We were sexual targets, marked as eternal sluts for exploring the desires only acceptable in men.

I milked my typical persona as a gritty, intellectual sex-positive feminist that men loved to conquer, toss aside, and shove into their conquest collection in the dusty backs of their closets.

I fell in love with a sniper – a man whose basic training instills psychopathic tendencies. I loved a professional dehumanizer. I loved a man who lived in a world where empathy was suicide. I...

Southerners have mastered picking, choosing, and rationalizing religious texts to fit their social agenda better than their own mother’s fried chicken recipe.

From my first stab at second base, I became obsessively concerned for my vaginal upkeep. I began shaving the day after I felt my first tongue down my throat. The first buzz was a disaster,...

We can deeply love our poison. We can love the taste of it, the scent of it, the comforting weight of it in our belly and find ourselves woken in the night with stabbing cramps,...

Incarceration is the way a woman is expected to date like a soccer goalie, shuffling back and forth to block the balls constantly flying in her direction and shamed the moment she lets one slip...

I’m pretty sure Number 1 wasn’t even aware that he was using a man’s deadliest weapon against women. He exposed his vulnerability. Over the years, I would repeat a pattern of chronically caving to that...

The gentlemanly Number 23 would have never made such a crude statement to a lady. But I was not a lady. Sure, I was intelligent and strong, but I dared to be wide open. I...

Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts...

Suddenly, the brave warriors parading to combat with bugles and bayonets were replaced by the push of a button.

My wakeup call wasn’t some light switch of empowerment. From as early as preschool I feared that if I didn’t grow up to be the pretty princess men fawned over, I was a failure. That...

I am done looking for love where it doesn’t exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells.

An eerie aspect of social media is the way the dead’s account lingers in digital space as a floating memorial. Friends post emotional farewells as if the departed will read them. But we all know...

My life views on sex, men, dating, and self-worth were sculpted with the unfiltered ramblings of a drunken misogynist.

Males were expected to be ready to fuck any hole they could slip their dicks into. Boys weren’t considered men unless they were influenced by their carnal instincts to spread their seed.

Oh, that’s too bad,” and drifted into the kitchen as if I’d received a stubbed toe rather than a shredded hymen. Everyone in my life took my rape as lightly as a brief thunderstorm that...

Incarceration is when nobody writes a happy ending for a woman without a man.

It wasn’t really a loud-mouthed, hyperactive little pig-tailed blonde that made Carl cringe. It was what I represented. While his upbringing was battered humiliation, I was spoiled, doted on, and spoon-fed by the world. I...

Children are often like hostages under the care of authority, with spankings and groundings nudging them like guns pointed at their skulls, threatening to shoot if the wrong words are uttered.

I only knew to treat the male asshole as if it had a grenade buried inside of it that could ignite a deadly explosion of anger, trauma, and sexual confusion.

It is not your job to convince men to like you.

I grew up missing my mom while she was right in front of me.

But penetration was a big deal. They protected their anuses the way girls protected their hymen in high school, believing that allowing anything beyond their holy gates would permanently corrupt them.

Your true passion in life is what you’d be doing if somebody handed you 100 million dollars.

Carl’s abuse isn’t obvious. It’s not something one can even notice while it’s happening. Carl doesn’t do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye...

We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. Casual sex is a very sad cat...

I would take them a few times, feel my emotions and sense of reality fuzz, and look at my mother who had been doped up on them since we moved to Chattanooga. I would see...

Honor, Courage, and Commitment.

But time and time again, I saw the change in their eyes once they’d conquered me. Dehumanization always follows penetration.

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical...