When I was

a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. “This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar” she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’
It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions?

Sandi Toksvig

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Silence won't protect you

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Out of control

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Kutcher, Moore, and

the organizations the DNA Foundation supports don’t give us ways to confront systemic poverty and racism, lack of access to education, or strict immigration policies and community policing practices that make people reluctant to engage with the systems that might support them. Instead, their campaigns focus hype and hustle on one target — the market for commercial sex. They don’t address the fact that this market does not exist in isolation of these other political and economic factors. When they do attempt to address human rights or misogyny, they do so only in rhetoric. They still place men in the paternalistic role of savior, and people in the sex trade as innocents to be protected. Then they ask us to pay them to perform the role of savior — a role they created, and a role people in the sex trade do not benefit from. In this way, the money that Kutcher, Moore, and the DNA Foundation raise will do nothing to address the real harms in the lives of people in the sex trade.
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The overall moral

of the story is this. Even with him, even with this guy, who totally blindsided me with his ability to read me despite the fact that he barely knew me: even with him, I had to be able to talk directly about what I wanted. Our connection was established because I was able to say, “Okay, that bite was a tad gentle, here’s how I really like it, and here’s what not to do with your teeth on me.” All my most extraordinary sexual connections have benefited from everyone involved taking ownership of their desire, and talking about it directly at least a little bit.
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I’m astounded by

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Being human is

complicated, not least because of our experience of sex. Between the hard-to-kill notion of women as property or status symbols and the not unrelated power of a woman’s control over her own fertility, we live in a constant state of dissonance. Are we free? Is there justice? What would that even look like, a world where no one sees anyone else as an object of possession or conquest?

But the tangle of these wildly disparate ideas has left one shining thought in my mind: that amid the noise and haste of the political world – a world of race and religion and economics and gender – two people may, astonishingly, implausibly, gloriously, connect. They may look into each other’s eyes and see the infinity of each other, and all the rest of it, the war and the injustice and the property and poverty, may wash away like dust under a rainstorm. Two humans, cleansed of culture and economy, can find the entire universe in each other’s eyes.

I hope Kate and William are happy. I hope everyone who was born an unwanted child has the opportunity to have only the children they want. I hope bin Laden’s widows find peace. I hope that you, all of you, can connect sexually with someone you care about without getting snared in the spider’s web of culture.

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Pubic hair comes

in different colors, different textures, and different patterns of distribution. Vaginal canals (the part that can be fun to stick things in) have different textures. Labia come in different colors and sizes. If a woman wants to keep all of her pubic hair and nurture how wild it is or get rid of it completely, that is her choice. Whether a woman has light pink inner labia or dark purple inner labia, labia minora that reach outside of the majora and wave around like a flag, labia minora that are all tucked up inside in a way that looks kind of like a coin slot or absolutely anything in between, her pussy (in my opinion) is inherently beautiful.
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My cunt is

not a prize to be won with wealth or game, it is not a gift given out of gratitude or insecurity. My cunt is for my enjoyment and pleasure, and for other people's enjoyment and pleasure. I fuck because of the sea-green color of your eyes, or your sweetheart smile, or the way you move your hands that reminds me of someone I've loved and lost; I fuck because I like the books piled three-deep on your shelves, or a joke you made that had me laughing for five minutes straight, or the look of concentration you get when you're shooting zombies in Left for Dead 2. I fuck because I love you with a passion that scares me, and because the idea of hurting you makes me shake in fear; I fuck because you're cute and I have nothing better to do.
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Kesennuma fishery building

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I'm not sure

where I'm going with this. I think my point is just this: An awful lot of people, of all genders and orientations, would benefit from the kind of sex that lesbians take as a given. The kind of sex where success isn't overwhelmingly defined by one partner's "performance." The kind of sex that doesn't make a sharp distinction between "foreplay" and "sex," and that doesn't have a strong opinion about which has to happen first. The kind of sex where the journey is the destination.
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I’m paying attention

to the moment by moment beat of a heart, the rise and fall of lungs, the regular oscillation of hormones, the unparalleled complexity and power of a human brain.
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Please… get to

know your vagina. Find out what it looks like in various states of arousal. Find out what it smells like over the course of your monthly cycle. Get in there with a mirror and a speculum and really get to know it. Whatever it does is right for it, and the only time you should be concerned is when your Gynecologist is or if it’s doing something out of character. Don’t let a sexual partner tell you something that’s normal for your body is gross or wrong. If they do, don’t let them back until they’re ready to deal with the reality of sex.
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At [its] heart,

this is about celebrating pornography and masturbation. It is an opportunity for ladies of all genders (or however you identify) to open up a dialog: What is feminist porn? What is your history with porn? What do you find hot?

And ultimately it’s a dare to share your hot links. Because the more we can openly talk about porn and what we like, the more likely it is that porn for women will continue being made. And really guys have been sharing and recommending porn for ages! So help a sister out.

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Drop that phone

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It seems, in

fact, that there's only one thing to be ashamed of in this environment, and that's being someone without a kink -- a vanilla. And it takes our group's comparatively handsome would-be spanker about 20 seconds to diagnose us, correctly, with this malady. "I'm not entirely a vanilla," I start to object. Then I realize I don't know if "vanilla" in this context is a noun or an adjective (is it "I'm not a vanilla" or "I'm not vanilla"?), which causes me to abandon my pathetic attempt to fit in. "Yes," I finally say, glancing at the bottles of hand sanitizer in between all the Swedish fish and sandwiches on the refreshment table. The scent of cold cuts wafts under my nose as I add, "I am vanilla. A vanilla."
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But he’s got

me to keep him safe now, and because he’s building trust and respect with me, his pack leader, because he’s learning that I’ll protect him if someone tries to hurt him, he can do anything. He’s free because he’s safe.

The tricky part about being human is that you have to be your own pack leader. You have to know that you can keep yourself safe, stand over your own emotional center of gravity and stay stable but responsive.

When you’ve got that, you can open yourself back up to new experiences, without fear, without reservation, trusting that if you fall, you’ll be safe. You’ve got YOU to protect you.

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What we're waiting for

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When you start

to know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That’s why you can’t fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and your body but not your heart. And that’s why, when you really connect with a person’s inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.
Lisa Unger

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True feminism seeks

not to make women the equals of men within an exploitative system, but to liberate both sexes from oppression.
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