ok the shittiest part about christmastime is the fact people keep skipping over the forth verse of “we three kings” like… we get it. y’all are white protestants who can’t even think about mortality for one single second.
also people who skip the third verse of “o holy night” are reactionary cowards
ok but these lyrics are so powerful and amazing. im so pissed.
We Three Kings (4):
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume Breathes a life of gathering gloom; Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
O Holy Night (3):
Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we, With all our hearts we praise His holy name. Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we, His power and glory ever more proclaim! His power and glory ever more proclaim!
Important context on O Holy Night: The English lyrics by John Sullivan Dwight are from 1855, a full decade before the abolition of slavery in the United States. In fact, abolition was still a VERY fringe position. Pro-slavery advocates, meanwhile, were arguing that slavery was God’s gift to white civilization. In that year, six years before the Civil War began, Americans were already shooting each other over whether slavery should expand out in Kansas.
Dwight–unsurprisingly, a Unitarian minister–put the most inflammatory possible political statement of the day into his Christmas carol.
I didn’t know it was common to skip the third verse of O Holy Night! It was a tradition for my high school choir to sing it every year, and we ALWAYS had that verse. It’s horrible to leave y out, it’s the most compelling part of the song. What’s the point of Christmas without the message of joy and peace for everyone?
Although his image is inseparable from the turmoil of the French Revolution, Saint-Just envisioned a time when it would come to an end, and he would no longer be necessary. How did that time look to him?
His friend Gateau reports that Saint-Just sighed after the end of the Revolution to … enjoy the repose of private life in a country haven, with a person whom the sky destined as his companion, and whose mind and heart he himself had liked to form, far from the poisoned eyes of the inhabitants of the city.
Lejeune reports as well something similar he heard from Saint-Just, one year before being chosen for the Convention: For me, my ambition is to live one day in the countryside, within the limits that nature has marked. A wife, children for my heart, study for my leisure, my superfluous for my good neighbors if they are poor.
This young man, the icy, living blade of the revolution, wanted nothing more than to return to his privacy, form a family and live a simple life somewhere in the countryside. It was not to be.
if an archaeologist says an artifact was probably for “ritual purposes” it means “i have no fuckin clue”
but if they say it was for “fertility rituals” they mean “i know exactly what it was for but i dont want to say ‘ancient dildo’”
Back in the day I worked at a certain very famous and very high caste art museum in the US as a junior curator. Part of my job was to catalog the objects in the museum database. This includes details like provenance, measurements, and a visual description of what the object looked like.
Like I said, the museum was a pretty snotty institution. It’s got a LOT of objects it’s way famous for possessing, but nobody knew about the absolutely massive collection of Moche erotic pottery it had because the curators were totally embarrassed by this stuff.
Some examples:
Pretty hot shit, right? They never, ever put any of this stuff on public view or published it in any catalogues but – we legit had like several hundred pieces of Moche ceramics in the “dirty pots” category. Anyway, I was left alone to just do my job with regard to the database for several years, ok? And I figured, well, these’re accessioned objects in the museum’s collection – better get down to bidness.
I catalogued every goddamn bestiality, necrophiliac, cocksucking, buttfucking, detached penis, and giant vulva drinking cup in that collection. I’d be like,
A drinking vessel in form of a standing man wearing a tunic and cap. He holds an oversized erection in his hands and stares into the distance (note I did not say “like he’s hella-constipated”). The vessel has a hole at both the tip of the penis as well as around the rim of the figure’s head, thus forcing the drinker to drink only from the penis or risk spilling wine all over themselves from the top of the vessel. Red and orange slip covers the surface of the piece.
Pretty straightforward, right? Apparently the deep seated fear of these objects that the curators exhibited was meant to spread to me as well, but – no one ever gave me that memo, because I guess Midwesterners reproduce asexually. When the curators understood that I had catalogued all of these objects in addition to the other, non-sexy pieces in the collection, they were apparently livid, but knew they had no legs to stand on in terms of getting pissed at me for it.
