Alpennia Blog

Thursday, June 4, 2026 - 09:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Having finished up a series of articles on general sexuality topics, I'm now embarking on an extended series of biographical articles. Initially this will be several short articles scattered across time periods, then finishing up with two much more extensive books about Anne Lister. The Lister material may easily tide me over for most of the month, if I break it up into manageable bite-size pieces. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP…

Wednesday, June 3, 2026 - 16:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project This article makes a useful contrast to yesterday's, as it illustrates that people working on the same time and place can interpret the data differently. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #557 Peakman 2004 Lascivious Bodies About LHMP Full citation: Peakman, Julie. 2004. Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century. Atlantic Books, London. Chapter 8 “Tribadis

Tuesday, June 2, 2026 - 08:03 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project When I work on the chapter for the book version of the Project that explains the various models of sex and gender, one of the hard parts is sorting out the chronology. Every author who works on this subject appears to have their own notion of when the changes happened and how they were promulgated in society. The simple fact is that social theories overlap each other, with multiple contradictory ideas of how human beings function…

Monday, June 1, 2026 - 08:45 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Usually I make an effort to make an LHMP post of some sort every day during Pride Month. That may be a bit trickier this year than usual given that (as noted in the most recent podcast) I have a broken arm, which slows down typing considerably. As with the subject of today's article, gardens were involved. Specifically my strawberry bed, where I was working when I tripped over my own feet and fell on the concrete walkway. I now…

Saturday, May 30, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 343 – Salt for the Unmarried by Khayelihle Benghu - transcript (Originally aired 2026/05/30) Before introducing the episode, I have a logistical announcement. I recently broke my arm, which is going to get in the way of extensive typing for a couple of months. Therefore I’m going to be re-running some favorite episodes from the past until I’m back in action. I hope that will tide you over in the mean time.…

Saturday, May 2, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 341 - On the Shelf for May 2026 - Transcript (Originally aired 2026/05/02) Welcome to On the Shelf for May 2026. Well, it’s now been an entire year since my retirement. You know that feeling after some significant life change where it seems like it only happened yesterday even though it’s been a while? I feel like that about the last time I moved—it was back in 2011 but continues to feel very recent. But…

Friday, April 24, 2026 - 10:30 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project This article was a little less interesting than I thought it might be, but it added some data to my "vocabulary of lesbianism" database supporting the use of "inseparables" as a dog-whistle for lesbians. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #554 Roulston 1998 Separating the Inseparables About LHMP Full citation: Roulston, Christine. 1998. “Separating the Inseparables: F

Thursday, April 23, 2026 - 10:15 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project You know that guy in your field who everyone cites but every time you read one of their articles you constantly mutter, "But you're ignoring X and you're redefining Y solely in order to support your pet theory, and you're simply wrong about Z"? Yeah, one of those guys. There are several on my list and Hitchcock is one of them. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #553 Hitchcock 1996 Redefining Sex in Eighteenth-Century England

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 - 09:30 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Usually when France Apsley's name comes up in lesbian-relevant history, it's in connection with the future Queen Anne, but this article focuses more on her correspondence with Anne's sister Mary. Or rather, on Mary's corresopndence with her, as we only have one side of the letters. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #552 McClain 2008 Love, Friendship, and Power About LHMP

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 11:53 thetheoryof-600wide.jpeg Time for the Hugo finalist hot takes, so here is a structural assessment of this year's Best Related Work finalists within the context of my study The Theory of Related-ivity: A History and Analysis of the Best Relate Work Hugo Category. (I won’t be updating the data in the study with this data, since the study is focused on nomination dynamics, for which we really need the full long list. But I may append these comments as a footnote or…

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 09:30 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project From one angle, this article is of only passing relevance to the Project--imputing same-sex bonds on fragile evidence. From a different angle, the entire lesson of the play being studied could be "men are trash; they'll betray you and get you killed; stick to your girlfriend for happiness." I doubt that's the lesson that Restoration audiencese took from it, though. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #551 Goode 2008 Dueling…

Sunday, April 19, 2026 - 11:01 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project I frequently comment on the somewhat chaotic order in which I encounter material for the Project. The closest I come to any deliberate program is when I seek out (or prioritize) publications on a topic I want to cover in the podcast. So it's often happened that, after blogging a book, I find myself encountering the author's earlier work that went into that book. Sometimes I'll write a post that's pretty much just a pointer to the…

Saturday, April 18, 2026 - 13:40 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 340 – Mary/Charles Hamilton: The Original Female Husband - transcript (Originally aired 2026/04/18) Introduction In 1746, a novelist named Henry Fielding wrote a sensational pamphlet, in the style of a criminal confession, titled The Female Husband: or, the Surprising History of Mrs Mary, Alias Mr George Hamilton. Hamilton was not the first case of a woman marrying while passing as a man. Nor was this the…

Saturday, April 4, 2026 - 15:33 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 339 - On the Shelf for April 2026 - Transcript (Originally aired 2026/04/04) Welcome to On the Shelf for April 2026. In the usual California fashion, Spring has been quickly elbowed out of the way by summer. The gardening is proceeding apace with tomatoes in the ground, the artichoke harvest well underway, st...

Wednesday, April 1, 2026 - 17:04 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project I don't usually post more than one LHMP entry per day, but I wanted to pair this article closely with Fielding's original, so that readers have the "real version" immediately available to compare with Fielding's fiction. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #549 Baker 1959 Henry Field...

Wednesday, April 1, 2026 - 16:59 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project This book functionally invented the term “female husband” for an assigned-female person who marries (formally or otherwise) a woman while presenting as male. It’s possible (though speculative) that the book also encouraged pop culture fascination with the phenomenon, though I suspect that the fascination would have existed even if ...

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 10:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project This finishes up the deep dive into the General History of the Pyrates, the narrative it presents about Bonny and Read, the contemporary sources for elements of that narrative, and the basis for disbelieving the factual nature of the vast majority of the narrative. It isn't that I enjoy debunking potential sapphic encounters in hist...

Sunday, March 22, 2026 - 08:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Even more than Mary Read's "origin story," the backstory given for Anne Bonny's birth is complicated, farcical, and implausible. Similarly to Read, she is given an excuse for later cross-dressing in having been disguised as a boy at an early age. (This motif shows up in other cross-dressing biographies and is a way of absolving the w...

Saturday, March 21, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 338 - Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Other Pirates - transcript (Originally aired 2026/03/21) I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but pirate novels have been getting rather popular in lesbian and sapphic fiction. Going by my spreadsheet (which isn’t necessarily complete), and searching on cover copy that inc...

Thursday, March 19, 2026 - 16:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project If Mary Read's narrative looks like it was cobbled together from various pop culture sources, Anne Bonny's starts off like the plot of a farce. I mean...what's up with the stolen spoons and the "musical beds" hijinks? Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #547f Johnson 1724 A General H...