and roots and rocks and and worms and dirt:

i scramble happy in the rubble of the living

sharpen my claws on flint, spark

ideas of later hoppings, another field,

another dig, all for myself.

i have a family, the one i chose,

it is vast as the parish and all my own,

as i am mine and theirs, alone.

the tunnel is dark, i see with my flesh

and sense the cooling as i deepen

into gaia’s body, comfy as a womb.

i make a nest of her heart and mind

and take birth when i emerge to seek

the sun, the clover.

Image: ‘Rabbits’, kurumi, 2024.

it had to have been a mundane day
a tuesday or something
or else i would not have thought to look

before you ask, no,
it was not a darkness like 
the absence of light

i saw the dark the way you see a soul
in the glimmer of a pupil
the pulsing of a wrist

mine moved like eels wrapped together
in terrible ecstacy
eating their tails and moaning

i saw the dark in the absence of life
i saw the dark and it saw me right back
it spoke to me and said

the fact that you can see me
is proof of your brilliance
that you can walk through me and emerge

not as a shadow
but as a flame
so we see each other, so we know each other

you'd best believe when i first heard its voice
i fought, oh i fought
against the chains of [un]becoming

the sinking feeling of nothing
that carved a cave
as a river through my chest

i saw the dark
i saw the pit
365 days of it

in the absence of love
i sought for It
to save me, to save me

it lingered at my door for years
and at last i undid the latch
offered it a seat, and tea 

the day i saw the dark
i broke
i screamed

the floor was mine for heaving
where i sunk beneath in snot and tears
yet still i resisted the urge to bleed

the dark mimed, you are a pig for sticking
open your veins, open your veins,
and i did not, and i did not

i walked through hell for my survival
i went back through to figure out the map
now i may dip my toes back in 

to pull my comrades out.

Image: ‘Lovers’, Paul Collins, 2022.

According to the ground-breaking essay ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ by feminist historian Joan Kelly, under the feudal system the illegitimate children of the aristocratic landowner’s wife would not have represented much of a threat to the maintenance of his power and property. This left her to court knights and engage in adulterous behaviour without this representing much of an issue for the stability of the State and, by extension, the Church. As this old system, along with the practices of courtly love, abated, chastity became the new convention of the court, and there was fresh concern for the wife to produce legitimate male offspring who would inherit her husband’s property upon his passing. The woman was married through the exchange of a dowry, that being the collection of goods, money, and/or land exchanged by her father or brothers for her husband’s hand in marriage. Alongside this, attitudes towards love changed dramatically. Following the writings of Dante and Petrarch, expressions of sexual love were banished from poetry in exchange for the love of two minds: beauty was something to be appreciated from a distance, a means of achieving an ascension of the soul, with the love of another mind bringing the self closer in its relationship to God.[1] This new love theory thus ‘bound the lady to chastity, to the merely procreative sex of political marriage, just as her weighty and costly costume came to conceal and constrain her body while it displayed her husband’s noble rank.’[2] The ideal chaste woman was one who did not have sex outside of marriage. With her dowry, she would enter into the nuptial agreement a virgin; would not engage in sexual relations with anyone other than her husband; and preferably, for the husband, she would not remarry if he predeceased her, which was a common occurrence due to the frequently wide age gap between the two.[3] The existence of the dowry, however, calls into question whether the institution of chastity was actually upheld for the majority of the female population of Renaissance Florence, or if it was rather exclusively enforced for the aristocratic women whose fathers could afford the transaction. With an eye toward the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, this essay will explore the extent to which ideas of property correlated with attitudes towards the control of the female body across the social classes. It will investigate the rise of women forced into the convent as the dowry became more expensive, especially looking at the way in which the rule of chastity was in fact broken by many. Finally, it will discuss the paradoxical role that prostitution played in protecting the sanctity of marriage, arguing that the doctrine designed to control sexual expression was so strict that it ultimately came to undermine itself.

The patrimony exercised significant influence over the life of the marriageable woman. First, there is a historical correlation to be made between the amount of property that a male individual holds and his attitudes towards women, who become an extension of a man’s property when they are valued in relation to the size of their dowry. According to Simone de Beauvoir in her novel The Second Sex, the owner

transfers […] his existence into his property, […] it overflows the narrow limits of this mortal lifetime and continues to exist beyond the body’s dissolution. […] But this survival can only come about if the property remains in the hands of its owner: it can be his beyond death only if it belongs to individuals in whom he sees himself projected, who are his.[4]

The woman on the other hand, owns nothing, and ‘forms a part of the patrimony of a man’ as a commodity who will only become heir as a last resort. [5] With the marriage as a financial transaction, the Florentine woman passed from the hands of one paterfamilias, the head of the family, to another, from father to husband.[6] For the upper-class woman with a sizeable dowry and a powerful husband, life was particularly hard. Due to the perceived risk of her becoming adulterous and producing illegitimate children, who would not become heirs and who would be a financial burden on the family, she was confined to indoor spaces, to the extent that it was frowned upon for women to spend their time staring out of the window, in part as it meant that she could ‘entertain thoughts about people and happenings in the world beyond their hearth, outside the male-dominated family structures’.[7] As it was semi-public and visible, it was conceived that she could be subject to the lusty male gaze, which made the act of window-staring a ‘sexually dangerous activity’.[8] Women of the working and artisanal classes were comparatively free to wander the streets and play a more active part in the economy, with their chastity being less stringently enforced and marriage being more of a mutual alliance.[9] As de Beauvoir argues, ‘the richer the husband, the greater the dependence of the wife […] on the contrary, a common poverty makes the conjugal tie a reciprocal tie’.[10] With regards to cases of adultery, the women would be more strictly punished than the men with whom they engaged in the sexual act, such as one instance in 1445 when Cosimo de’ Medici, as newly elected Gonfalonier of Justice, threw out and threatened a mother and daughter for having had sexual relations with his predecessor and a Prior in exchange for legal advice, with no such reprimand appointed to the men who had abused their position of power.[11] Penalties likewise signified the influence that class played in the importance of a woman’s chastity, with strict fines of 500 lire imposed on men who engaged in consensual or forced sexual relations with a virgin, a respectable widow or a married woman, fines of 100 lire for sex with a woman of lesser standing, and no fine at all for consensual sex with a servant or prostitute.[12] In addition, there were much more relaxed attitudes surrounding engagement in pre-marital sex for those of the lower classes. However, these women, often living under economic hardship, were much more vulnerable to the manipulation of dishonest men and sexual molestation. Cases of pre-marital sex usually only came to court if, after leaving her pregnant or with a child, the man failed to deliver on his promises of marriage, as women who had noticeably lost their virginity had little chance of subsequently marrying another. Usually, the court case would end with the seducer either giving her a dowry or being forced to marry her, with the even darker side to this being that some women therefore had to marry their rapist.[13] This all serves to demonstrate the extent to which a woman was considered private property depending on her class, with poorer women, though more vulnerable to the predations of upper-class men, living with less stringent regulation of their chastity than those with more money and social standing.

To discuss the issues surrounding the intense control of female sexuality and only focus on the heterosexual culture of Renaissance Florence is to overlook a large part of the picture. And yet, investigating the homosexual culture of the city reveals a huge gap in the field of research, with regards to sexual relations between women. We know from the influential works of authors such as Michael Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence that, due to the late age that men would marry in comparison to women – the age gap of upper class Florence was a staggering twelve years on average – and due to the repressive culture surrounding the protection of female chastity, it was common practice for men to have sex with other men.[14] Where, though, are the indications that women were copulating with each other? To answer this question, we need to look in what may seem the most unlikely of spaces: the convent. By around 1500, due to the increasing competitiveness of family social strategies which pushed up the market value of marriages, the rising price of the dowry had made marrying off one’s daughters increasingly difficult.[15] The spiritual dowry on the other hand, that being the amount of money needed to place a woman in a cloister, ‘amounted to between one-third and one-tenth of the value of a marriage dowry’, with the result that almost ten percent of the adult female population of Tuscany were placed into convents, usually coerced by family members under the illusion of having consented, either because they did not understand the financial implications of doing so, or because they saw no other choice.[16] This female sphere, which in theory should have most closely enforced the chastity of its inhabitants, was rife with sexual scandals often between local priests and nuns, such as the case of Fra Filippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti in Prato. [17] This is unsurprising when you consider that many of these ‘brides of Christ’ were here not because of a devotion to God but because their families could not afford to offer them in marriage. I would like to pose the argument that a lot of these nuns were having sex with each other, as ‘to imagine that sexual relationships were absent from these all-female communities strains the limits of credulity’, although little evidence of this exists as of yet in the case of Renaissance Florence, both in the convent and in the wider private sphere.[18] A reason for this lack of evidence of these hidden havens could be that, as upper-class women were so confined indoors, these relations would occur relatively undisturbed and undiscovered, explaining why there were few court cases against women committing ‘indecent acts’ of this sort. There is nonetheless the case of Sister Benedetta Carlini who was tried for her relations with another nun from the years 1619-23.[19] However, as she was an Abbess in Pescia, not Florence, this theory of lesbian nuns must be taken with a pinch of salt as her case occurred both in a different region and from a different century. This does nonetheless prove the existence of a lesbian nun who was in flagrante delicto. As convents are secretive spaces, coverups would be easy to enact, and it is feasible to believe that a lot of unchaste activity went unnoticed or ignored, with Sister Benedetta being unlucky in her case. As it stands, more research is needed both in terms of the happenings within what were essentially all-female prisons, and in terms of cases of female-female relationships. Another way of interpreting this lack of evidence for these relations in the city, conversely, is that the Renaissance culture was so phallocentric that sex between two women was not considered a real possibility by those in power. According to Katherine Haas, ‘Many masculine authorities considered nonpenetrative sex between women a form of masturbation, rather than sodomy’, and in the incident of Sister Benedetta, Haas argues that ‘medieval theologians and learned men were not unaware of sexual relationships between women, but they were largely ignored. The thought that women could bring each other pleasure without the aid of a man occurred to very few.’[20] In Brown’s words, ‘crimes that cannot be named, not surprisingly, leave few traces in the historical record.’[21] Through this lens, then, it can be argued that a woman could elude the social expectation of remaining chaste, in the same manner as her male counterparts, by sleeping with someone of the same sex, as it would not be classed as intercourse, nor would there be any visible evidence of having engaged in the act, such as pregnancy. If men were able to engage in relations with other men somewhat openly, I think there is a strong case to be argued that many women were doing the same, but in private. Further research is however much needed into the secrets of the sisterhood. Socially invisible and confined to the private sphere, they could circumvent the requirement to remain chaste by engaging in acts that were inconceivable and invisible to the Church and State.

If the family could neither afford to marry her nor send her to the convent, it was more likely that an upper-class woman’s options were limited to becoming a household servant or a prostitute. The rising cult of ecclesiastical devotion to Mary Magdalene was accordingly no coincidence.[22] The status that the prostitute held in Renaissance Florence demonstrated that the culture was marked with ethical contradictions, as the prostitute was perceived as both a socially healing force for good and a morally corrupt individual in need of redemption.[23] Although the preacher Girolamo Savonarola encouraged men to have sex with other men as Florentine parents ‘feared the disgrace of unwed pregnant daughters’, in general the Church preached the doctrine of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas: Sodomy was a sin that needed to be avoided, and prostitution, though a vice, was considered the lesser of two evils, and thus was encouraged by the Church and State.[24] The necessary evil of prostitution would divert the attentions of men away from women of middle-upper class standing families, demonstrating a clear interaction between the importance of practising Christian values, the need to preserve family lineage, and the social hierarchy of the city. Protecting the chastity of a woman only mattered insofar as her family was wealthy. Indeed, there was such a preoccupation within Florentine socio-ethical doctrine with protecting the chastity of marriageable women that prostitution experienced something of an economic boom during this time, which the state sought to profit from with the creation of the Onestà, the Office of Decency, in 1403.[25] This institution, a ‘surrogate for male control over prostitutes’, was originally designed as a means of segregating prostitutes within the poorer areas of Santa Croce and Santo Spirito through the construction of two state-sanctioned brothels, and by offering the women there legal, physical and financial protection. The state in a sense would become the pimp. However,

through the implementation of special rules for women who neither expressed their sexuality solely within marriage, nor suppressed it in a convent, as well as segregation in undesirable areas of the city and in bordellos, the very act of registration created a negative public identity known as meretrici, or merchants of sex without honor.[26]

Thus by submitting oneself to the Onestà’s jurisdiction, the women had little chance of rising out of poverty and obtaining the social and financial benefits that came with courtesanship. The Onestà was hence largely ineffective at controlling prostitution as the prostitutes and their clients resisted the process of identification ‘in a society where public reputation defined the individual.’[27] The government lost interest in controlling the occupation in the second half of the fifteenth century, allowing unsupervised, formerly marginalised, prostitution to re-establish itself in the city. Ironically, and as a result of the deteriorating regulatory enforcement, the Onestà devolved into a means of exploiting the earnings of prostitutes to support the convent of the Convertite, which was ‘established paradoxically as a refuge for repentant single prostitutes.’[28] Florence therefore experienced a rebirth of the religious prostitute of Ancient Greece, when it was once considered that the prostitute fulfilled a sacred responsibility in releasing ‘for the common good the mysterious powers of fecundation’.[29] The money that was earned by prostitutes was intended to support religious establishments. Furthermore, in Athens, Solon bought Asiatic slaves and shut them in the dicterions near the Temple of Venus, where each girl received a wage, and the net profit went to the state.[30] Prostitution is not an inherently oppressive profession for women to have, but its popularity can indicate the level to which a society is sexually repressed, especially when the patriarchal desire to establish male power over the working woman’s body corrupts the occupation. Where independent prostitutes are initially exploiting the male body for money, as a mutually beneficial transaction, when an establishment claims ownership over the woman’s profession, this whole dynamic becomes reversed, and the female body is commodified and exploited for the sake of a state that seeks to oppress women on a wider scale. Overall, in Florence, the requirement for a woman to preserve her chastity essentially became undermined, as more and more previously marriageable women, whose families could not afford to send them to the convent, fell into prostitution. The culture essentially required that an increasing number of working-class women sacrificed their bodies to preserve the chastity of those of the aristocracy.

