#women through history

[trans-androgyne]

Yes, trans men and mascs have historically been subjected to less public violence and ridicule than trans women and fems. Is having privilege really the only reason you can think of for that? Have you considered that they had less ability to be publicly visible in the first place? Please remember that the lack of autonomy women have historically been granted also applies to transmascs. They would have been considered the property of men. Spousal rape wasn't illegal everywhere in my country until 1993. How easy do you think it would be for forcibly impregnated transmascs to transition? For abused transmascs in general? Do you think they were all even allowed out of the house often without a man? There are so many stories of transmascs being forcibly institutionalized for being trans. Is that situation and otherwise being quietly abused and erased really so much better than hypervisibility?

[adiradirim]

From right to left: Beya Melamed; Bulgaria, 1890 - Jewish bride after the wedding; Turkey, early 20th century - Torah ark curtain made from a woman’s dress; Izmir, Turkey, 1929 - Wedding dress belonging to a Jewish family from Edirne, Turkey; early 20th century, gifted to museum exhibition in memory of Colombe Papo

Worn in the 19th and 20th century for weddings and other occasions by women across the Balkans and Anatolia, bindallı dresses were typically made of velvet in deep jewel tones. They were decorated with extensive gold embroidery of floral designs, which give this group of dresses their name, meaning thousand branches. This Ottoman-derived yet European-influenced style marked a transitional period between uses of traditional and modern western fashions.

The dresses - adopted from the surrounding culture as a fashionable item without any Jewish specificity - took on unique Jewish meaning through their use in the synagogue, where they became ark curtains, Torah mantles and binders, bimah covers, and the like, frequently with added dedicatory inscription. The donation of dresses and trousseau items by women to the synagogues created a personal bond between the women and the synagogue. The habit of donating these textiles to the synagogue endured long after the original embroidered bedclothes and dresses had gone out of fashion, and the transitional bindallı fashion thus remained alive in Sephardi synagogues long after the passing of the brides who wore the dresses.

[enlitment]

Paris 2024 really said Women's History rights <3

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Fire-eaters' political work was crudely done. At one level, it was racial fear mongering. In all of the speeches and appeals, the truly inflammatory pair presented was white women and black men. The threat of violence Black Republicans posed was always directed not at the white race in general but at white women in particular, and the threat itself was posed not by "black" Republicans (who were mostly white men) but by black and usually slave men incited to rape and pillage. The racial and gender threats were invariably a linked pair. And they were linked in pursuit of the nonslaveholders' vote.

On the eve of the presidential elections in 1860, a propaganda association was formed in Charleston, South Carolina. Called, appropriately enough, the 1860 Association, one of its avowed aims was to prepare, print, and distribute tracts and pamphlets. The publications committee made good on its promise, ultimately distributing more than 166,000 pamphlets. None had a bigger circulation than John Townsend's two incendiary contributions, "The South Alone Shall Govern the South" and "The Doom of Slavery in the Union." Both directly considered the effects of Black Republican government, which Townsend construed to include slave emancipation, on "the nonslaveholding portion of our citizens." Both insisted that the poor white man's racial superiority was bolstered only by slavery and would disappear with it, and both insisted that submission to Black Republican rule would touch off a race war between poor white and black men. "The midnight glare of the incendiaries' torch will illuminate the country from one end to another," Townsend railed in one of the pamphlets, "while pillage, violence, murder, poison, and rape will fill the air with the demonic revelry of all the bad passions of an ignorant, semi-barbarous race, urged to madness by the licentious teachings of our northern brethren." If they did not secede, Southern freemen would live to see their women seized as booty of war or, worse, raped by bestial and now emancipated black men. In Townsend's apocalyptic scenario the gender and racial threat to white men's rights are inextricably linked, their common property identified as white women, beloved objects men were pledged to protect.

All over the South, but particularly in the Deep South, politicians eager to unite voting men-the people-behind their plans envisioned the defense of the state as the defense of white men's wives from rape and murder. The fusion of the national and the feminine in Southern pleas has been repeated ever since along with the images and rhetoric of 1860 and 1861 in the argument that Southern men went to war to protect their womenfolk. In treating those images as truisms, as unproblematic and transparent articulations of men's beliefs, historians and others continue to deploy women as objects and symbols in a history made exclusively by men, just as Jefferson Davis had said. Where the nation became a woman, the woman took on a national posture. But the women offered to us in fire-eaters' and Unionists' narratives in 1860 and 1861 were not real. Like the virgin emblazoned on one side of the Virginia flag (who matched the shield on the other), or the female form adorning the hilt of a sword, they were figurative versions edited and simplified to serve as signs. They never spoke for themselves, never offered up their complicated and divisive perspective on events, their perceived truths about the dangers and the necessities in the historical moment. They were timeless forms, outside history. The challenge is to make women subjects of, as well as images in, the history we write.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south

[variousqueerthings]

GUYS GUYS GUYS THIS WAS IN THE COLORIZED TRANS PICTURES SITE THEY’RE NOTED THERE AS MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD PATIENTS!!!!!!!!

[navree]

there has GOT to be a way to explain anne boleyn's proto-feminism and importance to history without absolutely shitting on katherine of aragon and acting as if she was basically set dressing for her entire marriage rather than a person in her own right and an important one at that, but i think a lot of stanne's are just virulently misogynistic so they're physically incapable of doing so

[unhonestlymirror]

Guys, who's gonna tell her?

Molotov-Ribbentrop pact who?👀

[wonder-worker]

"[Alice Perrers] was an outsider to the exalted social and political world in which she found herself after becoming Edward III's mistress in the 1360s. Lacking any gentle or noble connections within her family, she had no natural network of political supporters in the royal household and council. She was dangerously dependent on her association with the other members of the court covine who were themselves exposed and disgraced in the Good Parliament. And if the testimonies given against her by other courtiers in 1377 are anything to go by, she had a knack for alienating many of those with whom she came into contact in the royal household. Furthermore, while significant numbers of single and widowed women in her generation were able to pursue independent and successful careers in trade, Alice's strategy of developing an extensive landed estate brought her into contact with members of the nobility, the gentry, and the church who were far less conditioned than their counterparts in the mercantile world to disputing with self-made, independent women. The effusion of misogyny in the Good Parliament, represented by the extraordinary preamble to the ordinance against women's practice of maintenance, speaks powerfully to this deep-seated social and gendered prejudice."

W.Mark Ormrod, "The Trials of Alice Perrers"

[timothylawrence]

further orientalism discussion under the readmore

the orientalism in dragon age's new game is especially fucking awful right now when you see the disgusting sexualization the iof + zionists are doing to palestinian and lebanese women. like its hand in hand. the orientalism you're seeing in your video game is an extension of real war crimes and sexual violence being done right now. the iof soldiers putting on lebanese and palestinian women's dresses and undergarments in their raided homes after expelling them and/or murdering them is tied in.

[hearthmistress]

the argument from corset defenders that they're just trying to say corsets "weren't universal torture devices" and/or "people didn't typically tightlace" is rendered automatically null by the fact that this is fundamentally a straw man argument - one that is made more so because they're purposefully ignoring valid critiques of corsetry - ones that actually take historical context into consideration (i.e. the role of the patriarchy, white women's bodies as tools of colonialism, fashion interlinked with industrialization and capitalism, real women's testimonies and feelings towards it, dress reform and medical history) when discussing clothing and fashion history - to repeat this rhetoric.

most critiques I've seen have encompassed discussions of gender, labour, and colonial history. It's a shame that people keep insisting on seeing the corset as (at best) a neutral item and devoid of social/racial/gendered context, and rather than as something that directly interacts with those topics, and therefore cannot be simply rendered as neutral item of clothing.

[famewolf]

baring my teeth at my friends when they send me nice, genuine messages about how much they care about me and replying in kind but wanting to bite something at the same time

[prolibytherium]

Absolutely death gripped clenched trying not to comment on reductive posts on ancient greek homosexual relationships

[noctomania]

Help Protect the Internet Archive!

“If our patrons around the globe think this latest situation is upsetting, then they should be very worried about what the publishing and recording industries have in mind,” added Kahle. “I think they are trying to destroy this library entirely and hobble all libraries everywhere. But just as we’re resisting the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back on this unjust litigation against our library and others.”

I just donated to Archive.org because they have spent the past two decades building this Digital Library that has collected over 100 PETRAbytes (1 petra = 1000 tera) of content from all over time and the world.

All kinds of media, even game emulators.

Books you can rent.

Full feature films.

Historical documents.

Webpages - The Wayback Machine, archiving over 860mill webpages across time, is part of the library.

The have a slew of projects designed to help allow libraries and everyday individuals contribute to this library as well as help give everyone access like Offline Archive , Bookserver - even in unique ways like with the Bookmobile!

They are also under attack though, which is what encouraged me to contribute today. Libraries across the US, and lets be real - access to education in many areas of the world - is under attack. I do suspect not just DDoS, not just businesses, but even governments seeking to oppress people will try to suppress this archive and the knowledge is holds.

While you can donate there are other ways to help:

Volunteering is an option, if that fits your bill. If you have collections that should be digitized, they have Scanning Services that would help people contribute non-digitized media to the archive. Also the aptly named Open Library is a great place to contribute either with books or if you are a programmer you can build on top of the data as well. There are also some jobs available! (i can't be sure without their info, but they may qualify as a PSLF employer since they are non-profit)

Archive.org is my new favorite place of all time. Both because of the content but also because of the mission at the heart of it all:

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.

[sendmyresignation]

another number one's fun fact that's literally pissing me off. well no this is a wonderful fact that has emotional resonances but like the ways women contribute to music history is so vast and far reaching and its just never acknowledged. even in supposedly male-dominated scenes and genres its always there and this erasure is only worsened by the fact nobody behind the scenes is given their due, we only view musicians or like. producers (read: auteurs) as the genius and not the village full of people

[nickysfacts]

Alice was a real person!🫖

🦤📖🌹