#doesn't make them any less valid

[uselessnbee]

i am tired of the way people act like aromantics feeling other kinds of love is some kind of redeeming quality

every time there's a post about aromanticism the comments are flooded with people saying how aromantic people can still feel love it's just not the romantic kind and like yes it is important to point that out because it is true that some aromantic people still feel other kinds of love but not all!! and that's okay!! some aromantic people don't feel love at all and it doesn't make them any less valid! and i'm not saying people need to stop with those comments there's nothing wrong with that but the moment someone tries to point out that loveless people exist and are valid others start acting so fucking weird about it

i have a really weird relationship with love i use the word "love" to describe how am i feeling about people or pets or other stuff because it's the closest thing to describe how i feel but at the same time i'm not 100% sure what i feel is actually "love"

it doesn't probably makes sense but i just feel like i don't feel love the same way others do, the same way this society deems normal and how i am supposed to feel it and so having people act like me feeling other types of love or attraction that are just not romantic and sexual is something that redeems me from not feeling romantic love just makes me really uncomfortable

i don't want people to keep pointing out how i can feel other types of love as if it's the only thing that makes me valid

like and what if i don't? what if i don't feel love at all? does that make me less valid? it should not. i should be valid for being me for being who i am not for being able to feel any kind of love.

i am tired of the way love is treated as something that makes us human. i'm tired of people acting like people who do not feel love are suddenly terrible and inhuman. it's just a fucking emotion and not everyone needs to feel it. if someone told you they can't feel hatred would you suddenly tell them they're terrible and inhuman because feeling hate is what makes us human? no because that's fucking stupid. how is it any different with love?

i could write whole essays about how fucking stupid it is that people act like feeling love and empathy is what makes us human and good people. there are some absolutely vile and cruel people in this world capable of doing monstrous things and some of them do feel love or empathy. does that suddenly make them good people? does that suddenly erase all the terrible things they've done just because they feel certain emotions? no it really doesn't. so why should it be any different if it's the other way around. good people are good because they choose to be kind. people can be the kindest souls on this earth and don't need to feel love and empathy.

i know i'm rambling and probably don't make sense but i'm just really tired. i'm tired of people acting like me being able to feel other kinds of love is what makes me valid. like me feeling love is that one good thing about me. i want to be able to say proudly that i am aromantic that i am aroace that i don't feel romantic love without needing to clarify that yes i do feel other types of love as if that's what makes me better. i am not better or more valid than loveless people just because i "can" feel love or whatever other bullshit

they're valid too and i want to be valid without needing to "feel love" i want to feel like i would be valid and accepted even if i wouldn't feel love at all

[sarah-cam]

i've seen some people bringing up the parallel of how tim told lucy that they were worth the risk to how tim broke up with her... this is a great parallel don't get me wrong and it is so painful and i feel so sad for lucy

HOWEVER i've also seen people absolutely railing on tim and calling him a coward for leaving her and saying that this is unforgivable. i get being upset with him, i'm not saying that's wrong. but i just want to offer my take:

tim is absolutely broken down. this is the lowest point he's ever reached and it's been building and building since before we even met him. everything that happened in his childhood, in the army, with isabel, the trauma we've seen from the job these last 5-6 seasons. and now this, which has brought everything he's never dealt with to the surface. he truly believes in his bones that lying to lucy was what he had to do to protect her. even when lucy (rightfully) told him to stop, he said he can't because it's who he is. it's all he has right now because if he's going to lie and break the rules and compromise him morals, he is damn sure going to do whatever it takes to protect the people he loves.

he grew up with an abusive father who made him believe that he doesn't deserve to be loved, let alone unconditionally. he had no control in his childhood so he got that control by joining the military, and when he finally had that control?? he screwed up and blames himself for getting his teammates killed. he tried to gain back that control by becoming a police officer/to but never felt like he needed to move up any higher than that and now we know why. he didn't want to be a leader again because he didn't think he deserved it. he was terrified of losing lucy with the UC work and didn't even realize it, because when she's gone, he doesn't know what's going on and can't back her up. he has no control.

