Queer as folklore, p.28
Queer as Folklore, page 28
For female heroes, we see a legacy going back to ancient heroines, defying feminine archetypes and creating characters that eschew marriage and familial duties in pursuit of adventure or friendship with other women. Warrior woman, ‘vigorous maidens’, Amazonian queens, all have been a beacon for queer women since at least the nineteenth century, and their stories directly led to the inception of the likes of Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy and Catwoman. Even when framed by men, heavily sexualised and created for a presumed male audience, the female superhero has unshakable connections with the history of lesbianism and queer women that predate the modern characters and tropes.
The superhero is a representation of everyday people, simply exaggerated and made more vivid. It therefore represents humanity in all its facets, so queerness is as much a part of the modern superhero as X-ray vision, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and radioactive spider bites.
As for today’s remixed heroes, Phil Jimenez, a gay comic-book artist known for his work on Wonder Woman and X-Men comic series, told me:
Inherent in the DNA of super-heroes is transformation. Many superheroes transform from someone mild and meek and hidden into who they truly are − often super-powerful, brazenly garbed, with a code name and powers and presence to match their colorful uniforms. Super-heroes are a terrific metaphor for coming out, and for transness/transition.
Beyond that, another important aspect of super-heroes is the fantastical, the outrageous, the whimsical; the opposite of mundanity. Many LGBTQ people (clearly not all) connect with these concepts through self-expression, coded language, media representation, personal fantasy, and the like − and make super-heroes a perfect vehicle to explore queerness across the spectrum of experience.
PART 5
And They All Lived Happily Ever After …
‘I am intrigued, Geoffrey,’ she said. ‘Why do you want to be a witch instead of a wizard, which is something traditionally thought of as a man’s job?’
‘I’ve never thought of myself as a man, Mistress Tiffany. I don’t think I’m anything. I’m just me,’ he said quietly.
From The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
13
Five Magic Beans
When writing this book I have occasionally discussed passages with my ever-patient husband, or talked through my current reading and research with him. Despite his unwavering support (I am an incredibly lucky man), he has commented on the darkness of so many of these stories. He is not wrong: queer history, even when it is about mythology and storytelling, often brings in elements of torture, death, punishment and suffering. The surviving records are rarely ones of joy or celebration.
But there is a way to flip this round. While the way history cements LGBTQ+ experiences is so often based on the worst day of an individual person’s life, we can remember that this is just one day. The person lived a life that was full, rich and complex outside that one gory end, or asylum record, or sodomy accusation. The upsetting document or anecdote might be how the story has survived until today, but it is not indicative of a real human life that spreads far beyond the text from a court record, or a mugshot, or a burned love letter. The light that shines down into the oubliettefn1 of sad and half-forgotten stories is that LGBTQ+ people are not victims any more than they are heroes. They are just people, and people have an indomitable spirit to live, love, fornicate and express themselves. So we know the same applies to every person, every story, every fragment here.
I want to approach the central argument of Queer as Folklore with some light for a change. When grappling with the question, the big why, I will be moving from historical fact to speculation. There is truly no single explanation for why LGBTQ+ people, and the people who might have described themselves that way today, are drawn to folklore and mythology as both consumers and creators. I believe I have demonstrated a connection between many of the storybook tropes, monsters and spirits that we have been immersed in for thousands of years and those who live and love differently. But, rather than looking purely at the obvious themes of oppression, and being monstered, let’s explore those special qualities that might place us closer to folklore. Let’s explore why these kinds of lives provide such fertile soil for stories, myth, legends and monsters to grow.
Just like Jack, who received five humble beans that transformed into a world-bridging beanstalk, I believe there are five qualities that are shared between LGBTQ+ people and the kinds of people who create, consume and oversee humanity’s folklore. These are my reasons for why people like us find ourselves so frequently in the worlds of myth and legend, and why we are still so drawn to them today.
Many of these are not unique to queer people – they may overlap with people of many experiences and identities – but taken together they do go some way towards explaining the specific queer connection. They describe five different kinds of people with different roles in society. They are not real people, merely archetypes, categories and concepts that highlight the connection between queerness and traits that are involved in the construction and dissemination of stories.
1. THE BETWEEN PEOPLE
I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.
Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.
Tove Jansson1
One word that has hovered at the edge of my brain throughout writing Queer as Folklore has been ‘liminal’. It is a word that simply means something that is in between, neither one thing nor another. Liminality can describe anything from spaces like a dentist’s waiting room or an empty corridor, to life experiences such as puberty or divorce. Anything that feels or appears transitional and temporary.
Both queer people and folklore operate in this space. The way lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people live in gender roles and relationships that are outside or in between what is often condoned by society is a kind of liminality. Similarly, many of the beasts described in this book are hybrids, formed by mixing two creatures together: half fish, half woman, half horse, half man. The mixed, transformative nature of these creatures is also liminal, often symbolising transformation, change, otherworldliness or something strange and unsettled.
