Part One: Ben Egerman and the Gay History of Maryland

0:01 CoolZone Media Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening in the world, there are people trying to do good things. And I have decided by researching history for the past several years in order to do this show, that the people who do the actual historical research and then create the books are cool people doing cool stuff.

0:26 And by that standard, today I am actually talking To one of the cool people who did cool stuff. I am talking to Ben Agerman. Hi, how are you?

0:35 I'm doing great. I'm going to have cool person now on my business card now that it's official.

0:43 Yeah, no, I am actually the person who decides who counts as cool persons or cool people.

0:48 I know. That's actually why I'm on this podcast.

0:50 Yeah, no, that's true.

0:53 You.

0:54 recently published what I am guessing by searching your name multiple times, your first book. Is that true? Is this your first book?

1:03 Yes, it is. It is A Gay Little History of Maryland, Volume 1. And it.

1:10 Does what it says on the tin. It is A Gay Little History of Maryland. The trim size is small. The writing is like very accessibly written. It is a collection of six zines that you've been putting together for the past little bit.

1:24 That's correct. Yeah. I have been doing this sort of research that the book is based on for probably about eight years, eight or nine years. And I've spoken about it to audiences in libraries and sometimes schools, colleges. I wanted to be able to present this in a way that was accessible, that didn't require a lot of prior knowledge to understand. And that got some of those stories out there. And it was fun. That was a big part of it. I wanted this to be kind of, sort of enjoy the weirdness of history and find the things that are entertaining about it and that make people really sort of excited to learn.

2:18 So for people who haven't read this yet, which is possibly some of you, but everyone should go and read this. It's a style of writing that is very different from, I think that my like queer history section, oh, did I move it? My queer history section used to be right next to me in my little podcast recording hole because I had to cover my entire house with bookshelves because of the work I do. I got to cover my entire house with bookshelves because of the work I do.

2:45 Of course. And I love all the queer history books, whatever. Most of them are dry as fuck.

2:52 Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, my view of it is like most of the people in our community don't have an advanced degree. Most do not have a four-year degree. And I read a lot of queer history and I struggle with it. And I do have an advanced degree and I do have a background in this. And so I'm like, okay, maybe there needs to be more sort of avenues for people to learn that doesn't require this.

3:26 And that doesn't require like a thesaurus, you know, handy to understand what some of these words are. Yeah. And so for me, it was sort of a writing exercise of like, how can I get these stories out in a way that doesn't dumb it down? It doesn't oversimplify it, but still is accessible to a sort of general public readership.

3:55 And again, does it require, you know, several Judith Butler books as background to, you know, really get what's being said? Yeah.

4:07 And like most of the time when I see people, because I interact with the way that history is written as my job, right? And most of the time, the simple presentation of history is wrong. It's too pat. It's too neat. I'd say the Wikipedia article version, but actually Wikipedia is better at this, although it's not the source that I use for things. It's the listicle version. It's the pop history version. And I'm a pop historian, and I would argue that your work is in some ways a piece of pop history.

4:42 Yeah, no, I think it is.

4:43 But most of the time, I have to throw all that shit out because it refuses to address any kind of nuance. It just is like, here's a person who did a cool thing, you know? And like, that doesn't work for me. I need complicated heroes and I also need, because I need to believe them. And so I was really impressed that in the stories that you tell, you do immediately, you say what you don't know, you know?

5:14 You show your own steps and, And how you have come up with what you know. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Here's what I'm going to infer. You even do the like, here's why I'm going to infer what I'm going to infer. Like, and here's why you might infer something different. But I'm pretty sure that this horse thief in Baltimore is the same horse thief as in Kentucky or maybe it was Tennessee.

5:40 It was Kentucky. Okay.

5:42 I have to admit, the first story that you present is possibly my favorite, even though it's like two paragraphs long.

5:49 Mine too. I mean, like I read that one pretty much every time I can to like any audience. I just love that story. Everyone does. Yeah.

5:56 You want to tell the story?

