#women who still mean the world to them
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
a-froger-epic · 2 years ago
Text
I hadn't seen the quote posted anywhere, and I thought it was quite a lovely one actually, so...
“For many years now, I have had the joy and privilege of living surrounded by all the wonderful things that Freddie sought out and so loved. But the years have passed, and the time has come for me to take the difficult decision to close this very special chapter in my life. It was important to me to do this in a way that I felt Freddie would have loved, and there was nothing he loved more than an auction. Freddie was an incredible and intelligent collector who showed us that there is beauty and fun and conversation to be found in everything; I hope this will be an opportunity to share all the many facets of Freddie, both public and private, and for the world to understand more about, and celebrate, his unique and beautiful spirit.
You see the spectrum of his taste. It's a very intelligent, sophisticated collection…I miss the fun, the humour, his warmth, his energy.”
Mary Austin
Tumblr media
Honestly? It's true that Mary can't win no matter what she does.
Had she kept it all forever, she would have continued to be accused of being obsessed with Freddie and living in a shrine to him.
Had she given it all away to museums, she would have faced criticism along the lines of: Is that what Freddie would have wanted? He never wanted Garden Lodge to be a museum, would he have wanted all his things in a museum?
Had she just got rid of it, she would have been accused of absolute sacrilege.
She made a decision, and she chose a way to do this that she claims Freddie would have approved of. And you know what? I've thought about it, and I must admit I do think Freddie would have been very amused by the idea of some rich fans bidding on his mustache comb. I genuinely think he would have laughed himself silly.
33 notes · View notes
rockethorse · 1 month ago
Text
The basegame wedding dress has a pregnancy morph??
Tumblr media
#I can never be positive if something in my game is like. a third-party launcher addition#but this is so funny and I had such a strong hunch#because rushing to have your Sim get married before they give birth is such a thing so many players would do!!#and it would be so funny to pay attention to that detail by having the wedding dress show the bump!!!!#all your sim's wedding photos very obviously giving away the reason for the rushed date HAHA#the dress with the pendant at the back that everyone default replaces off (the one with the knife texture) also has a preg morph#which I know because it's the one your Sims get forced into if they attend a wedding#but it's kind of unusual because pregnant Sims don't have the opportunity to change into formal wear?#like pregnant Sims get new undies pyjamas and swimwear in addition to their maternity outfit#and if you direct a pregnant Sim to change into one of them then it changes them into the appropriate maternity fit instead of their usual#but you can't direct them to change into formal and if you use a hacked option like the shop any-wear rack it uses their usual non morph fi#so it has to be something external like a wedding that triggers them to change into formal. and I have no idea why#does this mean there's a BG suit with a preg morph for men??#or did maxis not think that pregnant male Sims would be quite so desperate to get married#anyway I'm probably the last person to know about this LMAO and I'm sure no one cares bc everyone uses wear-anything mods#but I'm a scrub who still prefers to use the default maternity meshes so this is yuge to me#also if you've never seen this dress b4: in the early game all Sims getting married under an arch used to be forced into the same outfits#actually I can't remember if the men got forced into the same suit or if they just used their regular formal#because most BG formal outfits for men were mostly wedding-appropriate#but at any rate. all women wore the same wedding dress. and it was this .... beauty#and I don't remember with which EP it changed but probably pretty early on they just let Sims use their regular formal wear for weddings#so you could pick their wedding dress yourself#but this dress remained hidden by default (I think?) so ironically it meant you COULDN'T use the wedding dress even if you wanted to#also this is completely off topic but you would also go away for your honeymoon#which meant the Sims getting married would literally get driven away in a limousine and stay off-world for a while#it was kind of cute because it really was like they took a vacation from the player too. got up to their own mischief away from your contro#then with bon voyage they introduced ACTUAL vacations and they turned honeymoons into an actual game mechanic#but again these offworld honeymoons are no longer a possibility#kind of like teens 'going out' with permission got replaced by going out on actual outings/dates even though it was a cute event#wow this note section is long and irrelevant. anyway enjoy picking up your wedding dress from a store called 'It's Not Too Late'
94 notes · View notes
akkivee · 7 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
the mood is still like this pic of reol, femme fatale’s writer, in between the chuuoku seiyuu btw lmao
35 notes · View notes
wraith-caller · 6 months ago
Text
Never been a fan of people trying to shape the Golden Order into conservative Christianity. Reading fics where they talk about women needing to be "traditional" or seen but not heard, when the figurehead of the Order is a woman who has waged loads of wars, had two husbands, makes a point of examining her faith rather than submissively accepting it. Seeing posts that seem to say the GO is villainizing the use of sorcery, a way of deriding the carians, when one of the greatest champions of the Order himself studied sorcery of his own volition, and married perhaps the greatest sorceress ever known. There's nothing to indicate the GO ever had a beef with the practice of sorcery, and it's not like they shuttered Raya Lucaria after the union of the Moon and Erdtree. Cringing every time someone describes Fundamentalism as the "thoughtless extremist" wing of the Order when it's supposed to be about taking a scholarly approach to the examination of the laws of causality and regression.
Idk. It's just, there's so many reasons to be skeeved out by the GO, and it exists within a fantasy with a totally distinct history from our own world. While there are obviously influences from a wide variety of real-world sources on the mythology and world of the game, it's not a direct copy of reality. It's lame to see sth so full of opportunity for interesting world building from fans just turned into a watered down copy of what they despise in reality.
39 notes · View notes
wonder-worker · 7 months ago
Text
"[Elizabeth Woodville's] piety as queen seems to have been broadly conventional for a fifteenth-century royal, encompassing pilgrimages, membership of various fraternities, a particular devotion to her name saint, notable generosity to the Carthusians, and the foundation of a chantry at Westminster after her son was born there. ['On other occasions she supported planned religious foundations in London, […] made generous gifts to Eton College, and petitioned the pope to extend the circumstances in which indulgences could be acquired by observing the feast of the Visitation']. One possible indicator of a more personal, and more sophisticated, thread in her piety is a book of Hours of the Guardian Angel which Sutton and Visser-Fuchs have argued was commissioned for her, very possibly at her request."
-J.L. Laynesmith, "Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight's Widow", "Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty"
#historicwomendaily#elizabeth woodville#my post#friendly reminder that there's nothing indicating that Elizabeth was exceptionally pious or that her piety was 'beyond purely conventional'#(something first claimed by Anne Crawford who simultaneously claimed that Elizabeth was 'grasping and totally lacking in scruple' so...)#EW's piety as queen may have stood out compared to former 15th century predecessors and definitely stood out compared to her husband#but her actions in themselves were not especially novel or 'beyond normal' and by themselves don't indicate unusual piety on her part#As Laynesmith's more recent research observes they seem to have been 'broadly conventional'#A conclusion arrived at Derek Neal as well who also points out that in general queens and elite noblewomen simply had wider means#of 'visible material expression of [their] personal devotion' - and also emphasizes how we should look at their wider circumstances#to understand their actions (eg: the death of Elizabeth's son George in 1479 as a motivating factor)#It's nice that we know a bit about Elizabeth's more personal piety - for eg she seems to have developed an attachment to Westminster Abbey#It's possible her (outward) piety increased across her queenship - she undertook most of her religious projects in later years#But again - none of them indicate the *level* of her piety (ie: they don't indicate that she was beyond conventionally pious)#By 1475 it seems that contemporaries identified Cecily Neville as the most personally devout from the Yorkist family#(though Elizabeth and even Cecily's sons were far greater patrons)#I think people also assume this because of her retirement to Westminster post 1485#which doesn't work because 1) we don't actually know when she retired? as Laynesmith says there is no actual evidence for the traditional#date of 12 February 1487#2) she had very secular reasons for retiring (grief over the death of her children? her lack of dower lands or estates which most other#widows had? her options were very limited; choosing to reside in the abbey is not particularly surprising. it's a massive and unneeded jump#to claim that it was motivated solely by piety (especially because it wasn't a complete 'retirement' in the way people assume it was)#I think historians have a habit of using her piety as a GOTCHA!' point against her vilification - which is a flawed and stupid argument#Elizabeth could be the most pious individual in the world and still be the pantomime villain Ricardians/Yorkists claim she was#They're not mutually exclusive; this line of thinking is useless#I think this also stems from the fact that we simply know very little about Elizabeth as an individual (ie: her hobbies/interests)#certainly far less than we do for other prominent women Margaret of Anjou; Elizabeth of York;; Cecily Neville or Margaret Beaufort#and I think rather than emphasizing that gap of knowledge her historians merely try to fill it up with 'she was pious!'#which is ... an incredibly lackluster take. I think it's better to just acknowledge that we don't know much about this historical figure#ie: I do wish that her piety and patronage was emphasized more yes. but it shouldn't flip too far to the other side either.
