To access the full version of this episode, join our Patreon at the link below. Our community awaits you with legs open, heart full, and mouth slightly ajar 🤤
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Welcome to the wild and infuriating world of ancient homophobia!
You know how everyone thinks ancient Greece and Rome were queer free-for-alls, where all holes were goals (as long as you were a male, bisexual top) and pederasty was the only acceptable form of same-sex love between men?
Yeah, well that's not quite the full story.
We're thrilled to introduce to the podcast Harry Tanner, the author of The Queer Thing About Sin: Why the West Came to Hate Queer Love. Harry joins us to discuss his fascinating research into the Greek, Hebrew, Roman, and Christian origins of homophobia.
We cover:
If you were ever told that homosexuality or queerness is "unnatural," this episode is required listening for you.
Because we show how homophobia, like homosexuality, is simply a social and cultural construction. As Harry Tanner explains, it is a response to political and economic instability. A desire for control. That's the only human thing about it.
Same-sex desire occurs naturally in every society and culture in history. But condemning it only seems to happen when there is profound economic inequality in those societies.
Get ready to dive into this fascinating story of homophobia's ancient history.
The chastity cages are mandatory and the water is a preposterously inviting...human temperature.
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🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Semen-stained tunics sold separately.
🤑 Please support the burgeoning Historical Homos empire on our Patreon, if you have the means – or the madness – to do so.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up to our monthly newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
✍️ Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review on Apple or Spotify.
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Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash
Edited by Alex Toskas
Produced by Dani Henion
Guest: Dr. Harry James Tanner
Why is Disney's Hercules one of the greatest LGBTQ+ films ever made?
This episode attempts to answer that fraught and necessary question.
As you may know, Hercules (1997) is a story about a small-town girl who goes to the big city to discover himself, become famous, land a few sponsorship deals, and build a chosen family in an imperfect world.
It's like All About Eve but with much, much better music. (Though Hades and Bette Davis look uncannily alike, I'll admit.)
Hercules was the first anatomically male Disney princess to grace the silver screen – and this innovation changed the lives of every gay boy and girl born between 1987 and 1997.
The fact that it has some of the sharpest writing of the Disney Renaissance – and deeply layered mythological references – did not escape our notice either.
Which is why Bash and his honoured guest, Liv Albert (Let's Talk About Myths, Baby!) have embarked on a heroic quest to explore:
By the end of it all you will find out that, honey, we did indeed mean HUNKULES.
So come on in and don't be shy! The water is...human temperature.
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🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Pain and Panic sold separately.
🤑 Please consider supporting the podcast on our Patreon, if you have the means – or the madness – to do so.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
✍️ Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
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Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash
Edited by Alex Toskas
Produced by Dani Henion
Guest: Liv Albert
Wait, what’s so gay about witches, you ask?
First of all — sit down.
When I was a young f/hag in the late ’90s, Wicca was having a moment. The Halliwell sisters ruled the WB, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock were burying men in their back gardens, and I gobbled the GAGathon down with glee.
Only later did I realize what made these witchy bitchies so alluring: it wasn’t (just) that they were different — it was that they were powerful.
Outsiders who could fight back. Like the X-men...or democratic socialists.
But were they always outsiders? No! In the ancient world, everyone dabbled in magic. Pagans love a hag with a herb garden.
Then Christianity came along and ruined everything. AS ALWAYS.
By the 20th century, witchcraft was beginning to mean "freedom" to a lot of repressed Westerners. Which might explain why nearly half of Wiccans today identify as queer.
Join us for this Halloween special as we trace The Craft™ from ancient love spells to Victorian occultists, with brilliant guest Professor Marion Gibson.
Together we ask:
🧙♀️ When did “wise women” in the woods become “evil hags”?
🔥 Why did we burn so many witches?
🌍 How did colonialism export Europe’s hag-phobia worldwide?
💅 And how did queer people turn witchcraft into a symbol of defiance, glamour, and spiritual fulfilment?
So come on in, the cauldron-water is human temperature.
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🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Beard and severed thumb sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash
Edited by Alex Toskas
Produced by Dani Henion
Guest: Professor Marion Gibson
Remember when you found out you were gay (iconic of you btw) and you thought:
"Oh this is fine – I'll just have a regular heterosexual wife, a couple of kids, and a very elaborate sex life on the side."
Just me? OK, fine.
But the question remains: why do little gay children like me grow up assuming a straight nuclear family is our only option?
Has family always been one man, one woman, and a couple of snot-nosed heirs to the milkman?