It is no wonder that people who have perceived themselves as existing between standard definitions for human genders or human relationships might also seek out those well-known mythical symbols that represent something similar. Is it a coincidence that Hans Christian Andersen wrote a book about a half-formed creature, trapped between two very different worlds, who must sacrifice half of herself to try to live fully? Perhaps; perhaps not. But similar stories abound in history, from the queer men and women who wrote about beings that exist between life and death, and the non-gender-conforming people who went to sea to find freedom beyond the edges of the map.
Liminality represents spaces such as the aforementioned life at sea, or a life constantly travelling, or a life lived half among ancient Greek ruins or immersed in the pages of dusty manuscripts. Queer people may, more than other people, seek out locations and lifestyles that are also in between by their very nature. The grand tour of Greece and Italy, during which wealthy queer men and women would discover themselves while adventuring abroad, away from their families and associated conservative expectations, is a common trope among the privileged classes. But travel, constant movement and a desire never to settle in one location is present in the lives of LGBTQ+ people of all social standings. Such a liminal lifestyle would also naturally lead to an interest in stories, traditions, art and culture different from one’s own. Mythology and storytelling from around the world would be more discoverable by such people, and more relatable for those people who would travel and move constantly between different social strata. The liminality of a queer life could there be seen as conducive to a natural interest in folklore, simply by the nature of coming across more folk and more lore!
Liminality both in identity and lifestyle is the obvious connector between queer people and hybrid mythical creatures, monsters and supernatural forces. I am not the first person to make this connection. Historically being ‘between people’ is often seen as a negative, associated with being outcast, other or different. It can also create opportunities to look at history and humanity from imaginative and unique perspectives, making queer people perfectly placed to understand stories of magic and mayhem, by drawing connections to the same chaotic and transformative natures in their own lives.
2. THE MAGIC MAKERS
Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
The Minpins by Roald Dahl, 1991
Magic and the supernatural exist in every single human culture. But who are the people believed to be responsible for overseeing and controlling these unseen forces? Throughout history, even in times of extreme religious dogma, there have been magicians, priests, shamans, conjurers, fortune tellers, fakirs, witches, healers and druids – individuals, or small groups of people, who claim to have a connection with the magical, the divine or the profane. Whether creating mysterious brews, seeing the future in animals’ intestines or going into ecstatic frenzies in honour of a particular local god, these are permanent fixtures in every society and every time and place.
Individuals might become such a person for myriad reasons, perhaps by a personal connection with the supernatural, by right of birth or through diligent study. There is no one kind of person suited to such a profession, but there are clusters of traits that might be associated with many of these magic makers. Many are described as outsiders, the strange old man or women at the edge of the village, or as being perceived by their peers as somehow different. While there are respectable supernaturalists who work closely with kings and leaders, or who practise their magic in well-to-do circles, these are largely people who are treated with a kind of reverence, tinged with fear and suspicion.
It is notable that in multiple cultures the person who communes with the dead, who reads mystic signs or dreams, is often gender-nonconforming: a woman who does not dress as society dictates they should, a feminine man, or a person who belongs to a third or other sex entirely. This is not to say that magic makers the world over are queer, or even that the majority are. But historically there has been a space for some people who might today fit under the queer umbrella in these livelihoods. Most witches weren’t gay, the majority of shamans are not trans and Greek priests weren’t necessarily nonbinary. But traits aligned with all these identities do find themselves occurring well above average in these roles.
I am again by no means the first to make this observation. In Queer Magic, Tomás Prower explores the rich history and diversity of people that would today be described as queer playing central roles in spirituality and magic around the world. He sees this going back extraordinarily far in time:
It’s amazing to discover how widespread and disproportionately high our queer ancestors were represented in the priestly classes of Mesopotamian society. Making this more impactful is how these are some of the earliest civilizations in human history.2
Indeed, at the root of some religions, the blending of gender in one’s appearance, identity and presentation would place them closer to the gods. In Hinduism the god Ardhanarishvara is a combination of the male god Shiva and his female consort Parvati in a singular being: ‘the lord who is half woman’. This being represents a balance of the two divine energies. Despite an increase in persecution in India since the introduction of British imperialism, the ‘hijra’, a third-gendered group including people who could be described as trans women and those who are intersex or eunuchs, are enshrined in Islamic texts dating back to at least the fourteenth century. They are often associated with magic and Hindu spiritualism and even believed to have the ability to curse those who wrong them. Similar writings appear around those indigenous peoples who have a third gender, for example the lhamana of the Native American Zuni people, where those assigned male at birth but who live partially outside this category are believed to be naturally gifted at divination.