30 notes · View notes
dreamyintersexouppy · 1 month ago
Text
transmascs stop pretending that transfems are untrustworthy sources for transfeminism challenge impos- fuck i didn't even finish and you already complained about our terminology
#i really hate the expectation to know theory in these shit communities#they're barely communities it feels like on here trans people are unified by strict categorization#constantly infinitely expanding definitions but treating them as immutable and emergent from the core of reality#rather that words used to describe things we experience or the positions we are placed in my transphobic society#we're unified by who is mean to us more than wether or not we actually like each other#and so we must always be ready to litigate our position in these spaces#because they must be Definitionally justified rather than just having a real community where we're treated like human beings#i wish we still had our elders... i wish we weren't so adverse to learning humanly#i wish i could escape the weird black and white fandom thinking but it worms it's way into every community here now#this is why i keep lamenting old t4t spaces#we weren't there to argue theory#we weren't opposed to learning it in fact it was useful and joyful to share with each other#to help describe our experiences and understand where we've been placed in the world#but that's not why we were there#we were there for community to be kind to each other#now it's nothing but a bunch of teenage fandom tme people arguing with fake versions of trans women they invented in their heads#while we just hide in the background wondering if the word community means something different now#or if we're really just so evil to our very cores that we were foolish to think we could have community in the first place#sorry just#needed to vent this shit has been in my head for a while#i wasn't in a place to go to gay bars or trans events when i was first here#i couldn't have local community so finding one here with transfems who loved each other#it was so important to me#and learning that i could cater to that small but kind audience in my sex work is what made me finally love doing it#before then i'd been doing it purely cuz i couldn't get any other job#and before that because i was forced to#there's a lot of trauma wrapped up in my work for me but i healed from it largely because of my sisters i found on here#but i don't know when it went away but it did#and now it feels like we're left in a massive crowd of screaming voices#and i don't recognize any of them anymore
10 notes · View notes
themyscirah · 4 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
Okay so basically the United States MINT of all people is going to be working with DC to make a line of coins! These coins sadly won't be in circulation (the things I would do to live in a world where I could get Batman coins from the supermarket) as they're collectors coins, but will be releasing over the course of the next 3 years, 2025-2027.
Designs haven't been released yet (the same is true for all 2025 designs) but we know there will be 9 coins in total (3 each year) with the first year featuring (of course!!!) Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.
Although we know the first three heroes to be featured, the remaining six have yet to be decided, and it turns out the Mint is putting out a survey on their site to gauge which of a group of culturally significant heroes people want to see most! (link to the form is mentioned in the article above)
The considered group includes: Supergirl, the Flash, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, John Stewart GL, Aquaman, Hawkman, Jamie Reyes BB, Robin (Damian?), Cyborg, and Batgirl, of which 6 will be selected.
As someone who does a bit of coin collecting myself (mainly circulation coins like the quarters sets, but I also have a couple proof and collectors coins) I think this is a really cool and interesting idea that showcases the history of the comics medium and these characters and their influence on American culture. Really excited to wait and see what the designs look like for the coins already announced!
#ABSOLUTELY INSANE TO ME#sorry just. only thing that could make this crazier is if these were circulating. i would fucking die actually lmao#i mean you could buy something with one of these legally but like youre an idiot if you do that so likeeee#someone showing up with the solid gold superman collector coin and its only legally worth a dollar lmao#not that someone would do this but future generations/archeologists finding a coin in some ruins and it just has like. batman on it#amazing to me#also just the transition from us currency having all fake people (lady liberty some random native american guy etc.) and then going to real#people and presidents then expanding that to honor people that they believe should be honored (think the harriet tubman coin set right now)#and representing beauty and innovation and culture through representation of the states#only through that lens to swing back around and have fake people on the coins again in the form of the freaking dc trinity. insane to me#no one ever gets me when im nerding out over coins its okay. at least its not postage stamps (i actually do have some special postage stamps#its like 1 sheet though it was for the 2017 eclipse and the image changes from totality to the moon with the heat of your finger theyre so#cool okay) anyways i like dont really know that much abt coins lol i originally saw a post abt this on reddit 💀 lol and had to check this#was real which is insane. anyways my dad got my all my coin stuff ive got a proof set from the year i was born albums to hold the 50 states#and national parks (america the beautiful but its 90% natl park designs lets be honest here) quarter collections as i find them irl#(dont have an album for us women yet sadly but do have some of the coins) as well as a few dimes and other circulation albums i havent used#much. and then i have a few collectibles like the hubble telescope $1 coin the 50th anniversary apollo 11 one and the 2021 anniversary peace#dollar. though like not the gold ones or anything like that lol but yeah. i talk abt coins every once and a while with friends and i know#things but then my dad is in the car and its like nevermind lol.#also put a ? after damian's name bc theres a chance it could be dick and they just used the wrong picture. because some of the character#bios had names but his didnt and seemed very dick grayson (acrobatics mention “batman's partner” etc) but not so specfic exclude either one#and the pick was damian. but then the ollie pick was goateeless for some reason so who knows#culturally dick is more important but dami is current so idk#dc comics#blah#ive really been learning so much today. first all in announcement and subsequent leaks and now this. what a ride#also love how im anticipating and know future comics things lol. when did that happen haha. ive really transitioned from only reading back#issues and never knowing current events to following a lot of releases lol and somehow finding out about the freaking coin collection...#crazy how that happens#cant scroll up at that first image without losing it a bit still actually. what a world we live in. anyways take your bets who is gonna be
5 notes · View notes
aroaessidhe · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media
2023 reads
The Last
slow building apocalyptic thriller
an american academic is at a conference in a remote Swiss hotel when a nuclear apocalypse strands him with just 20 others
50 days in, a body is found in a watertank and he becomes obsessed with investigating to find out who did it
even though the remaining people are just trying to quietly survive as supplies slowly dwindle and the winter approaches
#the last#hanna jameson#aroaessidhe 2023 reads#so I read this because there’s an aromantic side character!#she’s an interesting/complex character who has a friends w benefits thing with the MC#a few stereotypes but like she actively counters them#the only weird thing about it is that it’s implied she’s a republican who voted for the ppl who started the nuclear war…..#like. would a right wing person identify as aro lmao#but also like i’m okay with not all ‘representation’ being good people.#as for the rest of the actual book i found it quite interesting overall!#i enjoyed that it wasn’t just 'fighting dangerous people to survive' immediately like a lot of the postapoc genre#(though i wonder how much food they had to be fine for 2 months??)#though there is a bit of that in places when they leave the hotel#a lot of interesting characters and like.....discussion on what different kinds of people would do in that situation#the australian accent (audiobook) of the australian character…..not sure about that LMAO#also I don’t believe the internet would still function after half the world has blown up? like this thing needs upkeep right#there’s a bit where the MC is talking to two dudes who start talking like: so are we gonna repopulate society?#and being creepy about the women. and the MC is obviously like: yikes!#but also nobody even suggests like……we could just die? without repopulating humanity whatever the fuck that means?#why is that concept not even brought up?????? i am horrified that anyone would consider having children in that scenario. christ.#anyway i guess yeah overall a few things im like hm about but it's a pretty good book#aromantic books#(also the MC has a wife on the other side of the world but like. there's not any actual romance. his thing with the aro woman is offpage)
13 notes · View notes
feral-radfem · 2 years ago
Text
Hey if you're a non-radfem and you want to make a complaint that radical feminist critique keeps getting applied to you because you hang around radical feminist spaces here is my advice: leave.
