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Okay, here's my criticism of this post I keep seeing -- and no, it's not what you think. I know, my longtime followers who know the kinds of things I post about a lot are probably thinking, "Oh, I know what their objection is going to be. It's going to be that 18-19 year olds are adults who can date older partners if they choose to." But no, that's not it this time! Yes, I do believe it's fine for young adults to date older adults if they choose to (and am accordingly rolling my eyes at all the "This should go up to 25!" comments in the notes), but. That's not my issue here. In fact, precisely because I believe that young adults dating older adults is morally neutral, I'm not at all concerned about the efficacy of the messaging against it. My concern is that underage minors being in sexual/romantic relationships with adults is actually harmful and dangerous, and therefore young people actually should be warned against it, and this is not an effective warning.

Fellow old people, do y'all remember being 14? At all? Would you have found this warning effective and compelling at that age?

I for sure would not! I did not! Quite the opposite!

Put yourself in the young person's position here. You have no rights. You're treated as someone with no agency. Your parents, teachers, government, and society as a whole treats you as some combination of "nuisance," "ticking time bomb," and "unthinking blob." Developmentally, you're at a phase of life when you should be transitioning to a more adult role, but everyone around you demonizes you for that desire. All your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are dismissed as the inconsequential ravings of Just A Dumb Kid Who Doesn't Know Any Better. You meet someone who treats you with basic human politeness, tells you that he likes you and that you're mature, actually treats you like you have two brain cells to rub together. Of course you're going to be drawn to him. And then when other adults warn you that obviously of course he doesn't really like you, that's impossible, of course you're not really mature, no one could possibly see you that way; actually you're naive and incapable of making your own decisions, and the way your parents/teachers/society treat you is completely justified. Are you going to heed those warnings?

Why are adults absolutely constitutionally incapable of giving good, necessary advice to teenagers without fucking insulting them in the process? Of course teenagers don't listen to it! Why would anyone??

"Oh, well, of course teenagers don't listen, because they're stubborn, and immature, and biologically determined to make bad decisions, which is all the more reason they need to be controlled," say adults, completely oblivious to the actual problem.

When I was a teenager, the big moral panic at the time was teen pregnancy, and we were all inundated with the least effective cautionary tales in the world: "If you get pregnant as a teen, you'll have to leave your parents' care and function as an adult!" Which left every girl who'd intentionally gotten pregnant for the explicit purpose of escaping her abusive parents saying "Yeah, that was the goal." And every girl who was looking for a way of escaping her abusive parents to think "What a great idea!" Today the big moral panic is older partners, but if the appeal of an older partner is that he treats you like someone capable of making your own decisions, why would you be persuaded by a counterargument of "Don't listen to him, of course you're not capable of making your own decisions!"?

Again. I'm saying this because I agree that adults dating minors is a bad thing and that minors should be warned against it. EFFECTIVELY.

That said, this is my advice to any 17-or-younger person being pursued by an 18+-year-old partner: Listen. You deserve so much better than the way society treats you. You deserve to be taken seriously. You deserve to make your own decisions in life. You have a mind of your own, and people should recognize that instead of treating your pesky "free will" as a personal affront or an inconvenient glitch. You can and should think for yourself. You deserve, and I hope you have, relationships with older people who validate those truths about you. However. You are still legally and materially powerless. I don't have to tell you that. You live it every day. Someone older than you -- and therefore, inherently, legally, more powerful than you -- should not be trying to extract things from you. Money, sex, unpaid labor, anything of value. Someone more powerful than you who truly values you, values your friendship, values you as a person, will be mindful of your status and not try to extract anything from you. Cross-age friendships are good. Older people can and should genuinely like and appreciate you, and you can and should genuinely like and appreciate them. But if they try to extract anything from you, run away.

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deserved

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Something really violent about eating a burrito. Biting a hole in that thing. A sandwich or a taco is different, it's already open, but a well-wrapped burrito is like a complete living thing in your hand, the taut skin protecting a complex network if internal organs. And you put a hole in it, maul it for sustenance, like a wolf on the open plain tearing the throat from a living gazelle. Or perhaps like a guy living in an infested apartment catching a white rat in his hands and just biting into it.

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2026 booktok discourse: sad books are a cognitohazard (they make you sad)

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Watching the politics tag fill up with exhausted liberals talking about how they're too drained to keep resisting and no one should blame them for that and like. Yeah, you're right this sucks and you shouldn't be forced to do it to be treated as human and you shouldn't need to be able to be on and in activist mode all the time either and ALSO

I've been doing this since 2002. My mother did this from 1981-2015. My auntie marched in Alabama during civil rights and my childhood minister has been in resistence since the Vietnam war and has shown no signs of stopping as she collects civil disobedience arrests across all 50 states like badges of honor.

And you all are burnt out after 8 yrs of some of the biggest (and therefore LEAST DEMANDING ON YALL PERSONALLY) movements we've ssen in decades because you feel too poor and tired???????

My mama would go around to every grocery store she had friends working at in the valley and collect all the food they were gonna toss, then host educational salons where she fed everyone in the neighborhood and performed innoculation work. She was a single mom raising a deeply disabled child ALONE on a salary half that of her male coworkers you think she had money? You think she had TIME????? NO!

If you are tired now, I'm sorry to be harsh, but it is BECAUSE YOU DID NOT LISTEN when you were told you needed to settle in for the long haul. You DID NOT LISTEN when organizers shared with everyone their practices around self-care, specialization, community care, and communication, and you spent the last 8 years burning the candle at both ends in person and online with no regard for the actual WORK only for your own fear and feelings of reassurance.

This will never sustain change. I'm sorry. I truly am. I never wanted this for anyone who came after me and I have so much grief that it's here. But I also do not have time to force yall to fucking listen to us when we talk.

Stop trying to assert that only the wealthy and energetic resist. Anyone I see doing so will be bitten repeatedly until fucking dead.

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giraffes are my single favorite example of evolutionary pressure. what if we dangled the carrot really reaeeeaaallllllllly high over the donkey's head. what would happen. can u guess

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Siren baby learns how to sunbathe.

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every day is a struggle

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Sorry if this is too kinky but can you hold my hand and tell me i mean a lot to you.

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Source: @lesbianmooncolony-deactivated2

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Artist: Suerynn Lee

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women’s bodies weren’t “made” to do anything, nature didn’t “intend” anything, no human action is “unnatural” and there is no inherent “purpose” to a human life