i was tempted to reblog the post but I do Not have the energy for drama but what I do have is a masters degree in an adjacent topic and a phd-in-progress in another adjacent topic.
When people say âoh how lonely our queer ancestors were, all alone and with no words for their identitiesâ what theyâre doing is spouting nihilistic, ahistorical nonsense.
Yes, the words we use now are a largely modern invention, and the rest are possibly late victorian. We had other words before that. And other words before those, and other words before those. We will have new words in the future. âDidnât have the vocabularyâ is a nonsense statement. âWe donât know what vocabulary they usedâ is a better one. âLargely, for much of western history up until the late nineteen-hundreds, what we would now call sexual identity didnât culturally existâ is a far better statement. Yes, you had queer folks. of course you did. They may well have thought of their sexual lives as an inherent part of their identity - some of them must have, to get that political ball rolling (everyone say hi to Edward Carpenter as we roll past). However, by and large, sexual identity, culturally, wasnât a thing. Everything was behavior, not identity-based. So, as much as they will most likely have had the vocabulary, they wouldnât necessarily have needed the same kinds of vocabulary as we do now. because they didnât think of it the same.
And maybe some of them were alone. Maybe, to quote one of the most bigoted comedy double acts that I can personally remember because fuck you david walliams, they were the only gay in the village. But you know Molly houses existed? You know people whisper and explore and find communities, find people and connect with them? Whole chains of queer people, connecting up between countries and generations? That happened. That has been happening.
Yes, unrecorded history is a thing. It is very much a thing. But Eleanor Rykener existed, and, from what Iâve gathered, had a community of queer folk around her. William Shakespeare and half his friends? Queer. King James? Queer. Anne Lister found many a girlfriend. James Barry? Trans. Had a boyfriend. Throw a stone from 1800 to 1910 and youâll hit a queer person (and get their number). Walt Whitman was so gay that âdoes he read Walt Whitmanâ was code for âis he gayâ. Rent boys were picking up men outside the courthouse after testifying at Wildeâs trial.
The classical world was wildly queer. We know this! People have always known this! Always!Â
Look, yes, there are whole acres of unrecorded history. Yes, there are many lost and lonely queer folks across history, and mourning them is natural and I get it, I do. My whole academic career is built on that. But we have a history. We have always had community. Always. Not everyone could access it, for sure. But to paint our history as a constant isolated misery is to write over our actual history.
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