Bitchy History - Episode 10： Pride Special - Queerness in American History (1607-1900)

00:00:00.160 Welcome to Bitchy History, the American History podcast that wishes all the homophobes and transphobes in America a super uncomfortable Pride Month.

00:00:13.580 Okay, so like episode 9, I am starting with the show updates because if I wait until the end of the episode, some of you will miss them because I know you aren't all staying till the bitter end of the show.

00:00:23.360 The first news is that Bitchy History will be transitioning to one episode a week at the beginning of July.

00:00:29.040 Two episodes a week has proven to be an awful lot to keep up with alongside running my research consulting business.

00:00:34.760 And unfortunately, that's the work that pays for this show, along with keeping my credit card companies and not coming for my throat with a knife.

00:00:42.480 The show will still be out on Mondays at 8 a.m. Eastern, but there will not be a Thursday episode going forward.

00:00:48.000 The second announcement is that on June 23rd at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, I will be hosting a live with a few other historians titled History and Drinks.

00:00:55.160 We'll be getting a little bit tipsy talking about history, probably spending some time shit-talking our least favorite historical figures.

00:01:01.460 At least that's my plan. We'll also be open to questions from viewers.

00:01:04.960 So if you have any questions or you just want to observe the chaos of a bunch of drunk historians getting online together,

00:01:10.900 please put this on your calendar and tune in. There's a link to my TikTok account on bitchyhistory.com.

00:01:16.160 All right, now on to episode 10.

00:01:17.660 Today we're taking a step away from the slow pace of going through American History 101 a step at a time for a special Pride episode.

00:01:25.160 on the history of queerness in America.

00:01:27.100 Because as much as theocratic fascists like Matt Walsh

00:01:29.720 want to make it seem like the existence of queer people

00:01:32.000 in America is a carefully curated conspiracy

00:01:34.500 caused by the brainwashing powers of Disney,

00:01:37.440 liberal teachers, and, I don't know, Lady Gaga.

00:01:40.400 No, no, really.

00:01:41.280 There's a clip from his show.

00:01:42.800 He doesn't name those three things specifically,

00:01:44.960 but I know that my listeners are smart enough

00:01:46.860 to read between the lines.

00:01:48.140 Well, what's going on is social contagion,

00:01:50.420 a kind of mass hysteria, a group hallucination,

00:01:52.860 in effect, but one that is constructed, fabricated, okay? This is all intentional.

00:02:01.920 It is social engineering on a scale and at a level previously unknown to mankind.

00:02:08.820 We've seen brainwashing before, but never like this. And never has it started so young.

00:02:14.860 Unfortunately for Matt's conspiracy theory, queer people have always existed. From Alexander the

00:02:20.180 Great to Abu Nuwas, Leonardo da Vinci to James I, the history of queer people stretches through

00:02:25.260 time and around the world, and the names we know are just the ones remarkable enough to be

00:02:29.400 remembered by history, which we know are only a small percentage of any population. Queer people

00:02:34.700 have been there the whole time, and that includes America. Of course, one of the most telling parts

00:02:39.880 of the history of queerness in America can be read in the court records. In fact, throughout history,

00:02:44.420 we can understand a lot of the prevalence of homosexual behavior because of the laws criminalizing

00:02:48.780 it. Though, understandably, having a law against something doesn't always mean it exists. Salem

00:02:54.760 witch trials. No, I, sorry, had a little cough there. But it does seem unlikely that society

00:03:00.420 would spend so much time on laws criminalizing homosexual behavior if it hardly ever occurred,

00:03:06.060 and prosecution for sexual perversions was not uncommon during the 17th and 18th century in

00:03:11.240 America at all. For instance, in 1636, Reverend John Cotton proposed that sexual relations between

00:03:17.820 women should be included in the definition of sodomy for the first time ever. He proposed this

00:03:22.860 wording specifically, unnatural filthiness to be punished with death, whether sodomy, which is

00:03:28.480 carnal fellowship of man with man or woman with woman or buggery, which is carnal fellowship of

00:03:33.920 man or woman with beasts or fowls. His version wasn't put into practice until 1656 in the New

00:03:39.480 Haven colony. And even then they took out the explicit reference to lesbianism and replaced it

00:03:44.740 with women changing their natural use to that which is against nature much more vague probably

00:03:51.760 to keep women from getting any ideas like oh that that was an option this whole time hey jenny guess

00:03:56.960 what we could have been doing this whole time on a related note in 1642 elizabeth johnson was fined

00:04:03.580 and whipped for unseemly practices with another maid attempting to do that which man and woman do

00:04:09.760 Which, A, was there not a more succinct way to phrase that?

