aromanticising your faves since 2017

i never felt like i would die of lack of sex but when i felt my stomatch empty because we lacked money on my house for a long time?

I'll add smth here cos I learned after posting this on IG that people still aren't entirely understanding how scary and dangerous this is. Ppl kept saying to me 'I can still buy your book in shops though' or 'Its okay, I'll order your book into my library!'

I dont give af about my book lol No one outside of Ace ppl ever read it, its yearly sales don't even cover a month of expenses for me.

The thing you should all be concerned about is that a totally benign unheard of book about someone's every day life is being banned. And those laws listed above are passing through US government right now. One of those laws would make it so that any teacher/librarian in the US could lose their job/go to prison for simply sharing 'ideology'- and I don't mean only lgbtq folk, these laws are attacking black history, civil rights history, disability rep in books. Just talking about these things will now legally be considered a 'dangerous ideology'.

And once that's set into law, the US government has backing via law to go ahead and say 'if these books aren't legally allowed in schools, then they shouldn't be allowed in shops, either.' And from there it sets up a great argument for 'The dangerous content in these books is lawfully being removed from public, shouldn't we be lawfully removing the people living out/promoting this ideology too?'

I can see why ppl don't fully understand how dangerous book bannings are, if they're not familiar with the history of fascism. If you're interested, there are plenty of graphic novels that share this history via first hand accounts- Maus, Persepolis, Banned Book Club.

But guess what? You're on limited time to get these via libraries...cos all three of these books are on banned lists too, and they got nothing to do with lgbtq rep, and everything to do with warning ppl about fascism.

And the US government knows it can get away with this, because they are passing these laws as we speak and barely anyone is doing anything about it or talking about it. I've been trying to talk about it for years and no one does anything except say to me 'don't worry, I'll buy your book!' or say its a badge of honour that I have a banned book.

In fact, I use them in a way that is actively anti-exclusionist.

Asexuality is experiencing little to no sexual attraction, while black-stripe asexuality is a microlabel specifically indicating 0 sexual attraction. Black-stripe asexuality actively acknowledges the existence of other types of asexuality. Black-stripe asexuals can even be sex-favorable and partnering! It is a microlabel solely describing that the level of attraction experienced is 0, as opposed to other ace microlabels such as demisexual, greysexual, etc.

Aromanticism is experiencing little to no romantic attraction, while green-stripe aromanticism is a microlabel specifically indicating 0 romantic attraction. Green-stripe aromanticism actively acknowledges the existence of other types of aromanticism. Green-stripe aromantics can even be romance favorable and partnering! It is a microlabel solely describing that the level of attraction experienced is 0, as opposed to other aro microlabels such as demiromantic, greyromantic, etc.

So often, when people refuse to use these terms, they instead refer to this "no" end of the spectrum as "fully" aro or ace, which inherently implies that anyone who experiences some level of attraction isn't fully aro or ace. Um, that's actively aphobic.

I've seen people criticize these terms for being too similar to gold-star lesbianism, but there's a huge difference: gold-star lesbianism is about action and makes a moral judgement. Black-stripe ace, green-stripe aro, and bold-stripe aroace are microlabels that are meant to accurately describe level of attraction without invalidating or judging any other aspec microlabels. They inherently acknowledge that the -stripe experience is not universal to all people under that same a-spectrum.

1) His character doesn’t exist in Homer’s Odyssey and was taken from Virgil’s Aeneid and given to him instead of giving him an actual character in the Odyssey. If someone were to visit the original source material, his role will not even be there.

2) He is essentially the dead wife of the plot, and is also one of the youngest characters. He haunts the narrative, which is a pretty common role given to women so as to not actually write them into the plot, but please do keep telling me that there is absolutely no transphobic or misogynistic biases towards why Elliot Page was specifically selected to play Sinon.

