Non-american history of homosexuality

This blog is dedicated to the world history of the LGB community that is not US-centric. submissions are welcomed! @naturalbornlesbian7 @obeijaflorealesbica

[lgbhistory]

Richard Puller von Hohenburg

• Richard Puller von Hohenburg was a French and Swiss nobleman and knight. He is notable for his homosexual liaisons.

• He lived in the 15th century and was a citizen of Strasbourg in Alsace.

• In 1463, a Swiss noble captured one of Puller's servants, a man named Ludwig Fischer, after “he had been seen dressed in lavish clothes and with more money than his occupation would afford him.” Back then gifts of clothing were seen as evidence of improper sexual services. Under torture, the servant revealed that Puller had romantically pursued him, an act he used to his advantage by blackmailing Puller for money and status.

•Though he had managed to evade prosecution this time, in 1474 Puller was again accused of sodomy, but managed to evade negative consequences through the strategic manipulation of his social status.

• Puller fled from Alsace stripped of his possessions, intending to recover them in the future.

• In 1482, city officials discovered a homosexual relationship between Puller and his servant, Anton Mätzler, this time because of the gifts of clothing given to the servant as well.

• Under torture by the city officials, Puller confessed to having had same-sex relationships with Mätzler and several other men.

• On 24 September 1482, a large crowd had gathered to see Puller executed. Puller was asked to repeat his confession, but he refused, instead claiming that the accusation of sodomy was only a cover for the Zürich officials who wished to seize his land and fortune.

• One of the officials mentioned by name was Hans Waldmann, then mayor of Zurich, who was later executed for several charges (among them, sodomy).

[lgbhistory]

Empar Pineda i Erdozia

• Empar is a Spanish feminist activist born in Hernani, Gipuzkoa in 1944.

• She was enrolled in a German nun's school, where she was required to learn English.

• As there was no public university in the Basque Country, she moved to Madrid, where her sister lived.

• She participated in the anti-Francoist student movement and was banned from enrolling at the Universities of Madrid and Barcelona. She ended up enrolling at the University of Salamanca in 1964, and a little later at the University of Oviedo, where she graduated in Romance philology.

• She returned to Madrid, where she began teaching Language and Literature while continuing her membership in left-wing organizations.

• An anti-Francoist militant, she was arrested by the authorities and spent some time in Martutene Prison.

•In the 1970s, during the transition to democracy, she moved to Barcelona. There she was the leader of the Communist Movement of Catalonia.

•In 1985 she was interviewed in the magazine Interviú with the headline "I am a lesbian just because ", to demand an end to the repression of homosexual women.

• In 1980 she was co-founder of the Lesbian Feminist Collective of Madrid and participated in the creation of the Right to Abortion Commission.

• In 2008 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi for "her dedication sustained for so many years in defense of women's rights, from the action – as an active member of various organizations – and reflection – as a co-author of several volumes, including 'El feminismo que existe'."

[lgbhistory]

Lina Poletti (1885-1971)

Was an Italian writer, poet and feminist. Considered one of the first italian woman to openly declare her lesbianism.

She used to wear masculine clothes and was a quite rebellious woman for her epoch.

In 1908 she attended the First National Congress of Women. This is where she met met the well-known writer Sibilla Aleramo, who shared her commitment to social change.

Both quickly got involved in a love affair, though Aleramo was living with a well-known poet Giovanni Cena at the time. Poletti and Cena didn’t like it and the two of them eventually left Aleramo.

The following year, Poletti married Santi Muratori, the director of the Biblioteca Classense in Ravenna, though they did not live together.

Shortly after their marriage, she met Eleonora Duse, at the time a popular stage actress, and became involved with her. The two moved in together in a house located in Florence, Italy, where Poletti started working on plays for Duse.

From 1918 to 1958 Poletti was in a relationship with the Countess Eugenia Rasponi, a noblewoman and ardent fellow feminist.

They later moved to Rome where they attended theosophical and philosophical meetings and traveled throughout Europe and Asia seeking answers for existence.

Poletti was unable to write during the twenty years of fascism in Italy, as she and Rasponi were constantly under the scrutiny of authorities and their home was often raided.

Poletti died on 12 December 1971 in Sanremo, in the northern coastal region of Liguria.

[lgbhistory]

Morocco - a hub for homosexuals?

Did you know that the country with strict islamic laws where homosexuality is punished, was once a place where homosexual men from America could take a break from their home country’s oppressive atmosphere.?

