Latest / gasp! the pod / yes, medieval nuns wrote erotic lesbian poetry feat. yen

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yes, medieval nuns wrote erotic lesbian poetry feat. yen · gasp! the pod

0:00
There was scholar saying that it would be an otherwise wholly
0:02
unknown species in the history of the genre if these were two
0:05
queer writers and nuns that Scholar doesn't know where.
0:08
The clit is like you, obviously. No, we're still looking for it.
0:23
Hi guys, welcome back to Gasp the Pod, the podcast for the
0:28
girls, the gays and especially the gay girls.
0:31
We have a very special guest this week and for listeners that
0:34
maybe picked up on it. I am actually kind of a history
0:38
nerd, probably not as well educated as our guests here this
0:43
week. I have had some historical
0:45
episodes in the past. I did Elizabeth Taylor episode
0:48
most recently Clara Bo. I also did like a history of
0:51
witches episode, like it feels like way back, but it was only
0:55
2024. I'm super excited to have
0:57
another history episode. And yeah, I'm just really happy
0:59
to bring out a guest that knows more than me on this subject and
1:03
it's going to tell us some amazing sapphic historical
1:06
stories about. And I like this pond.
1:08
Let me know if you like it about none other than nuns.
1:11
So funny, ha ha ha. Anyways, as a sapphic Catholic,
1:15
this is my Super Bowl. We're learning about some
1:18
lesbian nuns from the medieval times.
1:22
Anyways, today we have on yen, who leads the Cherry Letter
1:25
Club. We're going to talk a little bit
1:27
more about Cherry Letter Club and just like how cool of a idea
1:32
it is. And you all should definitely
1:34
check it out as well. But yeah, I just really am
1:36
excited to have on yen today. Hi, yeah, I'm so excited to be
1:40
here and I've been looking forward to talking about
1:42
medieval nuns. All week.
1:44
So yeah. Oh yeah, me too.
1:46
You're learning about lesbian nuns.
1:49
I'm not the knowledge source today and I'm just really
1:52
excited to hear about these stories.
1:54
People forget that Catholics can be very gay and gays can be
1:58
Catholic. Before we get into these stories
2:02
and the Cherry Letter Club, I just wanted to go over some
2:04
updates and reminders and get those out of the way for the
2:06
podcast. Please subscribe on YouTube and
2:08
Spotify if you haven't already and you're listening to this.
2:11
I have bonus episodes on Patreon and Spotify.
2:13
I just released a new Patreon episode and I'm also going to
2:18
release another Patreon episode shortly, probably like the day
2:22
after I posted this episode. What else?
2:26
Share the pop with your friends and family.
2:28
And also, it's crazy, but we're already almost to Pride so June
2:33
is coming up. I can't believe it's happening.
2:36
I did a pride series last year. I'm officially open for
2:40
suggestions for Pride series Pride content.
2:42
Now I'm done with those updates and we can finally get into our
2:47
topic. So First off, I just wanted to
2:50
say thank you so much for joining us again.
2:52
I found your content and specifically about the Cherry
2:56
Litter Club on TikTok. And I was like, this is so
2:59
fascinating and such a good idea.
3:01
But I wanted you to have the opportunity to kind of explain
3:04
the Cherry Litter Club and kind of like why you wanted to create
3:09
a club where people can access literature in like a different
3:13
way than I feel like we all access literature, which is just
3:15
like books. And that's like kind of it.
3:18
And especially because of how it's sapphic.
3:20
So if you could have kind of explained that to listeners and
3:23
how you started it. Definitely.
3:25
Thank you so so much for having me.
3:27
I love the pod and I'm just so excited to talk about gay shit
3:30
all the time. I majored in English and have
3:33
always wanted to be a writer, but I feel like when people hear
3:36
that, often times they're like. Oh, so you want to be poor or
3:38
you want to be an English teacher or you want to like have
3:41
no income source? Great.
3:43
And so I feel like it's crazy to me because before being a
3:46
writer. There was just like a profession
3:48
in it of itself. You could write short fiction,
3:50
you could get published in magazines.
3:52
You could kind of like make do with novels and different types
3:55
of payouts from novels. And now unless you get an MFA,
3:58
there's really no structure for that.
4:00
So I was seeing all these mail clubs for artists and realized
4:03
there was really this huge gap. Like, we love short media, of
4:07
course, like TikTok and Reels, but we don't really love short
4:10
fiction in the exact same way. So I was thinking.
4:13
Letters. OK Oh, we could tell the stories
4:15
through letters. Oh my God, to love letters.
4:18
And so it's just very quickly snowballed into this kind of
4:20
like Sapphic Love Letter Club. Essentially we're just mailing
4:25
people love letters, handmade art.
4:27
And it's. All super gay.
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Specifically Wallowa because I feel like we have heated
4:31
rivalry. Plenty of people love boy love.
4:33
Stuff, but sapphic lit just does not get as much attention or the
4:37
kind of spotlight that it deserves.
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So I just it combines all of my passions in a very, very neat.
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Way and by the way it's super historical because we're history
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nerds and we figured the people writing letters to each other
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are those queers from yesteryear's that are just like
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so they're yearning so hard they put pen to paper which is really
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something so. I love it.
4:58
I think it's such a great idea and I think it's so cool that
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you all have like an artist like and everything that comes with
5:04
these packages. It's I mean, we see tik Toks all
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the time of like medieval sapphic core or it's like
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mermaid sapphic core. And it's like, how do we like
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access this? I don't want to just say like
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vibe or aesthetic, but like the yearning of literature and
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history and like present day form without just like creating
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a collage, you know, you get something shipped to you weekly
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and it's so cute and sapphic. I will put links in my YouTube
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and Spotify and wherever this is so people can access Cherry
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Letter Club. Yeah.
