I am reminded in writing this essay why History is Not My Subject unless either ancient or as background knowledge for literature. Help. Why am I suddenly the least eloquent person in a 3 mile radius
“Of course autistic people can go to the bathroom by themselves and have jobs!!” Some can’t. They’re not burdens or an “epidemic” either. Please don’t get pulled into an argument about usefulness, because that feeds into their baseline eugenic idea that you have to “contribute to society” to justify your existence. Nobody’s worth is tied to what they can do for the state.
I’m not in America but I’m very very scared. Everything is scary.
JFK Junior said he’s ‘focusing on the 25%’ who 'will never have a job, go on a date, use the toilet unassisted’. We cannot abandon our higher support needs siblings. This is exactly what Asperger did. Sort the useful ones from the ones to be discarded.
it’s me and my two sources on medieval strap-ons against the world
Right, so.
Source One is Burchard of Worms’ Decretum, Book XIX. The Decretum was a collection of canon laws compiled in the early half of the 11th Century. Book XIX, or The Corrector, was a penitential: basically a guidebook for confessors. Here’s a sin, have u done it, here’s your penance.
One of the questions for women was, essentially, “Did you make a dildo, strap it to yourself and fuck someone with it?”. The original text is in Latin, and there’s a few translations floating around of what it said. Here’s one, which I spent the past three days looking for, because I wanted a direct source:
Have you done what women are wont to do: to make a certain device in the form of a male member to the measure of your will, and to tie it to your own or another woman’s genitals with some ties, and commit fornication with other women, or others with the same instrument, or with another with you? - Translated from Latin, taken from “Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche nebst einer rechtsgeschichtichen Einleitung”, F. W. H Wasserschleben
Pretty cut and dry re: the use of strap-ons. And dildos, because the next question is “and did you use this device on yourself?”
The second source is from the trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer, specifically Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477) by Helmut Puff, which has an analysis of the trial as well as a translation of the trial texts.
Katherina is the first recorded woman to be executed for homosexuality. There’s a lot to be said about her and the way she performed gender but what I’m interested in today is the strap. So, from the court text itself:
…She made an instrument with a red piece of leather, at the front filled with cotton, and a wooden stick stuck into it, and made a hole through the wooden stick, put a string through, and tied it round; and therewith she had her roguery with the two women…
And there we go! Two sources about people in medieval times using strap-ons, one from around 1020 and one from 1477.
Hey guys! It’s officially the Easter holidays and I am missing the routine of the semester, but I’m trying to motivate myself to work on my essays. Here’s some reading and planning for my 18th-century gothic essay from last week :)