5:57 Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I can read it directly from the book. Okay. Yeah. The first story that I tell in this, you know, I obviously make it clear that there's no starting point. to this history that as long as there have been people in this part of the country that we now call Maryland, there have been people living outside of gender and sexual norms. And obviously, pre-colonization, Indigenous people had very, very different ideas of who those people were and how they were treated. But within sort of the colonial and then American history of Maryland, The first person we can look at and see sort of as a trans person or as a queer person or anything, but in this case, first person we can look at

6:48 and see as a trans person is probably someone named George Wilson, who was arrested in 1838 in Baltimore for trying to sell a stolen horse that he had stolen. Yeah. Now, at first, everything seemed routine. until authorities discovered that George was trans, that he was what we would consider a trans man when they brought him to the jailhouse. Now, George told his jailers that he had been a sailor since leaving his native England. And when placed in a women's jail, he insisted on being called George Wilson and refused to give any other name. You can actually go to the Maryland State Archives and the penitentiary records do list a prisoner named George Wilson, and then in parentheses, female, because they did not get any other name out of him. Now,

7:50 prison authorities did not know what to do with George. He refused to do women's work, which if you're in a women's prison is a lot of what you're being told to do, and sort of shrugged off the sort of corporal punishment that they had there. And it was sort of a paradox because he was sort of too hardened to treat like other prisoners in the women's jail, but the jailers wouldn't punish him like a man because in their eyes, he wasn't one. And so they were really frustrated. They were concerned that he was a bad influence on the other prisoners, which he probably was.

8:27 It seems likely, yeah.

8:28 Yeah.

8:29 Do you think that when they say a bad influence, do you think that they mean like is sleeping with the other women?

8:35 Okay. Yes.

8:36 I want to drop as many euphemisms out of history as we can. Yeah.

8:39 That's just my assumption. Right.

8:41 Totally.

8:42 It could also just be that.

8:44 Teach him how to steal horses.

8:46 Teach him how to steal horses, swore like a sailor. Yeah.

8:49 He wasn't very good at stealing horses. He does get caught twice.

8:52 Yeah. Well, you know, maybe he was. That's true. Those were the only two times he was caught.

8:58 We don't know how many horses he stole.

8:59 Yeah. That's true. All right.

9:01 That's more horses than I've stolen.

9:03 That's true. So the warden of the jail had an idea. He wrote to the governor and asked him to pardon George on one condition. which was that he had to head back to England and never return. The governor agreed, and George was released with a ticket for a ship to England and money for a new dress. Yeah, he didn't really get on that ship.

9:36 He didn't want the dress.

9:37 Yeah. He ditched the ship, bought a suit, and almost certainly stole a horse and rode west. And.

9:48 The way God intended.

9:50 The way God intended. And then he's caught a year later. Now, maybe him. There's a story a year later from Kentucky about a trans horse thief whose description definitely matters. George's, which means obviously either George kept up his one man horse crime spree or horse thievery was just a common occupation for trans men at the time. Right. You know, it's probably the former.

10:15 But both make such good stories.

10:17 Yeah, exactly. And maybe it is just like in the 1830s, if you were a trans man, it was like, all right, have to decide what, you know, take a new name. You have to get a suit. And then it's time to steal some horses, you know? Yeah, what people don't recognize, we always talk about be gay, do crime. But what people forget to realize is that you actually are assigned a crime. Yes.

10:39 Based on where you are in the LGTB, whatever, in the spectrum on that flag. You know, trans men have been assigned horse thievery.

10:50 Yeah, no, exactly. And I really think that it's a practice that people should bring back.

10:54 Yeah.

10:54 You know, I really do want to hear someone be like, you know, I didn't clock him as trans until he stole all those horses.

11:01 But what do you think that the other spectrum, you know, like a trans woman, probably weapons violations. Like probably like historically dueling illegally. I think that that's what trans women probably did too much.

11:15 Yeah, I like that.

11:17 But, you know, in your bio, you describe yourself as a homosexual. So I believe I can make some assumptions here.

11:22 Yes, yes.

11:23 What do you got? What's your crime? You can't just go with sodomy.

11:26 That's cheating. I don't know. Well, yeah, exactly. Although I did just write the most recent zine that I wrote was all about sodomy. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's here. I think you'll appreciate the title. Sodomy in Maryland, the first 400 years.

11:42 You can just tell all of world history through sodomy.

11:51 Yeah, that's the plan.

11:52 Well, kind of only Western, the societies that come up with sodomy as a crime, but that's amazing.

12:00 But yeah, I don't know.

12:02 Maybe you get grandfathered in. Maybe you all get sodomy. Maybe you get the easy one.

12:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although, I don't know. I feel like, you know, like train robbery.

12:12 Okay, okay.

12:13 You know, I mean, every like gay I know loves transit. We love trains. Yeah.

12:21 Yeah.

12:21 You know, it seems very fashionable. Like you get to wear nice kerchiefs.

12:26 Trans men will get you the horses you need.

12:28 Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

12:30 I'll get you the weapons.

12:32 Good.

12:32 Yeah.

12:33 Okay.

12:34 Okay, so the reason that I like this story so much, one, he gets away while he gets caught. Does it say what happened to him when he gets caught the second time?

12:43 It's unclear. I couldn't quite figure it out.

12:46 Well, then he successfully rode away into the sunset. Everyone knows that. He did a week in jail, and the person who he stole the horse from was like, actually, you know what? I want that man to have that horse. He has a hard life.

12:57 Yeah.

12:57 And was given the horse.

12:59 He sort of earned it.

12:59 And then he ran away and joined the gang where everyone, like in a heist movie, everyone has their role, you know, and just go through the LGBTQ plus spectrum and everyone has their role within the gang.

13:14 Yes.

13:16 It's just, it's such a romantic story. It's like, I think one of the reasons that you probably started with this story, one is it's the earliest story that you have like a name that you can really assign to.

13:25 Yeah.

13:27 It also kind of sets up one of the things that you talk about in this book, which is that you mostly know about criminal queers, not because we, well, obviously our lifestyles have been criminalized for a very long time, but honestly, just because we only exist in the record when we get arrested for shit. Like, and I wanted to talk to you about that, what it's like looking for a history that has kind of gone unwritten and how you have to like find these little moments and try and piece something together.

14:01 Yeah. So the way I like to look at this, I mean, as you said, the most common way to find out about a queer person in history is they get arrested. And usually, especially earlier on, it's arrested effectively for being trans and not passing, right? You could be arrested and The charge would be literally written down as man in women's clothes or women in man's clothes. And so that's the most common thing that you'll see. Now, when we look at that and when you see what people are writing, you actually can pull out sometimes a good deal of the story and try and distance it a little bit from the you know, the sort of deeply fucked up sort of viewpoint of the writers. And so, you know, you have to do a good deal of interpretation.

15:09 But yeah, at the same time, you look at this and these individual stories, and sometimes they're decades apart, but you actually get a very good sense of how people were making their way through this world, right? There's a story of a trans woman around the Civil War who is sort of like making her way up and down the East Coast. And yeah, she gets arrested a bunch.

15:38 She is always talking her way out of it. And you sort of see how she was able to do that and sort of what the, you know, those self-defense strategies were. And so, yeah, I... I actually greatly enjoy reading all this sensationalist, oh, the horror type reporting because it's just super melodramatic and kind of campy.

16:08 Yeah, because they could describe completely opposite things. They could be like, this gay man killed 1,700 people. Isn't that crazy? He sleeps with men. And then he could be like, This woman married a woman and thinks she's a boy. And like they're presented with the same level of intensity as like, like here's a weird curiosity, you know?

16:33 Yeah, exactly. It's a wild thing, but you can actually pull out these stories and sometimes you can actually get pretty full understanding of people's lives. There is a story in here and it's the one story that doesn't take place in Maryland. It takes place in Virginia. But like really close to Maryland, you know, so I can still put it in the book. And so it is the story of these two guys. And in the 1880s, there's this series of articles. Effectively, they were fairly openly dating, planning a gay wedding. Now, they wound up having an argument over what the bride would wear. One of them was a tailor and sometimes a drag queen. So yeah, they had an argument over what the bride would wear.

17:24 It got heated. One of them pulled out his gun and said, no, you're going to wear green. The other one pulled out his gun and said, no, I'm going to wear red. They both shoot each other, but it's not fatal. It's this weird story. And, you know, all of the writers are.

17:43 Like- Custom made for Tumblr fanfic.

17:45 I know, right? Yeah.

17:47 Lovers become enemies, become lovers, et cetera.

17:50 Yeah. And all of the articles assume effectively that the sort of more effeminate partner or the more masculine partner was just sort of humoring the more effeminate one because he was normal. Oh, right. Uh-huh. And meanwhile, 40 years later, when the mask one passes away, the other writes like, heartfelt letter that he submits to the local newspaper as a like in memoriam about his true love. Right. And then I saw this and I was able to look and find out, no, they actually, neither of them married and they both lived within like half a mile of each other, their entire lives. And like very clearly, this was a couple that had been together since they were teenagers. Yeah.

18:43 Like they're late teens. And, were until one of them passed.

18:48 What years are we talking about? What era is this one?

18:51 So it's like 1880s to like 1920s or 30s, I think. Okay. Yeah.

18:59 Well, do you know what loves us and will be with us until we pass? It's the products and services that support this show. They love us dearly.

19:14 And we're back.

19:15 I warned you ahead of time and I was just going to straight up interrupt you in order to pitch to ads. That's the deal with capitalism.

19:22 Anyway. Yay.

19:24 I think what's so interesting, one of the things that's so interesting about gay history is that like half of it is just like, oh, I found someone who lived a really normal ass life. They just happened to do it in a way that got told isn't allowed to be normal.

19:39 You know?

19:40 And like, oh, I found a love story from, it's like, I want to get to be bored with LGBT stuff if it's not something a little fancier or crazier. But I don't get to. I don't get to just be like... I don't get to just forget about the fact that I'm othered by society. I would love to. And so it's so interesting that so much of history... seems to be like, yeah, I found John and Sam and they loved each other. Isn't that crazy?

20:16 I mean, yes. There's certainly the aspect of like, you know, because the easiest way to make it into the record as a queer person historically has been through the courts, right? By getting arrested. You know, it gives you the impression that queer people were you know, all criminals. In reality, then, as now, most of us aren't that interesting. Yeah. So it's interesting because, yeah, you do. It's much rarer to just find those sort of straightforward, you know, these were two women who loved each other and they sent each other letters. You know, that does exist. It's just, you think about how it could possibly come to light And you realize like, oh, it's a lot harder to find those things. I'm sure that there are letters, you know,

21:09 throughout different archives or wherever, but they're in boxes. Unless you already knew, it's hard to sort of, you know, find any of that.

21:19 It's so interesting because like trans and gay, for a lot of the second half of the 20th century, were really intentionally separated. And, you know, there's this like mass attempt to divide us again now. But before the development of homosexuality as like a concept and the development of heterosexuality as a concept in like Victorian era, Western society, like, yeah, we're all going to get lumped together. Like you're going to find something in the history books where you're like, this man was a lady or whatever the fuck, you know, about the same as you find these people loved each other in the following ways. And like, I find it so interesting because of how things both change and don't change.

22:02 Yes.

22:02 Like, the underlying impulses stay the same, but the way we understand them changes so much. Like, it's incorrect to go back and say that, like, the ancient Greeks were gay, right?

22:16 Yeah.

22:17 It is not incorrect to say that, like, dudes were touching peens.

22:22 You know?

22:22 I assume that that's what... Yes.

22:24 And, like.

22:25 It's so funny because it makes some parts of reading trans history and gay history complicated, but some of it is just so simple. You're just like, oh, I just see myself in that.

22:35 Yeah, no, exactly. And that's my sort of approach to it because there's always this question. And I just think it's semantics, you know? Totally. The reality is that we don't know how these people identified. And if you want to say that that means we can't actually connect with them, I guess we can't have queer history.

22:53 Yeah, totally.

22:54 Totally. You know, like.

22:56 Even though they were executing us, whatever.

22:58 Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. Well, and even though you go back to the 1700s and you can find sort of like, here are people who very clearly articulate that they understand who they are. Right. And they understand that there are other people like them and they see themselves as set apart from society. Right. And so it's, I say at the beginning, when I'm talking about these historic trans people, no, I don't mean trans in the same way that we do today. But frankly, if you were to explain the basics, if you were to get a time machine and say, this is the term we have now, they'd probably be very confused by a lot of things, but they'd probably be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, that sounds a lot like me, right?

23:58 Totally. In the same way that right now, if you try to explain an invert to someone, they'll be like, well, that's a little silly, but I guess that's what I get called if I was in the 1870s. Sure, fine.

24:10 Yeah, no, but this is something that I'm actually planning on writing about in one of the future volumes, because there will be future volumes.

24:18 Yeah, you've only written 400 years of sodomy. There's so many more years of sodomy.

24:22 I know, yeah, exactly.

24:23 Exactly.

24:24 There's so many more. The term gender identity, sexual orientation, transgender, these were all terms that were invented by one person in the 60s, who was the head of the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

24:41 Oh, interesting.

24:42 Yeah. He was a psychologist. And, you know, in some ways, what he was doing was describing a real differentiation that existed between sort of gay men, what you would now consider like gay men and trans women. Right. But in others, it was. It was sort of creating this very, very hard line between those two experiences that previously were seen as basically two different points on a spectrum, right?

25:13 Totally.

25:14 And the way that I have described it is that prior to this, really in the sort of turn of the century, people that we would now see as like cisgender queers would have been basically considered like sexually trans, right? Everyone who's LGBTQ would have been considered trans, but some are just sexually trans, right? Like in all other respects, they are not, right? And so it was seen as two points, you know, different points on this broader category, which in some ways I think is truer. Yeah. You know, in some ways, I don't think it's hard to understand that sexuality... I mean, literally, the only thing that makes sexuality a separate category is if you assume that heterosexuality is not simply a part of gender, which is not

26:11 how people thought up until very recently, right?

26:16 I feel like I see myself and the people around me better when I look... with this very expansive way of understanding where a ton of different, to use words that I only have certain I'm using, right? Like two different ontological sets, like two different ways of understanding or multiple ways of understanding. You can understand gender in the modern context, right? Where it's, you know, your gender and your sexuality and your identity and these things, right? Or you can have this early 20th century model, or you can have the ways that different societies have done it all throughout time. I've done a little bit of research, but it's very sparse what's available about the badlings, the Baden of medieval England. One of the first mentions of

27:06 trans women in English is a book of laws and why it's illegal for us to have sex. And it's like, legally described as a third gender, right? If a man sleeps with a bad, bad bait in, it's this, if a, you know.

27:22 Yeah.

27:23 And what works for me is to assume that all of those ways of seeing are correct because that's the only way I can actually wrap my head around it is if it's like, not just like absolutely no categories, although honestly, I'm kind of personally more interested in a world without any of these categories, but I understand they're like the use that we have for them. But to understand that like one day, probably 20 years from now, people are going to look back and see the modern conception of gender as retrograde and cringy and silly, you know, or offensive.

27:59 Yeah, no, absolutely.

28:01 Not because it's wrong, not because what we're doing right now is wrong, but because it's like just always going to shift and change. And that's cool.

28:07 Yeah, it's always changing. And I think that what I'd say... My way around a lot of this, I sort of do explain away a lot of it by saying like, I'm not super interested in the sort of details of whether someone identified a certain way or not. I think there is an idea that I have generally found silly that is frankly, well, it used to be more prevalent in queer history that these categories were effectively imposed. And that like until psychologists in the Victorian age started writing and talking more about sexuality, that queer people didn't actually think of themselves as such.

28:55 Yeah.

28:56 And there's plenty of evidence that that's not true. But, you know, it's how you can actually sort of navigate these people's lives where within their own lifetimes, these ideas change, right? And so the way that they're described will change, but you have to sort of, I am again, more interested in the question of how did these people make their way through the world, right? Because I think that it's pretty natural for queer people and trans people to look at history and try and ask that question of like, how can I possibly see myself here, right? And so to me, starting to look at that question of like, well, how did people who, you know, today we'd look at and see someone trans, how did they live their lives?

29:51 How did they survive? How did they go through the world? And, you know, I think that that's the far more interesting question than whether, you know, the sort of way they were described as accurate or not. Totally. Because at a certain level, I'm also just like, all of the writing about these people is going to be from a hostile source. Yeah.

30:15 There's only a few times in this book, well, except a few chapters where it's based on actual oral histories, there's only a few times where people get to speak for themselves, right? Usually we get people writing about queer and trans folks and, again, trying to interpret them, interpret why they are this way. And the answer is always going to be kind of wrong. Yeah.