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Anything else on that before we get into these love letters?
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Yeah, everything. I just want to make a huge call
5:47
out. Everything is like handwritten
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and hand created. We fucking hate AI too.
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So our artists are making everything by hand, making sure
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all the references are like real images and not AI generated.
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Even the reference and source material and all the writing is
6:01
written by real people. I wrote the.
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Pirate 1 My friend wrote the Medieval 1.
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So we just really want like actual art made by actual queer
6:09
creatives. It shouldn't be that hard.
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But yeah, that's. Absolutely no.
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It's actually sad that that's it's rare.
6:17
There's so many times where I'm, and I was saying this to you on
6:20
our other call. I'm like trying to learn about
6:22
something or like it's in a video format because like
6:25
usually books now to be published, they're not going to
6:28
have AI, but Youtubes and tik Toks, they're not going to have
6:34
like AI warning and I have to double check everything I'm
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watching and reading to see if it's even factual.
6:40
I'm like, did this even happen or am I just like a gullible
6:44
consumer? Definitely.
6:45
And they'll kind of just like put in something that's bullshit
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and then kick it with things that sound kind of factual.
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And it's. Just yeah.
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I don't know why AI loves to use the word genuinely.
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It's always like ironic is genuinely.
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I'm like, so like ruin. The M dash.
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Like as an English major, the M dash was my favorite thing.
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Nobody knew what the fuck an M-I know.
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And now like we can't use them anymore.
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OK, so I would love for us to start talking about these
7:14
medieval nun stories. And 1st I would love to ask,
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like, how did you find out that nuns were lesbians?
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Like I know it makes sense and obviously not all nuns were
7:25
lesbians, but like obviously it's a homo social environment
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that might breed some sort of sapphic behavior.
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But I guess like, how did you know?
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How did you like learn about this?
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I did not originally I was kind of wandering through Paris.
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I went to like the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and was
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like, let me just. Pick up how cool.
7:45
I've been there. Yeah, it's amazing.
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And just like. So there's so many books on the
7:50
shelves, but like this little tiny guy, I'm not sure if you
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could. Of course you won't be able to
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see it on the actual pot. It's but it's like pocket sized.
7:56
A Short History of Queer Woman by Christy Lower.
8:00
It's in a fantastic collection, super colloquial and just sounds
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like tea. Like your bestie reading tea
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from you. It just so happens that it's
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like from BCE nuns wrote down a lot of stuff.
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They were also in completely woman LED.
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Women run spaces with very little men present and so the
8:19
relationships, the friendships and the lovers that they bring
8:22
on. It makes sense that they're
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keeping their eye out for other women at times.
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So yeah, I have. Three stories prepared for us
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today, inspired off this book and then deeply researched.
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I have a question. And if you don't know, it's
8:33
totally fine. But I know that a lot of history
8:36
was only like recorded because a lot of people were not literate
8:40
and it was recorded. Yeah, yeah.
8:42
In monasteries. Yeah.
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Yeah, because a lot of the general public, like, wasn't
8:47
literate. Was that the same with nuns?
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Like were they more likely to be literate or was that not really
8:52
like a requirement? What I understand, especially
8:55
through these stories, a lot of people went to convents in order
8:58
to pursue more scholarly pursuits, to like to get an
9:01
education and to also like surround themselves in like
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literature. That's actually the whole reason
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Sorhuana joined the convent in the 1st place.
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So like if you wanted to pass way to education and a very like
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non typical heteronormative lifestyle joining convent from
9:17
monastery, what's the way to go? All right, I'm down to get to
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get right into this first story. OK, we've I've picked a pretty
9:24
saucy one. For the first one, we are going
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back to about 1100 Bavaria, Germany.
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These are the T Green C love letters.
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Shout out to my medievalists who already know what I'm about to
9:36
get into. But we were talking today about
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a medieval nun who wrote some extremely explicit lesbian love
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poems in the Middle Ages that have survived 900 years of
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history, transcription, etcetera.
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So I'll get into a little bit of context and then we'll just dive
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deep into what the actual quotes were.
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Great John Boswell calls them perhaps the most outstanding
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example of medieval lesbian literature.
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And it's because of letter #7 where one person they just use
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kind of acronyms, like letters they wrote to another woman.
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When I recall the kisses you gave me and how with tender
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words you caress my little breasts.
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I want to die because I cannot see you which is crazy like.
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We'll still call them friends. I know.
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So these besties were just touching their tits together and
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just like caressing nipples and stuff as you do with your
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besties. And it's wow, so funny, right?
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Like, Oh my God. I can't believe this was
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actually written down and saved. Yeah, saved and just preserved
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in a Bavarian monastery and transcribed.
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Like that's the only reason we have it.
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It's because people were like rewriting it over and.
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Over again. They're like, wait, we can save
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ten of these books, this is gonna be 1 of them.
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Definitely, definitely. And it's crazy, we have like,
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not that many surviving. So this is letter #7.
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There were 10 Latin letters of love and friendship, and they
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were completely preserved at the Tigren Sea Abbey Abbey.
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It's in Bavaria, Germany, and they're all composed by nuns or
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canices. So think of like think of a nun.
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Think of like what the nun like just fully in their own little
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cloister, chilling with other nuns, and they're just writing
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about touching breasts and tender words and caressing each
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other. The religious shame in me that
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still carries through makes me wonder if they like know that
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this isn't they're not practicing what they preach.
