Nobody wants to read about sex in history books

I have to confess, I have a bad habit. I know it’s not good for me, I know I should give it up and certainly know I shouldn’t devote so much time to it, but that’s what a bad habit is.

My bad habit is arguing with stranger on the internet. And when I say strangers, let’s be honest, I mostly mean men. MOIT (Men on the internet) it will no surprise anyone to learn, say what I regard as some pretty daft things and although I know I should be ‘bigger’ than this and ‘not feed the trolls,’ well, I can’t help it. It’s not as if I imagine in anyway these MOIT will actually change their minds, in fact it usually makes them double down and become either more bizarre or more abusive, but that apparently is not going to stop me. It’s like when you have a mouth ulcer, and you can’t help touching it with your tongue to get that little zap of pain, not enough to actually hurt but all the same - you can’t help yourself.

I bring this up because my current one women mission to re-educate MOIT, recently produced a discussion about history and, as quite a fan of history having lived through fifty year of it, and a regular reader of history books, I hate it when people - MOIT - make stupid statements about it.

I also hate homophobia, and this post was when those two things collide - a perfectly lovely article about Rebel Wilson marrying her long term girlfriend, which of course (and I hate that I don’t even need to tell you this for you to already know it) was loaded with homophobic slurs about lesbians.

The one I bring to you here, was an (American - is that a surprise?) who said ‘That’s not a wedding, there’s no Groom.’

I replied that women had been doing fine without Grooms for generations thanks, where did he think the words ‘Sapphic’ and ‘Lesbian’ came from. He didn’t answer this, the never do, but replied that ‘History is not about sexuality, it doesn’t matter.’

Yes it does.

With a tirade of people telling you that your sexuaity is not real, that you’'ll soon ‘come back to men’ and that it’s all ‘an internet fad,’ yes it does matter to know that there must have been enough same sex female couples, for Sappho to be allowed to write poetry about it 4,000 years ago.

His response was ‘History is a record of notable people doing notable things, nothing else.’

Yes, by this point I am screaming. This is not history, this is colonialism - this is the denial of all human experience which does not meet with a ruling authority’s perception of what is ‘right’ - be that the lives of working people, people of colour, women, LGBTQ+ people, children, people with mental health issues, people with disabilities - pretty much anyone who is not a rich white man.

The classic quote that that ‘those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it,’ but this is not aimed at rich white men and those they hold up and who hold them up - it’s aimed at us.

Us down here, us who do not fit into their systems and their beliefs. It’s us who have ever sat alone and cried, convinced that we are the ‘only ones ever’ who have done or been or suffered the things we are,do and suffer, when the people around us have made us feel that way. How much stronger would we be, would we feel, if we could reach back through History and link hands with those that came before, that choir of people never allowed to sing when they lived, and yet whom we might still hear.

Think again about how incredible it actually is that the voice of a lesbian poet can still be heard today, think of all the intervening years where even the thought that a woman might love another woman was illegal and impossible, and yet those words were preserved. We have the smallest fraction of ancient voices with us still today, thousands of them have been lost, and yes there she is even now.

And no, of course it doesn’t matter who slept with whom, in the sense that ultimately it shouldn’t overshadow what else they do - and yet it does matter because of what it tells us about the world in which they lived.

So yes, History is a record of notable people doing notable things, it’s just that I think it’s time we redefined who and what we consider to be notable.