3) He still only gets a combined amount of about five minutes of screentime, and considering this is the most notable role he’s recieved since coming out 5+ years ago… I don’t think this is proof that transitioning has benefited his career. Every time Elliot Page is even mentioned by name, the internet goes on a horrifically transphobic crusade for months until he’s forced back into obscurity. His acting career has objectively tanked since coming out.

4) Elliot Page has already worked with Chrisopher Nolan and was given a (noteably) bigger role in Inception pre-transition. Christopher Nolan did not “wait” for Elliot Page to transition (whatever the fuck that means), the two already knew each other from previous projects.

like, the OP of one particular post that went around got mad at people in the notes for calling them out, talking about how they were just trying to use this as an example to talk about misogynistic writing and "see, you derailed this post about how women are treated to talk about a man!" but its more than just an ill decision on their part.

people are so eager to make the joke that Page transitioned as is now getting better roles, regardless of whether or not its true. people are eager because its a joke that paints such a clear, pointed image of how cis women are affected by misogyny. its the same reason people love "if men could get pregnant..." jokes and sayings even when they are supposedly trans-inclusive. its the same reason that gender studies classes motherfucking love talking about how binary trans men and women in office jobs lose or gain male privilege, because it reduces trans experiences to a vehicle to illustrate cis women's oppression and cis men's privilege.

As in, they killed 41% of all the Jews on earth in just four years.

As in, this was called the "Final Solution" because it was their solution to the world's "Jewish Question."

The problem was that Jews existed. The question was how to save human societies from the Jews' inevitable corruption.

As Hitler wrote in 1919:

"Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.

"In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations."

That is Nazi talk. That is white supremacy.

It is impossible to end white supremacy if you don't know that Jews are still one of its favorite targets.

I don't think it's possible to even fight white supremacy if you're using some of its jargon, oblivious to the rest of the dogwhistles, and in agreement with it that Jews are a privileged, powerful oppressor class.

If you specifically just mean evil, or fascist, or racist, or queer-hating, then say so.

They were the end result of 2000 years of Christianity and every culture created or influenced by Christianity.

They were what happens when, after millenia of people in power insisting that the Jews are the source of all evil, and the poor aren't suffering because of greedy aristocrats but because of greedy Jews, and the people aren't rejecting our ideas because our ideas are flawed, but because of the Jews and their vile corruption, and we only lost the war because the Jews betrayed us, and our economy is only failing because the Jews betrayed us, a group rose to power who fully believed all of that.

The Nazis did not point to the Jews as the cause of every flaw they saw in the world because it was easy, but because they thought it was true.

And they got as far as they did because those ideas were so imbedded in not only Germany, but every culture created or significantly influenced by Christianity--very much including Islamic and Arabic cultures--that people around them may not have wanted to live under Nazi rule themselves, but what those guys had to say about the Jews generally seemed pretty reasonable.

Law. Do I even need to mention it?

Religion. Duh. For instance, in 1946 the Catholic church disciplined a priest for saying "hey the Kielce pogrom was bad". Although to be fair this was in keeping with their official policy of "the Catholic Church is apolitical and 'don't kill Jews' is political". Apparently, we also caused our pogroms "exclusively" by our officials' behavior (to be fair this was an unofficial publication).

Literature. Ezra Pound. T S Eliot. Shakespeare. Roald Dahl. Dostoyevsky. Jonathan Swift. Tolstoy. Carlyle. What do these figures have in common? All of them were antisemitic. (In the case of Pound, a literal Nazi, but that's beside the point.)

Language. In many languages, including English, the word for 'Jew' is a synonym of miserliness and being a cheapskate. This occurs in other languages, sometimes with (less common?) synonyms: Albanian (along with 'cowardly'), Belarusian, French, Norwegian (Bokmal), Polish, Russian, Swedish. Sometimes it means other bad things: Danish ('to steal'), Dutch (someone dishonest), Kabyle (a coward, but specifically female Jews; Kabyle is a North African Amazigh language). But let's focus on English. English with its Svengali (instead of being satisfied with just manipulator, say), its Shylock (in addition to usurer), its Judas (dissatisfied with traitor). Its cabal (from kabbalah, the Jews must be up to something with their calculations). Other examples abound.

