On the Gandhi drama - and famous GBLT people in history

[sparkindarkness]

We are erased from much of history. Many of our greatest individuals are presented as straight because they either were forced to hide during life or the great wave of homophobic historic editing has erased the fact or them entirely. Our people and our people's accomplishments, are stolen from us, hidden from us and pulled away from us. And that matters.

More, people who were openly GBLT and maintained that through history have been thrown to the winds of obscurity by homophobia. Before the GBLT community in Britain screamed blue murder about the complete omission of Alan Turing from the history books hardly anyone knew who he was. He was an obscure figure at best – one of the fathers of modern computing and a great war hero and brilliant scientist was relegated to a footnote because he was gay. In the US civil rights movement it's still amazing how many people do not know who Bayard Rustin was or what he did or how vital and important he was. For that matter I've seen no small numbers of feminists quoting Audre Lorde who are completely and utterly unaware that she was a lesbian (and had one straight woman angrily criticise GBLT people for “co-opting” her).

New post on the blog about recent kafuffles. Clicky above for the rest

Comment here, there or everywhere