For some of us, there is no amount of self-love or body-positive work that will inspire passion and sexual chemistry in our partners. For many of us, our partners simply don’t find touching our bodies desirable and aren’t capable of manufacturing that sensation. It’s not about us, though it unquestionably has a huge impact on us. Dressing provocatively, engaging in … [Read more...]
7 Pieces of Advice for Dating While You Are Non-Binary
Let's be real: the vast majority of dating advice is aggressively cisheteronormative. From popular magazines and dating advice books to talk shows and Bachelor Nation, we have a plethora of suggestions on how cishet, white, able-bodied, upper-middle-class folks can date each other within cishet, patriarchal structures. Fighting over the bill only to "let" the man pay, dressing … [Read more...]
Bisexual and Black: Navigating Heteronormativity and Religious Homophobia in the Dating World
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on Postmodern Woman under the title "Learning to Love Without Filter: The Many Contortions in the World of Bisexuality" and is republished with permission. “I want you to myself,” she whispered to me as her soft fingers curled through the baby hair growing on my neck. She twirled a few strands around her fingers and tugged, … [Read more...]
Worth and Desire: 3 Emotions I Still Work Through While Practicing Non-Monogamy
“Muriel and I talked about love as a voluntary commitment, while we each struggled through the steps of an old dance, not consciously learned but desperately followed … In those warm spaces of survival, love was another name for control, however openly given.” - Audre Lorde I return to this quote from Zami so often. It makes me think about the ways I have loved, do love, and … [Read more...]