and now this? he compromised everything he believes in, as he said, "to save his career" but it's not that simple. if he told the truth, that angela and lucy knew about everything and still helped him, they would still lose everything he tried to protect them from. he can't even look at himself in the mirror right now.

he's not a coward for breaking up with lucy. he's not walking away because they had a fight and he doesn't want to work through it. in fact, she validated everything he did!! she showed him that she still loves him no matter what he did, that she would've done the same thing. but to him, that's even worse because he doesn't believe he deserves unconditional love, so when lucy gives it, he thinks that he's dragging her down because how could anyone love him after this. giving their relationship a shot was worth the risk because she is worth the risk. but him? he's not worth it

it's not cowardly to take yourself out of a relationship that you're not mentally okay to be in.

[scoriarose]

She heard me doing things so she came up to the side of her baby bin and blelelelele'd at me until I noticed her. She greets me every morning where we spend the first hour of every day together, her just resting in my hand and me holding her, often gently petting her head and tiny scales. If there is a heaven, that first hour we spend together is it.

She is getting a larger enclosure for her birthday in a month and a half. :D Hopefully I can get it done in time, as I haven't sculpted a custom enclosure before and will be trying some new artistic critiques. I do have experience sculpting though. My biggest worry is the paints and sealing them properly! Art I can do- but food safe art that will be in a moist bioactive enclosure is new for me.

[astercrash]

"The Left at home is embarrassed; they know the true situation of the natives, the merciless oppression they are submitted to; they do not condemn their revolt, knowing full well that we have done everything to provoke it. But, all the same, they think to themselves, there are limits; these guerrillas should be bent on showing that they are chivalrous; that would be the best way of showing they are men."

-Jean-Paul Sartre in the preface to Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth

[abearinthewoods]

Its so annoying how often I'll see a blog have post after post after post after post so succinctly call out how the ways we view men and masculinity can be harmful to queer people, only to come across an op post explaining how misandry doesn't real.

Trans/intersex/agender/nb person: The way """progressives""" treat us as the worse of the worse of cis men and cast our actions under the shadow of stereotypes about cis men kinda sucks actually. What happened to equality and ending stereotyping and prejudge?

cis man: yes. I agree i have always hated this and think we should join hands as allies in the fight against misandry and androphobia.

Trans/intersex/agender/nb person: lol misandry doesn't real you silly mra.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Honestly though, this (what Ashe is pointing out) is exactly why I don't think GW could possibly end well. There's no "talking it over" after all the bloodshed (especially bloodshed started by them, and especially bloodshed started by them that didn't have to happen).

The way the narration leaves it "open" too at the end of GW just comes across as "it failed". It feels like... a kind of pointless story?

And I know some people might think that since Dimitri personally isn't as deeply affected by losing Matthias and so might be willing, that's still no good if his people and closest allies aren't. Rodrigue and Sylvain wouldn't be so forgiving, and I do think Dimitri would follow suit because that's his father (Rodrigue)'s closest friend and one of his own closest friends' father.

Add that to the fact that they have Sreng to deal with still (and I imagine sooner or Sylvain would figure out that Leicester had a hand in provoking Sreng to attack Faerghus) on top of losing Matthias and I imagine all the stress and aggravation wouldn't bode well for Leicester as far as Claude's thinking of things working out goes.

I just really can't see where GW goes afterward that would be "good" or works in Claude's favor at all. Maybe that was the intention and it was meant to be a route with a completely tragic ending, but apparently there are players who think it would end well and whatnot and I just can't see that happening (both from Faerghus' end and from Adrestia's end, the latter of which Claude discussed within GW itself).

If their intention was for a totally tragic ending, like yeah, I can see that... but as always the writing muddies the waters to make it sound good while something bad is happening. It keeps trying to have a positive spin on bad things as if they're just afraid to commit to a fully bad ending.

