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maddie-grove · 9 months

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Most Common Problems Faced by My Childhood Dolls (Grouped by Type of Doll)

Baby/Companion Dolls: life-threatening diseases; bullying by other dolls at school; my dubious discipline style; my divorce from my imaginary husband Jake.

Groovy Girls: bullying by other Groovy Girls; life-altering gymnastics accidents; feet too unwieldy for go-go boots.

Barbies: false witchcraft accusations; real witches; tuberculosis; kidnapping; the time Ken and his brother Adam started a polygamous cult; bullying by other Barbies (whether in a normal high school or a beauty pageant or a cult); basically anything bad that happened to female movie stars in Hollywood under the studio system; the challenges of raising a million Chrissies and Kellies and Stacies and Skippers and similarly sized off-brand child dolls with little help from Ken or Adam; sibling rivalry (including an East of Eden-style mess between Ken and Adam).

Dollhouse Families: my friend Emily C. (I was Emily S.) stealing the mom doll from my old Fisher-Price family, leaving John (the dad) a widower, so when I got a new family a few years later, I decided that John should marry Patricia, the mom of the new family, which made it necessary for me to interpret Robbie (almost certainly meant to be a dad doll) as Patricia's teenage son, which was obviously very emotionally confusing for Robbie and exacerbated the usual tensions of a newly blended family.

Clothespin Dolls: Nancy, Alice, and Lily, the three charming clothespin dolls made by my genuinely talented great-aunt Beth in the 1960s or 1970s, were grown-up sisters who had a complicated dynamic (both Nancy and Lily had serious psychological and/or substance abuse issues, so Alice had to take care of them and Nancy's children and her own children) and also experienced nineteenth-century-literature-style problems, like diphtheria and ice-skating accidents and bear attacks. The clothespin dolls that I created myself as a tween/young teen were not as well-made, but their problems were generally limited to normal high school bullshit (not even the kind where you get poisoned or kidnapped!).

Miscellaneous Medium-Sized Figurines (mostly fast food toys of Disney characters and mini-Barbies): various passive-aggressive rivalries between groups (mini-Barbies vs. movie/TV characters, Disney vs. non-Disney, movie vs. TV, protagonist vs. non-protagonist, etc.); a lack of eligible bachelors (leading to unwise marriages, such as Belle from Beauty and the Beast marrying a temperamental Space Jam monster); ennui.

Playmobils: the Playmobils had a nearly utopian society, relatively free from poverty and class snobbery, and generally this diverse group of Union soldiers, stuffy Victorians, pirates, outlaws, royalty, horse girls, milkmaids, and fairies were able to work out their differences peacefully. However, all that progressive modernity had a dark side, most clearly illustrated by the Kafkaesque ordeal of Oliver, a boy who was imprisoned for no discernable reason by an evil psychiatrist and his social worker girlfriend despite the desperate efforts of his mother to free him. Intense wartime romances and infectious disease outbreaks were also common themes.

Fisher-Price Great Adventure Action Figures: these rather hideous but very fun toys (consisting of an anachronistic mix of knights, pirates, cowboys, and Robin Hood's Merry Men) belonged to my seven-years-younger brother, so we would play with them a lot while I was looking after him. Naturally there was a lot of military conflict and criminal activity built into our play (will Robin Hood and his friends be able to steal the treasure from the castle? Will the golden knights or the black knights win the big battle? Who will stop the stagecoach robberies?), but, to entertain myself, I would introduce storylines such as "the Golden Sword Knight is tired of being bullied by the other knights, so he runs away and goes to live in the forest with Robin Hood's gang, where he falls in love with a female outlaw" and "Little John starts a AC/DC-style rock band with two of the black knights and everyone hates it."

Fisher-Price Little People: easily the most provincial of the doll groups, the Fisher-Price Little People struggled with extreme class/wealth inequality, widespread adultery, child abuse, teen homelessness, practically non-existent resources for the disabled, sexual repression, a character known only as "The Pervert," and a killer clown. Every day they went to school and work, and every night they tried to find someone to hook up with and maybe got kidnapped. I only wish my brother and I had been in possession of the motel playset. Think of all the extramarital affairs and drug deals that could have happened there!

Polly Pockets: the Polly Pocket community was dominated by two wealthy factions, a nouveau riche pair of brothers with a beach party house and the royal family. Due to a severe job and housing shortage, plus the local men's habit of not acknowledging their natural children, ordinary Polly Pockets had to struggle and scrape. Compared with the Barbies, there was a lot of solidarity among women (and also Josh, the one working-class boy Polly Pocket). Many of the Polly Pockets were very fragile, including the alcoholic Cowgirl Becky and the agoraphobic piano player Penny.

Paper Dolls: intense status jockeying over who had the most/best clothes, mainly. They also fought about friendships and (if there were any of them) boys, but it ultimately came down to clothes.

#dolls #little john's signature song was called 'ride to hell'#'we're going along on a ride to hell/why don't you come along and feel the trail'#it was not good and everyone was so mad at him

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dearorpheus · 1 year

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Are there any non-fiction you can recommend for people who are fascinated by your blog (especially the elements of dark eroticism, morbidity and horror)?

