Because if he wasn't a pedophile, did that garbage come from homophobic pious Christians? I'm starting to feel pretty dumb, because I feel like I was told a lie as a child by a relative who was ALSO told a lie...

Wasn't sure if this was better suited to sociology or history, so please redirect me if you think this is something sociologists could answer better.

Not necessarily limited to the US, but focusing there.

Some more specific questions:

-Did people at the turn of the 20th century find women dressed in drag as funny as we find men dressing in drag today? (It's still a frequent plot point on sitcoms and laugh tracks always go nuts during it, but women dressed in men's clothes is pretty normal now or is often just a fashion statement.)

-Were there specific ad campaigns, public figures, events in the media, social movements, activism, etc. that changed public perceptions?

-How did change in public perception relate to change in women's everyday behavior? Did women start acting masculine to massive ridicule and just put up with it for decades? Was there some pressure from some other source to accept it as normal?

-By the time I was sentient (late 90s), it was not only acceptable, but in many subcultures, taking part in certain masculine behaviors (e.g. watching sports; not being neurotic, which shows pretty big sex differences; being able to socialize platonically with male friends) was and still is actually a desirable quality in dating: the so-called "Cool Girl" ideal. What kinds of social movements led to that going from "abnormal" to "acceptable" to "desirable?"

I guess ideally I'd like a sort of historical sketch of the transformation of culture and perceptions surrounding this issue across the century.

What I've heard so far:

• The Asian ideas of impermanence in Buddhism and/or Hinduism

• An Old English poem, titled (I believe) The Lament of Scol(?), in which each stanza is about some mythical character's horrific troubles, ending each one with something along the lines of "That passed, so too will this".

• A Persian story about a king (I think) who wanted a ring that would magically make you happy when sad, and sad when happy, and wise men gifted him with a ring that had the phrase inscribed on it

• A group of similar Jewish stories surrounding King Solomon, similar to the Persian story, but with Solomon as the giver or receiver of the ring -- I believe I've seen this story attributed to Maimonides, but I'm not sure. The Jewish stories also had the unique facet that some of them have the ring only bearing the first letter of each of the three words in the phrase, rather than the whole thing.

My thoughts are that the Asian schools of thought are too distant to be considered related, and I find it unlikely that something in Jewish and Persian thought (as well as Turkish, but I haven't found any attribution to Turkish sources, only that the phrase is known there as well) would have a parallel that is genetically^1 related in Anglo-Saxon England. I find it fairly likely that the Persian and Jewish stories, however, are genetically related, since the stories are very similar, and the groups have historically been in closer proximity than England and the Middle East.

So, keeping this in mind, where did the phrase, and in turn the Persian/Jewish stories, come from?

^(1: When I say genetically related, I'm using it in the same sense as in linguistics, where something being genetically related means that either one descends from the other, or they both descend from the same source.)

To go a little more in depth, I'm talking about overall organization and logistics.

The Confederates had to start from scratch on forming their entire command structure; forming the armies, along with assigning rank, jobs, and pay to all men who join. They had to secure weapons, ammunition, food, and other supplies for a standing army that stood at over 50,000 soldiers by July of 1961, and over 300,000 by the height of the war in 1863.

This seems like a herculean task for the CSA who only had one major weapons manufacturer in Virginia for the duration of the war. How were they able to be in fighting shape just 5 months after declaring their state and secure enough resources for such a strong start against the Union for the first year of the war?

From what I understand, Japan during World War 2 established significant garrisons on dozens of islands assuming America would shed significant amounts of blood and resources taking each island, whittling down America's forces for a final decisive battle.

However, nearly all the islands lacked sufficient local food sources for the size of their garrisons. They also lacked industrial facilities and oil wells thus they were reliant on shipped supplies to remain combat effective. Did the Japanese high command not take into account that their supply lines would be disrupted or that America would just ignore or isolate Japanese occupied islands?

Or was it played up a bit?

Eg, at the start of the movie, they redid the entire orchestra because they didn't record the first run at it and Stalin wanted a copy. Would he really have executed people because he didn't get some lit tunes?

When he had a stroke in his office, the guards didn't investigate for fear of being killed. Would knocking on Stalin's door and asking if something was wrong really be a life or death decision? And furthermore, did Stalin actually die this way?

Even Kruschev, Beria, Malenkov, etc were analysing their own jokes so they didn't use unfunny material around Stalin. Would he actually have executed his own top command over something so petty?

So I know that in the early Middle Ages the turks lived in Central Asian steppe. Around XIII century I think, they migrated to Anatolia (Sultanate of Rüm, Ottomans etc).

I would like to know the details of the whole process. When exactly this happened, why (were they only seeking rich byzantine land, was there any migration pressure like with the Hunes...?) and how exactly they "transfered" most of their nation to a relatively distant place.

Sorry for possible grammatical errors and thanks beforehand.

I've heard a number of crass jokes in American culture about starving Ethiopians... Not just any Africans, but Ethiopians specifically. I'm a little confused by this, not knowing much about the history of their nation, and also having met a handful of Ethiopians and never getting the impression that they'd been starving before they came to the U.S. What do these references of Ethiopian starvation refer to?

Culturally, just how Kurdish was Saladin? He is used as a source of Kurdish nationalism today due to his Kurd heritage but I wonder just how much he identified himself as such. Did he use Kurdish in day-to-day life? Did he practice Kurdish customs? Would he have called himself a Kurd over anything else?

Let me preface this by saying obviously Holocaust denial is a heinous and atrocious lie and one of the most damaging in modern history. Understandably you are on thin ice and will be very easily discredited in the academic world if you start to promote denial or anything bordering it. But given that, how can historians tell if someone who is conducting research that turns up lower casualty counts or something of the sort is a genuine scholar or just an anti-Semitic propagandist? Seems like a fine line and not easy to tell but maybe better historians of the Holocaust can set me straight.

And what was the mood in the Empire following these defeats?

This is something I am extremely curious about. During the uprising, Prince Mianning used his musket (which was forbidden in China at the time) to defeat the rebels. How did he get this musket? I've read that it was supposedly a gift from Napoleon, but there is no citation for this anywhere. So, where and how did Prince Mianning get his musket?