if FineBros existed in 2023

if FineBros existed in 2023

A huge issue I have with the history side of Tumblr is this need to be right.  To know.

I won’t pretend that I’m an aspiring historian–I’m an aspiring art historian.  But as art history of recent years–or at least, the methods my mentors have focused on–has focused quite a bit on history and historical context, I feel like I can talk about it a bit.  

I feel like the “history” side of Tumblr approaches history in a way that is…  It would be okay if people weren’t pretending to be academic, but they are.  They so often are.  You see people quoting this book and that–and tbh, half of the things people quote on here are in the realm of popular history; understandably so, because it’s not like everyone can get their hands on academic articles/primary sources, but if you really wanna act like you’re a scholar…. you need solid sources–in this effort to back their arguments…  But at the end of the day, you’re not conducting yourself in an academic way when you act as if someone saying that your pet theory about X and Y’s marriage or whether or not this dude killed that one is wrong is like… an affront to your household.

Yes, we’ve seen famously passive aggressive tiffs among historians.  I’m not saying that’s going away anytime soon, but the current approach that I see to history is a bit different from what people were doing even 20 years ago.  Perhaps it’s because history and art history are experiencing something of a new influx of women and poc entering fields that were previously dominated by white men.  Perhaps it’s because we’re experiencing something of a cultural wave that is totally re-framing history and art history (for the better).

But while you can argue for your theory, it strikes me as the opposite of academic to act personally offended when someone comes at it.  There’s a certain distance you need with history and art history; that’s why historians can academically study people they might find repellent.  I specialize in art of the Italian Renaissance, for example (or I want to, I’m still a baby) with a feminist slant.  But I have the distance to acknowledge that most of the prominent artists of that time either didn’t care about the rights of women or were (in the case of Michelangelo, among others) misogynists. I can say I’m interested in female artists of that time and lament them being passed over–but I can acknowledge that to overemphasize their contributions to an artistic society that in some ways rejected them, is to deny the reality of history.

For that matter, there seems to be this National Treasure-esque desire to uncover secret histories, or undiscovered angles.  This is kind of falling out of fashion in some communities; for example, I know that a lot of students and professors alike in my art history department are completely against the idea of disrupting artifacts or objects for the sake of “discovery”.  A friend of mine and I were talking the other day: say we finally discovered Cleopatra’s remains.  What would be the point of disrupting her tomb and testing her DNA?  What would be the point of knowing exactly what her genetic background was?  What is ever the point of knowing these things that are, at the end of the day, irrelevant–at the risk of disrupting objects that are often sacred or at the very least culturally significant?

On a less physical level, there’s this huge tendency on Tumblr to comb through documents in an effort to prove yourself right.  You know!!!!  Except, you really don’t.  When dealing with history, there are many things we just can’t know.  And so often, I’ve asked a professor–who has their fucking doctorate in something–what does this mean, or where does that come from… And they just have to say “we don’t know”.  Barring the discovery of actual documentation, we often never know.  Even then, documents can be written with bias, or just plain mistaken.

We can’t know the unknowable.  This is perhaps more true for the history of art than history in general, but even then–you’re never going to prove yourself 100% right if you’re arguing about something that happened 100+ years ago and doesn’t have unquestionable evidence backing your theory exactly.  And then, it wouldn’t be a theory, wouldn’t it?  It would be a historical fact.

So much of the animosity I see here in a community I don’t even want to be directly involved with seems to do with the ego rather than actual history.

IT’S BECAUSE OSHA REGULATIONS! A SINGLE PERSON IS NOT ALLOWED TO LIFT MORE THAN FIFTY POUNDS! BAGGAGE HANDLERS ARE PEOPLE! YOU PAY MORE FOR HEAVY BAGS BECAUSE THE HANDLERS ARE SUPPOSED TO USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM TO LIFT THOSE! IF THE TOTAL WEIGHT MATTERED SO MUCH, PASSENGERS WOULD GET WEIGHED, BUT WE DONT QUESTION THAT NOW DO WE?

It also helps with weight distribution in the cargo hold. If every bag has a max weight they can put them anywhere in the hold and know roughly how evenly spread the load is. If every bag has some arbitrary measurement between, say, 30 and 100lbs, it’s a lot harder to get that done.

This is also why when flights are partially or mostly empty, they encourage people to move up in the cabin. It gives the cabin crew some peace and quiet in the back galley, and helps counterbalance the weight load of the cargo hold.

There are multiple reasons for the per-bag weight-limit, and all of them are safety.

Didn’t expect to see an aesthetic picture from my hometown today. The Market Place, on the border of Irvine and Tustin in California. The picture I added isn’t where the first one was taken though, they’ve got those purple signs all over.

always so touching and vibrant when you remember people a hundred years ago had profound lives full of fun and love

my great grandparents met because they were both telephonist-telegraphists and they used to communicate in spoken morse code so that their kids wouldn’t understand the dirty jokes they were saying. And my great-aunt was telling me the other day about how her father would sit with his kids during stormy nights and hug them as they looked out the window and he pointed out how beautiful the lightning was. Because he didn’t want them to be afraid. It isn’t far away but it’s easy to forget that people are people are people

isn’t it cool that we still take silly pictures where we pretend to put our baby niece for sale or where we pretend to officiate a funeral on the beach? I think that’s neat

In one of my family’s old photo albums from around the 1910’s-20’s there’s a picture of a dog sitting on a chair and wearing a hat.

its honestly wild, when you sit with it, that people are trying to beat and criminalize trans people out of existence. and folks are genuinely like wait a minute everyone!!! we need to debate the exact right word for when people want trans men dead. IF it even happens🙄. like if ur in a fight do u stop to look around for a specific model of knife with the perfect weight and shape thats appropriately sharpened or do you grab whatevers available and get to work

Too many of you conceptualize trans men as having access to all the advantages of cis womanhood and cis manhood combined, when the reality is that most of us just see the disadvantages of failed manhood and failed womanhood combined

All trans people are Schroedinger's Gender. You are simultaneously both and also neither male and female, man and woman, depending on what they feel would hurt you most at the time. This can change day to day, hour to hour, even minute to minute.

Examples:

Trans woman who is told she can't change her gender marker on her ID, takes off her shirt in a parking lot to change and is arrested for public indecency for her female-presenting nipple exposure, and is currently housed in a men's prison. What gender is she? The gender that hurts her the most at the time. Both and yet neither. Because fuck you that's why.

Trans man who requests to compete in boys' wrestling, forced to compete with the girls instead. Punished for "flashing" his bottom growth while taking a shower in the locker room. School's parents want him kicked out of sports because he keeps winning by a *lot* when he wrestles the girls, saying it's not fair to make the girls compete in strength with his testosterone. During yet another meeting where he requests to wrestle the boys, he's yet again denied *despite this* because he's a girl. Eventually beaten up by the boys at school mad that he's thrashing their girlfriends. Boys justify it by saying it's okay to hit him because he's not "really" a girl. What gender is he? Whatever gender he can be punished with at the time. Both and yet neither. Because fuck you that's why.

I didn't pull these out of my head. They're real people, real transgender stories I've been told either through news or firsthand accounts.