00:04:14.580 And B, that doesn't leave a lot of room for speculation on what was happening.

00:04:19.180 It was gay.

00:04:19.980 If they'd left it at unseemly practices with another maid, maybe you could argue that they were, I don't know, holding an unauthorized book club or something.

00:04:28.660 But this, this was definitely gay.

00:04:31.600 Similarly, in 1649, Sarah Norman and Mary Hammond of Plymouth Colony are taken to court for

00:04:37.500 lewd behavior, each with the other upon a bed.

00:04:41.220 Again, doesn't leave much room for debate on what kind of activity was occurring here.

00:04:46.120 Due to her younger age, Mary was only admonished by the court, while Sarah stood trial and

00:04:50.260 was convicted in 1650.

00:04:52.160 She was also required to acknowledge her unchaste behavior publicly.

00:04:55.540 Sarah was also charged with diverse lascivious speeches by her also spoke, which,

00:05:01.020 Which, uh, was dirty talk illegal in Puritan society?

00:05:04.840 Or am I misreading the meaning behind that phrase?

00:05:07.720 Interestingly enough, that case was a bit larger than just Mary and Sarah.

00:05:11.640 Another individual was accused as well, a man by the name of Teague Jones.

00:05:15.780 All three were accused by a single man named Richard Berry.

00:05:19.220 Berry eventually retracted his accusation from Jones.

00:05:22.040 And three years later, both Berry and Jones were prosecuted for homosexuality

00:05:26.800 and ordered to, quote, part their uncivil living together.

00:05:31.020 So there was some drama going on in the queer community of Plymouth Colony in the mid-17th

00:05:35.580 century.

00:05:36.760 I don't know what that drama was, but I would pay to find out.

00:05:40.960 In 1677, the sodomy trial of Nicholas Sension of Windsor, Connecticut, revealed that the

00:05:45.960 man in question had actually been quite open about his desire for men throughout the last

00:05:50.740 30 years of his life.

00:05:51.800 It was the act of homosexual sex rather than the desire or identity which was punished

00:05:56.720 in this case.

00:05:58.000 And in 1756, a Baptist minister named Stephen Gorton got suspended from his position for

00:06:03.700 unchaste behavior with fellow men when in bed with them.

00:06:06.940 Again, very, very specific on the accusation there.

00:06:10.740 In an interesting turn of events, Gorton confesses, and then his congregation votes to reinstate him?

00:06:17.040 A far cry from the Baptist church I grew up in,

00:06:19.300 the youth pastor told us regularly that gay people would burn in hell for eternity.

00:06:23.680 So clearly gay people did exist, and while some went to jail or were executed during this period,

00:06:28.740 undoubtedly far more were able to live their lives in relative privacy and peace,

00:06:33.200 though hardly out and proud in the modern sense.

00:06:35.980 Records exist from letters and diaries, both written by queer individuals and heterosexuals

00:06:40.600 who had interactions with the queer community over these two centuries.

00:06:43.560 The number of examples of this spikes in the 19th century,

00:06:46.740 while the records of arrest and punishment seem to dwindle, but not the records of their lives.

00:06:51.460 So for the moment, let's move away from the court transcripts and talk about the people who actually got away with being openly gay, at least to some degree.

00:06:59.520 Let's start all the way back in 1607 with the founding of Jamestown.

00:07:03.680 Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the American colonies, was named after King James I,

00:07:09.180 described by historian Michael B. Young as the most prominent homosexual figure in the early modern period.

00:07:15.380 He is thought to have had more than one male lover, most notably George Villiers, who eventually made the Earl and later the Duke of Buckingham.

00:07:23.580 In fact, he is said to have been quite openly affectionate with Villiers in front of many courtiers, even though James was publicly quite loud in his hatred of homosexuality.

00:07:32.660 Reminder, the King James version of the Bible where suddenly Sodom becomes a story about gay sex, that's this King James.

00:07:40.420 It's kind of weird how that stereotype about the loudest homophobes

00:07:43.480 actually being the gayest people in existence always seems to be true somehow.

00:07:48.060 One of the popular pithy statements at the time that compared James to his Tudor predecessor,

00:07:52.360 Elizabeth I, declared,

00:07:54.220 Elizabeth was king, now James is queen.

00:07:57.080 One contemporary poet put it a little more bluntly,

00:07:59.640 it is well known that the king of England fucked the Duke of Buckingham.

