I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

unavoidable that you will be the villain in someone else's story. You will be painted in an unfavorable light. You will be the irredeemable one. and all of this will happen despite how nice you might usually be or how kind or how respectful or how warm. and you will just have to move on.

A couple job interview hacks from someone who has to give a job interview every single goddamn day: (disclaimer: this goes for my process and my company’s process, other companies and industries might be different)

1. There are a few things I check and a few questions I ask literally just to figure out if you can play the game and get along with others in a professional setting. Part of the job I interview for is talking to people, and we work in teams. So if you can’t “play the game” a tiny bit, it’s not going to work. Playing the game includes:

- Why do you want to work here? (just prove that you googled the company, tell me like 1 thing about us, I just want to know that you did SOME kind of preparation for this interview)

- Are you wearing professional clothing? I don’t need a suit just don’t show up in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants.

- Are you able to speak respectfully and without dropping f-bombs all the time? Not because I’m offended but because I don’t want to be reported to HR if you wind up on my team.

- Can you follow simple directions in an interview?

2. Stop telling me protected information. I don’t want to know about what drugs or medications you’re on, I don’t want to know about you being sick, I don’t want to know if you’re planning to have children soon, I don’t want to know anything about your personal life other than “can you do the job?” 

3. When we ask, “What questions do you have for me?” here are my favorites I’ve heard: - What does the day-to-day look like for a member of your team?

- If one of your team members was not performing up to his usual standard, what steps would you take to correct that?

- What can I start doing now to accelerate my learning process in this job?

- What are some reservations you have about me as a candidate? (be ready for this emotionally….it will REALLY help you in the future, and I’ve had people save themselves from a No after this, but can be hard to hear)

- In your opinion, what skills and qualities does the ideal candidate for this job possess?

- What advice would you give to a new hire in this position/someone who wanted to break into this industry, as someone who has worked here for a while?

Those are just my tips off-the-cuff. I work in sales in marketing/SAAS, so these can be very different depending on the industry, but I wish the people I interview could read this before they show up. 

"Don't grieve for me when I'm go—" listen up here asshole. If you wanted to tell me how to feel about your death, you shoulda fucking stuck around. You're not here so you don't get a say anymore. You're not the one who has to deal with the emotional and logistical consequences of your passing. You are the missing piece in my life now, so you have (had) neither the knowledge nor ability to predict the best way for me to cope with it. And frankly, yes, I would have felt better if there'd been some kind of massive event where I could join everyone else grieving your loss and we could say to each other the awful hollow things that can't make it okay but can make it better, and then we could go get drunk about how much we missed you. So frankly, go fuck yourself. I miss you like hell. Hopefully you can take this criticism on board the next time you die. xo.

Casper David Friedrich, “Two Men by the Sea”, 1817, oil on canvas

Illustration for the series titled 'Book of Death' (Kay Nielsen, 1911)

Roasted chicken, ginger, daikon, shiitake mushroom soup with lime, cilantro, broccoli sprouts, and rice noodles

many people see “pedophiles” as a type of villain to wish infinite angry death upon, as opposed to recognizing CSA as a preventable form of abuse. the former buys into moral panic and punitive justice; the latter is actionable, helpful, and much needed

when i went to conservative christian hell school, all we heard about was the evil scary men who wanted to snatch us up on the street. we learned about csa through strange, coded language. we were not taught how to talk about our bodies, and we were not taught what sex was. eventually, i was groomed and assaulted. so were an alarming number of my peers, often by teachers and religious leaders

then, as an adult, i got the opportunity to work at a summer camp. we developed an actionable plan to prevent campers from being alone with adult volunteers; we advocated for all of our campers to learn appropriate body part language; we led discussions about boundaries and consent; we answered questions about sex with honesty, care, and age-appropriate detail. and it was safe! the one time we identified shady behavior, there were so many safety nets and protocols in place that it never became a real issue.

so, having been in both situations, it’s frustrating to see 46387 threads a day of people angrily, viciously tearing apart the mere idea of a pedophile without ever stopping to ask “hey, what can we do about this? in real life? like, what are the advocates advocating for right now?”

i hate to break it to you, but 18+ daddy kink genshin yaoi (sorry idk i’m out of touch) isn’t the issue here, and it’s kind of silly and terminally online to pretend that it is. i would argue that adult-only erotica servers that block minors aren’t as big of a threat as, you know, “minor safe!! we are very safe for minors :) and we HATE the mean nasty scary people” communities that have a piss poor accountability system and no real mechanism for preventing abuse. there’s a huge difference between “weird gross thing that grosses me out” and “unsafe situation,” and the latter is far more worth emphasizing

Irene Chou (Chinese, 1924–2011) - The Universe is my mind, ink and color on paper, 63 cm (2003)

being neutral about other peoples kinks is necessary by the way. when consenting adults are doing things between consenting adults, and you prioritize your discomfort over their autonomy and right to exist safely in a space without having their private interests excavated and recontextualized to make them out to be predators, that says way more about your willingness to place yourself in the position of moral authority than it does about them and you deputizing yourself on the basis of nothing but vibes and your personal traumas makes you very dangerous politically.

Mob in the style of Serial Experiments Lain, or so I tried heh

he has the ultimate power

✨ print ✨

The urge to bite him and shake him around like a chew toy

In mine and many other east Asian cultures, the dragon traditionally symbolises things like power, wealth and strength (imperial symbol and all)

I think we often forget that in the story of the Great Race, the dragon came in fifth because it'd stopped to give people rain. Then it'd stopped again to push a rabbit adrift on a log across the wide river so it reached the shore safely (that's why the Rabbit year comes before the Dragon).

Dragons aren't meant to just be powerful - they are meant to do good with such power, and to help those in need.

So in this lunar new year, I hope you gain more power, so that you might be able to help others. I pray you have abundant resources so you may give to yourself and those around you. I wish you courage, endurance, kindness and generosity, for yourself and your people.

I hope you, and I, will be rain givers, life preservers, joy bringers.

I hope we will be dragons.

Happy Year of the Wooden Dragon! Here's a risograph print on off-white speckled paper, it was my first time using gold metallic ink ✨ Available on my etsy

Robert Wun Spring 2024 Haute Couture