history

I love stumbling across alternative-sexuality history lessons. I love it because we're absent from most history accounts, due both to censorship and to our predecessors' desire for their own privacy.  And then sexually liberated people and conservative reactionaries end up with the same misguided belief that rampant, shameless sexuality is something Westerners invented in the 1960's.

So I highly recommend Tony Perrottet's recent article for Slate.com, "Hellfire Holidays," about the sex clubs of 18th-century Britain.  As Perrottet reports,

"Sadly, during the prudish Victorian era, most references to these naughty clubs were scotched from the historical record.  Horrified relatives burned embarrassing documents and club regalia. But their subversive antics survived in pornographic novels, travel guides to risqué tourist sites, and, of course, popular memory."

When most people first fall into an alternate-sex community, it does feel exotic and revolutionary.  But seriously, the novelty and "naughtiness" wear off after a couple years.  Despite getting off on exoticism, and despite mainstream shock, we the currently living haven't invented anything new.  We have antecedents' example to follow and adapt; we simply have to study history that didn't make it to our textbooks.

For all the increasing mainstream news coverage of polyamory, most articles still take the perspective of "exposing" something very new and innovative.  Which I understand, because most people haven't heard of us.  I've had a lot of positive coming-out experiences to a lot of open-minded people, but I've never come to out to anyone outside the BDSM Scene without having to explain what "polyamory" actually means.  Certainly the campaign for visibility is a relatively recent phenomenon.  The word was only coined in 1990, and The Ethical Slut only published in 1997.  Before that, the terms "polygamy" oddly classified us with authoritative patriarchies (like Mormons), or phrases like "open relationship" inappropriately trivialized our "secondary" partners. Even "open relationships" get sensationalized as a modern phenomenon; a recent CNN article claims, "The 1970s introduced the concept of 'open marriage.'" (Emphasis mine.)

By Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Sep 8 (IPS) - Juana Azurduy or Manuela Sáenz, Bartolina Sisa or Gertrudis Bocanegra, Luisa Cáceres or Policarpa Salavarrieta - these heroines attest to the participation of women in the struggle for Latin America’s independence from Spain, a revolutionary movement that began two centuries ago this year.

But at the same time, their celebration embodies the shroud that political and historical accounts have thrown over the countless unnamed women who fought or suffered in the quarter-century long process spanning from 1809 to 1824, like in so many other periods of history.

On Jul. 14, Argentine president Cristina Fernández granted Lieutenant Colonel Juana Azurduy (1780-1862) a posthumous promotion to the rank of general. Azurduy lost five of her six children while she fought for the independence of Upper Peru, present-day Bolivia, which at the end of the colonial period was part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata and under the direction of Buenos Aires.

Two years earlier, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa had also granted a posthumous promotion to general to another revolutionary woman, Manuela Sáenz (1797-1856), who is known in history as the "immortal love" of Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) and who held the rank of colonel in the liberation army.

Correa’s promotion was granted as part of the commemoration of the anniversary of the 1822 Battle of Pichincha, in which the Quito-born heroine fought.

"That’s not history, it’s politics," Inés Quintero, assistant director of the Venezuelan Academy of History, told IPS. "The role of women in the movement for independence is not vindicated by granting a title to an individual woman. That makes no sense, because history is not about settling scores," she argued.

Instead, the researcher said, "as women’s issues pay off in terms of the visibility that women are demanding, there are certain icons - these heroines - that are incorporated as part of the rhetoric, to give the impression that something is being done about the situation of women."