List Of Books Everyone Should Read

List of books everyone should read

Howl’s moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

The Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol series by Gail Carriger

The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvatar 

The Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer

Regency Romance books by Georgette Heyer

The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy series by Douglas Adams

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

The “only have sex with people you are attracted to” discourse may be a reaction against women and teen girls (often lesbians in denial) being coerced into sex with people/men they didn’t want to have sex with, with their rapists not respecting “I’m not attracted to you” as a reason to refuse. So the logic is that if it’s a thing to have sex with people you’re not attracted to, that will be used as a weapon in lgbtq spaces to coerce/rape even more young women. Do you have thoughts on this?

Wanting to have sex with someone doesn’t require enthusiasm or attraction, but it does require want.

It’s up to the individual to decide if the desire to have sex with another person is rooted in expectations from others, or for personal interest.

I’ve had a lot of sex most of it wanted, some of it emphatically not, and some of it falling into an uncomfortable grey area.

I’m going to give examples of some of my sexual encounters, because humans are exceptional pattern matchers, and this is a very difficult and complex concept to express verbally. Usually it would be the kind of thing you learn from experience, first or second hand. So, here’s some experiences, second hand.

As an example of “enthusiastic consent,” there was a man I knew in college, let’s call him Kismet. Kismet and I had a very fraught relationship. We never dated, and in fact were rivals in our software development department. We had more shouting matches than not, about what constitutes meaningful fucking technical comments, primarily.

We also had a lot of extremely aggressive sex. We both looked forward to it at the end of long projects, and as I was something of a slut at the time, I enjoyed flirting shamelessly with pretty boys and girls in front of him as foreplay. When we fucked, it was with extreme desire on both our parts. We were hot college kids with a lot of emotions and shit. It was everything your entry level consent education courses say it should be: freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, explicit, specific.

I would consider that the kind of gold standard that a lot of people imagine, but it’s only one way to have consensual sex.

As another example of consent, I was a popular “practice partner” in school. I always happily agreed to let other queer kids use my body as a way to explore their own desires. It was fun. I wasn’t attracted to most of them, in fact I only remember two of them out of around a dozen. I doubt most of them were attracted to me, beyond the fact that I was representative of some kind of opportunity. We all had fun, learned about ourselves, and moved on. This is what consent looks like without attraction, but with enthusiasm.

I have long term partners, now. And lifelong disabling illnesses. Sometimes, we want to have sex, but it’s impossible to get the energy together to be excited by the idea of it. Sometimes, we have sex lazily or after taking my painkillers, to make the physical activity of it easier. This is what consent looks like, without enthusiasm, but with want.

I also do sex work. I was full service for a while, and that required a very different type of consent. I had no desire to sleep with my clients. Only one was even moderately attractive to me physically, and all of them were rude and condescending. But, I did want their money, and I was more than willing to provide a service to get it. So, by extension, I wanted to have sex with them, for reasons other than my own physical satisfaction.

It was the easiest work I’ve ever done, and if I hadn’t literally doubled my weight in the last 6 years, I would go back to it. Because it benefits me. This is what convent looks like with none of the trappings of desire. A choice made on the belief that it will benefit you. This is how you can want to have sex with a person, without wanting that person’s body or mind.

That’s where the bottom line of consensual sex lies for me.

Then there’s coercive rape.

That’s the name for the type of pressuring you describe. And I’ve been there too. Careless sex positivity that doesn’t adequately educate kids on what the bottom line of consent is, is one of the worst things that a victim of this kind of rape can use against themselves.

Sexual consent is, at its root, no different than contract consent or medical consent: if you’ve been lied to, or been pressured into signing, it’s not a valid deal. It’s just rape.

Knowing what consent looks like, in all its forms, can help keep kids from getting cornered into sexual experimentation they’re too young for, or too scared of, just because someone else tells them to.

But, so often, people focus on only a single form of consent, that gold standard one up there that I led with. And then every other consensual act on this list becomes a cloud of grey that covers up what consent can look like. And if you don’t know what it looks like, it’s too easy to get confused and end up lost and hurt.

The fault always lies with the rapist here (though in cases like this, many of them don’t even know they’re being rapists), but when you learn that you could have avoided it somehow, it’s very easy to say you SHOULD have avoided it, and wrack yourself with guilt.

The whole “nuanced discussions of consent will get more girls coercively raped” line of thought is fault.

By having nuanced discussions of consent, more men will realize that their behaviour is unacceptable, and more women will be given the confidence to explain exactly why it’s unacceptable.

These kinds of discussions benefit people.

If, after having been given all this information, a man still does not take “no” for an answer, then he was never operating in good faith to begin with, and needs to be kicked in the teeth and sent away until he gets his act together.

But, generally, people want to be good, and having a discussion about the myriad types of consent will help people be good.

My little entp has depression. She is not herself and i want help her. I'm trying my best but is not enough. Any advices?

Hi nonnie!

I’m sorry that your friend is going through this. Depression is really difficult to beat or even manage, and sometimes it just spring up on ya and it’s just meh. But while you can’t solve it for her, there are things you can do to support her. 

Maybe the first thing about dealing with a friend’s depression is understanding it completely. It’s important to know that even when your friend may be acting like she’s not listening to you, or if she seems to be pulling away, it’s not about you. She’s just trying to deal. Also, know it can’t just be fixed by someone other than the person who is depressed (which makes it so hard to beat, my god). 

So as an ENTP who has persistent depressive disorder, I have a few tips that are actually like low-key super helpful for us. 

1. Make sure your ENTP eats

I find with the low Si, depressed ENTPs quickly forgo the small things required for taking care of ourselves. For me, it was food. I high-key just didn’t eat… and it wasn’t on purpose, I just didn’t care about anything and I forgot about food. My best friend began to ask me to go grocery shopping with her and she’d go out of her way to make me remember to get foods that I like– easy snack type foods that don’t require the effort (but keep me with sustenance). Other friends literally texted me to remind me to eat, and gradually I got back into the habit of eating all of my meals on time. But just eating takes away some of the burden of being tired already from depression. 

2. Invite the ENTP to exercise too

This take time because exercising literally isn’t fun (lol don’t @ me), but it’s good for you, and a great habit to get into to release those stress-reducing chemicals. Health health health hELPS. It really does. 

3. Be open to listening or even talking. 

So this depends on the person, but I found that for me, it realllllly helped me to talk about depression with people who had it before– I only learned this after a few months of therapy (which it’s hard to get to that point in the first place), but after therapy, whenever someone wanted to discuss depression, or its effects, knowing that you’re not the only one, and being able to share it with someone really helps. ENTPs really struggle with knowing what they’re feeling, and comprehending it, so the discussion kind of allows us (or at least it allowed me) to begin to process the problems that I was facing. 

4. Just be there!

This ties into literally all of them. But I have friends that randomly kept me in mind and invited me to random things, and it really helped to get me out of my head. There are up days and down days despite friends being around, and it’s hard to predict each day. But health is the first step because it helps sO much, and having a network of people around who she can trust is also wonderful. 

I really hope that your friend feels better, and she’s lucky to have you! Best of luck to you both. xx

While you're doing lower functions, anything for lower Si? I'm ENTP, if it helps. I'm ENTP if it doesn't, too!

Hello, ENTP. Have a Doctor Who gif.

Pay more attention to your body. Try yoga, dancing, exercise (hoop dancing is a great low-impact way to learn to be graceful and coordinated – it worked for me and it’s great at toning your body) or keeping a notebook where you jot down what you ate or did and how you felt afterward. (If you can learn what causes those discomforting twinges, you’ll stop thinking you’re dying whenever you get a stomach ache from drinking chocolate milk and eating twinkies at the same time. You’re not dying of cancer!)

Take time at the end of each day to think back through your memories, experiences, conversations, and feelings in order to categorize them and process them fully, so you can remember stuff later and/or deal with things as they happen, which will reduce later periods of guilt, anxiety after the fact, or feelings you might not have dealt with. Nobody wants that crap inferior Si dragging up old stuff out of the blue, right?

Devote some time to music. Si is good at recognizing that which it knows or has experienced. If you pay attention to music, you’ll start noticing patterns and being able to recognize who composed what over time (I’ve been doing this since I was a kid – I can now pick up, say, Han Zimmer or John Williams’ musical scores within a few bars of the opening theme because I recognize the tone, tenor, and instruments they often use; I do it with voices too – I can usually know who the actor speaking is before seeing their face / reading their name, even in animated films where they’re altering their voice – it’s a lot of fun!).