What is most interesting about the interaction between the ideals of chastity and the social structure of Renaissance Florence is that it confronts the modern reader’s notion that the wealthiest women of a population are always the most liberated. This was not so. Although the chaste life was considered the ideal pursuit for the respectable woman, it was not a reality evenly upheld across the social spectrum. Working class women were on a more equal footing with their possession-less husbands, whereas upper-class women, whose families more closely considered them a commodity to be bought and kept, locked them indoors, with the fathers and brothers of those unmarried placing their female relations in convents. It is feasible to suggest that a considerable amount of unchaste behaviour occurred in the quiet corners of these overcrowded cloisters, with there being a certain advantage to being hidden in the private sphere, if it was so utilised. As for the brothels, they thrived under the strain that the male population felt to avoid copulating with the maritally eligible women of the upper classes, a demographic which grew increasingly small with the inflation of the dowry. In general, strict enforcement of what is the natural sexual expression of a population is seldom successful, regardless of how aggressively the religious and state powers utilise it as a ‘political apparatus’ to preserve the economic institution of marriage.[31] Bringing sexuality under a stringent code of regulations is impossible, de Beauvoir argues, as ‘there is in eroticism a revolt of the instant against time, of the individual against the universal. In proposing to direct and exploit it, there is risk of killing it.’[32] What can be said is that this period may be considered a rebirth of positive Antique ideals for the male inhabitants of Florence, while many women on the other hand experienced a revival of Ancient Athenian female oppression; of being locked indoors if you were married or of a religious order, or working as a prostitute as a means of upholding religious and moral virtue. For them, the Renaissance was rather a regression.

Bibliography

de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997).

Brackett, John K., ‘The Florentine Onesta and the Control of Prostitution, 1403-1680’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 24, Iss. 2 (Sixteenth Century Journal, 1993), 273-300.

Brown, Judith C., ‘Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini’, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 4, The Lesbian Issue (University of Chicago Press, 1984) 751-758. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173632.

Brucker, Gene, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, (London: University of California Press, 2005).

Cox, Virginia, ‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice’, in The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 159-195.

Evangelisti, Silvia, ‘Wives, Widows, and Brides of Christ: Marriage and the Convent in the Historiography of Early Modern Italy’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 233-247. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021020.

Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings: 1972-1977, trans., and ed. by Colin Gordon, (Great Britain: Harvester Press, 1980).

Haas, Katherine, ‘Walking the Line: Renaissance and Reformation Societal Views on Lesbians and Lesbianism,” Ramifications, Vol. 1, Iss. 1, Article 2 (University of Pennsylvania, 2019), 1-24. https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/ramifications/vol1/iss1/2.

Kelly, Joan, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’, Women, History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 19-51. ACLS e-book.

Kirshner, Julius, ‘Family and Marriage: A Socio-Legal Perspective’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 82-101.

Owen Hughes, Diane, ‘Bodies, disease, and society’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 103-117.

Rocke, Michael, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’, The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 139-159.

Rocke, Michael, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

Tomas, Natalie, ‘Did Women Have a Space?’, Renaissance Florence, ed. by Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 311-328.

Wilk, Sarah, ‘The Cult of Mary Magdalen in Fifteenth Century Florence and its Iconography’, Studi medievali, S. III, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), 685–98. Via Moodle.

[1] Joan Kelly, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’, Women, History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 24-42. ACLS e-book.

[2] Joan Kelly, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’, Women, History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 46. ACLS e-book.

[3] Julius Kirshner, ‘Family and Marriage: A Socio-Legal Perspective’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 98-99.

[4] Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Patriarchal Times and Antiquity’, The Second Sex, trans., and ed. by H.M Parshley (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997), p. 113.

[5] Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Patriarchal Times and Antiquity’, The Second Sex, trans., and ed. by H.M Parshley (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997), p. 114.

Julius Kirshner, ‘Family and Marriage: A Socio-Legal Perspective’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 100.

[6] Julius Kirshner, ‘Family and Marriage: A Socio-Legal Perspective’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 89.

[7] Natalie Tomas, ‘Did Women Have a Space?’, Renaissance Florence, ed. by Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 314.

[8] Natalie Tomas, ‘Did Women Have a Space?’, Renaissance Florence, ed. by Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 318.

[9] Natalie Tomas, ‘Did Women Have a Space?’, Renaissance Florence, ed. by Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 322.

Gene Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, (London: University of California Press, 2005), p. 90.

[10] Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Through the Middle Ages to eighteenth-century France’, The Second Sex, trans., and ed. by H.M Parshley (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997), p. 132.

[11] Natalie Tomas, ‘Did Women Have a Space?’, Renaissance Florence, ed. by Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 313.

[12] Michael Rocke, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’, The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 145.

[13] Michael Rocke, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’, The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 149.

[14]Julius Kirshner, ‘Family and Marriage: A Socio-Legal Perspective’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 91.

Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[15] Virginia Cox, ‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice’, in The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 167-8.

