I'm a bit torn about this. On the one hand, it is equal parts maddening and hilarious when older history texts describe Baron Wilhelm "gay as a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" von Steuben as a "ladies' man". On the other hand, there is a tendency to regard modern ideas and expressions of sexuality as 'fact' and therefore look for them underlying past behaviours; but if you think about it, that's a rather parochial and self-congratulatory view.
Sexual desire, romantic desire, and platonic desire (I said what I said) belong (IMO) on a spectrum that cultures can split up in different ways. Modern Western culture tends to group romance and sex, and set friendship apart from that; but in the 1700s it was entirely normal for young people to have 'romantic friendships' with people of the same sex, to kiss and embrace each other, even to sleep together in the same bed, without being considered homosexual.
What makes this a mess, of course, is that without really thinking about it historians tend to assume that mainstream sexuality in the past maps neatly onto the modern term "heterosexual". They then argue that past figures were heterosexual because such-and-such behaviour was normal in the past. Yeah. But if you turn that on its head that means that some behaviours that are considered bisexual or homosexual now were just acceptable in the past, and how about that means, not that those people were heterosexual by our definitions, but that they were bisexual by our definitions and some aspects of that were just OK in their culture?
...sorry, this is just a bunch of disconnected ramblings on a subject I don't know much about.
Except that I will die on the hill that Alexander Hamilton was at least biromantic, and I don't think we need proof of an actual physical relationship with Laurens to claim him as queer - in modern terms.
baratheonpilled
gummygunk
