We’ve discussed the “and they were roommates” meme before in relation to the straightwashing of past historical eras. As most of us (hopefully) know by now, gay people are not an invention of the late 20th century. We’ve existed since the dawn of time, and we’ve had relationships since the dawn of time.

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The fascinating origin of “and they were roommates”

But for many reasons, queer couples from the past would often be classified as mere “roommates” by straight scholars who couldn’t conceive of two men sharing a home and life in anything but a platonic sense.

We were collectively reminded of this after the account @historymemes shared a photo from a 2020 Smithsonian article about the photography book Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s.

In Loving, readers get to see hundreds of portraits of anonymous men who history previously defined as roommates, but who were almost certainly something more.

We don’t know who Alexander and John were, but we do know that John’s hand is creeping dangerously close to Alexander’s inner thigh in this photo. Roommates they were not!

Straightwashing is everywhere, but fortunately, we don’t have to buy into it.

Gay couple, taken sometime in the 1920s.
byu/Border_Clear ingay

We might imagine that queer people in the past had to live deeply closeted lives, and that’s partly true. Until the late 60s and 70s, it was illegal even to crossdress in many states. But that doesn’t mean that queer couples couldn’t hide in plain sight, like in these romantic “man in the moon” photos.

Let’s Get Married, circa 1910
byu/2LegsOverEZ ingaybros

“Confirmed bachelors” were certainly a thing, but a lot of those bachelors were probably queer, just like plenty of “odd women” or “spinsters” were probably enjoying relationships with other women.

And lest we forget, this phenomenon still exists in discussions of contemporary figures. Until recently, Whitney Houston and her best friend and probable lover Robyn Crawford were labeled as just super close besties. But we know the truth…

The moral of the story? Most people who are just roommates don’t pose for deeply romantic photos together. And when they do, well, they might just be riding the well-known roommates-to-lovers pipeline without even knowing it.

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