- So, I was scrolling
through Tumblr the other day,
as you do, and I came across a post.
It was a black and white photo
of two women strolling down
a gravel path with their
arms around each other.
And the caption read, "A lesbian couple
"on a stroll through the woods
after their wedding, 1950s."
This post had over 160,000 notes.
The comments were bubbling
with excitement and joy.
The idea that someone had found this piece
of queer history, this little artefact,
this black and white photo
that showed not tragedy,
but just a couple going about their lives,
expressing their love each other.
But here's the thing, when
you run a reverse image search
on that photo, it doesn't
seem to have any kind
of reputable source.
In fact, the only websites
you can find it on
seem to be Tumblr and Pinterest,
that a photographer credited.
A Stan Wayman who was a real
photo journalist operating
in the 1950s to 1970s,
at the time of his death.
But looking through his archives,
there are no mentions of lesbians at all,
let alone attributed to
that particular photo.
And when you dig further into the notes
on that Tumblr post itself even,
you start to see people
claiming that the picture tells
a completely different story.
Some saying it's a mother
and a daughter for example.
All we know is that a photo was uploaded
and a caption was
written, but we don't know
by who or why.
Maybe it was someone deliberately trying
to mislead people who knows
that this photo doesn't
show a queer couple.
Maybe it's someone who had
captioned it as a fiction
and other people are taking
it to be historical truth.
Maybe it's a game of Chinese whispers,
someone sees the photo and says,
"Ah, kinda looks like a
lesbian couple from the 1950s"
and then their friend
repeats it to someone else,
so I'm like, "My friend said
that was a lesbian couple
"from the 1950s."
Then someone else saying, "I
think that kinda looks like
"the photography of this
photojournalist I know."
And how it ended up with
someone unwittingly putting
a false caption on it.
Now, if you look at it
on a very simplistic
and binary level, it could be easy to say,
well, in that case we've
got the real history
of classrooms and textbooks and the false
or fake history of the
online world, for example.
But for LGBTQ+ people, the
lines are a little bit messy.
For example in real classrooms,
we often don't have our
history taught at all.
In fact, in a lot of
places it's been banned
to teach that history to
young people in classrooms.
And there are examples
online of people uploading
and creating their own
personal queer histories
to try and preserve it
for future generations.
And so I completely understand
this instinctive draw
of queer people towards
something that looks like
it might be an accurate
part of our history
and we want to share
that with other people.
So, my question is how
do we merge the two?
Who is looking for queer
artefacts to preserve our history?
Who's digging to try and
find these hidden stories
which have been covered over
by mainstream historical narratives?
Especially when we're a
community who've often had
to hide or destroy evidence
of queerness for fear
of persecution in our own times.
Well, there are indeed a
lot people working on this
and I had the opportunity
to talk to one of them,
Matthew Story at the Tower
of London of all places.
So, the rest of this video
is gonna be our conversion.
We talk about a whole
range of things including
the changing nature of queer
identity across the centuries,
what kind of historical artefacts
and sources someone might look at to try
and look at queer history
including what artefacts people
in a hundred years might look at to try
and tell what being
queer was like in 2020.
And also whether there
are any LGBTQ+ royals
in the British history.
Spoiler alert, there were.
And if this video sparks your interest
and you want to learn more,
the Historic Royal Palaces
who were kind enough to sponsor this video
and link me up with Matthew
actually have LGBT tours going on
at some of their iconic venues
like the Tower of London
and Hampton Court Palace.
So, queer live tours
are going on across 2020
and it's just a really
exciting kind of queering
of this, what we might think
of as traditional museum space.
I'm gonna try and catch a
tour at each of the venues,
but I'm definitely gonna be going
to the one in the Tower of
London on the 24th of February
at 06:30, so hopefully
see some of you there.
If you can't make it to
London or any of the tours,
I'm also gonna leave a link
to some of the articles
around this kind of
history in the description
if you want to read more there.
And so I guess without
further or do, enjoy our talk.
