(no subject)
I haven't been on LJ much this week. I've been generally avoiding the internet this week, as I do a few times a year. I'll be going back to read.
I haven't been completely unproductive, lately. After five months hiatus, I've got a new post on my historical website. This one is about how homophobia fed anti-Chinese sentiment in Canada in the 19th century.
The racists in Victorian found that claiming that the Chinese were inclined toward homosexuality a useful tactic to whipping the government into a panic.
While rereading a passage in one of the travel narratives about China I read ages ago for an earlier post, I noticed again an oddity -- the word "gay" was used in a way that seems to mean "homosexual," in an English text dating to 1732. Most dictionaries say that the word wasn't used that way until 200 years later.
I haven't been completely unproductive, lately. After five months hiatus, I've got a new post on my historical website. This one is about how homophobia fed anti-Chinese sentiment in Canada in the 19th century.
The racists in Victorian found that claiming that the Chinese were inclined toward homosexuality a useful tactic to whipping the government into a panic.
While rereading a passage in one of the travel narratives about China I read ages ago for an earlier post, I noticed again an oddity -- the word "gay" was used in a way that seems to mean "homosexual," in an English text dating to 1732. Most dictionaries say that the word wasn't used that way until 200 years later.