I Hesitate To Say This Because Im Afraid It Will Sound Like Im Belittling Everyones Rightful Fury Over

I hesitate to say this because I’m afraid it will sound like I’m belittling everyone’s rightful fury over the cruel, callous “jokes” being made by smug holier-than-thou leftists up north. But I came down on the side of offering a counterweight, because, christ, SOMEONE has to say something kind.

I just want you all to know: For the past 72 hours my dash has been nothing but Northerners expressing intense concern and helplessness, as well as trading off and collating as many cold-weather survival tips as they can think of. Anyone who’s used to the cold is absolutely terrified at the thought of these kinds of temperatures striking areas without the infrastructure to handle them, has nothing but compassion and appreciation for the resources they have access to, and they’re wracking their collective brains for any tiny little details that might make this easier.

I’ve seen multiple posts where someone explicitly mentions how grateful they were for Texans coming together to do this same thing in reverse, when Northern states were hit by deadly heatwaves. How scared they were and how much that kindness meant to them. They haven’t forgotten.

You’re not alone down there. The assholes are loud but few and far between; for everyone making a stupid joke there’s seven people leaping to shut them the fuck down.

The rest of the country does not think you deserve this. We don’t think you brought it on yourselves. We’re pulling for you. We’re furious with every corrupt asshole who’s responsible for this entirely preventable bullshit. We desperately wish we could do something more.

And all of us want you to be okay.

today is the first international asexuality day! on this day, we celebrate those that are under the ace umbrella, including demisexual, gray-asexual, and all kinds of other ace identities.

asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity.

asexuality is valid. asexuality exists.

if you are an allosexual person, check in with your friends that are in the ace spectrum today! let them know you are with them every step of the way. and educate those who do not know what asexuality is.

and for us in the spectrum, let's use this day to celebrate our identity! we are in this together, let's not lose the community spirit. we have enough love for everyone.

sending love to my people, happy asexuality day!

@acuppajo tell me this isn’t us 😂

art…Hard

Lainey Molnar

Y'know, whenever people want to talk about why aspec people 'count' as an oppressed identity, they tend to go for the big stuff like corrective rape and conversion therapy. And like, we should absolutely talk about that stuff. Obviously those things are terrible and important and we need to raise awareness and deal with them.

But I feel like people often gloss over how… quietly traumatising it is to grow up being told that there is only one way to be happy— and that everybody who doesn't conform to that norm is secretly miserable and just doesn't know it— and then to gradually realise that, for reasons that you cannot help, that is never going to happen for you.

You're not going to find a prince/princess and ride off into the sunset. Or if you do, then it's not going to look exactly the way it does in fairytales. You're not going to get a 'normal' relationship, because you are not 'normal', and everybody and everything around you keeps telling you that that's bad.

You see films where characters are presented as being financially stable, genuinely passionate about their work and surrounded by friends and family, but then spend the rest of the plot realising that the real thing they needed was a (romantic and sexual) partner, to make them 'complete'.

You absorb the idea that any relationships you have with allo people will ultimately be unfulfilling on their side, and that this will be your fault (even if you discussed things with your partner beforehand and they decided that they were a-okay with having those sorts of boundaries in a relationship) unless you deliberately force yourself into situations that you aren't comfortable with, so as to make uo for your 'defects'.

You grow up feeling lowkey gaslighted because all the adults in your life (even in LGBT+ spaces. In fact especially in LGBT+ spaces) are insisting that it's totally normal to not be attracted to anybody at your age, and then you go to school and everybody keeps pressuring you to name somebody you're attracted to because they can't imagine not being attracted to anybody at your age.

And then you get older and realise that one day you're going to be expected to leave home, and that one day all your friends are going to be expected to put aside other relationships and 'settle down' with a primary partner and you don't know what you're going to do after that because you straight up don't have a roadmap for what a 'happy ending' looks like for someone like you.

(And the LGBT+ community is little help, because so many people in there are more than happy to tell you that you're not oppressed at all. That you're like this because you don't want to have sex, and/or you don't want to have any relationships, that your orientation is some sort of choice you made— like not eating bananas— rather than an intrinsic part of you that a lot of us have at some point tried to wish away.)

Even if you're grey or demi, and do experience those feelings, you still have to deal with the fact that you're not experiencing them the 'normal' way and that that's going to effect your relationships and your ability to find one in the first place.

If you're aiming for lifelong singlehood (which is valid af) or looking for a qpp, then you're going to have to spend the rest of your life either letting people make wrong assumptions about your situation (at best that your relationship is of a different nature than it actually is, at worst that the life you've chosen is really just a consolation prize because you 'failed' at finding a romantic/sexual partner) or pulling out a powerpoint and several webpages every time you want to explain it.

This what being aspec looks like for most people, and it is constantly minimised as being unimportant and not worth fighting against— even in aspec spaces— because we've all on some level absorbed the idea that oppression is only worth fighting against if it's big, and dramatic, and immediately obvious. That all the little incidents of suffering that we experience on a daily basis are not enough to be worth bothering about.

I mean, who gives a shit if you feel broken, inherently toxic as a partner, and like you're going to be denied happiness because of your orientation? Shouldn't we all just shut up and thank our lucky stars we don't have to deal with all the stuff some of the other letters in the acronym have to put up with (leaving aside the fact that there are many aspec people who identify with more than one letter)?

So you know what? If you're aspec and you relate to anything I've said above (or can think of other things relating your your aspec-ness that I haven't mentioned) then this is me telling you now that it's enough. Even if we got rid of all the big stuff (which we're unlikely to do any time soon because— Shock! Horror!— the big stuff is actually connected to all the small stuff) we would still be unable to consider our fight 'over' because what you are experiencing is not 'basically okay' and something we should just be expected to 'put up with'.

No matter what anybody tells you, we have the right to demand more from life than this.