10. Thigh Fencing and the Saffron Massage
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2018
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, co-hosts Gretchen and Leigh will take you on a tour of medieval Arabo-Islamic erotic literature and the many delightful descriptions of queer female experience it contains. Remember way back in episode two when 'thigh fencing' came up? Well, that and other martial imagery for wlw sexual experience come from medieval Arabo-Islamic poetry! Like shield banging, jousting without a lance, or our new favorite---the saffron massage. Plus, we'll dive into cross-dressing heroines, the music of love (moaning), and the first lesbian couple, Hind and al-Zarqa'!
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
5:57 – Historical Context: Medieval Arabic Erotic Tradition More Generally
25:52 – Historical Context: Arabic Literature and Western Courtly Love Poetry
36:11 – Fun Segment: Word of the Week
42:38 – Tribadism and Queer Lady Love in Arabo-Islamic Writing
1:03:17 – Tales of Cross-Dressing and Same-Sex Marriage
1:16:10 – People Examples
1:24:41 – Takeaways
1:30:25 – How Gay were They?
1:33:18 – Closing and Where to Find Us Online
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked |
| 0:05.8 | queer ladies, gents, and gentle enbies that have always been there in the unexplored |
| 0:10.4 | corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. |
| 0:33.2 | Yeah. Hey folks, I'm Lee, and I'm Gretchen. |
| 0:38.9 | And in this week, we are talking about Arabic lesbians in medieval literature. |
| 0:41.9 | I'm so excited. |
| 0:42.8 | Oh, my gosh. This is really cool. |
| 0:43.9 | We're going back. |
| 0:45.0 | We're going back to the Middle Ages to talk about ladies bonin. |
| 0:49.3 | Okay. |
| 0:49.7 | And loving each other. |
| 0:50.6 | People talk about the Middle Ages, like they're the dark ages, but I feel like we're |
| 0:54.5 | finding so many amazing queer things in the Middle Ages that like, this is like the rainbow |
| 1:00.0 | ages. |
| 1:01.1 | Oh my gosh. |
| 1:02.6 | The rainbow ages. |
| 1:04.1 | Yeah, no, we keep finding more and more things. |
| 1:06.0 | And I mean, it's, you know, especially when you kind of go outside of, like, Christian tradition. |
| 1:12.4 | Yes. |
| 1:13.0 | There's a lot of wonderful things to be found here. |
| 1:16.9 | So, yeah, so we're going to be talking about the Arabic erotic literature tradition this time around, which, much like what we did when we were talking about China, |
| 1:30.3 | we're pretty excited to get into all of these really cool stories. |
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