#there's a tendency to look for evidence that is sufficiently “intense” and see “merely romantic” expressions as friendly or performative

[my-deer-friend]

Homosocial – homoromantic – homoerotic – homosexual

A lot of people who talk about 18th century queerness treat these concepts as existing on a linear scale of "straight" to "gay", or as a progression of increasing queerness.

But that kind of framing isn't accurate. There's no line that we can draw here beyond which things become definitively queer. There were homosexual acts that had very little queerness to them, and homoromantic relationships that were fundamentally queer without ever (to our knowledge) straying beyond the emotional.