racismschool:

What I learned in school about Cleopatra:

Lived in Egypt. She was black-This one was interesting. I was in class when my teacher pulled down the map to point to Egypt. Truly…it never occurred to me that Egypt was in Africa. Why would it? Elizabeth Taylor was clearly not an African woman, right? I must have known but…I clearly never thought about it because I said, out loud “Egypt is in Africa?” There was not a laugh, other people joined in. They’d never thought about it either. The sad part, when I asked the teacher if Cleopatra was black, he said yes…but by the look on his face, he hadn’t given it much thought either. It was a “Yeeeees?” answer. Almost like he was asking a question. We could see the realization washing over him. It was amazing…sad but amazing. (I’m sure I was taught more than this but I really don’t remember much)

What I learned on my own:

Okay so…we’re all adults, right? I was going to pick one of the many amazing things about Cleopatra to highlight but I have to pick three. They are things you may or may not have heard of. I want to highlight them to say, she was a woman before her time in more ways that one. My personal favorite was the fact that she was a sex-positive feminist long before being a feminist was fashionable…and let’s face it, even some that call themselves feminists today aren’t the most sex positive people in the world.

These things are readily available pieces of information but I am not sure that any can truly be verified. None the less, I am going to chose three things to highlight here.

• She used cow dung as a diaphragm (Sounds gross but if true, she was centuries before her time)
• Legend has it that she had two orgasms a day
• She invented the first vibrator (This seems to be one of the more famous pieces of information. Although everything I’ve read seems to agree that bees were used for the vibration. The container used to hold the bees changes from literary item to literary item)