They Weren't Just Friends!
Four queer history experts explain the erasure of sapphic relationships in the past and the importance of efforts to highlight them today
From the Greek poet Sappho to 20th century footballer Lily Parr, history is full of women who were romantically and sexually attracted to other women. Unfortunately, like other queer peoples, queer
Leila J Rupp women have found themselves erased from the history books, their lovers dismissed as ‘just friends’. But vital work is being done to ensure these stories are restored to the historical narrative. We spoke to four LGBTQ+ history experts about historical queer women and why queer histories are so important.
Amelia Possanza
Harper-Hugo Darling
Kirsty Loehr is a writer based in Brighton in the United Kingdom. She is the author of A Short History Of Queer Women that explores the history of queer women through a comedic lens.
Leila J Rupp is a historian, feminist and Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California. She is the author of Sapphistries: A Global History Of Love Between Women, among other works.
Amelia Possanza is the author of Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir In Archives which explores seven stories of love between women. She also works as a publicist.
Harper-Hugo Darling is the founder and head-writer of Making Queer History, a site that explores LGBTQ+ history through a series of informed articles and podcast episodes.
LJR: The very concept of “queer women” needs to be analysed first, because it means something particular in a contemporary context. From a historical perspective, we use the term to mean other-than-heterosexual women and what we would now call “nonbinary” people assigned female at birth. Because, of course, people didn’t until relatively recently identify as “queer” or “nonbinary,” although throughout time there have been a range of labels for women known or suspected to love and desire other women.
AP: Queer women, and members of the broader queer community, have been present for so many of the big “textbook” events in American history, from the Civil War to the Great Depression to World War II to the March on Washington. We’ve even had some events that are uniquely ours, like the Stonewall Riots and the AIDS crisis. That said, the lesbians I studied and wrote about pushed me to go beyond analysing the role queer people have played in the moments emphasised by traditional historians. Queer lives throughout history have been marked by a pract
