Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T13:47:40.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Desire, Love, and Sex between Women in Global History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

By
Leila J. Rupp
Edited by
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks  and
Mathew Kuefler
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
Get access

Summary

and sex between women. The history of female homoerotic relations throughout time and in different places is widely varied, shaped by the societies and cultures in which women lived. How women act on their desires, what kinds of acts they engage in and with whom, what kinds of meanings they attribute to those desires and acts, how they think about the relationship between love and sexuality, whether they think of sexuality as having meaning for identities, whether they form communities with people with like desires—all of this differs across time and place. Yet there are discernible patterns, both in the ways that homoerotic relations have been conceived within persistently male-dominated social arrangements and in the forms of desire and intimacy experienced by women. A global historical view makes clear that emergence into public is not everywhere significant, that desire and love between women can flourish within heteronormative social arrangements, and that the emergence of a lesbian identity is a minor part of the whole story of female homoerotic relations.

Keywords

female same-sex sexualityfemale homoerotic desirefemale masculinityromantic friendshipnonbinary genderqueer identitiessocial construction of sexuality
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History of Sexualities , pp. 273 - 292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Aldrich, Robert, ed. Gay Life and Culture: A World History. London: Thames & Hudson, 2006.Google Scholar
Blackwood, Evelyn. ‘Sexuality and Gender in Certain Native American Tribes: The Case of Cross-Gender Females’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10 (1984): 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Brooten, Bernadette J. Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Judith C. Brown. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Cantarella, Eve. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Duggan, Lisa. Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Epprecht, Marc. Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson, Brigitte. ‘A Lesbian Execution in Germany, 1721: The Trial Records’. Journal of Homosexuality 6, nos. 1–2 (1980–1): 27–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: William Morrow, 1981.Google Scholar
Greenberg, David F. The Construction of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halperin, David. How to Do the History of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Hansen, Karen V. ‘“No Kisses Is Like Youres”: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century’. Gender and History 7 (1995): 153–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herdt, Gilbert, ed. Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. New York: Zone Books, 1993.Google Scholar
Jennings, Rebecca. Tomboys and Bachelor Girls: A Lesbian History of Post-war Britain, 1945–71. Oxford: Greenwood World, 2007.Google Scholar
Lybeck, Marti M. Desiring Emancipation: New Women and Homosexuality in Germany, 1890–1933. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrick, Jeffrey, and Ragan, Bryant T., Jr, eds. Homosexuality in Modern France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Ruth, and Wieringa, Saskia, eds. Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-Sex Practices in Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2005.Google Scholar
Murray, Stephen O. Homosexualities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Rupp, Leila J. Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women. New York: New York University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Sang, Tze-lan. The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. ‘The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America’. Signs: Journal of Women in Society and Culture 1 (1976): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Colin. Homosexuality in History. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.Google Scholar
Thadani, Gita. Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India. London: Cassell, 1996.Google Scholar
Traub, Valerie. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Vanita, Ruth. ‘“Married among Their Companions”: Female Homoerotic Relations in Nineteenth-Century Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India’. Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 1 (2004): 12–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Wekker, Gloria. The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Wieringa, Saskia E., Blackwood, Evelyn, and Bhaiya, Abha, eds. Women’s Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×