PRIDE x r/LGBT Reddit Talk: Pirate Queens w/ Rebecca Simon

REDDIT TALK BONUS EPISODE: Please enjoy this recording from our most recent chat with Levi, pirate historian Rebecca Simon, and Reddit's r/lgbt community recapping Season 2, Episode 3: Pirate Queens.We invite you to join live future talks by following the subreddit r/lgbt, and we will continue to share recordings of talks as they become available. We're so excited to have partnered with r/lgbt for live weekly Reddit Talks recapping our episodes and providing a platform for listeners and Redditors alike to ask questions and engage with other LGBTQ+ people.

Your host is Levi Chambers, founder of Rainbo Media Co. You can follow Levi @levichambers across socials.

Follow the show and keep up with the conversation @PRIDE across socials.

Want more great shows from Straw Hut Media? Check out or website at strawhutmedia.com.

Have an interesting LGBTQ+ story to share? We might feature U! Email us at [e-mail].

PRIDE is produced by Levi Chambers, Frank Driscoll, Maggie Boles, Ryan Tillotson, and Brandon Marlo. Edited by Frank Driscoll and Daniel Ferrera.

*This podcast is not affiliated with Pride Media.

Produced by Straw Hut Media

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey everyone, this is the RightChambers, the host of the Pride Podcast.
Last week we were joined by doctorRebecca Simon for another conversation about the
queer history of pirates, and thisweek we took the conversation to our slash
LGBT for a Reddit talk with Rebeccaanswering more questions about the queer and not
so queer history of pirates. Tunein next week for a new episode featuring

(00:22):
traveling nurse and HIV educator Brian Thomas. We talk all about his experience with
monkey pocks and Brian offers some tipsto staying safe. Until then, enjoy
our Reddit talk with Rebecca on thequeer history of Pirates. Hi everyone,
I'm Levi. I'm the host ofthe Pride Podcast, which we do in

(00:44):
partnership with Strahat Media. And inaddition to not to do a whole bunch
of gay things on the Internet,I oversee at LGBT and LGBTQ and Pride
on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter andall over the place. So my day
is pretty much queer. It's veryqueer all day. I mean, if
you are queer and every day isqueer, that's true. That's true.

(01:06):
Him thank you very much for invitingme here to speak. My name is
Rebecca and I'm a historian of piracyand I've had the really fun, amazing
honor of being on Levi's podcast twiceto talk about pirates and most recently about
female pirates and body and Mary Read. So I'm very excited to join you
all today. We're glad to haveyou. If you remember the very first

(01:29):
Reddit talk that we did, weactually kind of went off on this tangent
about LGBTQ pirates and queer pirates andkind of the history of that and got
talking about Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid, and there was a lot of excitement
about it, which inspired us atthe podcast to do another episode. Because
Rebecca has she's written several books andarticles and all sorts of things on pirates.

(01:53):
She's been on Netflix and the HistoryChannel. She's literally an expert and
knows everything. That's just kind ofmy thoughts there. But she had a
new book that she just finished.It just came out. She did a
ton of research into the lives ofAnne Bonnie and Mary Read, who,
according to history kind of before herbook, were hypothesized to be queer and

(02:15):
Rebecca spent a lot of time.I mean she actually I think she's either
still across the pond or she justgot back, but she's been doing all
sorts of things looking more into pirates, and she discovered a lot of new
information specifically about Anne, Bonnie andMary Read that we honestly didn't even talk
about when she was on the podcasttwo years ago. She had a different

(02:37):
understanding in some capacity and then foundlots of new information. So we had
her back on and obviously you canlisten to the podcast to get into the
nitty gritty details of it. Butwhat I think would be great is if
Rebecca, if you don't mind talkingjust a little bit about kind of the
research that you did to release yournew book, Pirate Queen's all all the

(02:59):
things that went into that, andtalk a little bit about kind of them.
I'd say transition, you know,in some way in the in terms
of your understanding of the queer historyof pirates, that the things that have
changed as you've learned more and more. So I'd love for you to kind
of talk to everybody a little bitabout kind of where you were in your

(03:19):
research with queer pirates and where youare today. Absolutely thanks so much,
Levi. So yeah, this bookPirate Queens has It was such a journey
going and researching and Bonnie and Maryread because they're such fascinating pirates that we
actually don't really know very much aboutbecause there's so little information. And before
I started researching about them, youknow, I had heard, you know,

(03:43):
I'd already researched them before, becauseI did pirates as my masters and
my doctorate, and so I alreadyhad kind of a working knowledge, and
in terms of queer pirates again hada bit of a working knowledge. And
there's a huge debate in the historicalcommunity about whether or not there were queer
pirates, and so that's always beena really interesting discussion, especially because there's
such little information. So when Iwent in talking about Ambonnie and Mary read

(04:05):
with Levi's podcast initially back in twentynineteen, I knew so much less about
them, and I thought I alreadyknew quite a bit at the time.
So that's what's so good about historyis the more you learn, the less
you know. It's kind of it'skind of funny that way. But initially,
you know, I had this ideathat these were two women and they
may or may not have been queer, they may not have been lovers,

(04:29):
or they may or may not havebeen lovers, And I kind of mostly
knew a lot about kind of thelegends about them. So when I wrote
this biography, I had to goreally really deep into the research about them,
and there were some challenges. Firstoff, I researched and wrote this
book throughout the pandemic, which meantthere were some limitations in terms of what
I could do. But thank god, like, there are so many historians

(04:50):
and there are so many libraries andarchives that just opened up so much of
their digital stuff for open access andtraded resources, and that was just so
great, see like everyone come togetherin that way. But basically, researching
a Bonnie and Mary Read was hardbecause there's only two sources about them.
The first is a seventeen twenty fourbook called A General History of the Pirates

(05:13):
by Captain Charles Johnson, and that'sbasically a collection of pirate biographies and some
of them are quite factual, buta lot of them are very fictionalized.
And one of the chapters that's probablyquite fictionalized is about Anne Bonnie and Mary
Read. And there have been there'sbeen documentation that the author of the book
deliberately wrote it to be similar toa novel. A Bonnie and Mary Reid

(05:33):
were used as marketing tools in theeighteenth century. On every advert you see
their names pop up. Their namesare kind of highlighted in the title page.
And then the other source is theirtrial. So they were arrested and
they sailed with Captain Jack Rackham,who Anne Bonnie was actually married to,
and they were all arrested in Octoberof seventeen twenty and put on trial in

(05:57):
Jamaica in November seventeen twenty. Andthe trial kind of details all their crimes
as pirates, all their activities andhow they acted, how they presented themselves
on the ship through I witness testimony. So these are only two real sources
that and a couple of scattered ones, one of which was a proclamation from
the governor of the Bahamas Woods Rogersdemanding the arrest for the female pirates and

(06:21):
Bonnie and Mary read along with JackRackham. And that was a game changer
piece of evidence because it was justlike a tiny little document, just one
paragraph. But what it showed wasthat this long standing idea that Mary Reid
had disguised herself as a man andlived as a man for years and years

(06:42):
and years and joined a pirate shipas a man, and a Bonnie fell
in love with her, not realizingshe was a man, but then their
love continued. That has always kindof been the narrative. But this document
showed that the governor of the Bahamasknew that there were two women on the
ship, which meant Mary Reid wasnot disguising herself as a man going on
the ship. And this kind ofjust opened up all the history for me

(07:04):
now and so kind of really broadenedeverything and allowed me to go into new
directions and a lot of new theory. And also what this book allowed me
to do is because there is suchlittle information about them, I was able
to go into so much social andhistorical context about the lives of women during
the eighteenth century, women in themilitary, women at sea, what gender

(07:25):
was like at c LGBT life atsea, and everything like that. So
I can go on and on andon, and I want to take up
too much time on that, butthat's basically kind of has been the journey.
And Yeah, everything I thought Iknew about Anbonny may Reid was just
so miniscule. So by the timeI got talked to Levi again, it
was almost like everything I'd said beforewas it's just completely different now. Oh

(07:46):
my gosh. Well, so personallythat brings up so many questions that I
don't know if you've covered in thepodcast. So I'm going to have to
give this lesson listening just because nowI'm so much more interested. But was
it kind of a situation where historianssaw it as a they didn't want to

(08:07):
point it out as our relationship thatwant anything but beyond foot was known,
so it was kind of a Sapphoand her friend kind of idea because they
didn't want to apply any of ourcurrent understanding of sexual value and gender on
it. Or was it just wasit something else? Well, what's really
interesting and also what the big challengeis about looking at LGBT history is that

(08:31):
there is this very long standing traditionfor lack of better terms of queer erasure
in history that can never ever bedenied. And part of it is because
of just kind of long standing historicaltraditions that have been very male dominated and
very conservative in general, and it'sreally only been like in the past,
like I would say twenty or thirtyyears that people have really began to broaden

(08:52):
the study of LGBT history and everythinglike that. But the major challenge that
comes through is that when we're lookingback at the eighteenth century, the seventeen
hundreds and earlier, the concept ofhomosexuality or lesbianism everything like that. Transgenderism
didn't actually exist as a concept inthe eighteenth century and earlier, and those

(09:16):
concepts didn't really start until the nineteenthcentury, and so historical documents from the
eighteenth century and back, when they'rereferencing gay men, it's only referenced as
sodomy or someone with quote unquote peculiartastes because it was considered to be a
crime. Now, for women,the idea of a sophic relationship, a

(09:39):
lesbian relationship that had no concept whatsoever, because female sexuality in a way wasn't
even a concept either. And theidea was basically even if a woman was
married and her husband caught her havinga relationship with a woman, it wasn't
a big deal because with a womanwith another woman, there's no penis involved,
and kind of the definition of asexual relationship and the definition of adultery

(10:03):
was basically if a woman slept withanother man someone with a penis basically.
And so this is what makes itso difficult because there's no written information,
and as historians we do have toget very literal about a lot of things.
It's very difficult to make the claimof yes, these people who are
definitely lesbians, or yes there wasthis whole queer group here, queer group,

(10:28):
that they were a couple, etc. Etc. When there's no documentation
that tells us this, it's verydifficult to make that claim, which is
the unfortunate reality of kind of thefield. And so this is so for
me when I'm researching an bonny MaryReid, you know, I'm trying to
be as authentic to the history aspossible while also trying to bring through the
modern day concepts and how we canapply it to history, while still also

(10:50):
being authentic to what actually exists withinthe historical narrative. But there still is
a huge problem with queer erasure andhistory, and I do very much believe
that, and I think we needto do a lot of work to actually
bring it forward a lot more.It's just there are so many challenges with
it. But that's also what makesit so cool. And this is why
the field it's just it's just it'sgrowing and it's going to keep growing.

(11:15):
Oh yeah, I honestly, that'sthat's exactly like what I was thinking about.
Um, with the amount of erasurethere is and just what's written down,
it's kind of amazing. I didn'teven know that I like, a
woman having like a relationship outside ofmarriage, if it didn't include a penis,
it wasn't considered adultery. Was itlike a legal thing or more of

(11:35):
just like something that wasn't considered atall. It was a legal thing,
so that we're actual laws of adulterykind of written in the books. But
it was also kind of a sortof like the social contract as well,
um socially societally the idea of sexin general and relationship in relations to women

(11:56):
as What's interesting is that as timeis going on into what we call the
early modern period, going into theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women's sexuality becomes
erased, and the idea is thatthey're not really sexual beings, and so
as a result, sex between twowomen just could not exist. And that
was more kind of like the socialcontrast, but generally accepted, and I

(12:18):
think there were some laws that it'snot that they don't necessarily specify that sex
with a woman is considered adultery ornot. It's just that, you know,
they're very very specific referring to menin those laws, men and women.
And what's also interesting is that despitethe fact that women's sexuality is like

(12:39):
totally erased during this time period,the people who get punished for adultery are
primarily women. So that's kind oflike, you know, the catch twenty
two or the irony of the wholesituation. That's really cool. One other
question before, because you're here andthis is a really interesting topic. So
you were talking about gender on shipsand the way people played with it,

