"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
It's a fragment of poetry by the Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos, the woman from whom the words "Lesbian" and "Sapphic" originate. She's famous for her love poems to other women, which we, "even in another time" remember.
I learned about Sappho a few weeks after I learned that I was a lesbian. Call it poetic irony or a cosmic sign, but I became obsessed with her. As tragic as it is to fall in love with a poet for whom only one complete poem and a handful of fragments survive to this day, Sappho did something incredible for that little teenage queer pouring over her words-- she let her know that she wasn't alone.
Of course, I knew I wasn't the only woman who loved women in the entire world. By this time, Glee was in full swing, the legalization of same-sex marriage had been slowly making its way across the United States, and there were at twelve kids who had already come out in my high school. But as far as I knew, LGBT people only came into existence in the late nineties. There was only one gay person that I knew over the age of forty. We were a product of our time, millennials who wanted to be edgy and separate themselves as much as they could from Baby Boomers. So we kissed our best friends, the girls wore suits and the guys wore dresses, and we covered ourselves in rainbow glitter.
But this woman, from thousands of years ago, changed everything for me. She made me realize that we weren't a fad, a form of rebellion-- we were a group of people with a rich history going back as far as love itself. Once I found Sappho, I became hungry for more "proof" that LGBT people have always been here. Oscar Wilde, Marsha P Johnson, Natalie Clifford Barney; each one of them felt like a hand reaching from the past to say "You are real. We know how you feel."
Even when LGBT historical figures are taught about in schools, like Leonardo da Vinci and Virginia Woolf, their sexual orientations are largely ignored. On one hand, I understand that speaking of historical figures using anachronistic terms for sexuality and gender identity presents some issues. But there is no denying that there are some things that transcend time. To the LGBT children who do not have a community that supports them, hearing that they share something with some of the greatest figures in history may be the thing that helps them learn that they are not freaks. They are beautiful.
Going forward in this troubling and uncertain time for the LGBT community, I think that one of the most important things we can do is celebrate and educate others about our history. It is time to pay our respects to those who came before, in order to encourage those who come next.
Have a LGBT historical figure that inspired you? Comment down below, and stay proud.
