Happy Pride Month Eleanor Roosevelt was queer, the Little Mermaid is a gay love story, James Dean liked men, Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, Nikola Tesla was asexual, Freddie Mercury was bisexual & British Indian, and black trans women pioneered the gay rights movement.
Florence Nightingale was a lesbian, Leonardo da Vinci was gay, Michelangelo too, Jane Austen liked women, Hatshepsut was not cisgender, and Alexander the Great was a power bottom
Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender)
I want to hire you to follow me around and defend my honor with meticulous research
Louisa May Alcott(who wrote Little Women): “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”
(from an 1883 interview with Louise Chandler Moulton)
The Hatshepsut fact is incorrect and I really hate to do this. I’m all for raising the profile of LGBT individuals in the historical record (looking at you James I), but Hatshepsut isn’t one of them.
For starters, when she becomes ruler of Egypt she can no longer carry the title Hmt nswt wrt (Great Royal Wife - there’s no such thing as ‘Queen Regent’ in Ancient Egypt) as that is a lesser title to the one of Pharaoh. She was married to Thutmose II before she came to the throne thus making her title ‘Hmt nswt wrt’ and when she ascended to the throne as regent in place of her infant son Thutmose III, she could take the title ‘nsw’ ‘King’ as a woman.
Note at this point in Egyptian history, the title of pr-aA (the word we all know as Pharaoh) was not yet in use, in fact it doesn’t come into use until c.1200 BC (I think Akhenaten is the first one to use it…). Hatshepsut is a good 200 years before this point (c.1473-1458 BC).
However, in Middle Egyptian (the form of Egyptian Hieroglyphs at the time) when writing a noun that is specifically gendered (as ‘nsw’ is male) the pronoun, regardless of the gender of the person using it, must agree with the noun (unless you’re saying something like nsw=s ‘her king’ in which case it doesn’t). So when Hatshepsut describes herself as the ‘nsw’ she uses the =f pronoun which is male. These are the grammar rules of Middle Egyptian. Elsewhere, when the word isn’t as specifically gendered she uses =s ‘she/her’ and uses that more often than not. People also overestimate how much of the decision making regarding texts used on temple walls were dictated by Pharaoh. 99% of the time they had very little input in the types of texts that went on the walls as it’s standard and formulaic language and texts (Pharaoh really only did the design layout kinda thing and said who they wanted it to be dedicated to) so the architects would just instruct the artisans to inscribe them. Hatshepsut would in no way dictate the usage of pronouns in specific religious texts. These are set things, having been written hundreds of years before. She’s not altering them, they’re just copying up texts that already exist onto the walls. This is also why they’ve got male pronouns.
Take for instance the text where Hatshepsut is spoken of as being born of Ra and thus has divine right to rule Egypt. This was done a) to shut up those who would seek to overthrow her because she was a woman and because her son was 4 years old (seriously if you don’t think the nobles were super excited at an opportunity to get on the throne because they can discredit the widow and kill the only son of the last king you need to do some more reading on Egyptian political intrigue. It’s like Game of Thrones but with more sand and about the same amount of incest) b) sA rA (son of Ra) is another formulaic phrase that is set in gender. All kings are ‘sA rA’ so she isn’t going to rock the boat and suddenly change all the religious rules as well as being a woman on the throne. Oh boy is that a sure fire way to get yourself assassinated. She wants to present herself as a legitimate ruler not a ‘hey let’s change all the things’ (If you know of Akhenaten then you’ll know exactly what happened to him with regards to changing stuff. It didn’t end well.)
As for being depicted as male, there’s one thing people need to understand about Egyptian art; it’s extremely rigid in its conventions. This is why Akhenaten (whom I’d actually more seriously lean towards as a Genderfluid individual) and his art style was so shocking to the Egyptians. They had very set ideas of how someone should be portrayed. So when it comes to the ‘nsw’ there are set rules that have to be followed: must be portrayed as a fit young man (regardless of age. Ramesses II was still depicted this way even when he was 80+ years old), must have the iconography of kingship (nemes headdress, crook and flail, bulls tail, false beard), must never be depicted as old or dead (oohhhh boy this is a no no). People like to jump on the false beard thing, but in truth no king of Egypt had a beard. They all had the false beard as a sign of ‘wisdom’ so this being unique to Hatshepsut isn’t really a thing. It’s a universal Pharaonic art convention. Just like they all have the nemes headdress.
