medieval philosophy – Going Medieval

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 “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 sexualising the “other”

Friends, we are as ever living in a society that spends a lot of time and energy attempting to uphold what it sees as “normal”. Normality, after all, doesn’t police itself, or even hold up as a concept without strenuous effort from the people invested in it. What we’re thinking about today is that in our society over time if something isn’t “normal” it is probably also sexual. Because sexual stuff is bad and therefore Not Normal and what we in the overthinking stuff game tend to refer to as “other”.

The other can vary from society and society and place to place, but here in Europe and in the areas that Europeans subjugated there is an underlying default, and that is a white straight dude. This was certainly true in medieval Europe, where, as you may have noticed men bossed everyone the fuck around and decided that they were defo the norm.

On QAnon and Systems of Knowledge

Today at Going Medieval HQ we are excited to have a guest blog by kick-ass art historian working on medieval medical visual culture, and the other half of Medieval Dick Twitter, Dr Sara Öberg Strådal. Follow her on Twitter for excellent meme action, updates about growing your own medieval pigment garden, and generally correct opinions.

If you’re blessed enough to not have heard about QAnon. Congratulations. You should leave this post right now and go and do something nice for yourself.

On Sex, Logic, and Being the Subject

This week in the godforsaken wasteland that is Twitter where I hang out for some reason (?), the public has been treated to the absolute gift that is a bunch of dudes insisting that women, in their experience do not like sex. No, they do not see this as linked to their person, and it is as fucking hilarious as you are imagining. WITNESS: