I've always loved history. As a child I would spend weekends at the local historical society with my sister. My favourite bit, the thrill I lived for (and still do), was when I would come across something that would remind me that these historical people were as human as any I know now.
When I saw the trailer for the HBO/BBC One historical drama series Gentleman Jack on Twitter I retweeted it with the comment, 'is HBO reading my dream diary?' Gentleman Jack is based on the real life diaries of Anne Lister, sometimes described as the 'first modern lesbian', who was a landowner in the 19th century.
I could barely believe it was going to exist. A whole TV show based on a historical queer woman and her relationships. There are so few that I know of I could probably list them offhand.
As soon as the pilot came out I was on the couch watching it. There was something so soothing about watching a woman in period dress be so canonically queer on screen that I just sank into it, even when the tone of the show itself felt a little weird.
Near the end of the pilot Anne (played by Suranne Jones) declares she will 'endeavour to make wealthy little Miss Walker ... my wife'. It's a moment that is slightly off-putting for its mercenary reasons (Anne is going after this love interest partly because of her money), but also triumphant in how sure Anne is of her own identity, even as the people around her are pressuring her to change. Gentleman Jack doesn't shy away from the fact that Anne is far from a perfect person, but she's so queer and real it's hard not to feel a little validated watching it.
Growing up, I didn't get know about many women who are like me or Anne. While in the past few decades there has been a push to uncover the hidden histories of LGBTQ+ people, often these histories languish in niche sections of bookshops and libraries.
And more broadly, historical figures who had ambiguous sexual identities are often classified as straight until 'proven' queer, though this burden of proof discounts how historians in the past have dismissed their subject's queerness and how family members or LGBTQ+ people themselves would destroy evidence like diaries and letters. Lister's diary most likely survived because it was written partly in code.
"These stories are valuable and shouldn't