00:08:03.360 So in effect, the earliest founding of our country is just flamingly homosexual.

00:08:08.680 In another case, in 1698, a French explorer among the Illinois Indian tribes

00:08:13.160 remarked on the number of men living as women among the tribes

00:08:16.180 and the prevalence of homosexual activity.

00:08:18.660 Only, he used a French term to refer to these queer members of the tribe,

00:08:22.000 which is considered offensive to these groups today, so I'll refrain from repeating it.

00:08:26.980 Two-spirit people were what he was describing here.

00:08:29.760 They were found in most tribes across North America, in fact.

00:08:32.980 These were individuals who were biologically male but dressed and lived as women.

00:08:36.540 In most tribes, they were highly valued parts of society, often serving as spiritual leaders in some tribes.

00:08:42.960 For instance, Oztish was the keeper of the Bade tradition, a male-bodied person in the Crow community who lived their daily life in a feminine role.

00:08:50.620 Earning their name, finds them and kills them in a fight against the Lakota.

00:08:54.460 Oztish was a revered member of the tribe who had a lodge, a family, and was considered a leader amongst their people.

00:09:00.760 And then we get to the American Revolution.

00:09:02.800 there's one particularly famous example of queerness during this period and that is of course

00:09:09.280 Alexander Hamilton the bisexual man whore he writes to his friend John Lawrence at one point that

00:09:15.980 I wish my dear Lawrence that it might be in my power by action rather than words to convince you

00:09:21.640 that I love you and you know the opinion I entertain of mankind and how much it is my desire

00:09:27.160 to preserve myself free from particular attachments and to keep my happiness independent of the

00:09:32.560 caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my

00:09:37.820 affections without my consent. If that wasn't romance, I don't know what romance is. Of course,

00:09:44.540 then this letter gives us a very strange aside in which Hamilton asked Lawrence to help him find a

00:09:49.600 wife, knowing that it will be difficult for Lawrence to find one that meets Hamilton's

00:09:53.540 expectations. Hamilton ends up telling him, to excite their emulation, it will be necessary for

00:09:59.400 you to give an account of the lover, his size, make, quality of mind and body, achievements,

00:10:05.760 expectations, fortune, etc. In drawing my picture, you will no doubt be civil to your friend.

00:10:12.420 Hamilton, quick question. Why is it that Lawrence apparently knows so much about your size, make,

00:10:19.740 quality of mind and body? Just, just a question. And yes, I fully admit that during this time

00:10:27.080 period men wrote in a decidedly more flowery style than they would with men today but there's

00:10:33.040 not a heck of a lot of ways to explain that particular exchange that isn't just a little

00:10:38.820 bit gay just you know phrasing i could go on about the letters between hamilton and lawrence at length

00:10:45.260 because i am engulfed with laughter at the audaciousness of them every time i read them

00:10:49.360 but nothing says i can't do another episode on the queerness of the american revolutionary period

00:10:53.920 in the future, and I certainly will. I was planning to discuss Baron von Steuben today,

00:10:59.400 but honestly, he deserves basically his own episode. Suffice to say that he used to have

00:11:04.160 pantsless parties at his house with the male soldiers, and was, for the 18th century anyway,

00:11:09.940 so out of the closet that I am shocked. Whenever people want to get all toxically masculine about

00:11:15.080 the military, I just remind myself that the father of the American military was a very gay man.

00:11:21.320 And then the American Revolution is over, but the gay party is not.

00:11:25.360 In 1798, a Frenchman living in Philadelphia named Moreau de Saint-Marie

00:11:29.440 writes that the women he has met are not at all strangers to being willing to seek

00:11:34.460 unnatural pleasures with persons of the same sex.

00:11:37.580 The rest of the letter is highly misogynistic, but Moreau was French,

00:11:41.240 so I'm not exactly shocked by that.

00:11:43.580 And this is one that is just really hard to talk about with a straight face,

00:11:47.500 so I apologize if I start laughing in the middle of this delivery.

00:11:50.820 In 1826, Jeff Withers and James Hammond, two young Southerners who would eventually go on to become prominent citizens, had a tendency to write playfully and graphically erotic letters about their past involvement with each other.

00:12:04.600 I would read some of these letters out on the air, but as much as I enjoy cursing on this show, I don't know if I can read too many lines like,

00:12:11.720 The extravagant delight of poking a writhing bedfellow with your long flesh and pull with any sort of seriousness.

