She Has Grown Up 🥺🫶✨ @eviltanguyan

It's been three months since I made this post about Saints Sergius and Bacchus, John Boswell, classical Western homoeroticism, and Christian homophobia.

Since then I have read both of Boswell's books on the history of gay/queer people in premodern Christianity (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe), familiarized myself more fully with the spectrum of charges against Boswell and his scholarship, and realized that he's been the subject of ideologically-motivated smear campaigns by just about every political/religious/academic faction you can imagine. My conclusion: Professor Boswell is a saint, martyr, and important queer elder who does not get the respect that he deserves, and I'm in awe of the sheer volume of the massive genius brain that was somehow crammed into his little blond head.

ANYWAY. This is an official followup to my original post, now that I've read Boswell's work.

I take back my hunch that Boswell's work was not intersectional. He was, in fact, a pioneer in the field of medieval social history, and utilized a wide range of critical lenses in his work. He was inhibited by the lack of documented evidence about some groups (for example, he was frequently criticized for not writing more about lesbians, but he was open about the difficulties of researching lesbians in history and explained what he was doing as a scholar and as a teacher to mitigate this) but he constantly called attention to issues of class, gender, and other social factors wherever they were relevant.

I was RIGHT in noticing that the slight difference in rank between Sergius and Bacchus seems to be an erastes/eromenos indicator! Boswell spoke at greater length and with greater sensitivity about erastes/eromenos dynamics in history, so if you want a deeper look into that, you should read his books.

I was also probably right in noticing that the legend of Sergius and Bacchus is seeded with various forms of Byzantine propaganda! I really wish that I could talk to him about it. :(

Both secular queer theorists and religious queer theologians seem to be most uncomfortable with the fact that Boswell was reporting on historical facts and observable social forces, not idealized concepts of queer people as somehow being more ethical or spiritual than the straight majority. He included evidence of things like abuse, prostitution, and exploitation not because he thought they were cool, but because they were part of the material reality of queer people's existence in the past, just like they were part of the material reality of his own 70s-80s gay subculture.

That was his bottom line: gay/queer people are a normal human variation, and as a historian, he could provide hard proof of their existence and what their lives might have been like. If his work seems "shallow" or "dated" to some more modern queer researchers, it's only because so many people were willing to dismiss his scholarship, reject his work, and abandon his research leads after he died. But, he was actually super smart and his scholarship was actually meticulous, so even his most dedicated critics have been unable to "debunk" him. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality most recently had a 35th-anniversary reprinting, and he is still being cited as an authority by more recent scholars.

Even though the full strength of the Church and the Academy were leveled against him, his work has proven its own worth. He still deserves to be read and discussed by both professional scholars and enthusiastic hobbyists. And, the Open and Affirming movement in Christianity wouldn't be as strong as it is without his confirmation that "gays and lesbians are normal," as he put it, and not simply a construct of modern society.

Rest in power, Professor Boswell. We won't forget you.

Since I made that post, I have also opened a sticker shop with a bunch of queer Christian saint icons, including Boswell and some of the queer saints he discovered/wrote about. They're pretty cool. You should buy one.

rereading htn right now

I love when I’m wearing shorts and men see my hairy legs and literally grimace it’s so funny. I hope my legs get even hairier just to piss em off

“The process of opening up is essential to any notion of a spiritual life. You open and open again. And then you open again. To love. To friendship. To teachers and learning. To safety. To new experience. To growth and to change. To the reality of your life and your place in the world. To changing the story of your life, if necessary. To trust. To faith. To intimacy. To responsibility. Opening of the hearts, juman and animal.” -Jon Katz . . . . . . #mylifeinbaja #getoutside #rewild #rewildyourlife #adventure #horse #horsesbyjose #bajacalifornia #beherenow (at La Mision, Baja California, Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoAigfpPs1P/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

There's no meme. This is just a chair.

Many such cases. It's ironic that reactionaries are the greatest enforcers of gender ideology

i'm probably overreacting a little but i hate when men try to flirt with me like even if they're nice it makes me soso uncomfortable to a degree i'm not sure is justified. just. don't look at me like that. don't say i'm pretty. don't touch me. i'm convinced some men do not know body language or conversational clues at ALL like can you really not tell i'm not interested?????

When ur mutuals w/ some cool ass people rb if u agree

Reblog if you’re gay. Or if you think it’d be cool to have a pet dinosaur.

something bout. how even Christ did not carry the cross alone.