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alatismeni-theitsa · 2 months

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This! The tweet references this tweet where foreigners proceeded to rejoice about their vacation in Greece as a first reaction after hearing about how the brutal reality of queer Greeks has been alleviated. Are you for FUCKING REAL people?? You make me wanna puke! Were we ever people to you? Or just a fancy destination and some vague ancient texts of a "dead" language, that you never cared to associate with the actual Greek culture and people??

I saw the majority of these comments came from USians and I implore you specifically to shut your fucking face. This shouldn't be your reaction to a foreign marginalized group (that is still in danger) gaining rights. The privilege of living in the country that controls Greece has gotten to your head, and unfortunately, I see this attitude from all US marginalised groups also.

You are clearly NOT ready to discuss how your country has been profiting from exploiting our culture, and that the way you see us for centuries now reeks of the neocolonialist attitudes.

Even when we are happy when for the first time in our history our existence is legal MUST WE cater to your voyeurism and "ancient Greek" fantasies? Not to mention the continuous eyerolls I had seeing people expressing they thought Greece is a gay paradise since antiquity... B R U H .... It was never legal or non-shameful for us to be gay! N E V E R . Check ancient texts and laws. It was never legal or pleasant for us here!

More from the tweet here:

#if you care about lgbt+ people in Greece reblog or repost this please #LGBT+ GREEK PEOPLE OWE YOU NOTHING #WHEN WILL YOU SEE US AS FUCKING PEOPLE #I'M SO FUCKING TIRED #lgbt+ community #lgbt+ history #queer history #greek history

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androgynealienfemme · 10 months

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"The faggots and their friends live the best while empires are falling. Since the men are always building as many empires as they can, there are always one or two falling and so one or two places for the faggots and their friends to go. When an empire is falling, the men become so busy opposing the rebellions elsewhere and searching for the reasons why this is happening, that they have no time to watch the faggots and their friends at home. The populace, tired of hearing only of foreign defeats, allows the faggots room to play. This entertains them. Once the empire is gone, the cause of the present evil must be found. And the faggots and their friends along with others often get chosen. Then times get bad and the faggots and their friends fade."

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, Larry Mitchell (1977)

#hmm sounds familiar #the faggots and their friends between revolutions #the Larry Mitchell #gay lit #queer lit #gay history #queer history #lgbt+ lit #lgbtq+ lit #lgbt+ history #vintage gay lit #historic gay lit

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themightyfoo · 5 months

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????

Prior to the early 1990s you couldn't just access the internet because you wanted to. Only people with a connection to the US Defense Department were allowed* to use it. That included a lot of universities under contract with the US Government (not always the DoD.)

* In theory. In practice you just needed a buddy who was a systems administrator for said contractor. That's how I first gained access, in 1982 I was a physics grad student with buddies in the High Energy Physics lab. They had access through the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. So they gave me access via a dumb TTY terminal on the physics department's DEC VAX 11/780 minicomputer. It was useful as a way of connecting to other LGBT+ computer nerds on net.motss ("members of the same sex") which may have been the world's first queer social networking system. I'm that much of a relic. (By 1986 I was also developing communications equipment for the early internet, which at that time was called the Defense Data Network. I still have one of the old DDN tech manuals around the house somewhere. One of my gaming buddies was Roy Fielding, coinventor of HTTP and inventor of the RESTful API. I also know everyone quoted in the following article. )

#history of the internet #history of technology #lgbt+ history #soc.motss #net.motss #personal #me

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positively-bi · 8 months

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It ain't over til the bisexual speaks...

The March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Equal Rights and Liberation took place on the 25th of April 1993 in Washington, D.C. An estimated 80,000 to over 1 million people attended.

The 1993 March was the first March on Washington to include bisexuals in the title. Out of 18 chosen speakers, only one was bisexual: Lani Ka'ahumanu.

Afterwards, she wrote an article for bisexual magazine Anything That Moves about her experience entitled "How I Spent My Two Week Vacation Being a Token Bisexual", which can be read on her website here.

The webpage also contains a transcript of the speech she made at the event, which has been copied below the cut:

Aloha, my name is Lani Ka’ahumanu, and it ain’t over til the bisexual speaks...

I am a token, and a symbol. Today there is no difference. I am the token out bisexual asked to speak, and I am a symbol of how powerful the bisexual pride movement is and how far we have come.

I came here in 1979 for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

I returned in 1987 for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

I stand here today on the stage of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equal Rights and Liberation.

