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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you From how stupports

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen

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Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, and today we're finally talking in depth

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Speaker 1: about something that we have mentioned many times on the

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Speaker 1: podcast but never really given a ton of context too,

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Speaker 1: and that is the old school Boston marriage, also known

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Speaker 1: as a Wellesley marriage. Right, I did not know that

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Speaker 1: it was also known as a Wellesley marriage? Is that

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Speaker 1: because so many women from and at Wellesley were cohabitating? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I don't think it was Wellesley specifically, but um,

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Speaker 1: women's colleges in general, we're just rife with ladies coupling

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Speaker 1: up with each other. Yeah. What I really loved and

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Speaker 1: what I do hope we convey today reading about this

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Speaker 1: topic us how it's such a product of its specific time,

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Speaker 1: at the intersections of people's attitudes about uh sex and

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Speaker 1: relationships and romance, about women's friendships and relationships with each other,

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Speaker 1: and about the whole idea of separate spheres. Because as

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Speaker 1: we'll get into, obviously it's not that women today don't

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Speaker 1: live together in the same way that they did in

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Speaker 1: this era that we're talking about, but the dynamics of

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Speaker 1: a Boston marriage are so particular to the time, and

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Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating. Well, it's particular to the time

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Speaker 1: and also particular to class as well, which we'll get into.

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Speaker 1: But first, for people who have not heard us mentioned

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Speaker 1: Boston marriages many times on stuff, Mom never told you

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Speaker 1: what it is essentially, or was I mean? Although I

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Speaker 1: guess technically Boston marriages can still exist if you're just

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Speaker 1: like cohabitating and uh, you know, with the with the

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Speaker 1: same sex partner, and if you're just really into you know,

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Speaker 1: old terms and yeah, and if you're really into like, um,

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Speaker 1: like reform work, you wear bloomers, and you know you're

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Speaker 1: really into settlement houses and giving fellow women a leg up.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you wear a top hat from time to time,

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Speaker 1: or a monocle and or all of these things. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: settlement houses not to be confused with settlers of Katan,

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Speaker 1: which I guess you could play in a settlement house

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Speaker 1: if yeah, in your Boston marriage in any city that

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Speaker 1: doesn't have to be Boston. Although I just realized we

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Speaker 1: really haven't to find what a Boston marriage is and

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Speaker 1: why um it's referred to as a Boston marriage, Like

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Speaker 1: why not like a St. Louis marriage or a San

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Speaker 1: Francisco marriage. My grandparents had a St. Louis marriage, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't at all like a Boston marriage. So a

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Speaker 1: Boston marriage is best described as relationships between educated, it

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Speaker 1: wealthier white women in Victorian era New England in particular,

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Speaker 1: like New England was a hotbed, it was for Boston marriages.

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Speaker 1: Hence the Boston part um. And of course they weren't

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Speaker 1: legally married, but they were sort of married in every

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Speaker 1: other type of way. They shared finances, obviously, they had

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Speaker 1: personal fondness for each other. They were likely suffragious, but

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Speaker 1: as far as sex goes, they may or may not

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Speaker 1: have been doing it on the regular with their their

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Speaker 1: Boston spouse um. But they also too tended to call

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Speaker 1: each other wife, help meet and husband. Yeah. And Lillian Faderman,

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Speaker 1: who's a an expert on Boston marriages, traces these romantic

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Speaker 1: friendships as they are called, uh, these relationships between women

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Speaker 1: all the way back to the sixteenth century and kind

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Speaker 1: of stemming from there. I mean, you have to to

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Speaker 1: think that before and and we'll get into this too.

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Speaker 1: We're giving you all sorts of hints and spoilers, but

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Speaker 1: before we hit like the nineteen and twentieth century when

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden everyone is afraid of homosexuality. Women's relationships,

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Speaker 1: even the very very intimate ones, were so important, and

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Speaker 1: they were looked at as precious and necessary for a

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Speaker 1: woman's life and development. Um, but the thing is, we

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Speaker 1: haven't heard a lot about these intimate relationships, whether they

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Speaker 1: were sexual or not, because a the Victorian ladies just

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Speaker 1: might not have been talking about sex all that often,

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Speaker 1: whether it was with a man or a woman, certainly not,

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Speaker 1: and or they would have called it something else, something

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Speaker 1: very eu famous, like fluffing your petticoats. Oh, I'm never

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Speaker 1: gonna look at a petticoat the same way because you know,

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Speaker 1: I see them all the time. Well, yes, but there's

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Speaker 1: also the whole like minor thing about how men right

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Speaker 1: history well and not to get off on a total tangent,

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Speaker 1: but also gendered perceptions of friendships where for a long time,

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Speaker 1: male friendship was considered like the pinnacle of human relationship,

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Speaker 1: right the real life buddy comedy. Yeah, like bromances were it,

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Speaker 1: and it was the same during this period, whereas female

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Speaker 1: friendships were just kind of you know, very emotional and

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Speaker 1: essentially just practice for marriage, so essentially like just rehearsal

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Speaker 1: for a relationship with another dude. Right. Well, you also

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Speaker 1: have the aspect of it too, where once attitudes toward uh,

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Speaker 1: same sex relationships of any kind start to shift, particularly

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Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth and early twentie centuries, you do

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Speaker 1: also see um descendants or relatives or editors who are

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Speaker 1: looking at the letters and memoirs of these women that

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Speaker 1: they left behind, and they are editing out mentions of love, affection, sex, whatever, intimacy.

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Speaker 1: Because whereas, like maybe a hundred years before these women's death,

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been a big deal because a lot

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Speaker 1: of women and men too spoke to their the members

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Speaker 1: of their sex at in a very intimate way and

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Speaker 1: it wasn't weird. Once we start to move into that

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Speaker 1: time when people are real squiat out about same sex relationships,

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Speaker 1: you do start to see more and more letters being

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Speaker 1: thrown in the trash. Essentially. You you see that with

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Speaker 1: some of Edna, Saint Vincent Malay's letters. You see that

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Speaker 1: with several other writers, for instance, in history who had

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Speaker 1: these relationships with women and their editors were like, nope, nope, nope, nope,

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Speaker 1: We're covering that up too romantic romantic real it in

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Speaker 1: edna um. So we could say that the heyday of

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Speaker 1: Boston marriages in terms of them being relatively open, like

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Speaker 1: people in these middle and upper classes knew that certain

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Speaker 1: women lived with women. I mean, they were kind of

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Speaker 1: like glorified spinsters and it was okay. Um. And the

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Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of Gender and Society traces the term Boston marriage

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Speaker 1: and the specificity of Boston to Henry James's book The Bostonians,

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Speaker 1: which stars feminist protagonist Olive chancellor Um, who falls in

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Speaker 1: love with a conservative ingenu named Verena tarrant Um, and

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Speaker 1: Olive convinces Verena to move in with her, and she

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Speaker 1: kind of sets about like sort of tutoring her in

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Speaker 1: the ways of suffrage and women's rights, and Verena' is like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is this is so fascinating, And James hints around

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Speaker 1: at you know, obviously a deeper, deeper than friendship level

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Speaker 1: of their relationship. Yeah, And if Henry James's name sounds

