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strix_albavia http://ift.tt/2cz9teN:
pervocracy:
korrigu:
adhd-ahamilton:
“Were there any straight people in this period of history?”
“Well…obviously speaking, there must have been some people that nowadays we would describe as ‘straight’, but we have to be very careful about applying modern standards of sexuality to the past. I’m sure if you asked anybody at the time if they were straight, they would have been very confused. And there’s something quite dangerous about forcing identities onto people who might not consider themselves that way. You also need to keep in mind that some things that today would seem ‘straight’ to us - like getting married, having children, etc. - were just the way things were back then. Nobody would have thought twice about doing that, including non-straight people. And there were plenty of people who undoubtedly got married, had very intensely emotional connections with their spouse, but then went off to go see their lover. Again, sexuality is a very complex thing, so I wouldn’t presume to state definitively that anybody was ‘straight’, and especially not without good, solid evidence that they were exclusively heterosexual. To presume otherwise would not only be making a lot of assumptions, it might even just promote harmful, overdone stereotypes about what makes someone ‘have’ to be straight, you know? So, yes, technically speaking there were, but I don’t see any reason to specifically consider straight people historically.”
this is what I’ve been saying
I think this is basically true though.
It basically is. It’s frustrating and invalidating for people to equivocate ONLY over assigning queer labels to historical figures, while they’re happy to label other figures as Obviously Straight. But I would be happier if people gave this disclaimer every single time someone made an assumption about the sexuality of any historical figures/time periods. A Queer History of the United States spends the entire first chapter talking about how we can’t actually call people straight/gay/bisexual outside of a certain historical/cultural context because those ideas are specific to us. It’s not that people didn’t draw distinctions between normative and non-normative sexualities, but the boundaries were frequently different - sometimes opposite, sometimes with no modern equivalent - from where they’re drawn today.
pervocracy:
korrigu:
adhd-ahamilton:
“Were there any straight people in this period of history?”
“Well…obviously speaking, there must have been some people that nowadays we would describe as ‘straight’, but we have to be very careful about applying modern standards of sexuality to the past. I’m sure if you asked anybody at the time if they were straight, they would have been very confused. And there’s something quite dangerous about forcing identities onto people who might not consider themselves that way. You also need to keep in mind that some things that today would seem ‘straight’ to us - like getting married, having children, etc. - were just the way things were back then. Nobody would have thought twice about doing that, including non-straight people. And there were plenty of people who undoubtedly got married, had very intensely emotional connections with their spouse, but then went off to go see their lover. Again, sexuality is a very complex thing, so I wouldn’t presume to state definitively that anybody was ‘straight’, and especially not without good, solid evidence that they were exclusively heterosexual. To presume otherwise would not only be making a lot of assumptions, it might even just promote harmful, overdone stereotypes about what makes someone ‘have’ to be straight, you know? So, yes, technically speaking there were, but I don’t see any reason to specifically consider straight people historically.”
this is what I’ve been saying
I think this is basically true though.
It basically is. It’s frustrating and invalidating for people to equivocate ONLY over assigning queer labels to historical figures, while they’re happy to label other figures as Obviously Straight. But I would be happier if people gave this disclaimer every single time someone made an assumption about the sexuality of any historical figures/time periods. A Queer History of the United States spends the entire first chapter talking about how we can’t actually call people straight/gay/bisexual outside of a certain historical/cultural context because those ideas are specific to us. It’s not that people didn’t draw distinctions between normative and non-normative sexualities, but the boundaries were frequently different - sometimes opposite, sometimes with no modern equivalent - from where they’re drawn today.
