breaking the silence.

Now Playing: Hearts a Mess by Gotye (you have lost too much love to fear, doubt and mistrust)

I firmly believe that behind every silence there is a stigma.

It's not always easy, to talk about gay marriage on the internet. It takes guts to openly admit you're a feminist. It's still hard for me to talk about sexuality and sex positivity and being open and open-minded about safe, consensual, legal sexual acts, even though it's something I really believe in.

But I do it anyway. It's my job, as a human being. Because I believe that behind every silence there is a stigma.

In primary school periods were not talked about. At all. They were simply wiped from existence, and anyone who succumbed was a deviant. And so the myths spread. One of the bubbliest, craziest girls I knew sat very, very quietly through all of recess and lunch because she was told that the blood would spread to other parts of her body if she jumped up and down. People thought you could lose your virginity to a tampon or that only sluts got their periods.

And with these lies come stigma. I was terrified of my period. Whenever it came about I would do anything to avoid being 'caught'. I had hormonal imbalances when I was younger so my periods were long and irregular and heavy and extremely painful, but I couldn't say a word because it was so stigmatized.

Then when I got to high school people suddenly became so much more...open about it. We help each other do the math and share horror stories. We whinge endlessly and relentlessly about it. We steal from each others' pad stashes because, you know, I'm totally disorganized. It wasn't that periods had suddenly lost their evil - people just understood them and, more importantly, understood how normal they are. People only get this epiphany through knowledge, and knowledge is only facilitated by open dialogue. Silence feeds ignorance, and therefore stigma.

You will not go blind and grow fur on your hands if you masturbate. You are not any less of a human being if you are attracted to men, women, both or neither. There is no such thing as too much or too little sexual activity. Virginity doesn't always give you the moral high ground, but it doesn't automatically make you a loser, either. You are not going to rot in hell if your gender identity and your biological sex and your sexual orientation don't match up in the traditional binaries. You are not a freak if you have hormones and nerve endings. And the law and no single person has the right to take away your right to safe, legal and consensual love, sex and marriage.

The root behind most of the stigma associated with gender and sex and sexuality is ignorance. Most of Laci Green's videos aren't justifying particular sexes or sexual orientations or sex acts, just explaining them - there's a helluva lot of myth busting to do. People believe anything anyone says and this ignorance is severely damaging to our fellow human beings. When I tell people I'm a feminist, nine out of ten of them don't really know what that means. When I say I support gay marriage, nine out of ten people don't think I know what I'm talking about when I understand the gay marriage debate better than anyone who tries to whack me over the head with the Bible (which I maintain is not inherently homophobic, only interpreted as such by homophobes).

It's scary, going against the tide. I know a lot of people judge me - believe me, I know. But as hard as it is and as scary as it might be, I can't stop. This is my job. This is my life. I know what it's like to be stigmatized and I don't want anyone to go through that for any reason. Behind every silence there is a stigma. So I'm trying to break that silence with a bang.