(13:03):
and I was curious, what diddo you mean by that, like in
general, because it sounds really interestingand I don't know how you would manage
to find history on that, sinceI'd assume a lot of documentation on Sea
Child didn't happen as much. Soyeah, so in terms of gender,
I was kind of meaning it meaninga little bit, a little bit literally,

(13:24):
so I probably should have said,you know, biological sex or something
like that. But there is alsokind of this big debate in terms of
gender roles on a ship, becausethere was this whole idea that women weren't
allowed on ships, but there werewomen on ships, for example, such
as Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid werevery active participants on their ship, and

(13:48):
part of the reason is because Annewas married to the captain, and captains,
even on pirate ships sometimes could bringwomen or bring their wives, although
generally for the most part, pirateships in particular banned women. There were
these things called the Pirate articles orthe Pirate Code as we more think as
we know it because of pop culture, and some of them specified very much

(14:09):
what's interesting do not the pirate PartholomyRoberts in one of the articles think article
for he writes, you know,you cannot bring any women or boys onto
the ship, which very much andsomething I've argued in another project I just
finished about life on the pirate ship, that that does kind of show that
there was some same sex relationships orat least sexual activity between two men.

(14:33):
If they're specifying not to bring youknow, boys as well, it could
be for various other reasons, butI think that is like a very interesting
choice of wards to kind of goin there and ideas about gender also is
quite about on the ship is quiteinteresting because it's very much considered to be
such masculine work, and there wasthis idea that women could not be on

(14:54):
a ship because they did not havethe physical or mental capacity to be able
to handle it. Yet at thesame time, sailors are doing a lot
of what's traditionally women's work, suchas they have to know how to sew,
and they have to be able torepair their clothing and the masks,
they have to know, they haveto know a lot of home remedies in

(15:15):
terms of illness and injury, whichwas also considered to be more of a
female thing and everything like that.So it's quite interesting, you know,
women not being allowed on ships,and yet men had to kind of adopt
some women's roles. And also theship is referred to with female pronouns despite
the fact that a lot of timeswomen weren't welcome on a ship. So
there's such like a contradiction here withkind of how gender is perceived and performed

(15:39):
in so many different ways. Thereason why I asked that is specifically,
why are there reasonable how you answeredit? Yes, I know, gender
wasn't typically something I was played asmuch with in those times, at least
on documented notes that we have.But I can see what you're saying in
terms of like relationships or or havingi mean, women only ships, is

(16:02):
in a way playing with those genderroles and identities. Yeah, yeah,
exactly. It's it's such a fascinatingand also kind of a complicated area study
to kind of get into, especiallybecause the maritime world is so fascinating but
also so mysterious because many pirates generallydid not leave records because it could implicate

(16:22):
them, or records could have beendestroyed. But also there are lots of
ships in general where you know,records might be scattered or they might have
been lost. There are so Ivery much believe they were probably way more
women on ships than we actually know, and they probably just weren't recorded,
And especially with pirates, we won'tknow because those documents just do not exist.
And it was also very very rarefor a woman to actually get arrested

(16:48):
and put on trial and be executed, or at least get sentenced to be
executed the way Ann Bonnie and MaryReid were. They were very much an
exception to a rule in that case. I don't know if this is probably
just maybe you weren't it interestingly,but you had said something akin to all
the women on the shift. Ithink that was was someone who is sending

(17:10):
out like a restaurant, wasn't fromthe Bahamas. Yeah, the governor Woods
Rogers of the Bahamas, because theysailed out of a city called Nassau,
which had been known for a longtime. It's like a pirate city and
so many pirates would congregate there.If any of you here have seen the
show Black Sales that takes place inNassau, and that was a real city,
and Woods Rogers was a real governorand he did send out proclamations trying

(17:33):
to eradicate piracy at all costs.And Rebecca, just speaking to your reference
to a television show and like themedia, I know. In the episode
we just had, we also broughtup a really relevant show right now that

(17:56):
I believe it just wrapped its finalepisode recently. Is the h D show
Our Flag Means Death by Takawa Titi. It's it's a story about Blackbeard and
about the gentleman pirates Steed Bonnet,both of whom are actual historical figures.
M and the show really kind ofdepicts this pirate ship as a very openly

(18:17):
queer, queer friendly pirate ship withnon binary relationships, trans relationships, gay
relationships, lesbian relationships. Can youcan you kind of speak to the accuracy
of that show and then also touchon we've touched on, I think in
terms of like female queerness or orsort of FtM transness, queerness, cross

(18:41):
dressing, however you want to referto it. But also can you speak
to kind of this idea of likeflamboyance on pirate ships and how oftentimes captains
would be perceived as or could beperceived as more flamboyant, and perhaps why
there's this story of Steed Bonnet beingpotentially gay. Yeah, absolutely so.

(19:04):
Our Flagman's Death is a really interestingshow, and something that impressed me about
it was just how much it highlightedthe diversity in all ways on the pirate
ship, because diversity on pirate shipsisn't always done very very well, and
a lot of this I think wasexaggerated a little bit for like comedic effect
and kind of for the narrative ofthe show. But I really did enjoy

(19:26):
how you had a ship that wasmade up of people from loads of different
countries, and you did see evidenceof queer relationships, and you did have
a non binary pirate on the showas well, which was played by also,
I believe, a non binary actor, and so I was really really
impressed by that and those details.Now, what's quite interesting is that this
is kind of where the debate amongsthistorians and people who research pirates. Again,

(19:51):
we don't have documentation of how manyLGBT pirates there might have been,
but what I think the show wasalso doing was kind of highlighting that this
life did exist on pirate ships becausepirates did engage in something called mate lettage.
I've no idea if I'm pronouncing thatright. I've never actually heard anyone
say it besides myself. So,and what mate lettage was, it was

(20:15):
basically kind of a civil union onships, generally between pirates. And what
it did is it kind of sortof legally bound each other so that way,
in case one of them died,they could legally leave their goods to
someone else. And this was usuallydone with very close friends, and sometimes
it was done between two men.Yes to clarify, yet two men.