Nature, surely, would be blissfully--nope. The 'Wandering Jew' plant is a real plant.

Natural disasters would cause problems for us, and of course there was the 'Jewish lightning' myth, that we'd set things on fire for the insurance money. (Some insurance companies wouldn't insure people whose last names ended in sky or ski, which presumably got a lot of Poles also). I was once absently reading a book of old humorous dictionary definitions, The Foolish Dictionary by Gideon Wurdz. I made it about three pages into the non-introduction content (screengrab from archive.org)

And it was just casually thrown in there as a joke. I don't know why this made such an impression on me when I was first unpleasantly surprised by it years ago -- I know it was normalized, I know most people would've smiled and kept reading. I just...it's something about the utter lack of attention given to it. It's on the bottom of a page, right after Argument ("Breaking and entering the ear, assault and battery on the brain and disturbing the peace.") There's no indicator, no WARNING -- ANTISEMITIC "JOKE" COMING. Nothing. Just the entry, and (if it was physical) a page to turn.

Antisemitism. Runs. Deep.

I'm not policing shit though?

I'm saying "leave SOME room for a queer orientation that's already invisibilized in real life". I feel like that can coexist. I feel like there's a difference.

But yeah, acting like offline is any more welcoming to us than online is naive reasoning. Or turning one's gaze away from our erasure across the board 'cus it's convenient that way.

The large, large majority of people's dismissal of us is ruinous for our self-perception ONline AND OFFline, so there's literally nowhere for us to be. And idk. Having a little bit more diversity on top of the existing diversity shouldn't be that hard.

As a trans-androgynous person, what the hell is this? Are we not allowed to be happy about who we are???

i’m NOT that old. i’m only in my 20s and i’ve known i was aroace for less than ten years. but sometimes even that is enough to make me feel ancient. i remember when there were just, basically no dedicated aro spaces. very few aro blogs on tumblr. impossible to find aro merch, barely any aro creators on youtube and the like. we hadn’t even unified around the current flag yet, in fact we were a couple iterations behind. ace stuff too, there were a lot more ace blogs and youtubers etc. than aro ones, and AVEN was already a long-standing thing, but still far less than there is now.

i’m sure if i was a bit more persistent and a lot less 15 and scared i could have found more out there, but the point stands that aro communities in 2014 were extremely insular. offline, i was the only aro person i knew, and i was deep in the closet. i only learned about being aro by accident, and i had to navigate it on my own. it took me more than a year to actually say it out loud, to myself in the mirror, because i couldn’t externalize it. there was never a moment of relief at realizing who i was. it was a dawning understanding of something i always knew, and then it became my deepest secret, because there was nobody i could tell who’d understand. i didn’t make aro friends online until much later.

the aspec community online, on tumblr especially, was decimated in those intervening years, and i had the “benefit” of already being closeted during those times, so i avoided the worst of the harassment that people who were openly aspec online were getting. but it did push me further into the closet and leave me with significant issues. but then, things got a little better. aro blogs started popping up. in fact, i won’t name names because i’ll embarass us all but if you’re seeing this and you ran an aro blog in 2017ish, thank you, because you are literally the reason i decided it was safe to be openly aspec on tumblr again, and here i am.

of course, nothing is ever perfect. every community has both internal and external problems, and we’re still working on ours. we’ve got a lot to fight for. and every time i think about all the culture and terminology we lost in the mid 2010s, i do get a little sad. but during pride month this year, i drove past a storefront that had pride flags painted in the window, and i almost started crying on the bus, because one of them was an aro flag. it was the first time i’d ever seen an aro flag in person that i didn’t own.