#sometimes it's exactly the same bc we swallowed their attitudes whole. see like. our views on penetration vs romans'.

[aeide-thea]

saw a post that was like

'i'm so floored by the fact that this mid-20th century author of historical fiction wrote about queerness as though it was natural and important!'

and it's like. the author in question was queer! queer people have been writing work in which queerness was natural and important since much earlier than the 50s—forster wrote maurice in the 1910s! whitman was writing poetry that celebrated queerness in the mid-19th century! i'm sure that if i did any actual research into the history of queer fiction instead of just whipping out the things that spring immediately to mind for me, many more examples would present themselves!

anyway i just think like. that sort of reflexive naive modern chauvinism is a real mistake (especially considering how things have been going in america lately…), and for anyone who is, or wants to be, a serious student of the past, worth scrutinizing and uprooting in oneself. queerness is present and positively depicted in some of the oldest literature we have; and when we encounter matter-of-fact, even celebratory, representations of it from eras we reflexively conceptualize as more conservative than ours, i think we need to be aware that any startlement we feel at that is an artifact of the repressive, erasive, homophobic thinking inculcated in us by our own particular milieu(x), and not in fact a neutral or historically informed reaction?