In 1987 I wrote an article on bisexuality for the Civil Disobedience Handbook titled, “Are we visible yet?”

Bisexual activists organized on the local, regional and national levels to make this March a reality.

Are bisexuals visible yet? Are bisexuals organized yet? Are bisexuals accountable yet?

You bet your sweet ass we are!

Bisexuals are here, and we’re queer.

Bisexual pride speaks to the truth of behavior and identity.

No simple either/or divisions fluid – ambiguous – subversive bisexual pride challenges both the heterosexual and the homosexual assumption.

Society is based on the denial of diversity, on the denial of complexity.

Like multiculturalism, mixed heritage and bi-racial relationships, both the bisexual and transgender movements expose and politicize the middle ground.

Each show there is no separation, that each and everyone of us is part of a fluid social, sexual and gender dynamic.

Each signals a change, a fundamental change in the way our society is organized.

Remember today.

Remember we are family, and like a large extended family, we don’t always agree, don’t always see eye to eye.

However, as a family under attack we must recognize the importance of what each and every one of us brings to our movement.

There is strength in our numbers and diversity. We are every race, class, culture, age, ability, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Our visibility is a sign of revolt.

Recognition of bisexual orientation and transgender issues presents a challenge to assumptions not previously explored within the politics of gay liberation.

What will it take for the gayristocracy to realize that bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and gay people are in this together, and together we can and will move the agenda forward.

But this will not happen until public recognition of our common issues is made, and a sincere effort to confront biphobia and transphobia is made by the established gay and lesbian leadership in this country.

The broader movement for our civil rights and liberation is being held back.

Who gains when we ostracize whole parts of our family? Who gains from exclusionary politics?

Certainly not us...

Being treated as if I am less oppressed than thou is not only insulting, it feeds right in to the hands of the right wing fundamentalists who see all of us as queer.

What is the difficulty in seeing how my struggle as a mixed race bisexual woman of color is intimately related to the bigger struggle for lesbian and gay rights the rights of people of color and the rights of all women?

What is the problem?

This is not a competition.

I will not play by rules that pit me against any oppressed group.

Has the gayristocracy bought so far in to the either/or structure, invested so much in being the opposite of heterosexual that they cannot remove themselves that they can’t imagine being free of the whole oppressive heterosexist system that keeps us all down?

Bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people who are out of the closet, who are not passing for anything other than who and what we are all have our necks and our lives on the line.

All our visibility is a sign of revolt.

Bisexuals are here to challenge the bigots who have denied lesbian, gay and bisexual people basic civil rights in Colorado.

Yes, Amendment 2 includes bisexual orientation.

Yes, the religious right recognizes bisexuals as a threat to “so called” family values.

Bisexuals are here to protest the military ban against lesbians, gays and bisexuals.

Yes, the Department of Defense defines bisexuals separately as a reason to be dishonorably discharged.

And yes, out bisexuals are not allowed to be foster or adoptive parents,

And yes, we lose our jobs, our children, get beaten and killed for loving women and for loving men.

Bisexuals are queer, just as queer as queer can be.

Each of us here today represents many people who could not make the trip.

Our civil rights and liberation movement has reached critical mass.

Remember today.

Remember that we are more powerful than all the hate, ignorance and violence directed at us.

Remember what a profound difference our visibility makes upon the world in which we live.

The momentum of this day can carry us well into the 21st century if we come out where ever and when ever we can.

Remember assimilation is a lie. It is spiritual erasure.

I want to challenge those lesbian and gay leaders who have come out to me privately over the years as bisexual to take the next step, come out now.

What is the sexual liberation movement about if not about the freedom to love whom we choose?

I want to encourage bisexuals in the lesbian, gay and heterosexual communities to come out now.

Remember there is nothing wrong with love. Defend the freedom to express it.

Our visibility is a sign of revolt. We cannot be stopped. We are everywhere. We are bisexual, lesbian, gay and transgender people.

We will not rest until we are all free;

We will not rest until our basic human rights are protected under federal law;

We will not rest until our relationships and families are not just tolerated but recognized, respected and valued;

We will not rest until we have a national health care system; We will not rest until there are cures for AIDS and cancer.

We deserve nothing less. Remember we have every right to be in the world exactly as we are.

Celebrate that simply and fiercely.

I love you.

Mahalo and aloha.