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Speaker 1: familiar aside from being a famous writer who's really well

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Speaker 1: known in history, and aside from you know, disguising me

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Speaker 1: at the bar, named both Henry and James, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's probably because you remember us mentioning him in our

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Speaker 1: episode on the Marmorian Flock, which is all of those

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Speaker 1: fabulous sculptresses who lived in Rome in the late nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century in early twentieth century, and he used the term

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Speaker 1: Marmorian flock to basically dismiss them as just like a

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Speaker 1: group of weirdos. Um so I love that, Like he's

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Speaker 1: cropping up again coining terms about groups of women. Well,

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Speaker 1: and soon after The Bostonians comes out. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: interesting that that James was so dismissive of those sculptures

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Speaker 1: is because in real life, this woman named Sarah Orange

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Speaker 1: Jewett publishes The Country of the Pointed Firs in eight

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Speaker 1: six and it was this huge hit, and James was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is a little little fantastic book on it reminds

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Speaker 1: me of all all of in Verena. Because Sarah Orange

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Speaker 1: Jewett and Annie Adams Fields had been Boston married essentially

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Speaker 1: since two and no one, not even old stuffy Henry

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Speaker 1: James batted an eyelash because this is the thing about it.

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Speaker 1: It was presumed that there could not possibly be a

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Speaker 1: sexual element to these relationships because at the time, dudes

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Speaker 1: were like, ladies, ladies, ladies, we don't mind if you

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Speaker 1: Spencers want to live together, because we know that without

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Speaker 1: a penis, you cannot you cannot enjoy any physical pleasure whatsoever.

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Speaker 1: I mean literally, like they really thought that sexual pleasure

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Speaker 1: um between people with two vaginas. How many vaginas do

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Speaker 1: these people have, either for vaginas in a room or

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Speaker 1: two I don't know, um for vaginas walk into a bar,

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Speaker 1: and some Victorian guys are like, I don't, I don't care,

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Speaker 1: so um so because of that, and also, like you said, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: like Victorian women would not be openly talking about sex anyway,

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Speaker 1: so it wasn't seen as that scandalous. And really only

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Speaker 1: until recently with scholars like Lilyan Faderman, who I mean

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Speaker 1: just shout out, shout out, shout out to her because

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Speaker 1: she essentially wrote this episode for us. Um only recently

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Speaker 1: have scholars begun questioning this presumed a sexuality, which blows

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Speaker 1: my mind. I mean, you had and you know, we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about some more of these women in detail here

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Speaker 1: in a second, but you have all of these biographers, men, men,

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Speaker 1: biographers who essentially a sexualized and virginized a lot of

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Speaker 1: these women, especially if they're women important to our country's

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Speaker 1: history in terms of suffrage and women's rights and things

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Speaker 1: like that. It's like, Okay, well, we really want to

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Speaker 1: talk about what contributions this person made to history, but

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Speaker 1: we don't want to talk about whatever that is, because

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Speaker 1: that's like kind of perverted and weird or inverted, as

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Speaker 1: the sexologist would call it. Yeah. Uh, side fact, Catherine

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Speaker 1: Lee Bates, author of America The Beautiful Boston Married, don't

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Speaker 1: hear that in history of don't. But I also want

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Speaker 1: to point out, you know I mentioned earlier about the

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Speaker 1: whole like people after you die, burning your letters and stuff,

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Speaker 1: um Fields as editor Annie Adams Fields as editor next

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Speaker 1: a lot of the intimate information from her letters that

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Speaker 1: that she exchanged with Jewett when she published their correspondence

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Speaker 1: after Jewett's death, because by that time you were starting

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Speaker 1: to see sexologists opinions of same sex relationships creeping into

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Speaker 1: popular culture and creating that kind of like sex and

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Speaker 1: gender panic stuff. So yeah, they're another example of like,

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Speaker 1: don't publish that, it seems weird. But what wasn't weird

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Speaker 1: was the level of intimacy that these women developed with

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Speaker 1: each other during this time. UM. And for this next

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Speaker 1: part we're going to be referencing William Faderman's fabulous book

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Speaker 1: Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, a History of lesbian life

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Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, and Faderman talks about, um what

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Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier in terms of do those quote unquote

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Speaker 1: romantic friendships romance in the sense of being fanciful or eccentric,

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Speaker 1: not necessarily the sexual kind of romance that we think

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Speaker 1: of today. UM, those kinds of romantic friendships between middle

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Speaker 1: and upper class white young women stretch back in documented history,

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Speaker 1: so through letters, mostly because really letters are all we

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Speaker 1: have of women's history. Um. After a certain point, they

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Speaker 1: didn't leave a g cities page, no live journal, nothing, No,

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Speaker 1: not even a UM day. Faderman says that these, you know,

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Speaker 1: evidence of these friendships and quotes stretched back at least

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Speaker 1: of the Renaissance, and again they were perfectly normal because

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Speaker 1: they were considered rehearsal and quotes for being married, and

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Speaker 1: because the separate spheres ideology of the Victorian era was

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Speaker 1: so strong, with men being directed towards cultivating nation building

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Speaker 1: so called muscle values, bros hanging with bros and women

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Speaker 1: being cast as these moral mavens who should develop their

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Speaker 1: heart values. This was totally fine, and if you ended

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Speaker 1: up in a Boston marriage, it was cool to call

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Speaker 1: each other wife or a call you know, one of

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Speaker 1: your partner's husband, whatever, because, as Stephanie Coon's mentioned to

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Speaker 1: NPR pre eighteen sixties, marriage was super chill in the

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Speaker 1: sense that you could just kind of like be like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're married. Now we're just married. You're my helpmeet. Um,

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Speaker 1: we are registered at Great and Bryl, so pick something up.

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Speaker 1: But back then it literally was you would get a

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Speaker 1: crate or a bear apparel and meso it. Hopefully one

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Speaker 1: would be fueled with like salted pork and the other

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Speaker 1: with molasses, hard tech heart tech candy. Um were their

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Speaker 1: Boston marriages and little house in the Prairie. I sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: totally totally um, but yeah, no one, Karen says, like,

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Speaker 1: no one was going to check your paperwork and be like,

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Speaker 1: you're not married. And for a lot of working class

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Speaker 1: women who would be in these arrangements, you would have

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Speaker 1: more literal female husbands who would dress in men's clothes

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Speaker 1: and go out into the work world as as men. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of I mean a lot of these

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Speaker 1: couples weren't so secretive about it. And this is something

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Speaker 1: that we read from literary history professor Sarah Nicolazzo who

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Speaker 1: talked to NPR. One of the women, the female husbands

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Speaker 1: that she cites for instance, is Lucy Ann Lobdell, who

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Speaker 1: she describes as hermit hunter, music teacher, and female husband.

