There is a silence that does not come from peace. A silence that lingers like smoke after fire, the aftermath of something burned, erased.

*Mixed media painting from the Unseen project by Elina/ Volk Kinethsniy*

It is the silence of the ones whose names were never spoken. The lovers who were called "friends." The artists who painted their desire into light and shadow, only to have history repaint it as something else. The men and women who disappeared into the night, into prisons, into the ground—marked, labeled, erased.

I create art that reflects my existence—queer, genderfluid, outside the lines they try to draw around us. My work is a mirror of the world they don’t want to see: androgynous figures, men in love, bodies that refuse to fit into their assigned roles. I am genderfluid and asexual. And for this, I have watched my work disappear. Censored, shadowbanned, buried. I was told we had won. That progress was a tide that could not recede, that the world had learned its lesson. But I watch as we are being made invisible once again—not with bans, not with fire, but with the quiet precision of an algorithm, with policies that erase without leaving a trace.

I post an image: two men, fully clothed, their lips barely touching. It vanishes.
I write a story: a queer love, defiant and alive. It is buried where no one will see it.
I try to reach those who would understand, those who would feel seen, and I am met with a closed door, a removed option, a shadow where there should be connection.

They are erasing us again.

The Mark of Shame: The Pink Triangle and the Names That Were Lost

It has always begun this way.

Before the world turned to war, there was a place in Berlin where we existed freely. The Institute for Sexual Science, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919, was the first of its kind—a sanctuary of knowledge where queer lives were studied, defended, documented. It held archives on gender identity, homosexuality, and transgender people. It was a place where we had names.

Then, in 1933, the Nazis came. The first books to burn under their rule were ours. They raided the Institute, torching its research in the streets. Soon after, they began rounding us up. The pink triangle—the rosa Winkel—was stitched onto the uniforms of gay men in concentration camps. Unlike other prisoners, who were at least given numbers, many queer prisoners were not registered at all.

Because they were not meant to survive.

Gay men were placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. Guards and even fellow prisoners brutalized them. They were forced into medical experiments, castrated, electroshocked, or "treated" with hormone implants. Many were raped, others beaten to death. Those who lived long enough to see the liberation of the camps were not freed—they were re-imprisoned under Paragraph 175, the Nazi-era law criminalizing homosexuality, which remained in effect in West Germany until 1969.

The world never returned their names to them.

And even now, the world tells us: It was a long time ago. It was different then.

But what is the difference between a number never given and a name erased from search results? Between a prison and an algorithmic shadow? Between a policy that criminalized existence and a policy that makes sure no one sees you exist?

When a Bullet Ends a Movement: Harvey Milk and the Cost of Visibility

We were told that visibility would save us. That if we stepped into the light, we would be safe.

Harvey Milk believed in that light. He was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, a man who stood on the front lines of a movement that had always been forced to fight from the shadows. His victory was a signal, a promise, a declaration that queer people could not only exist but could lead, could change the world.

And for that, he was murdered.

Shot twice in the head by Dan White, a man who saw his very existence as a threat. The courts were kind to White, sentencing him to only a few years in prison—his "Twinkie Defense" absurdly claiming that his consumption of junk food had altered his state of mind.

The queer community rose in grief, in rage. The White Night Riots of 1979 were not just about Harvey Milk. They were about every queer person who had been murdered and ignored. About a system that punished us for existing and excused those who killed us.

And yet, decades later, we are still told to wait. To be patient. To work within the system.

But what if the system was built to erase us?

Love Erased: The Vanishing of Gay Artists

They tell us queer love did not exist in history. But that is because they spent centuries scrubbing it from the record.

Take Caravaggio, the great Baroque painter. His work is full of men, of longing, of a beauty that defied convention. His greatest muse was a young man named Francesco Boneri, known as Cecco. He appears in painting after painting, his face the model for saints and gods, his body bathed in Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro light. Art historians called him Caravaggio’s "assistant." His "favorite model." They never dared call him what he truly was.

Or take Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose compositions shook the world. He wrote letters filled with passion and pain, confessing his love for men. Yet even today, his legacy is sanitized. His relationships rebranded as "deep friendships." His letters censored in official publications. The truth of his love cut away, piece by piece, until only the music remains.

And this erasure is not just the past. It is happening now. In an age where race, religion, and countless other identities rightfully fight for recognition, queer people are still being removed. A gay kiss in a film gets cut for "international audiences." A transgender character is rewritten as cisgender. A nonbinary artist finds their work miscategorized, hidden, deemed "niche."

And now, even in the spaces we built ourselves—our own magazines, our own networks, our own online communities—we are being pushed into the shadows again.

History Repeats Itself. Unless We Fight.

We were told that history moves forward. That the past will never return.

But we, more than anyone, should know better.

We know what happens when queer people are erased. We know what happens when we are made invisible. It starts with silence. It starts with lost names, with hidden stories, with censored images. It starts with laws disguised as "protection," with policies that make it impossible for us to find each other.

And then, the violence begins.

*Oneiroi by Elina/ Volk Kinetshniy from the Unseen project*

It is happening now. In countries that pass laws allowing LGBTQ+ people to be harassed without consequence. In schools where queer history is removed from textbooks. In social media, where the tools that once connected us now work against us.

And yet, they cannot erase what refuses to die.

They could not erase the pink triangle, though they tried.
They could not erase Harvey Milk, though they took his life.
They could not erase Caravaggio or Tchaikovsky, though they buried their love in footnotes and euphemisms.

And they will not erase us.

Because we have been here before.

The Unwritten Names

The Forgotten Spirit in the Age of Science