[muppetjackrackham]

23 my girl jo barker

character ask game

23. Future headcanon

tbh as much as i love the open ended ambiguity of johanna and anthony being able to escape the horrors to some extent and live their lives together i also know how ptsd works and i don't know that i believe anthony and johanna would just stay together after everything that's happened. i think anthony would try his best, would try to love johanna with everything he has, but i don't know if he's someone that would recognize whether or not he's out of his depth and/or know what johanna really needs after having literally killed a man to survive coming out of an incredibly abusive environment as judge turpin's ward AND the added trauma of the asylum and then on top of it all almost dying at the hands of her own father.

now, that being said, we also don't really know what it is anthony comes from. all we really know is that he was a sailor and at some point he rescued sweeney while they were out at sea. if we go by the original penny dreadful sweeney todd is based on, i would imagine anthony is probably based on mark ingestrie, who was in love with a girl named johanna oakley. at some point mark is imprisoned in the cellar beneath mrs. lovett's pie shop and forced to help cook the pies before ultimately escaping up the lift that brings the pies up from the cellar and into the shop itself. i think if our anthony has subsequent trauma of his own that we just don't know about, i could see it potentially still working between the two of them, because he would have some insight, albeit specific to his own trauma, that would allow him to at least empathize with johanna's circumstances better than he would without it (which isn't a knock on him, but it's very hard to understand things that have never happened to you, let alone be there to try and help someone in the ways they may want or need. it's not impossible, and it's not a one size fits all, but it's certainly not easy when you don't have any trauma of your own [and sometimes even when you do! trauma isn't a one size fits all; even people with the exact same trauma will still experience it differently because they're still fundamentally different people in terms of how they think how they feel, how they process things and how long it takes for them to process things]). but i think if he's as naïve as the overview of principal roles in sweeney todd makes him out to be, i don't think he and johanna would stay together.

as for johanna, i'm honestly not sure beyond that. i can't say for sure what i think she'd do, other than want to be rid of london for just about every reason imaginable and then some. maybe become a sailor herself, going from place to place, not wanting to be trapped like the bird in a cage motif that introduces her to us and follows through to the end when she can finally take her life, her fate, her freedom into her own hands for the first time in her life.

[lucky-clover-gazette]

i wish i could be like "ohhhh my writing must suck so bad" but tbh i'm having so much fun and if that means i have shitty taste so be it, i chose not to do this for a living for a reason

[hardtchill]

No, they wouldn't have. I don't like them but transracial adoption is REALLY a HUGE issue. Your white, European self needs to get out of that lane.

Dude, they would have. You need to do some digging if you think Sheabutter are in it to better the world.

[cluescorner]

I doubt they would survive a day in their own communities. Like, have y’all ever interacted with LGBTQ+ people IRL?? It’s really cool. Genuinely was a wonderful experience for me. Met someone who went by it/its pronouns because it saw that as the only way to distance itself from the demand to fit into boxes implanted on it by humanity. Met someone who goes by any pronouns and faer does that for the exact same reason as the person above. He and it were besties, hearing their discussions on gender was really fucking cool. Made me question my gender, I found out I’m cis but it was still a good experience. More relevant to this post, you’ve also got a pack of wild lesbians who congregated once while I was volunteering: me the young’un (cis, she/her, femme lesbian, has sensory issues with penetration of any kind but isn’t ace), an elder lesbian (bacla, she/he/siya (no preference but one of those) likes penetrative and non-penetrative sex), and a lesbian roughly between our ages (trans, she/her, about 4 months into socially transitioning, asexual). We’re just...talking about being lesbians and our differing experiences. It’s great, we taught each other a lot in the day we knew each other! Siya helped teach me about ways to explore myself and my preferences without triggering any averse reactions, I helped the trans lesbian vibe with wanting to be more gender conforming and traditionally ‘feminine’ (teaching trans femmes the joys of spinning around in frilly dresses is so nice), and she helped our elder get caught up with modern gay news. We left our stations and I’ve never seen either of them again, but this shit is so fun and so much better than arguing with randos about whether or not they ‘count’ as a lesbian. Imagine if I did what tiktok does and spent that whole time saying that our elder couldn’t be a lesbian because siya doesn’t strictly identify as a femme-aligned person or that the trans lesbian was teaching him about the ‘wrong’ gay news because most of it involved ‘bad rep’. Say what you want about cheesy cishet friendly romcom fodder, but seeing my elder beam at the idea that non-LGBTQ+ people cared about our stories on a large scale made that mediocre movie worth existing. IDK, people need to get involved in their communities (online or offline) and meet gay people outside of their immediate bubble. 