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Speaker 1: And basically, after Lobdell's husband died, she sends their child

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Speaker 1: off to live with her parents and begins living as

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Speaker 1: a man. Years later, at some poor house or settlement

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Speaker 1: house or whatever you know, it is that ra uh,

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Speaker 1: she meets this woman who had been abandoned by her

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Speaker 1: husband and they run off together. But they're like walking

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Speaker 1: around town with Lobdell dressed as a man, and they've

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Speaker 1: got a bear on a leash and like they're living

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Speaker 1: in caves and they keep getting arrested for vagrancy and

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Speaker 1: lobdelands up like dying really sick. Like it's kind of

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Speaker 1: a tragic story, but it is an interesting illustration of

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Speaker 1: how around this time, uh, your neighbors would be like

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Speaker 1: are you hurting anyone? Alright? Dress however you want? Like

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Speaker 1: are you shoving it in my face. Yeah, they didn't

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Speaker 1: want any pd A. Obviously, no one wanted any PDA

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Speaker 1: from anyone at that time. Um and to some extent

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Speaker 1: the day. But yeah, and those like smaller areas, it

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Speaker 1: still wasn't a big deal. And to the point that

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Speaker 1: Nicolazzo mentioned that there was an entire literary and journalistic

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Speaker 1: genre devoted to these so called you know, female husbands,

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Speaker 1: these these couples. At the time, people understandably were pretty

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Speaker 1: fascinated by them. Yeah. I wonder if James Henry James

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Speaker 1: was a part of that. I guess, Oh, with the Bostonians,

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Speaker 1: I guess starked it. That would have to count in

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Speaker 1: terms of the literary genre. Um. But it was really

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Speaker 1: the growth of women's colleges, which then gave way to

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Speaker 1: women's admissions in uh like mixed gender colleges, along with

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Speaker 1: growing professional opportunities for women to you know, like leave

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Speaker 1: the house. Uh. That changed everything. It finally, these colleges

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Speaker 1: finally gave these women a separate space away from their

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Speaker 1: parents to explore their ideas, explore their friendships and their sexuality, um,

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Speaker 1: if they wanted to. Um. And again this is applying

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Speaker 1: to women coming from families who could afford to send

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Speaker 1: them to college. But nonetheless, that's that's where it really

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Speaker 1: all sprang from. Yeah, because for the first time you

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Speaker 1: had women who didn't have to measure themselves against men,

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Speaker 1: or who didn't have to focus on, Okay, I've got

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Speaker 1: to prepare myself to be a wife to a man.

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Speaker 1: Um And also you have to take into account to

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Speaker 1: that a lot of women, it kind of went both ways.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of women were like, oh, good, I

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Speaker 1: get to go to school and get educated and get

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Speaker 1: a job, so I don't have to marry. Um. But

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Speaker 1: a lot of people too were like, I just I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I can do both. How can I

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Speaker 1: pursue my progressive era causes to uplift society? Um, if

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Speaker 1: I'm married to a dude, I don't have time to

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Speaker 1: be a mom and a wife and keep house and

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Speaker 1: and so today, you know, we have all these discussions

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Speaker 1: about women having it all and having the career and

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Speaker 1: the husband and the kids and all this stuff. Um,

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Speaker 1: but back then it was like not thinkable to do both. Well,

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Speaker 1: we should mention too that not all women's colleges were

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Speaker 1: gung ho about eight is going out into the world afterwards.

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Speaker 1: Some of them were pretty much finishing schools. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: like seminaries. Seminaries will and also just like you know,

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Speaker 1: schools that would teach you a few things, extra things

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Speaker 1: so that you would make for a more interesting hostess, right,

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Speaker 1: like balancing books on your head for your book balancing

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Speaker 1: head parties. Yeah, I go to those all the time.

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Speaker 1: And pronouncing words correctly, and and wrestling your petticoats. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't teach that. That's dirty. Okay. Well, so

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Speaker 1: the first woman's college, and we did talk about this

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Speaker 1: a way long ago back in our women's college episode,

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Speaker 1: but the first women's college in this country was Mount Holyoke,

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Speaker 1: which opened in eighteen thirty seven, And by eighteen eighty

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Speaker 1: you had forty thousand women in college in this country

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Speaker 1: with more than one hundred and fifty institutions open to them.

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Speaker 1: And so it's interesting to note that Smith College is

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four graduating class. Fifty four percent of those

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Speaker 1: women never married because of the things we talked about,

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Speaker 1: whether you you couldn't have it all, you couldn't do both,

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Speaker 1: or you didn't want to marry a dude. Yeah, um,

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Speaker 1: And also just the mere phrase have it having it

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Speaker 1: all just um like sets my jaw for sure, exactly. Well.

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Speaker 1: I mean a lot of these women wrote about how

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Speaker 1: there is no way that I can would or want

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Speaker 1: to sit at home being a wife or stoking the

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Speaker 1: hearth when I can be out changing the freaking world. Well,

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Speaker 1: and after you have that taste of freedom to some

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Speaker 1: degree in college, UM, I can imagine it would be

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Speaker 1: hard to consider going back to such a domestic life. Um.

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Speaker 1: So we should talk about campus life though, because y'all

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Speaker 1: this was the height of lady crushing. Seriously so, students

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Speaker 1: at women's colleges in particular tended to form these intense

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Speaker 1: roll crushes on each other, which and that's not news.

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Speaker 1: Girl crushes still happens. Um, I still get lady crushes

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Speaker 1: through this day, and I hope it never stops, to

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Speaker 1: be honest, Caroline. Um. But they had an entire language

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Speaker 1: for them, calling them either crushes you know as we

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Speaker 1: call them today, or spoons or smashes. Do you really

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Speaker 1: really really liked a girl? I wanted to hang out

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Speaker 1: with her? You were smashing on her? And they would

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Speaker 1: write these effusive mash notes to the objects of their

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Speaker 1: girl crush affection. Hence the nickname a Wellesley marriage. I'm

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Speaker 1: assuming mash notes were not the kind of game of

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Speaker 1: mash that I played in like eighth grade English class

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Speaker 1: or home room, where you like, you're like, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: live in the swamp with a Mercedes with Billy and

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be rich. I hope that they were those

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Speaker 1: mash notes because it would be like, all right, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna settle down with edith Um. We will have one horse,

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Speaker 1: three crates and barrels and no children. Were totally fine

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Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, but you know, these girls might also

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Speaker 1: be smashing on a lady professor who was likely herself

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Speaker 1: living in a Boston marriage. I mean, you had a

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Speaker 1: lot of these cohabitating professors who essentially served as a

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Speaker 1: type of relationship role model, because you gotta see it

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Speaker 1: to be it right. And that applies to jobs, but

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Speaker 1: it also applies to relationships, especially to these women who

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Speaker 1: are getting that first taste of freedom and independence and

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Speaker 1: looking at these really brilliant women who are role models

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Speaker 1: in so many ways anyway, in terms of academics and profession.

