When I was in my early 20s starting my B.A. in history, I also did the thing where I tried to find the "omg sexy slash rpf couple to ship this semester 😍" (we didn't use yaoi interchangeably with slash then, they were distinct, and I still think calling yaoi/BL "Western/gringo" is literally the dumbest thing and possibly racist - last time I checked, East Asia was neither white nor Western - but whatever).
Some of them like Montaigne and La Boétie might genuinely have had a platonic-romantic relationship inspired by the Ancients. We'll never know if they had sex though. They had a mentor/student relationship that seemed equal. They did seem to love each other.
There was Cinq-Mars who was a "favorite" of Louis XIII. It's very likely they did have sex. There were awkward testimonies. Louis XIII was most likely gay. He kept a string of male favorites... who he treated like baubles and boytoys.
Then there's Friedrich of Prussia and Voltaire... That most likely happened too.
And then I had my AmRev class and tried to do the things you do around here... And it all felt fake as fuck. Like shipping Marvel dudes. It wasn't real. Those guys were likely not attracted to each other at all. Not the way the others I mentioned were. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't studied any of them since literally 2007-2008.) This is how you seem to treat Napoleon/most of his marshals or Napoleon/Alexander. Like it's obviously "one big joke".
And that's when I understood there was an extremely real difference between "fannish-style slash/yaoi rpf" and historical figures who might actually have been romantically and/or sexually attracted to other men.
It's not my problem you don't see the difference.
And that's why this stupid drama is happening and keeps repeating itself: because of this chasm. You guys approach it as "not being real", stating there's "no evidence", and just being "for funsies". I approach it as a historian first and the fun depends on the accuracy. That's why I say you just treat them like sex dolls for your own personal gratification. You're not actually invested in them or interested in knowing what their sexuality could have been like in their time period. You think of them as blank slates, blank canvases for you to explore your present-day issues, not theirs.