TLDR; I’m 90% sure people involved in gay discourse have never actually spent time around gay people outside of their immediate bubble and that makes me sad. Talk to people y’all, it’s great. 10/10, would recommend. 

people on tiktok would never survive a day on tumblr

[snapbackslide]

and one last thing; i do not like talking about my origins or disclosing personal information, but i have a lot of family in the middle east, and watching my parents stress over what's going to happen to them is sickening. since that day last year and watching the horrors through social media and the news, i feel very desensitized from it all at this point. from everything, really. life on earth has gotten severly worse than what it was when i was a kid.

[idledreams4]

I've never been more (immediately) hurt by a statement than when I read "actors are just actors" on a post complaining about how High and Mads didn't really put that much thought into their Hannibal characters and don't care as much about Hannigram as the fans do.

WE ARE NOT ALL LIKE THAT

I beg you all to PLEASE realize we are not all the same

They are outliers here. Most actors work with their characters, they try to understand them top to bottom (this of course depends on the project. The level character depth you get in a long running Tv show is wayyyyyy different from the level of depth you get from a 15 minute short film)

Personally I want to know everything. From the character's favorite color or music genre, to their motivation: why they do what they do.

And if the writer doesn't have answers, I come up with them. I take what I'm given and I build on it. I use these little details to build a more realistic character.

Being an actor is so much more than just reading words on a script. I've been told a few times now "don't method act, it's dangerous, and it's bad for you"

But I've gotten this far by "living truthfully in fiction" and I expect it to carry me further

[halalchampagnesocialist]

How to spot Liberal Zionist Propaganda 101

This post is by no means exhaustive at all. There are many Liberal Zionist talking points but these are just some of the most common ones. While on the surface they seem a little naive and hopeful at best, they are very much harmful. If you claim to be an ally to Palestinians, this post is primarily for you!

For starters, liberal Zionists will often try to both-sides the issue of Palestine, talk about how it's complicated, they'll claim that the conflict hurts both Israelis and Palestinians, how the only way forward is one where Jews and Arabs "just need to get along," amongst other things. They also often like to centre themselves, even when acknowledging Palestinians as the victims of Israel or this "conflict." From time to time, they also like to engage in tokenising certain Palestinians whose views tend to more or less align with theirs. Here are some common arguments you may hear from them:

1. Any form of justifying Israel's existence or claiming that the only solution is two states

It does not really need to be said why justifying Israel's existence is harmful but justifying its continued existence also means legitimising Israel's land theft, its expulsions of Palestinians, and its ongoing harm to Palestinians and other populations. Reducing any sorts of “solutions” into a binary is unhelpful. Needless to say, a 2ss would not even address any legitimate concerns Palestinian have, such as the right of return, and would only legitimise Israel’s colonialism. Talking about a two-state solution also implies that the root of the conflict lies in Palestinians not having their own state rather than being an occupied people. It is very much also possible to construct a paradigm where Jews and Palestinians both live together on the same land as equal citizens that doesn't involve two separate states, much less an ethnostate.

2. Security for Israel could only come through peace

This is a similar talking point to the one above. Not only does it centre Israeli safety and security above Palestinian liberation but it mistakenly assumes that once Israel makes peace with Palestinians, it'll achieve security. The reality, however, is that Israel's imagined security has quite often come at the expense of peace. In fact, "peace" has just acted as nothing more than a smoke-screen for Israel to carry out its expansionist policies, particularly in the West Bank. When liberal Zionists talk about peace juxtaposed with Israeli security, they're talking about attaining a negative peace rather than a positive one.

