Don’t Omit LGBTQIA+ History From Your Curriculum

Stop me if you have heard this before: Your history curriculum is largely ignoring a marginalized group. This time we aren’t talking about women or ethnic minorities. We are talking about members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Contrary to what some prominent figures would have you believe, homosexual, transgender, and non-binary individuals have always been among us predating even the terms we use to describe them by thousands of years. From pre-history to classical antiquity, to the Middle Ages, to the colonial period, to today, they have always been relevant, yet our history classes don’t often reflect that.

What are some examples of this?

WWII is by far the most discussed war in both academics and pop-culture. The Holocaust is also widely discussed but primarily as a genocide of Jewish people … and that is definitely mostly what it was. Did you know that gay males were also a target of Hitler? Germany had a relatively vibrant gay community prior to the Nazi takeover. After the Nazis rose to power, gay men, like Jewish people, were rounded up and put into prison or camps. They were given badges too but instead of yellow star, they received a pink triangle. Today the pink triangle has been reclaimed by the community and can be seen at pride celebrations, but most straight people who see it are usually oblivious to the history behind it.

Just like the suffrage movement for women and the Civil Rights Movement for African Americans, the LGBTQIA+ community has its own long struggle for equality. The Stonewall riots are a great place to start for someone who intends to teach the subject. Most Americans can’t even tell you what it is.

Their history is more than their marginalization. Prominent figures throughout history have identified as LGBTQIA+ and/or have been retroactively identified as such by historians. Ancient Greece and Rome were relatively accepting of homosexuality to a certain degree. Many of the famous leaders and philosophers we teach about in history class would be considered homosexual by today’s metrics. And in many cases, these were not shadow indulgences but consequential relationships in their lives.

History is not short on examples of transgender people either. They tend to be harder to find because they often were only discovered upon their death, but we do know of quite a few. Also, many ancient cultures and civilizations have terms that roughly translate to “third sex” which is often an explicit reference to an individual who presents in a gender opposite or adjacent to their sex at birth. History is littered with stories of women disguising themselves as men to go into battle and while we have reduced many of these stories to folksy tales of patriotism, many of these cross-dressing women actually continued to live as men after those wars indicating they were indeed transgender. Of course, in our patriarchal world, there are many practical reasons for a woman to live as a man historically but few reasons for a man to live as a woman, but we still find examples. And in places where it was less stigmatized, we find even more examples.

Including LGBTQIA+ history in your lessons isn’t just about saying this person was gay or this person was transgender. It is about including their contributions to history and not omitting relevant parts of their identity just because it doesn’t conform to relationship or gender norms. We live in a time where even the most benign pushes to be inclusive can be interpreted as some kind of conspiracy, but the fact of the matter is LGBTQIA+ people are here, have always been, and how you feel about that is largely irrelevant in a history class. The curriculum should include them and reflect that.