https://alwaysqueer.com Always Here. Always Queer. Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:53:57 +0000 https://alwaysqueer.com en https://alwaysqueer.com/Mobile-header Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:26 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/Mobile-header ALWAYSHERE/ ALWAYSQUEER 00_Intro 01_Sappho 02_Rodin 03_Buried 04_Poetry 05_Religious 06_Transformed 07_Noteriety _Further reading _Make your own https://alwaysqueer.com/_intro Thu, 17 Nov 2022 00:23:42 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/_intro "The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours." (Bennett, 2004) I love being queer, but I haven’t always. So I’ve looked to history for a place to belong. Finding queer stories has been a difficult journey of flipping over rocks, racking open floorboard and peaking under the bed, because for a long, long time, that's the only place we could survive. &nbsp; I have a hard time reading dense academic writing, honestly I think it could do with a bit more levity and a few more exclamation points. A bit more pizazz! I hope that in these zines you find a connection, an interest. I'm an illustrator and honestly the starchier readings put it better, but my hope is that this approach makes them more accessible. So with these first entries I have gone in with a focus on the overlooked identities within the already overlooked queer community. Lesbians are a stuck-on-the-end single page/paragraph if lucky, trans and gender non-conforming identities are maybe an index mention and bi/pan/fluid sexualities are re-written or ignored. If I had a penny for every time I read that two people who shared their homes, bed and hearts with each other for decades were ‘really good friends’ I could probably pay off my student debt. The aim of this is not to dictate/prescribe/pin down/determine that certain figures are of certain identities. Instead I want to offer a kaleidoscope of sorts. Some thing a little messier, a little more fluid. Something you might see yourself in. We’ll never know, because these people are all dead, history is unforgiving and we don’t have a time machine. I’d say rather than argue about where to drop the anchor, we cruise about, explore all the corners of the map and accept and enjoy the queerness in all its multitudinous forms and combinations. To be put under a single title, is well- boring. Modern labels might&nbsp; work for the here and now, but really can't be applied to historic figures. But you don’t have to put a label on something to be able to resonate with it. This is a project to reflect on and be reflected in the queerness of the past. Our interpretations shouldn’t be singular but many. Overlapping and constantly retold and relived. Immortality is found in the hearts of others. In this research I’ve found joy, but also an incredible amount of frustration. For those who have been forgotten, lost and deliberately removed. Those whose stories still remain are by no means the ones who were ‘stronger’ or more ‘meaningful’. If I have learnt anything from this project, it is the passion, the fullness, the stubbornness of queer lives throughout history. For each of those who are lucky enough to have their stories still told, be it through infamy or privilege there are thousands upon thousands more who lived just as brightly. Through briars of allusion, thick censorship bars and crumbling mistranslations we are here, waiting to be found. This is by no means a definitive list. I hope, that this is a project, a space that can grow, evolve, step forward, step sideways, correct or even get a little wavy. If something needs to spill over or break boundaries, let it. It can always be scrunched up and redone. I want it to be as free and as collaborative as possible. All these zines are available to download and reprint on the website. Print them out and leave them on a bus, tuck them into library books, send them to a friend. All they need is a single A4. Make your own, the template is there to use. Draw on them, write on them, tear bits out and keep them in your pocket. If you find something new, write it down. And send it in to be shared out again. I am indebted to all the researchers that refused to believe anyone is insignificant. We owe so much to those who live in those niches of history, who found a thread and keep unravelling. So many queer stories are found in the domestic, someone’s great aunt or neighbour. ‘Domestic’ maybe feels reductive, but I say that with a lot of love. The domestic, the home, the day-to-day is where the cogs of human history keep churning. That's where life is lived. A lot of history might have been maliciously edited, but also a lot of it is just thought to be so commonplace it's never written down (look up the Land of Punt.) So much of this reserach is&nbsp; is found by the queer community, if there’s ever a question of the validity of gaydar, look no further than queer history. So if you feel that spideysense going off, maybe follow it. You might find the next entry, uncover the next great queer story. &nbsp; If there’s anything you take from this, its to make more. More art, more writing, more connections, more mistakes, more permanence in this world. We’ve been told we should be forgotten, that we’re not worth remembering. Fuck that and fuck them. Grow roots so deep they can never be untangled. Always here. Always queer. ‘It is our responsibility to remember that all of history is a construction, to resist nostalgia and to keep asking ourselves who constructed the histories we inherited and why? To ask who is remembered and who forgotten and to understand the power behind those choices.... Consequently, the historic characters we meet on our day out still disproportionately reflect male, white, elite, straight, cisgender, non-disabled lives. This minority continues to dominate the understanding and presentation of all of our shared history... The exclusion of LGBTQ+ narratives from public history, from the mainstream of the cultural heritage sector, not only displaces the lives that have been omitted or misrepresented, it dislocates LGBTQ+ people from their shared past. (Lennon, R. 2018. p.10) “There is a process of identification we engage in with queer historical figures, creating what Valerie Traub calls “lines of transmission of desire and culture” (2002: 352). Having no bloodline linking us to the past, we seek out a genealogy through affinity and identification; we look for those queer figures who can help us invent and create our own history, but we also yearn for a past that can give us a future, a modern past, so to speak. (Roulston, 2013) "Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see the future beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of the moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds … Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world."&nbsp; (Muñoz, J.E. 2009). Printable version: Biblio:Bennett A. 2004. The History Boys. Lennon, R., 2018. For ever, for everyone?. In: R. Sandell, R. Lennon and M. Smith, Prejudice and Pride: LGBTQ heritage and its contemporary implications. Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, p.10. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. NYU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg4nr Roulston, C., 2013. The Revolting Anne Lister: The U.K.'s First Modern Lesbian. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 17(3-4), pp.267-278. https://alwaysqueer.com/_Further-Reading Tue, 01 Nov 2022 09:07:59 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/_Further-Reading _Further reading A growing list of research resources: For books/pdfs/film highlights indicate free links ARCHIVES:The Lesbian Archive Glasgow Women’s Library23 Landressy St, Bridgeton, Glasgow, G40 1BP, UK. Lesbian Herstory Archive484 14th StreetBrooklyn, New York, 11215, USA.Historical LGBT publicationsOnline at JstorQZAP&nbsp;(Queer Zine Archive Project)‘The mission of the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) is to establish a "living history" archive of past and present queer zines and to encourage current and emerging zine publishers to continue to create. In curating such a unique aspect of culture, we value a collectivist approach that respects the diversity of experiences that fall under the heading "queer.’ Bishopsgate Institute230 BishopsgateLondon, EC2M 4QH, UK. Museum of Youth CultureGrown up in Britain: 100 Years of Teenage KicksHerbert Art Gallery &amp; Museum, Coventry1 July 2022 - 12 February 2023 The Subculture Archives Online. ‘An educational &amp; cultural research resource of primary sources exploring 100 years of youth culture through the scenes, styles, and sounds that forged them. From Rave, Punk, Rockabilly to Grime.’ ONE ArchivesNE Archives Foundation, the independent community partner that supports ONE National Gay &amp; Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries, the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world. WEBSITES:queeringthemap.com‘Queering the Map is a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space.’ qspirit.net‘The website fosters religious and artistic freedom by teaching love for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. It expands the meaning of holiness for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) people of faith and allies.’ Days of Rage‘Days of Rage is a web exhibition that enlivens historical activist posters from ONE Archives at the USC Libraries through tactile analysis and storytelling.‘ AlpenniaBlog about research into lesbian-like motifs in history and literature at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Dressing DykesLesbian Fashion History SOCIAL MEDIA:@dressingdykesINSTA: Lesbian Fashion History@lavenderlivesINSTA @arelesbianseverywhereINSTA:&nbsp;Exploring representations over the art world@ONEarchivesTWITTER: ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, the largest repository of LGBTQ materials in the world.&nbsp;@erik_kaars TWITTER: Queer medievalist researching the global origins of ideas about sex &amp; race in medieval English lit.@h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y Digital archive of iconic queer women as well as modern positionings like memes and online dating.&nbsp; FILMS &amp; VIDEOS: The Celluloid Closet. 1995. [film] Directed by R. Epstein, J. Friedman and V. Russo. Los Angeles: Sony Pictures Classics. Available at:&nbsp; https://youtu.be/I-TUF_GN_r8Wear with Pride: LGBTQ+ badges at the British Museum | Curator's Corner S2 Ep 3The British Museum. (2017)&nbsp;Wear with Pride: LGBTQ+ badges at the British Museum.&nbsp;[online video] Available at:&nbsp;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvyA7Q51Hnc&amp;ab_channel=TheBritishMuseumA Brief Queer History of Zines with Dr Jonah Comanqueer disrupt (2021)&nbsp;A Brief Queer History of Zines with Dr Jonah Coman. [online video] Available at:&nbsp;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCi8U4Q5eY&amp;ab_channel=queerdisrupt The Queer Code: Secret Languages of LGBTQ+ Art National Galleries (2022)&nbsp;The Queer Code: Secret Languages of LGBTQ+ Art. [Online video] Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=w447WOQZNNQ&amp;ab_channel=nationalgalleries BOOKS (NON-FICTION):&nbsp;Prejudice and Pride: LGBTQ heritage and its contemporary implications.Sandell, R., Lennon, R. and Smith, M., 2018. Prejudice and Pride. Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Available at:&nbsp;https://leicester.figshare.com/articles/report/Prejudice_and_Pride_LGBTQ_heritage_and_its_contemporary_implications/10207328&nbsp;and&nbsp;https://le.ac.uk/-/media/uol/docs/research-centres/rcmg/publications/prejudice-and-pride.pdfUnited Queerdom by Dan GlassGlass, D. 2020. United Queerdom. Bloomsbury Publishing.No Bath, But Plenty of Bubbles: An Oral History of the Gay Liberation Front, 1970-73 by Lisa PowerPower, L., 1995. No Bath, But Plenty of Bubbles: An Oral History of the Gay Liberation Front, 1970-73. London: Cassell.The Queer Art of Failure by Jack HalberstamHalberstam, J., 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press.Stolen Sharpie RevolutionWrekk, A. (2020) Stolen sharpie revolution. Portland, OR: Lunchroom Publishing.&nbsp; Queer London by Alim KherajKheraj, A., 2021. Queer London. ACC Art Books. Gender by Travis AlabanzaAlabanza, T. (2021) Gender. London: Tate Publishing. Love Between Women Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society) by Bernadette J. Brooten Brooten, B., 1996. Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (The Chicago series on sexuality, history, and society). University of Chicago Press.Among Women From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World by Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Lisa AuangerAuanger, L. and Rabinowitz, N., 2002. Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World.. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas PressThe Lesbian and Gay Studies ReaderAbelove, H., 1993. Lesbian/Gay Studies Reader. Routledge.Queering The Green edited by Paul MaddernMaddern, P., 2021. Queering the Green - Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry Book. Belfast: Lifeboat Press.Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas by Christopher Reed.Reed, C., 2011. Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas. New York City: OUP USA.Queer: A Collection of LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday edited by Frank Wynne.Wynne, F., 2021. Queer: A Collection of LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday. Harper. ARTICLES: The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire LifeKeating, S. (2019) The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire Life, BuzzFeed News. Available at:&nbsp;https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/shannonkeating/lesbian-cruise Counsel Club: Meet the archivist reaching into the postbag of one of India’s earliest queer support groupsMaheshwari-Aplin, P. (2021) Meet the archivist reaching into the postbag of one of India's earliest queer support groups, gal-dem. Available at: https://gal-dem.com/counsel-club-archive-queer-groups-india/ &nbsp; LGBTQ histories, as told through graphic design.Gosling, E., 2017. LGBTQ histories, as told through graphic design. [online] Creative Boom. Available at: &lt;https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/gay-uk/&gt;The Lesbian Pulp Fiction That Saved LivesFrost, N. (2018) The Lesbian Pulp Fiction that saved lives, Atlas Obscura. Available at: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lesbian-pulp-fiction-ann-bannon Stories of LGBTQ Resistance.Glass, D. (2021) stories of lgbtq resistance, Museum of Youth Culture. Available at: https://museumofyouthculture.com/dan-glass/AIDS, Art and Activism: Remembering Gran Furyd'Addario, J. (2022) AIDS, art and activism: Remembering gran fury, Hyperallergic. Available at: https://hyperallergic.com/42085/aids-art-activism-gran-fury/What Is the History of UK Gay Pride?Rafaeli, J.S. (2019) What is the history of UK gay pride?, What Is the History of UK Gay Pride? Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjvawn/uk-gay-pride-history-gay-liberation-front&nbsp; ORGANISATIONS: Gay Liberation FrontUK.The Queer and The Classical&nbsp;UK."A space for discussion, creative thinking, and provocations on everything queer and classical." https://alwaysqueer.com/_Makeyourown Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:53:57 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/_Makeyourown _Make your own This format of zine is really easy to make, all you need is one piece of paper, 5 folds and 1 slice!&nbsp; Simply fold your paper (this work for any size) into quarters and cut 3/4’s up the length of middle. Then fold the creases in an alternating order.&nbsp;To help out here is a downloadable version of the layout I have used with prompts : &nbsp; Link to indesign file:&nbsp;https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YLazOvdu3SJNcVRZ_LwXdZMDZDNHFqjd/view?usp=sharing There is no right or wrong way to make this, have fun, experiment and make happy mistakes!&nbsp; https://alwaysqueer.com/01_SAPPHO-1 Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:26 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/01_SAPPHO-1 01_Sappho Printable zine version: Everyone knows one fact about Sappho: that she desired other women ... “For [twentieth-century] culture, Sappho is first of all the emblem of female homosexuality ... and secondarily the author of a small number of surviving poems and fragments”Prettejohn, 2008, p.103.For the little known of the Poet Sappho, the ripples of her art, her work and life have echoed through out time. She was born to a wealthy family around 615 B.C. on the Greek isle of Lesbos. Later she lead a community of un-wed women devoted in worship to the deities of love, Eros and Aphrodite. She has still led a long and illustrious afterlife, leaving an indelible mark on artist and queer communities. Above centuries of censure, misinterpretation and infamy, Sappho has persisted.It is from her that we owe the terms Lesbian &amp; SapphicOf the thousands of lines she wrote, very little of her work survives, fragmented into 650 lines and the quotations of others. Despite all outward influences trying to bury her work, her poetry, her work, her life, have all stubbornly resisted complete erasure. Her poetry was thought to have been collected into 8-9 volumes at the Library of Alexandria, but lost to the deterioration of both the library and the papyrus it was inscribed upon. ‘the monks of the Middle Ages may have conspired to destroy Sappho's writings since her brand of pagan sensuality was not compatible with Christianity’ Obbink, 2015. Whilst it is said that Pope Gregory publicly burnt her work in 1073, at the same time the fragility of archiving materials and a decline in demand for her work, might have lead to the obliteration of the majority of surviving work. Fragments of her poems were found recycled into the papier-mâché cartonnage that was used to make mummy masks. It was in 1898, that Grenfell and Hunt found previously unknown fragments of Sappho’s work in an ancient rubbish dump. But it is not only the physicality of her work that was punished by time, but Sappho herself. She has been characterised as licentiousness, hyper-sexual, homosexual and promiscuous (is that a wrong thing to begin with?). As such a splintering occurred, of the master poet and the ‘wayward’ woman. ‘A time when scholars who devoted themselves to “rescuing” Sappho’s reputation from same-sex depravity pointed to the Suda, an ancient encyclopedia that asserted that the poetess had had a husband: a man name Kerkylos from the island Andros. Later scholars noted that her husband’s name was curiously similar to the Greek word kerkos, or “tail” — Greek slang for penis. And Andros means ‘man,’ more or less. That is to say, Sappho was married to someone named Rod Johnson from Dudesville. Hasselswerdt, 2016. In 1711 a translation of her work altered the love interest from a woman to a man. It is only in the last few centuries that deeply the woven homophobia and misogyny millenniums of society has begun to unravel. &nbsp; ‘Sappho became the “emblem of female homosexuality” very late in the history of her reception—2.5 millennia after her death’&nbsp; Prettejohn, 2008, p.103. There is something about Sappho that acts as a siren song. Maybe the mystery of her identity, the brazenness of her desire or the palpable longing that calls out from just a few fragmented words. The ladies of Llangollen named all their dogs Sappho. Natalie Clifford Barney dressed as a "page of love" sent by Sappho to woo Liane de Pougy. When you begin to look, you can see the threads of Sappho throughout the tapestry of queer history. Like calls to like, through nods and veils, we find each other, and perhaps Sappho’s name was an invocation of this; a historic ‘friend of Dorothy’. ‘The Sappho of Solomon and Swinburne marks a crucial moment in the emergence of the modern image of Sappho as lesbian, as well as in the history of modern artistic and literary constructions of homosexuality.’ Prettejohn, 2008, P103. <img width="1284" height="1242" width_o="1284" height_o="1242" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ce6d4df7a670f06c06aeefa28fa8963496883c3fdf7c181d4067b0f451a030e7/Solomon--S.-1864.--Sappho-and-Erinna-in-a-Garden-at-Mytilene.png" data-mid="159389854" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ce6d4df7a670f06c06aeefa28fa8963496883c3fdf7c181d4067b0f451a030e7/Solomon--S.-1864.--Sappho-and-Erinna-in-a-Garden-at-Mytilene.png" />Solomon, S. 1864. 'Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene.’ [Oil on canvas] Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) was a British artist belonging to the pre-Raphaelite movement. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in London, he was considered an artistic prodigy. Among his contemporaries were poet Algernon Charles Swinburne as well as artists John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Rossetti. His intense, rebelliously androgynous style built him a reputation and portfolio of remarkable artworks. Through his friend (and possible lover) Swinburne, Solomon was introduced to Sappho’s poetry and life: ‘In this context, too, there is nothing surprising about the fascination with Sappho in the work of the young painter Simeon Solomon or in that of his friend, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, in the 1860s, when both men were exploring their own unconventional sexual identities.’ Prettejohn, 2008, p.103. In Swinburne’s ‘Sapphics’ Sappho is restored: &nbsp; ‘Thus, Swinburne’s admiration for Sappho as a poet can further be seen as a strategic choice that enabled him to explore publically proscribed themes without calling upon the wrath of the censor. Whilst he broke the rules of translation, he also used translation as a cover.’Creasy 2019. In February 1873, Solomon was arrested and fined for cottaging and again in 1874 in France and sentenced to 3 months imprisonment. He was shunned by society, barred from the Royal Academy, falling in inflicted upon him by the cruel homophobia. <img width="1010" height="1260" width_o="1010" height_o="1260" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/afc40d36befdeb794e162de63d84f72773549456650bf7e3924f6dd38e64b67d/Solomon--S.-1862.-Study-of-Sappho.png" data-mid="159389833" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/afc40d36befdeb794e162de63d84f72773549456650bf7e3924f6dd38e64b67d/Solomon--S.-1862.-Study-of-Sappho.png" />Solomon, S. 1862. ‘Study of Sappho. ‘Though I have been consistently amazed by how LGBT artists have developed new creative forms to deal with the repression of the expression of their sexuality or gender identity, I have also been saddened to contemplate just how many artists’ lives and careers have been prematurely cut short as a result of prejudice.’ Janes, 2010. How do you define a the sexuality of someone millennia old? Especially when that person’s name has become an identity whole onto itself? Should you even try? “The difficulty we face is not necessarily the lack of erotically desiring women, but our inability to crack the code organizing the conceptual categories of an earlier culture.” (Traub, 1992, p.152) "Few would deny the existence of any erotic behavior between women, but was it represented? What shapes did it take? Is there a code that we must crack in order to begin to read?" (Auanger and Rabinowitz, 2002, p.111) What is sexuality in the past? “When we call an image of ancient women homoerotic, we are doubtless “reading in,” filling in the gaps between women occupying the same vase or in some cases imagining an absent woman. On what basis or with what methodology do we perform these operations? In what follows, I call homoerotic those looks and touches that seem to point to intimacy” (Auanger and Rabinowitz, 2002, p.112)&nbsp; “In what follows I have tried to be as inductive as possible and to work by looking at the representations, without imposing a definition on them, but of course, we do have preconceptions that may lead us to recognize only what fits our own categories. These preconceptions may also cause us to misrecognize a great deal. For instance, in modern society, “masculine” women are often read as lesbians, whereas “feminine” women who desire other women may be visible only when accompanied by another woman who fulfils the stereotype.” (Auanger and Rabinowitz, 2002, p.112) If you asked Sappho if she was a lesbian - well she’d probably say yes, but a yes to being a resident of Lesbos. Was she exclusively attracted to women? We cannot definitely say either way, there are records that she married and took male lovers, one of whom she ended her life in despair for. So the name sake for lesbians, is bisexual? Pansexual? Queer? Again we can’t say yes or no, but that doesn’t matter. What does is that Sappho loved, with an aching ferocity that spanned eons. What matters is that love has echoed through so many many people. Her work has given sapphics a life line with which to bind ourselves together, a life raft, a drifting memoriam to say that our kind of love is old, passionate and enduring. &nbsp; “But Sappho is not a woman whose life is about to be terminated. She is a woman to be continued. More than that, she is the girl who comes back full circle. This girl will not be interrupted.”(Nagy. 2020) <img width="3363" height="1213" width_o="3363" height_o="1213" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1ef46f750d89328aba084320d824b7865c24ab5f5aa462df1003df374a6a6472/_01_2.jpg" data-mid="159389764" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1ef46f750d89328aba084320d824b7865c24ab5f5aa462df1003df374a6a6472/_01_2.jpg" /> Biblio:Auanger, L. and Rabinowitz, N., 2002. Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World.. 1st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, p.111. Brooten, B., 1996. Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (The Chicago series on sexuality, history, and society). University of Chicago Press. Creasy, M. 2019. Sappho and Decadent Translation 2: Swinburne’s ‘Sapphics’. [online] Decadence and Translation Network. Available at:&nbsp;https://dandtnetwork.glasgow.ac.uk/sappho-and-decadent-translation-2-swinburnes-sapphics/ What Does It Mean to Be Sapphic?, Them. Available at: https://www.them.us/story/what-does-sapphic-mean (Accessed: November 3, 2022). Hasselswerdt, E., 2016. Re-Queering Sappho. [online] Medium. Available at:&nbsp;https://eidolon.pub/re-queering-sappho-c6c05b6b9f0b.&nbsp;(Accessed: October 22, 2022). Janes, D (2010) Seeing and tasting the divine: Simeon Solomons homoerotic sacrament. In: di Bello, Patrizia and Koureas, Gabriel (eds.) Art, History and the Senses: 1830 to the Present. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, pp. 35-50. Medhurst, E. (2021) Depicting Sappho: The Creation of the Original Lesbian Look, Dressing Dykes. Available at: https://dressingdykes.com/2021/03/19/depicting-sappho-the-creation-of-the-original-lesbian-look/ (Accessed: October 22, 2022). Nagy, G. 2020. The 'New Sappho' Reconsidered in the Light of the Athenian Reception of Sappho - The Center for Hellenic Studies. [online] The Center for Hellenic Studies. Available at: &lt;https://chs.harvard.edu/curated-article/gregory-nagy-the-new-sappho-reconsidered-in-the-light-of-the-athenian-reception-of-sappho/&gt; Obbink, D. 2015. ‘Sappho's New Poems: The Tangled Tale of Their Discovery.’ Written by Megan Gannon. Live Science. 23 January. Traub, V. (1992) 'The(In)significance of ‘Lesbian Desire’ in Early Modern England' in Zimmerman, S, 1st ed, Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage, ed. Susan Zimmerman, New York, Routledge, pp. 152. In Zine Figures: 1. Belli, V (c. 16th century) 'Bust of Sappho medal (obverse side).’ [Cast silver medal] At: British Museum. 1976,0315.1 2.Belli, V (c. 16th century) 'Bust of Sappho medal (reverse side) draped figure, holding a lyre.’ [Cast silver medal] At: British Museum. 1976,0315.1 3. The Sappho Painter (c.510 B.C.)’Sappho holding a barbitos, from a Six technique kalpis.’ At National Museum of Warsaw. 4. Pale brown sard gem engraved with a seated woman, perhaps Sappho. (c. 4thC BC) [Engraved sard gem cameo] At: British Museum. 1886,1001.1 5. Head of Sappho intaglio. (c. 17th century) [Carved onyx intaglio] At: British Museum, London. 1890,0901.76 6. Delatre, C., Lefebvre, J., Monnin, M, A, C. (c.1860-1875) 'Untitled (possibly Sappho)’ [Etching] At: British Museum, UK. 1875,1113.24 7. Spintria R.4483 (c. 1stC) [Copper alloy coin] At: British Museum, UK. R.4483 8. Goujon, J. (c. 1859) 'Sappho sur le Rocher de Leucade.' [Marble] 9. Terracotta fragment of a kylix (drinking cup) (c.second quarter of the 5th century B.C.) At The Met, New York. 2011.604.1.4537 10. Terracotta lamp. (c. 1-99) At British Museumm 2005,0921.1 11. 'Statue portrait of Sappho.’ (c. 1-500 A.D.) [Marble sculpture] At: The Met, New York. 42.201.12 12. 'Theatrical Mask.’ (c. A.D. 2nd century) [Faience mask] At: Met Museum, New York. 26.7.1021 13. Siana cup. (c. 575BC-550BC) [Shard of terracotta pottery] At: British Museum, UK. 1886,0401.1222 14. Obbink, D. (c. 3rd century B.C., found in 2014) 'Fragment of Papyrus preserving parts of Sappho's "Brothers Poem" and "Kypris Poem”. [Multispectral image of papyrus fragment] 15. Terracotta fragment of a lekanis lid (covered dish) (c.460–450 B.C.) The Met New York, 2011.604.2.1134 16. Terracotta fragments of pots; unglazed on the inside. (second quarter of the 5th century B.C.) [Terracotta] At The Met, New York. 2011.604.2.2260c 17. The Danaë Painter (ca. 460 B.C.) 'Terracotta bell-krater (obverse)’. [Red figure terracotta vase] At: The Met, New York. 23.160.80 18. Marble terminal bust of Sappho. Front view. (c. AD 1 - 160) [Carved marble bust] At: British Museum. 1805,0703.68 19. Scharf, G., Williams, S. (1849) 'The Works of Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Illustrated Chiefly from the Remains of Ancient Art’. [Wood engraving] At: British Museum, UK. 1867,0713.268 20. “LESBIANS ARE BEAUTIFUL” – “A DAY WITHOUT LESBIANS IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE,” Gay Freedom Day Parade, San Francisco. (1979) [Photograph] In care of: Chicago Tribune. 21. Beauvallet, P.N. 1813. ‘Sappho (Seated Woman Holding a Lyre). [Terracotta statue] The Walters Art Museum, 27.372 22. Goujon, J. (1859) 'Sappho statue on Aile Est wing.' [Marble] 23. Count Prosper d'Epinay. (c. 1895) ‘Sappho’. [Statue] 24. “ASK NOT WHAT A LESBIAN CAN DO FOR YOU, BUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR A LESBIAN” (c. 1975) [Pinback] 25. Pride button found in the lesbian connection vol. 23 no. 1, july 2000 26. Jodie Foster. 27. Lily Tomlin. 28. Arrowsmith, C. 1976. Joan Armatrading. [Photograph] 29. Solomon, S. 1864. 'Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene.’ [Oil on canvas] 30. Solomon, S. 1862. ‘Study of Sappho.’ 31. Harper, J. (1990) “Towards A Lesbian Aesthetic,” Hot Wire. Available at: &lt;http://www.hotwirejournal.com/hwmag.html&gt; Statuettes on back cover: Seated woman playing a kithera (c. 2nd–1st century B.C.) [Terracotta statuette] At The Met, New York. 74.51.1673 Musician (c. 600–480 B.C.) [Terracotta statuette] At The Met, New York. 74.51.1670 Standing female kithara player (c. 4th century B.C.) [Terracotta statuette] At The Met, New York. 74.51.1671_ Standing female lyre player (c. 600–480 B.C.) [Terracotta statuette] At The Met, New York. 74.51.1672 Fragmentary terracotta statuette of a woman with a kithara (c. 3rd century B.C.) [Terracotta statue] At The Met, New York. 12.232.15 Standing female kithara player (c. 4th century B.C.) [Terracotta statuette] At The Met, New York. 74.51.1695 37. Marble terminal bust of Sappho. Right side view. (c. AD 1 - 160) [Carved marble bust] At: British Museum. 1805,0703.68 https://alwaysqueer.com/02_RODIN Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:27 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/02_RODIN 02_Rodin Printable zine version: AUGUSTE RODIN 12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917 FRENCH SCULPTOR "The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live." Rodin “No part of the body was insignificant or trivial, for even the smallest of them was alive. Life, which appeared on faces with the clarity of a dial, easily read and full of signs of the times, was greater and more diffuse in bodies, more mysterious and more eternal.”Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, 1902. For an artist whose most famous work is a paragon of heterosexual desire, Auguste Rodin has a fair amount of queer connections. This is perhaps not surprising when realising he lived in Paris during the Fin de siècle, the epicentre of a lesbian revolution (as well as a sticky web of warring romances) namely due to one Natalie Clifford Barney (more to follow on her exploits) (the ex of the ex of the life partner of Virginia Woolf’s ex.) “Fin-de-siècle Paris was the capital of lesbianism. However, until the mid century, and despite the acknowledgment of male homosexuality, female homosexuality had been considered absurd….Lesbianism in the public realm was a sexual preference that, while common, was negatively judged by French conservative society and for this reason was conducted with subtlety and partially obscured. In fact, many of the biggest stars of the Parisian circuses, dance halls and café-concerts were lesbian or bisexual, including Jane Avril and May Milton”TOULOUSE-LAUTREC: Paris and the Moulin Rouge. 2012. Characterised by rough-hewn surfaces Rodin carves an unashamed presentation of sexuality through the momentum of bodies. Flesh is pillowy, soft, sinewy, and taut. Dimpled and creased. Spiralling forms roll into one another, skin against skin, half engulfed, consumed. Limbs plaited in ecstasy and misery. “Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump” Rodin Rodin was unafraid of renewal and reinterpretation, routinely Frankensteined together old works. Whilst he did use mythology and allegory as a basis for inspiration, we can see from the continuously changing titles, that Rodin did not permanently attach a specific meaning or story to a piece (Youth Triumphant, n.d.) “The inner life that makes up this age is formless and intangible; it is, in short, in flux.... [Rodin] took hold of everything that was vague, developing, and constantly changing—all of which was in him too—and gave form to it.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, 1902. Women shaped Rodin’s life and work, as inspirations, as models, assistants, friends, romantic and sexual partners and patrons. &nbsp; (also literally - Rodin’s method of production required several assistants to copy and plaster cast his original clay models&nbsp; — many were women.) (Rodin would later enter into an affair Welsh painter Gwen John, who was simultaneously in a romanic relationship with Rodin’s assistant/lover, artist Hilda Flodin. (Warren, 2021)) Rodin worked from life, encouraging his models to move as they pleased to maintain the reality of form, rather than a cold academic pose. He routinely employed dancers. Researching through his preparatory sketches and life studies reveals the ‘Couple Saphiques' he kept in his circle, but also an open queerness within the creative scene. Sapphic lovers weren’t just regaled to closed sketchbooks either.‘Metamorphosis’ was originally conceived as part of ‘The Gates of Hell’ “Rather than illustrating a specific story, the two female embracing figures evoke the spirit of Ovid, who was a favourite author of Rodin. Art critics of the late 19th century had difficulty in writing about these overtly erotic groups. They often described them as 'fantasies', and in so doing, ascribed less importance to them than to other sculptures by Rodin. But this aspect of Rodin's work held great appeal for young sculptors and writers of the 1890s who wished to confront Victorian culture.”Victoria &amp; Albert Museum, 2007. Contemporaneously, artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Baudelaire and previously Gustave Courbet peaked past the curtain of sapphic desire. Toulouse-Lautrec found friendship in the sexworkers of Paris, his 'Dans Le Lit' series inspired by and modelled on these sapphic relationships. “Lautrec’s depiction of lesbianism is particularly notable because it doesn’t fetishise sexual intimacy between women or present it as spectacle for the male gaze. Lautrec was trying to capture small, tender moments in the lives of the women he met, and he did so with humanity and sensitivity. In a world of constructed sexuality and fantasy, he finds the real relationships, and reveals to us the hidden lives of queer women in the 19th century.” Depictions of Lesbianism by Henri Toulouse Lautrec, 2014. <img width="2000" height="1348" width_o="2000" height_o="1348" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bb943cac007d955bbaab27a58f955e1e4e874464a46378d8ff8aacacea7a1976/Courbet--G.-1866.--The-Sleepers-Le-Sommeil--BLUE.jpg" data-mid="157819707" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bb943cac007d955bbaab27a58f955e1e4e874464a46378d8ff8aacacea7a1976/Courbet--G.-1866.--The-Sleepers-Le-Sommeil--BLUE.jpg" />Courbet, G. 1866. 'The Sleepers (Le Sommeil)' <img width="1094" height="815" width_o="1094" height_o="815" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b710f9bd54ab706b815833d87b369c5690160c5cb4d398074c8b82f7b8dd390d/Toulouse-Lautrec--H.-1892.--In-Bed-BLUE.jpg" data-mid="157819768" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b710f9bd54ab706b815833d87b369c5690160c5cb4d398074c8b82f7b8dd390d/Toulouse-Lautrec--H.-1892.--In-Bed-BLUE.jpg" />Toulouse Lautrec, H. 1892. 'In Bed Toulouse-Lautrec, would feature Mme Palmyre, manager of the lesbian brasserie La Souris several times. Cafes Le Hanneton and Le Rat-Mort were other sapphic meeting spots. According to Albert (2011), the authorities were in denial when it came to female homosexuality. It was a criminal offence to write about lesbian sex, but French authorities preferred to turn a blind eye to lesbian meeting places. “The courts condemned authors who wrote about lesbians and their physical relations because they feared the visibility it gave lesbians more than the so-called vice itself,” Albert (2011, cited in Caulcutt, 2011) <img width="1540" height="2000" width_o="1540" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6a37641b498abe05ac82bf97c4f60f93fda6d77ae7b1ff14cf39cc331598c635/Rodin--A.-c.-19th-century--Two-women-embrace-and-look-at-each-other--the-right-one-is-kneeling.--BLACK.jpg" data-mid="157820453" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6a37641b498abe05ac82bf97c4f60f93fda6d77ae7b1ff14cf39cc331598c635/Rodin--A.-c.-19th-century--Two-women-embrace-and-look-at-each-other--the-right-one-is-kneeling.--BLACK.jpg" />Rodin, A.(c.19th-century) 'Two women embrace and lookat each other, the right one is kneeling’. <img width="1326" height="2000" width_o="1326" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b0a058f7dd0ceb13dad414c8718fbd76384e0a3dc1918e1c5b00cd4e0da7618/Rodin--A.-c.-early-20th-century--Kjrlighetspar--Love-Couple--BLACK.jpg" data-mid="157820455" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6b0a058f7dd0ceb13dad414c8718fbd76384e0a3dc1918e1c5b00cd4e0da7618/Rodin--A.-c.-early-20th-century--Kjrlighetspar--Love-Couple--BLACK.jpg" />Rodin, A. (c. early 20th century) 'Kjærlighetspar 'Love Couple'. "In this enormous collection of almost unknown art from the later Rodin (the drawings were made during the period from the turn of the century to his death), the female body is caught with a few lines and patches of color: bodies sleeping, playing with each other like young athletes, or sexually active and alone. Many of the drawings are titled "Sapphic Couple" and represent women embracing, kissing, and making love. Sapphism, as it was called, had gained a fashionable aura by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, so much so that the Paris of the Belle Epoque was also called "Paris Lesbos" or "Lesbos-sur-Seine." Rodin was not breaking new ground by representing female couples. Like Proust, however, he was giving homoeroticism its title of nobility [lettres de noblesse], retrieving it from cheap commercialization. His treatment of the sapphic subject is different from the usual postcard or peep-show representation of the topic: this difference appears in the supple postures of the figures and in the paradoxical way that the illustrations make the viewer feel privy to the scenes without suffering the sense of performing a voyeuristic invasion. In most cases the artist's gaze seems unobtrusive, respectful of the couples' privacy. The women either seem too absorbed to pay heed to the artist looking on or are absent in sleep (in one version of the classical "sleeping beauty" topos, each female body is reclaimed by the other in a movement of crossing over that invites as well as denies visual appropriation)." Mahuzier, 2001, p.403. In 1912, Rodin said, “People have often accused me of having made erotic sculptures. I have never made any erotic works. I have never made a sculpture for the sake of the erotic element. Most of the people cannot conceive this because they are unable to conceive what sculpture is because they are forever looking in sculpture for literary and philosophical ideas. Sculpture is the art of forms.” <img width="564" height="935" width_o="564" height_o="935" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/292372d250e8510c09792bc44ab21eecb55f9bad05e33206e6d8fc3dfadc744a/Rodin--The-kiss.png" data-mid="159404914" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/564/i/292372d250e8510c09792bc44ab21eecb55f9bad05e33206e6d8fc3dfadc744a/Rodin--The-kiss.png" />Rodin, A. 1904. The Kiss. [Pentelican marble] At: Tate Britain, London. N06228 The two lovers are the adulterous pair Paolo and Francesca, whose doomed love can be found in Dante’s Canto V of the Inferno. The book in Paolo’s hand in the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Their one and only kiss is interrupted by Francesca’s husband, who slaughters the two, condemning them to a eternity in hell. Originally the two were also a part of ‘The Gates of Hell’ until 1886, when Rodin decided that the intended sensuality and delicacy of the pair did not fit. Instead of discarding the pose, he remodelled it to stand alone for exhibition in 1887. “When Rodin loaned The Kiss to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, it was such a scandalous piece that it was hid”den away in a separate chamber, viewable only upon special application.”&nbsp; Gunz, 2011. Rodin, as a little less pleased with his own work, describing the statue as ‘a large sculpted knick-knack following the usual formula.’ Three full scale versions were made in Rodin’s lifetime. In 1900, Edward Perry Warren, an American antiquarian living in England, commissioned a replica for his own collection. There were a few requests. <img width="580" height="377" width_o="580" height_o="377" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7f9054032aa81a1cc70abfd75577f02a87647d57a006f8eb321d99321651f937/Edward-Perry-Warren-and-John-Marshall--1895-BLUE.jpg" data-mid="157822310" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/580/i/7f9054032aa81a1cc70abfd75577f02a87647d57a006f8eb321d99321651f937/Edward-Perry-Warren-and-John-Marshall--1895-BLUE.jpg" />Edward Perry Warren and John Marshall.1895. [Photograph] Edward Perry Warren, is a rabbit hole of a person in his own. With a lifelong fascination in the arts and a robust family wealth came a vast art collection. His name can be found on many ancient objects, mostly notably the (in)famous The Warren Cup. The roman drinking cup depicts two gay male couples having sex, and was never sold in Warren’s life time. Perhaps this was in knowing that censure would have it hidden away, or maybe to avoid the attention the cup would bring to his own life. Warren alongside his partner archeologist John Marshall, lived a contented life in East Sussex. <img width="1582" height="1743" width_o="1582" height_o="1743" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ef5bc4b7a8cc256a9ed43892cfe022a122bd6f59a64bcbc0ca827cc68d339a50/The-Warren-Cup-c.-15BC---AD15-Silver-drinking-vessel.jpg" data-mid="157822563" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ef5bc4b7a8cc256a9ed43892cfe022a122bd6f59a64bcbc0ca827cc68d339a50/The-Warren-Cup-c.-15BC---AD15-Silver-drinking-vessel.jpg" />The Warren Cup (c. 15BC - AD15) [Silver drinking vessel] At: The British Museum, London. 1999,0426.1 Now with this replica, Warren, having seen the previous versions, requested that “the genital organ of the man must be completed”. Rodin delivered in the summer of 1904, but the statue was too large to fit into the house, and was instead stored, anticlimactically, in the stables.In 1914 Warren loaned the statue to the local town hall: “It was installed in the Assembly Room,” says Lampert, “which was a recreation space for troops billeted in the town. Regular boxing matches were staged in the room.” But the indecency of its nude protagonists proved so offensive to puritanical locals, who feared that it would incite lewd behaviour among the soldiers, that it was surrounded by a railing and covered with a sheet.” (Sooke, 2015) It was returned in 1917 and hidden once again in the stables, surrounded by hay bales to protect it from shelling. In 1953, it was donated to the Tate Modern, where it can still be found. Biblio:Artincontext.org. 2022. "The Kiss" Sculpture by Auguste Rodin - Analyzing Rodin's "The Kiss". [online] Available at: &lt;https://artincontext.org/the-kiss-sculpture-by-auguste-rodin/&gt; (Accessed 31 August 2022). Bouvier, R., 2021. Rodin/Arp. Hatje Cantz. Caulcutt, C. (2011) Lifting the veil on Paris's Lesbian Café Society, RFI. Available at: &lt;https://www.rfi.fr/en/visiting-france/20110113-lifting-veil-pariss-lesbian-cafe-society&gt; (Accessed: October 20, 2022). Depictions of Lesbianism by Henri Toulouse Lautrec (2014) Secret Lesbians. Available at: &lt;https://secretlesbians.tumblr.com/post/97431222326/depictions-of-lesbianism-by-henri-toulouse&gt; (Accessed: November 3, 2022). Elsen, A., 1980. In Rodin's studio. Oxford: Phaidon. Elsen, A. and Rodin, A., 1985. The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. Estados Unidos: Stanford University. Getsy, D.J. (2010) “Chapter 1: 1876, Michelangelo and Rodin's Desires,” in Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 29–57. Gunz, J., 2011. Peeking at Rodin's Kiss Through Hitchcock's Lens. [online] Alfredhitchcockgeek.com. Available at: &lt;http://www.alfredhitchcockgeek.com/2011/01/rodins-kiss-seen-through-alfred.html&gt; (Accessed 18 April 2022). Lampert, C., 1986. Rodin. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. Mahuzier, B. (2001) “Rodin's Sapphic Designs,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 7(3), pp. 401–415. Available at: &lt;https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-7-3-401&gt; Sooke, A., 2015. The shocking story of The Kiss. [online] BBC.com. Available at: &lt;https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151119-the-shocking-story-of-the-kiss&gt; (Accessed 31 August 2022). TOULOUSE-LAUTREC: Paris and the Moulin Rouge. 2012. [Exhibition] National Gallery of Australia. 14 Dec 2012 — 2 Apr 2013. Victoria &amp; Albert Museum. 2007. The Metamorphosis of Ovid | Rodin. [online] Available at: &lt;https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O135955/the-metamorphosis-of-ovid-statuette-rodin/&gt; (Accessed: 27 June 2022). Warren, O. 2021.&nbsp;Gaze Into The Interior Life Of A Quiet Painter, University of Cambridge Museums. Available at: &lt;https://museums.cam.ac.uk/magic/gaze-interior-life-quiet-painter&gt; (Accessed: October 23, 2022). Youth Triumphant (n.d.) Philadelphia Museum of Art. Available at: &lt;https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/103394&gt; (Accessed: August 23, 2022). In Zine Figures: 1. Rodin, A. (c. 1881-82) The Thinker. [Plaster] At: Musée Rodin, Paris. 2. Rodin, A. (c. 1882-85) 'Crouching Woman' [Plaster] At: Musee Rodin, Paris 3. Beresford, G. C. 1902. Auguste Rodin. [Half-plate glass negative] 4. Elborne, W. 1887. Camille Claudel and her friend Jessie Lipscombe sculpting in the studio on 117 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris. [Photograph] 5. Toulouse-Lautrec, H. 1892. In Bed. [Oil on cardboard] At: Musée d’Orsay. 6.&nbsp; Courbet, G. 1866. The Sleepers (Le Sommeil) [Oil on canvas] At: Petit Palais, Paris. 7. Rodin, A. 1886. The Metamorphosis of Ovid. [Plaster statuette] At: V&amp;A, London. A.117-1937 8. Rodin, A. (c. 1905)&nbsp; The Dream (The Angel's Kiss) [Marble] At: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid. Inv. no. K 56C.5&nbsp;(CTB.DEC1642) 9. Rodin, A. (c. 1900; cast before 1952). The Fallen Angel, or Illusions Received by the Earth (La Chute d'un ange, ou Les Illusions reçues par la Terre)’[Bronze] At: Brooklyn Museum, New York., 84.77.5. 10.&nbsp; Rodin, A. (Modeled 1885; cast 1927) Damned Women [Plaster Statuette] The Philadelphia Museum fo Art. F1929-7-113 11. Rodin A, (c. 1894) Bacchantes enlacées. [Statue] 12. Rodin, A. (c. 1896, cast before 1918) Youth Triumph. [Bronze sculpture] At: Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA. F1929-7-23 13. Rodin, A. 1883. Fallen Caryatid Carrying an Urn.’ [Cast terracotta statuette] At: The Met, New York, USA. 12.13.2 14. Rodin, A. 1904. The Kiss. [Pentelican marble] At: Tate Britain, London. N06228. https://alwaysqueer.com/03_BURIED Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:27 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/03_BURIED 03_Buried Printable zine version: Ladies of Llangollen. Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) &amp; Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831). County Kilkenny, Ireland &amp; Llangollen, North Wales. In 1768 Eleanor Butler (b.1739) met Sarah Ponsonby (b.1755), becoming fast friends and later sharing an intimate correspondence. A decade late, whilst Eleanor’s brother conspired to marry her off and Sarah’s guardians planned to send her to&nbsp; convent, the two hatched a plot to abscond to England. Dressed as men, armed with a pistol and a dog they fled into the night. Sarah fell ill before reaching the ferry and they were soon discovered. With a second escape delayed by Sarah's illness, Eleanor hid in Sarah’s bedroom with the aid of a sympathetic maid, Mary. The relatives soon realised that keeping the two apart was more trouble than it was worth. In 1780 Sarah, Eleanor and Mary travelled to Wales, and bought the gothic house Plas Newydd, near Llangollen. Sarah and Eleanor shared a room, a bed and their lives for the next 50 years. They transformed their home into a vast collection of books and woodcarvings. They signed all letters together, inscribed their books and glassware with both initials and owned a succession of dogs named Sappho. Since their first attempted elopement, gossip had spread, enough to earn them visits from Wordsworth, Byron, Anne Lister and even Queen Charlotte. “William Wordsworth celebrated the ladies in a sonnet, 'Sisters in Love'; the painter and poetess Anna Seward wrote poems about their 'Davidean friendship' and painted portraits of them; Anna Lister wrote in 1822: '... I cannot help thinking that surely it was not Platonic. Heaven forgive me, but I look within myself and doubt.' Diarist Mary Elizabeth Lucy recorded: '... these two ladies looked just like two old men ... they were so intensely devoted to each other that they made a vow, and kept it, that they would never marry or be separated, but would always live together never leave or sleep out for even one night.”&nbsp;(Coyle, 2015, p.20) They are buried together at St Collen’s Church, Llangollen, alongside Mary. <img width="543" height="500" width_o="543" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e3970814e2ca4b8d74ce94526cfe058db4b16d94c211f05a88eca22972527237/Glamorgan-Pottery-c.-181525--Ladies-of-Llangollen--Blue-pattern-plate-BLUE.png" data-mid="157085566" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/543/i/e3970814e2ca4b8d74ce94526cfe058db4b16d94c211f05a88eca22972527237/Glamorgan-Pottery-c.-181525--Ladies-of-Llangollen--Blue-pattern-plate-BLUE.png" /> Glamorgan Pottery (c. 1815–25) 'Ladies of Llangollen' [Blue pattern plate] At: Amgueddfa Cymru, Wales. <img width="638" height="500" width_o="638" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6c34193398da0e1ece6d86332d335189079dd228e87ef5c1e3dc3c7620514b82/Thomas--J.-c.-1875--Plas-Newydd--Llangollen--Photograph-BLUE.png" data-mid="157085695" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/638/i/6c34193398da0e1ece6d86332d335189079dd228e87ef5c1e3dc3c7620514b82/Thomas--J.-c.-1875--Plas-Newydd--Llangollen--Photograph-BLUE.png" />Thomas, J. (c. 1875) 'Plas Newydd, Llangollen' [Photograph] At: The National Library of Wales Catalogue. Biblio:Coyle, E. 2015. LIFESTYLES: THE IRISH LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN: 'The two most celebrated virgins in Europe'.&nbsp;History Ireland, [online] 23(6), pp.18-20. Available at: &lt;www.jstor.org/stable/43598746&gt; Darling, L. 2016. The Story of the Ladies of Llangollen. [online] Making Queer History. Available at: &lt;www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2016/12/20/the-story-of-the-ladies-of-llangollen&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: October 9, 2022). In Zine Figures: 1. Glamorgan Pottery (c. 1815–25) 'Ladies of Llangollen' [Blue pattern plate] At: Amgueddfa Cymru, Wales. 2.&nbsp;Lynch, J.H. (c.1870s) 'Portrait of The Rt. Honble. Lady Eleanor Butler &amp; Miss Ponsonby 'The Ladies of Llangollen' [Lithograph] At: The Welsh Portrait Collection.3.'Llangollen' (n.d.) [Photograph] At: National Archives, London. INF 9/641/7&nbsp; Anne Lister. 1791 - 1840. Shibden, West Yorkshire, England. <img width="874" height="1000" width_o="874" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eebf952f981e879c6c499e6b01a821a2ce4da3f35a4795403c972e48936c99f9/Horner--J.-c.-1830-Portrait-of-Anne-Lister.-Oil-on-canvas-BLUE.png" data-mid="157097985" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/874/i/eebf952f981e879c6c499e6b01a821a2ce4da3f35a4795403c972e48936c99f9/Horner--J.-c.-1830-Portrait-of-Anne-Lister.-Oil-on-canvas-BLUE.png" />Horner, J. (c. 1830) ‘Portrait of Anne Lister‘. [Oil on canvas] <img width="858" height="1000" width_o="858" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4073b84e943384300ecf481e37a304ceb02ea9537dc411e4509a6f0f65b48b93/Mrs-Taylor-of-Halifax-c.-1822-Anne-Lister-of-Shibden-Hall.-Watercolour-painting-BLUE.png" data-mid="157097986" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/858/i/4073b84e943384300ecf481e37a304ceb02ea9537dc411e4509a6f0f65b48b93/Mrs-Taylor-of-Halifax-c.-1822-Anne-Lister-of-Shibden-Hall.-Watercolour-painting-BLUE.png" /> Mrs Taylor of Halifax (c. 1822) ‘Anne Lister of Shibden Hall‘. [Watercolour painting] “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.”Diary of Anne Lister, 29th January 1821 Anne Lister was a prolific diarist and lesbian in 19th-century England. Highly charismatic, and intelligent, Anne was a consistent and unrepentant rule-breaker. Dressed in an all black, largely masculine style, she was dubbed ‘Gentleman Jack’. “We were talking of my dress. She said people thought I should look better in a bonnet. She contended I should not, &amp; said my whole style of dress suited myself &amp; my manners &amp; was consistent &amp; becoming to me.”Diary of Anne Lister, 10th May 1824. Whitbread, 1992, p.342. She met her first love, Eliza, at boarding school, and later Mariana Belcombe, a woman whom she would remain entangled with for many years. Though separated by 40 miles, the two would trade visits and letters until 1815, when Mariana married, leaving Anne distraught. However, this wouldn’t last, as a year later they resumed their relationship. Anne wrote: ‘Sat up lovemaking. She [asked me to swear] to be faithful, to consider myself as married. I shall now begin to think and act [as] if she were my wife.’ In 1922, Anne and Mariana visited the Ladies of Llangollen. In 1923 their affair ended and three years later Anne inherited Shibden Hall from her uncle. <img width="784" height="1309" width_o="784" height_o="1309" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f75c7a67031ee5cb72ae39810647886d74893cfeaa944a694cd77d0fd093d0f5/Entry-11-Aug-1806-sh-7-ml-e-26_first-entry_BLUE.png" data-mid="157097315" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/784/i/f75c7a67031ee5cb72ae39810647886d74893cfeaa944a694cd77d0fd093d0f5/Entry-11-Aug-1806-sh-7-ml-e-26_first-entry_BLUE.png" /> 11-Aug-1806 Entry [sh-7-ml-e-26] - Anne’s first entry In 1832 Anne would become reacquainted with the heiress Ann Walker (they had met in 1815). On the 10th of February 1834, the two exchanged vows and a fortnight later, rings. On Easter Sunday the two took communion together, considering themselves married from that point on. Anne and Ann lived and travelled together for the next 6 years until Anne’s early death. In her will she gave Ann a life interest in Shibden Hall. <img width="1352" height="823" width_o="1352" height_o="823" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32aabe484ad218beabb4ccd609d3c525b20e058d3b0b4aaba80f6ad24fa9381b/Entry-11-Aug-1840-sh-7-ml-e-24_0174_BLUE.png" data-mid="157097316" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/32aabe484ad218beabb4ccd609d3c525b20e058d3b0b4aaba80f6ad24fa9381b/Entry-11-Aug-1840-sh-7-ml-e-24_0174_BLUE.png" /> 11-Aug-1840 Entry [sh-7-ml-e-24_0174] - Anne’s last entry Her diaries religiously chronicled 34 years of her life, containing over four million words written in a secret code of her own making named ‘crypt-hand’. “Lister's diaries have also been called the Rosetta Stone and the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history, and websites discussing Lister often refer to her as the “first modern lesbian.” Roulston, 2013, p.267. ”Queerness has always been associated with codes, with hiding, deciphering, and strategic revealing. Lister's diaries are both a key—with sections literally written in code—and a transparent, explicit, and unashamed representation of lesbian desire. This makes Lister a symbolic conflation of past and present.” Roulston, 2013, p.268. “Lister's encoding of her diaries is the first marker of her complex relationship to both her sexual identity and her gender presentation. By its very presence, the code signifies an awareness of the forbidden, taboo, and potentially shameful quality of her writings. Anita Rowanchild suggests that Lister's decision to refer to her code as a “crypt,” when the more common term would be a “cipher,” “connotes the tomb, a place of preservation, of ghosts, and of silence” (2000: 206). The code is also there to make the content inaccessible to the casual reader, and yet it is a diary, an already private document. From whom, then, is Lister hiding?” Roulston, 2013, p.272. Anne’s diaries would remain encrypted until, years later, John Lister found the diaries behind oak panelling and with his friend Arthur Burrell, cracked the code. Poignantly, it is through the word ‘hope’ (note Lister and Burrell felt confident on ‘h’ and ‘e’, and through a note from Anne reading “In God is my….”, the two confidently guessed the final word in crypt hand was ‘hope.) that the pair were able to decipher the diaries. <img width="1945" height="143" width_o="1945" height_o="143" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/05eab0e24a836f99b9dbcf30cc7f029814c80fd15f996b0ad564e43bf44315c8/The-Code.png" data-mid="158734124" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/05eab0e24a836f99b9dbcf30cc7f029814c80fd15f996b0ad564e43bf44315c8/The-Code.png" /> Now, the contents of Anne’s diaries, described in pretty lurid detail (amongst the day-to events) her lesbian identity, desires, and adventures into said desires. Burrell told Lister to burn the diaries. Instead, he hid the diaries once more. It is thought that Lister himself was secretly gay (in 1885 male homosexuality was illegal.) It is perhaps ‘hope’ for a later, kinder time, that kept him from destroying them. The diaries and the key were later rediscovered by the Borough librarian and donated as the type-script ‘A Spirited Yorkshire Woman’ to the British Museum. Under the proviso that ‘unsuitable material should not be published’ Phyllis Ramsden and Vivien Ingham deciphered the diaries, making a chronology of Anne’s life and summaries of the contents (Harding, 2019, p.235) The Guardian reopened the call for researchers in 1984. Helena Whitbread joined The West Yorkshire Archive Service, and finally, Anne Lister’s diaries were decoded and published, ‘Gentleman Jack’ published at last in all her lurid lesbian detail. The West Yorkshire Archive Service currently hosts scans and transcriptions of Anne Lister’s diaries. In 2011, the diaries were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. “There is a process of identification we engage in with queer historical figures, creating what Valerie Traub calls “lines of transmission of desire and culture” (2002: 352). Having no bloodline linking us to the past, we seek out a genealogy through affinity and identification; we look for those queer figures who can help us invent and create our own history, but we also yearn for a past that can give us a future, a modern past, so to speak.”Roulston, 2013, p.268. Biblio:Anne Lister – Diary Transcription Project. 2019. West Yorkshire Archive Service Blog. Available at: &lt;www.wyascatablogue.wordpress.com/exhibitions/anne-lister/anne-lister-diary-transcription-project/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 15, 2022). Harding, J.G.R. 2019. “The Other Anne Lister,” The Alpine Journal, pp. 234–240. Roulston, C. 2013. The Revolting Anne Lister: The U.K.'s First Modern Lesbian. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 17(3-4), p.267-278. Medhurst, E. 2020. From Anne Lister's closet: The LBD (Lesbian Black Dress). Available at: &lt;https://dressingdykes.com/2020/08/14/from-anne-listers-closet/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 18, 2022). Medhurst, E. 2021. From Anne Lister's closet: Top hats or Bonnets?, Dressing Dykes. Available at: &lt;https://dressingdykes.com/2021/10/01/from-anne-listers-closet-top-hats-or-bonnets/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 18, 2022). The secret diaries of Anne Lister - cracking the crypthand code. 2021. Visit Calderdale. Available at: &lt;https://www.visitcalderdale.com/the-secret-diaries-of-anne-lister-cracking-the-crypthand-code/&gt; (Accessed: September 18).&nbsp; Whitbread, H. 1992. I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840. New York: New York University Press. p.342.In Zine Figures: 4. Shibden Hall 5. 11-Aug-1806 Entry [sh-7-ml-e-26] - Anne’s first diary entry Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake Charity Bryant (1777–1851) &amp; Sylvia Bryant (1784–1868). Vermont, USA. <img width="1500" height="1568" width_o="1500" height_o="1568" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/41824f6b02ba421bdee965b5b0f021485b97f7c921416a9d4b32f1380f7ab91b/-Silhouettes-of-Sylvia-Drake-and-Charity-Bryant-of-Weybridge--Vermont--c.-180515-Ink--cut-paper--hair-locks_BLUE.png" data-mid="157086568" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/41824f6b02ba421bdee965b5b0f021485b97f7c921416a9d4b32f1380f7ab91b/-Silhouettes-of-Sylvia-Drake-and-Charity-Bryant-of-Weybridge--Vermont--c.-180515-Ink--cut-paper--hair-locks_BLUE.png" /> 'Silhouettes of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant of Weybridge, Vermont' (c. 1805–15) [Ink, cut paper, hair locks] At: The Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History. <img width="808" height="1000" width_o="808" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b6c9c63293e10b5242b71b905330ad01f9a3f4493306ca0a9dff1db6966a06ad/Cleves--R.--H.-c.-2014--Gravestone-of-Charity-Bryant-and-Sylvia-Drake-_BLUE.png" data-mid="157086575" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/808/i/b6c9c63293e10b5242b71b905330ad01f9a3f4493306ca0a9dff1db6966a06ad/Cleves--R.--H.-c.-2014--Gravestone-of-Charity-Bryant-and-Sylvia-Drake-_BLUE.png" />Popova, M. 2014.‘Charity and Sylvia’s headstone at Weybridge Hill cemetery’ [Photograph]&nbsp;Available at: &lt;https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/08/13/charity-and-sylvia-marriage/&gt; In 1807 Charity Bryant (b.1777) moved to the small frontier town of Weybridge Vermont, where she would meet Sylvia Drake (b.1784). Charity, a skilled tailor hired Sylvia as her assistant. After only a few months, Charity asked that Sylvia move in with her: “I not only want you to come to assist me but I long to see you and enjoy your company and conversation,” On July 3rd 1807, Sylvia “consented to be my help-meet and came to be my companion in labor ”. They soon after built a home and tailoring shop and for the next 44 years. Charity ordered a ring for Sylvia and the two made the journey back to Charity’s home in Massachusetts. Her sister Anna wrote:&nbsp;“I need be under no apprehensions concerning your welfare while so dear and faithful a friend as Miss Drake is your constant companion,” Sylvia wrote to her mother: “She is everything I could wish.” One of Charity’s nephews wrote in the New York Evening Post: “If I were permitted to draw aside the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me most interesting history of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years...I could tell you how they slept on the same pillow and had a common purse, and adopted each other’s relations, ... I would tell you of their dwelling, encircled with roses, which now in the days of their broken health, bloom wild without their tendance.”Bryant, 1850.They would never spend a night apart until Charity’s death in 1951. When Sylvia followed in 1868, their families buried them under a shared headstone. “Although Sylvia and Charity lived a quiet life, far from the bustle and commotion of the nineteenth century’s growing cities, they did not live in secret. Everyone who knew them understood that they were a couple and viewed their relationship as a marriage.” Cleaves, 2014, p.X. “Queer history has often focused on the modern city as the most potent site of gay liberation, since its anonymity and living arrangements for single people permitted same-sex-desiring men and women to form innovative communities. More recognition needs to be given to the distinctive opportunities that rural towns allowed for the expression of same-sex sexuality.”Cleaves, 2014, p.XIII. “Cleves — who chanced upon Charity and Sylvia’s story by complete accident while browsing a local history museum — reflects on the broader importance of mining history for evidence of social phenomena we mistakenly believe to be unique to our age: “The research process has left me more sure than ever that there are countless pieces remaining to be found, if not from Charity’s and Sylvia’s lives then from the lives of other lovers who lived outside the norms. Their stories have been hard to see because they confound our expectations. We see each story as one of a kind, defying categorization. Taken together they tell a history we are only beginning to know. The most remarkable element of Charity and Sylvia’s life together, in the final assessment, may be how unremarkable it was.” Popova, 2014. Biblio:Bryant, W. 1850. Letters of a Traveller, or Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America. New York: George G. Putnam.136, qtd. in Cleves, xiv-xv. Cascone, S. 2018. A Rare Image of One of the Earliest Known Same-Sex Unions Goes on View at the Smithsonian. [online] Artnet News. Available at: &lt;https://news.artnet.com/art-world/19th-century-same-sex-union-smithsonian-1293428&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: October 10, 2022). Cleves, R. 2014. Charity and Sylvia. Oxford: OXFORD UNIV PR. p.x-xiii. Dabhoiwala, F. 2015. The secret history of same-sex marriage. [online] The Guardian. Available at: &lt;https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/23/-sp-secret-history-same-sex-marriage&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 19, 2022). Popova, M. 2014. Charity and Sylvia: The Remarkable Story of How Two Women Married Each Other in Early America. [online] The Marginalian. Available at: &lt;https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/08/13/charity-and-sylvia-marriage/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 10, 2022). In Zine Figures: 9.'Silhouettes of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant of Weybridge, Vermont' (c. 1805–15) [Ink, cut paper, hair locks] At: The Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History. Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge c. 1480-????Etchingham, England. <img width="1393" height="1547" width_o="1393" height_o="1547" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ce41aa28e206c556b95a56d11331a90376da7fd7db1734d52dafa352ff776520/Brass_of_Elizabeth_Etchingham_and_Agnes_Oxenbrigg-_Etchingham_church-BLUE2.png" data-mid="157084568" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ce41aa28e206c556b95a56d11331a90376da7fd7db1734d52dafa352ff776520/Brass_of_Elizabeth_Etchingham_and_Agnes_Oxenbrigg-_Etchingham_church-BLUE2.png" /> <img width="1393" height="1547" width_o="1393" height_o="1547" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4328710076f2b8c93c78b78567ecb7a7beea0392acf8598b7eba5bbf6318d1c3/Brass_of_Elizabeth_Etchingham_and_Agnes_Oxenbrigg-_Etchingham_church-BLUE.png" data-mid="157084567" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4328710076f2b8c93c78b78567ecb7a7beea0392acf8598b7eba5bbf6318d1c3/Brass_of_Elizabeth_Etchingham_and_Agnes_Oxenbrigg-_Etchingham_church-BLUE.png" /> Brass of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge (c.1480) [Brass memorial] At: Etchingham Parish, Sussex, UK In Etchingham Parish one might find a spot for a sapphic pilgrimage. The Brass of Agnes Oxenbridge and Elizabeth Etchingham is a memorial to two women buried there together. “Elizabeth appears on the left with her hair down and she is smaller than Agnes. This is likely representative of her being both unwed and young when she died in 1452 in her mid-twenties. Agnes is shown on the right … she was in her fifties when she died in 1480. Evidence for both women remaining unwed in the lack of head coverings, lack of records (both marriage records and records of their lives as was often the case with single women), and lack of any mention of husbands on the memorial (Bennett, 2011, p133). She also describes how this brass was designed in the style of contemporary memorial brasses for married couples, but with additional intimacy. Unlike the contemporaneous brasses, which often show couples looking straight ahead, Agnes and Elizabeth face each other and look into each other’s eyes (Bennett, 2011, p134). It was unusual that Agnes be buried with Elizabeth instead of in the Oxenbridge mausoleum, but both families must have agreed for it to have happened and in turn chosen to commission such an intimate memorial (Bennett, 2011, p133). Woodley, 2021. “This brass is also interesting for the notable attempts to fit it into cis-heteronormative expectations of history. Bennett writes “some have described the brass as a memorial to two children [despite them both living into adulthood]; others have imagined they were looking at two entirely separate brasses [despite the inscription referring to them both and their being connected]; and still others have fiddled with genealogies to minimize any direct relationship between the two women (Bennett,2008, p.131).” She attributed these manipulations to homophobic anxieties, which result in “bad history” and argues for the place of Elizabeth and Agnes in the “histories that modern… queers rightly seek from the past (Bennett, 2008, p.136,141).”Woodley, 2021. “The design suggests that no one — not Agnes Oxenbridge in pre-mortem requests, not Thomas Etchingham II and Robert Oxenbridge III acting on her behalf, and not the artisans in the workshop — shied away from representing the two women as an intimate couple. Indeed, the monument seems to have been designed with special emphasis on their warm affection. This affection was suggested, of course, by the simple fact of their joint brass, for most brasses with multiple figures remembered married persons—a motif generally understood as celebrating the closeness and fidelity of marriage. But the designers of this brass pushed beyond mere joint commemoration in stressing intimacy, for Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were also deliberatelyshown facing each other, moving towards each other, and looking directly into each other’s eyes. Most contemporary joint effigies showed couples f acing the front,much like bodies laid in tombs, but Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were portrayed in semi-profile, turned towards each other.”Bennett, 2011. <img width="1070" height="806" width_o="1070" height_o="806" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0dfc1c5da0d301d9e17a6f967cc00abcd04f4f18d1a2bbcbfe029aa40d1ab7c4/poliphilo.livejournal.com-2009797.png" data-mid="157083881" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0dfc1c5da0d301d9e17a6f967cc00abcd04f4f18d1a2bbcbfe029aa40d1ab7c4/poliphilo.livejournal.com-2009797.png" />akalablossom, polihilo (2019, July 23) Etchingham Brasses [LiveJournal] Messages posted to: &lt;https://poliphilo.livejournal.com/2009797.html&gt; (Accessed: October 18, 2022). Biblio: Bennett, J.M. 2008. “Two women and their monumental brass, c.1480,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161(1), pp. 163–184. Available at: &lt;https://doi.org/10.1179/174767008x330572&gt; Bennett, J.M. 2011. “Remembering Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge,” in The Lesbian Premodern, edited by Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. Sauer, and Diane Watt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. p.133-134. Woodley, B. 2021. Brass of Agnes Oxenbridge and Elizabeth Etchingham. [online] Queer Art History. Available at: &lt;https://www.queerarthistory.com/uncategorized/brass-of-agnes-oxenbridge-and-elizabeth-etchingham/&gt;(Accessed: August 18, 2022).In Zine Figures: 6 &amp; 7. Brass of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge (c.1480) [Brass memorial] At: Etchingham Parish, Sussex, UK 8. Bennett, J. M. (c. 2008) ‘Memorial Brass to an Anonymous Couple, c. 1485' [Brass memorial] At: Little Hadham, Hertfordshire. https://alwaysqueer.com/04_POETRY_1 Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:27 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/04_POETRY_1 04_Poetry Printable zine version: SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ. 12 November 1648 – 17 April 1695. b. Tepetlixpa, Mexico. d. Mexico City, Mexico Sor Juana de la Cruz was born in 17th-century Mexico.&nbsp; By age 3, she had taught herself to read and write in Latin, by eight had begun composing and in her teen years learned the Aztec language of Náhuatl. When her parents refused her plan to attend university disguised as a man, she instead joined a convent, one of the only places she could pursue an education. <img width="1440" height="1726" width_o="1440" height_o="1726" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d5f2241fb29edb6a34486f02578ca8c9a2aef9a918cdf401ce252dc5fa75d8b1/Cabrera--M.-c.1750-Portrait-of-Sor-Juana-Ines-de-la-Cruz-Oil-on-canvas-At-Museo-Nacional-de-Historia--Mexico-City--web.jpg" data-mid="158736384" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d5f2241fb29edb6a34486f02578ca8c9a2aef9a918cdf401ce252dc5fa75d8b1/Cabrera--M.-c.1750-Portrait-of-Sor-Juana-Ines-de-la-Cruz-Oil-on-canvas-At-Museo-Nacional-de-Historia--Mexico-City--web.jpg" />Cabrera, M. (c.1750) ‘Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.’ [Oil on canvas] At: Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City. She transformed her convent cell into an intellectual salon, with a library of around 4,000 books, the largest collection in Mexico. She was a poet, philosopher and composer. She began an intimate relationship with Countess Maria Luisa de Paredes, inspiring many love poems by the sister. She was an outspoken advocate against misogyny and hypocrisy within the church, leading to the Bishop of Puebla condemning and forcing her into silence. Her letter "Respuesta a Sor Filotea” is hailed as the first feminist manifesto, it was not published until 1900. She died nursing fellow sisters through a plague. MY LADY.Let my love be ever doomed if guilty in its intent, for loving you is a crime of which I will never repent. * LOVE OPENED A MORTAL WOUND. Love opened a mortal wound. In agony, I worked the blade to make it deeper. Please, I begged, let death come quick. Wild, distracted, sick, I counted, counted all the ways love hurt me. One life, I thought—a thousand deaths. Blow after blow, my heart couldn't survive this beating.Then—how can I explain it? I came to my senses. I said, Why do I suffer? What lover ever had so much pleasure? * DON’T GO MY DARLING Don’t go, my darling, I don’t want this to end yet.This sweet fiction is all I have. Hold me so I’ll die happy,thankful for your lies. My breasts answer yoursmagnet to magnetWhy make love to me, then leave?Why mock me? Dont brag about your conquest--I’m not your trophy.Go ahead: reject these arms. That wrapped you in sumptuous silk.Try to escape my arms, my breasts--I’ll keep you prisoner in my poem. <img width="1998" height="1224" width_o="1998" height_o="1224" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/94c7226ecbfd39ef895bf9aac1859db3545289ef11dda98a37570140a1ed1955/pieta-2.png" data-mid="158736433" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/94c7226ecbfd39ef895bf9aac1859db3545289ef11dda98a37570140a1ed1955/pieta-2.png" /> Biblio: Cherry, K. 2022. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Nun who loved a countess in 17th-century Mexico City. [online] Qspirit. Available at: &lt;https://qspirit.net/sor-juana-de-la-cruz-nun-mexico/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: October 10, 2022). de la CruZ, J.I. (n.d) ‘Love Opened a Mortal Wound,’ Poets.org [Online]. Available at: &lt;https://poets.org/poem/love-opened-mortal-wound&gt; de la Cruz, J.I., Peden, M. and Stavans, I. 1997. Poems, protest, and a dream. New York: Penguin Books. Rupp, L. 2011. Sapphistries. New York: New York University Press.In Zine Figures: 1. Escudo de monja depicting Inmaculada Concepción. (n.d.) [Oil on panel] At: Museo Soumaya. 2.&nbsp;Cabrera, M. (c.1750) ‘Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.’ [Oil on canvas] At: Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City. Hind bint al-Nu’man &amp; Hind bint al-Khuss. c.582-602 B.C.E. Mesopotamia. <img width="2000" height="1981" width_o="2000" height_o="1981" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1a28baa141b243776921a97e8ba65f40b8890b87d39bf42fef52cfa51adc3153/Openwork-furniture-plaque-with-a-striding--ram-headed-sphinx-ca.-9th8th-century-B.C.-Ivory-At-The-Met--New-York-BLUE.png" data-mid="158736611" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1a28baa141b243776921a97e8ba65f40b8890b87d39bf42fef52cfa51adc3153/Openwork-furniture-plaque-with-a-striding--ram-headed-sphinx-ca.-9th8th-century-B.C.-Ivory-At-The-Met--New-York-BLUE.png" />Openwork furniture plaque with a striding, ram-headed sphinx (ca. 9th–8th century B.C.) [Ivory] At: The Met, New York. Hind bint al-Khuss al-Iyādiyya (Also known as al-Zarqāʾ)(هند بنت الخس الإيادية) and Hind bint al-Nu'man (al-Hurqah)(هند بنت النعمان) were two pre-Islamic female poets. Al-Hurqah is reportedly the daughter of al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir, the last Lakhmid king of al-Hirah and a Nestorian Christian Arab mother. According to legend, fleeing marriage she found refuge with Al-Hujayjah (another female poet) Due to oral tradition, in al-Isbahani’s alternative telling ‘Kitab al-Aghani’ it is Zarqä' al-Yamäma whom Hind bint al-Nu’man falls in love. Zarqä’ was semi-legendary for her extraordinary sight: “Hind loved Zarqä' al-Yamäma, who was the first Arab woman to love another woman. As regards the latter, they say that she was able to spot an advancing army at a distance of some thirty miles.” Cassarino, 2014, p.184.&nbsp; Her work as a sentinel is unheeded, attackers ransacking the settlement of Gadïs and capturing Zarqä’. Their story ends: “Zarqä' died some days later. When Hind [al-Hurqah] heard the news, she turned to religion, she wore sackcloth and had a monastery built, which took its name from her and where she lived until she died.” al-Isfahani, 1900, p. 125. In Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib's 'Encyclopedia of Pleasure' he writes of how al-Hurqah’s love for al-Zarqāʾ was a romantic ideal. After &nbsp;al-Zarqa’s death, al-Hurqah went into deep morning, ‘cropped her hair, wore black clothes, rejected worldly pleasures.’&nbsp;She built the monastery in memory of al-Zarqāʾ and was buried beneath it’s gate. The two are the first reported lesbians in Arab culture: “Culturally speaking and in the context of medieval Arabic literary writing, sahiqat (lesbians)were associated rather with love and devotion, and at times they were even known to form an exclusive and supportive subculture. As a matter of fact, the origin of lesbianism, according to popular anecdotes in the Arabic literary tradition, is regularly traced back forty years before the emergence of male homosexuality to an intercultural, interfaith love affair between an Arab woman and a Christian woman in pre-Islamic Iraq.” Amer, 2009, p.218.“One might argue that the Arabic terms for "lesbianism" (sahq, sihaq, and sihaqa) and "lesbian" (sahiqa, sahhaqa, and musahiqa) refer primarily to a behavior, an action, rather than an emotional attachment or an identity. The root of these words (s-h-q) means "to pound" (as in spices) or "to rub,"&nbsp;Amer, 2009, p216. “Recovering the evidence of lesbianism and of lesbian-like attachments in the medieval Arabic tradition speaks thus to the emancipatory possibilities of the history of sexuality. Moreover, the medieval Arabic practices of homosexuality and lesbianism also challenge contemporary Western and Eastern (Arabic) assumptions about gender and, in particular, the binary constructions of masculinity and femininity.” Amer, 2009, p.236. Biblio: al-Isfahani. 1900. Kitab al-Aghani 'The Book of Songs'. 2, p.125. Amer, S. 2008. Crossing borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (The Middle Ages Series). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Amer, S. 2009. Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women. Journal of the History of Sexuality 18(2), p.215-236. Available at: &lt;doi:10.1353/sex.0.0052&gt; Cassarino, M. 2014. INTERPRETING TWO STORIES OF THE "KITĀB AL-AĠĀNĪ": A GENDER-BASED APPROACH. Quaderni di Studi Arabi, [online] 9, pp.181-193. Available at: &lt;http://www.jstor.org/stable/24640440 &gt; van Raphael, G. 2019. [Twitter] May 24. Available at: &lt;https://twitter.com/AliaGvR/status/1131936939601477632?s=20&amp;t=0kipuq-H0Aw02q0qExfEqw&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: October 5, 2022). Ruth and Naomi. c. 6th–4th centuries BCE. <img width="838" height="681" width_o="838" height_o="681" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/96a3d63aabf88bc34d62b6abc617ad059e2f1b2dd240a6d482868b549d27496e/Hermogenes-Calderon--P.-1886.--Ruth-and-Naomi--Oil-paint-on-canvas_web.jpg" data-mid="158736973" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/838/i/96a3d63aabf88bc34d62b6abc617ad059e2f1b2dd240a6d482868b549d27496e/Hermogenes-Calderon--P.-1886.--Ruth-and-Naomi--Oil-paint-on-canvas_web.jpg" /> Hermogenes Calderon, P. 1886. 'Ruth and Naomi' [Oil paint on canvas] In the Book of Ruth, Naomi, her husband Elimelech and sons emigrate to Moab. Elimelech dies and the two sons marry, Ruth and Orpah. After a decade and the death of the two sons, Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem. It is here she tells her daughters-in-law to leave her and remarry. Whilst Orpah leaves, Ruth instead replies: Ruth 1:16RUTH REPLIED:DO NOT URGE ME TO LEAVE YOU&nbsp;OR TO TURN FROM FOLLOWING YOU.&nbsp;FOR WHEREVER YOU GO,&nbsp;I WILL GO,&nbsp;AND WHEREVER YOU LIVE,&nbsp;I WILL LIVE;&nbsp;YOUR PEOPLE WILL BE MY PEOPLE,&nbsp;AND YOUR GOD WILL BE MY GOD.WHERE YOU DIE, I WILL DIE, AND THERE I WILL BE BURIED.MAY THE LORD PUNISH ME,AND EVER SO SEVERELY,IF ANYTHING BUT DEATH SEPARATESYOU AND ME. “The same Hebrew word (dabaq) is used to describe Adam’s feelings for Eve and Ruth’s feelings for Naomi. In Genesis 2:24 it says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” The way that Adam “cleaved” to Eve is the way that Ruth “clung” to Naomi.” Cherry, 2021. “The Book of Ruth does not detail the relationship between Ruth and Naomi; it simply presents us with an exceptional story of devotion…Cautious not to apply an anachronistic conception of lesbianism to the text, queer scholars seem to agree that the Ruth–Naomi dyad offers a powerful biblical example of same-sex intimacy.” Presner, 2017. “The very existence of Ruth and Naomi’s intimate relationship in the Bible, a thousands-of-years-old text, is significant and radical.” Spivack, 2020. Interestingly there are no weddings in the Bible, apart from the vows between Ruth and Naomi and David and Jonathan. So if looking for verses to use, you’d need to look to the love laments of two queer couples. <img width="485" height="248" width_o="485" height_o="248" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5ae5c2478a161225d8c44d9b450ba259c6a494afe34e781b6731a9e417ade30a/wjdgay3.png" data-mid="158739266" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/485/i/5ae5c2478a161225d8c44d9b450ba259c6a494afe34e781b6731a9e417ade30a/wjdgay3.png" />Biblio: Cherry, K. 2021. Ruth and Naomi: Biblical women who loved each other. [online] Qspirit. Available at: &lt;https://qspirit.net/ruth-naomi-loved-each-other/&gt;&nbsp; (Accessed: October 2, 2022). Preser, R. 2017. Things I Learned from the Book of Ruth. De/Constituting Wholes: Towards Partiality Without Parts, [online] pp.47-65. Available at: &lt;https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-11_03&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 25, 2022). Spivack, E. 2020. "Wherever You Go, I Go": Queerness in the Book of Ruth. [online] Jewish Women's Archive. Available at: &lt;https://jwa.org/blog/wherever-you-go-i-go-queerness-book-ruth&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 25, 2022).In Zine Figures: 3. Hermogenes Calderon, P. 1886. 'Ruth and Naomi' [Oil paint on canvas] Wu Zao. c. 1799-1862 CE. China. Wu Zao, is one of China’s greatest female and lesbian poets. The daughter and wife of merchants, she learnt to read, write, play music as well as paint. With the recorded lack of literary interest in her surroundings, all these talents were likely self-taught. Despite the pressures and expectations of a woman and wife, she became a prolific poet, playwright, artist and composer. In her opera ‘The Image in Disguise’ a woman cross-dresses, paints self-portraits and laments about the societal strictures of being a woman on her talents. Throughout her life she would have many romantic and sexual relationships with women, addressing multiple poems to female courtesans. <img width="1666" height="350" width_o="1666" height_o="350" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e346c671a79f7c349c629801a94b88d1616daed75e2e8a585df9552e89b618c/02.18.475.png" data-mid="157194398" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e346c671a79f7c349c629801a94b88d1616daed75e2e8a585df9552e89b618c/02.18.475.png" /> Garment hook in the shape of a phoenix.(c.19th century) [Jade (nephrite)] At: The Met Museum, New York. 02.18.475 FOR THE COURTESAN CH'ING LIN On your slender bodyyour jade and coral girdle ornaments chimelike those of a celestial companioncome from the Green Jade City of Heaven.One smile from you when we meet,and I become speechless and forget every word.For too long you have gathered flowers,and leaned against the bamboos,your green sleeves growing coldin your deserted valley;I can visualize you all alonea girl harboring her cryptic thoughts. You glow like a perfumed lampin the gathering shadows.We play wine gamesand recite each other poems.Then you sing “Remembering South of the River”with its heart-breaking verses.We both are talents who paint our eyebrows.Unconventional as I am,I want to possess the promised heart of a beautiful woman like you.It is spring.Vast mists cover the Five Lakes.My dear, let me buy you a red painted boatand carry you away. <img width="1137" height="2115" width_o="1137" height_o="2115" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0e0613dea9fa82b52788815f4a4e28373ef526b3b314ca262ca4d8be4710bd1f/65.86.83.png" data-mid="157194378" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0e0613dea9fa82b52788815f4a4e28373ef526b3b314ca262ca4d8be4710bd1f/65.86.83.png" /> Pendant.(c.19th century) [Jadeite] At: The Met Museum, New York. 65.86.83. “Despite the People’s Republic of China attempting to erase the long history of male and female homosexuality in China---dating all the way back to the Yellow Emperor of the 27th century BCE!---many, many records still survive. In the early dynasties, our knowledge of male homosexuality stems mainly from court records, many of which had separate sections for emperors and their male favorites. We also have a poetric tradition that spans almost all of Imperial Chinese history, though it isn’t always easy to suss out the gender of the person spoken about due to unique linguistic features in China. In the 16th-17th centuries, we finally start to get fiction that represents both male and female homosexuality in the form of books, short stories, and plays. Plus, lots of paintings!” (History is Gay, 2018) Biblio: History is Gay. 2018. Homosexuality in Imperial China. [online] Available at: &lt;https://www.historyisgaypodcast.com/notes/2018/2/4/episode-3&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 17, 2022). Rexroth, K. and Zhong, L., 1972. Women Poets of China. New York: J. Laughlin by New Directions Pub. Corp. pp. 72-78 Wiles, S., Stefanowska, A., Ho, C. and Lee, L., 1998. Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women. Vol. 1: The Qing Period, 1644-1911 (University of Hong Kong Libraries publications ; no. 10). Routledge, pp.234–36. Alice Dunbar Nelson. July 19 1875 - September 18 1935. USA. <img width="915" height="1300" width_o="915" height_o="1300" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c82ea3a93889e2c3de2502af0f959df6c8d79f9a63a53ab717b0089f7d8a7fcf/Parker-Bellsmith-R.-c.-1895-web.png" data-mid="158740337" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/915/i/c82ea3a93889e2c3de2502af0f959df6c8d79f9a63a53ab717b0089f7d8a7fcf/Parker-Bellsmith-R.-c.-1895-web.png" />Parker Bellsmith, R. (c. 1895) ‘Photograph of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ [Photograph] <img width="1384" height="1800" width_o="1384" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1625d82ae8dd203e73f40e49b9304a5b6e58337bdb556bfb1bfc96c1d109a918/Scurlock--A.-c.-1915-Photograph-of-Alice-Dunbar-Nelson-Photograph_web.png" data-mid="158740186" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1625d82ae8dd203e73f40e49b9304a5b6e58337bdb556bfb1bfc96c1d109a918/Scurlock--A.-c.-1915-Photograph-of-Alice-Dunbar-Nelson-Photograph_web.png" />Scurlock, A. (c. 1915) ‘Photograph of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ [Photograph] Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson was born in New Orleans to Patricia Wright, a seamstress and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine. At 17 she earned her teaching degree at the HSBU Straight University and at 20 she published her first collection of poetry and short stories ‘Violets and Other Tales.’ After studying English lit at Cornell in 1896, she wrote ‘The Goddess of St. Rocque and Other Stories’ just four years after her first. <img width="1121" height="1454" width_o="1121" height_o="1454" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f6b871f648511d2948bf940a381c154c754269eb18906ced094f8aba1bf3dc30/Dunbar-Nelson--A.-M.---Daniel-Murray-Collection.-1895.-Violets-and-Other-Tales.-Boston--Mass.Monthly-Review.-cover.png" data-mid="158744348" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f6b871f648511d2948bf940a381c154c754269eb18906ced094f8aba1bf3dc30/Dunbar-Nelson--A.-M.---Daniel-Murray-Collection.-1895.-Violets-and-Other-Tales.-Boston--Mass.Monthly-Review.-cover.png" /> Dunbar-Nelson, A. M. &amp; Daniel Murray Collection. 1895. Violets and Other Tales. Boston, Mass.: Monthly Review. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/95233207/. She was a prolific journalist and writer, all whilst teaching in local public schools (for 39 years). She is best known for her poetry, and being an intrinsic part in the flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Alice was an early activist in the Black women’s club movement, (Carbado, et al., 2012, p.17) and wrote for The Woman’s Era, the first US national newspaper written and published for and by Black women. She was married three times, whilst also having numerous romantic affairs with other women. She began a relationship with Edwina B. Kruse. in 1907 Edwina wrote to Alice: “I want you to know dear, every thought of my life is for you, every throb of my heart is yours and yours alone. I just can not ever let any one else have you.” Edwina B. Kruse to Alice Dunbar Nelson Whilst there are a few allusions to her sapphic desires, most are kept to her private diaries; on August 1, 1928, she wrote: “Narka [Narka Lee-Rayford, of the National Federation of Colored Women] comes to the house for comfort. We want to make whoopee … Life is glorious. Good homemade white grape wine. We really make whoopee. Leitha and Narka strike up a heavy flirtation. My nose sadly out of joint. Something after two Narka starts to drive home alone, just as Bobbo [Dunbar Nelson's husband] comes up. Such a glorious moonlight night… Carbado, et al., 2012, p.18. Fay Jackson Robinson was her “little blue dream of loveliness.” The day they met Alice called “One Perfect Day” and on April 12, 1930 she wrote in her diary: “You did not need to creep into my heartThe way you did. You could have smiledAnd knowing what you did, you have kept apartFrom all my inner soul. But you beguiledDeliberately.” Her diaries reveal: "the existence of an active black bisexual network among prominent 'club women' who had husbands but managed to enjoy lesbian liaisons as well as a camaraderie with one another over their shared secrets.” Faderman, 1992.&nbsp; “And while African American lesbian or bisexual authors such as Angelina Weld Grimké and Alice Dunbar-Nelson had in fact been publishing politically engaged work since the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century, this literature was either unconcerned with homosexuality or, when same-sex subject matter was incorporated, often left unpublished, as with Grimké’s love poems and Dunbar-Nelson's short stories. Although present-day black lesbian, gay, and bisexual fiction may have its origins in this body of fledgling literature, these early writings are not “gay-identified,” in the contemporary sense of the term. Nor would authors such as Grimké, Dunbar-Nelson, or Nugent have identified their own sexual orientation as such.”Carbado, et al., 2012, p.3. Biblio:Carbado, D.W., McBride D.A., Weise, D. White, E.W. (eds) (2012) Black Like Us: A century of lesbian, gay, and bisexual African American Fiction. Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press. Dunbar Nelson, A. 1895. ‘Violets and Other Tales' Short stories and poems. Monthly Review. Available at: &lt;https://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/louisiana_anthology/texts/dunbar/dunbar--violets.html&gt;&nbsp; Faderman, L. 1992. “Wastelands and Oases: the 1930s.,” in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Penguin, p. 93–117. Hull, G. 1987. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nielsen, E.A. (2007) Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) , Black Past. Available at: &lt;https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/dunbar-nelson-alice-ruth-moore-1875-1935/&gt; (Accessed: October 22, 2022). Parker Bellsmith, R. (c. 1895) ‘Photograph of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ [Photograph] At: University of Delaware Library, Delaware. MSS0113_I.1_B027_F459 Scurlock, A. (c. 1915) ‘Photograph of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ [Photograph] At: University of Delaware Library, Delaware. MSS0113_I.1_B027_F459In Zine Figures: 4. Parker Bellsmith, R. (c. 1895) ‘Photograph of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ [Photograph]5. Scurlock, A. (c. 1915) ‘Photograph of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ [Photograph] https://alwaysqueer.com/05_RELIGIOUS Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:28 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/05_RELIGIOUS 05_Religion Printable zine version: Jeanne d’Arc. c. 1412 - 1431. France. <img width="5026" height="901" width_o="5026" height_o="901" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c353b13e37a71745ea88f8ce4ad830a7beee2de36fbd5d856997bbb9c21a8975/Artboard-1BLUE.png" data-mid="157305037" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c353b13e37a71745ea88f8ce4ad830a7beee2de36fbd5d856997bbb9c21a8975/Artboard-1BLUE.png" /> “Interestingly, while Joan was seized by the English for being a warrior and leader of the French forces, this is not why Joan was killed. The Trial and Interrogation of Joan of Arc focuses less on Joan’s military exploits against the English government and more on Joan’s gender. It is heresy, claimed the English, for a woman to wear men’s clothing. They accused Joan of being a witch or a heretic because Joan’s masculine presentation seemed to defy their biased understanding of scripture. In the end, after many exchanges back and forth, and after refusing to eschew men’s clothing once and for all—or to condemn the wearing of men’s clothing—Joan was burned to death."Bychowski, 2018. “It is enough to say for now that Joan may not have had much liberty to speak candidly about gender and identity. The whole focus on the trial was trying to catch Joan making an unorthodox or heretical claim. Whether or not you accept that Joan of Arc might have been trans, it is clear that transphobia was central to Joan’s trial. The argument being made by the English court was, essentially, that a person cannot and should not be transgender. Joan refused to confirm all the English’s transphobic biases. Joan was ultimately killed on these grounds. This suggests that whether or not modern historians call Joan of Arc transgender, it seems as though the medieval court considered Joan transgender enough to die for it.” Bychowski, 2018. Jeanne d’Arc, born in England-occupied France, began having religious visions at age 13. These featured the Archangel Michael, the belly bursting St Margaret of Antioch and martyr-by-wheel Catherine of Alexandria. They relayed Gods’ instruction: she must meet Charles, heir to the French throne and drive England out of France. At 16, she traveled to the dauphin of Vaucouleurs, then the duke of Lorraine. Her story had travelled and the townsfolk of Lorainne lent her a horse and escort to make the 270-mile journey to Charles’ court. Finally after weeks of scrutiny, she convinced Charles to bestow her a suit of armour, the charge of 5,000 men and the mammoth task of retaking Orleans. Shearing her hair into its iconic crop she gained the awe of soldiers and folk as she traveled on horse back (reportedly followed by a trail of white butterflies.) *Sword fact* Following a vision, Jeanne would find a buried sword in the church of St. Catherine at Fierbois (Article 19, Linder, n.d) <img width="1240" height="1786" width_o="1240" height_o="1786" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dc95d5eb9a4e9bae6989acdbfc4b0aa837b468899d8d01c9ac7960b8cac18dae/Artboard-2BLUE.png" data-mid="157305038" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dc95d5eb9a4e9bae6989acdbfc4b0aa837b468899d8d01c9ac7960b8cac18dae/Artboard-2BLUE.png" /> Princess Marie Christine d’Orléans (c. 1839) 'Jeanne D'Arc' [Marble] Versailles, France. Leading the charge, she retook Orleans and Charles was crowned in 1429, Jeanne by his side. Her fortunes would turn a few months later in an assault on Compiegne. She was captured by Burgundian and English soldiers, becoming prisoner of King Henry. The English levied 70 charges against her, the strangest being stealing horses, dancing with fairies and owning a mandrake. (Linder, n.d) A tenth of them were about her clothes. Eventually they whittled down to 12, the three most pressing charges being her visions, her disobedience to the church and her male dress. She signed an agreement to confess to her 'sins' for life-imprisonment, but within days had returned to wearing men’s clothing, as a result they branded her a ‘relapsed heretic’. On May 30th 1431, aged only 19, Joan was burnt at the stake.&nbsp; It could be argued that her choice of male dress was to protect her from the very real threat of sexual assault from the prison guard (Burch, 2022): “While I have been in prison, the English have molested me when I was dressed as a woman….I have done this to defend my modesty.”&nbsp; These two ideas can coexist. Jeanne spent the last three years largely presenting as male, and not just any man, but as a knight: “Jeanne, rejecting and abandoning women's clothing, her hair cut en-round like a young coxcomb, took shirt, breeches, doublet, with hose joined together and fastened to the said doublet by twenty points, long leggings laced on the outside, a short mantle [surcoat] to the knees, or thereabouts, close-cut cap, tight-fitting boots or buskins, long spurs, sword, dagger, breastplate, lance and other arms in fashion of a man of war” Article 12, Linder, n.d. Her expression of gender was a stout refusal to bend into the strict roles of womanhood, whilst simultaneous navigating them. Her virginity was not preserved for an eventual husband was a directive from her visions. She commanded men, refused to be submissive and rejected ‘women’s work’. “I was invited to take a woman's dress; then I refused, and I refuse still. As to the women's work of which you speak, there are plenty of other women to do it." Article 16, Linder, n.d. We will never know if Jeanne d’Arc was any which identity; lesbian, queer, non-binary, transgender. Jeanne wouldn’t have identified with any of those labels, as they did not, to our modern understanding, exist yet. Revealing the past is the work of interpretation, not assertion, using actions and recorded intentions that reveal the hints of truth. "Through her transvestism, she abrogated the destiny of womankind. She could thereby transcend her sex. ... At the same time, by never pretending to be other than a woman and a maid, she was usurping a man's function but shaking off the trammels of his sex altogether to occupy a different, third order, neither male nor female". Warner, 1981. What we do know is that her story has had important influence on many modern identities. That cannot be taken away, and why should it? It might be unfair to say, as idolatry was amongst her charges, but Jeanne is an icon, an inspiration for a great many people and a great many different identities. “For many, this is because Joan is often held up as evidence that “women can do a man’s job.” On one hand, Joan regularly self-identifies as a “maid.” But Joan spoke very carefully in the trial;&nbsp; Joan’s actions and carefully chosen words make it debatable whether Joan, if alive today, might identify as trans or perhaps even non-binary.” Bychowski, 2018. <img width="2068" height="3057" width_o="2068" height_o="3057" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e4542350d3ba5f4437c2450d2c3e19217f05a7ae8bf32cc4a7fc59f51999b3f/Artboard-6BLUE2.png" data-mid="157305057" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e4542350d3ba5f4437c2450d2c3e19217f05a7ae8bf32cc4a7fc59f51999b3f/Artboard-6BLUE2.png" />Millais, J. E. 1865. 'Joan of Arc' [Oil on canvas] ARTICLE 12.&nbsp; In order the more openly and better to attain her end, Jeanne asked of Robert de Baudricourt to have made for her a man's dress and armor appropriate. This captain, with great repugnance, ended by acquiescing in her request. These garments and armor made and furnished, Jeanne, rejecting and abandoning women's clothing, her hair cut en-round like a young coxcomb, took shirt, breeches, doublet, ARTICLE 13. In one word, putting aside the modesty of her sex, she acted not only against all feminine decency, but even against the reserve which men of good morals, wearing ornaments and garments which only profligate men are accustomed to use, and going so far as to carry arms of offense. To attribute all this to the order of God, to the order which had been transmitted to her by the Angels and even by Virgin Saints, is to blaspheme God and His Saints, to destroy the Divine Law and violate the Canonical Rules; it is to libel the sex and its virtue, to overturn all decency, to justify all examples of dissolute living, and to drive others thereto.” "I have not blasphemed God nor His Saints.” "But, Jeanne, the Holy Canons and Holy Writ declare that women who take men's dress or men who take women's dress, do a thing abominable to God. How then can you say that you took this dress at God's command?” "Neither for that nor for anything else will I yet put off my dress. I make no difference between man's dress and woman's dress for receiving my Savior. I ought not to be refused for this question of dress." ARTICLE 15. If she will renounce entirely the dress of a man and take that of a woman, as her sex; she had refused. In other words, she had chosen rather not to approach the Sacraments nor to assist in Divine Service, than to put aside her habit, pretending that this would displease God. In this appears her obstinacy, her hardness of heart, her lack of charity, her disobedience to the Church, and her contempt of Divine Sacraments. "What have you to say to this Article?" "I would rather die than revoke what I have done by the order of Our Lord." "Will you, to hear Mass, abandon the dress of a man?" "I will not abandon it yet; the time is not come. ARTICLE 16. Previous to, and since her capture, at the Castle of Beaurevoir and at Arras, Jeanne had been many times advised with gentleness, by noble persons of both sexes, to give up her man's dress and resume suitable attire. She had absolutely refused, and to this day also she refuses with persistence; she disdains also to give herself up to feminine work, conducting herself in all things rather as a man than as a woman. "What have you to say on this Article?" "At Arras and Beaurevoir I was invited to take a woman's dress; then I refused, and I refuse still. As to the women's work of which you speak, there are plenty of other women to do it." "The dress and the arms that I wear, I wear by the permission of God: I will not leave them off without the permission of God, even if it cost me my head: but, if it should so please Our Lord, I will leave them off: I will not take a woman's dress if I have not permission from Our Savior.” ARTICLE 38. Jeanne, from the time of her child hood, had said, done, and committed a great number of crimes, sins and evil deeds-shameful, cruel, scandalous, dishonoring, unworthy of her sex ARTICLE 40. Forgetful of her salvation, impelled by the devil, she is not and had not been ashamed several times and in many and divers places to receive the Body of Christ, having upon her a man's dress of unseemly form, a dress which the Jaws of God and man do forbid her to wear. Biblio: Burch, J. 2022. The Sham trial and gruesome death of Joan of arc, All That's Interesting. Available at: &lt;https://allthatsinteresting.com/joan-of-arc-death&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 10, 2022). Bychowski, G. 2018. Were there Transgender People in the Middle Ages?. [Blog] The Public Medievalist, Available at: &lt;https://www.publicmedievalist.com/transgender-middle-ages/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: August 18, 2022). Linder, D.O. 2017.