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Speaker 1: But you're like, oh, I guess there's another avenue open

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Speaker 1: to me, and they would pursue their smashes or spoons

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Speaker 1: in a very date like kind of way. So Yale

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Speaker 1: Newspaper in sev e reported on when a Vassar girl

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Speaker 1: takes a shine to another, she straightaway enters upon a

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Speaker 1: regular course of bouquet sendings, interspersed with tinted notes, mysterious

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Speaker 1: packages of Ridley's mixed candies, locks of hair perhaps, and

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Speaker 1: many other tender tokens, until at last the object of

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Speaker 1: her attentions is captured, the two women become inseparable, and

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Speaker 1: the aggressor is considered by her circle of acquaintances as

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Speaker 1: smashed and listeners. I would just like to note that

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Speaker 1: I have left some old Werther's originals and hairballs on

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Speaker 1: Caroline's desk, and not a tinted note have I received. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I've left you some some chocolates. You have loved me

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Speaker 1: some notes and chocolates. It's true you have been a

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Speaker 1: much better smashing than me. I gotta step up my

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Speaker 1: smash game. Um well, is this right? A one article

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Speaker 1: in Cosmopolitans? Did it exist? It existed in nine Cosmopolitan magazine,

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Speaker 1: of course, Where else did ladies find out how to

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Speaker 1: reffle their petticoat? I'm not I'm not gonna let that go. Um,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, this article in nineteen o one describe these

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Speaker 1: romantic all girl dances at places like Vassar and Smith

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Speaker 1: that involved those same courtship rituals with flowers, taking your

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Speaker 1: date to dinner, escorting a date home, and you know,

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Speaker 1: they would write about how these girls they would develop

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Speaker 1: these like super serious lady crushes and be pining away

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Speaker 1: for each other. They wrote about one girl who like

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Speaker 1: went to bed crying because Susan didn't end up being

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Speaker 1: able to go to the dance with her, sus always

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Speaker 1: being a heartbreaker. But which which was it a yearbook?

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Speaker 1: Once we start to see the sexologists fear of same

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Speaker 1: sex relationships trickling down into society and suspicion of women's

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Speaker 1: intimate relationships kind of percolating, there was some I want

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Speaker 1: to say it was a yearbook or something like the

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Speaker 1: Yale newspaper or where they wrote about these smashes and

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Speaker 1: crushes and spoons. But they did it very winking wink wink,

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Speaker 1: nudge nudge, And they were writing about like, oh no,

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Speaker 1: our incredibly pure friendships between like Gurdie and Edith, Like no,

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Speaker 1: Gertie wasn't crying about like having her heartbroken. She simply

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Speaker 1: was just sad that Edith failed her test, you know,

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Speaker 1: very like wink wink, nudge, nudge. Know, some of these

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Speaker 1: women are having sex, you know, like because college students

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Speaker 1: forever and ever aren't idiots, and especially when the grown

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Speaker 1: ups try to you know, project their fear onto them.

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Speaker 1: And so I love the little bit of snark that

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Speaker 1: you see happening once the fears of women being close

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Speaker 1: start to enter into the popular discussion. But the thing

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Speaker 1: that stood out to me so much in reading about

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Speaker 1: women's motivations, for aside from just sexual attraction and just

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Speaker 1: legit loving another women in a very deep and poetic

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Speaker 1: kind of way, um, aside from those kinds of factors,

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Speaker 1: there's also this element of economic independence which was so

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Speaker 1: crucial to these even working because economic independence equaled relationship independence,

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Speaker 1: and this was just revolutionary for the time for women

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Speaker 1: because that relationship independence and not needing a dude to

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Speaker 1: get by and to subsist meant that you could actually

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Speaker 1: forge legitimately egalitarian relationship and that, it seems like, is

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Speaker 1: what so many of these women cherished so much about

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Speaker 1: their relationships. Right, like you said, even if it was

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Speaker 1: not sexual, even if it was not romantic or or

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Speaker 1: the way that two people being married today is viewed,

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Speaker 1: even if it really was just two women who were

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Speaker 1: dedicated or committed to one another in any sort of way. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're right, that opportunity to live your life the way

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Speaker 1: you wanted to is is intoxicating for a lot of

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Speaker 1: these women. I mean, as long as you were white

401
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Speaker 1: and upper class, you could get away with it well.

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Speaker 1: And again, you know, you did have some working class couples, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, same sex couples who were living together. But

404
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 1: survival for them often meant one publicly and sometimes privately

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Speaker 1: to um, presenting as a man in order to go

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Speaker 1: out and make a dude's higher wage, because yes, the

407
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Speaker 1: gender wage gap existed even back then. UM. But in

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Speaker 1: terms of the professional opportunities for these college educated women,

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Speaker 1: a lot of times they would go on to be professors, UM,

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Speaker 1: sometimes of doctors, social reformers absolutely, UM, artists and organizers.

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Speaker 1: I mean a lot of them were very much activists,

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Speaker 1: which is not surprising because I mean, to even get

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Speaker 1: to a point of being in a Boston marriage, it

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Speaker 1: seems like you would have to be at least the

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Speaker 1: tad progressive. That's your height. And I mean, these these

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Speaker 1: opportunities wouldn't necessarily have been opened, these professional opportunities wouldn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily have been open to them if they had gone

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Speaker 1: the traditional route of getting married to a dude. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because a lot of times what being a wife is

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Speaker 1: its own job. Well, and for the longest time into

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, once a woman married and or had children,

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Speaker 1: it was like, okay, well, now we're gonna ask you

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Speaker 1: to leave. It wasn't until the nineteen fifties that teachers

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Speaker 1: um finally won the right, like across across the land,

425
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: um won the right to keep teaching after they were married, right,

426
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: because it was almost that benevolent sex is something of like, oh, well, no,

427
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: you're married. Now you need to be at home cooking,

428
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: So like, get out of here, we're not going to

429
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: hire you anymore. Can't make a baby. Um. But one

430
00:27:55,560 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: thing that the literary history professor Sarah Nicolazo emphasized to

431
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: NPR and talking about uh these quote unquote female husbands

432
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: and gender fluidity back in that day, was that it's

433
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 1: important to remember how gender identity really ranged. I mean,

434
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: not everyone at the time, not everyone in these relationships

435
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: equated anatomy with gender um, which again pretty progressive for

436
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:27,639
Speaker 1: the time. UM. Also, so called female husbands were a

437
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 1: way of adhering to social convention. UM. So that was

438
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: kind of their way of fitting in, especially if you

439
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: were working class or in a more professional field. And

440
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: some wives really considered their husbands to be men, you know,

441
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like they were just playing dress up. Yes, exactly.

442
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: And I love I love that you see these attitudes

443
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: proliferating in this period because it seems like, oh my god,

444
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 1: what would have happened if we had just continued along

445
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: that track having these I mean, obviously life is a

446
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 1: lot better for a lot of us for so many reasons.

447
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: We probably would have had a female president by now.

448
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 1: I'll say that. I mean, we can vote now, so

449
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: that's cool. Uh. Yeah, women were even voting at this point,

450
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: and that wild. Oh my gosh, I know they were

451
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: ruffling your petticotes, but they were not voting. UM. But no,

452
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: I mean, I I it's kind of crazy to imagine

453
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: what might have happened had we stayed on that more.

454
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: I don't even want to say progressive, because it wasn't

455
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: necessarily progressive for them to think of gender in this way.

456
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: It was just the status quo of like, I'm viewing

457
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: gender and relationships and presentation in this way. Um. But

458
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: if it weren't for the freaking sexologists, Yeah, I mean,

459
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 1: because it's not even the thing of like, of same

460
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: sex relationships, but rather the self sufficiency that they enjoyed

461
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 1: for the very first time. Um, but what about the sex, Caroline.

