Forget Hamilton: On Tumblr, Founding Fathers Fandom Is Running Wild With Sex and Scholarship

News Media Commentary
Title:	Forget Hamilton: On Tumblr, Founding Fathers Fandom Is Running Wild With Sex and Scholarship
Commentator:	Rebecca Onion
Date(s):	March 15, 2016
Venue:	NY Magazine
Fandom:	Hamilton
External Links:	at the NY Mag, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Forget Hamilton: On Tumblr, Founding Fathers Fandom Is Running Wild With Sex and Scholarship is an article written by Rebecca Onion and published in the New York Magazine on March 15, 2016.

The article includes many links to fan blogs, tumblrs, and fanart.

Excerpts

Right now, on Tumblr, the founding fathers are flirting.

Alexander Hamilton — you know, from the musical — is telling his real-life confidante John Laurens to “Draw me like one of your North American softshell turtles.” George Washington is busting James Madison and Thomas Jefferson for their ineptly hidden office romance. And Hamilton and Jefferson are competing to see which founding father can turn the other on more, in the middle of a meeting with Washington.

There is a lot of crap history on the internet, and at first glance the Tumblr founding-father fandom could seem to be another haven for quick-hit decontextualization and erroneous virality. (Founding father material on Tumblr is, quite often, not accurate; it’s not even meant to be. See above. See below.) But this little fandom is taking a much-canonized era in American history and forcefully ripping it open, sending exploding bits flying all over the place; for that, it should be praised.

Bloggers are finding emotional connections between their own experiences and the founding fathers’. They’re translating everything into internet-speak, willfully extracting the founders’ words from their 18th-century contexts. And most of all, they’re arguing for hidden queer histories living at the heart of the most sacred era of American politics. Like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, the founding-father fandom on Tumblr audaciously takes a history that’s felt staid and old reimagines it as something funny and contemporary and vital.

On Tumblr, the founders’ sexuality is front and center. The idea that such famous and influential people might have been queer, and that historians might have erased that queerness, intrigues Tumblrers. “In my Googling of [Hamilton], I found out that he may have been bisexual, which, as a fellow bisexual person, sparked my interest that has lasted me these years,” wrote Yelyzaveta. Jaclyn engaged in a Tumblr exchange with Gregory Massey, a biographer of Laurens, in which the two challenged each other on the matter of Laurens’s relationship with Hamilton. And the blogger publius-esquire mused on historians’ perspectives on gayness, challenging the expert view, which holds that late-18th-century male friendships were more inherently romantic, so the sweet and longing words that Hamilton and Laurens wrote to each other in letters would not have been unusual. This topic taps both the platform’s interest in accepting and celebrating the varieties of human sexuality, and its distrust of much older, often white and male, experts.

What separates the kind of interest an academic historian has in a historical figure from the fervent attention a fan pays? Some of the feelings these bloggers have for their favorite founders are very familiar to me. What’s the difference between someone who runs a john-laurens fan blog and someone who (let’s just say, hypothetically) spent a semester in 2007 writing a masters’ thesis about the celebrity sled dogs of the early 20th century? Whether you’re accumulating Tumblr posts or citations, that feeling of greedy immersion and magpie curiosity is addictive.

Some Tumblrers might, as a few bloggers I interviewed worried, overcelebrate the founders, forgetting that they were multidimensional people. Others might, as one historian I interviewed fretted, be losing all sense of historical context in their relentless focus on one person or group of people. But in a social-media landscape where the charlatan @HistoryInPics account now has 2.86 million followers, the historical fandom on Tumblr — active, participatory, and self-policing — gives hope to this historian’s heart.

Reactions/Reviews

At The NY Magazine Article Page

screencap of the first few paragraphs of the article. Prominently featured at the top are several pieces of fanart pulled from tumblr blogs

[zoe.wilsongroark]: "What a.... truly terrible article that willfully misrepresents what's happening here. As if Massey hasn't been criticized in the past by other published queer historians because of his take on the Hamilton-Laurens relationship, most notably, Benemann, detailed in the post you literally LINKED.

Something interesting is happening on tumblr, and it's not limited to tumblr, and it's not about the facetious and tongue-in-cheek fanart: it's the study and reclamation of queer history by lgbt+ historians that has been so thoroughly erased over the centuries. That's interesting. And to mention it offhand after prefacing it with paragraph after paragraph of so-called "crap history" frames that in a very intentionally negative and condescending light.

You speak of it as if, "wow, people actually believe that," when the posts you linked are thoroughly researched and sourced by actual firsthand documents that have been gone over with a fine tooth comb.

From the reaction of some of the peoples mentioned here, they had a very different idea of what this article was going to be about, and I can see why.

"What’s the difference between someone who runs a john-laurens fan blog" wow, this doesn't seem pointed AT ALL... considering you used her specific URL instead of ""...a John Laurens fan blog." Your bias is showing, just a smidgen.

Also: the Massey vs john-laurens exchange was instigated BY Massey who submitted his 2 cents directly to her blog, and the only way to respond was by publishing it, as per tumblr's layout. To label this as an "email exchange" implies that john-laurens was somehow leaking a private exchange. But I suppose you knew that when writing it.

(and, let's be clear here, if you've read their letters to one another in the full context of which they were written, it becomes apparent that Laurens and Hamilton were probably in a romantic relationship. This idea is not a new one, and was even mentioned in Chernow's biography. And by the censorship of Hamilton's letters to Laurens after Hamilton's death (most likely by his son!), Chernow was hardly the first person to come up with this concept.)"

[carotid]: "Way to twist facts at the expense of others for the sake of sesationalism [sic]. Zoe's comment pretty much covers it. This article makes its writer seem very out-of-touch and self-serving."

[Ffauve]: "I honestly made an account on nymag just to comment on this article and its delightful misrepresentation and minimization of the historian community on tumblr. I can assure you that many of the people participating in what you derogatorily call the 'history fandom' are, like myself, entering into public history as an actual academic and professional field. Some of us have done an immense amount of research in areas that most established academics won't touch (primarily, homosexual relationships in the 18th and 19th century). In twenty years, I expect to see a slate of young historians who grew up in an environment in which information about our past was easily accessible, and we had a community of like-minded people who did research, linked us to primary sources and helped develop a language that let us talk about history outside rarified acadamia.

The public seems to have a great capacity to absorb (and publish!) the fetishization of female historic figures by male authors, but when a community, predominately consisting of young women or non-cissexual, heterosexual people try to relate to our history in ways that appeal to us we get articles like this, oggling [sic] at our interests. Although you frame the history community on tumblr as "giving hope to a historian's heart," the content of the article actually makes fun of and trivializes the work that we've been doing. If you were actually interested in our discussions you would have referred to some of publius-esquire's amazing, in-depth research about historical homoerotic relationships, or some of the work that's been done to dismantle the deification of the founding fathers myth and put the experiences of women, african americans and the LGBTQ+ community in the center of the historical narrative. But that would be SO much less sensational than picking and choosing the least serious posts we've made so that established middle aged New York Times Readers can shake their heads as they read their magazine over coffee and wonder at how the millennial generation is sullying the content of historic discourse.

And art theft is a wonderful way to give due respect to the 'next generation of historians.'"

[jane_lane]: "Hey, maybe your next article can be about why you seem to think having a Tumblr blog and being a historian are mutually exclusive things. I certainly don't think being a journalist and a historian are mutually exclusive, in spite of this article."

[carolineaurelia]: "I had to comment, because it was going to eat away at me if I didn't tell you exactly why you're wrong, lady.

1) Some of the bloggers you wrote off as stupid fangirls are honestly some of the most intelligent and learned people I've ever come across. They probably know a lot more about history than you do. Many are history majors, in fact. They've done hours and hours of research, going through articles and biographies with a fine-toothed comb. Take the "alleged" John Laurens-Alexander Hamilton romance, for example. These people didn't pull that out of a hat. There are letters WRITTEN BY HAMILTON HIMSELF to Laurens that contain suggestive content. Ron Chernow himself touched on this. So no, this was not something made up by a bunch of stupid fangirls.

2) That said, just because you deeply research something does not mean you can't have a little fun with it. In fact, I'll go on the record as saying that if you CAN'T have fun with what you've devoted your life to, you've probably devoted your life to the wrong thing.

3) You will actually find that there is some humor in history if you study it enough. But I'm guessing you haven't studied it enough.