This week, we’re talking to writer and educator Kirsty Loehr, author of A Short History of Queer Parenting, as we uncover:
It’s a fluid-filled romp through the history of chosen families, accidental babies, and deliberate love.
JOIN THE CULT
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Turkey baster sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.Guest Kirsty Loehr.Edited by Alex Toskas.Produced by Dani Henion.
"Hollywood was swarming with gay people."
You know how Pedro Pascal hasn't come out yet? Well: this episode will explain why.
Between the 1930s and 1960s, the Hays Code banned “sexual perversion” of all kinds from the silver screen, which (spoiler alert) meant queers.
That has bequeathed us a predominantly homophobic industry in Hollywood, even if the stars and culture have always been decidedly – how do you say? – VERY GAY.
This week we dive into the queerness of Hollywood’s first Golden Age.
We cover:
This week, Bash is joined by film critic and filmmaker, Michael Koresky, who is the recent author of Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness — a love letter to the sly, coded, and deeply horny films that the uptight, antisemitic, racist, homophobic, Catholic censors forced out of the era's greatest artists.
Hollywood was always swarming with queers, as Michael puts it, but people weren't naïve or stupid. We saw the signs – and we shot each other furtive glances as we hid our brain-boners...
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Wigs and cigarettes sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review on Apple or Spotify.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Guest host: Michael Koresky.
"An important precedent was set: fascist groups will always use you until you're no longer useful to them."
Welcome to one of history’s darkest (and dumbest) closets: fascists who are also, annoyingly, gay.
From Hitler’s Brownshirt boy toy, Ernst Röhm, to closeted McCarthyists like Roy Cohn, to lesbian “nationalist” hypocrites like Alice Weidel — it seems that the 20th and 21st centuries gave rise not only to modern fascism, but to a couple of queer rightwing nutjobs as well.
Join Bash and his gorgeous guest this week, Alexis Sakellaris, as they wade into the icy swamp water of gay fascism to ask: why do some of our siblings keep ending up on the wrong side of history?
Along the way we discover:
It’s an episode full of hypocrisy, homophobia, and hidocious messes — proof that queerness doesn’t automatically make you good. Just really, really organized.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Hordes of idiotic followers sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits: Written and hosted by Bash. Edited by Alex Toskas. Produced by Dani Henion.
What happens when a teen prodigy meets a drunk poet with a pistol in his pocket (the gun kind, not the fun kind)?
Answer: extremely gay chaos.
This week on Historical Homos, we’re diving into the doomed romance of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine—the most sensationally toxic boyfriends in the history of French poetry.
With our guest this week, Robert St. Clair, we’ll unpack:
It’s toxic. It’s fascinating. It’s, how you say, very fucking French
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Pipe and syphilis sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash
Edited by Alex Toskas
Produced by Dani Henion
Guest host: Robert St. Clair, Associate Professor of French, Dartmouth College
We all know James Baldwin the high priest of Civil Rights, but what about Jimmy B, the extremely horny homosexual?
JB was a chain-smoking, vodka-swilling romantic who fell hard and often—usually for straight men he could never have.
This week, Bash and his bestie guestie, Clark Moore, crack open Baldwin’s chaos: from his Harlem childhood all the way to his retirement villa in the South of France.
Along the way we meet the English teachers who found him a pleasure to have in class, revisit the first gay nights in Greenwich Village, and soak in the winter sun at his Swiss twink's chalet.
This is a tour of Baldwin's life through his greatest loves.
Get ready to talk about:
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Vodka and cigarettes sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
© Sebastian Hendra 2025
"Make love, take a bath, make love again."
That was Frida Kahlo’s motto—and sweetie, she LIVED by it.
We all know about Frida’s messy, horny marriage to Diego “Toad Face” Rivera and her revenge fling with Leon Trotsky.
But what about the women? The affairs, the crushes, the rumors, the gossip that turned her into Mexico’s most iconic bisexual?
This week, we’re serving you a slutty portrait of the artist as she truly was: a fearless, flirtatious rake who let the gossip mills churn while she tallied up an ever-increasing body count.
We discuss:
✨ Georgia O’Keeffe NOT making love to Frida while hospitalized (Frida's response: "Too bad.")