462
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: Everyone's probably wondering, Well, I don't know if everyone's wondering this,

463
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: but we've got to talk about sex. Because, like we said,

464
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 1: despite the erotic language in many of these women's letters

465
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:10,960
Speaker 1: to each other at the time, they were presumed on

466
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: sexual Hence Victorian folks being like, yeah, it's cool, it's cool,

467
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: it's cool, you're precious. Yeah, well, will come to your soul. Um.

468
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: And of course there was no quantifiable evidence about how

469
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: often these relationships were physically sexual. But it's like, does

470
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:33,720
Speaker 1: it really matter? I mean, sex at this point is

471
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: so besides the point. Yeah, exactly, I mean, you do

472
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: have evidence. There were people like and I did not

473
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: even realize this about Emma Goldman, the famous anarchists, like

474
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: she and her lover exchanged because I don't think they

475
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: were living together question mark, or maybe they were for

476
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: a time, but she and her lover are exchanged these

477
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 1: super racy, like romance novel level letters about your body this,

478
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 1: and your juice is that? And like whoa getting hot

479
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:04,280
Speaker 1: under the collar, like totally wrestling those petty kids, just

480
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: like you know, before you can have phone sex. You

481
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: had before there was yeah, before there was sexting, there

482
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: was lettering. Yeah, I have no idea, I need an

483
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: I stayed up all night lettering. I need a new

484
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: well I mean, and yeah, you see it too with

485
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: um Marmorian flock head honcho Harriet Hosmer and Louisa Lady

486
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 1: Ashburton her hubby as she called her or Hosmer was

487
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: the hubby uh, Lady Ashburton was misposa uh, And they

488
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: would write these impassioned letters like dripping with lust and

489
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 1: talking about I want to be in your arms and

490
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. But you're right, like it almost

491
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 1: doesn't matter in the same way that like it doesn't

492
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: matter if the couple you see walking down the street

493
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: is truly having sex at home. It's more like these

494
00:31:57,040 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: two people have found each other there have found a

495
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: relationship dynamic that works and that allows them to be

496
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 1: their best selves, hopefully, one would hope. Um. And yeah,

497
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,800
Speaker 1: and you have the context of those Victorian gimes where yeah,

498
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 1: you don't have people really talking about sex openly anyway,

499
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: so we don't really know well, and I like that

500
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: that's the case because it definitely challenges our just heteronormative

501
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:31,560
Speaker 1: notion of sex equaling penis and vagina, and also the

502
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 1: idea of sex being central to romance because obviously these

503
00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 1: women had romance for days, romance for days. So you

504
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: wanted to highlight a few famous Boston marriages, um, just

505
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: to give you a sense of the kinds of ladies

506
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 1: who were in these relationships, although we should note that

507
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 1: this is certainly not all of the women. Um. And

508
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: we want to start off in Wales. Yeah, so some

509
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: of the o g Boston marriage ladies were referred to

510
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: as the ladies of Shlan Goshlin, which Welsh people You're

511
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: welcome to correct me, but I did google how to

512
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: pronounce that these women, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby

513
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: were shocking up around the turn of the eighteenth century,

514
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:25,000
Speaker 1: so this was not in the Victorian eraw these were

515
00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: totally different petticoats that were being rustled. Um. And they

516
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: referred to each other as my beloved might be my

517
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 1: better half. I love it because why wouldn't you. I mean,

518
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: there's nothing weird about this. Because they're in a relationship.

519
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't they have adorable nicknames for each other, which

520
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:43,959
Speaker 1: totally harkins to our episode on couple Speakers. Yes, that's right,

521
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 1: you you develop your own language to foster intimacy. Um.

522
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: They were referred to, quote as the two most celebrated

523
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: virgins in Europe, and I have all the winks and

524
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 1: nudges to give with that. Like you said, they were

525
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: often you know, women in these relationships were often virginized,

526
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: and the way people talked about so it could be appropriate. Um.

527
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 1: But we have to mention how they got together because

528
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 1: it was epic. So what happened was Eleanor was thirty

529
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: nine years old and obviously she did not want to

530
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 1: marry a dude, and so her family was threatening to

531
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: send her off to a nunnery. And which goes to

532
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: show like how few rights women had, especially in the

533
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 1: term of the eighteenth century, because it was like, hey,

534
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 1: you're almost forty, but we are going to send you

535
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 1: somewhere because we can do that because you're just property. Um. Meanwhile,

536
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:37,799
Speaker 1: Sarah Ponsonby was twenty three and she was on the

537
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: verge of having to be married off to a scumbag

538
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: dude she didn't like. So they were like, listen, we

539
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: are in live with each other and we have to alop.

540
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: We gotta run away together. So Runaway Attempt number one.

541
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:55,879
Speaker 1: They dressed as men packing a pistol and Um had

542
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,799
Speaker 1: Sarah's dog Frisk along with them, and they rode through

543
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,160
Speaker 1: the night to catch a fairy. But the fairy was

544
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: delayed and so they were forced to hide in a

545
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:09,760
Speaker 1: barn and then they were caught and taken home. Runaway

546
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: Attempt number two. Eleanor escapes and I love this. She

547
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:20,399
Speaker 1: goes straight to Sarah's house hides in her closet. That's

548
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 1: like such a fourteen year old, Like, I know, I know.

549
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 1: She hides in her closet for a while until again

550
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: Eleanor's found out. I mean, these women were not very

551
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,839
Speaker 1: good at hiding. I'll say that, Yeah, it doesn't sound

552
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 1: like UM. And by this point their parents just like

553
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 1: threw up their hands and we're like, you know what,

554
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 1: we don't want anything to do with you too. Just

555
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,000
Speaker 1: stop running away, just be gone from our site. And

556
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:49,359
Speaker 1: so they were like, we will do that. So they

557
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: high tail it with I think Sarah's made no word

558
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:55,839
Speaker 1: on Frisk the dog. I really hope, I really hope

559
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:58,720
Speaker 1: that Frisk made it out to Um and they finally

560
00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: settled down in this cottage in gorgeous Welsh country side.

561
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 1: I know that because I Google imaged it and now

562
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,240
Speaker 1: I want to go to Wales. Yeah. Well, they're maid

563
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: who was named Mary a k A something like Molly

564
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: the Bruiser or something like that. I mean, no kidding,

565
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,840
Speaker 1: Like everybody considered her to be this really harsh Irish woman,

566
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: but she and these two women have this great love

567
00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: and respect and care for each other, and the three

568
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: of them are buried together on this estate. Oh man, Yeah,

569
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 1: but Eleanor and Sarah we're totally Boston married in Wales.

