| Sadly, people used to say "where is the gay history" to deny that gay people existed | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 08:44 pm EST 02/02/23 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 08:24 pm EST 02/02/23 | |
| In reply to: re: No, they are stating it because it is true - KingSpeed 07:51 pm EST 02/02/23 | |
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| There's a history of gay people over thousands of years, actually, it just has taken the work of a lot of historians to unearth it, because those stories were lost to us, partly because it was considered in poor taste to write about them. Even such big nellies as King Jame VI and I were kept in the closet by historians until very recently, and the few historians who did write about James' same gender sex life were lambasted for having the temerity to write about such things, because the political opinion at the time was that gay people had not existed historically. Since you lived through the 70s and 80s, you are probably old enough to remember that back then there were plenty of homophobes who would loudly proclaim that homosexuality must be a fad or a new invention because there was no historical record of gay people. In the same way, there have been non-binary people for thousands of years, but there were not given space to express it, partly because they feared the reaction of people who would pillory them (quite literally), and partly because the indoctrination of the gender binary was so strong, so they found it easier to hide or to ignore their own internal feelings. So for exmaple, when we look back at the history of cross-dressing - a hallmark of gay histories, especially of late 19th/early 20th Century Germany, where homosexuality as a modern concept was born - we don't know who might have identified as non-binary if given the chance. That's part of the tragedy. Fortunately, as we progress, a lot of known gay history (as well as straight history) will be further examined to understand how trans and non-binary identity was present but not seen. A small example: in the lesbian scene of the mid-20th century, women were either butches or femmes, and now we understand that many of those butches would have identified as trans-male (and possibly non-binary) if they had been given that opportunity. But because of the crushing prejudice of the day, simply being a lesbian was difficult enough. If we wait for the world to catch up, our history will be told. As was the case in the late 20th Century, the theater is leading the way by writing our lives and uplifting our artists, so that the rest of the culture can slowly come to appreciate that we exist and are valid. And that's especially important to remember when I read a post like yours, which I think we can all agree is invalidating non-binary people, which is hurtful. Now, I'm going to do my best to write this next bit as carefully and neutrally as I can: this isn't the first post you've written with what reads as hostility towards non-binary people for existing in gay spaces. Since that's your opinion, you should have no problem finding TGNC-exclusionary gay spaces in which you can thrive. That's fine. But here's the thing: many non-binary people - and perhaps most, though not all - identify as gay, lesbian, and/or queer because we love people of the same gender that we were assigned at birth. So non-binary identity does have SOMETHING to do with being gay, and much of the LGBTQ+ community to which I (but not you) belong recognizes that. And of course, you wouldn't have an LGBT (or just G?) community to be part of if not for the work of trans activists like Marsha P. Johnson, so I urge you to be a little more careful before you throw TGNC people out of your gay-only club. |
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