So I started this fun little project, researching queer people from the 15th and 16th centuries. Cool, right? At first I was like, "I'm gonna go prove that queer people always been here! 😘 Take that TERFs and homophobes!!!!"
And at first, that was super fun because, guess what! I found TONNNNNNNNES of queer stuff from 500 years ago. The 2000 year old Chinese cutsleeve tradition (still in full swing, go look up "Danmei" on tumblr dot com, YOU ARE WELCOME), with romantic epics about powerful men and their beautiful male lovers, even with its own GOD of same-sex love, Tu'er Shen 兔儿神. The 8th century Japanese Buddhist priest Kūkai 空海 went to China to study Vajrayana Buddhism and allegedly learned the art of monastic gay love. He invented the Kana writing system still used today, established the Japanese state religion of Shingon Buddhism, and established the Japanese insitution of wakashudo-- the way of desiring beautiful young men.
Then there's those Florentine artsy-fartsy types-- okay so do this math with me. The population in 1500 was 60,000. If half of the population is male, that's 30k, right? And of that I'd guesstimate that 12k will be babies, 10k will be young men, and 8k will be old men, -ish, right?? In the decades that they were going around arresting men for sodomy, 10,000 people got arrested. That's.... that's all of the men, besides the grandpas and the babies. I dunno, I'm not a math population person. But still. There was a lot of gay stuff happening in Florence. Our turtle boys-- all homos. Leonardo was arrested for Sodomy and drew....so many dicks, probably belonging to his apprentice Salai who lived with him for over 20 years. Michelangelo wrote absolutely PRESSED love poetry to a young aristocrat named Tommaso de' Cavalieri, including this unhinged gay gem:
You know that I know, my lord, that you know
That I draw close to take pleasure in you,
And you know that I know that you know who I am;
So why do you delay our acknowledging each other?
If true is the hope that you give to me,
If true is the great desire that I've been given,
Let the wall between them be broken down,
For doubly violent are concealed woes.
If I only love in you, my dearest lord,
That which you love in yourself, do not scorn
Because one spirit has fallen in love with another.
That which I desire and learn from your beautiful face
Is imperfectly comprehended by human minds:
Who wishes to know it must first die.
And then I found out about the tudor monasteries where basically anything was fine as long as no one was "bottoming" which would put you in the "sodomy" danger zone, which legally included (thanks to Henry 8th 1533
An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie) anal sex with men, women or, animals. I had heard the rumors but our boy Shakespeare was heckin queer. He wrote this sonnet which praises a fair youth as a perfect physical specimen, with every attractive trait a woman has, but without any nasty femaleness. He laments that god added only one (eh-hem) extra Thing to his perfect beauty, making him for women to love, and not for the speaker himself.
Cheeky! So Cheeky, Will!
SONNET XX
" A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth;
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure
I found a metric ton of steamy gay poetry from the Ottoman empire, and I LOOOOVED the juicy-day-time-tv fact that the fall of the Ottoman empire may pivot on the moment when the Sultan Suleiman and his long time lover and grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, had a tragic falling out that ended with Ibrahim's death by garroting in the Sultan's own chambers due to the machinations of Roxelana, the sultan's wife (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
Then there's cultures with words and concepts and social roles for third genders ** (kinda, honestly none of our modern American terminology really fits precisely, which is another big issue with this whole project of queer history-- I don't want to overwrite Native cultural meanings with clunky English words with narrow cultural meanings.) The Hindu Hijra sect, and Lakota Winkte and Samoan Fa'afine, with their roles both secular and spiritual and sometimes sexual beyond and between that of men and women. And not least of all the glorious Odyssey of Hawaii, Ka Huaka'i o Hi'iakaikapoliopele, that features Hiiaka and her aikane girlfriend Hopoe, and Lohiau and HIS aikane boyfriend Paoa!!!
I found out about a batshit crazy Italian nun Benedetta Carlini, 1590, who pretended to be possessed by a male angel named SPLENDITELLO to have sex with her female minder, and then got busted for SNEAKING SALAMI and the whole game was up. And about an absolute queer icon and also probably definitely a sociopathic conquistador Cataline De Erauso, in 1580. I found out about the handful of women who were killed for lesbian acts and the Talmudic Mishnah consensus that a lesbian is till technically a virgin and so is eligible to marry a priest.
