Queerness has existed throughout human history, but it has only been in the last 100 years or so that we have start to use language like homosexuality, bisexuality, queerness, etc to describe identities. As the tides of acceptance and embracing of Queerness have ebbed and flowed throughout history, you may wonder how we determine which ETC writers might have been a little 🍒 🍊
Clue #1: Their Writing
Many Expand the Canon writers’ plays, poems, and novels had explicitly homoerotic themes or featured characters grappling with sexuality or gender expression.
Wu Zao
Zao’s A Reflection in Disguise explores gender identity as the main character grapples with her dual identity as a talented woman and a version of herself as a male scholar, expressed through a portrait of herself cross-dressing.
She also wrote erotic poetry to female courtesans and captured the feeling of same-sex longing in ancient China.
Your collarbones jingle and shimmer, like a fairy friend in the jade city.
We meet with a laugh, and I forget my words.
Angelina Weld Grimké
Her play, Rachel, was one of the first plays by an African American to be produced and published.
Grimké’s work include romantic expressions for both male and female subjects. Many of her poems and diary entries explore female longing and desire and her own frustration that stemmed from not being able to fully express those feelings.
The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the
night, chin on knees
Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly
miserable –
The eyes of my Regret.
Clue #2: Their Lifestyle
For some writers, we have records of the way they carried themselves day to day from biographies, diaries, and how people referred to them in letters.
Rachilde
It is well documented that Rachilde defied gender norms throughout her life — she* adopted a male pseudonym, referred to herself as a “man of letters,” and others referred to her as “frere” or brother.
The name Rachilde, allegedly, comes from a seance where she learned she was “possessed” by a Swedish lord.
* If we are considering Rachilde androgynous, why do we use she/her pronouns for her? Well, historians consider Rachilde to be a woman with a open relationship with gender and who rejected feminine identity, but we cannot know for sure what pronouns she would use, so we are using the pronouns most often used in her lifetime and by historians.
George Sand
In addition to being a bigger influence in France during her lifetime than Victor Hugo, George Sand was known for her gender-fluid persona and for wearing men’s clothes in public (which required a permit at the time).
The name George was chosen deliberately as a male pen name to help her gain notoriety and a place in writing. She often gained access to men’s spaces and smoked in public, something women were barred from doing.
Embrace the Uncertainty and Be Open
We will never have a definitive answer about how most of our writers would identity in 2026, since the language for defining such identities did not exist during most of their lifetimes and are still shifting today.
The most important thing we can do is honor who they were by producing their work, reading their plays, and exposing communities to representations of themselves that they may never have seen in classics.
Check out an informative dive into this question from our resident Queer Historian and Social Media Queen, Rhiannon! ⬇
We love and embrace all Queer writers of the past, present, and future.
Happy Pride 🏳🌈
