The Past is a Foreign Country—And It’s Bisexual

In my article on Billy Breakenridge, I used the term “gay” for the ease of modern readers. This is historically incorrect. Sexual preference as identity did not exist in his time period.

In the past, sex was an activity, not an identity. It was something you did, it didn’t define who you were. And love was fluid. Just because you loved a man this week didn’t mean you couldn’t be in love with a woman next week. And vice versa.

Everyone was expected to marry and have children, of course, as that continued families’ generational wealth, land, businesses, etc. 

But whom you loved was not so simple. 

There is a long tradition of men loving men and women loving women in America. Off the top of my head, there’s Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Jane Addams and many other women in ‘Boston Marriages’. Yes, it was so common there was a term for two women living together in long term relationships.

In fact, starting out “petting” with a same-sex partner as teenagers together, and then marrying someone of a different sex as an adult, was considered a normal, natural progression. 

I used to possess an article from a San Francisco newspaper circa 1912 or so wherein the male writer said girls should be encouraged to kiss other girls because it was good practice and made them better kissers for their future husbands. I lost it in a move and have yet to rediscover it online, but I swear it’s true.

But sodomy was sinful, you might protest. So was lust. Sex merely for animal gratification was the sin. People in love assumed that didn’t apply to them. They were in love.

Being categorized according to whom you had sex with didn’t start becoming A Thing until the turn of the 20th century. Even then, the early 1900s were still surprisingly tolerant. Most people don’t realize the rabid, virulent homophobia of the mid to late 20th century ¹ didn’t always run rampant in American society. 

For example, there was a “Pansy Craze” in the late 1920s-early 1930s, when effeminate men were socially accepted and popular. 

In 1882, the socially accepted and popular Oscar Wilde toured the American West giving lectures on art and aesthetics. 

His audience—rough, tough cowboys and miners—absolutely loved him.

While Wilde personally was unique, queer folk were all over the West. I have the receipts to prove this statement, but since October is LGBTQ+ History Month, why not go right to the source and read the experts?

Presenting a limited² bibliography of books on the subject: 

• ANGEL ON A FREIGHT TRAIN A Story of Faith and Queer Desire in Nineteenth-Century America by Peter C. Baldwin 
• FRONTIER COMRADES From the Fur Trade to the Ford Car by Jim Wilke (this just came out so I haven’t read it yet, but it looks good)
• INTIMATE MATTERSA History of Sexuality in America 3rd Edition by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman 
• LONG BEFORE STONEWALL Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early Americaedited by Thomas A. Foster
• MALE-MALE INTIMACY IN EARLY AMERICA Beyond Romantic Friendships by William Benemann 
• MANLY LOVE Romantic Friendship in American Fiction by Axel Nissen
• MEN IN EDEN William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade by William Benemann 
• QUEER COWBOYSand Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Chris Packard
• RE-DRESSING AMERICA’S FRONTIER PAST by Peter Boag
• SAME-SEX AFFAIRS Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest by Peter Boag 
• SEX BEFORE SEXUALITY A Premodern History by Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay 
• UNRULY DESIRES American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sailby William Benemann 
• WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER by Hugh Ryan
• WHEN WE FOUND EACH OTHER Gay Men in 19th Century America by William Benemann 

By the way, effeminate cowboys appeared as heroes in early Hollywood movies. Watch 1912’s Algie the Miner if you don’t believe me.

However, after the Hays Code, queer characters had to be hidden, their existence only revealed to the audience through coded clues. 

How queer-coding relates to the Tombstone saga is the topic of another blog episode.

Stay tuned! Or subscribe! (Marketing! It’s subtle! LOL)

1. THE LAVENDER SCARE The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson  ↩︎
2. Because I was researching gay men, the books I read, and therefore this list, skew toward that subject, but there were also lesbians, women presenting as men, and men presenting as women throughout the West and some of these books do represent the wider community. These are also just the ones whose information I had nearby. There are MANY more books on the subject. If you have a favorite, please list it in the comments. I’d love to read it. ↩︎