Misogyny Created a Space for Women to F*ck in the 19th Century
As bewildering as it might sound, women in the 19th century —rather wealthy women— often shared their lives with other women. They shared lives, houses, kisses, beds… “Whoa whoa, wait, how do you mean? As in lesbian?” You see, it is a bit more complicated than that.
Women —some more than others— have historically had it tough, to say the least, to find a way of living independently, to finance themselves out of one of the VERY few career paths deemed adequate for them. Society back then stated that teaching was just fine for women, however, it was badly paid; domestic service was also very, very fine, but again, wages were low, as were the ones paid to industrial workers.
Teaching was, out of these, the elected occupation for the young educated Victorian women who strived for independence, but still, they could not support themselves without their parents’ or a man’s help. Then and there is that these arrangements came in handy. A woman who had left her family home but was not willing, or not yet willing, to settle down, marry some man and run his household, could find herself an alike female “friend” who were in the same position and move in with her, sharing the costs.
However, these friendships, or Boston marriages, as they are known and referred to after a novel that portrayed a relationship of the kind named The Bostonians, were not limited to roommates agreements.
In the Victorian era, and surely time before and after, it was expected and admired in a young high-class woman that she kept herself apart from men, to, you know, keep all the sacredness and purity inside. Paradoxically though, it was socially seen as virtuous that she got herself a female friend with which she shared kisses and caresses. In public.
How does that fit into the no-sex-for-women thing? Well, easy enough: wealthy or educated women did not have the sexual desire of men or poor women (promiscuity was attributed to low-class or uneducated women). Thus, under that belief, people were very comfortable letting women show affection for one another, as all it was was a platonic love often with short expiry date.
Now, was that all it was? Aren’t these women plain old lesbians?
Certainly, it is not too precipitate, not at all actually, to state that the women of that time who did search in their relationships with women for the type of connection that is unmistakably love, as well as the ones only interested in having sex with women, that is, the lesbians —and bisexuals— of the 19th century, could easily manage to pass off their relationships as another Boston marriage that also lacked the sex and intimacy — because then intimacy could not be achieved without sex— that society could not picture without a cis man (as probably could trans men too).
However, the “real” Boston marriages, loosely explained in words that we can understand in the 21st century (not that they literally fit that definition), were lesbian but asexual relationships, (platonic) love relationships between women in which there was no sexual element.
It is nonetheless subject of controversy, and also inaccurate, to claim that these lovers were all lesbians. In this regard, I find that it is the same difficulty that we encounter when trying to understand a social construct of a past time in history that encourages us to impose the criteria of our current time and society on another that existed around two hundred years before. This is not to say that women who loved women did not exist back then, because they have always existed, but the concept of the Boston marriages is one we do not have today, and probably—as I can’t claim to know for sure— not all the Bostonians were lesbians.
That being so, we can safely say that the officially platonic relationships that were so prolific in the 1800s and late 1700s among women provided an alibi for lesbians to live with their lovers without even being blinked at, and provided (wealthy) women the opportunity to live outside the jurisdiction of their parents and husband, that is independence, as well as an affectionate and passionate connection with other women.
What happened then?
It is surprising to know that society did encourage these relationships, but being that the case, that actually triggers the larger question: what was it that occurred as the 20th century came closer for them to be condemned as harshly as we know non-cisheterosexual relationships have been?
Despite how enormous and complex of a social change this was, it all really came down to its roots; the one factor that saved the Boston marriages was that women did not have the sexual desire men had (and if they did, like prostitutes or low-class women, they were considered less of a woman), therefore, and because the validation of a love relationship came exclusively with sex, those among women were not legitimate. Only a man could consummate a marriage, so a relationship between two women did not entail any threaten to the patriarchal order. Until...
The L word happened :)
It was ending the 19th century that the word “lesbian” was first used in a medical paper to address female homosexuality, and such a word was that killed the beloved Boston marriages.
I believe there is meaning in the history this word drags that relates to what it triggered in the late 1800s, in its travel from its motherland, the infamous island of Lesbos, until it arrived to put a name to a social nightmare, or rather, it arrived to put a name and started a nightmare.
Following on that, “lesbian” is quite an old word; it comes from the Greek and it is firstly and foremost the adjectival form of a location in Greece named Lesbos, birthplace of the poet Sappho, whose sexuality has been discussed throughout history to come to be known as the first lesbian, which of course has come at a price: the destruction of most of her work by ignorance and fear in the form of false morals. In her poems, the few complete ones and parts of lost ones we have access to, there are references to women’s beauty and attraction power, with an erotic tint that arose all kinds of criticism, even if it could still not deprive her from the deserved recognition as one of the greatest ancient poets and admiration from historic names of literature such as Homer or Plato.
From then on, the words “sapphist” and “lesbian” took on lives of their own. They were used as synonyms of “women-loving woman”, however, when translated to Latin, they were forced onto ugly meanings, rooted in the phallocentric culture of humankind. That is how we get examples of old texts and dictionaries, which Paula Blank collected in The Proverbial “Lesbian”: Queering Etymology in Contemporary Critical Practice, where Greek lesbias goes on to Latin meaning “prostitute” or “fellatrix”, and the verb lesbien, meaning “to defile” or “to fellate”.
The evolution of “lesbian” both served and was effect of the cisheteropatriarchy, and when the signifier finally came to rescue its second meaning in order of appearance — “female homosexuality”— (after “originally from Lesbos”), it occasioned that same repudiation that Sappho's poems provoked, which was first addressed by denigrating her and refocusing the sex act on the man (lesbias going on to mean “prostitute” and “fellatrix”); except this time that humiliation and hatred was associated with these non-heterosexual relationships that had been going on for a century and that did not fit into the religious, male-centered —and dominated— society anymore. And therefore had to go.
Yes, misogyny was BLIND
Though I have, unintentionally, made it seem that way, it was not the word itself but the realisation that women could actually have sex without a man, or would rather want to, that made everyone choke.
To put it simple, it was the same misogynistic mindset that kept women, as inferior —sexually and mentally—, innocent and weak beings, far away from power, money, freedom and education, that also provided the sociocultural context of these centuries for SOME women to create their own atemporal world which escaped society’s imposed rules, and to sleep with (and love) other women if they wanted to; that brought them together and gave them —not out of generosity — a space of, albeit little, independence.
And that is (God forbid!) not to thank misogyny, but I pleasingly accept it as a fine example of irony (and perhaps revenge?).
