Within every avenue of history, is the history of queerness. Not only due to the queer people who have inhabited every corner of the world, but also due to the influence every queer person has had on their little corner of the world. This is true within the history of religion as well. Though many people have made it their mission to exclude and remove queer people from various religious spaces, queerness is a sacred part of humanity, and every religion has found queer people in their midst. The queer people in question have shaped not only their direct religious community, often making it more accepting and open to people like them, but they have also played a large part in the vital task of interpreting religious texts. Despite what modern Christianity has said, queerness and religion are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the opposite is often true. There have been, and continue to be, religions and religious spaces where queer people and voices are heard and valued. Jiří Langer is one of the queer voices in history that can be seen in this specific journey.
Within the queer community, the work of activists is vital. Just as in every avenue of culture, people fighting for change are a necessary and often underappreciated section of the population. When one is born queer, there is a set of circumstances one can end up in where stepping into activism seems like the next obvious step. While many decide to take other paths, and those paths are no less worthy of praise, and often have drastic effects on the society around them even without the active decision to do so, the path of the activist is a difficult one. Queer people, both historical and contemporary have been put in a position where their very existence is a form of activism, and while that can be a rewarding path, it is not without its’ sacrifices. In the life of Agniva Lahiri, while there is a clear and obvious passion for advocating for the rights of the marginalized, it is not a situation where there were many other options left open to Agniva.
Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen is not only known for his success in the musical realm, but also for who he knew when he was alive. While the start of his life in small-town Australia, the son of an abusive alcoholic was not a glamorous one, he had his eyes set on stardom. Starting his act by copying a blackface performer at the age of five, and transitioning to playing the piano at a bar at the age of eleven, he was ambitious. Once graduating high school he would go on to join Chris Bell to create a duo act, claiming they were brothers who were from England. Through this, he would secure television performances and slowly work show to show to make his way in the competitive world of music.
Not all people who make queer history do so for their contribution to bettering the world. Queerness and criminality have in fact gone hand in hand for centuries, whether because queer expression in any form was outright outlawed or simply because an individual’s queerness pushed them to struggle amongst the dregs of society. For the time and place in which she lived, Olive Yang’s gender expression and sexual attractions were criminal offenses, and while those were not the malfeasances for which she was ultimately imprisoned, they likely rendered Yang fraught with the idea of leading the life of a traditional Burmese woman.
Literature is often an excellent way to gain insight into a culture, as well as the overall accepted and perpetuated views of a certain subject held by said culture. Even more so are the genres of fiction and fantasy something that can be looked to for this kind of insight, as the settings allow for a full exploration of characters and their interactions, without the limitations of the rules of reality. For those reasons, the subgenre of homoerotic fictional literature is a great resource for the discussion of the topic of male-male homosexuality in Imperial China. With few contemporary sources written on homosexual relationships during this period, fiction is the main way in which historians are able to understand the popular, general public view of homosexuality. Generally speaking, it can be argued through an examination of these sources that representations of homosexuality in fiction written in Qing China set a precedent for how such relationships were viewed by the general public, as opposed to the reality of these relationships.
There are more ways to affect change than most will credit. For any queer person living in a society that villainizes and stigmatizes their very existence, simply living and finding moments of happiness can be enough to shift public discourse. Openness about one’s identity has never been a qualifier for this type of life, neither historically nor contemporarily. There have been, and still are, queer people who had a deep and lasting impact on their communities without ever being explicit about their identity and desires. While there is some part of this reality that is a tragedy, a life unlived, a possibility for radical acceptance never experienced, the whole of the situation is not bleak. Public knowledge of someone's sexuality or gender identity does not equate to happiness, and the reverse is just as true.
It’s unfortunately common in our community for people to be forgotten, so much so that projects like ours work just to remember. Sometimes that erasure is purposeful and sometimes it is only a matter of time. And other times still, we remember the important work that people have done without remembering them and the lives they led, such as in the case of Gilbert Baker. Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, was a creative and an activist for many causes, but he is most known for having designed the rainbow pride flag.
If one were to pause and look at any single inflection point in Toto Koopman’s roller coaster of a life, there would always be one adjective apt to describe her and her actions, and that would be “brazen.”
There have been times when a person who is unfairly maligned in their life is still around to witness a rehabilitation of their image in their later years—to see the beginnings of a new legacy forming and taste the fruit of their labours. This is not a common phenomenon, unfortunately, and Manar is among the majority who never get the apology that they so dearly deserve.
There are no videos of Vaslav Nijinsky dancing. Known as one of the best dancers to ever live, the lack of footage was a choice made, as video recording equipment at the time was jerky and the quality could not be guaranteed. His dancing is conveyed mostly from memory, people telling of the times he flew on stage, the riots over his movement, a word often used is angular. There are photos of him posing, both in costume and out, and there is a certain charisma there. Even in stillness, he has a kinetic energy to him.
The halls of surrealist art are inherently queer in certain ways, not just because of the number of queer surrealists there happened to be, but because of the boundary challenging nature of the genre. With few rules, and even more rule-breaking, it can’t be surprising that queer people flock to this particular style - what is more surprising is how queer people have been and continue to be erased from the history of the movement. Even within the golden age of this movement, the inherently queer works of artists such as Leonor Fini were shocking, not only in traditional art circles but to the same people who made their names challenging norms. It seemed that even in the most transgressive of spaces, the mastery of women, androgyny, and queerness, in general, were enough to make the likes of Andre Beton and Salvador Dali clutch their metaphoric pearls.
What does it mean when the memory of your existence has been documented solely through the eyes of others? When it comes to Féral Benga, the handsome performer did not write or record anything about himself, nor leave behind anything of his own that could help elucidate his true essence. Instead, there are images; photographs and paintings, sculptures and film clips, all created by artists inspired by his beauty, hoping to capture it in their uniquely creative styles. From these, as well as from textual anecdotes by those who knew him, we can begin to put together a more complex image of Benga, a dancer who navigated life fearlessly, living an openly gay life while still opting to play the part and jump through the hoops of others to pursue his own particular aspiration.
Queerness, by its very nature, changes the world around it. This is not a simple sentiment but a provable fact. Simply by existing, queer people are making history. While there have been queer radicals, anarchists, and activists who have chosen to dedicate their lives to the betterment of the world, queerness alone is, by its very nature, transformative. While Zeki Müren did not spend his life fighting for the acceptance of queer people, he was able to transform the world around him through his choice to exist publicly and unapologetically as a queer man.
Agnes Noyes Goodsir is neither well-known by studiers of queer history nor unfairly shunned. Instead, she falls into the familiar category of quiet lack of acknowledgment. Living from 1864 to 1939 and moving to France during the 1920s, it was not impossible for lesbians to be open about their sexuality, nor was it uncommon for them to choose to keep such information private. She made the completely normal choice of keeping her sexuality more or less under wraps. That is not, of course, to say that it was a well-hidden secret. With a beloved ‘companion’ she lived with and publicly said to be her muse, her frequenting of lesbian spaces, and connections to the lesbian community in France, she was not working particularly hard to hide this fact. Neither was she advertising it.
A certain level of cognitive dissonance is required to continue with the violence of colonialism, and racism is often both the source and excuse for this. As with any lie, conflicting facts and disproving observations will begin to appear over time. Within the life of Ngola Nzinga, the cracks begin to appear rather quickly, and though much of the truth is likely out of reach, the lies have begun to peel away.