So it's no secret 'round these parts that I'm pretty pro-porn

I identify with a lot of this:

The first time I read porn on the Internet I was eleven; by the time I was thirteen I was writing porn, which was one of my major hobbies throughout high school . What horrific damage did it wreak on my sexual life?
Self-acceptance. The vocabulary to conceptualize myself as queer, a sadist, a submissive, rather than just knowing that something was weird about my sexuality. Greater familiarity with sexual anatomy and how to safely and pleasurably perform several sex acts. An appreciation for the diversity of human sexuality: some people were trans or poly or whatever, and that was cool. A better understanding than most people of how consent worked and the difference between fantasy and reality. Orgasms. Lots and lots of orgasms.
I’m not saying that it was perfect, but porn gave me a hell of a better sex education than school did.

--Ozyfrantz, of The Good Men Project

For me personally, I will say that reading porn especially helped. True life: I like, researched blowjobs when I was preparing to give one for the first time. Scoured the internet for the best descriptions in various erotica I could find. Porn reminds me that I'm not weird for liking what I like. Anatomy lessons were way better than the diagrams we got in class. There's tons of crappy porn that is bad for both the women involved and the public perception of women--I'm not denying that. But porn does some good in these streets too. 

Things that evidently really turn me on...

me: *leans over [guy I've slept with] to put in my wifi password on his laptop*

him: You wear the same perfume you wore in college.

me: *swoons* *fans self* *tries not to drool in front of other company*

She's a bitch but also a BAMF...

"The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it."

--Toni Morrison

(via sex is not the enemy)

Ryan O'Connell knows my life.

It is possible to occasionally sleep with your friend without it turning into some big ol’ thing. Why is there such intense debate about this? Why did Hollywood have to poop out two identical movies that explore this STRANGE and TWISTED phenomenon known as, “friends with benefits”? “OMG,” a fearful woman screams. “Is it true? Can you REALLY sleep with someone and not want to have 10,000 of their babies afterwards?” Yes. Friend sex is tricky but it can work on a case by case basis. I would just advise that the person you’re boning not be your best friend and that you only have sex sporadically. There. Bingo. Now you can sleep with most of your friends!

--Ryan O'Connell

GPOY

Reblogged from Stay A While...

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Reblogged from Lavender Labia

Seriously, because if you are a person of color and/or a person with a uterus and/or a person who makes less than $250,000 a year (which SOME PEOPLE think is "middle-income." Sheesh) and/or a college student and/or un/underemployed and/or a senior citizen and/or a parent and/or an educator and/or a person who cares about any person(s) who falls into one or more of the above categories, the quality of your life absolutely does.

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Reblogged from come correct

RACE AND**

More Music for your Wednesday

How can you not want this guy around #4moreyears?

If you really think the guy who, judging by recorded statements alone, is clearly debating himself, would do better by this country...go back to Britain or wherever you came from. I can't even. 

This hits me deep.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

"You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it."

--Audre Lorde

(via Sister Outsider) 

Excerpt from "10 Thoughts on Being Loved by a Skinny Boy"

Full text here.

The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.

Fucking me does not require an asterisk.

Loving me is not a fetish.

Finding me beautiful is not a novelty. 

I am not a fucking novelty.

--Rachel Wiley 

"If your success is defined as being well-adjusted to injustice and well-adapted to indifference, then we don't want successful leaders. We want great leaders who love the people enough and respect the people enough to be unbought, unbound, unafraid, and unintimidated to tell the truth."

--Cornel West

(via Happiness Runs...) 

As we've discussed, I love Cornel West. I vehemently disagree with a lot of his current political opinions right now, though, and that's fine. I can do both. If we couldn't love that which we find problematic, we would be either loveless or ignorant. 

I think Barack is that leader. That's what my absentee ballot that went out in today's mail says, and I hope it's what you'll say sometime between now and Tuesday too.

This is Method Man snuggling.

Reblogged from Serenity in Perspective

...I'm just gonna leave that there.

"The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. The clitoris is a simple bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers, to be precise. That's a higher concentration of nerve fibers than found anywhere else in the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice the number in the penis. Who needs a handgun when you've got a semi-automatic?"

--Natalie Angier

(via come correct) 

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Reblogged from Freedom Fighter

We don't want to survive. We want to live.

Reason #938470394709734708 why Paul Ryan is an obnoxious ass.

I'm sure you've all seen this image. You probably noticed how clean those dishes he's washing seem to be. You may have seen the crease in his apron and the wristwatch he hasn't taken off. You may have even noticed that the soap seems to be quite far from the sink.

Well, here's what actually happened. 

"They showed up there, and they did not have permission…The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. [Paul Ryan] did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall."