30:42 Well, do you know what I like to let speak for me and tell me who I am? It's the products and services that support the show. I find that I can build an entire identity just based on the things that I can purchase.

30:56 Oh, yeah. I mean, they really affirm me.

30:58 Yeah.

30:59 As a queer person. Yeah.

31:01 Sometimes we get prep ads. Those are great.

31:04 Oh, nice.

31:05 Yeah.

31:05 That one definitely affirms me.

31:07 Sometimes it's like, go outside. I like those ones.

31:11 Other ones, whatever.

31:13 I trust you all to make your own. I don't trust you all. I wish I could trust you all to think critically about these ads. Here they are. And we're back. Okay, so thinking back about this horse thief, who I will be thinking about until the day that I die, or until I excise him from my mind by writing a long historical fiction romance novel about him, I often think about how much nicer it would be to be a criminal in the era before proper documentation and surveillance.

31:49 Yeah.

31:50 And it's interesting because, like, yes, that makes... it easier for people to do really bad shit. Like, I don't know, murder a bunch of people. But it also makes it okay to be like, no one can see my air quotes. I'm a female impersonator and I got caught in, you know, Dundalk. So I'm going to Cumberland, you know, or Tennessee. Maybe you gotta get a little further. But like, well, of course I think this, I'm not a really big fan of like law as a concept and a way of running society. But it, it seems so obvious that, that we set ourselves up into this trap. Like, okay. One of the reasons why I think that cis feminists, even kind of turfy ones need to drop their war against trans women for their own self-interest is that when a

32:39 fascist state is able to determine who is and isn't a woman, what do they get to do with that? They get to control you. And when you, The history of law is this interesting thing where you're like, well, of course they got in trouble. They were a woman in man's clothes. And you're like, wait, what? You know, cause like we like to imagine that that's like legal at least, you know? And then you're like, actually that being legal is a shockingly new thing. Like I am slightly younger than, honestly, they're probably older than some of those laws that made that.

33:16 Okay. Oh yeah. I mean, Again, my most recent zine is all about sodomy laws. And I make the point that, like, when I was in high school, these laws were active and there were sodomy stings happening. Yeah. You know, that really most of these laws weren't functionally repealed until the late 90s, early 2000s. And actually weren't fully repealed until several years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

33:48 I'm sure they'll come back. Don't worry. I have faith in us.

33:51 I know. Yeah, I mean, sodomy's not illegal anymore, but, you know, it's kind of hotter if it were.

33:57 You know that Breaking the Law cover by Pansy Division?

34:02 Yes!

34:04 Breaking the Law! Sodomy Law! Which is then funny because then actually the original Breaking the Law is also a gay song because it was written by a gay man. So, like, anyway. I mostly listen to that whenever I leave a I refill the propane. I've spent a lot of my life living off grid and I'll refill propane tank and you're not allowed to put propane tanks inside enclosed vehicles. And before I had a pickup truck, I would like leave in my station wagon and I blast breaking the laws.

34:29 I drive away from the law from the propane filling station. Cause that's the level of like sodomy law. I think to people who haven't seen it enforced, it seems as silly as like, Oh, you could get in trouble for having a, propane tank in the back of your station wagon you know but like every law is silly until a cop decides to enforce it you know.

34:57 Yeah exactly i think to get back at your original point like a lot of these stories yeah they don't exist in in a modern society they exist because it was easier to be anonymous and because there was more of a culture uh i mean this was especially true in like There's a lot of stories that happen in rural areas and largely the sort of overriding culture is one of like, mind your damn business.

35:26 Yeah, totally.

35:27 They're not doing anything like, oh, well, like, you know, there's this strange person who lives on my street, but there's like a bunch of strange people in our town. And, you know, it's sort of left at that because there's no, what are you going to do about it? Right. The state isn't capable of sort of policing people's, well, what was considered private life, nearly as much as what we just sort of assume is normal.

35:59 Yeah.

36:00 And so, you know, I mean, this is, was literally talking to a friend about this earlier today, of you look at the Trump administration's sort of like actions around trans healthcare and And that is only enabled because of a massive amount of centralization and the accessibility of data that wasn't around like 15 years ago.

