#allo people be normal challenge

[dolokhoded]

tired of people using qprs in their fics as "miscommunication" and two characters "not realizing they've been dating all along 🤣🤣🤣" i know it might shock some people but you need to have your shit together and communicate to maintain a qpr too it's not just the "confusing stage" before a romantic relationship.

[degengxrl]

”I'd argue that it's an identity for antisexual. Sure, there must also be some people with low sex drive/no need for intimacy who now feel more empowered to adopt the label.”

“demisexual isnt that just normal”

“asexuals are just incels who cant get a gf”

“Asexuals are, without exception, pxdophiles who are scared to engage with their sexual desires.”

“you're not asexual, you're on antidepressants.”

“being aroace is a mental disability"

allos™️ stop talking abt aspec identities challenge omfg

pt: allos™️ stop talking abt aspec identities challenge omfg end/pt.

stfu

[kazs-scheming-face]

allo people be normal about platonic affection challenge

[magicalyaku]

Ok ok, let's get back on track. Work was draining these past weeks, but I'm on vacation now, so time to catch up! June was the month of the library books. I put a bunch on hold in April and May and they all came in at the same time. And after up to 10 weeks of waiting I was not about to push a single one back further, so I had to work a bit there. 8D Also, according to my list I've read 51 books in the first 6 months of the year. I seem to remember wanting to read less this year? Yeah. Not going well.

Gwen & Art are Not in Love (Lex Croucher): I read it in the very first days of June, which was basically an eternity ago, so my memory is a bit wonky. I do remember I had lots of fun! It was funny and sweet with a solid story and serious times when needed, nice characters, good adventure. The female lead did not get on my nerves! There was a cat! And a girl with a (legendary) sword! I think, though, it's a bit unfair that both boys ended up with permanent bodily harm while the girls got away scratchfree … Go read it!!

Thief in the Night (KJ Charles): I didn't know anything about this other than the summary when I put it on my waitlist in the library. After 10 weeks it finally came in and my first thought was "Is it broken?!" because it's only about 100 pages! It is a full story, mind you, I was just so suprised by it (and because I waited for so long!). It's a companion story to The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, featuring the brother of the protagonists of that one. It's pretty cute. Super short, but just the right length for a simple story. We can have a simple story once in a while. I had a good time reading this.

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting (KJ Charles): I borrowed this right after Thief in the Night. This is a full-length novel, so it has a lot more time to dive into characters and intricacies. It's nice. Like not groundbreaking, but very enjoyable. There's this thing about (pseudo-historic) British aristocracy that just calls for mocking them. I liked a lot how the climax and ending played out!

Flowerheart (Catherine Bakewell): Now this was another difficult book for me. I thought with time I'd get a little more chill with YA fantasy heroines. Seems I'm not there yet. The heroine here has these whiny self-pitying phases that really annoyed me. She's like "Oh maybe he never liked me in the first place" just because the guy didn't want her help at one thing. But: 1) He was her very close childhood friend, that was not a lie. 2) She has like one day of training in and can't control her magic, so her help would be … probably no help at all. And 3) when he told her before that he needs her on the weekends she said no, she can't … So why is she getting upset?! I hate characters like this. /D But thankfully, this is only half of the time, the other half she's pretty ok (the guy as well) and I actually found myself liking the book. The romance is acceptable and it does have some nice imagery going on with all the flower magic and stuff.

Sounds Fake But Okay (Sarah Costello & Kayla Kaszyca): My one non-fiction book of the year. :D It's about seeing the world from the perspectives of a_spec people. Like taking apart all that amatonormativity and all these ideas about romance and family and stuff that most of our world sees as right and normal. So it's not just a "let me tell you what aromanticism and asexuality are"-book but dives a bit deeper. I found it insightful. I think, both a_spec and allo people can take something away from reading this. Challenging our social constructs in thought at least can't hurt after all. Regarding the ebook library edition I read I didn't quite like the layout as the incorporated community quotes where not well marked and I stumbled over them a few times before realising it's another quote. That's probably no issue in the paper version though. I also struggled to tell the authors Sarah and Kayla apart. They introduce themselves and their stories in the beginning but I immediately jumbled them up ...

