A hand-painted china plate at a barbeque

Luckily, last year I got my hands on 結婚の自由—「最小結婚」から考える (Marriage Freedom: Essays Inspired by Minimizing Marriage), an anthology of chapters responding to or inspired by Elizabeth Brake’s work, and [...] I would like to share with you some of what Dr. Kubota has to say so that one can easily understand the constituent parts that make up amatonormativity.

You know, when this book first arrived in the mail, I did a quick little flip-through to get an idea of the structure of the book and what have you, and to see that all of the overly detailed tables were in the last chapter?? Absolute torment.

But I forced myself to read the chapters in order (not necessarily required for this book, after chapter 1), and it did keep me on track as I pushed through the difficult concepts (Derrida 💀) to get to that promised reward... of delicious, delicious theoretical models in delectable chart format.

So I just watched Rowan Ellis' latest video, which is about "The Discourse," and I don't really know how to feel about it.

By which I mean, I'm glad that she and several of these people she interviewed want to "get past 101 topics" and discuss how we actually organize for our issues. Since those people have large platforms, maybe they can actually bend the discourse in that direction.

But like, I personally am so Tired. I actually wound down the scholarship nonprofit this year because it had become apparent to me that I was not going to be capable of getting it off the ground, and that I needed to rethink the whole thing from square one. As is always the case with fighting the Sunk Cost Fallacy, though, it was a pretty bitter pill to swallow how little I can do. How hard it was fighting with people to try and get them to look to what we could build for the future and meeting with little to no success.

But like, maybe this is another 2009 moment, you know? One I'll look back on in hindsight like, "ah, finally the community was ready, and in 2024 things started to change." But if that's the case, if all of these loud voices are saying "it's time to go," why do I feel so absolutely terrible about it? Like, heart-racing-from-dread bad about it?

Oh, boy, I'm not even sure I could make a list of everything that was wrong with it... but you know I will try! :3

Factual Errors

The Demi flags on the cover have the wrong size stripes. Yes, you read right: this book is so bad, even the cover is wrong

They define the "asexual spectrum" to mean sex-averse/indifferent/favorable???

And then they call sex-favorable "sex-charmed"?????? And also "sex-enthused"

And they equate being gray-a to being sex favorable in some way, which is. Certainly a take.

They make a chart of "the Split Attraction Model" (already problematic) that's the first cartesian quadrant with an x-axis labeled "Romance" and a y-axis labeled "Sexual" and then put the tiniest, tiniest little circle around (0,0) to say that's where aroaces are.

There's a weird Pride and Prejudice metaphor that I think is incorrect to the source material, but I'm not an Austen expert and I see inexplicable P&P references more often than one would imagine, so we can let this one slide....

Bad Writing/Praxis

They say: "If you're not asexual, you're allosexual, be you gay, straight, or anywhere on the spectrum." Uhhhhh last I checked, people on the asexual spectrum are asexual. Or, this could just be really poorly written. They come back later to say that there are "just ace people and allo people" though.

They say that asexuality means not experiencing sexual attraction and nothing else—which is at odds with the way most community members actually define it

They also clumsily hit the talking point about "being ace doesn't stop me from from wanting to have a loving relationship or a family"

In fact, they hit a lot of cliché talking points, including some that have been criticized, but I guess... that's not... a crime....

There's an exploration of asexual "stereotypes" that I found to be confusing and incomplete

They call sex a "basic human need" which... is not helping

There's a conversation about whether or not aces are welcome in "LGBTQIA+" spaces, which didn't sit right with me, but also.... consult the acronym you have used.........

They call the OED "English's Boss," which I take exception to because no dictionary is the boss of English!!

Overall lack of nuance and accepts normative framing instead of challenging it.

I mean, I could summarize it, but why do that when a meme would do?

Lilies and Voices Born Upon the Wind/百合と声と風纏い (Yuri to Koe to Kazematoi) has gotten an official English-language release! Volume 1 is out now and Volume 2 is scheduled to be released at the end of February.