I don’t like taking down posts like this because it makes me seem like a joyless killjoy that wants to stomp all over LGBT individuals in history because they deserve to be heard and spoken about. Too long have we ignored them in history. But this is not the intent here. When there is an LGBT individual, like Alexander the Great, I’ll yell it from the rooftops. What we see with Hatshepshut is a misrepresentation of the narrative by those who have very good intentions, but do not understand the context they’re working with. Time and again Historians warn of modern bias and the application of modern sociological terms to the historical record. We should try to avoid it because it distorts the record and the voices of the people in the past. We can say ‘Evidence suggests that Akhenaten may be what we’d term today as a genderfluid individual’ but we can’t say ‘Akhenaten is genderfluid’ because that’s a certainty and without direct evidence to say he was that’s a misrepresentation of the data. Hatshepsut appears to change gender pronouns, which in modern sociolinguistics would suggest that she was not cisgender. However, context, which unfortunately most people will not have because they don’t actually read Middle Egyptian (yeah yeah I’m a nerd) won’t know of the specific grammatical rules that govern the language and therefore see the evidence presented before them as ‘not cisgender’ rather than ‘Middle Egyptian is an absolute dick when it comes to set genders and formulaic language and you must always assess the context before making a definitive conclusion’
tl;dr: Hello I’m an Egyptologist and I’m sorry to say her pronoun change is actually a consequence of formulaic language and grammar rules and not because she wasn’t cisgender.
I saw this in one of my sociology classes. In case you’re wondering she didn’t apologize.
white girl: *cries b/c she’s used to that working*
Jane Elliot:
We did a experiment like this when I was in the FIFTH GRADE. And this same shit happened, a lil white boy got fed up and left the classroom. Like could you prove the point any easier?
Favorite video on the internet
Jane Elliot did this experiment with her elementary school class in the 60’s and it’s really an interesting watch. I watched it for an education class and it was so interesting to see how the kids changed from one day to the next.
i love Legally Blonde so much. all of the women are so supportive of each other im??
when Elle was supposed to get engaged, none of the girls were jealous, they were genuinely happy for her n helped her get ready for the big dinner
when her bf broke up with her they were supportive
when Elle says she wants to go to harvard the counselor lady is like but ur major is fashion, do u have any backup plan? n elle is like nope im going to harvard n the lady is like okay then here’s what u gotta do.
her friends didnt get why she wanted to go to law school but supported her anyway, and helped her study
when she got 179 on her exam (more than her goal), they treated her like a queen
and that’s only in the first 18 minutes of the movie
Legally Blonde is a “girl power” movie with killer inspirational and positive attitude disguised as a stereotypical blonde movie.
Anonymous whispered:
As someone who is so explicitly sex-positive, what's your view on all the Sailor Moon scenes that are, well, not that? Like, how the villainnesses are hypersexualized, for example?
Ok… so I just wrote you an essay TWO TIMES, and then I accidentally refreshed my page TWICE and everything was gone. So… I’m gonna be quicker about my answer this time because i am raging MAD at my browser lol.
Anyway. This is an amazing question. Thank you so much for asking this amazing question! Now, the thing with hypersexualisation. There are a couple things with the term and the concept that rub me the wrong way. Yes, it’s true. In many, many forms of media, not just anime, and not just Sailor Moon, female villains get sexualised extremely. Not only in the way they dress, in the way they behave, even basic things like their voices, the size of their breasts. In Sailor Moon, we get that a lot, of course. Take, just as an example, the fact that all the female villains seem to hit on Tux at one point, and dress very “sexed up.” Like this.
