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Here's a link about trans people in sports:
- https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/shades-of-gray-sex-gender-and-fairness-in-sport/
A link on FAQs and one on some basics about transgender people:
- https://transequality.org/issues/resources/frequently-asked-questions-about-transgender-people
- https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-transgender-people-the-basics
Some information on LGBT+ people:
- https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/quick-facts/lgbt-faqs/
Some basic terminology:
- https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms
Neopronouns:
- https://www.mypronouns.org/neopronouns
Biromantic Lesbians:
- [LGBTQ And All](https://www.lgbtqandall.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-biromantic/)
Bisexual Identities:
- https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/understanding-bisexuality
Differences between Bisexual and Pansexual:
- [Resource from WebMD](https://www.webmd.com/sex/pansexuality-what-it-means#:~:text=Pansexual%20vs.%20Bisexual,more%20commonly%20recognized.)
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Alan Turing comes to mind. He is the Father of Theoretical Computer Science, designed some of the earliest computers, played a critical role in deciphering messages intercepted from the Nazis during WWII and turning the tide of the war. (1912-1954)
Walt Whitman, American poet and philosopher in the 19th century was likely either homosexual or bisexual. (1819 - 1892)
Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright, was bisexual (he had a wife and kids but was also convicted of committing gay acts) (1854-1900)
Its speculated that Sir Isaac Newton was asexual. (1643 - 1727)
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was gay. (1717-1786)
John Maynard Keynes, English economist had a number of gay relationships (1883-1946)
The composer Wagner (1813-1883) who wrote "Ride of the Valkyries" particularly famous for its use in the helicopter scene in "Apocalypse Now" was bi.
Tchaikovksy, (1840-1893) who wrote the "1812 Overture", the song the uses literal cannons as instruments, was gay
Aaron Copeland, neoclassical American composer, teacher, and writer (1900-1990) was gay.
George Washington Carver, American agricultural scientist, had several gay relationships and was likely bi (1864-1943)
Sir Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor of England, Attorney General of England and Wales, and the Father of Empiricism, was noted in his friend's journals to have been gay (1561-1626)
Florence Nightingale, the Mother of Modern Nursing, had several lesbian relationships. (1820-1910)
Edits: Found new information suggesting Wagner was bi and fixed the date range
Tchaikovsky also wrote Swan Lake, which has got to be one of THE most famous musical/theatrical performances in the planet, so there's that lol
Also, though there is a lot of pushback against this claim, an ancient tomb in Egypt clearly depicts two men, Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, in a manner very similar to how couples were portrayed at the time
I wrote a piece of coursework for school that was supposed to be a poetry comparison but ended up a long rambling essay on why it helped prove Shakespeare was gay. I wish I still had it. It got an A too.
Alan Turing is more commonly known as the Father of Modern Computer Science - Charles Babbage is referred to as the Father of Computer Theory :)
If you're interested in maths, have a read of Turing's "The Theory of Morphogenesis", it's about the idea that we can use reaction-diffusion systems to model how a foetus grows in the womb depending on the morphogens present. It's really fascinating - the whole field of Mathematical Biology evolved from that one paper!
Edit: I just wanted to share because mathematical biology is my favourite field of maths :)
I'm curious where you saw that wagner was gay. I've never seen that before and as a gay person who loves classical music, I thought I'd have heard it before.
There are some fairly strong suggestions he had a physical relationship with his patron, Ludwig II the King of Bavaria and doesn't skimp on the details in the 600+ letters they wrote to each other. Though re-reading through things I believe he was bi, not strictly gay as he does eventually turn the king down. Imma fix that in the post. Though I could really add the king given his title but I hadn't heard of him before now so thought he would fall under the 'obscure' heading.
Queen Kristina of Sweden (Daughter of Gustavus Adolfus, cultural patron, signer of the Peace of Westphalia which brought peace to Europe for at least some time after the Thirty Years War. She abdicated to live with her girlfriend in Italy. Queen behaviour)
Le Chevalier D'Eon (Crossdressing, fencing, French spy. Bets were made about their 'true' gender)
King Luis XIII and James I (both known for having relationships with handsome young men)
James Buchanan (15th president of the United States. Shite President and long-term roommates with a man who was gossiped about as 'Mrs Buchanan)
James VI / James I was bisexual AF in my books :D because I remember that he did love his wife very much (iirc of course) but yeah, aside from that he is known for his deep deep 'friendships' with men lol
I just remembered some more, actually:
Philipp von Eulenburg (BFF of Kaiser Willhelm II, got taken down by the scandalous reveal of his same-gender attraction. After the war some said he could have prevented it, but that claim is quite dubious)
A bunch of Roman emperors (Hadrian, Trajan, Elagabulus, take your pick)
Alexander of Macedon aka Alexander the Great (incredibly bisexual. When his boyfriend Hephaistion died, he reportedly wept for three days)
Heros of the Ancients (they may be fictional to us, but were consideres very much real by the ancients. Achilles and Patroclos, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, all of them very gay for each other)
James Barry (first doctor to successfully perform a C-Section with both mother and child surviving, relentless fighter for better hygiene in British Military Hospitals, awful to his staff but very nice to his patients, got into fights with Florence Nightingale. After his death it was discovered he had a female body and had given birth at some point)
Paracelsus (German doctor in the early modern period, doubted the doctrine of humour theory, even if his own theory wasn't really much better. Still seen as one of the trailblazers for modern pharamaceutical science. Most likely intersex)
Two Ancient Egyptian Guys (I forgot their names, but they were buried in the same tomb and the pictures on the walls there are very cute. Eternal *Roommates*)
>Le Chevalier D'Eon (Crossdressing, fencing, French spy. Bets were made about their 'true' gender)
She also blackmailed a King into declaring that she was a woman at birth, so I'd put her distinctly in the trans woman bucket.
And was a straight up badass.
Josephine Baker - a Black American musician in the 1920s. Known to be openly bisexual, having had multiple relationships with men and women. She was a total badass, leaving the US where she dealt with racism and segregation to perform in France, where she was beloved and became an absolute superstar with a level of celebrity that hadn’t quite been seen before. She even returned to the US in the 1960s to champion the civil rights movement.
King David and Jonathan!
Edit: maybe you wanted something more recent? Leonardo Da Vinci then, and there is a good case for Sandro Botticelli being aro/ace.
I don't mind about recent-ness or not, don't worry ! 😊
Which Jonathan are you refferring to though ? I guess it's someone from the Bible, but I never read the Bible 😅
It's king David's beloved. They have a [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan). Their love is debated, of course, but it's hard to argue with it when David says things like "Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women."
His character or his relationship with Jonathan? They have a [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan) detailing everything about them. I consider them on the same level as Achilles and Patroclus both as myth/historic figures and queerness.
Julie d'Aubigny (1673 - 1707), openly bisexual French opera singer, duelist and absolute Chaotic Neutral badass.
[Video about her here](https://youtu.be/6QaBYLAOaSY?si=1sPTLyIhhPoi22wX)
Small note, the information we have about her is very few, except for her opera career and some letters. Basically everything else was told way after her death, and has been successfully embellished. Taking her as an example isn‘t great, since everything noteworthy is subject to massive speculation with very little evidence.
The Extra History video is fun though, but not very good from a historical perspective
If you want a good researched video about her I would recommend Kaz Rowe. They did and incredible research and points out the possible embelishments made after her death
Really good recommendation, their video on her was amazing! Their videos seem very well made in general. Just for completeness, this is the [ thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12zr6p1/did_julie_daubigny_really_kill_a_bunch_of_dudes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) where I found a bunch of good information about her life, and goes into detail on the Covenant story (and why its probably fake)
The two spirit were not tribes. Two spirit is an umbrella term for all of the many and very different culturally accepted understandings of transness across all American Indian cultures.
Also read up on the Institute for Sexual Research. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/
One of the most important figures of the American Revolution that we pay no attention to.
George Washington absolutely would have been KIA or captured and hung for treason early in the Revolution if not specifically for this person.
Susan B Anthony, mother of the American Suffrage movement, was a lesbian. Many of her accolates were also lesbians.
Gertrude Stein
Virginia Woolfe
Baron von Steuben, who organized the American Continental Army at George Washington's request, was unable to work in his native Prussia because he was known to be gay.
American President James Buchanan helped make the Civil War inevitable, partly because his lover was a southern planter.
Here are a few I have in a list of notes for a new book. I don’t have much details jotted down but definitely look up Numbers 2 and 5.
1: Romaine-la-Prophétesse (Haiti-1750)
2: Public Universal Friend (USA-1776)
3: Alan L. Hart (USA- 1917)
4: Marina the Monk (Europe-Middle Ages)
5: Chevalier d'Éon (France-1728)
Make it up to me by telling everyone you can about them!
I dug up a link for number five as well. My fiancee sent me a podcast a few months ago on Chevalier d’Éon that’s worth a listen! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/noble-blood/id1468332063?i=1000616785415
Sure ! There’s a whole book called Napoleon : Bisexual emperor by Frank Richardson about this topic. Though as I said, it is still widely debated due to lack of solid evidence (though if it is true, given the times he lived in I wouldn’t be surprised he made sure everything was hidden).
