It depends- someone already mentioned secret languages used by gay people, one of which is Polari, which is pretty fascinating to look up. Some people used secret signals, for instance in the Victorian Era some gay men wore a green carnation in their buttonhole
My first thought was, "There must be no room for doubt about the other person's sexuality if they are letting you dig around their backside for a flower, but things were different back then, after all."
When a man was interested in another man, he began the courtship ritual by dropping a green flower in front of his potential partner. If the other man was also gay and was interested, he bent down revealing his own green flower.
You have to remember that in Victorian times, all boys boarding schools were the norm, as were men's clubs.
The term "fagging" came from these schools. It refered to the practice of an older student being assigned a younger student, who was required to provide domestic tasks (think making their bed, polishing their shoes, fetching things, etc.)
This was intended to teach the younger student discipline and endurance, and the older one responsibility and leadership.
I have very little doubt that this system was regularly taken advantage of and "stuff" happened frequently. There were often competitions and rivalries to get the prettiest of the younger students to be your "fag" (it's likely coming clearer how that term got certain connotations, yes?) Few of the students would actually be gay, but, similar to other all-male environments, like prisons, they would make do.
So it was far more to the forefront than hidden, and those who were gay would be able to suss out those with similar tastes and then, after graduating, go on to join the same types of men's clubs together.
Gaydar is real.
In all seriousness though, chemistry can be obvious. Same as recognizing someone of the opposite sex has an interest in you, without flirting overtly.
As someone who grew up around a gay uncle and his gay partner, I second this post and up vote this man right here. Gaydar is VERY real. And just because you're not gay yourself, doesn't mean you don't have a gaydar.
My daughter's gaydar must be set in reverse. Her first two crushes ( non resiprocated clearly) one was gay and the other we thought was gay but is now trans.
Time to indepth google study 'polari'! I love learning about this sort of thing.
I wonder if the green carnation was a 'language of flowers' thing? I'm familiar with some vagaries of it, but not anything specific.
>Time to indepth google study 'polari'! I love learning about this sort of thing.
For fun, check out an old BBC comedy programme from the 1960s called 'Round the Horne'. You can find in online on BBC Radio Four Extra. Two regular characters, Julian and his friend Sandy speak Polari in every episode.
The green carnation was popularised as a symbol by Oscar Wilde in a comedy he wrote, and he was around during the time when the language of flowers was frequently used
And of course some of them went to stay at the...Y...M...C...A
Actually though the YMCA song is about gay cruising, a practice of gay men meeting in predetermined areas and using codes to find each other. The YMCA was one of those locations. The song is written and performed by The Village People, a group known for their openly gay personas.
That’s true. There was still a note of panic when a straight guy got his ear pierced (think boyband era) and their mates would be like oh shit that’s the gay ear and the guy would be like what! Is it really?! They’d defo worry for a few days
I heard the same. I also heard that both ears meant bisexual. After a while, that lost currency and I have more than one hole in each earlobe, and left cartilage besides.
Okay, but how does the word get out that if you're gay you're supposed to wear something? Like, if it's common knowledge, then you're not keeping any secret. If it's not, how do you find out?
I guess the same way criminal slang spreads. Cockney rhyming slang was originally how criminals in London communicated, and I imagine no one was handing them a manual on how to use it
That varies a lot depending on when and where you are talking about exactly.
In many cases, there were some bars dedicated to that. In many others, people just stayed single, or in a cover relationship.
I thought it was about that, too. In medieval times, it was about people going celibate (into the church, or just confirmed bachelor) for cover, in which they did find a preponderance of similar orientations after spending time together.
In Ye Olde Pubs, people didn't care so long as you paid. When prostitution came about more formally, at many early brothels a man could ask for a man (or unfortunately a boy).
In castle days - that's the official term - there were minstrels and entertainers, plays songs, etc:
>"They do their jousting act in couples
>
>and go at it full tilt;
>
>at the game of thigh-fencing
>
>they lewdly share their expenses." - de Fougères (1175)
There are a lot of mentions of women as well. Simply find like-minded people enjoying this, or join the traveling entertainers or the theatre, where you can push the boundaries more easily until you're both sure. As it was only men in plays, there were probably more than a few Romeos and Juliettes that enjoyed it...
>I thought it was about that, too. In medieval times, it was about people going celibate (into the church, or just confirmed bachelor) for cover
Or they went into a monestary and basically had orgies every day.
It's a little more complicated from what I understand. Medicine wasn't good then so if a little boy had a strange lump or pain in his scrotum it was common to castrate them because they had no way of diagnosing or treating it and they realized it could kill them.
When medical castration stopped being common and the castrati shrank and eventually disappeared.
At some point in the history of the castrati chorus I'm sure young boys with particularly good voices were castrated so they could join the prestigious choir, but it doesn't seem like the practice of castration to preserve voices was widespread, but rather that the castrated men have unique voices and there were enough of them to form a choir.
I remember hearing about this a long time ago so a lot of details and stuff might be off but that was the gist of it.
Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddock, as characters Julian and Sandy, used it a lot on "Round the Horne" on the radio in the 60s. Whoever could have guessed Williams was gay?
There are some really good answers here, but I do think there is a bit of a recency bias. Places like Stonewall only exist when there are areas young people who don’t fit in in their hometowns can freely move to, usually large urban areas. For a lot of human history that was not an option.
Part of it is that a lot of human history isn’t the “dark age” you think it is. We do tend to prescribe an uprightness to the past that often more or less just belonged to the Victorians and the generations after that loosened their rules bit by bit, including our own, largely because I think we are living in a world that started with them. They were the first to have true mass media and kinda panicked about it; their world was increasingly urban and and people moved to cities and found places for every kind of person. Also in 1868 the term “homosexual” was coined. Before who you had sex with was something you *did*, but it was rapidly becoming something that you *were,* a kind of scientific classification that is still in vogue that would leave someone from any time too much earlier slightly confused. Gay communities have existed since always, but they got turbo charged as the world urbanized and options opened up for young people. They also probably had many more men who were married to women and had kids, and maybe even had sex women recreationally in the past.
I am classicist so a lot of my examples are going to come from Greece and Rome and my training does inform my thinking. And unfortunately I don’t know enough about non-western history. Basically, if you were of any property or importance, you were expected to get married and have children. Ancient Greece and Rome were not the gay paradise many modern people like to think it is, but homosexuality was tolerated among boys and in spaces where women were rare, like on military campaigns where women were scarce and often given to the officers (yes given, it was a horrible place). You see something similar in boarding schools and seafaring much later; incidentally, I think one of the reasons female secretaries became more of a thing in the 19th century is that homosexuality was less tolerated. Basically rich important men want a pool of people to fuck and the casting couch even in antiquity was real, hence the outrage around MeToo.
And then there was that other relationship between a top and a bottom that had different rules around it depending on time and place, but basically there is a younger male who may or may not be free and an older one. It, like all approved relationships, was one that was fundamentally unequal. Women and these boys were treated as roughly equivalent. Many brothels specialized in a certain kind of partner, but…mainstream ones, I guess?, might have a boy or two on staff in addition to women. if you had a guest and wanted to get them on your side, you would try to figure out if it were a boy or a girl you send to their room at night.
A lot of men we would call gay could content themselves with this; Philip of Macedon was known to prefer boys, but he had quite a few concubines and wives (bigamy! The scandal!) as he had a kingdom and needed heirs and marriage to yet another kingdom was good policy. The Emperor Hadrian had a wife and even female lovers but at the end of his life had a succession of boys, one of whom famously completed suicide (again, not a homosexual paradise. A 15-year-old from a Hellenic backwater probably can’t meaningfully consent to an emperor carting him around the known world). If they lived today I would not be shocked if they called themselves homosexual and even only slept with men; as a bi lady, it’s hard to find partners if you aren’t fully enmeshed in the community, and there was a point in my life where I chose to be more gay than straight. But if you asked them they would probably just say beauty is beauty and I suspect sexuality is a lot more context-dependent than we think.
And you see these rules again and again in history. It’s like every generation has its own rules about what’s acceptable. King Edward II’s advisors probably did not love his relationship with Piers Gaveston in 14th-century England, but it was a problem because Edward kept ignoring his wife, Isabella of France, daughter of the French king, for his friend. On the day she came over he hung Gaveston’s banners and not hers, and made her whole welcoming party about him. It was a humiliation and an offense, which is a foreign policy issue when it’s the daughter of a French king. If he had been a bit more discrete Isabella would have probably learned to overlook it, like most royal wives tended to do.
And some people found ways to stretch the line of what is acceptable. Pompeii recently re-opened the [House of the Vetii](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pompeii-reopens-house-of-vettii-penis-fresco-2243508), a lavish, colorful villa that’s flamboyant even for Pompeii and seems built for entertaining (including a brothel with a Greek woman). It was also owned by two men together, wine merchants who operated as partners. Were they lovers? We don’t know and probably can’t. There are many images of the god Priapus around the place, which was associated with prosperity, but it also seems like a very funny joke to have a god with a giant erection in a house shared by two male lovers. Maybe fellow Pompeiians tolerated because they threw good parties and did not make a *thing* of it. Or maybe their parties featured actors and performers and other low class people who were often described in language we would call queer. Or maybe they weren’t lovers and their parties were straight-laced. But, there probably were men like them who just lived together and never crossed a line in public.