I realized that actually, there's a ton of evidence out there for homosexual sex and for "cross-dressing"-- one sex living temporarily or permanently as another sex.
And at first, I was like, COOL!! A hundred academics punched the air!!!
But something about it seemed... off. Prurient. Reductive.
For one thing, these are not really warm fuzzy queer stories. Frankly, the sex is often rape. Some researchers insist that the only kind of socially acceptable male-male sex was pederastic-- between adult men and boys. Or, between adult free men, and slaves of any age. Or adult free wealthy men, and their social inferiors. Anyway, the point was often... power. Adult, free, wealthy men were free to use the bodies of their inferiors, and as long as they stayed, eh hem, "on top," their socially-acceptable masculinity was unthreatened.
Gross.
That's not.... that's not the queer history I want to find. That's just gross misogyny and patriarchy-- fucking people with less power than you, ignoring them as anything other than a sexual tool. I mean, I'm not kink shaming if everyone is on board with that dynamic, but slaves, children-- they literally cannot consent.
Was all homosexuality in the past just rape? I mean, no, right? If not, why is that the first definition that comes up?
I think the answer is xenophobia.
When you look at what's recorded, it's often from outsiders looking in, going, "EEEEEW, there are so many boy prostitutes, this place is immoral, not like our fine upstanding nation where the MEN are REAL MEN and the WOMEN are REAL WOMEN!!!" (No literally actually this part cracked me up: Gary Leupp in his book about male-male love in Japan, Male Colors says, “many societies regarded the male-male sexuality in their own midst as a foreign import… The ancient Hebrews associated (it) with the pagan Egyptian and Canaanite cultures, the ancient Greeks believed they had “learned” pederasty from the Persians; medieval Europeans regarded sodomy as an Arab peccadillo introduced into their culture by returning Crusaders. Many English of the Renaissance were convinced that the “unmentionable vice” had reached their lands from abroad; depending upon the state of their international relations, they blamed Castile, Italy, Turkey, or France.”
Clearly there was a lot of cultural intercourse, badamTSING
So I realized, just finding medical or tourist accounts of gay prostitution or possessed angel rapist lesbian nuns (that was a really fun sentence to write) -- that isn't the queer history I'm looking for.
Which made me realize, hmmmm. I'm LOOKING for something. There's something I want, that I need from this dive into the queer past.
Lately, in the here and now, I don't enjoy queer online discourse. It feels like an obstacle course-- are you queer enough??? What are your pronouns??? What do you mean, you don't know??? What is your cultural/social/sexual role??? Please list your credentials and affiliations or else your queer card will be cancelled!! We've been trying to reach you about your queer extended warranty!!!!
I can't. I just can't.
Look, I dunno, man. That's too much pressure. There's a naval-gazing aspect to it that I don't like, as if sexual identity is something that, if you quiet your mind and listen to your heart and follow your dreams, will be revealed to you in a moment of clarity. Ah! Now I understand myself! I am pansexual, aro-ace, and agender!! The birds now sing, the flowers bloom!!!!
I mean, yes, there are moments like that-- personal AH-HAH moments where you go, "oohhh, that was hella gay, wasn't it. Straight I am not."
But the public pressure to not only KNOW thyself, but to declare thyself? I'm not comfortable with that. Maybe because I'm in the middle of a lot of these spectrums, maybe because it's private, maybe because it's complex, maybe because I'm old and the answer "it's nuanced" is something that old people like and makes young people roll their eyes.
But the Renaissance; the queer old world. What was I really looking for?
Okay, here is something I found that made me say, YES, THIS is what I'm looking for:
St. John of the Cross: One Night Stand with Jesus is Transcendent!!!
St John of the Cross was a Spanish Carmelite Friar, born 1542. He was poor, worked hard to study at universities, and went on to found Carmelite monasteries.
Toby Johnson, a gay ex-monk, says, “The image in the poem ‘On A Dark Night’ is of becoming one with Christ in the experience of making love with a strange man in a park late at night–and waking to find they are lying in a field of lilies.”
1. One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
– ah, the sheer grace! –
I went out unseen,
In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
– him I knew so well –
there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in his Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
This is the ecstasy of union: transcendence and pleasure. Was St. John homosexual? Did he have sex with other men? Honestly, who cares, that's none of my business. The love and longing in this poem, it’s so queer, and it’s so beautiful.
