foxo_cube's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
3.0
This book was alright, I suppose, but it was trying too hard to be funny and it's a bit obnoxious.
The cover is 10/10 and I think the people and topics that Loehr discusses are important - I'm definitely going to put some of the bibliography on my to-read list - but it's hard to take it seriously. It's not like history (or non-fiction in general) has to be written in a really dry or academic way, don't get me wrong, but it's just a bit... well, too much for me. The most bizarre "funny quip" was "Oh, the older relative! We've all been there. For me, it was a sexy great-aunt." Have we? Have we really all been there? Ending the book with "Right, I need to get laid." was also certainly a decision. Maybe I'm too asexual to understand and this is on me.
It's not a bad overview of the history of wlw, I don't think, and it's good to see something written about the people who are notoriously straight-washed or just ignored. There is a glaring lack of mention of trans lesbians, and a couple of people are included who it seems might not have been too fond of being included in the category of "women". Some acknowledgement of genderqueer, women-adjacent people is there, but generally only those who were AFAB. I don't believe the author is transphobic per se, but there's occasional hints of transphobic bias, if that makes any sense. The book does acknowledge that the terminology we have now is kind of hard to apply retrospectively to people who didn't have the same language with which to self-identify, which is very true, so I'll give it that. Still, I would have thought more gender theory-based stuff would be included in a book about queer women, you know?
I don't feel like this book was a waste of my time, but I don't know how highly I'd recommend it, either. There's some really fascinating pieces of history between the cringe, but I guess your mileage may vary!
The cover is 10/10 and I think the people and topics that Loehr discusses are important - I'm definitely going to put some of the bibliography on my to-read list - but it's hard to take it seriously. It's not like history (or non-fiction in general) has to be written in a really dry or academic way, don't get me wrong, but it's just a bit... well, too much for me. The most bizarre "funny quip" was "Oh, the older relative! We've all been there. For me, it was a sexy great-aunt." Have we? Have we really all been there? Ending the book with "Right, I need to get laid." was also certainly a decision. Maybe I'm too asexual to understand and this is on me.
It's not a bad overview of the history of wlw, I don't think, and it's good to see something written about the people who are notoriously straight-washed or just ignored. There is a glaring lack of mention of trans lesbians, and a couple of people are included who it seems might not have been too fond of being included in the category of "women". Some acknowledgement of genderqueer, women-adjacent people is there, but generally only those who were AFAB. I don't believe the author is transphobic per se, but there's occasional hints of transphobic bias, if that makes any sense. The book does acknowledge that the terminology we have now is kind of hard to apply retrospectively to people who didn't have the same language with which to self-identify, which is very true, so I'll give it that. Still, I would have thought more gender theory-based stuff would be included in a book about queer women, you know?
I don't feel like this book was a waste of my time, but I don't know how highly I'd recommend it, either. There's some really fascinating pieces of history between the cringe, but I guess your mileage may vary!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Lesbophobia, and Homophobia
bronzeageholly's review against another edition
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality, Sexual content, Murder, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Infidelity, Biphobia, Death, Racism, Transphobia, Hate crime, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Misogyny
ramalam98's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
3.0
Lots of mixed feelings about this.
A lot of people in the reviews have spoken against the decision to refer to historical people as their assigned sex at birth (i.e. women) rather than what they may have identified as, calling this transphobic. While I largely agree that in the cases where these people lived life as men this book should have treated them as such, I do also believe that we should be very careful when applying modern gender terms to historical people. I attended an event where the author herself spoke about this, and stated that it was largely a decision imposed upon her by the publisher. She also touched upon the fact that lesbians and trans men have a massive shared history and that the lives of people who would today possibly identify as trans men are still incredibly important to talk about in the context of lesbian history.
That aside, the last third of this book was definitely the strongest part, as the lack of complete historical evidence for lesbians before that section meant that the author has padded out her writing with a lot of sass and sarcasm. I am a lover of sarcasm, but when every other sentence is a ‘witty’ comment, it gets old very quickly. For this reason I found a lot of this quite difficult to get through. Furthermore in several cases I couldn’t work out if the author was stating something that existed or was being sarcastic, as she didn’t actually include direct references to anything.
On to the good stuff though, this was still a great and snappy read and a very accessible starting point for those wishing to learn more about historical lesbians. There was a lot in here that I didn’t know about, a lot to laugh at and a lot of sapphic joy.
A lot of people in the reviews have spoken against the decision to refer to historical people as their assigned sex at birth (i.e. women) rather than what they may have identified as, calling this transphobic. While I largely agree that in the cases where these people lived life as men this book should have treated them as such, I do also believe that we should be very careful when applying modern gender terms to historical people. I attended an event where the author herself spoke about this, and stated that it was largely a decision imposed upon her by the publisher. She also touched upon the fact that lesbians and trans men have a massive shared history and that the lives of people who would today possibly identify as trans men are still incredibly important to talk about in the context of lesbian history.
That aside, the last third of this book was definitely the strongest part, as the lack of complete historical evidence for lesbians before that section meant that the author has padded out her writing with a lot of sass and sarcasm. I am a lover of sarcasm, but when every other sentence is a ‘witty’ comment, it gets old very quickly. For this reason I found a lot of this quite difficult to get through. Furthermore in several cases I couldn’t work out if the author was stating something that existed or was being sarcastic, as she didn’t actually include direct references to anything.
On to the good stuff though, this was still a great and snappy read and a very accessible starting point for those wishing to learn more about historical lesbians. There was a lot in here that I didn’t know about, a lot to laugh at and a lot of sapphic joy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia and Sexual content
Moderate: Death, Racism, and War
Minor: Terminal illness and Suicide
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