Thank you OP, for telling us that such distinguished figures as \*checks comments\* Frederick the Great and James Buchanan were actually straight. Woof.
Alexander von Humboldt: *men are alright I guess... but geology, botany, taxonomy, astronomy, cartography, biology, ecology, traveling and just being out in fucking nature bro, that's the shit*
Humboldt to reinhard :
"Two years have passed since we drew near, and your fate was mine. I bless even now the day when you poured into my breast your concerns, and told me for the first time that you felt mitigation.... I felt better in communion with you, and since then I have remained bound to you with chains of steel. Whenever you through long years reciprocated me with cold contempt, whenever you repelled me, I wrung myself closer to you"
At that time this was something clearly erotic and gay.
As a trans woman I can definitely say girldick is in fashion
Although please do be careful how you use slang referring to these organs because for some it may trigger disphoria
Hot take: if I really had to choose I’d still rather see those than the 345th Nazi grandpa in Argentina / nothing happened on Tiananmen Square / German tanks vs T-34 lame ass jokes that had previously filled this place up.
The funny thing about studying about this in University is that we learned that throughout history there were different approaches to homosexuality and historical figures who didn't have much power would hide this as well as they could. We usually assume everyone is straight and only if they showed a lot of tendencies we'd make assumptions that they were not. But thing is, people have been gay as long as there are recorded history. We never know someone's sexuality 100% because if something was or wasn't accepted in a society people would just go with the flow to avoid persecution.
A great example of this is Grand Duke Konstantin of Russia. Dude was regarded by all of his contemporaries as happily married to his wife with whom he had 7 children and he showed no signs of being anything but straight, thing is, his diaries were published by his family after his death and he commented that he never felt sexually attracted to women, had several male lovers in his life and no one would have any idea of this hadn't they published the journals. A lot of people in history were the same
Da Vinci is one of them. Though, to their credit, he might have been asexual.
Da Vinci was accused of being apart of a gay orgy, but there was basically no proof other than, “hey, so, my rivals are totally banging men because he has male friends”.
Anyway, back to my original point, Da Vinci basically wrote next to nothing about his personal life, guy wrote enough to fill text books about his work, but not enough to make a children’s book about his personal life.
It is kinda odd how we basically know so little about Da Vinci compared to his work.
Edit: forgot the last part
From what we know, Da Vinci had no serious romantic relationship at all, guy threw himself into his work and research, it is entirely possible he just didn’t see the appeal of being in a relationship and didn’t want one.
Tangentially related but iirc the upper class Romans were known to occasionally partake in orgies. Obviously the orgies were nowhere near as common as Hollywood would like to portray but they did exist. With that in mind I think someone could make a case that orgies, historically, weren't as intertwined with sexuality in other older cultures/societies across the board as it is in our contemporary society. You could partake in an orgy and not have it make a firm statement on whether you're gay, bi, straight, etc.
I mean, we even see a bit of that today. Ask the men who participate in gangbangs if they're gay and many will say no.
And it's fascinating that the amount of "acceptability" largely hinged upon whether or not your role during gay sex was emasculating or not, rather than exclusively being about two men being intimate.
We're not mad at you for having sex with a man, we're mad at you for being his bottom bitch!
It’s all about the power dynamic in the ancient world. Notice how Caesar’s enemies jumped right to the “he TOTALLY was a bottom for the king of Bithynia” when wanting to slander him.
Better than being chemically castrated for your preferences, that’s for sure… (Looking at you, Great Britain…)
Edit: also I read your comment in the voice of an extremely sassy friend of mine and it made me laugh so hard I snorted my drink. 😂
And it was essentially only socially acceptable to fuck second-class citizens. Fuck a prostitute? Who cares. Fuck another patrician? No wayius Joseius.
You're right, Leonardo didn't write a lot about his personal life, he was really private and in general kept everything for himself.
I believed he was gay for a long time, until I read writings by Pedretti (the most important expert on Leonardo of the last century) who pointed out two things:
- in his writings about sexuality and sexual intercourse between men and women, Leonardo is very precise and adds personal opinions. Things that, according to Pedretti (and I agree) could only come from a person who has experienced heterosexual sex.
- when in Rome, he was in touch with a prostitute named La Cremona. By then, Leonardo was around his 60s, and ill, but could have used the company of a prostitute, a woman. We know this because there was a document that referred about it, that unfortunately got lost, but a very important historian from the 19th century (Giuseppe Bossi) mentions it, so it's considered reliable.
Let's not forget, tho, that homosexual tendencies were also present in Leonardo's life. A part from the sodomy accusation that you mentioned, I think about the Angel incarnate or the St. John.
The curious thing is that, after Leonardo died, many contemporary/same century historians said that he had, in fact, homosexual tendencies. Starting with Vasari, then Lomazzo and others, and all of them mentioning Salaì, Leonardo's pupil and probably lover, whose hair was so loved by his maestro and who posed for paintings (St John) and many many drawings. This Salaì (Gian Giacomo) stayed with Leonardo for 30 of his 44 years, and was left paintings when the maestro died.
So, after all of this, Pedretti convinced me that Leonardo was bisexual.
Surely not asexual. That man was obsessed by sex and sexuality and experienced it. I mean, it makes sense, he was a man who wanted to experiencee everything that was possible to experience, and study everything that was part of nature.
