history of women – Going Medieval

On women’s anatomy and the power of paying attention

Pretend you are me – the nicest, cutest, sweetest person who deserves a relaxing little Sunday, where she just goofs and maybe reads a ghost book ever. Nice right? Well, I also will have to imagine it as well because unfortunately my Sunday was irrevocably disfigured by the rantings of an idiot on the internet, and I was forced to think about my job. Yes, that’s correct no one has suffered in the way that I do. Thank you for noticing. What can you do to help? Well you are going to have to look at this right here:

You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn

Say you are me (sorry about that) and you are minding your own business online, just trying to survive in a world of unrelenting horror when suddenly you are served an ad. Because of the dark magic of the algorithms and ad service providers, the ads are being tailored to me based on things I have read, or purchased, or allowed my eyes to linger on for a little too long. Maybe it has figured out that I am mates with a bunch of the people who appeared in the Witch podcast. It has certainly gleaned that I am a woman, I tend to read things about history, and am interested in feminist theory more generally.

Hillariously, what that means is I am often served ads for this schlock:

On periods, and the dudes who fear them

So today I had to see what is probably a joke about men’s attitudes towards periods, but which also might be a really stupid take about periods from some man on the internet, and I thought that was as good an excuse as any to talk about conceptions of menstruation in the medieval period. In theory, we have come a long way towards understanding how and why uterus’s bleed. In practice there’s a sad number of guys like this out in the world who just…feel the need to say things like this:

Podcast alert: Medieval sex demons, cold wet women and the plague on Storyteller

Last week, I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Lisa for the Storyteller podcast. Here we discuss sex demons, sex, women, and also exactly what my problem is and why I am like this. Enjoy!

On “alpha” men, sexual contagion, and poorly disguised misogyny

So, this week on Twitter, aka the place that Mufasa would have warned you that you must never go, we met a new dude. I became aware of him because he had some advice to world’s strongest man, and holder of the new world deadlift record Hafþór Björnsson, aka the Mountain, on how to stand next to his wife.

On courtly love and pick up artists

Loves, as an elder millennial, I am cursed to watch my references recede into the past; my memes wither and die; my ability to think of other jokes to put into this sentence dries up imperceptibly, day by day. So it is with my major reference point for explaining the major tropes in courtly love which are still weaponised as romance now – Hotline Bling. The kids are coming up from behind with references that are more relevant than all of the references I know. They don’t care what a child groomer had to say about love and how that connects with twelfth century romance. And you know what? That is fair.

On Jezebel, makeup, and other apocalyptic signs

Friends, today is a great day, for it was with deep pleasure that I found a spicy medieval take on women on the twitter TL. Check out Denise with the big medieval vibes:

On Women and Work

Another week, another chance for the world to be a misogynist hellscape. (Just, endless sighing. Amiright?) One of this week’s horrors has been brought to you by right wing rag extraordinaire and Suzanne Venker, a self-described “feminist fixer” who claims to “Free Women From Feminist Lies So They Can Find Lasting Love With Men” [sic]. Our intrepid anti-feminist in question has a particular mark this week – the millennial woman (Hey boo!), drowning in debt from “piling up” degrees (relatable!) which are “supposed to help them get established for marriage” (less relatable!) and are now sad.

On “the way of carnal lust”, Joan of Leeds, and the difficulty of clerical celibacy

Loves, you may have had the pleasure of being alerted, in the Guardian (which is a SWERF and TERF-ridden rag of a paper, but hey-ho), to the important findings of Professor Sarah Rees Jones and her team at the University of York’s extremely important discovery of the story of Sister Joan of Leeds.

Joan of Leeds, in an OG proof of the fact that you cannot defeat a bad bitch (you just cannot do that), in that in the year of our Lord 1318 got Archbishop William Melton of York’s attention to the point that our boy had to write out a note…

To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house…