Rainbow Revisionism
Rainbow Revisionism is a phenomenon whereby historical queer figures and events are either memory-holed or sanitized in such a way as to remove expressions of queerness deemed inconvenient to the "political objectives" of the modern LGBTQ+ Movement. Usually, the target of this revisionism is historical pederasty. While revisionism is a discrete form of information warfare, the Rainbow Reactionaries who promulgate it may at the same time enjoy the lower-brow practise of Validity Policing. The revisionist phenomenon is thought to have increased in its velocity since the exclusion of pederasts from the gay movement in the 80s, which was formalized in the 90s.
Well-known subjects of Rainbow Revisionism
The history of homosexuality itself is a subject of Rainbow Revisionism, as documented by Bruce Rind, in his analysis of various texts in 1998.[1] As our article points out, the events of Stonewall are routinely whitewashed, as are the following movement's manifestations against the age of consent - including those supported by celebrated founding members and the ILGA umbrella. Publications such as Spartacus International Gay Guide are good examples of how the gay movement and press whitewashed their history throughout the 1980s and 90s.
One example of this rewriting of history is the gay New York Times journalist, Anthony Tommasini describing Franz Schubert's reported partners as "adolescent men", a category otherwise unheard of in any form of commentary or analysis.[2] In another, a famous book by John Addington Symonds (in effect, a treatment of Pederasty), was recalled as "promoting the morality of same-sex relations".[3] The piece contains the first known mention of the term boylove.
The following prominent pederasts are either worshipped as "gay icons", or assumed to be homosexual in the modern, sanitized sense:
The following prominent pederasts have been permitted a public legacy, while certain aspects of their homosexuality have been ignored:
- Hajo Ortil[4]
- Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds
- J.M. Barrie
- Benjamin Britten
- Marcel Proust
- Jean Cocteau
- André Gide
- Jean Genet
- James Baldwin
Historical forgiveness coefficient
When assessing the case of many a historical pederast - it often becomes apparent that the earlier they lived, the more likely they are to be assumed a "straight gay" for pederasty that would be deemed unfathomable by modern-day standards and incompatible with gay identity. What this appears to reveal is that modern "queerness" and "gay identity" is more of a political project than its proponents are willing to admit.
"Woke" liberal revisionism
Some LGBT people complain that since the ascendancy of hyper-orthodox social-justice informed identity politics in the 10s, aspects of their history are being re-written by activists. This is alleged (again) in the example of Stonewall and the New York Gay Scene. Already cleansed of their pederastic significance, the riots are now erroneously said to have been "started by a black trans woman", leading honest supervisors to advise their students to ignore sources published after 2010.[5]