The claim that “two million people died under Pol Pot” conflates decades of foreign destruction that came before Democratic Kampuchea. Cambodia’s population had already been shattered by French colonial exploitation, U.S. bombing, and postwar famine caused by blockade and

Sex does not always involve penetration. Non-penetrative sex exists, and when it is coerced, it is still rape. Rape is about the absence of consent, not just penetration. If someone is forced at gunpoint to perform or endure any sexual act, that is rape. Patriarchy narrows the

Non-penetrative sex is still sex. Coerced sex is rape.

Tung Padevat: “Youth are the flame of the future. Their minds are quick, their bodies strong, their will unbroken. The youth must take the red banner from the hands of the older generation and carry it forward. They must study the revolution deeply, work harder than others, think

Tupac wasn’t a feminist. He was a convicted sex offender and a violent misogynist. For every “Brenda’s Got A Baby” there’s a “Wonder Why They Call You Bitch.” Malcolm X and Huey Newton were pimps who raped women through prostitution. There’s no consent under survival threats like

Tung Padevat: “Women stand as the equal half of the revolution. They are the mothers of the nation, the cultivators of the soil, the defenders of the home. They have borne the heaviest burdens of the old world; now they must share equally in building the new. In labor, in

Tung Padevat: “In every school and every collective, ideological study must be constant. Study the revolutionary line, study the class struggle, study the achievements of the people. Theory and practice must go hand in hand; thought without labor becomes empty, labor without

Tung Padevat: “The building of the new society requires the destruction of the old culture. Feudal culture taught obedience to kings and lords; colonial culture taught obedience to foreigners; bourgeois culture teaches obedience to money. The new culture teaches devotion to the

Malcolm X had everything to say about Elijah Muhammad (and rightfully so) but nothing to say about the Prophet Muhammad and Aisha.

If consent must be free to be real, and if freedom requires equality, then no sexual act within an unequal system can ever be fully free. Coercion is inherited through culture, enforced by economics, sanctified by religion, and reproduced by law. It shapes desire itself, teaching

Even in supposedly liberated societies, the weight of this past endures. The expectation that women must be attractive, available, and accommodating, and that men must be assertive and sexually successful, continues to reproduce the same logic of coercion. Most people learn to

Cultural norms reinforce these patterns through language, media, and education. From childhood, girls are told that love requires self-sacrifice, that pleasing men is part of womanhood, and that their bodies exist to nurture and satisfy. Boys are taught that persistence is proof

Religion sanctified this subjugation by defining obedience as holiness. Many traditions taught that a woman’s duty was to satisfy her husband, and that refusal was sin or rebellion. Fear of divine punishment replaced the whip as the instrument of control. When faith and morality

Throughout human history, systems of coercion, violence, inequality, and oppression have shaped every aspect of sexuality. From the earliest patriarchal societies to the modern world, sexual relations have rarely existed between equals. Instead, they have unfolded within

Racial and colonial hierarchies add another layer. Marginalized people have historically been fetishized or dehumanized; when economic or social vulnerability intersects with these stereotypes, consent becomes entangled with centuries of power imbalance. Lastly, internalized

Cultural expectations surrounding purity create another form of control. In purity cultures, people are taught to value submission, modesty, and silence about sexuality. Saying no becomes taboo, and compliance feels like virtue. Political and legal systems reinforce this coercion

Economic dependence can make sex coercive when someone’s survival depends on a partner, employer, or client, leaving them unable to refuse without risking homelessness, hunger, or job loss. Even if no one threatens them, the structure of poverty itself becomes the coercive force.

Human decisions do not happen in isolation. Every choice is shaped by the material conditions that surround it. People decide within the limits of what they must do to survive and what they have been trained to value. In a world built on hierarchy and dependence, decision-making

The claim that “two million people died under Pol Pot” conflates decades of foreign destruction that came before Democratic Kampuchea. Cambodia’s population had already been shattered by French colonial exploitation, U.S. bombing, and postwar famine caused by blockade and

All sex is rape under patriarchy. Coerced sex is rape. Systemic coercion, through gender norms, power imbalances, economic dependence, cultural conditioning and religious indoctrination, among other things, deeply shapes people’s sexual decisions. This doesn’t mean that one

Being gay or bisexual does not make someone biologically infertile. Sexual orientation describes patterns of attraction, not the physical ability to reproduce. Many gay and bisexual people have biological children through heterosexual intercourse, surrogacy, sperm or egg