frequently asked questions

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faq: Frequently Asked Questions:

Who did this?
Why?
Where are the women?
How do I start?
Help! The graphics on this site don't work.

faq: Who did this?

My name is Andrew Wikholm (but everybody calls me Wik) and I am a middle aged product of the Christian Right. Born the son of an Orthodox Presbyterian Minister ("Orthodox" because ordinary Presbyterians aren't conservative enough), I was taught the ways of a homophobe from an early age. Educated mostly in Christian schools, I was a devout Christian all the way through high school. In spite of a troubling fascination with Hercules and Tarzan movies, I continued to believe that homosexuals are unspeakably evil, and I tried hard not to be one.

My college career started at Dordt College, a Calvinist school in the Iowa cornfields, and ended at Northwestern University (Evanston) in 1979 with an M. A. in Anthropology. A few years after graduating, I realized that in spite of my marriage to a wonderful woman, my childhood obsession with Tarzan was more than a fluke. At 26, I came out as a gay man.

I have experienced homophobia from both sides of the street, first as a young insider and perpetrator, and later as an outsider and victim. It is my lived experience of these dual perspectives that motivated me to start this project. Maybe, I hoped, if people know more about gays and our history, they will find it harder to hate.

As I began my research, a second motive quickly complemented the first. This stuff is fascinating. To open a box of "ephemera" in an archive and find photos and publications that have never been documented is a true pleasure. And almost every month, academic and community historians publish new discoveries about our gay past.

Wik at the Archiv für Sexual-
wissenschaft, Berlin

I hope that this site is as exciting for you to explore as it has been for me to create. If you think of some way to make it better, please let me know.

faq: Why?

In the New York Times Magazine (Nov. 29, 1998), Phillip Weiss interviewed Professor Martha Nell Smith about her research on the poet Emily Dickinson. Weiss asked Smith why she is working so hard to find out if Dickinson had a sexual relationship with her sister-in-law who lived next door. Smith's answer is an eloquent defense of gay historical studies: "I observed what happened this fall after the murder of Matthew Shepard. How it affected gay students - young and fragile egos, some out some not out - and one important way to bolster their self esteem is to recover gay and lesbian relationships throughout history. They should know that humans have loved eachother in a variety of ways for a long time..." Amen.

And then there's homophobia. In a 1998 speech, U. S. Senate Majority Leater Trent Lott compared gay people to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs. How could anyone believe him? In part, it must be ignorance of the lives and people Lott was condemning. To combat this and other misrepresentations of gay people as wicked or perverted outsiders, we must tell the story of who we are. Our history is an important part of that story.

faq: Where are the Women?

Woman loving women, whether they are called lesbians or romantic friends, have had a different set of concerns and subcultural traditions than male homosexuals. Lesbian historians, especially Lillian Faderman (Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers), have shown that lesbian history is distinct from male homosexual history: its sources are more literary, and it is inseparable from the history feminism.

When historians have treated lesbian history as a subspecies of male homosexual history, they have minimized the complexity and distinctiveness of the history of lesbians as women, a mistake that gayhistory.com tries not to repeat.

For a list of lesbian history resources on the web, visit www-lib.usc.edu/~retter/main.html.

faq: How Do I Start?

The easiest way to get an overview of modern gay history is to browse the summaries on the timeline. Each summary provides a quick overview of a significant person or event that affected the story of modern homosexuality. If a particular summary catches your fancy, click "in depth" for a longer, more detailed account.

faq: Help! The graphics on this site don't work.

This site looks best if you maximize the size of your browser window. If that doesn't do it, you may need a browser upgrade. The site works with either Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Netscape's Navigator. To download Explorer, visit www.microsoft.com; for Navigator, go to www.netscape.com.