I haven't blogged this chapter in as much detail, as it runs crosswise to the topics the Project is interested in. But it's always useful to see the ways in which structurally parallel topics in male and female queer history (if you will forgive me for applying an inappropriate binary) are so very non-parallel in how they played out. A very brief slice of very recent history has convinced us that queer history can be viewed as a unified subject. But apparent/assigned gender has always been a stronger force than any theoretical similarity in non-normative experience. This continues to play out in the study of queer history. In another publication by Boag that I'll be blogging after I finish this book, he notes that when he was studying the 20th century history of same-sex relationships in the Pacific Northwest, he found so little data on women that he decided to focus his book entirely on men. Thus, an initial disparity in data becomes compounded to complete erasure. That disparity in data is why it's so important to have historians working specifically on women's experiences (and those assigned female). Because otherwise there's a temptation not to do the extra work to hunt down the relevant data and to make erroneous assumptions that conclusions about male data can be generalized. There was a delightful explosion of work and publications on lesbian history specifically in the first decade or so of the 21st century, but it's as if the fashion has passed. (Oh well, maybe I can get caught up on the reading?)
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