4) See, this is what really angers me, as a journalism major: From what I've seen on Tumblr you not only completely misrepresented the people you interviewed in the articles (see point #1), but you misrepresented your intentions to the people you interviewed. It seems that they were under the impression that this was to be a more serious and exploratory, less derogatory article about millennials' interest in history, and they answered accordingly. And then you cherry-picked from their answers to make them look like idiots when they gave you intelligent, well-thought-out answers. Shame on you. I wouldn't have been able to pull this crap in Journalism 101, so how were you able to pull that off for a professional publication?"

[mojastikla]: "Wow, what an utterly condescending article. Not to mention so, so wrong. Your research seems to have boiled down to superficially browsing tumblr without your brain actually retaining any of the information found there. I struggle with the thought that someone could read through the incredibly well-researched (certainly better researched than this 'article'), well-thought out, intelligent and factual posts made on those blogs and then just write them off as silly tumblr nonsense. It's painfully clear you were just aiming at sensationalism here because, if you had bothered to delve deeper into what you were researching, you could see that information is being both shared and questioned and people are getting educated about that point in history and getting excited about it. Also, people always seem to be so quick to shut down anyone questioning a part of history that makes those people comfortable, and in this case it's Laurens' and Hamilton's relationship. Theories like that are always treated as insane with no basis in fact and rapidly attacked and/or ignored because the idea of the status quo being changed worries people and it's always easier to explain it as 'flowery language'. It's offensive, honestly, that even the idea of a historical figure that has been, thus far, presumed straight being gay scares people so much that they will try and find any excuse in the book to deny it."

[sabelmouse]: "are you freaking kidding? you compare consensual homosexual relation ships [of] the rape of a [underage] slave girl?????!!!!!

need i remind you that there can be NO consent between a master and a slave, or between a grown man and a 14 year old."

On Tumblr

[john-laurens]: "So many of us enjoy researching and teaching others about history, even if our way of sharing our knowledge is through a blog post rather than through an academic paper. When I read this article, I was surprised and disappointed to see the direction the author had taken. Instead of offering a balanced view of the bloggers she interviewed, most of her content relied on the “lol look at these silly fangirls” perception. Most of the article is about how we are overzealous fangirls who post a lot of “crap history.” The author does try to show that we can be more academic by discussing our stances on queer history and the founding fathers, but her mention of this comes across as something that is meant to be taken as a joke."

[vivirue]: "I talked to my dad about this (he is a historian) and he said that academics are like this because they want to see themselves in the people they research, and they want to be the experts on these people. When people (especially teenage girls, since our society doesn’t want to think they can be intelligent) threatens that, they become defensive, dismissive assholes (my father’s words exactly). People thinking that historical figures were queer can threaten that feeling of connection historians often have with the people they research. This doesn’t excuse academics for their attitudes, but it does explain it a bit, I think."

[yelyzavetaa]: "the exact same thing happened to me concerning how my quotes were used and i don’t appreciate the light in which the fandom culture was portrayed or how ridiculed i feel after reading that

but what do i know? i’m just another fangirl who draws gay art of the founders because it’s cool and because i’m bi!!"

[ciceroprofacto]: "This is a disgusting decontextualized and generally toxic rhetoric against fan culture (what happened to the culture of aficionados??) and you should definitely write to the author about taking this so out of context. I’d be furious."

[pilferingapples ask]: pilferingapples: I really thought the article was positive? I mean, it seemed to be trying too hard to understand The Youths, but I thought it was very clearly setting up Tumblr history fandom as a contrast to "crap history", drawing favorable comparisons with the current fandom examination of history against the kind of destructive founder-worship that's been going on for ages. So if it helps any, at least this reader thought you & your fandom sounded awesome in that piece, despite any of its shortcomings?
[john-laurens]: Thanks. I know the article was meant to be a positive look at us, but it was just so much different than what I expected, especially when compared to the questions I was asked in my interview."

[feistyphocion]:"This lady also just gave a lecture about the Tumblr history fandom at UMass. I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet."

