10 - How to Spot a Lesbian in the Early Modern Spanish World

Summary

Scholars who spend time thinking about and looking for traces of passion between women in the early modern Spanish world are inevitably confronted with a certain degree of hesitation over evidence and terminology. This chapter considers some of the questions that early modern observers were asking about women suspected of loving other women. Legislators, medical specialists, theologians, and writers engaged in lively cross-disciplinary debates that pondered basic questions such as what women were doing with each other behind closed doors and what those erotic encounters meant for different individuals and institutions. The role of erotic fantasy is also significant for understanding how witnesses imagined and articulated sexual relations between women. While portraits, appearances, and plays could of er early modern spectators provocative visual evidence of lesbians and their desire, material artifacts could also provide concrete signs of same-sex passion. Religious material artifacts could be implicated in forbidden sexual encounters.