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How to Care for Friends Who've Experienced Trauma
It’s likely that you will or already do know someone who will experience or has experienced trauma of some form. As friends, it’s important that we understand the responsibilities and limitations of our role, so we can best support our friends who are survivors and maintain our boundaries. Has someone disclosed to you a traumatic experience they’ve had? How can you best support that person and yourself? Here’s some information about trauma, the role of friends, and what it means to really support survivors.
An Autistic's Guide to Being Ghosted
Suddenly, a person you’ve been regularly communicating with is M.I.A. Without warning, a fixture of recent life can become a memory. Somebody you’d bonded with has abruptly stopped contacting you. The text messages have ceased, all traces of their presence in your life have been yanked away by them, and without warning or explanation. But just because the experience is stressful doesn’t mean it’s impossible to endure. There are ways for autistic people to come out the other side of getting ghosted.
Weights and Measures: How to have healthy and affirming conversations about weight with a partner
When you gain weight and want to talk about it -- whatever your feelings about it are -- with partners or others you're in intimate relationships with, how can you do that, especially in a world where so few people are equipped with the skills to talk about weight in healthy, sensitive, supportive ways?
It's Never Too Late To Start To Date
Being autistic, some things just haven’t come as naturally for me as they seem to for other people. Unfortunately, these have included hallmarks of American life often used to symbolize being “an adult” like driving on my own or getting my first paid job. But human beings are not on a strict timetable to do all the same things at the same time. This is just as true of dating like anything else. Just because you (or I) haven’t been actively dating when a lot of other people in your life have doesn’t make you (or me) a failure. You’re just on your own timetable. So am I.
Self-Care Amidst a Deluge of Anti-Trans Legislation
I’d like to have a frank discussion with you about where these anti-trans bills come from, what you can do to be informed about the rhetoric surrounding them, and how you can affirm yourself and practice self-care while you may hear and feel so many people being non-supportive or outright hateful about trans and gender-nonconforming people.
What's Harm Reduction?
What's harm reduction? What are some basic harm reduction principles? What are some basics ways to minimize or reduce harm with sex, recreational drug use and the pandemic? Here's a place to get started.
Hell Is In Poland: Pregnancy, Power and Protest
Ida Covcin talks about growing up in Poland and what that meant for her ideas about and experiences with sex and possible pregnancy, and participating in the powerful abortion bans that have taken place there over the last few years.
Sex and Love in Times of Peril: An interview with Dr. Lexx Brown-James
Sex educator and therapist Dr. Lexx Brown-James talks talks about her line of work, how Covid-19 is rampaging peoples’ emotions, and how the work of POC sex educators continues to be devalued, stolen and co-opted.
Machismo: How Toxic Masculinity Harms Latinx People - an interview with Laura Carlsen
Machismo is an expression of exacerbated masculinity that has caused lingering pain and trauma to generations of Latinx people. Many young people are still struggling with it today.
Everything Sucks! It's Time To Be Negative
Sorry-not-sorry, but this sucks! I know it and you know it; maybe it'd be best if we let it show.