there’s this moment of awareness for a girl when she realizes her legs (and/or arms, armpits, upper lip…) are unacceptable.
she’s just minding her own business, bopping along, when maybe a classmate starts mocking her for having visible body hair. or she goes to a sleepover and someone points out that her legs look different from all the other girls’. or she walks in on her mom shaving and asks why, and the answer is “because a woman’s body looks nicer this way.” or maybe her mother or sister actually approaches her and says, “looks like it’s time you learned to shave that jungle.”
the point is, the day before that realization, however it happened, the girl didn’t give a shit about her hair. she put on shorts and tank tops without a second thought. she didn’t feel unclean. she didn’t feel like a monster when she looked in the mirror (at least not because of body hair). her hair didn’t stop her from riding a bike or climbing a tree.
only after someone draws her attention to it does she start feeling self-conscious and wanting to remove it. removal, in this culture, is never a choice made free of coercion. it’s never born of a girl’s own naturally occurring desires. the seed of shame was planted in her by someone else (family, friends, bullies, magazines, razor commercials) and chances are that seed will stay with her forever- a sinking realization that her body can be wrong, that she can look ugly or dirty even when clean, that a thing she never even noticed about herself before should be a source of retroactive humiliation.
that feeling is like a scar. every time we look at it, the humiliation and judgment we experienced as kids comes rushing back and the little nasty patriarchal voice in our heads (the same one that says shit like “jesus you’re getting fat,” “ugh why did you think you could pull off this outfit,” “god who would ever want to touch THOSE boobs,” etc) says “ugh, looks like it’s time I shaved that jungle.” and it’s just parroting back what we’ve already been told.
nothing special
emma/16/lesbianwhen lesbians can’t display public affection without harassment but lesbian porn is one of the most popular porn genres
When gay men believe female homosexuality is “more accepted” due to this social contradiction
when straight men think their consumption of lesbian porn means they appreciate love between women and support lesbians
when straight women utilise this fetishisation to appeal to straight men
In the same week, Chris Rock compared a beautiful love story about two women to girl-on-girl porn, and Pornhub released stats that show that “Lesbian” is the most searched porn term in 30 states.
We can talk about how awful this is, how much they hate us. But instead I just want to give you all a reminder:
Your existence is not a porn category. Your sexual desires don’t exist for men. Your love isn’t inherently exhibitionist or wrong, and neither is your sex life. You are not here for them or their pleasure; you are here because you love and desire women. And no matter how many times some asshole jokes about you and your girlfriend’s kisses being ‘hot,’ no matter how many times how many time your lesbian-related google search leads you to a porn site, it doesn’t change the fact: there is nothing dirty about you, men have nothing to do with your intimacy, and they will never, ever understand.
Men will say confidence is the sexiest thing about a woman..until that woman stands up for herself, until that woman has her own opinions, until that woman doesn’t need your compliments to make herself feel beautiful
Star Wars is particularly good at tailoring its villains to what people of the time fear most: in the late 70’s/early 80’s, it was faceless, militaristic dictators, in the late 90’s/early 00’s it was shady politicians who seize power questionably and then immediately start wars with murky ulterior motives, and in the 10’s, it’s twentysomething white men with no self-control.
why wont people let queer kids be excited about the fact that their fave might be like them lmao
may:
when Kesha’s next album comes out you all better support her.. she’s expressed many times that she doesn’t think she’ll be able to have a successful comeback and that her career is ruined so we all better prove her wrong.. i won’t stand to see her next era flop after the hell she’s been through!