3. Israelis are not their government.

This point does nothing to actually help Palestinians. It is also an incredibly tone-deaf thing to say when Israel has targeted many Palestinian civilians by having alleged proximity to Hamas, such as being family members of militants or leaders (inc. children!), civil servants in a Hamas-led government, or even any male above the age of 15 they consider to be a potential combatant! It also deliberately erases Israeli civilians' support of and culpability in Israel's actions towards Palestinians.

4. Netanyahu and/or the Israeli right are the source of conflict.

While it is true that things have gotten inadvertently worse under Israel's various right-wing governments, they are not the source of conflict, but rather a product of extremist nationalism and Jewish supremacy perpetuated by the system. Both the 1967 occupations and settlements were undertaken under centre-left governments in Israel, and Israeli policy under non-right wing governments has been just as harmful towards Palestinians and has paved the way for where we are today. Blaming Netanyahu just also obscures the violent nature of Israel's military occupation over Palestinians which long precede him coming into power.

5. Netanyahu and Hamas are two sides of the same coin

I don't think I've seen any allies give validity to this claim but it's an extremely reductionist claim and is sort of similar to the one above. Groups like Hamas are merely a response to the Israeli occupation while Netanyahu is a byproduct of it. While some Israelis may see Hamas or their actions as an "obstacle to peace," Israel's actions and policies long pre-date Hamas and how Israel is currently responding to Hamas is no different to how Israel has engaged with Palestinian militant groups in the past, regardless of political affiliations or political goals. It is also important to note that Hamas has agreed to the establishment of a state along 1967 borders while Netanyahu aims to prolong the occupation and empower the settler movement (some of whom are part of his coalition government) as much as possible.

6. Israel is not a settler-colonial state.

While it is indisputable that Jews have historical connections to Palestine, that doesn’t automatically make you Indigenous or negate Israeli settler-colonialism. Colonialism in particular describes a relationship of exploitation. There are many cases of this, but we most clearly see this in the West Bank where Israel exploits natural resources on occupied Palestinian territory for its own political and economic gains. In terms of settler-colonialism, it is widely known that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to make way for Jewish refugees and migrants to the new state of Israel, and is still actively facilitating Jewish migration to Israel today while denying Palestinians their right of return.

7. (X) doesn't help Palestinians.

It is not up to anyone to determine whether certain tactics or strategies are helpful or not. This point only seeks to discredit pro-Palestine organising. Only Palestinians get to decide what is actually helpful for the cause or not.

8. Any sort of Hamas-blaming.

On the surface it may seem like there’s nothing wrong with this, but this point is often harmful and usually lends itself to right-wing talking points because its objective is to deflect blame away from Israel. Certain arguments blaming Hamas also aim to minimise Palestinian suffering perpetuated by Israel. It also paints Israeli violence as retaliatory to Palestinian violence which only obfuscates Israel’s (and by extension, the US’) role in its state military apparatus and the differing power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. In other contexts, this point seeks to also legitimise certain opposition, such as the Palestinian Authority. Hamas-blaming also tends to sometimes lead to racist diatribes about Palestinians and their culture.

9. Al-Jazeera is not a credible news source.

Al Jazeera is a news source like any other. It has varying editorial policies and therefore will have equally good reporting on certain issues while having terrible reporting on others. The difference is that Al-Jazeera's news on Palestine is credible because it comes directly from their Palestinian reporters on the ground and first-hand eyewitness accounts. Western news sources are no more or less credible than al-Jazeera. Compare this to CNN, NYT, and any other Western news sources where Palestinian voices are often entirely missing from the narrative.

10. Overemphasis of antisemitism on the left

Antisemitism is a real issue and has the potential to fester in left circles if not directly addressed head on. Combatting antisemitism is extremely important, however, it is not an issue exclusive to the left. There is also a double standard in that no one expects Zionists to call out Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Certain accusations of "antisemitism" also seek to distract from what's going on in Palestine by making it about Jewish comfort and feelings. Combatting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism etc is always important as the basis of good politics.

Last but not least, be wary of native collaborators or any sort of normalisers! They are Palestinians or Arabs who try very hard to appeal to Western liberal consensus and can end up perpetuating a lot of harm to the cause and/or other activists. You will know them when you see them.

