There was no way I could justify effectively risking cancer to satisfy some arbitrary social norm. Learning to love and respect my body has been absolutely critical to my recovery process in the aftermath of sexual violence.
Read More
Filipino culture heavily stigmatizes mental health — it is either ignored entirely, or minimized and mocked. Luckily for my parents and for my own mental health, I adopted 2 kittens and changed all of our lives.
Read More
I fell in love with my best friend last year - the first person I'd been vulnerable with since being raped in 2015. He made me relive the exact circumstances of my rape, and then had the nerve to threaten to kill himself when I asked for space. I stayed with him for a year.
Read More
Sexual intercourse with a condom is different from sex without, and there are different risks inherent in both of them. Removing the condom changes the context in which you consented to sexual intercourse. If that context changes, it is imperative that consent is reaffirmed.
Read More
I could never change the fact that I had been assaulted, or that my heart had been broken. But instead of letting those negative experiences change me for the worse, I pushed myself to channel that energy into creating positive change and into pouring love into my life.
Read More
An administrative tribunal in Ontario ruled that they believed my story, and in one of the most gratifying moments of my life, found me to have been a victim of a sexual assault perpetrated by the "alleged offender." It took about two months to receive the written decision and cheque in the mail.
Read More
Watching a woman who looks like me kick major ass helps me accept both my Asian heritage and identity as a survivor of sexual violence.
Read More
Survivors are expected to conform to an impossible standard of victimhood, and are faced with an impossible choice — speak up now and be deemed a liar, stay silent and/or speak up later and it never happened.
Read More
In the past four years, I’ve listened to Lana Del Rey over 21,000 times, and that’s just according to my Last.fm records. I’ve bought multiple copies of each of her albums, and I own way too many of her magazine covers. I really don’t mean to come off as a crazy stan because she has a lot of those, but her music helps me in a way that I feel it necessary to support her.
Read More
I’ve met a lot of great people from the Internet over the years — through anime forums, fanfiction.net, MSN, AIM and IRC, among many others. As we progress through the age of social media and the “Internet 2.0”, meeting people online is increasingly becoming the norm. Catfishing is still a reality, but the people you meet over the Internet nowadays are usually who they say they are.
Read More
“I’m never coming back,” I said after my first hot yoga class. I proceeded to not only come back nine more times that month but also sign up for an unlimited membership that I’ve renewed every month since.
Read More