Honestly Just Tired And Confused

obvious warning for homophobia, transphobia, etc. in the link above.

I was born there. I have countless of LGBT friends there, and the fact that this is happening in the year 2020 is inhumane and terrifying. 

If you’re Polish, vote in the upcoming election. If you’re not polish, please spread the carrd around.

People who Looooove tr*mp will go fill this out in droves, and people who would like to see him lit on fire by his combover won’t, thereby skewing the results.

GO FILL IT OUT.

DON’T USE YOUR ACTUAL NAME OR EMAIL ADDRESS.

If you’re not from the US, just use any 5-digit number for the zip code (even including beginning with 0)

This is something I’ve been sitting on for almost a year, and I have to accept that it’s never going to express exactly what I want it to express, especially if I don’t share it with other people with other experiences that could expand on it. These are different types of asexuals I’ve seen in the community and different types of characters who frequently get headcanoned as asexual. 

That being said, I can see how this might get oversimplified to “asexuals with feminine/neutral/masculine gender expression” but I want to emphasise it’s not actually about gender expression.

Cakes

Cakes are the asexuals who can be seen enjoying their food, playing with bath bombs, and dressing up in fabulous clothing such as lolita or new romantic. Cakes are likely to joke about “It took me three hours to get into this outfit, I’m not taking it off for anyone!” Cakes may feed into the stereotype that asexuals are prissy or stuck up, or they may get a bit continental with their kisses: a friendly greeting rather than an expression of romance. Sometimes both. They are likely to express passions, but usually towards food or comfortable living. People with a poor understanding of asexuality might say that they are replacing sex with other sensual pleasures, but that’s a very silly thing to say because allosexuals can enjoy food, fashion, and self-care just as much as asexuals.

Fictional Examples of Cakes:

The Eighth Doctor

Aziraphale

Bilbo Baggins

Cards

Cards are the asexuals who come off as intellectual and cold, even if their areas of expertise are far from the usual “intellectual pursuits”. A card is usually ready to verbally smack down people who don’t believe in asexuality with statistics, facts, and explanations of how their debating opponent has a very shaky grasp on biology. However, they may feel extremely frustrated or bored having these conversations over and over again and are rarely shy in expressing that. Cards sometimes, but not always, can present themselves as androgynous to some degree, but are usually neat and tidy in their fashion. They are also likely to be very funny people, often with dry or absurd humour. They are likely to express confusion or dismay over their allosexual friends’ behaviour, either out of genuine confusion or a rhetorical technique to try and get those who feel sexual attraction to examine their own thought processes. A card may find themselves “looking into the camera as if they’re on The Office” whether they’re a real person or not. Cards feed into the stereotype that asexuals are too absorbed by mental concerns to even be aware of their bodies. Fictional characters headcanoned as cards are often also headcanoned as autistic, but one does not necessarily preclude the other, not in fiction or real life. People with a poor understanding of asexuality might say they seem inhuman or mechanical, but cards are some of the first people to point out that a biological process shared by the entire animal kingdom is not a very good gauge of humanity.

Fictional Examples of Cards:

Sherlock Holmes

Spock

Katniss Everdeen

Dragons

Dragons are the asexuals who got really annoyed when they found out what Netflix and Chill meant, because they were ready with the blankets and popcorn. If cakes dress fancy and cards dress sharply, then a dragon dresses for comfort. They often don’t care about their clothing at all, or if they do it’s ironically or simply flying in the face of what many would consider stylish; ie. “Look at my ridiculous hat! Isn’t it the best!” Especially if said ridiculous hat is worn with their most lived-in jeans and a sweatshirt. Dragons are likely to start listing off all their interests and joke that they simply don’t have the time to be interested in sex as well. They might do this four hours into lying on their stomach watching Netflix, but those four hours of Netflix were well-spent. Often, dragons can be perceived as or wonder themselves if they are too attached to their possessions, but this is because they have decided to fill their lives with that which makes them happy, regardless of how that appears. If a dragon wants to sleep with thirty stuffed animals because they’ve been given a new one for every birthday, they aren’t going to let being thirty get in the way of cuddling their stuffed animals. Dragons may feed into the stereotype that asexuals are childish or hyperfocused on frivolous pursuits, but they can be wonderful friends because they’re fun to be around and they are just as likely to hoard a person as an item: if a dragon decides you’re one of their favourite people, they can be the most ride-or-die friend you have. If they’ve fully accepted that their life is fulfilled from interests they’ve chosen themselves, dragons can be some of the happiest people you’ve ever met. Of course, some people may say that they’re also some of the strangest people you’ve ever met, but no one consciously picks normal over happy. People with a poor understanding of asexuality might say dragons never properly grew up, but this is less a problem with the dragons and more a problem with how society expects adults to be boring and miserable.

Fictional Examples of Dragons:

Charlie Weasley

Jughead Jones

Unicorn March is all about pride for the most forgotten and endangered parts of the community. 

Sometimes, pride means knowing more about the struggles that people like you face. Pride from within, from knowing what you’re surviving. Pride from other community members and outsiders, supporting you and loving you for what you are, not just what you overcome. 

This infographic collects all the current data on ace-spec oppression into one thread. (It exceeds Tumblr’s image limit, so if you’re only seeing the first post, check the notes for the rest.) Feel free to save any of these images to share. Tag @unicorn-march if you can, when you use these in a reply or your own posts; it would be great to see how this info helps people. Image descriptions are in the alt tags. 

Links to all the sources, in the order that they appear: 

UK Government Equalities Office. (2017) National LGBT Survey. Data from more than 108,000 LGBTQIPA+ people across the United Kingdom. You can review the data and crunch your own numbers by clicking “analyse” on their website! They also have a report which presents some of the data, and their commentary.

Cantor, David, et al. (2015) AAU Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct. Data from more than 150,000 college and graduate students across the United States. 

Samuels, Gina E. Miranda, et al. (2019) Voices of Youth Count In-Depth Interviews: Technical Report. This is a 22-county study of 4,139 unhoused youth across the United States. They worked with local agencies, and were careful to include a mix of rural, suburban, and urban areas of varying densities and demographics. This report has a broad overview of their findings and recommendations. 

The in-depth data represented here comes from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. (2017) Youth Homelessness in San Diego County, California: Findings from the youth count, brief youth survey, and provider survey. Although that’s a San Diego-specific study, Appendix E provides the data from all 22 counties for comparison.  The Williams Institute. (2016) LGB Within the T. This paper crunches the data from the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which did in-depth interviews of 6,450 trans people of all orientations.  Borgogna, N. C., et al. (2018) Anxiety and Depression Across Gender and Sexual Minorities: Implications for Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, Pansexual, Demisexual, Asexual, Queer, and Questioning Individuals. This paper crunches the data from the ACHA National College Health Assessment, a twice-yearly survey of (at last count) 67,972 students at 98 schools across the United States.  Yulea, Brotto, & Gorzalska. (2011) Mental Health and Interpersonal Functioning in Self-Identified Asexual Men and Women. This is an older study, by comparison, and much smaller, so it’s used very sparingly here. 

Salway et al (2019). A Systematic Review and Meta‑Analysis of Disparities in the Prevalence of Suicide Ideation and Attempts Among Bisexual Populations. An extremely thorough analysis of the data available in 46 studies on LGBT suicidality, the reasons for different findings in different studies, and the most likely actual numbers. 

Bauer et al (2018). The 2016 Asexual Community Survey Summary Report. This is an ongoing annual online survey of major asexual communities; the 2016 survey received a total of 9,869 responses (Ace = 9331 and Non-Ace= 538). As it’s not a peer-reviewed published study, it’s used even more sparingly here; the only data used here from this report is the percentage of cis aces who had considered suicide. 

Grant, Jaime M. et al. 2011. Injustice at every turn: A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Further excellent analysis of the data from those 6,450 trans people.  

I hope this makes many, many people feel validated by the enormous amount of concrete evidence that IN FACT YES, ace-specs ARE:

rejected by our families,

pressured to do conversion therapy,

harassed and assaulted at school and work,

living in poverty,

and at high risk for becoming homeless, and mentally ill, and suicidal,

just like lesbian, gay, bi, pan, and trans people, and NOT cis straight people.

On tumblr I’m seeing a hell of a lot of young white kids yelling at anyone who actually follows those steps, and acting like burnout is a moral falling rather than a well-proven psychological phenomenon.