00:12:19.240 These letters make most romance novels look downright puritanical.

00:12:23.300 You have been warned should you decide to look them up for yourself.

00:12:26.160 I take no responsibility for this.

00:12:28.580 And then in 1857, Charlotte Cushman, an actress famous for playing male roles, begins living

00:12:33.680 with a sculptor named Emma Stebbins.

00:12:35.360 It was the last in Cushman's long sequence of relationships with women and the longest

00:12:39.680 lasting.

00:12:40.640 The two remained together until Cushman's death in 1876.

00:12:44.740 Stebbins was famous for such statues as the Angels of the Waters in New York's Central Park,

00:12:49.240 which was the first public art commission ever awarded to a woman in New York City.

00:12:53.680 In one 1858 letter, Cushman alludes to marrying Stebbins, noting,

00:12:57.600 Do you not know that I am already married and wear the badge upon the third finger of my left hand?

00:13:03.920 A clipping of Stebbins' obituary from the New York Tribune contained this statement.

00:13:08.100 Ms. Stebbins' name is indissolubly linked with that of her friend Charlotte Cushman,

00:13:11.980 with whom she formed a close intimacy soon after taking up her residence in Rome.

00:13:16.860 They lived together, traveled together, and worked together for many years.

00:13:20.560 It was one of those romantic and abiding attachments which indicate a genius for friendship.

00:13:25.720 Miss Stebbins watched over her friend in her late illness and became her loving and appreciative biographer.

00:13:31.220 Since the death of the great actress, her own health has been declining.

00:13:35.200 Yeah, sure, they were just friends.

00:13:38.260 And of course, some queer people never got the chance to formalize their relationships or live

00:13:42.620 together. In 1859, Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus, two African-American women living in the North,

00:13:48.500 began their loving correspondence. About 150 letters written by Brown to Primus exist today

00:13:54.340 in the Connecticut Historical Society's collection, many containing very amorous statements.

00:13:59.460 Their early letters contained sentiments such as, I never shall love any person as I do you,

00:14:04.500 and wishing that I was in your loving arms and you would be imprinting sweet kisses.

00:14:09.620 They lived separately during this correspondence,

00:14:11.940 but Addie often thought of the life they might have had if one of them was a man.

00:14:16.300 Addie wrote,

00:14:17.100 It seems I can see you now, casting those loving eyes at me.

00:14:20.920 If you was a man, what would things come to?

00:14:24.440 And in 1890, Frances Willard, a white temperance activist, wrote in her autobiography,

00:14:28.860 The loves of women for each other grow more numerous each day,

00:14:32.680 and I have pondered much why these things were, that so little should be said about them surprises

00:14:37.760 me, for they are everywhere. In these days, when any capable and careful woman can honorably earn

00:14:43.000 her own support, there is no village that has not its examples of two hearts in council, both of

00:14:48.940 which are feminine. Other partners had many, many long years together. For nearly 40 years, Hull House

00:14:55.300 founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams maintained a romantic relationship with Mary

00:15:00.360 Rosette Smith. Adams and Smith traveled together, shared the same room and bed, and owned property

00:15:05.380 together. Adams consistently addressed Smith as dearest and used phrases such as, I am yours till

00:15:10.920 death. Mary Rosette Smith passed away in 1934 due to pneumonia, and many at Hull House were deeply

00:15:17.320 concerned about how Jane Adams would continue without her. Reformer Alice Hamilton wrote to

00:15:22.380 her sister expressing her concern, I told Mary that she must get well, that she could live on

00:15:27.860 without J.A., but J.A. could not live without her. Her concerns were proven correct when Jane Adams

00:15:33.700 passed away only a year later in 1935. Jane once wrote these words for Mary. The mine and thine of

00:15:41.140 wedded folk is often quite confusing, and sometimes when they use the hours it sounds

00:15:46.360 almost amusing, but you and I may well defy both married folk and single to do as well as we have

00:15:52.580 done the mine and thine to mingle. Wow, sorry, I got a little emotional there. Had to go and get

00:15:58.320 myself a tissue. In 1895, Angelina Weld Grimke, distantly related to the Grimke sisters of

00:16:05.160 abolitionism fame, was a young woman who would become a celebrated poet and important forerunner

00:16:10.720 of the Harlem Renaissance. At the age of 16, Grimke wrote to a friend, Mary Edith Karn,

00:16:16.260 Oh, Mamie, if you only knew how my heart beats when I think of you. I know you are too young

00:16:21.160 now to become my wife but I hope darling that in a few years you will come to me and be my love

00:16:26.200 my wife how my brain whirls how my pulse leaps with joy and madness when I think of those two

00:16:32.320 words my wife Angelina's poetry was marked by her desire to love and be loved by another woman

00:16:38.600 writing words like little lady coyly shy with deep shadows in each eye cast by lashes soft and long

00:16:45.740 tender lips just bowed for song, and I oft have dreamed the bliss of the nectar in one kiss.

