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sua-sponte-deactivated20200331

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

is-the-post-reliable

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

#lgbtq #history

closet-keys

when I was a kid I really enjoyed Suzy Eddie Izzard's comedy routines. I remember she had this one joke that went something like

(fatherly voice): yes little johnny. you must learn to play the clarinet, because I never got the chance when I was a boy. (little johnny voice): well you got the chance now. why don't you learn it now?

I was talking with another trans person earlier, and we were talking about relationships with our respective moms. they were talking about how their transition was being viewed by their mom as something being done to her.

I was talking about a similar thing with my mom's feelings about my surgeries. I was jokingly saying, as if to my mom, "the things I do to my own body actually don't affect yours at all, because we have two different bodies. that one is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. but this one is mine."

this is honestly something I think is really pervasive with parents, even outside of the context of being trans.

with my own mom, I know she deeply resented the patriarchal way she was raised. I know (because she's told me such) that part of the reason she wanted kids was to prove that she could raise a boy and a girl equitably. It was very important to her to "have one of each."

what she never said explicitly, but I've sort of come to realize must be the case, is that on some level her desire was to re-parent herself. she wanted the experience of getting to raise herself the way she wished her parents had raised her. she wanted to see what kind of life she would have had if she had gotten the same opportunities as her brothers.

on some level, this feels almost progressive. a laudable goal. but the thing is, it's an impossible desire. you can't raise yourself. you are always going to be raising an entirely separate person.

I am not my mom. her raising me was not her raising herself; it was her raising someone who had never existed before. every effort to preemptively treat me as she wished she was treated, to make predictions about my life based on her own, or to encourage her own interests far past when I communicated not liking them, was often a kind of a replacement for asking how I wanted to be treated, asking what I wanted from my life, or asking what I was interested in. Instead of learning about me, she wanted to shape me.

I think this is so common. This desire to give a child all the things that the parent wanted as a kid seems so generous and heartfelt from the point of view of the parent. But for the kid, it often ends up in continuous signals that everything they might want, enjoy, or become needs to be justified through the lens of fulfilling this parental fantasy.

there is a sense of duty to live the life the parent wants, because the parent couldn't. then this child doesn't get to live their life either, and might grow up and have their own child and parent with the same approach. sometimes there's generations upon generations of everyone living their parent's life instead of their own.

eventually I think parents all do need to take stock of what they really want out of being a parent.

as a parent, you cannot raise yourself. you can only raise a new person in the world. if you are grieving the lack of support you had to be yourself growing up, you are not going to successfully recreate yourself through forcing a child to pretend to be you. if you really wished you learned to play the clarinet as a kid, you need to stop displacing that wish onto your child and recenter it. this grief that drives the desire to create oneself through one's child relies on the belief in one's own life somehow already being over. it relies on a profound sense that it's "too late" (to ask to be treated differently, to pursue certain interests, or to become someone new). but unless you're dying, this belief is not accurate. there is still time. learn the clarinet now. you've got the chance now.

let your kid figure out what they want to do with their own free time and body. don't try to shape their life into the best version of what yours could have been. if you want to do right by your kid, then be a source of support so this entirely new human being gets the chance to live their own life.

mouseshouses

windowbox

sophsun1

Happy Pride 🌈 | The Golden Girls (1985-1992)

Can I be honest with yall I don't want to hear SHIT against cishets at pride this year

teaboot

"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade

teaboot

At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever

deheerkonijn

when there's a heatwave in Piltover but you still wanna cuddle.

#incredible #arcane #fanart #jayvik

parkchanwoohoo

Once you start noticing how the incapacity to handle discomfort affects how people live their lives it's actually pretty shocking how it ruins pretty much every conceivable aspect of existence. Interpersonal relationships, romantic and platonic. Career and education opportunities. Your politics Your willingness to go anywhere. The kind of food you eat. The kind of art you expose yourself to and your ability to read it. It's never just one thing, it touches everything, and once you notice it it's like suddenly being able to see germs or something. Just this horrific catastrophe people look at you askance for screaming about. As I grow older and see what became of my friends and peers who could not learn to handle discomfort, the more I'm like. This is a genuine societal issue

werewolf-beans

Increasing my discomfort tolerance has also been one of the greatest assets to improving my mental health.

v02qe

Ken kaneki 2025

#nice #tokyo ghoul #fanart

uservik

- v. hugo

#les mis

crowboy-bebop

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

source: hellgate osprey cam

curlicuecal

aetherograph

More context:

the first osprey is the father, the one that comes later is the mother.

ospreys are not eagles, they're ospreys

ospreys only eat fish, that's why they don't register this starling as possible food

the starling got home safely

the starling was not trying to eat the eggs, it was mostly curious and you can see it trying to hop under the osprey every time the osprey tries to sit down again--this is because the starling is still a baby and has the instinct to get under an adult for warmth, even though it mostly has its feathers. this scares the osprey because that is a Foreign Creature near its eggs.

at the end of the video you can see the ospreys starting to turn the eggs. birds do this so the yolk and/or embryo don't stick to the shell of the egg, which is bad for the egg's health.

ospreys have eyes adapted to seeing beneath the surface of the water!

#fascinating #bb animals #vines

notjusthespongenextdoor

I'm coming to realize how vital it is to keep a running list of shit you did in the past few weeks so that you can participate in small talk. It's literally not anything to do with them being interesting at all it's just having Something to say to give people even the barest thing to hold on to. It's so you don't get into the "what have you been up to" "nothing much what about you" "yeah same" trap. Literally just say something.

What have you been up to? Um well it's getting warmer so I've been having to brush my cat every day.

Like no it's not that interesting of a thing to say. But now they can respond to it. They could say, man yeah it really is heating up, I've been trying to think of things to do inside more often. Or, oh you have a cat? What's their name?

Like. It's Something. All you need is Something. And if you're like me and your brain immediately goes blank upon entering small talk then keeping a list will help you remember things to say.