ok today im going to make a post about one of my history faves: Gladys Bently
She was a musician during The Harlem Renaissance and very very very VERY openly a lesbian. She was known to flirt with women in the audience during her performances. She even claimed to have had a wife (although i cant find any details on that) and was quoted as saying “It
seems I was born different. At least, I always thought so….From the
time I can remember anything, even as I was toddling, I never wanted a
man to touch me.”
Unfortunately as far as I can tell none of her explicitly gay music was ever recorded
Sadly, She eventually had to claim she was no longer attracted to women for her own personal safety, although to quote this article“These desperate attempts to survive do not diminish her previous accomplishments.“
In a world where it feels like the only gay people in media are thin, flat chested, white people, I think we should all take a sec to remember this wonderful lesbian
My therapist asked me to create something “motivating” so I made these.
lol.
I really love these, and I reblog them every single time. Some of you don’t realize how easy it’s to forget to do some of those stuff or how hard they can be some days.
Lynne Cox is an accomplished American open water swimmer. Twice, she held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel. Cox was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait and the first to swim the Straits of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cox swam the Bering Strait from American soil to Soviet soil in 1987, at the height of the Cold War.
Look at her.
I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century.
And quite possibly a mutant.
She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).
She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“
She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across.
On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die.
She’s swum over 50,000 miles.
And look at her. This is a photo from when she was young, at the peak of her career and setting records all over the world. She is a great athlete. She is a human who can do things most humans would die trying. I’m sitting here at 1 AM getting all teary eyed because this is the first time I’ve looked up a photo of her and I am so surprised, so gratified, so overwhelmed to find out that this world record setter, this literal superhuman, has nearly the same body type as me.
Since they wouldn’t let her be a fantasy creature in a video game, she just did it in real life, I guess.
Anyone who thinks there is just one athletic body type isn’t paying attention during the Olympics opening ceremonies.
Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.
A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.
There really is no one way to be fit and athletic. For some reason, we tend to get ourselves hung up on the body type of track and field athletes, especially that of marathon runners (who tend to carry almost no extra fat) as the ideal.
i just want people to know that engaging in disordered eating patterns is harmful and difficult regardless of whether it never morphs into a clinically diagnosable eating disorder, and if you are dealing with any of this you have my utmost sympathy and care. i am so tired of diet culture treating these behaviors as though they’re completely fine as long as they’re not “bad enough.”
the culture of capitalism begets loneliness and one of the most important steps we need to take in creating a world that opposes capitalism is learning to live in a communal way & constantly occupy public space for social reasons, rather than liminally
General strikes are a big deal. They need organization, mass support, an agreed-upon list of demands, related demonstrations, etc. It’s not as easy as 10k people across the country at multiple different jobs not showing up – despite what you think, that will be seen as 10k independent occurrences and will result in several thousand firings for no call/no shows with no other notice paid. Even if this wildcat general strike gets enough traction to be seen as an actual threat (which is unlikely as just a viral tumblr post), the government will simply respond with arrests and brutality as they have in the past, and no part of this post prepares people for that
And don’t just decide to do it on your own – talk to your coworkers, get in touch with local unions and your IWW branch, talk to local chapters of climate activism groups like Rising Tide, 350.org, and Transition Towns to organize concurrent demonstrations and actions, and spread the word as much as you can so we can get some steam behind this in the 2 months we have to prepare
“Fuck Work Day” would probably just make things worse while scaring people off from participating in the real coordinated action less than a month later
*releases pack of dads into home depot* go……be free
invasive species encroach on lesbian territory
This is a common misconception because they’re such similar environments, but you should be aware that dads are native to Home Depot, while lesbians are actually native to Lowe’s. At this point, however, both dads and lesbians have made themselves at home in both Home Depot and Lowe’s to the point that trying to separate them back into their original ranges would probably do more harm than good to the delicate ecosystem of large chain hardware stores.
“We see a wild lesbian being approached by a Dad. Their similar color schemes might allow some interaction and…ooh…ooh he’s approaching…”
ForLoveFromFear 