✨ Hitting it off with the Real Housewife of Parisian Surrealism, Jacqueline Lamba, who kept Frida entertained at her first expo in Paris
✨ A tasty rumour that Josephine Baker, the Beyoncé of 1930s Europe, reportedly got it on with the newly divorced Frida on the eve of WWII
✨ Hollywood starlets and Mexican divas—like Dolores del Río and Paulette Goddard—getting plowed and painted by the Rivera-Kahlos back at the Casa Azul
✨ Chavela Vargas, a ranchera rebel who moved in with Frida on the first date, serenading Frida while she painted
✨ Why Frida’s bisexuality mattered—it's not just gossip, but a core part of her art, politics, and legend
So grab your tequila and maybe pack an extra toothbrush—you never know where a night with Frida might end up.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Lesbian manicure sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
"Love was the foundation of everything for Frida. This bisexuality, this eroticism was fundamental to her character."
She’s on your ex-girlfriend’s tote bag, your niece’s notebook, and probably a few questionable dorm-room tapestries.
But behind the unibrow is a Frida Kahlo you don’t know: a bisexual, communist, pain-embracing rascal who painted from her gut and fucked whomstsoever she pleased.
This week, we’re peeling back the kitsch to get at the real Frida, with filmmaker Carla Gutierrez, director of the fabulous new documentary, Frida (now streaming on Prime).
We discuss:
So: grab your eyeliner and fill in that unibrow you've been growing out, because it's time to get freaky with Frida.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Pet monkey and traditional garb sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Powdered wigs. Satin breeches. Candlelit salons.
And of course: sodomy.
This week we’re swanning back into Georgian England (1714–1837), a century of empire, cholera, imperialism, and very flouncy coats – but also one of the gayest domestic revolutions in history.
With special guest Dr. Anthony Delaney (author of Queer Georgians, out today!), we explore the LGBTQIA+ pioneers who didn’t just hook up in parks or "molly houses," but built full-fledged homes, lives, and legacies together.
Inside this episode:
🍸 Molly Houses — the proto-gay bars of London, where effeminate “mollies” cultivated community (and each other's C*CKS)
👬 An Odd Couple of "Cotqueans" — Lord John “Jack” Hervey and Stephen Fox: two aristocrats who went on a very gay Grand Tour of Europe, wrote love letters to one anotherwith phrases like “I look upon you as my dwelling,” and redecorated their way into history
👒 The Ladies of Llangollen — Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, two cottagecore lesbians who fled Ireland with a dog named Frisk and set up their gothic sapphic country paradise in Wales
🏠 Queer Domesticity — how 18th-century queers literally invented the idea of “home," defying societal expectations through the radical power of hot sex and interior design.
Because sometimes being gay isn’t just about who you shag—it’s about how nice your fucking house is.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Perruque and East India Company shares sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
The Dark Ages: Rome has fallen, the Church won't shut the fuck up, there's a killer plague for every season, and everyone else is dying of BOREDOM.
Right? WRONG.
Western Europe may have been a shitshow for much of what we ridiculously call the "Dark Ages," but the rest of the world had its act together.
Specifically: Baghdad around the 800s AD. At the height of the Golden Age of Islam. They had libraries, they had mathematics, and...they had lesbian sex scientists.
This week we’re taking a tantalizing dip into the Golden Age of Islam to uncover a treasure trove archive of lesbionic women from medieval Arabia.
Muslim philosophers and physicians had actual words for lesbians (or lesbian-like women), entire books about famous lesbian couples, and specific manuals that explained how to vigorously rub one out with your beloved.
From labia gas to celery-and-rocket shakes, the science was...shaky, at best. But the spirit of inquiry was strong, and the genuine respect for lesbian love profound.
Tune in to explore:
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Willow oil and saffron grinder sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Welcome to The Hanky Code, aka Grindr for Boomers.
Following on from our cruise through history last week, we've delved deeper into the notorious handkerchief code.
The code was a form of flagging, which used different coloured bandanas to signal sexual / kink preferences.
In this bonus Quickie episode, Bash unpacks the extremely colourful history of flagging—from gay Gold Rush cowboys to scrappy leather entrepreneurs in San Francisco.
Along the way, we learn:
Spoiler alert: you can't.
The hanky code wasn’t just about getting off—it was about queer ingenuity, solidarity, and desire in a hostile world.
Today it may be more relic than reality, but it still reminds us of the brilliant, horny creativity of our queer elders.
We'll be back on September 4 with our next full episode on the history of Queer Georgian homemakers. So stay tuned!
Till then, enjoy this bonus episode and get ready for some exciting announcements from us when we all go back to school...
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Fluid-stained bandanas sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
You know the feeling: when you lock eyes and the look lingers just a little too long. His hand brushes over his fly. And boom! A small smile confirms it:
You're about to be cruising, my king!
And all it took was a public park, centuries of sexual shame, and a little bit of courage to get you there...
Now it's no surprise that the elegant and much-envied act of Fucking in Public has been around for thousands of years.
But how did the "radical pastime" of modern-day cruising develop? Why did men start having sex with men in public parks and bathrooms? And why, in an allegedly sexually liberated world, do we still cruise today?
Join Bash and his guest this week, Professor Alex Espinoza, as they chart over 4,000 years of men getting it off with men. From the Roman bathhouse to Paris' first urban parks, this is a steamy, rushed romp through history designed to be enjoyed from your very own public bathroom stall.
You're welcome.
We will cover:
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Grindr Unlimited subscription sold separately.
📚 Grab a copy of Alex's book Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime on Bookshop.org (NEVER Amazon!)
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Alex Espinoza.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
He fiddled while Rome burned. He married two men. He may even have kicked his pregnant wife to death.
But he ALSO invented animal pelt kink, so could he have been THAT BAD?!
This week, Bash is joined by classicist and queer historian, Professor Andrew Lear, to discuss the scandalous, salacious, and slanderous life of Emperor Nero — Ancient Rome’s most notorious bisexual bad boy.
From castrating (and marrying) his wife’s male doppelgänger to "mauling" strangers’ crotches in animal pelts, the stories about Nero are a masterclass in ancient PR. But why did so many historians vilify Nero in this intensely OTT way?
Join us as we explore the answer to this question and many more, such as:
Along the way, we’ll learn why the real scandal for the raunchy Romans wasn’t so much Nero’s queer behaviour, but his dangerous subversion of class and gender hierarchy.
Plus: Justice For Roman Bottoms (my new charity), ancient pegging theories, and a verdict on the real question on everyone’s lips for the past two thousand years:
Was Nero a monster… or the "Elvis Presley Emperor" of the 1st century AD?
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Roman villa sold separately.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Andrew Lear.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
🏴☠️ Before there was BRAT, there were Butt Pirates. 🏴☠️
This week we're hoisting our slutty sails – that's what I call my underpants – to plunder the treacherous homosexual deep, with pirate historian and author Dr. Rebecca Simon (Pirate Queens; The Pirate’s Code) to answer the age-old question:
Why are men on a ship always kinda gay?
First of all, when we say "pirate," we mean the real 17th- and 18th-century swashbucklers who sailed the high seas. This is not Johnny Depp in eyeliner, but actual rum-soaked, textile-stealing anarcho-queers of the Caribbean.
Join us as we dive into the Golden Age of Piracy (c.1650–1730), and reveal the surprising egalitarianism of pirate society (it was pretty democratic and they had health insurance!) and its complex manifestations of queer desire — from situational sodomy to full-on civil unions (bonjour, matelotage 👬).
We also discuss:
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Parrot and peg leg sold separately.
📚 Grab a copy of Rebecca's book The Pirate Queens at our shop on Bookshop.org
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Rebecca Simon.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Leonardo da Vinci? More like Leonardo da Fist Me.
We've all heard of the man behind the Mona Lisa. But did you know he was also one of Florence's sodomitical sweethearts?
In this episode, we pull back the vajazzled curtain on Leonardo da Vinci to reveal a homo neither tormented nor repressed, suffering dramatically for his art, but a messy, charismatic, and brilliant dilettante obsessed with the world.
More than anything, Leonardo cared about curiosity. He was fascinated more by the world than his paychecks, which got him into trouble more often than his penchant for very handsome twinks – ahem, sorry, apprentices.*
Join Bash and Renaissance historian Catherine Fletcher as they answer all the big questions:
Was Leonardo gay? Does it matter? Did it affect his fantastically innovative artwork? Did he think outside the box? And whose box did he eat?
We'll also give you a taste of what it was like to be horny, humping Leo in 1470s Florence, dashing across the Ponte Vecchio from paint job to blow job in an Italian minute (aka seventeen hours).
We'll cover:
If you’ve ever wanted a crash course in the gayest corners of the Italian Renaissance — or just an excuse to say “I heard you're into the Florentine vice” out loud — this is the episode for you.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod. Espresso and slutty breeches sold separately.
📚 Grab a copy of Catherine's book The Beauty and The Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance.
📱 Follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and do sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people, like, at all.
Most importantly, if you like what you hear, please do leave us a ⭐ FIVE STAR ONLY ⭐ review.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Catherine Fletcher.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Hot, rich, European, emotionally unavailable... sound familiar?
It's your Hinge profile all over again.
