1. Were Some Pirates Poofters?
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2018
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In our first episode, your hosts Gretchen & Leigh begin their series examining the overlooked and underappreciated queer ladies, gents, and gentle-enbies from the unexplored corners of history with a discussion of the high seas. Meet Anne Bonny, Mary Read, John "Calico Jack" Rackham, and Pierre "the pansy pirate" Bouspet, a quartet of pirates from the golden age of piracy with a flair for the dramatic and some very interesting lifestyle choices. Anne kicking Jack out of his quarters and sharing them with Mary instead? Oh my! Or should we say, 'arrrghhh'? These pirates may not have been as straight as people think.
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
2:55 – The Golden Age of Piracy
5:33 – Brief Bio: Anne Bonny, Calico Jack Rackham, Pierre Bouspet, and Mary Read
28:09 – What Do You Mean They're Not Straight?
28:52 – Evidence from Historical/Cultural Context: Gender Code Switching, Situational Gayness, and Piracy vs. the British Royal Navy
43:08 – Evidence from Their Personal Lives
53:52 – How Gay Were They?
1:02:34 – Closing and Where to Find Us Online
Links to sources and bonus content at www.historyisgaypodcast.com. Get at us on twitter @historyisgaypod, tumblr at historyisgaypodcast, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Don't forget to rate and review so more folks can see the show!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle enbies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. My name is Gretchen and here with me and my fellow co-host is Lee. |
| 0:35.2 | Hello! |
| 0:36.3 | In this episode, the first episode of our podcast, we are going to be talking about |
| 0:41.0 | queer pirates. |
| 0:43.0 | Queer pirates! |
| 0:44.8 | Yes, we've been really excited about bringing this up. |
| 0:48.3 | I'm very excited to get into some of these people. |
| 0:51.0 | I know. They're awesome. |
| 0:52.5 | Yeah. |
| 0:53.2 | So the way this goes is we're going to introduce you to |
| 0:55.8 | some people from history that we think are really awesome. We're going to start out with a brief |
| 1:00.7 | bio of each of those people. And then we'll kind of transition into a discussion about evidence |
| 1:05.6 | that they may not have been quite as straight as some people would assume. And then we'll |
| 1:10.6 | end the podcast with kind of a, how gay were they, our personal rankings |
| 1:15.4 | and how likely it is that they weren't straight. |
| 1:18.9 | Sound good? |
| 1:20.6 | Yeah? |
| 1:21.0 | Great. |
| 1:21.6 | Cool. |
| 1:22.6 | All right. |
| 1:24.1 | So Gretchen, who are we talking about in this inaugural episode? |
| 1:28.3 | Well, we had originally planned on doing a whole thing about queer pirates and sailors and only to get into the history and realize that there are a lot, actually a lot more than we could do in a single episode unless you wanted to listen to us talk for three hours in a row. |
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