In the 200s AD, the Roman emperor Elagabalus was known for dressing in women’s clothing and requesting to be called “Lady” instead of “Lord.” 

In the mid 1600s, Queen Christina’s decision to abdicate the Swedish throne rather than marry a man fueled rumors that she was attracted to women. 

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But would Elagabalus have identified with the modern definition of trans? Would Queen Christina have called herself a lesbian? It’s impossible to know.

One of the major challenges with queer history is how we attribute our current understanding of gender and sexuality to people of the past, who might not have understood themselves in the same way or wanted to claim such labels for themselves had they been alive today.

Katherine Ott understands this quandary all too well. The de facto LGBTQ+ archivist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History spoke with LGBTQ Nation about how the disconnect between modern understanding and those of the past makes it difficult to identify historic artifacts as ‘queer’ with any certainty. 

“People who dressed outside their gender have done it forever,” Ott explained. “So I don’t know who wore the breeches that we have from 1760, or how they felt when they wore them. There are probably identities hidden that people from our community will never know, but I know that they’re there.”

Ott’s own experiences with gender and sexuality only serve to fuel that dilemma. “I know how difficult it is, for myself, hour to hour. I can’t keep up with myself; how can I keep up with people from 250 years ago?”

When trying to pin down and label their own identity can be so challenging, it’s hard to feel like they have the authority to dictate the labels of someone long gone. “We don’t [understand], because how they were using [a word] is so different from how we use it today.”

But Ott (who uses any pronouns) is nevertheless determined to preserve evidence that queer people have always been here, especially as political leaders are actively trying to erase LGBTQ+ voices and remove our history and symbols from historic landmarks. 

“I’ve been called out and name-checked over the years mostly for the queer and gender stuff in exhibits and things I’ve written,” said Ott. “I can say this is what happened. You can decide how you’re going to think about it.”

In July, Ott was called out by name in a White House report called “Saving America’s Story” for their work calling racism a public health crisis and their exhibit “Illegal to Be You: Gay History Beyond Stonewall.” But, noting it was “only a lousy footnote,” they remain committed to the work. 

Anything can be endured 

Ott arrived at the Smithsonian as a postdoc almost 30 years ago and is now the Smithsonian’s Curator of Medicine and Science. In that role, they lead much of the museum’s LGBTQ+ artifact collection and programming. 

For Ott, the LGBTQ+ and disabled communities were obvious focuses for their work. “My natural inclination is toward the things and people that have been made invisible or marginalized, myself being of a community that is.” Upon finding that no one was directly working to collect queer artifacts, Ott self-assigned themselves the job.

“When I was first doing it, the chair of the division challenged me and said, ‘Why are you doing that? It’s not what you were hired for.’ So, I started calling it ‘the history of gender,’ and that made it fine for a long time.”

Ott understands the symbiotic relationship between artifacts and words in bringing queer history to life. 

“It’s the stories that often make the object come alive and allow people to connect with other people in the past. As historians, no matter what your age is, you’re an elder who tells the story of how we got here. We do editorialize a bit with what we leave in or leave out, certainly. But storytelling grounds people, and I think anything can be endured if you can turn it into a story.”

The good & the bad 

Identifying queer people in history isn’t always a challenge. In some cases, Ott said, there’s enough evidence that it seems fair to include them under the LGBTQ+ tag. 

Charlotte Cushman, for example, played male roles on the stage and had female lovers during the Civil War era. One of the most famous possibly-LGBTQ+ figures in American history is 15^th President James Buchanan, who was known to share a bed with another man; memoirs from those in Washington at the time discuss the pair as if they were a married couple.

Ott similarly highlights Eleanor Roosevelt, pointing to the romantic nature of the letters she shared with Lorena Hickok, but notes, “I was not alive, so I couldn’t have walked in on her, but it sort of sounds like someone did at some point.” Ott then adds, “We have a dress from Eleanor Roosevelt. She was not my size, by the way. Don’t ask me how I know that.”

The Smithsonian collection tells both the good and the bad of the queer history within the United States. The collection’s artifacts of queer oppression provide a visceral understanding of just how bad things have been. “We have electroconvulsive shock equipment, lobotomy knives, and insulin pumps that were used on people who didn’t ‘fit in,’ often because they were queer,” Ott said. 

Ott’s favorite artifacts share the full spectrum of queer experience, from the lows of abuse to the highs of queer joy.

Some of those favorites come from the actor John Waters. Ott said when people asked, “What’s on your wishlist?” they’d jokingly respond, “John Waters’ mustache.” But then Ott got the chance to talk to Waters, and while he originally said everything he had was already promised to another museum, Ott joked, “Everything? Like even your toenail clippings?”

Waters came back with a collection of things for Ott: a pencil sharpener with shavings which Ott thinks was inspired by the toenail clippings joke, and the Maybelline eyeliner pencil that he uses to highlight his mustache. He also gave them an empty La Mer jar. “There’s a little bit of scent left,” Ott said, “So I can let people sniff John Waters. I’m sure he would be fine with that.”

