Hemingway was gay

Hem and Scott

I just finished a book about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald called “Z.” It was interesting. Zelda’s hatred for Hemingway came across loud and clear. I know that it’s historically true. However, there’s a claim that Hemingway came on to her, which didn’t strike me as true based on all that I’ve read and Hem’s feelings toward/against her. And there’s another portion in which she wonders if her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hemingway were closet homosexuals who had an attraction to each other. I don’t know that much about F. Scott Fitzgerald, but there’s not anything in the volumes that I’ve read about Hemingway and his past that would even slightly suggest that. I’ve read all of the hypotheses that Hemingway went ultra-macho to compensate for homosexual feelings. I don’t see that but everyone can have an opinion. Those comments aside, I found that I had sympathy for Zelda’s plight and her frustration in her life with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I also couldn’t help comparing Fitzgerald, of course, to Hemingway. When Heming

This kind of Freudian speculation has been left behind by most researchers looking at transgender lives these days, as it should. The following ought to be obvious: Most male to female transgender persons were not dressed up as girls by their mothers when they were kids. Moreover, most of the male assigned kids who were dressed up as girls did not become trans. There is more to transgender identities than childhood imprinting.

Hemingway did wear dresses as an infant.
At that time kids, regardless of assigned
gender were dressed like this. I have
a picture of one male ancestor
very similar to this one of Hemingway.

Indeed, most medical experts today concur that transgender identities are shaped by an interplay between biology and hormones on the one hand and society and personal experiences on the other. Childhood experiences may explain how a transgender identity plays out in a life, but they do not define why one particular person becomes gender variant.

It should be noted that in the end Dearborn leaves all these hypotheses behind, arguing that Hemingway was, indeed, some shade of trans.

The Garden of Eden

The

Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Androgyny

Ernest Hemingway and his three sons with blue marlin on the docks of Bimini, in The Bahamas. 20 July 20, 1935

Bullfight-lover. Big game tracker. Deep sea fisher. Brawler. Boxer. Drinker. War hero. Ladies' bloke. Even for his time, Ernest Hemingway was masculinity in hyperbole. The outsized writer of stripped-back prose was also, a brand-new documentary argues, an explorer of gender fluidity in the bedroom – both in his literature and his life. At a cultural moment which favours simplistic interpretations of iconic figures as villains or heroes, American filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick muddy the waters of the fallen literary celebrity in Hemingway, their non-hagiographic, six-hour examination of the contradiction between the myth and the man.

“For us it's about making things more complex,” Burns tells me, on a call from his home in Walpole, New Hampshire. “Hemingway is monstrous at times and there's never a moment in the film where we let him off the hook.” The writer’s epic and, ultimately, tragic existence allowed him to create literature – considered to be among the most influential in the English language – that Burns says

Ernest Hemingway's Sexuality Remains a Subject of Speculation Decades After His Death

When Ernest Hemingway died, he left behind literary works that would be read, acknowledged, and examined for years. And, although most still appreciate him for his work, others still have curiosities about Hemingway's sexuality and whether he was, in fact, same-sex attracted. Hemingway himself never openly identified as gay during his life, but for some scholars, the proof was in many of his books.

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While it's never a good notion to speculate about someone's sexuality, Hemingway's life and reputed personality paved the way for many to wonder about him long after his death. The PBS documentary Hemingway explores his personal life and relationships, of which he had many. Now, people have even more questions about him.

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Was Ernest Hemingway gay?

Hemingway never "came out," in any sense of the phrase, but there are still many who assume he might have been gay, or simply identified as having been sexuality fluid. Queerness, as a concept, came after his time, because when he was alive, it wasn't common for a man to