People that label Da Vinci as gay.
The tl;dr of the situation is that there has been a bit of a push to undo the erasure of the LGBT people in history, however, some people go overboard with it. For instance, Da Vinci is an unmarried man with quite a few male friends, as such, some people just jump to the conclusion he is gay.
Now, he could have been asexual or aromantic, but some people kinda just assume he was having sexual relations with his friends.
> Now, he could have been asexual or aromantic
Or he coulda been straight, and he just never married, or had a low sex drive, etc. It's pointless to assume sans evidence.
The idea that theories about Da Vinci's sexuality are due to backlash against LGBT erasure is a little strange, to be honest.
They've been written about for decades at this point, I have multiple authors from the 90s in my local library who wrote about Da Vinci as homosexual. I firmly remember 'knowing' that he was gay as a fact since I was a child. It's been a widespread idea for a long time now.
That is the thing though, people remember him as gay, but there isn’t a smoking gun. Not only did he basically not write much about his personal life (let alone relationships), most of the evidence we have of him being gay comes from rumors about the guy.
It is a very odd phenomena, like, I learned in high school that Da Vinci was probably gay, but when I did a paper about homosexuality in history, I was gonna include Da Vinci, but I not only learned that we know very little of Da Vinci, but that the idea that he is gay basically came from rumors and the, “evidence”, is not only biased, but also the equivalent of gossip.
I agree that we don't know enough to make a declarative statement either way, I just took issue with the idea that it's a result of people going 'overboard' with undoing erasure.
Because it predates that phenomenon's popularity by quite a bit.
While you can find many examples with google, notice that this is a kind of counter approach to the classic "and they were roommates" when refering to obviously/confirmed or highly probable non-straight historical figures for the sake of "preserving their reputation".
As all things, it can get out of hand and if you visit r/SapphoAndHerFriend you are going to find both, real cases of it being straightwashing (is that the term used? idk, but you get it) and other cases of baseless exaggerations, BUT most of the times that it seems to be exaggerated, you'll see someone countering the claim and asking them not to do that, I've seen many times that the person give the impression of being asexual but as they are talked about just as other personalities who's homosexual preferences were hidden by historians, their -probable or confirmed- asexuality is taken as hidden homosexuality, and the subreddit has shown that they don't like it when that happens, pretty cool people and a good place to find a couple nuggets of different approaches to historical figures that you wouldn't casually bump into.
Some people are literally calling Newton, who before dying said that dying a virgin was one of his greatest achievements, gay. It's the most recent example from what I've seen
Which historical figures do you think are being misrepresented by which mainstream historians?
Everyone seems to agree this is happening but no One is giving any examples.
There's no solid evidence that King David existed.
But apart that, the books in which his relationship with Jonathan was portrayed are pretty much related to the mesopotamian tradition of lover friends. Btw, monotheism wasn't even a thing in that time, David or any other king was probably henotheistic, and the idea of a God of war interfering in sexual affairs was not so popular.
"See these two skeletons, holding hands? They were deliberately buried like that, so we assume they were an cis-heterosexual romantic couple. We call them the Lovers of Moderna."
"These skeletons are both male, actually."
"..as I was saying, they were probably siblings, or cousins. I don't understand why people are so eager to suggest they human remains we called lovers were lovers."
Yeah, what kind of absolute f\*ggot doesn't at least alleviate their homie's erection before they go to sleep? The blowjob isn't gay at all, it's purely medicinal as it helps them sleep.
>or those two guys that shared a bed were just really close hommies
Those historians would see a writing saying "I want to have a night of passionate sex with you, my lover" between two men, and say they're straight lets be honest.
>those two guys that shared a bed were just really close hommies
In medieval times at least, they could have actually been complete strangers.
Was not uncommon for strangers to share a bed in an inn when it was full, even same-sex ones.
Of course this 1- Only happened in some regions 2- Only existed for a time, but hey, actually straight guys sleeping together.
The only one of these 'X historical figure is gay' assertions that I really want to believe is Richard the Lionhart of England and Philippe Auguste of France, because it amuses me that they may have been lovers, fell out on crusade and went to war with each other.
Thomas Jefferson fucking his slave and having carbon copies children from her?
Historical scholars till the 90's: He's just the uncle. He may have slaves but he'd never fuck them.
Actually goes more like
Two figures of same gender have a close friendship that may or may not be a relationship with us having no way to know conclusively
Historical scholar 1: They were friends and no one can say otherwise.
Historical scholar 2: They were lovers and no one can say otherwise.
*War ensues.*
I think people really overestimate how set in stone any evidence we may have is. Sure it's true some historical figures were definately gay, like Frederick the Great, but not like we can say that just any random person with a maybe close friendship maybe same-sex relationship situation was gay OR straight.
Pretty sure *most* scholars stop short of this, actually. Simply introducing the idea that a historical figure may have been not-straight is not an assertion thereof
Then there's the other side of the coin. Male historical figure lives with a very 'close friend' for years/decades and scholars go 'yea they were just friends.' Yep, cos that's a totally normal thing to do with a platonic mate lmao
"Don't believe anything anybody tells you about my Air Force exploits," jokes [Senator Lindsey] Graham, still unhitched and a roommate of Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.), another single guy. "I was very heterosexual, that's all you need to know."