570
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: I mean they shared a bed, they cut their hair shore,

571
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 1: they habitually were riding habits with mannished beaver hats. And

572
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: you want to talk about googling something I was picturing

573
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: like uh, Davy Crockett, like raccoon cap No, no, no,

574
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,880
Speaker 1: beaver hats are top hats, but they're like super shiny

575
00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 1: and slit because they've got fur. Oh my god. So

576
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:59,959
Speaker 1: these women were like, I'm just like picture that too,

577
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 1: even short hair riding outfits and top hat and a

578
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:09,359
Speaker 1: fur top hat like Jamaric wif style. Hopefully not that

579
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:13,959
Speaker 1: pickup artist e looking. Uh. They were way more slick. Yeah,

580
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 1: and um there more masculine fashion sense was no big

581
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 1: deal because they were like, listen, we're spending all of

582
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:25,319
Speaker 1: our money on books and cottage upkeep, and we don't

583
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 1: really care to spend money on clothes, which is like

584
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: Lamor and Sarah y'all do. Y'all love it. So our

585
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: next couple is fascinating because they were known in literature

586
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:41,720
Speaker 1: at the time as one person, one man, Michael Field,

587
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: but in fact they were Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. Yes,

588
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 1: but fun fact, they did wear a giant overcoat. One

589
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: of them would sit on the other shoulders, and they

590
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: would walk around with glasses and a mustache, Muppet style.

591
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 1: That's where the Muppets actually got that joke. Um. But yeah.

592
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: During the nine these the two as Michael Field, wrote

593
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:06,359
Speaker 1: twenty five plays and eight books of poetry and one

594
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: of their lines is my love and I took hands

595
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 1: and swore against the world to be poets and lovers evermore,

596
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,880
Speaker 1: Katie and Edith Hello, Well, we also have to mention

597
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 1: famed social reformer Jane Adams Um, who I'm pretty sure

598
00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:27,239
Speaker 1: Stuffy missed in history class, has done a bio episode

599
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,239
Speaker 1: on which you should go and listen to. Um. She

600
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: and Mary Rosett Smith were in Boston marriage for forty years.

601
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 1: But before that, Jane adams Is first love was her

602
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,759
Speaker 1: college bestie. There's college again, her college bestie, Ellen Star.

603
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 1: But um, they kind of parted ways and you see

604
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: Ellen disappeared. Ellen's letters start to fade out after Jane

605
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:57,879
Speaker 1: meets Mary, who was this philanthropist who for forty years

606
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: was her so called devoted companion, who would travel with her,

607
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: they would share a bed. They later bought a house together,

608
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:08,320
Speaker 1: and there's just really sweet letter from Jane to Mary

609
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 1: saying how excited she is to have their house and

610
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 1: to be able to say the phrase our house, and um,

611
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:17,960
Speaker 1: what all of the stuff of that means to her. Well,

612
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: Jane even wrote Mary a poem describing the first time

613
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: she saw her and how like basically it was basically saying,

614
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:27,839
Speaker 1: you know, my head was so wrapped up in all

615
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,080
Speaker 1: of my work that I barely noticed love right in

616
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 1: front of me, and it's it's just real sweet. And

617
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: but here's another example, because I uh did not know

618
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:41,040
Speaker 1: that Jane Adams was in a Boston marriage, and I mean,

619
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 1: that's my failing, But it also goes to show the

620
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: extent of that de sexualization and virginization, so to speak,

621
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 1: of these important women in history, because you did have

622
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: all of these male biographers of Jane Adams, like in

623
00:39:56,160 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 1: the sixties writing about her and specifically leaving that out,

624
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,320
Speaker 1: and they interviewed women who were still alive in the sixties,

625
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 1: who were in their nineties, who had been around Jane Adams,

626
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,320
Speaker 1: had been around Whole House in Chicago, and they asked

627
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:14,760
Speaker 1: they kind of kind of tried to ask basically dance

628
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: around that question without saying those words. And one of

629
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 1: the women that was interviewed for one of the Jane

630
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: Adams biographies was basically like, it's funny that you're asking

631
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 1: because it shows the generation gap between us, because she

632
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:32,959
Speaker 1: was essentially saying like, no sex ever happened between women

633
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,439
Speaker 1: at the Whole House, which of course that's glossing over

634
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,960
Speaker 1: some stuff too. But I think it does speak to

635
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: the different attitudes of Jane Adams's era, where it's like, Yeah,

636
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,160
Speaker 1: women can be devoted to each other and lived together

637
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:48,719
Speaker 1: and that's fine. It doesn't have to be like a

638
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:53,239
Speaker 1: secret thing. Well, and I guess it's the you know,

639
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:56,400
Speaker 1: pros and cons on both sides of that, because you

640
00:40:56,440 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: have like the de sexualization happening when it was hush hush,

641
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:01,719
Speaker 1: but in on the flip side of it, you have

642
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:06,400
Speaker 1: people being to find through their sexual orientation, you know

643
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yeah again, And but that goes back

644
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: to our conversation before the break about how these ideas

645
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:17,360
Speaker 1: about gender and these relationships were quote unquote progressive, Like

646
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: for us, they would be considered progressive because how great

647
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: would the world be? And maybe this is just me

648
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: that reading about Boston marriages, I just kept thinking how

649
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: great the world would be if we just went back

650
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: to not caring. I don't care who you want to

651
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: have sex with. I don't care who you want to marry,

652
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:37,799
Speaker 1: like what gender you are, what your sexual orientation is,

653
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 1: Like a god, that would be so much more convenient

654
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: for everyone. We just didn't care. You do you frisk

655
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 1: the dog. You do you you do you frisk? Well.

656
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:51,600
Speaker 1: Then finally we have literary superstar Gertrude Stein, whose relationship

657
00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: with Alice b. Toglis was no secret. I mean, they

658
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:59,080
Speaker 1: were basically the Brad Jelena of ex pat Boston marriages,

659
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: but all so an example of highly gendered roles even

660
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 1: within these you know, more progressive relationships, because Alice was

661
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: dedicated to kind of all things domestic, whereas Gertruds Done

662
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:16,399
Speaker 1: was the public figure. She would go out, she would

663
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:19,800
Speaker 1: hang with, you know, Hemingway and other smarty pants of

664
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,879
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, and I think their relationship is such

665
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: an interesting example that goes against what we've talked about

666
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 1: in terms of egalitarian division of household labor when it

667
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 1: comes to same sex relationships. But it also speaks to

668
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 1: what we've heard time and time again from professional women

669
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: you know, straight, gay, bye whatever, who say, yeah, this

670
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 1: would all be easier if I had a housewife, you know,

671
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:46,000
Speaker 1: that that joking assumption that like, yeah, if I had

672
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: someone at home who could take care of the house,

673
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: you know, that would free me up quite a bit

674
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:55,320
Speaker 1: more too. But everybody we've basically talked about, no literally

675
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 1: everyone we've talked about so far has been white and

676
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 1: and middle to upper class so far. Yeah, because again,

677
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:07,399
Speaker 1: these arrangements were often products of class, because in order

678
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 1: to live openly in the same sex relationship at the time,

679
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: you would need that social standing and wealth already there

680
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:16,720
Speaker 1: to kind of weather the fact that you were really

681
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: transgressing these gender roles. UM. So because we realized, like,

682
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:24,000
Speaker 1: wait a second, we don't want to just like talk

683
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:26,920
Speaker 1: about white women because it would be foolish to assume

684
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: that only white women were lesbians in the nineteenth century,

685
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: in early twentieth century, because of course there were women

686
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 1: of color in same sex relationships to UM, and documentation