For decades Tangier and other Moroccan cities were magnets for gay tourists. It’s because for so many years prior to 1956 Tangier was a territory without an “owner” ,an international zone with no defined laws. It attracted a lot of american toutists who loved to indulge in discreet homosexuals behaviors and smoke local cannabis.

A writer William Burroughs published a book about his experiences in Morocco that was banned in US.

In fact, Tangier has a huge literary legacy and it always attracted mostly male homosexual writers like Jean Genet, Andre Gide, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Joe Orton, also Mark Twain and Samuel Pepys ( who were both straight). Another Writer and English aristocrat, David Herbert ,wrote about “queer reputation” of Tangier in his autobiography.

And while it’s shocking how such a religious country with anti-lgbt laws could attract so many homosexuals back in the days, it might have been one of those society’s paradoxes.

You can read more about Tangier’s fascinating gay history here:

A British man has flown home from Morocco after being jailed for "homosexual acts" - there was a time though when Morocco was a haven for ga

[lgbhistory]

Sylvia Beach (1887-1962)

A writer, publisher and the owner of the prominent Shakespeare and company bookstore in Paris (yes, the pictures of which you have probably seen on pinterest).

She was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.

Sylvia was born in United Stated but in 1901 her family moved to Paris. Her father’s name was Sylvester Beach and that might be why she changed her birthname (Nancy) to Sylvia later so that she could be Sylvia Beach.

While conducting research at the Bibliothèque Nationale, in a French literary journal Beach read of a lending library and bookshop, La Maison des Amis des Livres. When she came there, she met an owner who turned out to be a young woman Adrienne Monnier. The two later became lovers and lived together for 36 years.

Beach started dreaming of her own book shop , so with Monnier's help, Beach opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company.

Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted both French and American readers, including aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality and encouragement as well as books.

In July 1920, Beach met the writer James Joyce at a dinner party. Soon after, Joyce joined Beach's lending library. Joyce had been trying, unsuccessfully, to publish his manuscript for his masterpiece, Ulysses, and Beach, seeing his frustration, offered to publish it.

Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published Ulysses in 1922.

Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after she had bankrolled, and suffered severe losses from, the publication of Ulysses.

Shakespeare and Company experienced financial difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s but remained supported by wealthy friends, including Bryher.

In 1936 when Beach thought that she would be forced to close her shop, André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company. Subscribers paid 200 francs a year to attend readings at Shakespeare and Company.

Beach later recalled "we were so glorious with all these famous writers and all the press we received that we began to do very well in business".

In 1956, Beach wrote Shakespeare and Company, a memoir of the inter-war years that details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Benet and many others.

After Monnier's (her lover) suicide in 1955, Beach had a relationship with Camilla Steinbrugge.Although Beach's income was modest during the last years of her life, she was widely honored for her publication of Ulysses and her support of aspiring writers during the 1920s. Beach died in 1962.

George Whitman (her friend) opened a new bookshop in 1951 at a different location in Paris (in the rue de la Bûcherie) originally called Le Mistral, but renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honor of Sylvia Beach. Since his death in 2011, it has been run by his daughter Sylvia Whitman (who was named after Sylvia Beach).

[lgbhistory]

TYSM for this blog 💖

Thank you for following❤

Things got so hectic in my life and so many changes that I kinda stopped posting. I had a loot of interesting links saved on my phone notes, but I dropped my phone really hard the other day and it doesnt work, all the information I have gathered for the past years is lost😭 But its okay because if I could find it once, I can gather it again one day at a time🥰And I am gonna start posting again❤

[lgbhistory]

Makes me wanna fucking cry how many of these people were murdered...I hate this world so much

Gee, I am sorry you feel that way:( I am heart broken myself. Thats why I am always concerned if I should tell their stories in detail or not. But I feel like this should serve us as a reminder to fight for our happiness and live our best lives for those who couldn't do the same. They would be proud of us. Also, remember that there are happy stories too. So many people who managed to actually make it work despite the circumstances that were against them.

[lgbhistory]

Anna Freud

She was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent born in Vienna and the youngest child of Sigmund Freud.

She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis, and she may be considered one of the founders of psychoanalytic child psychology.

After the Freud family were forced to leave Vienna in 1938 with the advent of the Nazi regime in Austria, she resumed her work in child psychology establishing the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic in 1952 (now the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families).

Anna Freud appears to have had a comparatively unhappy childhood, in which she may have suffered from depression which caused eating disorders.