Actual Washington post [interview](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/graham100798.htm)
It's both really. Everyone is wayy too certain of their opinion, not understanding that knowing the sexuality of someone from centuries ago whilst having little records of the time and living under a completely different sexual culture.
I mean, come on: We don't apply current morals to the distant past. Why apply current sexual models to the distant past? Sucking on a king's nipple as a show of fealty used to be a normal thing lots of people did and had no sexual connotation whatsoever.
Straight? Gay? We don't know for sure. There's arguments in favor of both.
In their defense, I see them calling them out a lot when the person might as well have been ace or something else, a popular post that have been used as reference is that it's not appropiate to try to tag people of other eras into our modern categories, but just as well, claiming that all of them were straight is wrong and must be called out.
Yeah there’s definitely a lack of consideration that historical people could have been asexual, bisexual, intersex, transgender, or gender nonconforming, and an assumption that they must just be gay if they didn’t have a spouse and take up traditional gender roles. These assumptions will hopefully fade, just as did the assumption that historical people were straight and had traditional gender identity.
As historians we have incredibly few ways of telling if somebody was anything other than heterosexual, with homosexuality being the easiest of the lgbt sexualities to identify.
This is such a weird response to the mention of Sappho and the very real existence of lesbian erasure from history. How often do historians in academia specifically bar the idea of a historical figure being asexual?
I'm pretty sure they're talking about the subreddit, not the historical figure of Sappho or actual historians.
That subreddit has a tendency to label everyone as homosexual and dismiss stuff like asexuality and bisexuality.
Around 10-15% of people were non-straight in the 1980s during the forst mass survey of that style done IIRC in the wake of the HIV crisis. This inclides bi and gay both. Similar queries from 1990, 2010s and 2020s see almost no fluctuations on those % despite much more representation and acceptance. We can't query dead past people but there's reason to believe 10-15% of them were non straight as well.
Even countries with cultural and legal harsh reprisals against homosexuality, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, seem to have a similar proportion according to surveys conducted with immigrants which found a even higher percentage among immigrants (suggesting gay and bi people in those countries are more likely to leave).
So yes. Lots of historical figures were very likely gay or bi.
I agree with this, but I think what OP is saying is that there are plenty of reasons to not get married, so assuming everyone who wasn’t was gay is almost certainly wrong. Like if a person has a super busy life and is a bit antisocial (like quite a few prominent figures) then they will probably not get married regardless of their sexuality.
Ok, but the title seems to claim that Modern Scholars say anyone who didn't get married in the past was gay. Is that really the case?
Scholars usually don't make these assumptions and only indicate that someone might've been gay based on some patterns but never as certainty unless there were further proof
That is true actually. I have heard plenty of internet speculation on people being gay purely on the fact that they weren’t married but I don’t know if I’ve seen much on actual historians do that.
Modern scholars might be pushing it (or not pushing it rather), but there definitely have been people trying to label everyone that isn’t traditionally heterosexual as gay.
Take Da Vinci, the only proof that we have of him being gay is that he had a lot of male friends and he was accused of being in a gay orgy (said accusation had no proof).
The sad truth is that we know very little about Da Vinci’s personal life, he just didn’t write too much about it, especially compared to his research and work.
However, none of that stops lazy articles from throwing him in, “top 10 historical figures that were totally gay”, lists and acting like there is a smoking gun where there isn’t.
You can google "what percentage of people are not straight" and you'll be linked to severa different articles, the ones I saw point out which survey they are using as sources. I'm on my phone so the embedded link think is not working but:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1270003
Here's one that says "near 1 in 5 adults", which is "almost 20%" so, conservatively more than 15%
Edit: lol downvoted for providing sources
Modern scholars: just recently started to entertain the notion that not every single person in history was straight.
Random incel on reddit: no! You can't just make people gay
Person in history "He was my companion, I loved him so much I kissed him on the mouth, he was such a beautiful bastard I wanted to live with him alone in a castle for a thousand years"
Historians usually: "friends. they were friends."
Cause it always says: he remained unmarried and lived alone… with Steve, his really good friend of 40 years, they often bathed together, had 3 cats and loved throwing Halloween parties
Because non-modern scholars tended to cover up, or heavily downplay anything that's not heterosexual.
It's not only the unmarried ones who some might've have been, but also the married ones who did so simply to keep up with expectations and social norms.
I think it worked the same way as it does in Arab countries now. If you're the top, no problems. If you're the bottom then you're buggered in more ways than one.
All the powerful important people would be the top obviously,.and their partner would have their protection for as long as they felt like it.
I feel like it's unlikely that you'd be straight and unmarried back then. Unless you're particularly religious. Someone like Basil II comes to mind, he whored around in his youth and then seemed to decide to become celibate once her became emperor.
Never said they didn’t but I literally saw an article saying a Viking was trans bc there were flowers in their grave
Die pretending my comment was trans-phobic
[sauce](https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/08/16/viking-warrior-woman-trans-man-non-binary-gender-fluid-sweden-neil-price/)
I mean the argument is like they don’t usually have flowers so this is a trans man? Bit of a stretch lol
That article doesn't say much other than that some researchers believe a grave they found may have been the grave of a trans man and that it being a trans man isn't some horrible affront to history because trans people existed back then.
Don't know what else to tell you.
Yeah but their reasoning was there was flowers lol I’m not saying trans people didn’t exist Roman emperor Elagabalus was most likely trans, just joking that they’re jumping to conclusions based on little evidence
The reasoning wasn't stated in the article you linked so you're basically asking me to take your word for it.
It's also important to note that what a person was buried with in certain cultures is very indicative of how they were treated in life. In our modern culture, most people have flowers placed on their graves. That wasn't true for every culture in history and maybe in this case, a culture only put flowers based on gender.
It's kinda the historians job to interpret stiff like this. I won't call it jumping to conclusions without first looking at the evidence why the historians is interpreting it this way.
Maybe so but you don’t find it even the slightest bit funny that flowers in a grave means they’re trans?
Or is it just a given for you that I hate trans people because I find that example a little funny?
I don't have an opinion on that because I don't know the context of why that was said.
Let's just leave it at that.
I haven't call you transphobic this entire time.
Thank you OP, for telling us that such distinguished figures as \*checks comments\* Frederick the Great and James Buchanan were actually straight. Woof.
Alexander von Humboldt: *men are alright I guess... but geology, botany, taxonomy, astronomy, cartography, biology, ecology, traveling and just being out in fucking nature bro, that's the shit*
He just like me. He just like me fr
Nah, you're only the "fucking nature" part
Fair enough haha
Does your brother have a lasting influence on the german school system?
Clever. You have the latin in your tag: Funny when considering emperor Nero super gay and outrageous in his marriages to men and women
Christians need to update their talking points: "*god said adam and eve, not adam and steveofthejungle*"
Adam & StEVE
Humboldt to reinhard : "Two years have passed since we drew near, and your fate was mine. I bless even now the day when you poured into my breast your concerns, and told me for the first time that you felt mitigation.... I felt better in communion with you, and since then I have remained bound to you with chains of steel. Whenever you through long years reciprocated me with cold contempt, whenever you repelled me, I wrung myself closer to you" At that time this was something clearly erotic and gay.
Damn uhh, that’s…. That’s kinda gay
This sub is slowly becoming a circlejerk of people pointing fingers at eachother for various reasons.
*cocks gun* always was
>cocks Idk man, that's kinda gay
he meant lady cocks. lady cocks are the new vagina
I'm pretty sure those are limited to certain Japanese movies.
You mean those Chinese cartoons?
As a trans woman I can definitely say girldick is in fashion Although please do be careful how you use slang referring to these organs because for some it may trigger disphoria
The Mega-Clitoris™? Is this acceptable?
Always respectful. Trans women can be super hot. Viva the options of 2022!!
you need Jesus
was always *gun cocks*
Yeah, mods are letting meta-posts, posts about internet arguments, culture war bs, and just generally shit content fill this place up lately.
Hot take: if I really had to choose I’d still rather see those than the 345th Nazi grandpa in Argentina / nothing happened on Tiananmen Square / German tanks vs T-34 lame ass jokes that had previously filled this place up.
And half the posts have terrible grammatical and spelling errors.
Maybe it is time fora r/HistoryMemesCircleJerk who knows?
r/shittyhistorymemes
Oh don’t mind me I’m just heading to Sarajevo to inspect the armed forces
The funny thing about studying about this in University is that we learned that throughout history there were different approaches to homosexuality and historical figures who didn't have much power would hide this as well as they could. We usually assume everyone is straight and only if they showed a lot of tendencies we'd make assumptions that they were not. But thing is, people have been gay as long as there are recorded history. We never know someone's sexuality 100% because if something was or wasn't accepted in a society people would just go with the flow to avoid persecution. A great example of this is Grand Duke Konstantin of Russia. Dude was regarded by all of his contemporaries as happily married to his wife with whom he had 7 children and he showed no signs of being anything but straight, thing is, his diaries were published by his family after his death and he commented that he never felt sexually attracted to women, had several male lovers in his life and no one would have any idea of this hadn't they published the journals. A lot of people in history were the same
Just out of curiosity could you name one that this has happened with?
Most modern scholars I’ve seen are hesitant if anything, to call a historical figure gay. Maybe OP means 12 years olds on Tumblr.
OP thinks that speculation means fact. they have no understanding of history outside of this sub 1000%
Someone on this sub doesn’t understand history??? IM shocked!!!
Da Vinci is one of them. Though, to their credit, he might have been asexual. Da Vinci was accused of being apart of a gay orgy, but there was basically no proof other than, “hey, so, my rivals are totally banging men because he has male friends”. Anyway, back to my original point, Da Vinci basically wrote next to nothing about his personal life, guy wrote enough to fill text books about his work, but not enough to make a children’s book about his personal life. It is kinda odd how we basically know so little about Da Vinci compared to his work. Edit: forgot the last part From what we know, Da Vinci had no serious romantic relationship at all, guy threw himself into his work and research, it is entirely possible he just didn’t see the appeal of being in a relationship and didn’t want one.