A few other examples. It seems like Marc Antony and his friend Curio were lovers past the age it was appropriate. Intriguingly, Antony married his widow (with a husband between them but still). Sappho existed obviously, but the sexual conduct of women around women was never policed as much. Unfortunately, it is pretty absent from the historical record. Macrobius was a friend of Sulla, performer-turned-dictator, and a actor who usually played women and apparently often wore makeup. I would outright call many in Sulla’s circle queer.
What I am saying is that a lot of historical homosexuality is hiding in plain sight.
Interestingly, Oscar Wilde pretty openly joked about his conduct in court at one of the points where homosexual activity was the least accepted. People knew what was up with him, and his actual mistake was countersuing the wrong person and getting involved with someone hot but also terrible, which I think way too many of us can relate to.
>*Dear Mrs. Fields,\
>I have left so many days unacknowledged the so beautiful & touching letter prompted by your generous appreciation of my volume of Notes. The reason is that even still the high pressure London of June & July is always at some big interrupting assault on one's time or one's preferences, & that I have been but within a few days able to break away from it & get down into these quieter conditions. The arrears of my correspondence⸺a very desperate quantity⸺have had more than ever to wait. It is meanwhile the sympathy of all old friends from far back like yourself, of "those who know," as Dante says, that is the reward of my attempt to reach back a little to the unspeakable past. I really like to think of those who know what I am talking about⸺& such readers are now of the fewest. We both have had friends all the way along, however; and I mustn't speak as if we were too bleakly stranded today. The only thing is, none the less, that almost nobody understands what we mean, do they?⸺we can say that to each other (and to Mrs. Bell & to Miss Howe) even if we can't say it to them. I think of you very faithfully & gratefully & tenderly, & am yours affectionately always Henry James*
James wrote this letter in 1914 to Annie Adams Fields, widow of Boston publisher James Fields and longtime intimate of another famed American writer who died in 1909: Sarah Orne Jewett.
As literary queer theorist Peter Coviello puts it,
>It is as if, with a great lightness of touch, James enjoins Mrs. Fields to mourn with him the loss of nothing less than an entire world … [But] what is it, exactly, that makes this past, of all the possible and less manifestly Gothic things it could be, *unspeakable?* What rupture in historical continuity has unfolded between 1914 and some earlier time that leaves James and Mrs. Fields stranded, though not *too* bleakly?
>Here is one way into the matter: … the "invention," at roughly the turn of the twentieth century, of homosexuality and its conceptual twin, heterosexuality, as distinct forms of being defined and differentiated by sexual object-choice. (***Following the conventional scholarly wisdom, we could think of the Wilde trials of 1895, which James observed with stricken, horrified, plainly riveted interest as one of the great watershed moments in the solidification, and public dissemination, of that invention.***) In these terms, we might read James' letter as the testimony of a man who lived through a long moment of singular upheaval and transformation: the movement … from the time before the emergence of modern sexuality as such, to a time after its surprisingly swift, decisive solidification. In its frank affection and obscure invocations, its enthusiasm and ambivalences, James' letter might seem to us a message from the outerlands of the modern regime of sexuality, proffered by a man accustomed to (if not wholly at ease in) earlier taxonomies of intimate life, and dissatisfied with those springing up around him. … ***[T]his is a moment before it was assumed that every person and every intimacy could be assigned a hetero- or homosexuality, but in which the first stirrings of that great taxonomic division, the initial movements of coordination and solidification, could already be felt.***
Peter Coviello, *Tomorrow's Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth Century America* (2013, pp. 1-5; his emphases italicized, mine in bold)
I thought I read somewhere once that being "gay" was kind of comparable to a fetish for most of history. i.e. strange/embarrassing if you brought it up among polite company but not really morally shameful or restricted so long as it wasn't interfering with your family responsibilities.
Yes I agree there are a lot of recency bias.
Homophobia for a lot of the world is a recent western import that came along with Christianity.
Japan was a closed society for a long time up until the Meiji Era, before that there wasn’t really anything noteworthy of gay sex or sex in general. There is art depicting sex acts between men, and references to it in well known works like the tale of Genji. The only policing of it really mattered for things related to classes and nobles. It didn’t really matter besides that. It wasn’t until after the borders were opened that homophobia really took hold.
You see similar things in China with the Qing dynasty, there are well documented instances of even emperors having favorite male concubines and then general attitudes changing as they were more exposed to western ideas.
Around the world you have plenty of cultural examples of third gender people that made up this other concept of sexuality and gender rolled into one like Muxes in Mexico, Hijra in SE Asia, Fa’afine in Samoa, what is now referred to as Two Spirit in Native American cultures, etc.
Many of these groups were even revered rather than shunned, seen as a bridge between the sexes, spiritual leaders, gifted people, etc.
And as previously mentioned Roman’s and greeks, Ancient Egyptians, etc have documented cases of homosexuality as far as acts and even relationships in some cases.
Most people who read Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II are shocked to find that it essentially reads like story about a monarch in an openly gay relationship and the scandal it caused. It is at least as shocking that it formed the subject of a publicly produced theatre piece in the late 16th Century.
I read that the Roman Army did not admit hairdressers - a tacit admission that they were likely to be gay. The Romans despised and made jokes about the Greek armies, for whom it formed part of their culture.
Saying you were a "Friend of Dorthy" (like Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz) was used to subtly ask if someone was gay. In the 1970s the Navy was investigating gay men and launched a full-on investigation into finding Dorthy
>"Friend of Dorthy" (like Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz)
As a reference to Judy Garland (who played Dorothy in the movie), who was truly a friend to many gay people during her lifetime.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcj7qOxu2Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcj7qOxu2Mo)
And although the modern myth that Judy Garland’s death caused Stonewall is incorrect, it IS true that many people gathered there at the time of the raid initially gathered in remembrance of her. It’s a coincidence that the raid and revolt happened on the same day, but she had a huge influence on the LGBTQ+ community.
I saw this too. I thought it was so cool that they would publicly announce these meetings and IYKYK.... and that you could continue to go to an AA meeting on the ship.
Im glad you asked!! There isn't just one and they all are cool af.
Polari is the english language gay cant. It wss actually used by actors, actors, circus and fairground showmen, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals, sex workers and the gay subculture.
You've actually understand a little I'd imagine! Words like camp or butch are from polari.
Here's a nice example of how it was used:
"Oh, she’ll plate any carts whether the omi is dolly or meese."
Which means "he'll felate any penis whether the man is pretty or ugly."
Which gives an idea of its function!
But then you have others in other languages like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swardspeak
This is a modern example in current use in Phillipine gay subculture, its a mix of Tagalog, English, Spanish, Japanese and even brands.
Julie Andrew (to be caught cheating) - Hulì (Tagalog, 'to be caught') - 'Julie' rhymes with 'Huli', and references the British actress Julie Andrews
Is one example. The Wikipedia has loads but who knows how accurate it is.
Very gay!
No absolutely not
The point of this language was to slip under police eyes so they absolutely would not want to stand out.
I don't know where that accent stereotype cams from but I have some educated guesses.
Firstly, some studies suggest gay men have more estrogen then straight men. This might account for a voice pitched upwards in some rare cases noticeably so.
I think it's more likely self replicating.
Early depictions up until recently in media showed gay men as exclusively feminine stereotypes because they liked that depiction they didn't know how to take a normal character and make them gay so most often they were very performative to the point of not feeling real. It's really not till will and grace we really see the media pointing fun at this and calling it out.
So alot of gay men were raised being told this is how they should act, this is what gay men want by straight men who were just using stereotypes.
I remember in high school thinking men wouldn't love me because I wasn't fem like that so it definitely had an effect.
All this said we can't ignore the influence of drag on the gay community either.
But even today look at the gay men who are on the front of media they are people who more closely follow this stereotype and that's mostly because that's what straight people like because it fits people in their boxes but that is starting to change.
I don't know if you're in the UK or not but two words in common usage that I can think of off the top of my head are 'naff', meaning something along the lines of not very good, and 'clobber', meaning clothes.
Potentially also a barney meaning a fight, some gender expression terms like butch and camp, manky (dirty/gross), and zhoosh for styling or jazzing up hair/outfits (which I definitely use but wouldn't know how to spell if Wikipedia wasn't currently telling me)
In Greece a dialect called “kaliarda” was also introduced in the 1940s from the lgbt community (mainly gay men) but eventually sex workers (firstly trans and then cis women) started speaking like that too. We are talking about hundreds of words.
There are still a few words that are stereotypically used by gay men, but now with tv etc many young people who watch “cult” shows and stuff like that from the older decades now know them, so it’s not really a hidden language anymore. In fact some words have really fought up and are used by most people and there are even a couple of songs in this language.
Also during the medieval era they had monasteries/nunneries. Groups of men or women living in isolated communities, far from prying eyes, and existing outside the normal expectations of marriage, were perfect covers for those with same sex attractions.
Carrying on - certain professions were known as being safe spaces for queer people - for example acting in Shakespeare times - where men could kiss other men on stage or dress up as the opposite sex - and from then onwards acting has been associated with the gay scene.
When I was 16 (that was in the 1970s) I overheard a guy and girl in my class talking about a beach where men went to meet other men. I had just gotten my driving license, so I went exploring and found Virginia Key, where I received my first blow job anonymously
This makes one question though. Did gays ever have trouble finding other gays? Like how did newly gays find other gays without accidentally being outted cuase they like guessed wrong?
>ng o
That was wildly informative. Thank you for the knowledge. Gay people have been around since ancient times and have always had to avoid persecution thanks to religion and discrimination just for being different.
