Y’all the white stripe on the trans flag literally is for nonbinary folk, so maybe stop yelling at nonbinary folk that we’re using the ‘wrong’ flag for ourselves.
Also the trans flag was inspired by the bi flag, so miss me with your ‘bisexuality is transphobic’ bullshit. Here’s more of a history on why that shit is ahistorical.
hi everyone im still pissed we never learnt in school that shakespeare was bi and wrote the sonnets about a dude and a woc he was into
hi everyone im still pissed that we were told emily dickinson was a spinster when she spent her whole life writing love letters to a woman
hi everyone im still pissed about the fact that we never got taught any of the super super gay Greek myths. it seems impossible to think they managed to pick all the hetero myths when Greece was just THAT gay but guess what? they did.
hi everyone virginia woolf was also bi im still pissed that so much of literature is queer and has queer coding within it that deserves to be analysed through that lens in the same way that we don’t ignore the gender of an author, but sexuality is never mentioned in highschool literature classes
hi everyone i’m still pissed that we were never taught that da vinci was gay af and that the ideal the western world has of jesus (white, long straight brown hair) was based on one of his male lovers
hi everyone i’m still pissed that we were told sir isaac newton died a virgin when he had multiple boyfriends over the course of his life one of whom he wrote passionate love letters too and lived with
There are people out there trying to straightwashing fucking Sappho. Sappho os Lesbos, patron saint of all queer girls. Sorry I didn’t follow the format y’all had going. I’m just mad as hell about how they’re trying to do Sappho so dirty.
You are not the Queer Pope. You don’t get to decide who is and isn’t queer.
Also, get off my blog.
Not only is anon not Queer Pope, they’re also factually incorrect. For others champing at the bit to be the next grayface too chickenshit to be wrong with their URL attached:
Google “the spinster movement”. 1920′s and 1930′s. Ace women considered “queer” by straight society for not complying with the demands of compulsory heterosexuality (i.e. marry, let your husband fuck you whenever he wants, produce hordes of children, probably die of tuberculosis (well, that last bit’s not compulsory heterosexuality, but I digress)).
Better yet, look up stuff from the research of Alfred Kinsey and/or Magnus Hirschfield (of the
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft- the Nazis burned it for advancing knowledge and acceptance of ace, trans, and gays & lesbians- all enemies of the State because their existence undercut the Aryan call for men FATHER MANY ARYAN BABIES and to FIGHT FOR THE FATHERLAAAAAND and for the women to manage Kinder, Küche, and Kirche (children, kitchen, church).
Here’s a nice excerpt from a 1935 newspaper on how asexual women should be barred from teaching (one of the very few jobs a woman could hold in those days) based on their sexuality: “The women who have the responsibility of teaching these girls are many of them themselves embittered, sexless or homosexual hoydens who try to mould the girls into their own patten.”
In the Victorian era, there was a movement for decades in favor of evicting spinsters (read: asexual and lesbian women) over 30 from Britain, and send them to Canada, Australia, or the United States instead.
They were at best, “surplus females”, and at worst? Here’s another quote! This one is from Eliza Linton, a Victorian writer quoted in a more modern work analyzing Victorian families, describing spinsters in contrast with “naturally” celibate women, that is, widows: “Unnatural and alien: Painted and wrinkled, padded and bedizened, with her coarse thoughts, bold words, and leering eyes, [the wrong kind of spinster] has in herself all the disgust which lies around a Bacchante and a Hecate in one…. Such an old maid as this stands as a warning to men and women alike of what and whom to avoid.”
TL;DR YOU EXCLUSIONIST SHITHEADS KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE HISTORY OF YOUR OWN COMMUNITIES, LET ALONE BROADER QUEER HISTORY. SHUT YOUR MOUTHS, OPEN A FEW WEBPAGES, AND READ.
I, an old cis hetero woman, I’m pretty uncomfortable with your exclusionist shit, anon. It’s absolutely disgusting that as soon as a minority group gains some traction and acceptance, some members will go “lemme see who can I exclude next to make myself feel better and more special”. I’ve seen enough shit posted about ace and bi people to seriously question the attitude “I’m gay, and my gayness gives me a status close to sanctity and infallibility and I can spew hateful nonsense now and be offended by everyone who’s not me or like me”. Anyone agreeing with the anon here can unfollow me right now, thank you, bye.