Obviously this can have both a positive and a negative association; as the chapters on demons and witchcraft show, one’s visible ‘queerness’ can also be used to cast a person as further from God. The practising of magic can therefore be a reason to persecute, ostracise or attack LGBTQ+ people. Yet this association might also explain why queer people find themselves so frequently involved in folklore and mythology. For magic makers, the worlds of myth, legend and religion blend together, and a magic maker might find themselves responsible for constructing stories and legends as well as recounting them.
Similarly, if an association with queer lives and magic making is as ancient as it seems, we may find ourselves written into stories as witches, spirits and otherworldly beings. Here gender nonconformity, dress or behaviour can become a well-understood shorthand for someone who dabbles in the dark arts, reads secret signs or speaks to the dead.
3. THE STORY WEAVERS
‘My dear sister, if you are not asleep, tell me I pray you, before the sun rises, one of your charming stories. It is the last time that I shall have the pleasure of hearing you.’
Scheherazade did not answer her sister, but turned to the Sultan. ‘Will your highness permit me to do as my sister asks?’ said she.
‘Willingly,’ he answered. So Scheherazade began.
The Arabian Nights Entertainments by Andrew Lang, 1918
At university I studied psychology and became captivated by evolutionary psychology and its seductive promise to explain human behaviour and eccentricities with facts and logic. In my final year I wrote my thesis on evolutionary explanations for male homosexuality. I now see that I naively thought that if I could explain my sexuality, to others and to myself, as being natural and understandable by scientific laws, I could build a wall against bigotry and intolerance.
Now, I feel that evolutionary psychology, while fascinating, often offers little more than ‘Just So Stories’, giving only provocative and even offensive explanations as to why we do what we do. It is so often mere pseudoscience littered with jargon that is unprovable, unverifiable and simple flights of fancy. The arguments around homosexuality were similar: the researchers who wrote on this topic were puzzling over why such a thing might exist when it was clearly detrimental to an individual’s reproductive potential. While I don’t think any of the arguments put forward held water, and some were downright stupid, a few have lingered with me.
One argument states that gay people, and those who are not interested in having relationships with the opposite sex, might still play a valuable role in the community.3 Biologist Jeff Kirby argues that we might act as support workers, a little bit like the worker caste in certain eusocial insects, like bees and ants. While we are less likely to have our own children, our genes, they argue, might be carried on by our family and siblings who we help, not being distracted by our own families and offspring. In this argument gay and asexual people would become the ultimate babysitters, social workers and guidance counsellors.
Even at twenty I thought that, taken wholesale, this argument was a bit silly. Queer people tend to invest a lot in their romantic relationships, and there is no evidence that we act as free childcare and drone workers in societies. That being said, the kernel of the idea, in a heavily diluted fashion, might help us to understand how LGBTQ+ people could become good story keepers and lore holders.
It is a well-known stereotype that LGBTQ+ people are drawn to art, literature and theatre. We are overrepresented in the creative fields today, and historically have found ourselves as key leaders in the arts, despite low social standing elsewhere. There are a million reasons why LGBTQ+ people might seek creative and artistic careers and circles, but one is a lack of interest in pursuing a traditional family life, at least the kind of family template modelled in the societies we are born into.
Within families people do tend to find themselves fulfilling roles. One sibling might be the peacekeeper, one might become a caretaker for elderly parents, and one might be the problem child or, conversely, the breadwinner. There is no one particular role that queer people find themselves fulfilling, but, purely anecdotally, I know of many LGBTQ+ children who, of their brothers and sisters, are the unofficial family archivists; the record keepers for their family’s history and stories.
In many societies with small, intimate communities, a person without a blood family of their own might find significance within their community as a story keeper, maintaining the community’s sense of self, its own internal history and lore. Arguably such a person, by not putting energy into their own children, might instead invest in other skills, such as providing entertainment, specialising in creating artworks, or producing and telling stories for their nieces and nephews. Also, might we be the people listening, sitting with elderly relatives, talking with fellow weirdos and sharing in their gossip and chatter?
Art, poetry, music and literature are also produced both for and by escapists, the stereotype for creatives being that of daydreamers, bohemians and people who value self-expression over conformity. LGBTQ+ people who often find themselves struggling to find a role within strict family life, or small conservative communities, may also travel to larger metropolitan areas and explore careers and livelihoods in the arts that celebrate self-expression.
Again, remember these are broad brushstrokes; I don’t believe many queer people I know were destined to become storytellers by birth, and I also think we are far from glorified babysitter librarians. Indeed, many queer people I know, myself included, have their own families in whom they are fully invested. Still, the archetypal story keeper, the preserver of lore and crafter of tales, does at least overlap with a vague, nebulous concept of many queer people’s experience in family and community life: the well-read spinsters, the quirky uncles and the activist aunties.
