[ SECRET POST #3591 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3591 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 29 secrets from Secret Submission Post #513.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Why do some people get bent out of shape when even the possibility of a celebrity or historical figure being gay comes up? I mention a famous person is probably or just MIGHT be gay and people come out of the woodwork to defend them like it's a horrible accusation.

It's not as if I'm claiming they're a serial killer, or a unicorn, or insulting them. It's not a bizarre, unbelievable claim that requires extraordinary evidence. I don't go around calling people gay for no reason. The mental gymnastics people perform in order to get around someone possibly being gay is so damn irritating.

/randomrant

[(Anonymous)]

Probably because they're homophobic or if female at a guy, they don't want to imagine that this person they think is attractive might not be attracted to them.

Sometimes - rarely - it's justified though, if the celebrity is saying they're straight and they feel it's obnoxious to declare someone else's sexuality for them. Or if people are calling someone like Justin Bieber "gay" as an insult because they perceive him as "feminine" or "girly" or something and there's no evidence to support it besides that whatsoever.

[(Anonymous)]

My favorite defense is usually us not knowing FOR SURE if the historical figure had sex with someone of the same sex, because that's all there is to being gay? Like yeah they lived together and shared finances and a bed and wrote love letters to each other and wrote the other person into their will but DID SHE HAVE SEX WITH THIS WOMAN? DID SHE? DID FINGERING HAPPEN??

If its an author it is also usually used to discredit any type of queer reading of a text which bugs me even more.

[(Anonymous)]

Is this about Richard the Lionheart being gay, again? Look, with a few exceptions, Kings of England before the Hanoverians liked to double dip. They didn't care, it was all about dominance. Hell, even GRIV and ERVII liked to do it in the ass occasionally. Who cares. The first thing the very creature to ever evolve an ass did was try and stick something in it.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, when it comes to historical figures part of it is that the entire concept of gayness as we understand it today just didn't exist in the past. Like, people had sex with people of the same sex and fell in love with people of the same sex but they understood it in such different ways that it's hard to know what to do with that. Today, sexuality is a part of identity, but it wasn't even a hundred years ago, so do we call James Buchanan gay, or is that plastering a 21st century term onto his very real lived experiences?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but since straight is still considered default attempting to just sweep it under the rug and go "Modern definition, no good. Can't apply it." without making an effort to go the same lengths for "So they were straight?" "Oh GOD no! Again, modern definition! Don't even try!" seems kinda iffy.

[(Anonymous)]

Um, no?

The free-love-type idea you're talking about was very much frowned upon. If you were gay, or just not straight, you were as far in the closet as your could get to stay safe. It wasn't part of identity the way we think about it today because if you had "other" feelings, you were in danger, even potentially from someone with similar leanings. They used the "gay" to mean happy and light, yes, but there were other common terms in use at the time; sly, queer, and peculiar come to mind. It was Not a good thing.

It wasn't part of one's identity -- it was a death sentence, socially, financially, literally.

So we may be using a modern term, but we are not overshadowing the "real lived experiences" of anyone -- if anything, I might argue you are, trying to sugar coat it to say it wasn't part of identity the way we consider it now and therefore people were fine with it.

The history of queerness is wrought with strife and violence, and not at the hands of our peers but the hands of those who saw us and thought "evil," depraved, inhuman. It is always about someone trying to push excessively conservative ideals onto others, to mould the new and "other" to their shape of humanity through the most inhumane means.

And the reason we don't hear about it is because people didn't talk about because they would be killed out of hand.

[(Anonymous)]

Because people are still used to gay=bad, whether it's being used to describe sexuality or as a degrogatory to say they're stupid/etc.

To the straights, it can be hard for them come out of the heteronormative worldview and consider someone else may be different from themselves. A lot of them think "well Someone would have known!" Well, yea, that's very likely true. But that doesn't mean they conveniently wrote, "dear diary, I'm a queermosexual," or "dear diary, my buddy told me they're a queermosexual," for historians to find later. That's knowing about codes like the earring or ascot thing, or the white flag outside your home, to name a few more modern examples, are so helpful to us now.

They don't understand it was - and still very much Is - really dangerous to even suggest you were queer. Because different, because bigotry, because scared of the Other.

/fellowrant

[(Anonymous)]

Homophobia.