Before Stonewall

It's one of the shortest stories of the Hebrew Bible, but it contains compelling themes of poverty, female solidarity, and, yes, even love between the same sex. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-4-ruth-and-naomi Video version:  Readings: Greenberg, Steven. Wrestling with God and Man: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). 

For this episode, meet lesbian and cross-dressing Harlem Renaissance idol and blues singer Gladys Bentley. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-3-gladys-bentley Video version:  Readings: Bentley, Gladys. "I Am A Woman Again" August 1952  https://queermusicheritage.com/bentley6.html Newlevant, Hazel. If This Be Sin (Small Press Expo Collection, 2014). Wilson, James F. Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).

Here is the story of a successful diplomat and spy in eighteenth century Europe who suddenly declared that she was a woman, setting her up against the king and queen of France. Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-2-the-chavelier-deon Video version:  Readings: Clark, Anna.  " The Chevalier d’Eon, Rousseau, and New Ideas of Gender, Sex and the Self in the late Eighteenth Century"  in Simon Burrows, J. Conlin, R. Goulbourne, & V. Mainz (Eds.),  The Chevalier d'Eon and his Worlds Gender, Espionage and Politics in the Eighteenth Century  (London:  Continuum, 2010). Kates, Gary.  Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 2001). 

You may already know about the gender-bending, sexually deviant Roman emperors Caligula, Nero, and Elagabalus, but do you know about the ill-fated Galba, who was a gruff, old-school Roman who nonetheless liked "muscular men"? Podcast version: https://soundcloud.com/chad-denton-3/episode-1-emperor-galba Video version:  Readings: Grant, Michael.  Twelve Caesars Brudell, James L., "Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Homosexuality" in Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity, eds. Beert C. Verstraete and Vernon Provencal (New York:  Routledge, 2006)   Morgan, Gwyn. 69 A.D.: The Year of the Four Emperors  Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars