#this is one for the history books

[melosjournal]

WE DID IT

i have been praying... since 2016....................................................................... hes back baby we get to kill him A G A I N

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[cursedgamerchild]

"internet historian's alt-right anyways" "great day to have never liked james somerton" "never even heard of illuminaughtii before this lol"

that's great buddy but don't go around thinking you're immune to this. if you're not looking for plagiarism, you likely won't notice it unless its egregiously obvious. hell, you've probably consumed plagiarized content without even realizing it. even hbomb pointed out that these people disguised what they presented pretty well as long as you didn't try and dig deeper. don't come away just thinking of this as a callout piece, take this as an important lesson about vetting your sources. if googling scripts in quotes was enough to expose the original, we should all start doing that shit!!

edit: it got a little too doomer-y a little too fast so one quick addition

this is hbomb's curated playlist of queer creators, many of whom were victims of plagiarism

this is producer kat on reddit calling for any more plagiarism discoveries and for queer content creators to be uplifted

please take some time to uplift these creators and recommend any you know! if you can help uncover more of the original creators whose work was lifted that would be great too :)

UPDATE- From Hbomb's twitter: "We're in the process of cataloguing everyone James Somerton plagiarised and finding their contact information. Which is quite a task, so to help us out: If you see this and happen to be one of the people Somerton stole from, please email us at contact@hbomb.zone"

edit 2:

[starii-void]

going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with

-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)

-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)

-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)

-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)

-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)

-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)

-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)

-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran

-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy

-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre

-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever

[sscarletvenus]

"both sides are suffering" really? because one is buried under rubble without any access to food, water, sanitation products, no fuel for ambulances, no electricity to support incubators for preterm babies, no proper beds or equipment for major surgeries, using vinegar as disinfectant, relying on phone lights to operate, has run out of body bags, had their largest bakery which received humanitarian aid bombed immediately after while the other is dancing and feasting and rejoicing and making tiktoks in clean clothes and brightly-lit rooms with electricity...

[flo-n-flon]

Who's with me to campaign for Alex Kingston as Pevara Tazanovni, Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah?

[stillwithmeisonlyyou]

Yes yes i do know what you meann

"you were my best friend before you were my best guess at the future" is actually fucking crazy why does she have to spell it out like this it hurts its too real and human and i feel parasocial just hearing and understanding the lyrics do you know what i mean?

[silverquillsideas]

in the palm of your hands

[flowersforfrancis]

I dread the end of winter.

[c-e-mcgill]

By the way, if any of you, like me, are nerds who love maps, I highly recommend checking out the Turgot map. I won't link it or tumblr will eat this post, but you can find it just by searching Wikipedia - it's an incredibly detailed 3D map of Paris made in the 1730s, and by "incredibly detailed," I mean

incredibly

incredibly

INCREDIBLY

DETAILED!

Look, there's Notre Dame! Individual trees! Individual lampposts! Individual boats!! (Some of them even have little people in lol, though clearly not to scale)

The full scan is over 35,000 pixels wide, guys! That's over 10 feet of map!! All drawn and engraved by hand! I'm freaking out a little! What an absolutely amazing piece of history & art!

[doctorsiren]

Day 25 of Sirentober / Doctober

Muse / Oracle

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Available as a print on my Etsy Shop

[starry-bi-sky]

do yall ever think about bruce/batman!clone danny standing in front of his bathroom mirror after finding out he was a clone and silently tracing his face. The slope of his jaw and point of his chin. The high angle of his cheekbones and the shape of his eyes, the curve of his brow bones and the shape of his nose. The volume of his hair and the way it curls and gets fluffy when it gets too long.

His hair is black the same way a crow's wing is black. His dad's hair is black the same way a black bear's fur is black. His dad's eyes are blue like the ocean is blue. Danny's eyes are blue the same way a glacier is blue.

His dad has a square jaw and straight flat hair, and he tans and gets a face full of freckles when he's out in the sun for too long. Danny burns like a lobster and his face remains untouched. Danny has a sharp jaw and tall cheekbones, and Sam says when he's not smiling there's almost something regal about him. You would never call Jack Fenton "regal" when he's not smiling.