36:25 Yeah.

36:26 The idea that the government could actually investigate this is new, right?

36:33 Yeah.

36:33 And so like, there's a huge part of this that is like, these are these stories of how people survived and Yeah, it was in a more hostile society, but also one where sort of the police, the state were just a lot less powerful and a lot less knowledgeable.

36:56 Yeah, that's such a, I mean, that's the description of the situation we're in right now, right? Is that like both the Democrats and Republicans for the past hundred years have been, you know, essentially neoliberal parties that have more in common than they don't. And they believed in certain things and the creation of more central databases and the more access of the expression of state power into more corners of our lives. And in sometimes benign ways, obviously not always in benign ways. I'm not trying to paint anything particularly positive about that system. But then when something worse comes along, it says like, oh, thanks for building databases.

37:38 And I think... One of the things I think about all the time, and I can't remember this man's name. I've even brought it up on the show a couple of times. There was a Dutch gay man in 1930s Amsterdam.

37:50 Wilhelm Arandius. No, no, no.

37:52 I love Arandius. But there was another guy.

37:55 Oh.

37:56 Part of that scene who, no, I have an Arandius back patch on my vest.

38:01 Nice.

38:01 Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards. I sometimes get nervous to wear it into like gas stations in West Virginia. And then I'm like, well, I can't take it off. Like it just says right there on the fucking thing. No, but the first gay magazine in the Netherlands had started only a couple years earlier because everyone was starting to come out. That's one of the things that's so scary about the modern moment, right? They told us all to come out, so we did. So this man had started this first gay magazine. Now, what he did, he fucking memorized all 190-some names and addresses and then ate the mailing list and survived the war.

38:42 I have heard this story. Yeah.

38:44 And it's so hard because we do need data. I'm not like– if we want to do science and– you know, trans healthcare is a science-based thing. More data is good. We need to be gathering that data, but like, my God, do we need to be careful with it right now? And it's so heartbreaking that we have to memorize and eat all the data.

39:09 Well, yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of liberalism right now is asking like, who would have guessed that anyone would have done this with our secret police like that we built? Yeah, totally.

39:21 Yeah.

39:22 What did you expect? Yeah. You know, this idea that like we're going to build these systems and everything will work out and it will never be abused. Right. Like, no, of course they will. Yeah. And so, yeah, no, I mean, I think that this is something that I get into. And again, this will be in volume two because it's in a more recent zine. There's throughout queer history, there are huge advances and then backlash, right? Like that's the cycle.

39:55 Absolutely.

39:55 And the problem is sometimes those advances come with an advance in actual like political power. So classically in the seventies, right? Queer people start getting much more organized. They start coming out. They start sort of flexing political power. And as a result, like some things start to get better. Certainly in cities, there's like much less repression because cops are basically told like, this is really messy and we don't want to have to deal with this whenever you raid a gay bar.

40:28 Yeah, and they're mobbed up.

40:31 Yeah, well, yeah, there's always that. But the problem is when you have this idea that I think was very popular, certainly up until fairly recently, that media representation would do that work for you.

40:46 Oh, uh-huh.

40:47 Yeah, I know, right? Like that, you know, if there was enough representation on television, people would come around and, you know, you didn't really need to like do all this activist work. Society would just slowly get better. And the problem is that provokes a backlash and then there's no power, right? You're sort of left without, you know, and obviously the media and sort of the Democrats are not going to be effective in defending you, even if they want to. Yeah. Right? And so you wind up provoking a backlash and then sort of being in a relatively powerless position. Yeah. And that's actually extremely precarious. Like, that's really dangerous.

41:31 No, that is such a... Oh, I'm going to be thinking about this. This is such an important way of talking about it.

41:37 Yeah, this is going in my manifesto.

41:39 Yeah, no, good. Because... It is good and necessary to change culture. Changing culture is a very slow process. It takes generations and it doesn't defend itself. Like political and or force, like because political power is often just the abstraction of force, is necessary to then defend what has been gained. Okay, but then this leads to a question. Oh, a question that I'm going to ask you in part two.

42:10 So then, and I have my own answers to this too, because I believe in history, but then, so then why history? But don't answer right now. But instead, this is what we're going to talk about in part two. And we're going to talk about the history of gay Maryland.

