How to Spot a Lesbian in the Early Modern Spanish World

Emotions and Sexuality

“…They were believed to have engaged in sexual relations using a dildo made of cane reeds, an opinion that led them to be known in the local community by the sobriquet 'las cañitas' ('the little cane girls'). 38 In the anti-sodomitic rhetoric of that time, homosexual acts were deemed to be a monstrous and anti-social deformation of the purposes of nature. The fact that premodern people living in long-term relationships whose goal was not procreation chose to adopt the vocabulary available at that time to express love between grooms and brides also tells us something about how feelings and affections within the family were viewed.…”