11:30
I wonder if they're like fully aware of that or they're like
11:33
pushing it down or they are only in the nunnery to escape the
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patriarchal system around them. It's just so interesting to
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think about. Yeah, definitely.
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And it's one of those where it's hard to know.
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So like, scholars have been pushing back.
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Now, by the way, scholars have completely reached consensus.
11:53
This is gay as fuck. Like, there's no debating that.
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But before, there was a lot of pushback as to whether these
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were, like, literary exercises, men pretending to be women
12:02
writing to one another. Latin is very gendered, so we
12:05
already do know that it is a female speaker writing to
12:08
another woman. But yeah, I mean, scholars will
12:11
say that they're besties, roommates, colleagues.
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They already, they meaning men in history will already assume
12:18
that when a woman says like I love you and I miss you and
12:21
whatever, they still think that that could be friendship because
12:25
there is just this assumption that women can never have
12:29
romantic love in a way that men and women can.
12:33
But it is just so clearly sexual beyond romantic love that I
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don't know how you could ever. That's so crazy.
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When I was writing about these, there's definitely some comments
12:46
inside Instagram where it's like, these were like completely
12:49
platonic relationships. Like there's no way that these
12:52
nuns were touching each. Other and it's like baby girl,
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like sometimes people do have sex like when they're not
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supposed to have sex, like it doesn't.
12:59
Happen so sometimes you're even more likely to when you're not
13:03
supposed to. Those are Catholics that are
13:05
like their brains or like exploding.
13:07
Like what? Yeah, wait until we get into St.
13:10
Hildegard. Oh my God.
13:12
But yes, sticking onto your and see there's some other fantastic
13:15
quotes from these letters of love and friendship.
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Quote UN quote. Here's another one.
13:21
What is my strength that I should endure?
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That I should have patience while you were away?
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Is my strength, the strength of stones?
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I do not see this morning, night and day like someone who has
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lost hands and feet, everything that is joyous and delightful
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scenes without you, like mud to be trampled under foot.
13:35
Return sweet love. Do not delay your journey any
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longer. Oh my God, that's so sweet.
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I'm getting like chills and goosebumps for sure.
13:44
Like, I don't know, it's just the idea that women have been
13:47
loving a woman for like the last 900 years makes me emotional,
13:50
especially when people are just like, oh, it was only lesbians
13:54
have only been around since Ellen, right?
13:55
It's like, no baby, we've been gay.
13:58
Yeah, and even the fact that in this time they're not confused
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about what they're feeling like. Like, just because they don't
14:07
have the terminology that we have now doesn't mean they don't
14:10
understand that they're in love with a woman.
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It's pretty clear that the yearning that exists here is not
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confusing to them. They're just very clearly
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romantically in love with other nuns.
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Or, wait, do we think there were other nuns or do we think that
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they were other women? In the town.
14:31
Most likely it's none to none just based off of like the
14:34
context of things. But like it could be, I don't
14:38
know. There's just so much we don't
14:39
know about it. It is very frustrating when it's
14:42
like, these were written by men. These are literary exercises.
14:45
There was one scholar that basically said like it would
14:47
it's impossible for them to be lesbians because that would be
14:50
wholly unheard of in the entire genre of medieval literature.
14:54
And it's just like we assume people are straight.
14:57
Like the moment there's any sort of inkling of any sort of
15:00
tension, immediately we have mentioned a man and a woman.
15:02
So like, we're lesbians, just always friends like Sappho and
15:07
her friend, yeah. There's so much here.
15:10
Yeah, just because it was unheard of, probably because we
15:13
didn't have much documentation from people's everyday lives
15:16
anyways, because it was almost 1000 years ago.
15:19
And then if it doesn't make sense in our way of viewing
15:23
history, then it just was not true.
15:26
Patriarchy just cannot fathom that.
15:28
Like without a man to woman could feel attraction and also
15:32
like pleasure one another like. Yeah.
15:34
For so long throughout medieval history, there wasn't even a
15:38
punishment for lesbian sex because they didn't think that
15:41
lesbians. Could have sex or that woman
15:43
could have sex without a man so. And like that idea still
15:46
continues because the idea of like what is sex?
15:49
There needs to be a penis involved for there to be sex.
15:52
And so therefore, women to women is not a threat to men because
15:58
they're not even having sex. And I think also the modern fear
16:03
of homosexuality is what made them this way.
16:08
And like, what kind of social things, like created gay people?
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Like, oh, you watch something gay and it makes you gay.
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Maybe there's this misunderstanding.
16:17
And if this is not like an excuse but of looking back on
16:21
history and be like, well they couldn't have been gay because
16:23
how would they even know to be gay?
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No, definitely. Because you would have to face
16:27
the reality that some people are just gay without some pressure.
16:32
Like if people can be gay in a nunnery.
16:34
Even through scholarly debate, there's been so much pushback on
16:39
using like modern day queer labels.
16:41
Like we can't call them lesbians because the term lesbian is such
16:44
a modern concept. So we use words like queer or
16:48
lesbian, like as coined by like an E matter and stuff like it's
16:52
just. That's like watering, watering
16:56
down reality of what was happening.
16:59
Yeah, and the proof that we do have is never enough, which is
17:03
so frustrating, right? Even the caress my little
17:06
breasts I mean. Do you need much more proof than
17:10
that? Like.
17:11
Today, thankfully, like Barbara Newman medieval Lewis clarified,
17:16
there's like no more ambiguity as to whether letter #7 of the
17:19
tigrancy love letters is sapphic and also lesbian like.
17:23
But it took so many decades of like.
17:26
Women. Scholars arguing that these are
17:29
woman identified relationships and that they are woman loving
17:33
other woman through these poems. There was scholar saying that it
17:37
would be an otherwise wholly unknown species in the history
17:40
of the genre if these were two queer writers and nuns.
17:43
That scholar doesn't know where the clit.
17:44
Is like you. Obviously you're still looking
17:49
for it. Amazing scholars like Jacqueline
17:51
Murray calling medieval lesbians twice marginal and twice
17:53
invisible because there's so much of A binary rigidity.
17:57
Dismissing the fact that there could even be lesbian identity
18:01
and the fact that these were lesbian like behaviors.
18:05
Lesbian like was actually coined in 1998 by Judith Bennett who
18:09
needed to create a bridge between scholars who like
18:11
weren't sure how to use this quote UN quote modern label to
18:15
acknowledge the existence of queer people back in the day.
18:18
And Oh my God, this debate continues.
18:20
Like inside comments you'll have folks debating like was this a
18:23
trans man? Was this a bisexual, a
18:25
pansexual? We, I feel like, can just agree
18:28
that these were very queer people.
18:30
Existing in a space. But that wasn't quote quote
18:34
normal or heteronormative. I think it's amazing that we
18:36
have evidence. The erotic part of the story, it
18:39
is annoying that we need to have that to even like have proof of
18:44
a sapphic romance because again, it is so strange that when
18:48
people see and hear two women being romantic towards each
18:53
other, it is assumed to be friendship.
18:55
And like, I love female friendship, I love female
18:59
friendship. But it's so frustrating that you
19:01
need to have sexually erotic lines in order to make scholars
19:07
actually have to confront or even have a debate over this.
19:11
The lesbian like thing is so interesting because I understand
19:14
these scholars won't agree to lesbian.
19:16
They won't agree to sapphic. Probably wasn't really used
19:18
commonly in 1998 and queer may have been more of like a slur.
19:24
But lesbian, like it is so annoying because it's not
19:28
lesbian like it's pretty damn lesbian.
19:33
We have to almost say it without.
19:34
Saying it, which is just so annoying and we are fighting
19:38
over scraps here, which is also frustrating.
19:40
Like because of the patriarchy we have one letter of a giant
19:44
monastery where there are pages, so many pages you could wipe
19:47
your ass. With them of like straight
19:49
romance throughout history and we get one line and the one line
19:54
we get is so gay and yet we have to constantly fight over whether
19:57
or not it's gay enough to be gay.
20:00
So can we move? Are we ready, Hildegard?
20:03
Yes. So I would love a perspective
20:07
from the kind of internalized Catholic self floating perhaps
20:12
because you can see it on full display with St.
20:14
Hildegard. Sometimes the call comes from
20:16
inside the house. Saint Hillegard von Bingen was a
20:19
genius. She's a composer, healer,
20:21
visionary. She's probably one of the first
20:23
people to invent music like modern day musicals.
20:26
She wrote fantastic love poetry, and she invented her own
20:31
language, which is crazy. She also condemned love, sexual
20:35
love between women and sexual love at all, while also, and get
20:39
this, writing heartbroken letters to the Pope begging for
20:43
the woman she loved to not leave her for another abyss.
20:48
To the Pope. To the Pope like.
20:51
It's actually really sad. I'm actually going to cry.
20:53
Oh my God, it is a very sad story.
20:55
So grab some tissues. St.
20:57
Hildegard. We'll go into her little bio.
21:00
Saint Hildegard lived from 1098 to about 1179.
21:04
She was an abbess, a Mystic, composer, healer, scientist,
21:08
theologian. She was a complete polymath.
21:11
She is a. Full genius.
21:13
And so there are a ton of Saint Hildegard fans, and I don't mean
21:16
any shade by dragging her, but like, we know that she was also
21:19
gay and repressed. Yeah.
21:21
Wait. I it's actually crazy sorry that
21:24
she lived to 81. Yes, great.
21:28
Kind of. Wild living to 81 is wild like
21:32
she almost lived until 1200 and she was born in 1000. 90
21:35
something. Yeah, crazy.
21:37
She did so much with that one lifetime.
21:40
She was also like, really into medicine, and modern medicine at
21:44
that. She actually has one of the
21:45
first Western depictions of a female orgasm in her medical
21:49
writings. Like she describes it in full
21:51
detail. Way it's.
21:54
Crazy. And it's amazing that she would
21:57
know this. So she was madly in love with
21:59
her secretary. Her secretary was named Ricardus
22:03
and they were close companions for many years writing many love
22:07
letters to one another, which is why we know they exist.
22:10
Their relationship existed in the 1st place.
22:12
Hildegard described Ricardus as a cherished person.
22:16
It was a basically a divine love is how she was describing it.
22:20
I love gay people. She's simultaneously being like,
22:25
yeah, women shouldn't have sexual relationships with women.
22:28
The fact that she even brought that up is showing that she's
22:31
probably gay anyways because, like, why are you even thinking
22:34
about that? Because it like, that probably
22:36
wasn't a common concern back then.
22:40
And then on top of that, you are depicting from one of the first
22:44
times if you want orgasm. That is so revolutionary. 11
22:48
something. There's still people out here
22:50
that probably don't even think women can orgasm.
22:52
So like it's like she's 1000 years ahead of her time.
22:56
She is so ahead of her time. She is writing yearning love
23:00
letters to everybody that would listen to get her woman back.
