My (ongoing) journey to self-love and acceptance
I grew up surrounded by religion, from Christian schools and summer camps to weekly church and youth groups. Most of these institutions taught me that it was sinful to be gay. Even if they taught that an “attraction” to the same sex was okay, it was coupled with the lesson that acting on it was a sin.
I never really vibed with that part of Christianity, even at my most devout moments. I firmly called myself an ally, tried to find holes in scripture to debunk anti-LGBT creed, and argued with friends and family about the morality of homosexuality. …
A short story that’s really weird
Today is exactly one year since I joined the Free Love Farm, and I couldn’t be more content. Nestled away in the Sierra Foothills, my days are full of tending the garden and caring for the sweet animals that roam the land. My nights are filled with food from the lands, and delicious copulations that I had never even dared to dream of before.
Did you know your body could be transported to another realm through the act of lovemaking? I sure didn’t, but that was because I was married to Steve and Steve just liked to get his rocks…
My ongoing journey from sex-negativity and shame to autonomy and sex-positive thinking
My first experiences learning about sex were through the lens of purity culture. I used to be the perfect picture of a Christian woman saving sex until marriage, complete with purity ring. Now, I’m polyamorous, which means I may choose to have multiple sexual and romantic partners. To some, it may seem like I’m living my life on the tip of a massive pendulum that swung too far to the other end of the sexual liberation spectrum. But to me, polyamory is a key ingredient to unlearning the damaging lessons from purity culture.
The Key Components of Purity Culture
My experiences with purity culture came from…
Why I’m talking about it over six years later
(Trigger warning: sexual assault)
Back in 2014, I was sexually assaulted by someone I considered a close friend. I wrote this detailed account of the experience for my blog in 2016, but never had the courage to publish it. It felt scary to be so vulnerable in a public setting about something so personal to me. I was afraid that people would tell me I was overreacting and my experience wasn’t “that” traumatic. I didn’t want to have to explain my choices and fend off victim blamers.
Talking about these experiences is critical. For me, this is the best way…
A history of systemic violence towards BIPOC and what you can do to help
Sex education is racist. While at times I’m sure it is overtly racist, I’m specifically talking about systemic racism: prejudice and abuse based on race that is deeply entrenched in our society. These factors compound together to engrain policies of discrimination on an organizational level, effectively hurting people of color.
A particularly nasty combination of housing discrimination, public school funding practices, and abstinence-only education grants is a direct cause of systemic racism in sex education. It’s the reason why Black and Hispanic teens get pregnant or contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at a far higher rate than white teens.
It…
Back then, I had no legal recourse. Where is the law now?
When I was seventeen and in high school, a naked picture of me from when I was fifteen was distributed amongst my classmates. This was done without my consent and as an act of retaliation. You can hear me talk in depth about this experience on the Sex Ed Podcast (season 2, episode 5: A Personal Story of Revenge Porn), but I’ll fill you in with some quick details here.
This was back in 2008, so (of course) it involves Myspace. I pissed off my ex-boyfriend’s best friend and the way he decided to get revenge on me was by…
And he’s proposing to me too
I was in a Taco Bell drive-thru with my boyfriend when we decided we would get married. I had been thinking about proposing to him for a while and floated the idea of me proposing to him, instead of the traditional man-proposes-to-woman.
When we talked about it, neither of us felt right about just one of us spending a lot of money on a ring and planning a big romantic proposal. We both wanted to have the opportunity.
So right there in that drive-thru, before we received our Crunch Wrap Supremes and Quesaritos (RIP), we decided that we were “unofficially”…
The perfect cure for a cold, rainy day
It’s finally November. The weather is getting chillier and I’m swapping out my favorite fresh blackberry margarita recipe for something a little more comforting: mulled wine.
Not only does the drink smell just like a crisp, fall evening, it’s also loaded with booze and a fascinating history that stretches back thousands of years.
The History of Mulled Wine
Most people know of mulled wine as a winter tradition, but it actually dates back to the 2nd century. In an effort to avoid dumping old, leftover, or spoiled wine, mulled wine was created by using heat, sugar, and spices to mask the bad taste. This is…
Leveraging talents and passions to make money as a writer
This may seem obvious to many, but for me, finding a niche felt like a misty cloud of confusion when I first started to write for money.
My initial mistake was thinking that a niche was something that no one else was writing about. This is false. A niche is just a specific area of writing that you have expertise in. In fact, there’s probably not a topic on the planet that you could write about that literally no one else has ever written about.
The truth is, there’s a huge need for good writing. Some of the informational material…
It’s not because I’m rich.
A few weeks ago, my friends and I were talking about our favorite candies. One friend, who was born and raised in South America, mentioned that she didn’t like to eat most popular candies in the US because pretty much all chocolate here is made with slave labor.
My initial instinct was to brush her comment off. Maybe she recently watched a documentary that over-exaggerated the problem. Sure, I’d seen the occasional candy marked with Fair Trade stickers and heard stories of atrocious labor conditions in big industries, but surely it couldn’t be all chocolate.
Would that include my favorite…
Kaylee Moser
Former software engineer, current freelance writer, host of the Sex Ed Podcast. I write about tech, sex, love, relationships, and sometimes fiction.