—

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society. He’s irritated that the Romney campaign had Paul Ryan stop by his soup kitchen, unannounced, and pose for pictures while “washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty,” as the Washington Post puts it. Antal is particularly distressed at the prospect of his center appearing to take political position, as he believes that could jeopardize its continued existence: “We are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” he explained. “I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals.”

(via La Belle Vita) 

It's like poverty-tourism but worse.

What should be said to every Republican ever.

"‎I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."

--Sister Joan Chittister, Catholic Nun

(via La Belle Vita)

T-shirts I want #next

Reblogged from 18° 15’ N, 77° 30’ W

This will someday be my life.

[Obviously minus all of that hideous art and featuring much more Afrocentric art.]

Jonathan Adler Catalog
Reblogged from Addicted to Etsy

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Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

"Our job is to love people. When it hurts. When it’s awkward. When it’s uncool and embarrassing. Our job is to stand together, to carry the burdens of one another and to meet each other in our questions." 

--Jamie Tworkowksi

(via Free Bird)  

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Reblogged from come correct

I cannot be the woman of your life because I am already the woman of my own.

Click this link.

link.

Listen to the play bar at the top.

(I'll wait...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

(...for your jaw to be down here.)

And let's throw in a little loc lust

Reblogged from Art School Dropout

Women who are perfection Vol. 2

Reblogged from 18° 15’ N, 77° 30’ W

#LegacyIsTheRealAffirmativeAction

As many as 15 percent of freshmen at America’s top schools are white students who failed to meet their university’s minimum standards for admission, according to Peter Schmidt, deputy editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. These kids are “people with a long-standing relationship with the university,” or in other words, the children of faculty, wealthy alumni and politicians.

According to Schmidt, these unqualified but privileged kids are nearly twice as common on top campuses as Black and Latino students who had benefited from affirmative action.

--"Ten Myths about Affirmative Action"

(via La Belle Vita) 

"Rude girls aren't the antithesis of feminism. They aren't even a different form of feminism. I am hesitant to label women of color's efforts to survive and carve a place in the world anything as flawed as feminism because things really just tend to be larger than the labels we give them. A rude girl is just the girl you need her to be, point blank. Get into her narcissism, her cockiness, her sex-positive approaches. Honey, really get into the way she tears down obstacles--with a little flair and a whole bunch of attitude. Even if you can't hang with her, you can hang with the way she handles her shit--because it's the way we sometimes want to: open and blunt, with the tell-tale knowledge that she is, and always will be, the shit."

--"An Ode to Rude Girl Anthems"

(via come correct) 

She is perfection.

Reblogged from Art School Dropout

Not gonna lie, after Rumble2012, I would have voted John Stewart into any position imaginable...

Reblogged from A Winding Road...

"A racist woman is not a feminist; she doesn’t care about helping women, just the women who look like her and can buy the same things she can. A transphobic woman is not a feminist; she is overly concerned with policing the bodies and expressions of others. A woman against reproductive rights — to use bell hook’s own example, and an issue close to your heart — is not a feminist; she prioritizes her dogma or her disgust over the bodies of others. An ableist woman is not a feminist; she holds some Platonic ideal of what a physically or mentally “whole” person should be and tries to force the world to fit inside it."

--Nyux, "An Open Letter to Caitlin Morgan"

(via Free Bird) 

Do you, boo.

"Actually, being what you are is the simplest.

What is difficult is to stop being what you are not.

Because we wish to keep hold of our attachments.

Freedom is to be free of attachments and the main attachment is to the ‘I’-self."

--Mooji

(via Free Bird) 

Music for your Wednesday

Wynter Gordon:

"We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of black women for each other."

--Audre Lorde

(via come correct) 

My friend CC's thesis is basically on this and I'm excited.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

Hurricane long weekend would have been better with snuggles in this:

Reblogged from Square Dancing with Giants

Fact: I've never watched The Office.

But this guy's name is evidently Oscar, and he is on point.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

CAAS just isn't going to be the same without him...

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

When I saw the call go out for students to participate in his tribute video on campus, I felt like I had to participate, even though they were looking for students who had taken multiple classes with him and I'd only taken one. My first African-American Studies class. The first time I ever had a class with an instructor who looked like me. 

I firmly believe this man is responsible for fundamentally altering the course of my life, and besides what I conveyed in that video, he will likely never know the impact he had on me. How can one measure the effect of being exposed to Du Bois for the first time? Of first reading bell hooks? Of knowing that someone you watch on television knows your name and will take the time to talk to you when you run into him at the mall? 

I started asking questions like I'd never asked before with this man. I stopped taking the world the way it was presented to me for granted. I felt this rush of wanting to learn that was long-forgotten and refreshing at the same time. No one else inspires me like this man has inspired me.