23:05
So they're trying to go long distance and Ricardus has like
23:08
an absolute crash out about it, which I love. 1151 Ricardus is
23:13
appointed abbess of a distant convent in Bassam, and Hildegard
23:16
cannot stand being apart from her lover.
23:19
So Hildegard is writing desperate letters to the Pope,
23:22
to Archbishop's A Marchioness and Ricardus, trying to stop the
23:25
separation. We have actual quotes saying
23:29
what was me mother? What was me daughter?
23:32
Why have you forsaken me like an orphan?
23:34
She's literally quoting Christ on the cross as she is
23:37
expressing her grief. That is the most sapphic
23:42
Catholic shit I've ever heard. Catholic in her made her really
23:46
fucking dramatic. I'm I'm here for it.
23:50
I love it so much. And she's also, of course, like
23:53
our musical theatre kid. So the theatre kid drama is
23:56
there. Oh my God, I forgot about that
23:58
Ricardus. Do we know after they were
24:01
separated, if the letters to the Pope worked, were they separated
24:05
forever? So they were separated and very,
24:08
very sadly. Get your tissues she.
24:11
Ricard has passed away within a year of reaching that far away,
24:14
Abby, but we have letters from her brother that she intended to
24:18
return, she just didn't make. It to that date she like wanted
24:21
to go back to Hildegard, which is very, very sad.
24:25
Oh my God, that's actually devastating.
24:27
Do we know if Hildegard was with anyone else after that?
24:32
Hildegard, very famously, as far as she's told us, has remained
24:36
extremely chaste and none like through her entire life.
24:39
So she was always very like anti physicality as far as sexual
24:44
relations go. But you don't have to have sex
24:47
to be a lesbian. There are ace lesbians and
24:50
plenty of other folks. Absolutely.
24:51
And yeah, you just need a yearn hard as shit.
24:54
And Hildegard definitely takes gold medal for.
24:56
That. Yeah, you just need yearning.
24:58
Comparing yourself to being Yeah, Christ on a cross.
25:02
The idea of comparing yourself to Christ is like, bad, bad.
25:06
No, no, no. So she's like, I don't care.
25:09
I am being persecuted. I am being forsaken.
25:12
So this is also like evidence of she felt comfortable enough to
25:16
talk to the Pope and ask the Pope to help her out.
25:19
Catholic system is very aware of gay people and this is not like
25:26
a unheard of B uncommon and almost she thought there was
25:31
probably maybe a chance that he would help her.
25:35
Went down her contacts list and like got everybody that she
25:38
thought would like move the needle on this thing for for
25:41
Carlos, which is incredible. Oh my God, that's so beautiful
25:45
but so sad. And then I wonder if like, maybe
25:48
through her heartbreak it didn't help.
25:52
Maybe her trying to tell other people not to be like was there
25:56
a level of like I'm so sad so no one else can have what I.
26:01
Had from what I'm aware of and I will double check this after,
26:04
I'm pretty sure she was actively like in love with Ricardus and.
26:08
Making all of the like musicals about how you shouldn't be like
26:12
physical and woman should be pure and left alone, which is
26:15
just really funny to me to be like thinking about chastity and
26:19
then like, I want to put my face against your face.
26:23
People lie. So do we actually think that
26:26
maybe she may have had some physical acts with Ricardis?
26:30
We'll never know. This was like 1000 years ago,
26:32
but. People do lie, and especially
26:35
Catholics, and I can say it, yeah, this doesn't surprise me.
26:41
There is like something so interesting about religious
26:46
brain that like compartmentalize and like the denial.
26:50
I OK, so like just a little insight in how this could make
26:54
sense, but my internalized homophobia was so beyond what I
27:00
thought internalized homophobia. Like was like I went to Catholic
27:04
school and then by the time like end of high school was around
27:07
like I was like pretty progressive and like had gay
27:09
friends and then in college majored in gender and sexuality
27:14
studies. Was an intern at the LGBTQ task
27:17
force, not the task force, the task force.
27:21
I thought it was straight like writing these thought pieces on
27:24
gender and sexuality thinking like I would know.
27:28
And so it is crazy what Catholicism can do.
27:32
When I say like denial, I think a lot of people think denial is
27:36
something that like, yeah, you can hear it at the back of your
27:39
brain, but you're consciously like, deny, deny, deny.
27:42
It wasn't even conscious. Like it had to fight to make it
27:47
up to the conscious level chemically.
27:49
I need someone to do a study on it.
27:51
So that's why there's something so interesting when you hear
27:55
someone be so homophobic and preaching this where there might
28:01
have been a lot of Hildegard's life where she couldn't even
28:05
really rationalize the two things or even like, combine
28:08
them into one brain. Yeah, especially in 1098.
28:13
I relate so much to your story. I was really.
28:16
Straight for all of college, I'm graduated.
28:19
In. 2020 It hasn't been that long, but I did not come out
28:23
until a year after graduation and realized that I was some
28:27
form of queer and like realized I was trans the year after.
28:30
That's like 22 years of my life just being like.
28:33
I'm a straight girl, but I like cuff my jeans and every single
28:36
person in my life is gay and like I love a good patch on a
28:40
Jean jacket and like I only wear Doc Martens and like hate men
28:45
are not stand being around men, but like compulsory
28:48
heterosexuality, like even if you're not religious is just
28:51
like such a horse blinder. Like it's like, oh, queerness
28:54
happens over there, but like over here, like and under like
28:58
male gaze. We're kind of told to be very.
29:00
Passive in our own sexuality. So like, you're going to be an
29:03
object of attention and attraction, but you're never
29:05
going to be the person having attraction for another person.
