#Queer History

[genderqueerdykes]

howdy, this may be a stupid question but I saw a post of yours talking about how men can be lesbians and I'm just a little confused? can some men be lesbians just because they identify with the label? and If people of any gender can be lesbians what does being a lesbian mean? my understanding may be flawed so I would really appreciate help in understanding :3

hello there! not a stupid question!

yep, men can be lesbians simply by identifying with the label, that's all there really is to it! that's how every queer identity except intersex works, in fact! in recent years, we've begun welcoming non binary people into lesbian and gay spaces- so why can't we open the doors to other people? this can be for a variety of reasons why a man would identify as a lesbian, transmascs and trans men who started in the lesbian community and still feel a connection to that identity, bi/multigender men, genderqueer men, genderfluid men, intersex men, bi and pan men who feel like their attraction is gay and lesbian instead of gay and straight, lesbian trans women who are also men, the sky is really the limit!

it's a bit complicated to define what terms like "gay" and "lesbian" truly mean, because they don't exist in a static vacuum that can encompass everyone in that given community. every lesbian has a different definition of what lesbian means. many lesbians believe that it strictly means cis women being attracted to cis women, which is definitely not how lesbianism works at all. no two queer people will ever define a queer term the same way. a lesbian is anyone who identifies as one. it can be a queer woman, non binary person, or man, or a gender well beyond that. or no gender at all.

for example, there's a loooooonnnngggg history of trans women who are also gay. many trans women still identify as gay and with the gay community even well after transitioning and not identifying as a man anymore. this has been a well documented experience since the dawn of the modern queer community in the United States, so why can't we extend the same to men and lesbianism?

when i say i'm a lesbian, i mean a lot of things. i do experience queer attraction to women ofc, but for me, lesbianism is about community and expression. it's about my love for other lesbians, dykes and sapphics, not just women. i'm a lesbian-oriented person. i resonate with the community, history, and culture. i feel right at home hearing about other lesbians' struggles and experiences with gender, expression, identity and sexuality. i see myself in other lesbians, dykes, and sapphics, and just because i'm (partially) a man doesn't mean i have to give all of that up!

i hope that makes sense! most queer identities don't have a concrete definition when you get down to brass tacks. for example "genderqueer" is not something that's easily defined at all. people love to argue about what it "really" means but there's no one answer to that. the same goes for lesbianism. the experience is too broad to be able to be defined simply by saying a lesbian is is a woman attracted to women. identity and lived experience is too varied and complex for that

feel free to have any more questions you may have! if you'd like, i highly recommend looking into the life and works of Leslie Feinberg, a transmasculine butch lesbian revolutionary and queer activist who had to transition into manhood in order to feel like hirself as a butch lesbian. zie identified as multigender and never gave up hir lesbian identity, even after living as a man for many years. it was vital to hir butch lesbian identity :) thanks for stopping by, i appreciate you asking!

[justdavina]

The Marvelous Solene!!

Hey! You bitches can't look at her! She's a HOT!

[luesmainblog]

i had a whole rant but honestly it doesn't even always have to be anything this dramatic. the first time i ever remember getting a crush, i initially mistook it for "wishing they were my sibling" because i didn't really know how to tell the difference. this is not an uncommon occurrence. it is also not exclusive to children.

i really don't know how to tell some people that their visceral disgust to anything that even resembles incest is leading them to act Really Fucking Homophobic.

Every now and then some discourse pops up around a queer ship consisting of a pair of fictional characters who are not blood related, but refer to themselves as "brothers" or "sisters," or are in some way, according to the fandom, "sibling-coded."

Every time I see that discourse, all I can think about are the very real queer men I once knew, who, before their deaths, lived their lives posing as "stepbrothers." The only way to avoid suspicion for being two older unmarried men living together in a rural conservative area was to pretend they were from the same family, even though the truth was that they were lovers.

They were never out in life. Their relationship was a strict secret to nearly everyone. They never knew that I knew, and sometimes it fucks me up inside that they never got to come out to me. It fucks me up that they had to hide behind a fake "brotherly" relationship for their own safety. It fucks me up to look at a gravestone that reads "beloved brother" and know what it really means, and what it could have said if they'd lived under different circumstances.

In another world, they could have been husbands, but they never had the opportunity. The world will remember them as brothers, because, even in death, that is what was safest.

The freedom to declare queer love openly is something that not everyone has. And I think more people could stand to remember that.

[365daysoflesbians]

An unidentified woman

Tripoli, Lebanon | c. 1920s-1930s

[pomeraniandancer]

It's also an oversight of the implications of "be gay do crime." I don't know enough about the history of the phrase to know if it deliberately echoes the history of criminalization of "homosexual acts" in countries like Britain and the US, but it certainly has that suggestion. For context, the term "straight" originated as gay slang in Britain because it was illegal to "perform homosexual acts" in Britain at the time the slang originated. "Straight" originally meant "law-abiding," so anyone who was gay was by definition "not straight." Which makes the whole homophobes calling for "straight pride parades" all the more hilarious, but that's a topic for a different post.

"Be gay do crime" was literally the experience of any queer person in Britain before the decriminalization of homosexuality, because if you were gay and recognized and accepted that part of yourself, you were at minimum at risk of violating the law.

In a way, transmasc people are therefore experiencing the trauma of past generations of queer people in the US and Britain who were policed for their behavior and experiences as queer individuals. It's the logical fallout of criminalizing identities. It isn't that you are deliberately seeking to break the law for nefarious reasons, it's that by nature of *who you are*, your very existence is itself a crime.

And if that doesn't meet the criteria for cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what does.

I think it’s normal to be afraid of jail especially for trans men who are disabled or not white or are mentally ill. to casually joke about “what happened to be gay do crimes” to a population whose mortality is threatened by the prospect of jail is deeply cruel and deranged behavior.

[marxalittle]

oh! and then, if you want to tie threads back together in the USA pre and post Stonewall (ie, getting back to Marsha if she and Stormee are your touchstones so to speak), having read these, pick up Hugh Ryan’s the Women’s House of Detention and read it in conversation with these texts and particularly how colonial expropriation is foundational to American history, and how those colonized and abducted cultures are suppressed in favor of the constructed white culture and consciousness. like, who gets to be a woman, and what incarceration means and does and is intended to do.

I am a big believer in reading things in conversation with and in the context of other texts

Okay, so when people try to speak on BIPOC's involvement in queer history, it is often simplified into just being about individual people like Marsha P. Johnson. While I am never going to say we should talk less about Marsha, I think it would be worth exploring more how BIPOC have a queer history of their own and often it's outside of just the context of the United States of America.

Prioritizing certain stories from QTBIPOC, can slip fairly quickly into erasure. So here is a reminder: colonial powers benefit when we only focus on individuals and erase the long complex queer histories of cultures that have been colonized. Cultures and communities that have been colonized deserve space in our discussions of queer history.

Maybe next time you hear someone boil down queer BIPOC's impact on the queer culture to the same short list of names, maybe question that. Challenge yourself to learn about lesser known stories, and even try to open yourself up to learning about cultural histories of queerness rather than just reading stories that are individual based.

[nerdygaymormon]

[sweatermuppet]

closing statement from an article about being intersex & the possible connection of gender expression and sexuality in intersex individuals, published in The Gay Liberator, 1970s

[1943hedgie]

Do....do these people not know about Public/Applied History? The field of history that is specifically trying to bring historical study out of academia and into everyday society? Do these people not realise that if they have ever looked up their family tree, or participated in a living history workshop, or been to a museum or taken a photo for future memories, that they are also the historians of their lives?

A historian is not something you "try to be". You are. What you choose to do with that responsibility is up to you.

One of the weirdest defenses I’ve ever seen of the stupid “historians will say they were roommates!!!“ meme, when I point out that queer history is now a recognized and widespread field of study, and queer historians have always existed besides

Is to… Basically deny that those particular researchers are actually historians?

It’s the weirdest thing. But I’ve definitely seen it before: people online disparagingly saying things like “the ivory tower will never accept you; why are you defending them?“ quite as if the person they are talking to is just ~ trying to be~ a historian. Like “historian“ is some kind of assimilationist title that queer people should never want, let alone actually claim. Instead of just a term for an academic who studies history

Do you really think you’re complimenting someone by telling them they’re not a real historian somehow?

[Points of clarity: I would completely accept it if they said “1950s historians“ or “conservative historians“ or basically anything that didn’t totally erase the modern study of queer history. But that’s not usually specified, so. Yeah.]

[allthebooksandcrannies]

Good news in the world!!! Read the article here.

The law also will extend adoption and inheritance rights to same-sex couples!

[aerithpilled]

the butch/femme scene of 1990s san francisco by chloe sherman

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[janusfranc15]

Annoying that we’ll never have a straight answer, as we, well, can’t ask them. But it is very lovely to see that they existed.

In the middle of the 5th dynasty of Egypt, the tomb of two men who would become one of the most famous same-sex couples in ancient history was built. The tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum was uncovered in 1964 and has been a fierce debate topic ever since. They have been said to be twins, lovers, brothers, and close friends. These two men and their relationship with each other became most controversial long after their deaths.

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[post-futurism]

As a queer person online who is not from the dominant cultural powerhouse in the world, the most common phrase I see is "know your queer history". I was always annoyed by this mantra not because I didn't want to take the time to understand the evolution of queerness through time but because that statement was always silently referring to North American queer history.

Australians. We now have an incredible new LGBTIQA+ documentary about queerness in Australia's colonial and Aboriginal history and it's written by gay comedians. Wins all around. If you want to learn about YOUR queer history, the three part documentary Queerstralia is now showing on ABC iView. Go go go!

[queersatanic]

Happy birthday, Duane.