(20:36):
And now there's the whole debate wherethey doing it be out of love and
romance or was it done for practicalreasons, And that's something again very debatable,
and it was probably both. Itprobably just depended. But there are
actual documents that I have in oneof my book collections here for my own
research of mata Letage agreements that werewritten down and that were saved. So

(20:56):
this very much existed, and pirateships were played meant for people who very
much lived on the fringe of society. And our Flagman's death is very cool
because they really kind of build thata lot in the show, more so
than others do. And in theeighteenth century, who would have been on
the most fringe of society's queer people, of course, because that existence was

(21:21):
illegal and today it's still very muchillegal in so many places. So in
a lot of ways, that's quitegroundbreaking. And it's interesting that they kind
of chose to show sort of theway they showed the relationship between Steed Bonnet
and Blackbeard is kind of falling inlove with each other. That goes against
the historical narrative. The reality isthe two of them actually did hate each
other and they never even sailed onthe same ship, So that kind of

(21:45):
as a historian. That's kind ofwhere I would sort of like grip my
teeth a tiny bit because I havea lot of people kind of telling me,
like, no, the show showedthey were a gay couple, and
I'm like, not really, butI think what also showed it was just
a very complicated relationship that the twoof them actually did have in real life.
Yeah, there was a major powerstruggle between the two until Blackbeard.

(22:07):
This is switched in the show.Blackbeard's the one who actually betrays Bonnet and
abandons him to the authorities in reallife, whereas in the show they flipped,
which I found it to be areally interesting choice. I'm not sure
why they did that, but Iliked that. I was like, oh,
that's a twist, and yeah,maybe we'll find out in season two.
Yeah, yeah, maybe we will. Um. Oh gosh, there
was another question you asked me.Yeah, just about like the general kind

(22:30):
of this. I think the pirateshistorically, oftentimes pirate captains, especially are
sort of portrayed in this very flamboyantpossibly even like hints of queerness or or
just like undertones of gayness. Andyou know, I even think about Captain
Hook and just like the feathers,and the way he's dressed and the shoes

(22:51):
he wears, and his you know, wristiness or whatever you want to call
it. Like, there's definitely theseunderlying kind of I guess I would say
nods for lack of a better word. Yeah, So this is that and
that kind of being portrayed in themedia of pirates sort of being flamboyant.
That is very much a reality,that's very accurate. Many pirate captains in

(23:12):
particular deliberately dressed as in as muchfinery as they could. So for instance,
the pirate black Beard from Our Flagman'sDeath, what he really kind of
showed off for himself was having verylong black hair and a very long black
beard. That's what he was knownfor. And what's quite interesting is that
it went against all social conventions ofthe time because in the eighteenth century,

(23:33):
in order to be considered a gentlemanor a polite person in polite society,
men wore their hair tied back undera wig or and they would have their
they would have a clean shaven face, and black Beard deliberately did like kind
of the exact opposite. For shockvalue, Bonnet was known as the gentleman
pirate because he was very educated.It is true. On the show,

(23:55):
you know, it shows that hebrought like his whole library with him.
That is true. He did.He did dress in finery, like the
nicest clothes because he was so wealthy. He did also pay his pirates a
salary, which was unheard of.Pirates were paid in goods they stole that
was evenly distributed. So I wasvery impressed by that detail. Wow,

(24:15):
what a progressive guy. Yeah,yeah, in a lot of ways.
And but what's funny is that kindof like what the show also showed.
He was a terrible pirate because theyhad no experience, but he did dress
that way. And you have otherpirate captains who did the same. Jack
Rackham, who was married to anbonnie. He was known as Calico Jack
Rackham because he also dressed in veryfine clothing, and pretty much all pirate

(24:37):
captains did. And the reason forthis is a few things. One,
they were able to get fine clothingbecause they plundered so many ships, and
textiles were always like the number oneitem people have always been trading for since
like the ancient period, and thatwas and also by dressing really fine like
that, it kind of was away of sort of intimidating people, kind
of being like, look, howpowerful we are that we can dressed this

(25:00):
way, because in order to showoff your wealth in the eighteenth century,
you did it through your clothing.Also, it was a way to kind
of intimidate people as well, youknow, like, oh my god,
how can someone who looks like sucha gentleman actually attack us. So in
terms of kind of a flamboyantness oflike the way we think of it,
and kind of in relation to youqueer people and kind of that flamaboyant dressed

(25:21):
and everything like that, that it'sa bit interesting with the eighteenth century because
that actually was very much a stylefor men in general to be considered very
civilized and polite, and that comesout of French society. France was very
much the country that like influenced allstyles at the time period. They were
like the cultural capital of Europe.So in terms of flamboyant the way we

(25:41):
think it, that's us kind ofapplying our twenty first century concept to the
plambuoyantness. But pirates did dress thatway on purpose because they wanted to be
noticed in that way as a wayof intimidation and as a way of kind
of almost creating sort of like atheatricality about them in a yeah, yeah,
yeah, and then just to quickly, So I'd love to open this

(26:03):
up to the audience. We've beentalking for a little while now, and
I'd love to hear their questions.But I think my last point I'd like
to bring up is there's less certaintynow that Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid were
lovers or a lesbian couple, orthere's just no way of knowing. But
what we do know is that theyused they both used femininity and masculinity,

(26:26):
especially when they were battling. Canyou, quickly, just before we open
the step to more questions, speakto kind of that playing around with gender
that Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid did. Yeah. Absolutely, And so this
is what makes them so fascinating isthat, according to I witness testimony survivors
of their attacks, when a Bonnieand Mary Reid were fighting, they wore

(26:48):
men's clothing, but at the sametime made no attempts to hide their gender.
They kept their long they didn't eventie back their hair, so you
could see they had very long hair. They would fight with their shirts open,
or at the very least kind ofvery low cut, so that way
their breasts were exposed. And thiswas an intimidation tactic. And pirates actually

(27:10):
did use nudity sometimes as intimidation tacticsbecause but particularly for these women. You
know, if you're being attacked bypirates and suddenly two women are coming at
you, you're going to kind offreeze in your tracks. And this was
an intimidation tactic to make it thatway, the other person would surrender as
fast as they could. But what'sreally interesting is that even though Anne Bonnie
and Mary Reid weren't trying to hidetheir gender, they also acted very masculine

(27:34):
or stereotypically masculine while fighting. Theywere reportedly they reportedly swore more, cursed
more than any of the men.They fought harder, they were a lot
fiercer there. At one point theycaptured a woman and Anne Bonnie and Mary
Reid wanted to kill her, andit was Jack Rackham who said no,
so they would go to their extremes. But then what's also interesting is that,

(27:56):
according to my witness testimony, whenthey were not fighting, they dressed
in they dressed in women's clothing.So yeah, it is because there's kind
of been this long idea that like, oh, they might have been like
transgender or something like that. Butthe reality is they were probably wearing men's
clothing for practical reasons while fighting,because they would dawn their traditional feminine dress,

(28:18):
and it could be maybe they weresocially conditioned to do that. Maybe
it's just because they liked to.We don't actually know those reasons, but
it is very interesting how they wereable to kind of use their gender femininity
to their advantage in a very masculineworld while also taking on traditionally masculine traits
as well. I think it mightbe worth pointing out that these are all
from historical records, right, Soa lot of that might the idea that

(28:41):
we have historical records that say theywere more masculine could be from people who
wanted to portray them as more masculineto either feel less self conscious or something
else. Is that true? Yeah, absolutely, because those O witness testimonies
come directly from the trial transcript andit is very possible that because these women
were acting so far outside the realmof how women were expected to be during

(29:06):
the time period, that any tinytransgression they did was probably blown way out
of proportion, especially in this world, you know, on a pirate ship.
Of one, being on a shipis a very masculine world, and
two a pirate ship way more so. So it's very possible that, you
know, they might not have beenfighting anymore so than any of the other

(29:26):
pirates, but because they were womendoing this outside of what was expected,
it very much could have been blownout of proportion. But we'd have a
comment in the question. A questionin the comments then I thought was pretty
well done, and it asked,since there's not a lot of understanding of

(29:51):
homosexual homosexuality and transgenderism before the nineteenthcentury, what kind of references are there
in history that speak about homosexual activityor transgenderism, and how far back does
that go in terms of the pirateworld or the golden age of piracy in
the sixteen seventeen hundreds, there ishistorical records of a lot of homosexual activity

(30:15):
taking place, and for instance,the Caribbean in general had a very huge
masculine majority, very few women initiallywhen plantation islands are being founded, to
the point where men were known tohave sex with each other, sometimes maybe
because they were queer, other timesit could have been what we call situational
homosexuality, where you develop these romanticrelationships when you're in just a very close

(30:38):
situation for long period of time.And it got to the point where the
governor of Tortuga his name escapes meat the moment, he actually brought in
fifteen hundred prostitutes to Tortuga from Francein order to get the men to kind
of stop having sex with each other. So this was clearly like a huge
concern in terms of kind of goingback like way through the historical record,

(31:00):
kind of way back in history.I can't speak a massive amount to that
because my focus is so much thesixteen and seventeen hundreds. The big question
I know a lot of people havehas to do with like ancient Roman Greece,
particularly ancient Greece, which was knownto have a lot of sexual relationships,
especially amongst the Spartans. But thosewere ways to kind of create sort

(31:22):
of bond like loyalty bonds with eachother, but also as a way to
kind of sort of like male dominanceas well, especially within the Spartan armies.
Yeah, and then in the nineteenthcentury it kind of starts changing and
I'm not exactly sure where that changebegins or how that change begins. What
I do know, and someone correctme if I'm wrong about this. But
what I do know is I believeOscar Wilde, who was put on trial

(31:45):
for having sex with men, thatwas the first time homosexuality was actually used
as a legal term, or atthe very least in kind that in a
trial context. But I'm not exactlysure how that concept changes. But it
appears that people do in a waystart becoming a bit more open with homosexuality
in the nineteenth century, not inany way like in the twentieth century,

(32:08):
but more clubs became a bit moreknown. They were always kind of secret,
underground clubs. Code words became alot more well known, and people
in those communities were able to expandwhere people could find each other, and
they weren't just kind of, youknow, hiding in the wings like they'd
been well before. But again,I'm not really quite sure how this history
sort of transitions kind of throughout thedifferent time periods, though it's still an

(32:30):
area that I have to dive muchdeeper into. That's that's still really cool,
though, um I invited up morethan I'm not entirely sure him.
So I'm actually a straight male,So I mean, I don't know a
lot about LGBT, but I dohave a question. So my question is

(32:51):
about how does I don't know why, but gay people seem to have a
different voice ass to regular men.I don't know if the I don't know
if their sexual orientation has affected theirvoice in any way. So I want
to understand why people who identify asyou know, an opposite gender, or

(33:15):
who are gay or a lesbian,why do they have a why do they
have a different voice? To makethis more on topic with the talk,
do we know maybe how like effemininevoices or something like that affected maybe the
time period. Maybe there's more morefeminine kind of voices out there for a

(33:37):
game and that were known about inthose time periods. Well, that also
is something we can't really know forcertain because the language people use when they
wrote each other, particularly between men, which is also which is very interesting,
is that the writings were tended tobe very intimate and what we might
think of as almost flowery, particularlyamongst more like middle and upper class like

(34:00):
educated men. So we see lotsof letters where between two men where they're
being very very affectionate with each other, and you know, we think like,
oh, they might have had arelationship or romantic relationship. But at
the same time, it also fitsin with kind of general language of the
time, so in terms of likeif it's different between you know, straight

(34:21):
men of the time period or queermen of the time period. Again,
it's I hate saying this as ahistorian. It's something we can't really know
for certain, but it is reallyinteresting when we're trying to interpret letters between
to kind of go with the tropevery close friends as I see, you
know, as means online all thetime, like, oh, you know,
they were historians, very close friends. It is very very possible that

