#b _ HERstory

[forsapphics]

Happy Disability Pride Month! 🩶💚❤️🤍💛💙🩶🌈 (x)

[btbigelow]

I’m always super disappointed when I see a Tumblr iceberg video and The Arkh Project and EuthanizeAllWhitePeople aren’t on it

[womeninfictionandirl]

Susan B. Anthony by Robert Shetterly

Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

[sexynetra]

As official bffs I’m christening your ask box with a photo of my fave and your fave 😌

This photo changed the game for real (I have a vivid memory of when it was posted bc it was the day I followed Aurora and also this makeup look Anetra did is fiercely burned into my brain forever and ever what do you MEAN rainbow eyeshadow I die)

[beckydenimjean]

@beckydenimjean

[hourcat]

very embarrassing and cringe confession. i follow nba since i was a kid but for a period after the piarles og basketball date every time an nba video appeared on my dash i thought it was the piarles one and tried to catch them before realising 😭

baby this is neither embarrassing nor cringe. u are simply a victim of the Brain Rot like the rest of us!!! its not safe out here!!!! ur other sports are not immune to piarles!!!!! its a condition!!!!

[krisrowland]

Josephine Baker’s story of being a bad ass bitch - fucking phenomenal 

[abwwia]

Sculpture of suffragists Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Let's read: Why the First Monument of Real Women in Central Park Matters—and Why It’s Controversial

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/monument-controversy-women-pioneer-central-park-180975662/

(2020 reminder) Today, New York City welcomed a public artwork honoring three suffragists. But some scholars argue that the statue obscures more than it celebrates | Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images

[blorbocedes]

THEE lesbian situationship with your best friend break up that led to Geri leaving the Spice Girls: a know your sapphic herstory primer

a chronicle of the breakup of the spice girls, where geri left the group after being in love and breaking up with Mel B... who she used to be the closest with and go on trips together and here describing their relationship:

Geri's mom telling her her drunk at home when it's Mel B's wedding... phhhhh

if i think about the girlhood dynamic manifesting in their reunion tour as grown women 😳😵‍💫😵‍💫

Mel B revealing on Piers Morgan in 2019 she did in fact fuck Geri, tries to back it off as drunken gal pals -- geri's complete image rebrand as posh Wife And Mother who only wears white and rubs shoulders with the british elite and powerful... and downplaying everything that happpened

geri in very girlboss pantsuit shows around mel the f1 paddock and her new posho husband, redbull racing team principal and CEO. that grip on her waist tho 😵‍💫

most telling that they're exes, mel b being the only spice girl who wasn't at Geri's huge birthday bash.

[rimouskis]

could you explain more about what you view as the before era and what you view as the after? i need to learn my herstory

I think this requires a more detailed and educated/researched answer than I can give after an exhausting workday and an after-hours work event, but I'm going to do my best and also open up the floor in reblogs for people to chip in their thoughts

foremost: a DISCLAIMER that this post does not aim to shit on writers from the "before" era. there are many classic fics that I love and enjoy, even if I consider their characterizations to be "less accurate"* than the ones we have in the after era.

*aside to say: accuracy is based only off of literal media accounts we have of these men; we do not know them, we should not claim to know them, and they have had different comfort levels with the media knowing selective truths about their lives [sid out of choice, geno out of media xenophobia] than they did when these early fics were being written.

"before" fics (which I tend to refer to as "classic" fics, and had their heyday in 2012-2013 but continued up until 2016ish) tended to have more regimented roles for sid and geno. sid was usually the protagonist; geno was the love interest.

this came with a cascading set of characteristics assigned to each guy. sid was poor-little-meow-meow'd. geno was the pursuer in the relationship. sid usually bottomed. sid had the whole spacetoaster moment (he was the inspiration for the term, haha). there wasn't much a/b/o fic but sid was, like, the omega-fied one and geno was alpha-ized.

something I've been thinking about more recently is how 2012-2013 era sidgeno displayed signs of Migratory Slash Fandom. I don't think of MSF as an inherently negative/condemning thing, but I think it's a phenomenon that deserves to be mentioned/analyzed, yeah?