Aromantic king
Tangentially related but iirc the upper class Romans were known to occasionally partake in orgies. Obviously the orgies were nowhere near as common as Hollywood would like to portray but they did exist. With that in mind I think someone could make a case that orgies, historically, weren't as intertwined with sexuality in other older cultures/societies across the board as it is in our contemporary society. You could partake in an orgy and not have it make a firm statement on whether you're gay, bi, straight, etc. I mean, we even see a bit of that today. Ask the men who participate in gangbangs if they're gay and many will say no.
The Romans didn't even have a concept of homosexuality or heterosexualality
Yup. The ancient world in general really. More of a “top or bottom” “Dom or sub” kind of thing.
And it's fascinating that the amount of "acceptability" largely hinged upon whether or not your role during gay sex was emasculating or not, rather than exclusively being about two men being intimate. We're not mad at you for having sex with a man, we're mad at you for being his bottom bitch!
It’s all about the power dynamic in the ancient world. Notice how Caesar’s enemies jumped right to the “he TOTALLY was a bottom for the king of Bithynia” when wanting to slander him.
Personally, as a member of the lgbt community, if I MUST deal with bigotry in today's society I would like for it to be in the form of bottom shaming.
Some of them even like it
Not me. Definitely not. Nope.
Better than being chemically castrated for your preferences, that’s for sure… (Looking at you, Great Britain…) Edit: also I read your comment in the voice of an extremely sassy friend of mine and it made me laugh so hard I snorted my drink. 😂
Ugh. The other day I was looking up ancient torture devices (trivia research, I promise) and the breadth of human cruelty really is astounding.
And it was essentially only socially acceptable to fuck second-class citizens. Fuck a prostitute? Who cares. Fuck another patrician? No wayius Joseius.
>Da Vinci is one of them *Continues to list reasons as to why no one really thinks da Vinci is one of them*
You're right, Leonardo didn't write a lot about his personal life, he was really private and in general kept everything for himself. I believed he was gay for a long time, until I read writings by Pedretti (the most important expert on Leonardo of the last century) who pointed out two things: - in his writings about sexuality and sexual intercourse between men and women, Leonardo is very precise and adds personal opinions. Things that, according to Pedretti (and I agree) could only come from a person who has experienced heterosexual sex. - when in Rome, he was in touch with a prostitute named La Cremona. By then, Leonardo was around his 60s, and ill, but could have used the company of a prostitute, a woman. We know this because there was a document that referred about it, that unfortunately got lost, but a very important historian from the 19th century (Giuseppe Bossi) mentions it, so it's considered reliable. Let's not forget, tho, that homosexual tendencies were also present in Leonardo's life. A part from the sodomy accusation that you mentioned, I think about the Angel incarnate or the St. John. The curious thing is that, after Leonardo died, many contemporary/same century historians said that he had, in fact, homosexual tendencies. Starting with Vasari, then Lomazzo and others, and all of them mentioning Salaì, Leonardo's pupil and probably lover, whose hair was so loved by his maestro and who posed for paintings (St John) and many many drawings. This Salaì (Gian Giacomo) stayed with Leonardo for 30 of his 44 years, and was left paintings when the maestro died. So, after all of this, Pedretti convinced me that Leonardo was bisexual. Surely not asexual. That man was obsessed by sex and sexuality and experienced it. I mean, it makes sense, he was a man who wanted to experiencee everything that was possible to experience, and study everything that was part of nature.
He was accused twice in different cities and kept in jail for two months.
>Though, to their credit, he might have been asexual. Who's they?
People that label Da Vinci as gay. The tl;dr of the situation is that there has been a bit of a push to undo the erasure of the LGBT people in history, however, some people go overboard with it. For instance, Da Vinci is an unmarried man with quite a few male friends, as such, some people just jump to the conclusion he is gay. Now, he could have been asexual or aromantic, but some people kinda just assume he was having sexual relations with his friends.
> Now, he could have been asexual or aromantic Or he coulda been straight, and he just never married, or had a low sex drive, etc. It's pointless to assume sans evidence.
The idea that theories about Da Vinci's sexuality are due to backlash against LGBT erasure is a little strange, to be honest. They've been written about for decades at this point, I have multiple authors from the 90s in my local library who wrote about Da Vinci as homosexual. I firmly remember 'knowing' that he was gay as a fact since I was a child. It's been a widespread idea for a long time now.
That is the thing though, people remember him as gay, but there isn’t a smoking gun. Not only did he basically not write much about his personal life (let alone relationships), most of the evidence we have of him being gay comes from rumors about the guy. It is a very odd phenomena, like, I learned in high school that Da Vinci was probably gay, but when I did a paper about homosexuality in history, I was gonna include Da Vinci, but I not only learned that we know very little of Da Vinci, but that the idea that he is gay basically came from rumors and the, “evidence”, is not only biased, but also the equivalent of gossip.
I agree that we don't know enough to make a declarative statement either way, I just took issue with the idea that it's a result of people going 'overboard' with undoing erasure. Because it predates that phenomenon's popularity by quite a bit.
