My Thoughts On Girl A: The truth about the Rochdale sex ring by the victim who stopped them by Girl A

A few years back, this story was all over the news. Then one day I was browsing Netflix and came across the series Three Girls, and I found the book Girl A: The truth about the Rochdale sex ring by the victim who stopped them by Girl A. Even from that book title you kind of guess that this book deals with a heavy subject. That’s the reason I avoided reading this book until now.

As we can in the first chapter ‘girl a’ as she became known, had that is considered a ‘normal’ life before her teen years. I’m saying this because this also shows that this can happen to anyone regardless of the lifestyle you grow up in. What was shocking to me was that a person who was once her friend becomes her pimp and force her to be gang raped. The only reason I thought of was that Emma (the pimp) wasn’t strong enough or capable of breaking the ugly cycle she found herself in.

Something else that I noticed was the strength that human beings get when they become a parent to break any bad habits that they might have because now they have another life to take care of, that solely depends on them. I gave this book a five out of five stars because it deserves it.

Girl A: The truth about the Rochdale sex ring by the victim who stopped them

Alex

Firsts Lines Fridays

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book

Lines

Preface

March 2017

When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple. I wanted a dog. I wanted a house that had stairs in it—two floors for one family. I wanted, for some reason, a four-door station wagon instead of the two-door Buick that was my father’s pride and joy. I used to tell people that when I grew up, I was going to be a pediatrician.

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The Book Is..

Becoming Goodreads

Alex

Firsts Lines Fridays

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book

Lines

The last image you might have of me is from about ten plus years ago when I was working as a gay and lesbian activist. At that time, I was also writing books (first Family Outing and next End of Innocence). Then I more or less disappeared.
In my first book, Family Outing, I described the events that led to a life-changing moment when I discovered that I was attracted to girls instead of boys, and drew the logical conclusion that I was a lesbian.

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The Book

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man Goodreads

Alex

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir by Ruth Wariner

I have a lot of thoughts on this book. However, I’m pretty anxious to write and share my thoughts on this book. I found this book when I was looking for a book that my friend Terra from bookbanditblog was reading. I don’t want to judge why people would want to live in a polyamorous relationship.

Upon reading this, I got super sad for the kids in the family, they barely went to school, they had very little food, no proper housing condition, electric wire all around the house and the mothers keep getting pregnant over and over again. The worse is when the dad started raping his stepdaughters. I think this man is a bastard. His wives sound like they were brainwashed by their man in some way. It’s rare that a book creates so many emotions in me that I want to close the book and sob my eyes out. This book is a real and heartbreaking piece of writing. To conclude my thoughts, I will say that that the fight of freedom won in the end and I’m pleased about that. I gave this book a five out of five stars.

Alex

My Thoughts On ‘Before I Had the Words: On Being a Transgender Young Adult’

Yesterday I read a memoir by a remarkable man called Skylar Kergil and his journey from female to male. Upon reading the first few pages, I quickly realised how every transition is different depending on the person who is going through it. My second thought was this will be meaningful to me because I’m going through the same situation knowing that I’m not alone in this world is reassuring since sometimes it feels like that. It gave me some medical information I’ve been craving. This book is for anyone who’s interested in reading what a transgender person needs to go through to be who they were born to be. I gave it five out five stars.

Alex

Before I Had the Words: On Being a Transgender Young Adult

Firsts Lines Fridays

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

Lines

Gender binaries remain entrenched for English-speaking people because they are so firmly entrenched in our language. Lacking gender-neutral pronouns to refer to sentient beings, we are constantly asked to determine whether the person about whom we are speaking or writing is male or female. This creates a problem that is shared both by the church and by people who identify as LGBTQ.

Progressive liturgists have for decades grappled with the inadequacy of gender binaries in our speech about God, whom scripture tells us plainly is neither male nor female—or is both male and female—even as the text itself, in numerous tongues, continuously uses masculine language for God, somewhat offset by metaphors that confer female attributes both to God and to Jesus. LGBTQ people, meanwhile, find ourselves trying to create language that accurately communicates our complex relationships to gender identity.

This book will draw on queer linguistic insights as a genuine effort to speak as authentically as possible about the nature of God and humanity.

When speaking about God, I am going to employ gender-neutral pronouns developed by transgender activists and writers: “Ze” and “Hir.” To clarify that I am referring to God, I will capitalize these words. When speaking about human beings, I will use a mix of “she/her,” “ze/hir,” and “he/him/his.” I will choose one of these for each paragraph or example and attempt to use it consistently. I will also employ the term “trans*,” asterisked, to acknowledge the diversity of gender identities and expressions that exist within transgender experience.