29:08
Yeah. I feel like the moment that we
29:10
allow ourselves to like, take full accountability for our own
29:14
pleasure and like once then queerness.
29:17
Becomes part of something that like you can actually fathom.
29:20
But some people, I mean like Hildegard, 81 years.
29:23
I bet you she lived her entire time under those horse blinders.
29:27
Straight, straight as straight can be.
29:29
And it's always like the most homophobic or the biggest
29:31
allies. And it's like our brain does so
29:34
many things to cope. That is so true what you just
29:36
said that like love happens to people, especially like women,
29:42
like love happens to you. And so to even get away from
29:46
that construct, I'm a full person that can decide what I am
29:50
interested in and I can pursue other people.
29:54
And then that on top of Catholicism and the discussed
30:00
over sexuality. Elder, that was such a confusing
30:03
character because like again described, the female orgasm was
30:07
talking to other nuns for details on their orgasms, most
30:11
likely in order to gather evidence.
30:13
To put inside like a medical textbook, Medical, like, of
30:16
course, it has to be like an official thing, yeah.
30:18
They were. Talking about sex at least a
30:20
little bit. And so it that not only
30:23
contrasts that we typically expect of Catholic nuns, but
30:25
also like opens a lot of questions about like how
30:29
involved till the guard was in her own awareness of self there.
30:33
Yeah, maybe it was something that she could tell her brain.
30:38
This is why we have a fascination of women.
30:42
This is why we want to think about sex, because I am doing
30:46
this for a medical reason. Convince.
30:49
Yeah. And then maybe the all the
30:51
conversations and the preaching about staying chaste is her way
30:56
of even thinking about sex because the absence of sex, the
31:00
opposite of sex, is just not even talking about it.
31:03
But like, when you're talking about not having sex, you still
31:05
get to talk about having sex. Yeah, definitely no.
31:08
Oh. My God that tracks.
31:09
I love that whether this was sexual is constantly debated a
31:12
lot of folks. Especially when the Catholic
31:14
community love St. Hildegard, love her messages of
31:17
chastity, and so it is very jarring to think of her as a
31:22
sexual being. A sexual being with like wants
31:24
and desires and all that. Totally want to createspace for
31:27
that. Don't want to shit on anybodies
31:29
like religious upbringing or attachments.
31:32
I do think that there was at least some homoerotic
31:34
attachment. Even if it was, I wouldn't call
31:37
it platonic because that's pretty intense to dial up the
31:40
Archbishop and the Pope and everybody else to get your
31:43
girlfriend back. But yeah, there was some sort of
31:45
lesbian like activity happening there.
31:48
Even if it wasn't physical, we can say that for sure.
31:51
And people live. So maybe it could be physical,
31:53
We don't know. It was like 1000 years ago.
31:55
So interesting, and now that we're talking about it I'm
31:57
realizing I definitely have heard of her, but not in this
32:01
sapphic context. Probably.
32:03
Her teachings probably convinced me that I was straight like.
32:07
But now I'm forgiving her because now she's giving me some
32:11
gay content that I'm happy about.
32:12
I would probably be a nun like I mean you.
32:15
At that time you like are either like arranged marriage, no
32:18
education, you're meant to turn butter, I guess like and
32:22
meanwhile A nunnery offers like lifelong female Community
32:26
Housing, education, literacy, access to books, a library,
32:31
freedom for male oversight. Like this is actually a really
32:35
good transition to Sorhana because it's the exact reason
32:37
she got into being a nun in the first place.
32:41
Amazing. So we're going to Fast forward
32:43
600 years. We are now in Mexico City and a
32:47
lesbian nun is writing intense love poems to a woman, fighting
32:51
for a woman's right to education, and actively being
32:54
pursued. By antagonists in the Catholic
32:58
Church she ends up on Mexican currency.
33:00
So I think this is has a happier ending than most lesbian like
33:04
medieval stories. But.
33:05
Yeah, today we're talking about Juana and as De Esfahe Ramirez
33:09
De Santiana, born 1648 near Mexico City and illegitimate
33:14
daughter, which is crazy. So she is a child prodigy from a
33:18
very young age. She is extremely smart but and
33:21
begs her mother basically to disguise her as a boy so she can
33:24
attend university and continue her education.
33:26
She basically caps out on how much a girl is allowed to learn
33:31
when she learns that she. Can't attend university, she
33:33
enters a convent purely for devotion to intellectual life
33:37
and to kind of escape the whole marriage Nil event.
33:40
Everything. She has nicknamed the 10th muse
33:42
the Mexican Phoenix and her face has appeared on two types I
33:46
believe, of Mexican currency. She is an absolute badass and
33:49
one of my. Favorite.
33:50
I don't, I don't want to try to have too many biases, but she is
33:53
my favorite. Like lesbian?
33:54
I think it's a good thing to say, yeah.
33:58
No. I completely missed the fact
34:00
that she defended abortion. Yes, she defended abortion right
34:04
to education, and those politics are actually why she got in
34:08
trouble. Not really the lesbian aspect,
34:11
yeah. That's so cool though, even
34:13
after that that she was put on Mexican currency.
34:16
Yes, that's so about us. So not only did she fall in love
34:19
with a woman, she fell in love with the most powerful woman in
34:22
colonial Mexico, Maria Luisa Enrique de Laura.
34:26
Movie, I know it's like I caught.
34:29
I think there are movies, musical theater plays.
34:32
Like there's so much content about her so please look her up.