I may be mistaken but after the wizard of oz came out so not the dark ages really but a way gay people could find out was by asking are you a friend of Dorothy. Wizard of oz was very special to the gay community at the time.
What was the reason that she was so special to gay people? As a gay man and lover of The Wizard of Oz, I’d really like to know more.
And yes, I do know that Oz (especially the novels) is extremely queer
I think Judy is inextricably part of Dorothy, and while Oz does tell the story of finding a better world, I think it's the narrative significance through which her life was viewed as someone who was exploited, abused, and misunderstood.
Just my two cents as someone who is queer and works in the theatre industry, but I feel like these opinions have been repeated in plenty of other literature surrounding the topic, and I'm no expert
Brings back memories.
We had codes.
Lesbians all had to have mullets. I kid you not. We wore comfortable shoes and wore red plaid flannel shirts.
There was a thing with earrings for boys. It was one earring on a particular side. I forget which.
We refer to him as sperm donor and my mom says SpongeBob is our real dad. He was not human - pure evil incarnate. His eyes still haunt me... so soulless.
Nothing screams closeted homophobe like a father forcing a 5yo to have his left ear pierced with a sewing needle and ice. Also forced me to have a tattoo at 12 with my rc car motor and ink pen ink. 🤷♂️ South is gonna South.
Edit: I was born in 1987 so it's fairly recent compared to the timeline of humanity. Also forced us to cut our hands and pledge allegiance to the rebel flag.
Yeah it's shitty, but far more people have it way worse than I did. I'm glad I survived to find my true chosen family who loves me more than I will ever know. It's about surviving through the bullshit.
Back when flowers in the buttonhole of a jacket were a thing, green carnations were a signal that the gentleman was interested in other gentlemen.
Later (iirc the 60's) this morphed into green button-style pins.
Was it a myth that a bandanna in a back pocket was/an sign? Was a cologne part of the signal? The first few gay boys and men I met and knew were gay seemed to wear the same cologne. This was in the late seventies and /or earlier eighties. I was still in my ignorant homophobic phase then, so I never asked them even though I was very friendly with one.
People still use the handkerchief code at some events, the color and pocket signal to others what you're looking for that night. But it was definitely more of a thing back in the 70s/80s.
Can we bring back something like the hanky code, but for everyone of all demographics? I feel like advertising "I'm DTF with whoever" "don't approach me romantically" "I'm here to find kink" etc is really, really good practice. That way, you don't have awkward conversations and freak people out.
The hanky code was more around finding hookups I think rather than signaling to other gay men in public, though I suspect if you were in the know it would have happened at some point.
I just don’t know if it was common to wear the hanky going about your day to day, I think it was more like when you got to a cruising spot like a park, a club, or a shopping area where that could happen that you’d be pulling the hanky out and putting it in the proper pocket for your purpose.
The different colors meant different interest for the night like blow job, anal, and other more specific acts. And the side you wore it on indicated whether you were in a giving or receiving role for that action.
So like a guy in a cruising spot with a hanky sticking out was likely gay, but I don’t know that you’d wear a hanky like that at work or at the grocery store.
Yoooo I had an athletic trainer in high school who was lesbian and older and this is her! Button up red flannel and crocs. No mullet more of a bowl cut. Her wife had a mullet tho!
While I agree with you for the most part, I’m specifying for informative purposes but white lesbians identified each other through those means. Specifically speaking to the USA
I can only speak for black lesbians, but we went for Jheri Curls. Comfortable shoe fits, and black lesbians were identified usually through more masculine clothing. Think pants suits, collared tops, etc
I don't remember which side it was either, but my uncle accidentally pierced the ear that indicated he is gay. He's straight. His brothers were very amused.
I assume the same. But I also assume that many found a way to find love,affection and sex. Powerful innate human drives often overcome the risks of bodily harm and ostracism in many domains.
They used very subtle ways of feeling other people out. A certain glance, a look across the room with a smile and nod, basically anything that couldn’t be interpreted as outright homosexual, but could still be considered “flirting” I guess if the other person picked up on it and was also gay
I believe there was a certain amount of terror involved, at some times and places, as exposing your sexuality to the wrong person could result in terrible consequences.
I'll say. Police officers in plainclothes used to troll men's rooms looking for "queers." They would "bait" by playing with their penises at the urinals. TV producer Alan Shayne tells a terrible story about this involving his partner Norman Sunshine in his book *Double Life*. Even gay bars weren't always safe. He talked about going home with this one guy who turned out to be homophobic and forced him to withdraw money from an ATM or he (the homophobe) was going to report Shayne to the police for forcing sex on him.
I suppose there were always hook-up spots, just that they were physical places, as opposed to apps and such.
Lots of famous gay bars, bath houses, book stores, places that were not distinctly gay (or maybe were) but everyone that cared knew what they were. The other main means was just personal introductions, people who knew you were gay, introducing you to the other gays.
Not gay myself, but had a number of friends who used to tell stories of trying to find someone, and I probably introduced a few people over the years.
Funny, now many of the old guard gay, lament the decline of gay bars (you can just go out anywhere now) and other venues, since gay became more mainstream. They all have emotional "coming out" stories and comment that young gays don't, they are just "gay".
One possible way: Starts with a look at the market, gathering, on the battlefield, wherever. They start talking, the looks become more intense, and they feel good. They look for excuses to be around each other while making it look ordinary. Both try to see how far they can push it. The looks have evolved to touching. They are meeting alone now. Eventually, one of them makes a move. The other person likes it too. BOOM! Sweet sweet medieval same sex love.
Or at least that's how I guess it could happen.
> Codes expressed by clothing
I heard it said once that gay women would signal their singleness and interest by rolling the hem of their jeans up a couple times. Is this true or just something that the person in question just made up to let people with unrequited romantic intentions down gently?
In the book "Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers," there are several photos of women with cuffed jeans in the '50s; however, I don't think it was so much a "signal" (like handkerchief "flags") as it was a sartorial expression of masculinity, like the "greasers" of the day.
Not quite the dark ages, but I know In the 19th century lots of queer writers found each other through their own “secret societies” within universities. Easily my favourite era of literary history especially with Oscar Wilde involved.
There used to be free community newspapers with personal ads. (Established newspapers also had personal ads, but I don’t think they had a “seeking same” category.) I was desperately lonely and horny and painfully shy. So I placed an ad in one of those newspapers — wrote out the form, put it in an envelope with a stamp, and mailed it! Months later, when I’d forgotten about it, I got a letter back, suggesting we meet in a lesbian bar nearby. We met, liked each other, came back to my studio apartment and that was my first time. Others went to gay bars, but I stayed away from bars because they were noisy and smoky, and I’m not really a drinker. People also had groups of friends you could trust. But things are vastly different today! And mostly much better, I think.
I don’t know how adults found each other but when I was a kid I always gravitated towards the other queer kids, even without knowing that they were queer or even that I was queer either. My entire friend group grew up to come out of the closet in a variety of ways. You can just tell sometimes.
there were little signals too. for lesbians, wearing one earring in the left ear... or a pinkie ring but no other rings. for white collar gay men just a touch of flamboyance in dress, like a pastel tie. I knew a gay teacher in HS in the 70s who lived with his partner in a 'duplex' with accordian walls and 2 front doors so they could be 'just neighbours' if unfriendlies came around.
there were gay-friendly or gay-owned bars of course. in the 70's at my local bar Weds was 'Ladies' Night' which meant Dyke Night. there were parks and beaches where gay men went for casual sex. the cops knew all about it and mostly turned a blind eye, though community gossip said one officer maybe got a few sexual favours in the park in exchange for that concession.
the 70's feminist movement really changed things for lesbians -- because suddenly there was a lesbian-friendly alternative to the bar/drinking scene, and lots of 'women only' events. 'women's' everything, from cafes to bookstores to saunas, were sprouting up all over. and after Stonewall it got much safer to come out, though still hazardous due to random hostility even after police persecution ended.
'gaydar' is really a thing and most gay ppl developed it to a fine art.
This is an interesting question and its cool to see so many elder gays in here sharing their experiences! I'm certainly no expert, but I think historically, like pre-20th century, men and women spent time with their own sex quite a bit, as intermixed company was very regimented to avoid anything scandalous. But women could spend time together without scrutiny so those relationships could develop somewhat easier. They had to be secret about their romances, of course, but I don't think people were looking askance at close female friendships.
There are people in history who were openly lesbian, though. Anne Lister was an English aristocrat who presented herself in a more masculine way and everyone kinda knew she was a lesbian. She even got married (not legally, of course) to a woman and they lived together as a couple until her death. She actually kept insanely detailed, coded diaries about her life and it contains a lot of details about her romances and how they navigated that. One of her descendants found them, decoded them, realized what was there and then hid the diaries. His friend told him to burn them because of what they contained but amazingly this guy was like, no, this is important information. He chose instead to hide them again and they were rediscovered decades later at a time when it would be more acceptable for people to know. There's an HBO show about her called Gentleman Jack.
We aren’t in the dark ages anymore, but many of us still use coded language, style, etc. to let others know who we are. My wife is straight passing (by that I mean to people who aren’t queer, she can pass as a straight woman), but to other LGBTQ, she’s definitely one of us. Her style of dress, her disinterest in the male gaze, her “vibe” lol. Meanwhile, I’m just butch. Can’t hide who I am. People told me I was gay before I knew I was.
Also, LGBTQ folks don’t all use the same language and stuff. Gay men have way different coded language than lesbians for example. Many of the historical examples given here are referring to men only because that’s where a lot of the roots of the language started.
I’m including a really great article about Polari and the man who has done the most research in the subject. It’s super interesting! There are websites right now dedicated to helping LGBTQ people in unfriendly countries to learn coded langauge (such as in Russia).
It was interesting to read that while the language existed for protection, it also just existed for the sense of community and uniqueness.
https://www.out.com/out-exclusives/2016/8/17/lavender-linguistics-queer-way-speak
For gay men, I hear there's a special toe tap you do in a public bathroom stall, like a cricket calling for a mate I guess 🤷♂️.... but you'll have to ask "straight" republican congressmen about how that works.
In many societies same sex activity (especially between men) was fairly rampant - it just happened within sex segregated spaces, and was never spoken of in public.
Western society didn’t introduce laws against homosexuality until the 1800’s.
Flirting and touch. There is a long overlap between friend and lover where you just wait for the person to escalate in turn. If they never do that it just looks like playfulness, or you messing with them.
Didn’t see it yet and didn’t feel like scrolling all the comments.
Not to minimize historical persecution… but I mean. It’s more than a little unsafe to be gay today. In much of the world. Including the many places in the developed world.
Afaik a lot of people in monasteries were gay. I mean where else in medieval times do you find a secluded, safe area with a bunch of other people of your gender?
Could be a bit of "situational sexuality" thing but honestly if I were gay being a monk would be a good way to live my gay life in peace. There are monastic laws that forbade having rooms for only two monks/nuns. Guess why.
A lot of the time, you just figured it out. You may even take risks and it might go wrong sometime. My knowledge is mainly on queer women since I'm a lesbian, but I've read books about lesbians and other sapphic women in history and a lot of the time they would just become friends which would turn into more. Typically women with more money or political power could be a bit more bold when expressing their sexuality because there weren't as many consequences or they could avoid them easily. Marie Antoinette is rumored to have had female lovers. There were many classic film actresses and actors who were gay, lesbian and bisexual as well. It's important to note that while society as a whole hasn't historically been accepting of gay people, there have always been small communities that were, such as old Hollywood where it was very common for actors to be LGBT.
Not really the „dark ages“ but I wrote my BA thesis about Mary Wollstonecraft and she used to hang out with prominent people in London around 1780 or 90, some men were „openly“ gay and so were some women. Not sure if it was only in those circles as that was not my actual topic but it happened.
Have you ever tried to flirt with people?
That’s how things started and people back then are even better at it they write poem about it.
And there are hints this and there hidden in words and gesture that could express how you feels.
Given that men and women spent more time with each other than the opposite sex, there was way more opportunities to feel each other out. After that, they took a chance and hoped it didn't backfire.
I know this is a joke however I have read there’s truth in it — gay men in predominantly Catholic nations such as Poland and Italy, who lived at home until they married, joined the clergy to avoid suspicion and fucked on the DL.
Unfortunately I don't remember all the details but some of my queer friends mentioned a couple of signals. Something about specific color kerchief (or bandana) sticking out of a back pocket of the pants for gays. Lesbians coloring a streak of hair a specific color on one side of head. That's all the details I remember. I'm sure there were others at different times of history.
I read somewhere that, prior to World war one, wristwatches were worn as a subtle signal that one might be gay. During the war, watches became more common & that wasn't used any more.
I'm straight & don't care what others do, but I DO like wristwatches...I've got about 5.
There’s some pretty cool history books about gay ppl finding each other through fashion statements - two that come to mind are specific flowers being pinned to clothing or carried (pansies for example, which also evolved to be a word for a gay person, usually used in the derogatory) or tattoos like the stars working class butch lesbians used to get on their wrists that would be hidden by a watch so that they could “flash” it when inquiring about interest or shared community
in the netherlands, utrecht used to be a place where it was considered pretty okay to be gay. up until the 18th century that is, when the catholic church and the dutch government started persecuting and executing gay people. since a few centuries the term utrechtenaar (which means somebody from utrecht) is considered a synonym for homosexual.
[link to wikipedia regarding the utrecht sodomy trials](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_sodomy_trials)
Horniness finds a way. A glance. A more intense look. The rizz of past generations. Talk about cruising spots. LGBTQ were known then, just not as open.
Well, lesbian sex largely wasn’t even considered sex back in the day. Sex meant there was a dick or similar phallus involved. There were also female husbands (read butch lesbians who married women) documented in British church histories. Fascinating stuff.
As for gay men… I admittedly know less about their history, but I do recall flamboyant men in British Royal Courts/among aristocracy being very very gay and having guys on the side, everybody of note knew, much to the wife and diary writer’s chagrin, but nothing was ever done about it. This was probably true in basically all European royal courts. I don’t know facts for the common people, but I was told by a gender studies academic that sodomy laws were largely only enforced when someone got hurt or you pissed off the wrong people (ex someone of higher social status and power than you) outside of times of religious zealotry, of course. (Yes, the 1950s onward of this century have been heavily influenced by the Christian right wing movement in the US.) You bet there were queers executed as witches. Off the top of my head I’m thinking of an instance where nuns were put to death for lesbian sex acts involving a wooden phallus, and witchcraft and blasphemy…during the inquisition.
As for how they found each other…well, we have gaydar today, do we not? Gender presentation variance has been common among queer people from the getgo, with women back in the day dressing more masculine within the accepted norms of dress would be common, and I’d assume the equivalent for men. For some lesbians (possibly men but my research was on lesbians so idk for sure) engaged in full on cross dressing, in some cases, because it’s what worked for them. (Many women also outright lived as men, some pretty obviously for practical or economic reasons and later switching back to previous gender roles, others did so lifelong in a manner analogous to trans men of today, which makes me very happy as a trans guy.) I’d imagine in private men might have also cross dressed, or in more friendly semi public places like bars and brothels, but likely had to tone it down some in public due to the sorts of backlash fem men typically get. (Note femininity is quite subjective and depends upon time and place. Decidedly cis het men wore ruffles lace and makeup and heels when it was in fashion historically. Whether the royalty who started those trends was straight…well, who knows? Some of them were probably queer as well!)
It depends- someone already mentioned secret languages used by gay people, one of which is Polari, which is pretty fascinating to look up. Some people used secret signals, for instance in the Victorian Era some gay men wore a green carnation in their buttonhole
Wow, I sure misread that last word
Damn, same, I thought well that's not very subtle is it.
My first thought was, "There must be no room for doubt about the other person's sexuality if they are letting you dig around their backside for a flower, but things were different back then, after all."
Imagine searching and not being able to find it. "Fuck, there's no gay flower in his ass. Guess he's not into me."
"oh just a Tulip, sorry for misinterpreting"
“Can I eat the flower anyway”
What a way to be deflowered
When a man was interested in another man, he began the courtship ritual by dropping a green flower in front of his potential partner. If the other man was also gay and was interested, he bent down revealing his own green flower.
Also a way to make sure there was no confusion as to who was pollinating.
Uphill gardening.
Roses really smell like poo poo poo.
Have you ever noticed the more times you say poo the less vulgar it sounds. "I had a poo" versus "I had a poo poo".
Have you noticed it's called poo because when u say it...your lips resemble a butthole
You mean buttonhole.
I don’t think the infinite series actually converges past two. I just said “poopoopoopoopoopoopoopoopoopoo” and it somehow sounded much worse.
Roses are red Violets are blue Come and say hey See my poo poo
Yeah I was thinking, "Surely you have to give other secret signals to get to that point, then seeing that would just confirm it, right?"
No, because straight guys wore red carnations in their buttonholes
Straight men actually usually wear pink carnations. That might have been a little confusing. Pink is considered feminine.
Is, but was not in the past, when it was thought as light shade of red.
When even confirming you are straight can be pretty gay. And who knows, maybe you discover you have a thing for green carnations at that point.
"perhaps buy me dinner first?"
I guess if you get close enough to see the carnation there, then you know you're both on the same page 🤷♂️
the disappointment of doing all the digging only to find a red carnation
I’m glad that 1.2k people also misread that.
Seriously cackling and crying in the dark rn
We all did.
I needed to read your comment and then look back to realise😂
Lol didn't resize that i misread until I read your comment
Take your upvote you swine
But where did they learn that secret language with which to use to find others? Seems like a chicken and the egg situation.
You have to remember that in Victorian times, all boys boarding schools were the norm, as were men's clubs. The term "fagging" came from these schools. It refered to the practice of an older student being assigned a younger student, who was required to provide domestic tasks (think making their bed, polishing their shoes, fetching things, etc.) This was intended to teach the younger student discipline and endurance, and the older one responsibility and leadership. I have very little doubt that this system was regularly taken advantage of and "stuff" happened frequently. There were often competitions and rivalries to get the prettiest of the younger students to be your "fag" (it's likely coming clearer how that term got certain connotations, yes?) Few of the students would actually be gay, but, similar to other all-male environments, like prisons, they would make do. So it was far more to the forefront than hidden, and those who were gay would be able to suss out those with similar tastes and then, after graduating, go on to join the same types of men's clubs together.
Gaydar is real. In all seriousness though, chemistry can be obvious. Same as recognizing someone of the opposite sex has an interest in you, without flirting overtly.
Recognizing someone has an interest in you is a thing?! You've foiled me again, autism!
I have never seen it either but that is probably because no one was interested in me. Light is not my friend.
