Hey folks, can anyone recommend some awesome queer authors or historical figures?
Bonus points if they're trans and ofc it'd be best if they're not a :LIB: ; big fan of Leslie Feinberg for example
quick note about historical figures: historical figures are hard because we're kind of guessing at it in most cases.
that said, some absolute friggin icons are thought to have been queer, including Da Vinci, Newton, and Erdös, who are all absolute giants of history.
Ah yeah I guess I was talking about more recent people and "historical figures" is a really poor way of phrasing of what I meant. More along the lines of people of note / public figures .That's super cool though
I recently came across Susan Stryker's My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: performing transgender rage and it really resonated with me.
CW: There's some descriptions of really vile transphobia and suicide on the first few pages. The essay is also from 1993, so the terminology is a bit outdated at times, but it's still a powerful text. She basically takes all the TERF rhethoric where we're called freaks and monsters and spits it right back in their faces. Here's a choice quote:
Hearken unto me, fellow creatures. I who have dwelt in a form unmatched with my desire, I whose flesh has become an assemblage of incongruous anatomical parts, I who achieve the similitude of a natural body only through an unnatural process, I offer you this warning: the Nature you bedevil me with is a lie. Do not trust it to protect you from what I represent, for it is a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness of the privilege you seek to maintain for yourself at my expense. You are as constructed as me; the same anarchic Womb has birthed us both. I call upon you to investigate your nature as I have been compelled to confront mine. I challenge you to risk abjection and flourish as well as have I. Heed my words, and you may well discover the seams and sutures in yourself.
Frederick II of Prussia aka Frederick the Great was almost definitely gay. Which makes it funnier that the nazis totally glorified him as some kind of masculine ideal and a great military leader. Turns out they were idiots and/or historical revisionists - who could have predicted that? Edit: him being a good military leader wasn't revisionist nor his masculine inclinations, I just mean they ignored all the rest in their quest to emphasize those 2 things.
She sounds so cool! I was reading her wiki and this sounds so fun as someone who's been trying to learn Spanish
Anzaldua's works weave English and Spanish together as one language, an idea stemming from her theory of "borderlands" identity.
She was an all timer. One of the most important minds in shaping a decolonial identity that is very approachable from a non academic perspective. The most honest writer I have ever read as well.