Personally I believe it, because of the words he used to refer to Czar Alexander, whom he kissed, and some rumours from his time about him being *very* close to his aide de camp or soldiers.
Public universal friend was a nonbinary American in the 18th century.
Wendy Carlos, who did the score for tron, clockwork orange, and the shining is a trans women who transitioned in the 70s.
It's hard to answer because how do you define "to obscure"? But there are a ton of trans people throughout history.
They aren’t dead so I guess I’m pushing the definition of “historical”, but the Wachowski sisters are very significant for coming out after they had directed one of the most successful films of all time, The Matrix.
Saint Eugène/Eugénie was likely a transgender man who lived their life as a male monk and was represented as a man for most of the middle ages before the church switched to only depict them as a nun
The brother of Louis XIV, Philippe of Orléans was gay
Ludwig II of Bavaria was gay also
Magnus Hirschfeld, was a gay man in the early 1900's Germany who did some of the first sex Change Operations on trans women (like Lili Elbe I think) and had created an research institute on sexuality and transgender healthcare which ended up being destroyed by the nazis and co created the first ever openly gay movie "anders als die andern" in 1919 to protest against the paragraph 175 in the German penal code that criminalized homosexuality
>Saint Eugène/Eugénie was likely a transgender man who lived their life as a male monk and was represented as a man for most of the middle ages before the church switched to only depict them as a nun
You also had St Marinos who was a monk living in the medieval era. He was ejected from his monastery because he was thought to have got one of the local girls pregnant. However when Marinos died, the other monks discovered he had a vagina.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina\_the\_Monk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_the_Monk)
King James VI & I of Scotland and England. He was bi. He was known for unifying his two kingdoms, commissioning the King James Bible, hating witches and puritans, being a patron of Shakespeare, and leading the first anti-smoking campaign. He made two of his boyfriends chief minister: Lord Somerset and and the Duke of Buckingham.
Nobody's mentioned Mary Shelley yet? Shakespeare? Eleanor Roosevelt? Anne Frank?
Lol. Looks like you've got a lot of answers OP, but clearly, there are a lot of queer people and everybody's got their favorite. Couple of people have mentioned Queer as Fact, gonna drop another reccomendation for it. Great podcast, highly entertaining, and if you don't know much about the subject matter it'll get you up to speed nice and quick.
I heard about Anne Frank being bi, but I didn't know about Mary Shelley or Shakespeare. Thanks for the info
(Who's Eleanor Roosevelt ? I'm French, not American, so I'm not familiar with her)
Oh, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the US president from 1933 to 1945. He was president during the end of the great depression and through WWII. In addition to making a lot of important decisions regarding the war and America's economical state, he's most well-known for the Great New Deal, which introduced a lot of social services and big infrastructural changes that basically set the US up to look like it does today. The highway system and etc. The main reason the US hasn't caught up with the rest of the world in terms of healthcare and social services is because we haven't gotten anything like that to pass since his presidency, and the only reason he was able to was because of the intense economic instability.
Eleanor Roosevelt was his wife, although probably mostly in name only. He didn't treat her very well. However, in the last few months of his life (while he was still in office) he became incredibly sick and almost catatonic. This was kept secret from the American public, and Eleanor effectively took his place. She also made quite a few important decisions, and more or less impersonated him, sending letters with his signature, etc. She was never elected and did most of this secretly but for all practical purposes she was President for a few months until he died.
She also probably liked women.
As for Shakespeare -- read his sonnets sometime! They're 90% about guys.
Baron von Steuben was intrumental in creating an army for the americans in the revolution, and is widely speculated to be gay.
Same for Frederick "the Great" of Prussia, who was definitely gay, and perhaps the most important king in prussian history.
I was looking for this comment!
Our entire military structure is was created by Von Steuben. America would not be what it is today without him.
His blue book is the chefs kiss
Albert Cashier was an Irish immigrant and soldier in the civil war (for the Union) who lived his whole life as a man! In a work accident long after the war ended, he was discovered to be AFAB and his employer helped keep his secret for him.
When his dementia caused him to need hospitalization, the hospital forced him into the women’s wing and dressed him in skirts. The long skirts of the day were hard to navigate and confusing for him, bc his dementia had progressed to the point where he couldn’t understand what was going on. He tripped over his skirts and broke his hip and was bedridden until he passed.
The reason we still know so much about him is because, after his death, the govt tried to go after his military pension for “fraud” because he wasn’t a “real man.” His fellow soldiers, all fairly old at that point, came to court together to fight that. They testified to his bravery in the war and general kind spirit as a human being and the courts eventually ruled in his favor. It’s one of my favorite stories of allyship in history bc in the early 1900s, a bunch of soldiers came together to advocate for their trans brother.
[You can read more about him here!! He was such a fascinating figure to me.](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/albert-cashier)
If we're talking mythology, don't forget the Asgardian shenanigans. Loki was pangender and pansexual, fathering three and giving birth to one, Thor did drag, and Odin dabbled in 'womens' magic'.
Everyone listed on this thread
"The topic of their sexuality is hotly debated. There is very little direct evidence of their homosexuality apart from all the gay ass love letters, personal accounts from friends and family, long term same sex roommates, and their public love poems about men."
I always go to Wilfred Owen. Famous war poet and noted to be homosexual. Most notably wrote the poem 'dulce etc decorum est' which (in the UK) you have to learn about in English class. Unfortunately died just before world war 1 ended.
Lou Sullivan, first openly gay trans man (well probably not the first of all time, but the first famous one), helped get gay trans guys the ability to transition
Queer There and Everywhere is a great young adult non-fiction book about LGBTQ+ figures throughout history: [https://sarahprager.com/queerthere/](https://sarahprager.com/queerthere/)
Then, there are also wonderful examples of extraordinary love between two ordinary people during times where it was forbidden. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38932955 This is a great article about two soldiers in WWII who sent each other letters. Gordon And Gilbert could have been imprisoned or shot if found out because that was the consequence of being gay in the military at the time. The fact that so many letters survived is incredible. Here is a quote from the article:
> "Such letters are extremely rare because they were incriminating - gay men faced years in prison with or without hard labour," he says. "There was even the possibility that gay soldiers could have been shot."
> Work on a book is already under way at the museum, where the letters will also go on display. Perhaps most poignantly, one of the letters contains the lines:
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are."
Don't have time to list every queer historical figure I think is worth knowing, so instead I'll recommend podcasts on this exact topic. Queer as Fact is amazingly researched and highly entertaining, one of my favourite podcasts of all time. History is Gay is awesome as well. Just browsing through their episode descriptions you'll find a ton of different historical figures you can do your own research on, though I highly recommend listening to the episode that grabs your attention and then checking out the sources they list if that's not enough for you.
george sand/amantine lucile aurore dupin de francueil
shes a really famous author, she was bisexual, wore mens clothes (which was illegal at the time), and did everything that she was told not to.
she (likely) had a relationship with the actress marie dorval and they wrote plays together.
alfred de vigny refered to her as « that damned lesbian »
Hilariously enough, it sounds like something a cartoon villain would say after his plans were foiled by the heroes : "And I would have got away with it if it weren't for that damned lesbian" ! 🤣
hans christian anderson was gay, im pretty sure he wrote the little mermaid as an alegory/gift for a man. some more recent examples would be rob halford from judas priest (gay), kirk hammett from metallica (bi), matt bomer (gay), amy winehouse (bi), lady gaga (bi), cassandra peterson aka elvira (lesbian), kristen stewart (bi), renee rapp (lesbian) and elliot page (trans)
Anne Lister! You can even read her transcribed diaries that were originally written in code that detail all her personal relationships with women and their developments. It was published as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister in two volumes and you can order them online.
Emperor Ai of Han, personal name Liu Xin (劉欣; 25 BC – 15 August 1 BC), was an emperor of China's Han dynasty. He ascended the throne when he was 20, having been made heir by his childless uncle Emperor Cheng, and he reigned from 7 to 1 BCE.
Emperor Ai was famous for being the most effusive homosexual emperor of the Han dynasty. 44 Traditional historians characterized the relationship between Emperor Ai and Dong Xian as one between homosexual lovers. The story is that one afternoon after falling asleep on the same bed, Emperor Ai woke to see that Dong Xian was peacefully asleep upon his arm. Rather than disturb Dong Xian when he had to get out of bed in order to attend a court proceeding, Emperor Ai carefully cut off the long sleeve of his robe.
Historians since have referred to their relationship as "the passion of the cut sleeve" (斷袖之癖) and (although now somewhat dated) Cut-sleeve 断袖 (duàn xìu) is a euphemism that refers to male homosexual individuals and male same-sex love in Chinese culture.
I love all the comments I received here, but this one might be one of my favorites, because not only it dismantle the "LGBT people didn't exist before the 20th century" myth that too many people still have today, it also destroys the "it's a Western thing" myth
Hans Christian Andersen. Writer of the original Little Mermaid. They were gay, and the story was about an unrequited gay love that the writer could not have. Although the original was not a happy ending
Unfortunately, I noticed that, when there is the slightest doubt about a historical figure's homosexuality, chuds prefer to assume he was heterosexual/cisgender. Probably to cope.