687
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 1: of that in the US at least goes back to

688
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties. I mean in that alone, I mean

689
00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 1: you have with Willian Faderman saying that we have records

690
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:51,359
Speaker 1: of essentially white ladies letters going back to the Renaissance,

691
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: but records of women of color same sex relationships UM

692
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 1: are so limited because of things like slavery. Mean, and

693
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,840
Speaker 1: it's all about who's writing the history. It's not just dudes,

694
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: it's white dudes, and whose stories are considered worth telling

695
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:11,320
Speaker 1: and saving, and who even had the means to write

696
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:14,720
Speaker 1: things down and preserve them. Yeah, but you do see

697
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:19,879
Speaker 1: these communities flourishing, especially during the nineteen twenties Harlem Renaissance

698
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: um for the same reason that we see Boston marriages

699
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: emerging between upper class white ladies in the Northeast around

700
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 1: the same time. It's that idea of economic autonomy and

701
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: having those safe spaces for socializing. And so you do

702
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: see like what was the bar called I think it

703
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: was Mona's where the tagline was where girls will be

704
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:45,399
Speaker 1: boys instead of boys will be boys. And I think

705
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: it was cited in this Collector's Weekly article by Lisa

706
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:54,360
Speaker 1: Hicks that we read as the first lesbian bar in

707
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:58,879
Speaker 1: the US, right, and where um, black lesbians and gay

708
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:02,440
Speaker 1: men would go other because they knew it was a

709
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: safer space. And it got so famous to the point

710
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: where white tourists from New York but also from out

711
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: of town would go to check it out. And and

712
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 1: that essentially influenced some of the culture. And I mean

713
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 1: this speaks to a larger cultural movement at the time.

714
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 1: But you do see like flappers, basically like white flappers

715
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: influenced by this open culture that existed in these neighborhoods

716
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: in New York. Um and case in point, within the

717
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 1: Harlem Renaissance, you have the blues scene which was especially

718
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: welcoming for lesbians like Gertrude Ma Rainey, who if you

719
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: have seen the HBO biopic Bessie starring Queen Latifa as

720
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 1: Bessie Smith, Um, Gertrude Ma Rainey was played by Monique Um.

721
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,879
Speaker 1: And also you have at the time Bessie Smith and

722
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 1: a blue singer who isn't as well known named Gladys Bentley,

723
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: who was one of the only out lesbian performers at

724
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: the time. Because even though yes, there were safe spaces

725
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:10,719
Speaker 1: within the blues and some of their songs would I

726
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 1: mean directly address the fact that you know, they would

727
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:17,799
Speaker 1: court women. Um, especially as we move further into the

728
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 1: twentieth century, a lot of lesbian entertainers would have to

729
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: remain closeted. Well, it wasn't was it Gladys Bentley who

730
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:29,799
Speaker 1: wore the suits and tuxedos. Well, you have Marini who

731
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:33,439
Speaker 1: would wear um, a fetching white tuxedo, and I think

732
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 1: Gladys Bentley would wear you know, suit and tie as well. Yeah,

733
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 1: but it was places like Mona's where a lot of

734
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:44,879
Speaker 1: these women, not all of them and not many of them,

735
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: but some of them didn't have to remain closeted. You've

736
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: got stories of women on stage who would be very

737
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 1: open and acting almost like like a lude dude on stage,

738
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: hollering at the women from on stage who were in

739
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 1: the odd ends. Um. And then you've got Bessie Smith

740
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:05,480
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirties the boy in the Boat singing. When

741
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: you see two women walking hand in hand, just look

742
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: them over and try to understand they'll go to those

743
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:13,399
Speaker 1: parties have the lights down low, only those parties where

744
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:17,200
Speaker 1: women can go Hint, hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink wink.

745
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 1: Oh man. And if you haven't seen that Bessie biopic,

746
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,600
Speaker 1: watch it. It's fantastic. Queen Latifa is well a queen

747
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 1: and um. But the thing is that lesbian relationships would

748
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: not have been acceptable in Black Christian communities at large,

749
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: outside of these blues clubs, outside of these um subcultures

750
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: at the time, especially for aspiring post Victorian middle class

751
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 1: Black Americans who are all about you know, the quote

752
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 1: unquote respectability politics right exactly. The whole progressive era ideas

753
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:59,360
Speaker 1: of racial uplift of act totally respectable and dressed totally

754
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,960
Speaker 1: respectably all times so that we can eventually earn those

755
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:05,279
Speaker 1: rights that we deserve. That kind of stuff. So, yes,

756
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: not everybody was down with open relationships in terms of sexuality.

757
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 1: But for a long time in the Victorian and the

758
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: early progressive eras, people were pretty chill about Boston marriages,

759
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: specifically of those upper class you know, white women who

760
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:25,800
Speaker 1: would have been living together. So what happened? Who ruined

761
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: at Caroline? Who always ruins it? Freud? Freud? Yeah, and

762
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 1: the rise in uh, psychoanalysis and sexology and these theories

763
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:44,720
Speaker 1: about perversion and inversion, and even Freud was like, oh, sure,

764
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: we all go through an anal retentive phase, but if

765
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,240
Speaker 1: you don't grow out of it, you know, if something's

766
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 1: roll wrong with you. And and suddenly you see this

767
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 1: like cultural scramble where everybody is trying to distance themselves like, oh, no, no, no,

768
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:02,880
Speaker 1: I'm not that, I'm not inverted, I'm not perverted. I'm

769
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,760
Speaker 1: I'm totally fine. I'm so masculine or I'm so feminine.

770
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: I'm going to get married to a person of the

771
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 1: opposite sex and it's going to be fine stopped looking

772
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:14,239
Speaker 1: at me. Meanwhile, lesbian love was being cast in you know,

773
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:17,879
Speaker 1: mainstream media as morbid and disease, and you would have

774
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 1: um these like fearmongering columns warning parents to make sure

775
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 1: that their daughters weren't hanging out with girlfriends for too

776
00:49:25,239 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 1: long or else I was going to ruin them from marriage.

777
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 1: And speaking of marriage, around this time too, you have

778
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:36,160
Speaker 1: the rise of companion at marriage as the new ideal.

779
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 1: Finally we reach a point where husbands and wives are

780
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:45,319
Speaker 1: expected to be friends with each other essentially. Yeah, the

781
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:47,799
Speaker 1: idea of marrying your soul mate, rather than it just

782
00:49:47,840 --> 00:49:53,839
Speaker 1: being like a transaction essentially between your father and your husband. Um.

783
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 1: And so, with with this idea and with sort of

784
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:03,799
Speaker 1: the event shual dismantling of separate spheres, it's not as

785
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:08,400
Speaker 1: taboo for men and women to be friends, to express

786
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,600
Speaker 1: public displays of affection toward one another, and so you

787
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:19,080
Speaker 1: have fewer opportunities, but also fewer like socially acceptable opportunities

788
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 1: for women to develop those close, intimate, separate sphere type relationships.

