For those who have trouble reading that:
Imagine being a black, gay drag queen in the 1800s after being born into enslavement AND having the style and cachè to throw soirées that the girls had to come to! That’s why I don’t want to hear this “we’re not our ancestors stuff.”
You’re right!
From The Very Black Project Page- William Dorsey Swann was a gay liberation activist. Born into slavery in 1858, he was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a “queen of drag”. Imagine the queenery of this icon.
He was a slave in Hancock, Maryland and was freed by Union soldiers after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. During the 1880s and 1890s, he organized a series of balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the “queen of drag”. Most of the attendees his gatherings were men who were former slaves, and were gathering to dance in their satin and silk dresses.
William was arrested in police raids numerous times,including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. In 1896, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail for “keeping a disorderly house” (running a brothel). After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but but he was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather.
He was known to have been close with Pierce Lafayette and Felix Hall, two men who had also both been slaves and who formed the first known male same-sex relationship between enslaved Americans.
When William stopped organizing and participating in drag events, his brother continued to make costumes for the drag community. Two of his brothers had also been active participants in his drag balls.
Imagine how intelligent and ambitious this man had to be to come up with drag balls in the 1800s! Imagine how many terrible concepts he had to unlearn by himself to be a confident gay black man who does drag in the 1800s! Imagine how courageous he had to be to fight for lgbt people as a former slave in America in the 1800s!
William Dorsey Swann is the original queen, the original drag mother, the original activist. Tell his story!
you ever just sit and realise u can’t remember 80% of your childhood? like … what happened? who am i ..?
Many people in the comments are saying “trauma”, but this is actually a very normal occurrence. It’s called Childhood Amnesia, and it’s a process which, as the brain reorganizes itself for cognitive thought that is developed in late childhood, it changes the Accessibility of those memories during recall. Many childhood memories are available to the person, but they will not be remembered during regular recall activity, you have to “trick” your brain into remembering with different tactics.
This is because there are two parts to memories - their encoding and their recall. The encoding determines their availability, their recall determines their accessibility. The reason why trauma memory and childhood amnesia are different is in this distinction. Trauma memory is often encoded differently, bypassing to the limbic system where it is stored as intrinsic memory. It can’t be recalled because it was never encoded. Childhood amnesia, however, seems to indicate that the memories are encoded, but we lose access to them as we age. This is most likely due to the development of brain structures that fundamentally change our encoding and recall of memory as we get older.
This is an important distinction, because trauma memory is “stored in the body”, i.e. you get triggers that send your body into a cascade of uncontrollable feelings, sensations and reactions. Whereas childhood memories won’t generally do that, they are just recalled at odd times with odd associations.
reblogging this because I’ve legit seen people freaking out when they realised they can’t remember some of their childhood, thinking they might have some repressed trauma.
So you mean my brain literally looked at my whole childhood and said “sorry that file type is no longer supported”
Raising money for Chelsea Manning
As power concentrates into ever-fewer hands, we are increasingly dependent on whistleblowers - insiders who come forward to tell the truth about what is being done in our name.
The powerful know this, and go to great lengths to destroy whistleblowers as a warning to others.
When Chelsea Manning was a US Army Private, she leaked a trove of US government cables to journalists, revealing widespread corruption, from the coverup of the US military’s murder of Reuters journalists to cozy deals with the world’s worst dictators.
Manning was betrayed by a journalist she’d trusted and was imprisoned and tortured by the US government. After her sentence was commuted by Obama on his way out of office, she was re-imprisoned for refusing to testify before a grand jury.
Apologists for corruption and imperialism have pulled out all the stops since to keep her from finding even a sliver of peace and recognition. In 2017, Harvard rescinded her fellowship offer because Sean Spicer (seriously) objected to it.
Manning told the truth to the American people about what their government was doing in their name. Spicer lied to the American people while drawing a public salary. Harvard sided with Spicer.
Despite the powerful enemies who pursue their petty vendetta against her, Manning has continued to do good work, teaching AI and machine learning on her Twitch channel, and lecturing on prison support and mutual aid.
The activist Lisa Rein has set up a Gofundme fundraiser to help Manning pay her bills: rent, groceries and other monthly bills. They’re seeking $33k, and as of this writing have raised less than $2k. I will be contributing (in Sean Spicer’s name) after I publish this.
If you can afford to contribute, I hope you will too.
Keeping on the old school video game love, today’s piece “Alien Synthvasion” is inspired by all the top scrolling wave shooters I loved so much. I totally want to do more fun sky bgs like this too. All this and more can be found HERE
“A Republican. A Republican. That’s worse than being a goddamned Communist!” - Tallulah Bankhead
Every shitty live action Netflix adaption looks like this but worse
Your going to summon them.
Im putting my faith in the endless blood feud between Disney and DreamWorks to keep us safe
The living statues this time of year are positively awe-inspiring. For they shimmer and glow like so much intricately, masterfully carved ice that could not possibly move an inch without shattering. But move they do…