Science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been aimed at a male readership, and can be more restricted than non-genre literature by their conventions of characterisation and the effect that these conventions have on depictions of sexuality and gender. However, speculative fiction also gives authors and readers the freedom to imagine societies that are different from real-life cultures. This freedom makes speculative fiction a useful means of examining sexual bias, by forcing the reader to reconsider their heteronormative cultural assumptions. It has also been claimed by critics such as Nicola Griffith that LGBTQ readers identify strongly with the mutants, aliens, and other outsider characters found in speculative fiction. (Full article...)
Josef Kohout (24 January 1915 – 15 March 1994) was an AustrianNazi concentration camp survivor, imprisoned for his homosexuality. He is best known for the 1972 book Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel (The Men With the Pink Triangle), which was written by his acquaintance Hans Neumann using the pen name Heinz Heger, which is often falsely attributed to Kohout. The book is one of very few first-hand accounts of the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi imprisonment. It has been translated into several languages, and a second edition published in 1994. It was the first testimony from a homosexual survivor of the concentration camps to be translated into English, and is regarded as the best known. Its publication helped to illuminate not just the suffering gay prisoners of the Nazi regime experienced, but the lack of recognition and compensation they received after the war's end.
Homosexual couples at a symposium, as depicted on a fresco in the Tomb of the Diver, Paestum, Italy
The Tomb of the Diver in the former Greek colony of Paestum, Italy is known for its well-preserved frescos showing an ancient Greek symposium. These frescos appear to be the only surviving examples of Greek painting from the Orientalizing, Archaic, or Classical periods. Among thousands of Greek tombs known from this time (roughly 700–400 BC), only this one features human subjects. Two of the men (on the right) are depicted sharing a loving embrace.
... that the Heian period Japanese story Torikaebaya Monogatari is the tale of a man who lives as a woman and his sister who lives as a man, who eventually swap places in order to lead happy lives?
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