Your 9 to 5 Evil

We are 3 days into pride week and I have seen my dash flooded with lots of positive representation for the LGBT+ community, and it has been awesome. However, I’ve also seen a surge in people trying to discredit the legitimacy of other’s inclusion in the community. Especially asexuals.

The main argument of ace discourse is that we are “basically straight” because we do not experience homophobia or transphobia. While it may “sound” like a good argument, this is why this not only hurts those of us in the ace community but also everyone else in the LGBT+ community:

1. You’ve immediately claimed that every single person that isn’t gay or lesbian faces no hardships because of their orientation. This is an /insult/ to everyone who experiences attraction to people of other genders, to those who live years of their life believing they are broken and useless because they don’t want/ crave certain types of intimacy, and every person who has had someone in their life try to “fix” them.

2. You’ve just excluded every single closeted person, no matter their orientation.

3. The entirety of the multisexual community has just been shamed as well. And you’re even using the same excuses for kicking us out as you did for them a few years back.

4. This is a fantastic way to reinforce heteronormativity. You’re argument is that anyone that doesn’t experience attraction to the same sex is straight. Which erases not only the asexuality spectrum, but the gender spectrum and the sexuality spectrum as well.

5. This whole thing just turns into a way to hate on others who you don’t understand and aren’t willing to listen to. You are trying to turn the hatred and oppression you face and forcing it onto others to bear. There’s a word for that, and it’s /bullying/. The same bullying you face all the time for your orientation. The bullying that made you want to create and join this community in the first place.

6. You say that we should just build our own community and pull away from the LGBT+ community. Except we can’t. Every single “safe ace space” I’ve ever been apart of has been bombarded by this hatred and negativity. You can’t hate us and put us in a corner and then fill that corner with spiders and expect us to feel loved and appreciated and safe.

7. By saying that “only aces with a non-heterosexual romantic orientation are valid”, you’ve just said that the only thing that matters is the attraction we /do/ feel. That it’s not enough that we feel broken and hated for not feeling sexual attraction. That it’s not enough that so many aces have had people they know and trust try to “fix” them. That it isn’t enough that most of us in a romantic relationship live in fear of our loved ones leaving us because we can’t satisfy them. Nope. You’ve basically said that you’re the only ones that matter. Only your experiences are valid. That we’re making it up for attention. That it’s wrong and makes us broken.

Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

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Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

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Maggie O'Farrell, After You’d Gone

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Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

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Jandy Nelson, I’ll Give You the Sun

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Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

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New series reservation from Classical Puppets

You have to let go of your monogamous way of thinking if you want your relationship to be a happy one. Seriously.

Your lover dating other people doesn’t mean that they love you less. Your lover not being romantically and/or sexually exclusive to you doesn’t mean that you are not good enough for them.

Remember that your lover is not doing this to hurt you, but also don’t feel bad for being jealous. Be honest to your significant other about your less pleasant feelings. Talk to them and ask for reassurance. They will be happy to provide it.

This is me in my usual bra, note the 34D/32DD boobs.

And here is the binder, almost completely flat.

I (First Nations, Mohawk) used to have hair past my chest but my middle school forced me to cut my hair because “boys couldn’t have hair past the tips of the ear” (I’m not a boy either, but they assigned me ‘boy’ as a gender) but even when I begged them to let me keep my hair because of spiritual beliefs, they forced me to cut it. A classic move of the white school system against native children. I got a referral everyday for the 65 days I refused to cut my hair. I cried for two weeks after the principal took scissors to my hair. I’m still growing it back.

My best friend (who is an aboriginal Egyptian) was once told to remove her hijab (also a gift I had given her) because “hats weren’t allowed” (a mixture of racism and islamophobia), she reluctantly took it off.

In middle school again, my friend Nemo ( First Nations, Navajo) was told she couldn’t wear her traditional clothing on her 13 birthday, celebrating her reaching puberty. She was sent home and forced to spend her birthday alone while her parents worked.

Tomorrow is my 18th birthday, an important life event in Mohawk culture (becoming an adult) and I want to wear my traditional clothes to school, especially because I’ll have to celebrate all alone this year since I live far away from my nation. Even though my school doesn’t have uniforms or a strict dress code, I’m afraid they’ll tell me that my clothes or very light face paint are “distracting” and tell me to take off my traditional jewellery (headband, choker, bracelets) or wash off the face paint.

#giveitback originated from when GLAAD was doing a campaign being all “L IS FOR LESBIAN!” (next poster) “G OF FOR GAY” (next poster) and then just went through the list of the acronym

and then, “A IS FOR ALLY” It was like, #Gotyourback was their original hashtag for it I think?

And so in respond to #Gotyourback, Aces, aros, and agender people started their own hashtag. #Giveitback !

And like, #AisforAsexual, #AisforAromantic #AisforAgender.

P much our community, as well as part of the larger community, spoke up to Glaad, and I felt that Glaad gave a very earnest apology and made a new one instead.

It’s been a good while but, #Giveitback is returning for American Appearel’s now pride week tote bags. It’s getting coverage by Yahoo and such so that’s awesome! I haven’t research too much into it, but, that’s what it is.