Read on Twitter
I'm going to have a little rant. Enjoy. 
I'm bouncing off Hannah Johnson and Lauren Cole's brilliant #gms2021 paper on Hildegarden of Bingen, and Hannah's observation about being dissuaded from using a stronger term than 'lesbian-like' for Hildegarde's sexuality.
I'm bouncing off Hannah Johnson and Lauren Cole's brilliant #gms2021 paper on Hildegarden of Bingen, and Hannah's observation about being dissuaded from using a stronger term than 'lesbian-like' for Hildegarde's sexuality.
Firstly, I love Bennett's article and coinage of the term 'lesbian-like,' and it does hugely important epistemic work that I wouldn't ever want to disrespect or deny.
But, the reluctance to use the term 'lesbian' in relation to women's same-sex desires in the medieval period is rooted in lesbophobia and misogyny that says much more about modern culture than it does about medieval.
If you look at a newspaper, or read a gossip forum when an individual comes out as gay in later life, I guarantee you will find a gendered pattern. With men, the response is that he was 'secretly gay' or 'in denial' all his life.
There may be overt criticism of this, but male gayness is presumed to be stable and unchanging and *real*. A woman, especially if she was in heterosexual relationships prior, is simply doubted. 'She's confused'. 'She's bisexual' (this second is damaging to bisexuals, too).
I have also seen parents and teachers doubt adolescent lesbianism *much* more often than adolescent male homosexuality. Boys are presumed to be gay if they say so; girls are 'confused' or 'going through a phase' or 'doing it because it's fashionable'.
All of this makes it pretty clear to me that it's our own social biases we're perpetuating when we insist on quibbling about applying the term 'lesbian' to medieval women. Sure, medieval women didn't use the term. But our discomfort applying it isn't about that: it's about us.
In peer review and in job interviews, I have seen colleagues calling into question the reality or validity of discussing medieval women as 'lesbians,' and while I think it's usually an innocent attempt to elicit a disclaimer about the fact the term didn't exist, it's depressing.
I don't in the least want to get into taxonomising medieval women/texts and putting them in boxes and saying 'this one is definitely lesbian'. But we *must* be able to talk about female same-sex desire as a real thing without constantly apologising for the word 'lesbian'.
Now I shall retreat into silence (Silence?) and eat my lunch.
