Interesting Mention

[AVENguy]

We're beginning to get cited when people make academic arguments. This means that

A) We're considered credible
B) There's beginning to be enough of a knowledge of us among academic experts that we're working out way into the points that they're making.

Hot dog.

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108...c3=&id=3235



2014 Mod Edit: The above link doesn't link to the correct content, but the article can be found here. For future reference:

Tracing Our Roots
by Scott Darby
Contributor
Monday Nov 27, 2006

Pioneering gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz led a panel discussion at Harvard University in November at an event to mark the 30th anniversary of his groundbreaking book Gay American History. Later, he spoke with EDGE about how he came to specialize in the fascinating subject and some of what he’s learned.

The Nov. 6 event that also featured a book-signing and reception drew a full house. Its sponsors included two Boston GLBT organizations, The History Project (www.historyproject.org) and Stonewall Communities (www.stonewallcommunities.com).

Katz told EDGE he first started thinking about gay history in the winter of 1971 at a meeting of the media committee of the Gay Activists Alliance, an organization founded in New York City in 1969 after the Stonewall riots. GAA dissolved in 1981, but one of its legacies is the use of the Greek letter lambda as a community symbol.

"We were discussing ways to publicize the existence of our new militant movement and our new consciousness-ourselves as an oppressed group-and that was a new insight at the time," says Katz. "I thought that there must be such a thing as gay history." That was a unique concept at the time.

He first considered doing a theater piece based on whatever he could find out about GLBT history. Katz’s research resulted in "Coming Out! A Documentary Play about Gay Life and Lesbian Life Liberation," a well-remembered part of post-Stonewall culture. Katz says that when Gay American History was published in 1976, "It got a lot of attention, because it was the first book on the subject."

The author confided that for him history was--and still is--an obsession. Among other goals of his book, he wanted "to document, to show that there was such a thing as gay American history and lots of evidence to prove it." He also wanted "to try to understand all that material in its context, in historical context, and analyze, and that’s a very different thing, looking at the material, trying to understand it in any depth. It’s a different process."

EDGE asked how difficult it was to understand gay history in the context of the time it transpired. "Very hard," Katz answered, "because you just make sense of the variety of intermittent sexual relationships between men, for instance, over time and to try to understand [them]...because you have to figure out what’s the important context that really influenced these relationships."

Another challenge, says the author, was identifying the words men used, in a particular time, to describe and understand their relationships: "What were the concepts that were available? What kind of relationships might they have known about? Did they know about such things as romantic and sexual relationships between men? Looking into all of that is a difficult process, a long-term process that requires many people working on it."

After starting that process in Gay American History, Katz continued it in Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, published in 2001. The book about gay relationships in the 19th century covers some of the same material as his pioneering work, but has a lot of new information, too. "So that many years later, I’m still struggling with the problem of trying to understand these varieties of intimate relationships" he acknowledges.

At Harvard, an audience member asked how Katz’s interpretations had changed since he wrote Gay American History. "They’ve changed a lot" he replied, telling EDGE that the questioner also asked about same-sex erotic behavior among Native Americans.

"At the time I was working on Gay American History I actually was trying to claim that material," he says. "It’s from the early colonial period of discovery." He happened upon reports that there were cross-dressers among Native American tribes who reportedly sometimes had sex with members of the same sex. "So, when I was doing Gay American History, I was claiming these Native American people as sort of gay, or homosexual."

Katz has since realized that "the process of claiming is us in the present trying to fit people in the past into our modern categories, like gay or homosexual." Now he would ask "what are the terms available in a particular tribe, how did a particular tribe in a particular time, appreciate or not appreciate those figures, whatever they were called?" The author says the French had given the phenomenon they observed a universal name, but his research showed it varied in different Native American tribes." Katz now tries to learn "more about the historically particular forms of relationships and not to impose our modern categories on the past."

He also says that in researching the book, "I was always surprised to realize that it wasn’t really that hard to find the material, just that nobody had really looked for it before because of the prohibitions on doing homosexual history research. You were suspect in academia if you did it, you know. So nobody had looked for this stuff, and there was tons of it in major libraries that I was looking in" even back to 1500s and 1600s.