Captive Prince Trilogy (C.S. Pacat): I borrowed the English edition from the library … and didn't want to return it! Which is stupid because I own the German version in paper. But that kinda sums up how I feel about these books. Captive Prince was not the very first gay fantasy book I read almost two years ago but the first one I liked. (The actual first was Rowan & Ash by Christian Händel which had a terribly selfish love interest and shied away from all the important conflict. (And yeah, long before that I did read The Raven Cycle but I picked that one up for the Ley lines and the no-kiss-promise. The gay was just a pleasant surprise, so I don't count it.)) Which is funny, because especially the beginning is so filthy! I remember being quite put off by this the first time around, but apparently it was intriguing enough to continue reading. I like the incredible slow-burn of Damen's and Laurent's relationship. The slow building of trust in a surrounding where trust is so rare. How shit happens between them and they have to sort it out on page before progressing. How you only catch glimpes of Laurent's true self for a long time. I like it when authors feel smart through their writing and writing Laurent's and the Regent's intrigues and all the different settings with war strategies etc. sure does feel smart to me. I like the slow-burn in stories as well when things start at some point and only get important much later and all weaves together beautifully. It's so rewarding. Look, where we started - look, how far we've come! Hah. u3u

Riley Weaver Needs a Date for the Gaybutante Society (Jason June): For the end of the month I went for something light and funny. Of all the authors I read last year F.T. Lukens and Jason June stuck with me the most. Lukens for the cozy charming fantasy and June for the slightly silly noisy onea. Riley Weaver is no exception to that. It does have a serious undertone and message, though, but due to the framework of the story it manages to never feel dull or preachy.

I also tried to read Dragonfall by L.R. Lam, but gave up after just 50 pages. I can't even say if it's good or bad, because I don't know. I couldn't stand the viewpoints. Like, there's three people. The first one is a 1st person narrator, who refers to the second person as You, but in the narration, not dialogue! That put me off so much. It was so … icky! The second person narrates 1st person as well. If there's another "you" I don't know because I didn't make it to the point where they meet for real. And then the third person comes along and … it's 3rd person?! And I screamed! God, I hate that. I mean, it can work and I have read books that I like with inconsistent viewpoints but there was nothing here for which I was willing to endure. To be fair, I don't like dragons in the first place, so maybe we never were a good match from the start. :'D

That's it for June!

[peach-pot]

allo people be normal about aspecs for ten minutes challenge

[foxymoxynoona]

"I love talking about writing but can you clarify for me, do you mean how to write in the different points of view? Or how to move between them (like with internal thoughts)? Or am I misunderstanding something else? ☺️"

it's exactly those two things foxy, sorry for not making it clear I think it was my translator

-anon

Oh geez there's soooo much to say so I'll just focus on a couple specifics and if you have more questions, I'm around for more :)

I think no matter what, it's important to remember that your narrator is a character, even if they aren't a named character in the story. The choices you make about what the narrator knows and tells the reader, and how, should remain consisten. If you want a narrator that is more like a character (or even first person the character!) then there should be more personality and bias, whereas the further in third person you get, there should be more objectiity. i see people struggle with this sometimes, where they write a close first person narrator but then have them omnisciently know things the other character is thinking or feeling. They can observe and guess but they can't actually read minds!

I personally like writing close third person best because you get to be a little objective in the narration but still point things out to the reader about what the main character is experiencing, and use those observations (whether right or wrong) to develop the character. When i write in that POV, I try to remain true to what that character would notice --so for example JK may not notice much about his girl's outfit but he may notice that it's low cut or tight lol, he notices smells a lot but not very normal mundane Korean things in a scene that someone like Sasha would because they are different/interesting to her. I lean into a lot of internal monologue very fluidly when I write this, and I tend to use italics to let readers know when something is a direct thought of the character rather than a narrated or paraphrased thought, and done in a close way that lets the reader understand they are sliding back and forth between a very close third person narrator who, for that section, also has limited (but not totally blocked) view into the other characters.

Second person is big in fandom and it's a funny one. Technically second person doesn't have to be actual read insert, it just means you are forcing the reader to embody the main character in a more overt way than in first person (where you are riding shotgun, but now you are sitting behind the wheel though not necessarily driving.) I think there's something powerful, done well, about using that tool to make the readers do or confront things that push their world view or understanding of themself and what they would really do, or allow them to escape the confines of their true self for a bit... but what I think is important in fandom to realize is that if something is a self-insert second person, you have to be more mindful about how you "code" this character. There's an expectation that you are writing more of a blank slate that the reader can insert their real true self in, and every thing you write whether it's action, thought, or physical description, is likely to alient some subset of your readers. Things you don't even realize wil be coded for height, weight, hair type, social interactions, etc etc. But a truly blank slate character will have no thoughts or actions they could take because nothing is actually universal! So it's a really tricky writing challenge for anything loner than just a scene or drabble.