[trashycosmos]

Hu5h

[ceilidhtransing]

I've cropped out the username because I have absolutely no desire to start drama or make a personal “callout” or have people go harass someone or anything like that (and if you take this kind of thing as an opportunity to go and be horrible to another Tumblr user then that is terrible and you should stop), but wow, I have never seen such a clanging example of amatonormativity. I don't think OP necessarily meant it this way, I don't think they meant any harm, I don't think they're consciously arophobic or something - it's far more likely that they're simply unfamiliar with aspec issues, and I always prefer to assume good faith - but I want to talk about this post anyway because it provides a really good and explicit example of the way society just sort of... asserts the centrality of romantic attraction and entirely forgets aromantic people exist.

I do want to first say that I actually agree with the initial point this post is making. Romance as a genre is unfairly derided as some kind of “lesser” form of art, and this derision very frequently comes with generous helpings of misogyny. I totally agree that romance is not at all an unintellectual or superficial thing to write about, and it's bad that it gets treated that way and that readers and writers of romance get so often mocked and condemned. Romance is a totally valid genre and enjoying it doesn't make you vain or stupid or superficial.

HOWEVER. As an aromantic person I find the rest of the post just... I don't know, it's just so perfect as a probably unwitting expression of baked-in cultural amatonormativity. It's brilliant. It's so funny to me. I can almost do a line-by-line breakdown of the way it so completely forgets the existence of aromantic people. In fact, let's do that.

It is so fundamental to us. The issue here should be pretty obvious. The assumption that romance is some integral part of The Human Experience and that it's fundamental to All People is pretty much amatonormativity 101. It reinforces the idea that people who don't experience romantic attraction are “lacking”, forever sitting apart from The Human Experience, and possibly in some way not quite fully human, since we don't experience the thing that is apparently so fundamental to humans.

To want to love and be loved. The post seems to be incorrectly equating “romance” with “loving and being loved”, when in fact there are many people who don't experience romantic attraction yet absolutely love and want to be loved. (And of course loveless aros, aplatonic people, various folks who don't “want to love and be loved” also exist, and it's important to emphasise that this desire, just like romantic attraction, is also not necessarily integral to all people.) “Love” is not automatically “romantic love”, but this post seems to imply that romance is the only, or default, form in which love can exist.

If you don't think every great work of literature. philosophy. metaphysics. was ultimately about romance. I don't think you were paying enough attention. OK this is the line that elevated this post from “sigh, more casual amatonormativity to scroll past” to “I just have to respond to this”. Where to even begin with this assertion. This is a level of “assuming romance is central to everything humans ever do and ever create” that I've almost never encountered before. It feels like a manifestation of the tendency for alloromantic people to declare that, because romance is very central for them, it is thus central to Everything. And I'm homing in on “romance” because the post doesn't say “ultimately about love” - which would still be a reach, but less of a reach - it specifically says “ultimately about romance”. As an aromantic person who is an academic at heart and highly educated in the humanities and social sciences, the idea that my ability to understand literature and philosophy and metaphysics is somehow greatly hampered by the fact that I don't experience or relate to romantic attraction is just... what??? This idea is really very funny to me but also genuinely pretty insulting, even though I'm sure it wasn't meant that way. Not only does it feel like the summation of every patronising “oh, you couldn't possibly understand” directed to aromantic adults who are, in fact, entirely capable of understanding, but it also flattens the incredible breadth of human intellectual experience into “being about romance”. I sometimes find myself wishing that alloromantic people would peak outside the bubble of amatonormativity and realise that actually, there is an enormous swathe of human experience and intellect and creativity and expression that has nothing at all to do with romantic attraction and romantic relationships. And no, stating that, I don't know, the Book of Job is not actually about romance has nothing to do with our society's misogynistic denigration of romance as a genre; it has everything to do with the fact that the Book of Job is not actually about romance. (And if you aren't familiar with Job or for some reason don't consider it a “great work of literature”, replace with whatever other example you can think of; there are many.) It's insulting to imply that aro-spec and/or ace-spec people are somehow less able to participate in art and literature and philosophy etc because we might bring a perspective that doesn't include romance or sex at all and we're just not capable of understanding that Actually Romance And/Or Sex Is Central To Everything. It's genuinely absurd to argue that all the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement really, at their core, come back to romance, and it speaks to our very blinkered society's tendency to declare things like “everything is really about sex” or “everything is really about romance” or “everything is really about breakups” or whatever and then look at aro-spec and ace-spec people like we're aliens and go “but like... how do you even live?” Newsflash, there is so much more to life than romance and love and sex. You can live an entire, very fulfilling, very meaningful, very thoughtful life without these things being at all relevant to you. That's not to dismiss those things as minor or unimportant - they are indeed very central to a lot of people's lives, and they're not “dumb” or “shallow” or whatever - but they're not central to everyone's lives, and they're hardly The Only Things In The World.