[yelyzavetaa]: "she starts to talk about the hamilton fandom at 1:04:55 and i cringe at every word"

[john-laurens]: "She literally opens the Hamilton fandom discussion by talking about ship names oh my gosh

“Some people believe that John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton actually did have, you know, a kind of friendship or relationship that went beyond simple friendship. We don’tknow that, and I actually think that most historians who write about Laurens would say that’s not necessarily true, but people on tumblr really believe it. (laughs)”

Glad to know what her true feelings about my blog are"

[higglety]: "Wow, that article is absolutely terrible. You’d think she could reign in her obvious disdain for her subjects to at least try to present a neutral view, but no. Shit like this is why fans are skittish about talking about fandom to non-fandom folks in the first place. :/ :/ :/"

[halestered]: "oh my god i watched 5 minutes of it she talked about jamilton & the virginia ham sandwich i’m going to delete"

[theblindtorpedo]:"wow yeah just totally throw our scholarly efforts under the fucking bus lady listen. most historians would say thats not true because most historians prefer cishetero readings of history wOAH. and yo not EVERYONE JS CISHETERO PERISH THE THOUGHG

THIS MAKES ME SO MAD"

[jadore-histoire]: "Of course we don’t know. But way to mock people on tumblr over a theory we’ve posed! We all know we’ll never find out exactly what Laurens and Hamilton were doing. But there’s evidence that something may have been going on that makes them more than BFF. And I know how Massey feels about it, but there ARE scholars who said “Yes, there’s a possibility.” Chernow’s one and I think there’s some LGBT historians who agree as well. I’m not the expert here - @publius-esquire?

I wish people like this would stop shaming fandom for liking things."

[grandtheftcanine]: "some people believe that this prominent male historical figure may have had a relationship with another man. this, of course, is ridiculous; at no point in history has any non-straight person been forced to hide their sexuality or relationships due to fear of violence or legal punishment. also, as all true historians know, the village people invented gay/bi men in the 1970s.”

Tagged: #replies #(not really but) #hamilton #alt:young lgbt people on the internet are happy that an extremely famous and historically vital person may have been like them #how pathetic can you get lol

[madtomedgar]: "yeah but see those scholars are men of a certain age with phds and scruffy facial hair so they must be respected unlike us

very important and legitimate distinction i assure you

[youabsolutewalnut]: "I was watching the video (the Hamilton part) and?? She seems to be laughing at it while she’s talking about it because it’s this huge fckng joke and just. It’s awkward."

[whatthefoucault]: "Ok, so I’m not a part of this fandom at all (but like wicked respect to you guys, history is cool!) but seriously. As someone who used to run in both the fandom and academic spheres, and with a degree in cultural studies, you can bet that there was at least once a touch of temptation to look at some aspect of contemporary fandom as a cultural phenomenon.

BUT I DIDN’T DO IT.

Because why? Because so many academic papers I’ve read on fandoms take a weirdly sneering, awkward-giggles approach to the whole thing - or, because it’s being written by someone who’s not actually involved in fandom, just straight-up gets shit super wrong. And no level of peer-review can seem to fix this. It’s like in order to present the idea of, say, slash fanfic to the uninitiated, academics feel they have to present it in this sort of “and some people, mostly young women, like to imagine that these two dudes out of Star Wars are super gay for each other! What? Isn’t that just weird? I totally didn’t get a little tingly having to look at pictures of them kissing for research” punctuated with a shitload of nervous laughter. Just. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself and everyone. Go study, I dunno, how clickbait headlines are shifting the paradigm of contemporary language or some shit."

[sonofahurricane]: "Yeah. Like the amount of misogyny and ageism is disgusting. (Let’s be real, it’s mostly misogyny.) Hell, the musical plays up their relationship, and I’ve seen zero criticism aimed at LMM for it.

Really gross and disappointing. If it helps, I know for a fact that PhD holders read and approve of a bunch of your blogs (I’ve talked about certain posts with my advisor.)"

[akhuna]: "Okay, so I started to read this and have to say that I only skimmed through the last quarter of the article. Apparently, the author has completely failed to get the point of the history fandom. The fact that she seems shocked that people would joke about “the most sacred era of American politics“ and make memes and fanarts and treat it like a fandom clearly shows this. This is also proven by her statement that she “showed some […] favorite founding-fandom posts to a few (frankly bewildered) historians” - she didn’t get that the fandom isn’t meant for academian context, that there are people who have a great time geeking out on history.

Now, where I come from, we don’t have “sacred eras of history or politics”, so I found this phrase really interesting. Maybe that’s what she finds so disturbing. But articles which only show how baffled the author is with other people’s hobbies (be that knitting, history, sports, whatever) always end up bad. She would have gotten more out of this if she had tried to see history through the fandom’s eyes. (She would have written a better article, too).

