If you are a woman, if you’re a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person od intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

…And it’s going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think ‘oh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly’, don’t you know, that’s not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme that doesn’t turn around shit.

When you don’t have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote, you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution and our revolution is long overdue.

- — Margaret Cho

There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. — Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

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LGBTQ* Tumblrs You Should Know

Queer Between The Lines 

“Words are beautiful. You are beautiful.”

… I asked [my son] Jonathan what he felt were the strongest negative and the strongest positive aspects for him in having grown up with lesbian parents. He said the strongest benefit he felt he gained was that he knew that he did not have a lot of the hang-ups that some other boys did about men and women. And the most negative aspect he felt, Jonathan said, was the ridicule he got from some kids with straight parents. ‘You mean, from your peers?’ I said. ‘Oh no,’ he answered promptly. ‘My peers know better. I mean other kids.’”-Audre Lorde, poet, author, theorist, activist, lesbian mother

- What would your peers say?