(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

I've updated my historical website with something historical for a change. The new article is about homosexuality in the media at the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century in Canada.

Individual cases had been mentioned, but this was the first time homosexuality started to get talked about as a "social problem."

Doing this site has been really interesting. I've not only had to dig up LGBT history, but a lot of general Canadian history as well to do a background on these issues. There's so much out there that would be considered vital history to know in any other country, but which isn't even taught in our schools.

Comments

[lux-apollo.livejournal.com]

Yay! A new article! Also, I agree. Our national history curriculum is exceedingly weak. At least, in Ontario it is.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

In BC, as well. I didn't even hear about Lafontaine and Baldwin until university, and then only in passing. I wonder how many other countries will let you graduate high school without ever hearing the names of the founders of your democracy? It's just weird.

[maenad-au.livejournal.com]

Isn't that when the word homosexual first came into being?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

The word was invented in 1869 in German, but took awhile to filter into other languages. First citation in English, though, is 1895. In French, it's even later -- 1912, if I'm remembering correctly.

There's a long and arcane dispute that claims that gay identity and gay communities only existed after that word was created.

Historians have cut hole after hole in that argument -- one historian identifying such communities in medieval Europe around 1000, others talking about similar communities in ancient Rome -- but it doesn't seem to make a dent in the awareness of the postmodernists, who are particularly infatuated with this stuff.