As for internal monologue, the method should depend on what pov you're writing. If you're in first person, the distinction tends to be that an internal thought is what the narrator was thinking at the time they are telling you about, because otherwise the whole story is internal thought! For third, like I said I like to use italics. I think it gets tedious if every line is he thought, she though, he mused, he wondered. It also allows you to do some nice comedic set ups in third person where the narrator points out something very objectively clear to the reader and then the narrated character has a really idiotic and wrong internal thought 😂 I try to only use he thought as a qualifier when there hasn't been any internal monologue for a while so you're reminding the reader, or also as a subtle nudge to the reader of hey he is thinking this but it's just a thought, not my objective narration, and it may not actually be true.

Ok that's a lot :) I hope any of that was useful or interesting and happy to chat about anything else, it's fun to talk about!

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

allo people on tiktok communicate normally challenge

[eyelessrabbit]

Whilst I agree with calling out this behaviour of fetishizing latino men, it's still pretty unfair that you would call shame all allo people for sexual attraction when the issue is of fetishizing actors, in particular latino male actors. This isn't something that all people who feel sexual attraction do, it's what racist, fetishizing people do, and you attributing that to people's unchangeable and inherent sexuality and capacity to feel sexual attraction to others contributes to purity culture and shame. Please don't blame a majority of the population's unchangeable and immutable traits for the actually racist choice that some people actively make.

I am specifically talking about Allo Fandom Spaces, not Allos as a whole

it is an objective fact that allosexual fandom spaces take so much glee in sexualising SPECFICALLY POC characters that asexual fandom spaces, while they have their own issues, actively avoid doing by instead focusing on other subjects.

I am a Native American Woman who has had to repeatedly see my own race be sexualised by allo Fandom Spaces, and has only found a break in that by engaging instead in ace Spaces. I am allowed to be annoyed at Allo people for repeatedly sexualising me, my race and other POC. Just the same as a gay person is allowed to go "STRAIGHT PEOPLE BE NORMAL CHALLENGE" and that very obviously isn't them saying all straight people are like that, but critiquing a very common issue in straight spaces.

[kneedeepincynade]

No one can be provoked forever, and this is even more true for nations. The United States provocations and adventurism will inevitably cause a conflict with China

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ L'AVVENTURISMO ANTI-CINESE DEGLI IMPERIALISTI AMERICANI PORTERÀ ALLO SCONTRO ⚠️

✈️ Il 26/05, un Caccia Multiruolo J-16 dell'EPL ha intercettato un RC-135V nel Mar Cinese Meridionale. Non è la prima volta che ciò accade, dato che gli Imperialisti USA - nei mesi precedenti - hanno continuato a provocare l'Esercito Popolare di Liberazione con voli di RC-135U, EP-3 Orion e P-8A Poseidon 😡

🤔 Come potete notare dalla mappa, l'RC-135V si è avvicinato, intenzionalmente, nel Territorio della RPC, operando all'incontro tra lo Stretto di Taiwan e il Mar Cinese Meridionale ❗️

🤔 L'RC-135V, come ricorda China Army, possiede un Raggio di Ricognizione di ~ 600/800km. Pericolosamente vicino alla Città di Shantou, il velivolo ha quasi oltrepassato il confine dello Stato, quindi è normale che il Comando - una volta notato - abbia preso contromisure preventive, inviando un Caccia per intercettare l'intruso 🌟

🇨🇳 Ricordate le parole del Colonnello Zhou Bo, che definì il Mar Cinese Meridionale come un possibile Teatro di Scontro Militare tra Cina e USA, a causa di «Navi da Guerra e Aerei USA che continuano a sfidare le rivendicazioni Cinesi alla Sovranità nella Regione» ⚔️

🤔 Tuttavia, è anche fondamentale sottolineare un dettaglio: l'RC-135V, intercettato dal J-16, ha lasciato l'Area dopo le 9:30 UTC, dopo che la Portaerei Shandong è entrata nello Stretto di Taiwan. Ciò significa che l'aereo, probabilmente, è stato inviato dagli imperialisti USA per osservare le sua attività ❗️

🔍 Provocazioni degli USA contro la Cina:

一 24/02: il Comando Orientale dell'EPL intercetta un P-8A nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, e invia un Caccia di Superiorità Aerea J-11, armato con Missili Aria-Aria, per scortare l'Aereo USA al di fuori della Zona Cinese 🔥

