Le Grand Voyage, Victor Brauner

Parvana and Sulayman

Soon, soon we will in Krakow, 1914, Kazimir Malevich

“Love doesn’t recognize gender”

“Homophobia kills”

— the painted benches of Tirana, Albania

Portrait of Cristina My Sister 1928

Frida Kahlo

I get on tumblr. I read yalls naruto essays like the morning paper

Madhubala in “Mughal-E-Azam” (1960)

Stefan Karl Steffanson is Iceland’s man of the year.

Well deserved 

Aishwarya Rai in Jeans (1998)

Psychiatrist Who Argued That Being Gay Is Not a Disorder Dies at 82

Richard Green was one of the earliest LGBTQ allies in the mental health profession.

In 1972, early in his career, Green wrote an article in The International Journal of Psychiatry taking issue with “the premise that homosexuality is a disease or a homosexual is inferior.” The following year, the American Psychiatric Association dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

“Those were times when, if you spoke up in support of homosexuals, people immediately thought that you were secretly homosexual yourself, or had unresolved sexual issues,” Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, told the Times. “Richard was very much heterosexual, and it took a lot of courage to argue for gay people.”

Even earlier, in 1962, Green testified on behalf of a Nicaraguan man who was facing deportation from the U.S. for being gay. The man won the right to remain in the U.S. Later, Green “testified on behalf of a transgender woman who was suing to keep her job as a pilot, and a transgender parent who was suing for child visitation,” the Times reports.

Green eventually completed a law degree, and he put that to use in support of LGBTQ rights as well. In 1990 he volunteered his legal services in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay scoutmasters. Although the BSA won the suit, it finally dropped the prohibition in 2015.

May his memory be a blessing. 

The Jewish people of Uzbekistan photographed by Gueorgui Pinkhassov

“The term Bukharan was coined by European travelers who visited Central Asia around the 16th century. Since most of the Jewish community at the time lived under the Emirate of Bukhara, they came to be known as Bukharan Jews. The name by which the community called itself is “Isro'il” (Israelites). 

The appellative Bukharian was adopted by Bukharan Jews who moved to English-speaking countries, in an anglicisation of the Hebrew Bukhari. However, Bukharan was the term used historically by English writers, as it was for other aspects of Bukhara. 

Bukharan Jews used the Persian language to communicate among themselves and later developed Bukhori, a Tajik dialect of the Persian language with small linguistic traces of Hebrew. This language provided easier communication with their neighboring communities and was used for all cultural and educational life among the Jews. It was used widely until the area was “Russified” by the Russians and the dissemination of “religious” information was halted. The elderly Bukharan generation use Bukhori as their primary language but speak Russian with a slight Bukharan accent. The younger generation use Russian as their primary language, but do understand or speak Bukhori.

The Bukharan Jews are Mizrahi Jews and have been introduced to and practice Sephardic Judaism. 

The first primary written account of Jews in Central Asia dates to the beginning of the 4th century CE. It is recalled in the Talmud by Rabbi Shmuel bar Bisna, a member of the Talmudic academy in Pumbeditha, who traveled to Margiana (present-day Merv in Turkmenistan) and feared that the wine and alcohol produced by local Jews was not kosher. The presence of Jewish communities in Merv is also proven by Jewish writings on ossuaries from the 5th and 6th centuries, uncovered between 1954 and 1956.”