and I had to take a car, which I can not afford. At least the corner store hadn’t shut down and the cashier let me wait inside. Either he’s very friendly and chatty or he’s flirting with me, but the important thing is I still have all my toes.
“Marie Høeg (1866-1949) and Bolette Berg (1872-1944) were Norwegian photographers from Horten, Norway. Marie, the more outgoing of the two, was an active women’s rights advocate who also enjoyed crossdressing in private. A private collection of photographs from the Berg and Høeg photography studio primarily shows Marie, with occasional appearances of Bolette, crossdressing in various fashions. These photographs show Marie’s willingness to digress from and contradict social norms.
An extraordinarily skilled poet, musician, and playwright, Wu Zao occupies a liminal yet luminous place in the history of Chinese literature—and increasingly, in the evolving narrative of China’s LGBTQ+ cultural heritage. Born at the turn of the 19th century, Wu Zao emerged as a singular voice in a literary canon typically dominated by men, and carved a space for herself within intellectual and artistic traditions that rarely welcomed women, let alone those who dared to defy gender and sexual norms. While many of the particular details surrounding her existence remain uncertain, Wu Zao’s surviving writings subtly but powerfully permeate with erotic ambiguity and convey the deep emotional bonds she forged with other women throughout her lifetime. Through careful translation and scholarly interpretation, Wu Zao has emerged in more recent years as a figure who, with quiet defiance, charted her own path on the margins of Qing Dynasty society to challenge socio-cultural constraints placed on gender and sexuality. Today, Wu Zao’s creative legacy not only enriches the canon of classical Chinese literature but also expands the landscape of Chinese queer history, offering a rare glimpse into the complexities of queer desire and expression from a time and place where such notions were seldom recorded.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, most often known today as simply Caravaggio, was an Italian painter in the late Renaissance era. He was known in his time for how realistically he depicted people — physically and emotionally — especially compared to his dramatic use of light. While the figures are incredibly realistic, the lighting is so extreme it’s almost akin to stage lighting today. His work, especially that dramatic lighting, inspired the Baroque style of painting. He depicted women and men in his work, though more so the latter. This, and the eroticism of some of his works, is one of the reasons scholars have debated his sexuality. There were rumors and scholarly discussions of his personal life — he never married or had children, and there is evidence to suggest he slept with men and women. He lived a relatively short life, but his legacy is evident in Baroque paintings and the work they inspired today.
Get off of google calender get off of google docs get off of microsoft office etc
Corperations cannot be trusted and care for no one.
I understand this sentiment entirely! I am right now working to get myself off Google Docs, and removing Google from my life as much as I can. I will say, that this rhetoric makes me think of the book drive I am running.
In my province, books are being banned in school libraries and there are two important responses to the situation. First we need people fighting to keep queer books in school libraries, because many children have no access to queer books outside of their school library. Second we need to start preserving queer literature in safe places. If we focus too much on only keeping queer books in school libraries, we run the risk of losing access to these books as a whole community in the event the government doesn’t listen to our protests. If we focus too much on only preserving the books, then they will be available only to a specific sect of the community.
All of this to say, we need to leave Google behind where we can. But some of us have jobs that utilize Google in varying ways that we can’t opt out of, or can’t leave Google right yet for accessibility reasons. Google has specifically made it so it is hard to not use their services, so we need to have multiple responses. I think there is value in disentangling from Google, but I also think there is value in purposefully and aggressively maintaining queer history within the platform of Google.
Many worry that criticism is suffering from a crisis of authority. In a world where everyone’s a critic, what is criticism for? Since her canonical 2018 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a leading public intellectual and a bold cartographer of the new landscape of taste itself. Authority brings together sharp, illuminating essays on everything from musical theater to sci-fi novels, as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of personal essays first published in the magazine n+1. Throughout, Chu defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, charging fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with complacent humanism and modeling how the left might brave the culture wars with both its faculty of judgment and its sense of justice intact.
In two magisterial new essays, Chu offers a fresh intellectual history of criticism’s crisis of authority, tracing the surprisingly political contours of the discipline from its origins in the Enlightenment to our present age of social media. The desire to recover some lost authority, she argues, is neither new nor particularly freeing. Rather than being taken in by an endless cycle of trumped-up emergencies over the state of our culture, Authority makes a compelling case for how to do criticism in light of the actual crises, from climate change to rising authoritarianism, that confront us today.
Pornography remains an important part of queer expression! Queer people deserve space to explore/express their sexuality. Rejecting the expression of sexuality because some people do it in an exploitative way or get addicted would be like closing the Stonewall Inn because they were run by the mafia at one point or because they sell beer which can be addictive. Sexuality is an important part of the queer community and stopping queer people from expressing that is a form of oppression. Queer people deserve to enjoy their sexuality without shame!
