What annoys the FUCK out of me about the ‘all historians are out there to erase queerness from history’ thing on Tumblr is that it’s just one of those many attitudes that flagrantly mischaracterises an entire academic field and has a complete amateur thinking they know more than people who’ve spent fucking years studying said field.
Like someone will offer a very obvious example of – say – two men writing each other passionate love letters, and then quip about how Historians will just try to say that affection was just different ‘back then’. Um…no. If one man writes to another about how he wants to give him 10 000 kisses and suck his cock, most historians – surprise surprise! – say it’s definitely romantic, sexual love. We aren’t Victorians anymore.
It also completely dismisses the fact of how many cases of possible queerness are much more ambiguous that two men writing to each other about banging merrily in a field. The boundaries of platonic affection are hugely variable depending on the time and place you’re looking at. What people mock us for saying is true. Nuance fucking exists in the world, unlike on this hellscape of a site.
It is a great discredit to the difficult work that historians do in interpreting the past to just assume we’re out there trying to straightwash the past. Queer historians exist. Open-minded allies exist.
I’m off to down a bottle of whisky and set something on fire.
It’s also vaguely problematic to ascribe our modern language
and ideas of sexuality to people living hundreds or even thousands of years
ago. Of course queer people existed then—don’t be fucking daft, literally any
researcher/historian/whatever worth their salt with acknowledge this. But as
noted above, there’s a lot of ambiguity as well—ESPECIALLY when dealing with a
translation of a translation of a copy of a damaged copy in some language that
isn’t spoken anymore. That being said, yes, queer erasure happens, and it
fucking sucks and hurts. I say that as a queer woman and a baby!researcher. But
this us (savvy internet historian) vs. them (dusty old actual historian)
mentality has got to stop.You’re absolutely right.
I see the effect of applying modern labels to time periods when they didn’t have them come out in a bad way when people argue about whether some historical figure was transmasculine or a butch lesbian. There were some, of course, who were very obviously men and insisted on being treated as such, but with a lot of people…we just don’t know and we never will. The divide wasn’t so strong back in the late 19th century, for example. Heck, the word ‘transmasculine’ didn’t exist yet. There was a big ambiguous grey area about what AFAB people being masculine meant, identity-wise.
Some people today still have a foot in each camp. Identity is complicated, and that’s probably been the case since humans began to conceptualise sexuality and gender.
That’s why the word ‘queer’ is such a usefully broad and inclusive umbrella term for historians.
Also, one more thing and I will stop (sorry it’s just been so long since I’ve gotten to rant). Towards the beginning of last semester, I was translating “Wulf and Eadwacer” from Old English. This is a notoriously ambiguous poem, a p p a r e n t l y, and most of the other students and I were having a lot of trouble translating it because the nouns and their genders were all over the place (though this could be because my memory is slipping here) which made it hella difficult to figure out word order and syntax and (key) the fucking gender of everything. In class, though, my professor told us that the gender and identity of the speaker were actually the object of some debate in the Anglo-Saxonist community. For the most part, it was assumed that the principal speaker of the poem is a woman (there is one very clear female translation amongst all that ambiguity) mourning the exile of her lover/something along those lines. But there’s also some who say that she’s speaking of her child. And some people think the speaker of the poem is male and talking abut his lover. And finally, there’s some people who think that the speaker of the poem is a fucking BADGER, which is fucking wild and possibly my favorite interpretation in the history of interpretations.
TL;DR—If we can’t figure out beyond the shadow of a doubt whether the speaker is a human or a fucking badger, then we certainly can’t solidly say whether a speaker is queer or not. This isn’t narrowmindedness, this is fucking what-the-hell-is-this-language-and-culture (and also maybe most of the manuscripts are pretty fucked which further lessens knowledge and ergo certainty).
Also, if there’s nothing to debate, what’s even the fun in being an historian?
All of this.
