You Know I Have Been ToHell And Back I Have Shed As Many Skins As They Are Flames In A Fire And I Lost

You know I have been to Hell and back I have shed as many skins as they are flames in a fire and I – Lost many pilgrims along the way But the sun still rises and I wish you could see me now You would say I am the strongest woman you have ever known

Simone Desso, Back From the Dead (via wnq-writers)

My sophomore year of college, I had to take this class called Honors Human Sexuality. Which was a strange kind of class to wander into because you had a dozen kids: nerdy enough to be top of their class, getting scholarships just for doing their homework, but also who were willing to have completely honest, frank discussions about sex. (What I’m saying is, it was awesome.) So our first day, the professor went through this list of intimate acts, and wanted to know what we believed qualified as sex. She said kissing, we said no. She said oral, there was some controversy. She said anal. And one– one singular girl, in the corner of the room, said no. And god, with that one word, I could tell you her whole life’s story: I could tell you about the Bible Belt, Southern Baptist home, the “your virginity is a gift you give your husband.” I could tell you about the pushy high school boyfriend, the First True Love and how he said things like “blue balls is a medical condition” and “no, this is totally six inches” and “baby, baby, anal doesn’t count as REAL sex.” The tragedy here is not her ignorance, or her warped perception of human sexuality. The real tragedy is the education system that failed her– the way female sex drive is treated like a myth or a side-effect of heterosexual marriage, the way the clitorus is left un-labeled in high school text books or how I learned the word vulva on the internet. It’s the society whose obsession with sex can only be rivaled by it’s shame of it. How there is no right way to have a body: virginity treated as prudishness, promiscuity treated as lack of moral compass. In a world where boys talk about losing respect for the women they sleep with and yet never lose respect for themselves, it is not her fault that she didn’t understand what she was getting into. When she stumbled over her explanation that she thought anal counted as sex in gay couples, just not heterosexual ones, it made my chest ache. She was putting up parameters, working in clauses all so that what she’d done wouldn’t fall under the terrifying title of Real Sex. Because growing up under the Lone Star State of Abstinence Only turns the freedom of choice into a heavy burden where we are taught how to say no but not how to say yes– where women are valued by the state of their bodies. Did you know you can’t even pop a hymen? That it’s a muscle and it stretches and if you bleed the first time, you’re not supposed to? That stained sheets are not a rite of passage or a sign of purity. To every teenaged boy who’s ever bragged about how tight she was, here’s the part where I tell you that when she is aroused everything lubricates and loosens, she was only that “tight” because you have no idea how to turn her on. (Which is not something to brag about.) It is unacceptable that someone could make it to college—two decades of their life– without getting the bare bones basics of sexuality. And no, fear tactics and wait-until-marriage don’t count as an education. We can’t be so caught up in shaming sexuality that we neglect to teach how to express it safely. Because if Abstinence Only really works? Then I guess anal isn’t sex. It’s just cardio.

HONORS HUMAN SEXUALITY by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)

We happily accept that we can love more than one child, parent, sibling, teacher, friend or pet. When you think of it like that, isn’t the total exclusiveness that we expect of spousal love positively weird?

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion  (via fyp-science)

I refuse to be reforested. I stay razed            as a reminder.

Nina Puro, from “houses all the way down, or, the slope mine” (via christophercarrioned)

You know what? It’s okay to be ace and also a prude. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs. I don’t like sex jokes or sex scenes. I don’t wear makeup or show a lot of skin. I’m society’s definition of a prude. But does that make my asexuality any less valid? No, and it doesn’t make yours any less valid either.

I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.

Zora Neale Hurston, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing… And Then Again: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (via wordsnquotes)