out of his quarters and sharing them with Mary instead? Jack Rackham being jealous of Mary and Anne's 'friendship' and walking in on Mary naked on Anne's bed? A pirate who owns a dress shop, coffee shop, and loves to paint with turtle blood? A pirate with a taste for splashy colors and may have been the lover of his former captain? Oh my! Or should we say, ‘arrrghhh’? These pirates may not have been as straight as people think.

How do we know about these folks?

As we mentioned in the episode, much of the histories of Anne, Jack, and Mary comes from the book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, published in 1724 by a mysterious  “Captain Charles Johnson”, whom some claim is a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe, aka author of Robinson Crusoe.

First edition cover, 1724.

Some images of our cast of queerios:

Anne Bonny - c. 1702-1782, born in Cork, Ireland

Illustration from the 1725 Dutch version of A General History of...Pyrates

Mary Read - c. 1690-1721, born in England

Illustration from the 1725 Dutch version of A General History of...Pyrates

John “Calico Jack” Rackham - c. 1682-1720

Illustration from the 1724 edition of A General History of the Pyrates

Sadly we have no images of our favorite drama pirate, Pierre Bouspet.

If you want to learn more about these folks, as well as the history of piracy in the 17th and 18th century, check out our full list of sources further reading below!

Online Articles:

• John Strausbaugh, Were Some Pirates Poofters?

• Christine Hernandez, Forging an Iron Woman

• Marcus Rediker, Liberty Beneath the Jolly Roger (Includes text of Captain Johnson’s accounts)

• Lesbian News, Anne Bonny and Mary Read: Queer Pirates of the Seas (Includes other sources for further reading)

• Rictor Norton, Lesbian Pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read

Books:

• David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag

• David Cordingly, Women Sailors & Sailors’ Women

• Ed. C. R. Pennell, Bandits at Sea: A Pirate Reader

• Myra Weatherly, Pirate Women: Eight Stories of Adventure

• Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates

Anne and Mary, from the 1724 edition of A General History of the Pyrates

If you like Mary Read, Anne Bonny, Calico Jack Rackham, and Pierre Bouspet, you might also like...

• The TV show Black Sails on Starz

• The Abyss Duology (The Abyss Surrounds Us and The Edge of the Abyss) by Emily Skrutskie

• The Seafarer's Kiss by Julia Ember (mermaids and Vikings, but close enough!)

• This list of "16 Great Reads for Lesbians and Queer Girls who Love Pirates!"

• Princeless: Raven the Pirate Princess comic by Jeremy Whitley

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

Stay tuned...

Here is where you'll be able to find fully-detailed notes for each episode, including sources and links, photos, and bonus content!