Natalie Slaughter

[N]o one held my molester down and called the police for what he did to me. He was quietly escorted away, and over the course of a few months, the whispers of support turned into accusations.

I barely had a chance to say “What’s taking him so long?” before he stepped up to the counter to ask me what he could help me with. Me. Not my friend who had been standing there for a minimum of twenty minutes waiting for assistance, but ME, the white girl.

A polyamorous relationship is like any other relationship — you set rules and sometimes you hit bumps along the way, but everyone involved knows what is and isn’t acceptable.

Is anything keeping you from believing that you deserve good things?

Because you only get one shot at life.

Even a Google search will conflate “queer women” with “lesbian.” So the first and most obvious thing I wish people understood about being a queer woman, is that we exist.

We’ve all made bad choices when it comes to dating. Mine involves Hannah Montana, a tractor, and an awkward invitation to a threesome.

You can learn to live with the pain, you can move on as I have after over a decade of self-reflection and hard work, but you never, ever get over it.

If I have sex with a woman, it does not make me gay. As someone who identifies as female, it doesn’t even make me a lesbian.