I like to think about the future and write about worlds where workers' rights, diversity, and mental health care matter. I also like robots and rock 'n' roll, though not necessarily in that order. You can follow all of my adventures on Twitter or catch the highlight reel on Facebook.
You're probably familiar with the literary classic "Moby-Dick."
But in case you're not, here's the gist: Moby Dick is the name of a huge albino sperm whale.
(Get your mind outta the gutter.)
There's this dude named Captain Ahab who really really hates the whale, and he goes absolutely bonkers in his quest to hunt and kill it, and then everything is awful and we all die unsatisfied with our shared sad existence and — oops, spoilers!
OK, technically, the narrator Ishmael survives. So it's actually a happy ending (kind of)!
Basically, it's a famous book about revenge and obsession that was published back in 1851, and it's really, really long.
It's chock-full of beautiful passages and dense symbolism and deep thematic resonance and all those good things that earned it a top spot in the musty canon of important literature.
There's also a lot of mundane descriptions about the whaling trade as well (like, a lot). That's because it came out back when commercial whaling was still a thing we did.
In fact, humans used to hunt more than 50,000 whales each year to use for oil, meat, baleen, and oil. (Yes, I wrote oil twice.) Then, in 1946, the International Whaling Commission stepped in and said "Hey, wait a minute, guys. There's only a few handful of these majestic creatures left in the entire world, so maybe we should try to not kill them anymore?"
And even then, commercial whaling was still legal in some parts of the world until as recently as 1986.
And yet by some miracle, there are whales who were born before "Moby-Dick" was published that are still alive today.
What are the odds of that? Honestly it's hard to calculate since we can't exactly swim up to a bowhead and say, "Hey, how old are you?" and expect a response. (Also that's a rude question — jeez.)
Thanks to some thoughtful collaboration between researchers and traditional Inupiat whalers (who are still allowed to hunt for survival), scientists have used amino acids in the eyes of whales and harpoon fragments lodged in their carcasses to determine the age of these enormous animals — and they found at least three bowhead whales who were living prior to 1850.
Granted those are bowheads, not sperm whales like the fictional Moby Dick, (and none of them are albino, I think), but still. Pretty amazing, huh?
This bowhead is presumably in adolescence, given its apparent underwater moping.
Unfortunately, just as things are looking up, these wonderful whales are in trouble once again.
We might not need to worry our real-life Captain Ahabs anymore, but our big aquatic buddies are still being threatened by industrialization — namely, from oil drilling in the Arctic and the Great Australian Bight.
This influx of industrialization also affects their migratory patterns — threatening not only the humans who depend on them, but also the entire marine ecosystem.
And I mean, c'mon — who would want to hurt this adorable face?
BOOP.
Image from Pixabay.
Whales might be large and long-living. But they still need our help to survive.
If you want another whale to make it to his two-hundred-and-eleventy-first birthday (which you should because I hear they throw great parties), then sign this petition to protect the waters from Big Oil and other industrial threats.
Professor Jørgen Berge always thought animals, like people, preferred to spend their winters dormant.
Berge is a marine biologist and zoologist at the Arctic University of Norway and the University Centre in Svalbard, which means he's used to those long, dark winters where the sun literally does not rise for anywhere from 23 to 176 days.
This phenomenon is known as a "polar night," which means that no part of the sun's disc is visible on the horizon, and it occurs everywhere above the 67° latitude line, including parts of Alaska, the Yukon, the Denmark Strait, and parts of Greenland and Russia.
But he and his fellow researchers were inspired to take a second look after a chance encounter in a Svalbard fjord in the winter of 2013.
"Above us was a starry, winter night and below us were countless blue-green 'stars' in the deep produced by bioluminescent organisms. The beauty of it was stunning, and the fact that so many organisms were producing light was a strong indication that the system was not in a resting mode," he explained.
Giant jellyfish swim under the ice of the Arctic.
Photo from Pixabay
A team of nearly 100 scientists from seven different nations cataloged the lives of some surprisingly active Arctic animals.
Over three winters, the team led by Professor Berge embarked on underwater filming, biodiversity counts, and analyses of the stomach contents of seabirds and fish.
"Instead of an ecosystem that has entered a resting state, we document a system with high activity levels and biological interactions across most trophic levels," he said.
