Cglre Stimming

Space themed moodboard !!

Requests open (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

This good-intentioned individual proposed very sweetly that we look for different words together, different medical terms to describe what I go through so no one will throw out my job applications or treat me like a danger to society.

Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!

I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs) 

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!

As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)

New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!

Read banned books!

That’s 1972

29 years before AVEN was started online,

and 47 years before the present.

And that’s only the date that Manifesto was written, so asexuals as members of a community must have existed at least some time before that.

We are still legally classified as a mental disorder or psychosexual dysfunction in most countries. Aroace people have fought hard, partially successfully, to have asexuality removed from the DSM-V in 2013.

My sexuality, aegosexuality/autochorisexuality, was literally named and defined by a doctor who wrote about it and asexuality as a paraphilia, in 2012.

Aro/aces are at high risk of experiencing conversion therapy. We're 10% more likely to be offered or undergo such therapies compared to other sexual minorities, and around 48% aromatics reported having experienced attempts or suggestions to "fix" or "cure" them. This includes being pressured or even forced to take medication.

Aromatics are especially discriminated in mental healthcare because of all the above.

In some places non-consummation is a ground to annul marriage and/or is ruled as cruelty. Basically, if you don't have sex with your partner, in the eyes of law, you are being cruel to your husband/wife and you're at fault for the divorce.

Asexuals are significantly more sexually assaulted than homosexuals (but not bisexual).

Aro/aces are not protected by most anti-discrimination laws, because asexuality is seen as lack of sexuality and not a sexual orientation. Same goes for romantic attraction.

Aro/aces have secret codes/signals for showing other aro/aces their identity without needing to come out to others. We wear white and black rings on specific finger and hand, just like gays did with handkerchiefs and lesbians with carabiners.

There's almost no media that doesn't dehumanise people who don't feel romantic or sexual attraction. Those that do exist were made by aro/ace people.

Surveys show most allos don't understand what asexually is, even when they are confident in their definition. This leads to almost all of asexuals being told they aren't actually ace because of xyz by allos.

Because what I want makes me look like a prude, pearl-clutching conservative who can’t handle explicit sex and wants everyone back in the closet.

No.

What I want is queer romances that can stand on their own legs without smut being all they have to offer, and I’m not picking on any one story in particular. I make the same complaint about straight romances that are less “believable, multifaceted relationship” and more “Boy thinks Girl hot they fuck they’re in love”

But adored because there’s two dicks involved when it would otherwise be ignored if it was a straight couple.

You’re caught between “this is a country whose relationship with sex and the shame surrounding it is a systemic problem and having media unafraid to get messy with it is a good thing” and “ok but an epic romance that balances on the pinhead of only what they do in bed is unrealistic and unhealthy and ignores what keeps people together beyond just sex”.

If I speak up and say “yeah can’t they just be friends or at least have a mutual respect for each other first?” I’m accused of being homophobic.

There’s a bookstore near me that only sells romance novels, and the romantasy genre sustains its ability to pay rent. I submitted my book as a local author for the shelves and before I got redirected to the lengthy form that went nowhere, I was talking to one of the sales reps—I don’t know if she was a lesbian but she sure acted like a straight woman just horny for gay smut—and I got this… attitude.

And this question: “How spicy is your novel?” Both from her and on the form.

It’s not. I’m ace. It’s written through an ace lens. There’s two sex scenes and if it were on AO3 it would be rated T. Yes, it’s adult romance.

And I got that fake-ass customer service smile, and promptly redirected to the purgatory form with zero further questions about my novel and its world, plot, or characters, the likes of which I have a long list from independent bookstores that I shall someday blacklist when I become a bestseller for the simple disrespect of not telling me they’re not interested even in an auto-reply.

I don’t have a problem with smut, I really don’t. I’ll pick up a compelling fanfic whenever I’m bored. I just also need some compelling characterization to go along with it, particularly in an original work of fiction that can’t just rely on pre-established canon.

I don’t have a problem with horny romantasy as a subgenre, but I’m writing these books because I’m hungry for rep that exists beyond what they do in bed, and I don’t yet feel like we can coexist without people like that bookstore clerk turning her nose up at me for not writing her wank material.

Adult rep, in adult fiction, because if I’m writing YA, the lack of smut is a given. I don’t have to justify a T rating.

But I also just… hate being a female-passing (jury is pending here), white author, lumped in with my contemporaries who see gay men as playthings and gay sex as just a titillating caricature of a person and not one aspect of an entire sexuality.

I absolutely understand the frustration and wariness that comes from “another middle-class white woman has written a gay romance” because there’s not been a great track record.

I mean I’m not straight or cis, but I sure don’t look that way and while I don’t have a problem saying that on this hellsite, I shouldn’t have to say it in public to justify my credentials to write queer romances.

I wrote the books I wanted to read, and the crux of the central romance that crashes and burns spectacularly is the unstoppable force of a desperate allosexual who thinks he’s “the right person” colliding with the immovable object of an ace who just doesn’t see him that way and tried his damndest to make it work with all he had to offer short of his bed, and it’s not enough.