Book post!

[sophia_sol]

The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, by Xinran

This is a hard, sad book. Xinran, the author, was a radio presenter in China in the time following the Cultural Revolution, and had a women's program. She undertook a personal mission to learn the stories of Chinese women, and in this book - which she wrote after leaving China to move to London - she shares what she discovered, along with some of her own story. There are a lot of tragedies in this book, which Xinran doesn't shy away from sharing. And it is a fascinating look into the hidden lives of women impacted by the Cultural Revolution.


The Blue Castle, by LM Montgomery

Since I started keeping track in 2009 of the books I read, The Blue Castle is the book I've read most often. This is my fourth read since then - the other times were Feb 2010, July 2012, and June 2013. It's just such an endlessly delightful book. The apogee of comfort reads, for me. *happy sigh* And what else is there to say about it?


Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, by Michael Rocke

Hahaha I had forgotten how much SLOWER it is to read academic nonfiction. One of the interesting things about much of my reading being during my lunch break at work these days is that I have a very easy way of judging my reading speed, because I'm always reading in a very discrete time interval. So I have a much better sense of exactly how fast I read than I ever have before in my life. And the main thing I've noticed is how WIDELY it varies from book to book! Depending, I'm sure, on variance in words-per-page and density of ideas and opacity of language other things like that. And this one? Is by far the slowest of any book I've read in the last year or so since I started reading at lunchtime.

It was really interesting though! This book first came to my attention when toft read it a few years ago and wrote this stellar post about it. Go read her post - it's highly recommended. And I really wish the novel she suggests at the end existed.

So yes, a book about male-male sexual relations in 15-16th century Florence! (technically sodomy meant any non-reproductive sex act but in practice it generally referred to sex between males.) I'M ALL OVER THAT. And the book totally delivered. In, you know, that dry academic way.

My favourite things I learned from this book (beyond THE EXISTENCE OF THE OFFICE OF THE NIGHT) were as follows:

1. Florence was so notorious for being a hotbed of sodomy that some people from other parts of Europe used Florence instead of Sodom as their referent in naming people who engaged in that type of behaviour. (eg, the German word for a sodomite was a "Florenzer") IIRC the author mentioned that something like two thirds of the male population of Florence was probably somehow involved in sodomy at some point in their lives!

2. Ideas in that place and at that time of which partner was "active" and which partner was "passive" in oral sex were different from how we consider it today! In anal sex, the active partner put his penis into the passive partner's anus; in oral sex, by comparison, the active partner received the passive partner's penis in his (or her) mouth. In other words, the focus in oral sex is on the active partner's mouth, not the active partner's penis. (p. 92) I FOUND THIS FASCINATING, given that my experience with modern western culture's approach to sex is that the older, stronger, manlier man's penis must always be the focus of any sexual encounter. I love evidence like this that all the baggage we attach to various roles in sex is just that - cultural baggage. There's nothing intrinsically anything about any role.

3. Unfortunately the nature of the extant records means we don't have much information about what there was in the way of positive, loving relationships - but one sentence notes that Carlo di Berardo d'Antonio "remained faithful to Michele [di Bruno da Prulli], and at Michele's request he also swore over the holy stone on the holy gospels of God to remain faithful to Michele in this sodomitical vice." In other words, Carlo and Michele (two men) took a ceremonial oath of fidelity to each other in a church. And Carlo is referred to as Michele's wife in the judiciary records, and between that and this ceremony it seems that the officials "recognized their action as a formally binding agreement, as a 'marriage,' regardless of the illicit nature of their sexual union." (p. 172)

After reading this book I.... kind of want to read (translations of) the text of all of the denunciations that the Office of the Night received. They sound FASCINATING. And full of far more of the human details than the magistracy's records were.

Reading this book also made me realize just how little I really know about Florentine culture and politics of the time period. Or the Italian peninsula in GENERAL of the time period. I feel like a lot of the information in this book would benefit from being situated in the broader socio-political context more fully. But of course there isn't space in this one fairly tightly-focused book for all that.

Comments

[pauraque]

Regarding #2, worth noting that in present-day American lesbian culture, giving oral is also considered a "toppy" thing to do, which is of course the opposite of how it is among gay men.

[sophia_sol]

Oh, INTERESTING. I did not know that!

[pauraque]

Yeah, the logic of it is like... among lesbians it is seen as butch to focus on the body and pleasure of your partner, whereas having one's own body touched or pleasured is not so butch. So giving oral and penetrating with a strap-on are both butch because of that, and being butch is associated with being toppy in general (though obviously not always the case for individuals). At the extreme end, butches who do not want their body touched ever at all are called stone, and are typically thought of as super ultra butch.

Some of this could be partly explained by the existence of pre-transition trans guys and genderqueer people in the lesbian dating pool, who might be stone because of gender dysphoria, which is what happened with me and some other guys I know. But I'm not sure which way the cause and effect goes — did we influence lesbian culture to be this way, or was it like this before, and we just found that the stone identity was something that happened to work for us at that time in our lives?

My understanding of the gay male side of things is not as clear, but I get the impression that being toppy/active/butch/masculine there is about receiving pleasure, not so much about giving it. Like, you can easily imagine a stereotypical butch bragging about giving her partner a billion orgasms, but it's harder to imagine that coming from a gay guy. At least it doesn't match the cultural stereotypes in my head, based on growing up in the queer community. This is all speaking in generalizations, of course.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, I do recall learning about stone butch before, and in that context this understanding of lesbian oral sex makes more sense to me. Thank you for sharing these further thoughts on the subject! It's all so interesting to me.

[genarti]

I read Good Women of China a few years back, after buying it on a whim; I loved it, in that stare-into-the-middle-distance way. I'm glad she was there to tell those untold stories, especially since as I recall they were all of people who called in to her and thus wanted their story told in some way, to someone, but hard and sad describes it well.

That book about Florence sounds FASCINATING. Mental note!

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, most of the stories were stories the women were eager to be able to share with someone, anyone, who genuinely wanted to listen and know. And it's just so sad that so many women didn't have anyone they could talk with about the hard things that had happened to them!

The book about Florence is indeed fascinating! I hope you enjoy it if/when you get around to it.

[cahn]

The apogee of comfort reads

YES. YES THIS.

[sophia_sol]

RIGHT? Montgomery is magic. I am so glad this book exists in the world.

[toft]

Yaaaaaay! I'm so glad you enjoyed Forbidden Friendships! Also it was fun to go back and read that post and all the comments. I still vaguely have that book at the back of my mind!