#around mental illness and disability and their intersection with gendered dynamics

[sqbr]

My initial gut response to this was that even if it doesn't work as a deterrent it can keep some really dangerous people off the streets, but then I thought about that some more and...

My mother's brother was a serial sexual predator with a history of violence and theft who went to prison for sexual assault. He was, separately, visibly mentally ill, looking and acting like a stereotypical Weird Homeless Man. Which obviously isn't ACTUALLY the same as being dangerous, but does get read that way, and in this case by coincidence he was dangerous. And even then the Australian justice system did very little to protect anyone from him.

Cut for long discussion of dark topics.

Mum said at his trial it felt like the prosecution settled for sexual assault because while he did rape the woman they wouldn't be able to get that conviction.

The time he spent in prison was a relief for us from the lifelong worry that he would show up and be awful to us and any other nearby people. As someone who leans towards prison abolition, this caused me some mixed feelings.

But that time was like...a year, coming near the end of his 70-odd years of life, when age made him slip up enough to get caught. Even ignoring any harm he may have done to his fellow inmates, being in prison did nothing to save anyone or change his behaviour in the years before or after. I am not aware of there being any systems in place to try and mitigate future harm once he was released.

I don't think my family handled the situation perfectly by any means (HA), but we did generally acknowledge him as a dangerous person and try to protect people from him, and even though he was known to social services and the justice department for decades, I am not aware of there being any systems in place to mitigate the harm he did to others that we could have engaged with. If he wasn't actively being convicted of a crime (and he was usually able to successfully toe that line) they at best very vaguely cared about making sure he was fed and housed, and were so bad at that my family had to constantly make sure he didn't starve to death.

My mum tried to warn people when she could, including social workers etc, and the way she tells it people's general reaction was either "how dare you be so mean about your own brother" or "Right, he sucks because he's crazy", and I can only assume that if he wasn't mentally ill it would have just been the first reaction, and he would have managed to stay out of prison entirely. Unlike most serial predators, he had little social power to silence his critics or avoid punishment, and people were more likely to believe the worst of him (for unrelated bigoted reasons) and he still caused untold harm and there wasn't much anyone could do to stop him.

And of all the many sexual predators I have encountered in my life, this is by far the most helpful the prison system has ever been at protecting anyone from any of them. Even when it comes to the victim who pressed charges, I'm sure she was glad her case succeeded, but I'm also sure she would have much preferred being protected from him somehow before that. I'm not sure what that protection would have looked like, but the system didn't even try. It didn't care enough to even begin to try.

In the end the only thing that stopped him was death. Surely we as a society can do better than that.

And no, extended and more broadly applied sentences for sexual assault would absolutely not fix this problem. I have trouble being very sympathetic to my uncle despite the fact that he clearly did suffer a lot of ableism during his life, but even I don't think he should have been murdered or arrested for life as a mentally ill teen with a poor grasp of sexual boundaries, and anything less than isn't full protection, even if we again ignore the potential harm done to and by him in prison. And of course plenty of people caught in that net would be entirely innocent, while most actual predators would manage to stay free.

My abusive ex boyfriend was also a repeat sexual predator, and he started in childhood, as a result of his own trauma. Again, I find it hard to be very sympathetic, but I can't see any way prison could have protected others from him that isn't utterly unconscionable.

I was going to try to come up with a conclusion but I need to stop thinking about this now! Sorry if I have missed some obvious caveats etc, it's not easy to talk about, but it's such a powerful example I wanted to share it.

Extremely tired of ppl tryna dunk on prison abolition by being like "well what are we gonna do with all the rapists then huh"

[arotechno]

Aromantic-Official’s Pride Month 2018 Questions!

It’s time for me to finally answer the weekly pride month questions set up by @aromantic-official! I realize it’s the last week of pride month and I’m only doing these now, but I’m a mod. So I get to break the rules. ;)

I apologize in advance, as this post is going to be a monster.

June 1-2: Pride Month Kickoff!

