Queer People Deserve Nuanced, Dynamic Conversations About Our Bodies

Sam has an announcement and an invitation.

Let's Queer Things Up!

It is undeniable that how we experience our bodies is often impacted by the identities we hold. I’ve known this deeply as a transgender, queer, and mentally ill person, trying to navigate self-love and body acceptance in a world that routinely denies my humanity and my worth. Our bodies are, perhaps, the most politically-charged battleground that we know; how we honor, protect, touch, and understand them often collides with the de/valuing of those same bodies in the culture at large.

Having conversations that acknowledge this complexity is a rare thing. Queerness, by its very nature, complicates the way that we move through the world — and by extension, the relationship we forge to our bodies and to each other. It’s worth talking about, and yet we are only beginning to collectively unravel this dialogue.

I’ve never known a queer person who hasn’t had some kind of complicated relationship to their…

View original post 738 more words

Memories: Trying to put them down

Alfa on memories – lovely

Glass & Gale, pt I

Nicole sent me here and I’m glad she did.

3 lessons I learned from my abuser

Sarahbeth Caplin shares 3 important lessons learned from an abusive relationship.

Sarahbeth Caplin

I’m not one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason. For the most part, I think that idea is complete horseshit.

Redemption from past pain is something different: it doesn’t require that a terrible event take place in order to teach you something. It doesn’t require you to be grateful for a period of suffering or loss. While I’m not sure that redemption does come from every traumatic event, I do believe there was something I dare call “good” that came out of my past abusive relationship.

These are just a few lessons I learned that have helped improve my current relationships, platonic and otherwise:

1) The difference between “apologies” and “not-pologies”

This should speak for itself, but if you’ve ever listened to the tearful confession of a celebrity or a politician caught doing things he shouldn’t, you may notice a pattern of victim-blaming and taking…

View original post 705 more words

Capture Bonding: How I Both Need and Grieve My Gender Transition

Sam writes of gain and loss in transition.

Let's Queer Things Up!

If we were to believe the dominant narratives around gender transition, we could only conclude that it’s a magical, affirming, and life-giving process. With these stories—and the glorious “before and after” photos that accompany them—we’re told that the uncomplicated truth of transition is that when the transformation is complete, we emerge on the other side whole and shimmering.

I am not whole, nor am I shimmering.

I often wonder: Can it be true that I can’t inhabit this body anymore—with its curves and parts that alienate me—but am still bonded to it? Top surgery is on the horizon for me. While I can’t fathom living the rest of my life with this chest, a part of me is grieving this loss. These curves were always guests (never residents), but their absence still means something to me.

I understand it only in metaphor. Imagine the kidnapped person who bonds to their…

View original post 1,005 more words

Fuck Fear – Jason Kynge

Nicole shares Jason’s writing of relationship, fear, and magic.

Nicole Lyons

Fear.

It conjures many images in our mind reading it. But I’m not talking about spiders or my irrational fear of opening a door; afraid someone will burst in at the same time and break my fingers.

I mean those fears that come when we enter a relationship. See I had hit a wall awhile back. Failed relationship after failed relationships. With the exception of one, I’ve remained friends with them all. I want them to be happy because for a moment we shared time together. But that’s not what this is about.

I came to this place of acceptance. Even put it out publicly that you know, I’m good being single and where I’m at. I’ve learned so many things from these past relationships but for the moment I’m standing still. I’m not searching or looking and I’m just going to be content where I am. And I was…

View original post 1,565 more words

Life And Your Place In It

Veronike writes of tragedy, and beautifully of making a difference, even a small one.

Thoughts Of A Sunrise

Standing in the hospital ward on my call last night, waiting for the round to begin and thinking of all the things I need to get done I suddenly hear a scream in the last cubicle and the nurses get up to go look. I run too. It’s a mother with her baby who stopped breathing. His little body lying there, emaciated and helpless, is making the occasional gasp, but he is no longer breathing.

He was HIV positive, having gotten it from his mother at birth and had pneumonia and malnutrition. The Doctors had known beforehand he would most likely not pull through and if something like this happened, he was not for resuscitation.

We walked with his slowly deteriorating body to the resuscitation room while bagging him for a while and calling the mother in to say her last goodbyes. But she wasn’t crying. She carried on as…

View original post 1,406 more words

It is a strange thing; this life.

Insane Roots shares some difficulties and some really, really good thoughts.

Insane Roots

I am writing to you today from within a fleeting moment of ease.

I don’t know how long it will last or how long it will be before my perception begins to blur, but these moments are scarce at best these days and therefore something to cherish.

It is a strange thing; this life.

A collection of moments woven together through emotional experiences. Creating the unique tapestry we cloak ourselves in for the entirety of our lives.

Seemingly so simple at times, almost mundane.

A settled routine providing much needed comfort in an otherwise chaotic world.

And then other times…it knocks the wind out of you. Sending you into a tale spin so fast all you can do is hold on tight and pray it is over soon.

Up until this week, I had been feeling pretty easy about things. Sure, I was still working through some emotional scars, but…

View original post 1,231 more words

All About That Bass: Your Kids Are Having Anal Sex, and Teen Vogue Was Right On For Educating Them

Samara responds to complaints about a genuinely educational article.

A Buick in the Land of Lexus

I get it. I do. Just last year, your cherubic daughter was pleading for you to take her to American Girl. Who wants to think about her getting ass fucked by the basketball team?

But she is.

Maybe not your daughter – but her best friend. And maybe not the whole basketball team. Maybe just the point guards.

The fact is, our teens are having anal sex. Teen Vogue’s “A Guide to Anal Sex” isn’t encouraging them to experiment with it. They just are, because horny teenage bodies are a wonderland.

The article, a nonjudgmental guide to safe anal sex, fills in a much-needed gap for teens, particularly LGBTQ teens, whose questions typically go unanswered by sex education. Generation Z, kids born after 2000, are more connected to available information than any other generation – but googling “anal” and “sex” is going to give them less useful information…

View original post 927 more words

Writer’s Block

Hetti writes on how words and what we call something can make a difference.