Can It Be Five Years Already?
Time flies when there’s too much to do. This blog launched when the book, Yes Means Yes: Visions Of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, hit the shelves in November 2008. The book went on to critical raves and a solid position in college syllabi, while its editors, Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, went on to other things — Jessica left her baby, Feministing, and ended up with a regular gig at The Nation, while Jaclyn wrote the follow-up workbook What You Really Really Want (I wrote the online supplement, and while I’m clearly biased, I think it’s a terrific book and it almost literally offers some useful tools for everyone old enough to read it). She writes for various outlets, does media appearances, runs WAM! and generally keeps a schedule that can make you tired just looking at it.
This was originally a group blog, and in the first year a majority of the contributors that said they would write for the blog submitted at least one post, but many only one or two. Some of those posts were terrific; Stacy May Fowles’s and Lee Jacobs-Riggs’s work particularly resonated with me. Before long, only a handful of us were writing anything for the blog, and then it was just me and Jaclyn, and a lot more me than Jaclyn, and for a long time now this has effectively been a solo blog. I never intended it that way, but that’s what happened.
When I started, I didn’t realize I had so much to say.
After three hundred posts of mine, and dozens of other folks’ from the early years, there is a heck of a back catalog. This is an entirely partial and biased list.
Rape and Rape Culture:
This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like
Cockblocking Rapists Is A Moral Obligation; or, How To Stop Rape Right Now
Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer
Steubenville: Humiliation Was The Point Of The Exercise
Shroedinger’s Rapist And The Imagined Right To Intrude
The Boiling Frog Principle Of Boundary Violation
Sexuality:
The (Nonexistent) Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Consequences of Enthusiastic Consent
Gender Differences and Casual Sex: The New Research
BDSM and Kink Community Issues:
There’s A War On (final part, with links to each part)
Domism: Role Essentialism and Sexism Intersectionality in the BDSM Scene
Parenting:
If She’s Not Having Fun You Have To Stop
What To Tell The Next Generation
Hey Teenage Boys! Worried About Steubenville? Don’t Be.
Stuff I loved that nobody read:
When Men Were Men, And Burned To Death
Sometimes I think that some time I’ll be done, and then I remember what Jaclyn taught me: it is not yours to complete the work, neither is it yours to desist from it. So maybe I’ll still be here in another five. Thing will be better then. Not completely, but some.
yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com 
thank you for carrying on, this is one of my constantly referred to blogs, as a sub in my private life and a sex worker there are few other spaces which approach consent and the right to say no in a way that neither others or alientates me.
Thomas, as always, the blog is fantastic. Keep it up!
I love this blog! I only recently discovered it, and can’t wait for more posts. Here’s to 5 more years!!
I am very sorry to be so late to commemorate 5 years of the blog. I am more grateful than I can say to all who have contributed, and particularly to you, Thomas, for keeping it current. Thank you. Here’s wishing for many, many more!
A lot of your older posts remain my go-to resources to teach people, and your newer posts continue to educate me. Thanks for the writing you have done, and thanks for committing to continue.
Thomas, I appreciate your work. Please commit for another five years.