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dean-winchesters-clit · 2 years

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With the release of the Little Mermaid (2023) trailer, I want to tell you all about the gay man who saved Disney

After the death of Walt Disney in 1966 and Roy Disney in 1971, the Disney Animation Studio floundered for over a decade and a half. The movies released following the Disneys’ deaths did not do well at the box office or with critics, and the company began losing money quickly. It didn’t help that during the production of The Fox and The Hound, Don Bluth along with a bunch of other Disney animators left the company to start their own animation studio.

After The Fox and The Hound released in 1981, Michael Eisner (best known as the inspiration for Lord Farquad) took over after Walt Disney’s nephew resigned as CEO. Michael Eisner came into the company with the sentiment that they “had no obligation to make art”, and released The Black Cauldron in 1985 to critical and commercial failure. The company hit rock bottom and in response, Eisner moved the animation studio out of the buildings that were DESIGNED FOR ANIMATORS TO ANIMATE IN and into various hangers, warehouses, and trailers. Eisner was about to get rid of the animation studio for good until Walt Disney’s nephew intervened. Thanks to the mild success of The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company, Eisner gave the animation studio another chance.

That’s where our man comes in.

Howard Ashman was born in Baltimore, Maryland in May of 1950. He and Alan Menken (the composer for many many many Disney films) collaborated on The Little Shop of Horrors. Ashman was the lyricists, librettist, and director of the project while Menken wrote the music. They were nominated for a Grammy Award and Ashman received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. Ashman then wrote the screenplay for the Frank Oz film adaptation of the musical.

Ashman was brought in to Disney to write a song for Oliver and Company. While there, he was told about several projects the animation studio had on the back burner, one of which was The Little Mermaid.

Ashman became a driving force behind the creation of The Little Mermaid and subsequently, all of the Disney films made between 1989 and 1999. He explained to the animation team how musical theater and animated films were made for each other, and how they had the exact same amount of suspension of disbelief for audiences, which made them a perfect substitute for live action movie musicals which had gone out of fashion after the 1960s.

Ashman wrote all the lyrics to the songs in The Little Mermaid and insisted that Alan Menken be brought on to write the score and music. It was Menken’s first ever movie score and he fucking nailed it. Ashman was the one who insisted on bringing on actors who had musical theater backgrounds. He also insisted that Sebastian the crab be Jamaican so he could include Caribbean inspired music and have an “up” number during the movie. He explained to the writers how musicals were structured, where to include songs, and how those song would weave themselves into the story and feel natural. Ashman was credited as a producer on the film, which was released in 1989 to ENORMOUS SUCCESS. Ashman then went on to write the lyrics to the songs in Beauty and the Beast and three songs from Aladdin, the latter of which he pitched to Disney as an animated musical and wrote a treatment for.

After the release of The Little Mermaid, Ashman revealed to Menken that he had tested positive for HIV/AIDs. Jeffery Katzenburg, the then animation director at Disney, fully supported Ashman during the making of Beauty and the Beast, even creating a studio near his home in New York so he could work easier while receiving treatment. He got to see a private early screening of Beauty and the Beast before he lost his eyesight. He died of heart failure seven months before the film was released in November of 1991.

Beauty and the Beast received a standing ovation at its premiere and was the first and only animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, a decade before the Best Animated Feature category was added. The film is dedicated to Howard Ashman, a message at the end of the film reading, "To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful.“ Beauty and the Beast won for Best Original Song at the Oscars, the award presented to Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Ashman’s partner Bill Lauch accepted the posthumous award for Ashman, making it clear to the audience that he and Howard were a couple and loved each other. Disney was furious that Lauch had said those things during his acceptance speech.

Following Ashman’s death, the 2002 special DVD release of Beauty and the Beast added the song “Human Again” which Ashman and Menken wrote but was cut from the original film. The DVD also featured a special short called Howard Ashman: In Memorium. It features many people from the animation studio talking about Ashman and his invaluable contributions to the films he worked on. Jeffery Katzenburg said that there were two angels watching over them during his days at Disney: Walt Disney himself, and Howard Ashman.

If it weren’t for Howard Ashman, a gay man who died of AIDs in 1991, Disney would not be what it is today. They would have continued to flounder and eventually have gone under. Ashman brought Disney back to life and gave us unforgettable films and inspired countless others. He was the backbone of the Disney Renaissance, creator of the formula that these films followed and allowed them to succeed where previous films hadn’t.

And the modern Disney Corporation refuses to acknowledge his existence. While doing research for this post, I found a documentary on Disney+ about Howard Ashman. It has a one minute long trailer on the Disney+ YouTube account and that’s it. There’s no other marketing for this documentary, no one posting about it, NOTHING. It came out in 2018. FOUR YEARS AND NO ONE KNOWS IT EXISTS. Disney has been erasing the existence of queer people in their history and continue to profit off of the work that queer people did to keep their company afloat. The Beauty and the Beast remake was the first Disney movie to make over a billion dollars and in doing so, they butchered the work of a dying gay man who didn’t even get to see the finished film he worked so hard on.

So, as you make art and gif posts about The Little Mermaid (2023) as more and more trailers and promotional material come out for it, remember Howard Ashman. Remember the man who gave many of us our childhoods, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul.

Rest in peace, Howard.

Here is a video the goes more in depth about Howard’s contributions to Disney and the history surrounding the importance of The Little Mermaid:

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historyandarthijinks · 1 year

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#4 History Shorts

A pair of “forbidden” love letters during WW2 emerged between two male soldiers in 2008.

Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher fell back into love when they met each other again on the battlefield, fighting for Britain.

Being homosexual was illegal at the time. Being so could easily get you imprisoned, lobotomized, beat, and more. In the military it was viable to get you shot. However that didn’t exactly stop soldiers (almost everywhere).

They would send secret letters to each other, and gossip about their other crushes and romances.

The letters would be found after Bradley’s death, and put in the Oswestry Museum.

One letter contained the exact words, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”

#ww2 #1940s #happy valentine's day #lgbtq+#lgbtq history #queer history #lgbtq+ history #lgbtqia #british history #vintage letters #history #gay history #mlm history #lgbt+#lgbt+ history

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endusviolence · 23 days

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Magnus Hirschfeld was a eugenicist. I suggest you read Racism and the Making of Gay Rights by Laurie Marhoefer, a historian of queer and trans people in Nazi Germany, before you go writing posts praising him. He literally advocated for the sterilizing of the "feeble-minded", but oh, he has such a "fabulous mustache"!

Yes, he was. I really should have addressed this in my previous post. In my defense, this is a side topic that requires a lot of elaboration and to do so in that post would've derailed the point. Let's have that elaboration now, shall we?

For those who are unaware, eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices created with the goal of improving the genetic quality of a population. Versions of its practices have kind of always existed, but the term itself was coined by a British polymath named Francis Galton. The problem with it is it's scientific racism. From its start, it was meant as a method of "racial improvement" in society. Galton genuinely believed that all people with African roots were "two grades below Anglo-Saxtons in intelligence and ability." I've not even mentioned yet that Galton created eugenics under the belief that we didn't need to know how the mechanism of hereditary work to see its results. The entire practice was and is an uninformed pseudoscience that always focused more on racial traits than trying to find any truth based in reality.

Eugenics is often considered a Nazi thing because they really loved using it (see the mass sterilization and the Lebensborn program), but reality is that most nations (especially Western nations) have utilized eugenics in one way or another since its inception. In the US, for example, hundreds of thousands underwent compulsory sterilization during the 20th century to prevent socially undesirable traits, disproportionately affecting non-white populations. Eugenics was also used to help ban most Asian immigrants (except for those from the US's ally Japan or the then-colonized Philippines) from entering the country in the Immigration Act of 1924. Counter movements protesting eugenics made serious waves to dismantle some systems in the 70s and 80s, but prisons and other public institutions will still sterilize especially unruly people.

Magnus Hirschfeld, like many scientists of his time, was influenced by the ideas of eugenics. It's not entirely clear cut as it may seem. For one thing, Hirschfeld mostly rejected the racial hierarchy aspect (part of what made him controversial in his time, actually). He did, however, believe that those with disabilities or other undesirable traits should not reproduce. Sterilization was performed at the Institute (often with transgender patients). I also don't deny that he had his own racist beliefs, and I'll be delighted to read the recommended literature for better insight on this topic. I do not praise him for any of this behavior. In fact, I personally find it absolutely horrifying.

Then, why don't I hold it against him? Simply put, I don't find it productive to completely throw away and forget about important historical figures over controversial beliefs. I think Kaz Rowe put it perfectly in their video on Chevalier d'Eon (another controversial figure in trans history). You don't need to like a historical figure to find them interesting and worthy of study, and a historical figure don't need to be a good person to be queer. Without Hirschfeld and the Institute of Sexology, the early practice of sex reassignment surgery wouldn't have nearly as big, and the transgender people who did receive care from the Institute likely wouldn't have been able to transition. You're allowed to feel complicated things about figures of our past and even hate them for some of their beliefs. But you cannot deny that they do deserve at least a golf clap for the foundations they laid.

