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Gay pirates have pretty much become a trope at this point - homosexual relationships often play a minor or even major part in pirate media. Jack Sparrow is often seen as exhibiting stereotypical homosexual behavior, Our Flag Means Death is a romantic comedy about two homosexual pirates, and most interesting is perhaps Black Sails, which is really about a naval officer scorned from English society for his sexual preferences, and seeking revenge for it. And no doubt you’ve heard the phrase “butt pirate”.
This portrayal is relatively recent, and stands in stark contrast to the traditional presentation of the pirate as a hypermasculine womanizer. It all dates back to the book Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, written in 1984 by Barry Richard Burg - it seeks to answer the rhetorical question posed in the title of this video, and whilst you might expect to be provided some sort of simple answer, this is simply not possible. Burg even admits this in his book, saying there's not enough documentation from pirate society to do anything but theorize. So instead, this video will more so provide an insight into this period so radically different from our own, and perhaps provide a better understanding of how they might have viewed this very contemporary topic.
Modern sources:
1700: Scenes from London Life - Maureen Waller
Against Nature: Sodomy and Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America - Zeb Tortorici
Escaping court martial for sodomy: Prosecution and its alternatives in the Royal Navy, 1690-1840 - Seth Stein LeJacq
Gotham: A History of New York to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows & Mike Wallace
Homosexuality and rape of males in Old Norse law and literature - Kari Ellen Gade
Men and Matelotage - Nicole Keegan
Pirates in their own words - E.T Fox
Redefining Sex in Eighteenth-Century England - Tim Hitchcock
Sailors: English merchant seamen, 1650-1755 - Peter Earle
Sodomy and the pirate tradition - B.R Burg
Sodomitical Inclinations in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris - Jeffrey Merrick
Songs of Sodom: Singing About the Unmentionable Vice in the Early Modern Low Countries - Jonas Roelens
"Things Fearful to Name": Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeenth-Century New England - Robert F. Oaks
The Sea-Rover's Practice - Benerson Little
The Transformation of Sodomy from the Renaissance to the Modern World and Its General Sexual Consequences - Randolph Trumbach
Period sources:
Germania - Tacitus
Les us, et coutumes de la mer - Chez Jean Lucas
Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery - John Wilmot
Music by Jon Sayles at jsayles.com
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
6:27 Defining sodomy
14:16 Sodomy in Law and Religion
23:36 Sodomy in the Old World
31:50 Sodomy in the New World
41:51 Sodomy at sea
48:10 Pirates and sodomy
58:15 Pirate gay marriage?
61:52 Conclusion
#pirates #history #lgbtq #pridemonth