- Welcome, Rowan, this
is the Wakefield Tower.
It's part of a mediaeval
palace in the Tower of London.
I wanted to meet you here,
because one of the key figures
in queer royal history is Edward II
and he'd have used this space
when he stayed at the tower.
A key part of his biography
is his relationship
with two male favourites,
the main one being
a man called Piers Gaveston.
And, of course, you're looking
at a long way back in time.
There's been a lot of
debate over the years about
what that relationship was, but a big idea
is that it was a love relationship
and also possibly a physical relationship
between these two men.
- Do you think it's, I guess,
the importance for, in general,
for Britain, for example,
for us to know our
history, but specifically
for queer people, is
there a significance there
for modern queer people to
know about historical figures?
- I think it's really important for people
to know where they've come from.
To know what their heritage is.
It's a way of creating yourself.
It's a way of working
out why you're here today
and why society is as it is today.
I don't think you can understand
the place of queer people
in society today without understanding
that very long history that
got us to where we are now.
- So, what would that
look like in terms of
if you were looking for an artefact
or a source of some kind,
what kind of sources
would you be looking for
if you were looking back,
would it be writings, would it be art,
how would you start to dig
in and try and figure out
what was a part of this queer history?
- Well, because queer lives are integral
to human society, the
evidence can be found
in lots of different places.
And as you've just said,
that can be found in written records,
it can be found in art as well,
it can even be found in the architecture
of the palaces, for
instance that we look after.
Very often queer history can be found
in legal records and this perhaps is why
the evidence is often
is often skewed to men.
So, it's often easier
to find queer histories
that involve men, because sex between men
was a criminal offence.
So, it finds its way
into the legal records,
certainly in this country.
We don't have legal records
for sex between women
in this country, in the same way though,
if you look in Europe, at the same time,
say 16th, 17th, 18th centuries,
you'll find legal records there, because
the authorities did prosecute women
who had sex with other women.
So, legal records is part of it,
but legal records only really tell us
when things went wrong.
When a charge was brought
against another person
or where two people were discovered.
And so what we can lose
sight of if we just rely
on legal records is the huge
range of queer experience.
One thing I say over and over again
when I'm thinking about queer history,
talking about queer history
is we can't just look for sex.
And there's this feeling with historians
that you can't say someone
is queer in the past
unless you find evidence
of them having sex
with somebody of the same gender.
And my argument with that is how often
when you have sex do go and write it down
on a piece of parchment and then put
it in the archive to last for all time,
it's just not how people work.
So we need to look for
other evidence as well
when we're looking for queer life,
because we know that there's
so much more to queer life
than sex, it's about who you are,
it's about your place in
society and relationships,
any relationship is based
on a lot more than sex.
It's about friendship,
it's about shared feelings,
shared sense of humour
even, it's about love.
So, we need to look for
records of that in the past.
- So, I have kind of said it before,
but I really do think there's
something interesting about
the way in which we used to
look at queer men's history
as being recording in court documents
and medical records and then
you have queer women's history
that's almost like letters
and diaries by candle light
and both of them end up
with this something missing,
I think, from the picture.
Because you have queer men stories
that you're absolutely right,
it feels indisputable in terms
of like this person was literally
by a court of law found to be homosexual.
But you don't necessarily get
that person's emotional life,
their personality, their thoughts,
their feelings about,
even what was happening
to them when those court
records were being created.
But then on the other hand
you have women, for example,
that were writing letters to each other
that are full of affection and love,
but you always have
these people being like,
well, it wasn't proven, was it?
That's really good friends, weren't they?
That was just how people
talked to each other back then.
And so there's always
this kind of invalidation
in a lot of ways.
And, I guess, the way I
like to think about it
in terms of, if people are
like, well, you can't tell 100%
that a figure in history was queer or not.
Well, if that's true,
then we can't 100% anyone
in history was straight, to be honest.
If you have this much evidence
and you're still gonna deny it
then you can also not say
anything for certain about anyone
at that point.
