With my tattoos, I get to say, these are choices I make for my body, with full-throated consent. This is how I mark myself. This is how I take my bod… - Roxane Gay

I am quite content to be in my thirties, and nothing affirms that more than being around people in their late teens and early twenties.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing about nonconsensual sex is that, in an instant, it erases you. Your own desires, your safety and well-being, your ownership of the body that may very well have been the only thing you ever felt sure you owned — all of it becomes irrelevant, even nonexistent. You don’t need to be a helpless, innocent child to be changed by that.

Complaining is seductive on those days when happiness requires too much energy.