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> thing to do is to "let it go" and "look at the bright side"

That is never advice for someone after trauma. Anyone who tells you to 'just get over it' has no idea what trauma is like or how the brain responds to it. As a friend of mine once said, "the only way out, is through." Recovery is a difficult and long process, but I promise to you that you will recover.

> Even counselling isn't helping much as there isn't really any way to get back at him and that is what I want

'Getting back' and healing are two separate things and those two things will never intersect. You will not heal through revenge. I support your pursuit of justice, but I also know, through experience and through the many other survivors I know (and have grown with), that the justice system is more re-traumatizing than helpful. This is going to sound cliche AF but sometimes the best revenge is just reemerging from this as the strongest, best, most happy version of yourself. I know that sounds whack right now. I know the idea of feeling happy and safe again feels laughable right now, but it is possible. I think the first time I truly learned to love myself was maybe 3 years after my rape. My rape recovery taught me a lot about myself. I don't owe my rape any of that hard work, I did all that in spite of being raped, but I can say that I grew.

Have you tried group therapy? That was critical for me. Recovering with people going through similar things...it made me feel so supported and loved and valid, feelings I couldn't get from the friends and family I confided in.

I also don't recommend this sub for this type of discussion because it is constantly being trolled by ill-meaning people. r/rapecounseling is an amazing place and well moderated as is r/rape.

I'm linking here two writings from survivors that got me through some awful moments - they may help you too:

https://thoughtcatalog.com/velouria-black/2017/10/i-will-no-longer-let-you-invalidate-my-rape/

https://thoughtcatalog.com/cj-hale/2013/06/12-things-no-one-told-me-about-sex-after-rape/

https://www.amazon.com/Rape-Recovery-Handbook-Step-Step/dp/1572243376


I am here for you. Anytime. I'm on year 4 of my recovery. I am so grateful to the people who made themselves available to me to talk throughout my recovery. Writing also helped me. I have maybe over 50 pages of advice I've collected over the years, and am happy to share.

<3 I am wishing you the best. You are not alone in this. Rape will teach you first how cruel the world is and second it will teach you just how beautiful and loving it can be, because slowly, but surely, you will see so real beauty in the people who help you now, in the people who stand up for you now, and in yourself as you fight for yourself, fight to love yourself, like never before.

Take care of yourself, love.

There are lots of great gender neutral toys for all ages! I'm especially fond of building toys, especially for younger kids. Blocks and tinker toys are great (I looooooved mine), and legos (especially those open-ended sets) are good for when they get a little older.

Educational toys are also a good one. A three-year-old isn't gonna realize that a set of Go Fish Alphabet cards will help them learn the alphabet. They think it's just a fun game. Older children can move into board games and puzzle games like Rush Hour.

A lot of arts and craft kits are gender neutral, too. Remember those Klutz books? Sure, they've got Glitter Face Paint While You Do Your Nails and Have a Tea Party kits (which, tbh, I actually don't think are that bad), but they've also got some awesome kits for paper airplanes, origami, learning magic, and learning to sew (a skill that everyone should have).

Also, science toys and kits. Chemistry sets are perfect for older kiddos, and younger ones are happy with dinosaur action figures or solar system plushies.

Finally, books. You can never go wrong with books.

What did you enjoy playing with as a child? Does the giftee have any particular interests (e.g. crafts, music, reading, science)? I'd start with those two questions and go from there.

From a past discussion:

"Princesses and pornstars by emily macguire is a good and easy to read primer. also, the word 'porn' in the title is likely to pique interest (though he will ultimately be disappointed in this regard)

Comic books like The Maxx: Realistic woman (and men too) and a savage look at victimization. As well as action, journey into the subconscious, and questioning face value. Plenty of good stuff in there, though it is more than a little weird.

"Feminism is for Everybody" by bell hooks

A lot of Margaret Atwood's works have a good, uncompromising approach to women in society and the ways they are treated and exploited - and they tend to be aimed at a young adult fiction market.

Reading Oryx and Crake isn't going to stop him from being objectifying and offensive but it will help him gradually understand things, and hopefully build some empathy for women as a foundation for further personal development."

***

Further recommendations for young readers:

100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader - http://bitchmagazine.org/100-young-adult-books-for-the-feminist-reader

The Amelia Bloomer project http://libr.org/ftf/bloomer.html

Some past recommendations from our users about inspiring/strong young women:

• "The Fault in Our stars, Visible Amazement, anything by Tamora Pierce (especially the lioness, protector of the small, and trickster series') Persepolis."
  
  
• Hunger Games Trilogy
  
  
• "Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It's pretty old, came right out of the Harlem Renaissance. Its about her relationships with different men, and how in each of the relationships she takes a different role. It also reveals a lot of the racial zeitgeist, as well as women's issues. Plus, it's a love story, and who doesn't love a good love story?"
  
  
• A Wrinkle in Time
  
  
• Native Tongue
  
  
• "HIS DARK MATERIALS by Philip Pullman. Lyra is amaazing. Lirael and Abhorsen are great too."
  
  
• "Left to Tell. It's a true story told by a woman who survuved the massacres in Rwanda, and how she overcame the obstacles during and after. It's a very compelling read."
  
  
• "Lynne Andrews-Medicine Woman Jean Auel-Clan of the Cave Bear Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes-Women Who Run with the Wolves"
  
  
• "detective novels by Laura Lippman, who is an excellent writer. Her protagonist, Tess Monaghan, solves mysteries in Baltimore."
  
  
• "Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls by Jane Yolen"
  
  
• "The Paper Bag Princess. Not only is it empowering to young girls, it lampoons the whole "I'll just wait here helpless for my Prince charming to come rescue me" mentality you find so often in disney films. "

I think as long as your feelings of "vastness" results in ego dissolution - where you sort of feel the boundary between yourself and others disappear for a few moments - then there will be a similar pattern of brain activity. Lol brain scans while watching Pale Blue Dot/Cosmos would be super interesting.

Yeah definitely! If you're serious you can search for phds in cognitive sciences, consciousness/philosophy of mind, psychology and or neuroscience of meditation/psychedelics/the ego/the default mode network would be worth looking up. If you want something cool to watch I'd recommend the 6-part docuseries called the Brain by David Eagleman, its super accessible and has excellent up-to-date science and great visuals. Theres also this Harvard Medical School talk with Sadhguru and a few neuroscientists if you want something that delves more into the spirituality & consciousness questions, and this Ted Talk by Anil Seth called "Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality" for something shorter and more strictly neuroscience based.

I would recommend that you read Bell Hooks. She explains some concepts better than I am able. I've read most of Feminist Theory - from Margin to Center. I'm not sure if it's her best work, but it's very good, and it's the only one I've personally read. I hear her other stuff is also great.

Bell Hooks promotes a brand of radical feminist theory which I can get behind. (I can't get behind all radical feminist thinking). She is a black woman who rather heavily criticizes some aspects of mainstream feminist thinking for being very slanted towards upper class white women and overlooking other, more marginalized women who lack the privileges of being upper class and white.

She promotes a brand of feminism which is radical because it supports an overhaul of the entire structure of society in order to eliminate ALL oppression. She describes how we, as humans, as society, are trained and set up to live in a society of has and has-nots, of inferiors and superiors. There are those who lead, and there are those who follow. Privilege concentrates at the top.

Her brand of feminism promotes a solution that goes far beyond simply highlighting and struggling against various instances of sexism. She argues that sexism is merely one of many consequences of a society that is structured to be oppressive towards many groups, and that until you overthrow the entire system that condones superiors controlling inferiors, you are only treating the symptoms of the problem and not the actual problem.

As such, her brand of radical feminism is actually not even particularly focused on sexism against women - it's more focused on overthrowing all oppression in society as a whole.

On the one hand, I don't imagine ever actually achieving the radical goals she has set out. But on the other hand, I think she's basically right - we do keep falling back into trying to figure out who gets to oppress and who gets to be oppressed, and pointing out instances where this happens misses the point when the whole structure is wrong.

And, bringing it back to your point, it's a version of feminism that is concerned with ALL instances of inequality, not just sexism against women.

There are a number of academics in sociology, gender studies, anthropology, psychology, and even political science who are doing some pretty great work researching men and men's issues. Michael Kimmel and R.W. Connell are two such researchers, as are Dr. Shelley Pacholok and Michael Messner. In many universities, courses in Gender Studies now include examinations of men and masculinities alongside feminist theory and queer/critical theory.

My own MA thesis discussed constructions of masculinity within far right white supremacy movements, and my PhD research is examining men and masculinities in militia movements in the United States. I have several colleagues who are pursuing similar lines of research. While not a 'men's movement' per se, it is certainly doing what it can to look behind the 'male mystique' and see how men live, what sorts of issues they face, and how we can all work together to deconstruct some of the most harmful forms of masculine behaviour. The work is both male-focussed and absolutely pro-feminist. Interestingly enough, this growing body of work gives the MRM a wide berth, as its contributions have been negligible at best.

Check out "Masculinities" by R.W. Connell, or "Men's Lives: 9th Edition" by Kimmel and Messner, if you're interested in this kind of research.

I'm pretty leery of studies that conclude biological facts from things that are clearly (even explicitly) influenced by culture.

> "Men want sex more often than women at the start of a relationship, in the middle of it, and after many years of it," Baumeister concludes after reviewing several surveys of men and women. This isn't just true of heterosexuals, he reports: gay men also have higher frequency of sex than lesbians at all stages of the relationship. Men also say they want more sex partners in their lifetime, and are more interested in casual sex.

I remember reading somewhere that women are probably less interested in casual because the probability of orgasm is so low for them, and if the question is rephrased to include orgasm, the rates of interest in casual sex are close to equal between the sexes (can't find reference for this, sorry). Is that a difference in sex drive between the sexes or just common sense for women?

Historically, evolutionary biological theories of human sexuality are so gendered they are practically useless. They start by only considering reproductive sex as important, therefore anything other than vaginal intercourse is discarded. Researchers universally assumed competition between the sexes, rather than thinking of sex as a social feature that evolved alongside the development of cooperation, altruism, and living in communities. They also start by assuming male heterosexual sexual desire as the norm, and then try to explain anyone who doesn't fit that model.

New thinking has emerged in this field recently, and (surprise) it is revealing that human sexuality is complicated and nuanced and not easily broken down into a listicle on a pop-sci website. While we wait for more meaningful theories to migrate from academia into popular culture, we can expect more "men are like this, women are like that" articles.

tl;dr: This article is based on outdated theories, superficial, and useless.

I second the recommendations for Adrienne Rich and Anne Fausto-Sterling. Here are a few other recommendations:
Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of Intersectionality,
Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality,
Bettina Apthekar's Intimate Politics,
W.E.B. Du Bois' theory of the Double Consciousness,
and if you want more of a pop fem approach, you should try Cunt

If you get more engaged with theoretical work by examining another work through that critical lens, you might enjoy watching Dark Angel and examining how issues of identification, gender, sexuality, and race play out through the main character.

Good luck and enjoy!

I read a really great book while planning my wedding, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding. It analyzes the commercial aspects of weddings piece by piece and deconstructs what we think of as traditional and "wedding-y." It might inspire you to come up with your own traditions. It certainly helped me feel good about planning my very unusual, casual wedding.

Is there anything other than the white dress, the walking down the aisle, and the taking of his last name that you find oppressive in the marriage process? Those things are all completely optional. I eschewed them all.

Some weddings have all of these parts to them that people think of as necessary - otherwise it won't be a real wedding - but really, you can do, or refuse to do, any and all of it and it will still be a great time and it will still be Your Wedding. Mine looked nothing like the wedding people expect when they think of "weddings" and two years later people still tell me it was the best wedding they've been to by far. We did it our way. It meant the world to us and it would have been so much less "us" if we'd done all the normal stuff, the aisle walk and the bouquet toss and the reception line and blahblahblah.

So figure out what your way is and do that.

Give him a book or two back:

Intro to Asexuality

And sit him down to discuss with him, minus the wife, how much his decision to give you a book that makes assumptions about you and your happiness really hurt you. Tell him you understand he did this because he cares for you and religion features heavily for him but in giving the book it showed how much he fundamentally didn't understand or want to understand you and your perspective. You are thus giving him a few books so he can understand you better and ask that he respects you enough to not make assumptions about you in such a way again.

For those interested in learning more about this alongside a bit of feminist theory, Jessica Valenti's book The Purity Myth has a pretty lengthy section about the whole purity ball phenomenon. The book itself is a discussion of American culture's obsession with virginity and reads pretty quickly--I'd recommend it for sure!

Yeah I put it up on Amazon :) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VSQDC38 and thanks!

Check out Yes Means Yes by Jaclyn Freidman and Jessica Valenti, really good collection of essays about sex-positive feminism. Check it out! http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Means-Visions-Female-Without/dp/1580052576

Pick up some books by Jessica Valenti. They're very accesible and interesting. Some of them are addressed to women, but they're a good read for anyone:
Yes Means Yes,
He's a Stud, She's a Slut,
Full Frontal Feminism,
and The Purity Myth.

Camille Paglia has an interesting book called Sexual Personae. It's very dense, but very well researched unified-field theoretical book that blasts conservative, liberal, and feminist readings of human nature. I don't agree with some of the biological determinism in it and it sees art as fact in a sort of problematic way, but it gets you thinking about gender pretty hard!

Great infothing.

Recommended reading: "Half the Sky" http://www.amazon.com/Half-Sky-Oppression-Opportunity-Worldwide/dp/0307387097

This one is good as well, we bought it for my son


https://www.amazon.com/Feminist-Baby-Loryn-Brantz/dp/1484778588

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape

http://www.amazon.com/Yes-Means-Visions-Female-Without/dp/1580052576/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312294851&sr=1-1



Activists and writers Friedman and Valenti (He's a Stud, She's a Slut) deliver an extraordinary essay compilation focusing on the struggle to stop rape in the U
.S. and the importance of sexual identity and ownership. Early on, Thomas MacAulay Millar and Rachel Kramer Bussel explain how the "no means no" concept (sexual consent equals the absence of no) must be rejected in favor of a "yes means yes" mentality: the idea that consent means affirmative participation in the act itself, a broader definition that better protects women while encouraging power over-not fear of-personal sexual identity. Other topics include body image and self-esteem issues as well as incest, the dangers faced by female immigrants and the public perception of rape; in "Trial by Media," Samhita Mukhopadhyay looks at the Duke Lacrosse rape case and finds the media acting in the tradition of slavery by commodifying the young, female African-American body. Though surprisingly entertaining throughout, with no shortage of wit or humor, unexpected topics (Friedman on enjoying sex, transsexual writer Julia Serano on the mixed cultural messages that lead "nice guys" to sexual aggression) keep the book dynamic. Sure to empower and inform, this is an important and inspiring read for assault survivors, educators, activists, experts and those on a path to self discovery.

Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader

Yes Means Yes


The Purity Myth


EDIT: The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help