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.
Read the original and much much more at Huffington Queer Post here
