Writing Responsibly

How to Develop Sexual and Romantic Attraction to People Who Are Good for You

Reblogged from holisticsexualhealth

sexreeducated:

Cultivating healthy attractions: The love-skill we’re never taught.
Published on May 13, 2012 by Ken Page, L.C.S.W. in Finding Love

We can’t force our sexual attractions. Most of us have learned that the hard way.

Yet, there’s something profound that most of us have never been taught: Although sexual attractions can’t be controlled, they can be educated. This post will teach some ways to cultivate sexual and romantic attraction to people who are kind, respectful and available. Even if you’re relentlessly attracted to bad-boys or bad-girls, or to unavailable people, you can still develop this capacity!

These suggestions are not gimmicks, they are the lifelong skills of romance and intimacy—the very same skills you will use to keep passion alive in your next serious relationship. .

The Attraction Spectrum

Every time we enter a room of people, we make choices based upon our attractions: Whom do we notice? Whom do we pass over? Deb, a young stockbroker from Chicago, once told me, “You know, it’s almost magical. I can go to a party, and there’s always one person I’m most attracted to. If I date him, within a few weeks or a few months I discover he has the same emotional qualities as my previous partner. But when I first saw him from across the room, I had no idea at all that this would be true!”

Read More

Myth of the Day, 28

Reblogged from holisticsexualhealth

sexreeducated:

“Girls can’t get pregnant during their period.”

REALITY: There is a chance that you can get pregnant if you have sex during your period. Once in the vagina, sperm can stay alive for several days—that  means that, even if the last time you had sex was three days ago during your period, you could now be ovulating and therefore you could get pregnant. Remember: ANY time you have sex unprotected there is a risk of getting pregnant, so always use protection.

guys, here is why people keep saying that demisexuality is slut shaming:

Reblogged from princekarkat

thingsthatmakeyouacey:

greenchestnuts:

missvoltairine:

It’s not because anyone gives a shit about how you, personally, only want to have sex after forming an “emotional attachment” or w/e. In fact, it is precisely because no one cares about how you, personally, only want to have sex after forming an “emotional attachment” or w/e.

It’s not because anyone is trying to ~police~ your identity. It’s because “demisexuality”, the term, the identity, specifically creates distance between those who ID as such and those who are condemned widely by society for engaging in casual sex.

Except that the set of people who are demisexual and the set of people who engage in casual sex are not mutually exclusive, because orientation is not behavior.

In a world where people, especially women, are punished for being seen as sluts, the kind of attraction/sex relationship inherent in demisexuality is really seen as ideal.

No, it’s not. I lived it in precisely the kind of “True Love Waits,” “Abstinence Until Marriage” relationship that you’re talking about. I was raised as a conservative Christian and I was dating a conservative Christian man at the time. And my lack of sexual attraction to him— which, at the time, I characterized as demisexuality— still caused problems in our relationship. It was good that I wasn’t having sex with him… but it was bad that I wasn’t attracted to him.

The thing about demisexuality— the reason this is relevant to my experience, which I thought was demisexuality at the time— is that, if you’re only sexually attracted to people you form an emotional bond with, not q may mean not p but q sure doesn’t mean p. Forming an emotional bond with someone is no guarantee that you’ll be sexually attracted to them. And being a woman who’s not sexually attracted to her boyfriend? Is really not seen as ideal.

Amen.

Also:

Potentially relevant article.

Humane Fish Euthanasia

Reblogged from bettabutts

bettabutts:

oh and

Reblogged from princekarkat

kamidoodles:

i swear to god people use ‘thee’, ‘thou’, and ‘thy’ interchangeably. please stop.

it’s really easy guys.

‘thy’ is ‘your’ (genitive [relationships between nouns])
‘thine’ is ‘your’ (possessive [subset of genitive, classifying possession])
‘thou’ is ‘you’ (nominative [defines subject of verb])
‘thee’ is ‘you’ (objective [direct or indirect object of a verb])

use thy when you could say my
use thine when you could say mine
use thou when one person is the subject
use thee when one person is the object 

examples:

thy house
be this thine?
thou wast in the field yonder
get thee to a nunnery 

Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sally Roesch Wagner, and the Haudenosaunee Origins of American Feminist Thought

Reblogged from princekarkat

buggeryisthegenus:

zuky:

the bad dominicana:

deluxvivens:

feminist.com

“The Untold Story of The Iroquois Influence On Early Feminists”
by Sally Roesch Wagner

I had been haunted by a question to the past, a mystery of feminist history: How did the radical suffragists come to their vision, a vision not of Band-Aid reform but of a reconstituted world completely transformed?

For 20 years I had immersed myself in the writings of early United States women’s rights activists — Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) — yet I could not fathom how they dared to dream their revolutionary dream. Living under the ideological hegemony of nineteenth-century United States, they had no say in government, religion, economics, or social life (“the four-fold oppression” of their lives, Gage and Stanton called it.) Whatever made them think that human harmony — based on the perfect equality of all people, with women absolute sovereigns of their lives — was an achievable goal?

Surely these white women, living under conditions of virtual slavery, did not get their vision in a vacuum. Somehow they were able to see from point A, where they stood — corseted, ornamental, legally nonpersons — to point C, the “regenerated” world Gage predicted, in which all repressive institutions would be destroyed. What was point B in their lives, the earthly alternative that drove their feminist spirit — not a utopian pipe dream but a sensible, do-able paradigm?

Then I realized I had been skimming over the source of their inspiration without noticing it. My own unconscious white supremacy had kept me from recognizing what these prototypical feminists kept insisting in their writings: They caught a glimpse of the possibility of freedom because they knew women who lived liberated lives, women who had always possessed rights beyond their wildest imagination — Iroquois women.

The more evidence I uncovered of this indelible Native American influence on the vision of early United States feminists, the more certain I became that this story must be told.

[Read More]

ok so there’s a few things to criticize in this rosy view of “white folks and ndns yay!” but people need to stop acting like none of this ever happened.

Incidentally I wrote an essay on my old blog in 2009, largely inspired by Sally Roesch Wagner’s writings on Haudenosaunee women, entitled “Ongoing Echoes from the Women of the Long House” — which I reposted on this very tumblr. For whatever it’s worth, I argued that not only were Haudenosaunee women a galvanizing original source for early US (white) feminism (e.g. Bloomers), but also for the most well-known ideals of US democracy and liberty, as well as the League of Nations and the United Nations.

I sorted out the various links, because figuring out who said what where was getting confusing:

• This link goes to the copy of the article entitled “The Untold Story of The Iroquois Influence On Early Feminists” by Sally Roesch Wagner (originally published in the Winter 1996 edition of On the Issues), as republished by feminist.com sometime after 2002, along with a brief biography of Dr. Wagner and now-dead links to where books by her could formerly be purchased.

• This link goes to the official website of Sally Roesch Wagner — more specifically, to the page from which her books can be purchased so that proceeds from the sale will go to benefit the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation.

• This link goes directly to the gift shop at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (MJGF) which offers works by both Sally Roesch Wagner and other authors including both Gloria Steinem and Matilda Joslyn Gage herself. 

• This link goes to the copy of Sally Roesch Wagner’s article “The Untold Story of The Iroquois Influence On Early Feminists” as reblogged from feminist.com by WoC blogger extraordinaire delux-vivens here on Tumblr.

• This link goes to baddominicana’s reblog of the reblog delux-vivens had posted because, while she didn’t add commentary of her own, she did pick a good spot for the “Read More” break which is something I’m trying to learn how to do.

• This link goes to zuky’s reblog (via baddominica, via delux-vivens, via feminist.com) to Sally Roesch Wagner’s article “The Untold Story of The Iroquois Influence On Early Feminists”; zuky added a link to an essay she (zuky) had written shortly after she (zuky) first discovered and read one of Sally Roesch Wagner’s books early in 2009.

• This link goes to a copy of zuky’s February 2009 essay, entitled “Ongoing Echoes from the Women of the Long House” — exploring the influence Haudenosaunee culture had, not only on the women’s rights movement which began in the 19th century, but on the development of the ideals of liberty, democratic government, and innate equality, that both inspired the American Revolution of the 18th century and then also became enshrined in the founding documents of the United States — an essay zuky wrote in response to Wagner’s Sisters In Spirit as well as to the experience of visiting Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York (USA) over the 2008-2009 winter holidays.

• This link goes to the Amazon.com page for Sisters In Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists, the book by Sally Roesch Wagner which zuky discovered and purchased on her trip to Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls and, in February 2009, wrote her (zuky’s) essay largely in response to. (This is one of the books available via the MJGF gift shop as also linked to above.)

Hopefully I’m not the only one who will find these links less confusing to navigate.

Definitely read the essay by Sally Roesch Wagner, and everyone’s commentary on in here on Tumblr, but especially also read zuky’s essay. It’s all well worth your time, and may just blow your mind.

In closing, I’ll just repeat part of deluxvivens’s brief but incisive commentary:
“people need to stop acting like none of this ever happened.”