She was a lively child with a reputation for mischief.  In adolescence she took a precocious interest in her father's work and was allowed to sit in on the meetings of the newly established Vienna Psychoanalytical Society which Freud convened at his home.

Anna Freud created the field of child psychoanalysis, and her work contributed greatly to our understanding of child psychology. She also developed different techniques to treat children. A fundamental principle of Anna Freud's work is that every child should be recognised as a person in his or her own right.

While Anna was the closest intellectual and emotional companion of Sigmund Freud, she was also a lesbian. Freud taught that lesbianism is always the fault of the father and is curable by psychoanalysis. Hence, Anna involuntarily became an object of his inappropriate experiments.Nevertheless, Freud failed to “correct” Anna’s lesbianism.

Anna Freud's life-long romantic partner was Dorothy Burlingham, an American child psychoanalyst and educator. Anna and Dorothy soon developed intimate relationships and lived together as "companions".

Freud died in London on 9 October 1982. Her life-partner Dorothy Burlingham and several other members of the Freud family also rest there. 

[lgbhistory]

Frédéric François Chopin

Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano.

A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20.

He settled in Paris and he didnt give many public performances there, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. 

After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin (known by her pen name, George Sand). In his final years, he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling. For most of his life, Chopin was in poor health. He died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39.

While many sources deny it, there is no doubt that Chopin was attracted to his own sex. He used to write a lot of letters to his male lovers. These letters contained erotic and passionate messages.

He had feelings for Tytus Woyciechowski, who may have been the love of his life. It is to him that he dedicated his Variations op. 2 and the composition of the Waltz op 70 no. 3. He also was involved with J. Matuszyński, A. Wodziński und J. Fontana. In Paris he lived together with Matuszyński and Fontana for several years.

Because Frédéric Chopin is an idolized national hero in Poland,the current government try hard to prevent any official recognition of Chopin's love for men.

[lgbhistory]

Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum

Were ancient Egyptian royal servants.

They were buried together at Saqqara and are listed as "royal confidants" in their joint tomb.

They are notable for their unusual depiction in Egyptian records, often interpreted as the first recorded same-sex couple in ancient history, according to some scholars.

The assumed romantic relationship between Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum is based on depictions of the two men standing nose to nose and embracing.

The tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum was discovered by Egyptologist Ahmed Moussa in the necropolis at Saqqara, Egypt in 1964 .

It is the only tomb in the necropolis where men are displayed embracing and holding hands. In addition, the men's chosen names form a linguistic reference to their closeness: Niankhkhnum means "life belongs to Khnum" and Khnumhotep means "Khnum is satisfied."

No human remains were discovered inside.

The two aree portrayed in the most intimate pose allowed by canonical Egyptian art, surrounded by what would appear to be their heirs. The nose-on-nose touching in ancient Egypt normally was an equivalent of a kiss.

Nyankh-Khnum and Khnum-hotep each had families of their own with children and wives, but when they died their families apparently decided to bury them together in one and the same mastaba tomb.

Some other scholars disagree and interpret the scenes as an evidence that Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep were twins, or even possibly conjoined twins. No matter what interpretation is correct, the paintings show at the very least that Nyankh-khnum and Khnum-hotep must have been very close to each other in life as in death.

[lgbhistory]

Thank you everyone who voted in the poll👍🏻, now I see your preferences. The final verdict: according to what the majority of you vote for, it's okay to post about people who are still alive or about something that happened not so long ago. Also the majority of you think it's okay to tell the stories as they are without censoring uncomfortable parts. I hear you. Although I will still try to word things more gently, like some of you told me, because I understand that some stories are too triggering to read and if you feel like you lack information, you can always find a more detailed info through online sources and books.

And finally, I have organized the hashtags yay! Now you can not only search information by continents or countries but also by regions!!

In europe we have: Eastern, Northern, Central and Southern europe. (Ex: #lgbnortherneurope) The thing with european regions is that they can be very tricky. So like one country can belong to two regions. Example: Poland can be considered Eastern europe, but also it is considered by many, a part of Central europe. In this case I put both hashtags.

In Oceania for now we only have the region of Australasia which consists of Australia and New Zealand. But soon I will add more posts about Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.

In The Americas we have North America, South America, The Caribbean #lgbcaribbean and Central America.

In Africa we have South/North/East/West and Central Africa (but again, not all of them have information posted in them yet).

And In Asia we have North/East/South and West Asia.