[16] Richard C. Trexler, C. Klapisch, ‘Le célibat à la fin du Moyen Age: Les religieuses de Florence’, Annales : histoire, sciences sociales (French ed.), vol. 27, No. 6 (Armand Colin, 1972), 1340; cited in Silvia Evangelisti, ‘Wives, Widows, and Brides of Christ: Marriage and the Convent in the Historiography of Early Modern Italy’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 242. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021020.

Judith C. Brown, ‘Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini’, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 4, The Lesbian Issue (University of Chicago Press, 1984) 754. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173632.

Virginia Cox, ‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice’, The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 174.

[17] Michael Rocke, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’, The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 151.

Gene Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, (London: University of California Press, 2005), p. 80.

Silvia Evangelisti, ‘Wives, Widows, and Brides of Christ: Marriage and the Convent in the Historiography of Early Modern Italy’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 247. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021020.

[18] Judith C. Brown, ‘Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini’, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 4, The Lesbian Issue (University of Chicago Press, 1984) 751. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173632.

[19] Judith C. Brown, ‘Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini’, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 4, The Lesbian Issue (University of Chicago Press, 1984). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173632.

[20] Katherine Haas, ‘Walking the Line: Renaissance and Reformation Societal Views on Lesbians and

Lesbianism,” Ramifications, Vol. 1, Iss. 1, Article 2 (University of Pennsylvania, 2019), 6-7. https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/ramifications/vol1/iss1/2.

[21] Judith C. Brown, ‘Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini’, Signs, Vol. 9, No. 4, The Lesbian Issue (University of Chicago Press, 1984) 754. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173632.

[22] Sarah Wilk, ‘The Cult of Mary Magdalen in Fifteenth Century Florence and its Iconography’, Studi medievali, S. III, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1985), 685–98. Via Moodle. https://moodle.warwick.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/2826962/mod_resource/content/1/Sarah%20Wilk-Mary%20Magdalene-STVDI%20MEDIEVALI.pdf

[23] Diane Owen Hughes, ‘Bodies, disease, and society’, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, ed. by John M. Najemy (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 115.

[24] Michael Rocke, ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’, The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, ed. by John Jeffries Martin, (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 152.

[25] John K. Brackett, ‘The Florentine Onesta and the Control of Prostitution, 1403-1680’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 24, Iss. 2 (Sixteenth Century Journal, 1993), 275.

[26] John K. Brackett, ‘The Florentine Onesta and the Control of Prostitution, 1403-1680’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 24, Iss. 2 (Sixteenth Century Journal, 1993), 275.

[27] John K. Brackett, ‘The Florentine Onesta and the Control of Prostitution, 1403-1680’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 24, Iss. 2 (Sixteenth Century Journal, 1993), 275.

[28] John K. Brackett, ‘The Florentine Onesta and the Control of Prostitution, 1403-1680’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 24, Iss. 2 (Sixteenth Century Journal, 1993), 273.

[29] Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Patriarchal Times and Antiquity’, The Second Sex, trans., and ed. by H.M Parshley (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997), p. 121.

[30] Simone de Beauvoir, ‘Patriarchal Times and Antiquity’, The Second Sex, trans., and ed. by H.M Parshley (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997), p. 119.

[31] Michel Foucault, ‘The History of Sexuality’, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings: 1972-1977, trans., and ed. by Colin Gordon, (Great Britain: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 189.

[32] Simone de Beauvoir, ‘The Point of View of Historical Materialism’, The Second Sex, trans., and ed. by H.M Parshley (Great Britain: Vintage, 1997), p. 90.

Image: ‘Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting’, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1638-39.

the toughest armour – 
Beware the sting,
the claws alone:
“Your distance keep”,
buried in the raging sand,
she sits contented, seethes;

until the rain patters the grain
and she emerges from the heat – 
basking in the gentle wash,
it melts into the cracks
of the defence you thought
her fort.
the fire that forever burns beneath
cools, unclenches its gnashing teeth;

just for a moment, 
she sits as flesh,
soft, and kind;
and so, so sweet.

Image: ‘Scorpion (Stranger Than Paradise),’ Stephanie Schneider, 1998.

oh, we don’t talk about that.

aye, but my pelvis remembers

the blood, the stinging piss,

the haemorrhoids.

my pelvis remembers his eyes

rolled to the back of his head,

his gritted teeth,

his cock slapped against my face in the shower.

how i smiled as he bought my beers,

how i asked for him to tie me up,

how i asked for him to carry me to bed,

how i disappeared for twenty four hours,

how i was a five year old in an adult’s body,

but i just looked like a slut to him.



we dont talk about that.

but my inner thighs twitch throughout the day

and tingle like static, when they are static.

my pelvis remembers

the stiff cocks and dry vagina,

the sex toys at sixteen,

when i numbed myself and flew elsewhere,

smiled and did all the right things,

 prayed this would be over soon.

but it wasn’t, it never is,

because my body does not forget,

it stores its sores like urns of ash

pulsing in my nerve endings.



oh, and my pussy remembers

my wanting a one night stand with a man 

who looked exactly like my ex.

except he did not kiss me gentle, no,

he gnawed my lips off and gave me herpes

because i did not want to shag without a condom

but did not know how to say no.

my pelvis remembers

longing for love and getting fucked instead.