As somebody who loves history, I can only say: Do your thing. What you do, is not silly or stupid. You are having fun and people can learn something about American history while having fun, too. Example: @asaucyginger : Your post about General von Steuben was so interesting that I picked up a biography about him when I went to the library, and I got a lot out of it. I would never have educated myself about him otherwise.

I wish I could find folks who are as enthusiastic about the Reformation movement and Anabaptism, because that’s my thing, and I’m usually shushed after five minutes of excited monologue. ;)

Last word about the sex: Sex is always popular, and this is not surprising. People are not fascinated by the the Anabaptist’s Kingdom of Munster because of the theology / theocracy introduced, but because the Anabaptists established polygamy for a few days, since there were far more women than men in Munster, and the men wanted to keep control over the women."

[fiftysevenacademics]: "I’m still so mad about this. She totally refused to take seriously the way real history is being used in these fandoms right now. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on and apparently she even interviewed people about it, then chose to use her article as an opportunity to reinforce a division between “real” historians, of whom she considers herself one, even though she’s just an online writer and blogger like the rest of us who happens to have a PhD in American Studies– it’s not like her Slate or NYMag pieces have to survive peer review or anything– and “fans”. She has to know that a lot of the bloggers she’s dismissing are majoring in history or are applying knowledge they’ve acquired through fandom channels into college or high school courses on history, that fandom has become a location in the production of knowledge about history, and made the conscious effort to erase it in her story. This fantastic piece on the linguistics of doge and emotional language on the internet crossed my dash this morning and it struck me how much more rigorous, honest, and intellectually valuable it is as a piece of journalism than whatever that thing was that she posted yesterday. The UMass talk barely passes muster as an academic lecture because mostly she just pokes fun and giggles at all the “bad” history on the Internet. But I guess that makes her seem like a “better” source of Internet history than her journalist and blogger competitors, which matters when that’s how you earn your living.

I used to like her work on Slate – she wrote a review of “The Witch” that was exactly what I thought it would be like when I saw the trailer and now I’m excited to see the movie– but after listening to that MIT lecture, no way. Super not happy with her."

[nerdylibrarian]: "Full disclosure, I tried to watch the linked clip beginning at the Hamilton discussion, but I could not get through it. The saddest part of all of this is that thanks to Chernow, Lin, and Tumblr, so many more people know about and love John Laurens and the work he did and tried to do. You would think historians would celebrate the genuine interest and passion people have for these men and women. I also think it’s such a shame that this woman, who is Yale University educated, and a PhD holder, can’t give the fandom credit for understanding that the theories on Tumblr are in fact theories. And that even if a person believes in these theories, and has researched these theories, they have every right to do so.

If people can believe and discuss the fact that they think mankind was created by an omnipotent being in six days, why can’t a group of people also discuss and believe that two men may have had a relationship? Belief in the latter certainly doesn’t do any harm to anyone. I mean honestly, what is the worst thing that happens if someone goes through life believing Alexander and John had a relationship if they did not? At worst, if their of a certain age they may write a paper for US History class that their teacher returns citing the need for better sources. The horror. To the creator of this presentation, without the fandom and people you’ve chosen to judge and misrepresent, you wouldn’t have your presentation. Being a PhD holder, one would have thought you would have looked a little more at your sources. You assume you understand the beliefs, methods, and mindset of the people you’ve interviewed and highlighted, but it is clear that you don’t.

Take a look at the Hamilton fandom and Hamilton fandom on Tumblr as a whole. People are visiting the gravesites of Angelica Schulyer Church, John Laurens, Elizabeth Schulyer Hamilton, and Alexander Hamilton. People are visiting the homes these people lived in, the places they fought at. People are learning, people are being inspired. People are reading, researching, discussing, debating, creating, giving, and immersing themseleves in this world. And they are doing so because they want to, because they have connected with these people. And sure, maybe some people are motivated by clicks, likes, views, reblogs, but if that’s all someone wants, misusing a popular tag makes that pretty easy. But there is real effort being put forth here. So while it is a shame that you’ve presented some of these people in the manner that you have, know that what they do is solely out of the goodness, passion, and creativity in their own hearts and souls. People have fallen in love with the very subject you love and dedicated a huge amount of time, effort, and money to. Why look down on that? Why not highlight what is good?"

