I Hope We Choose Love

hold it close to your heart. as you walk away. as you grieve the loss. as you find yourself: leaving is not abuse. getting out is not abuse. freedom is not abuse. freedom is never abuse.

relationships should never be based on fear.

And if it’s not our revolution, then let’s build a new one.

I’m just a fucked-up girl who writes essays in a manic

Shame and judgment are the twin faces of trauma, and we are trained to see ourselves and others through their eyes.

As adults, shame makes us curl away from the intensity and potential danger of authentic, compassionate relationships. It tells us to run away from ambiguity and to either submit or lash out at those who we think might threaten us.

What strikes me as particularly interesting, and disturbing, about celebrity culture in the social justice movement is its relationship to mob mentality and capitalism: We are happy to take political direction from celebrities within the masked hierarchy of the movement, at once elevating and scrutinizing them—that is, until they say something that we do not agree with. T

This type of identity politics is based on a level of essentialism that I am uncomfortable with; it assumes that all people of colour, trans folks, etc., have the same experience, and that identity categories apply uniformly across the board

but the rad queer community offered me a whole new set of norms for performance and lovability that, at least on the surface, gave value to the identity factors

Love that might not save us at the end of the world but that might make it possible to live through