I often find myself asking the question of why no one of Whitman time seemed to grasp the fact that Whitman was queer or cared at all if they did know for that matter. Whitman was queer and wrote about it very explicitly in his many works which was a very taboo, uncommon, and largely unacceptable topic matter to have published in his work, yet the topic of Whitman’s queerness went largely unnoticed, or was not something of interest to his readers at the time. While it wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, Whitman did employ subtle ways to try and closet his homosexuality, though looking at it from our 21st century lens it seems thinly vailed. In much of his works Whitman will speak about both genders instead of just his male counterparts. He uses conjoining words like, “and” and “or” to link the to together as a diversion to him solely addressing the male persuasion. He falls into a pattern, however, that shows his purposeful inclusion of women to distract from his not homonormative content. In the beginning of I Sing the Body Electric, one of his more famous works, Whitman does these three consecutive times within the first ten lines of the poem. First he opens with “The bodies of men and women engirth me,” then, “the expression of the body of a man or woman balks account,” and once more, “the male is perfect and that of the female is perfect.” Following all this he goes on to talk at length about the male body. These lines are very repetitive in structure as the male is always talked about first and foremost while the women seem added in almost flippantly so to merely make a female presence.
This was a good enough attempt at masking Whitman’s preferences at the time but reading these poems now it seems dreadfully obvious and almost comical that this ever-fooled people and the reason for this is something I’ve been coincidentally researching at length for my capstone in my other major, Anthropology. There has always been this idea, spewed upon us from our parents’ generation that “those kinds of people didn’t exist when I was young” yada, yada, yada. Obviously, that is untrue. “Those people,” queer people, most definitely existed, however the space for them in society didn’t without threat, making them essentially nonexistent to the heteronormative world. The research Proposal that I am working on is based on and steeped in the Anthropological Theory of Linguistic Relativity, famously known as the Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis. It basically states that that people’s perception is based on the spoken language they participate in. Essentially, as people’s cognition is affected by their language structures, they can create their own realities. If people do not have the language to describe something the perception is that it doesn’t exist. However, in terms of human experience there is much that people go through without the proper words to describe and thus conceptualize their experience. This may be the reason why Whitman’s queer Identity flew under the radar for so long. His experiences were overlooked because it was not anything that those readers were looking for. It wasn’t a part of their reality because it wasn’t anything that they could conceptually understand because they could not explain it.
Now, the story is much different. Language is socially created and is constantly changing. It can be used as a weapon to ostracize people but I’m arguing that the absence of language is isolating as well, if not more so. There is now an entire lexicon of queer/LGBTQ+ terminology that breeds inclusivity and normalcy of the queer experience. Our language has changed, along with our societal norms and personal perceptions causing us to read and synthesis Whitman in a very different way than the readers of his time, and times after. As well, I think this is another reason as to why Whitman has stayed so pertinent throughout time. He appeals to people, the queer community especially, because he told his story when it was unheard of to do so. Maybe he did hide this aspect of himself in the slightest but he still acts as a marker of self-expression to those who possibly did not have the same ability to do so.
Here is a link about the theory of linguistic relativity if anyone is intrigued:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-hostos-childdevelopment/chapter/linguistic-relativity/
To go with it here is a lovely portrait of Walt and a butterfly:
https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.07141
I think today we definitely identify Whitman as queer because we are more open to the idea of it. But, back in the time of Whitman’s life, being queer or anything that encompasses the queer community, was almost unheard of. Today, however, we are open and welcome to the idea of Whitman loving men over women so we read it very clearly. It is frustrating to me that Whitman wasn’t able to live his truth. If only he could have been born in modern times. He probably would have been one of the most influential queer poets we have ever seen.