The author reports finding additional research on Native Americans, among others, that had occurred in Germany "as part of a homosexual emancipation movement that started at the end of the 19th century." But the Nazis created laws against homosexuality when they came to power in the 1930s and the research remained hidden until those involved in the gay movement in the early 1970s uncovered it, he reports.

Katz’ intensity also helps him in his work. "As I said, I was obsessive," he told EDGE. "Wherever I went I would tell people what I was researching." He reports that at a party someone told him about seeing love letters between Alexander Hamilton and another officer in the American Revolution: "I said, ’What?’ It didn’t sound likely, because I think Hamilton was famous as a ladies’ man, but sure enough, there were these very interesting letters."

He went on to say that "how to interpret effusive declarations of love between men is a major issue in gay history." Nevertheless, Katz adds, "something is going on between these two guys. There’s some sexual joking going on...I think we’re starting from ways of understanding homosexuality that are very ahistorical." He encourages people to "start thinking historically about sexuality. It changes the basic understanding."

Another phenomenon Katz pointed out was the seemingly extinct 19th century idea that members of the same sex could be in love with each other on a spiritual or emotional level without the presence of sexual love-something that seems to take place among the asexual community (visit www.asexuality.org for more information). "Love was not thought of as sexual love" he says. "That’s a sort of modern, contemporary idea." He explains that men could be in love with other men and talk about it openly, but it didn’t imply a sexual attraction. "Although looking back, we can in some cases see that there’s something going on that perhaps the people of the time didn’t appreciate, didn’t see."

But "when the knowledge of something called homosexuality comes in at the end of the 19th century, men start to get nervous, and you can see that in a number of documents that...their close relationships with male friends might be compromised by this knowledge that there are these sexual kinds of things going on," Katz adds.

"The conflict of homosexuality as it came down to me in growing up in the 1950s was very psychologically oriented--a Freudian interpretation--so I did not think of homosexuals as having a history, or of the concept of homosexuality as having a history or the word having a history," the author says, "so it was quite startling to discover."

Katz is the author of numerous books and articles, and the director of www.outhistory.org. Visit www.wikipedia.org and go to "Jonathan Ned Katz" to learn more about him.

[Hallucigenia]

Not only a mention of this website's existence, but also a mention of asexual 19th century love between males.

*gives the guy in the article a gold star*

[Eta Carinae]

One of his quotes, in context (emphasis mine):

"Love was not thought of as sexual love" he says. "That’s a sort of modern, contemporary idea." He explains that men could be in love with other men and talk about it openly, but it didn’t imply a sexual attraction. "Although looking back, we can in some cases see that there’s something going on that perhaps the people of the time didn’t appreciate, didn’t see."

I'm glad he didn't do what I've seen some people do, and assert that all (or most) of these relationships really had sexual undercurrents, despite what the people involved were saying.

[Goonie]

woohoo...

good news :)

[spinneret]

That's super awesome. This fella looks pretty awesome in general, actually.

I wonder though if the asexuality reference was from Katz himself, or if the writer threw that in. :?

[PollyB]

I wonder though if the asexuality reference was from Katz himself, or if the writer threw that in. :?

I think it's good either way, because it's such a straightforward acknowledgement. I also think I heard him do a talk in London once, a long while ago, and he was great.

I think it's a very human process for a community defining or redefining itself to go looking for precedents in history and other cultures, partly in order to underpin itself, and only later to say, wait - we really ought to have paid more attention to what that means in context to those particular people. We do it as well - we play "hunt the famous asexuals".

[M51]

Woah!! PAAARRTY!!

That's worth celebrating. I know AVENguy said we were referenced, but it is something else to go to the article and see it myself.

[thylacine]

I'll bring the beer.

[Carsonspire]

I'm glad he didn't do what I've seen some people do, and assert that all (or most) of these relationships really had sexual undercurrents, despite what the people involved were saying.

My thoughts, exactly.

[Shockwave]

Cool.

[sonofzeal]

Woah!! PAAARRTY!!

That's worth celebrating. I know AVENguy said we were referenced, but it is something else to go to the article and see it myself.

Well, we do have that brand spankin' new Celebration forum....

[!]

YAAAAAAY!!!

:vis: :aven: :!: :D <<<That says it all :lol: