inside people's memories, i can live forever.

justmarkingtime:

Dear people,

Stop speaking at girls about their own self respect.

You don’t get to decide whether or not someone respects them self. That is their own mentality.

You can be a prostitute and still respect yourself. You can be a porn star and still respect yourself. You can be a sex therapist and still respect yourself. You can have a 4-way consensual BDSM orgy and still respect yourself.

Self respect is about how you treat yourself and how you let others treat you, and that is based on your own personal boundaries.

Just because you have different boundaries to someone does not mean that person does not respect them self. 

Let’s say girl A’s limit is at kissing a guy she’s just met in a club. She won’t go further than that because she’s not comfortable doing so.

And let’s say girl B’s limit is at sleeping with a guy she’s just met in a club. She won’t take it further to regularly sleeping with him because she’s not comfortable doing so.

Girl A and B are both doing what they are comfortable doing. 

But most people would say that girl B has no self respect, because she’s willing to sleep with someone she just met.

But if she’s perfectly comfortable/happy doing so and it does not bother her, then clearly she fucking does respect herself. If she leaves the event happy, knowing that she made a decision she is comfortable with, then that is not disrespectful to herself.

Now, if you purposely went past your boundaries despite knowing you’re going to make yourself feel like shit, that is disrespecting yourself. If you actively let people treat you terribly, that is disrespecting yourself because you know you deserve better but you let it continue.

You could love yourself, treat yourself well, surround yourself with positive people that treat you well and you can do things that you know you deserve for your own happiness

but the second you feel comfortable posting a picture online of your breasts, some bitch in the corner screams ‘OMG RESPECT YOURSELF, GIRLS THESE DAYS.’

Hey, it’s not your fucking job to tell someone to respect them self.

I am fucking sick of this cattiness, this double standard and this degradation of women from the use of ‘self respect’. 

Telling someone to get self respect does not make sense. And just because you believe someone doesn’t respect them self - that does not make you a better person or give you a warrant to go out of your way to degrade them. Fuck you if you do that.

It’s this kind of bullshit (the people who think women who are comfortable posting nudes are somehow slutty, I mean) that reaffirms rape culture. If you’re a woman who tells other women that they don’t respect themselves because they have different boundaries than you, then you are part of the problem. Stop. Just because you wouldn’t do something doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t do it. As long as it isn’t damaging anyone else, they should be allowed to do whatever makes them happy.

(I used “damaging” because, especially in many BDSM lifestyle choices, pain can be wanted, though there should always be consent.)