No, silly, it's vampires!
We are thrilled to welcome back folklorist and queer historian, Sacha Coward (author of Queer as Folklore) this week, as we trace the gloriously queer history of vampires—from ancient blood-sucking demons to modern brooding bisexuals.
Drape your capes and get ready to dive into:
Plus, how vampires got from Dracula terror to Twilight trysting, from cursed to cool, from monsters of the fringe to main characters with fangbanging stans.
As Sacha eloquently puts it:
"Vampire here. Vampire not going anywhere." (Direct quote)
🩸 Whether you’re a Lilith stan, a Buffy devotee, or just into emotionally repressed men with centuries of baggage–*raises hand violently*–this one’s for you.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your blood.
📚 And grab Sacha Coward’s book Queer as Folklore in sexy new paperback form—wherever fine, gay books are sold.
You can follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and you should sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people at all.
And if you like what you hear, please do leave us a (FIVE STAR ONLY) review. Praise, not blood, is what Bash feeds on.
Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Sacha Coward.
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.
Heads up! This is the episode where we solve gender.
Famously a "construct," it turns out Mx. Gender has been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
This podcast is only 70 minutes long so we're sticking to the last 5,000... but still. Not bad.
Join Bash and his honoured guests this week – Kit Heyam and Marty Davies – as they delve into the deep-cut history of gender, long before we had words like cis, trans, or nonbinary.
Kit Heyam is the author and historian behind Before We Were Trans, our guiding text for this episode. And Marty Davies is the founder of Trans+ History Week, an award-winning initiative now in its third year in the UK.
You might think – like Bash did for an embarrassingly long time – that gender and sex binaries have been the norm since the beginning of time.
Everyone has "male" and "female" right? Husband and wife, penetrator and pregnancy-haver. And that's that.
That's actually wrong. It's waaaay messier than that. As long as there have been humans, there has been what Kit Heyam calls "gender disruption."
This essentially experimental and creative approach to gender is in fact the norm – the one thing we find in almost every civilisation.
As if that weren't enough, here are some other essential things you'll learn about in this episode:
As always thanks for listening, and if you love what you hear, please leave us a FIVE STAR ONLY review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
You can follow Historical Homos on Instagram and TikTok, and you should sign up to our newsletter if you care about gay people at all.
You can also listen to the QueerAF podcast on Apple, Spotify or your fave podcast app, including all the episodes that came out this season with Trans+ History Week.
And subscribe to QueerAF's free newsletter to understand the LGBTQIA+ world every Saturday, or find them on Instagram and Bluesky.
Episode Credits:
Written, researched, and hosted by Bash. Special thanks to guests Kit Heyam and Marty Davies. Edited by Alex Toskas and Jamie Wareham.
A QueerAF and Historical Homos Production.
She was young, she was hot, and she was hated. But did she eat pu$$y?
Marie Antoinette was many things: a teen bride, a fashion icon, and according to Sofia Coppola, a big fan of The Strokes (I knew I liked this bitch!)
She's famous nowadays for losing her head, but did she also give it? And to whom / with what degree of relish?
In this week’s episode, Bash is joined by bestselling author and royal dirt-digger Eleanor Herman (Sex with Kings, Off With Her Head) to untangle the messy myth and misogyny surrounding France’s last queen.
From bedroom rumors to an actual revolution, we trace how Marie’s alleged lesbian love affairs and slutty reputation helped take down the French monarchy.
But how much of a labial libertine was dear old Marie?
Did she really let they/them eat cake, or did she prefer to have hers eaten?
And why did the revolutionaries care so much about who she was (or wasn’t) shtupping?
Get ready to cover:
👑 Marie’s teenage trauma: a 14-year-old Austrian girl dropped into horny French court politics
👑 Her disastrous marriage to Louis XVI, France’s least sexy locksmith
👑 Count Axel von Fersen: the hot Swede who became her baby daddy and was the only man in France who loved her
👑 The lesbian propaganda: 18th-century porn pamphlets and political smear campaigns that took Marie down
👑 Marie’s tragic downfall—and why she still makes us feel some kind of way about money, sex, fashion, and power
Plus: masquerade balls (aka cruising for cis-hets), Versailles orgies with her stepbrother, and the story of how Marie Antoinette's lesbian reputation became a 19th century pickup line for aspiring sapphics.
You can find out more about women in power by reading Eleanor Herman's books at her website.
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Episode Credits
Written and hosted by Bash.
Guest: Eleanor Herman
Edited by Alex Toskas.
Produced by Dani Henion.