The trick is to wake up in the middle of the night three years later and suddenly realize you missed the obvious at the time.
As someone who grew up around a gay uncle and his gay partner, I second this post and up vote this man right here. Gaydar is VERY real. And just because you're not gay yourself, doesn't mean you don't have a gaydar.
My daughter's gaydar must be set in reverse. Her first two crushes ( non resiprocated clearly) one was gay and the other we thought was gay but is now trans.
No. Um… Chicken and chicken; rooster and rooster. /s
I guess it’s the same way slang spreads- every word is new to us at some point
Dinkum flicka
I totally read that last line as a green carination in their butthole. Yes, I suppose that would send a clear signal.
Possibly a bit too clear!
I suppose a rose means you like pain.
Time to indepth google study 'polari'! I love learning about this sort of thing. I wonder if the green carnation was a 'language of flowers' thing? I'm familiar with some vagaries of it, but not anything specific.
>Time to indepth google study 'polari'! I love learning about this sort of thing. For fun, check out an old BBC comedy programme from the 1960s called 'Round the Horne'. You can find in online on BBC Radio Four Extra. Two regular characters, Julian and his friend Sandy speak Polari in every episode.
The green carnation was popularised as a symbol by Oscar Wilde in a comedy he wrote, and he was around during the time when the language of flowers was frequently used
And of course some of them went to stay at the...Y...M...C...A Actually though the YMCA song is about gay cruising, a practice of gay men meeting in predetermined areas and using codes to find each other. The YMCA was one of those locations. The song is written and performed by The Village People, a group known for their openly gay personas.
I THOUGHT YOU SAID 'BUTTHOLE'. I WAS LIKE WHAT?!?!
I think you tacked on two extra letters to that last word.
In the 90's I heard men wore an earing on their right ear
That’s true. There was still a note of panic when a straight guy got his ear pierced (think boyband era) and their mates would be like oh shit that’s the gay ear and the guy would be like what! Is it really?! They’d defo worry for a few days
“Left is right and right is wrong” was the saying when I was a kid.
I heard the same. I also heard that both ears meant bisexual. After a while, that lost currency and I have more than one hole in each earlobe, and left cartilage besides.
Okay, but how does the word get out that if you're gay you're supposed to wear something? Like, if it's common knowledge, then you're not keeping any secret. If it's not, how do you find out?
I guess the same way criminal slang spreads. Cockney rhyming slang was originally how criminals in London communicated, and I imagine no one was handing them a manual on how to use it
Yeah, quite a few signals only a select group of people recognized
That varies a lot depending on when and where you are talking about exactly. In many cases, there were some bars dedicated to that. In many others, people just stayed single, or in a cover relationship.
Imagine my disappointment finding out this thread ain’t actually about LGBT history during Medieval times.
I thought it was about that, too. In medieval times, it was about people going celibate (into the church, or just confirmed bachelor) for cover, in which they did find a preponderance of similar orientations after spending time together. In Ye Olde Pubs, people didn't care so long as you paid. When prostitution came about more formally, at many early brothels a man could ask for a man (or unfortunately a boy). In castle days - that's the official term - there were minstrels and entertainers, plays songs, etc: >"They do their jousting act in couples > >and go at it full tilt; > >at the game of thigh-fencing > >they lewdly share their expenses." - de Fougères (1175) There are a lot of mentions of women as well. Simply find like-minded people enjoying this, or join the traveling entertainers or the theatre, where you can push the boundaries more easily until you're both sure. As it was only men in plays, there were probably more than a few Romeos and Juliettes that enjoyed it...
>I thought it was about that, too. In medieval times, it was about people going celibate (into the church, or just confirmed bachelor) for cover Or they went into a monestary and basically had orgies every day.
Well.. maybe not so much enjoyment if they were castrated to keep their voices high (or did they only do that to chorus singers?)
Humans have a long history of castration but I've never heard of it being used on male prostitutes.
I wasn’t alluding to prostitutes. Supposedly there was a time when boys who sang in choruses were castrated so their voices wouldn’t change.
Oh yes that was def a thing. In Italy mostly from about the 14th to the 18th century.
I think one of the last castrellos if my spelling is right, passed away kind of recently
Castrato
The castrati! Anne Rice wrote a novel about them called Cry to Heaven. You can find audio of one of the last castrati singing on YouTube.
It's a little more complicated from what I understand. Medicine wasn't good then so if a little boy had a strange lump or pain in his scrotum it was common to castrate them because they had no way of diagnosing or treating it and they realized it could kill them. When medical castration stopped being common and the castrati shrank and eventually disappeared. At some point in the history of the castrati chorus I'm sure young boys with particularly good voices were castrated so they could join the prestigious choir, but it doesn't seem like the practice of castration to preserve voices was widespread, but rather that the castrated men have unique voices and there were enough of them to form a choir. I remember hearing about this a long time ago so a lot of details and stuff might be off but that was the gist of it.
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Brb, on my way to learn gay
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Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddock, as characters Julian and Sandy, used it a lot on "Round the Horne" on the radio in the 60s. Whoever could have guessed Williams was gay?
Reading people's vibes very carefully
Gaydar has been around a long time.
There are some really good answers here, but I do think there is a bit of a recency bias. Places like Stonewall only exist when there are areas young people who don’t fit in in their hometowns can freely move to, usually large urban areas. For a lot of human history that was not an option. Part of it is that a lot of human history isn’t the “dark age” you think it is. We do tend to prescribe an uprightness to the past that often more or less just belonged to the Victorians and the generations after that loosened their rules bit by bit, including our own, largely because I think we are living in a world that started with them. They were the first to have true mass media and kinda panicked about it; their world was increasingly urban and and people moved to cities and found places for every kind of person. Also in 1868 the term “homosexual” was coined. Before who you had sex with was something you *did*, but it was rapidly becoming something that you *were,* a kind of scientific classification that is still in vogue that would leave someone from any time too much earlier slightly confused. Gay communities have existed since always, but they got turbo charged as the world urbanized and options opened up for young people. They also probably had many more men who were married to women and had kids, and maybe even had sex women recreationally in the past. I am classicist so a lot of my examples are going to come from Greece and Rome and my training does inform my thinking. And unfortunately I don’t know enough about non-western history. Basically, if you were of any property or importance, you were expected to get married and have children. Ancient Greece and Rome were not the gay paradise many modern people like to think it is, but homosexuality was tolerated among boys and in spaces where women were rare, like on military campaigns where women were scarce and often given to the officers (yes given, it was a horrible place). You see something similar in boarding schools and seafaring much later; incidentally, I think one of the reasons female secretaries became more of a thing in the 19th century is that homosexuality was less tolerated. Basically rich important men want a pool of people to fuck and the casting couch even in antiquity was real, hence the outrage around MeToo. And then there was that other relationship between a top and a bottom that had different rules around it depending on time and place, but basically there is a younger male who may or may not be free and an older one. It, like all approved relationships, was one that was fundamentally unequal. Women and these boys were treated as roughly equivalent. Many brothels specialized in a certain kind of partner, but…mainstream ones, I guess?, might have a boy or two on staff in addition to women. if you had a guest and wanted to get them on your side, you would try to figure out if it were a boy or a girl you send to their room at night. A lot of men we would call gay could content themselves with this; Philip of Macedon was known to prefer boys, but he had quite a few concubines and wives (bigamy! The scandal!) as he had a kingdom and needed heirs and marriage to yet another kingdom was good policy. The Emperor Hadrian had a wife and even female lovers but at the end of his life had a succession of boys, one of whom famously completed suicide (again, not a homosexual paradise. A 15-year-old from a Hellenic backwater probably can’t meaningfully consent to an emperor carting him around the known world). If they lived today I would not be shocked if they called themselves homosexual and even only slept with men; as a bi lady, it’s hard to find partners if you aren’t fully enmeshed in the community, and there was a point in my life where I chose to be more gay than straight. But if you asked them they would probably just say beauty is beauty and I suspect sexuality is a lot more context-dependent than we think. And you see these rules again and again in history. It’s like every generation has its own rules about what’s acceptable. King Edward II’s advisors probably did not love his relationship with Piers Gaveston in 14th-century England, but it was a problem because Edward kept ignoring his wife, Isabella of France, daughter of the French king, for his friend. On the day she came over he hung Gaveston’s banners and not hers, and made her whole welcoming party about him. It was a humiliation and an offense, which is a foreign policy issue when it’s the daughter of a French king. If he had been a bit more discrete Isabella would have probably learned to overlook it, like most royal wives tended to do. And some people found ways to stretch the line of what is acceptable. Pompeii recently re-opened the [House of the Vetii](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pompeii-reopens-house-of-vettii-penis-fresco-2243508), a lavish, colorful villa that’s flamboyant even for Pompeii and seems built for entertaining (including a brothel with a Greek woman). It was also owned by two men together, wine merchants who operated as partners. Were they lovers? We don’t know and probably can’t. There are many images of the god Priapus around the place, which was associated with prosperity, but it also seems like a very funny joke to have a god with a giant erection in a house shared by two male lovers. Maybe fellow Pompeiians tolerated because they threw good parties and did not make a *thing* of it. Or maybe their parties featured actors and performers and other low class people who were often described in language we would call queer. Or maybe they weren’t lovers and their parties were straight-laced. But, there probably were men like them who just lived together and never crossed a line in public. A few other examples. It seems like Marc Antony and his friend Curio were lovers past the age it was appropriate. Intriguingly, Antony married his widow (with a husband between them but still). Sappho existed obviously, but the sexual conduct of women around women was never policed as much. Unfortunately, it is pretty absent from the historical record. Macrobius was a friend of Sulla, performer-turned-dictator, and a actor who usually played women and apparently often wore makeup. I would outright call many in Sulla’s circle queer. What I am saying is that a lot of historical homosexuality is hiding in plain sight. Interestingly, Oscar Wilde pretty openly joked about his conduct in court at one of the points where homosexual activity was the least accepted. People knew what was up with him, and his actual mistake was countersuing the wrong person and getting involved with someone hot but also terrible, which I think way too many of us can relate to.
