Eshe Smites

And as someone who is currently writing a book where the two main characters and the main relationship is gay I’m a lil scared.

I’m don’t identify as gay or a man, I identify as AroAce Agender. I was wondering if anyone has any opinions on this? I’ll probably write the story anyways (worst case I’ll keep it to myself), but I would like to know of other peoples opinions on this.

The argument that if you are not X sexuality you can’t or shouldn’t write characters who are that sexuality is the same bullshit argument that people use to say if you’re not a POC you shouldn’t write characters that are POC or that people of one gender can’t write characters of another gender. That ‘advice’ is small minded and inherently broken because it assumes that if you don’t have X characteristic, then you can’t possibly understand people with that characteristic. It’s othering.

That’s not to say that writers don’t have a responsibility when writing characters with characteristics they don’t have. Do your research. Talk to people with those characteristics and learn about them. Ask someone from that group to read your work and point out issues. Really interrogate your work to find if you’re including any unconscious biases. Make sure you know the difference between a character flaw and a stereotype.

Writers are always writing characters who don’t share characteristics they have. If they didn’t, most of fiction couldn’t exist. Writing is how we explore the world, our community, and ourselves, and how we invite others to share in that exploration. One of my favorite pieces of my own writing is a short little story about a first date between a bisexual man and a man who is only just coming to realize he may also be bisexual. I’m an ace woman who has had a single kiss with another woman. Just because I didn’t share the characteristics of being male or identifying as bisexual didn’t mean I couldn’t relate to how my characters were feeling or how they would react to each other. I could use my own experiences trying to identify myself and translate them for my characters.

People are people, no matter what characteristics they have. The idea that a characteristic like sexuality, gender, or race would disqualify you from being able to write a person with a differing characteristic is fundamentally based on the (incorrect!) assumption that those characteristics are enough to make one person entirely alien to another, and that’s the road to fascism, baby!

On Friday, I got a notification that I had a package. My apartment has package lockers that FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL/etc. deliver int and when they register a package to me, I get a code emailed/texted to me that I can use to pop the locker open.

I didn’t remember getting a package, but that happens sometimes. I preorder a lot of things and Bookshop doesn’t always let you know when they’ve finally shipped something, or a friend surprises me, or whatever. So I put some clothes and shoes on and went over to the leasing office building to get the package.

It was not for me. FedEx is gonna FedEx.

So I picked it up out of the locker and went to the leasing office staff to hand it to them. They were kind of closed for lunch, so I was contemplating what to do if they weren’t in. It had the address. I could walk over there and deliver it maybe?

‘Cause see. A lot of people apparently just shut the locker and are done with it. But if I did that...how would this person know they had a package or where it was? How would anyone get the package back out of the locker, now that the system registered it as retrieved? They don’t have the code, and the code is expired anyway.

I could just leave it in the locker. Or take it out of the locker and dump it to the side where it could be pilfered; the exact function the package lockers exist to prevent. It’s not my package. Not my problem.

But it costs me a tiny bit of inconvenience and time to place it in the hands of and appropriate custodian and save a bunch of other people a lot of inconvenience and time. I live in a society. Society is designed to save everyone across the society as much time and effort as possible cumulatively.

Sure, it’s easier and faster to just shove your shopping cart out of the way and pull out. Not your problem. You don’t need the cart anymore. Except now the cart is blocking other people’s cars and other parking spots and can ram into cars and people and some poor worker is going to have to go track it down. You have saved yourself a tiny amount of time and inconvenience and in doing so wasted everyone around you’s time and convenience.

Sure, you could put your neighbor’s mail from a government agency with an URGENT stamp in your mailbox and mark it “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS.” Or you could. Just. Pop it in their mailbox or slip it under their door (I’ve been having mail problems recently okay. Give the USPS more money).

You don’t have to wait an extra 5 seconds to hold the door for someone just behind you. But. Like. Come on, man, really? (Unless you're entering a secured area with restricted access, because that causes a separate cache of problems)

Weighing how much time and effort something is going to cost you compared to how much time and effort it will save everyone else around you cumulatively is...well...pro-social way to think. There are obviously always going to be exceptions and a balance to things, especially if the cost to you is much, much higher proportionally.

We live in a society. We live in many societies.

You can leave your dishes all around your house. But whoever has to do the dishes later (even if it’s you!) is then going to have to remember or know this happened, figure out where they all are, pick them up, deal with any spills/etc. that incurred, and return them to the kitchen and then was them. Was that really worth just putting them in the kitchen earlier? Maybe. But probably not.

“But what do I get out of that?” Firstly, you’re a tarpit. Secondly, you get all of the time and energy everyone around you has saved you by also being a functioning member of a society.

Societies work because we’re all contributing so the burned is distributed, just the way people can walk over a bed of nails but not an individual nail. We all take up a small part of people’s burdens that aren’t necessarily ours so we all have better lives.

Consider: how pro-social is your behavior? Sometimes pro-social behavior is a huge undertaking for massive gains elsewhere. But so much of the time it takes an extra 30 seconds, an extra minute.