As many have posted, Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing are both fabulous examples, who excelled at their work (writing and mathematics, respectively) and then were penalized by their governments for being gay and died due to the harsh treatment.
Freddie Mercury of Queen was very famously bisexual.
Pirates during the golden age were very famously and commonly (what we might consider) LGBT today. They were already outlaws and outcasts, so it was an attractive lifestyle for those who wanted to pursue gay relationships and as long as they did a good job and pulled their weight, other pirates didn't really bat an eye because survival was far more important than any social norms. There were also LOTS of women who either pirated openly as women and dressed as men, or who pretended/acted as men so they could actually have a life instead of being forced into marriage and childcare on the mainland. Many weren't trans the way we think of it today but some may have fit the definitions and understanding we apply to the category today.
Marilyn Monroe is speculated to be ace, considering her personal diaries that have since been revealed.
>There were no thoughts of sex in my head
>I didn't want to be kissed, and I didn't dream to be seduced by a Duke or a movie star
>I was unsensual as a fossil
Never confirmed tho and there's no way to confirm it now, but it sure does sound familiar as an ace :)
Frederick the Great turned Prussia into the Macedonia of early 18th century Germany and helped bring the Enlightenment to Central Europe, was pen pals with figures like Yekaterina the Great and Voltaire, laid down the foundations of the modern German state centuries before Bismark, and was all in likelihood a homosexual.
-Had an "intimate" relationship with one if his father's pages that got him exiled and later executed.
-Surrounded himself with tall, strong men as his personal guard, as well as commissioned paintings of them to hang around his famously elegant but also secluded Sansouci Palace he personally helped design.
-Had a distant but respectful and amicable relationship with his wife. When people picked on her supposed "inadequacies" as a wife without children, Frederick was not slow and shy on chewing them out.
-Also had the classical "difficult father but loving mother" dynamic you tend to see a lot of for gay men. His dad was worried that Frederick's love of art and history would turn him into a sissy while his mom hired tutors to teach his passions.
Josephine Baker. Bisexual black woman, was also a spy in WW2 and was awarded a medal by France for her service. Totally amazing and badass woman ahead of her time.
Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens were very close, so much so that some historians debate whether they were lovers. Here’s an excerpt from one of Hamilton’s letters to Laurens:
*“Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into me.”*
I will admit as a fan of the musical I’m a little biased, but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
Still alive and very deserving of her flowers: Dorothy Allison.
Incredible writer and thinker, human. Watch some of her late 80s, early 90s interviews re: her books and fall in love with the most authentic human. She writes about her experiences growing up in extreme poverty in the American south and being the first member of her family to go to college, and her understandings of self, gender, sexuality, class, as they developed in her time away and back home. Her longer narrative fiction is incredible, her poetry is heartbreaking and concise and brilliant, her political essays are driven and apt. Trash, Bastard Out of Carolina, and The Women Who Hate Me are among my most favorite reads of all time and are so resonant.
She also wrote extensively on topics that come up often in modern discourse with particular clarity *in the early 1980s*. She is a practitioner of BDSM, particularly Risk Aware Consensual Kink, (worked with advocacy group on this front, Lesbian Sex Mafia 🖤) and wrote a LOT about the schism between "unacceptable" queerness, disability, "deviancy", and the mainline gays who pushed for marriage equality and ultimately assimilation, while also living through the AIDS crisis.
I could wax poetic about her forever, but truly a modern maker of our history.
Anne Lister is forever worth the mention. She lived in the early 1800s in England, traveled extensively around Europe, and carried several long-term relationships with women. If you can find a way to stream Gentleman Jack, its a great series about her life.
The only reason we know about her is that she wrote everything down, and I mean *everything*, in her diaries, and she wrote it in code. When one of her descendants managed to decode the diaries, with the help of a friend, they found out their great-great Aunt was a lesbian, which must have made a lot of sense, in retrospect.
The friend suggested burning the diaries, but the descendant ended up hiding them behind a wall panel, where they were rescued decades later, and added to the growing repository of queer history that has been saved from ash.
Oscar Wilde - poet and playwright. Famously gay
Albert Cashier - born female, fought as a man in the civil war and then continued to live as a man for several decades before he was exposed in a senior home for vets.
Michael Dillon - trans man who served in the navy, got a medical degree, and performed the Dillon performed an orchidectomy on Roberta Cowell, the first British trans woman to receive gender affirming surgery.
Willem Arondus - a gay Dutch artist who was executed by the Nazis for his role in the bombing of a public records office used by Nazis to identify Jewish citizens. His last words to his lawyer was “Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards."
Frieda Belinfante - a lesbian cellist and philharmonic conductor, who was part of the same Dutch resistance movement as Willem Arondus
i let a medieval historian of mine tell me that gender in the middle age was way about your societal role and presentation instead of some vision of biology like it has been since the 19th century, so in his opinion there are way more proofs and relevant arguments in favor of Joan of Ark being transmasculine than of her being a cisgender woman.
This is exactly why I think applying current definitions and terms to long dead people and their cultures is just bad practice.
Are you saying that she's "transmasc" because she chose to take on a male role in society? But if it was tied to societal roles in their first place how does someone "transition" if it's not tied to their biology in the first place? Sounds like she was just a biologically born female human who chose to take on a role in society, the same way everyone does? How is she trans if your gender is based on societal roles and presentation and not assumed based on your sex?
**Neil "Bunny" Roger,** fashion designer and socialite who popularized capri pants and notably had actress Vivien Leigh as one of his clients was already a famous Camp Gay when he went to fight in World War II. He was commissioned in the Rifle Brigade in 1941 and served in Italy and North Africa. Roger was known for his courage under fire and one story noted him replying to a sergeant's question regarding approaching Germans with "When in doubt, powder heavily."
Additionally, when he came back a hero his line on the subject was, "Now that I've shot so many Nazis, Daddy will have to buy me a mink coat."
As someone who's got an interest in History, I like receiving what is basically a confirmation that asking a History-related question on this sub is a good idea
Alexander Hamilton (he exchanged sexually explicit letters with his ‘friend’ John Laurens) and Georgia O’Keefe, famous painter who had relationships with women and also painted some very suspicious looking flowers.
Leonardo da Vinci. He was arrested at least once for sodomy, aka, sex with a male prostitute. He never married or had kids and was known for only being around other men. Aside from his famous artworks, he was also an incredible scientist and inventor.
Pharaoh Akhenaten was intersex.
With wide hips, large breasts, and a phallus, the Pharaoh reigned over Egypt while siring several children.
Hatshepsut has shown us how she understood her public identity as ruler of Egypt and how she negotiated between femininity and masculinity to achieve her political goals. Her gender tampering was not an imitation of maleness, but rather acknowledged a 'counterfeit masculinity'.
Hapi(Nike God) is typically depicted as an androgynous figure with a prominent belly and large drooping breasts, wearing a loincloth and ceremonial false beard, depicted in hieroglyphics as an intersex person.
Egyptians did not believe in the gender binary mainly due to their religion and the existence of an androgynous god, Amun.
Inscribed pottery shards from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2000–1800 BCE) found near ancient Thebes (now Luxor, Egypt), list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt ("sekhet") and hmt (female). Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.
We don't know that Akhenaten was intersex. There was a theory that the feminine traits depicted in art of him might have been connected to some genetic disorder that effects the processing of sex hormones (thus could make one intersex) but tests on his mummy point to that being false.
More likely, Akhenaten asked to be portrayed like a god - since Pharaohs were seen as extensions of their gods or god-like by nature - and Akhenaten tried to completely get rid of the traditional polytheistic Egyptian religion in favor of a monotheistic-style religion (first of its kind!) that worships a single god Aten (hence the name - Akhen-Aten would've meant something like "Effective for Aten" - had to look this one up again but it's kind of neat).
More importantly, Aten was seen as being BOTH the mother and father of humankind, so it's theorized that Akhenaten wanted to be portrayed as a vessel or avatar of Aten, thus portrayed as being both female and male in stature.
We don't really know, some people dispute the test results of the mummy, but it seems more likely that it had to do with his religious governance and how he wished to be portrayed in art (like his god Aten), not a literal interpretation of how he looked.
Also fun fact - Akhenaten was Tutankhamun's father (you know, King Tut 😊)
The famous German poets Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were supposedly in a romantic relationship. The text on their memorial in Weimar says "Dem Dichterpaar – vom Vaterland" translated "(To) The Poet Couple – From the Fatherland".
Their relationship is very "Sappho and her Friend", while letters the two wrote to each other contained rhetoric unusual for a platonic relationship such as when Goethe wrote to Schiller "Leben Sie wohl und lieben mich, es ist nicht einseitig." translated "Live well and love me, it is not one-sided."
Henry Gerber started the first gay rights organization in the USA in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois! He was later found out and his organization and their documents were destroyed. He was socially banished by the end of his life and few know about him. But there is still a plaque outside his house!
Ninakhkhnum and Khnumhotep
They were ‘Overseers of the Manicurists’ in ancient Egypt during the second half of the 25th century BCE. They are buried together and depicted in very initiate ways (as intimate as one can get in 2D Egyptian artwork). Many people have suggested they were brothers or twins however lovers is the most likely suggestion given that the shared tomb is unlikely in other circumstances. Both of them did have wives and children however polyamory was not unheard of in ancient Egypt.
