#this also goes to aces/aros/anyone that lacks attraction to men

[commander-gloryforge]

any fellow lesbians ever feeling weirdly isolated and alienated from their friends/mutuals because you just simply cannot share the same excitement and attraction for men. and you feel like, even though this is probably not the case, you feel like everything is always about men and the attraction to men and the desire for men. and you try to understand and be apart of the fun and all but at some point you're just kinda like. "okay we clearly are not the same and this isnt working out"

idk ive had this for a while but lately its like. wow i really am just missing out on so many conversations and interactions and friendships because of this 1 simple difference between me and many of my friends

[katzkinder]

Idk why but I headcanon lily as aro ace

Ooh, neat! You're about... The third person I know of who also has that headcanon!

Personally, I headcanon that he identifies as pan, but like... He chooses that as his label because he likes the flag colors better lmao. That's it.

I always meant to type up my headcanons for this but never got around to it, so I think now is as good a time as any?

Misono: sex positive ace. Both because I think it suits him and because I like the contrast with my headcanon of Lily, where Lily has sex related trauma that makes him have difficult feelings about being attracted to others. Misono is almost clinical? When talking about that kind of thing. It can be off putting but he genuinely just thinks the scope of human sexuality is a fascinating thing to research

Mahiru: Bisexual, like his uncle, but not particularly aware of it in that he doesn't identify as anything. He's very "yeah that person is hot" and moves on with his day. The type who goes "huh! I guess I am" if you point out he's queer

Speaking of Queer, Mikuni: uses this exclusively. He thinks it's delightful. Like yes, this is perfect, he IS a very strange and odd little man! And that's all you're getting out of him (genuinely, this is all he gives me aside from maybe some flavor of aro. Jackass)

Lawless: Disaster bi with a distinct preference for intimidating women and older men. Licht is actually out of left field for him. Not typically the type he goes for!

Speaking of Licht: Angel. No I do not know what this means anymore than you do. Figure it out.

Kuro: double demi. His attraction hinges on having close emotional bonds with somebody first and it drives him crazy 😭Like he'll just be chilling and everything will be fine and the next thing he knows he's having an epiphany that ohhh god. oh fuck. oh god oh fuck he cannot DEAL. Terrible at flirting unless he's passing it off as a joke btw

Sakuya: *smash bros announcer voice* GAY

Freya: bi lesbian but calls herself lesbian, because that's what she's always called herself and she's not changing. Completely blindsided by the whole lesbian separatist discourse. Frankly disgusted with it. The big bad butch aligned fem in the corner who stands there and intimidates anyone hassling baby queers. She's got that peasantry farmer's wife bod, which means biceps that can crack your skull if you annoy her.

Iduna: doesn't label. She likes what she likes, so there! (does anyone remember this show lol)

Jeje: He's dressed like a priest, so I think it's safe to assume he's a self hating queer. This is only half a joke.

Ildio: You know that chart that's like functional bi, distinguished bi, disaster bi? He's a secret fourth thing: Himbo bi.

Nicco: Wombo Combo of Functional and Distinguished bi.

I'd add pride pair but my read on them is Lacking due to them not really having much in terms of development...

[ckret2]

do you think alister if he even has any kind of preference (he could be sex repulsed and all) would have that old 'its not gay if you're the one fucking the other man' mentality (round about way of asking for the same post you made for pen but. for the radio demon)

No, no, see, this isn’t the same as the question I answered earlier at all. The question I answered earlier was “do you think Sir Pent tops or bottoms?” (technically, the “question” i answered was “pen is a bottom” and my answer was “INTERESTING! NO.”) But the question you’re asking is “do you think Alastor defines a person’s sexuality by their sex acts rather than by the people that person is attracted to?” with a side helping of “do you think Alastor has any sexual preferences at all or is he 100% sex repulsed?”

“Which acts does the character think ‘count’ as gay” has no inherent correlation to “which acts does the character enjoy engaging in.” You see the difference. For them to be the same question, we’d have to start off the question by assuming that what acts the character is okay with engaging in is determined by whether or not the character thinks those acts are gay. Conflating what they think is gay with what they’re okay with doing implies that you’re assuming a whole lot about that character’s personality, how much internalized homophobia that character is dealing with, and how fragile that character’s sense of masculinity is, and I’m pretty sure you don’t actually want to imply any of that!

So if you want me to answer the same question I answered earlier, then come back and ask that question, not a roundabout version of the question that’s in fact a very, VERY different question. In the meantime, I’m going to answer the question that you actually asked: “do you think Alastor has 'it’s not gay if you’re penetrating’ beliefs about sexuality?”

The tl;dr is: big shrug, I dunno. Seems possible based on what little I DO know about the time period but I don’t know enough yet. Also if anyone happens to have resources on queer life/history in 1920s New Orleans, like, please chuck them at me.

Essay below!! Hey tumblr you’d better let the read more cut work, don’t let me down.

As it happens, I’ve actually been trying to figure out how sexuality was viewed roundabouts the 1920s in New Orleans—because I figure Alastor’s views have probably evolved very little since then. I get the impression that he’s very set in his own era; and because he’s sort of in a social bubble—who’s going to try to get close to the Radio Demon?—and doesn’t engage much with current mass media, he’s more or less shielded from evolutions in modern culture.

(Compare that to, say, Angel, who sounds very modern—or Charlie, who’s at least a couple of centuries old (probably much more) but also dresses and acts very modern.)

So whatever he thinks about sexuality is going to be rooted in whatever was current when he was alive.

The 20s were actually surprisingly good to queer folks, from what I’ve found so far—there was some VERY gay vaudeville & jazz tracks coming out—but like, I don’t know exactly how good, relatively speaking. Or where. Was it, like, only New York? And/or only San Francisco? I’ve got next to no sources on what was going on in New Orleans. The ONLY fact I’ve been able to find from the era so far is that 1933—the year of Alastor’s death—is the year the first gay bar opened in New Orleans (or, at least, the first one that’s still open today—it relocated but it’s still going). But that doesn’t tell me a lot about the overall environment. All it tells me is “New Orleans wasn’t so homophobic that the bar was burned down immediately, and/or they kept it too secret for that to happen.” That’s not a lot to go on.

And all of this is, like, the level of mainstream tolerance/acceptance toward queerness. It doesn’t tell me what people actually believed then.

Here’s a paragraph on late-1800s/early-1900s psychological beliefs about queerness that are hella outdated today: one contemporary belief about sexuality called “sexual inversion” basically said that a queer person’s brain was “inverted” gender-wise from the norm—that is, for instance, if you’re AMAB and attracted to men, you’ve got a feminine brain, you’ll like to do feminine things, you’ll want to perform feminine sex acts (ie, be the recipient in anal sex), and you’ll probably want to have a feminine body. Basically it conflated being gay and being trans. On the other hand, if you’re AMAB and you’re attracted to a feminine AMAB “invert,” you’re more or less still straight, because you’re attracted to someone with a feminine brain so like that’s more or less a woman psychologically speaking. By modern standards this whole framework is very “oh yikes” but like… ours probably will be seen as cringy in 50 years; and psychologists who believed in sexual inversion generally advocated in favor of letting inverts live in alignment with how their brains told them to, which was a big step forward.