#Magnus Hirschfeld #Trans History #Transgender History #Eugenics #Scientific Racism #LGBT History #LGBT+ History #LGBTA History #LGBTA+ History #queer history #btw hot tip: i sense bitterness in the mustache comment and I get it. But personal feelings don't have much of a place in debate #when it comes to Hirschfeld and eugenics it's complicated. Who could've guessed!#I mean it when I say you're allowed to hate historical queer figures #i can't fucking stand Jan Morris but I also applaud her autobiography for being one of the first transition narratives in history #it's both an important historical document and an incredibly horrifying example of 20th century racism #i hope i'm making sense. I edited this post heavily for clarity's sake

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rougedraconteur · 2 years

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#maybelle blair #a league of their own #lgbt+ history

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gautierprotectionsquad · 24 days

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Source: Gay Community News (June 1994) Vol 20, No. 1 & 2. Page 15 https://archive.org/details/gaycommunitynews2001gayc/mode/2up?q=stonewall

#romanticsap #queer history #lgbt+ history #ID in alt text #putting this in queue to surprise myself when it gets posted

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mumblingsage · 1 year

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Hey just so you know, that tweet you posted about "queer labels from the 90s" is misinformation. Those labels are not from the 90s. They are from a 2013 twitter thread that was published in "My New Gender Workbook." The tweeter of the "90s" misinformation deliberately clipped out responses that included twitter handles so it would seem more 90s.

Why did someone do all this? They did this because there's a concerted effort among the modern sexual libration movement to lie about LGBT history.

Thank you for the reminder to do some research!

Here's the original Twitter thread - it cites Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook as the source, which, according to the Amazon product information, was published in 1997.

The images in the Twitter thread look like pictures from a printed book, not Tweets.

So I next went to Google Books to peek inside My Gender Workbook. I searched inside using the phrase that stuck out to me, "percussion fetishist" (<3) and found the context: Bornstein describes how she "put out the word on the Internet that I'd like people to define themselves in twenty-five words or less." The numbered list that wound up quoted on Twitter was of the responses to this Internet questionnaire (full list published in My Gender Workbook under the header "101 Gender Outlaws Answer the Question, "Who Am I?"" - for some reason I can't find page numbers in my Google Books search.)

Again, this is in the 1998 edition of My Gender Workbook, published by Routledge, as viewable on the copyright page in Google Books (which also states as book info that it was published in 2013 - I believe this was the date of a re-release. There are no results for 'Twitter' in a search of the book with 1998 on its copyright page, though My New Gender Workbook, on Amazon, offers a few results for "Twitter" when I used the "search inside preview" feature - mostly references to Bornstein consulting with her "Twibe" which was apparently a thing in 2013.)

My gut feeling was that the list sounded very '90s, and now that I know it was from one of Bornstein's books it makes even more sense - she's great that way :D

People's motivations re: accuracy in queer history are of course open to interpretation.

ETA: Also at least one person on the Twitter thread says they recognize the pages as from the 1998 edition of the book.

#queer history #LGBT+ history #Kate Bornstein #it brings me no pleasure to confirm the precussion fetishist is too old for me

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chxrchgay · 1 year

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Jeb and Dash: A Diary of Gay Life, 1918-1945. Edited by Ina Russell, published 1993. 290 pages.

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Jeb and Dash is an edited version of some 50 diaries written by Carter Newman Bealer (1899–1965), chronicling his life as a government employee and member of Washington D.C.’s gay community. While some aspects of his life were changed by his niece Ina during the editing process (all of the names are pseudonyms, and some figures in his life were left out or synthesized for clarity/ease of reading), it’s still an invaluable primary source. Jeb/Carter documented his life meticulously, and the infinite details he records about the city & its gay culture (and the friends who were involved in it) make it feel remarkably alive.

It is, admittedly, a sad read. Jeb was an aspiring writer but between long bouts of writer’s block and lifelong anxiety, he only had one short story published during his lifetime. His relationship with Dash was often marked by insecurity and jealousy, fueled by Dash’s sometimes cold behavior and inconsistent patterns of rejection and affection. And the world was also an unfriendly place for a gay man—Jeb makes mention of his hatred for cops, as they harassed or arrested men for cruising, and he was frequently harassed by strangers and coworkers and family alike.

Much of his writing about politics was cut, as Russell wanted the focus to be on gay history, but there are still moments where Jeb shows his spine in satisfying ways—defending the actions of anarchists and getting into arguments with fascists & nazi apologists, including those within his own family.

All in all, I considered it a very worthwhile read. I’ve always been fond of this sort of epistolary format (diaries and letters and the like), the relationships are often equal parts compelling and frustrating, I loved the historical aspect of it, and the great inescapable loneliness that followed Jeb throughout his life made me feel even more kinship with him, despite the fact that he died nearly 60 years ago.

“But we who are afflicted with this terrible and exquisite curse that uplifts us to the stars one moment and drops us in the mud the next, can find little lasting happiness in any way—our own or that of the unsympathetic world.”

While I’m sure I missed some, I made an accompanying playlist of every song referenced in Jeb’s diaries that I could find on spotify. Some other jazz playlists of the era can be found here: x x x x

Additional reading:

The Edwin Poems, by John Zeigler, 2007. Zeigler was a friend of Jeb’s and is featured in his diary under the pseudonym “Nicky.” This collection of poetry was written during and after Zeigler’s 49 year relationship with his partner Edwin Peacock. 4/5 stars. (ISBN: 9781425752729)

Edwin and John: A Personal History of the American South, by James T. Sears, 2018. (ISBN: 1560237619)

#book review #book rec #lgbt+ books #lgbt+ history #queer history #queer lit #a.txt

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alatismeni-theitsa · 2 months

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Patrochilles this and that but I see no people getting fixated on an actual real queer couple that is Hadrian and Antinous.. 👀

ΩΠΑ 😲 Good call! Okay the couple is later compared to "Patrochilles" however it was a real couple, and Antinoos was Greek (well, and Hadrian of the Italian peninsula but I focused on Antinoos cause Greece babyyy). Of course we can still speculate about other couples but I love it when real ancient same-sex couples are centered!

At this point I have another story about a possible same-sex real couple to tell:

In the spring of 390 A.D. emperor Theodosius published a law punishing homosexuality with death. Based on this text, the Goth general Buthericus of Thessaloniki imprisoned a popular rider (a sports star of the era), accusing him of pederasty. Archaeologist Thodoros Papakostas said that this rider had a relationship with the son of the Goth general, and this was the general's way of getting rid of him.

The people of Thessaloniki were enraged when the general didn't want to release the rider, and they revolted. In this stasis (revolt) the Goth general was killed. (At the time there was lots of tension because of the Goths in Thessaloniki) Then emperor Theodosius ordered the army to surround the Thessalonian Hippodrome and slaughter all the spectators. He repented of the order, but its revocation reached Thessaloniki after 7,000 citizens had been slaughtered.

#answered #lgbt+ in greece #queer history #lgbt+ history #greek history #byzantine history #roman history

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androgynealienfemme · 1 year

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"It is 10:30 at night. I ride the D train to the Bronx. I feel exceptionally beautiful and strong. My hair is fluffed, my dress short, my stockings patterned and colorful, my shoes high and black and patent leather. I am on my way to a party. My lover will be there, but she dos not know I am coming. I am excited about surprising her. I am excited about my low-cut, sleek black dress, my exposed legs, my hair. At least two men try to talk to me on the train, one who sits next to me, one across from me; they eye my legs. But tonight I am ready. "No," I say, "please, don't talk to me. Don't!" Eventually one by one, they leave me alone. When I arrive at the party I stand at the top of the stairs watching Buddy from across the room. She is quiet by the window and someone shouts her name and she turns around. She glances at me and slowly walks toward me with that swaggering, macho walk I love so much. She climbs the stairs to me and puts her arms around me, burying her face in my neck. Warmth. She takes my bag from me. She takes my coat off and hangs it in the closet behind me, then returns to me. Stands in front of me, kisses me, her hand on my waist. Holds me out in front of her, looks me up and down, smiles at the heels, my legs, my bubbling cleavage. her smile widening, she says, "You look like a girl," her hands in my hair. I smile, too, wanting to seem sophisticated but starting to giggle. "I am a girl!" I feel independent, confident. I sit with her on the couch directly from the big mirror on the wall. She wears a black, cropped-neck men's shirt and baggy blue slacks. I watch us in the mirror, her arm around my shoulder, fingers brushing my bosom, my hand moving slowly on her thigh. I am who I want to be. it feels good."

-“femme-insm” by Paula Austin, The Persistent Desire (edited by Joan Nestle) (1992)

#lesbian #lesbianism #butch #femme #butch femme #lesbian history #the persistent desire #lgbt+ history #lgbtq+ history #femme lesbian #recs #writing

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silvandar · 2 years

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What ofmd means to us ❤🏳️‍🌈