I had a student once try to tell me that I was erasing queer history by claiming that a poem was ambiguous. I was trying to make the point that a poem was ambiguous and that for the time period we were working with, the identities of “queer” and “straight” weren’t so distinctive. Thus, it was possible that the poem was either about lovers or about friends because the language itself was in that grey area where the sentiment could be romantic or just an expression of affection that is different from how we display affection towards friends today.
And hoo boy. The student didn’t want to hear that.
It’s ok to admit ambiguity and nuance. Past sexualities aren’t the same as our modern ones, and our understanding of culture today can’t be transferred onto past cultures. It just doesn’t work. The past is essentially a foreign culture that doesn’t match up perfectly with current ones – even if we’re looking at familiar ones, like ancient or medieval Europe. That means our understanding of queerness also has to account for the passage of time. I think we need to ask “What did queerness look like in the past?” as opposed to “How did queerness as we understand it today exist in the past?” As long as we examine the past with an understanding that not all cultures thought same-sex romance/affection/sexual practice was sinful, we’re not being homophobic by admitting there can be nuance in a particular historical product.
I know a lot of very smart people who are working on queerness in medieval literature and history. And yes, there are traditions of scholars erasing queer history because they themselves are guided by their own ideologies. We all are. It’s impossible to be 100% objective about history and its interpretation. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t good work being done by current scholars, including work that corrects the bad methodologies of the past.
Tag: lgbt
A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles
What a read. To be honest, I found Harry a little “meh” but Julius more than made up for it. Harry is as it reads on the tin, very impetuous and passionate, about anything he loves. Julius is a bit older, a war veteran, and has a further secret that is revealed later in the novel. Long time member of the Ricardians, it’s easy to first imagine he’s just interested in his coats and buttons. Together, they’re a treat. This is the second installment of the entire series, the first being a short story. Harry’s cousin is the person for whom the Ricardians is named, and that group forms the central core of this series.
A Fashionable Indulgence for Kindle is on sale right now for $1.99! Don’t miss out on Julius and Harry, because Julius is one of the biggest cinnamon rolls in LGBT historical romances.
it worries me so much that there’s been this (mostly unintentional) culture built up around coming out, to where young lgbt kids are putting themselves in danger at school and at home because they don’t want to “live a lie.” i just want to say, i came out when i was 15 and it created a lot of difficulties in my life that i could have avoided by waiting until i was older. it isolated me socially, it exposed me to homophobia from my parents, my family, my teachers, and my classmates at the most important developmental stages of my own confidence and sense of self… closeted people are not living a lie. closeted people are surviving. don’t let anyone pressure you to come out before you’re ready. don’t put yourself at risk when you don’t have to.
http://evervexinghexes.tumblr.com/post/126283074027/meh-feelings-about-illyana-rasputins-queerness
Things like this are why I’m suspicious of “but what about friendship?”
I’m actively screaming at my phone
OK, maybe it’s just because I don’t watch teen movies, haven’t since I was one, but what are all these “gay teen movies”? From what I can tell reading the notes here, the one example everyone is bringing up is written by a gay man, so, WTF?
“There is no heterosexual explanation for this” also known as “I don’t believe in close friends being affectionate with one another”
Ship what you want, but please remember that friendship is definitely an Actual Thing
Platonic relationships are a thing. Straight, same sex friends being affectionate is a thing. Women who don’t fit society’s mold for femininity being straight is a thing. Men who don’t fit society’s mold for masculinity being straight is a thing.
also, people with same-sex attraction can have same-sex platonic relationships.
Okay, yes totally, but a lot of times it’s pointing out people ignoring queer subtext, so that’s kind of a big thing.
I know what you mean. Ive seen a lot of them where yeah, totally, thats just what friendship is, but like a big part of it is voicing Hey! Stop Saying The Queer Subtext Just Isn’t There!
Also, do you say the same of people who insist that a man and a woman who glanced at each other once must be in luuuuuuurve? Because I hear people say it a lot when people ship queer couples, but hardly ever when it’s straight couples?
Quite frankly, fucking all of this. Oh no, queer people jokingly talk about seeing people who reflect their types of romantic relationships. Oh no, they’re being so mean to poor, persecuted friendships. ;_;
Lesbians I love you more than anything else on this planet and all your little posts are cute but do you all realize how much of a commitment running a small farm is
“I just wanna live on a farm and sleep in while my wife brings me tea in bed” like no dummy wake the fuck up it’s 4 in the morning and your wife needs help milking the cows
Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.
Give op their hard-earned notes
look – set aside the vitriol of “discourse” for a moment: how can we communicate that sesame street explicitly stating bert and ernie aren’t gay because none of the puppets have sexuality is NOT sesame street promoting them as ace in any meaningful way OR even sesame street fighting the concept of heteronormativity? how can we communicate this is hurtful? can this be done? how do we explain that absolutely no one was discussing bert and ernie’s desire to have sex or not, and that assuming so is homophobic?
how do i explain to people that the denial of same-sex attraction or love as a homophobic act is not an opening to pretend there’s just different representation there?
We’re all starved of meaningful representation. I don’t think it’s wrong of ace people to look for the silver lining in a bigoted statement.
Alright, let’s examine this premise earnestly: ace people are starved of meaningful representation. I can accept that outright calling a character ace IS very uncommon! So let’s say on a base fundamental level I agree with your first statement.
What makes it okay to take heteronormativity and homophobia as an opening FOR ace representation? Especially when gay people can also be asexual? Is that really a silver lining if it hurts some ace people?
Then let’s point out the other issue at hand: no one is claiming the puppets have a libido or not. This IS Sesame Street and no one is assuming the puppets are also having sex, not having sex, or anything else! We aren’t talking about puppets wanting to have gay sex, and in fact the VERY reason why this is homophobic is because it equates a gay relationship with being inherently *more* sexual than a straight relationship, and is therefore inappropriate for children because it introduces the presence of sex.
If you wanted to (and if this is the thing that will make people understand), you could easily argue that this very form of homophobia at its core denies the idea that gay people CAN be asexual, because it equates gayness with sex. (Which is NOT to say that gay people can’t be sexual and this be normal! just to say this particular homophobic notion is about over-sexualization of ALL things relating to gayness).
By all rights this kind of statement should be harmful to ace people in at least *two* different ways. How is that a silver lining? How is it even a possibility for representation? Do some ace people simply not matter? How is that decided?
Would this be acceptable in other ways? Can you imagine if someone introduced the idea of a trans puppet and then Sesame Street said “Yes we use pronouns, and yes the puppets identify with them, but none of the puppets have a gender”? Would it be okay for anyone to find representation in that transphobia? My answer is no, but I wonder how many people would say yes.
In a community – any community – is it sustainable, healthy, or ethical to benefit from an action when other people are hurt by it? In a community of marginalized people is this useful? Does it give us representation or does it further the marginalization and only give the illusion of progress?
I agree with you on many points:
- Sesame Street’s official stance is homophobic.
- People who don’t think it’s homophobic are misguided.
- Sesame Street is not promoting meaningful ace representation.
- People who believe Sesame Street is promoting meaningful ace representation are misguided.
However, I think it’s everyone’s right to point at a character and say “lesbian” or “ace” or “trans” without justification. I don’t think morally wrong interpretations exist—not even the most blatant cases of straight people burying their heads in the sand and going “la la I can’t hear you they’re straight” about canonically not-straight characters.
If someone doesn’t understand why the official stance is homophobic, then by all means explain it to them. I just don’t think “Stop interpreting X character as Y orientation” needs to be a part of that conversation.
I disagree that “Stop interpreting X character as Y orientation”–as a general injunction–was part of the original post. OP said that Sesame Street is not promoting ace representation and that they’re not challenging heteronormativity.
She also said that the homophobic denial of same-sex love is “not an opening to pretend there’s just different representation there.” Does this mean that no one can personally read Bert and Ernie’s relationship as platonic? Or that no one can personally read Bert and Ernie as asexual? That’s not what I got from this statement. I believe the point is that it’s not “acceptable” to insist that a homophobic statement should be taken as neutral, authoritative evidence for a competing interpretation and to frame it as a recognition of sexual diversity worth celebrating.
Speaking for myself, it isn’t simply the act of interpreting two characters as asexual that bothers me. It’s specifically: 1) drawing on a homophobic and heteronormative statement/context as evidence for that interpretation; and, furthermore, 2) insisting that this homophobic statement–which we all agree is not actually a meaningful affirmation of asexual representation–conclusively determines that the characters really “are” asexual. Denying that it is heteronormativity that provides this evidence, and that they are therefore deriving a positive advantage from heternormativity in their ability to point to this statement as authoritative evidence for their preferred interpretation, bothers me as well.
Those are all things I’ve seen so far. I haven’t specifically seen this yet, but I suspect that someone out there is implying that this “representation”–which is just a void of “sexual orientation” created by the denial of any possibility for gay kinship specifically (heterosexual relationships and families aren’t marked by “sexual orientation” the way that same-gender relationships and families are; the denial of “sexual orientation” for the characters should be understood in that context)–is actually valuable and should be celebrated [protected from dissatisfied gay/bi people] because ace representation is so rare [and therefore more urgently needed than a condemnation of homophobia]. And that possibility bothers me as well.
In your second comment, you say it’s people’s “right” to hold an interpretation “without justification.” (As far as I can see, everyone already has the ability to do this; I don’t see how that could be revoked. Do you mean that people should have the right to hold any interpretation without negative judgement or criticism?) Yet in your first comment, you aren’t describing people holding an interpretation “without justification.” You’re talking about people “[looking] for the silver lining in a bigoted statement.” Like us, you were commenting not just on the mere act of holding an asexual interpretation, but on looking to a homophobic statement for evidence or inspiration–your phrasing suggesting finding a positive element in it. So let’s stay on topic and talk about that.
You said it’s not “wrong” to do this; OP said it’s not “acceptable.” Obviously I’m in her camp, but I’ll frame it this way:
It’s not wrong for people to be upset that others are pointing to a homophobic statement as neutral and/or authoritative evidence for an asexual interpretation.
It’s not wrong for people to have a negative judgment of those who point to a homophobic statement as neutral and/or authoritative evidence for an asexual interpretation.
It’s not wrong for people to criticize pointing to a homophobic statement as neutral and/or authoritative evidence for an asexual interpretation.
It would be misguided for people to make a blanket judgement about asexuals because some people (ace or not) are doing this.
It does show a skewed sense of priority if your first concern is making sure that we don’t form a negative judgement about the people who are doing this.
I agree with basically everything scissortalesaint said. Making a blanket judgment about asexuals off of this post would be wrong. But taking something that is at least partly based in homophobia as a “silver lining” indicating that they’re asexual is bad wording at best. Why does a bigoted statement need a “silver lining”?
Is there a fact-check anywhere of that “homophobia/misogyny is colonial” stuff? I could maaaaaaybe believe it for SEA, but not India, and definitely not generalized.
(For posterity: This is about this post)
It’s not something you can fact check.
The uncharitable explanation is that a certain political tendency will mindlessly blame anything wrong in a formerly colonized country on colonization. Lots of stuff (senseless borders driving sectarian strife, for example) can be laid at the feet of colonizers. However, this excuse has been used to deflect or distract from decades of avoidable mismanagement. Academic-sounding anticolonialist mush has been covering for massive theft and corruption from the get-go.
The charitable explanation goes as follows: the anti-sodomy laws in effect across the formerly-colonized world date back to legal codes implemented by the colonizer nation, including India’s infamous Penal Code Section 377. So they’re technically right. However, large parts of the criminal code are uncontroversial and were kept around after colonies gained independence. Whether you’re in Bangalore, Bamoko or Boston, you can’t just punch a stranger in the street or set their house on fire. Those anti-sodomy laws were in that category.
Religion also plays a role. Western “decolonialists” point out that attitudes about homosexuality come from alien religion imposed by colonists. They usually mean Christianity (safe target, because wypipo), but the OP who started this thread is talking about a Muslim country. That said, the perilous and dangerous situation surrounding LGBT+ people in Uganda, for example, is indeed very much tied up with Christianity. India, which is 80% Hindu, doesn’t really fit in here, but that never stopped anyone.
The real problem lies in the mirror. The western conception of sexuality does indeed fail to account for non-western concepts like a third gender. However, decolonialists have their own blindspots. When you really listen to them, it’s evident that their conceptions of sexuality don’t come from the imagined utopia of pre-colonial gender relations. It instead comes from the western universities where they learned all the anticolonialist jargon. It’s safe to assume that the western anticolonialist vision criticized by OP looks more like imposing the values of Sex Week at Oberlin than the views of their great-great-great-great-great precolonial grandparents.
Want to offend the heck out of your average citizen of a Global South postcolonial nation? Sit them down in the college classes where their self-appointed saviors learned all that language and theory. That’s OP’s whole point: Victorian homophobia and 21st century queer theory both lack roots in precolonial cultures and whipsawing from one to the other isn’t a shift to something more authentic or culturally appropriate.
That’s the paradox of power, isn’t it? Imposing your views on the population is only bad when someone else does it.
really, really fucking good take.
right now, my country has a ton of religious fundamentalists with a brand of Hinduism they made up from scratch, touting it as the One True Way Of Hinduism. it’s trying to turn Hinduism–a largely non expansionist, ordered system, more focused on life and ritual and knowledge than actual divinity (which all comes in the latter texts) into something it has never been. it’s the Indian version of Jesus Was A White Guy–Krishna was unproblematic, actually, and we should all strive to be like him and have 1001 wives and…steal butter. or something, I don’t fucking know.
and these people, the people who’ll say stuff like “India had planes in 6000 BC, actually!!1! no we don’t have an agenda!!1!1” are the same people who hate gays with a rabid passion and think the West invented lesbianism only to corrupt the morality of pure
IndianHindu girls. and they try to pretend that the West is bad because it colonized us, and that’s the only wrong thing they ever did. like, I can’t explain the scale of dissonance going on here, so a rundown of what they believe:
- the West is bad
- but it gave us (Hindu Brahmins, because FUCK everyone else) trains and education so it’s okay
- but it’s bad and everything Western (like girls in jeans and gayness) is bad because it’s Western (critical thinking whomst??)
- Hindus are AWESOME.
- but only the right kind of Hindus everyone else is uhhh antinational (right = believes what I say)
- Muslims BAD
- Christians are okay (never explain why)
- Jains and Gujaratis are okay (because money and Gandhi)
- Buddha?? don’t know him
- we had planes and nuclear bombs in 6000 bc NO REALLY
- India must go back to how it was
- without the queerness. none of our gods were ever queer. Vishnu? a known drag queen? I can’t hear you over the sound of how hindutva I am
- India was never queer (historical revisionism ftw)
- India was better in the past, which wasn’t queer. none of this gay rights bullshit
- um I believe in women’s rights but no jeans and no birth control and no education and no jobs but women’s :)))) rights :))))))))))
- dalits? stay in ur place. adivasis choke cause we’re gonna develop everything at great damage to the ecosystem and what do you mean ancient India cared about the forest
the truth is that these people have never given a damn about us or our history. they have an agenda and a plan for India and how it should look and they will lie and lie and lie to get what they want. which is not the greater good
lookashiny 