And if your response is something along the lines of “well OK there's a tiny minority of people who don't engage with romance and/or sex, or relate to it in the same way most people do, but that doesn't mean that romance isn't still at the core of humanity, or that all the most important things don't still have romance at their heart”, imagine telling a woman that “well, you can focus on a career if you want, but what's really fundamental to being a woman is being a wife and mother - in fact, motherhood is the most important thing in the world, it's fundamental to women, it's what all women's literature is about”. Or, hell, telling a person of any gender that “parenthood” is the central pillar of all of humanity and that every great work of art ever produced is ultimately about parenthood and obviously parenthood is fundamental to everyone's being - forgetting that actually some people will never be parents, and implying that their childlessness makes them less able to understand The Human Experience. That might give you some small idea of what it's like to be an aspec person and be repeatedly told that feelings you don't experience and relationships you don't have and attractions you don't relate to and acts you don't engage in are somehow Fundamental To Humanity and are what lie at The Core Of Everything: how excluding that is, how alienating that is, how oppressively stifling that is.

Feeling that love and/or romance and/or sex are very important to your own life is totally valid, but I wish alloromantics and allosexuals could be more capable of opening their minds and imagining and empathising with an existence for which these things aren't central. Our lives aren't lesser, or emptier, or sadder, or shallower for lack of romance or sex. Our experiences are part of The Human Experience. Our perspectives on art and life and relationships and philosophy and humanity and everything else are just as valid. We are just as capable of profundity, of creativity, of insight - because romance and sex aren't “at the core” of any of these things. We are here, and we're tired of being forgotten, ignored, sidelined, dismissed, erased, talked over, talked past. It would be great if society at large actually remembered we exist once in a while, and that our lives are just as beautiful and important as anyone else's.

[ixzotica]

RANDOM THINGS I'VE SCRIPTED THAT YOU MAY WANNA TOO took these out of my rules page in my script bcuz i'm too lazy to be creative rn but i still wanted to post something for y'all LMAO divider credits ♡

i never get scammed.

i know how to do cpr properly.

the world is less dull and dreary.

nobody ever succeeds in copying me.

kissing never feels awkward or weird for me.

there are way less racist/notsee dog whistles.

i can never lose any of my senses (e.g., sight, hearing, taste, etc.)

i always time my jokes correctly and people always laugh at them.

i always know the ages of characters even if they're not specified (because i'm TIRED.)

animals and bugs never piss, spit, snot, shit, throw up, or jizz on me or my belongings.

all fatphobic people end up being fat and struggle hard to lose the weight if they even try to (you will become what you hate.)

while on a plane, i still have service while my phone is on airplane mode and it doesn't affect the airplane or lines or whatever in any way.

i never center men or constantly seek male validation/attention. like if i get it for the right reasons then cool or whatever but i don’t really care.

i know how to roast people really well without bringing up stuff that’s like detrimental or very sensitive unless i fully intend to and it's absolutely deserved.

all men that make racist, homophobic, pedophilic, misogynistic, or any sort of derogatory jokes end up alone and sad until the end of their days. no one will ever love them or be there for them when they die.

anti-shifter, proship/profic, ageplay, pro ana, bigot/incel, and any variation dni