(34:43):
some of them might have actually hadOh no, I'm not going to say
possible. It is definite that someof them very much did have romantic relationships
because there have always been queer peoplethroughout human history, of course, and
but we just it's just a littlehard to disseminate who if that makes sense
because the writing style was so similarin general, they might maybe use a
bit some more affectionate words, butagain it was still very very common in

(35:07):
written correspondence in general. Fair enough, I mean, it is kind of
hard to determine someone's speech pattern basedoff of written word in general, guests
to go on a bit more ontopic, we were talking about gay people,
but I'd assume it'd be a lotharder to figure out about like trans

(35:28):
people in that especially in the sixteenthseventeen hundred that time century. Kind of
area are there known um kind oftrans people or like kind of the same
idea as like gay bars ish orclubs, but more so related to the
trans community or or even drag kingslash queen community. What I do know

(35:53):
is I think a lot of thosetypes of communities that we know more about
kind of really started in in thenineteenth century, or at least that's where
we start seeing evidence for it.And I know, particularly with women in
London in the nineteenth century, womenwho would dress as men were sometimes referred
to as Tom's and that was kindof like sort of a code word that

(36:15):
eventually people kind of caught onto werewomen who preferred to dress as men.
We don't know, and it's verypossible they might have been transgender. I
think there was also a word formen who dress as women as well,
but I don't actually remember what thatword is. There were societies going way
back into like the ancient classical periodof people who were transgender, and in

(36:37):
polytheistic societies were actually kind of reveredin a way because it was believed that
they were made up of both gendersand that therefore they were kind of touched
by the gods. And I'm notsure when this kind of transition from that
belief changed, and it was obviouslywhen we became monotheistic and the church began
taking over everything, and that's awhole other discussion, but that did exist

(36:57):
in older cultures. And then Iknow, yeah, again from like the
nineteen early nineteenth century onward, andyes, we did start to see communities
of people who were what we wouldwere probably transgender, particularly in France.
Like a lot of people within thosecommunities went to Paris. Paris kind of
became known as like this place forpeople to go. People also sometimes go
to Amsterdam, which was known tojust be a bit more tolerant of many

(37:22):
different populations in general, but Francekind of became known as kind of the
place to go as where a lotof writers congregated. It was the source
of the Enlightenment, you know,so all the idea about like equality and
new ideas of humanity, So kindof like a lot of people just sort
of gravitated into that region for it. And that's where we start to kind
of see a lot more open evidenceof possible transgender people. I invite Heather,

(37:45):
Heather, you should be able tosee a microphone button you can use
to high my questions. Actually consideringthat homosexuality was a difficult concept to grasp,
would bisexuality have been easier or moredifficult for them to grasp in that

(38:07):
time period? Oh, that isa really really good question, And it
is. And the reason why sayit's a good question is because there have
been LGBT historians who have like tried, who have like explored the concept of
bisexuality during those time periods. AndI think that bisexuality was even less kind
of considered or bisexuality. You know, we kind of say that there's a

(38:30):
lot of bi bisexual erasure today.We'll amplify that by like hundreds for the
early modern period, because the ideawas we if you're bisexual, then that
means you're having sex with the quoteunquote correct gender. So therefore, bisexuality
as a concept didn't exist, andif men, I'm going to have to
speak to men because you know,usually again, a lot of the DADEA

(38:52):
of homosexuality really only applied to men. If a man was married to a
woman but then would have sex withmen, if he was vice whether or
not he might have been bisexual orgay and married, just for social convention,
he would be known. If peopleknew about it, they would just
kind of look away or kind ofrefer to that person as having quote unquote
peculiar tastes. If again, ifa woman was married to a man and

(39:15):
also having a relationship with another woman, it wasn't seen as anything criminal and
it wasn't even counted. So bisexualitywas I don't think, based on what
I've been researching, I don't thinkwas a concept at all. If that
makes sense, that does also,I would like to mention that was that
was a really good question. Thankyou for asking ether, thank you for

(39:37):
giving me the time. Absolutely NowI'll do a one or more refresh,
see if there's any interesting comments.Oh, actually, here's a good one.
So either or what kind of resourcesdo you use when you're writing your
books and where do you get youroverall knowledge? Right? How many how
much of what you have is frommaybe like newspapers or primary sources from the

(40:00):
time itself great questions. So Ihave painstakingly been compiling sources since basebas for
over ten years, and the sourcematerial I've used for my research for pirates
has been through early modern newspapers,and so many of the thousands of them

(40:20):
have been digitized through various sources.If any of you are in college university,
check out the library databases and ifyou see something like the Bernie Collection
of Newspapers, those are British newspapersfrom my time period, and the Early
American Newspaper series again is also Americannewspapers from my time period, and I've
spent months going through those, sothose are great resource on British history.

(40:45):
Online, there is the Calendar ofState Papers and these are basically like letters
written back and forth between officials.And in the colonial series you have like
all the officials kind of writing toeach other back and forth from the colony,
and there are lots of complaints aboutpiracy, and so those have been
very good sources. Trial transcripts aregreat sources because that's where people go into

(41:07):
detail about what pirates were doing,what crimes they were committing, how pirates
were seen in the eyes of thelaw. And then also let's see High
Court of Admiralty papers. That HighCourt of Admiralty was the legal institution in
charge of all things maritime, andso those have loads of resources. So

(41:27):
I did my doctor in the UK, and so a lot of those sources
I would look at in the NationalArchives out in West London, and I
also spent the majority of my timein the British Library in Central London because
they've got loads of manuscripts and they'vegot loads of old printed books from the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so Ilook at a lot of those. In
terms of secondary sources, you know, I read pretty much every single thing

(41:50):
I can about pirates, of course, but not just that. I read
a lot about maritime law, becauseso much about piracy, very much is
law related. That was also kindof one of my focuses. I read
about colonial history in the America's,the Caribbean, Africa. I read about
the slave trade and early modern Britainand society, and I had to go
into a lot of Enlightenment ideas becausemy doctor was about public executions and pirates

