Good luck during pride month to all the aroaces who are gonna be blasted with "love is love" everywhere
Edit:
This post includes aplatonic people, loveless aros and any other people who fall anywhere on the aro and ace spectrum.
Stop saying "but theres platonic love and familial love-"
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I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.
And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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First day on tumblr, any tips or rules to follow?
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Ok hear me out: Narilamb but they're both aroace and in a qpr.
I've been rolling around in my head for like a long long time this idea that Narinder and Lambert could both be aroace and (after like. A couple of centuries or so) end up in this like very comfortable very close relationship that neither of them define as anything specific other than calling it a "companionship". But on the other hand most of the cult thinks that they're dating in secret or something despite the fact that both of them have said they don't take lovers, because they are clearly very tight but maybe not super openly so, so maybe the cultists thing they're being secretive and hiding something or something like that. Idk but my aroace brain loves thinking about extremely close (mostly) platonic relationships and for some reason my brain decided hmm. I'm going to take this and throw it at Narilamb and see how I like it.
So then I decided to make a ridiculous joke comic about Narinder asking Lambert's hand in marriage specifically because he wants to get out of paying taxes. Because like, I know that spouse followers do actually still have to pay taxes in the actual game but. Hey Narinder and Lambert have presumably never married so they probably don't know that...? Honestly the only reason I made this was because the concept tickled me and I spent too much time on this for no one to see it, so. This comic and all it's absolute ridiculousness be upon ye.
While there's a tiny part of me that's been thinking about making this into an AU (which I'd probably call something like the "Strictly Platonic AU" or something), I know for a fact that I would blatantly not do anything legitimate with it so. It's an unofficial AU I guess?? But. Anyways. I thought this would be funny. Enjoy my ramblings and I hope you enjoy this thing that I spent. Actual time on. Lol
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Anyway. Bi and Mspec Lesbians aren't a hotly "debated" topic or even new to queer culture, it's just the newest thing that bullies who REALLY want to be homophobic and even racist use to justify harassing gay people they don't like.
It's the thinnest possible veneer of progressive language wrapped around TERF and reactionary rhetoric so that they can feel righteous for forming an angry mob against vulnerable targets. If you're gullible enough to fall for the newest wave of bigotry within the queer community, and turn on your allies because they're "confusing" or "invading your spaces," the SAME way they turned on bi/pan labels, trans people, xenogenders, neopronouns, and aroace people before this, then get lost.
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