becoming sexually liberated is, for me, about so much more than sex- or even pleasure. it's about embracing my desire to give and receive love. about experiencing vulnerability as a form of strength with limitless potentiality. about realizing that the lines between "want" and "need" are not clear cut. about realizing that honoring myself does not inherently betray anyone else, but betraying myself betrays others also. about using every resource available to me. about overcoming depression. 

I've been socialized to view my body as an object of duty, productive capacity, and ultimately, as a failure to live up to the standards imposed on it. reclaiming my sexual self helps me restore a relationship to my body in which I view it as my very self, a flowing, beautiful, powerful recepticle for love, pleasure, creation, and essential being. 

FIRST AND FOREMOST- this is an excellent resource guide for learning how to be an effective anti-racist.

bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES

Featured Articles:
How to Talk About the Truth and Trump at Thanksgiving - Ibram X. Kendi
An Anti-Racist Reading List - Ibram X. Kendi

Featured Poetry:
Selections from Salt by Nayyirah Waheed
Caged Bird by Maya Angelou
A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou
On Working White Liberals by Maya Angelou
A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

show archive coming

DONATE NOW: bit.ly/blacklivesconcert

 From Day 8 of #TwentyOneDaysofHope

1. sign a petition

 Here are some meaningful ones you can sign & then share with 5 friends:

• Tax Amazon & Big Business: Fund CV Emergency Relief: https://tinyurl.com/sedb5bc

• Suspend rent, mortgage, & utility payment during the CV crisis: https://bit.ly/3a6HUVX

• This Pandemic Demands A Systemic Response Poor People's Campaign Petition

• Healthcare Workers Need Protective Equipment!

  • More information about this: Frontline NY Nurses Lack Protective Masks & Ventilators, Say Worst Yet to Come as COVID-19 Spreads

2. check in on a friend

 You never know who is struggling or how until you ask.

3. learn about someone’s struggles that you didn’t know about 

Someone who is in a different demographic than you. 

4. watch an enlightening documentary 

Recommendations

netflix: 

• Untold History of the United States 
• 13th
• American Factory
• Our Planet
• The Great Hack 
• Knock Down the House 
• Chasing Coral
• Inequality for All
• What The Health
• Cowspiracy
• The Family
• Dirty Money
• When They See Us
• Food Inc.
• The Magic Pill
• Cuba and the Cameraman
• The Pharmacist 

amazon prime:

• Pride
• Citizenfour

Drop your recommendations in the comments!

*I wrote this in the bathtub by red candlelight while he fell asleep*

There's something that feels supernatural about the love that I've fallen into. First there was how we met, how I felt at home with him; how I knew that I loved him within just a couple of days. How my walls came down around him - the courage I took to express by vulnerabilities - the way I felt so confident and safe in sharing them. The way our personalities and external lives are so different, and yet we seem to share the same heart, each having pieces of the same heart. A slow-won yet innate understanding of each other. As though the love were there before we were. I'm not religious, but this love is supernatural to me.

Hannah Rooth, February 1, 2020

On the internal dictator 

Tells you what you can’t do...
what you’re not good *enough* at...
that people will think you’re weird...
your friends won’t understand...
your family won’t approve...
your childhood god would disapprove...
you’ll probably fail...
it’s stupid...
that’s not what girls do...
that’s not what boys do...
it’s too scary...
*insert your own version here*...

On the external dictator 

Defines what people are “bad” or “wrong” or need to be exterminated...
decides on what is socially allowed...
punishes, imprisons, represses for “otherness”...
represses creativity and creative action...
defines roles for all in society...
uses brainwashing and violence to maintain control...
defines the good or acceptable based on a social norm...

If you cannot stand up to your internal dictator, how will you stand up to an external one?

More resources on the idea of the internal dictator:
Regime Change
Your Little Internal Dictator

Resources on external dictators:
How Do Democracies Become Dictatorships?

~Hannah Rooth