I Don’t Want to Look How They Want Me to Look: On Tininess and Sexuality

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by Ansley Clark

She is on top, curled between his legs with her back against his groin, almost a fetal position. Her thin thighs press together, contained into a skinny tight v. Her arms wrap around her knees, her calves lifting to reveal tiny wet vulva lips, a cock sliding between them. She is a ball of tiny-shaped legs and a swell of belly barely there and thin arms and a sharply prominent rib cage. The caption reads: “I love this pic because it shows how tiny I am and how big he is.”Continue Reading

Dear FetLife Tourists: An Open Letter

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by AB

Imagine you’re a lesbian, at a lesbian bar on Lesbian Night. You strike up a conversation with a total babe. You buy her a drink. She’s leaning in, touching your arm, giving you the eye. You take her out onto the dance floor and start mackin’. As the night winds down, you ask for her number. She giggles self-consciously.

“Oh, um…so, I’m not really a lesbian. I just think women are beautiful, and like, I thought it would be fun to hook up a little, or something.”Continue Reading

Feeling the World Askew

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by Alysia Sawchyn

I pulled into the row of parking spaces at 6:25pm on a Saturday night, already five minutes late to the monthly prayer meeting at Our Lady of Clearwater. Looking up at the glass-paned building, the stone grottos encasing plaster statues of Jesus and Mary on either side of its main entrance, like guardian lions, I took one deep breath in and let it go slowly.Continue Reading

Radical Self-love: Writing Intimate Spaces in the Trump Era

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By Mariam Williams

 

For two weeks after the election, I wrote nothing. I was enrolled in two writing workshops for my MFA, and I wrote nothing. I submitted a poem I had written over the summer and didn’t bother to revise for my poetry workshop that week. The following week, I skipped my nonfiction workshop all together. I also doubled my regular dosage of anti-depressants and avoided all the people I can’t stand on even my best days.

On November 9th, I opened up Instagram and my writers group pages on Facebook and found people touting Morrison, Baldwin, Hughes.Continue Reading

Tell Me How to Be

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by Caitlin Scarano

Author’s Note: Starting the night of the 2016 Presidential Election, I started a log on my computer that I maintained for ten days. I attempted to trace my reactions to Donald Trump’s victory, while recording other losses that were happening in my life at the time. This essay is shaped from those notes with some revisions and additions.

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The night of the election, I am all body.

Later, my mother will say: My whole body is numb with an unbearable sense of grief. Later, Josh will write me: I felt it in my spine.Continue Reading

The Better Feminism Workbook–An Interview with Creator Jennifer Williams

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Jennifer Williams is a writer, musician and community organizer living in Oakland, California and has self-published two workbooks titled The Process of Letting Yourself Have a Creative Process and The Better Feminism Workbook. We chatted with Jennifer about The Better Feminism Workbook, finding strength in the era of Trump, and more.

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Un-President-Ed: The Trauma of Trump

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by Courtney Udischas

In the weeks that followed the election, I felt I had stepped into the Twilight Zone. All of the colorful assurance I held about living in a time in history when a woman could hold the highest executive office in our country completely drained away. The worst part wasn’t that an unapologetic narcissist was in charge of decisions that would soon affect my life. The worst part was sitting with the knowledge that we proved to ourselves, and to the world, that our priorities haven’t changed much. A television personality, who mirrors the worst aspects of our culture, was a reality more possible than Hillary. The outcry from my generation was considered an overreaction from Trump supporters. The country shifted into a fugue state as we decided to roll the dice with this deeply flawed, dangerous person over a qualified diplomat.

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On Dick: How Materialism Caught Up With My Queer Life

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by Eric Mueller

I love Dick. It’s more than just looking at Dick on others. With Dick wrapped around me, I feel complete. Dick is what I call any piece of clothing I’ve ever worn, owned, or coveted. It’s my materialism, because a love so deep deserves a name. I didn’t know I liked Dick until Ian, an actual person, entered the picture.

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No Time for Apathy: Processing the 2016 Election

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by Rose Heredia

Hearing “This can’t be happening” and “Is this a nightmare” as I walked with my classmates to the bar Pig & Whistle on election night while others, like myself, walked along in silence, breathing meditative breaths, I thought how racist this country is. How do I even begin to live in this country with this man as president? I didn’t know and still don’t know how to answer that question.

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Why Audrie & Daisy is Required Watching in a Culture of Slut Shaming and “Locker Room Talk”

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by Courtney Morgan

 TW: Sexual assault, rape culture, suicide

Last Friday, October 7, 2016, was a big day in the media for sexual assault. President Obama signed the historic Sexual Assault Survivor’s Bill into law. The same day, Access Hollywood released tapes of presidential candidate, Donald Trump, in 2005 bragging about his propensity toward, and ability and history of committing acts of sexual assault against women. And I, that evening, just happened to watch Audrie & Daisy—the documentary (which premiered at Sundance and released on Netflix September 23), about the sexual assault cases of two American teenage girls, Audrie Potts and Daisy Coleman. This imbroglio of mixed messages sort of felt like an average day in America—but it also painted a pretty clear picture of what needs to change.Continue Reading