(42:14):
and society. I've looked at lotsof like kind of Renaissance ideas, the
idea of like the social contract,and how ideas of humanity in terms of
prisons were changing, which men hadto look at Fuko a bit. But
basically kind of the way I compiledthese sources is I have a very meticulous
kind of documenting system where basically Ihave different folders labeled on my desktop and

(42:37):
I keep them up all listened inthe spreadsheet as well, so that way
I can kind of refer to them. And I basically I've always saved absolutely
everything because I'm like, even ifit doesn't feel relevant now, it could
be relevant later. And this wasa massive help, especially during the pandemic
as I wrote this book and wasn'table to get to libraries and archives,

(42:58):
I was able to kind of backand look at everything I took from these
early American newspapers because basically, everytime I saw the word pirate, I
would transcribe that article, no matterwhat it said. So I had all
of this available to me. Andthen also really great other library sources would
have lots of images and maps andthat sort of stuff and relating to pirates.

(43:20):
If you want to see some forfree online the John Carter Brown Library
Image Database. You just type inPirate. There's loads of great images and
a lot of those were put intomy book because they're open access as well.
So yeah, images, trial transcriptearly modern newspapers, books, other
printings. Yeah, Pirates themselves didn'tleave records. So basically everything I do
has to kind of be Pirate adjacent, as I call it, and from

(43:45):
there you kind of have to sortof fill in the gaps. I do
have another interesting question here on thesubwad, so I see one here that
mentions France. The mention of Franceis a central point as well as answerdam.
Is it due to the historical beliefof France being more of like the
city of love and that kind ofthing, or is it more of a

(44:07):
recent thing, like more of thosethings, more of the like LGBT community
making their way there? What spawnedthat? That's the idea of Paris being
the city of love is more oflike a nineteenth century concept, And this
kind of came about sort of inthe later nineteenth century when you had all
these major major writers who became famousat the turn of the twentieth century,

(44:29):
like Fitzgerald and Richard Stein or isa Richard sign of someone else? Sorry,
But like all these writers around thattime period would congregate together, and
that's kind of where Paris sort ofbecame to be seen as like the city
of Love. It became very,very very romanticized. And a lot of
this kind of goes back to theMiddle Ages because when King Louis the third

(44:53):
or fourth one of those two,he became the very first king in Europe
to actually stay home in his homecountry because he wanted France to be like
the best as possible. And soit's around that time that France sort of
starts to go through a bit oflike a Carolingian Golden Age and it becomes
like the cultural center of Europe,and it really much and it very much

(45:14):
stays that way up until pretty muchthe Reign of Terror during the French Revolution,
even during kind of a lot ofthe revolutionary era. And so I
think because like France is such likea cultural like such a cultural center,
then that meant Paris in particular,the capital was very welcoming of all things,
kind of flamboyant all things, maybekind of outlandish or kind of on

(45:36):
the fringe because you know, peoplewanted people would go to France. You
know, for centuries, even beforethe nineteenth century, people would go to
France wanting to be different and reallykind of engaging in this in every way
possible, And it was a placealso for people to be a bit freer.
There was stuff that was a bitmore accepted there that wasn't quite as
accepted in other parts of Europe,such as there was like a very distinctive

(45:59):
like pross Tuition culture that was abit more liberated than other places in Europe.
So because of kind of these likeideas that have gone through centuries,
France just kind of has always wasalways kind of sort of known like that's
the place you go if you're kindof different, if you don't really fit
in anywhere you go, you goto Paris. Now that's honestly really cool
because implying that you know a placeas cultural meaning and that kind of meaning

(46:23):
entirely because it's a place where yougo if you don't necessarily fit in,
that's super cool. One other questionthat I ended up seeing is the question
is kind of like because of historybeing very like LGBT, you're removed like

(46:49):
washed out, and they raced.Do you feel like that's at least partially
because of gay people not being ableto build up generational wealth and whatnot and
becoming part of like part of thatlike capitalists like overhead or part of the
government kind of thing. I thinkyes and no. So um, there's

(47:13):
this phrase that, you know,history is told by the winners, and
in a way, a lot oftimes this is unfortunately true because so much
documentation really does come from legal sourcesand the monarchies and that sort of thing,
and so that's known as top downhistory, and there's been a big
movement over the past few decades oflooking at what's called bottom up history,

(47:34):
where you're looking at history through themarginalized people, you know, the people
that really kind of make society.And now in terms, so, there
probably were some queer people, particularlyqueer men, who would have had a
harder time making a living, andit's very possible that if they couldn't make
a living, they would try tofind ways to do so. And so

(47:55):
a lot of there were a lotof queer men who would traditionally join monasteries
or join the church, and partof it was because you know, if
a queer man didn't want to marryit wouldn't look weird because he was kind
of a member of the church.And I don't I can't think of any
documented evidence, but I do knowthat there were lots of instances, of

(48:15):
course, queer relationships within the church, and of course, you know,
we see that in many ways today, and a lot of it in very
unfortunate circumstances, to put it lightly. But that's again, that's a whole
other topic conversation. But there arealso people from very high up in society
who, of course, of queermen, very very very high up in
society. There were some kings Ican't remember which ones off top of my

(48:37):
head that I think were rumored tohave possibly been gay. And there were
also, of course, like countsand dukes and earls, and you know,
they would marry and they would theywould marry, and they would have
children, and you know a lotof times, in many many relationships,
especially within the upper class, onceyou had children, you know, you
no longer were expected to have sexwith each other anymore. And a lot

(49:00):
of those marriages are very much contractualand not out of love. In fact,
marriage for love is actually quite anew concept. So there were some
queer people who were from the higherups to society, but they would just
have to very much keep their lifestylehidden because again it was illegal. But
if they were very high up,then people will probably just look away,
you know, pretend not to see. If you were not from the upper

(49:21):
class society and you were from moreworking class, if you were caught engaging
in same sex activity, you couldbe thrown in prison, you could be
executed, or you could be transportedand put into into forced labor or penal
colonies. During the sixteen and seventeenhundreds, so it kind of really depends

