#mind aspec

[pokimoko]

Ace Week is upon us again, which means it's time for me to share some more silly little critters with you all! (If you like, you can also say hello to their friends from 2021, 2022 and 2023.) ✨Go and be as amazing as always, aces✨

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[fettiowi]

"This character is ace because they have never shown any interest in dating or have ever seemed to experience romantic attraction!" THATS NOT ACE THATS ARO THATS AROMANTIC AROMANTICISM THOSE ARE DIFFERENT THINGS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD REMEMBER AROS EXIST OUTSIDE OF ASEXUALITY AND THAT THERE ARE ACES WHO FEEL ROMANTIC ATTRACTION PLEASE

[doodleplus]

Do not separate!

[starchild--27]

my mom: you know, i won't mind who you'll end up with, boy or girl or anything else. <3

me: yeah, i know you won't mind. <3

my mom: except for when you'll end with no one at all. <3

my recently as aspec-identifying ass: ... ._.

[stiffyck]

I WISH ARO HEADCANONS WERE MORE POPULAR IN FANDOMS

[enter-the-bear-circle]

Imagine romance is a song.

Yes, a song. A song you don't find particularly good or bad. It's ok, you don't mind occasionally listening to it, you might even enjoy it sometimes.

But then you realize this song is everywhere. It keeps you company while you are buying groceries, you go to school/work and all of your classmates/colleagues are listening to it, you hear strangers on the street singing the lyrics. Your favourite artist covers it. It goes viral on every possible platform. You turn on the radio and every single station plays it.

There is no way to escape it.

How do you feel then? Frustrated. Exhausted. Angry. Most likely you'll start hating the song. You wouldn't want to hear a single second of it anymore. You could get annoyed at your friends who keep talking about it. You even might feel like you are going crazy. Not a bright scenario, is it?

So next time you hear a bitter aro complain about amatonormativity please understand one thing: the problem isn't "romance is bad", it's "romance is everywhere".

[dawnbreakerluna]

sylus with an aspec!partner who experiences severe touch starvation and aversion in such sporadic moments. he doesn’t mind accommodating for those moments at all & ends up being perceptive to the little behaviors or quirks that indicate when you miss him and therefore need to feel him against you once again.

[anistarrose]

Asexuality can be about more than just sexual attraction and lack thereof. There have historically been multiple avenues to asexuality.

First of all: of course, you don't have to identify as ace if you're sex-repulsed/sex-averse, but feel like your attraction has something else going on that's important to you. And of course, you can identify as ace if you're sex-favorable, but feel like your lack or near-lack of attraction is important to you too. Nothing I am about to say negates those things.

However, for some people, sex aversion/repulsion is the most important factor in falling under the mantle of asexuality. The most important factor in resonating with the language of asexuality, finding a home in the asexual community, and considering asexuality both an identity they can take pride in, and use to communicate their experiences.

As useful as it can be to describe and discuss sexual attraction, said sexual attraction is ultimately a social construct that may be impossible to parse, uncomfortable to parse, inapplicable, and/or irrelevant to many on the asexual spectrum. Many of us active in the asexual community are familiar, either firsthand or secondhand, with how slippery the concept of sexual attraction can be — the turtles in ponds metaphor, the search for something you're not sure you even know the shape of. What's the boundary between attraction and non-attraction, between sexual and sensual and aesthetic?

Really, should something so slippery and confusing be the only metric we're allowed to define ourselves by? I argue it can be useful for many, but should never be a requirement — and personally, it's not how I define myself. I identify as asexual in part because the question of "Do you experience sexual attraction?" is fundamentally impossible for me to answer. An intractable problem, which I reject the need to answer or solve in order to know myself as a person.

Moreover, asexuality has a long history, serving as a useful term and community to ace-specs with a wide variety of experiences with attraction, desire, and action. While the "Non-Libidoists" of the early 2000's were by no means correct that a lack of interest in sex/masturbation should the only avenue to an asexual identity, they highlight that aversion and indifference to sex have been many people's reason to find a home in asexuality, throughout much of that term's usage.

Multiple avenues to asexuality are possible, and that goes both ways. Asexuals who have or want to have sex need to be welcomed and cherished, but positing that "little to no sexual attraction" is the only valid definition of asexuality is an overcorrection — and an alienating, exclusory overcorrection at that.

[cepheusgalaxy]

(You don't know for how long I've been thinking on doing this)

LGBTQIA+ representation on media be like:

ID: The meme with an adult holding up one child in a pool while the other drowns, and underwater is a skeleton. The adult is labeled "LGBTQIA+ "representation" in media." The kid being held up is labeled "gays" with an asterisk of "sometimes, lesbians and bi people." The drowning child is labeled "Transgender and other sexualities/romantic orientations." The skeleton is labeled "Intersex people." /end ID.

(Edit: id by @aromanticsky)

[purplecelestial-buddy]

The concept of chapter 25 is kinda unbelievable to me

If you told past me "oh yeah there's this character that's so heavily aspec coded that they:

1. Get absolutely uncomfortable when someone frames an action as being romantic

2. Mention not caring/not being interested in having their first kiss

3. Wonder if wanting to kiss someone is normal

4. Worry about the idea that dating must mean you have to kiss your partner"

I would absolutely tell you to stop toying with my feelings because we don't ever get that kind of rep.

[theartsyhognose]

Happy ace week!!

[mossy-aro]

why do allos insist on viewing relationships in the most boring ways imaginable

[thatsgazebo]

The “bud” after “I love you” does NOT devalue it. And NOT just because “bud” can be interpreted romantically, but because having loving platonic relationships with friends is just as monumental.

[doodleplus]

It's only the last slice

[lovelessrage]

An aroallo canon event is walking into a space designated as friendly and safe to "all of the aspectrum" [awesome, sounds good, I like being able to talk to people about issues that affect all of us] and realizing very quickly that you are not included in "all". It's the constant need to stick up for yourself in what is supposed to be a safe space that burns aroallos out of your community spaces. If you have a stark lack of aroallos in an all-inclusive zone, ask yourself if the environment is actually safe and welcoming, or if they are expected to constantly be their own advocate with no safety net. It's immensely common and underdiscussed.

Are you sticking up for the aroallos around you? Are you asking how you can be better? Are you expecting to rely on being "called out" rather than learning for yourself? Do you know what aroallophobia looks like? What sex negativity actually is? Please don't let aroallos fade away into the background of so many boundaries crossed and lines drawn that they have to go. We need bridges between the community now more than ever, and that means making it a two way street on each one.