Honestly, I'm so tired of seeing this shit. Go find some other places to hang out. I don't care that you came here because everyone else kicked you out for being a "transphobe". That does not make it our responsibility to soften our movement and our criticisms so that you feel comfortable in a movement you have no intention of of committing to. You are welcome here on the basis of being a woman, however, if you can't handle the feminist action that goes on in these spaces, then you need to leave. That is a you problem, not ours. I'm tired of hearing y'all whine that we don't coddle you enough and then adding anecdotal evidence of feminist harm or strawmen arguments for why you're justified in doing patriarchal actions were other women are not. There is not a single identifier or life experience you can tell me that is going to make me think that you deserve to be exempt from the same criticisms I would level at any other woman. If you're an adult, you should be mature enough to hear them. If you are not mature enough to hear feminist critique, you need to leave feminist spaces.
if you want to be self-serving, it is completely your right to do so. I've heard a number of you in passing claim that you "don't want to be feminist, you want to be people". Which, while that's an insulting sentiment as a feminist, just demonstrates that the only person y'all care about is yourself. You see being a person as inherently being self-serving and self-centered. First and foremost, it's all about you. That level of selfishness is pathetic and frowned upon in collective spaces. Feminism being one of them.
Just save us all the headache and go away. Y'all are one of the only groups of people on the internet who are able to piss me off in seconds, istg.
#lily responds#literally any of you who do not have a vested interest in the liberation of women refuse to do feminist action and#then still feel entitled to control how these space is function#f*** off. we have enough trouble holding spaces where we can have these discussions because we are feminist in the first place#we don't need a bunch of non-feminist women coming in and telling us that we are hurting their feelings and they#want us to do something about it. we're not doing s*** about it.#if you can't handle the fact that the things you're doing harm other women then stop f****** doing them#don't get mad at us because we're pointing out the damage you're doing and the damage in the messages you're helping perpetuate#you can log off and go experience all the spaces in the world that aren't made specifically for radical feminism#y'all hear that we're here to serve women in the effort to liberate all women and think that means we're here to serve you personally#I may be responding directly to a person regarding this soon but I'm so irritated I can't edit my post at the moment#I will make it clear here that I don't think every woman of the groups I just listed is doing this at all#I think it's a minority however I'm tired of these minority group of women using these identifiers to justify being a shit feminist#or justify why they don't have to be a feminist but should still have all the entitlement to the feminist spaces we create to talk about#our movement. these are feminist spaces first women's spaces secondary#I don't even know how to tag this because the specific people I want to reach is you fucking entitled ass orbiters#you who take advantage of the fact that we are welcoming to any woman to be divisive in our movement when you don't wish to be an activist#in the first place. or you want to claim the title alone and do good action but get us to stop criticizing ur anti-feminist actions#there's clearly enough of you that y'all can create your own gender critical non-feminist spaces. just leave us the f***#alone.#also when you use being gay as a justification for why you shouldn't have to be a feminist you make all us lesbian feminist look bad#there are plenty of feminists who recognized that we are women and therefore benefit from women's liberation#y'all are so f****** annoying#some of my tags may not make sense because I just listed just about every group of women there is realized I listed every group of women#and then erased it because I realized that was a lot of words for no reason so those are the identifiers I'm talking about in my tags
12 notes · View notes
ladynoirist · 1 year ago
Text
"FAMILY STRUCTURES WHERE EVERYONE TOOK CARE OF EACH OTHER" tell me you've never met an asian woman without telling me you've never met an asian woman
6 notes · View notes
musical-chick-13 · 1 year ago
Text
My God, I’m so tired of the pervasive idea that “Female characters overall just aReN’T aS weLL wRiTTeN” because there are a TON of properties that have EXCELLENTLY-complex, multidimensional female characters; people either just refuse to engage with them when people tell them those properties exist or they instantly write off all the women as “bitchy” and “annoying” without giving a single second of deeper thought.
