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Check out the growing number of LGBTQ-related documents and resources available through the National Archives!

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A lot of times LGBT people are given the chance to talk about injustice, but I think it’s always nice when we have a focus on the people who helped us and changed us for the better with their support. I know this is a small account, but I want to hear who gives you guys pride. Tell a story, write a poem, or just list special thanks. The best ones I find will be reblogged onto this account, @xpyramints, within pride month 2017. Tag with “#gmpride”. Make it trend, guys! Post this on social media if you’d like, but please credit me if you do.

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A lot of times LGBT people are given the chance to talk about injustice, but I think it's always nice when we have a focus on the people who helped us and changed us for the better with their support. I know this is a small account, but I want to hear who gives you guys pride. Tell a story, write a poem, or just list special thanks. The best ones I find will be reblogged onto this account, @xpyramints, within pride month 2017. Tag with "#gmpride". Make it trend, guys! Post this on social media if you'd like, but please credit me if you do.

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One of the earliest microscopes, dating to the 1600s. This tool was used by Anton van Leeuwenhoek who devoted his life to the study of “animalcules,” his term for the tiny organisms he found in saliva, water, and blood. Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries helped to kick-start the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries.  

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A Bottled Ecosystem

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“no homo” I whisper as I look at my garden of pea plants. The progeny had expressed a 1:2:1 ratio of phenotypes. I am Gregor Mendel. 

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1. Lungs don’t just facilitate respiration - they also make blood. Mammalian lungs produce more than 10 million platelets (tiny blood cells) per hour, which equates to the majority of platelets circulating the body.

2. It is mathematically possible to build an actual time machine - what’s holding us back is finding materials that can physically bend the fabric of space-time.

3. Siberia has a colossal crater called the ‘doorway to the underworld’, and its permafrost is melting so fast, ancient forests are being exposed for the first time in 200,000 years.

4. The world’s first semi-synthetic organisms are living among us - scientists have given rise to new lifeforms using an expanded, six-letter genetic code.

5. Vantablack - the blackest material known to science - now comes in a handy ‘spray-on’ form and it’s the weirdest thing we’ve seen so far this year.

6. It’s official: time crystals are a new state of matter, and we now have an actual blueprint to create these “impossible” objects at will.

7. A brand new human organ has been classified, and it’s been hiding in plain sight this whole time. Everyone, meet your mesentery.

8. Carl Sagan was freakishly good at predicting the future - his disturbingly accurate description of a world where pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy reigns gave us all moment for pause.

9. A single giant neuron that wraps around the entire circumference of a mouse’s brain has been identified, and it appears to be linked to mammalian consciousness.

10. The world’s rarest and most ancient dog isn’t extinct after all - in fact, the outrageously handsome New Guinea highland wild dog appears to be thriving.

11. Your appendix might not be the useless evolutionary byproduct after all. Unlike your wisdom teeth, your appendix might actually be serving an important biological function - and one that our species isn’t ready to give up just yet.

12. After 130 years, we might have to completely redraw the dinosaur family tree, thanks to a previously unimportant cat-sized fossil from Scotland.

13. Polycystic ovary syndrome might actually start in the brain, not the ovaries.

14. Earth appears to have a whole new continent called Zealandia, which would wreak havoc on all those textbooks and atlases we’ve got lying around.

15. Humans have had a bigger impact on Earth’s geology than the infamous Great Oxidation Event 2.3 billion years ago, and now scientists are calling for a new geological epoch - the Anthropocene - to be officially recognised.

16. Turns out, narwhals - the precious unicorns of the sea - use their horns for hunting. But not how you’d think.

17. Human activity has literally changed the space surrounding our planet - decades of Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio communications have accidentally formed a protective, human-made bubble around Earth.

18. Farmers routinely feed red Skittles to their cattle, because it’s a cheap alternative to corn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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fun fact

being nonbinary does not mean you are bi or pan

many nonbinary people identify as gay and lesbian

it is not your place to tell them their sexuality

it is not your place to tell them what they have to identify as

and it is definitely not your place to misgender them based off of what sexuality they identify with

so do yourself a favor and when you see a nonbinary person identifying as gay or lesbian leave them alone, they aren’t doing any harm by being themselves

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Some facts about LGBT

- Ellen Degeneres was the first openly gay women in Hollywood.

-It was normal to be gay in the ancient rome. And emperor Nero was probably the first emperor who was married to a man. -The word “lesbian” is derived from the name of the Greek island of Lesbos, home to the 6th-century BCE poet Sappho .She wrote about the love what she had with women’s  

-Records of same-sex relationships have been found in nearly every culture throughout history with varying degrees of acceptance

Gay people tend to be left-handed much more often than heterosexuals.

-Most of the LGBT community discourages the use of the term “sexual preference” because it implies that sexuality is the result of conscious choice

-Almost three quarters of LGBT youth say they are more honest about themselves on the Internet.

-90 percent of LGBT teens have come out to their close friends.(based on teens in America)

-Young LGBT who are “out” to their immediate families report feeling happier than those who aren’t.

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An Ancient Greek Transgender Person

We read this passage in class yesterday and I thought it might interest youse guys. The passage is from Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans 5; it’s a discussion between Clonarium, a young man, and Leaena, a courtesan who had an unusual experience at a drinking party.

Eventually Megilla, being now rather heated, pulled off her wig, which was very realistic and fitted very closely, and revealed the skin of her head which was shaved close, just as on the most energetic of athletes. This sight gave me a shock, but she said, ‘Leaena, have you ever seen such a good-looking young fellow?’ ‘I don’t see one here, Megilla,’ said I. ‘Don’t make a woman out of me,’ said she. ‘My name is Megillus, and I’ve been married to Demonassa here for ever so long; she’s my wife.’ ‘Then, unknown to us, Megillus, you were a man all the time, just as they say Achilles once hid among the girls, and you have everything that a man has, and can play the part of a man to Demonassa?’ ‘I haven’t got what you mean,’ said she, ‘I don’t need it at all. You’ll find I have a much pleasanter method of my own.’ ‘You’re surely not a hermaphrodite,’ said I, ‘equipped both as a man and a woman, as many people are said to be?’; for I still didn’t know, Cleonarium, what it was all about. But she said, ‘No, Leaena, I’m all man.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard the Boeotian flute-girl, Ismenodora, repeating tales she’d heard at home, and telling us how someone at Thebes had turned from woman to man, someone who was also an excellent soothsayer, and was, I think, called Tiresias. That didn’t happen to you, did it?’ ‘No, Leaena,’ she said, ‘I was born a woman like the rest of you, but I have the mind and the desires and everything else of a man.’ ‘And do you find these desires enough?’ said I. ‘If you don’t believe me, Leaena,’ said she, ‘just give me a chance, and you’ll find I’m as good as any man; I have a substitute of my own. Only give me a chance, and you’ll see.’

Translation: M. D. Macleod, Loeb, 1961.

So Megilla - who, as a side note, is from Lesbos - was born a woman but identifies as a man, going by Megillus. Still, for some reason, they* disguise themselves as a woman. The whole situation is a bit confusing but the bolded bit is clear: Megilla/Megillus is, in modern terms, transgender.

Lucian’s Dialogues are fictional, but the fact he mentions a trans person speaks for their existence at the time. Remember that whenever people claim trans people are a recent phenomenon!

*I’m using they/them pronouns because it’s unclear exactly how they refer to themselves. Greek conjugated verbs are mostly non-gendered (so what the translation renders as ‘she said’ is actually ‘he/she/they said’), but there is one participle in the feminine (οὐδὲν ἐνδέουσάν με τῶν ἀνδρῶν, I’m as good as any man) despite Megilla/Megillus asking Leaena not to refer to them as a woman. So, unclear.

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Fun history fact of the day “Smash the family, smash the state!” was a feminist and gay rights slogan in the 70s and it needs to come back.

‘The gentrification of the mind’ by Sarah Schulman, page 113.

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Fact: bisexuals make up a majority of the LGBT population.

Fact: the majority of bisexuals are closeted.

Theory: If all bisexual people came out, straight people would no longer be the majority. 

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Hooray for LGBT Pride month!

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Prepare yourselves

It’s almost Pride month! Stay tuned for plenty of LGBT facts and jokes (some reblogs, some research,  and some original), as well as other surprises!

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Teachers <3

Teachers are pretty great. The best ones are the ones who you can know personally but not uncomfortably. Not all teachers teach in school. Whether or not teaching was their profession, how has someone in your life stood out as a particularly special teacher?

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“Old Market Woman” Sculpture by Julio Claudian. Held at The Metropolitan Museum. Report by @xpyramints (Tumblr). This marble sculpture depicts an old woman in draping clothes carrying a basket holding two chickens. These are supposedly a sacrifice to the god of wine and celebration, Dionysus. This, as well as her flowing robe and the ivy wreath that adorns her head, displays the woman’s affluence, which seems unexpected considering the statue’s humble title. One of the woman’s hands is clenched at her chest and her facial expression portrays a balance of reverence and agony, perhaps coming from the pain of her old age. This would also explain her arched posture, which seems to symbolize humbling oneself in honor of the gods through the physical lowering of her body. Movement can be seen in the sweeping of the woman’s clothing and the way that the basket gently swings slightly behind her, showing that she is walking. Perhaps the most dynamic feature of thw figure is the hand clenched toward the chest that can almost be seen in motion through the mind’s eye, along with the other arm that appears to have been reaching or pointing. Perhaps this reaching was meant to show the old woman’s faith toward the gods or her general longing to reach her destination despite her pain. This is a Roman copy of a Hellenistic Greek sculpture. The original was made circa 150 - 100 B.C., and the Roman version was made circa 16 - 48 A.D. The Hellenistic stylization can be seen in the deep and heavy emotions portrayed through the figure’s face and posture, as well as its realism, considering an old, frail woman who some say may have been drunk is not exactly the epitome of the Greek ideal. Despite this, the statue is often honored for displaying piety and respect toward the gods despite her age and weakness. Overall, “Old Market Woman” is a beautiful statue with much detail and history, and it can be viewed at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. Bibliography: “Marble Statue of an Old Woman | Roman | Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian | The Met.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I.e. The Met Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2017. & The Old Market Woman. Digital image. HUM 120 Course Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2017.

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This is just perfect! I needed to find this kind of thing for my theatre project as we are being asked to use fans! Quite an interesting and complex language, but what about the men’s use of walking sticks in theatre?

Pittston Gazette, Pennsylvania, August 5, 1869