So I can't help but feel like Princeton has lost something precious. But at the same time, I know that CAAS will keep doing big things, because the entire department is chock full of superstars, many of whom may have been struggling for room to shine. 

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Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

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Reblogged from 18° 15’ N, 77° 30’ W

"I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool."

--Theodore Isaac Rubin

(via Free Bird) 

Style Crush

Reblogged from On the Bright Side

True life, MHP is one of the professors I most regret not taking a class with at Princeton.

Reblogged from come correct

BAHAHAHAHA

"We were discussing gay marriage in class and some girl was like ‘God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ and another girl was like ‘God ain’t create that cheap-ass lace front on your head either. That shit is Lucifer-made.’"

(via come correct)

I love it when my friends cash in on offers I don't expect them to take me up on.

I see how that could be a bad thing, but let me give two recent examples:

Sometime early in the summer, I thought about how my friend SW was taking a year off and living at home in West Virginia. 'West Virginia's not super-far from DC,' I thought. 'I should let her know that I'd be cool with her coming to visit for a weekend sometime if she needs a break from home.' I wrote on her Facebook wall to this effect, but I'm not gonna lie--I was surprised when she actually emailed me months later saying she wanted to visit. We had SUCH a great time when she was here and I was so glad I'd decided to extend that offer, even if I wasn't particularly expecting her to take me up on it.

During Sandy, I kept checking in on my friend who lives in Arlington because I knew way more people on NoVa had lost power than in DC. When he still didn't have power by this afternoon, I told him that if he and our other friend and his housemate wanted to come hang out at my place when metro re-opened, they were welcome to. He didn't text me back then, so I was like, eh, well, I guess that's just something people think people say, but when he called me later to say they were coming, I was so excited! We hung out catching up for a few hours, I made dinner, and now, like the 20-somethings we are, we're all sitting in my living room on our computers while they make use of my good electricity. 

It makes me feel good when my friends know that my offers aren't empty. I like being able to be here for people, as a mini-vacation, a source of company and electricity, an editor, a pair of listening ears, whatever...   

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Reblogged from The Write Curl Diary

GPOY

Reblogged from Serenity in Perspective

No lie I kinda want this shirt.

Reblogged from come correct

This makes me want to watch LA Complex

 Reblogged from come correct

Because seriously when do you see this in pop culture? Uhhhh I think this brings us to a grand total of once. 

The previous post taught me a WONDERFUL new word!

It is the best new word I have learned in a while. It makes all the sociologist and feminist and race-scholar parts of me simultaneously happy.

If you were reading closely, I bet you saw it too, and were like, hmm, this word, what does it mean? 

Kyriarchy

(n.) a social system or set of interlocking social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission...coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to describe interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others.

(via wikipedia)

Basically, it's like, yo, I heard you like intersectionality, so I put some intersectionality in your intersectionality. And I need to go read all the things that employ this concept like immediately. 

"Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It's about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel 'same sex' or 'same gender' attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?) But queerness doesn't stop there.

"This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than 'gay' or 'lesbian' or 'bisexual'. A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to describe their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy.

"Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched in the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDS and other STIs.

"Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don't like in bed.

"We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don't expect one person to be able to fill all our diverse needs, fantasies, and ideals indefinitely. 

"Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed.

"Queer doens't mean 'don't label me,' it means 'I am naming myself.' It means 'ask me more questions if you're curious' and in the same breath means 'fuck off.'

"At least, that is what it means to me."

(via Tranarchism)

I dislike saying "people of this identity ARE [any subset of qualities]" because no they all aren't. So I'm going to replace the word queer in all of this with the phrase "people with healthy attitudes towards sex, love, and identity". Otherwise, ALL OF THIS OMG YES.

#TransRespect #DCPride

My city has launched the first ever transgender respect ad campaign. Images below are via Colorlines.

Saying #preach feels redundant...

Reblogged from La Belle Vita

Obsession with the haircut is still strong, in case y'all were wondering

Reblogged from

18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

"Rosie" the Riveter's real name is Geraldine.

Reblogged from Lavender Labia

My mother doesn't know who she is. I was talking with her last night about the various costumes people wore to my Halloween party, and when I said that my housemate's friend dressed up as Rosie the Riveter, she said, "Who?" 
"[My housemate]'s friend," I repeated, thinking she missed the subject of the sentence. 
"No," she replied, "what did she dress up as?" 
"Rosie the Riveter."
"I don't know who that is."
"'We can do it?' Women going to work in the factories while their husbands were away fighting in WWII? The feminist icon?"
 "I have no idea what you're talking about."

*headdesk*

I believe this is a re-reblog. It deserves it.

Reblogged from

18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

Beautiful.

Reblogged from Serenity in Perspective

Reblogging for the first part

Because it is the truth.

Reblogged from On the Bright Side

 

All of this.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)