Different from the Others

German and Dutch Discourses of Queer Femininity and Female Desire, 1918-1940

Cyd Sturgess (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

368 Seiten

2026
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-83695-397-5 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. März 2026)
Versandkostenfrei
Auch auf Rechnung

Artikel merken

Presenting for the first time a comparative and socio-cultural history of queer femininities in Germany and the Netherlands for an English-speaking audience, Different from the Others highlights this submerged history and engages queer authors and activists from the Netherlands to challenge and redress conceptualizations of queer femininity in the interwar period.

For much of Europe, the interwar period was one of cultural expansion and diversion and increased visibility for lesbians. While historical research on Germany during the period immediately after the First World War has been extensively studied by historians through the lens of gender and sexuality—with an implicit emphasis on the “masculine” dimension of queer female sexuality—the Dutch context has been virtually ignored. Through careful and sensitive studies of medico‐social discourses, media representations, and literary depictions of queer femininity, Different from the Others recovers the submerged history of queer feminine women in both Germany and the Netherlands. Cyd Sturgess provides a theoretical analysis that makes key empirical contributions to the history of Dutch gays and lesbians while reframing our collective understanding of queer femininity more broadly.

Cyd Sturgess is a queer literary and cultural historian, who works as a Leverhulme postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University. Lecturing on themes of gender and desire in the media, Cyd's latest research project concerns issues of identity and precarity in community-based film festivals and the queering of documentary and archival practices.

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and Translations

Introduction

“Good” and “Bad” Femininities

Locating the “Fem(me)” in Histories of Sexuality

Labels and Names

Queer Historiographical Methods Setting the Parameters for Historical Research

Part I: Socio-Medical Discourses

Chapter 1. Sex and the Cities – Locating Queer Feminine Desires

‘A Child of War’

A Conservative Modernity

Living Apart Together

The (Not So) Frivolous Flapper

‘Bubis’ and ‘Mädis’

Little Baskets and Cautionary Owls

Queer Activism in the City

Policing Same-Sex Desires

Conclusions

Chapter 2. Sexual Science – The Queer Feminine Mystique

The Emergence of a Scientia Sexualis

Ideal Women, Ideal Marriages

Queer Female Desire At the Margins: Early Theories of Same-Sex Desires

Somatic Signifiers: Questions of Queer Legitimac

Intermediary Forms: Spectrums and Hierarchies of Queer Desire

Femininity as a (Queer) Woman’s Right

Seductive Don Juans and Curable Queers

Conclusions

Part II: Community Discourses

Introduction

Chapter 3. Fashioning Femininities in the Weimar Periodicals The Girlfriend and Love of Women

The Girlfriend: ‘Journal for Ideal Friendship’

Women’s Love: ‘Friendship, Love and Sexual Emancipation’

Discursive Divisions within Berlin’s Queer Subculture

Defining the Parameters of the Feminine

Literary Discourses and Feminine Desire

Fashioning Femininities

Trans Femininities

Anti-Feminine Discourses

Conclusions

Chapter 4. Marys and Mollys: Finding the Queer Feminine on the Dutch Press Landscape

The Cult of Domesticity

Beatrice (1939–1967)

The Young Woman (1924–1938)

We (1932)

The Right to Live (1940–1946)

Conclusions

Part III: Fictional Discourses

Introduction

Chapter 5. A Mother’s Love: Eva Raedt-de Canter’s Internaat (1930) and Christa Winsloe’s Das Mädchen Manuela (1933)

Eva Raedt-de Canter

Christa Winsloe

Boarding School (1930)

The Girl Manuela (1933)

‘Alone in the World’: Dynamic Desires in Boarding School

‘I want to be a boy’: Queering Sexological Tropes in The Girl Manuela

A Mother’s Love

“Confessions” and “Comings-Out”: Queer Desires as Queer Identities?

Conclusions

Chapter 6. When Object Becomes Subject: Feminine Protagonists in Anne E. Weirauch’s The Scorpion (1919–1931) and Josine Reuling’s Back to the Island (1937)

Anna E. Weirauch

Josine Reuling

The Scorpion (1919–1931)

Back to the Island (1937)

Challenging Sexological Frameworks

Femininity in the Foreground

Hierarchies of Gender and Desire

Mother-Love and “Nonlesbian” Subjects

Conclusions

Conclusion

Bibliography

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.3.2026
Zusatzinfo	Bibliography; Index
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	1-83695-397-6 / 1836953976
ISBN-13	978-1-83695-397-5 / 9781836953975
Zustand	Neuware