- Yesterday a thread about two gay soldiers
in World War One,
went viral on Twitter.
This tread began with an image of a grave,
with two names on it.
Two soldiers who'd been buried in the same place.
According to this thread,
these men were a couple.
And there was evidence of that.
There were pictures, there were paintings,
there were photographs, there were gifs
that were included along the way.
And in the and we seem to have totally unambiguous proof,
that these two men were buried together as a couple.
Literally thousands of people retweeted,
shared, liked this.
They responded to it.
They were overjoyed,
especially queer people.
They latched on to this story,
this incredible story.
And then we found out,
it was all a lie.
The original person who had posted the thread,
posted a message separate
from the thread itself, with a link.
Now that link was an article that said,
I made it all up.
There was a grave,
and it did have two people's names written on it,
other than that,
it was all a fiction.
At the time of me filming this,
where these other pictures, paintings, gifs,
came from, we don't know.
We just know that this was not a case
of two gay soldiers in World War One,
it was a case of someone finding a gravestone,
and pretending for whatever reason,
that this is who they were.
And this wave of joy and excitement
that had come to the queer community,
when they thought that this was a true story,
suddenly turned into this sadness
and frustration, and outrage.
And so yeah, I could spend this video speculating
and getting angry at the person who wrote the thread
in the first place.
Looking at what their motivations were,
looking at how they handled it,
but I think what I actually wanna do,
is look at the more wider reaching issues
that surround this whole story.
What I'm gonna talk about in this video,
is why queer people were so sad and angry about this news.
That why.
The reason why so many queer people
are so starved of resources of history,
which is actually fact checked, readily available,
as part of their education,
that they were so willing to latch on to this story,
that had no actual proof behind it.
And why it felt like an ultimate betrayal
when it turned out not to be true.
This is a topic I've actually been meaning
to talk about in a video
for a really long time.
At the beginning of 2018 in fact,
I posted on Twitter,
asking people to send me images.
Black and white or vintage images
of real queer people or real queer couples.
When I looked at the replies,
I went through the images,
and I reverse Google searched them.
I tried to find the source.
I tried to find out who these people were.
And in almost every single circumstance,
they weren't really there.
Some of them were modern mock ups
made to look older. Some of them were older pictures
that were edited together.
Some of them were miss labelled,
and they weren't couples at all.
And then some of them,
we just don't know.
It seemed almost impossible
to actually find images of queer people
that we could prove were images of queer people,
before Stone Wall.
And that kind of messes me up a bit.
So why do we have so little access
to our own history.
So the first, it's obviously a lack of education.
When I was in school for example,
the education around LGBT people,
the only time that we were mentioned,
was a single line in a history textbook,
about who was persecuted in the Holocaust,
as well as Jewish people.
And it said homosexuals,
in between a list of other names as well.
That was it.
It wasn't expanded upon,
and we didn't learn about it anywhere else.
But we also don't have access to other kinds of education.
We don't have access to our history through our family,
in the way that the way of people of marginalised religions,
or ethnic identities might do.
And we also don't really have a presence
in the education sphere outside of schools.
In museums and galleries for example.
There's no LGBT museum in London, for example.
Which is wild. And even if you take it upon yourself
to do your own research,
there's also the problem of a lack of sources.
Now the lack of historical sources
around marginalised groups,
is a massive issue.
And I think that each group
has really specific issues that feed into that.
For queer people,
those are as follows.
One, in order to record as a first hand source,
a photograph of you
that's explicitly queer,
writing that's explicitly queer,
you have to feel safe enough to write down
those feeling explicitly,
or to display them explicitly,
at a time when it wasn't just taboo,
but it was illegal.
Also another part of that is,
you had to have the money, right.
You had to have the money to be photographed,
or to photograph yourselves.
The third one's that you needed to have the means
to store these places.
You had to have a steady place to live
in order to store these records.
Four, you also needed to have people in your life,
who would not destroy them after your death.
And it's not just individual's family
that have destroyed specific personal sources,
in queer history.
The Nazis destroyed thousands of documents
in the Institute For Sexual Science for example.
And the idea I mentioned before,
about other marginalised identities
having their own reasons why historical sources
wouldn't be readily available
or would've been destroyed.
Yeah, those identities aren't separate spheres.
They're Venn diagrams.
There're queer people who are also
muslim or black or disabled or working class.
And those are going to intersect.
And the intersection means,
that we're even less likely
to have sources around those people.
And so sometimes it can feel like,
do we just not have any visible history?
And the third reason after lack of education,
and lack of sources,
is lack of an intergenerational relationship
between LGBT people.
Like I mentioned before
we don't have that kind of birth family aspect.
The inheritance aspect.
We're not even talking historically.
We're talking right now.
We don't really have any spaces
for LGBT people across different generations to socialise.
Almost all LGBT spaces
are bar or club spaces,
over 18 spaces, alcohol based spaces,
which means that just isn't possible.
I've talked about this before on my channel,
but the specific sexualization around queer people,
means that having adult queer people,
interact with minors,
is seen as wrong in a way
that other groups aren't.
So even programmes that are trying to do this,
are treated with suspicion and disgust.
I mean, just look at the comments
on any really lovely story
about drag queens reading queer stories
to kids in libraries.
Which is the most adorable and lovely
and inclusive thing in the world,
and people even now,
still think it's disgusting and wrong.
