This proves why my PhD thesis is wholly necessary because I am tired of the whole ‘you can’t acknowledge the ambiguities of ancient gender/sexuality and you can’t map modern queer identity structures onto antiquity’ without someone saying ‘hm, sounds like queer erasure to me!’ https://twitter.com/badgayspod/status/1348922619496706048

‘Straight-washed’ Alexander is a constructed character that elides any aspects of his queerness to craft a particular identity that suited the agenda of the political/cultural climate in which that work was being created in/for.

‘Queer-ed’ Alexander is also a constructed character that potentially overemphasises and misconstrues aspects of his queerness to craft a particular identity that suited the political/cultural climate in which that work was being created in/for.

Obviously the impact of both sides to this ‘coin’ are not equal, given the different dynamics in power between queer culture and heteronormative culture, and so the motivation to align Alexander with either one of those can’t be wrangled with in exactly the same way.

There is indeed an element of homophobia and sustained queer erasure in the history of the scholarship and reception of Alexander the Great. Recently* the trend has shifted and Alexander has been somewhat reconstructed as an LGBTQ icon.
*60’s onward

Are these both ‘inaccurate’ readings of his persona that construct him as something very different from his character in antiquity? Yes. Are they both as ‘bad’ as each other? No, of course not. As with all things, the conversation to be had is much more nuanced than that.

Do I aim to research the conflicting constructions of Alexander’s character in the scholarship and media of the 20th century and see how and why we came from Tarn’s ‘heterosexual monogamous gentleman’ to queer fanfiction and Alexander having an entry on gayheroes dot com? Yes.

Addendum: I’m not seeking to produce a definitive answer as to whether Alexander was straight or gay. I don’t think such a thing is ever possible. I also don’t think that ‘queer-ing’ Alexander, or any figure from antiquity really, is a bad thing. I think it’s very interesting.

I’m a queer person, I’m an NB lesbian. I’m not looking at this project to try and straighten out or unQueer Alexander. I want to look at the liminality of his character through a queer lens and how the way his persona was constructed changed so radically in the space of 80 years.

The way Alexander’s character underwent such radical change and became so far removed from his actual personhood, the way his likeness was appropriated in antiquity, the way his literary portrait was imbued with such artifice, these are all things that I have researched before.

I want to take those threads, the deliberate construction of character, the artifice in Alexander history, the appropriation of his image, and apply that to how we consider modern renditions of Alexander in media. Every era creates their own Alexander, we are no exception.