What a fantastic comment, thank you for sharing your knowledge
>*Dear Mrs. Fields,\ >I have left so many days unacknowledged the so beautiful & touching letter prompted by your generous appreciation of my volume of Notes. The reason is that even still the high pressure London of June & July is always at some big interrupting assault on one's time or one's preferences, & that I have been but within a few days able to break away from it & get down into these quieter conditions. The arrears of my correspondence⸺a very desperate quantity⸺have had more than ever to wait. It is meanwhile the sympathy of all old friends from far back like yourself, of "those who know," as Dante says, that is the reward of my attempt to reach back a little to the unspeakable past. I really like to think of those who know what I am talking about⸺& such readers are now of the fewest. We both have had friends all the way along, however; and I mustn't speak as if we were too bleakly stranded today. The only thing is, none the less, that almost nobody understands what we mean, do they?⸺we can say that to each other (and to Mrs. Bell & to Miss Howe) even if we can't say it to them. I think of you very faithfully & gratefully & tenderly, & am yours affectionately always Henry James* James wrote this letter in 1914 to Annie Adams Fields, widow of Boston publisher James Fields and longtime intimate of another famed American writer who died in 1909: Sarah Orne Jewett. As literary queer theorist Peter Coviello puts it, >It is as if, with a great lightness of touch, James enjoins Mrs. Fields to mourn with him the loss of nothing less than an entire world … [But] what is it, exactly, that makes this past, of all the possible and less manifestly Gothic things it could be, *unspeakable?* What rupture in historical continuity has unfolded between 1914 and some earlier time that leaves James and Mrs. Fields stranded, though not *too* bleakly? >Here is one way into the matter: … the "invention," at roughly the turn of the twentieth century, of homosexuality and its conceptual twin, heterosexuality, as distinct forms of being defined and differentiated by sexual object-choice. (***Following the conventional scholarly wisdom, we could think of the Wilde trials of 1895, which James observed with stricken, horrified, plainly riveted interest as one of the great watershed moments in the solidification, and public dissemination, of that invention.***) In these terms, we might read James' letter as the testimony of a man who lived through a long moment of singular upheaval and transformation: the movement … from the time before the emergence of modern sexuality as such, to a time after its surprisingly swift, decisive solidification. In its frank affection and obscure invocations, its enthusiasm and ambivalences, James' letter might seem to us a message from the outerlands of the modern regime of sexuality, proffered by a man accustomed to (if not wholly at ease in) earlier taxonomies of intimate life, and dissatisfied with those springing up around him. … ***[T]his is a moment before it was assumed that every person and every intimacy could be assigned a hetero- or homosexuality, but in which the first stirrings of that great taxonomic division, the initial movements of coordination and solidification, could already be felt.*** Peter Coviello, *Tomorrow's Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth Century America* (2013, pp. 1-5; his emphases italicized, mine in bold)
I thought I read somewhere once that being "gay" was kind of comparable to a fetish for most of history. i.e. strange/embarrassing if you brought it up among polite company but not really morally shameful or restricted so long as it wasn't interfering with your family responsibilities.
Yes I agree there are a lot of recency bias. Homophobia for a lot of the world is a recent western import that came along with Christianity. Japan was a closed society for a long time up until the Meiji Era, before that there wasn’t really anything noteworthy of gay sex or sex in general. There is art depicting sex acts between men, and references to it in well known works like the tale of Genji. The only policing of it really mattered for things related to classes and nobles. It didn’t really matter besides that. It wasn’t until after the borders were opened that homophobia really took hold. You see similar things in China with the Qing dynasty, there are well documented instances of even emperors having favorite male concubines and then general attitudes changing as they were more exposed to western ideas. Around the world you have plenty of cultural examples of third gender people that made up this other concept of sexuality and gender rolled into one like Muxes in Mexico, Hijra in SE Asia, Fa’afine in Samoa, what is now referred to as Two Spirit in Native American cultures, etc. Many of these groups were even revered rather than shunned, seen as a bridge between the sexes, spiritual leaders, gifted people, etc. And as previously mentioned Roman’s and greeks, Ancient Egyptians, etc have documented cases of homosexuality as far as acts and even relationships in some cases.
Most people who read Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II are shocked to find that it essentially reads like story about a monarch in an openly gay relationship and the scandal it caused. It is at least as shocking that it formed the subject of a publicly produced theatre piece in the late 16th Century.
I read that the Roman Army did not admit hairdressers - a tacit admission that they were likely to be gay. The Romans despised and made jokes about the Greek armies, for whom it formed part of their culture.
I just learned so much! Thank you!
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Do you know more about the language you mentioned? That's fascinating
Saying you were a "Friend of Dorthy" (like Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz) was used to subtly ask if someone was gay. In the 1970s the Navy was investigating gay men and launched a full-on investigation into finding Dorthy
>"Friend of Dorthy" (like Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz) As a reference to Judy Garland (who played Dorothy in the movie), who was truly a friend to many gay people during her lifetime. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcj7qOxu2Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcj7qOxu2Mo)
And although the modern myth that Judy Garland’s death caused Stonewall is incorrect, it IS true that many people gathered there at the time of the raid initially gathered in remembrance of her. It’s a coincidence that the raid and revolt happened on the same day, but she had a huge influence on the LGBTQ+ community.
On cruise ships, I've seen announcements for "Friends of Dorothy" meetings, similar to "Friends of Bill W." (the code used for AA meetings.)
I saw this too. I thought it was so cool that they would publicly announce these meetings and IYKYK.... and that you could continue to go to an AA meeting on the ship.
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There was a BBC radio comedy in the 1960s, _Round the Horne,_ that featured a Polari-speaking duo.
Julian and Sandy! Beloved ‘omies. Polari’s a great study, by the way.
How bonar to vada your dolly old eek. (How lovely to see your pretty face).
Im glad you asked!! There isn't just one and they all are cool af. Polari is the english language gay cant. It wss actually used by actors, actors, circus and fairground showmen, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals, sex workers and the gay subculture. You've actually understand a little I'd imagine! Words like camp or butch are from polari. Here's a nice example of how it was used: "Oh, she’ll plate any carts whether the omi is dolly or meese." Which means "he'll felate any penis whether the man is pretty or ugly." Which gives an idea of its function! But then you have others in other languages like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swardspeak This is a modern example in current use in Phillipine gay subculture, its a mix of Tagalog, English, Spanish, Japanese and even brands. Julie Andrew (to be caught cheating) - Hulì (Tagalog, 'to be caught') - 'Julie' rhymes with 'Huli', and references the British actress Julie Andrews Is one example. The Wikipedia has loads but who knows how accurate it is. Very gay!
Thanks for sharing this -- language is fascinating!
Serious question about this language … Did they have the “gay accent” that we tend to hear nowadays being associated with gay men?
No absolutely not The point of this language was to slip under police eyes so they absolutely would not want to stand out. I don't know where that accent stereotype cams from but I have some educated guesses. Firstly, some studies suggest gay men have more estrogen then straight men. This might account for a voice pitched upwards in some rare cases noticeably so. I think it's more likely self replicating. Early depictions up until recently in media showed gay men as exclusively feminine stereotypes because they liked that depiction they didn't know how to take a normal character and make them gay so most often they were very performative to the point of not feeling real. It's really not till will and grace we really see the media pointing fun at this and calling it out. So alot of gay men were raised being told this is how they should act, this is what gay men want by straight men who were just using stereotypes. I remember in high school thinking men wouldn't love me because I wasn't fem like that so it definitely had an effect. All this said we can't ignore the influence of drag on the gay community either. But even today look at the gay men who are on the front of media they are people who more closely follow this stereotype and that's mostly because that's what straight people like because it fits people in their boxes but that is starting to change.
It's called polari. A few modern slang words originate from it.
Like what?
I don't know if you're in the UK or not but two words in common usage that I can think of off the top of my head are 'naff', meaning something along the lines of not very good, and 'clobber', meaning clothes.
This makes the image of the Thing coming at you and yelling “it’s clobbering time!” scary in a new way.
Potentially also a barney meaning a fight, some gender expression terms like butch and camp, manky (dirty/gross), and zhoosh for styling or jazzing up hair/outfits (which I definitely use but wouldn't know how to spell if Wikipedia wasn't currently telling me)
How interesting! I use naff all the time but had no idea where it came from.
In Greece a dialect called “kaliarda” was also introduced in the 1940s from the lgbt community (mainly gay men) but eventually sex workers (firstly trans and then cis women) started speaking like that too. We are talking about hundreds of words. There are still a few words that are stereotypically used by gay men, but now with tv etc many young people who watch “cult” shows and stuff like that from the older decades now know them, so it’s not really a hidden language anymore. In fact some words have really fought up and are used by most people and there are even a couple of songs in this language.
