Sex Ed

So you might be wondering: why is an asexual person writing an article about sex? What do they know about sex if they don’t even experience sexual attraction? Do asexuals even have sex? Is it different from what straight, gay,...

My body opened up to me, unfolding just a little at a time. And I learned how to love myself, my life, my jaded, traumatized, extremely weird trans girl body, just a little bit more, in the middle of that terrible winter in my shoebox apartment in Toronto. 

What matters isn’t my capacity for self-love anyway. I don’t control the systems of power which tear through the world I live in. I can’t change the material circumstances of my life, even if I go to yoga or buy a vegan cupcake. All I have is my desperate longing, my bitter bones growing around bruises and fractures. The dreaming I make in beds of nothing. 

Boundaries aren’t punishments that happen to bad people. At their core, boundaries are about connection. 

There is strength in an enthusiastic yes or a firm, unwavering no. For me, vulnerability, boundaries, expressing my needs, they made me trust myself. It made me respect that I could take care of myself. It allowed me to love myself.

Self-love is not possible without you. I do not end where you begin. You teach me what loving myself can look like when you love me. I teach myself what loving myself can look like by loving you. Self-love is connection. 

Music is such an incredibly personal, incredibly liberating experience. Is there anything else that can connect you so viscerally, in such a primal way, to your identity? Is there any other form of art that serves as such an electric source of immediacy and intensely focused bodily pleasure?

Confidence encourages us to feel what is happening right now. It begs us to tap into our sensual experience and feel, see, touch, taste and smell without self-judgement. It asks us to be unapologetic in taking up the space we desire. 

For me, loving myself is raging about the world instead of raging at myself. It’s understanding that my head leads me astray, not my heart.