This activity included:
scallops and shellfish feeding on the floor;
krill and zooplankton and other tiny critters all spawning like rabbits in the springtime;
and auks and guillemots who resisted the urge to head south for the winter and somehow managed to stalk their deep-sea prey in absolute darkness.
"They are not individuals that are left behind and about to die," Berge told the BBC. "They are doing well, they find their food in the dark. Many of them had very full stomachs."
Pretty amazing, right? And all they had to do was look in the one place that no one thought to look before!
And in defense of every other scientist ever, I completely understand not wanting to leave your bed in the middle of a pitch-black Arctic winter to dive through the ice on the off chance that you might find some surprising aquatic activity.
Working at night in the Arctic can be challenging.
Unless ... maybe this overactive polar night is actually something new?
For better or for worse, Berge and his team would not have been able to conduct their research if it hadn't been for the rapidly rising global temperatures.
"If you go back 10 years, the fjords would freeze up at that time of year, and this wouldn't have been possible at all," Berge said. "At the same time, there has been warming. We have less sea ice, we have more influence of warmer Atlantic water masses — and that will also have influenced the system."
Could it be that this influx of activity is actually the result of climate change and the melting polar ice caps?
Well ... maybe.
We can't actually know for sure because there's simply not enough research yet to prove the theory. As far as Berge's team members are concerned, it really could go either way.
"It's surprising to see that the rates are so high — that the level of activity is comparable to what's there in the summer. That is impressive," said Dr. Donatella Zona, an Arctic ecologist at the University of Sheffield. "But it's not very surprising that there is activity during the cold period. The main problem is that there are so few data. It's very hard to quantify, because we are relying on so few measurements."
Granted, correlation is not causation. But climate change is still a serious concern, and it would stand to reason that it might have something to do with this newly discovered aquatic Arctic dance party.
Regardless of whether climate change has a direct impact (yet) on animal activity in the Arctic Ocean, I think we can all agree that the Arctic environment is a unique and wonderful place full of mystery and life that should be explored.
But things like Arctic drilling are chipping away at that ecosystem at increasingly alarming rates.
Pretty much our relationship with the planet right now
Using a raspy lower register gets noticed or does it?
"Vocal Fry" is a term for the glottal, creaking sound of lower-register speech oscillation.
You know, like that raspy Zooey-Deschanel-type thing where your voice has that little "GuUuUuUuUuUuUuUh" crackle, instead of the smooth, consistent "Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuh."
That really didn't help at all, huh?
OK, it's this:
We've noticed women using "vocal fry" for a while now...
A scientific study was reported in a 2011 issue of Science magazine that's generally credited with adding the phrase "vocal fry" into the popular lexicon. Before this point, according to the magazine, apparently vocal fry did not exist, although Britney Spears anachronistically employed it in the first line of her debut single, "Baby One More Time" all the way back in 1998. And she wasn't the only pop star to do so.
Britney Spears was all about the 'vocal fry' with her debut single, "Baby One More Time."
The study from Science purported that women are often different than men (groundbreaking!), and thus, women talked less good with their mouth-sounds. (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.) (Please excuse my rolling eyes.)
Specifically, vocal fry was said to be a trend among college-aged women of a certain social standing. "Young students tend to use it when they get together. Maybe this is a social link between members of a group," noted one female researcher.
...but recently it's been recognized that us dudes have been getting in on the action for a while too.
All right, guys! We're finally getting closer to true gender parity! But the question remains: How come no one noticed that men have been using vocal fry for years?
"This American Life" host Ira Glass recently admitted that he uses vocal fry. But in a conversation with Chana Jaffe-Walt (who is not a dude), Glass also admitted that no one notices his vocal fry. And it's not that no one notices — women are criticized for using vocal fry while men have been getting away with it for years.
"I get criticized for a lot of things in the emails to the show," Glass said. "No one has ever pointed this out."
Noted academic and anarcho-syndicalist advocate Noam Chomsky has also been known to employ vocal fry (presumably as a means of dismantling capitalism). Chomsky certainly has his detractors, but none of them seem to take issue with his vocal quality either. And even The Hairpin noted over 6 years ago that male vocal fry has become "a thing."
In reality, associating the vocal fry trend only with women — both in practice and in naming — is a really just another way of trying to define gender roles.
It's certainly interesting to observe the trends in human social interactions in the same way we observe a pack of wild capuchin monkeys. But the way that vocal fry gained traction in popular culture was, well, kind of weird.
