Female sodomy

Female sodomy is a general category of sexual or erotic activities enacted between women. It was codified as a legal category in medieval and early modern Europe, although it differed greatly between regions. Female sodomy is distinct from the social and legal category of (male) sodomy due to the significant differences in the way women accused of sodomy were seen in society and treated within the court system. A person who commits sodomy is sometimes referred to as a sodomite. Notable historical female sodomites include Katherina Hetzeldorfer and Benedetta Carlini.

The legal definition of sodomy in many places required an act of “unnatural penetration” and could therefore not be easily extrapolated to apply to the persecution of female sodomy.^[1] Due to the rigidity of social and legal categories of gender, any expression of sexuality that did not fit into the heterosexual paradigm was seen as a transgression of sexual and gendered norms. Female sodomy was therefore typically punished more harshly than those who committed crimes which were solely transgressions of sexual norms. Female sodomy appears to have been less widely persecuted than male sodomy in Europe during this period. The record of female sodomy in European history consists most overwhelmingly of fragmented court documents and personal correspondences, although the latter is quite rare. These sources reveal the harshness of the charge of female sodomy. As it was regarded as a transgression of gender, social, as well as sexual norms, these women were often charged with more than just sodomy. Many accusations of female sodomy were accompanied by accusations of witchcraft, deviancy, and hermaphroditism. This record offers insight on the differences between female and male sodomy, showcasing the strictness of social norms for women. A single transgression, such as participating in eroticism with other women resulted in the perception of these women as ‘non-women’, or in some cases even ‘non-human’. Many regions in Europe had their own labels for female sodomites in order to classify them as non-women after these transgressions.^[2]