Hypothetical Dystopia

Love isn’t necessarily soft, right? Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.’ The way that we think about leading with love is through a deep connection to everybody’s fundamental human dignity. There’s a real power in that, and a power in human relationships that are built on respect and recognition of one another’s humanity. Love and anger aren’t opposites, either. Sometimes you have to draw the line and fight, and that’s also about love.

Ai-jen Poo, director, National Domestic Workers Alliance. She’s responding to this question:

The idea that domestic workers are “just part of the family” often serves as a justification to deny them basic workplace protections. Is there a tension, when organizing domestic workers, in whether or not to employ sentimental rhetoric that could reinforce the idea that nannies or housekeepers are working out of love for the family?

(via thesmithian)


Without [legal consent], sexual contact with someone is rape whether you intended to rape or not. A woman who is drunk, unconscious, sleeping cannot give legal consent. And it’s not about a woman simply saying “no,” it’s really about making certain she’s saying yes.

Jaclyn Friedman author of “Yes Means Yes”, coined the term ‘enthusiastic consent’, which flips the traditional lens with which we view consent on it’s head. She asks, “What if, instead of just the absence of ‘no,’ an enthusiastic ‘yes’ was required as a standard for sexual consent?”

[…] “Consent is actually easy to figure out. You have to ask. It’s your job to ask. It’s not gendered. Women also have the responsibility to ask. And if you can’t tell, ask.”

5 Ways We Can Teach Men Not To Rape

And if the “yes” you receive is obtained through coercion, and/or is not enthusiastic, that does not count as true consent.

(via justthinkingaboutcatsagain)

(Source: sugarkat)