“If you look at the words ‘don’t smoke,’ everyone figures I’m talking about smoking cigarettes, or grass, or hash; ‘don’t drink’ — everyone figures I’m talking about alcohol; ‘don’t fuck’ — everyone figures I’m saying ‘No sex!’ Think about that! think about the word ‘drink’: what does ‘drink’ mean? Do you think that people would ever figure, ‘Oh, he wants people to no longer take any beverages, or any liquids of any sort?’ But when the word ‘fuck’ comes on, they cannot understand it the same way. That just blew my mind. What I was clearly discussing was abusive, quest-oriented, manipulative sex. People who were not interested in other people’s feeling, but only in getting off. I saw as a teenager that people’s energies were so squarely caught up in getting laid that a lot of pain and hurt came with that. People were being hurt and damaged and traumatized by other people’s behavior.”

— Gabriel Kuhn’s interview with Ian MacKaye for Sober Living For The Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics (via ribbonsandgeekery)