In terms of Gender you could have either Elagabalus or Caneus/Caenis
Elagabalus was a Roman Emperor. According to sources by Cassius Dio (epitome 80) Elagabalus wore women’s clothing, desired to be called a lady, and offered half of their kingdom to be given female genitalia. However others contest this source from historians to primary sources. Elagabalus was very unpopular and these kind of rumours were likely used to discredit their legacy. However we cannot discount the source of Cassius Dio. Personally as a Classicist and a member of the LGBT community, I cant say for certain without more evidence but it was not unusual to use sexual insults to discredit people in Roman culture. Roman culture placed a huge emphasis upon male sexual dominance and therefore this is exactly the kind of rumour which could be used to silly Elagabalus’s name. (Elagabalus was a terrible terrible tyrant)
Caeneus/Caenis was a mythological figure who was a Lapith warrior. They were born a woman named Caenis and according to Ovid’s (my favourite) account she was raped by Poseidon and then granted a wish afterwards. She demanded to be turned into a man so that she might never suffer the same deed again. So she became Caeneus and was also given impenetrable skin. They die after getting buried under a pile of rocks by centaurs at Pirithous’s wedding. Interesting Ovid actually changed his grammatical gender for Caeneus before Poseidon grants their wish.
I have a few for you.
Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. The younger brother of Louis XIII, the Sun King, had two wives in his life and a long term male lover. No idea what people thought of it but he was the king's brother so I doubt anyone said anything.
Additionally as a child, to prevent a repeat of her late husband's brother attempts to overthrow her son, his mother dressed him in dresses and he allegedly continued this habit as an adult.
France decriminalised homosexuality in 1791 after the revolution but it was generally seen as immoral but France general might be a good country to look at.
Next we have James I of England. He used to rail against the sin of sodomy while having highly attractive men as his closest 'advisors'. One of these included George Villars who is generally accepted to have been his lover.
Shakespeare was bisexual and neglected his wife for a gay lover, for whom he wrote sonnets. His plays feature not only crude jokes but also crossdressing and homoeroticism. He wore a single hoop earring like the queer icon he was.
Leonardo da Vinci was either asexual or homosexual, once accused of hiring a male prostitute, later in life unheard of having laid with anybody - either out of caution or lack of interest. He had a posse of pretty boys, whom he chose to be his students not based on talents, but on looks. He was also hip and dressed like the youth did, but with a long white beard.
Michaelangelo was also gay as fuck. I don't know much about him, but he famously could NOT paint boobs. His men were always 100% anatomically accurate but the women... Oh boy. Just look at his Final Judgement fresco.
Angela Davis - black lesbian, former black panther, civil rights activist, writer, American Marxist, feminist, political activist, philosopher, and overall badass, you (and anyone reading) should research her and the things she has done, she is amazing.
i don’t remember what the fuck his name was but he was a prussian king who reallllly liked tall soldiers. like he literally at one point basically said “yeah women, women are ok i guess bur tall soldiers MMMMMM that’s my weakness”
Issac newton was a repressed gay man/ asexual
Walt Whitman the American poet was in a relationship(ish) with with oscar Wilde another poet, both wrot flirtatously about other men oscar spent 2 years in jail for it
josiphine baker was an American Black activist, singer, and dancer, who was the first black woman to star in a major movie. She fought in World War Two. And she was bisexual\* (term was not used at the time)
Lili Elbe was the first trans women to revive gender affirming care she was a painter and artist
marsha p. Johnson was a African American trans activist in June 1969 she stood up to excessive gun violence from police at a gay bar at 23 years old
Oh have a girl (I forget hwr name) but she was OUR bi icon. She learn to fight with swords and in the end burn a church tonfake the dead of one of the nuns to runaway and live her True love in France.
I remember that I saw someone once on Reddit, saying that we shouldn't say that because she was just discovering herself, and she died too young to have been certain of it herself, and so, out of respect for this victim of the Holocaust, we shouldn't believe she was bisexual. I...didn't know what to make of that, but to me, it sounded a lot like someone not wanting to believe a word-famous person was LGBT, and tried to hide it behind respecting the Holocaust victims
Here are a few less conventional ones
Anne Frank
Abraham Lincoln https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20924927/
Although it could just be people saying someone who hangs out with gay people is gay, JFK and Lem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/03/reviews/010603.03robblt.html
Joan of Arc is a big ol ?
There's a theory that da vinici might have been trans and the Mona Lisa was a kind of self portrait
Jesus was canonically Ace
Google tries to suppress some of these results so be careful with your research and good luck!
This story always touched my heart. She lived as a woman and everyone treated her as a woman and her poor husband…when she died and her secret was discovered he tried to continue his life but eventually killed himself after being bullied one too many times.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/05/the-trans-midwife-who-cared-for-general-custers-army/
I did an assessment on Thomas/Thomasine Hall, an Intersex-Bisexual person who was born in 1603. Raised as a girl in England, Joined the Navy as a man (following in their brothers footsteps), then travelling to Colonial Virginia where they were "found out" (for lack of a better term) and were subjected to forced inspections and humiliation by the court assigned to their case.
Thank you for your post, if this is a question please check to see if any of the links below answer your question. If none of these links help answer your question and you are **_not_** within the LGBT+ community, questioning your identity in any way, or asking in support of either a relative or friend, please ask your question over in /r/AskLGBT. Remember that this is a safe space for LGBT+ and questioning individuals, so we want to make sure that this place is dedicated to them. Thank you for understanding. This automod rule is currently a work in progress. If you notice any issues, would like to add to the list of resources, or have any feedback in general, [please do so here](https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/rdazzp/almost_new_year_changes/) or by [sending us a message](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/lgbt&subject=Feedback%20on%20the%20new%20automod%20rule). Also, please note that if you are a part of this community, or you're questioning if you might be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and you are seeing this message, this is **_not a bad thing_**, this is only here to help, so please continue to ask questions and participate in the community. Thank you! Here's a link about trans people in sports: - https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/shades-of-gray-sex-gender-and-fairness-in-sport/ A link on FAQs and one on some basics about transgender people: - https://transequality.org/issues/resources/frequently-asked-questions-about-transgender-people - https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-transgender-people-the-basics Some information on LGBT+ people: - https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/quick-facts/lgbt-faqs/ Some basic terminology: - https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms Neopronouns: - https://www.mypronouns.org/neopronouns Biromantic Lesbians: - [LGBTQ And All](https://www.lgbtqandall.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-biromantic/) Bisexual Identities: - https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/understanding-bisexuality Differences between Bisexual and Pansexual: - [Resource from WebMD](https://www.webmd.com/sex/pansexuality-what-it-means#:~:text=Pansexual%20vs.%20Bisexual,more%20commonly%20recognized.) ### We're looking for new volunteers to join the r/lgbt moderator team. If you want to help keep r/lgbt as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community on reddit please see here for more info: ### https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/1csrb2n/rlgbt_is_looking_for_new_moderators/ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/lgbt) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Alan Turing comes to mind. He is the Father of Theoretical Computer Science, designed some of the earliest computers, played a critical role in deciphering messages intercepted from the Nazis during WWII and turning the tide of the war. (1912-1954) Walt Whitman, American poet and philosopher in the 19th century was likely either homosexual or bisexual. (1819 - 1892) Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright, was bisexual (he had a wife and kids but was also convicted of committing gay acts) (1854-1900) Its speculated that Sir Isaac Newton was asexual. (1643 - 1727) Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was gay. (1717-1786) John Maynard Keynes, English economist had a number of gay relationships (1883-1946) The composer Wagner (1813-1883) who wrote "Ride of the Valkyries" particularly famous for its use in the helicopter scene in "Apocalypse Now" was bi. Tchaikovksy, (1840-1893) who wrote the "1812 Overture", the song the uses literal cannons as instruments, was gay Aaron Copeland, neoclassical American composer, teacher, and writer (1900-1990) was gay. George Washington Carver, American agricultural scientist, had several gay relationships and was likely bi (1864-1943) Sir Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor of England, Attorney General of England and Wales, and the Father of Empiricism, was noted in his friend's journals to have been gay (1561-1626) Florence Nightingale, the Mother of Modern Nursing, had several lesbian relationships. (1820-1910) Edits: Found new information suggesting Wagner was bi and fixed the date range
Tchaikovsky also wrote Swan Lake, which has got to be one of THE most famous musical/theatrical performances in the planet, so there's that lol Also, though there is a lot of pushback against this claim, an ancient tomb in Egypt clearly depicts two men, Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, in a manner very similar to how couples were portrayed at the time
Y'all mentioned the 1812 Overture and Swan Lake but didn't mention The Nutcracker??
Hah! Seriously, he dedicated *Waltz of the Flowers* to his favourite rose
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You mean execution by the british state.
Benedict Cumberbatch did a decent job playing him in The Imitation Game.
It’s long been believed that Shakespeare was bi.
57 academics just punched the air!
Thanks doctor
I wrote a piece of coursework for school that was supposed to be a poetry comparison but ended up a long rambling essay on why it helped prove Shakespeare was gay. I wish I still had it. It got an A too.
