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Researching LGBT+ history is equally fascinating and infuriating
2 years ago · 2 · LGBT, +3 · Explicit
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Ancient San art depicts 3 undeniably homosexual men, but you’ll never see it. The only remotely close image you’ll find from the same era is of two men holding hands. Historians argue that they ‘could have been friends’.
Ancient figurines and art depict androgynous figures, people with either no defining sex characteristics or all of them at once. Historians say ‘it must be a ritual object’ ‘it’s fat, it must be a woman’ ‘this one must really be a man, because it’s hunting’. Why can’t you just look at something and accept that you don’t know, that perhaps these ancient storytellers didn’t really see gender as something worthy of note?
Sappho wrote about her female lovers
“For by my side you put on
many wreaths of roses
and garlands of flowers
around your soft neck.
And with precious and royal perfume
you anointed yourself.
On soft beds you satisfied your passion.
And there was no dance,
no holy place
from which we were absent”
But we ‘can’t know for sure’ whether she experienced same sex attraction. Why is it only ok to label historical figures, if that label is ‘heterosexual’?
Heliogabalus was a teenage Roman emperor. A young trans woman with a sense of humour (did you know she’s thought to have invented the whoopee cushion?). She celebrated pleasure and decadence, and pushed boundaries (even by ancient Roman standards) on sexuality. She offered riches to anyone who could perform a sex reassignment surgery on her. Her death is possibly the first recorded transphobic hate crime. She died hiding in a chest, clinging to her mother, killed by the guards who’d sworn to protect her as part of a plot orchestrated by her grandmother. Most of our modern knowledge of her is based on what her enemies wrote. Even now, she is known only for being a ‘pervert’, a sexual deviant, an unworthy ruler. She was 18 when she was murdered.
Emma Trosse published several academic works in Germany in the 1890s. She herself was asexual (or ‘lacking sensuality’) and she advocated for legal protections for non-straight people. Her papers were banned in several places, and may have been just a few of so many progressive works burned by the nazis.
Speaking of, did you know that the Allies actually agreed with the nazis when it came to gay people, ‘deviant’ women and travellers? Memorials were put up with their symbols missing. People went from one prison to another. Did the war ever truly end for everyone?
What’s changed, really? Some people still see gay men as filthy, force intersex people into binary boxes, pretend lesbians don’t exist, assume trans people are deserving of violence, and destroy all scientific evidence that would suggest otherwise.
What I’m trying to say is, we have always been here. We’ve always been here and we’re not going anywhere and there will always be Us. Society hasn’t always been hateful, we haven’t always been seen as different and horrifying - we were the subjects of ancient art. Maybe our art has been defaced over time, scratched over and burned and repainted and examined through a white western cis-hetero-centric lens, but it’s still there under the surface just waiting to be restored.
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Yeah. This was a very interesting read. I can't believe how full of hate this world is. Hate crimes and all that. I just don't get it. I'm a lesbian and sometimes scary cuz you don't know if someone's planning on killing me or anyone for it.
ReplyIt’s just so frustrating knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way, it’s never had to be this way. It takes zero effort to not be violent, zero thought to not be hateful.
Reply