Dearest Queer Person,
Chances
are you don't even know that you are holy, or royal or magic, but you
are. You are part of an adoptive family going back through every
generation of human existence.
Long before you were born, our
people were inventing incredible things. Gifted minds like the inventor
of the computer Alan Turing and aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont
live on in you.
The imprint that bold and brilliant individuals like
Lynn Conway and Martine Rothblatt (both transgender women alive today)
made on modern technology is impossible deny as present-day engineers
carry their torch in the creation of robots and microprocessors.
More
recently speaking, one of the co-founders of Facebook publicly
acknowledged his identity as a gay man, as did the current CEO of Apple.
We
were so often gods and goddesses over the centuries, like Hermaphrodite
(the child of Hermes and Aphrodite), and Athena and Zeus, both of whom
had same-sex lovers. In Japan it was said that the male couple Shinu No
Hafuri and Ama No Hafuri, "introduced" homosexuality to the world. The
ability to change one's gender or to claim an identity that encompasses
two genders is common amongst Hindu deities. The being said to have
created the Dahomey (a kingdom in the area now known as Benin) was
reportedly formed when a twin brother and sister (the sun and the moon)
combined into one being who might now identify as "intersex." Likewise,
the aboriginal Australian rainbow serpent-gods Ungud and Angamunggi
possess many characteristics that mirror present-day definitions of
transgender identity.
Our ability to transcend gender binaries
and cross gender boundaries was seen as a special gift. We were honored
with special cultural roles, often becoming shamans, healers and leaders
in societies around the globe. The Native Americans of the Santa
Barbara region called us "jewels." Our records from the Europeans who
wrote of their encounters with Two-Spirit people indicates that
same-sex sexual activity or non-gender binary identities were part of
the culture of eighty-eight different Native American tribes, including
the Apache, Aztec, Cheyenne, Crow, Maya and Navajo.
Without written
records we can't know the rest, but we know we were a part of most if
not all peoples in the Americas.
Your ancestors were royalty like
Queen Christina of Sweden, who not only refused to marry a man (thereby
giving up her claim to the throne), but adopted a male name and set out
on horseback to explore Europe alone. Her tutor once said the queen was
"not at all like a female." Your heritage also includes the ruler Nzinga
of the Ndongo and Matamna Kingdoms (now known as Angola), who was
perceived to be biologically female but dressed as male, kept a harem of
young men dressed in traditionally-female attire and was addressed as
"King." Emperors like Elagalabus are part of your cultural lineage, too.
He held marriage ceremonies to both male-identified and
female-identified spouses, and was known to proposition men while he was
heavily made-up with cosmetics.
Caliphs of Cordoba including Hisham II,
Abd-ar-Rahman III and Al-Hakam II kept male harems (sometimes in
addition to female harems, sometimes in place of them). Emperor Ai of
Han Dynasty China was the one whose life gives us the phrase "the
passions of the cut sleeve," because when he was asleep with his
beloved, Dong Xian, and awoke to leave, he cut off the sleeve of his
robe rather than wake his lover.
You are descended from
individuals whose mark on the arts is impossible to ignore. These
influential creators include composers like Tchaikovsky, painters like
Leonardo da Vinci and actors like Greta Garbo. Your forebears painted
the Sistine Chapel, recorded the first blues song and won countless
Oscars. They were poets, and dancers and photographers. Queer people
have contributed so much to the arts that there's an entire guided tour
dedicated just to these artists at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
You
have the blood of great warriors, like the Amazons, those female-bodied
people who took on roles of protection and had scarce time or interest
between their brave acts to cater to the needs of men. And your heart
beats as bravely as the men of the Sacred Band of Thebes, a group of 150
male-male couples who, in the 4th century B.C.E., were known to be
especially powerful fighters because each man fought as though he was
fighting for the life of his lover (which he was). But your heritage
also includes peacemakers, like Bayard Rustin, a non-violent gay
architect of the Black civil rights movement in the U.S.
We
redefined words like bear, butch, otter, queen and femme, and created
new terms like drag queen, twink and genderqueer. But just because the
words like homosexual, bisexual, transgender, intersex and asexual, have
been created in the relatively recent past doesn't mean they are
anything new.
Before we started using today's terms, we were Winkte to
the Ogala, A-go-kwe to the Chippewa, Ko'thlama to the Zuni, Machi to the
Mapuchi, Tsecats to the Manghabei, Omasenge to the Ambo and Achnutschik
to the Konyaga across the continents. While none of these terms
identically mirror their more modern counterparts, all refer to some
aspect of, or identity related to, same-gender love, same-sex sex or
crossing genders.
You are normal. You are not a creation of the
modern age. Your identity is not a "trend" or a "fad." Almost every
country has a recorded history of people whose identities and behaviors
bear close resemblance to what we'd today call bisexuality,
homosexuality, transgender identity, intersexuality, asexuality and
more. Remember: the way Western culture today has constructed gender and
sexuality is not the way it's always been. Many cultures from Papua New
Guinea to Peru accepted male-male sex as a part of ritual or routine;
some of these societies believed that the transmission of semen from one
man to another would make the recipient stronger. In the past, we often
didn't need certain words for the same-sex attracted, those of
non-binary gender and others who did not conform to cultural
expectations of their biological sex or perceived gender because they
were not as unusual as we might today assume they were.
Being so
unique and powerful has sometimes made others afraid of us. They
arrested and tortured and murdered us. We are still executed by
governments and individuals today in societies where we were once
accepted us as important and equal members of society. They now tell us
"homosexuality is un-African" and "there are no homosexuals in Iran."
You, and we, know that these defensive comments are not true--but they
still hurt. So, when others gave us names like queer and dyke, we
reclaimed them.
When they said we were recruiting children, we said "I'm
here to recruit you!" When they put pink and black triangles on our
uniforms in the concentration camps, we made them pride symbols.
Those
who challenge our unapologetic presence in today's cultures, who try to
deprive us of our rights, who make us targets of violence, remain
ignorant of the fact that they, not us, are the historical anomaly. For
much of recorded history, persecuting individuals who transgressed their
culture's norms of gender and sexuality was frowned upon at worst and
unheard of at best. Today, the people who continue to harass us attempt
to justify their cruel campaigns by claiming that they are defending
"traditional" values. But nothing could be further from the truth.
But
now you know they are wrong. Just imagine the world without that first
computer or the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, or a huge part of the music
you've ever heard from classical Appalachian Spring to classic YMCA (I
mean, we've held titles from the "Mother of Blues" to the "King of Latin
Pop!"). How much less colorful would the world be without us? I'm
grateful that you're here to help carry on our traditions.
So, happy LGBT History Month! I hope to celebrate with you here at Quist. This list of LGBTQ history online resources is a good place to start in exploring more specifics about this heritage.
Lesbianamente*,
Sarah Prager
*Actually a term as a way someone signed a letter for a lesbian organization in Mexico decades ago!
This piece was inspired in part by facts and sentiments from Another Mother Tongue by Judy Grahn (published 1984). Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia
edited by Gilbert H. Herdt (published 1993) is also referenced. Many of
the referenced facts are cited so many places it has become common
knowledge. Christianne Gadd contributed significantly to this piece.
This post originally appeared in The Advocate.
Follow Sarah Prager on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/Sarah_Prager
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