King, Queen & Queer and Prostitution within the military

Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin is well-known within LGBT-circles by now. This year she holds two exhibitions during Pride. King, Queen and Queer – Who owns the image of history? enlightens the definition of sexuality in Swedish history.

The installation at Armémuseet (The Army Museum) consists of three pictures of historic swedish regents that are "queer icons". The pictures are full-scale portraits of Queen Kristina, Karl XII and Gustav III.

- Only in modern 20th century society we have defined people as either homo- or heterosexual. In history, the focus was on the sexual acts themselves, assuming that practically anyone could be tempted into performing them.

Dag Lundquist held a tour of the exhibition and told us more about the royalties, for example how Queen Kristina was raised as a man and of King Karl XII’s fear of women.

The installation can be viewed until October 31 and is free of charge for anyone with a Pride dogtag.

Military prostitution

For almost a century the homosexual prostitution in Stockholm was mainly a military operation. It went on without much disturbance and in many honorable regements without leaving a trace in the military archives. The acts took place between male soldiers, but the prostitutes were not necessarily gay. In Arméemuseet, there are a few desks with information concerning issues of gender. Here you can  dig deeper into these questions. For example, if the uniform makes the man and wether women really could become good soldiers.

You can also join a tour and debate the Swedish army’s history and look at it from a LGBT- and gender perspective.