if an archaeologist says an artifact was probably for “ritual purposes” it means “i have no fuckin clue”
but if they say it was for “fertility rituals” they mean “i know exactly what it was for but i dont want to say ‘ancient dildo’”
Back in the day I worked at a certain very famous and very high caste art museum in the US as a junior curator. Part of my job was to catalog the objects in the museum database. This includes details like provenance, measurements, and a visual description of what the object looked like.
Like I said, the museum was a pretty snotty institution. It’s got a LOT of objects it’s way famous for possessing, but nobody knew about the absolutely massive collection of Moche erotic pottery it had because the curators were totally embarrassed by this stuff.
Some examples:
Pretty hot shit, right? They never, ever put any of this stuff on public view or published it in any catalogues but – we legit had like several hundred pieces of Moche ceramics in the “dirty pots” category. Anyway, I was left alone to just do my job with regard to the database for several years, ok? And I figured, well, these’re accessioned objects in the museum’s collection – better get down to bidness.
I catalogued every goddamn bestiality, necrophiliac, cocksucking, buttfucking, detached penis, and giant vulva drinking cup in that collection. I’d be like,
A drinking vessel in form of a standing man wearing a tunic and cap. He holds an oversized erection in his hands and stares into the distance (note I did not say “like he’s hella-constipated”). The vessel has a hole at both the tip of the penis as well as around the rim of the figure’s head, thus forcing the drinker to drink only from the penis or risk spilling wine all over themselves from the top of the vessel. Red and orange slip covers the surface of the piece.
Pretty straightforward, right? Apparently the deep seated fear of these objects that the curators exhibited was meant to spread to me as well, but – no one ever gave me that memo, because I guess Midwesterners reproduce asexually. When the curators understood that I had catalogued all of these objects in addition to the other, non-sexy pieces in the collection, they were apparently livid, but knew they had no legs to stand on in terms of getting pissed at me for it.
I visited the museum’s online public access database a few years back and – every single description I wrote of these pieces has been totally neutered to say something like Male figural vase.
Long story short? Just call a dildo a fucking dildo. It’s all gonna be ok, I swear.
This is absolutely the MOST unusual reblog I have ever tagged with what is probably my second-favorite tag, “talk to me about your work.”
it really is very interesting to me that people who think they sound quite intelligent on this website are very willing to label dead/historical figures “gay/lesbian” while balking at labeling dead/historical figures “bisexual”, often claiming that “bisexual” is a label restricted to a modern, western time frame, as if gay/lesbian aren’t terms also created within that same relative time/geographic frame, defined/pathologized through similar institutions and disciplines (sexology, psychology, medicine, etc). and i didn’t write this post as a response to any discourse or anything – what i’m describing is an actual trend in transnational queer studies! clare hemmings has a phenomenal article about this that i recommend reading (if you have an open mind). i’ve actually posted some excerpts and quotes from it before but it’s one of my favorite articles ever about bisexuality.
It’s the National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Celebration (NAIDOC) week in Australia. This year’s theme is language. There are a growing number of online resources for learning Australian languages. The Bininj Kunwok languages of Kakadu National Park and western Arnhem Land have their online resource home at bininjkunwok.org.au
While most school districts across the country are cutting back on recess time and ramping up the Ritalin, one Texas school has kindergartners and first graders sitting still and “incredibly attentive.”
What’s their secret? Their recess time has tripled.
Instead of 20 minutes of recess per day, Eagle Mountain Elementary kindergartners and first graders now get an hour, broken up into four 15-minute breaks, in addition to lunchtime.
Their teachers say it’s totally transformed them.
The kids are less fidgety, less distracted, more engaged in learning and make more eye contact.
Eagle Mountain is one of dozens of schools in Texas, Oklahoma and California testing out extra recess time as part of a three-year trial. The pilot program is modeled after the Finnish school system, whose students get some of the best scores in the world in reading, math and science.
Hey kids! I’m glad that these students are less distracted and have more time to play BUT ADHD IS A GENETIC PROBLEM AND NOT ONE THAT CAN BE FIXED JUST BY MORE PLAY TIME
This is actually not a description of how you can stop ADHD, the disorder, but how you can prevent neurotypical children from exhibiting similar symptoms to ADHD by not putting them under wholly unnatural stresses. While this might also be helpful for ADHD kids, it would not “cure” them.
Look, I am 100% behind more recess time, but this article uses rather gross, dismissive and derogatory language towards people with adhd. It implys that most adhd diagnosis are either a fraud or “if we just let them run around more there wouldn’t be adhd!” More recess time is beneficial to adhd kids and helps them destress and cope better (unless they’re being bullied and recess then becomes their own personal hell, but at least it’s a hell they can run and jump around in) but it doesnt ‘cure’ them. It may make them appear better behaved and more conforming to society’s standards, but that alone is not “curing”, it’s COPING.
Yeah, to be honest I see that a lot. Articles that are essentially one step up from clickbait claim that something “cures” ADHD or autism or depression, when in fact what it does is either “fail to cause symptoms of the disorder in neurotypical children” or “ameliorate the symptoms of the disorder somewhat”.
Depression might be curable, but I’ve never met anyone who succeeded at it. ADHD and autism aren’t curable any more than being an extrovert is; not only can’t it be cured but it sounds ridiculous to even talk about curing it when you actually understand what it is. You could traumatize people into being too terrified to display the symptoms, or you could ameliorate the problems caused by the issue, but you can’t cure it.
