(no subject)

[foreverdawning]

I'm sure everyone's already read it but 13th century nuns' love letters made me swoon. (link) I was wondering if anyone knows how common it was historically for sapphic women to become nuns. I read a little bit about it in the book Teresa by Barbara Mujica, but after reading the article I got to thinking about it. 

Comments

[auroracloud]

Ah, thank you for the link! My tendency to listen to podcasts while I'm doing something practical like cooking means that I remember what I was doing when I listened to something, but not when it was and what kind of episode it belonged to. Your podcast is one of my favourite podcasts ever - and actually one of the original reasons I started listening to podcasts - found it via your blog and decided to give it a try. Glad to see you here, too!

And that's a good point about the effect of earlier ages not having the concept of fixed sexual orientation that has come to dominate the modern discourse. I've only started finding a significant amount of information on queer history in the recent years, so it's all too easy to leap back into the modern mindset even though you technically know the point of view is different. One of the things I really enjoy about your podcast and blog is the way you'll dig deep into the actual attitudes and customs of the time, trying to see what the reality of the people would be rather than just interpreting all through the same modern Western lens. It's useful, informative, and helps in opening to mind to other ways of thinking and behaving, which is important with history.

That's very true about the sources and the difficulty of finding neutral sources likely to give accurate information.