11 notes · View notes
gender-euphowrya · 2 years ago
Text
i know our fatphobic cultures have deepfried and glassblown people's brains but it always boggles my mind when a fat person is fatphobic ??? what are you doing
11 notes · View notes
freebooter4ever · 2 years ago
Note
This is 1000% random but came to mind regarding the duck movie. I sometimies watch movies without sound if I think they might ~suck~ like that... so just a tip if you want to see it but not sort of experience it :D hahahha
heh, well. ive already seen it fully so the damage has been done. i bought it even, thinking i would want to rewatch it, but i really REALLY dont think i will. ever. i have watched a LOT of bad movies for my stupid infatuations over the years so honestly im used to it.
#Im not gonna pretend like it doesnt hurt a little seeing the kind of movie joe is ok with attaching his name to#I was vaguely aware he was conservative but i will admit i didnt really have it shoved in my face until this#It reminds me of one of my closest friends here who just...we meshed in a that natural immediate connection way#And one day we were sitting in the getty villa just chatting and i was talking about the amazing documentary the Janes on h * b *o#And he just casually threw out there that he was pro life and anti abortion and he kind of wished he could force a woman#To carry his child against her wishes#He insinuated that when he was younger he got someone pregnant on accident and she refused to have the baby and got an abortion#And he felt it was a violation of his rights not to be able to force her to have a baby#And let me tell you i was like a slap in the face#Like that is...it is so discounting a womans right to her own body#It was chilling to hear a guy who i vibed with so well talk about a woman as if she's just a body and nothing else#I personally have been lucky or ugly enough that its never been an issue i have no idea how i feel about it#I mean my grandma WAS catholic and that seeps down no matter how lapsed i am#So i dont think i would have an abortion? But like i said i really genuinely like kids and in an ideal world would want that#But god im in my thirties now and still not financially stable enough to support a child i have no idea what i would have done#Had i gotten pregnant on accident#I spent most of my twenties recovering from an abusive relationship and not letting men touch me so it was never a question#Im just saying its a womans body its her life pregnancy is simple for some but for others its a life altering experience#It should be her right to choose :( and i wish men respected women enough considered them human enough to recognize that#If the shoe were on the other foot what man would let a woman decide that he must be pregant for 9 months#ALSO for fucks sake women shouldnt have to be practically celibate like i was just to prevent any accident from happening#Also also it is so fucked up that the same people who are pro life are also the bob types - skeptical of adoption#Like this is how you get unwanted kids in the world and take it from me that kids childhood is really really weird#Like knowing from a young age that you are what ruined your mothers life????? Fucking weird man i dont think i will ever process it#Especially being a woman now and recognizing that yeah i kinda did ruin my mothers life but it was neither of our fault#It was the pressure of society and people Trying To Do What They Are Supposed To#Meanwhile my dad was the I Could Never Love Other Peoples Kids and I Hate All Children That Arent My Own type#So yeah i guess i have a lot of negative feelings about this movie after all#Anyway it might have completely killed the joe infatuation LOL probably for the best#Dont even get me started on the blink or you miss it homophobia with bonus weird almost racism in the therapy scenes
5 notes · View notes
fractalfablefrostfantasm · 1 year ago
Text
This but they are called to help do advertising for their job, and they see the corporate sponsored idol doing such a bad job that they are worried about the corpo idol losing their job so they sneak in to the training area to give them tips from their idol days, and absolutely can still rock their skills on set and on stage but just prefer the anonymity and peace of an office job they think does good work.