🖤 love that you are loving!

i will try to stick to non-fic (also refraining as best i can from re-recommending texts from previous asks but there is of course bound to be some overlap): - The Severed Head: Capital Visions, Julia Kristeva -> read about Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Salomé (x, x)

and supplement w Baudelaire's Une Martyre "in which the narrator lovingly contemplates the beauty of a woman's severed head at rest upon a nightstand"

- Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs, Deleuze - The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, Angela Carter - Aesthetic Sexuality: A Literary History of Sadomasochism, Romana Byrne - Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon, Allen S. Weiss - "Must We Burn Sade?", Simone de Beauvoir -> read also about Erzsébet Báthory, the Bloody Countess. supplement your readings with Borowcyzk's Immoral Tales (1973), Julie Delpy's The Countess (2009), Alejandra Pizarnik's La Condesa Sangrienta and/or, if you have the stomach for it:

Lorna's death in Hostel Pt II (2007), inspired by the Countess^

- Anaïs Nin's diaries + Henry and June - Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art, Yvonne Owens

Hans Baldung Grien "gave powerful visual expression to late medieval tropes and stereotypes, such as the poison maiden, venomous virgin, the Fall of Man, 'death and the maiden' and other motifs and eschatological themes, which mingled abject and erotic qualities in the female body"

- Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Per Faxneld - The Library of Esoterica's Witchcraft - the biographical Taschen on H.R. Giger's oeuvre—biomechanical, Lovecraftian-tentacular fused limbs, bodies, systems, overtly phallic/yonic symbology, darkly psychedelic... very much fantastically erotic; I have my eye on the 40th Anniversary Edition

Giger, as we know, having designed the xenomorph from the Alien (1979) series to have an intensely sexual evolution:

- DEFINITELY read about+explore ero guro (see also: Bataille's L'histoire de l'œil / Story of the Eye! though it is fiction)

brief introductory articles here and here but it's truly so rich and decadent... delve into it!! film, lit, manga, history, so on... -> watch Nagisa Ōshima's In The Realm Of The Senses (1976) too

- if you can read French by any chance, Le Corps Souillé (The Soiled Body) by Eric Falardeau looks incredible; if not, this excerpt alone is delightfully provocative even in isolation - similarly, L'espirit de plaisir: Une histoire de la sexualité et de l’érotisme au Japon (The Spirit of Pleasure: A History of Sexuality and Eroticism in Japan) by Philippe Pons and Pierre-François Souyri is something I'm hoping might see an English translation

^an excerpt from an interview with the authors

- The Art of Cruelty + The Red Parts, Maggie Nelson - Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles & Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, Richard Barnett - The Butchering Art, Lindsey Fitzharris - Death, Disease and Dissection, Suzie Grogan - The Theatre and Its Double, Antonin Artaud - Men, Women, and Chainsaws, Carol J. Clover - House of Psychotic Women, Kier-La Janisse - The Monstrous-Feminine, Barbara Creed - Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, Sady Doyle - The Lady From The Black Lagoon, Mallory O'Meara

#that's all that comes to mind for now! loveu anon #asks #eroticism #horror

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duckprintspress · 6 months

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National Non-Fiction Day: 31 Titles to Get Your Queer Learn On!

In the past year, we’ve posted a lot about our favorite queer fiction titles. We wanted to take Non-Fiction day to talk about the non-fiction titles that have impacted us! Whether self-help, memoirs, psychology, history, sociology, or a different non-fiction genre, these are books that have helped us learn, helped us teach, helped us improve, helped us see and be seen, and helped us be more informed. So join us as we introduce our thirty-one recommendations for National Non-Fiction Day!

Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing

Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children by Diane Ehrensaft

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke

Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi

transister: Raising Twins in a Gender-Bending World by Kate Brookes

!Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb

London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 – 1914 by Matt Cook

Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins by Cassandra Snow

Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion

The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Janet W. W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity by Ryan Lee Cartwright

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Queer Budapest, 1873 – 1961 by Anita Kurimay

LGBTQ-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care by Kimberly D. Acquaviva

Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa by T. J. Tallie

Handbook of LGBT Elders: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Principles, Practices, and Policies edited by Debra A. Harley and Pamela B. Teaster

LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media by Christopher Pullen

Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda

LGBTQ Cultures: What Healthcare Professionals Need to Know about Sexual and Gender Diversity by M. J. Eliason and P. L. Chinn

The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth

You can view this list as a shelf on Goodreads!

It can be so difficult to find good non-fiction resources on queer topics. Which titles to DO you recommend?

#duck prints press #book recs #queer non-fiction #national non-fiction day #book recommendations #rec list

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thenightling · 4 months

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Homophobia and transphobia is not "old school" witchcraft

Today on Facebook someone told me a story of how he tried to join a coven of magical practitioners in the 1990s only for the "High Priestess" (I'm putting that in quotations for a reason) told him that because he was a gay man he was outside the cycle of creation since gay men don't have children. She would not let him join her coven. Let me point-blank tell you this. That "High Priest' is no High priest of any real Occult practice. Lots of people like to use "Traditional" or "old school" as an excuse to exclude trans women or gay men from the "Eternal feminine" or other magical practices and concepts. I do not know what kind of coven this is so I'll be covering both Wicca and Hecate-based Neo Paganism in this rant. In the 1990s Wiccan books offered same-sex marriage ceremonies. And LGBTQAI+ magical practitioners aren't something new and "invented" recently. In the fifteenth century there was Doktor Johann Georg Faustus, the basis for the Faust legend. This is a sorcerer from German legend and at least two works of classic literature. The historic version was banished from Ingolstadt University for practicing black magick (N--romancy which would probably be Noirmancy today since though that first half of the word does mean black but is deemed offensive). And he was also banished for being a "S-d-mite" (and old impolite word for being a gay man). As far as i know no one ever questioned his credentials as a magical practitioner. Also would this "High Priestess" also say that those who are infertile, or women past menopause are outside of the cycle of creation? How about a happily married straight practitioner who just chooses to not have children? The excuses that would leave out gay men or transwomen would also leave out a LOT of cis / het women just for not being baby factories. How misogynist can you get? if you think the womb is the extent of what "eternal feminine" means you are no witch or feminist. The thing about Neo-Paganism is the neo part. Neo means new. Wicca is not the only religion cobbled together from remnants of pre-Christian faiths. Most Neo-Paganism was (whether people want to face it or not) invented in the nineteenth century. A lot of the old beliefs and practices were lost. Also I find it baffling that anyone could accept a possible "High Priestess of Hecate" (I assume that's the deity this "High Priestess" worshiped) as being anti-gay. Let's step back and look at the obvious problem here. Someone who worships a GREEK deity being anti-gay. Did... did this "high priestess" think the Ancient Greeks were anti-gay? Do I need to point out what's wrong with this idea? If you stumble across any occult practitioner who claims being LGBTQAI+ means you cannot be a part of their coven or you can't use magick, that is no true High Priestess of anything. That's just a mean girl with a clique trying to reclaim the cruelties of exclusionary factions in High School and giving herself a power trip while possibly offending multiple entities. Real magick is natural as the way you are born. Real magick has always been inclusive. If someone says you are unworthy because of what you are... that person is no true High Priestess and is the truly unworthy person. End of rant.

#Wicca #Witchcraft #Wicacn #Pagan #Neo-Pagan #Occult #Arcane

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thewitcheslibrary · 26 days

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Brief history of wicca

A brief history:

Gerald Gardner, an English civil servant, novelist, and magician, is credited with establishing the religion that would become known as Wicca. Gardner, born in 1884, travelled much as a child and developed an interest in anthropology, archaeology, folklore, and, finally, spiritualism and other esoteric issues. He belonged to a number of groups and associations relating to his hobbies, including the Rosicrucian Order, which he joined in 1939. Gardner met other acquaintances who were members of an even more hidden inner group, and they confessed to him that they were a witch coven. He was inducted into the coven in September of that year.

Several years prior, in the early 1920s, a popular hypothesis circulated in anthropological circles about an old pagan religion that had been largely eradicated by Christianity but was still practiced in secret enclaves across Western Europe. Margaret Murray, the anthropologist who pushed the thesis, referred to the religion as a "Witch-cult," claiming that the remaining practitioners were organised into 13-member covens. When Gardner encountered the New Forest group, he knew they were one of the last vestiges of this old pre-Christian religion, and he intended to help assure the Witch-cult's survival into the twentieth century.

Throughout the 1940s, Gardner remained interested in a variety of religious and spiritual traditions and concepts, but his encounters with the New Forest coven had a profound influence. He eventually formed his own coven, Bricket Wood, and began to create a new incarnation of the ancient Witch-cult, drawing inspiration from a variety of sources, including the New Forest coveners, elements of Freemasonry and ceremonial magic, and the work of other occult figures such as Aleister Crowley and Cecil Williamson. Gardner's primary innovation eventually became one of Wicca's most fundamental elements: the worship of a Goddess and a God who were equal in every aspect. This was very unusual after millennia of male-dominated, patriarchal faiths!

Gardner never referred to his relatively young religion as "Wicca." He did occasionally refer to his coven members as "the Wica," an Old English name for sorcerers and diviners. However, the tradition was usually referred to as Witchcraft, or "the Craft," or "the Old Religion." It didn't become recognised as Wicca until at least a decade later, when it expanded to the United States and Australia.

By then, Gardner's disciples and other occultists had produced new versions on his idea, some of which bear little resemblance to the original Bricket Wood coven. In reality, many people in the UK who continue to practise Gardner's rituals as they have been passed down from covener to covener refer to it as British Traditional Witchcraft. These Witches see "Wicca" as something altogether distinct, often referring to it as an American creation. Gardnerian Wicca is the name given to the original version of Wicca in other parts of the world.

Although Gardner is regarded as the founder of the contemporary Witchcraft movement and was undoubtedly one of its most vocal public supporters, he clearly did not do it alone. Indeed, there are several notable personalities throughout Wicca's history. Many of his friends and colleagues participated in the partnership, including Patricia Crowther, Lois Bourne, and Doreen Valiente, as well as mid-century occultists Robert Cochrane and Raymond Buckland. Indeed, the complete history of Wicca and its growth may fill books, but the entire narrative would most likely never be recounted!

Furthermore, Gardner and others took inspiration from information, beliefs, and practices produced by various previous organisations dating back to the British occult resurgence of the late nineteenth century, and even earlier, to the thirteenth century. And those Middle Age occultists did, in fact, deal with ideas and materials from ancient civilizations.

So, even though no evidence for Murray's Witch-cult theory has ever been discovered, and no unbroken tradition of occult practice dating back to antiquity appears to exist, it is possible to argue that there was some kind of spiritual "lineage"—perhaps an eternal divine essence—strong enough to survive centuries of Christian dominance and reappear in modern times. Whatever the case, for individuals who practise Wicca, the experience is really timeless.

#witchcraft #witchcore #witchblr #pagan witch #witch #wicca #wiccan #baby witch #beginner witch

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magnetothemagnificent · 1 year

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"Godless atheists" is a dogwhistle for Jews. - Can you please elaborate on this? I don't understand the connection and I want to learn.

Under Christian antisemitism, Jews are seen as the opposing force to Christianity.

A key aspect of antisemitism is scapegoating Jews.

In medieval times and the Renaissance, Jews were blamed for diseases and wars, and associated with Satanism and witchcraft.

However, after the Enlightenment, Jews began to be associated and blamed for something else- secularism/atheism.

The Enlightenment brought a new era of thinkers who considered themselves more agnostic, deist, or atheist. This is where the seperation of religion and culture really happened, because before that culture and religion were intertwined. If you were European, you were Christian, and you didn't really think about the existence of a god, because religion was more cultural. Now that a distinction was made between culture and religion, many began to question religion and/or the belief in a higher power. This of course made Christian leaders feel threatened, and so they sought to find a reason for this increase in secularism.

As always, they blamed the Jews.

Judaism as a culture has always been more open to differing beliefs about spirituality and the existence of a god, and many debates have been recorded all throughout our history as a people. Jewish people were and are more likely to engage in progressive and scientific movements, and after the Enlightenment many of these ideas went against the Church (agnocism and the theory of evolution, especially). Thus, Christian leaders made the connection between Jews and secularist movements.

This especially became heightened in the 20th century, as Jews were associated with progressive social movements such as socialism and sexual sciences (homosexual and transsexual liberation).

This association of Jews with secularism (today, atheism) has been around for a few centuries now.

Jews are associated with whatever is seen as the biggest threat to Christian hegemony at the time. For a long time it was paganism, witchcraft, and Satanism, but now it has taken the form of atheism, civil rights, and LGBTQ liberation.

Whatever the Christian hegemony feels most threatened by is what they associate with Jews.

Further reading:

The Specter of "Godless Jewry": Secularism and the "Jewish Question" in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany

Fact Sheet on the Elements of Anti-Semitic Discourse

Antisemitism in Global History

#antisemitism #christianity #christian antisemitism #christian hegemony #history

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homomenhommes · 6 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

This "in between time" has long been one which gay people have taken on as their own holiday, reveling in masks and costumes. There are reasons Halloween is so closely associated with gay people, some of which author, Arthur Evans explained in his book, Witchcraft and The Gay Counterculture.

Here is a brief excerpt:

One Celtic male deity … is the horned god, "one of the most basic of the Celtic god types," whose worship goes back to the Stone Age. He is often associated with the Mothers, as well as with sex, animals, and nature. He also seems to have links with male shamans. His great antiquity is shown by a Stone Age painting in Ariege, France, which shows a man dancing in the hide of an animal and wearing the antlers of a stag. And in the eighteenth century, construction workers inside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris uncovered a four-sided Celtic stone altar dating from Roman times and bearing the figure of a bearded male deity with antlers. The stone was inscribed with the word Cernunnos, which means "The Horned One."

The horned god was especially linked with male sexuality and often appears with an erect cock. Moreover, when erect, he is sometimes portrayed in the company of men, not women. A drawing of the horned god from Val Camonica, Italy, shows him holding a ceremonial collar ring in one hand and a horned serpent in the other. He is being worshipped by a man, and the man has an erection. This picture is reminiscent of early art scattered throughout Europe. The men often have erections and appear together in groups without women. In view of the Celts' notoriety for homosexuality, these facts suggest a Gay element in the workshop of the horned god.

The horned god was also lord of the dead and the underworld. To the Celts, who believed in reincarnation, darkness and death were parts of the cycle of life and rebirth, and death was the very place where the creative forces of nature brought about new life. Because of this connection with the underworld the horned god was often shown as black in color. But this blackness was not considered evil, as Christianity later viewed it

....

The Celts dated the feast days of their religion according to the changing of the seasons, the breeding habits of animals, and the sowing and harvesting of crops.

As it happens, these dates correspond exactly with the holidays later attributed by medieval Christians to witches. The Christians called these days, respectively, Halloween, Candlemas, Walpurgisnacht, and Lammas.

Ritual transvestism associated with the old holidays continue[s] in Europe down to modern times. "May Day sports perpetuated the practices, including even transvestism. in Wales, there existed, into the nineteenth century, a peasant dance and march with a garland, led by a dancer [a horned god figure] called the "Cadi." In the Hogmanay celebration in Scotland, "the boys wore skirts and bonnets, the girls, hats and greatcoats." The feast of Fools, a remnant of the old pagan religion, has persisted into modern times with clerics "wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of the office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, or disreputable men, or minstrels. They sing wanton songs." Today many Gay people throughout Europe and America observe Halloween as a Gay holiday with transvestite celebrations.

1940 – Craig L. Rodwell (d.1993) was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967, the first U.S. bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors, and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City pride demonstration. Rodwell is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the early homophile movement of the 1960s.

Rodwell was born in Chicago, IL. His parents divorced prior to his first birthday and for the next few years he was boarded out for day care where he was required to do kitchen labor and laundry to supplement his board and care. When he was 6 years old, Rodwell's mother, Marion Kastman, fearing that the child care set up could cause her to lose custody of her son, arranged for his admission to the Christian Scientist affiliated Chicago Junior School for "problem" boys, in Elgin, IL. Conditions and treatment at the school were described as "Dickensian" and Rodwell got a reputation for being a rebellious child, as well as a "sissy," during his seven years there. It was at Chicago Junior School that Rodwell first experienced same-sex relationships and also came to internalize the Christian Scientist notion that "truth is power and that truth is the greatest good."

At Sullivan High School in Chicago, IL. Rodwell continued his studies in Christian Science by enrolling in Sunday school at the 16th Church of Christ, Scientist. He later studied ballet in Boston before finally moving to New York City in 1958. It was in New York that he first volunteered for a gay rights organization, The Mattachine Society of New York.

In 1962, Rodwell had an affair with Harvey Milk, who went on later to become one of the first openly gay politicians elected to high office. It was Rodwell's first serious relationship. Rodwell's relationship with Milk ended in part due to Milk's conflicted reaction to Rodwell's early activism and his introduction to Milk of "strange new ideas that tied homosexuality to politics, ideas that both repelled and attracted the thirty-two-year-old Milk." Milk believed that Rodwell had been responsible for Milk contracting an STD. After Rodwell's arrest and incarceration when picked up cruising in Washington Square Park, Milk ended their romantic involvement. Shortly after, Rodwell attempted suicide.

When Rodwell opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in 1967, Milk dropped by frequently, and after moving to San Francisco Milk expressed his intention to Rodwell of opening a similar store "as a way of getting involved in community work." Milk eventually opened a camera store that also functioned as a community center, much like Rodwell's bookshop had as a community gathering place.

In November 1969, Rodwell proposed the first gay pride parade to be held in New York City along with his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes. The first march was organized from Rodwell's apartment on Bleecker Street.

We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.

We also propose that we contact Homophile organizations throughout the country and suggest that they hold parallel demonstrations on that day. We propose a nationwide show of support.

Rodwell is believed to have created the term heterosexism in January 1971 when he wrote:

"After a few years of this kind of 'liberated' existence such people become oblivious and completely unseeing of straight predjudice and - to coin a phrase - the 'hetero-sexism' surrounding them virtually 24 hours a day.

In 1978 Rodwell was one of the creators and organizers of Gay People in Christian Science. One reason for the creation of the group was that three of its members had been recently excommunicated from the local branch church. In 1980 the group began to demonstrate by leafletting at the church's Annual Meeting in Boston and by 1999, six years after Rodwell's death, the Christian Scientist church no longer barred openly gay or lesbian people from membership.

Rodwell died on June 18, 1993 of stomach cancer.

1964 – Frank Bruni is an American journalist and long-time writer for The New York Times. In June 2011, he was named an op-ed columnist for the newspaper. His columns appear twice weekly and he also writes a weekly newsletter.

One of his many previous posts for the newspaper was as its chief restaurant critic, from 2004 to 2009. He is the author of three bestselling books: Born Round, a memoir about his family's love of food and his own struggles with overeating, Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be, about the college admissions mania, and Ambling Into History, about George W. Bush. He is currently a CNN contributor.

After graduating from Columbia University in the City of New York, Bruni joined the staff of the New York Post and then moved on to the Detroit Free Press, where he did a wide range of beats, including a stint covering the Persian Gulf War. He spent more than a year as the movie critic and also wrote extensively about LGBT issues and AIDS. In 1992, he was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for his profile of a convicted child molester. In 1995, Bruni took a job with The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter and often wrote for The Times's Sunday magazine and for Sunday Arts & Leisure. In 1998, he was assigned to the Washington, D.C., bureau, where he covered Capitol Hill and Congress, before being sent on the campaign trail to follow then-Texas Governor George W. Bush. He then covered the White House for the first eight months of the Bush administration and served as the Washington-based staff writer for the Sunday magazine. In July 2002, he was promoted to Rome bureau chief. Two years later, he became The Times' restaurant critic. After more than five years in that position, he returned briefly to the magazine before becoming an op-ed columnist.

In 2016, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association gave him its Randy Shilts Award for his career-long contribution to LGBT Americans. He was previously awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Columnist in 2012 and 2013.

Bruni was born in White Plains, New York. He is openly gay. He has struggled with his eating and bulimia

1969 – On this date Time magazine ran a cover story on "The Homosexual in America" that included a report on the Stonewall Riots. It was protested by the Gay Liberation Front because the writer said homosexuals are mentally ill and immoral.

1986 – Sean Paul Lockhart, born in Lewiston, Idaho, is an American model, film actor and gay pornographic actor. For the latter, he uses his stage name Brent Corrigan and has played roles in gay porn films notably with Cobra Video and Pink Bird Media, but has also made some films with Active Duty and Jet Set Men. As for his appearances with Falcon Studios particularly in The Velvet Mafia series, he has used the stage name Fox Rider instead.

As Brent Corrigan/Fox Rider

He has also appeared in several nonpornographic films as well, using his birth name Sean Paul Lockhart trying to reposition himself as a more serious mainstream actor rather than just a porn star and has released no new pornographic films since 2010 . He has focused almost exclusively on gay-themed movies and indie films. Such gay-themed and indie films include Judas Kiss, Sister Mary, Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild!, Welcome to New York, and others.

In 2011 he starred as "Ricky" in the musical Chillerama directed by Tim Sullivan in the segment "I Was A Teenage Werebear".

