I wish more people acknowledged how historically it was mostly non cis/straight people of color,working class people ,sex workers etc who were more likely to use the label “queer” to describe themselves bc they often did not had the privilege to have access to words and resources to explore and describe their gender and orientations and how they intersected/differentiated from their race/culture .
Most of the lgbtqa circles were dominated mostly by white cis upper/upper-middle class lgbtqa people many of whom were still quite racist,classist and anti sex workers and used to shun those people from accessing their meetings,rallies,resources etc and thus the non cis/straight people of color,working class people,sex workers etc used “queer” to identify themselves as non cis/straight but someone who wasnt specific about their identity.
Trying to paint “queer” as inherently a bad and useless word is not only ahistorical but also erases the existence of those people and their experiences
Most of the Water Tribe names are made up. Only a few are for-sure legit and verifiable like Noatak which is a real place in Alaska with an Inupiaq name.
Some are listed on sketchy baby name sites (and a lot of dog name sites which seems really racist…) and I included these in square brackets meaning take them with a big grain of salt.
I also found some similar-sounding words in Inuttut, an Inuit dialect spoken in Nunatsiavut (from this museum dictionary), that seem to have similar etymologies. I included those, along with other similarities, in curly brackets.
Also, I transliterated all the names into the Inuktitut script, which is only used in Nunavut and Nunavik in Canada, but I thought it would be fun to do it for all of them anyway.
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! Hewrote 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.
dude had guts, someone needs to update his Wikipedia page
Queen & Slim centers on a couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil on their very first date after being stopped by a police officer. When they’re forced to kill the officer in self-defense, the pair make a decision to go on the run instead of turning themselves into authorities.
L.J.'s Obsessions 