二 23/03: gli USA inviano il Cacciatorpediniere Milius nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, nell'Area delle Isole Paracel, al fine di provocare la Cina😡

三 28/04: gli USA inviano un P-8A nello Stretto di Taiwan, per provocare la Pace nella Zona

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ THE ANTI-CHINESE ADVENTURISM OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS WILL LEAD TO CLASH ⚠️

✈️ On 26/05, a PLA J-16 Multirole Fighter intercepted an RC-135V in the South China Sea. This is not the first time this has happened, as the US Imperialists - in the previous months - continued to provoke the People's Liberation Army with flights of RC-135U, EP-3 Orion P-8A Poseidon 😡

🤔 As you can see from the map, the RC-135V intentionally approached the PRC territory, operating at the junction of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea ❗️

🤔 The RC-135V, as China Army recalls, has a Reconnaissance Range of ~ 600/800km. Dangerously close to Shantou City, the aircraft almost crossed the state border, so it is normal that the Command - once noticed - took preventive countermeasures, sending a Fighter to intercept the intruder 🌟

🇨🇳 Remember the words of Colonel Zhou Bo, who defined the South China Sea as a possible theater of military confrontation between China and the US, due to «US warships and aircraft that continue to challenge Chinese claims to sovereignty in the region» ⚔️

🤔 However, it is also essential to underline one detail: the RC-135V, intercepted by the J-16, left the area after 9:30 UTC, after the aircraft carrier Shandong entered the Taiwan Strait. This means that the plane was probably sent by the US imperialists to observe its activities ❗️

🔍 US provocations against China:

一 24/02: PLA Eastern Command intercepts a P-8A in the South China Sea, and sends a J-11 Air Superiority Fighter, armed with Air-to-Air Missiles, to escort US aircraft out of the Chinese zone 🔥

二 23/03: US sends Destroyer Milius to South China Sea, Paracel Islands Area in order to provoke China😡

三28/04 US sends a P-8A into the Taiwan Strait, to cause Peace in the Area

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

[ohwell-itsme]

I see a lot of problems that are caused by or grow because of the language used, and I just feel like this time the fault doesn't lie in twinks. Because the word itself belongs in an alignment that was classifying all kinds of body types. And then it ended up being popularized in online fandom places. And something happened.

The pieces of media fandoms center themselves already held biases, in order to be marketable. The fandoms, however unaware of it, already held their biases. And suddenly everybody's favorite guy was a twink. Most of them don't even remember the other qualifications, because they'd have to first learn of otters or think about body hair other than maybe happy trail at all to bother with those to begin with.

The thing is, it wouldn't be any different under any other word. They want "a man with paper skin and bones made out of glass", a wet cat, babyboy, prettyboy, babygirl even, a little bottom bitch, and bottoms have no rights, a submissive and breedable catboy, a malewife, a bitchboy, a fragile little scrungly and it'd be so easy to snap his spine, a wind could knock him over, pathetic, slutty little waist, a dumb whore, crybaby tboy with visible ribs, he can't drive a car, it's a gay thing, a little housewife with a flat tummy and woman's underwear that only thinks about his boyfriend

You said you won't get into the gender roles 2.0, but this IS a facet of that, everyone knows not to say "the woman in the relationship" so they found all those slightly more subtle ways to apply misogyny 1:1 to all possible other receivers in sex, starting with the scrutiny over weight, make up, clothes, then moving onto perceived sluttiness, or purity, ability to be an independent adult, the role in a romantic relationship, eventually a role in the house with said partner, taking on most of the chores while the other has a job, they can have a part-time job or a hobby, but their main purpose is cooking, cleaning, looking pretty and taking the d.

This is all connected, and I don't think we can fight one of the aspects of body-shaming without fighting the root as well. And the root is the ever prevalent idea that everybody in the world should aim to please the allo gaze [wait what? Okay, so. I don't want to call it the male gaze. both because a lot of what's described here is done by women, like honestly a lot of queer people perpetuates that, and because at the end of the day it's aphobic, the notion is that you have to make your body attractive or be socially rejected if you don't meet the norm]

Sometimes I feel like being fat, disabled, trans or aspec themselves is the only way people wake up from this at all and none of us are immune to continuing to engage regardless because it's so ingrained into online culture, but that's the doomer mindset.

