Asexual Awareness - Tumblr Posts

Guy:I like you want to go on a date

Me:Yeah sure that sounds like fun.I should let I’m asexual

Guy: Fuck you then don’t ever talk to me again

Actually screaming on the inside at how they basically told queerphobes and exclus to please fuck off and explicitly included us aspecs even beyond aesthetics like the pride flags and nail polishes

for all the aros and aces on vday, white boy is squirking for you too

I completely agree and I’m so sad and mad that ace and aro issues aren’t more well known and spread around the community and outside of it. So few people are aware of the struggles that the a-spec community face, wether it be through institutionalized oppression or socialized oppression.

Here is a list of ressources that can help you give you more perspective on the rights that we don’t have and the issues that we still have to fight against till this day :

- An academic look of the systemic oppression of asexuality

- Asexual people do not have equal rights with allosexual people : a look about the institutionalized and medicalized oppression ace face (europe lens)

- There is NO mainstream representation of a-specness in the media and very few positive representations exist (it’s getting better but very slowly i.e. sex education and the aroace japanese series)

- Also, a look through asexual history will reinforce your faith in your queer identity. We — as aroaces — have BEEN here, all along.

this list is ace-centered because I’m alloace (pan-ace), but I will so gladly let my aro folks add their own ressources for all of us to read on about.

Hope it can help you as an a-spec connect even more with your identity ; and help allos understand more what makes a-spec identities so inherently queer.

Genuinely so nice to see posts telling me to use the label I want and that it can mean whatever I use it to mean, but I still do feel out of place calling myself queer because, well, I wouldn’t be killed for my aroace spec ness. My friends could be, though, for their queerness. My partners. I’m torn between “pride is a protest because queer people are being killed” and “Aro and ace are queer identities because the deviate from the norm”

I would never ever tell another aroace person not to call themself queer, though, I love all of you, this is a personal conflict. Thoughts?

I think we need to be careful about defining queerness as 'must be this oppressed to ride'. The fact is that we all live in a society that prioritizes cis/straight/allo/perisex experiences and ways of being. We all benefit from pushing back against it together. The community itself tends to stand for embracing that diversity within the community too, and letting people define themselves on their own terms.

I think we also need to be careful about implying that ace and aro people don't experience oppression for being ace/aro, or that our oppression isn't also worth fighting against. It definitely can look different, but it still deserves attention.

That said, it is absolutely OK to choose not to ID as queer. Labels are all what feels right, and if it doesn't feel right to you or you don't feel like it fits you for any reason you don't have to use it. And I know a lot of ace and aro people who prefer to stick to ace and aro labels.

Do any followers have their own thoughts they want to share? Please do!

"i support aspec people!" yeah but do you?

are you normal about aplatonics?

are you normal about asexuals who have sex?

are you normal about aroallos? alloaces?

are you normal about asexuals that are sex repulsed because of trauma? hell, are you normal about asexuals that are asexual because of trauma?

what about aromantics who date?

what about everyone else who you ignore because they make you 'uncomfortable'?

what about, oh, i don't know, cishet aromantic men? because apparently you don't fucking support those people.

you cant support just some of us. you cant call yourself an aroace ally if you refuse to acknowledge those who dont fit your bullshit stereotypes and standards.

"love is love" until it doesn't include sex

"love is love" until it lives in separate beds

"love is love" until it is queer platonic

"love is love" until it does not comply with compulsory sexuality and amatonormativity

love IS love, for aspecs, for sex sepulsed folk and for platonic relationships

"love is love" apply to more than same-sex relationships in a world where romantic and sexual relationships are considered more valuable

Remember to advocate for Asexuals and Aromantics this pride. Because we are also here, and we are also queer

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.

There is no “see results”, just vote.

Tags, lol: @our-aspec-experience @our-asexual-experience @our-aroace-experience @ace-culture-is @asexual-society @asexualadvice @asexualspectrumspector @asexual @aroaceconfessions

The Nature of Memory

The Nature of Memory

This was written for a writing course I was taking, and we had to start at one time, and then skip forward or back in the life of the same person. I started in the 80’s and then skipped forward to the near present. Again, it seems to have a theme of being happy with what you have, and I guess the theme of 2022 is self acceptance. Please note, that I am not trying to accept being a serial killer,…

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In Any Universe

Hello Hello, I realized that I wrote this on Monday and then never scheduled it for release, but here is this week’s response to the six-sentence writing prompt of BRANCH by girlontheedge. I am writing this one for Asexual Awareness week, about a Naiya, who is enduring the most boring/out of touch lecture of her life. Mutli-verse theory stipulates that every time a decision is made, there is a…

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Okay, I realize this hilariously late for Asexuality Awareness Week (which was last week), but due to unforeseen stressors, it didn’t really get done in time.

Anyway! I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while, and I’m proud of myself of actually getting a six page comic done within a week. (Not that it’s really anything super fancy, but it’s better than nothing lol) I do apologize for the massive ugly text wall that is page four but I had a hard time figuring out how to convey it visually while being kind of pressed for time. oh and the occasional copy/paste, I’m sorry for that too

Enjoy! Click on the separate pictures if the text is hard to read.

It's international asexual day!!! It's pretty late for me cause work has no mercy, but not too late to add to the tags and make a post about it!!

Ty to everyone else who has been posting, making art, writing, and spreading the word about this day for awareness and talk about asexuality, all throughout the spectrum. It means a lot to me, and I'm sure it means a lot to many others on Tumblr as well!!