One of the things that comes up time and time again in the work I do on LGBT history is that, when source material has been translated into English, if there has been LGBT content then it has been left out, or mis-translated, so as to erase the evidence.

The latest example of this has been the life of Walatta Petros, a 17th Century Ethiopian nun whose struggles to protect Ethiopian Christianity against the Catholic Church earned her a sainthood. The book also happens to be the earliest known biography of an African woman (possibly excepting Egyptian material which may not exactly qualify as biography). You can read more about Walatta and her life in this Guardian article.

Alison Flood (for ’tis she writing the article) sensibly warns us against assuming that Walatta was anything like a modern lesbian. While lesbianism is named after goings on in ancient Greece, the modern idea of the lesbian is very much based on ideas about the nature of same-sex desire developed in the 19th Century. However, I suspect Alison may be wrong to assume that Walatta’s vow of celibacy meant that no hanky panky went on. Back in those days it is entirely likely that “celibacy” was interpreted as refraining from potentially procreative sex, not as refraining from any sexual contact.