1. What aro pride merch do you have and/or want?

As of right now, all I’ve got is an aro bracelet that my friend made me for my birthday and a green aro ring that I got for a dollar. I would like to get my hands on an aro flag, and some pins or something... but I don’t have the money to throw at pride merch right now! Subtle merch is also good, as I’m out to precisely 3 people offline.

2. What are some of your favorite aro-friendly songs? (Feel free to make a playlist!)

Here. Or for more aro playlists besides mine, my aro jams tag.

3. What are your favorite arospec symbols?

I guess just the flag (the version that I use in my icon)? Arrow symbolism is also cool. Or, if you’re from the arocalypse crowd: papos. Although that might be a dated reference now...

(weeks 1-4 under the cut because I’m nice)

Questions for Week One (June 3-9):

1. How did you realize you were aro/arospec? How long have you known?

It was the spring of 2014, when I was a freshman in high school. For most of my life, I never really thought about or questioned my orientation. I figured I would know what I was when I felt it. But I always knew I didn’t get crushes, and figured that wasn’t weird and that I’d get them eventually... That didn’t end up happening, as you might imagine. I was never ashamed of who I was, though--not until people made me feel that way, and I realized maybe I really was different or weird. Thankfully, I had stumbled across asexuality, and consequently aromanticism (this was 2014; if you think it’s hard to find information about aromanticism outside of ace spaces now, think about how it was back then), before that point. It just didn’t really click until somewhere down the line. And even then, I waffled on aromanticism vs. asexuality for quite a bit, feeling more drawn to the ace community due to its size and its exposure, and frankly I couldn’t tell which one I was, though eventually I realized that was because I was both! It’s been several years and I’ve grown a lot, and I’ve become more in tune to my aromanticism apart from my asexuality.

2. Have you come out to anyone? Share a coming out story (coming out to yourself also counts)!

It’s funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday. I’m out as aromantic to three people irl, but I’ve never actually properly come out on my own terms. Two of my friends were peripherally involved at the time that I realized I was aromantic, so they were kind of a part of the realization and I never had to explicitly tell them that I had figured out this part of myself. The third friend came to understand my feelings about attraction before I eventually told her the words. But I’ve never had somebody in my life who presumed I was straight that I was able to explicitly decide I wanted to tell that I wasn’t.

In terms of coming out to myself, it took me about a year after realizing I was aroace to say the words out loud to myself. Sophomore year of high school was when I really began to fully accept that this was who I am and that I could say it and be proud of it, rather than it just being a peripheral aspect of my life that I had to pretend didn’t affect me (because we’re so often taught that we’re supposed to be just like everyone else despite our sexuality, but I have always felt that it made me explicitly not like everyone else, and that was the problem). So I said to myself, in the mirror, “I’m aromantic and asexual.” And I started writing it in my journal. At this point, I was in a weird place where I wasn’t even sure my two closest friends knew I was aroace and that it wasn’t just something I had speculated. It took me until the end of that school year to start using the word not only to myself, but to them as well. Even now, I still talk circles around it sometimes. Internalized aphobia is a real pain in the ass.

3. How/Why is your aromanticism important to you/your identity?

My aromanticism shapes how I see the world in a lot of ways. It affects me every day of my life. It influences my views on philosophy, relationships, my experiences with gender... I can’t relate to the majority of the world’s population on such a basic level that I’m often left wondering what my place in the world is and feeling like I’m living in a different universe altogether. It’s frustrating, but it can also be exciting. I’m proud of the way being aromantic has shaped me. I think the ways I view the world make sense, and being aromantic has a lot to do with it.

I consider myself to be an existentialist, and accepting that my emotional wants, needs, and experiences didn’t line up with the marriage/kids/white picket fence narrative that I was always expected to follow really helped me realize that if I don’t have to follow that narrative, then I don’t have to follow any narrative at all. I can do whatever I want with my life, and there’s no cosmic reason for me to do anything else. That’s voidpunk, baby.