Idea: Idol girl disappears and transitions to become the most boring 40 year old man who works a 9-5 and people wonder why there's photos of that idol girl in his house and he's like "that's me when I was 19"
44K notes · View notes
scientia-rex · 7 months ago
Text
For the most part, my approach to prescribing hormones is “sure,” but I will note that the one thing I lean HARD on patients about is smoking. If you’re transgender, and you’re on hormones, the number one thing we want to protect is your cardiovascular health. That’s frankly the number one thing I want to protect in all my patients, but anyone taking exogenous hormones is at higher baseline risk. And the best thing you can do for your heart is DON’T SMOKE. It’s a bitch to quit, and I didn’t even smoke much or long before I quit in my late teens, and I STILL didn’t enjoy quitting and had smoking dreams for years. It’s harder to quit than just about anything else up to and including crack and heroin, and that’s coming from a patient of mine who recently passed in her early 60s who’d done all of those things—for years and years—but eventually was able to quit everything except smoking. And that killed her. She developed severe COPD and eventually called to say her blood oxygen saturation was dipping into the 70s, which is incompatible with life. She was lucid enough to decline medical care, including refusing to call 911 or go to the ER. A week later, after both I and one of our outreach nurses had contacted her to ask her to please go to the ER, I got a notification that she’d been found dead. She had been so frustrated that she wasn’t a candidate for a lung transplant.
One of my oldest trans patients is in her late 50s. She’s had blood clots that went to the lungs. Repeatedly. Smoking raises that risk. Estrogen raises that risk. She’s a veteran with PTSD; of course she smoked.
These aren’t theoretical. These are humans I’ve cared for over years of their lives. I have been rooting for them—my beloved former addict, who spoke without shame about her years of homelessness and drug use in the city; my queer elders, who are slowly trading in their motorcycles for power scooters. I want everyone to live their fullest, best life.
Smoking doesn’t fit into that. Please don’t smoke. I don’t want you to die like that—not now and not later. I want you to have the future that you may not be able to see yet, but exists.
Since I moved home as an out queer, word got out, and there’s a whole apartment complex of lesbians in their 60s to their 80s who come see me—sitting next to their wives in the office, nagging about blood pressure meds, tattling about not having gotten the shingles shot they said they would. To be clear, when I was growing up in town, I knew no lesbians. Not one. I knew one gay kid in my class, which eventually turned into two. We were it. To see these women living decades with their wives and being able to squabble like any couple in my office over who was supposed to bring their home blood pressure cuff in for us to check it… it means the world to me.
26K notes · View notes
therealbeachfox · 9 months ago
Text
Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.
It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.
To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.
This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.
Join me below, if you would.
2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.
Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.
It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.
But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.
The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.
“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”
“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”
We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.
"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?
The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.
We had slightly miscalculated.
Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.
“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”
“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”
“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”
“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”
And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.
00000
We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.
It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.
At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.
Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.
So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.
“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.
“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.
Monday is the last day to do this, after all.
00000
So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.
The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.
“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”
So.
Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?
Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.
It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).
Then it starts to rain.
We had not dressed for rain.
00000
Here is how the next six hours go.
We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.
Everyone is so happy.
Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.
People online start making delivery orders.
Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.
A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.
The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.
A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.
Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.
00000
We have Line Neighbors.
Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.
The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.
Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”
“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”
“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”
My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.
“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.
“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”
We stay in line.
It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.
The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.
We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.
It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.
They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.
We still have a -long- way to go.
00000
They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.
It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”
We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.
We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.
I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.
The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.
Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.
The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.
A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“
The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”
We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.
If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.
That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.
There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.
We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)
I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.
There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.
Then we're married.
Then we get in line to get our license.
It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.
Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.
We make it to the marriage records office.
I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.
It's almost 3PM.
00000
There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.
We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.
I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”
He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.
Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.
We get back to our car and climb in.
It’s 4:30 and we are starving.
There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.
We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.
We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.
The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.
My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”
00000
It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”
But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.
It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.
I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.
We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.
Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.
It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.
Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"
And that was that.
00000
When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.
I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.
I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.
I never thought I’d live in this world.
And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.
I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.
The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.
And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.
25K notes · View notes