Funny thing, Newton being so vehemently repulsed about his peers constantly trying to set him up was one of the first introductions to the concept of asexuality AND was one of the first times where I started thinking "Wait....... that sounds like me"

I will say, a person can be ace and also create art with erotic themes. You don't have to be a murderer to write murder mysteries. Edit: a nice surprise to hear Dom Noble here

There's also Alan Turing, the mathematician whom is credited with cracking the Enigma code in the second world war. He was actually arrested in 1952 for being gay.

The first person i came across in queer history was Alan Turing. He was a absolute genius and along with his team he broke the enigma code and at first i had no idea he was gay but once i did he became a bit more of a inspiration to me especially since i want to learn coding. I also watched the Imitation Game the film about him cracking the code with his team (fantastic film btw). Unfortunately him being gay at the time was a crime and he was chemically castrated and died after biting a poisoned apple laced with cyanide. What he did was incredible and had a hand in inventing the computer in a early concept.

For us in England he is on the new £50 note being the first gay man to be on any British money. He also got a apology although far too late for what happened to him even having a law named after him  that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.

Hey can you make this a yearly tradition? Yes? definitely? absolutely?

I recently started uncovering the history of Hans Christian Anderson. As a kid, they just told us “he was a loner and a bachelor.” But when you uncover all his unrequited loves, of various genders, his super tragic stories make a lot more sense…

Sun Rah was a jazz musician and one of the founders of the “Afrofuturism” movement. Dude dressed like King Tut, did crazy jazz music. He was also asexual!

I like that there are finally terms we can use on the reactionaries now. "Woke-spotter!" "Status quo warriors!"

This is a great video, Vera! Give us a part 2!!!
But I have to clarify a couple things on Emily Dickinson! I studied her in grad school, and my wife and I spent a week at the Dickinson Museum and Institute in Amherst. It is not really disputed or ignored anymore that Emily and Susan had a vibrant sexual relationship from before her marriage to Austin, and continuing after! In fact, it's also celebrated that Austin himself had a longstanding, extramarital, polyamorous relationship with a woman named Mabel Lewis Todd and her husband! These queer relationships are a major feature in tours of the museum (which is in fact the Dickinson and Austin Dickinson homes and estate)!!! 🏳️‍🌈 The Dickinson family: not straight! 😂

Thanks for the Ace representation (and for ALL the Representation; the more we have as a community, the less people can deny our existence)! Maybe it's because I'm older, but I've experienced so many occasions where the Queer community kind of ignores us or pretends we aren't "really" queer. So I wanted to say thank you 🩶 And, of course, Happy Pride! 🏳‍🌈

William Shakequeer

As well as being queer, there's a lot of speculation that Da Vinci had ADHD (eg not finishing projects for years, wide range of interests, etc).

So both a gay and ND hero.

Some recommendations for Part 2 of this new series:
- Julius Caesar
- Abraham Lincoln
- Frédéric Chopin and George Sands
- Piotr Tchaikovsky
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Angela Davis and Virginia Woolf also sounds good.

Please do a part 2! This was wonderful! I'm a history geek so I had to watch this.

I also want to add Nikola Tesla. When I was going a Research papers about him in college I found no Evidence of him being not Romantically involved with anyone. If anything Telsa was Very likely aromantic. Feel free to disapprove me if you wish

I learned about Julie d’Aubigny, who is considered bisexual. She was also occasionally mistaken for a man (even when not dressed like one), beat three noblemen at sword-dueling in one evening after kissing another woman, and committed arson and body snatching just to run away with another woman.

The good Mr Noble did a splendid reading of Sonnet 20 here! Some years back, Kyle "Brows Held High" Kallgren and Rantasmo did a crossover episode bout Shakespeare's queerness, in which Kyle read this same sonnet. When Rantasmo, in pretend-incomprehension, raised his eyebrows and demanded "Translation?", Kyle summarized Sonnet 20 thusly: "You're hot! Shame about the penis."

Let me add:
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian composer. Russia will do anything to prove the opposite, but there's one disastrous childless marriage, a boatload of letters (from him, friends and family which he wa sout to), his compositions dedicated to men that sound like love confessions and the fact that he died under very suspicious circumstances and there are some small details that point to suicide. #

Friedrich Schiller, German poet, author of the Ode to Joy possibly bisexual, also wrote homoerotic poetry and allegedly might have had an affair with Goethe.

Michelangelo Buonarotti, the most prolific and influential of Italian rennaissance sculptors. Anyone who has ever seen his paintings and statues of "woman" know he never saw a single one naked.

Oscar Wilde, famous English author and queer icon par excellence, was known to detest woman and was criminally convicted of homosexual acts.

Paul Verlaine and (possibly) Arthur Rimbaud, two French surrealist authors / poets who likely had an entire affair together.

And those are just the European male artists. Mishima Yukio, Japanese author, actor and political activist who exaulted male relationships. Kosaka Masanobu, retainer and lover of Takeda Shingen, one of Japan's greatest daimyo's, with whom apparently they've led a loving relationship up to Takeda Shingen's death. So many have come before us and so many will come after us. We've been surviving through centuries and we will continue to survive through the ages. And though it takes it's time, but the truth always comes out. And when it does it shines with the brightness of the Sun.

I knew these, but I was kinda obsessed with the topic when I figure out I was queer. I think the combination of being queer and neurodivergent does that. It sucks how much of queer history has been brushed off, we've lost so much. I hope, in 500 years from now, if we haven't been nuked yet, the diversity of modern time folks isn't such a hush-hush thing. Happy Pride! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

I had the absolute honor of working with Tam O’Shaughnessy when interning at NASA, as she was fighting to set the record straight (lol) in memory of her partner Sally Ride. Tam was promoting her photo memoir of their lives together, and as NASA was celebrating Sally, she wanted to make it abundantly clear who Sally was. It is among the projects I am most proud of, being the writer of Sally’s official NASA bio declaring her as the first LGBTQ+ astronaut. A signed copy of that memoir sits proudly in my living room.
Side note, Sally didn’t call herself a lesbian, though Tam does consider both of them lesbians.