But, you see, actually, what Esmeraude wears in this scene, for one, is basically my comfort outfit sans the tights. Something I wear all the time. So, what rubs me the wrong way is actually not the “sexualisation” itself - but 1) that these characters get reduced to this, that it’s all there is to them, and 2) that we ONLY get to see openly sexy clothes and active flirting and teasing and stuff like that on VILLAINS. That it’s a trait of their “badness” - because being sexy you cannot be “pure”. So, actually, what I hate about this trope of hypersexualising female villains is not actually the way they are portrayed per se, but the way it’s portrayed in a way as if it’s wrong. (AND that they are reduced to it.)
That brings me to losely related part 2 that rubs me the wrong way: Censoring female nudity. It makes me LIVID that this is done. That women have to follow dress codes, that outrageous amounts of people fly off the handle when you can see a nipple. Small example: My husband collects board games with miniature figures, and backs a huge amount of them on kickstarter. Most of these are “monster” games (everything from Zombies to Massive Darkness creatures), and thus on the miniatures you get a lot of gore and blood and fangs and tentacles and missing limbs. At one of these, one of the strech goals revealed a new figure. Another monster, more blood and gore. But this one received an uproar - because this one showed a bared breast. Suddenly all these backers went berserk, “How can I have this openly displayed now, I have small children!” … This … I don’t even have words for this. Newsflash: Your small kids will be very likely to have seen a nipple. But maybe the gore you have no qualms about openly displaying might scare them. When did we get to this point? Somewhere along the line we got to the point where we, as a society, collectively started associating the female body with sex. And this went too far. If female body = sex, and sex = bad and impure (…. .. …. next rant), then female bodies become a no-no that gets demonized along with what we do to sexuality. And that frigging makes me livid.
And by censoring female nudity everywhere other than in sex scene, we enhance this unhealthy association. If the only place we see breasts is during sex, there is no wonder sex is what we think when we see it. And there is no quicker way to objectify someone as by deeming their body parts only visible for one thing and one thing only, if you ask me.
There is nothing inherently sexual about the female body. Like there is nothing sexual, for one Sailor Moon example, about the scene where Chibs, covered in black magic goo, turns into Black Lady.
No kid will see this and think sex. Because bodies are normal, and kids see naked bodies.(Despite the point that I’d rather have kids see healthy sexuality than violence in media, anyway, but that’s a rant of its own.) A kid who sees this scene will understand that her body now turned into that of an adult. But the fact that we see this an think oh wait woah is because we learned to see breast and butts and see something else to it.
So, anyway, all this is to say: Yes, villains in Sailor Moon get hypersexualised. But to me actually not more so than in other shows. Because this show, thankfully, also shows an aggressively flirting Minako and it doesn’t put her down, for one example.
And, also, wonderfully, gloriously, amazingly: We see Usagi naked all the time. Be it during her transformation as a silhouette,
We see Usagi, the Senshi of Purity, the kindest, purest character in this series, naked all the time. And it’s not sexualised. It’s normal. It’s allowed. And I celebrate that!
Relaunching this again for a future ‘not-post’, but something better! Thank you to everyone who continued to send in suggestions. Submit here.
As an addition to the goth/post-punk/alt band masterpost, here’s a list of bands featuring members of color. Most are influential, others new discoveries or future freak gods. Thanks to research and helpful readers, here’s a bit of sick sound suitable for all taste buds:
Goth, dark or industrial:
Creature Feature- Erik X is an evil composer and organ player with a special gift for raising the dead.
Plastique Noir-the Brazilian band that made the song “Empty Streets” that’s just too dark to handle.
O. Children - contrary to popular belief, Tobi O’Kandi is not, in fact, a black reincarnation of Ian Curtis.
Thrill Kill Kult - sick industrial band with several poc members.
Dev Hynes - a British musician who started out in a punk band Test Icicles then went solo as a folk/indie musician as Lightspeed Champion and now is doing an electronic/R&B thing as Blood Orange.
L’Arc-en-Ciel - Okay, so these guys are Japan’s other most famous export. These guys got known outside of japan for doing some major anime theme songs (Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam 00, NANA live action movie, etc) and were the first Japanese act to headline Madison Square Garden (Japanese rock bands really like New York for some reason). Their bassist tetsuya (formally known as tetsu) gets bonus points for being one of Japan’s only out LGBT celebrities (he’s Bi).
