art is the weapon

it/he | 23 | vampire enthusiast

[itmighthurtalittle]

Incredibly gorgeous speech from our boy.

[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

[heavensenthousepet]

you learn something new everyday. unless you're a historian. then you learn something old

[melonisopod]

[probuccalfat]

i cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you should ideally give birth in a fully equipped and staffed medical facility or if you insist on giving birth through an alternative method you should be within minutes of a hospital and i mean under 5 minutes if you’d like me to be really fucking frank

[probuccalfat]

like i can get on board with so much feminist theory and stuff, truly, and i do acknowledge that obstetrics and gynaecology as a field holds blind spots that are egregious (e.g. infant and maternal mortality in the black community) but there is no empowerment in risky birthing practices that our foremothers, and i’m not mincing words, often suffered through. birthing is natural, but it is not “easy” or even “innate”, it is best practiced guided and witnessed by those that know what to do in an emergency. you are not reconnecting to any innate feminine nature by practicing dangerous birthing practices—you are recreating a time when the bodies and lives of women barely mattered and it was expected that death would/could occur at insane and tragic rates.

[probuccalfat]

this is a hill i will spend the rest of my days fighting on because while i am not interested in birthing children myself, i have an incredible passion and interest in the field of labour and delivery. it’s been one of my greatest joys to play even a small part in delivering neonates. i do not want anyone to risk their babies over a deeply, deeply misguided idea of free birth being “the natural way” when natural is not always synonymous with the safest way.

[anarchohellenism]

So many people think it's either midwife or doctor. It's not. Have your midwife or doula in the hospital room with you, I promise the doctors don't give a shit. Hell, you can have her do the delivery itself and just have the doctors there as emergency backup! But for the love of your baby, go to the fucking hospital.

[probuccalfat]

yup. a lot of hospitals are willing to work with you to realize your birthing plan as much as they can within safe limits and parameters. my hospital is closely and highly allied with midwives all up and down the coast, with the explicit instruction to call the midwife when we know a labouring patient is about to deliver so we can respect their plan. genuinely, you can have almost any kind of birth you want—just make sure that there are qualified professionals in attendance, and it’s not just midwives or OBGYNS you need. you have no idea when you’ll need a respiratory therapist on call, you have no idea when you will need a blood transfusion within minutes or risk certain death, L&D nurses do not have the same training as NICU nurses if a baby declines rapidly. it’s a literal thousand things that can go wrong and you should be in the best place for them to go wrong.

[i-enact-postvore]

You ever think about many peices of media have zero women and thats just perfectly normal but if a peice of media has an all female cast people get... like that? Women should be allowed to kill over this btw

[loveshoplifter]

same but it's black people

[i-enact-postvore]

That's right

[spookberry]

lowkey kinda hate how all the pride flags are just stripes, can we get some shapes up in here pls

[schnuffel-danny]

OK bisexual (czech)

[spookberry]

Hell yeah 🤙

[the-ghost-king]

Biczechual

[narutwitter]

[frontmansdefender]

[mostcodesareciphers]

stop tagging your heated rivalry bullshit with “game changer” im tryna look at gifsets of anna garcia beating up demi adejuyigbe while josh rueben fucks a sam reich mannequin in a baby carrier.

[sandersstudies]

Anybody else have no idea how their personality is perceived by others? Like am I nice? Am I mean? I have no idea.

[sandersstudies]

When people tell me stuff about me I literally think about it nonstop for 3-5 business days.

[sandersstudies]

A coworker casually said “everyone else likes you” (because one coworker was mad at me) and I was for real like ????everyone likes me??????

[lonestarflight]

Apollo 17 vs Artemis II

[mementochao]

Despite everything, it's still you.

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Also prev tags:

That's really cool actually

[tanoraqui]

#excuse me but are you telling me that the Apollo pic is made with the help of the SUN and the Artemis one with the help of the MOON??? #that's actually so poetic i want to cry

@gorandomshesaid wait i need to sit with this one. wait.

[animentality]

[grey-screaming]

[ecto-hazard]

youre so fuckign right

[werewolf-transgenderism]

irritating as fuck when people get mad at Black people existing in premodern historical fiction/fantasy media. like first of all, you're racist. and second of all, you are acting as though Black people didn't exist in premodern Europe which is simply false. especially when we're talking about the Mediterranean, like what the fuck do you people think is along the southern half of the Mediterranean Ocean?? everyone's on boats, there are GOING to be interactions with Black people in Northern Africa, and there are GOING to be Black people in Mediterranean Europe. stop being stupid. your imagined homogeneous white European past is not historical reality, get over it you massive losers

[were--ralph]

this sleeper tweet

[guiigemar]

never met a sentence i couldn't make incredibly long

[dragon-in-a-fez]

does the body ALWAYS have to keep the score? maybe we could just have a friendly game this time. maybe we can just have fun without putting numbers on it