Sam says when he's not smiling he looks scary the same way a stone statue is. Jack Fenton when he's not smiling looks scary the same way that german shepherd staring at you across the street is.

Do you ever think he grew up wondering if he was adopted. Because of course, he has black hair and blue eyes like his dad. But having the same color doesn't make you someone's child.

Or, worse, things he's heard from the other kids and the other parents and even some of his teachers growing up; that he was the product of an affair. And that his dad was just too stupid to notice. And Danny would defend his parents until the day he died, because Jack Fenton wasn't an idiot and Maddie Fenton wasn't a cheater.

But doubt comes in with fickle tongue. his parents swear up and down that he is their child when he asks about either. That Danny just had his grandparents' features, but he was their son and they loved him.

But Danny doesn't look like either of his parents. His mom's eyes are blue like an aquamarine and Jazz's too. And they burn like lobsters in the sun too, but Jazz gets freckles on her face and so does Maddie. And as Danny grows up he doesn't bulk up or get stocky like his dad did, and when he hits puberty he doesn't shoot up like a tree like Jack Fenton did.

He stays small, and they say he's a late bloomer (and he is), or that he just has his mom's height. But he's fast and has good stamina, and some days it feels like he's built entirely different from his family. That the things they went through growing up just didn't apply to him. Jack and Maddie Fenton both had acne and breakouts when they hit puberty, and Jazz inherits it and he's seen the amount of skincare products she keeps on her side of the bathroom.

And then he hits puberty and breaks out maybe once or twice, but his skin stays clear for the most part and the problems and changes his dad went through just don't happen to him.

And the truth is worse than all of the lies.

How horrifying.

[ashleyloob]

I randomly got dragged to Mormon church and met the illustrator for A Series of Unfortunate Events who is apparently a bishop at the church, and now we are Instagram mutuals. today was so bizarre

[call-me-kitty]

Thinking back. It absolutely kills me that Orion knew that something was up with D but he still loved him. D was violent and he was pushing him away but Orion stuck with him. Like he knew he was losing his friend and he still ran to his side. D was the first person he went to when he crashed into Sentinel's tower. He helped him up and immediately went "What did he do to you?"

Orion was ready to jump to his defense just for D to push him away with "Nothing compared to what I'm about to do to him."

And then still, Orion ran to his side and fought beside him with the only intention of helping his friend. He didn't check in on the high guard. He didn't even check with B to be completely honest. He ran to D.

Now I'm rambling but you get my point right? Orion was trying so dang hard to prevent a breakup and then...they're not even friends anymore...

[haridraws]

Excuse the format (I made this for instagram since that's what the publisher wants, rip) but this is basically a shorter, easy-to-read version of the history section at the back of my new book.

(Part 2 || The book)

---

Disclaimer: I'm extremely not an expert, and this is only scratching the very surface of complex topics that are hard to simplify. I mostly made this to EXTREMELY rec these books and podcasts, and would urge you to go check them out if you're not familiar!!

This stuff might seem obvious to some of you, but let me tell you, I do NOT think it's widely known in the general UK population.

Imo a lot of the general (especially white) public think that the Windrush generation - Caribbean migrants brought in to help rebuild postwar Britain in the 50s - were the first Black communities in the UK. And yet there's deliberately not much focus on why the Caribbean has links with northern europe. HMMMM

(Britain loves, for example, to celebrate the abolition of slavery without mentioning WHAT CAME BEFORE IT - Britain being the biggest trader of enslaved people, with more than 1 million people enslaved in the British Caribbean. They literally just did it overseas.)

Telling the truth about history or British imperialism gets this massive manufactured backlash at the moment. There are so many ideas prevalent in UK politics - anti-Black, anti-refugee, anti-trans - based on going ‘back’ to some imaginary version of the past. Those are enabled by a long tradition of carving parts out of the historical record, and being selective about whose histories get told and preserved. Even though the book I was making is a fun rom-com, by the time I finished researching, I decided to make an illustrated history section at the back too (this is a mini version). My hope is that readers who haven’t come across these histories might get an introduction to them - and some pointers of what they could read next to get a clearer view of our past.

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Source: Holding Space: Life And Love Through A Queer Lens , by Ryan Pfluger