aeschylus: stayed outside in his old age to avoid a prophecy that he would die from having something fall on his head, died when an eagle thought his bald head was a rock and dropped a turtle on him to break its shell
plato: partied too hard
empedocles: jumped into a volcano to prove that he was immortal
philitas of cos: was such an incredible pedant that he wasted away while studying erroneous word usage
saint lawrence: roasted alive during christian persecution under valerian, joked that he was done on one side and needed to be flipped over
didius julianus: purchased the roman empire in an auction, ruled for 9 weeks, executed for being ineffective leader
petronius arbiter: sentenced to death by nero, opened his veins while enjoying a sumptuous dinner party, edited his will to list all of the reasons he hated nero
Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole – oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms)was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905.
The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Got that?
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece – ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.
Seventeen things you have to learn for yourself
as a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual
or otherwise Queer youth
by the time you are seventeen.
One is that the first Pride was a riot
I don’t mean that it was full of laughter, or that it was some grand party
where everyone spiraled up to dance among the stars
because the only glittering that night
was broken glass on cobblestones.
The first Pride was a riot
on the backstreets of New York
and they never tell us
that night
we won.
The only protest
in a decade full of turmoil
where the cops had to hide out in the bar they raided
and run from shouting rioters
who fought to reclaim the only patch of ground they had ever claimed as theirs
the first Pride was a riot,
and two, around the same time it took place
it was a debated topic in the gay community
whether or not they should say
that they weren’t mentally ill
which, three, homosexuality was removed
from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses
in 1974
congratulations
all it took was a vote to declare that, whoops, we were never mentally ill
except, four, there are still teenagers being tortured today
in what some dare blaspheme as “therapy”
used to destroy their self-identity
in the hopes of making them normal.
except, four, the queer community still carries overwhelmingly high rates for poverty and homelessness and depression.
Did you know that, five,
over half the children forced into conversion therapy
commit suicide?
And six, that lesbians
were regarded as “hangers-on”
of the movement
by much of the gay community
before the AIDS crisis?
Because it turns out, seven can wear a rainbow on your shirt
and still be a bigot.
There are people who stick rainbows in their ears
or wear them on their fingers
or slap them across their cheeks in badges of defiance
and will still hate you for the color of your skin
or the size of your thighs
or your gender
or the way you like to kiss two or more genders
or none of the above.
Don’t ask me why this happens
it just does
I think it might be that we’ve all been taught to hate ourselves
for so damn long
that we don’t understand what to do
in a space with no hate.
Or maybe it’s that the space seems too small, because
eight, there are people who will tell you that you are not enough
that you do not reach the magical benchmark of “gay enough” to pass through the gate even
especially
when you are some flavor of the rainbow other than straight-out gay.
eight, this is bullshit
eight, those people are bullshit.
eight, you are enough.
eight, there is always enough room.
nine, there is no overarching “homosexual agenda”
sorry
we’re all kind of flailing along in here trying to figure out some way to make it work
when most of us have nothing in common
except that society looked at us in different ways and decided we didn’t fit
so we could all go be misfits together
under one big rainbow flag
but just so you know, ten, there are plenty of other flags
there is one for you, I promise
and eleven, misfits may not all need the same things
but we need to stick together, especially in a world where
twelve—refer to point seven—there are lesbians who hate other lesbians
for having the audacity to be born in a body
that everyone looked at and saw “boy”
which brings me to
thirteen, there is so much to understand.
fourteen, you need to understand
because we need to stick together
and to stick together we do not have to be the same but we do have to understand
and it will be hard because
you were probably thrown into this world with no warning because
fifteen, being queer is not genetic and we are not unique among minorities
in that we collect our heritage through broken bits of history and research in a world constantly working to make those misfit bits go away
but we are unique in that when we try to prove our legacy
we can be laughed down
or re-erased
or flat out ignored
but I swear to you
you have a history as old as Alexander the Great
as beautiful as Sappho
as dignified as Abraham Lincoln
and as proud as Eleanor Roosevelt.
But even with that behind us
sixteen,
they have always watched us die.
because even though the bystander effect is bullshit, sixteen
Kitty Genovese was a lesbian, sixteen
Ronald Reagan is a mass murderer, sixteen
our children, your brothers and sisters and siblings of all stripes and all colors and sexualities and genders are being murdered
through neglect
and rejection
and hate.
Sixteen, there is an entire generation of gay and bisexual men
missing from history
because the government chose to do nothing
when they were dying by the thousands.
sixteen, we died from the disease and died from going back into the closet and died for staying there and died for coming out,
sixteen, they laughed at us because they believed god was punishing us for daring to love,
sixteen, ashes of your forerunners rest on the lawn of the White House because
SIXTEEN, THEY HAVE ALWAYS WATCHED US DIE.
SEVENTEEN
you are allowed
to be angry.
You do not have to be one of the nice gays
or one of the nice trannies
or sweet or kind or educate the rest of the world in something less than a yell
you are allowed to be so furious it scalds your bones
at the way we are forgotten
and passed over
at the way, as soon as June becomes July
we are expected
to go back to dying in silence
and mourning our dead
and kissing all alone
when no one can be offended
at the sight of us.
You are allowed to be angry
and scream down the stars
to shatter like broken glass at your feet
because you know what?
The first Pride
was a riot.
