Listen to "History Hates Lovers"
Jan. 14th, 2025 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithA friend tipped me to the song "History Hates Lovers." It's a good song, but it raises issues.
On the one hoof, erasure is real and causes problems. People often go to great lengths to cover up things that make them uncomfortable. Much queer history has been hidden this way, simply ignored, or even noted but not recognized for what it is.
On the other hoof, we need to be careful not to overinterpret things based on the concepts of a given time or place when we're looking at lives from a different time and place. Sex/gender identity is intricate and diverse, so you can't always take a label from one culture and apply it accurately to another.
We tend to think of "transgender" as meaning an internal affinity for a different gender than the body shape. But what about the sworn virgins? Do we count them as trans on the premise that only masculine-leaning people in female bodies would find that role attractive or at least tolerable? Or not-trans because they do it to gain specific cultural freedoms not available to women? They are their own thing.
In my family history, we have a record of Great-Aunt Lydia and another woman. They had a very close, long-term relationship and even used the word "love" in some letters. But they never mentioned sex, and most people don't. So we don't know if they were lesbian lovers, queerplatonic, or something else. All we know for sure is that they loved each other, not exactly how. To call them lesbians would erase the possibility of them being aromantic/asexual, or bisexual, or anything else. We can respect the relationship based on what we know of it, without trying to read more into it than the evidence we have left.
"A Stranger's Way" is a prehistoric poem about sex/gender issues. This culture has a designation, one-between, for people who don't fit the usual parameters. But Cobble doesn't feel like that fits him; he feels like a man and wants a man's social role, not a one-between social role, even though his body looks female. Gullwing, who hasn't been interested in anyone else, is willing to consider him. We might think of Cobble as transgender and Gullwing as a lesbian, but is that how they would think of themselves? Probably not.
Looking for queer history is always a challenging balance between looking for clues to things that people often had to hide for sake of survival or may not even have realized about themselves, vs. avoiding the temptation to "find" things just because we desperately want them to be there, and trying not to erase some queer identities in favor of others. It's hard to figure out the picture of a puzzle when you only have 10% of the pieces. You might see blue and red and boards, but struggle to distinguish whether it's meant to be a boat or a house. Floating white dots might be snowflakes, but in Japanese art, could also be cherry petals. With history, what we know for certain is limited. But that doesn't excuse us from doing our best to understand it.
On the one hoof, erasure is real and causes problems. People often go to great lengths to cover up things that make them uncomfortable. Much queer history has been hidden this way, simply ignored, or even noted but not recognized for what it is.
On the other hoof, we need to be careful not to overinterpret things based on the concepts of a given time or place when we're looking at lives from a different time and place. Sex/gender identity is intricate and diverse, so you can't always take a label from one culture and apply it accurately to another.
We tend to think of "transgender" as meaning an internal affinity for a different gender than the body shape. But what about the sworn virgins? Do we count them as trans on the premise that only masculine-leaning people in female bodies would find that role attractive or at least tolerable? Or not-trans because they do it to gain specific cultural freedoms not available to women? They are their own thing.
In my family history, we have a record of Great-Aunt Lydia and another woman. They had a very close, long-term relationship and even used the word "love" in some letters. But they never mentioned sex, and most people don't. So we don't know if they were lesbian lovers, queerplatonic, or something else. All we know for sure is that they loved each other, not exactly how. To call them lesbians would erase the possibility of them being aromantic/asexual, or bisexual, or anything else. We can respect the relationship based on what we know of it, without trying to read more into it than the evidence we have left.
"A Stranger's Way" is a prehistoric poem about sex/gender issues. This culture has a designation, one-between, for people who don't fit the usual parameters. But Cobble doesn't feel like that fits him; he feels like a man and wants a man's social role, not a one-between social role, even though his body looks female. Gullwing, who hasn't been interested in anyone else, is willing to consider him. We might think of Cobble as transgender and Gullwing as a lesbian, but is that how they would think of themselves? Probably not.
Looking for queer history is always a challenging balance between looking for clues to things that people often had to hide for sake of survival or may not even have realized about themselves, vs. avoiding the temptation to "find" things just because we desperately want them to be there, and trying not to erase some queer identities in favor of others. It's hard to figure out the picture of a puzzle when you only have 10% of the pieces. You might see blue and red and boards, but struggle to distinguish whether it's meant to be a boat or a house. Floating white dots might be snowflakes, but in Japanese art, could also be cherry petals. With history, what we know for certain is limited. But that doesn't excuse us from doing our best to understand it.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-01-14 09:06 pm (UTC)Algumas sociedades tem a filha mais velha se tornando o homem da família quando não se há irmãos viáveis em idade ou existência após a morte de seu pai.
O terceiro gênero é comum e até adorado em algumas culturas.
Realmente olhar com as lentes do século 21 do ano de 2025 muitas das vivências passadas às vezes pode ser como um apagamento para algumas pessoas.
Sei que já houve casos de pessoas que se uniram em casamentos lavanda e no fim de amaram realmente e criaram família (tem até um caso documentado de um gay e uma lésbica que saiu em jornais anos atrás).
Gostei muito do que disseste. Me fez pensar.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-01-14 11:00 pm (UTC)This applies so much to all history. Before trade unions did workers see themselves as working class or just poor? Did they see even class? Perhaps just an inevitable order preserved by a god?
It's helpful to understand how others in our time feel by empathically putting ourselves "in their shoes" but the actual study of history needs scientific rigour. The points you make are a good example of why. Ordinary people look through a lens called "now" and, without critical analysis, that lens is distorted.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-01-15 08:42 am (UTC)That depends a lot on the culture. The more stratified, the more likely that people do think about class or caste. And there have been many types of organization that functioned in some way to protect member workers. Some societies had jobs reserved for particular types of people, like the blind harpers of Ireland. Various cultures thought of guilds, which protected worker rights and ensured quality. There are even some historic examples of strikes and collective bargaining.
>> It's helpful to understand how others in our time feel by empathically putting ourselves "in their shoes" but the actual study of history needs scientific rigour. <<
Science and history studies don't agree at all on how things should be done. In science, eyewitness reports are dismissed as anecdotes; in history they're the best data you hope to get. And historians are notorious for data-cropping. They ignore whole cultures worth of stuff, like oral tradition, just because it isn't their tradition.
But then someone breaks the rules, talks to a tribal historian, and nails down the source of an orphan tsunami. And that is why we need both generalists and cultural diversity.
>> The points you make are a good example of why. Ordinary people look through a lens called "now" and, without critical analysis, that lens is distorted. <<
I think we need balance. No one toolkit has the whole picture.