Athycat

Rather eclectic and mostly reblogs I'm afraid. History - unwritten gay history if I can find it. Very few NSFW. Very few.

[justanothertinablog]

[217truckdrivinman]

[mockva]

[revoltedstates]

Deadeye in Drag – A Mystery Solved?

In this article, I explored these amazing images of Civil War soldiers in drag and was able to confidently ID one of them (on the far right) as John H. Brown of the 1st US Engineers (and previously Andrew's Sharpshooters), who was wounded in action at Antietam. Click the link above to learn more.

[apoemaday]

The Philosopher

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

And what are you that, wanting you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man on my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell, -- And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well?

[private-idaho1]

Thornton Wilder, age 23, 1920, from his Yale graduation photograph.

This author and playwright was introduced  to his close friend and supposed lover Samuel Seward by Gertude Stein. His homosexuality was never disclosed publicly and he died after living with his sister for many years. 

[mranom45]

vintage sailors

Circa 1910

[fravery]

“Life must be rich and full of loving—it’s no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.” ~ Jack Kerouac

[rocy5]

[master-john-uk]

The Moon will be full on 30th/31st May 2026. A Blue Moon... the second Full Moon in a calendar month.

Are the stories about the Full Moon true? about the Full Moon true? Possibly. Tales about werewolves, etc. date back at least 2,000 years. As a scientist, I find it hard to believe in the metamorphism, or shapeshifting. But there is plenty of evidence o prove me wrong! The Moon moves oceans. 75% of the human body is water. It is very likely to have some effect.

Many men have an increased sexual urge when the Moon is full. And, when the Full Moon occurs at the weekend... many urban police forces around the world report a rise in violent, or anti-social crime

BEWARE!

[gregorygalloway]

Hud was released on 29 May 1963.

After reading Larry McMurtry’s 1961 novel, Horseman, Pass By, screenwriter Irving Ravetch recommended it to Paul Newman and Martin Ritt to be their first film for their newly-formed Salem Productions. Ravetch and his wife Harriet Frank Jr. adapted the novel for the screen, changing the focus from Lonnie Bannon (played by Brandon deWilde) to his uncle, Hud Bannon. Ritt changed the novel’s black housekeeper to a white one (played by Patricia Neal) because he thought “a relationship between Hud and a black woman would not work” at the time. The studio was against the hiring of Melvyn Douglas, but Ritt insisted, and cinematographer James Wong Howe insisted on his vision to shoot the film in black-and-white.

Hud was a commercial and critical success, nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. The film received 3 Oscars: Best Actress (Patricia Neal), Best Supporting Actor (Melvyn Douglas), and Best Cinematography (Howe).

[master-john-uk]

Paul Newman was childhood/teenage crush!

I had the privilege of meeting him at a dinner in New York in th 1990’s. It was the only time I have ever found myself unable to speak!

[soldiersofthequeen]

The 80s didn’t rush you.

You had time to just lie on the carpet and listen.

No notifications. No endless scrolling. No pressure to be anywhere else.

Just wood-panelled walls, warm lamp light, a stereo humming in the corner, and headphones big enough to cover half your head.

This was childhood before the internet. Slow afternoons. Albums played all the way through. The quiet feeling that you had the whole day ahead of you

[monamoni]

104 skydivers, 20 nations and one beautiful world record breaking moment

[passareltemps]

"Three Little Piggies" by Tatiana Yanovskaya-Sink.

[efemmera-archive]

Manuscript illumination depicting a lesbian couple kissing and a gay male couple embracing from the Moralized Bible of Vienna (1220s).

This illustration is one of the only explicit depictions of female homosexuality known from the medieval era.

[giantcowboy]

Fine young specimen

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

The Bookseller: Britain's bestselling LGBTQ+ books of 2026 so far

We have combed through NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) for the first four-and-a-bit months of 2026 to find out how books by and about the LGBTQ+ community have performed this year. To do this, we have identified authors previously featured in LGBTQ+ profiles at The Bookseller among those who are known to be publicly out. From there we have identified the 50 bestselling titles and worked our way up the list from there to identify anyone we have missed. We may still have omitted some – either because they are not publicly out, or because they have simply been missed in our search. For context, our 50th bestselling title – Louie Stowell’s Write and Draw Your Own Comics – has sold 5,163 copies, but there are 1,685 different ISBNs selling more than that so far this year, so it is akin to finding a needle in a gaystack. Just 50 titles out of the 1,685 – just under 3% – of the bestselling books of the year are considered LGBTQ+ by this definition. The 2021 census across the UK suggests that 3.7% of the population is lesbian, gay or bisexual – though it should be noted that that number may be under-reported if respondents were unable or unwilling to answer the question openly. At first glance, our Top 50 does slightly over-index from a value perspective: they represent 4.6% of the total sales of the equivalent 1,685 titles, more than their frequency within the list suggests they should be achieving – but £1.7m of the Top 50’s £7.6m comes from just one author. The cultural phenomenon that was Heated Rivalry on Sky Atlantic at the beginning of the year catapulted Rachel Reid’s Game Changer books – the series the steamy ice hockey romance was based on – straight to the top of the charts as the titles were published in the UK for the first time. For a brief period, Reid challenged Freida McFadden for the number of different titles in the UK Top 50 – and at of the end of April was the 11th-biggest author in the country, sandwiched between JK Rowling and colouring collective Coco Wyo – although sales have dipped since the initial release. Without Reid, the LGBTQ+ Top 50 represents 3.6% of total sales, nearly spot on that figure from the census. (Full article)

[angrylovelyheart]