I think the start, the point where we can begin to challenge all that is reminding people to enjoy media through other lenses than shipping, appreciate characters that you don't immediately want to read smutty fics of, and once we're past that and people stop tuning out the characters that don't meet their beauty standards we can get to lowering those standards, because paying attention to something long enough makes one notice beauty in it, but people need to start paying attention first!

So here's another rot: the acceleration of fandom and death of proper analysis. How are people supposed to appreciate characters they're not immediately attracted to if they don't look into the nitty-gritty of the characterization? And how can we expect media that only want to be marketable to deliver on better and actually diverse rep when they see the little background scraps they give remain majorly unappreciated by the fandom?

Telling people to just not treat fat characters different from skinny ones won't help, because they're not being normal about those. There is another essay somebody could write, and most likely have before, about fetishization of youthfulness, "healthy & natural" appearances, the beauty industry, the predatory nature of it, sexualization of teenagers, and it goes on. Because we, as a society, treat our bodies like some sort of advertisement & the product we're advertising, selling something to people's eyes, something consumable. A character from a big IP meant to make money has to be as widely digestible as possible. Deviance from the established norm is often seen as repulsive, even grotesque. We haven't taken a step away from treating disabled bodies as a horror/tragedy, but here we are with the hopes that an average person with a m/m OTP won't hurl at the image of a gay bear.

Darlings, I am not gonna lie, I am a little worried about the future.

Well it's come up multiple times today so I'll make a post about it.

I think the popularization of the word "twink" has ultimately been really bad for people in general.

I know it's hard to track the positive and negative effects of language but I don't think it's hard to see how creating a word for a group of people wherein the most consistent qualifying trait is "being skinny" is healthy for people's self image. Obviously people have lots of ideas about what it means to be a twink- gay, lacking body hair, feminine, beautiful, young, white- but the most consistent descriptor I've seen is "skinny." Hell, it's even a body type on Grindr; the size below "average."

So it kind of functions as a code word in the gay community: anyone can say that they're only interested in twinks and they don't have to look shallow by saying they only like skinny guys. It's such an accepted attitude that no one really bats an eye when they hear it.

I'm not even going to get into how it's become part of the larger issue of people turning "top" and "bottom" into gender roles 2.0, but that is closely related, because people with any internalized homophobia can look at a skinny, feminine man and turn off their fag alarms by viewing him as a woman or not a "real" man, and it makes twinks more acceptable to society at large.

No, ignoring all of that, one of the biggest issues is that gay men are taught by society that they are only attractive while they are skinny. Just having the label "twink" reminds a boy that people are looking at his body and judging it. There were countless times when I was growing up that people would tell me, "You're such a twink," or argue about whether or not I qualified as a twink because I had body hair. People around you, unpromted, judge your body and give you a label based on it, and that label has a large influence on whether or not you're seen as objectively attractive. I know many other gay people who say they wish they were a twink so they could be more attractive to guys.

So think, you have all these kids growing up being told whether or not they qualify as a twink, and then we have the gay community as a whole where it's completely acceptable to say you're only attracted to twinks. I think its because of all of this pressure to be a twink (in other words, to have a below average weight) that many of the gay people that I interact with struggle with a negative body image or eating disorders.

I mean, people talk about "twink death" like it's an actual event that makes a gay man much less attractive, and no one thinks that, maybe, it's harmful to tell a guy that the very day he stops being young and thin and pretty, he will stop being attractive and celebrated?

I'm not qualified to speak on fatphobia in physical queer spaces because I don't have the ability to frequent them where I live, but I can't imagine that these aren't issues at social gatherings as well. I also can't speak on my own experiences with weight discrimination because so far in my life I have had a naturally thin body, but I have experienced a lot of outside pressure to be thin that have caused me to pick up unhealthy eating habits to reduce my weight in fear that I could become fat later on. Thankfully that is something that I've mostly been able to work past. I'm not an expert, but idk, I just wanted to rant on my silly tumblr blog.

Obviously it's impossible for a word to be inherently bad. I'm not trying to imply that saying "twink" is a magic word with evil powers. Obviously the real issues at play here are fatphobia and harmful beauty standards and body shaming. But in my opinion, the popular use of the word twink has made it much easier and acceptable to express fatphobia, etc, in the gay community by turning "skinny person" into a "type of guy that you should try to be so you can be attractive."

[variousqueerthings]

There are, however, those for whom there is no other answer [other than to have surgery]. In my experience these people, both men and women, are asexual before they make the changeover and have difficulty in relating to others because of their own confusion which comes from deep within them. Once they have made the changeover, and they are what they have always felt themselves to be, their emotions are released and they become capable of a deep loving.