4. What are some misconceptions about aromanticism that bother you?

That we’re heartless. That we don’t feel less emotions/weaker emotions than alloromantic people, or generally equating romance with emotions. That we need a QPR or other type of non-romantic partnership to fill a void where romantic relationships “should be.” That aromanticism must modify or be secondary to one’s sexual orientation. That we don’t risk being dehumanized or cut off from people around us when we come out. Arophobia in general.

5. What’s something you like about being aro/arospec? Something you dislike?

I love the arospec community first and foremost, and as I mentioned above I love the way aromanticism shapes my view of the world. I love that the aro community, though we are stereotyped as being heartless, is so full of love and compassion for one another that we can’t even argue with each other, we just have pleasant, generally civil discussions and often end up reaching mutual conclusions. I love that I can make this entire long-winded post about my experiences and not only will people read it, but they’ll appreciate it and respect it.

I hate not being understood. I hate the fact that I don’t want to come out because I’m afraid I’ll have to give an emotionally taxing vocab lesson and/or be dismissed or ridiculed and/or be called a heartless monster. I hate that we don’t have any mainstream representation that doesn’t get ripped from our hands by people who claim we do not deserve it. I hate that there are no aromantic role models in the public eye living happy lives for us to look up to; but then again, I have a secret fondness for being part of a generation that future aromantics will be able to look up to.

Questions for Week Two (June 10-16):

1. What aro-spectrum labels, terms, descriptors, and identities do you identify with?

I identify as aromantic. I also use nonamorous as a descriptor a lot of the time. That’s pretty much it. The term arogender kind of speaks to me in a way (I was there when it was coined!), as my experience with gender does feel influenced by my aromanticism, but I don’t know that I’m particularly inclined to use it for myself. I like to keep things simple, I guess.

2. Talk about other aspects of your identity that are important to you, that are meaningful parts of you like your aromanticism, such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, neurodivergence, mental illness, chronic illness, disabilities, etc.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m asexual as well as being aromantic. They kind of go hand-in-hand for me, but I’m much more open about being asexual if only because it’s more commonly understood and accepted. Several years ago, I was much more connected to the ace community than the aro community, but in the last couple of years that dynamic has completely flip-flopped. I feel more at home in the aromantic community, as the ace community often feels to me more focused on navigating romantic relationships while asexual, and as an aromantic I really don’t find any solace in that. The ace community has also thrown me and my aro and aroace siblings under the bus multiple times, which often makes me feel unwelcome, unfortunately.

3. How do other aspects of your identity intersect with or affect your aromanticism?

Other aspects of my identity don’t affect my aromanticism that much. On the contrary, my aromanticism affects my gender. I identify primarily as a cis female, but even saying I identify that way feels too strong, as it’s a pretty loose identification. Because of the ways in which misogyny, heteronormativity, and amatonormativity intersect, so much of traditional womanhood is based around finding romance, 99% of the time with a man. There isn’t really a subversive narrative for aro women. And femininity often feels like a costume designed to make me appear straight and allo and proper and headed for marriage. tl;dr gender machine broke.

4. Have any of your identities impacted you realizing you were aromantic, your questioning process, or coming to terms with it?

If you want to get obvious, asexuality directly helped me realize I was aromantic in that I would not have known that aromanticism existed without it. So thanks, ace community. You did do me a solid at one point or another.

Questions for Week Three (June 17-23):

1. What is your favorite aspect of the aro and arospec community?

I mentioned this earlier: I love how open, inclusive, accepting, and willing to have civil and productive discussion the aro community is. The aro community has also given me basically everything, especially the arocalypse gang (hi, guys). Without a community behind me, this blog would not exist, and I would feel devastatingly alone.

2. Are there any notable differences in your experiences in this community and other LGBTQIA+ spaces you have been in?

In general, compared to larger LGBTQIA+ spaces, the aro community on tumblr is obviously a lot smaller and more tight knit, which makes for an inherently different environment. Smaller voices somehow still speak so loud. That’s symptomatic of its size more than anything, and I haven’t been active in enough larger spaces to say much else.

