#spinsters

[lesbiansovereverything]

At Home with Ourselves: Medusa's Spinster Heaven

At Home With Ourselves is an interview series in which we profile lesbian homes. From van life to the suburbs, from self-built cabins to studio apartments, from collective houses to the things that make you feel at home wherever you may find yourself. Wherever and however lesbians live, we want to know about it.

Devorah: I can relate to the idea of home needing to be a place where you don’t feel infringed upon. Have you always aspired to this?

Medusa: Even as a young girl, I went against the grain. I admired the Maiden Aunts in literature and real life that were supposed to frighten us. I thought they were gutsy and interesting. Like those fabled Spinsters, I grew up to live in my own attic and to wear a lot of black dresses. I am a lifelong lesbian, now in middle age. My space is appropriately named Spinster Heaven.

Devorah: What else do you want to share about your space and what home means to you?

Medusa: Women are often told we are “selfish” when we need time or space to ourselves. We need to reclaim “selfishness” as the self-care that it is and to let go of guilt about needing our own spaces. I am an introvert, psychically sensitive, and have a busy mind. I need a lot of space, quiet, and time to myself. Many of us do.

Like many women, I grew up in a family where I did not have a lot of control over my direct environment. I lived with a constant low-level distress which compromised my health. As an adult, I lived with roommates and lovers, but it was not until I had my own space at Spinster Heaven that I was able to truly inhabit it and live.

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[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy - Fontana - 1960 (cover illustration by Eileen Walton)

[octarinespill]

Paris Reid - Spinsters, 2023

[abuddyforeveryseason]

Awww, how cute, Buddy's girlfriend's proposing to him. As we know, a guy can't say no to a marriage proposal from a girl on Leap Day. But, just in case he decides to break with tradition, she's proposing on top of a cliff (easy to push people off of), so he'd better say yes.

According to Douglas Adams, that little tree growing under the cliff is called a "grimmet".

I had planned on drawing 366 different pictures from the beginning, even if it wasn't a leap year, so I guess I lucked out.

And of course, everyone's favorite Leap Day movie is showing on repeat.

You know, speaking of woman making marriage proposals, I've been watching a show which features spinsters, and the ladies on the show are the stereotypical old maids who want nothing more than to get married, falling in love with even the most mediocre of men. And it feels that, even for the time, it's just wish fulfilment from the part of the male writers. Sure, the old maids might not be too attractive (though, TV being what it is, they're far from ugly), but I think a lot of men would want nothing more than to marry a religious virgin who'd be his homemaker despite his obvious flaws.

And in the real world, women who chose not to marry had a very rough life ahead of them. Even if it wasn't illegal for a woman to choose to stay single, it was immoral according to most religions, the woman would have trouble supporting herself, and would be targeted by all sorts of violence, from literal witch-hunters to random criminals who see a person who'd have a harder time defending herself.

So, in a society where women were pressured into marriage, a woman who refused to do so was a real outlier. And fiction adopted a "sour grapes" stance on the matter, portraying any adult woman who's never married as being desperate to do so - and always out of loneliness or romantic passion, never out of a practical need to survive. And that'd let the male viewers enjoy the fantasy world where even an unattractive, unsuccessful and unintelligent man has the option of marrying a submissive virgin if only he can look past her age.

[my-52-weeks-with-christie]

Vintage My 52 Weeks With Christie: Spinsters

Crooked House  First Published: In Cosmopolitan (US magazine) in 1948.  I Read: Crooked House. Harper, New York, 2011.  Series: Stand Alone.  Detective: Charles Hayward  Summary: Charles and Sophia met overseas, fell in love and were separated by their duties in the War. They decided if they lived through it and still liked each other then they would get married. Two years later the War is…

[purecinema]

Movies about spinsters! That was a thing. How dare they?! But there are some good ones though. The Heiress, Now Voyager, Summertime …

I admit it, I’m into spinsploitation films.

[chelebelleslair]

[clemsfilmdiary]

The Honeymoon Killers (1970, Leonard Kastle, Martin Scorsese, Donald Volkman)

4/26/23

[askthedarkone]

What were the spinsters who raised you like as guardians? Do/did you consider them to be your parents? What became of them?

I do consider them my parents, yes. Unfortunately age and illness took them, but they were the only parents I truly ever knew. They treated me well, taught me a trade and ensured I never went to bed hungry or cold. Even if it was to the detriment of their own experiences of such things. It was the closest to being loved that I had ever felt as a child.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters In Jeopardy - Fontana - 1973

[oldshrewsburyian]

Dear college students,

I really hope that I, your spinster aunt of Tumblr, am not the first person to tell you this, but: please use your university library services. You are paying for them. They are there for you. Moreover, your professors are operating on the assumption that you will use them as necessary.

When I say "library services" I mean not only physical books that will help you with research, but the usually more extensive eBook collections ditto. Novels you've been meaning to get around to and can't afford to buy. Even (quaintly?) DVDs for your entertainment. And perhaps most significantly of all, interlibrary loan.

I'm going to reiterate interlibrary loan in its own paragraph because a student complained to me recently that publishers were "literally incentivizing piracy" by not pricing academic monographs for purchase by college students and my reaction is best summed up as: ????? Publishers typically price scholarly monographs in the pious hope of not losing money on them. Everyone complains about the ones priced at $300, and a lot of them are priced around $30-50. They are priced for purchase by libraries and specialists. And they are priced for purchase by libraries precisely so that libraries can make them accessible to college students. Anyway, use interlibrary loan, good grief.

TL;DR: the library is there for you, that is what it is for, please behave accordingly.

[lindaseccaspina]

Weird News or is it??? You Tell Me....

Weird News or is it??? You Tell Me….

CLIPPED FROMModesto Morning HeraldModesto, California17 Jun 1922, Sat  •  Page 1 Have you read-The Man who Disappeared– Stories of Dr. G. E. Kidd CLIPPED FROMMontpelier Evening ArgusMontpelier, Vermont21 Jan 1939, Sat  •  Page 2 Have you read- The Sea Serpents of Lake Ontario Sea Serpent Captured in Chats Lake SEA MONSTER IN THE OTTAWA RIVER CLIPPED FROMThe Birmingham NewsBirmingham,…

[mrkida-art]

Fem!Bagginshield

[fruitcage]

[ezekiellsplayground]

I fell into a pattern of simply filling up spindles over the last few months. So here’s the 100s of meters of thread that needs to be de-spindled, plyed, & finished.