Gogol Bordello - self described as “gypsy punk”. Singer Eugene Hütz is Russian-Ukranian with Romani heritage and born with a ‘stache. Nearly crazier than Little Big and Korpiklaani combined.
Blasphemy - Black metal, the biggest irony on earth as Caller of the Storms remains one of the rare black musicians within the genre.
Babymetal - this Japanese trio is more metal than a viking woman on her period in the middle of a battlefield drinking the blood of her enemies to the sound of Immortal…for some at least.
Wicked Wisdom - Will Smith’s wife get a band?? Yes she Will.
Unlocking the Truth - these 13 year olds played in the streets of NYC before they opened for Living Colour.
Ego Fall - a Chinese folk metal band and also Corbac’s fave. Mixing tradition with heavier sounds.
Static X - Japanese guitarist Koichi Fukuda & Mexican-American bassist Tony Campos.
Sepultura - the founding members are all Brazilian, currently their lead singer (Derrick Green) is black. “Arise” is a massive album of pure metal awesomeness.
Tenger Cavalry - a folk metal band based out of Bejing who describe their style as “Mongolian folk metal”. Like this and you’d probably enjoy Ego Fall.
Cthonic - Taiwanese metal band who’s lead singer is also the president for the Taiwanese branch of Amnesty International.Most of their music deals with their goal of an independent Taiwan and they’re really REALLY great.
Invasion - a stoner/psych-metal band fronted by a valkyrie space wizard out of London.
Vodun - like invasion, marries punk, psychedelic, and doom metal influenced instrumentals with soul influenced vocals to create a unique and original takes on doom metal.
Body Count- Ice T’s metal band rules. It would be a little tastier with ice cubes though.
Hirax - pioneering thrash/speed metal band (with hardcore influences). Katon De Pena is one of the most distinctive vocalists of the then-burgeoning California metal scene. Though they never achieved the success of some of their contemporaries like Metallica or Slayer, they have long been an insiders’ favorite and cited as an influence by bands ranging from Napalm Death to Cannibal Corpse to Darkthrone.
X Japan - Probably Japan’s most famous metal export. These guys are the reason Visual Kei (basically Japan’s gothic metal scene) exists. All those flashy JRock bands wouldn’t exist without X Japan. They also recently just played a huge show at Madison Square Garden.
Maximum the Hormone - Also known as “the guys that did that weird opening and ending to death note”, MTH do a fantastic combination of metal, punk, and even pop. The best part about MTH is that their lyrics don’t make sense even when translated so you can just have mindless fun listening to them even if you understand Japanese.
Suffocation - one of the most influential death metal acts of all time. Terrance Hobbs’ incredible mastery of the guitar allowed the band to blend complex technicality into the genre without sacrificing raw brutality.
Acrassicauda - Iraqi heavy metal. There is a film called “Heavy Metal in Baghdad”, about the band. Another documentary called Global Metal, which is by the same director as Heavy Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, is highly recommended.
Sigh - one of the first japanese black mack metal bands led by a fierce lady.
BIS (Brand-New Idol Society) - considered “alternative Japanese idols”, and have done some amazing things including recruiting a new member who was rumored to be a high school girl and turned out to be Junko Koshino, a famous fashion designer who is 74 yrs old. Their song + video for MURA-MURA is excellent.
Go Betty Go - chicano rock, “pop punk”. Several of their songs are in Spanish.
ELLEGARDEN - JAPAN’S BEST 90s/EARLY 2000s POP PUNK ROCK EXPORT I’M NOT EVEN KIDDING. Part of what contributes to this is Takeshi Hosomi (singer/rhythm guitarist) writing ¾ of the band’s discography in perfect english. Unfortunately they went on hiatus in 2006, but that spawned two more fantastic bands: Takeshi does experimental progressive indie in the HIATUS (its the same guy I swear), and guitarist Shinichi Ubukata formedNothing’s Carved In Stone which is basically a Japanese alt. rock supergroup.
Shonen Knife - you can’t talk about japanese girl rock without the literal originators of the movement/popularity. Because Kurt Cobain said he listened them, a HUGE surge of all girl bands started popping up over Japan.
