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Sodomy doesn’t just mean butt stuff. In the legal sense, it also refers to mouth on genital stuff. During the Catholic inquisition, the “nefarious and abominable crime of sodomy” was imposed on anyone engaged in same-sex relations, regardless of gender. The sentence was often death. In 16th century Brazil, lesbian Felipa de Souza got off relatively easy: a vicious public flogging, and exile.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: January 4, 1592--
Born in 1556, not much is known about de Souza other than she liked other women. Maybe that’s why she joined a convent in Portugal, to spend all her time living with other women and not men. I mean, who can blame her? But I guess she wasn’t that discreet, because she was eventually booted out of the convent and ended up in Salvador on the coast of Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. While there, she kept on having slippery naked fun time with other women, until she got caught. Continues below …
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The inquisition was seriously bent out of shape about people having sex in a way that went against what Jesus said was right and proper. Oh, wait. Jesus never said anything about it. It was Old Testament shit that was (allegedly) into hating on gay sex. From the Book of Leviticus: “If a man lies with another man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They must be put to death.” Fuckin’ harsh, except that’s likely a shit translation that originally was banning pedophilia. That same book also says, “Do not mark your skin with tattoos” then lets you know it’s super fucking serious by adding, “I am the LORD.”
Licking the little man in the canoe? Not okay. Putting ink under your skin? Also not okay. What’s really not fucking okay is thinking some religious bullshit from thousands of years ago should have any bearing on how people consensually live their lives.
But in Salvador, during an inquisition, a woman confessed, narking on Felipa for eating her pussy. Did that descriptiveness offend you? But you were okay with all the times I described egregious tortures and executions? Interesting. Anyway, knowing that inquisitors often went easier on those who saved them time and came forward with confessions, numerous women, seeking to save their own sodomizing asses, confessed, saying, “Felipa ate my pussy too!” Felipa did not deny it, but rather proudly proclaimed that, yes, she was indeed a cunning linguist.
And so Felipa was fucked, and not in a way she found pleasurable. On January 4, 1592, she was given a hefty fine and sent into exile. As part of her punishment, she was made to walk barefoot out of the town while brutally whipped for all to see. “Let that be a lesson to the rest of you perverts!” was the Church’s intent.
In 1994, the human rights group OutRight Action International created the Felipa de Souza Award for “courageous advocates in the human rights movement to advance the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and/or queer (LGBTIQ) people.”
My thanks to the several lesbians who provided feedback on this piece prior to publication.
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