Queer people have always found each other

Queer people have always existed.

In every era, in every culture, even when the world around us refused to see it, we’ve been here. And wherever queer life was forced underground, queer language finds a way to surface. Sometimes it’s in coded gestures or private diaries. Sometimes in poems, letters, or novels that seemed innocent to everyone else.

Even when we couldn’t say who we were, we wrote it.

Literature in particular has been a lifeline, and I’ve been diving into this more lately. I’m reminded that the struggles of today are not new. Long before the word queer existed in its modern sense, writers and readers used literature as a kind of signal fire, a way to say I am here and this is who I am to those who would recognize what the words really meant.

Writers build bridges out of language, sometimes in cipher, sometimes in plain sight. Writing and other forms of art could hold truth even when plain speech could not. You can pick up a book or a poem and remember that you’re not alone. There are others. There always have been.

And literature moves beyond a bridge or emotionally supportive infrastructure. For diarists like Anne Lister and the American poet Charity Bryant – both of whom I’ve been reading about lately – literature wasn’t only a refuge; it was also a form of code-switching, a way of expressing queerness safely in a world that had no vocabulary and very little tolerance for it.

Lister used literary references like keys she could turn subtly in conversation to see what they might unlock. Fluent in classical and Romantic poetry, she would quote Sappho, Byron, sentimental verse about “female friendship,” or even the Bible to test the atmosphere. Would the other woman recognize the signal? Would she answer it, play along, or retreat behind propriety? For Lister, the right reaction could open a door. Literature became both armor and invitation – a way to cloak desire in respectability while still searching for recognition.

Her diaries show this dual function clearly. She used coded Greek letters to record her physical relationships with women, but her use of literary allusion in daily life was equally deliberate. Quoting a poet like Sappho aloud wasn’t just intellectual flair; it was a quiet gamble: will she understand what I’m really saying?

Charity Bryant used her poetry in her early life to express her love toward other young women. Early in her life, her poetry even expressed erotic desire toward women she had intense attachments to. Eventually she met Sylvia Drake and the two lived together for many years until Charity’s death at the age of 74. Even within her long-term relationship, Charity used poetry in a similarly subversive way as she and Sylvia tangled with a mix of a deep shared love and a deep shared guilt.

For both women, literature didn’t just reflect their experience; it made it possible. It gave them a vocabulary to name feelings that society refused to recognize – and a way to process their own inner turmoil.

These literary signals weren’t just acts of self-expression; they were acts of connection. Queer people have always read differently, trained by necessity to listen between the lines. When you live in a culture that won’t name you and won’t let you name yourself, reading becomes a form of survival. You learn to hear what’s whispered, what’s implied, what’s almost said.

That sensitivity formed entire underground networks. In the 19th century, queer readers found each other through literary salons, letters, and coded references to Sappho or Michelangelo. In the 20th, through pulp novels, zines, and small poetry presses that circulated hand-to-hand. Today, this lineage continues through fan fiction, AO3 tags, and private online spaces – new codes for old truths.

The language has changed, but the impulse hasn’t. Queer people have always written toward one another, even when we can’t write their names. Literature becomes our language.

That’s why I’ve spent so much of my life steeped in it. I first recognized queerness in poetry in high school, reading Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman and feeling, somehow, recognized.

In the U.S. today, as queer and trans visibility faces renewed, snarling political backlash, it’s easy to feel that we’re sliding backward. But history tells a different story: queer people have never disappeared. We have always found each other, even in the dark.

And literature has always been the light. Whether in Anne Lister’s carefully coded literary allusions, Charity Bryant’s personal poems, a pulp paperback slipped under a pillow, or a fanfic tagged slow burn, sapphic yearning, the act of writing and reading remains the same quiet rebellion: You can’t erase what keeps finding ways to be seen.

Queer communities aren’t a modern invention; they’re a historical constant. What changes is how we signal, how we speak, how we keep the language alive. Even when the words have to be whispered, the meaning endures.