"Know Thyself" speech by Mrs Doreen Cordell at the 16th March, 1974 TV/TS UK conference, held in Leeds

Fascinated by the use of the word asexual here, definitely covering (if not actually mainly about) what we today would call "aromanticism" and the ways the conference/1970s attitudes towards TS/TV distinction takes on a pathologisation of various behaviours in an attempt to normalise the parts that individual activists/speakers related more to within themselves -- I am the normal trans, and you can tell because of xyz medically/psychologically measurable behaviours

I think this is a limitation that's deeply baked into 20th century trans histories and politics, which in no small amount came from the pathologisation of queerness (see how trans and ace are linked along the lines of mental illness) as a whole in the 1950s-onwards, specifically from the cis, white, male majority psycho-babble

It's important to unpack these limitations, especially as how they pertain to throwing others under the bus, in particular if we as a community want to better support anti-colonialist and anti-racist gender movements and our intersex siblings

The 1974 conference is an important moment in trans history, that undoubtedly contains within it a great deal of joy and community, as well as intersex voices (Miss Della Alexander was a pretty big deal in the UK community in 1974, although I wonder if some of her ideas aren't too radical even for today -- I think they're still very interesting and might share some of her words on here as well, they certainly make me think, even if I don't know where those lines of thoughts are going) but simultaneously reiterates or often struggles to have the effective words to challenge white, western-centric, passing-focused, pathologised, and intersexist ideologies

what parts of all of this muddle have we managed to challenge today, and what voices are we still not centering enough?

I do note, I know a few trans people who identified as ace pre-transitioning, as well as trans people who identified as allo in one way or another, and their sexuality changing with transition -- crucially, they didn't think of their pre-transition sexualities as a negative, but merely a part of their ongoing journey, and even if someone were to see it as a negative symptom (and I'm sure many do) it's not a generalisation of everyone's experience in the way one often risks seeing in some of these older takes (or... some modern takes)

(I deliberately didn't get more into the asexual/aromantic conflagration and pathologisation, because that's its whooole own post that I'm still thinking about as I continue to read the conference transcript. suffice to say, it's interesting to learn more and unpack a lot of what was said 50 years ago)

[gravityofsouls]

Just to be clear, my gripe isn't with het people, it's with heteronormativity.

It is with that culture created (that includes allo and cis normativity) that places insane rules on people's personal agency on their bodies hearts and minds, and anyone who mindlessly adheres to it and enforces it.

You can be cishet and challenge these concepts. I know allo-cishet people who get called "queer" because all they do is just continuously question and challenge these concepts. Yet they live a perfectly normal life in their gender with their other-sex partner. And they are welcomed and loved as part of the queer community, simply because they didn't adhere to prefabricated concepts without questioning the system, and that has made them "different" enough to the system, it has made them queer enough to fit in.

Same reason idc if you're gay or bi, if you don't question the system and adhere to (again cis+allo+)heteronormative standards and try to enforce them on others with the whole "good gay/bad fag" mentality and all that, you're not part of our community to me, you're part of the problem. You're not less gay, or less bi, that's not it. But being gay/bi/trans/anything alone isn't enough to make us "community", it's more than that.

It's a struggle and fight we all fight together for the benefit of all. Even allo/cishet people, as far as I'm concerned. If you're on the side of "If YoU jUSt PlAYeD bY tHEiR rUlEs" you're not part of this. You're not part of us, you are the problem. You are what we stand united to fight against, for the freedom of all.

My fight isn't on cishet individuals, it's on the culture some of them created and force on us all. It's what I refer to as "heteronormativity", but it is not reduced to "heterosexual vs homosexual", in it it has a lot more. It's all the set of rules on who to love, and how to love, and who you can be, what your role has to be in love.

[redacted-blr]

Random thoughts I’ve had in the matter of days since I worked out I was ace.

Normally I would write this stuff in my !!very private!! journal that is mostly filled with angst, but my thought is that maybe by posting and tagging this someone might relate to (or even challenge!) my thoughts.

I resonate strongly with the “little or no sexual attraction” (in my case none) that is literally the or a defining feature of asexuality in resources I have found. There seems to be a bizarre preoccupation, particularly on this website, with one’s position on actually having sex. What I have seen seems to constitute mostly cleaning up after messy and unfriendly discussions or statements on this topic in either direction.

