I graduated high school in 99.

There was a student at our school named Wayne.

Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.

Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.

The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.

Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.

He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.

Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.

So... no.

No one in my school talked about being trans.

Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.

Graduated high school in 1990. There was one guy in my class who was bullied and called gay because... he liked wearing eyeliner. That's it. he had a girlfriend. He's still, afaik, straight and cis. But he wore one item of makeup and had a fashion sense and that was enough. I left my small town and went to college at an extremely liberal private college and immediately met trans and gay and bisexual and lesbian people and started considering my own identity, which it had not been safe to do AT ALL in high school.

And later learned that a number of people I'd known in high school were queer. By later, I mean 20 years later when we all found each other on facebook.

Kids started calling me a "lesbo" on the playground and beating me up for it while I was in elementary school. I became "boy crazy" as a form of self defense. If I was a slut, at least I wasn't a dyke.

It was a joke in my family that my youngest sibling hated dresses, which of course were mandatory for "girls." Ha ha, it's funny, ha ha. Because of course we just have to put up with wearing dresses.

That's my brother. Jake. He graduated from HS in 2001.

Fuck that asshole. We broke ourselves trying to survive. Some of us didn't.

If you were in the UK, there was a little thing called Section 28 that made it illegal for schools to discuss "homosexually" (which was the catch all for any non-het, non-cis identity) in a positive light. Three internet wasn't an easily accessible thing yet, and positive representation in the media vanishingly rare. Many of us who have grown up to be some variety of queer literally did not know there were options beyond Gay Man (predatory or tragic, will be dead from AIDS by 30), Lesbian (ugly and shrill, always predatory) or Transvestite (see Gay Man but more laughable).

Aside from similar experiencing similar levels of violence and ostracisation to those described by previous posters, would my mental health been better had I known I was bisexual and genderqueer at 15 (rather than 28 and 39 respectively) instead of being keenly aware that I was Doing Woman Wrong despite trying Really Hard to be normal and not sure how I was still failing? Almost certainly.

Do I remember Eddie Izzard describing herself in the mid 90s as "a lesbian with a man's body" and feeling a strong sense of kinship, albeit the other way around, and then immediately dismissing it because female "transvestites" didn't exist, so I guess I couldn't feel like that? Painfully.

So why didn't you get kids coming out at trans prior to 2000? Because if we weren't getting any non-conformity beaten out of us by peers/teachers/parents, we were beating it out of ourselves thinking we were the only ones who felt like this so it could be real.

Yall are talking 2000 and earlier but ik kids at my fucking school who are too terrfied to come out bc they're in a bad class.

I spent middle school clutching my identity in secret because if it came out I was more then a emo girl with funky colored hair we'd be fucking dead. Litterly.

We went to a good school, in a big-ish city. Our current school is considred one of the queerest, and yet we can still point out each and every closeted person we only know to be trans because they've confided in us.

Its still like this. It's better, but it's never been the time. It's been that if we come out, we're fucking dead.

Graduated high school in 1996. One of the first people I met in the school who wasn't awful to me was a splendid, but awkward individual who took me home and handed me off to their big sister as a more suitable mentor for a weird, loud, mouthy little baby lesbian.

Said person was several grades ahead of me, and graduated long before I did, but I remained very close with the sister.

Said person fully transitioned the minute we were all out of high school, and he was my manager at my first full-time office job. No, he never talked about being trans on campus. He would have been beaten to death by the other students. But he was trans, and the minute he could live his truth, he did.

Graduated HS in 2010 from a private high school. There was one gay girl at our school and she was slowly forced to leave by the school banning her from all activities that involved changing clothes cause “parents were worried about their daughters”. She couldn’t do PE unless she changed in the bathroom at the other end of the school which made her late every time. She was banned from acting in any plays cause she wasn’t allowed to use the dressing room. She joined us in tech cause none of us cared (and 9/10 of us ended up coming out as queer later in life) but I was partnered with her anytime she had to go behind stage during costume changes ‘just in case she tried to go in the dressing room’. She couldn’t do sports or any activity that involved overnight trips. They took away everything from her. Most of us students didn’t care that she was gay, she was a great friend and smart kid, but the school didn’t care. The faculty and staff bullied her out of any group activities.

I came out 2 years after I graduated and slowly 9 other members of my 60 person class have come out since. 5 of us are trans in some way. 0 of us talked about it until after graduation cause we all watched how this girl was bullied by her own school and it didn’t matter how many of us students tried to say we were chill with her on our teams or in the dressing room, the faculty didn’t care, they had decided she was an “other” and she was gonna be treated like it.

I graduated from high school in 2001. (At the time, Ontario had an optional fifth year of high school. I’m that old.) I didn’t know anyone at the time who was out as trans; however, I know a few people from my graduating class who have since come out as such. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t trans back then. It just means that it wasn’t as safe to be anything but cishet at the time. It sickens me that things are getting to be that bad again.

Graduated in 2011

Girls in my grade passed around a petition asking that I be banned from changing in the same change room as them.

Guys followed me when I was walking home and threw hot dogs at my back so I’d “know what a dick felt like.” They got ketchup and mustard on a brand new hoodie (I grew up super poor, new clothes as a kid that weren’t hand me downs were nearly unheard of). I told the principal. He said he’d talk to the kids parents. I found out later he didn’t talk to the kids parents. Or the kids. They got no punishment at all. My dad though, beat the shit out of me for getting stains all over the back of my new hoodie. So that was cool.

Friends I’d known for years stopped wanting to hang out with me, or go to sleepovers I was invited to. I got constantly asked if I was attracted to them when I’d known them for years and shown zero attraction.

One of these friends told another friend she felt uncomfortable around me now because she felt like I was always “staring at her”. Like, I’ve barely said two words to this girl as we weren’t close but just hung out in the same friend group and she thought I liked her suddenly because I she found out I liked girls.

My best friend also got bullied as a result of me coming out because they assumed if I was gay she must be gay too.

And that was just what I dealt with for coming out as bi.

I currently identify as genderqueer and bi, and definitely I would not feel safe coming out as genderqueer in 2011. Honestly if I could go back in time I probably would’ve waited to come out as well.

I am Kenough.

So IDK if people will understand this concept but I made "corner pins"

Basically they are tiny pins with TWO posts on them, and you use them to hold up mementos like instax/photos/tickets etc without having to puncture them, and without having to pinch them with the metal or the push pin edge etc. You can simply rest the corner of the item between the posts gently!

These are the cute ribbon/bow ones, I also made some others that i think would be really cool on your mementos ToT

Let me know what you think about this concept?? I don't know how to market it but i really thought it was a nice idea T_T. You can find them in my store here

Explaining to all companies that the three requirements for me to use a social media with any frequency are:

You may call me boomer or whatever but if a social media doesn’t have bare minimum these three things then I will never use it ever. I won’t even make an account. You can suck at everything else but these are non-negotiable. The fact that they are anathema to profitability does not matter to me. If you cannot provide me these three things then I will simply not use any social media at all.

I can feel The dryness of those markers in my bones

Fun fact those dry markers were supposed to have water put into them to make them work. You take off the bottom thing and pour water in and bam, instant marker success. Only learned about this four years after I’d lost my set 🙃

WHAT

WHAT

WHAT

Hey. Reblog to save some poor kid lots of grief.

Fucking what?!

Every ‘90s child on Tumblr raises their head in outrage.

I just stood up so fast and snatched mine out of my closet brb going to the sink

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

when my mutuals change their url and icon and blog theme i just have to resort to smelling them with my antennae to identify them

Roe deer/rådjur. Värmland, Sweden (July 20, 2022).

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Some bugs are more than just tiny six-legged animals– they’re artists! The larvae of an insect known as the antlion often leave swirling trails in the sand where they build their traps, and are thus commonly referred to as doodlebugs.

