Bill Veusay

There have always been people like us. Queer, atypical, strange, in any and all ways that presents. We might have different words for what we experience. We might not conceive of those experiences under remotely the same framework. Yet if there is one thing reading about history has taught me, it's that no matter how far back you go, you will always find a reflection of somebody from today.

And we can point to the big names, the myths, the icons. We can latch on to the stories of Inanna, to Hatshepsut, to scraps from Sappho, to Alexander's grief, to what we can guess about Shakespeare, and what we know about d'Aubigny and d'Eon, Anne Lister and James Barry, Stormé DeLarverie and Martha P Johnson. I won't ever deny the importance of knowing those names, those lives, and what they achieved within the context of their time.

But history is a pinhole through which we view the past. How many more people must have done or thought or desired as we do for even a single name to have passed down? We have the records of those in power, who determined what society looked like, what was right or wrong, what punishments would be meted out to transgressors. We also know transgression was a fact of life. Inevitable, no matter how hard or how softly it was pushed to the fringes.

This is what gives me hope, above all else. The simple, eternal truth that rules and convention and whole-hearted hate cannot extinguish human variety. That people have never once all fit neatly into the boxes we build for ourselves.

We are here.

We have always been here.