I am a virgin, and I genuinely don’t know where I stand on sex since I lack experience. On the one hand it is biologically designed to be a pleasurable activity, while on the other it is not at all hard to imagine that without sexual attraction in the mix the experience could be unsatisfying, uncomfortable, or even traumatic (and this is not even considering people who identify as asexual as a result of past traumas).

Obviously it makes zero sense to exclude people who feel no sexual attraction and dislike sex as a result. On the other hand if sex is very enjoyable to an ace person and that therefore they want to engage in it with someone else, the essential lack of sexual attraction means that the desire to have sex with that person is qualitatively similar to the desire to, for example, eat some cake and cuddle; and qualitatively different to the more biological feeling that allosexual people experience. Why should someone who’s relationship with sex is qualitatively different to allo people be excluded either? Oh and for demisexual and other ace-spec people I suppose I should specify that the target in the above discussion should be in the not-attracted sphere.

It was very easy for me to recognise that I was asexual, and that’s only partially because I’ve known for a while and just been in denial. I found it surprisingly straightforward to raise my head to see that, hold on, other people are actually physically attracted to each other? Like planets under the influence of gravity? Navigating the dizzying array of social cues surrounding finding and building a relationship is supposed to be easy???

Another good indicator for me is that the word “hot” applied to someone carries no inherent meaning for me. If I try to imagine “cute” I have a plethora of reference points (largely female because men unfortunately rarely go for cute), but if I try to imagine “hot” I come up dry. Supermodels maybe, the people socially understood to be widely seen as hot. I feel nothing for supermodels.

I don’t properly understand what romantic attraction is supposed to be as distinct from sexual attraction and that scares me. When I was talking about navigating the array of social cues around relationships, which is it that gives you the power to do that? Both? Does sexual attraction give you the confidence and romance the tact? What?? Watch me come back to this post in months and facepalm at this bit because I didn’t properly understand the relationship between a feeling I don’t experience and another that I may not either.

Anyway I am concerned that I may be on the aromantic spectrum, given that a. I have never had a crush and b. The above. Also c. I don’t really get the appeal of kissing but it’s not like I’ve tried. Since upon reflection I would very much rather not be alone in life the possibility of being aromantic or aro-spec is certainly a frightening blow given the likelihood of a relationship that accommodates that. I have a feeling this one is going to take a long-ass time to work out so I am doing my best to basically avoid the problem. The next section also shows why this really doesn’t matter all that much and that I should really just stop stressing about labels.

I think the best thing to come of all this self-reflection that came about by examining my sexuality is that I now have a view of what I would want out of a relationship that isn’t dictated by heternormativity. This in turn makes me actually interested in dating?? What?? Anyway summarised below.

Mandatory: trust & support, emotional closeness, cuddles

I’d be down for that: Sex as another form of intimacy (probationary position (this is not a sex joke) until I have experience), kissing (non-romantic)

Unsure: kissing (romantic)

No: Sex as a focal point of the relationship.

If I have forgotten anything important it’s probably because I am stupid. I look forward to looking back on how this set of priorities compares to what I consider important in the future. Also monogamy is an “I am still socially programmed so my perspective is inherently unreliable” situation.

It is interesting how discovering asexuality implies (for me at least) a dissolution of the heterosexual mental boundary on the possibility of relationships with the same gender (and non-binary people). I have nothing more to say on this rn because I don’t know how I feel, though none of my relationship priorities say anything about gender.

Well this all ended up very long and surprisingly personal, I really was dead serious when I said I would normally write this in my private journal. Luckily I have no followers so this account will again fulfil its purpose of being a means for me to toss thoughts into the void. Like if you agree fr. Also I’m 20M if that gives any useful context and/or makes it easier for Google to link this to my other accounts and market me ace shit.

[femmedionysus]

reblogging again just to add

if you’re even mildly obnoxious in the notes (or if I just think your vibes are rancid) get blocked

if you’re a terf or otherwise bigoted/nasty in the notes get reported & blocked, also go play in traffic

I don’t love that people are tagging this as lgbt/queer discussion bc hey besties everyone of every orientation should be normal about this. if you think cishet people are exempt from caring about consent & bodily autonomy get away from me

if you’re reblogging this & tagging it as aphobia please reread the part where I said it’s literally fine for people to like and want sex too, this post is not dunking on ✨the allos✨ it’s literally just Be Normal About People Having Complicated Feelings About Sex challenge

stop reblogging this with tags about how horny or non-horny you are/the frequency with which you do or don’t have sex. I prommy you don’t need to tell me, a whole ass stranger on the internet, how you interact with your own god damn genitals. please for the love of god stop coming into my house to tell me if & when you like to fuck

not to discourse on main but I think we will not know peace until people can come to terms with the fact that every person alive has a complicated relationship with sex & it means different things to different people & that is okay. like for some people it’s not something they ever want to do, or even think about doing. for some people it’s completely neutral, or maybe they’re fine with doing it when it crosses their mind but it doesn’t cross their mind very often. for some people it’s something they like doing a lot for fun, or it could be a very important source of intimacy for them, or they feel really strongly about doing it but only in certain ways. & none of those people are wrong! those are all perfectly fine ways to feel about sex! your feelings on the subject might stay the same or they might change over your life too, & that is also fine!

just like. please understand that “sex is bad/problematic/icky” and “you have to have sex every week for your health” are equally batshit stupid things to say. everyone has the right to pursue as much sex as they want, by themself or with other consenting adults, including when that means no sex. (key word here is consenting. you have a right to want sex but you don’t have a right to anyone else’s body. which should go without saying but y’know. your right to want sex doesn’t overrule someone else’s right to not want it & no one else’s right to want sex overrules your right to not want it either)

[sureuncertainty]

oh sorry didn’t realize that allos are actually the ones who decide what is and isn’t acephobic /s

[acespec-ed]

I’ve seen a good amount of posts about how we shouldn’t be saying stuff like “even though we’re ace, we can still feel romantic love” and “even though we’re aro, we can still love our friends” and “aces can still have sex” and “aros can still be in relationships.” Because it ignores aspecs who don't, and makes it look like we have to make up for our lack of attraction. And those posts are right. We need to cut that out.

But it’s absolute bullshit people felt a need to say it to begin with.

The whole “but we can still looovveeee” line some of us have been using is often said out of defense. Because alloallos look down on us with pity, or think there’s something seriously wrong with us. And we feel like we have to prove ourselves to them.

When you’ve got people saying stuff like, “that’s a shame,” “you’re missing out,” “something’s wrong with you,” “so you’re incapable of love?” to aces and aros, the ace and/or aro in question is going to defend themselves out of instinct. We don’t want to be pitied for our identity. We don’t want people thinking something is wrong with us. So we go with the first line of defense, not thinking about how the words affect the aces and aros who don’t feel romantic/sexual/platonic attraction. Who don’t do sex/relationships.

We should obviously stop with the “but we can still ___!!!” crap. But that’s just... that one picture of a bandaid stuck over a large crack in the ground. It’s good to stop saying that, but there’s an underlying problem that made it such a common thing to say. One I’ve yet to see any posts about.

That problem lies with alloallos being so stuck in allonormativity and amatonormativity, their brains break when they learn about our existence. They literally cannot understand how anyone can happily go without sex and/or romance. There is so much emphasis on sex and romance, that an alloallo’s entire worldview is challenged by our existence. And some of them don’t like that. Some of them can’t comprehend us. They think something is seriously wrong with us. They see us as inferior, or childish. All because some of us have no interest in sex and/or romance. It makes some of us feel like we have to prove ourselves “normal.” And we shouldn’t have to! 

We all need representation. We all need awareness. We all need understanding. Alloro aces, aro allos, aroaces, apl aroaces, loveless aros, etc. All of us need that. Unfortunately, we’re not getting that. Instead, we get pity for “missing out,” or be advised to see a therapist, or have to respond to misconceptions. If we had that representation, awareness, and understanding, we wouldn’t have to justify ourselves to alloallos. We wouldn’t be saying, “we're not that different from you we can still ____!!!” Instead, alloallos would know some people aren’t into sex and/or romance. They’d react as though we said we don’t like videogames. They’d see nothing wrong with us. We wouldn’t have to jump to defense. No aspec would be thrown under the bus. Everyone is happy.

But apparently that’s too much to ask for. So what should we do instead?

I say, dump defending ourselves. Dump trying to prove ourselves “normal” to alloallos. If an alloallo can’t wrap their head around an adult being happy without sex and/or romance, then that’s their problem. And we're not required to fix it.

(Or, if the alloallo is actually making effort to understand, we can explain the concept of apl aroaces/loveless aros alongside the fact that some aces can feel romantic attraction, and some aros can feel platonic attraction. That some aces/aros are open to sex/relationships, and some aren’t. It’ll validate all of us and the alloallo would have learned something new. That would be the ideal but the real world isn’t always ideal so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )