The more I know my own worth, the less I have to fling myself against anything.

As a young woman I struck myself against everything—other bodies, cities, myself—but I could never make sense of the marks I made on them, or the marks they made on me. A thing of unknown value has no value, and I treated myself as such.

In my fantasies, healing comes like a plane to pull me out of the water. Real healing is the opposite of that. It is an opening. It is dropping down into the lost parts of yourself to reclaim them.

Misogyny filters so granularly into action. Those men did not hate me, as a hungry person does not hate a refrigerator. They simply valued their own needs above mine.

I considered the way that we treat animals like objects, as if their bodies are empty containers, their instinct to survive rattling like a marble at the bottom. The more we want to exploit a body, the less humanity we allow it. Here I had been believing my own body an object that I could yield to others without harming.

I had spent most of my life thinking of my body as an instrument, an object connected to my psyche but not integrated with it. My body, I was realizing, was not the box that held myself, it was my self.

both men and women prioritize the comfort and well-being of men over women’s safety, comfort, even the truth of their bodily experience.

Emma and I nodded. Was that emotional labor? I wondered where to locate the line between sympathy and labor. I knew that they were not mutually exclusive, but also that there was a difference between caring for someone and performing care. How did a person know exactly when genuine expression became emotional labor?

If I have learned anything from my study of empty consent, it is that I must turn on the lights and welcome every part of me into the room. If I want my yes to mean yes, there can be no locked doors in the house of me.