"It's important to say, we don't all have to love each other. Your clear 'no' makes the way for your 'yes.' Being able to say what we don't want allows us to clear the path."
"We should celebrate love in our community as a measure of healing. The expectation should be: I know we are all in need of healing, so how are we doing our healing work?"
"Make a commitment with five people to be more honest with each other, heal together, change together, and become a community of care that can grow to hold us all."
"Suffering is a massively important and absolutely true part of life, a spiritual reality. But I deeply believe we were not placed on this gorgeous, sensational planet to suffer. It is not the point."
"Oh, and practice saying no. Practice getting up and leaving. Practice saying, hey, I'm not feeling it, I gotta go. These are skills we're not taught and they are crucial."
"I guess it's true that the more we are brave, take risks, and try to bring our full selves to the table (or the bed, countertop, etc.) the more it encourages others to do the same. I know hurt people hurt people... but healing people heal people!"
"So do sex workers feel pleasure at work? Yeah. Because you know what feels amazing? Surviving capitalism."
"This one takes so much practice. Many of us are taught anti-consent practices as children, to hug and kiss whatever adult comes around asking for affection, that it's rude if we don't make the demanded contact. This culture of access based on power grows with us. Power gives an assumed total access of older people to younger people's bodies, white people to people of color's bodies, men to women's bodies, cis to trans bodies, those with resources to those with less, those with more physical strength to those with less. It's the way systems of hierarchy, domination, patriarchy, misogyny, and capitalism converge in the realm of flesh... practice makes this awareness transformative - asking if someone is open to physical contact, to a hug, to intimate touch, to sex begins to create a foundation of consent, a path to grow beyond the sick system we've been shaped by."
"All game is not created equal, and it's largely misunderstood. The quality of game is much more about being honest and being yourself than being smooth. It's not about small talk, filling the space, or easing the awkwardness. It's letting true desire and curiosity come to the forefront of the interaction."
"If I notice paranoia or anxiety creeping in, I remind myself that my mind is not the world and the future hasn't happened yet."
"I am a product of an imperfect world filled with people struggling to survive."
"When Lorde says 'having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing [the erotic's] power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves,' I understand her use of the erotic as a grounds for the struggle for global injustice for all beings, emerging out of the experience of true intimacy with myself, the world, and others, and accepting no less."
"Zizi's mantra for this one is (everyone sing after me): I have a big belly and I love my belly. Rub the bellies. Love the bellies. Reveal the bellies. Scratch the belles. (Do this twice a day for the rest of your life and you may have a chance to cope with shame.)"
"How about you suggest, try, attempt (maybe trust) this or that, rather than believe? There is very little space for humility in belief."
"I often think 'what is dinosaur humor,' you know? What was dinosaur humor, those moments where you're like: we're going extinct, let's enjoy it. Even if this is the end of the world, right, or the end of the world as we know it or the end of our species on this planet or whatever. Just do the fucking best you can and be the best person you can, put up the best fight you can, but then you also have to be able to laugh and release. Laughter increases our time. If you have time to tell a joke, you're not too rushed."
"I want people to see that what we create in the world is a reflection of what is inside of us. We cannot make that in the world that we have not made inside of us. Radical self-love is how we get to a just, equitable, and compassionate world."
"Now that I think of it, both loving and seeing are about connecting and transcending - your boundaries blur, and you're part of something bigger than just yourself. So maybe the greatest pleasure is transcendence."
