Ex Astris Scientia

beggars-opera

imthemuthafuckingcricket

Alright.....

The "and historians would say they were such good friends. No homo :))))" joke is real tired now.

marzipanandminutiae

it’s true and you should say it

like here’s the thing. there IS a well-known past of queer erasure in the historical field. and I wouldn’t suggest that it’s completely fixed now, don’t get me wrong

but things have changed since the 1950s, folks. I know more queer historians and GLAM workers (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) than straight ones- including me

furthermore, this joke has turned into an excuse to take the nuance out of historical narratives, in a way that really disturbs me

because no, we CANNOT just assume someone was queer just because they [never married/had certain interests/were affectionate with a same-gender friend/presented aesthetically in a way that was counter to their birth-assigned gender]. it’s a huge oversimplification of the vast diversity of human experience, which often totally ignores the broader context of a person’s life to force them into modern identity categories

there are many situations where we can comfortably say, “Okay, this person was what we’d now call queer.” but there are even more where we can’t

if a modern historian seems cagey about a person you think is “clearly gay,” it’s probably because there genuinely isn’t enough evidence to say one way or another. and so, to make a hard call would be to risk potentially misrepresenting that person- which is something we all really try to avoid doing

the tiresome joke not only erases queer historians and the real, important work being done in that sub-field. it also makes people think the only reason for not definitively saying a historical figure was queer is intentional homophobic erasure

which is a dangerous idea to enforce

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sotilte

helpimbeingchasedbywaltwhitman helpimbeingchasedbywaltwhitman

*writes I LIKE GIRLS on every other page of my journals so future historians don’t try to insist that I’m straight”

vilesbian

Future straight Historians: “we see several examples of her prioritizing a sisterly bond with the women around her, for example on page 12 she says ‘I like girls’ and throughout the text she references loving women and preferring their company. This is not to say she prioritized about her romantic relationships because on page 78 she mentions talking to a man one time in her life. It’s hard to know just how much she valued her sisterly bond with women due to this one reference of men and the ambiguity of early 21st century slang. For example on page 12 when she said she liked women, the passage continues ’…in a lesbian way. I want to kiss girls, they are so pretty, I’m so gay.’ Now it’s difficult to understand just what that sentence means. We know that in the early 21st century kissing on the cheek in greeting had gone out of vogue but the word gay, a word with an archaic meaning of happiness gives the contextual clues that perhaps she is references that old fashioned practice.

Going back to the nameless man that is mentioned once on page 78 for one sentance…”

cringepics

badgorlbribri

On 9th March 2008, historians have found what they believe is the first recording of a human voice. Predating Thomas Edison’s first phonograph recording of 1877. The “phonautograph”, created by etching soot-covered paper by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, was played by US scientists using a “virtual stylus” to read the lines. The recording was initially believed to be the voice of a woman or adolescent, but further research in 2009 suggested the playback speed had been too high and that it was actually the voice of Scott himself. This is the original recording.

PLEASE LISTEN Audio