There are many legitimate reasons — beyond gender — for why a person might develop vocal fry.
The simple truth is that vocal fry is just one way that people talk, regardless of their gender. Some people employ it as a means of being heard, as differentiating their voices from the rest of the masses. Other people really do just talk that way!
And it's another example of the way we treat women like Goldilocks("This one's too sexy, and this one's too prude, and..."). If a woman uses a higher register to speak, then it's classified as ditzy, valley-girl uptalk. If a woman uses her lower register, it's vocal fry. If she speaks in the middle (modal range), her words often get lost entirely.
Women are often classified just from the way they talk.
Maybe, just maybe, we should all try to worry less about the way people speak (or dress or...) and instead try to actually listen to and hear what they're saying.
So vocal fry? Don't vocal fry? Do what you want! Because if our crappy earbud headphones have taught us anything, it's that content matters more than the quality of delivery.
It's something so simple, yet something so good — two tasty buns around mouthwatering meat.
Yes, it's true: Hamburgers are wonderful. But what exactly makes them so wonderful? With so many parts and so many variations, it’s hard to know precisely why this dietary delight has become such an iconic part of our culture.
Over the centuries — yes, centuries — the hamburger has evolved from an umami underdog to a ubiquitous food staple all across the globe. And at the center of that strange journey is some surprising insight into humanity itself (and also a tasty meat patty).
Here are seven fascinating facts from across the years and continents that will make you appreciate the burger for more than just its taste.
1. The hamburger was invented in New Haven, Connecticut.
It was 1900 when Danish immigrant Louis Lassen first took the trimmings from his trademark steak sandwiches (which he also helped pioneer), packed them into patties, and placed them between two slices of toast from his sandwich wagon. The family still runs Louis’ Lunch Shop on Crown Street today and still serves the sandwiches on toast with no option for ketchup.
As someone who was born and raised in New Haven, I can assure you that this is 100% unequivocal truth. Even the U.S. Library of Congress has it on record!
Louis Lassen stands at the counter of the Lunch Wagon in New Haven, Connecticut.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
2. Unless it was not invented in New Haven at all.
Perhaps it was Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas, that actually invented it. He supposedly started cookin’ up those patties in the late 1880s, then brought his treat to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, where it gained global attention.
Or it could have been Charles and Frank Menches of Hamburg, New York, who ran out of sausage at a fair in 1885, so they packed together ground beef with coffee, brown sugar, and other brown spices to mask what was otherwise considered “lower class” meat.
Some people even give credit to Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, who began serving flattened meatballs on bread in 1885, even though that’s pretty clearly a “meatball sandwich” and not a “hamburger.”
Maybe it all began at root beer-maker Oscar Weber Bilby’s Fourth of July party in 1891, right in Oklahoma — the heartland of America.
As you can see, there's some question as to which of the 50 states can actually claim credit for this distinctly American delicacy. Unfortunately, people didn’t keep very clear records of these things back then, so it’s kind of hard to determine which one was the real pioneer.
A large statue commemorates the lover for a burger.
3. But we do know that the first record of a hamburger-like recipe was from 1758.
"The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy" by Hannah Glasse — the most popular cookbook in England for more than a century — was well-known in the American colonies too.
The cookbook was updated many times after its initial publication in 1747, but it was the 1758 edition that first made mention of a “hamburg sausage” — a combination of ground beef and spices that was cured and then served roasted on a single piece of toast.
4. The hamburg sausage wan't quite a sandwich. But neither was the "hamburg steak," another cousin of the burger.
Obviously, the question of “what defines a sandwich” has resulted in much debate. But one thing we can all agree on is that it requires some kind of casing in order to qualify as a “sandwich” ... right?
While Glasse’s hamburg sausage could have arguably been an open-faced sandwich, the popular hamburg steak was definitely not a sandwich. The German dish gained popularity in the 18th century and comprised of, um, well, a patty of ground beef packed together — sometimes with spices or onions or egg — and then cooked and served. Which, come to think of it, does sound a lot like a hamburger without the bun.
(Some would argue that a hamburger without a bun is not technically a hamburger, but that's a philosophical discussion for another time.)
5. Come to think of it, no one’s really sure who invented the sandwich either.
This may not sound like an important part of hamburger history, but bear with me. You’ll see how it connects.