I'm interested in this
idea of the artefacts
that we might create,
because if we're looking at
the fact that queer history
has been in existence,
but not necessarily recorded, even now,
we don't have a dedicated LGBT museum
in London, for example.
We have these really exciting
things like the tour,
say, for example the tours
that you guys are doing
and other museums in the area,
but there isn't any dedicated space.
What would a queer artefact look like now
if someone was to look back in 50 years
and be able to have an exhibition
in a museum saying like,
"This is what queer
life was like in 2020."
What kind of artefacts
or things you do think
that we would be trying to preserve
or should be trying to preserve
for those future generations
looking back at it now.
- Gosh, great question,
what would I as a curator.
- What would you curate?
- Bequeath to future generations.
A lot of my time when I'm
working in historical palaces,
I'm dealing with a collection
of historic clothing
and seeing what that can tell
us about people in the past.
And so I think maybe people's clothes,
the clothes they wear on a night out,
the clothes they wear with their friends,
the clothes they wear on a pride march,
that would be a great way of looking
at how people expressed their identity
through their outward appearance.
But at the same time, if I was curating
the queer museum of the future,
I'd want to record people's
stories around each object.
So, if you're at home,
look around your room,
what objects are important to you,
what objects express who you are
and what would you write on the label next
to that object to put in that museum
so people would know why it was important
and why it's expressed
something about you.
- We've kind of touched on
this idea of individuals,
individual people's clothes,
individual people's letters,
I kinda wanted to talk a little bit about
the way in which, although we
talk about the queer history
as if it's like this big
thing, this queer history,
the way in which people have
interacted with experienced
queerness has changed, right?
So now a days it is seen
as a solid identity,
that is something that you come out as
and this is who you are and it's part
of your very vibrant being
whereas in years gone by,
there's been other ways
of thinking about it
like in terms of it being
just a thing that you do
and action that you take.
You talked a bit about
how that's developed
or what that might've been like, I guess,
way back when, how would
they have experienced that?
- As you say, there was
this idea that especially
with same-sex love and
desire, up until perhaps
the 18th and into the 19th century,
it was something you did.
It wasn't an identity.
And if you look back at the
records and the sources,
that it does seem to support that.
And then you get a point in,
beginning around the 18th century,
with, you could say the mollys.
So, it would be for 18th century
men, especially in London
as a subculture who
dressed in women's clothes
and had sex with each other.
And they seemed to form a
subculture based around identity
and based around sexual
desire for other men
as part of that identity.
It's not until the 19th
century that you get
the concept of homosexuality coming in
and that's something
that sexologists bring in
and that's when you get a real sense
as we understand this today of identity.
And even if you look back
to the early 20th century
which can seem very similar to us,
their ideas of gender and
sexuality are, yet again,
different and you do get to
travel across the 20th century
of the change and understanding
of sexuality and gender.
And of course, we see it today as well,
there's so much discussion.
Now, the evolution of the way
people are using terminology,
the way people identify themselves.
So, this is still changing,
this is still something that's developing.
- So, they say that history
is written by the victors
and I think that that can
be obviously in battle
or in wars, the country or the force
that wins imposes what they want onto
the place that they've conquered,
but I also think that
there is a social victory
that informs history.
So, who are the people
that have the privilege
to be literate in the
time that they're living,
that they can record
things down in writing,
more recently, that might have cameras
or video equipment that
they can record themselves
in that way, they can
paint, have art done of them
or even just they have
the luxury of enough time
to be recording their lives.
And I think that that
goes for anyone in history
of any identity, but there
is something specific about queerness
where you also potentially have this gap
with people who have
enough social privilege to
be able to feel like they
have some kind of safety
in admitting or writing
down or recording in any way
this thing that is taboo or illegal
or is persecuted in some way.
Do you think that the artefacts of history
and the evidence of history, queer history
that we have are informed by
these elements of privilege?
- Absolutely, privilege
and class and wealth
is a huge factor in this as well.