So that was a theory going around. But like, how widespread was it? I know a book about lesbian inverts was written in the late '20s to try to make the term more widespread but idk whether it succeeded or to what extent. Was it a term ONLY being used in psychiatric circles and a handful of people who picked up the book? Was it restricted to certain metropolitan centers? If you went to a drag ball, did people introduce themselves as inverts? (Did they have drag balls? I know they did in mid-Victorian England but that doesn’t tell me much about what was being done in 1920s USA, much less New Orleans.)

And as far as I can tell, the idea of “sexual inversion” was the first time that a framework was presented in Western society where queerness was presented as something inborn rather than a choice people make to go screw someone they “shouldn’t” screw. There was a shift around the 20th century from “gayness is an action that you perform, people can perform the act or not perform the act but they’re basically all the same on the inside” to “gay is something that you ARE, on the inside,” but WHEN exactly did gayness shift from an action to an identity? And when did that shift happen in New Orleans? Knowing when it happened in NYC or some shit isn’t gonna do me any good if, say, it didn’t happen in NOLA for another two decades.

So like obviously I need to find a lot more research on queer history in that region and decade before I can give a super firm answer about what Alastor’s opinions/beliefs are.

I’m toying with the idea that Alastor did spend some of his life in NYC, though; like, he didn’t just casually pick up a Mid-Atlantic accent on the streets of Nawlins. He might’ve picked it up from talkies—although he would’ve had to spend a LOT of time at the movies studying specifically to copy the accent. I know the Mid-Atlantic accent was big in theater, but was that also the case in NOLA, or only in New England? Were there, like, traveling Broadway shows then like there are today? I’m inclined to believe that Alastor actually studied theater at some point in order to pick up the accent, which probably means going to some theater school in the northeast. We know he was into theater, being trained as an actor before going into radio makes sense to me. (He also could’ve learned it at a fancy expensive private school, but I prefer headcanoning him as from a lower background than that.) So maybe he spent some time living in NYC before going back home to NOLA, so if I really really can’t find anything on 20s NOLA I can focus research on NYC instead and say “he picked up his opinions there.” That’s my plan B.

I know that, WHATEVER the 20s NOLA queer community was like, I want to headcanon Alastor was sort of in it but also sort of on the fringes of it—like, due to his very conspicuous (conspicuous to himself) lack of normal/expected attraction to the people he knew he was “supposed” to be attracted to, he sort of felt a draw to the company of other folks who were conspicuously not attracted to who they were “supposed” to be—but he never really felt super deep ties to that community because, one, he just naturally forms very shallow relationships in the first place, and, two, he wasn’t hanging out in queer spaces looking for a relationship or a date or an opportunity to express some hidden side of himself so much as he was looking for a place where he wasn’t being weighed down by The Mainstream Expectations. But you can still be weighed down, albeit to a lesser extent, by The Counterculture Expectations, too. So, he was comfortable enough in queer spaces, but remained just sort of on the edges—was probably recognized by sight by other folks in NOLA who frequented queer events but wasn’t anyone’s best friend. Kinda shows up and makes small talk and goes home.

So, what sort of opinions and beliefs would he have absorbed from those edges? And how would they have been influenced by his own ace/aro perspective, from which ALL talk of sex and romance, whether queer or straight, is a foreign perspective that he could intellectually learn about but not ever really FEEL on an instinctive/gut level the way allo folks do?

I don’t know yet. Gotta find the right research materials first!

So tl;dr anon I don’t know yet whether he thinks taking it up the ass makes someone gayer than putting it in the ass.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

(1/6) In advance, sorry if this sounds clipped but I'm rewriting an 11 part ask because that's just too much and it feels like it would be rude to send such a long question. Somehow it's still long. So my background is: mostly used to aro and ace communities, don't have much experience with the lgbt+ community at large (trying to work on that), the way the aro/ace communities break concepts like attraction down really helped me figure out what my orientation was. Questioning my gender now and

(2/6) having a hard time finding resources that help me clarify my feelings instead of making me even more confused. I started researching thinking that they would be similar to aro and ace resources, going to the root of things and saying “What even is attraction, let’s define it” and breaking it down into chunks instead of trying to tackle the whole thing at once (see the split attraction model). Instead I found many lists of labels and pronouns, trans 101 that was at the same time too basic (3/6) and not basic enough, and “Gender is a feeling, masculinity/femininity/androgyny/etc are feelings too, no one can tell you what your gender is but you”. My request isn’t for anyone to tell me what my gender is, I’ll figure that out myself. But I feel I’m lacking the tools to do it. So does anyone have any resources, be they articles/blogs/life experiences and stories written by trans people/etc that breaks things like the feelings of gender as a whole, masculinity, femininity, androgyny,(4/6) agender, and dysphoria down (not coded behaviors or presentation, but what they actually FEEL like. These are the things that I’m most confused about and most want some sort of answer or definition for) in the style aro/ace resources do for attraction/orientation? To figure this out I need some sort of starting point or foothold or anchor for this instead of “it’s a feeling” when I don’t know what that feeling could be. But “Nobody can tell you what you are” sounds much more like defeat(5/6) than freedom to me rn. I’ve heard it said that gender is experienced differently by everyone, and if it’s really just some nebulous unidentifiable feeling that literally cannot be put into words then I can learn to live with the fact I’ll just never understand it, but… it just seems like there HAS to be some sort of commonality in the feeling of gender, the feeling of femininity/masculinity/all the rest that could be prevalent enough to say what that feeling IS and used to help people (6/6) figure out better who they are and who they want to be. For the ones like me who don’t even know what they’re feeling or what they want to be, just that they don’t want to feel like they do now.

Kii says:You’ve got a lot here, and you’re right. Gender is really confusing, and it really is something that 100 different people will give you 100 different answers about. Some people do feel their gender is best described by more visible aspects, such as behaviors, clothing, desired body, hobbies, etc, but some people don’t, and for them, it is just a feeling that isn’t describable, they just know internally what gender they are and can’t always explain why. 

However, just because there are feelings doesn’t mean that everyone’s feelings are the same, like the commonality you’re mentioning. You know the old “how do we know that your green is the same as my green?” Two people could be seeing the exact same item, both agree that it’s green, but how does anyone know that if I saw the same item through your eyes, I would still call it green? Your eyes might be structured completely differently than mine. Your green might be my purple, etc. I think the same goes for the words “masculine” and “feminine”- I can give you words that I associate with each, but a lot of people might disagree. 

Think of a person that you consider to be very masculine (whether they ID as a man or not)- why do you see them as masculine? Is it because of how they dress? What their body looks like? Because they like cars, sports, etc? How they act or other elements of their personality? Do the same for someone who you feel is very feminine (whether they ID as a woman or not). How is your “masculine” person different than your “feminine” person?

Androgyny is usually described as the intersection or mix of masculinity and femininity, so to figure out what you associate with androgyny, you kind of have to figure that out first.

We have a whole page about dysphoria, since that’s a more concrete concept. There are lots of descriptions there on how different people describe dysphoria and how it feels.

We also have this post, which a lot of people have tried to make helpful to questioning people, as well as this ask where various mods described what gender feels like to them.

Harper Says:I would also suggest a broader understanding of gender (and sexuality). You’re looking for a commonality that is not found uniformly in lived/expressed experiences - perhaps you might find it fleetingly, strangely, but I doubt it will come with much uniform clarity. The assumption that there has to be a commonality, a universality, is one that potentially assumes a (purely) medical/psychological account of gender and sexuality. Experiences of gender will necessarily intersect with other forms of systematic oppression: race, disability, and so on; and so each account of gendered experience has to be uncommon.Try instead understanding gender as part of a wider system of oppression rigged to benefit white cis men. In this, bodies, activities, sexualities, (and many other things) are codified and performed within a system of oppression. This is the way as far as I, and many other thinkers, understand gender. When you ask for gender as “not coded behaviors or presentation, but what they actually FEEL like” I think you misunderstand that gender is easily and always both. The performances, the risks, the transgressions, that commonly make up transgender experiences are inescapably coded behaviours - we don’t live in a society that isn’t oppressive. That is why there is such fear and thrill in a trans woman shaving her legs for the first time, or a trans man using the men’s bathroom for the first time. The emotion and feeling wouldn’t be there if such transgressions weren’t coded in a system of oppression that frowns upon such behaviours. Gender is always on some level something that is done and the doing is bound up with being. To strive for a definition that reduces one to the other or excludes one or the other is as far as I understand it, a misunderstanding, and this is perhaps where your confusion comes from.With this understanding I would then say that it is not very surprising that you’re finding dead-ends and confusion by trying to parse an understanding of gender through split-attraction model type thinking. This is a relatively recent way of thinking about sexuality within the LGBT community, (one that I personally find no stock in), butting up against around thirty years of queer feminist thought, and a whole history of LGBT lives and experiences. You will probably find that trying to think through gender in ace/aro modes of thought is an impossible task without this appreciation of transgender history or an understanding of heterosexuality as the oppressive action of gender.I’m not surprised then, that you find defeat instead of freedom; for many, gender is something that is survived. Freedom can only come with the abolition of gender, that is the end of the “material, social, and economic dominance of men and exploitation of women” (Escalante). So to speak of a commonality, perhaps start reading about how these oppressive systems work. Understanding all of this is not an easy task. Below I’ll feed a few pointers on a theoretical level, and as such can throw up inaccessible language. My hope is that if you do struggle with any of it, from here you can google keywords and hopefully find more sources that suit you better.For the theoretical exploration of such see: Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and Monique Wittig’s The Straight Mind and Other Essays (see One is Not Born a Woman - I haven’t yet managed to find a pdf for the whole book). Or key words: material feminism, Butler, gender performance, heterosexuality, the straight mind. CW: (this will be quite broad but I know Wittig talks about:) pornography, sexual harassment, slavery.For an account of gender which explores these concepts see Susan Stryker’s My Words to Victor Frankenstein…. In this Stryker mixes a lived personal experience with gender as a trans woman alongside theoretical musings. Key words: transfeminism, transgender studies, transgender rage. CW: surgery, suicide, TERF stuff, pregnancy, birth.I would also recommend investing yourself in transgender voices and histories, so you can see how a varied approach to gender throughout history has been undertaken and lived. How complexities and contradictions have been embodied and embraced complexly by trans individuals. See Paris is Burning for what has become an important moment in LGBT cinema and history. CW death, accounts of violence, mentions of surgery, talk about sex.Also check out One From the Vaults a trans history podcast by Morgan M. Page. (Also available on iTunes, etc. I think.) In this engrossing podcast, Page tells the stories of various trans - or at least gender transgressive - people throughout history, including clips of them, letters, interviews, etc.. It comes with “all the dirt, gossip, and glamour from trans history” and so shows the variety of our trans ancestors throughout history, good and bad, happy and sad; encompassing all different ways of doing gender and different ways of being.In terms of your own personal questioning of gender, I would do as I advised here. Do gender: evoke man, evoke woman, evoke neither. Try things out, see what you feel. Explore yourself and your own embodiment and explore the feelings that arise out of this. At the end of the day, gender isn’t something that originates from books and articles, it is lived and done out in the world.I wish you the very best on your journey!

[nerdgasrnz]

This is so stupid and frustrating bullshit bc like... I'm VERY new to navigating concepts of gender and sexuality from a new, non cis/het lens. There's terms and history I need to learn. That I'm STILL learning.

But then there's these super popular posts with all this Ace Discourse word soup that is just hard to decipher. WORSE for people who lack even more energy and patience.

Posts whrre I'm not fucking sure if I'm actually surrounded by people that support me, or just see me and others like me as a "special snowflake" trying to fit in, wanting to be oppresssd. Adding to the confusion about if I have enough "gold stars" on my queer card to qualify me to get "in."

Those posts with tens of thousands of notes talking about how """Exclusionists""" deserve to die. The "logic" for who they mean and why is needle buried in a 7 paragraph haystack.

On that side, you have the Intellectuals™ who flower up their bigotry at the length of an SAT Essay so they can fool impressionable people** into into thinking that what they're saying is worthwhile. But when they talk about "Exclusionists?" You don't know if they actually mean ignorant people excluding all Aros/Aces from what it "really" means to be queer, or if they're saying "all those filthy gays should die along with their allosexual* bretheren"

And then those people get mad when it's explained MULTIPLE TIMES how a word is horrible, because it lumps queer people with cis/straight people? Does that really sound like it makes sense? That is why "Allosexual" is an actual not good word!!! like sheesh just trust us on this one okay? "Non-Ace" works fine as a distinction.

So on the other side, you have those **Impressionable People who are blown away by these big words that don't actually make sense together.

"BUT HEY the post has a lot of notes, so they must be right! Now, let's throw together some similar-sounding words on topics where I actually don't know my stance. Let's contribute to a volatile, negative discussion to feel Valid™!!!"

So then, this leads to not just excessive use of the word "Allosexual" in reference to people that donot want to be categorized the same way as cisgender, heterosexual people: You also get people throwing around "terf" like it's just a quirky, acceptable tumblr insult.

But those people don't know that a "Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist" is actually a gigantic warning for other peoples' safety. Transgender safety. Because RadFems like them want to oppress everyone they don't consider "real women" Like transgender people.

(re: the "Kill All Men" mantra, which to them, includes and misgenders Trans/Nonbinary people under the guise of "Womens' Rights" lmao)

With Buzzword Bigot's popularity, and naïve Mob Member #476, you get this Ace Discourse garbage: where you can't really tell which side hates you? Or if both sides hate you? Do THEY know why they hate you? You'll never know, because nobody will SAY WHAT THEY MEAN IN PLAIN LANGUAGE!!!

That's not just Acecourse, that's the minority experience!! When it used to be easier to tell who hated you, by whoever punched and spat on you!

But now everyone tries to duck and weave being (rightfully) accused of being a bigot.

I do not blame ANY queer person for standing up against blatant homophobia and transphobia and kicking people out of their spaces. When some fucker, who HAPPENS to be Aro and/or Ace, has a lame-ass agenda to create a shitstorm for publicity, yeah, you need to gtfo!!! Nobody fucking cares if you "deserve" to be at the VIP venue, or if you "paid your dues" to be there: if you're disruptive and destructive, the bouncers are kicking you out because of the damages you're causing!!!

I do not blame ANY queer person for hating people from MY spectrum of sexuality: because people from MY community are repeating toxic, hateful behavior and ideas that already wreaked havoc on queer people's safety. Because then you get shit like an "Ace-centric," apocalyptic, Young Adult novel pitch where "people die if they're physically intimate" sounds like a good plot; but that was already a thing in real life called the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States. Which mostly plagued queer people. But yeah talk about it like it's just fiction because "those dirty allosexuals will die from that gross intercourse!"

If you're cis and on the aro/ace spectrum, and you're spouting shit that misgenders people, then yeah, trans people have every right to exclude you.

When you talk about gay bars with disdain, wanting "G-rated" alternatives, as if Queer people and Gay Bars are ALWAYS sexually explicit and never "turn it down"; you probs don't know how much you sound like one of the police officers that would arrest a queer person just for minding their fucking business.

If you don't experience attraction to the same gender in ANY way, and you're on the aro/ace spectrum, but you repeatedly talk about anyone/everyone who has interest or experience with sex like they're filthy, cursed, or diseased? Then yeah!!! Queer people don't fucking want you here!!!

Because you sound like every homophobic speech deliverer that we've EVER heard who goes on about "purity" and "innocence" and "virginity" as if they're the most sacred thing on the planet, as if lacking those things makes us "unworthy" of a happy and full life, or whatever!

Even aro/ace queer people don't want you here, because you're throwing us under the fucking bus too and you fucking know it!!! Don't pretend to feel "betrayed" as if you didn't know that Asexuality and Aromanticism are NOT cookie cutter experiences? There's sex repulsed people who aren't virgins; aros/aces that have sex. People with STD's who are WAY more pure and kind than most of us, who are putting effort in these stupid, divisive concepts on this hellsite.

If any of us wanted to experience the shit that you goddamn homophobes/transphobes were serving, we'd go crawling back to the cis/het people that already made our lives miserable! We'd listen to the family that already doesn't accept us! The public speakers that used their platform to tell us we deserve misery and death for the "debauchery" we live! We'd go back to the peers that always harrassed us!

We don't give a FUCK if you're Aromantic or Asexual spectrum; if you're gonna be hateful and not examine yourself to fix it, Queer people have every fucking reason to want you fucking gone! And it's NOT because of your sexuality or lackthereof, it's because you're just like all the other assholes that have been in our lives!!! So fuck off!!!

[probablysapphic]

what can i do if i only romantically like girls but i only feel sexually attracted to boys? like i only see myself being in a happy and healthy relationship if it's with a girl; i can't imagine falling romatically for a boy, but i feel that sexual "thing" only about them. it's weird and i feel like i'll never have a normal relationship because of this, since the gender i'm romatically attracted to should be the same as sexually, right?

Nothing is normal. Also everything is normal. If by normal relationships you mean those that are healthy, respectful, honest? They sure can exist without the sexual component. And vice versa, also without the romantic component.

Have you heard of asexual and aromantic? (And the spectrums they are on?) However, I’m not nearly enough informed about them to give advice regarding those identities, you have to find other blogs for that. But I do know that the gender you’re romantically attracted to definitely doesn’t have to be the same you’re sexually attracted to. And it’s also okay if you find yourself not sexually and/or romantically attracted to anyone! So don’t worry about being “different”, it’s all good :)

Other things I wanna tell you:

1) Like I said, it’s possible to apply the “split attraction model” to yourself (which as a girl liking girls romantically and guys sexually could be “homoromantic heterosexual”, I think? I’m not sure, though). It’s totally valid. Feel free to do that if you feel that’s working for you.

2) On the other hand, while I deeply respect it and aro/ace identities overall, it doesn’t work for everyone who is questioning their sexuality because it doesn’t leave much room for the concepts of internalized homophobia/lesbophobia and compulsory heterosexuality. Or better, room for realizing and examining the reason you’re not (yet) sexually attracted to women even though you’re interested in them romantically.(My tags: internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality)

3) Fact is, women are socialized to wanting to be desired by men and wanting to desire men. To attract them. To seek romantic and sexual relationships with them. Figuring out if that’s what you personally want and desire, meaning if this attraction is genuine or coerced is so difficult. Sometimes it feels impossible. But you don’t have to figure it out or be sure to identify a certain way. Please check out the links above. Also my questioning tag and my attraction tag might be useful.

Recently, I answered another ask that kinda goes into a similar direction like yours, it might help you, look here.

What I’m trying here is to give you all the information I have, which is that there are valid identities that lack certain and/or all types of attraction (sometimes completely, sometimes to a certain degree or under certain circumstances) - but figuring out you’re not straight is also a process. For the most of us it’s not “I’m straight”, immediately followed by the identity you figure out at the end of your questioning process. It can be steps, like in this post or this post. Or whatever else. Everyone’s journey is different but they’re all valid.

I can’t tell you your sexuality. You’re going to figure it out, though, I promise.What is helping me is getting informed and surrounding myself with positivity (making sure my dash is full off sapphic stuff, watching tv shows with characters that aren’t straight, reading fanfiction about f/f ships, etc). Maybe that’s something for you, too.Maybe you’re on the ace/aro spectrum, experiencing different attraction towards different genders; maybe you’re bi, maybe you’re a lesbian. It’s all good, it’s all fine, it’s all valid. You’ll find your way.

Your questioning process is probably gonna take a while, so be patient with yourself and don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ll get there eventually!

I’m sending good vibes your way and wish you the very best, you got this 👍

[sak-a]

What is your feel on Akira's character, him being a silent protagonist and all?

If you don’t mind me combining my own personal interpretations as well, and excuse the fact that I’ve only just beat the second boss, then here are my thoughts. I will gladly change my interpretation if I find new facts/observations.

TL;DR: Akira grew up with parents who didn’t necessarily physically abused him, but deprived him of love and what proper parents should be, and most likely emotionally abused him. Thus, he goes out of his way to be a good person who genuinely cares about people and wants to prevent more people turning out like his parents or that of the shitty society that forced him into his current situation.

From his upbringing, he’s probably wanted to rebel against his parents all this time but didn’t get a chance to do it safely/freely until he becomes a Persona user. He’s a decent guy who actually gets shit done when he sets out to do it. He’s a scheming, courageous, bold guy no matter what situation he’s in. Akira’s also kind and charismatic enough to know how to handle people and would be an excellent boyfriend.

Also he’s bi AF, fight me ATLUS.

The long rambling:

He seems to be familiar with harsh treatment since not only is it beaten over the head that nobody wants to give him a chance when he arrives at Shibuya, but I think it can be pretty much safely assumed his parents probably never gave much of a shit about him if they’re sending him to a person they only know through an acquaintance who happens to visit Sojiro’s cafe, who may not even be a regular.

He probably tries a little harder than most people to show he cares about his friends/lover so that he doesn’t turn out like his parents and so that his friends/lover don’t end up feeling like him: thrown away, alone, unwanted.

If he’s got a hidden rebellious side that isn’t released until he’s in Kamoshida’s castle we can probably assume he’s always tried to be a good boy and obey his parents and yadda yadda when he was still with them. But I’d venture a guess that his parents would be unsatisfied with him no matter what and him stepping in to save that woman was a good excuse to get him off their hands. Maybe his parents aren’t necessarily great people and would rather abide by a shitty society than stand up for what’s right.

Speaking of which, Akira was hesitant to save the woman but ends up stepping in. He’s a decent person but he was probably scared at first. Who wouldn’t be? An aggressive, drunk adult would probably have been violent with him. He protects Ann when she mentions that she feels someone watching her and so he escorts her with Ryuji without hesitation this time. He’s not scared anymore and he knows what his sense of justice is very well.

Given that he’s a silent protagonist, he’s not very talkative like the others, of course. However he still has his own distinct character. Minato/P3 doesn’t seem to care about bonding with people, as proven by the difference of social links against Minako/P3P/FeMC. Minako’s social links include the male party members and she’s generally more cheery than Minato, from her music to her dialogue options, which tells me she wants to talk to her friends over some dude from a different school. Meanwhile Minato could just get by with the social links that rank up automatically and honestly, it feels like he could care less about their lives. Yes, I’m biased.

Yu/P4 is a more naturally charismatic guy who’s gentle and is probably in a poly relationship with the main cast honestly. He has a sense of humor, considering some of the options you’re given to say. Ignoring the no homo bro vibes that are painfully in the anime, he’s a great guy. In contrast to Akira he’s liked pretty much immediately by everyone regardless of age and doesn’t seem to have any problems with his family or himself, other than he’s scared not to have friends since his previous high school.

Putting Akira against these protagonists, despite how attractive we the fandom see him, he’s probably seen as just an average quiet wallflower in the Persona universe had it not been for his probation stuff. Although we don’t see any reactions from him I’d guess he’s used to labels. Perhaps from his parents calling him useless or ungrateful? Or maybe he’s settled to just accept his situation. The Velvet Room reflects his inner soul after all and he seems to accept that he’s trapped in society’s shitty ways.

When he gets the opportunity to be a Persona user and change said society, he seems pretty happy. He’s got a lot more room to express himself and be an arrogant little shit and gains friends who come to understand him and have got his back, something he’s probably thrilled over. He has his chance to make a difference, he has people who care about him, he has a place where he can be free and let loose when the school day’s over and Morgana doesn’t bitch at him.

He has a sense of humor as well, sassy dialogue options, and bi as fuck dialogue. Ignoring the fact that you can romance adult women when he’s 15 and the terrible representation of gays aside, you can pretty much flirt with anyone in your gang but the boys don’t seem to be interested in him, either because ATLUS intervention or because he’s just not attractive to men. (I’m personally all for ace/aro Ryuji and Yusuke but anyway–)

He’s certainly bold and courageous, the prologue’s interrogation scene being a good example. You can defy writing your name despite being beaten, drugged, and trapped. If you aren’t stopped by Ryuji, you could shout that you love him over a mic. When he flirts, he flirts. Unlike people who just pick up recycled garbage, he observes certain traits about someone and makes sure to compliment them on it or flirt while keeping the other’s personality and character in mind. As a leader of thieves he’s a schemer who is probably laying out plans and tries preparing for everything at any given second.

Akira probably has a way with words with his charm and scheming mind combined. If he were in a different game he could probably be a mastermind. His fake glasses are supposed to his docile look, and he knows it. Had it not been for his “criminal record”, he could have gotten away with it. From this, I think he could be manipulative if he wanted to be.

He’s kind and gentle despite how he must have grown up and how he’s treated at the start of the game. He’s good with his hands considering how making shit like lockpicks requires attention to detail and delicate work; oh boy would I love to see how good he is with them in bed. If it comes down to getting nasty with his lover, he wants them as comfortable as possible and to satisfy them before himself. Further down the line, he’d probably want to try some kinky shit if they were down for it.

On the romance side he’d buy his lover lots of gifts and would save up as much as it takes to buy them something that would make them happy, whether it’s flowers or diamonds or whatever else. Thanks to his confidants he knows a couple good spots to take his lover, and from his lack of affection he’d probably be really close and cuddly frequently. He’d especially adore it if his lover was just as affectionate back but also probably overwhelmed that someone was actually in love with him. When he asks someone out in-game, he giggles like a nerd; he’d be overjoyed to know the person he loves returns his feelings. He’ll take his relationship slow and be anxious that he’s not “exciting” enough. From what this boy’s been through, he’s gonna need a lot of love and reassurance and support.

While Yu is also kind, I’d say how Akira’s upbringing shaped him would make Akira go out of his way to be a good person. “I’m not going to turn into someone from this society,” he thinks, and it’s not like he’s trying to fool himself or anything. He wants to make a difference, he gets involved with politics, he actually steps up to change it unlike a majority of teenagers his age who would just sit around and ask, “what can I do? I’m just a kid” and don’t bother. You want shit done? He’ll get shit done.

That’s about all I can think of right now! I hope that’s good enough for you, anon!

[grimdarkdragonspit-blog]

A friend of mine asked for a list of sexualities and related terms, so here ya go!

Androsexual: Sexual attraction towards men or those with masculine characteristics.

Androgynosexual: Being sexually attracted to both men and women, specifically to those with androgynous appearances.

Akoisexual: the feeling of attraction but not wanting it reciprocated or losing it when it is reciprocated; used as an alternative and potentially less problematic form of lithosexual/lithoromantic

Aliquasexual: not normally feeling attraction, but feeling it on occassion under specific circumstances

Amicussexual: when you’re attracted to people you’re platonically attracted to

Amorplatonic: experiencing romantic attraction but only wanting to be in queerplatonic/quasiplatonic relationships

Androphilia: an attraction primarily toward men or masculine-inclined people.

Antihaemosexuality: a sexual orientation in which one is attracted only to people who are not, at the moment, menstruating. In some extreme cases, antihaemosexuals may only be attracted to people who never menstruate, or who have never menstruated at all.

Apothi: being aromantic/asexual and not experiencing any romantic/sexual feelings in any shape or form; aromantic/asexual individuals who are romance/sex repulsed

Aromantic: feeling no romantic attraction regardless of gender or situation

Aroflux: similar to genderflux where the intensity or romantic attraction you feel fluctuates; aromantic to demiromantic to alloromantic and back

Arospike/Acespike: feeling no attraction except in occasional bursts of intense attraction and then plummeting back to no attraction

Asexual: feeling no sexual attraction regardless of gender or situation

Autosexuality: the feeling of attraction only towards oneself

Bellusromantic: having interest in conventionally romantic things yet not desiring a relationship; part of the aro spectrum

Bisexual: the feeling of attraction towards two or more genders, generally your own gender and other(s)

Borea: having an exception to your usual orientation

Burst: having spikes in attraction that fade away after a while

Cass: feeling utterly indifferent towards attraction and believing its not important

Cease: usually beeing allo- yet occasionally feeling a sudden loss of attraction and then returning to normal

Cetero: the feeling of attraction towards nonbinary people; replaces skolio- because “skolio” means bent or broken and implies that nonbinary people must be fixed; this is reserved for trans/nonbinary individuals because cis people were judging nonbinary people based off of presentation alone

Culparomantic: feeling romantic and platonic attraction at the same time

Cupio: the feeling of having no attraction towards any gender yet still desiring a sexual or romantic relationship

Demisexuality: not feeling attraction towards someone until a certain closeness or bond has been formed

Desinoromantic: when one does not experience full-on romantic attraction, but experiences “liking” someone instead of loving them romantically, at which point the attraction goes no further

Duo: having two or more well defined orientations that you switch between

Ficto: only felling a certain type of attraction towards fictional characters

Fin: feeling attraction to fem(me) identifying people

Fray: only experiencing attraction towards those you are less familiar with; the feeling is lost when they become closer or more familiar; the opposite of demi-

GERONTOSEXUALITY: Attraction primarily to elderly people.

Grey: the feeling of usually not having any attraction except occasionally depending on the situation; typically paired with asexual and aromantic

Gray-A:

1) do not normally experience sexual attraction, but can sometimes.

2) Have sexual attraction but a low sex drive

3) Have sexual attraction and drive but no desire to act upon it.

4) Those who have sexual attraction and drive but only under limited and specific circumstances.

Alternative definition:

Gray-A: (also spelled “Grey-A”) is a gray area between asexuality and sexuality

Gynephilia is an attraction primarily toward women or feminine-inclined people.

Gynosexual: Sexual attraction towards women or those with feminine characteristics.

Heteroflexible: the feeling of having mostly hetero- attraction yet having an openness for other genders

Heterosexual: the feeling of being attracted to a gender other than your own

Homosexual: the feeling of being attracted to your own gender

Iculasexual: being asexual but open to having sex

Intrasexual: a member of a multiple system who is only attracted, romantically or sexually, to other members of the same system. “Intraromantic” is a more commonly-used term, due to the difficulties of two members of the same system engaging in a sexual relationship.

Idemromantic: being able to categorize others as having either a platonic or romantic attraction based on outside factors yet feeling no difference in the type of attraction

Kalossexual: the desire to have a sexual relationship yet never feeling sexual attraction; part of the ace spectrum

Lamvano: feeling no desire to do sexual/romantic things to someone, but wanting to be on the receiving end; opposite of placio-

Lesbian: someone who identifies fully or partially as a woman who is attracted to other fully or partially identified women

Limno: experiencing attraction towards depictions of attraction (writing or drawings) but not the physical acts

Ma: feeling attraction to men

MENOSEXUAL: A little-known orientation, menosexuality is attraction primarily or entirely to people who are menstruating. It is the opposite of antihaemosexuality.

Min: feeling attraction to masculine identifying people

Multisexuality: a sexual orientation wherein one is only attracted to members of multiple systems. In some cases, a multisexual is only attracted to one member of a system; in others, they may be attracted to several members of the same system, to everyone in the same system, or to people from separate systems. One thing all multisexuals have in common, though, is that they only experience romantic or sexual attraction toward members of multiple systems.

Neu: feeling attraction towards people who are genderless

Nin: feeling attraction towards androgynous identifying people

Nocisma: feeling attraction to everyone except cis men because of associated oppression

Noma: experiencing attraction to every gender except for self identifying men

Novi: feeling complicated attraction or lack thereof in such a way that it is difficult or impossible to fit into one word or term

Novo: when one’s orientation changes with gender

Nowo: experiencing attraction to every gender except for self identifying women

Objectumsexual: Someone who is sexually attracted to inanimate objects. (In this sense, this is not a fetish, for the person sees the object as a partner, not a way to enhance a separate sexual relationship with another person)

Omni: the feeling of a lack of preference in gender and may be attracted to all genders equally; similar to pan-

Pan: the feeling of attraction towards any gender or all genders; similar to omni-

Penulti: feeling attraction towards every gender except your own

Platoniromantic: feeling no difference between platonic and romantic attraction

Polar: feeling either extreme attraction or intense repulsion

Poly: the feeling of attraction towards most or several genders (but not all)

Polyamory: the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Pomosexual (the “pomo” means “postmodern”): a label used to describe those who do not self-identify as gay, straight, or bi, because they feel such labels are unnecessary and outdated.

Pre: a placeholder term for someone who doesn’t think they’ve experienced enough attraction to know their orientation

Proqua: feeling attracted to feminine people when you yourself are feminine

Proquu: feeling attracted to masculine people when you yourself are masculine

Queer: This is sometimes used as an umbrella term for those who do not identify as heterosexual. It can also refer to someone who does not fit any specific sexuality.

Quoiromantic: from the French word quoi meaning “what”; the feeling of not being able to distinguish romantic from platonic attraction and therefore being unsure if one has experienced it; used to replace wtfromantic because of vulgarity

Recip: the feeling of only experiencing attraction once someone else has experienced it towards them first

Requies: not feeling attraction when emotionally exhausted

Sapiosexuality: a sexual orientation where the primary feature that one finds attractive is intelligence, rather than appearance or body. It commonly goes hand-in-hand with asexual-spectrum orientations.