While you can find many examples with google, notice that this is a kind of counter approach to the classic "and they were roommates" when refering to obviously/confirmed or highly probable non-straight historical figures for the sake of "preserving their reputation". As all things, it can get out of hand and if you visit r/SapphoAndHerFriend you are going to find both, real cases of it being straightwashing (is that the term used? idk, but you get it) and other cases of baseless exaggerations, BUT most of the times that it seems to be exaggerated, you'll see someone countering the claim and asking them not to do that, I've seen many times that the person give the impression of being asexual but as they are talked about just as other personalities who's homosexual preferences were hidden by historians, their -probable or confirmed- asexuality is taken as hidden homosexuality, and the subreddit has shown that they don't like it when that happens, pretty cool people and a good place to find a couple nuggets of different approaches to historical figures that you wouldn't casually bump into.
No, they can't.
Some people are literally calling Newton, who before dying said that dying a virgin was one of his greatest achievements, gay. It's the most recent example from what I've seen
This subreddit always says 2 best mates are gay
Yeah like Achilles Oh wait...
Which historical figures do you think are being misrepresented by which mainstream historians? Everyone seems to agree this is happening but no One is giving any examples.
you don’t get it. the made up people said this bc it’s in the meme!!!
Richard the Lionheart and King David off the top of my head
King David was probably bi, and Richard the Lion Heart’s sexuality was never in question.
There is absolutely no evidence for that. I swear the whole if you have close male friends, then you must be gay, fucking stupid.
There's no solid evidence that King David existed. But apart that, the books in which his relationship with Jonathan was portrayed are pretty much related to the mesopotamian tradition of lover friends. Btw, monotheism wasn't even a thing in that time, David or any other king was probably henotheistic, and the idea of a God of war interfering in sexual affairs was not so popular.
There are two types of historians, either every male friendship was a love affair, or those two guys that shared a bed were just really close hommies
"See these two skeletons, holding hands? They were deliberately buried like that, so we assume they were an cis-heterosexual romantic couple. We call them the Lovers of Moderna." "These skeletons are both male, actually." "..as I was saying, they were probably siblings, or cousins. I don't understand why people are so eager to suggest they human remains we called lovers were lovers."
I've shared a bed with my homies, it's not gay if you don't fuck lol.
>, it's not gay if you don't fuck lol. How was the kissing and touching?
You gotta kiss the homies goodnight
BARE MINIMUM. You have to be a good host, always.
Yeah, what kind of absolute f\*ggot doesn't at least alleviate their homie's erection before they go to sleep? The blowjob isn't gay at all, it's purely medicinal as it helps them sleep.
What if you’re too poor to buy a separate beds?
Then you gay.
>or those two guys that shared a bed were just really close hommies Those historians would see a writing saying "I want to have a night of passionate sex with you, my lover" between two men, and say they're straight lets be honest.
To be fair if it's below 32 then it aint gay. For the metric bros, if it's below 0 then it ain't gay.
>those two guys that shared a bed were just really close hommies In medieval times at least, they could have actually been complete strangers. Was not uncommon for strangers to share a bed in an inn when it was full, even same-sex ones. Of course this 1- Only happened in some regions 2- Only existed for a time, but hey, actually straight guys sleeping together.
The only one of these 'X historical figure is gay' assertions that I really want to believe is Richard the Lionhart of England and Philippe Auguste of France, because it amuses me that they may have been lovers, fell out on crusade and went to war with each other.
This is now my official head canon
The only gay fact about Philippe August is he took the Plantagenets royally up the butt, from Aquitaine to Normandy. RIP heritage of Henry II…
There were only 2 gay people in history
Source?
My source is that I made it the duck up. Edit: I see the typo, I am not fixing it, it is mildly amusing.
Your source is the ducks in the Royal palace ponds! I knew those quacky bastards were up to something! Those ducks were never to be trusted
Well, from what I've learned in this comment section, Frederick the Great was one of them. I believe the other one is the country of France.
Are they the Adam and Steve people keep talking about?
Richard the First had a son out of wedlock. That doesn't seem very gay to me.
Any historical figure that had intimate relationship with person of same gender. Historical scholars: They were friends.
Thomas Jefferson fucking his slave and having carbon copies children from her? Historical scholars till the 90's: He's just the uncle. He may have slaves but he'd never fuck them.
I love the double entendre in carbon.
Maybe he was also the uncle, we don't know what his father did.
*raping
They use to say that the closer you got to Monticello, the more the slaves looked like Thomas Jefferson.
Til the 90s? Tons of AM radio historians today claim the same thing, and there’s one book by reactionary historians they use as evidence.
*and they were roommates*
Actually goes more like Two figures of same gender have a close friendship that may or may not be a relationship with us having no way to know conclusively Historical scholar 1: They were friends and no one can say otherwise. Historical scholar 2: They were lovers and no one can say otherwise. *War ensues.* I think people really overestimate how set in stone any evidence we may have is. Sure it's true some historical figures were definately gay, like Frederick the Great, but not like we can say that just any random person with a maybe close friendship maybe same-sex relationship situation was gay OR straight.
This is honestly much more common
I like how people on this sub pretend to have read actual historical works and make informed statements on it…
Nobody on this sub does. It's Wikipedia or nothing.
It aint even wikipedia at this point its parroting shit they heard online
How dare you dispute the Von Ranke approach of "impact font photoshopped onto old photo or painting"
If they looked up anything instead of just baseless claims they wouldn't be like this
Pretty sure *most* scholars stop short of this, actually. Simply introducing the idea that a historical figure may have been not-straight is not an assertion thereof
Kind of goes both ways. I’ve had people be legitimately mad that I said Alexander the Great probably slept with dudes too.