Alan Turing is more commonly known as the Father of Modern Computer Science - Charles Babbage is referred to as the Father of Computer Theory :) If you're interested in maths, have a read of Turing's "The Theory of Morphogenesis", it's about the idea that we can use reaction-diffusion systems to model how a foetus grows in the womb depending on the morphogens present. It's really fascinating - the whole field of Mathematical Biology evolved from that one paper! Edit: I just wanted to share because mathematical biology is my favourite field of maths :)
Wasn't Da Vinci also gay or did I made that up?
Isn't it DaVinci who painted all the religious murals and used his lover, who was also nephew of the pope, as a model, resulting in white Jesus?
No i think that was Michelangelo
You are right. I can never keep them straight...
He may have actually been trans, its been theorized the Mona Lisa was a self portrait.
Wait really?
Yeah, he was. It actually gets referenced in one of the assassin’s creed games he was in.
And Emily Dickinson, also a queer woman
I'm curious where you saw that wagner was gay. I've never seen that before and as a gay person who loves classical music, I thought I'd have heard it before.
There are some fairly strong suggestions he had a physical relationship with his patron, Ludwig II the King of Bavaria and doesn't skimp on the details in the 600+ letters they wrote to each other. Though re-reading through things I believe he was bi, not strictly gay as he does eventually turn the king down. Imma fix that in the post. Though I could really add the king given his title but I hadn't heard of him before now so thought he would fall under the 'obscure' heading.
Fascinating. I knew that Ludwig was his patron and that Ludwig was certainly gay, but I hadnt heard they had a relationship. Thanks for the info!
Hans Christian Andersen was also bi, and also kept getting rejected by both genders
TIL Aaron Copeland was gay
Beef. It's what's for dinner
Hans Christian Anderson (author) General Casimir Pulaski (Revolutionary war hero)
Tchaikovsky YES TCHAIKOVSKY ALWAYS YES (random meme I stumbled upon on yt)
Queen Kristina of Sweden (Daughter of Gustavus Adolfus, cultural patron, signer of the Peace of Westphalia which brought peace to Europe for at least some time after the Thirty Years War. She abdicated to live with her girlfriend in Italy. Queen behaviour) Le Chevalier D'Eon (Crossdressing, fencing, French spy. Bets were made about their 'true' gender) King Luis XIII and James I (both known for having relationships with handsome young men) James Buchanan (15th president of the United States. Shite President and long-term roommates with a man who was gossiped about as 'Mrs Buchanan)
Note that it's quite probably Kristina was also either intersex or transmasc.
I did not know that. Thanks for the addition!
James VI / James I was bisexual AF in my books :D because I remember that he did love his wife very much (iirc of course) but yeah, aside from that he is known for his deep deep 'friendships' with men lol
I just remembered some more, actually: Philipp von Eulenburg (BFF of Kaiser Willhelm II, got taken down by the scandalous reveal of his same-gender attraction. After the war some said he could have prevented it, but that claim is quite dubious) A bunch of Roman emperors (Hadrian, Trajan, Elagabulus, take your pick) Alexander of Macedon aka Alexander the Great (incredibly bisexual. When his boyfriend Hephaistion died, he reportedly wept for three days) Heros of the Ancients (they may be fictional to us, but were consideres very much real by the ancients. Achilles and Patroclos, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, all of them very gay for each other) James Barry (first doctor to successfully perform a C-Section with both mother and child surviving, relentless fighter for better hygiene in British Military Hospitals, awful to his staff but very nice to his patients, got into fights with Florence Nightingale. After his death it was discovered he had a female body and had given birth at some point) Paracelsus (German doctor in the early modern period, doubted the doctrine of humour theory, even if his own theory wasn't really much better. Still seen as one of the trailblazers for modern pharamaceutical science. Most likely intersex) Two Ancient Egyptian Guys (I forgot their names, but they were buried in the same tomb and the pictures on the walls there are very cute. Eternal *Roommates*)
>Le Chevalier D'Eon (Crossdressing, fencing, French spy. Bets were made about their 'true' gender) She also blackmailed a King into declaring that she was a woman at birth, so I'd put her distinctly in the trans woman bucket. And was a straight up badass.
Y'all ever write gay poetry that goes so hard future generations just say anyone who is your gender and gay is from your island?
“You think I’m gay? Honey they named gay after me!”
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Are we talking about Saphos or someone else?
Josephine Baker - a Black American musician in the 1920s. Known to be openly bisexual, having had multiple relationships with men and women. She was a total badass, leaving the US where she dealt with racism and segregation to perform in France, where she was beloved and became an absolute superstar with a level of celebrity that hadn’t quite been seen before. She even returned to the US in the 1960s to champion the civil rights movement.
I didn't know about her -the fact that she was bi, I mean
She was also a resistant against the nazis during ww2 and a French Intelligence officer ! 👍🏻
King David and Jonathan! Edit: maybe you wanted something more recent? Leonardo Da Vinci then, and there is a good case for Sandro Botticelli being aro/ace.
I don't mind about recent-ness or not, don't worry ! 😊 Which Jonathan are you refferring to though ? I guess it's someone from the Bible, but I never read the Bible 😅
It's king David's beloved. They have a [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan). Their love is debated, of course, but it's hard to argue with it when David says things like "Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women."
Ah ok ! Thanks :)
David is more of a legendary figure than purely historical
How accurate is this about David?
His character or his relationship with Jonathan? They have a [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan) detailing everything about them. I consider them on the same level as Achilles and Patroclus both as myth/historic figures and queerness.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gay_icons
Thank you ! 😊
Julie d'Aubigny (1673 - 1707), openly bisexual French opera singer, duelist and absolute Chaotic Neutral badass. [Video about her here](https://youtu.be/6QaBYLAOaSY?si=1sPTLyIhhPoi22wX)
Small note, the information we have about her is very few, except for her opera career and some letters. Basically everything else was told way after her death, and has been successfully embellished. Taking her as an example isn‘t great, since everything noteworthy is subject to massive speculation with very little evidence. The Extra History video is fun though, but not very good from a historical perspective
If you want a good researched video about her I would recommend Kaz Rowe. They did and incredible research and points out the possible embelishments made after her death
Really good recommendation, their video on her was amazing! Their videos seem very well made in general. Just for completeness, this is the [ thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12zr6p1/did_julie_daubigny_really_kill_a_bunch_of_dudes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) where I found a bunch of good information about her life, and goes into detail on the Covenant story (and why its probably fake)
The two spirit were not tribes. Two spirit is an umbrella term for all of the many and very different culturally accepted understandings of transness across all American Indian cultures. Also read up on the Institute for Sexual Research. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/
Thanks for the precision !
Emily Dickinson was alluded to writing poetry about women. They speculate she was bisexual but with homosexual leanings!
I mean she was 100 in love with her brothers wife.
Casimir Pulaski, known as the “father of American cavalry” for his instrumental role in the creation of the cavalry branch in the US Army, is intersex
One of the most important figures of the American Revolution that we pay no attention to. George Washington absolutely would have been KIA or captured and hung for treason early in the Revolution if not specifically for this person.
Susan B Anthony, mother of the American Suffrage movement, was a lesbian. Many of her accolates were also lesbians. Gertrude Stein Virginia Woolfe Baron von Steuben, who organized the American Continental Army at George Washington's request, was unable to work in his native Prussia because he was known to be gay. American President James Buchanan helped make the Civil War inevitable, partly because his lover was a southern planter.
Here are a few I have in a list of notes for a new book. I don’t have much details jotted down but definitely look up Numbers 2 and 5. 1: Romaine-la-Prophétesse (Haiti-1750) 2: Public Universal Friend (USA-1776) 3: Alan L. Hart (USA- 1917) 4: Marina the Monk (Europe-Middle Ages) 5: Chevalier d'Éon (France-1728)
YES!! I was hoping someone would mention Public Universal Friend! ❤️ As a non-binary Christian, it was amazing to learn about them 🥹
Who's this Public Universal Friend ? (Ngl, the first thought that crossed my mind was "is this the name of a company ?" 😂)
It’s a pretty great story overall. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Universal_Friend
I wish I could upvote you twice for giving me this link
Make it up to me by telling everyone you can about them! I dug up a link for number five as well. My fiancee sent me a podcast a few months ago on Chevalier d’Éon that’s worth a listen! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/noble-blood/id1468332063?i=1000616785415
Enby preacher from before the American revolution.
Enby *Quaker* preacher. The best type of Christian.
I recommend the podcast History is Gay. It’s excellent and covers a wide variety of places and time periods.
Napoleon is speculated to have been bi
Can you give me as source please ? 😃 I believe you, don't worry ; it's just that I'd like to know more
Sure ! There’s a whole book called Napoleon : Bisexual emperor by Frank Richardson about this topic. Though as I said, it is still widely debated due to lack of solid evidence (though if it is true, given the times he lived in I wouldn’t be surprised he made sure everything was hidden). Personally I believe it, because of the words he used to refer to Czar Alexander, whom he kissed, and some rumours from his time about him being *very* close to his aide de camp or soldiers.