Porn can and does exist ethically. I am so grateful to know queer sex workers, and I love not only them but also their work. I’m not ashamed of the ways queer porn has been a part of my development. I am so grateful for works from Elana Dykewomon which includes explicit sex or erotica from authors like Kathryn Moon who express sexuality in a beautiful and emotionally powerful way. Shutting down human sexuality is not something I am interested in engaging in.
Anatomical Venus is a visceral collection of poems that invoke anatomical models, feminine monsters, and little-known historical figures. It’s a journey through car accidents and physio appointments, 18th century morgues and modern funeral homes. Grappling with the cyclical nature of chronic pain, these poems ask how to live with and love the self in pain. Magic seeps through, in the form of fairy tales, in the stories of powerful monsters, in the introspection of the tarot, and the transcendence of queer love.
This was so great to read! It makes me so happy that you got to share it with your community and bring people together. Thank you so much for sharing with me and your local pride meeting!
For those of you who haven't seen our Queer History Fortune Tellers yet, this is what they look like:
History can feel inaccessible and like it doesn't pertain to our lives, so I wanted to create something that could connect people with a voice from the past in a direct way. Plus, when you read the fortunes, it almost feels like getting advice from queer elders!
You can get your own printable copy of the fortune teller by purchasing it or becoming a Patron.
The famous author Honoré de Balzac used to say after sex “there goes another novel!”
Taking it literally, J. M. Tolcher sets out to write an entire book without ejaculating—an experiment in sublimation, desire, and control.
In just over a month, he attempts to channel his libido into art, diving into the ancient alchemical process—nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo—in a relentless search for meaning.
But what begins as a test of discipline becomes something far more dangerous. Libido, after all, isn’t just about sex. It’s the unseen force shaping power structures, fueling authoritarianism, and dictating the fate of the world itself.
Where does repressed desire go? What happens when it’s not sublimated? And can a man truly master his own urges—or does libido always find a way?
Tolcher returns to form as Australia’s hottest underground writer with another chronicle as cerebral as it is carnal, as philosophical as it is depraved.
Tamara de Lempicka was a highly controversial artist. A bisexual woman was made a refugee twice in her life, first by the Bolsheviks, then later by the Nazis, she was called bourgeois while simultaneously being poor, and a failure of an artist in the midst of her success. A contradiction of a woman, de Lempicka’s work remains iconic all over the world.
These are both affiliate lists, so a part of the profits go to Making Queer History, but feel free to use as a reference to find the books elsewhere if you prefer!
Pornography remains an important part of queer expression! Queer people deserve space to explore/express their sexuality. Rejecting the expression of sexuality because some people do it in an exploitative way or get addicted would be like closing the Stonewall Inn because they were run by the mafia at one point or because they sell beer which can be addictive. Sexuality is an important part of the queer community and stopping queer people from expressing that is a form of oppression. Queer people deserve to enjoy their sexuality without shame!
Porn can and does exist ethically. I am so grateful to know queer sex workers, and I love not only them but also their work. I’m not ashamed of the ways queer porn has been a part of my development. I am so grateful for works from Elana Dykewomon which includes explicit sex or erotica from authors like Kathryn Moon who express sexuality in a beautiful and emotionally powerful way. Shutting down human sexuality is not something I am interested in engaging in.
Hilma af Klint was born in Sweden on 26 October 1862, and known primarily as a painter — though her work as a mystic is heavily intertwined with her art. She gained recognition for her work decades after her death. She left her collection to her nephew with the promise to keep them secret for twenty years. While some of the recognition may have come from the surprise, her talent and unique style speak for themselves. Her use of color, geometric, science and religion are evident in her works; they feel cool and modern, but there is something incredibly spiritual about them. If you’ve studied geometric in nature and art, you might get the same feelings.
While Hilma af Klint never married, she had a close knit group women and exclusively lived with women during her life. It is her deep relationships, as well as her thoughts on gender, androgyny, and the fluidity of presentation that have led many queer folks to feel she may identify as a lesbian or with some other sapphic identity today. You can find these works and more in our gallery!
This was so great to read! It makes me so happy that you got to share it with your community and bring people together. Thank you so much for sharing with me and your local pride meeting!
For those of you who haven't seen our Queer History Fortune Tellers yet, this is what they look like:
History can feel inaccessible and like it doesn't pertain to our lives, so I wanted to create something that could connect people with a voice from the past in a direct way. Plus, when you read the fortunes, it almost feels like getting advice from queer elders!
You can get your own printable copy of the fortune teller by purchasing it or becoming a Patron.
Spread Me is a darkly seductive tale of survival from Sarah Gailey, bestselling author of Just Like Home. A routine probe at a research station turns deadly when the team discovers a strange specimen in search of a warm place to stay.
Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the isolation and the way the desert keeps temptations from the civilian world far out of reach.
When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it inside. But the longer it’s there, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can’t be ignored any longer.
One by one, Kinsey’s team realizes the thing they’re studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate….
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