Condoms are imperfect. This is perfectly okay to admit. What is not okay is ignoring the potential consequences of not using them. For most people, condoms are the most effective readily available method of STI and pregnancy prevention. Whether by malice, selfishness, or ignorance, many prefer to not use them, even when they should. They also discourage their partners from … [Read more...]
7 Things I Teach My Kids About Consent, Sexual Harassment, and Assault
During a crowded bus journey, my daughter's shrill four-year-old voice piped up clearly and succinctly above the hum of the ongoing conversation: "I want to have sex with [insert classmate here]." A silence, not unlike the one pervading the moment before the conductor raises his baton, fell in anticipation of my reply. And on behalf of all the sex-positive parents, I swallowed … [Read more...]
Stop Hurting Women: We Belong to Ourselves Despite Violent Male Entitlement
[Content note: descriptions of violence, gendered violence, rape, physical assault, sexual assault, death] Mary “Unique” Spears, a mother of three, was shot on the streets for rejecting a man’s advances. April Sams was thrown over a six-story parking structure by a male co-worker whose unwanted advances she had refused. Maren Sanchez was stabbed in her high school hallway … [Read more...]
Abuse Happens Everywhere: 8 Questions To Ask About Respecting BDSM Boundaries
I came of age during a moment when lesbian feminist culture was booming -– music festivals, women’s bookstores and lesbian feminist political projects were cropping up everywhere. And one of the most damaging and fallacious assumptions of that era was that women were inherently non-violent, that lesbian relationships offered a haven from abuse, that simply because our … [Read more...]
How Do We Create Consent Culture With Our Children?
As many cis het white women know right now, it is a time for us to learn everything we have been doing wrong and make amends. But whilst many claim to love learning, discussions of race are hampered because it means confronting our own failings and actively choosing to be vulnerable to the rage of those we have unwittingly oppressed or abused, even if our crime has 'simply' … [Read more...]
This Cartoon Shows Us How Ridiculous Our Ideas About Consent Really Are
This article first appeared on Everyday Feminism and is reprinted by permission. Our friends at Everyday Feminism used this awesome cartoon to illustrate the core issues with how we treat sexual consent in our society. What if we treated all consent this way? This cartoon shows us how absurd it would be. Understanding sexual consent is an essential part of radical self … [Read more...]
3 Ways to Create Safer Space for Black Women in a Misogynoir World
The phrase “Safe Space” was by far one of conservative media's favorite phrases of the past year. Post election, particularly in the context of colleges creating them, safe spaces have been accused of aiding the creation of intolerant students, censoring opinions of others and most of all absurdly coddling those who are over-sensitive to the world. On the other end of the … [Read more...]