Try cooking. I know it requires paying attention and your taste buds might suck just like mine (seriously, unless it’s hot / sweet / spicy, I literally cannot taste it) – but it’s a skill that you can develop over time and Si is quite good at picking out individual tastes and/or recognizing flavors once you know what they are.

Do art of some kind. Any kind. Scrapbook (you don’t have to use family photos, you know; I like to do albums for family and friends of everything I admire or love about them, and use pictures from the internet). Draw. Paint. Craft. Make cards. Become an expert at gift-wrapping with coordinated ribbons and paper or learn to spray paint art. Anything that forces you to be hands-on creative instead of intellectually creative. Try woodworking, or calligraphy, or building things, or painting murals, or coloring books with ten thousand details. You do have natural abilities to pair colors, make something look attractive, etc., if you can just train yourself to notice and/or care. (Just like I recommended for the lower Se’s – get yourself to the library and check out books on cooking, crafting, fashion, interior design, building things, etc.) The more you know about many different things, the more resources you’ll have mentally stored up to use in life.

Do something about your environment. You don’t have to live in a sparse space unless you want to. Your Si-dom cousins are terrific at stuff like surrounding themselves with the fabrics, colors, scents, music, etc., that they like. You can do it too, but you need to spend time finding out what you love and discovering all the different detailed things that exist to help you! (You can’t do awesome things unless you know about the tools that are out there to create with.) Try lots of new things. Feel fabrics. Smell candles (just not too many at once, or you’ll get a headache from over-sensory-smell stimulation like I d… never-mind). Notice how the colors in a room impact you – do you feel peaceful and calm with this color, or nervous and agitated? What do you WANT to feel in this space? (If this color gives you energy, put it wherever you want to be creative; if it makes you feel peaceful, the bedroom or reading spot might be perfect.)

Slow down. I know it’s a pain in the butt, it makes you feel like the world is moving in slow motion, but the best things take time to learn. Try lots of things, but the ones you really like, slow down and try to do them well. Si’s often learn to be really good at something by practice and watching other people to learn techniques. Don’t only watch YouTube instructional videos if you get stuck. Try them first. Try and take pleasure in the process of learning.

Get in touch with your past. If you do this, you won’t have angst later, and you’ll be less weirdly sentimental over strange things  Feel free to think about the past – voluntarily rather than under stress or a period of self-loathing. Try making photo albums, keeping records, writing stories about what happened to you and when, painting pictures to represent periods in your life, whatever strikes your fancy – anything that connects you to memories and helps you ground yourself.

Train yourself to try new things. You do this all the time with Ne, in conceptual realms – now try doing it physically. Don’t always order the same thing at that restaurant. Try something new. Paint that piece of furniture. Go a different way to class. You hate ruts. Don’t get stuck in a sensory rut.

Writers: take a scene from a movie and recreate it in writing, but without any dialogue as a writing exercise. This forces you to describe the actions of the characters, what is going on in the background, how the light looks, what’s happening in the environment. You know, those details intuitive writers miss! If you can train yourself to do this, you’ll notice more in your real-life environment too. :)

- ENFP Mod

PS: Sorry, I know a lot of these examples are kinda feminine… I’m tired.

hey, here’s a radical idea: someone saying “no” when you ask for sex is never an act of abuse, and saying otherwise in a conversation about rape victims is deplorable.

if there are other things that were done to you that were abusive, your trauma is always valid. but “not having sex with me” can never be added to the abuser’s list of offenses, because you are never owed sex. 

 if your partner says the reason they said ‘no’ was that you’re ugly, or stupid, or any number of demoralizing things- that is an act of abuse. but the act of abuse is in attacking your sense of self worth, and not in refusing sex. 

the abusive act is that your abuser attributed their ‘no’ to a supposed lack of worthiness on your part. but denying sex in itself is never an act of abuse. when this occurs, you point out that you had your self worth attacked.

 you don’t go around preaching that saying ‘no’ to sex is an abuse tactic, and you especially don’t do it in the chronological middle of a discussion regarding people being pressured into sex. 

my favourite aphobic argument is that somehow ace people in relationships are abusive for not having sex with their (non asexual) partner

uwu relationships are all about compromise and that means the only one who actually has to do any compromising is always the asexual partner or else they’re abusive uwu