Phew, I learned more about geography while doing it, than I learned in school😀

If you are ever confused (because regions can be tricky and ambiguous) you can always ask me or consult the internet. And you can always search by continent or country which is easier.

[lgbhistory]

It's an anonymous survey that can help me understand your content preferences and improve the quality of the blog

Hi everyone❤ I have 2 important questions for you, and your answers could help me improve the quality of this blog. Would be thankful if you answered them in this anonymous google poll.

The first one is about triggering information. As we all know, the history of our community is not all sunshine and roses, and along with happy stories, there are also sad stories. Would you prefer that I avoid triggering details about violence (those who want to know the full story of someone else's life can just find additional info by themselves in wikipedia and other sources) or do you think I need to post everything as it is, because history is about facts, after all, and here we strive to learn more about what actually happened with all the details because every detail is important?

Another question is: do you think it makes sense to post about something that happened relatively not so long ago, or a person I am posting about is still alive? Is it also part of the history?

[lgbhistory]

Eudy Simelane

She was a South African footballer who played for the South Africa women's national football team and an LGBT-rights activist. 

Simelane was born in KwaThema, Gauteng, South Africa, in 1977.

Simelane played as a midfielder for Springs Home Sweepers F.C. and the South Africa women's national football team. She also coached four teams and was studying to be a referee.

She was raped and murdered in her hometown.

According to local gay-rights organization Triangle, the practice of "corrective rape" is widespread in South Africa, whereby men rape lesbians purportedly to "cure" them of their sexual orientation.

2 of the four attackers were pled guilty and sentenced to life, but the remaining two accused were acquitted.

A miniature bridge was erected in KwaThema, Springs, Gauteng in her honour in 2009.

[lgbhistory]

FannyAnn Viola Eddy (1974 - 2004)

Eddy was a lesbian activist and a courageous woman with a deep commitment to lesbian and gay rights in Sierra Leone and throughout Africa.

In 2002, she founded the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association, the first of its kind in Sierra Leone.

They documented harassment, discrimination and arrests of LGBT people in the West African nation. The organization also provided social and psychological support to a fearful underground community. 

She traveled widely, addressing the United Nations and other international groups.

In April 2004, she advocated the passing of the Brazilian Resolution at the UN in Geneva.

Eddy was murdered on September 29, 2004, when a group of at least three men broke into the office of the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association in central Freetown, gang-raped her, stabbed her, and eventually broke her neck.

Eddy left behind a 10-year-old son and a girlfriend Esther Chikalipa.

In 2008, the FannyAnn Eddy Poetry Award was named in her honour.

[lgbhistory]

Can you do more African/melanesian/black lgbt history?

Okay I will!

[lgbhistory]

i know it might be too much to ask for but i'd love a separate tag for eastern europe!

Maybe its not too much to ask for after all?🤔 Frankly, I have been thinking about separation myself lately, I think I am gonna take some time soon and rearrange all the hashtags here, go through all the posts and divide continents into regions I guess. You are right!

[lgbhistory]

Victoria Kent Siano

Born in 1891, in Málaga, Victoria was a Spanish lawyer and republican politician.

Kent was affiliated to the Radical Socialist Republican Party. She became a member of the first Parliament of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931. 

One of the most outstanding and controversial moments in Kent's personal and political life would be her opposition to women's suffrage.

Kent was against giving women the right to vote immediately, arguing that, as Spanish women lacked at that moment social and political education enough to vote responsibly, they would be very much influenced by the Catholic priests, damaging left wing parties.

She had a controversy about this subject with another feminist in the parliament, Clara Campoamor. This caused her certain unpopularity and, when women were given right to vote, she lost her seat – as she had predicted – to the conservative majority in 1933.

Her partner was Louise Crane, a prominent American philanthropist. She helped Victoria to publish Ibérica. Ibérica featured news for the expatriate Spanish community in the United States.Kent was a prominent member of the Spanish Republican party, opposed to Franco. Many prominent writers, including Salvador Madariaga, contributed to Ibérica.

After the Spanish Civil War, Kent went into exile in Mexico, but soon moved on to the United States. She died in New York in 1987, and is buried alongside her partner.

Colleges in Málaga, Fuenlabrada, Marbella, Torrejón de Ardoz (Instituto de Educación Secundaria Victoria Kent), and a railway station in her home town of Málaga, have been named after her. Historians have not adequately discussed her lesbianism.

In 1986 she was awarded the medal of San Raimundo de Peñafor, but because of her old age she was not able to receive it in person.