(49:42):
on what your social station was.But you know, just like today,
the wealthiest had the most privilege becauseof their status. Awesome, And I
have one probably shortest, shorter questionthat I really liked and felt was a
good one. Do you know ifand Vonnie and Mary where you'd were the
earliest known queer pirates or earliest knownlesbian queer parts That isn't that I don't

(50:06):
know in terms of they were thefirst queer pirates. And it's also quite
likely that they actually weren't queer aswell, because of various reasons. They
were both married, they're both pregnantwhile they were pirates, and the idea
that they may have actually been lovers. It's kind of a twentieth century idea
based on kind of reinterpretations of olderevidence. But in terms of queer pirates

(50:29):
in general, you know, whenwere the first ones? Again, I
don't know, and that's because ofthe lack of documentation. But the way
I put it is that all throughouthistory, the amount of queer relationships queer
people in any sort of profession,situation, etc. Etc. Would be
about the same percentage as your currentworkplace today. So they definitely were not
the first, but I think theywere one of the first that people really

(50:52):
began looking at in terms of,you know, were they queer? Were
they in this relationship? And soI think that they are the ones where
people have looked at them most vocally, trying to, you know, discern
their relationship with each other. Becauseone thing I've I know, I've always
been unable to find, and Idon't even know how to speculate, is

(51:14):
how the two of them actually met. I have no idea, and I
wish I could find out. Soit's very possible that they could have had
this relationship before they entered onto theship and everything like that. It's just
one of those things that's one ofhistory's mysteries will never fully knows. That's
a good point. I wonder ifpart of the reason why they're so well
known is entirely because there are twowomen, because of a lot of the

(51:37):
ways that women tend to get sexualized, especially lesbian women. It's kind of
interesting that their story is so muchmore interesting than other queer pirates that we
may or may not know of.Yeah, and if they hadn't been women,
they would have just kind of,you know, sort of fallen into
the wayside, like so many otherpirates who are put on trial. But

(52:00):
because they were women, and notonly that, but they were also pregnant,
as it turned out, it wasdiscovered at their trial. If it
weren't for that, they probably,you know, we wouldn't know about them.
But I think also one of thereasons why we know about them is
because of Captain Charles Johnson's General Historyof the Pirates, where he wrote really

(52:21):
interesting biographies about them which were largelycompletely made up, but they made for
a very good story and they verymuch inspired other writings such as Paully and
Moll Flanders, both of which featuredwomen either in relationships with pirates or women
who actually were on the who wereon the sea, and they very much
also inspired female pirate characters, kindof going well into the twentieth century.

(52:46):
You know, Gina Davis's character inCutthroat Island, you know, and Anne
Bonnie was one of the main characterson the show Black Sales. You know,
Kiera Knightley is supposed to be basedoff of ant Bonnie, and Mary
reid Zoe's Aldona was also in thePirate to the Caribbean films as a woman
in disguise on the ship. Andso they very much kind of inspired people.

(53:06):
And I do believe that it isbecause of a general history of the
pirates, how they were used asmarketing, because that was seen as just
so social deviant, socially deviant bornfor that book. People might just not
have paid much attension in general before. It's like super cool. We highly
recommend everyone go and listen to theepisode, and then if you're really really

(53:29):
curious, I highly highly recommend listeningto our first episode with Rebecca that came
out in twenty nineteen. The firstepisode kind of covers a more general history
of like queerness and pirates. Andthen obviously this episode focuses far more on
specifically an Bonnie and Mary read beforewe end today. Rebecca, do you

(53:52):
want to let people know where theycan follow you, maybe anything you're working
on right now, and where theycan buy your book Pirate Quins. Yeah?
Absolutely, so, um you canfind me, um. So first
off, if you have if peoplehave questions about um, female pirates or
anything like this that you couldn't ask, I will actually be doing an AMA

(54:12):
on Ask Historians on Monday, soUMA, so that so you can post
up your questions there. Of apost will go up on Monday morning early
and I'll answer. I'll be answeringquestions. Um. But you can also
find me in a few places.So I'm active on Twitter and my handle
on Twitter is um Becalex, whichis b e c k a l e

(54:37):
X, so different than my Reddithandle UM. And then I'm also active
on TikTok and my um name onTikTok is pirate Becalex. So all one
word pirate b e c K al e X think like Beck the musician
and Alex kind of combined into oneword. And um, I do daily

(54:57):
pirate facts um and videos on there. I'm also on Instagram, which is
a bit more personal, but it'sstill a public account, and I post
up news on there sometimes in mystories, and it's the same handle as
my TikTok handle. I also havea website, Rebecca dash Simon dot com,
which has lots of my writings andinformation. So you can find my
book, Pirate Queen's on Amazon,indie bound. It's available. It's a

(55:21):
hardback, and on Kindle. Therewill be an audiobook coming out in a
few months. I read the bookfor the audiobook, and now their team
just has to kind of their techteam has to sort of put it all
together, so that will be comingout in a few months, the audiobook,
and I am currently one of thefeatured historians on a Spotify podcast called
Real Pirates, which is a seriesabout pirates, So really go listen to

(55:43):
that. They've been doing a reallygreat job. I really enjoy working on
that. And currently I've just finisheda third book, which is about the
Pirate Code, and it's about lifeon the Pirate ship, and I do
go into in one of the chapters. One chapter is devoted to relationships on
the Pirate Ship, so I dotalk a lot about that. That'll be
coming out in twenty twenty three,and it's called The Pirate Code. And

(56:04):
go on my website you'll see likeI published loads of articles online, and
I've been on loads of different podcasts, you know, including of course Levi's
and then I've also been on HistoryHit, You're Dead, to Me,
History Extra, and many others,and they're all on my website and also
like my Twitter, my Instagram,and my TikTok are also linked on my
website as well. Thank you soso much for taking the time to record
with us on the podcast. Andalso, yes, thank you so much,

(56:28):
Rebecca. You're welcome. This hasbeen really fun. Thank you so
much for having me. Oh,thank you everyone for joining us today.
Yeah. Absolutely