34:35
But she falls in love with the Countess of Perettas in
34:38
Visserine of New Spain. So the person in like the wife
34:41
to the person in charge of this colonial outpost that is Mexico,
34:45
she is writing love poems. Sorvana technically is supposed
34:48
to do this. She's supposed to write poetry
34:50
to the Visserines. It's part of her job as court
34:52
poet. She's writing hundreds.
34:54
Of poems to Maria Louisa. They have like erotic nicknames
34:58
Lysis or Phyllis. And they are writing poetry.
35:01
They're writing poetry that like translates so poorly to English.
35:05
It is so romantic in like actual Spanish, but they're openly
35:09
erotic. It's fantastic.
35:11
I can read you a few quotes. Yeah, I love it.
35:13
I love you with so much passion. Neither rudeness nor neglect can
35:17
explain why I tied my tongue yet left my heart unchecked.
35:20
One let my love be ever doomed, if guilty in its intent, for
35:24
loving you is a crime of which I will never repent.
35:28
Shut the fuck up. It's getting emotional of these
35:32
like a woman loving woman. 100 years ago, 300 300 Thank you.
35:36
That you're a woman far away is no hindrance to my love for the
35:39
soul. As you well know, distance and
35:41
sex don't count. That's one of my favourites for
35:44
sure. Please tell me people weren't
35:46
like this was friendship. They were like.
35:50
This is friendship. In some cases, yeah, they're
35:53
just best friend love poems. My heart unmade, undone within
35:58
your hands. Wow.
36:00
Make the genders a man and a woman and a man writing like I
36:04
love you with so much passion. Neither rudeness nor neglect can
36:06
explain why I tied my tongue yet left my heart unchecked.
36:09
Like instantly the straits would be like, Oh my God, he is like
36:13
so well spoken and so overcome with love for his like lover
36:17
that like, it is so just. It's literally just because it's
36:20
two women writing to each other that it becomes question.
36:23
Yeah. Absolutely.
36:25
This last one, although I know that it is too forward and
36:28
daring, but love witnesses that I don't know what I say to
36:31
myself for how I feel and in the end be forgiven by God for how I
36:34
speak to you, for if it was within me, you wouldn't be
36:37
within my voice. Wow.
36:40
The urge to. Merge the lesbian urge to become
36:43
one. Person the urge to merge.
36:46
No, for real. There is something so powerful
36:51
in queerness and in lesbianism that makes you not care about
36:58
going to hell, even if you really did believe in going to
37:02
hell. So pure to like love a woman is
37:05
so sacred and so beautiful and just like feels like oh man,
37:10
when you meet your person, it's like This is why I'm here like
37:12
this is. Part of being.
37:13
Human and living, and I'm so glad to have this person in my
37:16
life. Absolutely.
37:18
Oh my God. All of this is being written to
37:21
a married woman, Maria Luisa, a very powerful married viscera
37:25
read of New Spain. And then on top of that, Sir
37:28
Juana doesn't stop. She actually has more bars.
37:31
She's writing La La Respueta, The response, a passionate
37:34
defense of a woman's right to education.
37:36
And it pisses off the church. So they're cracking down for
37:39
challenging patriarchy. And they forced her to do some
37:42
crazy things, sign a confession of faith in her own blood, sell
37:46
her library of 4000 books. They're targeting her for
37:50
prioritizing her own like selfish once instead of that of
37:53
the church, and basically had her completely silent for the
37:56
last three years of her life. So Juana died very quietly at 46
38:01
caring for her sisters during the plague.
38:03
So they really tried to make sure that she was completely
38:05
erased from the history textbooks for her more
38:09
progressive views. This is where Maria Luisa comes
38:13
in clutch, because when she leaves Mexico, she takes with
38:16
her all of Sorhuana's poems and publishes them.
38:19
And that's why they are so famous today.
38:21
It's why we know so much about Sorhuana's life.
38:24
And. Just the amazing.
38:26
Contributions to literature. So yeah, they loved each other.
38:31
They loved each other in spite of it all.
38:34
My God, the fact that her lover saved her poems after death so
38:39
she would be remembered by history.
38:41
Now we're talking about it today.
38:43
And she's like the 10th muse. Of Mexico, like she is one of
38:46
their most famous poets and recognized by governments as a
38:51
hero. It's just yeah, love conquers.
38:55
That is so iconic that she was with the most powerful woman.
39:01
Like can see why she's your favorite?
39:04
I love her, she's iconic. It's also how many stories do we
39:08
have of other famous women throughout history that just had
39:12
to disguise themself like themselves as men?
39:15
But how many of those women might have also been queer or
39:19
trans and we just don't know it. I.
39:22
Think we have to understand like why so this this is like the tip
39:25
of the iceberg of all the history of lesbians that have
39:27
ever existed right. So like historians are looking
39:30
for irrefutable evidence that this person's queer.
39:33
So you are dressing a different like gender non conforming.
39:37
You are like actively. Writing love poetry.
39:40
You're talking about little titties like.
39:41
Those are the evidence pieces that get preserved but so much
39:45
of it is burned, not seen as legitimate or just completely
39:48
erased away. There are so many stories like
39:51
Gentleman Jack, Anne Lister, her entire like poetry set was
39:56
hidden behind the walls of a mansion.
39:58
Like so much stuff has to literally exist on the outskirts
40:01
and corners of society because it is taboo and it's just a
40:06
shame. Like we are missing so much
40:08
amazing sapphic lit because it is just not normative quote UN
40:13
quote. Yeah, the fact that I haven't
40:15
heard about any of these nuns and like I am the perfect
40:21
audience for it just shows you that like you do have to go out
40:26
looking for this type of information.