(Image: A doodlebug (Myrmeleon sp.) and its doodles by Cheryl McGraw)

If you like what I do, consider leaving a tip or buying me a ko-fi!

dark souls ending: “will you perpetuate or end the cycle? and does it even matter anyways?” elden ring ending: “will you become lord of a fractured order? or will you burn it all away? or will you leave the lands between to their uncertain future?” bloodborne ending: “would you still love me if i was a slug”

How to have a conversation about a topic you’re not interested in or don’t know anything about:

I just thought I’d write a script for this, because someone who can’t / won’t do this came up in a Captain Awkward column, and listening about topics you have no interest in is a really useful skill to have and not often explicitly taught, particularly to boys and men.

This is really helpful advice for people with adhd/autism because we’re often not great at social skills and holding conversations

ERASE the idea that America saved lives by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan from your minds. ERASE the idea that it was anything more than a political move to scare Russia and also to satiate US curiosity as to the true ability of nuclear weapons. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not military bases. They were heavily populated civilian cities chosen precisely bc the U.S. wanted to see how many people an atomic bomb could kill in one go. Japan was on the verge of surrendering, the U.S. literally wanted to test out their nuclear weapons on people that they deemed disposable. That is it. If those bombs were dropped by any nation other than the US veryone involved would have been tried as war criminals.

Also erase the idea that America was the hero of WWII and got into the war because they wanted so save people. They couldn’t have cared less about the victims of the Holocaust, proven by the fact that they turned away so many shiploads of refugees that went on to die at the hands of Nazis.

“the us wanted to see how many people an atomic bomb could kill in one go” oh really? Source your bullshit, asshole

i left out sources bc i figured most tumblr users know how to use google but ok 

- Report produced by the U.S Strategic Bombing Group (employed by Truman) to survey the air attacks on Japan concluded that: 

“Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” - page 52-56 

- Dwight Eisenhower future president and then Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces also said:

“I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to [the then Secretary of War] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” - page 380

- Admiral William Leahy, one of the highest ranking officials in the US army during WW2 wrote of the usage of the bombs:

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. […] My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” - page 441

- General Douglas McArthur, another high ranking US official in the war:

“[When asked about his opinion on bombing Japan] He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” - page 70-71

- On September 9, 1945 Admiral William F. Halsey commander of the Third Fleet publicly quoted as saying:

“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment… . It was a mistake to ever drop it… . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it… . It killed a lot of Japs.” - online source

- The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, speaking to President Truman:

“I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon [the atomic bomb] would not have a fair background to show its strength.” - diary of Henry Stimson which can be found online here 

- Even those deploying the bombs questioned the decision to drop them on civilian cities:

“I thought that if we were going to drop the atomic bomb, drop it on the outskirts–say in Tokyo Bay–so that the effects would not be as devastating to the city and the people. I made this suggestion over the phone between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and I was told to go ahead with our targets.” - online source

- Lewis Strauss Assistant to the Navy Secretary James Forrestal on the locations of the bombings:

“I remember suggesting […] a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. […] Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation.” - page 145

So to recap: 

Draw your own conclusions. 

Very little is known about the Korean Crested Shelduck (Tadorna cristata). Its former range included South Korea and Russia, possibly extending to China and Japan. Crested shelducks were collected and exported to Japan for aviculture in the 1700′s and 1800′s; they are depicted in several works of art from the time period.

The last confirmed sighting of this mysterious bird occurred in 1964. Though it is officially classified as critically endangered, the species is most likely extinct.

Only three specimens of T. cristata exist today. The two taxidermy specimens pictured above (male at left, female at right) are part of the Kuroda collection in the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology in Tokyo, Japan. The third specimen is kept at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Doctors explaining hysteria in 1846

this is literally the only funny thing i have ever seen in my life, which includes a summa cum laude BA in the history of art

tumblr leadership: we need INFLUENCERS we need CELEBRITIES we need this site to become MARKETABLE

tumblr users: there's a frog scientist on here and we worship him

it's @markscherz for the uninitiated

Harris's Hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus), family Accipitridae, being chased away by a Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos), family Mimidae, Santa Clara Ranch, TX, USA

photograph by @hector_astorga_photography

My brain is not ready for this picture

but my eyes are