I feel like what these people actually observed is that normal children who are denied the ability to run and play start exhibiting symptoms of hyperactivity and inattention because the freedom to run and play is a basic need in children and thwarting anything on the Maslow hierarchy will cause symptoms of some disorder or another, and if you stop denying those children their basic needs, hey presto they don’t have those symptoms anymore! Because they never had ADHD in the first place; they were being harmed by an inhumane system. Meanwhile the actual kids with ADHD will certainly benefit from those freedoms too, because kids with ADHD also need those things, but the best it will do is make the symptoms less difficult for the kids to deal with.
I sometimes feel that society’s approach to various mental illnesses is something like: shove a whole lot of people in a dark room, a few of whom are actually blind. Observe that people in a dark room can’t see. Feed them carrots. This only helps the minority with vitamin A deficiency. Turn on a dim light. Most can now see. Declare that this means blindness has been cured/isn’t a problem, and therefore no one needs to take vitamin A. Do nothing about the fact that the lights are really dim, so most people can’t see well, and that some people are still blind. Anytime someone complains of being blind, recommend they eat carrots.
Sorry to keep making donation posts, but I’m getting increasingly desperate. Long story short, our car broke down and is stuck 40 miles away from our house and we can’t afford the repair to get it back. Both my partner and I are very, very disabled, and I’m increasingly unable to deal with things like walking to the corner store for toilet paper, waiting for taxis in the cold, etc. If we don’t get our car back soon, it’s just going to get worse. My partner actually checked to make sure I was alive this morning.
If we could get the funds to get our car back before Tumblr self-destructs, that would be a huge, huge help. I don’t know what we’re going to do if we can’t.
A photography project about the Polish Tatars, Poland’s oldest native Muslim population
The Podlasie region of North-Eastern Poland is home to the largest remaining population of Polish Tatars, also known as Lipka Tatars, a Sunni Muslim minority group that have resided in Eastern Europe for 600 years.
Their history in the region begins with Tokhtamysh, who was a prominent Khan of a subdivision of the Golden Horde, a Turkicized entity of the Mongol Empire. Tokhtamysh and his clan were granted asylum in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Vytautas the Great. At the beginning of its history the Grand Duchy, a Pagan ruled-state, had come to occupy parts of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. Being that it was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious entity ruled by a pagan leader, it developed an early history of religious tolerance. Eventually the Grand Duchy joined to make a Commonwealth with the Kingdom of Poland, by this time both nations had been Christianized.
For most of its history the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth upheld and legislated the previous values of the Grand Duchy. Due to these circumstances the Islamic population of the Commonwealth were allowed to mobilize in society freely and practice their religion without fear of persecution, unlike most other parts of Christendom. This religious freedom also brought about more Islamic settlers in the form of Crimean and Nogay Tatars, who would soon be absorbed into the general Polish Tatar population. The Tatars were also granted nobility status and frequently intermarried with the Polish nobility, however when this occurred it was mostly between those Tatars who converted the Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Tatars remained a free people unlike the majority of the non-nobility Christian population who were serfs. They were also permitted to own Christian serfs, again something not seen in most other parts of Europe.The Lipka Tatars were heavily valued as cavalrymen due to their horse-riding skills, and fought against both the Teutonic Knights and later the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Vienna. despite the fact that this would ensure an Islamic expansion into the rest of Poland. Due to their intermingling with the Slavic populations of the region, they quickly lost their language, however other traits of their culture survived, specifically their adherence to Islam. Most Lipka Tatars adopted the Polish or Belarusian languages as their native tongue, but interestingly enough also used the Arabic script when writing those languages. After the partition of Poland and eventually its independence, most Lipka Tatars ended up living between Poland and Belarus.
The Waning Crescent is a photography project created by Selim Korycki, who commented on it with the following:
“Despite being brought up as an atheist, I was always very aware of my family history as well as the history of Lipka Tatars. Following many discussions about rising nationalism and Islamophobia, I realised just how very few people are aware of the Muslim community peacefully settled in the heart of Europe for over 600 years. Knowing that Podlasie region is the only place within today’s Polish borders where Tatars not only lived for generations, but are still present today I decided to execute the project there. This was my first visit to the region,”
Despite the Polish Tatars influence on Polish history and culture, there has been a lot of misunderstanding of the Tatars since the end of WWII, when the country experienced great homogenization and radical assimilation, which increased under the Communist regime. Selim say of the view of many of his countrymen:
“There is a belief, for example, that Polish Tatars look like Mongolian nomads, that they speak ‘another’ language, and are generally un-Polish. In reality, after 600 years of assimilation, Poles of Tatar heritage are mostly [indistinguishable] from the rest of the population. Just as their parents, their grandparents and their great-grandparents they speak Polish, think Polish, feel Polish, have Polish surnames, eat Polish food.” At the same time Polish Tatars cultivate their culture by practicing Islam, preserving traditional Turkic names, and nurturing traditional Tatar cuisine (Central Asian dishes with Eastern European influence).
Today when less than 5% of the population of Poland consider themselves to be a member of an ethnic minority, and over 85% Poles declares themselves to be Roman Catholic; the Lipka Tatars are a striking reminder that Poland was once a hugely multicultural and multi-religious country”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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