So to think about how difficult that was to do in history,
and so if that hasn't happened in history,
we've lost those stories.
We keep losing those stories.
People can only tell from when they were alive.
Not necessary from the generation before them.
I just made a video about the lost gay language of Polari,
which I'm gonna link somewhere you can find it,
and that's just a really specific piece
of queer history,
that's going to disappear essentially,
unless we make a conscious effort
to try and preserve it.
To interview the people who still speak it,
to try and note it down. Because the whole point of it,
was that it was secret in the first place.
That we didn't want any records to be there,
because we wanted to protect ourselves and our community.
And that necessary to be free from danger
means it's difficult now,
when we have more acceptance,
creating some kind of queer cannon.
Now for the people who are watching this,
kind of video and on this channel,
may already know this, but I did want to talk a little bit
about why it is so important
for queer people to see their own history.
Because we don't get that education in schools
when we're growing up,
and because we don't get it from our families,
queer people often come out or come into themselves,
when they're in their teens or later.
So they're having to do this period of self discovery.
And I know a lot of queer people
who go looking for queer history,
trying to connect with their community,
trying to connect with their elders.
So when they go looking for their history,
what do they find?
Basically just a lot of sadness.
So there's the AIDS crisis,
and how that was talked about,
and how it's still talked about today.
They are looking at the Holocaust,
and the persecution of gay men then.
And they probably also find lots of individual stories
of brilliant, incredible men,
who were killed before their time,
because of being prosecuted or persecuted for being gay.
People like Harvey Milk, Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing.
And I feel like you might already be able
to see the gaps there.
Where are the women?
Where are the people of colour?
Where are the trans people?
Where are the non-binary people?
There's these whole huge amounts of our community,
which aren't shown.
But then even the people who are shown,
are shown in a way
that makes it think
that our entire history,
is just tragedy.
There is a huge amount of power
in acknowledging the fact
that we didn't just spring up in the 20th century,
to be these tragic icons,
that straight people can learn from,
or be disgusted by.
We've always been here.
We've always been creating and shaping history
in the same way that straight and cis people have.
And I think it's also important,
not just for us to see ourselves as valid and powerful,
but for straight and cis people
to see us as valid and powerful too.
To have that history available to them,
and not just something
that we have to actively seek out.
And not just have us trying to scramble around
finding and dissecting our own history,
sifting through like we're panning for gold.
And all we're getting this fools gold Twitter threads,
which aren't real.
I think that creating that sense of community
and culture and legacy,
is so so important,
A big reason why I think that this story in particular
was so tantalising to queer people,
was that it was so unambiguous and sure of itself.
And queer history feels so full of ambiguity.
Talking to people about these historical queer figures,
feels like you're constantly being gas lit.
Well are you sure they were really queer?
Is that what that meant?
That just how people talked back then.
They were just friends.
All of these people that you see yourself in,
there's always people
who are gonna be able to doubt that.
Because of all the reasons I've talked about before.
Why these sources that are explicit
might not exist.
Because even language is difficult for us, right.
These words that we use now
to describe ourselves
are not necessary the words
that used to be used.
This language is so tricky.
If you have a woman for example,
who is married to a man,
but had affairs with women,
is that someone who we get to describe as bisexual?
Because she seemed to have relationships
with both men and women.
Or does trying to claim that she's definitively bisexual,
ignore the pressures of women at the time,
to marry men.
And also perpetuate the idea of the gold star lesbian.
That if you've ever been with a man,
then you can't be gay.
Or in turn,
does saying that,
and saying she's definitively a lesbian,
contribute to bio-ra-sia.
Queer history because of it's secrecy
is so difficult to shift through.
And I don't necessary think
there's any neat answers
that can be wrapped up with a bow.
However much I might want that to be.
But what I did want to do is highlight some people
who are doing incredible work.
There's been an ongoing campaign
for a permanent LGBT museum in London.
They've done some really interesting
great works of activism.
And it's something that's being seriously discussed,
as to how it would be put together,
where the sources would come from.
So I recommend looking into that.
There were also LGBT tours
have popped up in the last few years,
of existing places,
including places like the VNA,
but also just of the streets of Soho,
that you can book and support as well.
There's also some incredible books
about LGBT history,
and obviously you can find them,
if you're further afield, online.
But I would also recommend,
if you can make it to London,
go into Gay's The Word,
which is a historical site
and LGBT bookshop,
which has all sorts of books in there,
and is run by some wonderful people,
who will be very happy,
to help you find the book of your dreams.
And there's also a number of small scale
community individual projects,
around pro Facebook groups,
with queer historians,
and podcasts for example.
So I will leave links to those in the description.
But ultimately a lot of these things,
are available to queer people
who are actively seeking them out.
Who are having to try and find them.
What I'd rally love to see,
is having these resources pulled in
to the national curriculum.
To be something that is taught.
Not just as LGBT history month,
which is take it or leave it,
depending on the school you're at,
but be something which is ingrained in.
Which is seen as important and vital.
Which is part of not get PSHE,
but history, English,
it's talked about in these different lessons,
where it is relevant. So I would love to hear your thoughts,
whether it's about the thread,
or about this topic in general.
If you'd like to help support me make these videos,
I'm gonna leave a link to my Patreon
in the description,
along with all my social media.
So you can find me all over the internet.
And until I see you next time, bye.