***
And then also, this story from Japan. This story made me say, YESSS. This is the queer history I'm looking for:
This is the Story of Gemmu, written in 1475, and I'll paraphrase from Child's 1980 translation.
There was a priest named Gemmu, from Ohara north of Kyouto. A young man named Hanamatsu
from the Nikko shrines, far to the north, made the trek to the capital. There, Gemmu and
Hanamatsu met and fell in love.
But Hanamatsu had to return to the north, and Gemmu promised to join him soon. Gemmu finally
set out to visit his lover. When he was climbing the mountainous terrain up to Nikko, he lost
his way. Just as he despaired, Hanamatsu found him! The two were happily reunited and spent
the night together at Hanamatsu’s temple.
But when Gemmu woke in the morning, Hanamatsu was gone. When Gemmu went to look for him,
he was told that Hanamatsu was dead! He died only 17 days before.
What had happened was this. Hanamatsu’s father had died in battle. Hanamatsu set out to avenge
his father and killed his father’s killer. Then, the surviving son of the killer, killed
Hanamatsu in turn.
Gemmu was devastated and awed-- he had been led to safety by Hanamatsu’s spirit. He committed
himself to a life of Buddhist religious devotion.
One year later, he met another young priest dressed in mourning clothes. The young priest
explained that his father had been killed, and that he had then killed his father’s killer.
But to his shock, he realized that the killer had been a young man his own age, and
turned to Buddhism. This was Hanamatsu’s killer.
The youth and Gemmu spent the rest of their days together in religious devotion, reciting the
sutras.
It is recorded that the lovely boy Hanamatsu was actually a bodhisattva, who lived on earth to
lead others to the Buddha. Through his love and death, he led two priests to enlightenment.
****
I guess, what I'm after is a queer world-view, a queer experience that is not limited to sex-acts but includes relationships, connections, meaning-making.
It leaves space for intimacy, love, duty, friendship, and affection between same-sex friends and lovers that isn't so medicalized, moralized as the taxonomical categories: "homosexual" or "transgender" or "heterosexual" or "cisgender."
I dunno, it's bimyou びみょう微妙-- delicate, subtle, maybe pointless.
But I like the complexity of queerness I find in some stories. The queer story that launched this whole thing, and is the focus of the conference I'm presenting this paper at, is the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett.
These historical novels about the 16th century were written in the 1960s and holy cow. It is the most subtle, beautiful, tragic compassionate queer story ever. "Queer" or "homosexual" were not categories in the 16th century, so the main character moves with an undefined sexual identity through one historical and personal catasrophe after another. Over the books, the main character Lymond sleeps with men and women for a number of extremely terrible reasons-- because he is forced to, to teach someone a lesson, to make an alliance, to protect his friend from being raped, to pass a psychological test, to treat his migraines-- it's pretty tragic. So there's sex-- homo and hetero. (#BisexualDisasterIcon??? ) But his bonds of duty, compassion, friendship, and yes LOVE, are for men and women. He is queer in that his love is almost too much to bear, the depth of it he feels for his friends, the lengths he is willing to go to protect them from the worst things that come into his life and that he believes are of his own making.
The thing that makes the Lymond Chronicles a GOOD queer story for me is that Lymond, in the end, is able to have self-determination and self-definition. He is able to be with the person he loves, the FLAWLESS Philippa Someville (hah yes from flaw valleys, har har love you Dorothy Dunnett), with all of himself known and loved. Compulsive heterosexuality this is not-- the one comphet couple in the novel ends in absolute and complete DISASTER, precisely because the man and woman were pushed together as substitute for the queer relationships they actually wanted.
Even more than a queer story, this is a bisexual story, where someone with a complicated sexual past, and ambiguous gender (Lymond is literally a beautiful girl in a critical battle, and passes as an effete Eunuch counter tenor when he's in hiding) is able to be his whole self.
So... my trawl through history has yielded sweet and bitter fruit. It reaffirms to me that sexual and gender identity is about more than who sticks what where, and how those sex acts are either punished or rewarded. Good queer stories past and present mirror the self-determination, self-definition and equality that is the ultimate ideal.
Comments
Post a Comment