switchingview podcast
The switchingview project tells positive stories about LGBTQIA+ people from centuries past. It explores the relationship between homosexual people and the Christian Church, in a way that corrects centuries of religious prejudice and distortion. It describes how in many cultures, right across the world and across history, homosexual and other LGBTQIA+ people were widely accepted and valued for the gifts they brought to their cultures. Sadly the Christian church developed teachings that were critical of these people. And as Christianity spread across the world LGBTQIA+ people were attacked, pagan and indigenous cultures suppressed, and across the world these varied queer histories have been all but forgotten. It is now time to challenge that suppression, to recover these histories, and to appreciate the full diversity of what LGBTQIA+ lives have been, and can be in the future. The switchingview project uses social media to tell these stories - through Podcasts, YouTube videos and a website. I want the stories to be accessible to anybody in the world with a mobile phone or PC, rather than being locked away in a university library. The switchingview.com website gives full information about where these stories can found.
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Episodes
Tuesday Sep 10, 2024
Tuesday Sep 10, 2024
"What exactly is homosexuality?", and "Who gets to define who or what can be described as a homosexual person in history?"
These are contested and controversial questions. In this podcast I discuss these questions, and explain the approach I will be using in my switchingview project.
Monday Sep 09, 2024
Monday Sep 09, 2024
This recording describes how as European Colonialism was spread across the world it suppressed and damaged many of the cultures in which Intermediate Type people (LGBTQ+ people) had existed, to the extent that the memory of them is all but forgotten. It is now time to recover these lost histories.
Saturday Sep 07, 2024
Saturday Sep 07, 2024
This episode describes eight historical examples showing how LGBTQ people have been valued and accepted in many cultures across the world and across history, especially in the contexts of religion and warfare. This podcast follows on from Podcast Int1.1, Edward Carpenter's Intermediate Types.
Friday Sep 06, 2024
Friday Sep 06, 2024
I explore the ideas contained in Edward Carpenter's book Intermediate Types. He described how if you study LGBTQ+ peoples within cultures dominated by Christianity you will get a distorted picture due to Christian anti-gay prejudice. Unfortunately European colonialism from the 15th to 20th Century CE has spread this Christian anti-gay influence, forcibly, right across the world.
But if you make the effort to examine cultures across the world and across history before Colonialism and Christianity got there then you will find a different story. There are countless examples of cultures where "intermediate type" people (what we might today label LGBTQ+) were accepted by the society they live within, and in many cases valued for what they offered and how they lived.
This is part 1 of a 3 part introductory series introducing these ideas. Later recordings will give much more detail.