[tadeuszkosciuszkoscoffee]: "This article pisses me the hell off. The people mentioned in here are actually very smart, very well-researched, very dedicated bloggers, and they and the fandom at large are kind of reduced to stupid fangirls. I feel like what they said has been twisted. I mean, my God, no matter how dedicated you are to what you do, if you can’t have fun with it, you’re in the wrong damn field. God forbid anybody ever have fun with something they’re deeply interested in."

[kafkamilktea]: "Disappointed but not surprised. It’s easier to sell a story about young people being sex maniacs on the Internet than a story about young people educating themselves academically."

[mikyusuf]: "Wow. This is really messed up.

The whole article is literally about: “omg how dare these silly young people making fun of the founding fathers and historic stuff?! this is unacceptable! what? fanart? fanfics? PUNS? pfft this is so stupid! we don’t need your creativity and funny jokes in our strict historical mature society!!1″

Oh and also isn’t that nice to steal other people’s works just to rant about how much you hate them?"

[publius-esquire]:"Rebecca Onion: No amount of stealing my fanart and taking it out of contextualization, or making fun of LGBT+ people for writing queer historical fiction (which you never would have done had people been writing straight ships) will ever erase the fact that I’ve spent hundreds of hours reading dozens upon dozens of books, and know more on this subject than you ever will. So as we say in the serious academia world, eat me."

[uggggggggggggggh]: "i know nobody is gonna read this but please just let me get it out of my system so my soul can be at rest also lets go wild since we wanna call out tumblr blogs here

Honestly, sometimes I don’t know if I should laugh at people or be disgusted whenever they can’t grasp a historical figure as part of the lgbt+ spectrum just because they are a part of history. Lgbt+ people have alway existed throughout the times, EVEN if they did not have a label to go by as bisexual or gay. A recent article was written by Rebecca Onion with popular history tumblr blogs, but the writer turned their words around and made the whole history fandom as a joke of memes and weird fangirls. Sure, people joke (it’s TUMBLR for crying out loud ), but the writer made it seem as if the serious history side of tumblr does not put the time and effort of research.

In an a college lecture , Rebecca Onion said the following:

“Some people believe that John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton actually did have, you know, a kind of friendship or relationship that went beyond simple friendship. We don’t know that, and I actually think that most historians who write about Laurens would say that’s not necessarily true, but people on tumblr really believe it. (laughs)…Tumblr people like to go against educated historians. ”

?? So you have to have a History degree to prove something when there is information to the public? History is free for interpretation, but that doesn’t mean ERASE the facts. There are a number of historians that do believe Laurens and Hamilton have a relationship, so why are you not including them? Oh yeah– It’s to support your argument that lgbt+ people didn’t exist at all throughout history.

In one of my books of my own personal library, Jefferson and Hamilton by John Ferling, said the following, “it cannot be said with certainty that Hamilton was a homosexual or bisexual. Many people used the term “feminine” in describing certain of his qualities, through such characterization hardly points to one’s sexual disposition. What is more, the use of over elaborate expressions of same-sex affection was not unknown in the letter-writing style of the eighteenth century. The one thing that can be said for certain is that the erotic tone in Hamilton’s missives to Laurens ended abruptly once he met Elizabeth Schuyler.”

May I also remind you that Ron Chernow, a famous historian for his work on “Alexander Hamilton,” that also inspired the famous Hamilton musical, agreed with the possibilities of their relationship. Jonathan Ned Katz, Bennemann, etc–Wow, way to go Rebecca Onion for erasing so many supporters and facts. Mhm, way to go to for saying, “ THERE’S NO WAY HE COULD BE BISEXUAL OH MY GOD YOU’RE ALL WRONG AND HILARIOUS AND A BIG HUGE JOKE.” Rebecca Onion is so fabricated and one sided that it’s ridiculous, but my point is; open up to the possibilities and at least acknowledge them. You don’t have to agree, but acknowledge and respect when these people are not at your throats, but rather interested on your intakes. It opens my eyes that there are people like Rebecca Onion that slanders lgbt+ people from history and call it, “crap” and use the argument, “most historians agree with me so I’m ultimately right and everyone else is wrong!” While denying all evidence from other perspectives with the least amount of respect."

