There's an entire genre of articles on the theme "why is it so hard to find historic evidence for female same-sex relations?" It covers everything from the types of erasures and displacements that Faderman talks about in this article, to the deliberate and selective exclusion of f/f vocabulary from the Oxford English DIctionary (which continues the process of erasure to this day, as people relying on it to be complete and detailed). Time after time you get slapped in the face with the understanding that f/f relations were erased because people considered them shameful and embarrassing. Not even necessarily the people engaged in them! But their biographers, their descendents (who controled their legacy), and most historians up through the late 20th century. If a woman was considered otherwise admirable and praiseworthy, it was important to make sure that nothing "stained" that. And, of course, we can't ignore the contribution of general misogyny, because as we all know a woman must be perfect and of unstained reputation to avoid getting torn down for daring to be a woman in public. But one of the things that Faderman's work points out, is that much of the overt erasure is specifically a product of the post-sexological world.
This is an error that creeps into a great deal of sapphic historical fiction: characters are concerned about aspects of their relationships that actual people of the period would not have blinked at. Sharing a bed? No biggie. Kissing, embracing, and holding hands in public? Utterly normal. Writing love poetry and effusive declarations of affection? But of course! And yet so many current sapphic historicals have characters freaking out over things that their historic counterparts would have taken for granted as, not simply acceptable, but expected behavior. A romance novel requires conflict and roadblocks, but they should be ones that are true to the era, not ones borrowed from the 20th century.
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