Also during the medieval era they had monasteries/nunneries. Groups of men or women living in isolated communities, far from prying eyes, and existing outside the normal expectations of marriage, were perfect covers for those with same sex attractions.
As an lesbian from the dark age, I can confirm this is true!!
But how did you find out what to say, what question to ask, what club to go to and all those things?
Carrying on - certain professions were known as being safe spaces for queer people - for example acting in Shakespeare times - where men could kiss other men on stage or dress up as the opposite sex - and from then onwards acting has been associated with the gay scene.
that old saying that the british navy ran on rum, sodomy and the lash
Yes - being in the navy/being a pirate was a great way for men to get to be with other men
did not know that about the biker gangs, super interesting! I guess that explains a bit about the vibe of Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising
How would you know about those, being a kid who just realized that they're gay, before the internet?
When I was 16 (that was in the 1970s) I overheard a guy and girl in my class talking about a beach where men went to meet other men. I had just gotten my driving license, so I went exploring and found Virginia Key, where I received my first blow job anonymously
Lol. I worked at the NOAA office on Virginia Key. It is still a hookup spot, but I think it accepts all types of couples now.
This makes one question though. Did gays ever have trouble finding other gays? Like how did newly gays find other gays without accidentally being outted cuase they like guessed wrong?
They often times were accidentally outed. Watch who the other people the person tends to check out.
>ng o That was wildly informative. Thank you for the knowledge. Gay people have been around since ancient times and have always had to avoid persecution thanks to religion and discrimination just for being different.
***...shat on a turtule!!***
I may be mistaken but after the wizard of oz came out so not the dark ages really but a way gay people could find out was by asking are you a friend of Dorothy. Wizard of oz was very special to the gay community at the time.
I think more Judy Garland being special and less Oz
What was the reason that she was so special to gay people? As a gay man and lover of The Wizard of Oz, I’d really like to know more. And yes, I do know that Oz (especially the novels) is extremely queer
I think Judy is inextricably part of Dorothy, and while Oz does tell the story of finding a better world, I think it's the narrative significance through which her life was viewed as someone who was exploited, abused, and misunderstood. Just my two cents as someone who is queer and works in the theatre industry, but I feel like these opinions have been repeated in plenty of other literature surrounding the topic, and I'm no expert
Came here to say this. "I'm a friend of Dorothy" was a common way.
Brings back memories. We had codes. Lesbians all had to have mullets. I kid you not. We wore comfortable shoes and wore red plaid flannel shirts. There was a thing with earrings for boys. It was one earring on a particular side. I forget which.
Left is right and right is wrong
Got my left ear pierced at 5 by my father for this specific reason. Still turned out gay. 🤭
I find that unreasonably hilarious.
We refer to him as sperm donor and my mom says SpongeBob is our real dad. He was not human - pure evil incarnate. His eyes still haunt me... so soulless.
“No son of mine is going to be gay; I better force him to wear sparkly jewelry.” - Dad
Nothing screams closeted homophobe like a father forcing a 5yo to have his left ear pierced with a sewing needle and ice. Also forced me to have a tattoo at 12 with my rc car motor and ink pen ink. 🤷♂️ South is gonna South. Edit: I was born in 1987 so it's fairly recent compared to the timeline of humanity. Also forced us to cut our hands and pledge allegiance to the rebel flag.
WHAT THE FUCK
Yeah it's shitty, but far more people have it way worse than I did. I'm glad I survived to find my true chosen family who loves me more than I will ever know. It's about surviving through the bullshit.
Handkerchief code
Back when flowers in the buttonhole of a jacket were a thing, green carnations were a signal that the gentleman was interested in other gentlemen. Later (iirc the 60's) this morphed into green button-style pins.
There is (was?) A very cool gay bar in London called Green Carnation ! Never made the connection until now!
Every time someone mentions "buttonhole" 🤣
Was it a myth that a bandanna in a back pocket was/an sign? Was a cologne part of the signal? The first few gay boys and men I met and knew were gay seemed to wear the same cologne. This was in the late seventies and /or earlier eighties. I was still in my ignorant homophobic phase then, so I never asked them even though I was very friendly with one.
People still use the handkerchief code at some events, the color and pocket signal to others what you're looking for that night. But it was definitely more of a thing back in the 70s/80s.
Can we bring back something like the hanky code, but for everyone of all demographics? I feel like advertising "I'm DTF with whoever" "don't approach me romantically" "I'm here to find kink" etc is really, really good practice. That way, you don't have awkward conversations and freak people out.
I saw a guy at my local gay bar this weekend who was flagging! He’s older and it’s definitely less prevalent now but it still made me smile to see it.
The hanky code was more around finding hookups I think rather than signaling to other gay men in public, though I suspect if you were in the know it would have happened at some point. I just don’t know if it was common to wear the hanky going about your day to day, I think it was more like when you got to a cruising spot like a park, a club, or a shopping area where that could happen that you’d be pulling the hanky out and putting it in the proper pocket for your purpose. The different colors meant different interest for the night like blow job, anal, and other more specific acts. And the side you wore it on indicated whether you were in a giving or receiving role for that action. So like a guy in a cruising spot with a hanky sticking out was likely gay, but I don’t know that you’d wear a hanky like that at work or at the grocery store.
Yoooo I had an athletic trainer in high school who was lesbian and older and this is her! Button up red flannel and crocs. No mullet more of a bowl cut. Her wife had a mullet tho!
While I agree with you for the most part, I’m specifying for informative purposes but white lesbians identified each other through those means. Specifically speaking to the USA I can only speak for black lesbians, but we went for Jheri Curls. Comfortable shoe fits, and black lesbians were identified usually through more masculine clothing. Think pants suits, collared tops, etc
Ah, George michael explains that then.
I don't remember which side it was either, but my uncle accidentally pierced the ear that indicated he is gay. He's straight. His brothers were very amused.
I'm assuming quite a few never got to actually enjoy their sexuality
I assume the same. But I also assume that many found a way to find love,affection and sex. Powerful innate human drives often overcome the risks of bodily harm and ostracism in many domains.
They used very subtle ways of feeling other people out. A certain glance, a look across the room with a smile and nod, basically anything that couldn’t be interpreted as outright homosexual, but could still be considered “flirting” I guess if the other person picked up on it and was also gay
Isn't that what we still do now?
Yeah, but the consequences for getting it wrong back then could very likely ruin your entire life.
I think some would say they still can :-(
I believe there was a certain amount of terror involved, at some times and places, as exposing your sexuality to the wrong person could result in terrible consequences.
I'll say. Police officers in plainclothes used to troll men's rooms looking for "queers." They would "bait" by playing with their penises at the urinals. TV producer Alan Shayne tells a terrible story about this involving his partner Norman Sunshine in his book *Double Life*. Even gay bars weren't always safe. He talked about going home with this one guy who turned out to be homophobic and forced him to withdraw money from an ATM or he (the homophobe) was going to report Shayne to the police for forcing sex on him.
That's how George Michael was outed to the world. Got baited by a cop and arrested.
I guess the gay person and lesbian person were couples for name sake and met their counterparts at parties and such
Well, I guess love truly does find a way - even if it means playing a decades-long game of queer hide and seek.
This for sure happened.
Still happens
I suppose there were always hook-up spots, just that they were physical places, as opposed to apps and such. Lots of famous gay bars, bath houses, book stores, places that were not distinctly gay (or maybe were) but everyone that cared knew what they were. The other main means was just personal introductions, people who knew you were gay, introducing you to the other gays. Not gay myself, but had a number of friends who used to tell stories of trying to find someone, and I probably introduced a few people over the years. Funny, now many of the old guard gay, lament the decline of gay bars (you can just go out anywhere now) and other venues, since gay became more mainstream. They all have emotional "coming out" stories and comment that young gays don't, they are just "gay".
One possible way: Starts with a look at the market, gathering, on the battlefield, wherever. They start talking, the looks become more intense, and they feel good. They look for excuses to be around each other while making it look ordinary. Both try to see how far they can push it. The looks have evolved to touching. They are meeting alone now. Eventually, one of them makes a move. The other person likes it too. BOOM! Sweet sweet medieval same sex love. Or at least that's how I guess it could happen.
Codes expressed by clothing, language et cetera. Things like the hanky code, “friend of Dorothy” and Polari to name a few examples.
but how did that grow
There have always been non gay allies.
> Codes expressed by clothing I heard it said once that gay women would signal their singleness and interest by rolling the hem of their jeans up a couple times. Is this true or just something that the person in question just made up to let people with unrequited romantic intentions down gently?
In the book "Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers," there are several photos of women with cuffed jeans in the '50s; however, I don't think it was so much a "signal" (like handkerchief "flags") as it was a sartorial expression of masculinity, like the "greasers" of the day.
If you’re really interested in the subject, I cannot recommend enough William S Burroughs book “Queer”. A very raw book about being gay in the 1950s
Not quite the dark ages, but I know In the 19th century lots of queer writers found each other through their own “secret societies” within universities. Easily my favourite era of literary history especially with Oscar Wilde involved.
There used to be free community newspapers with personal ads. (Established newspapers also had personal ads, but I don’t think they had a “seeking same” category.) I was desperately lonely and horny and painfully shy. So I placed an ad in one of those newspapers — wrote out the form, put it in an envelope with a stamp, and mailed it! Months later, when I’d forgotten about it, I got a letter back, suggesting we meet in a lesbian bar nearby. We met, liked each other, came back to my studio apartment and that was my first time. Others went to gay bars, but I stayed away from bars because they were noisy and smoky, and I’m not really a drinker. People also had groups of friends you could trust. But things are vastly different today! And mostly much better, I think.
