"What
makes writing queer history so challenging? What moments from these histories
provide us with especially vexing challenges to make sense of? Why is it
important to grapple with them?"
“…queers have lived often in ignorance of each
other and of queer-relevant historical information from the near, as well as
distant, past.”
-
Donald Hall
For this
blog post I wanted to focus on the fact that queer history has gone unrecorded and
unreported, causing this inability for queer people to form a community and
even mobilize for a long time as Donald Hall points out above. By looking into
why queer history has gone unrecorded and unreported for so long, I think it
will give us a lense through which to look at sexual expression and identity. I
think that the failure to record queer history has affected the way that each
generation has expressed and claimed their queer identity.
On page
21 of Queer Theories, Hall seems to
answer that question when he says, “‘history’ is always an artificial
construct, one that depends upon numerous acts of interpretation, exclusion,
and information shaping that reflect inevitably and indelibly the beliefs and
biases of the historian or critic.” Author Carolyn Dean is able to elaborate on
this by telling us that this isn’t just the case when history is written by the
majority, but that queer historians are guilty of inserting their own voice
into history as well. In her article “Queer History” Carolyn Dean extends Hall’s
argument by saying, “historical narrative divides history from memory, and
makes claims to truth based on historians’ presumed ability to weed out fact
from fiction.” I believe that the insertion of historians’ personal voices have
made it more difficult to accurately document queer history.
Hall
does a good job of explaining that queer history can affect the way that each
generation has expressed and claimed their queer identity when he says, “But
certainly naming something and giving it a history does make it available as a
way of organizing one’s identity and of seeing and proactively creating
affiliations.” This can be seen being put into practice in legislation today.
In “California Is Adopting LGBT-Inclusive History
Textbooks. It's the Latest Chapter in a Centuries-Long Fight” an article by
Time Magazine, we see that California has opted to pass the FAIR Education Act
after a wave of suicides among LGBTQ+ youth shook the community. The FAIR
Education Act stands for Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education
and advocates for the inclusion of the political, social, and economic
contributions of queer people to be taught in school and added to modern history
books. The fact that putting legislature to include queer history in place was
the next logical response to the high rate of queer youth committing suicide
affirms Hall’s analysis about naming something and giving it a history making
it possible to organize one’s own identity. I believe that this ability to
reconcile one’s own identity comes from having positive role models allowing
youth to associate their identity, whether it be race, gender, sexuality, et cetera,
with something positive rather than whatever the normative culture has told
them about their identity.
I
believe that it is important to engage with the history of queerness and the
positive contributions that queer people have made to society because of the
benefits that come from positive representation of minority groups. There is a
reason why the black community was so excited about the sudden increase of
black representation in Hollywood with movies like “Black Panther” and “Get Out”.
Seeing yourself represented, whether that means seeing people that look or sexually
identify like you, boosts morale and gives communities the ability to view
themselves in a different light. I think that the same can be said for LGBTQ+
youth. Rather than being forced to wrestle with their identity alone without
any concept of a greater community, queer youth can now look back and find
positive historical role models rather than being forced to see their queerness
through the lense their environment or community has given them. I also believe
that normalizing the spread of queer history will allow for inclusive and
informative dialogue surrounding the LGBTQ+ community to occur outside of just
academia.
*sorry about the formatting!*
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