Obviously, I mainly look at palaces
which were lived in by kings and queens
where you have a huge
amount of written evidence
that survived from them and
that also other people wrote down.
So, people observe monarchs
and write about them
and that's a great source of evidence.
But we also do get
little glimpses sometimes
of these less privileged people.
Another example of where
you can take a legal record
and apply it to someone who we knew
would've been at the tower is
the case of Kathleen Woodhouse
which I only discovered the other day,
Kathleen was brought before
a magistrate's court in 1918
accused of being a deserter.
They were also known by the
name of Frederick Wright
and so the court accused them
of adopting women's clothes
to desert the army.
And yet when you look at the reporting
of the court case, you
realise that Kathleen wants
to be known as Kathleen
which she should be born a woman,
not wearing dresses, because that reflects
the life she wants to lead.
And then when you realise that Kathleen
was part of the Royal
Fusiliers which is the regiment
that since the 17th century
has been based in the tower,
you can see how can take
a little legal record
and you can apply it to and realise
it is part of the
history of somewhere like
the Tower of London.
- I mean, it kinda goes
without saying, I guess,
but there's, in terms of
these intercepting identities
that go across each other,
not only do we have in general within
a class system some people
who were not traditionally educated,
didn't have access to education
and then women on top of that less likely.
I think you also have
examples of race, for example,
that people who weren't
right in the country,
if we look at the ways in
which they've been structurally oppressed,
that then maps onto when you
have queer people of colour,
how little their stories
are necessarily told
or preserved in a lot of ways.
So, I think it's really
interesting when trying
to dig through through,
you have these people
who on multiple levels
have had their histories erased or seen
as unimportant enough to document.
So, it's really difficult, I think,
to go back into history and
try and find these people
who have been hidden in the cracks almost.
- I have a colleague
say to me the other day,
hidden history is also,
no forcibly obscured history is actually.
One of our key figures for queer history
at Hampton Court Palace and
especially at Kensington Palace,
because those are centres
of the Georgian Court
is Lord Hervey.
And he had a 10-year relationship with
a man called Steph Fox.
And it's also thought that he may have had
a close relationship with
Frederick, Prince of Wales.
So, he's the son of George II
and the father of George
III, but we don't know,
because although Hervey
leads us fantastic,
quite gossipy, bitchy bit of records
of life at the Georgian
Court and lots of letters,
just as this relationship between
Frederick, Prince of Wales
and Lord Hervey looks like
it's getting interesting,
a censorious 19th century Hervey,
so one of Lord Hervey's
descendens cut the pages out.
So, quite literally, there
is a gap there in history.
Now, that might have
been a bit of own goal
for that 19th century Hervey,
because nowadays people read
whatever they want to
(laughs) into that gap.
But that is a great example actually
of history being erased.
And one of my favourite
queer historians Clare Barlow
has said that their queer is
basically full of bonfires
that so often we know that there was
a piece of evidence and we
know when it was destroyed
by usually, family members who see
that having a queer person in
their family past is shameful.
And so to preserve their
family name and honour,
literally destroying that
records and their history
and that, as a historian,
that breaks my heart.
- I wanted to ask you, I guess,
on the flip side, we talked about the idea
of if we have these records,
who's records aren't we having?
Why do you think people,
'cause when I talk to
people about the fact
that I was gonna do this video,
there were multiple
people who would ask like,
"Oh, can you ask them about gay monarchs,
"is that a thing, was that a thing?"
- It was a thing, definitely.
- Conclusive.
- Definitely.
- It definitely was a thing.
But I think it's interesting that we,
why do we have such an
interest in the idea
of proving that we had,
why is it somehow more
important for a gay monarch
than just anyone being
gay in 17th century?
And I think in part that is
just is 'cause of this idea
of class which is already
embedded in society,
the idea of like, "Look at this
important person was queer."
