One of the most bizarrely cool people I’ve ever met was an oral surgeon who treated me after a ridiculous accident (that’s another story), Dr. Z.
Dr. Z. was, easily, the best and most competent doctor or dentist I’ve ever encountered – and after that accident, I encountered quite a number. He came stunningly highly recommended, had an excellent record, and the most calming bedside manner I’ve ever seen.
That last wasn’t the sweet gentle caretaking sort of manner, which some nurses have but you wouldn’t expect to see in a surgeon. No; when Dr. Z. told me that one of my broken molars was too badly damaged to save, and I (being seventeen and still moderately in shock) broke down crying, he stared at me incredulously and said, in a tone of utter bemusement, “But – I am very good.”
I stopped crying on the spot. In the last twenty-four hours or so of one doctor after another, no one had said anything that reassuring to me. He clearly just knew his own competence so well that the idea of someone being scared anyway was literally incomprehensible to him. What more could I possibly ask for?
(He was right. The procedure was very extended, because the tooth that needed to be removed was in bits, but there was zero pain at any point. And, as he promised, my teeth were so close together that they shifted to fill the gap to where there genuinely is none anymore, it’s just a little easier to floss on that side.)
But Dr. Z.’s insane competence wasn’t just limited to oral surgery.
When I met Dr. Z., he, like most doctors I’ve had, asked me if I was in college, and where, and what I was studying. When I say “math,” most doctors respond with “oh, wow, good for you” or possibly “what do you want to do with that after college?”
Dr. Z. wanted to know what kind of math.
I gave him the thirty-second layman’s summary that I give people who are foolish enough to ask that. He responded with “oh, you mean–” and the correct technical terms. I confirmed that was indeed what I meant (and keep in mind, this was upper-division college math, you don’t take this unless you’re a math major). He asked cogent follow-up questions, and there ensued ten or so minutes of what I’d call “small talk” except for how it was an intensely technical mathematical discussion.
He didn’t, as far as I can tell, have any kind of formal math background. He just … knew stuff.
I was a competitive fencer at this point in time, so when he asked if I had any questions about the surgery that would be necessary, I asked him if I’d be okay to fence while I had my jaw wired shut, or if it would interfere with breathing.
“Fencing?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “like swordfighting,” because this is another conversation I got to have a lot. (People assume they’ve misheard you, or occasionally they think you mean building fences.)
“Which weapon?”
“Uh. Foil.”
“No, it won’t be safe,” and he went off into an explanation of why.
Turns out, he was also a serious fencer – and, when I mentioned my fencing coach, an old friend of his. (I asked my fencing coach later, and, oh yes, Dr. Z., a good friend of mine, excellent fencer.) (My coach was French. Dr. Z. was Israeli. I never saw Dr. Z. around the club or anything. I have no idea how they knew each other.)
So this was weird enough that later, when I was home, I looked Dr. Z. up on Yelp. His reviews were stellar, of course, but that wasn’t the weird thing.
The weird thing was that the reviews were full of people – professionals in lots of different fields – saying the same thing: I went to Dr. Z. for oral surgery, and he asked me about what I did, and it turned out he knew all about my field and had a competent and educated discussion with me about the obscure technical details of such-and-such.
All sorts of different fields, saying this. Lawyers. Businessmen. Musicians.
As far as I can tell, it’s not that I just happened to be pursuing the two fields he had a serious amateur interest in – he just seemed to be extremely good at literally everything.
I have no explanation for this. Possibly he sold his soul to the devil.
The history of LGBT+ activism is a long and storied one, but many of those stories have been erased or forgotten. In honor of the month of Pride and all the courageous activists who came before us, here are some of them:
The Activism of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld, who was himself gay, led a movement to decriminalize and understand homosexuality in pre WWII Germany that was highly successful given the time in which it took place. In 1897 he founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee to study and demystify homosexuality, believing that through scientific examination hostility towards gay men and women could be reduced. In 1898 his committee presented 5000 signatures of prominent Germans to the Reichstag in favor of overturning discriminatory laws against homosexuality. The bill didn’t pass, but Hirschfeld was only beginning. In 1910 he coined the term ‘transvestite’, the very first term for what we now know as transgender people, and even – remarkably – suggested that gender might be a spectrum. In 1919 he opened his Institute for Sexual Research, a clinic created for studying and caring for sexual or gender minorities. The famous Lili Elbe (as in The Danish Girl) received treatment at his clinic.
