yknow i get why we make such an effort not to use words like gay and lesbian and bisexual for historical figures because their societies didn’t necessarily have those exact ideas of sexuality and it’s an important thing to remember but at the same time i’m a little cautious about that argument 1. because it’s never used when we call people from history straight and 2. some of these people are really fucking gay. like. alexander the great, after hephaestion’s death, crucified hephaestion’s physician and destroyed the nation of the cossaeans as a sacrifice to hephaestion, whom he wanted to divinize. hadrian deified his male lover antinous and had so many images of him made and left around the empire that every time we find one we’re like oh what do you know, another fucking antinous bust. sappho wrote lines like “that laugh, it sets the heart in my chest to flutter” about women. like shit son that’s gay.
(via wildehacked)