I visited the museum’s online public access database a few years back and – every single description I wrote of these pieces has been totally neutered to say something like Male figural vase.
Long story short? Just call a dildo a fucking dildo. It’s all gonna be ok, I swear.
This is absolutely the MOST unusual reblog I have ever tagged with what is probably my second-favorite tag, “talk to me about your work.”
Museums should have sections dedicated to artifacts like these with a warning that says “There’s a lot of private parts in here but we’re dedicated to displaying history so we won’t censor these. Enter at your own risk” or something. It’s prudish to deliberately hide history because of some ding dongs.
Most of these are taken from the Wikipedia entry for “Timeline of Asexual History” With a few extra facts taken from AVEN’s wikia page, and other news sources.
Asexual History
1869: Karl-Maria Kertbeny uses the word “Monosexuals” to refer to people who only masturbate. While not really a distinction in modern asexual discourse, it is similar to other categories coined such as “autoerotic” and “asexual” people described by Myra Jonson in the 1970s, among others.
1896: A German sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, wrote the pamphlet “Sappo und Sokrates,” which mentions people without any sexual desire.
1948:The Kinsey scale included a “group x” for those who did not feel sexual attraction, which was roughly 1% of those surveyed.
1974: Singer and composer David Bowie discusses asexuality in the Rolling Stone in the article “David Bowie in conversation on sexuality with William S. Burroughs by Craig Copetas in the Rolling Stone February 28, 1974”
1977:Myra Jonson wrote one of the first academic papers about asexuality as part of The Sexually Oppressed. Johnson mainly focused on the problems still facing asexual women as they were ignored, or seemingly left behind by the sexual revolution going on.
1979:In a study published in Advances in the Study of Affect, vol. 5, Michael D. Storms of the University of Kansas outlined his own reimagining of the Kinsey scale, using only fantasizing and eroticism, and placing hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale; this allows for a distinction between bisexuality (exhibiting both hetero- and homo-eroticism in degrees comparable to hetero- or homosexuals, respectively) and asexuality (exhibiting a level of homo-eroticism comparable to a heterosexual and a level of hetero-eroticism comparable to a homosexual, namely, little to none). This type of scale accounted for asexuality for the first time. Storms conjectured that many researchers following Kinsey’s model could be mis-categorizing asexual subjects as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.
1980: Writer and Artist Edward Gorey, Comes out as asexual in an interview. When asked ‘…the press makes a point of the fact that you have never married. What are your sexual preferences?’, Gorey responds “Well, I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly.” and goes on to talk about how his lack of attraction affects his work.
1983: The first study that gave empirical data about asexuals was published in by Paula Nurius, concerning the relationship between sexual orientation and mental health.
1993:Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians by Esther D. Rothblum and Kathleen A. Brehony was released on November 17, 1993.
1994:A survey of 18,876 British residents found that 1% of the respondents “never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all”.
1997:First online Asexual Community appears in the comment section for an article titled “My Life As An Amoeba”
2000: A Yahoo group for asexuals, Haven for the Human Amoeba, was founded.
2001: David Jay founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which became the most prolific and well-known of the various asexual communities that started to form since the advent of the World Wide Web and social media.
2004: The New Scientist dedicates an issue to asexuality.
2004: Discovery dedicates an episode of “The Sex Files” to asexuality.
2005: L’amour sans le faire by Geraldin Levi Rich Jones (Joosten van Vilsteren) is released. The first book on asexuality. Geraldin was at the head of the asexual movement, launching “The Official Asexual Society” in 2000 and performing asexual comedy shows. She also was a prominent face in the early ‘00’s asexual media boom.
2005: A common symbol for the asexual community is a black ring worn on the middle finger of the right hand. The material and exact design of the ring are not important as long as it is primarily black. This symbol started on AVEN in 2005.
2007: Award winning Novelist, Keri Hulme, comes out as asexual in an interview, saying “It is part of who I am: the major impact is that I am not– and never have been– interested in sex. It was more a slow realisation that I was different from most people. By my mid-teens, I’d realised that what was of great moment and interest to other young people – their sexuality and relationships – didn’t intrigue me in the slightest.”
