Going Medieval

On cats

The other night I was mindlessly scrolling about on my phone through Instagram, as one does when they really ought to go to bed but are stuck being entertained instead of resting, when I came upon a video of a cute stripey cat. This ordinarily would not be the sort of thing that you would come to a medieval history blog to read about, I will grant you. However, what seems to have been usually just an account with a cute little cat strayed into my danger zone by claiming that the “Black Plague had a lot to do with cats” and, oh babes, it got worse from there.

On nobility, courtship, moral justification, and sexy tapestries

Last month I had the absolute pleasure of popping over to see friends in Basel to check out Fastnacht, as my lovely Patrons have had to hear about in detail. It was amazing! It was deeply weird! It was a super wonderful thing to be a part of! However, one of the most magical things I came across in Basel was not just the thousands of people playing piccolos or marching around in the dark with lanterns – it was the absolutely overwhelming collection of medieval tapestries that were on display in the Historisches Museum Basel.

On dating advice and men

Of late I have noticed that ever since that one sex trafficker guy got himself arrested there has been a recurrent theme down the old discourse mines: who on the left is talking to young men about relationships?

The answer is of course, friend of the blog BISHUK.com, thanks.

Yet not content with a simple and straightforward answer, the discourse machine moves forward, driven by a bunch of people who have literally never paid attention to who is doing sex and relationships education and therefore think they need to ask a question which has already been answered.

Medieval Women Were a Vital Part of the Workforce. We Can Learn from Them – for Time

Over at Time I have a piece that I wrote about working women in medieval Europe. It covers some of the themes from The Once and Future Sex, and can give you a good idea of what the rest of the book is like.

Do check it out!

Ⓒ Eleanor Janega, 2023

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Want more audio medieval history? Check out my podcast, We’re Not So Different.

My book, The Once And Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society, is out now.

On women who talk, and also write books

My loves, I have been remiss in writing for you because, well, I wrote a book. I don’t know if you have heard this but that is very hard. As a result, I have been doing a lot of work to see it safely out into the world and hopefully into your hands at some point. And lo, it is now out in the States, and will be out in the UK/Aus/NZ in March. The book, in question, is entitled The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society.

On maintaining monarchical succession

Well it’s been an incredibly normal month to live in the United Kingdom. So normal, in fact, that I have mostly been gawping, horrified, as the most normal things possible unfurled about me like some sort of noxious algae bloom. As people queued up over-night in a very normal way, and people holding signs that said “Not My King” were threatened with arrest even more normally, I have been at times equally amazed and disgusted. Overall, however, the entire period has been instructive to me, as someone who works on propaganda and imperialism.

I have read and worked extensively on the measures that dynasties take in order to prove their “right” to rule, as well as the establishing the intended recipient of said right. It turns out that all these same propaganda tactics that Charles IV implemented when he needed to establish the Luxembourg dynasty in fourteenth century Prague were alive and well in THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2022 in London, and boy oh boy did I ever have to learn about it. So now you do. Sucked in.

Podcast alert: medieval abortion on History Hack

I stopped by History Hack to yell a lot about the history of abortion in the medieval period. Have a listen and sharpen up your argumentation skills.

On beer, or, why chicks rock

You will no doubt be unsurprised to learn that last night I went to the pub. There are several reasons for this, chief among them being that in the discomfort of summer, going to the pub is quite the best thing you can do with your time in London. Also, it is the best thing to do with your time when it is cold in the winter. Also, in autumn and spring. Anyway, the point is that conditions have been so miserable here that it has sort of been impossible to do anything except drink beer as a form of recreation, so I have been doing that.

This state of affairs made me think about medieval people, as I do, for a couple of reasons. One, I am very happy that I am not doing manual labour in a field bringing in the hay right now, as is usual for August for the majority of medieval Europeans. I cannot imagine having to do that now that we have 34 degree days for some reason. No thank you. Second, my sitting around enjoying many delicious beers made me think about how chicks rock.

On heteropessimism and maternal expectations

I was at my local pub on Saturday just trying to have a nice time after a bad week. Trying to be hopeful and enjoy my new George Michael homage t-shirt. Things of that nature. While at said local, I got talking to someone else who claimed to also be a regular (lol, FALSE) and we had a nice time discussing NWA and Tupac. But then he started to ask me if I had kids. I said no, and then for half an hour he proceeded to tell me why I should have them, as I repeatedly stated that I have absolutely no interest at all whatsoever in being a parent. Ever. Anyway, I am sensitive to how cultural hegemony works and why people say these types of things, but that guy was on my mind when I made the mistake of logging on and saw two things making the rounds.

On disavowing sexual assault

Content Note: this post discusses the existence of sexual assault. It does not go into any detail, but does talk about it as a sociological and legal construct.

By now you have probably seen that there is a new show set in the Game of Thrones/ASOIAF universe coming up called House of the Dragon. This is OK news if you are me, because I am extremely going to watch that garbage one way or another. This is because of who I am as a person. I am not, however, gonna, like, get my hopes up that it will be good after … the unpleasantness of the ending of GoT. ANYWAY that is not what I am here to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about the statement of one of the showrunners Miguel Sapochnik, who when asked why there was so much sexual assault in the upcoming series was heard to remark that, “You can’t ignore the violence that was perpetrated on women by men in that time”. And man, do I have something to say about this.