Credit often goes to John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who allegedly needed some way to contain his food so that he could continue playing cards with his friends without making a mess or needing utensils.
But he was hardly the first to think of such a thing — Hillel the Elder was known for eating flatbread sandwiches as far back as the first century, and of course, many Middle Eastern and Eurasian cultures made use of the pita to contain all kinds of tasty treats, including — wait for it — minced meats.
Now do you see where this is going?
There are many components to this flatbread burger.
Image via Pixabay.
6. That’s right: The hamburger goes all the way back to Genghis Khan. (Sort of.)
Look, there’s a lot of world to conquer, OK? And when you were part of Khan’s Golden Horde, you didn’t have a lot of time to stop and eat between invading 2/3 of the planet. Khan’s soldiers would sometimes stay on horseback for days at a time, which wasn’t really conducive to eating soup either.
They found a way around the problem by thinly slicing meat and packing it together into portable patties that could be taken on the road and eaten as needed. Sometimes they were boiled, sometimes cured ahead of time, and more often than not, they were just eaten raw (but, contrary to popular belief, they were not placed under their saddles and cooked by butt-heat friction).
A statue for the likeness of the historical Genhis Khan.
Image from Pixabay.
In one part of the world, this minced meat may have evolved into kebabs, which of course were then contained in the aforementioned pitas. Genghis’s grandson Kublai Khan is believed to have passed this raw meaty snack on to the Russians, who called it “steak tartare,” reportedly after their name for the Turco-Mongol peoples.
It would only be a matter of time before Russians shared the recipe with Germans, who gave it a twist of their own and turned it into hamburg steaks.
7. But the absolute oldest reference to a burger-like food comes from fourth-century Rome.
The ancient Roman Empire contributed a great many things to the modern world — including, believe it or not, fast food in the form of the ready-to-go thermopholia markets (literally “a place where something hot is sold”). According to a fourth-century cookbook, some of these thermopholia sold a packed patty known as Isica Omentata, which was made from minced meat, pine nuts, fish sauce, wine, and other spices. You can even find some modernized recipes and make your own Roman patties the next time you’re in the mood for a gladiator match!
The Roman Empire created some unique architecture.
The hamburger’s globe-trotting history shows us exactly why people around the world love those meaty buns.
(Besides the fact they’re delicious, I mean.)
The real power of the burger is much more primal than that. Bread and meat are dietary staples of every culture since pretty much the dawn of civilization as we know it. It only makes sense to bring them together in such a simple way. And as technologies continued to evolve, of course we’d use them to perfect this quintessential combination, which would, in turn, give rise to the modern burger as we know it.
A representation of a hamburger with cheese.
Image via Pixabay.
That’s why the hamburger’s winding journey from Rome to Mongolia to Russia to Germany and, finally, to the United States is such a telling story: It shows how separate cultures have so much in common across time and space. In that regard, it almost doesn't matter who was first to slap that patty on a bun or what inspired them do it — because the impulse was intrinsically human. Which means, yes, the hamburger has the power to unite us all, no matter where we come from, like one big global barbecue.
Thousands of emails bombarded the company in a short period of time. They all came from the same source, pretending to be someone or something they weren't in order to lure people into clicking on shady links and giving up their personal data.
"While investigating it, I stumbled upon the phisher's database which had [the] personal data of thousands of people," McGready says. "I was surprised how little effort was required on the fraudster's part to acquire such a trove of information."
This discovery sparked McGready's interest in information security and teaching others how to protect themselves from fraud. Since then, this journey has taken him from the U.K.'s National Trading Standards department to the documentary series "Secrets of the Scammers" to his own company and beyond.
Here are just a few lessons from McGready — and some other IT professionals — about securing your personal data:
"Having data readily available online means that things like phishing emails can be automatically tailored to targets without much effort," McGready says.
But what does "data" really mean in this case? Um. Er. Pretty much everything. Even if we don't realize it. Something as simple as your basic browsing habits and location history can actually reveal a lot about you. Even if your name's not attached to it, a savvy social hacker could still figure something out.
2. Be aware that your friends may expose info about you — even if you're not on social media.
"We tend to share every detail of our lives on social media because we feel obliged to by peer pressure — whether that be adding your birthday to your Facebook profile because the website keeps asking for it," McGready says. But it's worse when your friend tags you in that photo from high school with your school mascot in the background and — oops. There goes another security question.
