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Marsha P. Johnson at home | ph: Randy Wicker

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I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

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I’ve been looking through The Digital Transgender Archive again and found somethings from the Femmes Unite! #2 zine (published in 2007) that I felt validated by. I saved several clippings, but here’s one:

[Text Description: Our femme community here in Portland is so big and as you might imagine, we’re all very different folks. We’ve got fatties, anarchists, bottoms, tops, switches, dykes, fags, mtfs, ftms, lesbians, survivors, punks, midwesterners, southerners, college grads, high school drop outs, radicals, indoor and outdoor femmes … the list could go on forever. If there’s anything we’re learned, it’s that femme is not a singular restrictive box to fit ourselves into. Being femme is only part of who each of us are. (Just glance at the biography pages and you’ll see what we mean!) In this zine we tried to address some of our other identities and how they overlap with the glamour and strength of our femmeness. We hope that you can see some of yourself here and that it sparks exciting thought and discussion. Love and sensible shoes, Femme Affinity Group Porland. /End Descrption]

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Various old transguy/ftm pins "QUEER BOY" Could also just mean something else but I figured I'd include it anyway

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Transvestites are the most liberated homosexuals in the world. We have had the guts to stand up and fight on the front lines for many years before the gay movement was born. ... Remember that transvestites and gay street people are always on the front lines and are ready to lay their lives down for the movement.

Sylvia Rivera, Transvestites: Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers of the Revolution

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Hey since TERFs buried the original, higher quality recording, here’s the only surviving recording of trans activist Sylvia Rivera’s infamous “Y'all Better Quiet Down” speech, along with full transcription, now free and open on Archive.org. The transphobic fucks can try their best to scrub us from history, but we’re not going anywhere.

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….. they said disney. not the united states armed forces. they specially said corporations, not every single entity ever that uses a rainbow. assuming they were defending the fucking marines is idiotic.

my purpose in mentioning the marines was to demonstrate the full effects of rainbow capitalism. as the us military defends capitalistic interests, then rainbow capitalism, homonationalism, and us imperialism are all very closely interrelated. relatedly, corporations like disney benefit from western imperialism, so it's not too much of a stretch to link the two.

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rainbow capitalism isn't liberatory, especially not when we exist in a society that withdraws its support for queerness as soon as it transgresses respectability and commodified the rest of it. just yesterday the marines posted a picture of a helmet with rainbow bullets strapped to the back, and it comes off, to me, as entirely grim to say, "well, at least i feel safer" when the biggest imperialist project in the world continually reinforces homophobia and transphobia abroad and at home.

i’d rather have rainbow capitalism then living in constant fear of discovery. the woman in the pride flag disney t-shirt might be missing the nuance, but at least i know i can be myself. a street full of rainbow flags makes me more comfortable holding a mans hand. look. corporations aren’t your friend. they will sell to whoever will buy. but kids seeing gay everything every year is only ever a good thing, and a massive improvement in history

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First of a new set of pride themed mermaids I’m working on!! I’m so excited to be working on these again.

as an aro person obviously this one is very close to my heart and I love them <3

psst there is a sticker available on redbubble :3

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“Oh yeah, we mixed with lesbians. We always got along back then. All that division between the lesbian women and queens came after 1974 when Jane O'Leary and the radical lesbians came up. The radicals did not accept us or masculine-looking women who looked like men. And those lesbian women might not even have been trans. But we did get along famously in the early 60’s. I’ve been to many a dyke party… The lesbian community today has a lot to learn from the old ways of the lesbian community.”

— Sylvia Rivera (via millesbianfalcon)

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the queer community was formed by people who were deemed strange and abnormal in society based on them not conforming to expectations about sexuality & gender. there are no specific boundaries bc this isn't a club. a cishet guy that likes wearing dresses who fights side by side with us for true liberation, is 100x more queer than a millionaire gay man who's besties with companies that sell us watered down versions of our own culture for profit during pride while donating to homophobic lawmakers every other month.

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FTM Trans Pride 1994

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romoaro + apl flags

a flag for romoaro aplatonics!

id: two flags of similar colors, one nine-striped and one seven-striped. the first has colors in this order, top to bottom: dark purple, dull blue-purple, dull blue, pale yellow, light pink, pale yellow, soft yellow-green, soft green, dark green. the second is similar but lacks the two outermost stipes of dark purple and dark green. end id.

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legitimately i think it was brokeback mountain which devastated me for two weeks after i watched it, lol. still one of my fave movies regardless, i like tragedies.

im curious, what was the first book or show you saw with queer rep and how did it influence you?

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It’s #FollowFriday, and today we are featuring Invisible Men, a platform created to explore trans masculine visibility and narratives, with trans men and trans masculine people of color unapologetically centered.

Lucky Alexander, a Black trans man, founded Invisible Men because he wanted to “create a platform we could tell our stories without taking up space in other ways. We are the only ones who can tell our stories and they need to be heard.”

To learn more about their Legacys program, advocacy, workshops, campaigns, and resources for trans men and trans masculine people, visit them on Facebook (Invisible T Men), Instagram (InvisibleTransMen), or their website: https://invisibletmen.com/

Supporting the work of trans people, especially trans people of color, is vital. That’s why we promote the work of different QTPOC organizations each week on #FollowFriday. Thank you to every trans person who works for our communities’ empowerment - we will liberate ourselves together.

[ID: Glittery dark background with a translucent pink-brown-blue gradient. The TEP logo is in the top left. White text down the right side has “# Follow Friday,” “Invisible Men,” and the organization’s website and social media usernames. On the right are two photos, one of their logo and one of four Black trans men standing together in suits.]

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Hey! I just wanted to let you all know that I coined a new term! 

Neu Aro / Aro Neu for people who are neutral on allo or ace. It expands to either Neutro or Neutral, and it’s for non-SAM aros as well! 

The term is intentionally vague and doesn’t expand on what neutral would mean in this case. You can optionally expand it to neutrosexual or neusexual, if you do use the SAM and want or need that label. 

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Affinity

I talk about affinity a lot both here and on @trustedcompanionship, but I’ve never really defined it. That’s partially because I’m very resistant to defining it– it’s a lived experience and a feeling first, and a piece of terminology second. It’s inherently resistant to the tendency to divide up queer experiences into easily compartmentalized boxes that resemble DSM-V diagnostic criteria more than they do descriptions of the way an individual person sees themself and the world. Affinity as a term and as a paradigm for describing connections is inherently fluid. 

That being said, affinity is any connection, desire for connection, or feeling of closeness that doesn’t feel like it fits under attraction, or that an individual does not feel comfortable describing as attraction. “It’s easy to talk to you” is affinity. “We have so much in common” is affinity. “I would follow you anywhere” is affinity. “I want to explore different kinds of intimacy with you” is affinity. Many other things can be affinity as well.

I do not want to be the arbiter of what counts or does not count as affinity. I didn’t invent this feeling and do not have the right to control how others experience it. Please respect my boundaries and do not ask me if what you’re feeling “counts” as affinity– only you can figure that out. If you don’t feel comfortable or right calling something attraction, you are welcome to use affinity as a shorthand to describe what you feel.