The clinic was wildly ahead of its time. Hirschfeld not only pioneered gender confirmation surgery through the work of Dr. Ludwig Levy-Lenz but he convinced the police – the police! – to issue a special permit to trans women so that they could travel freely in their own clothing without being harassed or arrested.
As a gay Jewish man who fought for the rights of gay and trans people, it’s not a surprise that Hirschfeld was a favorite target of the Nazis. In 1933 his Institute was raided and his research burned, setting back queer liberation for god knows how long. He fled to France, where he lived out the rest of his life.
The Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis
The Mattachine society, founded in 1950, was the first ‘homophile’ (gay rights) organization in the United States. Founded by Harry Hay in Los Angeles, the society had itself likely been inspired by knowledge of Hirschfeld’s work and proposed to improve the condition of the lives of gay men in America. The group adopted the cell style organization favored by Communist groups and soon there were chapters all around the country. When member Dale Jennings got arrested for ‘lewd behavior’ he decided to fight the charges with the support of the Society, who generated publicity and sympathy around the case. The jury deadlocked, the charges were dropped and the Mattachine society declared victory.
The Daughters of Bilitis (1955) was originally concieved as an alternative to the lesbian bar scene but quickly politicized. They provided support and education for lesbians who wanted to learn more about their orientation, as well as launching a magazine that was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication called The Ladder in 1956. In 1960 they even held a national convention.
The Activism of Frank Kameny
In 1957 Frank Kameny was caught up in the “lavender scare”, a purge of homosexuals from US Government departments, and lost his job. But Kameny was a fighter, and he didn’t take it lying down. He devoted himself to activism.
Refusing to be bullied or made ashamed of his orientation, Kameny not only founded the Washington D.C. chapter of the Mattachine society but launched what was one of the earliest LGBT picket lines in history when he and ten other activists picketed the White House in 1965 carrying a sign that said “Gay is Good”, his favored slogan. In 1963 he launched the campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in D.C. and personally drafted the bill that finally passed in 1993.
The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot
The first transgender-led riot against the police took place not at Stonewall, but at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderlion district of San Francisco.
Compton’s Cafeteria was a restaurant that had become a meeting place for transgender people, as they weren’t welcome in many gay bars at the time. In the early 1960′s, the staff at the Cafeteria began calling the police on their trans customers, leading to arrests and raids and harassment. Things came to a head when a police officer attempted to arrest one of the trans women who was patronizing the restaurant, and she threw her coffee in his face. Furniture was thrown, windows were smashed, and the fighting spilled out into the street. A police cruiser had all its windows smashed out and a newsstand was burned down.
The next night trans women and other LGBT supporters formed a picket line outside the Cafeteria to protest their treatment. During the demonstration the windows of the Cafeteria were once again shattered. Many of the activists were members of Vanguard, an early organization for LGBT youth.
Woody’s roundup is keeping my dash way safer than Tumblr’s new filters ever could
Okay what is this woody’s roundup thing I’m so confused
You know how sometimes you’d see an argument on your dash, and one person was being an ass, and it got a lot of notes, and the ass’s account deactivated? Someone (likely a group of people) snagged a fuckton of those deactivated urls and turned them into this weird, hivemind-like rp of woody from toy story. So now, on those old argument posts, if you click on the source of a blog saying “racism is good actually”, it’s got an icon of woody and the title is “Howdy Pardner”
They also “got memeufacturing” yesterday, which increased the attention given to them. Memeufacturing was a popular shitpost blog that deactivated when people claimed the person running it was sexually harassing people (and doing some other icky stuff, I forget the details, it was like a year ago), so now if anyone clicks on the source of an old memeufacturing shitpost, it’s one of these strange woody rp blogs.
People have also been calling it the Woody Takeover and the Woody Collective, but whoever is running these blogs seems to prefer to call themsel(f/ves) “woody’s roundup”.
I haven’t seen this info floating around Tumblr, so I’m putting it up here.
Starting June 30th, 2017, Tumblr users will no longer be able to log in to Tumblr using AT&T-affiliated email addresses! If that’s you, go get a new email address! The Tumblr Help Center had a list of domains that will no longer work, and instructions on how to switch to a new email address.
This isnt blog related, but most of my followers are on here, and I’m sure a fair chunk of y’all would like to know this
I thought for sure this was some sort bogus scare-tactic BS, but nope, it’s real.
daisychainnihilism 