Posts Written by Red
By Red • 11 years ago

Love does not hurt

Recently someone told me that love hurts. It made me think, and I have come up with a conclusion.

Love doesn’t hurt. Fists hurt. Words hurt. Fear hurts. Loss (of love) hurts. Unwanted, unconsented sex hurts. What we say and do to each other hurts. But love, in and by itself, is innocent of hurt.

It’s Valentine’s Day. A day of roses and heart shaped everything. Hallmark is victorious and red.

Some 40,000 flower workers in Ecuador and over 100,000 in Colombia are working to grow, harvest, and package the flowers we will buy at our local deli and supermarkets. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, more than half of them are women, and forced to give proof of sterilization to be hired. In Ecuador, 55% of the women workers are sexually harassed and at least 19% will be forced to have sex.

Love doesn’t hurt, but apathy does.

In Kyrgyzstan, 11,800 cases of kidnapping of women and girls are reported every year, because some men find it acceptable to kidnap and forcibly marry a girl whom they begin to fancy.
By Red • 11 years ago

The Cost of Silence

*Trigger warning*

I learned about sex from romance novels and Jackie Collins, mostly. Porn came much later. Before porn and after the romance novels came sexual abuse. The first, second and the third… get blurred in my mind. Was the first time at home, while I was under the care of family members, or was it the stranger who grabbed my breast, while cycling past me in the rain? I was walking back from school, no more than fourteen. I used to love the rain. I remember being stunned and frozen in the monsoon. I remember feeling dirty and ashamed afterwards.

Since then I dodged groping hands in public buses, pretended to ignore cat calls from the young men in the neighborhood, ...

*Trigger warning*

I learned about sex from romance novels and Jackie Collins, mostly. Porn came much later. Before porn and after the romance novels came sexual abuse. The first, second and the third… get blurred in my mind. ...