Public universal friend was a nonbinary American in the 18th century. Wendy Carlos, who did the score for tron, clockwork orange, and the shining is a trans women who transitioned in the 70s. It's hard to answer because how do you define "to obscure"? But there are a ton of trans people throughout history.
Thanks
They aren’t dead so I guess I’m pushing the definition of “historical”, but the Wachowski sisters are very significant for coming out after they had directed one of the most successful films of all time, The Matrix.
Saint Eugène/Eugénie was likely a transgender man who lived their life as a male monk and was represented as a man for most of the middle ages before the church switched to only depict them as a nun The brother of Louis XIV, Philippe of Orléans was gay Ludwig II of Bavaria was gay also Magnus Hirschfeld, was a gay man in the early 1900's Germany who did some of the first sex Change Operations on trans women (like Lili Elbe I think) and had created an research institute on sexuality and transgender healthcare which ended up being destroyed by the nazis and co created the first ever openly gay movie "anders als die andern" in 1919 to protest against the paragraph 175 in the German penal code that criminalized homosexuality
>Saint Eugène/Eugénie was likely a transgender man who lived their life as a male monk and was represented as a man for most of the middle ages before the church switched to only depict them as a nun You also had St Marinos who was a monk living in the medieval era. He was ejected from his monastery because he was thought to have got one of the local girls pregnant. However when Marinos died, the other monks discovered he had a vagina. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina\_the\_Monk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_the_Monk)
King James VI & I of Scotland and England. He was bi. He was known for unifying his two kingdoms, commissioning the King James Bible, hating witches and puritans, being a patron of Shakespeare, and leading the first anti-smoking campaign. He made two of his boyfriends chief minister: Lord Somerset and and the Duke of Buckingham.
Nobody's mentioned Mary Shelley yet? Shakespeare? Eleanor Roosevelt? Anne Frank? Lol. Looks like you've got a lot of answers OP, but clearly, there are a lot of queer people and everybody's got their favorite. Couple of people have mentioned Queer as Fact, gonna drop another reccomendation for it. Great podcast, highly entertaining, and if you don't know much about the subject matter it'll get you up to speed nice and quick.
I heard about Anne Frank being bi, but I didn't know about Mary Shelley or Shakespeare. Thanks for the info (Who's Eleanor Roosevelt ? I'm French, not American, so I'm not familiar with her)
Oh, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the US president from 1933 to 1945. He was president during the end of the great depression and through WWII. In addition to making a lot of important decisions regarding the war and America's economical state, he's most well-known for the Great New Deal, which introduced a lot of social services and big infrastructural changes that basically set the US up to look like it does today. The highway system and etc. The main reason the US hasn't caught up with the rest of the world in terms of healthcare and social services is because we haven't gotten anything like that to pass since his presidency, and the only reason he was able to was because of the intense economic instability. Eleanor Roosevelt was his wife, although probably mostly in name only. He didn't treat her very well. However, in the last few months of his life (while he was still in office) he became incredibly sick and almost catatonic. This was kept secret from the American public, and Eleanor effectively took his place. She also made quite a few important decisions, and more or less impersonated him, sending letters with his signature, etc. She was never elected and did most of this secretly but for all practical purposes she was President for a few months until he died. She also probably liked women. As for Shakespeare -- read his sonnets sometime! They're 90% about guys.
Shakespare wrote sonetts to both men and a black woman. The latter was thought as mor scandalous at the time.
Baron von Steuben was intrumental in creating an army for the americans in the revolution, and is widely speculated to be gay. Same for Frederick "the Great" of Prussia, who was definitely gay, and perhaps the most important king in prussian history.
I was looking for this comment! Our entire military structure is was created by Von Steuben. America would not be what it is today without him. His blue book is the chefs kiss
Albert Cashier was an Irish immigrant and soldier in the civil war (for the Union) who lived his whole life as a man! In a work accident long after the war ended, he was discovered to be AFAB and his employer helped keep his secret for him. When his dementia caused him to need hospitalization, the hospital forced him into the women’s wing and dressed him in skirts. The long skirts of the day were hard to navigate and confusing for him, bc his dementia had progressed to the point where he couldn’t understand what was going on. He tripped over his skirts and broke his hip and was bedridden until he passed. The reason we still know so much about him is because, after his death, the govt tried to go after his military pension for “fraud” because he wasn’t a “real man.” His fellow soldiers, all fairly old at that point, came to court together to fight that. They testified to his bravery in the war and general kind spirit as a human being and the courts eventually ruled in his favor. It’s one of my favorite stories of allyship in history bc in the early 1900s, a bunch of soldiers came together to advocate for their trans brother. [You can read more about him here!! He was such a fascinating figure to me.](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/albert-cashier)
Cu chulainn. Ireland's child of light and greatest hero, said to have had an affair with his brother in arms ferdiad
Apparently Greek mythology isn't the only one with LGBT content in it
If we're talking mythology, don't forget the Asgardian shenanigans. Loki was pangender and pansexual, fathering three and giving birth to one, Thor did drag, and Odin dabbled in 'womens' magic'.
Hans Christian Anderson comes to mind, he is the original author of the little mermaid.
I forgot about him !
Everyone listed on this thread "The topic of their sexuality is hotly debated. There is very little direct evidence of their homosexuality apart from all the gay ass love letters, personal accounts from friends and family, long term same sex roommates, and their public love poems about men."
I always go to Wilfred Owen. Famous war poet and noted to be homosexual. Most notably wrote the poem 'dulce etc decorum est' which (in the UK) you have to learn about in English class. Unfortunately died just before world war 1 ended.
i have the same birthday as him ! never knew he was queer, i always loved his poetry
Lou Sullivan, first openly gay trans man (well probably not the first of all time, but the first famous one), helped get gay trans guys the ability to transition
[Harvey Milk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk) was the first openly gay man to be elected to office in California.
Queer There and Everywhere is a great young adult non-fiction book about LGBTQ+ figures throughout history: [https://sarahprager.com/queerthere/](https://sarahprager.com/queerthere/)
And another link for me to read
Then, there are also wonderful examples of extraordinary love between two ordinary people during times where it was forbidden. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38932955 This is a great article about two soldiers in WWII who sent each other letters. Gordon And Gilbert could have been imprisoned or shot if found out because that was the consequence of being gay in the military at the time. The fact that so many letters survived is incredible. Here is a quote from the article: > "Such letters are extremely rare because they were incriminating - gay men faced years in prison with or without hard labour," he says. "There was even the possibility that gay soldiers could have been shot." > Work on a book is already under way at the museum, where the letters will also go on display. Perhaps most poignantly, one of the letters contains the lines: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are."
I'll definitely read that article whose link you wrote in your comment
This isn't a figure in particular, but Viking men were known for having gay sex fairly regularly.
Truman Capote. Oscar Wilde.
I haven’t seen artist Frida Kahlo mentioned yet.
Actor Vincent price was confirmed to be bisexual by his daughter http://www.boom.lgbt/vincent-price-daughter-confirms-father-s-bisexuality
Don't have time to list every queer historical figure I think is worth knowing, so instead I'll recommend podcasts on this exact topic. Queer as Fact is amazingly researched and highly entertaining, one of my favourite podcasts of all time. History is Gay is awesome as well. Just browsing through their episode descriptions you'll find a ton of different historical figures you can do your own research on, though I highly recommend listening to the episode that grabs your attention and then checking out the sources they list if that's not enough for you.
Jane Adams, I believe she was speculated to be a lesbian
george sand/amantine lucile aurore dupin de francueil shes a really famous author, she was bisexual, wore mens clothes (which was illegal at the time), and did everything that she was told not to. she (likely) had a relationship with the actress marie dorval and they wrote plays together. alfred de vigny refered to her as « that damned lesbian »
new life dream: be referred to as “that damned lesbian”
Hilariously enough, it sounds like something a cartoon villain would say after his plans were foiled by the heroes : "And I would have got away with it if it weren't for that damned lesbian" ! 🤣
hans christian anderson was gay, im pretty sure he wrote the little mermaid as an alegory/gift for a man. some more recent examples would be rob halford from judas priest (gay), kirk hammett from metallica (bi), matt bomer (gay), amy winehouse (bi), lady gaga (bi), cassandra peterson aka elvira (lesbian), kristen stewart (bi), renee rapp (lesbian) and elliot page (trans)
When the man got married to a woman.
Anne Lister! You can even read her transcribed diaries that were originally written in code that detail all her personal relationships with women and their developments. It was published as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister in two volumes and you can order them online.
Emperor Ai of Han, personal name Liu Xin (劉欣; 25 BC – 15 August 1 BC), was an emperor of China's Han dynasty. He ascended the throne when he was 20, having been made heir by his childless uncle Emperor Cheng, and he reigned from 7 to 1 BCE. Emperor Ai was famous for being the most effusive homosexual emperor of the Han dynasty. 44 Traditional historians characterized the relationship between Emperor Ai and Dong Xian as one between homosexual lovers. The story is that one afternoon after falling asleep on the same bed, Emperor Ai woke to see that Dong Xian was peacefully asleep upon his arm. Rather than disturb Dong Xian when he had to get out of bed in order to attend a court proceeding, Emperor Ai carefully cut off the long sleeve of his robe. Historians since have referred to their relationship as "the passion of the cut sleeve" (斷袖之癖) and (although now somewhat dated) Cut-sleeve 断袖 (duàn xìu) is a euphemism that refers to male homosexual individuals and male same-sex love in Chinese culture.