Things don't always go as planned with technology.
3. Pay attention so you can mitigate the risks (though probably not completely avoid them).
McGready recommends keeping your social media profiles as private as possible and asking your friends and family to do the same. "Even those that intentionally aren't on social media may be easily findable by their friends or family that share the 'dinner table selfie.'"
4. It's better to be proactive than wait until you're compromised.
"We hear about data leaks almost every week, it seems," McGready says. "The general public are no longer asking 'if' their data is compromised, but rather 'when.'"
This might sound scary. But it's also a good reminder to stay sharp.
Do you know everyone that's using your computer?
Image via Pixabay.
5. Check the Facebook apps and third-party services that might have access to your account.
"It's worth checking what data you share with specific companies and only giving out the bare minimum in case of a data breach in the future," McGready explains.
For example: Does Bejeweled Blitz really need permission to access everything you've ever put on Facebook, to post on your behalf, and to spam your friends and family? It's not just annoying — it puts you at risk if that information leaks.
6. Take some time to get rid of those old accounts.
A clever hacker might still be able to figure out something through your iwasdefinitelyacool15yearold@aol.com email address. "Many of us, myself included, also have a large number of 'dormant accounts' on websites that we no longer use," McGready says. "I'd fully recommend logging into these accounts and changing all the profile information before deleting the account."
It's important to know what accounts are open in your name.
7. Don't feel bad if it happens to you. Even IT professionals fall for it!
Georgia Bullen, technology projects director for New America's Open Technology Institute, recounts how she was hacked:
"My password wasn't secure enough and so someone had built a program that was logging into not-secure-enough accounts and then spamming."
What she felt at the time is all too familiar for anyone who's been hacked: "Embarrassed, confused, and then really worried that someone else was going to click on something from me."
8. Be smart, pay attention, and know what you're getting into with any website or service you sign up for.
This bears repeating because a little awareness can make a big difference.
What type of security for your accounts do you have?
Passwords are the Achilles' heel of the modern world — but there's a trick.
"It's totally possible [for hackers] to take one password, see where you've re-used it, and then get access to those accounts as well. And that's where the bigger danger happens," explains Harlo Holmes from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
That's why, in general, passwords should be different for every website or service used, and consist of three random words, interspersed with special characters; a DiceWare password like "correct horse battery staple" is a good place to start.
Password managers can help out by creating unique passwords for you. Which leads to...
Password managers can generate strong, random passwords for you. And they keep track of all of your different passwords so you don't need to memorize them yourself.
All you need to do is remember one super-secure master password in order to unlock every other possible password combination. That way, says Bullen, you can't even make the mistake of verbally giving your password away because you genuinely don't know it yourself! (Unless it's your master password, in which case, ya know, don't do that.)
Safety is good, but a back-up plan is even better. 2FA sends a code to a device on your person just to make sure that the person logging in is really you. Even if your password does get compromised, the hacker probably doesn't have access to your smartphone, too. (Probably.)
Mozilla's Amira Dhalla explains how it works:
12. Consider using a separate email address — with a separate strong password — for important accounts like banking.
That way, even if you do use the same password elsewhere, hackers will have a harder time getting in to your important accounts. (Make sure this secondary email account has two-factor authentication, too!)
13. Be sure to hover over links before you click them.
"Links may look legitimate, but upon hovering, they actually redirect to a completely different place," McGready says. (Don't believe me? See what happens when you click on www.upworthy.com/definitely-not-an-upworthy-page.)
14. Always double-check the URL in the address bar. (But even that's not always safe.)
Ever notice that green padlock in your browser bar? It's a good sign! ... except when it's not. As McGready explains, "While it's true that this means your data is encrypted between your computer and the website itself, it doesn't legitimize the website."
Using default passwords on the computer router can leave you vulnerable..
It may seem harmless to use the default password for your router, but that can actually leave you vulnerable to hackers (there are even websites that can be used to find out different routers' default settings). And someone accessing your router can access pretty much your entire home network. So it's worth taking that small extra step of setting up a strong user name and password.