Therefore queer and
important feel like they've,
historically, can be linked together
which I think is almost,
I guess, another symptom
of this idea of who's stories get told,
who is important to be
referenced and seen,
what does power mean, all
these kind of things, I think,
end up threading together really.
- Monarchy has always had such
a huge presence in society
and a legitimising presence and sometimes
that can be really positive.
So, for instance at Kensington Palace,
one of the stories I love to
tell, queer stories I love
to tell at Kensington
Palace is Prince William
on the cover of Attitude Magazine in 2016.
And he has such a status
and such a platform
for him as a future king to put himself
on the cover of a gay magazine.
That was a really powerful statement.
- Would you like to see
more queer history being put
in schools, for example?
- It's a long time since
I've been in school
and a long time since I've
studied history in school,
so I'm not quite sure
what is taught nowadays,
but as we've been saying,
queer lives are so integral to history
and to human experience that it should be.
If you're learning about history,
you should learn about queer lives
and so much through the
appearance of history
or people in history don't make sense
unless you talk about
their queer relationships
or their queer identities.
And it's also important
to remember and hear
that there are age appropriate
ways of doing that as well.
That sexuality and
queer identity aren't just about sex,
they're about love and relationships.
I mean, we talk, people are talking
in school about Henry VIII
and his six wives instead,
if that is not an example
of extreme heterosexuality
and unbelievable
misogyny, I don't what is.
And if you can talk about Henry
VIII and his relationships,
why not talk about romantic
relationship between people
of the same sex.
But I spend a lot of my
time thinking about the past
and trying to work out what
life was like in the past,
but what do you think
about these issues today
and where we're going?
- I do see a lot of, I think,
always when there
progress there's backlash
and I think we see that all the time,
where a step will be taken forwards
and because that particular group,
marginalised group
whether it's queer people
or any other, has previously
been relegated to the shadows
as soon as they come forward
and ask for equality.
There will be a lot of
people who see that ask
as an ask for superiority in some way or
an ask for more than they deserve,
whether or not they would
necessarily phrase it like that
or think about it like that,
that if you make a fuss then
it's almost hanging over your head.
Like, if you behave well,
if you don't make a fuss,
then we'll let you be.
And so I think it's really important
to not lose that kind
of rebellious spirit,
not just in terms of identity
and how you express yourself,
but also in terms of saying, well,
who else can we have solidarity with?
What other queer
communities around the world
can we support?
What ways can we rebel
against the status quo
that for so many years
said that we weren't worthy
to get married and to
have our relationships
where section 28 said,
"Pretended family
relationships," for example
which was so recently.
That we can say, okay,
well who else is having
that kind of rhetoric around, and I think,
so at the moment, I think that the way
in which trans people
are being talked about
in the mainstream is very
indicative of how gay people
were talked about in the mainstream.
And so I think that there is
something still quite radical
and within those routes to
look at other people and say,
how can we use what
we've had to go through
and the tactics we've used
in order to get equality
to help other people?
So, I don't necessarily, I think there
is a value in allowing
people to be themselves
and to have that kind of
individuality and liberation,
but I also think that
coming together as a group,
we can do some really exciting,
radical stuff together, I guess.
- And I think
what impacts modern life,
might feel confusing,
that's something where
historians come in actually
and I think you do see people
start talking about history
and then they start relating it to today
and their own lives.
So, by providing the long view which
is what historians and curators do,
you can help people make connections.
- Amazing, thank you so
much for talking to me.
This has been very interesting.
- Thank you
so much for coming.
- Covered all the topics.
- Thank you.
(Rowan laughs)
- I hope you enjoyed that.
Thank you so much for watching and again,
thank you to our sponsor for this video,
the Historical Royal Palaces.
All the information about
the queer life's tours
in the description.
In the comments, let me know
if you have any thoughts on
anything that we covered.
I know it was a lot of topics.
But specifically, if you have any ideas
of artefacts that you
would put in a time capsule
to teach people about history right now,
especially queer history
in like 100 years time.
And until I see you next time, bye.
(gentle music)
