Sex, puns, philology and geekiness. The best of the internet brought to you by Highlyeccentric.

[highlyeccentric]

Whopping great theory post which i must come back and finish reading at some point: Is there heterosexuality in the middle ages?
theory makes my brain hurt.
For what it's worth, my gut instinct is that jumping up and down and fussing around with modern sexual categories ends up with us missing some of the more foreign expressions of sexuality in the middle ages. Eroticism in the 12th century, for example, just isn't about copulation. It's about something else entirely, something which is very hard to grasp. Something which has Baudri of Bourgeuil writing Ovidian verse to everyone from Adela of Blois to the Duke of Normandy to the bishop to the little boys in the choir stall. Or, a little later, there's Hildegaard, who phrasemuffin's teacher tries to tell him is "lesbian for Mary". No. There's something else entirely going on and our framework for interpreting eroticism doesn't fit that at all.

Meanwhile, have an Anglo-Saxonist Pun

Bet you didn't know there was such as thing as feminist philology, did you? Deborah Cameron debunks the Mars & Venus myth. And by the looks of the Times article i just linked you to, she has her head screwed on straight. Whether you want to credit this to the fact that she's a feminist or the fact that she's a philologist, is entirely up to you.

Finally... Cecila is my hero.
I guess I'm not sure if my research is going to make a difference... Is it going to make the world a better place and improve the human condition? Probably not.
Then why do you do it?
Sheer geekiness, unfortunately. I just think this stuff is really cool.

Also, she offers a definition of "geek".

Comments

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Clearly it is a special moment between us.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I'm overwhelmed.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

hehe. i don't know you, goblinpaladin, but i think i agree with you too! haven't read the article you link to there yet highly but the whole 'trying to see if our categories fit the past' thing gets rather tiring after a while... because, as you say, it seems to miss the point...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i think that the article agrees with you/me/goblin. hard to tell, because it's all in Theory Language. plus it's a review, so it's not developing an argument so much as responding to someone else's.
The general drift seems to be that medieval people don't define themselves on a hetero/homo binary; that modern theorists, particularly Queer theorists, have a vested interest in there being Heterosexuality in the middle ages, because they need it to define Queer against; that it is possible to understand medieval sexualities through different binaries, such as active-passive, but that approach is problematic too.
The reviewer thinks whatever it is he's reviewing goes too far in saying there is no "heterosexuality", and medieval sources do define male-female relations as the norm. which sounds pretty true to *me*.

my point, which isn't an opposition so much as a rant, is that when we read medieval poetry particularly and we find erotic language we read that through our modern filter without considering the function of eroticism in the period at all. eroticism in the twelfth century, for example, is not about sex. it's like they're carrying something much BIGGER on the back of all the sex talk.
my other rant, which i haven't put up yet, is the mistaking of homosocial/gynosocial for hom(e)osexual. people keep wanting to look at all the supercharged emotional man-bonding of the heroic age and read that as evidence that homosexuality was widely accepted. which is bollocks, and misses the point entirely. same thing happens to a lesser degree with women in the later middle ages. some thing happens *between* men and women in this weird period in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

so yeah. have a medievalist word dump.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

oooh, heaps interesting! i have looked only briefly at this stuff, being focused on australia and uber-recent history and all that :)

*digesting*

tell me more! give me more links/references! pretty please?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

references... actually, that article was the first thing i'd read in depth on gender/sexuality theory. I tend to avoid theory at all costs.

i'll see what i can do, though :) i was thinking my homosocial rant needed a proper write up at somepoint.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

sure does, that is going to be one mighty awesome rant :D

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure how to put it... every way i phrase it ends up looking like i'm saying that homosexuality isn't important. or that gay people didn't exist. neither of which are true.

but i'll figure something out.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

*wanting to explode with conversation about this but feeling it might be good to wait until you actually write something first*

*and until i get around to reading the whole of that article*

i was really hoping to get into some of this kind of theory with my thesis, but so far i don't seem to be heading down a suitable path. not sure if that'sjust cos it's early stages in terms of writing or whether it's my supervisor's influence or what...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

converse away :) it might help me clarify my thoughts...

i'd be really interested to hear anything you had to say about the In The Middle post. i know the period but i don't get the Theory.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

I always like it when people who don't know me agree with me. It's why I have a LiveJournal.