This is true btw. I did a report about Ann Boney in school and Read actually liked her back so they ran away together and were considered the two most terrifying pirates across the seven seas
Lesbian Pirates
Give us this film
Just fyi – many of the illustrations and statues of them show them with their breasts exposed. This is not because they are sexualising lesbians but because these women often used to open their shirts and expose a breast when they killed a man just so the man’s dying thought would be the realisation that he was killed by a woman.
tits out for murder!!! a true aesthetic!!!
Throwing this out there, relationship labels are a weird place in history and I haven’t been avidly researching pirate history in a hot minute, but they also had a polyamorous relationship with Calico Jack Rackham (who Jack Sparrow was based on), and the three of them spent a number of years cruising around the Caribbean, taking over ships and gaining quite impressive reputations as pirates.
Anne Bonny’s gender would pretty much never be revealed to anyone but Rackham and Read, until their capture when Read and Bonny pleaded they were both pregnant to put off the death penalty. Read didn’t make it out of the prison, dying in childbirth I think, but Bonny did make it out.
activists at barnard college providing “labels”, photographed by susan rennie and published in off our backs: a women’s newsjournal vol. 3 no. 6, february 1973
Black an white photo of two women, one standing, one seated.
Behind them is a hand-written sign reading,
“YEA – It’s a heavy trip. BUT! This is a chance to CHOOSE YOUR OWN LABEL instead of having someone else do it for you:
Sections 553 and 554 of Article 27 of the Maryland Code prohibited sodomy (punishable with a sentence of “not less than one year nor more than ten years”), oral sex, and “any other unnatural or perverted sexual practice with any other person.”
i love that one old timey 1910s trans dude who has a tiny wikipedia page for himself that he earned entirely due to him starting fights in bars and being the city’s hottest casanova
Like this glorious jerk got arrested so many times that was literally ALL THEY HAD TO WRITE IN THE PAPER
He was a vagrant street kid and Seattle girls were all over this guy, to the point where it caused a moral panic. There’s a famous anecdote about a women proclaiming her love in Denny Park and then trying to shoot herself, but most of these reports were falsely worded in a way that suggest his female admirers were “upset about being deceived” when really they were upset that he was wooing other women, or trying to get his attention by being as extra as possible.
What you also should know is that back in the day “seduction” was a literal crime that could put you in prison (unless you married the woman you seduced) but since he wasn’t cis they couldn’t really CHARGE HIM with anything. Legend.
I especially like “Seattle Woman Appears in Men’s Clothes Because She Says Her Features Make it Possible.” I can’t imagine anything but someone going “Hey! You can’t dress like that!” and him responding “Oh yes I can. You see, I look very good.”
and if you can, go and see The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson, which includes this footage as part of a fuller segment on Sylvia Rivera’s life right up until her death. what an amazing person who the world was not ready for.
(Transcription follows🙂 Sylvia Rivera: I may be—
Crowd: [booing]
Sylvia Rivera: Y’all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help and you all don’t do a goddamn thing for them.
Have you ever been beaten up and raped and jailed? Now think about it. They’ve been beaten up and raped after they’ve had to spend much of their money in jail to get their [inaudible], and try to get their sex changes. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women. On the women’s liberation and they write ‘STAR,’ not to the women’s groups, they do not write women, they do not write men, they write ‘STAR’ because we’re trying to do something for them.
I have been to jail. I have been raped. And beaten. Many times! By men, heterosexual men that do not belong in the homosexual shelter. But, do you do anything for me? No. You tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs. I will not put up with this shit. I have been beaten. I have had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way? What the fuck’s wrong with you all? Think about that!
I do not believe in a revolution, but you all do. I believe in the gay power. I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights. That’s all I wanted to say to you people. If you all want to know about the people in jail and do not forget Bambi L’amour, and Dora Mark, Kenny Metzner, and other gay people in jail, come and see the people at Star House on Twelfth Street on 640 East Twelfth Street between B and C apartment 14.