16. Be wary: These days, the internet is in everything from lightbulbs to baby diapers. Which is super cool! And bad.
McGready sees "the internet of things," or IoT, as the biggest online threat on the horizon. Even if you have worried about Amazon spying on you, you probably didn't consider who else could be spying on you through a vulnerable Wi-Fi or Bluetooth system built into your smart home. "The issue comes when these wireless chips are integrated by default on all products, whether the customer wants them or not," McGready explains.
17. Exercise a little extra caution.
It all boils down to the fact that humans are too trusting.
We trust that our friends aren't going to expose our address over Twitter. We trust that some disgruntled Angry Birds employee won't hijack our linked Facebook page because we didn't pay attention to permissions. We trust the green padlock in the browser bar that keeps our credit cards secure, even if the website taking that information wants to use it for a shady purpose.
Simply put, we trust that the internet is mostly good and that people are, too.
It's hard to solve a problem you can't see — which is why McGready is so passionate about teaching online safety.
"Show the public exactly what is possible and what they should be watching out for," McGready says. "It's one thing to tell someone that a scammer can send a text which appears to be from a legitimate company or a known person; it's another thing entirely to send a text to that person's phone which comes from 'Mum.'"
There's no "one weird trick" to protect us from the dangers of technology. But we can do our due diligence — as long as we know where to start.
“You could never tell this little girl has three tubes in her."
Natasha Fuller is just 8 years old, but her grandmother, Chris Burleton, told the Fond du Lac Reporter that she doesn't let her medical condition faze her. “She is happy and sassy, and she just wants to lead a normal life, and do things like go swimming.”
Natasha was born with a rare abdominal muscle condition called Eagle-Barrett Syndrome, or "prune belly syndrome." Among other things, this means that her eight years of life so far have been plagued by urinary tract complications. She lives with her grandparents in Oakfield, Wisconsin — some 400 miles away from her parents and twin sister in Oklahoma — where it's easier to see the doctor, including thrice-weekly trips to the hospital for kidney dialysis.
But in the fall of 2015, doctors said if she didn't get a transplant, Natasha would die.
She had been waiting years to get a new kidney. But every time her name came up on the transplant list, she was already dealing with other kidney infections that would make the surgery impossible. So each time, she was bumped back to the bottom of the list.
Jodi sits with Natasha, a first-grader in desperate need of a kidney transplant.
Photo pulled from YouTube video
That's when her first-grade teacher, Jodi Schmidt, was inspired to do something radical.
Jodi had only known Natasha since the start of the school year, and though she clearly cared about the girl, she couldn't quite articulate where the idea came from. All she knew was she was suddenly so overwhelmed that she had to pull the car over and call her husband.
"I told him, 'Rich, I want to give a student one of my kidneys,'" she told USA Today.
Jodi went through all the proper tests to make sure that she was a donor match for Natasha before she even shared her plan with anyone else. She checked with her principal, Becky Doyle, to see if she could take off the 8 weeks of recovery time, and confirmed with the hospital that her kidney would be used for Natasha and no one else.
Then she called Natasha's grandmother in for a special conference at the school.
Natasha's grandmother assumed that she was going in to speak about her granddaughter's grades or to address some concerns about her failing health, according to USA Today. Instead, she was greeted with a gift.
"We gave her a gift box, and under the tissue paper was a card with the words: 'It's a match,'" she explained.
Grandma finds out Jodi is a donor match for Natasha.
Photo pulled from YouTube video
"I have had some really good days in my life, and that was probably one of the best," Jodi said after seeing the family's reaction. "I think that life takes us on very different paths, and I now have no doubt I was brought to Oakfield for a reason."
Jodi teaches her first-grade class.
Photo pulled from YouTube video
Teachers make amazing sacrifices for students every day — and Jodi's gift to Natasha is simply one of the most extraordinary.
In the meantime, you can warm your own heart with the full donor revelation video below — and let's all hope that Natasha and Jodi both have a speedy recovery after their surgeries in April!
Frederick William Park and Thomas Ernest Boulon, aka Fanny and Stella.
Officially, there were no homosexual men in Victorian England.
But that's just because the word "homosexual" didn't enter the language until the mid-to-late 1890s. ("Transsexual" and "transgender" would catch on even later.)
There were, however, men who engaged in sexual and/or romantic relationships with each other. They just didn't identify with the same words we use today; in fact, many of them used a special cant-like, crypto-language called Polari in order to communicate without exposing themselves in public.
While the rest of society was struggling to define and understand them, they went about with their usual business, living their lives regardless of words.
