Queering queerness: Reflections on witches and spinsterhood in post-pandemic times

Stanley, Phiona

Abstract

In pandemic times, there were couple-bubbles and household bubbles and social bubbles. And then there was me, uncoupled, unchilded: a bubble of one.

In early modern Scotland, the Witchcraft Act (1563) held my type as “rebel women who talked back, argued, swore …a socially dangerous subject ”. In contemporary Scotland, social imaginaries of crazy cat ladies worked together with the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act (2020) to produce similar effects. “Emotional and material dependence within couples is both accepted and expected…[while] other kinds of relationships of dependence are subject to constant criticism and condescension ”.

But I am not alone. My oddkin were my bubble (virtually and illegally) and my spinsterhood, now, does not make me an inevitable bubble of one. This, then, is my declaration of dependence.

During the pandemic, single people found ways of connecting (although this turned us into rebel women, by necessity socially dangerous subjects).

This presentation is about labels—spinsters, crazy cat ladies, witches. It is also about queering queerness, and negotiating the queer and deeply gendered queerness of spinsterhood.

Citation

Stanley, P. (2024, March). Queering queerness: Reflections on witches and spinsterhood in post-pandemic times. Paper presented at Gender and Sexuality Research Symposium, Edinburgh, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Gender and Sexuality Research Symposium
• Start Date: Mar 6, 2024
• End Date: Mar 6, 2024
• Deposit Date: Mar 11, 2024
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3559585