This is a coming-of-age manga that somehow also manages to be a light-hearted tale of a world where everyone is ace and that’s how we like it. I do have a couple of reservations about it, but just, don’t think about it too seriously and enjoy the way everything is way too dramatic all the time for no reason in a subversion of typical romantic tropes, and you will enjoy it (^^)

Yuri to Koe to Kazematoi has gotten an official English-language release as “Lilies and Voices Born Upon the Wind”! Volume 1 is out now and Volume 2 is scheduled to be released at the end of February.

This is a coming-of-age manga that somehow also manages to be a light-hearted tale of a world where everyone is ace and that’s how we like it. I do have a couple of reservations about it, but just, don’t think about it too seriously and enjoy the way everything is way too dramatic all the time for no reason in a subversion of typical romantic tropes, and you will enjoy it (^^)

I don’t know how to do this without it coming off as gatekeep-y, so I mostly try to keep my mouth shut, but this writing us out of our own history really needs to stop. Coy makes a really solid argument here, but I’d also like to underline the wider implications. I.e., to be crystal clear: if you are perpetuating the narrative of “queerplatonic” as a solely aro term, you are echoing lateral aggression against aces. I’m not saying that’s your intent or that you are even aware that that’s what’s happening; a lot of the people who say it are ace themselves. But, ironically, a misapprehension of identity is kind of at the core of the problem here.

I have heard the defense of this narrative so many times that, in fact, aro people were involved, and so therefore it’s not inaccurate to say it’s an “aro word.” The argument continues that what “queerplatonic” is talking about has to do with a question of romantic-or-not, and so that’s what’s important; many people explicitly define QPRs as maybe-sexual but definitely not romantic. And not to be operatic about it, but: you fools!!! Do you not see that this is exactly why the ace context is important??? Those early conversations didn’t bother to mention sex because we all assumed there would be no sex. It was baked into the premise from the beginning. Don’t you see????

To reiterate: I’m not saying that maybe-sexual-but-not-romantic relationships are not “queerplatonic.” This word is yours to use as you see fit, and I know I’m not speaking out of turn here because Kaz and Sci have been dragged out here over and over to say as much. But by the same token, you can’t define us out of our own word. Especially because, in case you missed it in the last sentence, we can hear you. When I first saw this post and discovered that OP had turned off most of the ways to contact them privately, I thought maybe I had no choice but to reblog it. That’s what people normally do to disagree with something, right? But I read it again from the top and my heart sunk in my chest and all I could think was, “I can’t reblog this knowing that it will put this pus in front of my friends’ faces.” I hope that they don’t interact with this post. I hope that they miss it completely and they keep posting about [redacted] and their new [redacted] and it never falls before their eyeballs.

In some ways, this is a small-potatoes kind of problem, because, in sober analysis, we are being erased left and right by published authors and asexual studies PhDs, and the entire orientation--nay, the entire queer community--is under attack from institutional forces. All of those things are far more consequential than a drip-drip-drip of random people on tumblr with bad takes. But at the same time when the people who are supposed to be members of our community trample over us, it makes all those other things feel hopeless.

One of the claims in George Norman’s thesis[1] that I have been trying to give due consideration to instead of dismissing out of hand is that, according to him, it is easier for men to “get ahead” in ace circles, an advantage he feels he has enjoyed himself. The thing that I find puzzling about this is not the assertion itself, but the caveat that it is within communities it’s true. As I say, I neither buy “easier” assertions, nor think they’re particular productive, but one advantage I do perceive ace men as having is that their declarations of identity are more readily believed and taken more seriously.[2] I can’t help but think that Satoru and Mitsuru were put in their positions as informal “professors of aceness” to speak to the outsider audience. The optics of that does make me uncomfortable, especially because their opportunities to info dump to the audience are often done under the in-universe guise of teaching their Young Ace women protags.

Add to that that the only example I can think of a canon ace man not being put in a romantic relationship causes his spurned suitor to turn in a vengeful snake monster... and then get put into a romantic relationship... and I kind of wonder about the kind of burden we’re putting on these fictional gentlemen and if it’s helpful or affirming at all to real ones.[3]

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[1] To remind: I have a lot of problems with it and I think linking it without some criticism to that effect would be irresponsible, which criticism does not really belong in one of these short posts. I link it in the multidirectional memory post from July if you really must.

[2] I think any “easier” narrative we might build off this immediately falls apart, since being taken seriously is the precondition for attracting trouble.