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.

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.

At this point gender basically exists to sell us stuff.

There’s a lot more to sexuality than meets the eye.

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?

[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.