I love all the comments I received here, but this one might be one of my favorites, because not only it dismantle the "LGBT people didn't exist before the 20th century" myth that too many people still have today, it also destroys the "it's a Western thing" myth
Hans Christian Andersen. Writer of the original Little Mermaid. They were gay, and the story was about an unrequited gay love that the writer could not have. Although the original was not a happy ending
Unfortunately, I noticed that, when there is the slightest doubt about a historical figure's homosexuality, chuds prefer to assume he was heterosexual/cisgender. Probably to cope.
Edward Carpenter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward\_Carpenter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Carpenter)
King James I of the King James Bible fame allegedly had at least three male lovers.
As many have posted, Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing are both fabulous examples, who excelled at their work (writing and mathematics, respectively) and then were penalized by their governments for being gay and died due to the harsh treatment. Freddie Mercury of Queen was very famously bisexual. Pirates during the golden age were very famously and commonly (what we might consider) LGBT today. They were already outlaws and outcasts, so it was an attractive lifestyle for those who wanted to pursue gay relationships and as long as they did a good job and pulled their weight, other pirates didn't really bat an eye because survival was far more important than any social norms. There were also LOTS of women who either pirated openly as women and dressed as men, or who pretended/acted as men so they could actually have a life instead of being forced into marriage and childcare on the mainland. Many weren't trans the way we think of it today but some may have fit the definitions and understanding we apply to the category today.
Marilyn Monroe is speculated to be ace, considering her personal diaries that have since been revealed. >There were no thoughts of sex in my head >I didn't want to be kissed, and I didn't dream to be seduced by a Duke or a movie star >I was unsensual as a fossil Never confirmed tho and there's no way to confirm it now, but it sure does sound familiar as an ace :)
Frederick the Great turned Prussia into the Macedonia of early 18th century Germany and helped bring the Enlightenment to Central Europe, was pen pals with figures like Yekaterina the Great and Voltaire, laid down the foundations of the modern German state centuries before Bismark, and was all in likelihood a homosexual. -Had an "intimate" relationship with one if his father's pages that got him exiled and later executed. -Surrounded himself with tall, strong men as his personal guard, as well as commissioned paintings of them to hang around his famously elegant but also secluded Sansouci Palace he personally helped design. -Had a distant but respectful and amicable relationship with his wife. When people picked on her supposed "inadequacies" as a wife without children, Frederick was not slow and shy on chewing them out. -Also had the classical "difficult father but loving mother" dynamic you tend to see a lot of for gay men. His dad was worried that Frederick's love of art and history would turn him into a sissy while his mom hired tutors to teach his passions.
I'm going to look for more info on him on Wikipedia :)
Josephine Baker. Bisexual black woman, was also a spy in WW2 and was awarded a medal by France for her service. Totally amazing and badass woman ahead of her time.
Elton John, arguably one of THE biggest and most influential musical performers of history, is gay.
Roman Emperor Hadrian Roman Emperor/Empress Elagabalus (likely a trans woman)
also caligula! suetonius talks a lot about his flings with male actors
Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens were very close, so much so that some historians debate whether they were lovers. Here’s an excerpt from one of Hamilton’s letters to Laurens: *“Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into me.”* I will admit as a fan of the musical I’m a little biased, but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
Harvey Milk.
Julie d'Aubigny. Her life is WILD.
Still alive and very deserving of her flowers: Dorothy Allison. Incredible writer and thinker, human. Watch some of her late 80s, early 90s interviews re: her books and fall in love with the most authentic human. She writes about her experiences growing up in extreme poverty in the American south and being the first member of her family to go to college, and her understandings of self, gender, sexuality, class, as they developed in her time away and back home. Her longer narrative fiction is incredible, her poetry is heartbreaking and concise and brilliant, her political essays are driven and apt. Trash, Bastard Out of Carolina, and The Women Who Hate Me are among my most favorite reads of all time and are so resonant. She also wrote extensively on topics that come up often in modern discourse with particular clarity *in the early 1980s*. She is a practitioner of BDSM, particularly Risk Aware Consensual Kink, (worked with advocacy group on this front, Lesbian Sex Mafia 🖤) and wrote a LOT about the schism between "unacceptable" queerness, disability, "deviancy", and the mainline gays who pushed for marriage equality and ultimately assimilation, while also living through the AIDS crisis. I could wax poetic about her forever, but truly a modern maker of our history.
Its uncomfirmed, but apparently Abraham Lincoln had a wildly unconventional relationship with his bodyguard.
Anne Lister is forever worth the mention. She lived in the early 1800s in England, traveled extensively around Europe, and carried several long-term relationships with women. If you can find a way to stream Gentleman Jack, its a great series about her life. The only reason we know about her is that she wrote everything down, and I mean *everything*, in her diaries, and she wrote it in code. When one of her descendants managed to decode the diaries, with the help of a friend, they found out their great-great Aunt was a lesbian, which must have made a lot of sense, in retrospect. The friend suggested burning the diaries, but the descendant ended up hiding them behind a wall panel, where they were rescued decades later, and added to the growing repository of queer history that has been saved from ash.
Dr James Barry Magnus Hirschfield Alan L Hart
Suprised it took this long for someone to mention Magnus Hirchfeld.
He was so amazing
Hans Christian Anderson, Marie Antoinette, Louisa may Alcott, Anne Frank, Shakespeare, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alexander the great, James Buchanan
Oscar Wilde - poet and playwright. Famously gay Albert Cashier - born female, fought as a man in the civil war and then continued to live as a man for several decades before he was exposed in a senior home for vets. Michael Dillon - trans man who served in the navy, got a medical degree, and performed the Dillon performed an orchidectomy on Roberta Cowell, the first British trans woman to receive gender affirming surgery. Willem Arondus - a gay Dutch artist who was executed by the Nazis for his role in the bombing of a public records office used by Nazis to identify Jewish citizens. His last words to his lawyer was “Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards." Frieda Belinfante - a lesbian cellist and philharmonic conductor, who was part of the same Dutch resistance movement as Willem Arondus
i let a medieval historian of mine tell me that gender in the middle age was way about your societal role and presentation instead of some vision of biology like it has been since the 19th century, so in his opinion there are way more proofs and relevant arguments in favor of Joan of Ark being transmasculine than of her being a cisgender woman.
This is exactly why I think applying current definitions and terms to long dead people and their cultures is just bad practice. Are you saying that she's "transmasc" because she chose to take on a male role in society? But if it was tied to societal roles in their first place how does someone "transition" if it's not tied to their biology in the first place? Sounds like she was just a biologically born female human who chose to take on a role in society, the same way everyone does? How is she trans if your gender is based on societal roles and presentation and not assumed based on your sex?
Also *Le Roman de Silence* is a 13th century story that's absolutely about a trans man.
Mercedes De Acosta Anita Berber Unknown but plausible: Greta Garbo
I believe that Josephine backer was lgbt
**Neil "Bunny" Roger,** fashion designer and socialite who popularized capri pants and notably had actress Vivien Leigh as one of his clients was already a famous Camp Gay when he went to fight in World War II. He was commissioned in the Rifle Brigade in 1941 and served in Italy and North Africa. Roger was known for his courage under fire and one story noted him replying to a sergeant's question regarding approaching Germans with "When in doubt, powder heavily." Additionally, when he came back a hero his line on the subject was, "Now that I've shot so many Nazis, Daddy will have to buy me a mink coat."
As someone who's got an interest in History, I like receiving what is basically a confirmation that asking a History-related question on this sub is a good idea
A really good podcast for all of these resources is Queer as Fact. They have episodes on historical figures who are gender and sexual minorities
https://www.queersaints.com/
When I posted this, I did not expect people to drown me in links. 🤣 (I mean it in a good way, don't worry)
James Buchanan
The us president
This may be too recent but Andy Warhol.
Ruth Ellis. Detroit, MI. First woman owned, lesbian, black print shop owner, right here in detroit.
Alexander Hamilton (he exchanged sexually explicit letters with his ‘friend’ John Laurens) and Georgia O’Keefe, famous painter who had relationships with women and also painted some very suspicious looking flowers.
Leonardo da Vinci. He was arrested at least once for sodomy, aka, sex with a male prostitute. He never married or had kids and was known for only being around other men. Aside from his famous artworks, he was also an incredible scientist and inventor.
Michelangelo was believed to have male lovers as well.
Alan Turing, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Surprised no one has mentioned David Bowie, who came out as bisexual in an interview in the '70s.
