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May. 22nd, 2020 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfI don't claim to be an original thinker. But it is still deeply delightful to me when I come across something that looks exactly (or even kind of) like something I've pictured in my head. I have a whole tag for it.
This is, however, the first time I've had a... headcanon? Logical extrapolation based on what I know about history? validated. So in the sin eater fic there's a family with a dead gay son (as in he was gay and he died, not he died because he was gay), and they accepted him as he was, and would have embraced his potential partner as well. I wrote it as a fuck you to the notion of "period-typical homophobia", because no person in history has had all the ~period typical~ views we flatten and call the X decade or Z century.
A researcher found some evidence in a Yorkshire farmer's diary from the 1810s that views re: homosexuality were not as monolithic as people expected. You can read more about it here. I mean, this is still a fairly privileged person, even if not necessarily educated. He could read and write, he obviously kept up with the news and discussed it with people. And he thought about punishment for homosexual acts in context of his understanding of religion:
Like I said, not an original thinker, but it's still weirdly gratifying to see you weren't so far off the mark after all.
This is, however, the first time I've had a... headcanon? Logical extrapolation based on what I know about history? validated. So in the sin eater fic there's a family with a dead gay son (as in he was gay and he died, not he died because he was gay), and they accepted him as he was, and would have embraced his potential partner as well. I wrote it as a fuck you to the notion of "period-typical homophobia", because no person in history has had all the ~period typical~ views we flatten and call the X decade or Z century.
A researcher found some evidence in a Yorkshire farmer's diary from the 1810s that views re: homosexuality were not as monolithic as people expected. You can read more about it here. I mean, this is still a fairly privileged person, even if not necessarily educated. He could read and write, he obviously kept up with the news and discussed it with people. And he thought about punishment for homosexual acts in context of his understanding of religion:
It must seem strange indeed that God Almighty should make a being with such a nature, or such a defect in nature; and at the same time make a decree that if that being whom he had formed, should at any time follow the dictates of that Nature, with which he was formed, he should be punished with death.I'm not saying he's a paragon of modern ideas of tolerance (he proposed punishment for homosexuality if it was a choice, as opposed to part of one's nature) but it's another nail in the coffin of the odious concept of "period-typical homophobia".
Like I said, not an original thinker, but it's still weirdly gratifying to see you weren't so far off the mark after all.