Another favorite is a 45rpm vinyl record with dense layers of history. The single is a gay parody of “Frankie and Johnnie,” recorded for a 1960 fundraiser organized by the lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis and sung by Edyth Eyde under the pseudonym Lisa Ben (an anagram of “lesbian”), who published the lesbian zine The Ladder. Eyde signed it, “To Phyllis and Del, fondly, Lisa Ben.” Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were the first same-sex couple to be married in San Francisco in 2004, when gay marriage was first legalized, and then again in 2008 when it was re-legalized.

Ott also highlighted the powerful artifacts they collected from the parents of Matthew Shepard. “His parents are amazing. I have such deep affection and respect for them, how they turned that unimaginable tragedy into taking care of others.”

But those artifacts might not be what you’d expect. Rather than focusing on the tragedy of Shepard’s murder, they focus on who he was as a person. The collection includes childhood belongings, drawings, photographs, and clothing. “He liked J.Crew a lot…. We have a Superman cape he loved when he was a kid.”

One item they have encapsulates that Shepard had hopes for a bright future. “When they were cleaning out his apartment, they found a ring, like a wedding ring… And he didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. It wasn’t legal to get married. But for me, it really captures his aspiration and that he was a romantic, and he was going to do it no matter what.”

What it means to be a human

Ott said one of the key differences between the Smithsonian and LGBTQ+ museums is that the latter tell the story of queer people in America, while the Smithsonian seeks to tell “the wholeness of American history,” including the queer people and stories that have always been part of it.

“In the history of medicine,” Ott offered as an example, “we have coping strategies of people who were queer; we have artifacts from how they found joy. And we can put that in the context of wider oppression around race. We can make it intersectional. Or we can tie it to World War II and queers in the military because we can tell that bigger story.”

The Smithsonian does not currently have any in-person queer exhibits, but it offers digital exhibitions and a wealth of LGBTQ+ artifacts in the Smithsonian collection.

Ott couldn’t say whether there is a specific reason for the lack of in-person queer exhibits, but emphasized that the comprehensive nature of the Smithsonian means that queer history is still very much on display. 

“In the gallery there are artifacts and stories in almost all the exhibits we have that are queer. We tell the story of war, so within that are stories of queer people, BIPOC, and all that. Which I think is good, because we’re all struggling together. Seeing the context is good.”

When we try to understand what 250 years of queer history in the United States means, it can be easy to look to big singular moments like the AIDS crisis, Stonewall, and gay marriage. Equally, we can look to big names like Harvey Milk, Marsha P. Johnson, or Bayard Rustin. But for Ott, that’s only a small part of the much bigger picture. “There are names that become famous,” they said. They’re not necessarily the important people.”

Ott’s online bio explains, “An amazing perk of my job is giving presence to people who are central to understanding today’s predicaments yet often left out of the story.” While it can be easy to assume there must be names of important historical figures that are being left off the list, Ott is more concerned with the average folks who merely lived out their queer lives and whose only radical act may have been being themselves.

“My uncle was in World War II,” Ott said, “and he had a really good time with the guys. He was a dancer. But you know, he got a dishonorable discharge, too.”

“We know they’re there. For me, I look at the collections we have collectively, because they really capture the story of the development of sexuality and gender over 250 years. What people wore, even looking at fashions. You can see the flow of history in and out of when certain people can wear things and when they can’t, or what needs to be ‘fixed’ about someone’s body, how you need to conform, trying to write the authenticity of who you were. So, all of the things we have tell pieces of this much bigger story of what it means to be human.”

Here to serve

This is, of course, a difficult time to work in a field that relies on telling the truth about marginalized communities. A recent TikTok featured an attack on Ott, full of misinformation about their work. “What pisses me off,” Ott said, “is they didn’t talk about my sinfully gorgeous hair, or my devilish wit, or my seductive intellect.” Laughing it off, they added, “I have to be irreverent about everything, because otherwise you don’t survive.”

Ott recognizes that their work will always get hate. A fellow curator once showed them a piece of hate mail she received over an exhibition on snow globes. “Somebody is always going to have an issue,” Ott said.

But at the same time, they see that things are changing. Before they started working at the Smithsonian, the museum had a very small 10^th anniversary exhibit for Stonewall. The comment book had pages covered in quotes from Deuteronomy, phrases like “you’re going to rot in hell,” and complaints about taxpayer dollars being used for the exhibit. But there were also pages of people defending the museum and retorting against the hateful words.

When the museum held a 50^th-anniversary exhibit for Stonewall in 2019, Ott said it was contentious to get it on the floor, but once it was displayed, the museum didn’t get any hateful comments. “Nobody cared because things had changed. It’ll probably come back around, but it doesn’t mean we don’t tell history.”

Ultimately, the pushback can be disheartening, but Ott and their colleagues know what their jobs are. “I see doing history as a part of future studies, because everything we do today is going to be experienced and consumed in the future. We need to know how we got here and to understand why things are [the way they are] and where we want to go.”

“We’re civil servants here at the museum,” they added, “so I swore to uphold the Constitution, and I take it seriously. We’re here to serve. But we’re tired.” 

“I’m tired, but undeterred.”