The people are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a white middle class white club. And that’s what you all belong to!
REVOLUTION NOW! Gimme a ‘G’! Gimme an ‘A’! Gimme a ‘Y’! Gimme a ‘P’! Gimme an ‘O’! Gimme a ‘W’! Gimme an ‘E! Gimme an ‘R’! [crying] Gay power! Louder! GAY POWER!
There’s some really important commentary on this event by several trans women on the previous upload of the video. I’m going to quote it here so it’s not lost; unfortunately the original commenters have deleted their blogs or gone private so I can’t provide full attribution.
lilacbootlaces said:
[[Trigger warning: suicide]]
Sylvia went home that night and attempted suicide.
Marsha Johnson came home and found her in time to save her life.
Sylvia left the movement after that day and didn’t come back for twenty years.
this is incredible, she is incredible, I highly recommend watching it
but I think the addendum re: the effect of this day on sylvia is really important
so often we valorise decontextualised moments of tough, articulate resistance and rage
and
the suffering of the people who embodied them is not acknowledged, it’s
uncomfortable, it’s not inspiring, we want them to stay tough and cool
and stylish forever
which is particularly terrible when I think about how sylvia felt like that because of women like me — women who are now watching this video and feeling inspired and impressed
and maybe a bit pleased with ourselves for finally having watched a
speech by the famous and really cool to name-drop sylvia rivera
girl-assassin said:
rebloggin for the true as fuck commentary (bolding mine)
n
like, on one hand this moment is decontextualized as fuck, but on the
other hand a lot of ppl try to hyper-contextualize it to make it
“history” and a very specific historical moment, so we (cis women) can
be like “oh so sad that’s how it was in the 1970s, radfems were so
awful, but it was only the whole second-wave scene that was the problem,
glad that’s over.”
Like have we forgotten the fact that Sylvia
only died in 2002? And she died young, if she were still alive she
wouldn’t even be 65 yet. I know hella older ppl in NYC who knew her
personally, and hella “leaders” of the NYC queer scene pulled horrific
shit on her constantly in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, like literally
until the day she died (ppl from Empire State Pride agenda literally
went to St. Vincents to beef with her on her death bed) Where are the
video tapes/memorializing of that shit?
N now the Manhattan LGBT
center on 13th st has a room dedicated to her memory, despite the fact
that very center permanently banned her in 1995 for daring to suggest
they should let homeless QTPOC sleep there in sub-zero weather.
N
now there’s a whole homeless trans youth shelter on 36th st named after
her, Sylvia’s Place, that kicked my TWOC friend out on the streets for
testing positive for marijuana; failing to recognize how fucked up that
is in a shelter named after a woman who struggled with addiction all her
life, and was very vocal about the relationship between drug use and
the stress of living under constant threats of violence.
N from
the late 90s onward rich gays and lesbians openly fought against Sylvia
to try to shut down 24/7 access to the piers that she n hella other
QTPOC cruised and lived on bc they were bringing down the property
values of their multi-million west village apartments.
N like 90%
of the individual people who perpetuated fucked up violence against
Sylvia are still alive and high-profile leaders in the NYC LGBT
“community” today.
So like yes, good, remember the oppressive
weight of our history of transmisogyny…but also remember that this shit
specifically ain’t even history, it’s the current reality of the NYC
queer/trans hierarchy today—like not even figuratively, literally the same people
who pulled shit like this on Sylvia are still alive n well n all over
NYC cutting the ribbons to the newest Sylvia Rivera memorial n
eulogizing her like they never tried to fucking kill her themselves.
“MY SON IS BI…I DON’T ASK WHY.” – “MY MOTHER IS STRAIGHT…BUT SHE DON’T HATE.,” Michael Szymansky and his mother, March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, Washington, D.C., April 25, 1993. Photo by Lynn Harris Ballen (@lynnharrisb), c/o @onearchives. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #CrystalPepsi (at Washington, District of Columbia)
Steel Phoenix Studios 