There are more of us out there than you think!

I have created a master list of queer fiction books which can be sorted and filtered by your preferences.  However, many have asked how to use it - so I have created a quick guide below!

This is not like google sheets - any filters you create will only be shown to you and will disappear when you exit that screen. So feel free to mess around! I promise you won’t ruin anything.

Step 1: Open the database

Step 2: Select the “Create Your Own Filter” view on the left-hand side.

Step 3: Click “filter” on the top bar.

Step 4: Input any filters you would like to organize the files by. The screen will automatically update with books that fit into all of your specifications.

I don’t even mean this for aspecs. Amatonormativity has taught us ALL that a relationship defines our happiness. A lot of arospecs, acespecs, and allos have put themselves into relationships that they did not want, simply because they were told that it would make them happy. You decide what makes you happy. If it’s not a relationship, that’s fine!

If you have family members nagging you to be in a relationship or friends constantly bugging you about being single or you feel pressured by society to be in a relationship, remind yourself that a relationship does not define you. Plenty of people are in bad romantic/sexual relationships, and maybe you don’t want to take that risk. Or maybe you’re prioritizing your education or your career and don’t want to bother with a relationship. Or maybe you’re arospec or acespec and sex/romance-repulsed and don’t want a relationship. Or you’re arospec/acespec and cannot physically find the Attraction™ to have a relationship. 

dude: what's your gender?

me : I don't have a gender.

dude: no what's your sex?

HAPPY PRIDE TO ACE AND ARO PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY.

Yes that includes straight aces and aros. Yes that includes aroaces that aren't oriented.

For too goddamn long people have felt too comfortable being shitty to us for no reason. Pride is for us, too.

LGBT Flower Headers! 🌺💮🌸  Pt. 1 | Pt. 2

here I made some Aromantic Wallpaper. The second one is stealth aro bc if u google aro backgrounds they are way too obvious

Bulk posting my ace memes for International Asexual Day!

This meme was made to spread awareness for r/orientedaroace. Oriented aroace is an aspec identity where an aroace person feels that another label such as gay, lesbian, or bi is a significant enough part of their identity to have a place beside their aroace label, usually because they experience some kind of tertiary attraction. If this intriuges you, check out the pinned post on the subreddit for more information.

Here’s what I know without doing a ton of searching that I don’t have the energy for because today was the day from hell:

The concept of asexuality-as-a-spectrum dates to ca. 2003.

That, over time, evolved into the term asexual/ace spectrum. While I have no exact timeline for this, I do know that ca. 2015 a non-zero number of aces were using “on the spectrum” to refer to asexuality, which resulted in autistic aces mentioning that hey, this is not really a cool thing to do because “on the spectrum” has been used specifically and consistently to refer to autistic people. Here’s one example of this, and here’s another that specifically suggests that aces use aspec instead because it is not a term the autistic community used.

My gut feeling is that aspec/a-spec is a term that I first recall seeing late 2015-early 2016. I don’t have any posts at this moment to back that up, though. Gotta do the research some day, I guess.

People who have done the research have turned up exactly zero instances of autistic people referring to themselves as aspec, though interestingly apparently the term is also a car term.

I can also tell you that at one point, when the aspec tag was much shorter than it is now, I went through it. The entire thing. I actually did find the first post that used aspec to mean “asexual/aromantic spectrum”. There were zero posts, before or since then, that referenced autism except for those made by/about autistic aces.

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