Image: ‘The End of Love’, Tracey Emin, 2024.

petrarchal patriarchal:
that self-identifying-male-feminist-ego,
when he places her on such a pedestal
that she is encaged in a way of being
no less than exceptional.
for she is pure, and kind, and nice,
a mother who will open her cunt
onto the unworthy male desperate to be healed
or held by someone other than himself.
and as the waters flow down upon him,
he gushes about being unworthy
with no intention to make himself worthy
yet still his partners are, without exception,
associated with divinity.
because he likes to covet women.
she saves him, oh, she saves him
from having to feasibly work 
on any shadow evading her glow.
all that he need do is focus on his radiance,
which is nothing more than a reflection 
of her sunshine presence.
as much as possible, he avoids 
his own company in her absence —
why make an effort to find that candle inside?
when she makes twice the effort to shine half as bright 
as she would, if he were not so leeching,
if he were only out of sight.

Image: ‘Dante and Beatrice in Earthly Paradise’, Ruggero Focardi, 1901.

the energetic barrel at my bedside:

it required a third eye and an open mind

to see that shadow glitter in plain sight.

i knew them to be joy.

like a babe, I reached out my arms

to greet them, say i love you, and good night,

then i closed my eyes and saw for miles

the ancestors watching back,

grinning and spinning from the black.

psychedelic, you may call it

but i experienced this sober

And now can guess how Rilke felt

to be greeted in sleep by a seraph.

they have visited since i was a child.

it was frightening for a while,

to lay awake alone with that audience

of teeth i saw as bared and mocking

and gazes i could not ignore

for they followed behind my eyelids, keeping score.

paranoia, you may call it,

the state doctors would love to call me insane,

but healing is fifty per cent belief and

belief is fifty per cent choice,

so i choose to believe

that natural release of DMT
is the angels watching out for me.

I need only heal from the fear, not the visions.

hypnagogic hallucinations?

or the brain’s attempt at comprehending a reality

in the presence of non-physical entities?

nuns and poets were recorded seeing angels across history

but in place of being in touch with spirit

we label that magic a pathology

i’ve been seeing that magic since i was a child

and used to find it pretty scary

for i felt that they were mocking me.

it wasn’t until much later that i saw

one of these biblically accurate beings on paper

and was like, oh! i know that guy!

be it a quirk of the human brain,

be it a hallucination,

be it being in touch with the angels ,

be it what you like,

but it was not something that went away with time

and fearing them did not make them leave me be.

i learned to accept their presence,

to greet them as if they were old friends,

i learned to treat them as part of me.

with that acceptance came peace.

a funny phenomenon of the mind

that i feel blessed to experience in this lifetime,

so “be not afraid” makes for pretty sound advice.

if i am hard wired to be a bit mad,

then i will lean into the wind with whatever gifts i have.

Image: ‘the village’, Katie Rose, 2023.

Oregano

Parsley

Celery

Ginger

Cinnamon

Turmeric

Cloves

Chamomile

Nettle

Red Clover

Rue

Dong Quai

Ginseng

Shatavari

Ashwaghanda

Chasteberry

Pennyroyal

Black cohosh

Marigold

Goldenseal

Damiana

Peony

Raspberry leaf

Juniper

Chickweed

Motherwort

Mugwort


coat hangers.

little boys need to play
if they are forbidden from climbing trees
they will climb political hierarchies

little boys need to play
if they are forbidden from having toys
they will play with military convoys

little boys need to feel safe
if they cannot hug their mum 
They will seek affection in a loaded gun

little boys need to feel safe
if they cannot hug their dad
they will seek their revenge on a foreign land

little boys need to feel free
if they are bound by state responsibility
they will seek free will in heavy artillery

little boys need to feel free
if they are bound by deacons and priests
in little boys and girls they will seek their release

little boys need to know love
if all they know are servants and gold
they will search for a wealth they can never quite hold

little boys need to know love
if they cannot recognise that holy dove
they will rain hellfire from the heavens above 

Image: ‘The Education of the Western Boy’, Armando Mariño, 2022.

do you remember running?
the purity of the air?

the stamp that follows
rubber soles, asphalt and loose ankles;
shoulders spinning in their sockets;
the flesh between the ribs, expanding;
air that burns to breathe
through a gaping grin,
for growth is painful;
pain is growthful.

salt and sun cream on the tongue -
i stick out and stretch it, 
just for fun.