&nbsp;The trial of Joan of arc: An account, Famous Trials. Available at: &lt;https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2355-the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-an-account&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 17, 2022). Linder, D.O. (n.d) Trial transcript: Reading of 70 articles of accusations and Joan's answers to each (March 27-28, 1431), Famous Trials. Available at: &lt;https://www.famous-trials.com/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-1431/2364-trial-transcript-reading-of-70-articles-of-accusations-and-joan-s-answers-to-each&gt;(Accessed: September 17, 2022). Sackville-West, V. 2018. Saint Joan of Arc. London: Vintage. Warner, M. 1981. Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. London: Weidenfeld &amp; Nicolson. Available at:&lt;https://archive.org/details/joanofarcimageof00warnrich&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 17, 2022).In Zine Figures: 1. Roche, P. 1918. 'Joan of Arc' [Bronze uniface medal] 2. Princess Marie Christine d’Orléans (c. 1839) 'Jeanne D'Arc' [Marble] Versailles, France. 3.&nbsp;'Knightly Sword' (c. early 15th century) [Steel, silver, gold, enamel, wood, leather] 4.&nbsp;'Early Sword' (c. 1500) [Steel sword] 5. From Left to Right: Rossetti (1864), Stilke (1836), Ingres (1854), Joan of Arc (1946), Joan of Arc (1999), Princess Marie Christine d’Orléans (c. 1839), Bill &amp; Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Lynch (1903), Millais (1865), The Messenger The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), Les fetes de 500c Anniversaire de Jeanne d’Arc (1929), Joan of Arc (1946), Kohn (n.d.), Joan of Arc (1946), Abelé (1901), The Messenger The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) 6.&nbsp;Fragment of stone from Jeanne D'Arc's dungeon. (c. 1412–31) [Linestone fragment] Marinos the Monk. c. 5th century Lebanon. As with many ancient stories, there is never just one version. But from consensus, in 5th century Lebanon a child was born and named Marina. When she was young her mother died and her father raised her, until deciding to join a monastery. Some versions say the father intended to marry her off, others that he was going to leave her an inheritance. Either way Marina didn’t like the idea of her father leaving her: “You wish to save your own soul and leave mine to be lost? …He who saves a soul shall be as the one who created it”? Tsames, 1990, p.314. And so Marina became Marinos and joined a monastery alongside her father. “Monastic life in the fifth century was much more a cenobitic life, which is a communal ascetic life, than anchoretic, which is a solitary ascetic one. The Cenobetic monasteries had small but separate cells where the monks lived, this made it possible for Marina to conceal her identity.“ Hourani, 2000. Marinos excelled in the spiritual life, becoming ‘Abba Marinos’(Father Marinos) After a night attending the community, Marinos and three other brothers lodged with an innkeeper. Several months later the Innkeeper arrived at the monastery with a baby, claiming that Marinos had impregnated his daughter. Rather than reveal the impossibility, Marinos replied:&nbsp;“Forgive me, Father, for the Lord’s sake; for I have erred, being human.”&nbsp;(Tsames, 1990, p.317) and was ejected from the monastery. He lived and raised the boy outside the gate (or a nearby grotto) in penitence. Years later he was allowed to return if he took on the hard labour. Marinos continued to raise the boy in the monastery until his death. When the monks prepared his body for burial they discovered the circumstances of his birth and the false accusal. “Entering the cell, the Abbot dropped down with his head on the ground, weeping and saying: “I will remain here, at his holy feet, until I die, if I do not receive forgiveness.” Tsames, 1990, p.319. “Because Marinos lived before the word transgender came into the English language in 1974, we really cannot say for certain whether or not he would call himself such. That being said, in multiple hagiographies he does show quite a few traits that trans people today can sympathize with. So while he may not have called himself trans, I think more than a few trans people can relate to how he felt.Because I am writing about historical figures, it’s impossible to say what labels they would give themselves. So instead of giving them a solid label (like gay, bisexual, asexual, trans, etc.) I am arguing that these saints can be read as queer. In that they behave in similar ways that people today who use those labels do. Athelstan, 2020.<img width="522" height="500" width_o="522" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3ab605f895e831b7f8dae0f415b93240560b0fa8f1db9ac84bf9fb1cb83bfa01/de-Voragin--J.-c.-14th-century-Sainte-Marine-presentee-au-monastere-in-Legenda-aurea.-ManuscriptFol.-139vBLUE.png" data-mid="157305507" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/522/i/3ab605f895e831b7f8dae0f415b93240560b0fa8f1db9ac84bf9fb1cb83bfa01/de-Voragin--J.-c.-14th-century-Sainte-Marine-presentee-au-monastere-in-Legenda-aurea.-ManuscriptFol.-139vBLUE.png" /> de Voragin, J. (c. 14th century) ‘Sainte Marine présentée au monastère‘ in Legenda aurea. [Manuscript]&nbsp;Fol. 139v Biblio: Athelstan, V. 2020. “Queer Saints: Marinos the Monk, A Transgender Saint,” The Mediaeval Monk, 6 September. Available at: &lt;https://themediaevalmonk.wordpress.com/2020/09/06/queer-saints-an-important-preface/&gt; (Accessed: October 1, 2022). Athelstan, V. 2020. “Queer Saints: An Important Preface,” The Mediaeval Monk, 12 September. Available at: &lt;https://themediaevalmonk.wordpress.com/2020/09/12/queer-saints-marinos-the-monk-a-transgender-saint/&gt; (Accessed: October 1, 2022). Hourani, G.G. 2000. “Saint Marina the Monk. Part I,” The Journal of Maronite Studies, 4(1). Tsames, D.G. 1990.&nbsp;Meterikon [Lives of the Holy Mothers]. Thessalonica: Ekdoseis “He Hagia Makrina,” pp. 314–319. In Zine Figures: 8. de Laval. (c.1400-1500) ‘Horae ad usum Romanum, dites Heures de Louis de Laval‘ [Manuscript] At: Bibliothèque nationale de France. 190r. Madre Juana de la Cruz. c. 16th century.Spain. Not to be confused with Sor Juana de la Cruz, Madre Juana, was a 16th-century abbess born in Azaña, Spain. She spoke of how God originally shaped her as male, but through the intervention of the Blessed Virgin, she was born female. To avoid marriage, she dressed in male clothing and escaped to a convent of Franciscan nuns. “Juana claimed that she experienced a sex change before birth. Although Juana identified publicly as a nun and therefore as female, such rubrics as trans or intersex can help parse the nuances of the distinctive narratives on which Juana rested her authority.” Boon, 2018. “Juana’s expansive understanding of gender extended beyond herself. For her, Christ was both male and female as well. The blood and sweat of the Crucified Christ are evidence to Juana that at the cross, Jesus gave birth to us as our Mother.” Cherry, 2022. Her work was considered controversial in her time, quashing her beautification. In 2015, Pope Francis restored her Venerable status on the path to sainthood: “In addition she saw Jesus in queer ways, saying that Christ becomes whatever the seeker needs: father, mother, husband, wife, or friend. She blended sexuality and spirituality by envisioning the streets of heaven lined with marriage beds, each with God and a male or female saint.” Cherry, 2022. “Each year pilgrims in Spain recreate the journey of young Juana leaving her family and traveling to the safety of the Franciscan convent. Every April, they contemplate a young girl dressed as a man, traveling to a refuge where she could remove those clothes and put on the clothing of yet another man, spending the rest of her life dressed in the habit of St. Francis." Cherry, 2022. Biblio:Boon, J. 2018. At the Limits of (Trans) Gender. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 48(2), p.261-300. Cherry, K. 2022. Madre Juana de la Cruz: Queer saint of 16th-century Spain. [online] Qspirit. Available at: &lt;https://qspirit.net/madre-juana-de-la-cruz-queer-saint/&gt; (Accessed: September 3, 2022). In Zine Figures: 6. ‘Prayer Book’ (c.1450-1475) [Parchment codex] At: British Library. Harley 2850 f. 47v.7. de Laval. (c.1400-1500) ‘Horae ad usum Romanum, dites Heures de Louis de Laval‘ [Manuscript] At: Bibliothèque nationale de France. 281rNun Letters. Anonymous letter between two twelfth-century nuns TRANSLATED BY PETER DRONKE, Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric, II. p.479. “To C, sweeter than honey or honeycomb, B sends all the love there is to her love. You who are unique and special, why do you make delay so long, so far away? Why do you want your only one to die, who as you know, loves you with soul and body, who sighs for you at every hour, at every moment, like a hungry little bird. Since I've had to be without your sweetest presence, I have not wished to hear or see any other human being, but as the turtle-dove, having lost its mate, perches forever on its little dried up branch, so I lament endlessly till I shall enjoy your trust again. I look about and do not find my lover-she does not comfort me even with a single word. Indeed when I reflect on the loveliness of your most joyful speech and aspect, I am utterly depressed, for I find nothing now that I could compare with your love, sweet beyond honey and honeycomb, compared with which the brightness of gold and silver is tarnished. What more? In you is all gentleness, all perfection, so my spirit languishes perpetually by your absence. You are devoid of the gall of any faithlessness, you are sweeter than milk and honey, you are peerless among thousands, I love you more than any. You alone are my love and longing, you the sweet cooling of my mind, no joy for me anywhere without you. All that was delightful with you is wearisome and heavy without you. So I truly want to tell you, if I could buy your life for the price of mine, [I'd do it] instantly, for you are the only woman I have chosen according to my heart. Therefore I always beseech God that bitter death may not come to me before I enjoy the dearly desired sight of you again. Farewell. Have of me all the faith and love there is. Accept the writing I send, and with it my constant mind.” TRANSLATED BY PETER DRONKE, Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric, II. p.481. G. unice sue rose To G—, her one-and-only rose, from A— the bond of precious love. What strength I have, that I may bear it, that I may have patience while you are gone? Is my strength that of stones that I should wait for your return, I who do not cease to ache night and day, like one who lacks both hand and foot? Without you all that’s joyous and delightful becomes like mud trodden underfoot, instead of rejoicing I shed tears, my spirit never becomes joyful. When I remember the kisses you gave, and with what words of joy you caressed my little breasts, I want to die as I am not allowed to see you. What shall I, unhappiest, do? where shall I, the poorest, turn? Oh if my body had been consigned to the earth till your longed-for return, or if Habakkuk’s trance-journey were granted me, that i might once come to see my lover’s face—then I’d not care if in that hour I should die! For in the world there is no woman born so lovable, so dear, one who loves me without feigning, with such deep love. So I shall not cease to feel the endless pain till I win the sight of you again. Indeed, as a certain wise man says, it is a great misery for a man not to be with that which he cannot be. While the world lasts you’ll never be effaced from the centre of my heart. Why say more? Return, sweet love! Do not delay your journey longer, know that I cannot bear your absence longer. Farewell, remember me. “Some of the strongest evidence for the women’s sexual relationships appears in their religious writings, where they struggled with the burden of secret sins that left both women feeling uncertain about their redemption. Romantic letters and poems hint at more positive aspects of the women’s physical relationship. In both these sources, references to sexuality take the form of allusions, not direct statements. Respectable nineteenth-century women rarely wrote directly about sex of any sort, but this silence is especially characteristic of the history of same-sex intimacy. For many centuries, sex between women or between men was referred to as “the mute sin” or the “crime not fit to be named.” Cleaves, 2014, XVII. Biblio: Brundage, J.A. and Bullough, V.L. (2010) “Homosexuality,” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. New York: Garland, pp. 155–190. Brundage, J.A., Bullough, V.L. and Murray, J. (2010) “Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: Lesbians in the Middle Ages,” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. New York: Garland, pp. 191–222. Cleves, R. 2014. Charity and Sylvia. Oxford: OXFORD UNIV PR. p.XVII. Dronke, P. (1966) in Medieval Latin And The Rise Of European Love-Lyric. Volume II. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, p. 479-481. https://alwaysqueer.com/06_TRANSFORMED Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:08:28 +0000 Always Here. Always Queer. https://alwaysqueer.com/06_TRANSFORMED 06_Transformation Printable zine version: Carmilla. Le Fanu, S.1872. We owe a lot to Carmilla; Dracula, Twilight, but perhaps above all else the lesbian vampire trope. In 1872 the Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu published the gothic novella Carmilla (Bram Stoker’s Dracula would be published a full 26 years later.) In it, Laura lives a lonely childhood with her father in an Austria castle. She has visions of a beautiful stranger visiting her at night. “I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneel ing, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself.” (Le Fanu &amp; Tracy, 2008, p.246) This longing is punctured by the arrival of a stranger by way of the carriage accident. Laura is struck to find her stranger before her, the lovely but mysterious Carmilla. The two are instantly drawn together and embarking on a relationship of increasing emotional and sexual intensity. "And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.” (p.264) "I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again and again.”(p.285) “if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.... I live in your warm life, and you shall die - die, sweetly die - into mine.... I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your tum, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty which yet is love.”(p.263) Carmilla is a typical 18-year-old; she sleeps all day, refuses to join prayer and stays up much of the night. Carmilla’s reluctance to share any information about herself, along with a string of deaths in the local young women. This gives Laura cause for investigation leading to her discovery of Carmilla’s vampirism. Keeping with the lesbian lexicon, Carmilla transforms into a cat, rather than a bat: “But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it;”(p.278) <img width="1547" height="1766" width_o="1547" height_o="1766" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c577bb6bb4a86c4dea1df825c53a3d96d52c127c3454518f399d41a96f508acb/CAT-2-web.png" data-mid="158749359" border="0" data-scale="87" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c577bb6bb4a86c4dea1df825c53a3d96d52c127c3454518f399d41a96f508acb/CAT-2-web.png" /> <img width="3012" height="2318" width_o="3012" height_o="2318" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f02d6cc161bfea1d4f12aa38a7911db4308e8d9f822a54cca45dd5da5ea71bca/CAT1webpng.png" data-mid="158749362" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f02d6cc161bfea1d4f12aa38a7911db4308e8d9f822a54cca45dd5da5ea71bca/CAT1webpng.png" /> “Although "Carmilla"'s denouement is ambiguous, Le Fanu refrains from heavy-handed moralizing, leaving open the possibility that Laura's and Carmilla's vampiric relationship is sexually liberating and for them highly desirable. The ontological change in Laura between the beginning of the narrative and the end is never reversed, suggesting that her shifting desires are, for her, healthy and vital” (Signorotti, 1996, p.611) In the last lines Laura still yearns: "to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations —sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door" (Le Fanu &amp; Tracy, 2008, p.319) Horror and sexuality entwine throughout fiction. As a genre, horror has been employed as a vehicle for exploring social issues (Russo, 1987). Vampires as fictional monsters have been used to scapegoat multiple marginalised identities (Hughes and Smith, 2011). For the last century, the fear of female sexuality and liberation has incensed the interest in the lesbian vampire; the seductress, the heathen, the predator. Her queerness unnatural, devilish, wrong. Despite this, there has always been a draw to vampires for the queer community; outsiders calling to one another. A change in the 70s came with a shift in politics, with the views of sexual ‘taboos’ shifting. The waters became murkier, the black and white villainy of these women becoming more questionable. Where before their unbridled/unquenched sexuality and emancipated lives might have been monstrous, it was now perhaps empowering. From the outset, ‘Carmilla’ was always a surprisingly progressive, the desire between the two women is palpable and reciprocated. The genre it spawned is problematic in many ways, but also groundbreaking in a fair few, giving us some of the few instances of onscreen sapphic desire. It sowed a path that we are still fascinated with today, a trail of breadcrumbs that has lead to an unquenchable hunger. The full text of Carmilla is public domain and avaible at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10007/10007-h/10007-h.htm Biblio: Hughes, W. and Smith, A., 2011. Queering the Gothic. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hulan, H. 2017. Bury Your Gays: History, Usage, and Context. McNair Scholars Journal, [online] vol. 21, no.1, pp 17-27. Available at: &lt;https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair/vol21/iss1/6&gt; [Accessed 4 January 2022]. Jönsson, G. (2006) “The Second Vampire: ‘filles fatales’ in J. Sheridan Le Fanu's ‘Carmilla’ and Anne Rice's ‘Interview with the Vampire,’” International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, 17(1), pp. 33–48.Le Fanu, S. and Tracy, R. (2008) In A Glass Darkly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Le Fanu, S. and Richardson, M (1945) in Novels Of Mystery From The Victorian Age. London: Pilot Press, pp. 573–628. Le Fanu, S. 1872, ”Carmilla,” in In a Glass Darkly. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1995. Russo, V., 1987. The Celluloid Closet: homosexuality in the movies. New York: Harper &amp; Row.&nbsp; Signorotti, E. (1996) “Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Dracula,’” Criticism, 38(4), pp. 607–632. Syrdal, K. (2022) 50+ lesbian vampire movies, Creepy Catalog. Available at: https://creepycatalog.com/lesbian-vampire-movies/&nbsp; (Accessed: October 31, 2022). The Celluloid Closet. 1995. [film] Directed by R. Epstein, J. Friedman and V. Russo. Los Angeles: Sony Pictures Classics. Veeder, W. (1980) “Carmilla: The Arts of Repression,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 22(2), pp. 197–223. In Zine Figures: Collage featuring: Crypt of the Vampire (1946), Blood and Roses (1960), Succubus (1968), Lust for a Vampire (1971), Vampyros Lesbos (1971),&nbsp;Vampire Lovers (1971),&nbsp;Vampyres (1974),&nbsp;Nightmare Classics’ Carmilla (1989) Iphis &amp; Ianthe. Ἶφις and Ἴφιδος Crete, Greece In classical Greek &amp; Roman literature, Ovid’s Iphis and Ianthe is the only telling of lesbian-like desire. To set the scene, Ligdus’, tells the pregnant Telethusa that: “A girl is more of a burden, and fortune has not given me the means to support one. So, though I pray that it should not happen, if a girl is born, then she must be put to death.” Moore, 2021, p97.&nbsp; Telethusa is visited by the goddess Isis, who advises her to keep the child no matter what. When the time comes, with the help of her midwife, Telethusa disguises her child and raises them as a son named Iphis (which interestingly is a gender neutral name.) Iphis is bethrothed to Ianthe and the two fall quickly and madly in love. “as a result, love touched their innocent hearts and wounded both alike.” Here we learn of Iphis’s lament. The story is framed from Iphis’ perspective. Iphis is aware of the circumstances of her birth and though raised a boy, identifies still somewhat as a girl (pronouns used differ between and within translations). Her sadness is that the ruse will soon be up and that her love for Ianthe is unnatural and fated never to be. “Why then not summon all your mettle, Iphis? Return to your own self; extinguish this flame that is hopeless, heedless, surely foolish. For you were born a girl; and now, unless you would deceive yourself, acknowledge that: accept it; long for what is lawful; love as should a woman love!”&nbsp; (Mandelbaum 319) “Before this denouement, however, Iphis anticipates a wedding at which there will be no groom, 'Just two brides" ("qui ducat abest, ubi nubimus ambae," 9.763), and she confronts the intractable problem of comprehending a nameless desire.' Despite her undeniable emotional and erotic attraction to Ianthe, Iphis is confounded in her efforts to represent or express what she feels. The difficulty she faces should be a familiar one, though, for it is not unlike the problem that we encounter when reading her story, especially if we try to understand the elusiveness of her desire in an historically sensitive manner.”(Walker, 2006, p205.) A different, but no less valid reading could be that Iphis is a young trans man and what he laments is gender dysphoria. In the context of the time, ‘natural’ sexual activity is phallocentric and penetrative, the ‘unnaturalness’ of his desire for Ianthe is what society dictates as compatible for fertility. &nbsp; Telethusa brings her child to the temple of Isis and together they pray for a solution that would allow Iphis and Ianthe to marry. Isis answers their prays by transforming Iphis: “Her face lost its fair complexion; her hair seemed shorter, plain and simple in style, her features sharpened and her strength increased. She revealed more energy than a female has—for she who had lately been a maiden had become a man!” Moore, 2021, p.99. “Ovid may or may not have believed in a performative model of gender identity and sexuality. It seems likely that he did at least to some extent, as likely also did his audience. And he has certainly embedded his culture’s sense of negativity toward female same-sex relations, alongside a heteronormative, masculine ideal, within his narrative.”Moore, 2021, p.111. “There is continued conversation as to whether Ovid is anti- or pro-lesbian.” Pintabone, 2002.&nbsp; "Walker (2006) argues that the Iphis story both gives and revokes “lesbianism”: while the possibility of something like lesbianism is allowed to emerge in readers’ minds, Ovid never allows it to fully materialize.”Kamen, 2012, p.22. In the end, though it is a story about how two people who love each other are able to circumvent societal strictures to spend their lives together. Iphis is still an important figure in the canon of trans &amp; sapphic history, and one that can transform with each individual reader. "o Iphis," says the narrator, "you who were a girl so recently/are now a boy" (Mandelbaum 321; "nam quae/femina nuper eras, puer es," 9.790-91). And, indeed, by story's end, the goddess Isis has transformed Iphis's anatomy, thereby resolving all of the obstructions that have prevented her and Ianthe from coming together in marriage and in body. Yet, before the happily-ever-after, Iphis voices a long and grief-stricken lament. She speaks of the intensity of her desire for the girl Ianthe, but she can only understand that desire in terms of a heteronormative logic of physical complementarity. Because it cannot be consummated in a penetrative fashion, Iphis's desire confounds both cultural and natural intelligibility.Walker, 2006, p.209. “In the context of historic literature, one of the most valuable legacies of Iphis and Ianthe is that continuing interpretations and variations on the story provide a context for exploring the possibility of desire between women. Many of those later explorations take the story in entirely different directions. But it establishes a precedent that has proven troubling across the centuries: that of setting lesbian and transmasculine narratives in competition with each other. We’re still dealing with the legacy of that framing.” Jones, 2016. Biblio: Begum-Lees, R. 2020. “Que(e)r(y)ing Iphis’ Transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” in Surtees, A. and Dyer, J. (eds) Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 106–117. EJB. 2021.&nbsp;Iphis: LGBTQ+ representation in Ovid and beyond, Women in Antiquity. Available at: &lt;https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/iphis/&gt; (Accessed: September 20, 2022). Jones, H.R. 2016.&nbsp;Queer Fantasy Roots: Gender Transformations in Ovid's metamorphoses, Queer Sci Fi. Available at: &lt;https://www.queerscifi.com/queer-fantasy-roots-gender-transformations-in-ovids-metamorphoses/?cn-reloaded=1&gt; (Accessed: September 22 ,22). Kamen, D. 2012. “Naturalized desires and the metamorphosis of Iphis,” Helios, 39(1), pp. 21–36. Available at: &lt;https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2012.0000&gt;&nbsp; Moore, K. 2021. “The Iphis Incident: Ovid’s Accidental Discovery of Gender Dysphoria,” ATHENS JOURNAL OF HISTORY, 7(2), pp. 95–116. Available at: &lt;https://doi.org/10.30958/ajhis.7-2-1&gt;&nbsp; Ovid and Mandelbaum, A. 1995.&nbsp;The Metamorphoses of Ovid. San Diego: Harcourt Brace. p.319 Pintabone, D.T. 2002. "Ovid's Iphis and Ianthe: When Girls Won't Be Girls” in Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin &amp; Lisa Auanger eds. 2002. Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World. University of Texas Press, Austin. Walker, J. 2006. Before the Name: Ovid's Deformulated Lesbianism. Comparative Literature, [online] 58(3), pp.205-222. Available at: &lt;https://www.jstor.org/stable/4125343&gt;. In Zine Figures:1. Boissonnas, F. 1903. Οn the Sacred Rock of the Acropolis, Athens. [Photograph] Roman de Silence. c. 1200s. Cornwall. <img width="1619" height="1500" width_o="1619" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0166be0dd5585538ab2b806740f589dd85d5f86d07057c93fd900b18e2650ef6/de-Cornualle--H-c--13th-century-Silence-Dressed-as-a-Young-Boy-in-La-Romance-de-Silence-Manuscript-BLUE.png" data-mid="157305818" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0166be0dd5585538ab2b806740f589dd85d5f86d07057c93fd900b18e2650ef6/de-Cornualle--H-c--13th-century-Silence-Dressed-as-a-Young-Boy-in-La-Romance-de-Silence-Manuscript-BLUE.png" />de Cornuälle, H (c, 13th century) ‘Silence Dressed as a Young Boy‘ in ‘La Romance de Silence’ [Manuscript] University of Nottingham, MS WLC/LM/6, f. 203r In the thirteenth-century tale Roman de Silence, a child is born to the Cador, Earl of Cornwall and Eufemie (whose name means ‘use of good speech’ aka euphemism) Without any other children and the weight of patriarchal inheritance, the parents decide to raise their child a boy, named Silence. Reaching puberty, Nature personified arrives to chastise him for hiding his biology. Nurture turns up to argue, but it is not until Reason appears to convince Silence to remain as is. And so he does, continuing to train as a knight, but not before running away with two minstrels for four years. When he returns, he joins the royal court as a knight. The Queen Eufeme (whose name means ‘alas! woman’. Not to be confused with his mother Eufemie) attempts to seduce Silence but he rebuffs her. The Queen accuses Silence of assaulting her, and the Kings sends him to France on the task of capturing the wizard Merlin. This is seen as an impossible task for a knight as Merlin can only be caught by ‘the trick of a woman’. Silence catches Merlin, who in turn outs Silence to the court. The King has the Queen executed and at this point we also learn of the Queen’s secret lover who had been disguised as a nun. Silence from then on (if by choice or instruction) lives as a woman and marries the King. &nbsp; Le Roman de Silence is written in octosyllabic verse and is attributed to Heldris de Cornuälle. He opens the story by telling the audience that the arts are underpaid and unappreciated. Not much has changed since. &nbsp; This text exists as a single manuscript, found in Walton Hall, Nottingham in 1911. It was found in a box marked ‘unimportant documents’ “Medieval thought does assume that there’s such a thing as a “woman” and a “man,” but prior to the emergence and institutionalization of concepts like “the normal,” distinctions between the two fail to map onto the gender binary as we experience it today. … Imaginative literature, however, offers affordances to explore what the world might be rather than what it is, and can sometimes function as the space where the nature of sex and gender gets worked out in a relatively consequence-free way.”Raskolnikov, 2021, p.178. "Simply by setting up a romance’s main protagonist to be raised to perform successfully as a man and (therefore) repeatedly doubting that they have the ability to succeed as a woman, Heldris of Cornwall denaturalizes “male” and “female.” The romance demands that we notice this: Heldris renders both “male” and “female” as things that have to be learned, skill sets and sets of habits that, in turn, mark the body (as when living as male renders Silence’s mouth “too hard”). Raskolnikov, 2021, p.180. “The question of what constitutes the “truth” of sex and gender functions as the driving force for much of the narrative, which hinges strongly on the status of “the secret,” a concept that very obviously gets coded within the romance as “silence,” both as the protagonist’s name and as an absence of sound.”Raskolnikov, 2021, p.180. Biblio: Boulanger, J. (2018) “Women Reading Silence in a Time of Social Fracture,” University of Notre Dame's Medieval Institute, 12 October. Available at: http://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/tag/roman-de-silence/#_ftn1 (Accessed: October 3, 2022). Raskolnikov, M. (2021) “8. without magic or miracle: The romance of silence and the prehistory of genderqueerness,” Trans Historical, pp. 178–206. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501759529-011. Steenson, K. (2018) “Silence,” University of Nottingham Blogs / Manuscripts and Special Collections, 15 August. Available at: https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscripts/2018/08/15/silence/ (Accessed: October 3, 2022). Inanna. c. 8000-2000 B.C. Mesopotanian (present-day Iraq and northeastern Syria). “Inanna erupts in new forms periodically. In our era, she’s overdue” Grahn, 2021. <img width="1000" height="1302" width_o="1000" height_o="1302" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c628a126c0d6704594572f15cb439bbbb7b0c6496e0cb075328f6fa949306064/-Queen-of-the-Night--Fired-clay-plaque-At-The-British-Museum--London.-2003-0718_web2.png" data-mid="158748649" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c628a126c0d6704594572f15cb439bbbb7b0c6496e0cb075328f6fa949306064/-Queen-of-the-Night--Fired-clay-plaque-At-The-British-Museum--London.-2003-0718_web2.png" />'Queen of the Night' [Fired clay plaque] At The British Museum, London. 2003,0718. Inanna is the Mesopotamian deity of sex, justice, war and fertility, She is a goddess of rebirth, reinvention, her myths and legends go as far back as 4000 years ago, and have echoed throughout time; a devastating flood, her death and return after three days, a paradise garden. <img width="1116" height="2194" width_o="1116" height_o="2194" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c4f84c85cce21951fb313ac98fc27025e4e1b78d14933e26ff7df12f8b96f261/SEAL1-treshweb.png" data-mid="158748749" border="0" data-scale="90" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c4f84c85cce21951fb313ac98fc27025e4e1b78d14933e26ff7df12f8b96f261/SEAL1-treshweb.png" />'Woman wearing a cylinder seal, playing a flute' (c. 2600–2500 B.C.) [Shell inlay] <img width="950" height="1500" width_o="950" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fa1e10b748fa2c5c8ce50edc6b9d5463aca003661067b05733298ce2ca0e251e/Adda-Seal-1613734743-web.png" data-mid="158748868" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/950/i/fa1e10b748fa2c5c8ce50edc6b9d5463aca003661067b05733298ce2ca0e251e/Adda-Seal-1613734743-web.png" />‘The Adda Seal’ depicting the deities Inanna,&nbsp;Utu,&nbsp;Enki, and Isimud (c. 2300 BC) [Greenstone Akkadian cylinder seal]&nbsp; It is through here ceremony of ‘head-turning’, that Inanna would transform ones gender. A hymn to Inanna recounts: She takes the great crime from their body She places a hand upon their brow, calls them pilipili breaks the lance, gives them a weapon as for a man’s heart She does not esteem he whose name She called; upon approaching the woman She cuts the weapon, gives her a lance reed marsh man, nisub, reed marsh woman, She punishes, groan… lualedde, transformed pilipili, kurĝarra, saĝursaĝ lamentation, song…“A reed marsh is a place that doesn’t fit into a simple definition. It’s not dry land, but it’s not exactly a river. It’s not completely fresh water or salt water. It’s a murky, in-between place that blurs the line between the solid and the fluid — a symbolic no man’s land that defies categorization.In these myths, the reed marsh man and reed marsh woman blur the line between male and female.” Benedict, 2015. “In a “headoverturning” ritual in Inanna’s temple, women and men were given the clothes and tools of the other gender and became shamanic temple officials. Inanna referred to them as “reed marsh” people, placing them back into Sumer’s creation story, which had divided people into binary genders, as reeds in the marshes weave together different elements. “Other Sumerian names for androgynous, cross-dressed, or hermaphroditic people were galaturra and kurgarra; they also performed elegies and lamentations in Inanna’s temple” (118).&nbsp; Inanna was herself androgenous, possessing both the cloak of women and the mace of men, and associated with both female love and beauty through the third brightest evening star, and the male warrior-related third brightest morning star.”Boyd, 2021. Biblio: Benedict, R.S. 2015. How a Sumerian Goddess Turned Gender on Its Head. [online] Hornet. Available at: &lt;https://hornet.com/stories/how-a-sumerian-goddess-turned-gender-on-its-head/&gt; (Accessed: September 17 2022) Boyd, C. 2021. Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn BOOK REVIEW by Carolyn Lee Boyd. [online] Feminism and Religion. Available at: &lt;https://feminismandreligion.com/2021/06/07/eruptions-of-inanna-justice-gender-and-erotic-power-by-judy-grahn-book-review-by-carolyn-lee-boyd/&gt;&nbsp;(Accessed: September 17 2022) Grahn, J. 2021. Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power. Nightboat Books. ‘The Adda Seal’ depicting the deities Inanna, Utu,&nbsp;Enki, and Isimud (c. 2300 BC) [Greenstone Akkadian cylinder seal]&nbsp;At: British Museum, London. 89115.In Zine Figures: 2. 'Queen-of-the-Night'-[Fired-clay-plaque]-At-The-British-Museum,-London.-2003,0718.1-2