pantsukitty:

sex should be:

- empowering

- fun

- trusting & loving

- safe

if you’re feeling anything other than these things when in a sexual encounter, please take the red flag and communicate or get out of there as soon as you can! sex should never make you feel anything other than good things!

cosmictuesdays:

“How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realise this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realise this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition. No culture has ever bothered to forbid men to photosynthesise, women to run faster than the speed of light, or negatively charged electrons to be attracted to each other. In truth, our concepts ‘natural’ and unnatural’ are taken not from biology, but from Christian theology. The theological meaning of ‘natural’ is ‘in accordance with the intentions of the God who created nature’. Christian theologians argued that God created the human body, intending each limb and organ to serve a particular purpose. If we use our limbs and organs for the purpose envisioned by God, then it is a natural activity. To use them differently than God intends is unnatural. But evolution has no purpose. Organs have not evolved with a purpose, and the way they are used is in constant flux. There is not a single organ in the human body that only does the job its prototype did when it first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago. Organs evolve to perform a particular function, but once they exist, they can be adapted for other usages as well. Mouths, for example, appeared because the earliest multicellular organisms needed a way to take nutrients into their bodies. We still use our mouths for that purpose, but we also use them to kiss, speak and, if we are Rambo, to pull the pins out of hand grenades. Are any of these uses unnatural simply because our worm-like ancestors 600 million years ago didn’t do those things with their mouths?”

— Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harari, Yuval Noah)

andrewjosminyard:

lasmaracuyas:

“I confront [white guilt] every year, about a month into my course on racism, among [white] students who come to me in tears because they cannot deal with the racism that goes on in their families or their home towns or their student residences. Their tears are the result of genuine anguish, care, and a desire to learn and to change. I confront similar attitudes among my colleagues, and I am similarly gratified by their concern. But those who experience white guilt need to learn three things: 1) People of colour are generally not moved by their tears, and may even see those tears as a self-indulgent expression of white privilege. It is after all a great privilege to be able to express one’s emotion openly and to be confident that one is in a cultural context where one’s feelings will be understood. 2) Guilt is paralysing. It serves no purposes; it does no good. It is not a substitute for activism. 3) White guilt is often patronizing if it leads to pity for those of colour. Pity gets in the way of sincere and meaningful human relationships, and it forestalls the frankness that meaningful relationships demand. White guilt will not change the racialized environment; it will only make the guilty feel better.”

— “Women of Colour in Canadian Academia,” Audrey Kobayashi (via lamaracuya)   (via hagereseb)