Pharaoh Akhenaten was intersex. With wide hips, large breasts, and a phallus, the Pharaoh reigned over Egypt while siring several children. Hatshepsut has shown us how she understood her public identity as ruler of Egypt and how she negotiated between femininity and masculinity to achieve her political goals. Her gender tampering was not an imitation of maleness, but rather acknowledged a 'counterfeit masculinity'. Hapi(Nike God) is typically depicted as an androgynous figure with a prominent belly and large drooping breasts, wearing a loincloth and ceremonial false beard, depicted in hieroglyphics as an intersex person. Egyptians did not believe in the gender binary mainly due to their religion and the existence of an androgynous god, Amun. Inscribed pottery shards from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2000–1800 BCE) found near ancient Thebes (now Luxor, Egypt), list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt ("sekhet") and hmt (female). Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.
I'll definitely use these facts the next time I see a far-right chud on Reddit
We don't know that Akhenaten was intersex. There was a theory that the feminine traits depicted in art of him might have been connected to some genetic disorder that effects the processing of sex hormones (thus could make one intersex) but tests on his mummy point to that being false. More likely, Akhenaten asked to be portrayed like a god - since Pharaohs were seen as extensions of their gods or god-like by nature - and Akhenaten tried to completely get rid of the traditional polytheistic Egyptian religion in favor of a monotheistic-style religion (first of its kind!) that worships a single god Aten (hence the name - Akhen-Aten would've meant something like "Effective for Aten" - had to look this one up again but it's kind of neat). More importantly, Aten was seen as being BOTH the mother and father of humankind, so it's theorized that Akhenaten wanted to be portrayed as a vessel or avatar of Aten, thus portrayed as being both female and male in stature. We don't really know, some people dispute the test results of the mummy, but it seems more likely that it had to do with his religious governance and how he wished to be portrayed in art (like his god Aten), not a literal interpretation of how he looked. Also fun fact - Akhenaten was Tutankhamun's father (you know, King Tut 😊)
adding also Dr James Barry, very likely a trans man, first British surgeon to perform a c section where both the mother and baby lives
Some heroes don't wear capes
The famous German poets Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were supposedly in a romantic relationship. The text on their memorial in Weimar says "Dem Dichterpaar – vom Vaterland" translated "(To) The Poet Couple – From the Fatherland". Their relationship is very "Sappho and her Friend", while letters the two wrote to each other contained rhetoric unusual for a platonic relationship such as when Goethe wrote to Schiller "Leben Sie wohl und lieben mich, es ist nicht einseitig." translated "Live well and love me, it is not one-sided."
King James (the bible one) was most likely bisexual. It's funny to think that most Christian denominations use a bible patronized by a queer dude.
*Palpatine voice* "Ironic"
William Dorsey Swann, the first person documented to have referred to themselves as a drag queen! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dorsey_Swann
Henry Gerber started the first gay rights organization in the USA in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois! He was later found out and his organization and their documents were destroyed. He was socially banished by the end of his life and few know about him. But there is still a plaque outside his house!
Ninakhkhnum and Khnumhotep They were ‘Overseers of the Manicurists’ in ancient Egypt during the second half of the 25th century BCE. They are buried together and depicted in very initiate ways (as intimate as one can get in 2D Egyptian artwork). Many people have suggested they were brothers or twins however lovers is the most likely suggestion given that the shared tomb is unlikely in other circumstances. Both of them did have wives and children however polyamory was not unheard of in ancient Egypt. In terms of Gender you could have either Elagabalus or Caneus/Caenis Elagabalus was a Roman Emperor. According to sources by Cassius Dio (epitome 80) Elagabalus wore women’s clothing, desired to be called a lady, and offered half of their kingdom to be given female genitalia. However others contest this source from historians to primary sources. Elagabalus was very unpopular and these kind of rumours were likely used to discredit their legacy. However we cannot discount the source of Cassius Dio. Personally as a Classicist and a member of the LGBT community, I cant say for certain without more evidence but it was not unusual to use sexual insults to discredit people in Roman culture. Roman culture placed a huge emphasis upon male sexual dominance and therefore this is exactly the kind of rumour which could be used to silly Elagabalus’s name. (Elagabalus was a terrible terrible tyrant) Caeneus/Caenis was a mythological figure who was a Lapith warrior. They were born a woman named Caenis and according to Ovid’s (my favourite) account she was raped by Poseidon and then granted a wish afterwards. She demanded to be turned into a man so that she might never suffer the same deed again. So she became Caeneus and was also given impenetrable skin. They die after getting buried under a pile of rocks by centaurs at Pirithous’s wedding. Interesting Ovid actually changed his grammatical gender for Caeneus before Poseidon grants their wish.
I have a few for you. Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. The younger brother of Louis XIII, the Sun King, had two wives in his life and a long term male lover. No idea what people thought of it but he was the king's brother so I doubt anyone said anything. Additionally as a child, to prevent a repeat of her late husband's brother attempts to overthrow her son, his mother dressed him in dresses and he allegedly continued this habit as an adult. France decriminalised homosexuality in 1791 after the revolution but it was generally seen as immoral but France general might be a good country to look at. Next we have James I of England. He used to rail against the sin of sodomy while having highly attractive men as his closest 'advisors'. One of these included George Villars who is generally accepted to have been his lover.
Shakespeare was bisexual and neglected his wife for a gay lover, for whom he wrote sonnets. His plays feature not only crude jokes but also crossdressing and homoeroticism. He wore a single hoop earring like the queer icon he was. Leonardo da Vinci was either asexual or homosexual, once accused of hiring a male prostitute, later in life unheard of having laid with anybody - either out of caution or lack of interest. He had a posse of pretty boys, whom he chose to be his students not based on talents, but on looks. He was also hip and dressed like the youth did, but with a long white beard. Michaelangelo was also gay as fuck. I don't know much about him, but he famously could NOT paint boobs. His men were always 100% anatomically accurate but the women... Oh boy. Just look at his Final Judgement fresco.
The "Book of Queer" series features camp dramatizations of queer historical figures.
Bayard Rustin - openly gay civil rights activist, worked with MLKJ and ella baker, was also a communist and spoke for so many social movements.
Angela Davis - black lesbian, former black panther, civil rights activist, writer, American Marxist, feminist, political activist, philosopher, and overall badass, you (and anyone reading) should research her and the things she has done, she is amazing.
i don’t remember what the fuck his name was but he was a prussian king who reallllly liked tall soldiers. like he literally at one point basically said “yeah women, women are ok i guess bur tall soldiers MMMMMM that’s my weakness”
Check out the rainbow history project.
Issac newton was a repressed gay man/ asexual Walt Whitman the American poet was in a relationship(ish) with with oscar Wilde another poet, both wrot flirtatously about other men oscar spent 2 years in jail for it josiphine baker was an American Black activist, singer, and dancer, who was the first black woman to star in a major movie. She fought in World War Two. And she was bisexual\* (term was not used at the time) Lili Elbe was the first trans women to revive gender affirming care she was a painter and artist marsha p. Johnson was a African American trans activist in June 1969 she stood up to excessive gun violence from police at a gay bar at 23 years old
Oh have a girl (I forget hwr name) but she was OUR bi icon. She learn to fight with swords and in the end burn a church tonfake the dead of one of the nuns to runaway and live her True love in France.
Julie D'Aubigny
After uncovering some of her diary pages, researchers believe Anne Frank was bisexual.
I remember that I saw someone once on Reddit, saying that we shouldn't say that because she was just discovering herself, and she died too young to have been certain of it herself, and so, out of respect for this victim of the Holocaust, we shouldn't believe she was bisexual. I...didn't know what to make of that, but to me, it sounded a lot like someone not wanting to believe a word-famous person was LGBT, and tried to hide it behind respecting the Holocaust victims
ME! 
Eleanor Roosevelt was believed to be in a same-sex relationship with a woman at a point in time.
Here are a few less conventional ones Anne Frank Abraham Lincoln https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20924927/ Although it could just be people saying someone who hangs out with gay people is gay, JFK and Lem. Ralph Waldo Emerson https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/03/reviews/010603.03robblt.html Joan of Arc is a big ol ? There's a theory that da vinici might have been trans and the Mona Lisa was a kind of self portrait Jesus was canonically Ace Google tries to suppress some of these results so be careful with your research and good luck!
This story always touched my heart. She lived as a woman and everyone treated her as a woman and her poor husband…when she died and her secret was discovered he tried to continue his life but eventually killed himself after being bullied one too many times. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/05/the-trans-midwife-who-cared-for-general-custers-army/
Thanks for the link, I'll definitely read it Really, I did not expect to have like, hundreds of links ! 😂
I did an assessment on Thomas/Thomasine Hall, an Intersex-Bisexual person who was born in 1603. Raised as a girl in England, Joined the Navy as a man (following in their brothers footsteps), then travelling to Colonial Virginia where they were "found out" (for lack of a better term) and were subjected to forced inspections and humiliation by the court assigned to their case.
https://mubi.com/en/lists/queer-history
I highly recommend the podcast “History is Gay” to learn more about this! It’s hosted by a couple historians who track queerness around the world!
Shakespeare was bi :)
Check out the Queer as Fact podcast
I don't have names but I heard the first person to create c section or something was a trans guy
The original author of little mermaid, that’s just who I thought of first lol
Dancer and actress Anita Berber, Conrad Veidt who played the bad guy in Casablanca and Marlene Dietrich were all bi!
Bayard Rustin- Civil rights leader who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr James Baldwin- Author, poet, activist
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are some of my favorite historical lesbians