Lgbtq In The Victorian Era

The LGBTQ community has always existed even if it was called by different words, however the Victorian Era is one of the most important eras in the development of ideas and thoughts on homosexuality. Now one may ask, ‘what does LGBTQ stand for?’ Well do not fret for there will be an explanation soon. LGBTQ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer and/or Questioning depending on who is asked. ‘How does this relate to the Victorian Era?’ one asks again. The Victorian Era is commonly known as a sexually repressed era, but that is not true the era was actually very sexual; there were many affairs and sexual writings during this time, most of it is heterosexual but that does not matter, the focus here is the LGBTQ people. Homosexuality has been around for many years even if it went by different names such as ‘Sexual Inversion’ which was used during the Victorian Era.

According to Davis, who said that “…there were an increasing number of men who lived as women during the nineteenth century and were only discovered to be men when they died” (pg. 228), there were many people who cross-dressed in public. Transgender people back then were hard to detect in that time due to the fact that they lumped them in together with the homosexual men but there are a few cases of transgender people being known such as a case Davis described of the “French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, who committed suicide after being forced to abandon a female identity and assume a male identity” She was of a gender she did not like and viewed herself as a woman and when they forced her to be a man she killed