i love that one old timey 1910s trans dude who has a tiny wikipedia page for himself that he earned entirely due to him starting fights in bars and being the city’s hottest casanova
Like this glorious jerk got arrested so many times that was literally ALL THEY HAD TO WRITE IN THE PAPER
He was a vagrant street kid and Seattle girls were all over this guy, to the point where it caused a moral panic. There’s a famous anecdote about a women proclaiming her love in Denny Park and then trying to shoot herself, but most of these reports were falsely worded in a way that suggest his female admirers were “upset about being deceived” when really they were upset that he was wooing other women, or trying to get his attention by being as extra as possible.
What you also should know is that back in the day “seduction” was a literal crime that could put you in prison (unless you married the woman you seduced) but since he wasn’t cis they couldn’t really CHARGE HIM with anything. Legend.
I especially like “Seattle Woman Appears in Men’s Clothes Because She Says Her Features Make it Possible.” I can’t imagine anything but someone going “Hey! You can’t dress like that!” and him responding “Oh yes I can. You see, I look very good.”
Instead of inmates being able to receive donated books in the mail from family members and community groups, inmates at three New York prisons now have to purchase books selected by six, state-approved vendors. And the selection is limited. And expensive, activists say.
And about a quarter of the titles are coloring books.
According to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the directive is in an effort to restrict contraband from entering the prison “through a more controlled inmate package program.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office has made the point that inmates still have access to prison libraries, but some say it’s not enough. “The problem with prison libraries is that [the prisons] control who has access to them,” said Amy Peterson with NYC Books Through Bars. “So people who are in solitary confinement don’t have access to prison libraries.”
Peterson’s group has been mailing books to prisoners all over the country for nearly two decades, with a focus on New York. “We get letters from people saying they had to borrow a stamp in order to write to us. So if these people can’t even afford postage, we don’t know how they’re going to be able to afford buying books from a vendor,” she said.
Over the past several days, inmate advocates pointed out that the vendors combined offered only five romance novels, 14 religious texts, 24 drawing or coloring books, 21 puzzle books, 11 how-to books, one dictionary, and one thesaurus.
“No books that help people learn to overcome addictions or learn how to improve as parents. No Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Maya Angelou, or other literature that helps people connect with what it means to be human. No texts that help provide skills essential to finding and maintaining work after release from prison. No books about health, about history, about almost anything inside or outside the prison walls,” advocacy group Books Behind Bars complained in a letter to the governor.
