Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship

Riassunto di Social Sex

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   When Women Were Invisible Friends

   

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   Think of your closest female friend. Now imagine a world where that relationship-that deep, sustaining bond-was considered impossible. For two thousand years, friendship was written about, celebrated, and theorized as an exclusively male domain. Philosophers from Aristotle to Cicero waxed eloquent about brotherhood and virtue between men, while women were dismissed as too jealous, too emotional, too petty to form genuine bonds. The Hebrew Bible gives us David and Jonathan, whose souls were "knit together" in love so profound that Jonathan defied his own father to protect his friend. Meanwhile, women appear primarily as rivals-Sarah and Hagar fighting over Abraham, Rachel and Leah competing for Jacob's affection. The message was clear: women connected through men, not each other. Yet beneath this male-dominated narrative, something else was happening. Ruth's famous pledge to Naomi-"Whither thou goest, I will go"-reveals a different story, one of women choosing each other despite a world that barely acknowledged such choices mattered. This invisibility wasn't evidence of absence but of a profound cultural blindness that would take centuries to correct.

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   The Sacred Sisterhood Behind Convent Walls

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   While male philosophers debated friendship, women created their own models in convents - the one place society granted them autonomy. Hildegard of Bingen formed intense bonds, particularly with Richardis of Stade, who helped prepare her visionary manuscripts. When Richardis became abbess elsewhere, Hildegard's grief erupted: "Why have you forsaken me? I so loved the nobility of your character, your wisdom, your chastity..." Nuns shared daily prayers and mystical visions for decades, creating bonds rivaling any marriage. Not all were platonic - Benedetta Carlini's affair with Sister Bartolomea scandalized investigators. Yet even this transgression reveals something profound: when women lived outside patriarchal households, they formed connections so deep that neither church warnings nor threat of execution could prevent them. For intellectually ambitious women, convents offered something revolutionary - a community where female companionship wasn't just tolerated but structurally necessary.

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   Gossips, Salons, and the Birth of Public Female Friendship

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   By the 1580s, English women openly socialized with their "gossips"-female friends who gathered to exchange information, support each other through childbirth, and enforce community norms. Shakespeare captured this dynamic vividly. Rosalind and Celia in "As You Like It" are inseparable, having "slept together, rose at an instant, learned, played, ate together." They weren't background characters-they schemed, supported each other through disguises and exile, and brought about happy endings through loyalty. Katherine Philips, who founded the Society of Friendship in 1650s England, wrote passionate poetry to her beloved friends, considering women's friendships more profound than heterosexual bonds and lamenting that "the Marriage of a Friend is the Funeral of a Friendship." French salons revolutionized social life, allowing women to participate equally with men. When Mme de La Fayette confessed to Mme de Sevigne, "You are the person whom I have truly loved the most in all the world," she articulated what society had barely acknowledged: women's friendships could be life's deepest relationships.

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   Revolutionary Bonds and Political Partnerships

   When revolution swept through America and France, women's friendships became political partnerships. Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams maintained a forty-one-year correspondence, signing letters as Portia and Marcia - comparing themselves to Roman matrons. When critics dismissed women as "indifferent politicians," Warren insisted observations should be valued for merit, whether from "a female lip in the soft whispers of private friendship" or "thundered in the senate." They claimed their emotional nature as political strength. The French Revolution produced even more dramatic bonds. Mme Roland, facing execution in 1793, asked her closest friend Sophie Grandchamp to witness her final journey. Grandchamp positioned herself at the Pont Neuf and watched unflinchingly as her friend was carted to the guillotine, later devoting herself to preserving Roland's legacy. True friendship meant bearing witness even to death. These revolutionary friendships weren't just emotional support - they were political partnerships that helped articulate new visions of citizenship and civic virtue that included women for the first time.

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   When Women Loved Like Lovers

   Around 1800, female friendship turned intensely romantic. Women called each other "darling," spoke of eternal devotion, and openly embraced without shame. Charlotte Bronte worried to Ellen Nussey: "Why are we to be divided? Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving each other too well - of losing sight of the Creator in idolatry of the creature." Her concern wasn't loving another woman, but that this love might eclipse God. American boarding schools institutionalized these passionate friendships - girls shared beds, exchanged flowers, candy, locks of hair, and rings, kissing and embracing publicly. Society tolerated these "romantic friendships" as nonsexual and unthreatening. "Boston marriages" between working women sharing lodgings offered economic alternatives to legal marriage with full social acceptance. This golden age ended abruptly in the 1880s-90s when sexologists introduced terms like "homosexual" and "lesbian." Suddenly, innocent behaviors became pathologized. The unself-conscious romantic friendship died, replaced by suspicion that persists today.

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   Quilts, Prayer Groups, and the Power of Women's Collectives

   American women discovered that repeated gatherings for communal work forged powerful friendships. Quilting bees brought together four to eight women sharing conversation and accomplishment. By the 1840s, quilting evolved into art, spawning friendship-quilts where contributors added signed blocks - often as gifts for women heading west, maintaining connection across distances. The Second Great Awakening created female prayer groups that evolved into "cent" societies raising missionary funds. By 1915, three million women belonged to foreign mission societies - an organizational force preparing women for leadership roles society denied them. The New York Female Moral Reform Society, formed in 1834, expanded to 445 auxiliaries within five years, boldly threatening to publish brothel patrons' names. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's fifty-year collaboration exemplifies women's political partnership. Despite different temperaments - Stanton a mother of seven, Anthony single - they maintained remarkable harmony. Stanton described feeling "incompleteness" when separated, but united, possessing "such strength of self-assertion that no ordinary obstacles, differences or dangers ever appear to us insurmountable." Their friendship transcended personal connection to ignite collective action, proving women's bonds could reshape nations.

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   The Digital Age and the Future of Female Friendship

   By the 1960s, female friendship became explicitly political through second-wave feminism. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the Commission on the Status of Women, Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique," and consciousness-raising groups declared "the personal is political." Despite initial racial tensions, shared experiences of patriarchy gradually bridged divides, reflected in works by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor. Popular culture evolved accordingly. Television progressed from "I Love Lucy's" married-couple focus to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show's" single women's friendships, paving the way for "Sex and the City" and "Broad City." Films like "The Color Purple," "Thelma & Louise," and "Bridesmaids" established women's friendships as worthy subjects for serious storytelling. Today, social media enables "efficient friendship" for women juggling multiple demands. Platforms like Meetup.com and GirlFriendCircles.com bridge online and offline connections during life transitions. Four universal elements define female friendship across history: affection, self-revelation, physical contact, and interdependence. Female friendship has traveled from historical invisibility to cultural prominence-from being considered impossible to being celebrated as life's most sustaining bond.

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