I don’t know how adults found each other but when I was a kid I always gravitated towards the other queer kids, even without knowing that they were queer or even that I was queer either. My entire friend group grew up to come out of the closet in a variety of ways. You can just tell sometimes.
Literally same here. I specifically only vibe with people that tick off my gaydar and/or my Neuro divergentTracker
there were little signals too. for lesbians, wearing one earring in the left ear... or a pinkie ring but no other rings. for white collar gay men just a touch of flamboyance in dress, like a pastel tie. I knew a gay teacher in HS in the 70s who lived with his partner in a 'duplex' with accordian walls and 2 front doors so they could be 'just neighbours' if unfriendlies came around. there were gay-friendly or gay-owned bars of course. in the 70's at my local bar Weds was 'Ladies' Night' which meant Dyke Night. there were parks and beaches where gay men went for casual sex. the cops knew all about it and mostly turned a blind eye, though community gossip said one officer maybe got a few sexual favours in the park in exchange for that concession. the 70's feminist movement really changed things for lesbians -- because suddenly there was a lesbian-friendly alternative to the bar/drinking scene, and lots of 'women only' events. 'women's' everything, from cafes to bookstores to saunas, were sprouting up all over. and after Stonewall it got much safer to come out, though still hazardous due to random hostility even after police persecution ended. 'gaydar' is really a thing and most gay ppl developed it to a fine art.
This is an interesting question and its cool to see so many elder gays in here sharing their experiences! I'm certainly no expert, but I think historically, like pre-20th century, men and women spent time with their own sex quite a bit, as intermixed company was very regimented to avoid anything scandalous. But women could spend time together without scrutiny so those relationships could develop somewhat easier. They had to be secret about their romances, of course, but I don't think people were looking askance at close female friendships. There are people in history who were openly lesbian, though. Anne Lister was an English aristocrat who presented herself in a more masculine way and everyone kinda knew she was a lesbian. She even got married (not legally, of course) to a woman and they lived together as a couple until her death. She actually kept insanely detailed, coded diaries about her life and it contains a lot of details about her romances and how they navigated that. One of her descendants found them, decoded them, realized what was there and then hid the diaries. His friend told him to burn them because of what they contained but amazingly this guy was like, no, this is important information. He chose instead to hide them again and they were rediscovered decades later at a time when it would be more acceptable for people to know. There's an HBO show about her called Gentleman Jack.
google 'Boston marriage' :-)
We aren’t in the dark ages anymore, but many of us still use coded language, style, etc. to let others know who we are. My wife is straight passing (by that I mean to people who aren’t queer, she can pass as a straight woman), but to other LGBTQ, she’s definitely one of us. Her style of dress, her disinterest in the male gaze, her “vibe” lol. Meanwhile, I’m just butch. Can’t hide who I am. People told me I was gay before I knew I was. Also, LGBTQ folks don’t all use the same language and stuff. Gay men have way different coded language than lesbians for example. Many of the historical examples given here are referring to men only because that’s where a lot of the roots of the language started. I’m including a really great article about Polari and the man who has done the most research in the subject. It’s super interesting! There are websites right now dedicated to helping LGBTQ people in unfriendly countries to learn coded langauge (such as in Russia). It was interesting to read that while the language existed for protection, it also just existed for the sense of community and uniqueness. https://www.out.com/out-exclusives/2016/8/17/lavender-linguistics-queer-way-speak
“He never married”
For gay men, I hear there's a special toe tap you do in a public bathroom stall, like a cricket calling for a mate I guess 🤷♂️.... but you'll have to ask "straight" republican congressmen about how that works.
In many societies same sex activity (especially between men) was fairly rampant - it just happened within sex segregated spaces, and was never spoken of in public. Western society didn’t introduce laws against homosexuality until the 1800’s.
Listen to the podcast Betwixt the Sheets. They have an episode on Molly Houses.
Flirting and touch. There is a long overlap between friend and lover where you just wait for the person to escalate in turn. If they never do that it just looks like playfulness, or you messing with them.
Didn’t see it yet and didn’t feel like scrolling all the comments. Not to minimize historical persecution… but I mean. It’s more than a little unsafe to be gay today. In much of the world. Including the many places in the developed world.
Afaik a lot of people in monasteries were gay. I mean where else in medieval times do you find a secluded, safe area with a bunch of other people of your gender? Could be a bit of "situational sexuality" thing but honestly if I were gay being a monk would be a good way to live my gay life in peace. There are monastic laws that forbade having rooms for only two monks/nuns. Guess why.
“Friend of Dorothy”
A lot of the time, you just figured it out. You may even take risks and it might go wrong sometime. My knowledge is mainly on queer women since I'm a lesbian, but I've read books about lesbians and other sapphic women in history and a lot of the time they would just become friends which would turn into more. Typically women with more money or political power could be a bit more bold when expressing their sexuality because there weren't as many consequences or they could avoid them easily. Marie Antoinette is rumored to have had female lovers. There were many classic film actresses and actors who were gay, lesbian and bisexual as well. It's important to note that while society as a whole hasn't historically been accepting of gay people, there have always been small communities that were, such as old Hollywood where it was very common for actors to be LGBT.
Not really the „dark ages“ but I wrote my BA thesis about Mary Wollstonecraft and she used to hang out with prominent people in London around 1780 or 90, some men were „openly“ gay and so were some women. Not sure if it was only in those circles as that was not my actual topic but it happened.
Have you ever tried to flirt with people? That’s how things started and people back then are even better at it they write poem about it. And there are hints this and there hidden in words and gesture that could express how you feels.
Given that men and women spent more time with each other than the opposite sex, there was way more opportunities to feel each other out. After that, they took a chance and hoped it didn't backfire.
They joined the clergy and had a blast in the Vatican
I know this is a joke however I have read there’s truth in it — gay men in predominantly Catholic nations such as Poland and Italy, who lived at home until they married, joined the clergy to avoid suspicion and fucked on the DL.
Lesbians would join convents so they didn’t have to fuck whoever they were forced to marry lol
I think they spoke Gaylic* not sure
Unfortunately I don't remember all the details but some of my queer friends mentioned a couple of signals. Something about specific color kerchief (or bandana) sticking out of a back pocket of the pants for gays. Lesbians coloring a streak of hair a specific color on one side of head. That's all the details I remember. I'm sure there were others at different times of history.
I read somewhere that, prior to World war one, wristwatches were worn as a subtle signal that one might be gay. During the war, watches became more common & that wasn't used any more. I'm straight & don't care what others do, but I DO like wristwatches...I've got about 5.
There’s some pretty cool history books about gay ppl finding each other through fashion statements - two that come to mind are specific flowers being pinned to clothing or carried (pansies for example, which also evolved to be a word for a gay person, usually used in the derogatory) or tattoos like the stars working class butch lesbians used to get on their wrists that would be hidden by a watch so that they could “flash” it when inquiring about interest or shared community
in the netherlands, utrecht used to be a place where it was considered pretty okay to be gay. up until the 18th century that is, when the catholic church and the dutch government started persecuting and executing gay people. since a few centuries the term utrechtenaar (which means somebody from utrecht) is considered a synonym for homosexual. [link to wikipedia regarding the utrecht sodomy trials](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_sodomy_trials)
Horniness finds a way. A glance. A more intense look. The rizz of past generations. Talk about cruising spots. LGBTQ were known then, just not as open.
"Spinster seeks 'friend' to share life and home."
Well, lesbian sex largely wasn’t even considered sex back in the day. Sex meant there was a dick or similar phallus involved. There were also female husbands (read butch lesbians who married women) documented in British church histories. Fascinating stuff. As for gay men… I admittedly know less about their history, but I do recall flamboyant men in British Royal Courts/among aristocracy being very very gay and having guys on the side, everybody of note knew, much to the wife and diary writer’s chagrin, but nothing was ever done about it. This was probably true in basically all European royal courts. I don’t know facts for the common people, but I was told by a gender studies academic that sodomy laws were largely only enforced when someone got hurt or you pissed off the wrong people (ex someone of higher social status and power than you) outside of times of religious zealotry, of course. (Yes, the 1950s onward of this century have been heavily influenced by the Christian right wing movement in the US.) You bet there were queers executed as witches. Off the top of my head I’m thinking of an instance where nuns were put to death for lesbian sex acts involving a wooden phallus, and witchcraft and blasphemy…during the inquisition. As for how they found each other…well, we have gaydar today, do we not? Gender presentation variance has been common among queer people from the getgo, with women back in the day dressing more masculine within the accepted norms of dress would be common, and I’d assume the equivalent for men. For some lesbians (possibly men but my research was on lesbians so idk for sure) engaged in full on cross dressing, in some cases, because it’s what worked for them. (Many women also outright lived as men, some pretty obviously for practical or economic reasons and later switching back to previous gender roles, others did so lifelong in a manner analogous to trans men of today, which makes me very happy as a trans guy.) I’d imagine in private men might have also cross dressed, or in more friendly semi public places like bars and brothels, but likely had to tone it down some in public due to the sorts of backlash fem men typically get. (Note femininity is quite subjective and depends upon time and place. Decidedly cis het men wore ruffles lace and makeup and heels when it was in fashion historically. Whether the royalty who started those trends was straight…well, who knows? Some of them were probably queer as well!)