Natalie Slaughter

Even a Google search will conflate “queer women” with “lesbian.” So the first and most obvious thing I wish people understood about being a queer woman, is that we exist.

If I have sex with a woman, it does not make me gay. As someone who identifies as female, it doesn’t even make me a lesbian.

[N]o one held my molester down and called the police for what he did to me. He was quietly escorted away, and over the course of a few months, the whispers of support turned into accusations.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving my body. I don’t have to choose between being fat and beautiful, I can be both.

Is anything keeping you from believing that you deserve good things?

You can learn to live with the pain, you can move on as I have after over a decade of self-reflection and hard work, but you never, ever get over it.

A polyamorous relationship is like any other relationship — you set rules and sometimes you hit bumps along the way, but everyone involved knows what is and isn’t acceptable.

Treating women like idiots has the additional consequence of making women less likely to report symptoms in general. It’s really exhausting