This chapter focuses on the philosophy, history, and development of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) specifically. The creation of the OED was a monumental project, delivered alphabetically in fascicles (separate installments of a larger work, meant to be bound into a single volume when complete). The fascicles were released beginning in the 1880s and completed in 1928, followed by a supplement in 1933 to catch up with developments in the previous half century.
20th c
The strict scope of this project cuts off at the 20th century, but this tag will occasionally be used when a source spills over.
LHMP entry
This chapter compares the dearth of entries for f/f sexuality in general dictionaries in the 1750-1850 period with the wealth of discussion on those topics in medical dictionaries. The appearance of medical dictionaries as a genre aligned with an explosion of vernacular publishing in the health field in the 16-17th centuries. These were aimed not only at non-specialists, but at health workers outside the academic elite—people who didn’t have access to Latin literature. The publishing establishment operated as gatekeepers in terms of what material got published and how it was presented.
This chapter opens discussing how dictionaries explicitly presented themselves as censoring inappropriate language when aimed at an audience that included women. This sort of comment shows up as early as the later 18th century. Even the nature of what was being censored is censored, with explanations that it is aimed at “inelegant” words, rather than objectionable or obscene ones.
This chapter looks at how words are defined and cited, and the semantic frameworks they’re associated with, using “sodomy” and “buggery” as the working examples. [Note: my summary is going to give undue attention to discussions relevant to women.]
The book begins with an anecdote about the OED updating its entry for “marriage” when the (British) marriage equality act was passed, and how this was framed in the press as participating in a “change of definition”. This is followed by an anecdote from a slander case in 1942, which argued that “lesbian” could not be slanderous, as it was (incorrectly) asserted that the word didn’t exist in English when the relevant law was passed--an argument based on citations in the OED entry for “lesbian”, which was not included in the first edition published in 1908.
Chapter 7- Allen: Sexual Offences Prosecutions in the Late Twentieth Century
[Note: I think I’m succeeding in a briefer, high-level summary for the remaining chapters. These notes may be more random and unconnected.]
[Note: it is actually rather hard to do a very condensed overview of these chapters that are of less interest to the Project. I’m trying to get much more high-level for these last few chapters.]
A 1957 committee considered potential changes to the legal treatment of “vices”. One goal of the changes was to keep activities in this category, such as prostitution and homosexuality, out of public view. Even decriminalization was not intended for the benefit of the accused, but to suppress knowledge of the activities.
By the 1920s, certain sexual offenses between women were criminalized, but not the generic “gross indecency”. “Female husband” disappeared from the record with respect to sexual offenses, but the case of Victor/Valerie Barker signals a new direction of medicalized approaches, combined with anxiety over single women in the wake of World War I and the glimmerings of visibility brought by the obscenity lawsuit over The Well of Loneliness. This was a short-lived visibility ended by a rejection of sexological arguments for acceptance.
In 1921, Parliament debated, but did not pass, a bill that would have criminalized “gross indecency between female persons” as part of a general male reaction to the new freedoms and social power women were obtaining. There was a belief that if women engaged in lesbianism, they would never again be interested in men.
Derry begins by contradicting the myth that Queen Victoria was the reason there were no laws in England against lesbianism. There are three problems with this myth: no such law was proposed; if it had been, the queen wouldn’t have any power to block it; and such a blockage wouldn’t explain the earlier absence of such laws. But the lack of specific laws doesn’t equal the “benign neglect” suggested by some historians. The main policy against lesbianism was silencing. Laws would recognize lesbianism as “a thing,” whereas silencing was aimed at preventing it from being imaginable.
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