Image: ‘Ya win some, ya lose some’, Pilar Pagán O’Connor, 2025.

pal of mine got three years for soup-throwing
oars, for going up the river
time done for chilling in a hammock
act now or forever hold your tongue
shhh - the zoom calls have ears
un-alived for blowing whistles

palour ghostly of those flag flyers
sty, for piggies (the ones in high-vis, mind)
knack for twisting the narrative
(the rich) shun those who refuse to be silenced

Image: ‘You are Free’, Michael Leunig, Date Unknown.

a horror last night,
down Kingston Drive.
i heard it first:
a wolf whistle
which for a moment's breath
i assumed was mine,
until i turned to my right,
saw a woman in a helmet on her bike.

a couple of feet behind:
two men,
bald and drunk and white,
cycling side by side.
i stopped where i was strolling,
as if caught in the headlights;
at first i thought to run after her,
but was met with the futility of that action,
so all i did was pray she made it home alright.

it only occurs to me now as i write
that calling the police never once crossed my mind.
this struck me as a surprise,
until i remembered the officer
who phoned me to suggest,
the man who followed me home that time
was probably just trying to be nice,
and that my previous harassment report
painted my fear in a, shall we say,
dramatic and dubious light.

and i couldn't save her,
i couldn't save her.

i can't run as fast as two bigots on their bikes.
even if i could,
it wouldn't exactly be much of a fight.

so i hope that she screamed.
i hope that she kicked.
i hope that she aimed her fingers at their eyes,
her elbows at their throats,
and her knees between their thighs.

walking home tonight
i saw a lady waiting for the bus,
phoning a friend, 
her torch glaring bright.

how quickly i made a bee-line,
tapped her shoulder just to say,
"excuse me, your phone torch is on,
switch it off so your battery doesn't die".
she was dismissive, 
couldn't i see i had interrupted her call?

we get no medals for doing what is right,
for trusting our intuition,
our magical foresight.
we do it because our souls demand integrity;
they demand that we try.

Image: ‘Quietly Gone Missing’, Alice Herbst, 2025.

plucked from Chiltern chalk,
i, the Chickweed stand
on unfamiliar dampness,
moss and peat, Glaswegian streets,
tentatively stretching my feeler threads
for a nook to sow and sew my roots,
repair those that snapped in the upheaval,
in the hopes of a quiet scar.

with each smile of our cooling moon
a pair of dimples carves its tunnels
further into my rosy cheeks,
a medicinal counterbalance
for the furrows of my brow.
i clutch the lack of my many-dimpled Motherwort
who has turned her healing inward,
begun the crawl to nurture her shattered roots
and fill the crone-shaped hole
left by our Mugwort matriarch.

she, in her wisdom,
as July passed his torch to August,
has joined the sleeping shadows
of Carbrooke’s graveyard
to wan with the sun’s second face
and climb her decay towards the ether
as food for the fungi.

i watch the slow drip of Autumn’s leaves
in their yearly flourish; the wind tugs
their green to southern climes
in exchange for the glow of amber beads
who will blanket my grandmother’s bed,
keep her in the comfort of her final summer
as our hearts are etched with the memory:

the Hairmyres hospital room’s evening glow
clings to the flesh around her bones,

melting her skin,

wrinkling my mother’s

and dimpling my own.

Image: ‘Aviva’, Amy Cutler, 2014.

living in fear

the white paint caffeinate

these walls all look the same

so it’s hard to stare into space

a twitching leg, a nine hour wait

a third coffee by three pm

you can’t toil the field

you stare at the glowing slate



living in fear

your father’s rage 

in a sideways glance

locking you in the bedroom

ignoring your screams

then wondering why 

you seldom sleep for the dreams

you seldom sing



living in fear

files and tapes

(you know the ones)

a prince and a child, you were a child

a phantom hand on your inner thigh

sensing evil in a loving eye

scrolling away

not bringing that talk

into the “normal” of the day



living in fear

am i alone?

do i want to be so?

will i accept a microphone

over a human ear

if that is easier to obtain?

will i tolerate

a drone at the window

if it means i can feel seen, safe

secured in my own home?

Image: ‘My Mind is on Fire’, Kieren Seymour, 2024.

i see my mother when I smile - 
my lower lip hugs my teeth.
i laugh wide-mouthed and cackle proud,
the antithesis of discreet.

i see my mother in my toes, 
for we have the same feet.
i see her in my checklists,
in my goals for the working week.

in the vegetarian meals i make,
and the wardrobes i curate,
i see her in the words i choose,
carefully selected for their weight.

when the bluebells amaze me yet again,
standing taller than the trees,
when i see the swifts fly overhead,
as heralds of summer’s heat.

when i languish in the sun,
i feel her as my skin;
like the houseplants that we collect,
we draw the light within.

i see her when i listen 
for we were raised on betty’s word:
treat loved ones as you wish to be treated -
and i would want to feel heard.

Image: ‘Daffodils and Spring Trees’, Janet Fish, 1988.