[fiftysevenacademics submitted]:

I didn’t know if you wanted that post reblogged or not, so I’m sending this and you can delete it or do whatever you want. I read that article when another blog was upset by it, too, and I felt about it basically the same way you do. You and several other blogs do a lot of serious historical research, and she chose to emphasize the fan culture aspect of your blogs. I felt bad for you. She downplayed how fan culture is changing the relationship that many fans have to history, making it more real and vital, and glossed over the fact that many, maybe even most of the same fans who love the frivolous side of fan culture have also spent dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours reading original source materials, biographies, historical articles, etc. I don’t think her article was particularly disrespectful to fan culture itself, but she did use her article as an attempt to prop up an increasingly tenuous and contested boundary between fan culture and academic culture, which really irritated me. She kept playing up “real historians” vs “fans”, without appreciating that some, maybe even a lot of the fans are doing more thorough and diligent research on certain topics, such as John Laurens and his pals, than some “real” historians. You actually had a collegial, academic disagreement with Massey– he takes you seriously!– and she apparently couldn’t take it seriously, which is like… What planet are you on? It’s also disappointing because I usually like the articles she writes for Slate, and this one for NYMag fell way short.

[john-laurens]:Thanks for your message; I appreciate your support. You hit all the points that I’ve been trying to articulate through my frustration. When she interviewed us, it sounded like she was going to make an article that explored a more positive relationship between fandom and academia and discuss how history bloggers have, as you said, made history more relatable and accessible. Unfortunately, that’s not the article we got, which is very disappointing.

And yes, you can reblog my posts about the article if you would like."

[john-laurens]: Also is it just me or did Rebecca Onion indirectly compare our interpretations of certain historical figures as queer to Jefferson’s sexual relationship with (i.e. rape of) Sally Hemings

[publius-esquire]: No, she directly compared it:

“But the kind of playfulness around the founders’ sexuality that these posts represent is pretty new. While some political opponents and radical abolitionists might have whispered about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings in the 19th century, the topic was fairly taboo.”

That was the exact moment I just gave my screen the finger and clicked out. The direct comparison of speculating about consensual same-sex historical relationships to plantation-rape is disgusting; it’s insulting obviously to all queer people - diving into a long, long history straight people have had of depicting all same-sex relationships as depraved - and also to black people (straight and LGBT+); especially since from the tone of her choice of words - “political opponents and radical abolitionists” - it doesn’t even sound like she believes the Jefferson-Hemings affair happened.

[madtomedgar]: And rape victims"

[Anonymous Ask]: Who is Rebecca Onion and what did they do? I keep seeing stuff about it and I'm really confused. :o
[e-pluribusunum.]: Basically she wrote this article in NYMag, patronizing and bullying Hamilton/History blogs. There’s a better post explaining the article and why it’s so shitty here."

[crying-in-the--archives]: "rebecca onion’s video of her lecture on the tumblr history fandom gave me strep throat"

An Example Of What Was Said During One Interview And What Appeared In The Article

"One of the interview questions that Rebecca Onion sent me was, “How’d you come to love this era/historical figure? What was the gateway to your interest?” In the article, my response got summed up in one line: “Jaclyn, 21, who runs john-laurens, told me she first got interested in the topic because of 1776.” I understand she had a word limit, but I don’t feel this one sentence came close to conveying the full response I gave. I really liked what I had written as my response, so I’m sharing it here to both explain how I became interested in Laurens and show the difference between the questions we bloggers were asked/the responses we gave and what these responses were turned into to make that article. So here’s what my full answer was:

When I took history courses in school, the American Revolution was always a time period that piqued my interest. But what really established my interest in this era was the musical 1776. While it has some historical inaccuracies and can be endearingly over-the-top at times, the musical does an excellent job of communicating the passion and conflict (both between America and England and between the colonists themselves) that were central to the forming of our nation. It also does not shy away from discussing issues such as slavery, which was deeply entrenched in the Southern way of life (and much of the world in general) and would dictate racial relations and government policy-making for centuries to come. The complexities of the founding fathers and their contemporaries are what really started to draw me in. I became particularly interested in learning about Alexander Hamilton and picked up Ron Chernow’s biography on him a few years ago. Through my research on Hamilton, I was introduced to John Laurens, who was close friends with Hamilton and likely had a romantic relationship with him. Laurens stood out as an iconoclast of his time. Though he was born into a South Carolinian slave-owning family that had made most of its fortune and status through slave trade and labor, he openly condemned the practice. He even believed that black people could be treated as equal and wrote to his father, “we have sunk the Africans & their descendants below the Standard of Humanity, and almost render’d them incapable of that Blessing which equal Heaven bestow’d upon us all.” During his short life, Laurens tried to form a black regiment to help fight in the war. His plan was to recruit slaves to fight for the American side and free them after their service. (Unfortunately, his plan was repeatedly rejected by the South Carolina House of Representatives.) Laurens also advocated for equal distribution of wealth – one of his bolder statements about this came after a fire destroyed several houses in Charleston, prompting Laurens to write to his father, “I deplore the misfortune of Charles Town if it has fallen upon Individuals of moderate fortune;_ if it affects only a number of rich men & will contribute to equalizing estates I shall not regret it_” Laurens was far from perfect, but the fact that he so openly censured the institutions that had brought him and his family into the upper class and supported his words through his actions shows that he was quite a progressive man. Prior to Hamilton, Laurens was not well-known, rarely making brief appearances in the occasional history textbook or biography of more lionized historical figures. The lack of literature on him and lack of awareness surrounding him is what prompted me to devote my free time to researching his life and telling his story."

This led on fan to comment in the tags of her reblog:

"#WOW #THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PARAPHRASE AND THE QUOTE IS SO STARK #ALSO THE PARAPHRASE DOES SUCH A POOR JOB OF ACTUALLY SAYING WHAT JACLYN SAID #SHIT JOURNALISM."

Author-Reader Interactions (Both Real And Imaginary)

[Anonymous Ask]: In what way has Rebecca Onion not responded well to the people who contacted her about her shitty journalism? I'm not surprised, but I guess I'm not in the loop.

[john-laurens]: A few of us emailed her (separately) about how we felt about her article. Her responses were not good. I’d rather not get into too much detail because this was communicated in a private email conversation, and as I said in my original review of the article, I’m not one to publish private conversations like that. But I will tell you that her response to my message did not address any of my criticisms of her article. She responded to only one blogger (to my knowledge) and directed others to this blogger for an answer instead of providing individual responses to the different messages that were sent.

[frightenbiden ask]: YO I hope you publish this so someone can say straight up that Rebecca Onion sucks and did a shitty piece of journalism that I, as a writing student, am ashamed of, Rebecca please see this comment and interview me on how I am ashamed of you
[john-laurens]: There were definitely a lot of issues with that article."

[Anonymous Ask]: I understand why people are upset, but I think it's really unnecessary for people to be harassing the author like that, because she obviously meant well. We shouldn't attack her for this, we should let her know what we felt was inaccurate about her portrayal of the fandom and ask that she change it, rather than running around and saying "suck my dick", etc. I hate to be that person, but that's why people don't take us seriously.

[john-laurens]: People are understandably upset with how she portrayed us, and they’re just trying to vent their frustration. The thing is, we did contact Rebecca Onion in a civilized manner, and her responses (or really, lack thereof) dismissed our feelings about her negative portrayal of us. I sent her an email about what I and others had taken issue with in her article, and the only thing she looked into changing was the description of my interaction with Greg Massey (meanwhile, she’s not changing the section where she compares possible queer relationships between historical figures to Jefferson’s rape of Sally Hemings). I have a post here that describes some of her responses to me and other bloggers. From the responses I have seen from her, she clearly has no intention of amending what she wrote or issuing any sort of apology.

[anti-rebecca-onion]: "i am going to duel rebecca onion"

One fan imagined how Hamilton himself might have responded to the article:

[nerdylibrarian ask]: I don't like discussing things I haven't watched. I made an exception regarding the UMass video. I even tried starting at the Hamilton bit, but I couldn't get through. The video and article screams of picking things that suited Onion's theory, ignoring everything else. It's click bait catered to her target audience.. Your blog is great. Also, I don't understand her focus on ship names. Finally, imagine Alexander's response. #OnionRefuted #TheRebeccaPamphlet
[john-laurens]: Thank you. I don’t understand her hyperfocus on the ships either. And I would have loved to have seen Hamilton’s response to this.