A review by hemlockreads
Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila J. Rupp

1.0

It made me uncomfortable that this book spoke at such length about historical trans men but didn't say anything at all about trans women. It set out so well in the beginning laying out that we're viewing the past through our cultural lens and tracing the evolution of lesbian as a concept, but when part of your evidence is men who lived as such and asserted their identities as men or were only discovered to not be cisgender after they died that seems disingenuous. This book was published in 2009 so I wasn't expecting as nuanced a look at gender as might have been published in a book written today (for example: wasn't really expecting nonbinary lesbians to be discussed), but the emphasis on "biology" and phrases like "social males" along with outdated terms made the last half of this book such a slog to get through.

Besides that everything was just kind of depressing. The author even acknowledges that the primary sources discussed are mostly men who are disdainful at best. Plus "love" seemed to mostly mean sex. As I read this book started to feel more like the history of lesbian fetishes and harmful pathology seasoned with TERF rhetoric.