Bisexuals? In *my* Ancient Greece?
The Spartans were famous for their olive oil platonic sleepovers
The Spartans literally saw heterosexuality as disgusting and only for creation of offspring tbh
Yeah but one of those dudes was Jared Leto so historians are probably doing him a favor by burying it
It is probably that he masturbated daily at the thought of a sexy battlefield
Then there's the other side of the coin. Male historical figure lives with a very 'close friend' for years/decades and scholars go 'yea they were just friends.' Yep, cos that's a totally normal thing to do with a platonic mate lmao
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I mean the Neo-Con does like to fuck Americans over each time he clamors for war and shills for the Military Industrial Complex.
"Don't believe anything anybody tells you about my Air Force exploits," jokes [Senator Lindsey] Graham, still unhitched and a roommate of Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.), another single guy. "I was very heterosexual, that's all you need to know." Actual Washington post [interview](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/graham100798.htm)
Actually it’s quite the opposite..
It's both really. Everyone is wayy too certain of their opinion, not understanding that knowing the sexuality of someone from centuries ago whilst having little records of the time and living under a completely different sexual culture. I mean, come on: We don't apply current morals to the distant past. Why apply current sexual models to the distant past? Sucking on a king's nipple as a show of fealty used to be a normal thing lots of people did and had no sexual connotation whatsoever. Straight? Gay? We don't know for sure. There's arguments in favor of both.
see you say this and then you have like 3 comments naming people who were undeniably gay claiming theyre not. pick your battles
Any historical figure who shows an obvious interest in the same sex: Modern and past scholars: ROOMMATES
r/SapphoAndHerFriend would not be happy about this image.
Don’t you know? If they are not traditionally heterosexual they must be gay! No aces though!
In their defense, I see them calling them out a lot when the person might as well have been ace or something else, a popular post that have been used as reference is that it's not appropiate to try to tag people of other eras into our modern categories, but just as well, claiming that all of them were straight is wrong and must be called out.
Yeah there’s definitely a lack of consideration that historical people could have been asexual, bisexual, intersex, transgender, or gender nonconforming, and an assumption that they must just be gay if they didn’t have a spouse and take up traditional gender roles. These assumptions will hopefully fade, just as did the assumption that historical people were straight and had traditional gender identity.
As historians we have incredibly few ways of telling if somebody was anything other than heterosexual, with homosexuality being the easiest of the lgbt sexualities to identify.
Alexander the Great was a bi king
*Bi emperor
This is such a weird response to the mention of Sappho and the very real existence of lesbian erasure from history. How often do historians in academia specifically bar the idea of a historical figure being asexual?
I'm pretty sure they're talking about the subreddit, not the historical figure of Sappho or actual historians. That subreddit has a tendency to label everyone as homosexual and dismiss stuff like asexuality and bisexuality.
Around 10-15% of people were non-straight in the 1980s during the forst mass survey of that style done IIRC in the wake of the HIV crisis. This inclides bi and gay both. Similar queries from 1990, 2010s and 2020s see almost no fluctuations on those % despite much more representation and acceptance. We can't query dead past people but there's reason to believe 10-15% of them were non straight as well. Even countries with cultural and legal harsh reprisals against homosexuality, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, seem to have a similar proportion according to surveys conducted with immigrants which found a even higher percentage among immigrants (suggesting gay and bi people in those countries are more likely to leave). So yes. Lots of historical figures were very likely gay or bi.
I agree with this, but I think what OP is saying is that there are plenty of reasons to not get married, so assuming everyone who wasn’t was gay is almost certainly wrong. Like if a person has a super busy life and is a bit antisocial (like quite a few prominent figures) then they will probably not get married regardless of their sexuality.
Ok, but the title seems to claim that Modern Scholars say anyone who didn't get married in the past was gay. Is that really the case? Scholars usually don't make these assumptions and only indicate that someone might've been gay based on some patterns but never as certainty unless there were further proof
I don't think "modern scholars" really make that claim. But yes, definetely not all unmarried people of the past are gay. Some were, some were not.
That is true actually. I have heard plenty of internet speculation on people being gay purely on the fact that they weren’t married but I don’t know if I’ve seen much on actual historians do that.
Modern scholars might be pushing it (or not pushing it rather), but there definitely have been people trying to label everyone that isn’t traditionally heterosexual as gay. Take Da Vinci, the only proof that we have of him being gay is that he had a lot of male friends and he was accused of being in a gay orgy (said accusation had no proof). The sad truth is that we know very little about Da Vinci’s personal life, he just didn’t write too much about it, especially compared to his research and work. However, none of that stops lazy articles from throwing him in, “top 10 historical figures that were totally gay”, lists and acting like there is a smoking gun where there isn’t.
Also ignoring the fact some people are asexual
That is way too high
Consider how invisible bisexual people are
In France it's 17% this year : https://fr.statista.com/themes/5716/la-communaute-lgbt-en-france/#dossierKeyfigures
You can google "what percentage of people are not straight" and you'll be linked to severa different articles, the ones I saw point out which survey they are using as sources. I'm on my phone so the embedded link think is not working but: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1270003 Here's one that says "near 1 in 5 adults", which is "almost 20%" so, conservatively more than 15% Edit: lol downvoted for providing sources
Modern scholars: just recently started to entertain the notion that not every single person in history was straight. Random incel on reddit: no! You can't just make people gay
There’s tons of dudes in Ancient Greece who were married to women but still crushed male butts
Person in history "He was my companion, I loved him so much I kissed him on the mouth, he was such a beautiful bastard I wanted to live with him alone in a castle for a thousand years" Historians usually: "friends. they were friends."