In 2011 Sean Paul Lockhart won the Rising Star Award at the Philadelphia QFest Festival. In 2012, he announced his involvement in production of an indie film titled Truth to be directed by Rob Moretti. He has also recorded an album with songs by the Swedish singer-songwriter and accordionist Roland Cedermark. Lockhart heads up his own production company and enjoys writing in his spare time.

Both Lockhart and Cobra Video the gay porn company that launched him as a young porn star have created separate "official Brent Corrigan websites" promoting the performer's gay porn films creating some confusion and controversy.

Lockhart's admission of playing pornographic roles while underage created great controversy resulting in voluntary withdrawal of many of his early films from circulation.

He also appeared as a witness in the murder trial of Bryan Kocis, owner of Cobra Video for whom Lockhart worked. Prosecutors alleged the two accused suspects murdered Kocis because they wanted to get Lockhart to work for them at their porn film company. However, police investigating the murder believe Lockhart didn't know about the plot and that he fully cooperated with the police and testified for the prosecution.

1987 – On this date the Associated Press reported that several nursing homes in King County (Seattle) Washington were under investigation for refusing to accept AIDS patients or those suspected of being likely to have been exposed to HIV.

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didzblog · 10 months

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Ecate or Hecate by Roberto Ferri (2018)

Ecate is the ancient Greek goddess of the three worlds; The World of Humans, The World of the Gods and The World of the Dead. She is the goddess of magic, crossroads, witchcraft, sorcery, ghosts and necromancy in ancient Greek religion and myth.

Roberto Ferri was born in Taranto in 1978. In 1996, he graduated from the “Lisippo” art school in Taranto. He began studying painting as an autodidact and, having moved to Rome in 1999, he deepened his research on ancient painting, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. He devoted himself to Caravaggesque and academic paintings. ( David, Ingres, Girodet, Géricault, Gleyre, Bouguereau, etc.)

#painting #artwork #mythology #roberto ferri #oil on canvas #contemporary art #fine art #human body #anatomy #nudity #oeuvre d'art #surealism

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funeral · 2 years

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Philosophy and the Seven Liberal Arts from a nineteenth-century copy of the lost manuscript dated 1167–85 of Herrad of Landsberg’s Hortus Deliciarum (Garden of Delights)

The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic

#magic #hortus deliciarum

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haggishlyhagging · 10 months

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Just as the edicts on witchcraft served to strip the sixteenth-century woman of power and autonomy, so the scientific dogmas of the nineteenth century ensured that women were confined to the home and to their reproductive role, to avoid damage to their health, and their future offspring. Women were thus firmly excluded from the professions, particularly those requiring the skills of a ‘rational scientist’. For, as one nineteenth-century educationalist claimed, if a woman were to 'violate the natural laws of organisation' by studying or working on intellectual tasks, she would be prone to a 'mental persecution . . . which has fated the cerebral structure of woman, less qualified for these severe ordeals, than those of her brother, man' (Maddock, 1854: 17).

It was not only medicine from which women were to be excluded, but education, politics, law, economics, writing - in fact any occupation which might challenge the authority of men. If science was becoming the guiding philosophy of society in the Victorian age, the key to a future of enlightenment and knowledge, those who investigated and disseminated it were determined that it would be not placed in the hands of women. 'Women' and 'science were contradictions in terms. Nineteenth-century discourse placed women firmly on the side of nature, infirmity and superstition, and men on the side of learning, direction, management and science. Science was personified as male. Nature was female - to be ‘unveiled, unclothed and penetrated by masculine science’ (Fee, 1988:4). Through their use of the tool of science men could uncover and control nature, and, by extension, uncover and control women.

Buttressed by the scientific rhetoric, the medical profession was consolidating its monopoly over healing, and now the woman who was pregnant, who felt sick, or depressed or simply tired, would no longer seek help from a friend or a female healer, but from a male physician. And so throughout the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth century, the psychiatrists looked to extend their power through widening their definitions of madness (Scull, 1979). The general belief underlying the doctors' practice as well as their public pronouncements was that women were, by nature, weak, dependent and diseased. Thus the doctors attempted to secure their victory over the female healer: 'with the "scientific" evidence that woman's essential nature was not to be a strong, competent help-giver but to be a patient' (Ehrenreich and English, 1978: 91). So to talk of 'mad' came to mean to talk of 'woman'.

-Jane Ussher, Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness?

#jane ussher #female mental health #female oppression #medical misogyny

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patron-minette · 1 year

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pls share one headcanon each for Gueulemer, Babet, Claquesous, and Montparnasse?

Hello anon! Thank you for such a fun question!!

I have a ton of headcanons about these characters, all of them existing entirely within the historical contexts of the novel’s narrative. Sorry that this has turned into rather a long post, I couldn’t help but go into detail about each headcanon (I spend too much time thinking about them…)

Gueulemer;

You know how in the novel we are told that Gueulemer dwells in the Arche-Marion sewer? Well, my headcanon is that all the washerwoman of the nearby Arche-Marion barge are obsessed and infatuated with him.

I envision them all watching with bated breath for this huge man to emerge from his sewer and cross over the Pont Notre-Dame during the day, adjusting their dresses and pinching their cheeks to rouge them in anticipation of his appearance. And, when he does walk by the barge Gueulemer is always greeted to a gaggle of excited, flirtatious women asking him how he is and where he’s off to.

Perhaps they might even offer to wash his clothes for him— if only so that they can admire his Farnese Hercules physique up-close, as he’d have to come aboard the barge boat to deliver his garments to them. Maybe they might even ask Gueulemer if he could help lift some items on and off the barges, claiming that they needed a big, strong man who could help out on the boat. Naturally, he would happily to help out, all the while remaining utterly clueless to the fact that the washerwoman greatly enjoy him and his bulging muscles.

Babet;

Drawing upon Babet’s past as a quack dentist, I’ve always perceived him as having a creepy fascination with teeth in general— and imagined that he would have a slight fixation with collecting teeth wherever he could.

Not only does this headcanon include Babet taking the time to carefully extract all the teeth from individuals murdered by the Patron-Minette, but it also involves him going to the barricades and pulling as many teeth as he could from all of the unclaimed corpses that were left behind. And, yes, Babet too would enjoy entering into Paris’s catacombs and pulling the teeth from the old skulls that resided there too.

He would then put painstaking effort into making the most ghastly sets of false teeth that you have ever seen. But, he would remain immensely proud of his dentistry work— and perhaps might even wear a hat like this to advertise his teeth pulling skills:

(Yes, items of this kind were indeed real and sometimes worn by a street dentists in order to demonstrate their expert tooth pulling skills to all their customers [source])

Maybe Babet even dabbled in creating some sentimental / mourning tooth jewellery also (again, I hate to break it to you but this was not unheard of in nineteenth-century Europe). He might’ve even made or commissioned a piece of “mother’s jewellery” to be made for his wife in the past that included the milk teeth of their children…

Claquesous;

If I’m being honest, I don’t have all that many headcanons about Claquesous. He is already shrouded in so much mystery, and I tend to enjoy picking apart + speculating about him more-so than thinking of headcanons. However, there is one idea that has recently been floating around in my mind about the character which I shall share.

We all know that Claquesous is an ominous figure that Hugo describes as a “ventriloquist”, right? Well, did you know that ventriloquism’s origins directly lie in necromancy and witchcraft? I didn’t until fairly recently… and now I can only imagine a range of eerie scenarios involving Claquesous engaging in multiple spiritual practices such as necromancy in his free time.

Naturally, I can imagine the character feeling a close spiritual connection to the Parisian catacombs, and perhaps he might even live down there— serving as a “living ghost” who resided in the shadows and could communicate the words of the deceased from his own mouth. He would absolutely petrify those who dared venture down to visit the macabre site.

Montparnasse;

I've always perceived Montparnasse to be a bit of an Opiumiste (sorry to everyone who already knows of my thoughts on this through reading my fic, but I realised I’ve never actually vocalised this headcanon properly on my blog before). After all, we are told in the novel that this character possesses all the vices— and it’s always seemed likely to me that one of his many “vices” involves him dabbling with the substance.

There is a rich history of opium consumption in this era that renders it entirely plausible to suggest that Montparnasse would’ve been a habitual user in 1832.

Whilst opium could be found in many medicines of the day across Europe, the substance was beginning to be experimented with in a purely recreational manner during the 1820s and 1830s. You only need to look at texts written by the Romantics and Thomas de Quincy after they began taking the substance for pleasure to see how it was becoming influential in certain circles of artists, decadents and dandies in this period.

Hence, casual opium consumption would likely have been rife in 1830s Paris, especially for fashionable young fops. And, knowing that Montparnasse models himself on such figures, it seems only natural to me that he would frequently indulge in the drug. The relaxing high that the substance provides might also contribute to Montparnasse’s general idleness also.

BONUS HEADCANON

Lastly, I thought I’d add a final headcanon that I have for the entire Patron-Minette gang…

In the novel, it is implied that Lacenaire, a real life criminal of the time whom Hugo momentarily introduced into the fictional narrative of Les Misérables, knows of the Patron-Minette:

When the chief justice of the circuit court visited Lacenaire in jail, he questioned him over a felony that Lacenaire denied committing. “Who did it, then?” the judge demanded. Lacenaire gave this reply, puzzling to the magistrate but clear as day to the police: “Could be Patron-Minette.”

Hence, there exists an idea in my mind that the Patron-Minette and Lacenaire have a slight rivalry— wherein the Patron-Minette constantly try to pin their failed heists on Lacenaire, whilst Lacenaire does everything he can to shift the blame for his crimes onto the Patron-Minette. I can only imagine that this would leave the police force very frustrated and confused at times.

#thank you for the ask!#les mis headcanons #gueulemer #babet #claquesous #montparnasse #patron minette #patron-minette #les miserables #les mis #headcanons #historical context #ask response

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one-coming-is-enough · 7 months

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you're so adorable in the sense I wanna enroll you into science 101 and watch you marvel at everything you learn bcs i js know you would

and also take you to a therapist bcs yeah being known as a conspiracy theory and alternatively idolised would suck so hard

I love science! One of the best ways humans can know My Divine Mother is to study Her creation and use what you learn for the benefit of Her world. Mother and I have actually answered plenty of prayers from scientists in my day, all the way from my girl Miriam Hebrea, the first alchemist ("Please don't let my cheese sauce seize up again") to Gregor Mendel ("Please let these bloody peas breed pink") to countless modern scientists who ask Me for everything from efficacious new vaccines to patience dealing with outdated equipment.

But I do spend most of My time answering prayers, appearing to mystics, or pressing my face into pieces of toast (NEVER make a corporate sponsorship deal as a deity, it's not worth it). So I haven't had nearly as much time to learn about the modern world and its technology as I like.

