Visible women : female sodomy in the Late Medieval and early modern Southern Netherlands (1400-1550)

Compared to the number of prosecutions for male sodomy in early modern Europe, few cases of same-sex acts between women in this period are known. In the Southern Netherlands however, no less than 25 women were charged for this crime between ca. 1400 and 1550, which means that nearly one out of ten accused sodomites in the region was a woman. This article argues that the exceptional repression of female same-sex acts was the result of the relative high level of liberty and visibility women enjoyed in the Southern Netherlands, compared to other European regions. The more visible women were in urban society, the more women attracted to people from their own sex were at risk of being discovered and penalized