Attention! Attention!
Concentration’s but an option:
That so-called “deficit" simply 
Dysregulates the norm.
Your hyperactivity is your superpower,
Darling, please - 
Cause as much disorder as you like >:)

For you do not exist to be productive,
And you do not exist to be efficient,
Your body is creative, not constructive,
Your brain is SPICY!!!
Different, not deficient.

Image: ‘The Clever Ones Figure It Out’, Kieren Seymour, 2024.

It aches
Like growing pains.
Freezing, condensing, evaporating,
Never quite knowing your bones
Before all structure shifts again
And your once familiar hometown
Shuts you out into the wind.

It tastes
Like battery acid
On the city air.
The melting liquid
We are forced to drink
Through corrupted lungs
And a heavy chest.

It sounds
Like a distant roar,
A buzzing fridge,
A ringing ear inside the head.
Long hot roads five miles away:
Black hot hissing snakes,
Flattened hedgehogs, rabbits, badgers.
It sounds like a deadly hushhhh...

It looks
Like the mechanical bull
In Birmingham New Street - 
Marinetti’s wet dream.
Or, the 100k cars - 
Metal coffins designed 
Without families in mind.
That shifts its face
When we call it “killer!”
That mashes itself into a pulp
So that we buy another.
And perhaps a toy for a little boy,
So he can learn to worship it
When he finds he cannot fuck it.

It smells
Like a smoking gun.
Like a consumer,
Marketer,
Manufacturer,
Producer,
Builder,
Shooter,
Sweating salt and shouting
“I am not responsible!”
As the iron stench spills thick
From a gaping wound.

It shifts.
Don’t ask me to point it out to you,
The needles and hay are one and the same.
I cannot pause time,
I cannot hold a liquid in my palms,
Nor hold my breath for longer than a minute.
This is not a perfume to be bottled,
Nor a soundtrack on your commute.
This is not a beast that can be poached,
Its demand is never quenched by your supply
And it will eat you too.
You will become the pulp under the wheels,
The soup of your used up flesh between the cogs,
The bag of bones in the nursing home.
Hunger will be your closest friend,
Where food will not suffice to feed the hole,
And when you tell your kids, all grown up!

That it’s time to move out, get a job,
Buy a car, buy a spouse, a house,
You offer your own up to the alter
Of your thankless pseudogod,
And turn the pistol on yourself.

Image: ‘Skyscrapers and Tunnel’, Fortunato Depero, 1930.

We see the waters rising

And an icy shadow fall,

The captain is unconscious

And we hear the sirens’ call.



But what of our own music?

As our starboard slips askant –

If the ship be set for sinking

Then we may as well dance.

Image: ‘Unfinished. Untitled’, Katie Rose (2023).

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like in deep space,
To float freely in an intense abyss.
This would be without the body of course,
An inconvenience really,
My eyes would burst like a grape 
Held too tight between finger and thumb.

No,

Let’s remove the body and brain,
Leaving that tiny little element
Hidden in a fold of grey matter
That’s not quite physical – 
I think that’s where I am.
So I guess I’m already floating?
It’s not like I’m sitting still;
Admittedly this vessel is like a waiting room.

I’m floating in the oversized vacuum.
It feels like a morning coffee:
Swirling, black, liquid, it pirouettes,
It protests the mug’s walls.
Before the first sip, I’m drowsy.
If you stare down long enough you swim with it.
I don’t see any stars but at least it’s warm
- Scratch that - 
I heard that space is cold.

I can spin as if in an immense hammock
Tied at the hem where it should be the clasp
Round and round, I feel so dizzy,
I can rock in a cradle.
There’s no need for up and down here,
Which makes it hard to map where you are,
It’s completely compass-less,
Everywhere is uncharted, not territory.
The hammock is slowing,
My heart would be fluttering if it hadn’t evaporated.
What am I without a heart?
Am I feeling?
How?
I’m not spinning any more.

My body responds to the world,
Sadness in my feet, happy in my heart,
Anger in my teeth and fists – 
Both clench.
How do I respond up here?
Nothing contracts, nothing cries,
So where is the proof I exist like I did?

I know so few answers,
I must know even less
If my brain hasn’t joined me here 
because that was my hardware, reminding me
That we share DNA with bananas and
I am a combination of my parents’ quirks,
So I can’t have been planted on earth
Or we would be mismatched pieces – 
Well, that throws a spanner in the works.

God, eternity’s rather long!
I’m not accustomed to feeling time,
If you can call it that,
It twists, it is too malleable,
I’m out of my depth,
I’m bending so much I could snap in two.

Swim far enough out and I’ll find gaps between atoms,
Maybe it’s comfier there.
Space is a five star hotel, 
roomy and hard and out of my league.
Am I ungrateful for wanting it a city street?
I miss the busy.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like in deep space,
From under my blanket, the window my barrier.
–  Ever so lonely, the sky replies.
Is there anyone with you?
Is my grandmother there?
The sky stays silent, her lips are sealed;
She said too much.

Image taken by publisher.