789
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:26,279
Speaker 1: And so suddenly there's not as much of a of

790
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:29,879
Speaker 1: a cover, so to speak, for these Boston marriages. Yeah,

791
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:32,839
Speaker 1: I mean, it's wild to consider just how powerful that

792
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:38,000
Speaker 1: homophobia was and really has been, and it's finally starting

793
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:42,560
Speaker 1: to erode in our culture. Um. And one example of

794
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: that that Lillian Faderman's sided was Willi Cather, author of

795
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: My Antonia, who dressed in men's clothes and called herself

796
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 1: Dr William. Yeah. I love it. I mean she had short, short,

797
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:58,520
Speaker 1: short hair, yeah. Um, and she this was her her

798
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: style in college. But as she, you know, was on

799
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: the verge of graduation, you see her transitioning into a

800
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:10,720
Speaker 1: more traditionally feminine presentation because she, you know, it wouldn't

801
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 1: have been acceptable for her to to leave college as

802
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:18,240
Speaker 1: Dr William. Yeah. And so now we're at a place

803
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: where we have marriage equality and you can be out

804
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 1: and socially accepted for the most part, for the most part. Um,

805
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 1: But we don't have anything we call Boston marriages anymore.

806
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 1: I know, I guess we don't need to call them

807
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 1: Boston marriages. But it is so great that we have

808
00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 1: this information and we have more people looking into these histories, um,

809
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:47,840
Speaker 1: these queer histories basically and going back and not adding

810
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: sex back in per se, but correcting that de sexualization,

811
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:58,080
Speaker 1: that de romanticization that has happened over the centuries, and

812
00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 1: being able to look at these women for what they were,

813
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: which is independent women of their own minds who loved

814
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:10,480
Speaker 1: other women well, and it's also part of these women's

815
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: historical records being not just the things they did, but

816
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,879
Speaker 1: also the people that they were. And I think that

817
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:22,399
Speaker 1: that's so just so critical for our full understanding of

818
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,120
Speaker 1: you know, the women that came before us, our our

819
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:29,280
Speaker 1: lady heritage, right and to just see to be able

820
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 1: to get that full picture in the full context of

821
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 1: the women who really shaped our society and who were

822
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: our earliest trailblazers in terms of culture and freedom and

823
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: social and career opportunities. Well and also finally, um, it's

824
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 1: some evidence for people out there who think that uh

825
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 1: LGBT orientations are simply made up, that no, this has

826
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 1: pretty much been around since forever. Ladies have always loved ladies,

827
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:01,359
Speaker 1: dudes have always loved dudes. Mix match however you want,

828
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 1: shake and serve, So with that, we'd love to hear

829
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this. I'm wondering if there's anyone in

830
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: our audience who has a family member who is in

831
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:17,879
Speaker 1: a Boston marriage, you have maybe that aunt who lived

832
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 1: with her roommate for a really long time. Mom Stuff

833
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: at hells works dot com is where you can send

834
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 1: us your letters. You can also tweet us at mom

835
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:28,319
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got a

836
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:34,720
Speaker 1: couple of messages to share with you right now. Okay,

837
00:53:34,719 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: So I have a letter here from Ashley in response

838
00:53:37,080 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 1: to our episode on gender and HIV. Ashley writes, I

839
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 1: had to say that I was really moved by your

840
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:47,879
Speaker 1: miss gendering of HIV episode. Academically, I've always been really

841
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:51,720
Speaker 1: interested in the sociology of the HIV epidemic. I've read books,

842
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 1: taking college classes on it, even led workshops about HIV

843
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:59,359
Speaker 1: and women. However, last year, HIV hit closer to home

844
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: than I ever thought it would when my stepmother in

845
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 1: law died of AIDS. She was diagnosed as HIV positive

846
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: two weeks before she died. She had been sick for

847
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:11,640
Speaker 1: years but was never tested for HIV. No one, not

848
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:14,799
Speaker 1: her doctors, certainly not herself, ever thought that she was

849
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:17,240
Speaker 1: at risk, so no one thought to connect the dots

850
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:20,040
Speaker 1: on her symptoms. My father in law still won't tell

851
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 1: anyone what she died of because of the stigma attached

852
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: to it. Her story reflected so many of the issues

853
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 1: you talked about, fear of being tested, stigma, the idea

854
00:54:28,880 --> 00:54:30,960
Speaker 1: that women aren't at risk that I just had to

855
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,720
Speaker 1: write in I hope your listeners can make a connection

856
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,040
Speaker 1: to their own lives and get tested to help dispel

857
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:39,760
Speaker 1: the stigma around HIV. It's not a disease of quote

858
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:43,279
Speaker 1: those people over there, it's every one of us. And

859
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:45,760
Speaker 1: thank you again for sharing this information with the world,

860
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: and thank you Ashley. So I've got a letter here

861
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:53,560
Speaker 1: from Christina, subject line period Pride cometh before the Fall.

862
00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:58,400
Speaker 1: She writes, the secrecy and shame that surrounds periods is ridiculous.

863
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 1: Everyone poops and p ease and talks freely about that,

864
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:04,800
Speaker 1: so why not talk about periods? Despite that, I found

865
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: myself mentally scoffing at Slash making squid faces while listening

866
00:55:09,160 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 1: to parts of the podcast hashtag tweet your period not

867
00:55:12,520 --> 00:55:15,200
Speaker 1: my thing. I don't even have a Twitter. Are using

868
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: period blood squick? But also, if that's your jam, you

869
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 1: do you. The subject of public period perils particularly piqued

870
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:26,879
Speaker 1: my ire until I had my own not ten minutes later.

871
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:30,560
Speaker 1: Karma is a bit and she works fast. I finished

872
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:32,759
Speaker 1: the podcast, went to the pantry to make a cup

873
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: of tea, and then had to abruptly dash to my desk,

874
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,640
Speaker 1: followed by the bathroom as I felt warm blood running

875
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:41,520
Speaker 1: down the inside of my left leg. Thank god I

876
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:45,800
Speaker 1: was wearing one dark washed jeans and two writing boots. Also,

877
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:48,040
Speaker 1: even though it felt like things weren't so bad that

878
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:50,319
Speaker 1: I couldn't tidy myself up, I still went home for

879
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:52,960
Speaker 1: the day. What jeans are the worst? And jeans went

880
00:55:53,040 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 1: from your own blood unspeakably worse. Final twists of the day,

881
00:55:57,160 --> 00:55:59,360
Speaker 1: I had to take the red line home, sitting in

882
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:03,279
Speaker 1: a red seat. Oh Christina, thank you so much for

883
00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 1: sharing that surprise period story with you. I really love

884
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 1: that our listeners trust us enough that they would share

885
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:13,279
Speaker 1: period stories with us. I mean, let's talk about some

886
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:17,879
Speaker 1: romantic friendships. That's it right there, And listeners, if you've

887
00:56:17,880 --> 00:56:19,920
Speaker 1: got stories you want to share with us. Mom Stuff

888
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:22,320
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com is our email address

889
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 1: and for links to all of our social media as

890
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,920
Speaker 1: well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with

891
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:29,960
Speaker 1: our sources so you can learn more about Boston marriages,

892
00:56:30,360 --> 00:56:38,360
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.

893
00:56:38,400 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

894
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:49,840
Speaker 1: It How stuff Works dot com