A Short History of Queer Women

Product Information

It’s confusing to try to superimpose gender theory, as it’s taught today, on a society that didn’t operate as such. Also, I can’t be arsed. i had the pleasure of meeting Kirsty in person for a pride event Max Minerva’s hosted last month— and i can confirm she is just as lively, funny, and flirty as she is in the book. I really enjoyed reading this book as I found it was a great introduction to queer history and it was told in an accessible and entertaining way. I think hearing Kirsty talk about her intentions with the book really helped to shape my reading experience before I went into the book, not thinking it would cover the vast history of queer women’s lives, but rather would be a small selection of certain stories which Kirsty has been researching since her MA. Without having much space, she aimed to tell intersectional stories to show queer women have always been around. As we submerge into the depths of winter, it’s only natural that we look for some warm, cosy comfort, and what’s better than snuggling up in a big blanket with some hot tea and a variety of interesting queer books?

I was so excited to learn a little more about queer women throughout history and the cover alone had me so hyped for this book but unfortunately it failed to meet those expectations. Let me wrap up here then (not least because this is starting to feel less like a book review and more like an essay) and leave you with this, the list of names mentioned in the book and one final point. If the job of a nonfiction book is to make you think, this has certainly done that. It’s stuffed full of glorious titbits of info, meticulously researched, deliciously contextualised and done with real flair and humour. Who says lesbians can’t be funny? Here we have much proof, along with excellent historical insights into lives lived fully openly and loving without fear, and Loehr shared the stories of some wild women who lived and loved with urgent, stunning brilliance. But I’ve momentarily digressed here. We were discussing the author’s decision to call all of the people who feature in this book women. These are not what you might call ambiguous examples. There are individuals who dressed as men, who lived and married as men, and who were punished for it. (There is an example of someone who wore a leather dildo (outside of sex), for crying out loud. What exactly strikes you as cis woman about that?) Loehr even decides that Radclyffe Hall, despite noting that “Radclyffe identified as male and almost always wore men’s attire”, is going to be included in this book as a woman. Even if you’re going to stop short of using trans terminology to describe them, you can at least admit that they’re not cis women as we understand those terms in a modern world (and therefore, should either not be part of this book, or the remit of this book should be expanded). Some use of modern terminology is inescapable in a book like this, but it’s interesting to see what the author chooses on a more selective basis.Sure, lesbianism as a ‘concept’ did not exist in the past, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t use it to refer to certain women. (...) We must also remember that gender theory is a modern tradition, and that applying it to a society that did not function as such is just, well… (...) a bit daft. As we all know, things didn’t quite work out for Marie, as she famously met a grisly end with the guillotine during the French Revolution. But, before her death, Marie was allowed one final goodbye with her lover, not Louis XVI, but Marie Thérèse Louise. Marie Thérèse Louise had earlier been arrested and put on trial, where she refused to swear hatred to the King and Queen. She was then taken outside to a baying mob who murdered her. They cut off her head, took it to where Marie was being kept and demanded that she give her one-time lover a final kiss. Bloody hell, that’s unnecessary! Just so you know, even though you never asked, I’m Team Sarah, but I think that might have something to do with the fact that Rachel Weisz played her in the movie. Yolande was dubbed the most beautiful woman in France. Marie showed her affection by paying Yolande’s debts, moving her into a massive apartment in Versailles and eventually making Yolande’s husband a duke and therefore Yolande a duchess. This encouraged the French media to pipe up again, releasing thousands of pamphlets depicting the two in a range of sexual positions.