Consider the case of Frederick William Park and Thomas Ernest Boulton — also known as Fanny and Stella, respectively.
The duo met while working as actors around London, where there was a longstanding tradition in the theater of men cross-dressing to perform as women. Fanny and Stella appeared onstage as sisters, but Park and Boulton carried these identities offstage as well, cavorting at parties and in public.
Fredrick and Thomas pose in an embrace as Fanny and Stella.
Boulton, whose affinity for women's clothing and dreams of femme stardom stretched back to childhood, had a live-in relationship with Lord Arthur Clinton, a naval officer and the son of the 5th duke of Newcastle. Park, on the other hand, was the son of a judge. While it's not clear whether he was involved sexually with either Boulton or Clinton, he was known to have a written correspondence with Clinton in character as Fanny.
Clinton, Boulton, and Park pose for a photograph.
Clinton, Boulton, and Park. Photo via Frederick Spalding/Wikimedia Commons.
Things started to get messy when Fanny and Stella were arrested outside of London's Royal Strand Theatre on April 28, 1870.
Their alleged crime? "Conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offense" with the other men they were accompanying. Lord Clinton was also indicted in the scandal but tragically died before it went to trial, possibly by suicide.
When the case reached the court, the prosecution faced a difficult challenge. There was nothing technically illegal about a man wearing a dress in public, and it was impossible to prove someone guilty of "being gay or transgender" when the words didn't yet exist. Thus, the only potentially punishable offense for which Fanny and Stella could be tried was sodomy.
Fanny and Stella stood before a judge in their best evening gowns while doctors presented physical evidence of sodomy. Even the public at the time thought the spectacle was ridiculous, and the two were ultimately acquitted by a jury.
A drawing depicting both Fredrick and Thomas being arrested in 1870.
In 1880, Victorian values were once again scandalized by the "disgraceful proceedings" of a so-called "drag ball" in Manchester.
The private event on Sept. 24, 1880, at the city's Temperance Hall was organized by a group calling themselves the Pawnbrokers' Assistants' Association. They took numerous precautions to protect the guests' identities, including a bouncer at the door dressed as a nun, black paper on the windows, and a blind accordion player to provide the party's music with plausible deniability.
Somehow, Detective Jerome Caminada, who's believed to be the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, caught wind of the occasion. The sneaky sleuth reportedly observed "men dressed in the most fantastic fashion, and eight of them in the garb of women."
The police waited until the early hours of the morning to raid the party and ended up arresting nearly 50 people for the crime of "having solicited and incited each other to commit an unnameable offense" — again, because there was nothing explicitly illegal about "being queer and dancing the can-can."
In the end, most of the defendants were forced to pay a bond in a promise to the court for 12 months of "good behavior."
A cartoon published in the Police News talking about the incident.
Five years later, the U.K. passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which made "gross indecency" punishable by prison time.
Member of Parliament Henry Labouchère realized that if they were ever going to bring charges against queer men, trying to legally prove they engaged in sodomy wasn't the answer.
Labouchère came up with the vaguely defined term gross indecency, which basically meant any kind of physical sexual contact between two people with penises that the court deemed "gross." (There was no comparable law against queer women.) The new law was tacked onto an amendment about the age of consent.
Perhaps the most famous charge of gross indecency was against Oscar Wilde, who served two years hard labor in Reading prison, from which he never quite recovered. The British codebreaker and computer science progenitor Alan Turing was also charged with gross indecency in 1952. As punishment, he was chemically castrated; 50 years later, the British government acknowledged the action was grossly inhumane.
Statues made in honor of mathematician Alan touring and writer Oscar Wilde respectively.
(Left) The Alan Turing memorial in Sackville Park, Manchester, and the Oscar Wilde memorial in Merrion Square, Dublin.
Sex between two consenting British males was finally decriminalized in 1967 — but anti-gay laws stayed on the books in Scotland and Northern Ireland until the 1980s.
It still took until 2010 for the U.K. to secure most other rights for LGBTQ people, including adoption, marriage, and protection from discrimination.
The fight for sexual and gender equality has been long and arduous, but one thing is certain: Queer people have always been here, regardless of what they were called at various times in history.
Naming things is how we give them power. The words we use today make it easier for us to see and to accept identities that have always been present for what they truly are: essential parts of the human experience.