(I assume television is straight-up witchcraft and that Heaven has just all quietly agreed to ignore it the way they're quietly ignoring statues and tattoos. Sometimes you've just overwhelmingly lost a fight that wasn't important to begin with and you need to adjust the Karmic Algorithm.)

(Please don't try to explain television to me, either. If you can show people what you're doing from hundreds of miles away by sending it through a piece of glass via trapped lightning and invisible waves of force through the air, you're using spirits to do your bidding, I don't care how you put it. It's fine though, I really like telenovelas and The Great British Bake-Off.)

I actually sit in on a lot of therapy sessions. And support group sessions. Although a lot of those are about people not drinking or using drugs. Nobody loves Me like someone with a substance abuse problem, I'll tell ya. It really made Me cut down on the drinking.

(You have no idea how much alcohol I genuinely needed to get through the nineteenth century. Carrying around a little flask of the Water of Life is nothing for a guy who was mostly brandy during every moment of the 1860s. And that was for other people's medicinal purposes.)

But my own therapist would be great. My life, My death, My job, My Divine family, it's all So Freaking Much. It's not like I want it to end, I just think that if I had about a century or so to Myself, I could get a chance to breathe and recharge and spend the rest of Eternity really fresh for My role as Savior, you know?

Like, maybe all the Christians can just agree to go atheist for about a century and see how it works? Behave according to your moral principles and not the fear of an afterlife or of am all-seeing deity disapproving? Leave Me the fuck alone except for on My Birthday (not my real birthday, I spend that with my homies. My Queen's Birthday, as it were) and just check in with Me when they get the nice surprise of being greeted with "Everything is Fine!" in large friendly letters and a nice stardust milkshake with a cherry on top at the end of their lives.

Then maybe I could go back to school and also sort my shit out with a qualified psychological professional who's not invoking me so that people won't do heroin.

#good omens rp

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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Hi! I'm writing a fic about a Jewish vampire (born in Judeah & currently living in Jerusalem) which takes place during the Crusades. The Crusades themselved are the background of the fic. So I'm wondering if you have any information/resources on how the Jewish population of the Kindom of Jerusalem/Palestine viewed the Crusades and the repeated invasion by either Christians and Muslims during that time. A lot of the information I found is very Christian vs Muslim centric and I'd like to have a Jewish perspective on the conflict.

Oh boy, do I ever. So many, in fact, that I have sorted them into several categories, and hope that at least some will be useful. Nota bene that you will need some kind of academic credentials to access the full text of some/most of these: there are some open-source pdfs and Google books, but yes, academia will be academia, alas. You may also have to do some investigation to pick out tidbits that are most relevant, but:

Jews, the First Crusade, Memories, and Martyrdom

Chazan, Robert. 'The Facticity of Medieval Narrative: A Case Study of the Hebrew First Crusade Narratives', AJS Review 16 (1991), 31-56.

Cohen, Jeremy. Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)

Shagrir, Iris, and Netta Amir. 'The Persecution of the Jews in the First Crusade: Liturgy, Memory, and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture', Speculum 92 (2017), 405-28.

Shepkaru, Shmuel. 'The Preaching of the First Crusade and the Persecutions of the Jews,' Medieval Encounters 18 (2012), 93-135.

Jewish Daily Life in Eleventh/Twelfth-Century Palestine

Bareket, Elinoar. 'Personal Adversities of Jews during the Period of the Fatimid Wars in Eleventh Century Palestine', War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, 7th-15th Centuries (1997), pp. 153-62.

Boehm, Barbara Drake, and Melanie Holcomb. Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016)

Dulska, Anna Katarzyna. 'Abrahamic Coexistence in the Twelfth-Century Middle East? Jews Among Christians and Muslims in a Travel Account by a Navarrese Jew, Benjamin of Tudela', Journal of Beliefs & Values 38 (2017), 257-66.

Gil, Moshe. 'The Jewish Quarters of Jerusalem (AD 638-1099) According to Cairo Geniza Documents and Other Sources', Journal of Near Eastern Studies 41 (1982), 261-78.

Shagrir, Iris. 'The Guide of MS Beinecke 481.77 and the Intertwining of Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions in Twelfth-Century Jerusalem', Crusades 10 (2016), 11-32.

Talmon-Heller, Daniella, and Miriam Frenkel. 'Religious Innovation under Fatimid Rule: Jewish and Muslim Rites in Eleventh-Century Jerusalem', Medieval Encounters 25 (2019), 203-26.

Medieval Jewish Magic (and Vampires!)

Bohak, Gideon. 'Jewish Magic in the Middle Ages', in The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 268-300.

Chajes, Jeffrey Howard. 'Rabbis and Their (In) Famous Magic: Classical Foundations, Medieval and Early Modern Reverberations', Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition (2011), 58-79.

Dan, Peter. 'How Vampires Became Jewish', Studia Hebraica (2009), 417-29.

Epstein, Saul, and Sara Libby Robinson. 'The Soul, Evil Spirits, and the Undead: Vampires, Death, and Burial in Jewish Folklore and Law', Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 1 (2012), 232-51.

Idel, Moishe. 'On Judaism, Jewish Mysticism and Magic', in Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium, ed. Peter Schäfer and Hans Kippenberg (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 195-214.

Matteoni, Francesca. 'The Jew, the Blood and the Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe', Folklore 119 (2008), 182-200.

Patai, Raphael. The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)

#anonymous #ask #history #medieval history #jewish history #medieval magic

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