The only other specific LGBTQIA+ spaces I’ve been in are asexual ones, and while there is some overlap between the two, aromantic spaces feel much more inclusive to me. Though that is likely due to the fact that asexual spaces do still put a focus on romance, while aromantic spaces certainly wouldn’t. The aromantic community is one of a kind and an absolute treasure, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

3. What’s one way that the aro community could be better or more inclusive? Do you have any tips on improving in this regard?

I think the aro community could take further steps to improve accessibility (I mean, look at me, I’m writing out this long-ass monster of a post. I’m part of the problem.). But I don’t really have any tips, considering I just broke one of my own suggestions... Don’t listen to me, I’ve got no idea what I’m talking about.

4. Do you think there are flaws in the way that different types of attractions are navigated, discussed, and defined in the aro community?

Yes. I talk about this from time to time on here... This is probably a hot take, but to me, defining types of attraction too rigidly, while it is helpful for tons of people, can often lead to an accidental hierarchy of types of attraction or relationships. For example, putting alterous attraction over platonic attraction, or queerplatonic relationships over more traditional platonic ones. I’m not saying anyone does this, at least not on purpose, but I think it’s at least a potential issue.

5. Do you consider yourself nonamorous, amorous, aplatonic, experiencing queerplatonic attraction, etc., or do you not use those terms? Are you romance positive, neutral, repulsed, or don’t use those labels? Do these answers intersect?

I’m nonamorous and romance repulsed. I’m not sure if they intersect, to be honest.

6. Have you ever been in a relationship you would consider committed, such as a queerplatonic/quasiplatonic, romantic, soft romo, friends-with-benefits, or others? How did being arospec affect that and the boundaries you set?

Nope. Again, nonamorous.

Questions for Week Four (June 24-30):

1. Have you ever participated in any pride events, such as parades and festivals? If so, do you feel welcome at these events? If not, would you want to go?

I haven’t. I would go, but I don’t really know how welcome I feel... And I’d need to go without being suspicious, which is pretty much impossible.

2. Do you celebrate pride month? If so, how do you celebrate? If not, why?

Hell, I’m doing it right now! I’ve been working on these questions with the other mods all month. Thaaaat’s about it, as there isn’t much to do around me except for go to pride, and I already explained why that was off the table.

3. Do you have any creative contributions to the aro community (art, comics, writing, moodboards, music, zines, informational posts, etc.)? Which do you like making the most? If you instead support aro creatives, what category of aro creations do you like best?

Hi, yeah, this blog. Shoutout to any of my followers who have been here since last year when all I posted on this blog was my writing... I guess you got more than you signed up for.

I write primarily short fiction for the aro community. I take soulmate prompts and spin them to be aromantic, and usually sad. Soulmates are a concept I hate with all my cold aro heart, so starting this blog was a mean of reclaiming that idea and making it a little less painful for myself and hopefully other aros. I’ve posted about this a thousand times, so I won’t go into more detail.

4. How do you feel aro creatives have impacted the community? Show some love to your favorite aro creators by @’ing them in this post and reblogging a bunch of their stuff. If you don’t have any favorites, now is a good opportunity to find a few!

Without aro creatives, we would have pretty much 0 content in general, as no one else seems to care about creating anything for us. @aroworlds is doing amazing work not only creating wonderful aro content but connecting other aro creators with one another and spreading the word. @aroacearborvitae makes moodboards and edits that brighten my day every time I see them. @arotryinghisbest is writing a novel if you want to go show him your support!

5. Is representation in mainstream media important to you? What about smaller, niche media? If so, why, and in what form would you like it to take?

Both are important, but for different reasons. I’m so thirsty for mainstream aromantic content that I would sell my soul for just one canon aromantic character on television. We need visibility, and we need people to know that we’re out here and that we exist and that we’re not broken or messed up or lying. But niche media is also important, as it often supports aromantic creators directly, and supporting small creators and media outlets is really important. Niche media can even sometimes be a gateway into mainstream media, if it picks up enough steam. Give me aro characters, please!

And that’s that. If you made it this far, congratulations, and thank you. Happy pride month! See you in the future when I hopefully start posting some more actual content...