[ SECRET POST #4220 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4220 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #603.
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)]

ayrt

Well yeah, I absolutely agree. Speculating on someone's sexuality includes assuming they were heterosexual. I agree, it's frustrating and incorrect when the "don't assign historical people modern sexualities!" discourse ends with "everyone was straight".

[cbrachyrhynchos]

There's the LGBTQ equivalent of last-Wednesdayiam going around some circles where gay/lesbian were apparently invented in the mid-20th century and transgender in the 1990s when Feinberg started talking about it. It's all BS of course. Colette may not have used the word "bisexual" (she was French after all) and de Forest wouldn't have used the word "transgender," but Colette's relationships are very well documented, as well as de Forest's arrest, testimony, and forced hospitalization for living as a man.

NAYRT

[(Anonymous)]

You can't, of course, deny the reality of the experiences. Nor would I want to.

But I think there's an intellectual question there - to what extent can we meaningfully use our contemporary categories to understand those experiences, when those categories are culturally-specific abstract models in the first place?

Re: NAYRT

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt but while this is a good point, sometimes I think it's applied inappropriately. Namely when talking about sexual attraction/orientation.

For example - if Alexander the Great slept with and was attracted to men exclusively, he is gay whether or not the concept of homosexuality existed. Homosexuality isn't a cultural construct, it's a category of sexual attraction and behavior. Likewise, if he felt attraction toward and slept with both men and women, he is bisexual whether or not they had a word for it. Same-sex attraction is not a cultural identity even if we like to treat it that way, it's an objective orientation full stop. Obviously that doesn't mean a historical person necessarily identified as gay, and I think it's important to distinguish that, but homosexual attraction and behavior isn't contemporary.

I can agree that nuance is important in a lot of terminology. I like this argument best when talking about, say, mental health disorders/disabilities when our criteria so specifically depends on a cultural context that wouldn't have existed.

Re: NAYRT

[cbrachyrhynchos]

The same way you talk about the history of capitalism even though we live in conditions that were unimaginable to Marx and Smith. You take a good look at what's known and unknown using primary sources close to the persons in question and secondary sources about the environment around that person, you state very clearly exactly how you're defining your words for the purpose of your analysis, and you address the multiple theoretical perspectives behind those definitions.

It's not rocket science, but it is a fair bit more nuanced and framed with the appropriate levels of ambiguity than either the "don't call them gay" and the "they were absolutely gay" trolls admit.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep. If you point out that concepts like homosexuality, bisexuality etc didn't exist, you've also got to acknowledge that heterosexuality didn't exist then either.