Matt Joseph Diaz

Whether it’s your ethnicity, your religion, your sexuality, you do not deserve to be loved in spite of who you are — you deserve to be loved for who you are. Those things are a part of you, and they shouldn’t be swept under the rug or pushed to the side so someone can pick and choose the things they like about you.

We met Matt a year ago when he showed us his post weight-loss body.

Being asked about my weight-loss “secrets” make me uncomfortable. It feels very different from people wanting to know about my story. It feels like being asked to provide a shortcut.

[CN: surgery, bodily fluids] There are scars, blood drainage, swelling and bruising — it’s essentially going to look like makeup from The Walking Dead following the procedure. Not only that, but you’ll probably lack the necessary energy to groom yourself like you normally do, and you might not be allowed to shower for an extended period of time.

This Monday, Matt helps us celebrate Masturbation Month! (To say anything else would betray the beauty of this video.)

I've long considered myself a collector of failed relationships. From the girlfriend I asked out during a bar crawl and dated for eight days to the conservative Christian who thought her love was “saving me from a life of debauchery,” I actually gained a little pride from my list of failed love affairs. However, while these relationships were problematic, what made them “failures?”

I know that the world can seem like a scary and terrible place, where it feels like the threat of judgment and exclusion is constantly looming. That’s because it is; but there’s so much more love and kindness on this planet than evil and suffering. There is generosity and spirit in every human being that runs so deep, you’ll find it hard not to fall a little bit in love with each and every one of them.

Instead of being allowed to exist as fully complex and sexual human beings, they’re relegated to being a tag in pornography. They’re seen as a guilty pleasure among those with “abnormal” sexual appetites, something to be viewed sexually in spite of their comparison to what we consider "the norm."

This is literally the cutest, happiest thing you will see all day.

People who live with mental illness are aware of how our brains work differently. Because of this, we constantly go the extra mile to try to validate what we’re feeling within ourselves before even considering voicing an opinion out loud.