This is where I think this book falls short. I don’t think you can purport to write a “short history of queer women” and neglect an analysis of gender within that. No, we don’t know how these people might have identified, whether they thought of themselves as women or not, whether they even had the words to express not-womanhood—we are likely never to know, unless they wrote about it (although I maintain we might make educated guesses, such as those individuals who elected to live as men). But even in writing such a book, we are subconsciously imposing our modern ideas of gender onto it, whether we mean to or not. To act like we might remove the concept of it entirely defeats the point. Can lesbianism itself, for example, not have a dimension of gender, as much as it does sexuality? Sorry but I'm actually so offended a history book without references even got published, you can't even get away with not referencing in high school these days. Kirsty Loehr comes to Bristol to discuss her book A Short History of Queer Women, with Noreen Masud (A Flat Place). As part of the 2023 Farsley Literature Festival, hear author Kirsty Loehr in conversation about her hilarious and informative book, A Short History of Queer Women.

Reviews

i keep seeing that this book is getting a lot of hate for the humorous tone, millennial jokes, lots of swearing, and endless comments about having sex. i invite everyone to lighten up!!! However, the biggest issue with this book is that there are ZERO REFERENCES! Not one piece of information has a source cited nor is there an actual reference list at the end (only a further reading list, which is not the same thing) and I'm sorry but that is absolutely appalling or something proclaiming to be a history book.

As my first foray into learning about queer female history, this book was a flop, I'd advice anyone who wants to learn more about this topic to try literally any other book than this one - and specifically one written by an actual reputable academic or similar who understands the value and importance of REFERENCING. But it was the nineteen-year-old widow Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy who was Marie’s personal favourite. Marie was so charmed by Marie Thérèse Louise that she regularly showered her with gifts and made her the superintendent of the royal household, which sounds more like a punishment than anything else. There were a few interesting bits of information but again I failed to even fully enjoy those bits because ?? is it even true or did she just pull this info out of thin air - and yes, of course, I can do my own research but A. a few times I tried and found zero to corroborate what she was saying and B. That defeats the purpose of this book, I wanted to read it to learn not to serve as Google inspiration. A Short History of Queer Women is definitely going to end up on my list of most disappointing reads of 2023 and I'm so sad about that. Queen Anne wasn’t the only royal dabbling in the dark arts of lesbianism. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was at it too. Marie wasn’t exactly beloved by her people; she spent a lot of money, ate a lot of food and didn’t seem too bothered that her subjects were starving in the streets. Although to be fair, Marie didn’t really have a say in the matter, as that was the job of her husband, King Louis XVI.As this is a history book, I am dealing with people who are no longer alive and cannot tell us how they identify. There are many reasons women in the past opted out of womanhood—some would certainly have been trans, others were simply trying to live and love as best they could. But to avoid superimposing my own beliefs—and for utmost narrative clarity—I choose to refer to them how history has generally referred to them: by their birth sex. And, as we know, the past is not always indicative of the future, so please feel free to get out your red pen and edit the pronouns as you see fit and according to your understanding of them. The second issue I have is the bigger one, namely the decision detailed at the start of the book which I shall lay out here in the author’s own words: Firstly, the positive(s?) because, despite my later reservations, I do have positive things (or, really, one positive thing) to say about this book. It covers a vast span of history and, as such, touches on a lot of people, and eras of history in more general at times. This is a major reason why I went with a 2-star review at least initially (by the time you read this, I might have reconsidered): it’s very informative and, as a starting point, gave me a lot of names to research (and a lot of other sources to read too). It didn’t just touch upon the more famous names, but plenty more lesser known ones too. (I have, by the way, listed them all at the end of this review in the spoiler tags, so if you want to know who to look up, but you don’t want to read this book, then they’re there.) That was superbly frustrating. The author kept trying to inject humour in the book, which wouldn't be a problem if her sense of humour wasn't the lesbian equivalent of a horny fifteen year old boy repeating the same joke over and over (The joke was variations on "lesbians amirite"). Marie and Louis were hardly love’s young dream, and initially got together to form a political alliance between France and Marie’s home country, Austria. The pair were utterly ill-suited. Louis was painfully shy, indecisive and cold. On the other hand, Marie was lavish, outgoing and extremely shallow. They were so uninterested in one another that it took them a whopping seven years to consummate their marriage.