MSF thrives on big character differences.... like, grumpy/sunshine, sarcastic/broody, genius/empath. it's all about emphasizing disparate archetypes to create natural tension in a story. this works really well in most romance novels! I love it!

the issues arise when people try to make characters fit into these preset dynamics. and, frankly, when sidgeno first got big, we straight-up didn't know as much about sid and geno. I mean that. despite sid being EXTENSIVELY covered by media from age, like, 14, he was really tight-lipped compared to what we have now.

and geno was.... there. I don't mean that as a diss—he was INCREDIBLE, but the media totally passed him over again and again. or they helped contribute to stereotypes of him being a dumb oaf who didn't know english.

aside: ironically I think that helped in creating sidgeno and not, like.... sidflower or sidtanger. geno was so "DIFFERENT" from sid (aka: russian, characterized by media as not knowing how to speak [in comparison to sid's highly curated media soundbites]) that it meant he was the best candidate for A Ship with sid.

a lot of the really big writers who got into sidgeno were fandom veterans with lots of experience in other big fandoms. to me, that means MSF had a hand in all this. and we should be grateful, because it led to the BOOM of hockey fic, and of sidgeno fic specifically. modern hrpf wouldn't exist without it.

that being said, those template ship dynamics, plus the media's attitude then towards sid and geno in its coverage, led to those characterizations of whiny soft sensitive boy sid who needed to be rescued even though he was the best hockey player EVER, and geno as the lumbering tall strong alpha not-that-bright Love Interest Man.

this isn't to say every fic was this way, or that this is BAD. I, uh, love poor-little-meow-meow-ing sid and omegafying the hell out of him. what I'm saying is that it was a near-ubiquitous characterization across the board.

that all changed in 2016-2018. I personally wholly credit sevenfists, though I imagine it's more nuanced than that, but: my blog, I make the rules here. I don't know if sevenfists was psychic or just highly observant and absolutely excellent at reading people (and that's basically the same thing, right?), but characterization shifts began taking place in fic....

and the coolest thing happened, in that those characterizations were seemingly reinforced by more media coverage. the back to back cups brought with them TONS of interviews with and media about the team, and sid and geno in particular. the coolest part of it was that sid had loosened up a LOT and geno had gotten more comfortable (and had gotten a reporter firmly on his side).

the interviews about sid post 2016 were just SO different. so much information started coming out, and a LOT of it conflicted with Ye Olde Characterizations. as it turned out, sid was deeply one of the boys. he was funny. everyone liked him. he loved hosting. he was insanely comfortable around almost everyone, including strangers, because he's a little freak who's kind to everyone. he can make smalltalk like no one's business. he's kind of gross. he likes to giggle and be in on jokes and get into the thick of it. he isn't some blushing virgin bride sold off of mario's doorstep, yeah?

and geno, too, was finally getting the coverage he deserved. and his personality was both fortified by age and better shown to us through media. as it turns out, he isn't some happy go lucky oaf. he's mercurial and intensely aware of what others think of him (and he CARES). he's sensitive and thoughtful but also can lash out at random times. he has a wicked sense of humor that he uses as a defense mechanism and as a surefire way to get people to like him, which matters to him. and, as everyone says, he is SMART.

if you had to boil it down, I'd say that post-2016, it became clear that SID is the confident one and GENO is the insecure one. and fic caught onto that with a miraculously fast pace. also: they're more alike than they are different, but I still think romance inherently feeds off of difference and tension, so we still exaggerate things to make the stories ✨WORK✨.

I'm not going to give examples of pre- and post- era fics, because I don't want to point any fingers and say someone was doing characterization "wrong." that's not the takeaway I want anyone to have here.

fandom attitudes have changed. it's been 10 years since that first wave of fics, and while I don't think that's very long, it's a hell of a long time on the internet, and in a niche internet community. what was once the standard for fics (and what was well-read, and what people gravitated towards) was different. not worse—different.

I think it's fair to say the "after" era of fics is more "accurate" to what we know of sid and geno. it's also fair to say that this is only the case because we have a WEALTH of information, character-revealing interviews and videos and anecdotes, that Ye Old Authors could only dream of getting.

I really love the story of how everything has changed, and it's a fabulous microcosm of fandom evolution and how approaches to fanworks have changed and grown with fandom, and I think it's all so so cool.

[forsapphics]

Two couples of women kissing (1900s)

[kitkatpancakestack]

Can't believe I just seen a post refer to Bucktommy as B/T, babe what were you thinking. That shit has been blacklisted for like three years now. Know your herstory

[warningsine]

Good post op.

For those interested, here are some such films to know herstory:

"Mädchen in Uniform" (1931)

"Anna and Elizabeth" (1933)

"All about Eve" (1950)

"Olivia" (1951)

"Mädchen in Uniform" (1951), dir. Géza von Radványi

"Girls in Uniform" (1951), dir. Alfredo B. Crevenna

"No Exit" (1954)

"The Girl with the Golden Eyes" (1961)

"Walk on the Wild Side" (1962)

"The Nun" (1966)

"Persona" (1966) (yes, I'm including it)

"Belle de Jour" (1967)

"Les Biches" (1968)

"The Killing of Sister George" (1968)

"Baby Love" (1969)"

"The Exquisite Cadaver" (1969)

"The Vampire Lovers" (1970)

"Daughters of Darkness" (1971)

"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972)

"The Beguines" (1972)

"Successive Slidings of Pleasure" (1974)

"Twice a Woman" (1979)

"Desert Hearts" (1985)

"I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing" (1987)

"Betty" (1992)

"Les Voleurs" (1996)

"8 Women" (2002)

"Nathalie…" (2003)

"Night Fangs" (2005)

"Backstage" (2005)

"Pretty Persuasion" (2005)

"Loving Annabelle" (2006)

"The Page Turner" (2006)

"Notes on a Scandal" (2006)

"Bandaged" (2009)

"Chloe" (2009), American remake of "Nathalie…"

"Cracks" (2009)

"Gigola" (2010)

"Bloomington" (2010)

"A Perfect Ending" (2012)

"Concussion" (2013)

"Nymphomaniac: Vol. II" (2013) (going controversial with this one)

"Tru Love" (2013)

"Clouds of Sils Maria" (2014)

"Sand Dollars" (2014)

"The Duke of Burgundy" (2014)

"Unexpected" (2014)

"4.48" (2014)

"Carol" (2015)

"Freeheld" (2015)

"Summertime" (2015)

"AWOL" (2016), dir. Deb Shoval

"Bird of Prey" (2016)

"Foreign Body" (2016)

"Allure" (2017)

"Atomic Blonde" (2017)

"Daphne du Maurier: In Rebecca’s Footsteps" (2017)

"The Party" (2017)

"You, Me and Him" (2017)

"Lizzie" (2018)

"The Favourite" (2018)

"Suspiria" (2018)

"The Bisexual" (2018)

"Clementine" (2019)

"Greta" (2019) (anon's* choice ❤️)

"Saint Maud" (2019)

"Ammonite" (2020)

"I Care a Lot" (2020)

"T11 Incomplete" (2020)

"Take Me Home" (2020)

"Parallel Mothers" (2021)

"Vigil" (2021)

"Benedetta" (2021)

"Anaïs in love" (2021)

"Eileen" (2023)

"May December" (2023)

Some of them are subtextual, some of them explicit, some--to use Tumblr's favorite word--problematique, some do not revolve around romance, some are cinematic masterpieces, some utter trash.

*Edit:

Ok, I laughed out loud, but on second thought? #valid

[womeninfictionandirl]

Susan B. Anthony by Allison Adams

“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less."

Susan B. Anthony (1820 – 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who dedicated her life to woman suffrage. It is largely because of her determination and zeal that women in America have the equal right to vote and own their own property.

[gatheringbones]

[“Once, Joan took up the microphone for a solo performance that fills up an entire B side. She was sick. Her head hurt too much to write. Doctors couldn’t diagnose her. She worried she was coming to the end of her life and wanted to leave a final message. “I want to tell tales of a lesbian life,” she says, her voice high and self-conscious where Mabel’s is deep and restless. “I want to talk about the wonderful women I’ve known, and I want to talk about what it’s meant to be a lesbian and how it was at the core of all I think that was best in me.”

When Joan sat down to record this tape, she had already begun to collect tales of the wonderful women and lesbians she had known. In 1974, she cofounded the Lesbian Herstory Archives with Mabel Hampton and two other women dedicated to preserving lesbian culture before it disappeared. A year later, the budding collection of letters, magazines, cassettes, photographs, and books took up residence at Joan’s Upper West Side apartment, where it would continue to grow for the next fifteen years, until the organization raised enough money to purchase a permanent home, a brownstone in Park Slope. Mabel was a fixture at the archives, regaling volunteers with stories of the Harlem Renaissance as they opened the mail.

Joan lived. She went on to record dozens more interviews with Mabel for the archive. Their relationship marked a fundamental shift in how lesbian history was set down and passed along. Until Joan and Mabel, the amateur sexologists who edited Mary Casal’s memoir, the police who arrested women in male garb and the courts who put them on trial, and the newspaper editors who reduced their stories to lurid headlines filtered lesbian stories through the gaze of authority.

Sheer accident preserved much of what we know, what I can know, about the lesbians who lived at the turn of the century. Their personal letters and pages of poetry left a record so riddled with holes it leaves room to either imagine lesbian stories or discount them entirely. “]

amelia possanza, from lesbian love story: a memoir in archives, 2023

[beckydenimjean]

@beckydenimjean