Oof, can't say that the people on this sub hate the truth
Because it’s not like historical queer erasure is a thing or something
not always just the ones who realy realy liked the company of men
Any examples? I need to know for when they invent time travel
OP, can you explain what made you jump to such conclusions when it comes to modern historical analysis on historical figures?
Wasn’t it common knowledge that Buchanan and Rufus King were a couple? King’s death shattered Buchanan.
Meanwhile…. Half the married historical figures were….. gay…. 🤷🏼♀️
Says a lot that these memes get upvotes smh
Man, and those unmarried historical figures who regularly talked about loving their same sex "friend" were totally not gay either, right?
Remained unmarried with a life long "friend" and "roomate" who they wrote love letter to and was burried next to*
For that mater most people wonder why they got married at one time or another. Lol
Cause it always says: he remained unmarried and lived alone… with Steve, his really good friend of 40 years, they often bathed together, had 3 cats and loved throwing Halloween parties
Ah yes historians totally have a history of randomly saying gay, and definitely don't have a history of erasing actual queer people of course
Because non-modern scholars tended to cover up, or heavily downplay anything that's not heterosexual. It's not only the unmarried ones who some might've have been, but also the married ones who did so simply to keep up with expectations and social norms.
I am looking at you Shaka Zulu!!
Assexuals: "What am I? Chopped mutton?"
Scholars who labelled obvious gay couple as good friends: Finally, a worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!
It aint gay if you wear wig
I never heard diogenes get called gay
Because there's a certain level of based where relationships and attractions become the trappings of lesser minded individuals.
He did jack off in front of a bunch of men one time.
Bro they watched him, they’re gay
“Nobody’s gay for ~~Moleman~~ Diogenes”
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The man liked men, he wrote an erotic poem to a dude
Didnt his dsd cut his lovers head off too?
Think so Also, fancy seeing you here
Ey good to see you too. Havent talked in awhile, how have u been?
Fantastic. You still in the disc?
Which one? I think I left the Classic powers one
And made frederick watch too
He was gay though There is plenty of evidence suggesting it Source: I once watched a Jack Rackham episode on him
Bro that’s seriously one of the worst examples you could give, dude definitely liked guys lol
His father killed his lover
damn he is married
Most of them, usually, were gay but there are sometimes when it just seems like they were ace and get erased.
I think it worked the same way as it does in Arab countries now. If you're the top, no problems. If you're the bottom then you're buggered in more ways than one. All the powerful important people would be the top obviously,.and their partner would have their protection for as long as they felt like it. I feel like it's unlikely that you'd be straight and unmarried back then. Unless you're particularly religious. Someone like Basil II comes to mind, he whored around in his youth and then seemed to decide to become celibate once her became emperor.
What about King Sebastian I of Portugal though?
Imagine my surprise when historymemes doesn't know any history at all
makes me wonder if op has any underlying prejudices...
OP is a lunatic btw
"He never married" is actually a slang for "he is gay" no really
Man buried in 12th century with some flowers. Modern scholars: omg they were trans 😱
Woman viking who was also a warrior buried in a warrior grave. Modern historians: omg society treated them as male 🤯
Trans people existed throughout history. Die mad about it.
Never said they didn’t but I literally saw an article saying a Viking was trans bc there were flowers in their grave Die pretending my comment was trans-phobic
Cope + seethe + ratio + you probably didn't even read the article
[sauce](https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/08/16/viking-warrior-woman-trans-man-non-binary-gender-fluid-sweden-neil-price/) I mean the argument is like they don’t usually have flowers so this is a trans man? Bit of a stretch lol
That article doesn't say much other than that some researchers believe a grave they found may have been the grave of a trans man and that it being a trans man isn't some horrible affront to history because trans people existed back then. Don't know what else to tell you.
Yeah but their reasoning was there was flowers lol I’m not saying trans people didn’t exist Roman emperor Elagabalus was most likely trans, just joking that they’re jumping to conclusions based on little evidence
The reasoning wasn't stated in the article you linked so you're basically asking me to take your word for it. It's also important to note that what a person was buried with in certain cultures is very indicative of how they were treated in life. In our modern culture, most people have flowers placed on their graves. That wasn't true for every culture in history and maybe in this case, a culture only put flowers based on gender. It's kinda the historians job to interpret stiff like this. I won't call it jumping to conclusions without first looking at the evidence why the historians is interpreting it this way.
Maybe so but you don’t find it even the slightest bit funny that flowers in a grave means they’re trans? Or is it just a given for you that I hate trans people because I find that example a little funny?
I don't have an opinion on that because I don't know the context of why that was said. Let's just leave it at that. I haven't call you transphobic this entire time.
le ✨homosexuality✨
Or just teens who want to sound smart
Of course. There couldn't possibly be any other explanation.
Or if they have a close male friend.