Cyber Sex(uality)
Barreling down I-64 from Virginia to Kentucky, I got a call that the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country were appearing in Lexington, the city where I was to present my oral history research the next day. The conference and my trip were cancelled shortly thereafter as I turned around to return home to a (now going on eight months) period of lockdown. Life still went on, as it does, and I continued to conduct oral histories with queer Appalachian artists who, just like me, were locked down yet still working.
In its essence, oral history is the practice of interviewing historical actors, famous or otherwise, about their specific knowledges and experiences regarding an event, era, identity, and so on. Most oral history interviews consist of a narrator—the historical actor who recounts their perspective—and a researcher—who asks questions and has a hand in steering the conversation to collect certain information. Oral history, as an ethnographic and scholarly practice, has its roots in anthropological interviews by American folklorists and government workers who recorded the subjects of their research around the turn of the 20th century. One such early example is the New Deal-era Federal Works Progress Administration’s “Federal Writers Project,” in which government employees interviewed formerly enslaved Black people about their experiences. This early oral history work was not without serious flaws however, especially regarding the undue influence of the researchers onto the narratives that they collected. As historian Catherine Stewart explains in her book about the Federal Writers Project, Long Past Slavery, many of these oral history researchers were members of the Daughters of the Confederacy, who were concerned with “rewriting the national narrative of slavery in ways that would vindicate the Confederate cause.”[1] The practice of oral history, like many academic practices, then is an important one that nonetheless contains the potential for immense amounts of harm and misrepresentation.
The increasing (academic) interest in LGBTQ+[2] people and histories along with the proliferation of high-quality recording technology has led to the development of “Queer Oral History,” a practice which LGBTQ+ historians Horacio Roque Ramirez and Nan Boyd argue dates back more than thirty years.[3] Boyd and Ramirez argue in their methodological anthology Bodies of Evidence that queer oral history distinguishes itself from non-queer forms of oral history by centering “the role of the body” and the inherent intimacy which emerges from intense discussions of bodies, sex, desire, and trauma.[4] Due to this “intimacy-as-trust” which undergirds many queer oral histories, various commitments—whether emotional, romantic, and/or political—often form between the narrator and the researcher (especially if they share similar gender and sexual identities).[5] Journalist and professor Steven Thrasher further elaborates on the intimacy and empathy which upholds queer oral history to also explicitly consider the inextricable dimension of race alongside gender and sexuality. In his essay “Discursive Hustling and Queer of Color Interviewing,” Thrasher highlights the specific practice of “queer of color interviewing,” in which a queer person of color (specifically a Black queer person, in Thrasher’s example) interviews another queer person of color for an presumed audience of queer people of color.[6] This “empathetic, embodied knowledge” which can only emerge from shared identities is the foundation of “queer of color interviewing” and, in many cases, the foundation of all queer practices of oral history.[7] In this way, queer oral history and similar practices are not only “queer” in the sense that they eschew conventional barriers of gender and sexuality but also in the sense that they transcend barriers between academic interviewer and narrator by explicitly incorporating the body and communal emotions.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, serious obstacles have appeared in the practice of queer oral history. Like other various forms of LGBTQ+ physical interaction, from queer meetups to clubbing to sex to activist work, physically sitting with someone to record an oral history has become far more fraught and even dangerous, as a misjudgment in testing or proper safety precautions can potentially lead to someone becoming very ill. Certainly, in pre-pandemic times, I have met narrators in drag bars, art gallery openings, and concerts—all of which have been seriously restricted or completely closed due to the virus. Moreover, my narrators and I conducted our sessions in person at homes, restaurants, and other public venues, which pose similar risks of infection. How, then, is a queer oral historian to conduct their research? For a practice so rooted in “the intimacy created in the physical encounter between narrator and researcher,” wouldn’t the inability to meet in person seriously undermine queer oral history altogether?[8]
While in-person interactions are undoubtedly ideal for conducting queer oral histories, recent oral histories that I’ve conducted have illustrated the immense potential for digital forms of communication in such interviews. Digital oral history is far from a new practice and it has been around in some capacity since the advent of digital forms of communication via the Internet. Discussing specifically the role of digital communication in rural queer oral history, historian John Howard argues that digital forms of communication enable “rural narrators—on their own, at their computer—to participate in far-flung queer historical projects.”[9] Working beyond simple email exchanges, Howard relies on digital interactions in gay chatroom websites. Similarly, Thrasher explains that, to conduct queer of color interviews, he “realized I needed to use or create accounts for every queer hookup app that I knew Michael [Thrasher’s narrator] had used” in order to glean more information about his narrator through engaging with his past sexual partners on these apps.[10] While I’m not currently going through queer dating apps and looking for narrators, I have certainly begun engaging with much more online and digital forms of communication with narrators since the outbreak of the pandemic. The first encounters that I have with many of narrators are through social media, most commonly Instagram (since many of these narrators are artists and can post their work on the site), where I can direct message them or email them through their personal websites linked in their Instagram bio. I’ve found that contacting narrators through these conventionally informal means, especially when we have numerous mutual followers, has led to more frank and friendly discussion than narrators who I’ve met through less casual means like academic emails or through organization websites. In this way, digital interactions are essential for generating the “increased candor” from both the narrator and the interviewer that Howard notes.[11]
Along with the initial encounter occurring digitally, I have also begun conducting the oral histories themselves digitally. Under normal circumstances, I would take a trip into the mountains to conduct oral histories in person. Since staying in hotels or people’s homes isn’t the safest option at the moment, I’ve instead opted to conduct virtual interviews over the video-calling platform, Zoom. This platform, though not allowing for the same kind of physical embodiment as an in-person interview, nevertheless enables me and the narrator to speak in ways that would otherwise be difficult in person. First and foremost, video calls are accessible. So long as the narrator has a fairly reliable Internet connection, I am able to speak with them regardless of our locations, physical ability, or any awkward rescheduling. Though I am unable to read their body language in the same way as I would in person, I can still read their facial expressions and the recorded video of Zoom means that these expressions are recorded in a similar way to the speech, which is not the case for in-person interviews with an audio-only recording.
In addition to this increased accessibility, the Zoom platform has enabled multifaceted forms of communication that were not as convenient in person. Since many of my narrators are artists, I am able to pull up images of their art through Zoom’s “Share Screen” feature so that we can talk about specific aspects of the piece with the piece in front of us. While this makes talking about sculptures and other three-dimensional forms of art more difficult, it makes discussing paintings, digital art, and photographs much easier, especially pieces are no longer in the narrator’s possession. Moreover, through Zoom’s chat feature, the narrator and I can send each other links to relevant websites or social media pages, which we can then explore real-time. In these ways, digital communication through Zoom enables a discussion which has multiple levels and avenues of content, rather than the conventional back-and-forth of an in-person interview. While I hesitate to call this hypertextual depth “queer” in the same sense as conventional queer oral history, digital queer oral histories nevertheless provide unique opportunities to express a narrator’s connections, networks, and emotions that are not as easy with in-person oral history. Similarly, I have spent many pre-interview discussions checking in with my narrator over a shared sense of anxiety and fear regarding the pandemic, an expression of emotion and care radically specific to the time and medium.
One day (I pray) COVID-19 will be manageable and treatable to the point where in-person oral histories can be unequivocally safe. I will, of course, return to the homes and local bars and galleries of my narrators, meeting them and embracing them and sitting with them in person. At the same time, I am certain that I will meet narrators who are too far away, too busy, or otherwise unable to meet me face-to-face, scenarios which will undoubtedly become manageable through my increasing knowledge of digital communication methods. A question emerges and remains, however; will there come a scenario in which I have the option to do either a conventional oral history or a digital one and the digital one would be the best option? I’m uncertain at the moment. The possibility emerges of a truly queer and modern oral history practice as one which disrupts boundaries between “virtual” and “physical” and instead finds a novel way to combine the two.
[1] Stewart, Catherine A. Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers' Project. UNC Press Books, 2016. 5
[2] I will also use the word “queer” as a synonym for LGBTQ+. This is not a universally accepted usage of the word, check out the “A Note on Terms” section for more information about this discourse.
[3] Boyd, Nan Alamilla, and Horacio N. Roque RamÃrez. "Introduction: Close Encounters." Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History (2012). 1
[4] Ibid. 2
[5] Ibid. 9
[6] Thrasher, Steven W. "Discursive Hustling and Queer of Color Interviewing." Imagining Queer Methods (2019). 237
[7] Ibid. 236
[8] Boyd and Ramirez, “Introduction: Close Encounters.” 9
[9] Howard, John. “Digital Oral History and the Limits of Gay Sex,” in Queering the Countryside, ed. Mary L. Gray et al. (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016), 310.
[10] Thrasher, “Discursive Hustling.” 234
[11] Howard, “Digital Oral History and the Limits of Gay Sex.” 325