00:16:52.480 In 1896, Sarah Oren Jewett publishes Martha's Lady, a short story celebrating the redemptive

00:16:58.080 power of love between women. Many of her works featured relationships between women, and Jewett's

00:17:02.900 letters and diaries reveal that as a young woman, Jewett herself had close relationships with several

00:17:07.880 other women. Jewett later established a close friendship with the writer Annie Adams Fields

00:17:12.940 and her husband, publisher James Fields.

00:17:15.480 After the sudden death of James Fields in 1881,

00:17:18.800 Jewett and Annie Fields lived openly together

00:17:21.000 for the rest of Jewett's life

00:17:22.320 in what was then termed a Boston marriage.

00:17:25.200 I could go on to add countless other names to this list,

00:17:28.200 but my point is made.

00:17:29.540 Throughout American history,

00:17:30.720 from the native tribes who were here

00:17:32.180 long before European settlers came to these shores,

00:17:35.240 from the first settlement to the men

00:17:36.840 who helped found this country in every decade since,

00:17:39.920 queer people have been a part of the story of America.

00:17:41.940 We aren't new. We didn't spring from the rainbow merchandise on shelves at Target.

00:17:46.820 We've always been here, whether behind the scenes, training the American military to win a war with Great Britain,

00:17:52.420 or winning Nobel Peace Prizes for activism.

00:17:55.400 The history of America would look far different without us.

00:17:58.780 Those who ask why there are so many more of us now than there were in past generations are missing the point.

00:18:04.360 We have the freedom now to be ourselves, to publicly love and live as our true authentic selves

00:18:09.220 in a way that society denied our previous generations.

00:18:12.620 The ancestors of the queer community were lost to silence and societal shame.

00:18:17.320 The elders of our community were lost to AIDS and gay bashing.

00:18:21.060 My generation is one of the first to be able to live openly.

00:18:24.240 So yeah, you see more of us than you did in the 1950s.

00:18:27.820 Get used to it.

00:18:29.080 And as a special message for men like Matt Walsh and other conservative commentators like him,

00:18:33.860 there's no brainwashing going on.

00:18:35.460 I know it would make you feel better about the thoughts in your own mind

00:18:39.140 if you could blame it on Disney and rainbow capitalism and drag queen story hours,

00:18:43.620 but those thoughts are your own.

00:18:45.460 I recommend therapy rather than spewing all that self-hatred out into the world.

00:18:50.060 On another note, though vaguely related,

00:18:52.560 I got into a scuffle with your average white straight male on TikTok last week

00:18:56.480 who was absolutely sure that I was only a feminist

00:18:58.960 because I'm too butch for men to find attractive.

00:19:02.180 First of all, I am by no means butch,

00:19:04.280 and secondly, as I told him,

00:19:06.400 I'm a lesbian, dingus,

00:19:07.700 which kind of means I don't care what men think of me anyway and it definitely has no impact on

00:19:12.600 my feminism. But please, go tell Gloria Steinem that only butch women can be feminists. You'll

00:19:17.100 get a laugh, I guarantee it. But to get to the point, I told this story to a few friends and

00:19:22.080 one of them decided that I'm a lesbian dingus was the most hilarious response I had ever made

00:19:27.100 online and has made me a graphic that I can use. I'm considering making some merch for the show

00:19:32.840 using it. Would anyone but me wear that? I know this was a slightly shorter episode than normal,

00:19:38.720 but there's a compelling reason for that. Thursday's episode is an hour long. On Thursday,

00:19:43.680 I'm having Amanda Tempson from the TikTok channel Yester Queers on the show to talk about the

00:19:47.540 history of drag in America. So you're not just going to be listening to me talk for a whole hour.

00:19:51.980 It's going to be a fascinating episode, and I know that because it's already been recorded.

00:19:56.640 Thanks for tuning in to hear me bitch about history, and I will see you back here on Thursday.

00:20:02.840 Thank you.

Bitchy History - June 19, 2023

Episode 10： Pride Special - Queerness in American History (1607-1900)

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