by Source
03.27.2013
Editor's Picks
By Sarah Beaulieu / The Good Men Project
Sarah Beaulieu struggled to find the right way to tell people she was a sexual assault survivor. Here’s how you can support someone who opens up about sexual assault.
As a survivor of sexual violence, I always found it challenging to “come out” to a potential love interest about my history. It never seemed to come up naturally in conversation on a date.
There is no right or wrong approach to telling a date that you are a survivor of sexual violence. It’s a completely personal decision, and you have to figure out what works for you. In college, one of my big motivations for sharing my story publicly at Take Back the Night was to share it with the entire universe of potential love interests all at once, so I didn’t have to tell it again and again every time I met someone new.
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by Source
03.21.2013
Sex in San Diego
Why do porn actors kill themselves? Who is responsible?
Whenever a porn star – especially a gay porn star – commits suicide, theories show up, and people act very, very certain about them. Arpad Miklos, who was as much as a porn “star” as anyone can be in a time when we are hyper-saturated with porn, killed himself on February 3rd, 2013, at the age of 45. As usual, many people felt sure they knew why he committed suicide, without much evidence. It was drugs, it was studios not treating him well, it was the feeling of dehumanization, it was the vague but all encompassing “porn industry” that did it, it was the feeling of being hollow, it was it was his loss of validation after being a star for so long.
I can’t claim any special knowledge about his death, I didn’t know him very well. We met in passing on a set; he’d just finished a scene, and I was about to start mine. He was huge and handsome; I’m not saying anything new. If you met him, you were impressed by his smile and his body and his presence. Looking at him almost made you feel a sense of unbalance in the world, like his handsomeness and flawless physique were proof of some deep inequality between people. But then you’d forget that feeling and be drawn back into the intense attraction.
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