Theme 1 - INTERMEDIATE TYPES

Who is permitted to have a history and who is not is a vital issue.

Recorded history, imposed from above, is controlled history beyond whose boundaries are silence and darkness.

Those who have no memories or story have no life.
Philip Sheldrake, Spirituality and History (1991)

We must pay attention to the process of telling history. If we fail to study to how history is told we may be blind to the distortions and inaccuracies in the texts that we read.

We must pay attention to power. Who has the power to impose their own version of history, and to suppress the stories of those people they disapprove of?

Researchers and campaigners are now challenging this imposed narrative. They are telling their own stories from the underside of history; Slavery stories, Colonialism stories, Women's stories, LGBTQIA+ stories.

My own Underside of History story is as follows.

Until recently a dominant patriarchal Christian culture has taught that right across history, homosexuality was considered unnatural and to be condemned.
There is however clear evidence that across the world back in history, homosexual and other LGBTQIA+ people have been accepted and valued by the societies they lived within.
Such people were often closely involved with a spiritual vocation (as priests, shamans or other forms of spiritual leadership) or in warfare.
Much of this activity was systematically supressed when European colonialism spread patriarchal, Christian, homophobic values across the world.
Because of the suppression this history has been all but forgotten, but the evidence is still there and it can be re-discovered.

Edward Carpenter's Book Intermediate Types (published 1914) is a very early example of this challenge to such embedded ideas. The first three videos listed below explore Carpenter's ideas, and give detailed examples of such Intermediate Type lives.

How we use labels and cultural understandings related to homosexuality is a contested field, especially when comparing different societies across history. In the last video in this theme I describe the approach I use in my own work.

List of YouTube Videos

	Int1.1. Edward Carpenter's Intermediate Types. How to uncover LGBTQ+ History YouTube Video - (February 2024) This first video describes Edward Carpenter's theories on how to explore LGBTQIA+ history. One should study Intermediate Type people outside Europe, and outside the influence of patriarchy and Christianity, to avoid the distorting effects of anti-gay prejudice.
	Int1.2. Intermediate Types - The Evidence. Stories of Queer People in History Int1.2. Intermediate Types - The Evidence. Stories of Queer People in History - (February 2024) Following on from part 1 - This video lists eight historical examples showing how Intermediate Type people were valued and accepted within their cultures across the world and across history. Such people often served their communities in two specific roles; in the service of Religion (Queer Ministry) or in the service of Warfare (Warrior Love).
	Int1.3. Suppression and Genocide. How Colonialism damaged LGBTQ+ History YouTube Video - (February 2024) This third video describes how as European Colonialism spread across the world, many of the indigenous cultures in which Intermediate Type people had lived were supressed and sometimes destroyed. The memory of them is now all but forgotten. It is time to recover these lost histories.
	Texts and Resources Document - A list of the texts and references I have used in all three Intermediate Type recordings, also giving recommendations for further reading. Discussion Definitions and Laws - Intermediate Types - a webpage which defines and explains the various ideas used in the project in more detail than I can give in the videos. Intermediate Types full text - The full text of Carpenter's book "Intermediate Types" is available here (or a pdf copy can be easily downloaded if you search online) Theme 6 - Edward Carpenter - For more about Edward Carpenter see Theme 6 of the switchingview project.
	Int2. How do you tell the History of Homosexual People? YouTube Video - (August 2024) "What exactly is homosexuality?", and "Who gets to define who can be described as a homosexual person in history?" These are contested and controversial questions. In this video I explain the approach I use myself in this switchingview project. Texts and Resources Document - A List of all the texts and references I have used in this recording, and recommendations for further reading. Discussion Definitions and Laws - Intermediate Types - a webpage which defines and explains the various ideas used in the project in more detail than I can give in the videos.

Finally, can I ask you a favour.

I put a lot of work into these recordings, and it would be good if they can be seen by the largest number of people.

If you have a friend or colleague who you think would benefit from knowing about these issues, please do pass it on.

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I would welcome comments and suggestions on this work - Contact Me.

Theme 1 - INTERMEDIATE TYPES

List of YouTube Videos

TELL A FRIEND! - SPREAD THE WORD!

Thank You