40:29
And of course, like it popped up on my for you page from you.
40:32
So thank you so much for that. But like it is really sad, like
40:36
how many stories that we don't have or how many stories that
40:39
maybe someone glossed over and decided that's not sapphic and
40:43
so. It's.
40:45
Somewhere in some preserved area of a bunch of texts that no ones
40:50
relooking at because maybe the man there decided it's not
40:53
sapphic. I would be paying the fuck
40:55
attention if somebody was like hey Hildegard, not just telling
40:59
you to not have. Sex actively, like yearning as
41:02
hard as she is over her secretary, Marie Antoinette gay,
41:07
by the way, like just. There's so many different types
41:10
of historical figures that I get like I get a few paragraphs
41:14
about like all their politics and other things that are so
41:16
straight washed and nothing about like the interiority of
41:20
their actual person. I don't know.
41:22
I mean, like, I would be paying attention, but I would also have
41:24
probably figured out that I was queer much earlier because I
41:26
wouldn't be so afraid of it being something so terrible or
41:30
like a slur or a bad word. Or this idea that queer people
41:33
were always like, the victims of powerful people.
41:38
And like, yes, there's like an extent to that, but like, also
41:41
the people that we already knew in history, a lot of them were
41:44
queer. And I think it's just so easy to
41:47
see this person see like facts about them Mexico City birthdate
41:51
1648 like different types of things they did as a kid.
41:54
But when you see. Them falling in love with
41:58
another person, there's something so irrefutably human
42:01
about that. And something that, like,
42:02
connects you across hundreds, thousands of years to other
42:06
lesbians. It's just, yeah, we've always
42:08
been loving women. Yeah, we've always been like
42:11
this. And like, the feelings are very
42:13
very similar even though this person grew up in a completely
42:15
different space and time than us.
42:17
Yeah, it's so beautiful. Even the most irrefutable queer
42:22
aspects of these stories, when do they actually make their way
42:26
to like mainstream media? When you look up their names and
42:30
to the point where maybe it gets to rumored to be or some
42:36
scholars argue when you are reading that and maybe you are a
42:40
professor or you are writing something and you want something
42:43
to be like extremely factual, you're going to be like, oh,
42:47
this is a rumor and then it doesn't get passed into fact.
42:50
This happened and not just like rumors when we have an actual
42:56
poem about the little breasts I. Can't.
42:59
No amount of proof will be enough for somebody that only
43:02
wants a heteronormative patriarchal point of view on
43:05
history. Which is so infuriating because
43:08
I know lesbians, lesbians are very good with the spreadsheets
43:11
and with finding like itemized evidence and tabs and organized
43:15
binders. And that's just not enough.
43:16
Like we are invalid to a specific person.
43:19
But the important thing is like, we know we exist and we know
43:21
that we've been eternal and have existed throughout human
43:24
history. Sappho was writing about lesbian
43:28
stuff so much that her island became the lesbian island.
43:31
So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:32
I love that. We know what is real, we know
43:36
what happened. Everyone hears about Abraham
43:39
Lincoln might have been gay, but no one's talking about Saint
43:41
Hildegard. Modern is almost seen as AI hate
43:47
to use the other sides like terminology, but like the woke
43:50
versioning of history, like we've somehow re like
43:54
commandeered it and like rewritten all of it and put our
43:57
modern spin on things. And it's like, I don't know how
44:01
to tell you that you just were pulling the wool like away
44:04
because you've been saying that little.
44:06
Breasts is completely straight person behavior and it's like
44:09
no, caressing little breasts between two women is definitely
44:13
not platonic like no matter how you spin it so.
44:15
It can't be. Yeah, No, I think that's so
44:18
true. It's viewed as like we
44:20
commandeered the story and took it as ours when really who
44:24
commandeered the story. The fact that any of these
44:28
writings are survivable is also amazing and I can only hope that
44:33
someone somewhere has a gay ass poem in the walls of their old
44:40
English estate or I don't know wherever you are and can send it
44:45
to us. Yeah, I hope they keep
44:47
discovering more lesbian poetry that's been somehow buried or
44:52
put away. Yeah, because we need it.
44:54
Especially today. Oh my God.
44:55
Well, this has been so fascinating.
44:58
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing these stories.
45:01
I learned so much and I'm really excited to read that book and
45:04
I'm also very excited to join Cherry Letter Club.
45:07
If you could tell people like where to find you, where to find
45:11
Cherry Letter Club and just any instructions on that and that
45:14
would be amazing. For sure Cherry letter club
45:16
cherry letterclub.com at cherry letter club on both Instagram
45:20
and TikTok or you could just e-mail us at cherry letter club
45:22
at Gmail. Sign up is really
45:24
straightforward. We now have a $10 a week by $10
45:27
a month biweekly option if you want to sign up and get letters
45:31
sent in the mail with little like sapphic love letters and
45:35
little historical. Extras and stuff.
45:37
We have pirates and Medieval and yeah, just like dive into these
45:41
lesbian love experiences. They're really fun.
45:45
I love it. Thank you so much for joining.
45:47
It was truly a pleasure again. And for those who are listening
45:51
and watching, follow Cherry Letter Club and reminder to
45:55
subscribe on Patreon and Spotify.
45:58
Let me know any other topics you want me to cover.
46:01
If you like lesbian history, let me know because I would love to
46:05
continue doing episodes like this.
46:07
So thank you all for listening. Thank you all for watching.
46:11
Bye. Thanks for having me, bye.