42:21 Yeah, yeah. We should probably talk a little bit about that at some point.

42:24 Oh, everyone is used to, my show comes out twice a week and Monday is all context and set up. And then Wednesday is when we actually talk about the thing because I believe in it. I believe that we have to understand things as fully as possible. But if people can't wait and they're like, I want to read this now, is there a book available? Is it possibly in its fifth printing?

42:47 Yeah, I think it is at this point. The book is published by Red Emma's Cooperative Booksellers in Baltimore. If you just go to redemmas.org, there's a link that says shop books. You can scroll down and you'll find it because it's redemmas.org. It's their first time publishing a book.

43:07 I was just going to say it's the best-selling book that they've ever published. But you could point out that it's the only book they've ever published. That's fine. I was just going to say it's the best-selling one.

43:15 Yes, that's true. Yeah. Sure. I will say it's sold much better than I ever expected it to.

43:20 Yeah, I think it actually is essentially a bestseller for them. And, yeah, you're on your fifth printing or something like that.

43:27 I don't want to, like, gloat too much, but, like, yeah, kind of.

43:31 No, and it's– I'm not surprised– Like, I am not surprised that this accessible book that has just enough like undergroundness, like it was printed.

43:42 Hold on.

43:42 I wrote this down. It was printed by Black Classic Press, which is a publishing and printing company that was founded by a member of the Baltimore Black Panther Party. Like this book is grounded in history, you know, and it's physical form, but it's also accessible. So it like is set up. to do well it is set up because it is interesting it is readable and it's like when you pick up this book i'm basically just doing an ad for you you already know this stuff like when you pick up this book you know you're reading something that like they kind of don't want you to have you know yeah and that's fucking cool.

44:23 Yeah no exactly i mean that's that's it it's like people love finding out these stories that are just like i talk about this of like there are stories in here that aren't supposed to exist, right? That we are told like, you don't find things like this. And I think that's really revelatory for people to realize that there are these sort of stories that they can maybe see themselves in or that just like wildly look wildly different than their expectations. And, um, You know, yeah, I ground it in my own sort of background and, yeah, sort of a DIY punk, like, lefty perspective. But it's not a book of political theory. It's, you know, it's a fun book of history that you'll probably hear me rant a little bit at different points, but mostly it's just

45:26 worked in that you sort of get the sense of what I'm going at.

45:31 Yeah, absolutely. But also by what you make sure to include, like it is a, well, we're going to get into this in part two. So people can find your book at redemas.org, or if you're in Baltimore, you can go there in person. Also a couple other bookstores sell it, I believe.

45:48 Yes, there are a number of bookstores in Baltimore that sell it. You can find out more. And also you can read the actual zines that are in here. I put everything up on my website. which is mdhistory.gay.

46:02 I love that there's a.

46:04 Gay. Yeah, yeah. It's a valid ending for a website. And everything that I write, I put up, you know, I make available for free. I don't want to, you know, gatekeep this. And I also think that people really actually very much like the physical copies of things. So I'm not super worried that I'm cutting myself out of anything.

46:29 Fair enough.

46:31 All right.

46:31 Well, if you are listening to this, when it comes out, you still have time to pre-order my newest zine, which is called The Folk Tales of Lowland Sakan, which comes out on Halloween from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a different workaround collective. And you can get that at tangledwilderness.org.

46:50 And it is the prettiest zine I have ever... It's the prettiest book of mine, honestly. No offense to all the other books. Oh, it has so many parallels to yours. It's letter-pressed by another worker-owned cooperative called Eberhardt Press. Not letter-pressed, I'm sorry. It's offset printed by a worker-owned collective. And yeah, you can check that out. It's only six bucks and you can pre-order it or you can regular order it if you're listening to this after Halloween 2026. And we will be back on Wednesday when we will talk about some true crime of the less... I mean, honestly, stealing horses isn't the nicest thing, but it's even less nice to stab the people you're in relationships and.

47:27 Shoot the person you're in a relationship with oh because there's no.

47:31 Stabbing oh i'm so sorry don't stab anyone just shoot wait nope all right yep and we will talk about all of that and other things in two days on wednesday bye everyone.

47:50 Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.