Reading the iliad is so crazy because like alexander the great was reading this story over 2000 years ago?? he probably wrote fanfiction about achilles and patroclus and told hephaestion his headcanons?? life is absurd
HE DID THO. HE ACTUALLY DID.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT WAS HELLA GAY AND WROTE GAY FANFICTION OF THE GAYEST PEOPLE IN ANCIENT GREECE.
I’m not even kidding. Achilles and Patriclus were hella gay Ancient Greek warriors; like the Illiad (the number one source for all things Greek) has half the book dedicated to their relationship.
Alexander the Great wrote 57 papers about them. HE WROTE 57 ESSAYS ON THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER AND WHAT HE THOUGHT THEY WOULD DO IF THEY LIVED IN HIS TIME PERIOD.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT WROTE MODERN AU GAY FANFICTION
And it gets EVEN GAYER
He constantly refers to himself and his “guy pal” Hephaestion as having the same relationship as Achilles and Patroclus
He literally talks about how he and his best friend were like WELL KNOWN ANCIENT LOVERS.
Don’t think it can get gayer? THINK AGAIN
Alexander and Hephaestion visit the graves of Achilles and Patroclus and laid down flowers in honor for them, stripped naked, and ran a race in their honor. After words they SENT THEIR SERVANT AWAY TO SPEND THE NIGHT ALONE AT THE MEMORIAL.
This isn’t a myth, this is actual documented history. It’s all true. I don’t have sources because I learned about this a few years ago in my history class in college but google it I promise you.
Wow, 57 essays. Alexander must have had a lot of free time on his hands.
The reason you don’t have sources is that this didn’t happen.
I TOOK 15 MINUTES
Cartledge, Paul. Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past. Woodstock, NY; New York: The Overlook Press, 2004
Wilcken, Ulrich, Alexander the Great, W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (March 1997)
~follow for more soft historical homosexuality~
Alexander the Great lived in a time when travel was slow and he got to travel in a carriage, meaning he didn’t have to worry about controlling a horse. He had plenty of free time to read and write, there was little else to do on long carriage rides.
See those feathers? The skeleton they found was so well-preserved that scientists were able to examine the pigment cells in the feathers and compare them to those of modern day birds.
And they were able to do this with such accuracy that they know the coloration of this dinosaur. In life it looked something like this.
It just baffles me that we know the color patterns of an animal that has been dead for 161 million years
They found a prehistoric chicken that wears adidas swear pants my god
why does it feel like everyones already forgotten about the pulse shooting? don’t forget about it. don’t forget the largest mass shooting in us history, perpetrated by omar mateen, which took place on june 12, 2016 and where a majority of the victims were latino gay men. don’t forget the 49 lives lost and 53 wounded. it’s only been a few months! don’t let people forget about pulse.
Fun History Fact: The overwhelming majority of cowboys in the U.S. were Indigenous, Black, and/or Mexican persons. The omnipresent white cowboy is a Hollywood studio concoction meant to uphold the mythology of white masculinity.
Thank you.
I will always re-blog this
I think it was high school when i overheard some white girl put on her best semi-disgusted and confused voice and go “why do so many Mexicans dress up like cowboys?” and I had to be the person to tell her.
Why do you think the whites say buckero? Cause they couldn’t say vaquero.
I dunno if I reblogged this before but fuck it, y’all gon learn today.
Teach the children.
also, cowboy culture was hella gay. like, write-poems-about-your-cowboy-partner gay.
IF people acknowledge it, they play the necessity card– there weren’t any women out on the range, so they had to “resort to men.” this claim completely erases 1) the romantic (not just sexual) writings of actual cowboys, 2) the acknowledgement of cowboys’ potential homosexual activity by writers at the time, and 3) the possibility that some men would deliberately become cowboys with the intent to seek out homosexual encounters.
no one wants to admit it, but cowboy culture was just. so inherently gay.
Im here for the gay POC cowboys
“there weren’t any women out on the range
“
Well, actually there was. Not just the women who openly owned and/or ran ranches and/or worked on ranches and with cattle droves, either. There were also many women who dressed as and acted as if they were men and worked as male cowboys, and in some cases male-identified (like Charley Parkhurst, one of the more famous examples).
Apparently the independence of many of the openly female ranch owners, hands, and cowgirls is part of why Wyoming was one of the first states in the US to give women the vote.
“Were there any straight people in this period of history?”
“Well…obviously
speaking, there must have been some people that nowadays we would
describe as ‘straight’, but we have to be very careful about applying
modern standards of sexuality to the past. I’m sure if you asked anybody
at the time if they were straight, they would have been very confused.
And there’s something quite dangerous about forcing identities onto
people who might not consider themselves that way. You also need to keep
in mind that some things that today would seem ‘straight’ to us – like
getting married, having children, etc. – were just the way things were
back then. Nobody would have thought twice about doing that, including
non-straight people. And there were plenty of people who undoubtedly got
married, had very intensely emotional connections with their spouse,
but then went off to go see their lover. Again, sexuality is a very
complex thing, so I wouldn’t presume to state definitively that anybody
was ‘straight’, and especially not without good, solid evidence that
they were exclusively heterosexual. To presume otherwise would not only
be making a lot of assumptions, it might even just promote harmful,
overdone stereotypes about what makes someone ‘have’ to be straight, you
know? So, yes, technically speaking there were, but I don’t see any
reason to specifically consider straight people historically.”
ruby-dear archive 