Sans: when there’s no trend line in the attraction one feels, it just does what it does

Sensu: an orientation that is based off of sensuality as opposed to romance, sexuality, etc; different from sensual orientation; when romantic or sexual type pleasure is derived from sensual acts or situations

Skoliosexual: the feeling of attraction towards nonbinary genders; replaced by cetero- because of problematic wording

Specio: feeling attraction towards someone based off of specific traits, not gender

Thym: feeling attraction which varies depending on emotional state

Volit: feeling attraction that is not directed at anyone in particular

Woma: feeling attraction to women

Zoosexuality (occasionally called “zoophilia”) :the sexual attraction to non-human animals. Most zoosexuals are only attracted to members of one particular species, or to members of closely-related species; and most zoosexuals are attracted to mammals.

If there are any others you know about, please let me know so that I can add them to the list. Hope these help!

[afearing]

since apparently theres no consequences for delivering unto this website extremely long and good takes i will present to you my hot take on the ace d'escourse, with no sources because I Dont Feel Like It. its more words than is reasonable bc i have been stewing in this for like 4 years and if i dont type it out at some point im going to fucking lose it. no, literally, it’s 3 pages long in word about shit no one cares about anymore. please remember to like and subscribe.

some background on me, i id’d as ace for something like 8 years, from the first time i read the wikipedia page on it back in maybe 2009 or thereabouts. i also id’d as aro for about a year in 2016. that is to say, i have a lot of compassion and understanding for asexual individuals and feel i understand the inclusionist side of the argument pretty well, as i never questioned inclusionism until maybe 2014 or so, when the discourse blew up. i took some time off tumblr because i was so fucking distraught to think that, as i id’d as aroace at the time, that i had to come to terms with not being lgbt. lol i was a little too attached to being ‘gay’ because... fun fact, past dumbass self... you are gay. anyway, i really dont want anyone to feel that i hate them, but after i cooled off a little bit i realized that the exclusionist take on asexuality just makes more sense. hopefully i can explain why clearly enough.

i really believe that what is understood as aphobia is 100% of the time simply a manifestation of our culture’s expectations surrounding sexuality. while “expectations surrounding sexuality” as a very broad topic does indeed cover both the lgbt community and people on the ace spectrum, facing these issues does NOT make a person lgbt. i subscribe to the idea that lgbt is for people targeted directly by homophobia and transphobia. ace issues ARE super important to talk about and the whole inclus/exclus nonsense is entirely because this discourse has been put under the wrong category. im aware that probably most people will not care that much about my opinion on the correct framing of asexual activism as i no longer id as ace but i think this is important for everyone. sexual expectations also weigh on straight individuals, especially women, and i’m going to describe a few examples to try to demonstrate why i believe both that it doesn’t make sense to consider asexuality lgbt as well as why it does make sense to frame it as an issue based mainly in misogyny.

call out post for myself, i use reddit, and i think the r/childfree community is a good example of what i think the framing should be like. although it’s acknowledged that not wanting children has larger social consequences for women, both men and women talk about their issues in the forum, including horrific accounts of reproductive coercion and rape, the intersections with race/being lgbt/ageism (although they could do a LOT better with intersectionality, many posters do touch upon it), profoundly cruel comments made by those who have/want children, difficulty finding an understanding relationship partner, discrimination at work, misunderstandings and even hatred from family and acquaintances, discrimination in healthcare, etc.

i think you can tell where i’m going with this. even though being childfree cuts against the expectations for sexuality in most societies, even though it leads to unfair judgment from others, and even though they face discrimination on the basis of the way they express their sexuality, childfree people do NOT frame parenthood/childfreedom as an axis of oppression, nor do they claim that their lack of desire for children makes them lgbt. it’s not even a question if straight childfree people are straight, because duh? nor if the presence of lgbt childfree people makes the whole community fall under the lgbt umbrella, because it obviously doesn’t.

to drive the point home, the reason why this is NOT an axis of oppression is because parents face a ton of issues as well! they also face reproductive coercion as well as judgment over the number of kids they have, constant scrutiny and moralization over every aspect of their parenthood style, judgment based on parents’ age/wealth/sexuality/marital or dating status/race, housing and employment discrimination, especially for mothers, the government hating poor parents and cutting their benefits, and more i’m sure i’m not thinking of. again, this is due to societal expectations of sexuality. to complete the analogy, people who aren’t ace face their own set of challenges and discrimination. part of homophobia/biphobia is tinged with hatred of our sexual attraction; no one except for straight white men is allowed to really express their sexuality without backlash, and even then there is this shame leading to a lack of proper sex ed and horribly unhealthy understandings of sexual attraction in a large portion of the populace. so calling aphobia an axis of oppression is just not right. and in addition, the large proportion of lgbt aces doesn’t make asexuality lgbt, that’s not how groups work.

some more on what i mean by ‘expectations around sexuality’... in terms of my experience in the US, there is some blueprint in many people’s minds of what a person should be like in terms of sexuality, and that is something like “cishet, abled man, who is neither ace nor aro, who gets laid regularly (but not to excess) starting no later than 18 and ending no later than 28 when he settles down with one cishet abled wife, also neither ace nor aro, who has only had sex with up to three committed boyfriends, and they have precisely two children, approximately two years apart in age, whom the parents can financially and emotionally support to the utmost, because they are also moderately to very well off, and the parents work under traditional gender roles to raise their children as conventionally as possible.” and if you deviate from this script in ANY way that’s viewed with moral panic and scrutiny by someone. and the connection to misogyny is that women are seen as sort of the bastions of sexual morality. we are punished especially harshly for nonconformity.

if you’re poor you’re fucked because either you don’t have kids or you can’t send them off to private schools and feed them fancy organic shit. if you’re lgbt or polyamorous or aro or ace? fucked! if you dare to reproduce as a disabled person, and if your disability impacts your parenthood, especially for women, you’re practically crucified even in liberal circles. if you have too few kids or too many (don’t you know only kids turn out weird? / how can you possibly raise 5 children properly?), if you have too much sex or too little, if you split up the work in your relationship not along gender lines, if you do unconventional things in your parenthood, like accept your trans kids or move a lot or any number of other things, the social judgment rains down like the fires of fucking hell. meaning practically no one can escape it!! huge bonus to the screaming crowd with pitchforks if you’re a person of color or a woman, mega ultra bonus to women of color.

but does that make everyone i just talked about lgbt? no! although every single one of the groups i mentioned is tangentially related through this issue, even though all of them face a lot of horrible problems and discrimination, that does not make those issues inherently lgbt. again, they are tangentially related and i could see a good case for solidarity among many of the groups mentioned; all of them are fighting for greater acceptance of different kinds of relationships, greater acceptance of seeking happiness and being who you are rather than pressuring everyone to conform as much as possible to the LifeScript. but all of those groups are equally related to the lgbt community - that is, tangentially only. just as you can be childfree and straight, a stay-at-home dad and straight, a straight woman of color, so too can you be polyamorous and straight, ace and straight, or aro and straight.