I thought about just tagging this 'nuff said, but it's not.

I want to say something to all of the women under 50 on this site. Ready? You do not have to be over 50 to start taking up space.

And, to everyone's utter astonishment, it kind of works. Because he's stupid. Because someone points out something that's not working—there's a park on Fortieth Street that got closed down because of broken glass, for example—and instead of understanding the system, which mostly says, "So sad, but we can't do anything about that," he starts talking about it.

"We should clean that up and reopen it." Very nice thought, Mayor Wayne, but the budget isn't there. "Well, we subtract money from here and move it over here." That's the police department, Mayor Wayne, we can't do that. "It's just a little bit, they'll never miss it, and anyway, if teens have somewhere to shoot hoops—do kids say that these days, shoot hoops?—they won't break anyone's windows and the police will have less trouble anyway." Mayor Wayne, that's just one stop from the Narrows, the young men in question are more likely shooting rival gangs, and anyway, cars coming by will throw glass there anyway.

For a bare moment, Mayor Wayne suddenly seems—sharp. Knife sharp. "Kids."

"What?" the city council member says, startled.

"If they are fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, they are children."

"I think the police that they take shots at would disagree, sir."

"We'll look at that next."

It really shouldn't seem like a threat, and yet.

Back to vacuous. "We can build a fence," Brucie Wayne says, "to make it harder to throw bottles into the park. Not too big, we don't want it to be forbidding, but just enough to stop it from looking like a target. And put more trash cans in, recycle too—there weren't trash cans to start with? Well, there's your problem!" He beams, as if he's solved something. "We can put together a community initiative to keep it cleaned, maybe have the Parks people bring some snacks or things for everyone who participates. Make a party out of it! And if we're transferring more money, which we'll have to, we might as well renovate it too. New paint on the things that are still within code, new equipment with new materials for the stuff that isn't, and we might as well put some things for the older kids—we can hire someone to draw up a proposal, I don't know what kids do these days but it has to be more than just one basketball hoop with out a net. Tiddlywinks?" For an instant, it looks like his eyes might cross from that lone, bouncing neuron being stuck in a corner, which entirely distracts the council member from the fact that Brucie Wayne is too young for tiddlywinks also. "And some sun protection and trees, that'd be nice too, don't you think. We can do it! This is Gotham, it's the City of Opportunity. John, it's been lovely talking to you, but I had a peek at your calendar and I think you've got something at twelve—unless you can think of more stuff to spend money on?"

John cannot.

Six months later, the local gangs claim that the fucking Bat came out of retirement to tell them that Willow Park (it still doesn't have any willows, but it has saplings that may at least become trees) is neutral territory, on pain of pain. The truce seems to be holding. There is new equipment, new paint, a new cleanup day, and new foliage.

Bruce Wayne's closest confidants are hopeful, but weirded out by the fact that he seems to be smiling—not Brucie smiling, but actual smiling.

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.

* New student, very small. Grace said it was pebble. Pebble is small Earth rock. Pebble likes name.

* He found out Eridians have no gender rules.

* Students brought him mineral sample. After he stopped crying he said he loves show-and-tell game. Human naming conventions oddly literal.

* I told him Earthsun grew bright.

* I took him up atop atmosphere bypass elevator to look at stars.

* He woke up from nap and found me still with him. I did not wait on his chest; he says I am heavy like “elephant” and he “couldn’t breathe.” I laid my arm over him instead, kept him close, feeling safe. He said “cuddle” was warm.

* Before class he heard younglings singing.

* He has plants in house from sprouts on ship. Plant grew “bud.”

* Engineers got seawater temperature right. He took off shoes and stood in water, sighing. He didn’t care about pants getting damp. Cried until shirt was also damp. Humans very endlessly wet.

* He missed “Doritos.”

* Adrian helped food scientists make taumoeba dried paste. Made it crunchy after heating. We fused it into triangle form. Told him it was Tauritos. That made him laugh-cry. Laugh-cry is rare and precious.

* He remembered Eridians have no gender rules.

* We made him celebration outfit. Used metals he calls pretty. He can see frequencies named “colorful” and “shiny.” These make humans happiest.

* I gave him hug when he wasn’t expecting it. Easier to hug close now with exosuit. Hug when Grace sitting down so he does not fall over.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

It is absolutely immoral, completely counterproductive to the goal of learning things, and turns out incredibly subpar work.

Well maybe I don’t WANT to work double as hard as abled people!! Maybe I deserve a BREAK!! Maybe I’ve been working MORE THAN double as hard for MY WHOLE LIFE and it’s led me to immense burnout & caused me to develop several MORE disabilities!! Maybe I should be ACCOMMODATED so I don’t have to KILL MY BODY AND BRAIN over trying to do what abled people can do!! Maybe I DON’T have to work double as hard!! Maybe if there’s the option to let me NOT work double as hard, I should have it, because I’m already working double as hard JUST TO SURVIVE!!