#that's a lot of us.

[bilesproblems]

Making a new post because the tags broke.

I ran this poll (link) to see how many mspec lesbians were aspec. I was curious after talking about how aphobia and luniaphobia overlapped and wanted to know. The results, though from a small pool of 61 respondants, were shocking to me.

11.5% (7 respondants) of the votes were from non-mspec lesbians, and the other 88.5% (54 respondants) came from mspec lesbians. Percentages on the poll will not match the percentages that I will share, because the ones I share are recalculated to reflect only the percentage of mspec lesbian voters.

Of mspec lesbian respondants, 92.59% (50 respondants) identified as some form of aspec, making up 81.97% of total respondants

Of mspec lesbian respondants, 24.07% (13 respondants) identified as asexual or acespec as their only aspec identity, making up 21.3% of total respondants

Of mspec lesbian respondants, 12.96% (7 respondants) identified as aromantic or arospec as their only aspec identity, making up 11.5% of total respondants

Of mspec lesbian respondants, 3.7% (2 respondants) identified as aplatonic or aplspec as their only aspec identity, making up 3.3% of total respondants

Of mspec lesbian respondants, 1.85% (1 respondant) identified with another atertiary label as their only aspec identity, making up 1.6% of total respondants

Of mspec lesbian respondants, exactly 50% (27 respondants) identified as more than one of these, having multiple aspec identities, making up 44.3% of total respondants

Of mspec lesbian respondants, only 7.41% of respondants identified as fully allo and did not identify with any aspec identity.

What this suggests: this poll suggests that the vast, vast majority of mspec lesbians are aspec in some way, shape, or form, and that result suggests that there is some sort of relationship between identifying as aspec and identifying as an mspec lesbian that is worth exploring.

Controls: Non-mspec lesbians were given their own separate option to avoid them skewing results. Mspec lesbian tags were used for reach but it may not have worked very well since the post doesn't appear in the bi lesbian tag on my end. Most if not all of my followers are mspec lesbians. However, there were no controls for accidental misvotes or intentional skewing from respondants. Nothing on the poll or about the poll, nor anything about myself, should have resulted in more aspec mspec lesbians voting than allo mspec lesbians, so intentional or accidental sampling bias could not have happened.

Limitations: The small sample size of 61 respondants does leave room for random sampling bias, which is when a random sample ends up not reflecting the general population. The lack of control on voters could have skewed results.

This has overall been a fascinating bit of research. I think my aphobia essay will be not about aphobia but mspec lesbians and the anattractional spectrum overall, with aphobia being a part of that essay but not the only part. Thank you everyone who voted, and I hope you all find this very interesting! Feel free to use these results to prove "mspec lesbians are appropriating aspecs by using the SAM" wrong and stick around for the eventual massive research paper on mspec lesbians and aspec identity.

[shrubsparrow]

It's in the eye of the beholder

[gawki]

Royal Pigeon

[almondpiglet]

ppl were drawing mikus from all over so heres habesha miku and her lil twin sibs rin and len!!

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[its-yashas-strong-arms]

FINALLY some good fucking feature ideas from the tumblr devs. tamagotchi renaissance now

[oatmealspet]

Over 800 TAG members marched on Netflix & delivered a petition demanding the AMPTP keep #animation jobs #union, agree to AI protections & more. Show the AMPTP that you #standwithanimation. Sign your name next to the people that make the shows you love.

[yeepof]

Local PHD student at wizard school HARRASSED!! FOR SHAME!!

[ionomycin]

Grief

ref photo by @jawsstone

[tariah23]

White people are miserable, racist losers period. They’ve even been getting mad at Japanese people for correcting them about Yasuke as well.

[hawkpartys]

i think of this image approximately every day of my life

Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) observation by kiwikiu

[evgar]

i need them badly

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[morningsaidthemoon]

might continue work on this one,, ✨✨

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.