that’s it for my main point. ace and aro people? your lives are hard. i’m not going to downplay it in any way because i know there are a lot of people who actually hate your guts. fuck, i’ve seen people full-on shittalk asexuality, in the internet and real life, in the most blatant of ways, so it’s not just something you can necessarily escape by logging off. not as much so for aro people tbh but i predict as much once the Public gets more wind of your existence. i fully believe that you face a higher risk of sexual assault; discrimination in relationships, housing, and the workplace; horrible comments from everyone who thinks their shitty opinion on your sexuality and love life matters; and I believe you that that hurts and is terrible and that you deserve a place to discuss and provide support.

but. those issues are not exclusive to you. they’re not exclusive to lgbt people, or oppressed people, and so those issues don’t and cannot make you lgbt, nor do they make ace/aro vs. allo an axis of oppression. our communities intersect, yes, considerably, but you are not a subset of lgbt. perhaps our rhetoric can help you, but because straight ace and aro people exist you cannot and should not consider yourselves lgb+. i think you understand that the issues you face are a form of oppression, but they are the result of the toxic and misogynistic sex culture in this society, which, yes, targets lgbt people but also, practically everyone, including groups which are definitively absolutely not inherently lgbt, such as parents, gnc straight people, poc, disabled people, the list goes on.

to conclude, what really converted me to being an ace exclusionist was the example of a straight grey or demi ace. how could you possibly argue that someone who falls in love with the opposite gender only, but with more conditions or less frequently than someone not aspec, is lgb+, can call themselves queer, etc.? exactly what material reality does that person share with a gay or bi person? i think that their issues fall in line with aspec community issues but extremely clearly not at all with lgbt ones. 

the end but post script since i brought up orientation modifiers: perhaps it isn’t my place to say, but i don’t think that microlabels are very healthy and that it would make more sense for the ace community to work on expanding the idea of what sexuality is than to try to create a label to describe every single person’s experience of their sexuality. not that i think you should necessarily kick grey ace people out of the aspec community or that they’re not valid or whatever, but that perhaps it makes more sense to say that some people experience sexual attraction less frequently, and that’s alright. i don’t know.  i spent sophomore year of high school poring over those mogai blogs looking for some new orientation label that would make me go like, oh my god that’s me! and believing that if those labels helped people feel that way they weren’t doing any harm. but what actually finally made me feel like that was expanding my understanding of what attraction is and a better conception of lesbian issues and why i might feel so disconnected from my sexuality and why i might be obsessing over every interaction with a guy looking for signs i was attracted to him but feel super disgusted whenever they exhibited interest in me. i spent so long trying to go like maybe im cupioromantic lithsexual and feeling terrified that that i had such a weird and esoteric sexuality that no one could ever possibly understand enough to be in a relationship with me... like, ok dyke! i know a lot of people have had similar experiences and i don’t think i know a whole ton of people now in college who are still doing that, which makes me think those labels are more harmful than not. 

i guess that’s anecdotal but it’s easier for me to believe that a person could cling to those labels due to internalized homophobia than actually have a new form of sexuality heretofore undiscovered throughout all human history, but that’s just me. and so many of them just sound so unhealthy, like dreadsexual. i really wish people would work on expanding what not being asexual can mean and look like and i dont think there would be this drive to create these labels anymore. even demisexual which i think is probably the most mainstream conditional orientation, i think many people who have never heard of it and are perfectly content not to would describe the way they experience sexuality a similar way and just consider it normal. sexual attraction isn’t necessarily having your nethers set aflame upon first making eye contact with someone, it looks different for every person and it’s alright to just be how you are without making it part of your whole identity.

The End II. this is 2,200 words. if you read this far you’re a fucking mad l- *the academy cuts my mic line while looking directly at the camera like in the office*

[lunarjustice]

so many people have moved from “cishet aces online have been acting homophobic” to “if youre ace youre not lgbtq” likeeee you. you. simply cannot generalize that much. you cant. there are many lgbtq ace/aro spectrum people & like...... Not Being SGA does not immediately mean theyre not a sexual minority........? of course if someone is not sga/trans they cant use the word queer & they cant discuss homophobia/transphobia or consider themselves on the same level but you cant. you cant just kick every ace person out on the curb like that. like? this is a more complex issue than just Us vs Them. obviously a lack of attraction is not the same thing as “different” attractions but lgbtqia+ has always been for minority gender & sexual identities

it doesnt make sense to me to exclude people on a minority identity spectrum, who often intersect with lgbtq, any more than it makes sense to create separate communities for mono & poly sexualities. being gay & being trans are very different concepts but were still in the same community because issues of sex & gender are so conflated. in the same way, the way you experience attraction or dont like.. is pretty connected to other sexual identities actually

i get that they arent all sga & they cant all call themselves queer but to just cut it down the middle like that leaves many people hanging between the two? you cant just hear “ace” & assume theyre also cishet. you guys have got to understand that human identity is more complex than that. i know more “true” lgbtq ace or aro people than cishet ace people, personally.  sga ace/aro people exist, & so do trans ace/aro people

im demisexual which is like.. Both sga & ‘technically’ ace. putting aside my gender identity, if you were to say that because demi is considered part of the ace spectrum im no longer lgbtq that would be straight up wrong. like im literally in a gay relationship. theres no way you can sit there & tell me because my sexuality falls on the ace spectrum that excludes me from being queer automatically. the two terms are not mutually exclusive, yet this whole argument is taking place upon the assumption that they are & cannot exist together

(i refuse to use the word allosexual because of how homophobic ace people have practically been using it as a slur but) people who arent on the ace spectrum seem to all be assuming “oh well lack of attraction is completely normal so they arent lgbtq.” like... no? thats the whole point, most people dont lack attraction. thats why.. its a minority identity. of course its not on the same level of homophobia, & people who cry “aphobia” are often homophobic as well as stupid, but they still are very much a sexual orientation minority. which is the globally accepted meaning of the lgbtqia+ community

giving cishet aces a place in the community or not is a point of contention which i understand both arguments for, & i am not trying to take a stand on cishet ace identity right now. i actually dont care all that much. i care because non-ace people have been taking the argument about 10 steps too far & saying that anyone who identifies as ace/aro cannot be in the community or be lgbtq+

none of this is an excuse for blatant homophobia & transphobia coming from cishet aces. that is unacceptable, & adds to the hatred & violence that sga & trans people face in their lives, both online & irl. but in the same way that transphobia from cis gay men does not define every gay person, it would be reckless to base your ace spectrum exclusion arguments on cishet aces alone. there are many more of us than just them, & many of us are also rightfully part of the lgbtq+ community. so the next time anyone goes to say that ace people arent lgbtq, i would ask that you take a moment to consider exactly who would be included under that label