2009: AVEN members participated in the first asexual entry into an American pride parade when they walked in the San Francisco Pride Parade.
2010: A flag was announced as the asexual pride flag. The asexual pride flag consists of four horizontal stripes: black, grey, white, and purple from top to bottom.
2010: The New York State Division of Human Rights updated its discrimination complaint form to include asexuals in the protected sexual orientation category.
2010: Asexual Awareness Week was founded by Sara Beth Brooks in 2010. It occurs in the later half of October, and was created to both celebrate asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and grey-asexual pride and promote awareness.
2010: Fashion Consultant, Tim Gunn, says in an interview that he has identified as asexual since the 80s, saying “Do I feel like less of a person for it? No… I’m a perfectly happy and fulfilled individual.”
2010: Comedian Janeane Garofalo comes out as asexual while live on stage in Seattle.
2011: The Documentary “(A)sexual” is released.
2012: The first International Asexual Conference was held at the 2012 World Pride in London.
2013: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition changed the diagnosis of Hypoactive sexual desire disorder conditions to include an exception for people who self identify as asexual.
2013: American Comedian, Paula Poundstone, Comes out as Asexual in an interview
2014:The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, by Julie Sondra Decker, was published; it was the first mainstream published book on the subject of asexuality.
2015: George Norman became Britain’s first openly asexual parliamentary election candidate.
2017: ‘Asexual’ is updated in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to include the sexual orientation.
2018: ‘Ace’ and ‘Aromantic’ are added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and ‘Asexual’ is updated to include the sexual orientation.
Dr. James Barry, Albert Cashier, Charley Parkhurst, Billy Tipton, and Dr. Alan Hart could have each written “I am a man and want to be recognized across history as such” and transphobes would still be like… “wow what misunderstood butch heroes… lesbian icons!!!!”
interesting how they… didn’t all write that. across history women have disguised themselves as men in order to escape misogyny cus u couldn’t get anywhere much in life (much less become successful doctors) as women. and anyways, of course a woman constrained by sexism would prefer to be given the privileges of a man. i can’t confirm these women were lesbians, but you cannot confirm they were transmen either.
Interesting how… I didn’t argue that women haven’t disguised themselves throughout history. I mentioned specific instances of historical trans men for whom there is evidence to conclude they identified as men and not women. I said nothing against lesbians in my post either, only about transphobes.
It all started with me pledging to read only women authors in 2014. But then I got a serious hankering for some Sherlock Holmes (who is, sadly, written by a dude). Thinking, “Surely there must be detective stories written by ladies! Lady detective stories even! Vintage lady detectives written by vintage lady authors!” And there are! Several hours later, here we are… (NB: Being an asexual lady myself, I consider the spinster sleuth an awesome and delightful protagonist, haters to the left.)
Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1841-1910) was a British short story writer and novelist. Her stories of disguise-mastering Loveday Brooke, who choses detecting over becoming a governess, were published in Ludgate Magazine, starting in 1894. Loveday Brooke stories: The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (1894) .
Mary Roberts Rinehart(1876-1958) was an American novelist, playwright, and non-fiction author. Apart from her detective fiction, her co-written novel The Bat about a caped criminal inspired Bob Kane’s The Bat-Man. Her protagonists all fall in the spinster sleuth category. Rachel Innes novels: The Man in Lower Ten (1906) | The Circular Staircase (1908) . Letitia “Tish” Carberry stories: The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911) | Tish (1916) | More Tish (1921) | Tish Plays the Game (1926) | Tish Marches On (1937) . Cornelia van Gorder one-shot mystery: The Bat (1920) co-written with Avery Hopwood.
Editing my post to add: Baroness Emma Orczy (1865-1947) was a Hungarian-born British novelist, playwright, artist, and translator. Although she is predominantly famous for her novels about The Scarlet Pimpernel she also published a book about a female crime-solving duo. Lady Molly stories: Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910) .
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