Kiwi

Sometimes a single sentence can get stuck in between your teeth, try as you might not to pick at it, the effort of ignoring it only reminds you more that it's there. I'm swinging pretty badly between trying to tease it out, maybe I'm more frustrated by the ambiguous wording than the actual intent or result of the sentence itself, or maybe I am frustrated, violently frustrated even, at how it can feel like aspec spaces are disproportionately spoken for by alloaces.

They have a tumblr, I wonder if I should talk to them instead of going off on my own so harshly. What would I even say? "Hey bud, I've got a bone to pick with you about speaking to your authentically lived experiences." It's not like I'm trying to get someone fired from the passion project personal stories queer anthology zine.

You know the old saying? If you meet an asshole in the morning then you met an asshole. If you meet nothing but assholes all day, then you might be the asshole. I feel like I've come across this kind of thing so often, so often felt rebuked and annoyed, so often wanted to start up this exact conversation, like maybe the problem is just me.

HI CHAINSAWMANNERS!!! I BRING U A GIFT!!!

I do not experience any romantic attraction, and I do not experience any sexual attraction.

I have never dated nor had sex or been in any sexual or romantic relationships.

My friends are all dating or married or single-but-busy. With a few aroace and single exceptions.

I am not lonely.

I have never been lonely truely.

Lonely is not synonymous with aroace.

I can never be alone in a world so full of, well, everything.

I can’t be alone with music, with friends, with books, with my imagination, with family, with nature.

I get lonely maybe once or twice.

I have been alone.

But I am fine. I am happy.

Not Lonely is not synonymous with romantic/sexual love.

I like my hair to be long, I spent a year with it dyed a golden blonde with dark roots because I like the trashy party girl aesthetic. I want to dye it again with pink tips. I like painting my nails, black and blue are my favorite colors. I like wearing chokers. I also like wearing baggy jeans and ratty hoodies. I like having stubble. I like having chest hair. I like having a square jaw and broad shoulders. I wish I had a flatter stomach and a thinner profile frame. I don't know what this makes me, perhaps this is something no more GNC than Machine Gun Kelly. I think about this a lot, how queer my appearance truly is. I should think about it less. I have thought long and hard about if I could be trans or if I could be non-binary or if I could be genderqueer and the conclusion I ultimately came to is that I most enjoy being a man open to whatever self-expression I want.

I don't date, but I've thought about it. I would like to meet people, and I would like to have sex with them. But I don't want to hurt them. I fear if I explain what I am beforehand it'll scare them away. I fear if I explain after they'll feel manipulated or abused. I don't know how many people in the dating scene want what I want. I fear my own lack of experience will make me a bad lay, an embarrassing story to tell to confidants in hindsight. I fear my own virginity, a boundary to those I wish to be like. All of these fears are baseless, as I've not been able to even begin a single relationship in my life. Despite this I still heavily identify with terms like "slut" and "manwhore" and "thot" because my interests lay so deeply within casual sex, sex without great intimacy or emotion. This may be some form of stolen valor. I hope the true sluts are not too mad at me.

I made this blog several years ago because a mutual of mine reblogged memes making fun of aro and ace people, making fun of the concept of aphobia, and in addition well known aphobes. I didn't feel comfortable talking about aro stuff on my main blog, for as little as I talk about it. Living through the ace discourse of the 2016 era has largely caused me to cringe in embarrassment any time I am forced to discuss my orientation with people who aren't aro or ace themselves. I no longer follow this person. I unfollowed many people I was mutuals with from that time, most of them because they posted too often about how much they hated men and I didn't want to see that, some because our interests simply drifted too far apart, only one for explicit aphobia reasons. (Also one because they became a "both sides are bad, any vote is wasted" libertarian, but that's unrelated.)

But despite the invisibility, aspec people are actually doing quite a lot of things that will piss off queerphobic, right-wing and religious people (and hell, even left-wing people). And the most obvious point is that we are actively not performing heterosexuality the way they want us to. People who's entire world view is "cis men and women should be in monogamous, heterosexual marriage and have (white) babies" are not going to lean back and say "oh but those asexuals and aromantics are fine". They will also hate our guts, and they will come up with all sorts of reasons, including insinuating we're all secretly into bestiality, or mentally ill, or not human, or attention seeking children. It's just plain old queerphobia, and like all queerphobia, there's no inherent logic to it which you can worm your way out of by "not doing anything".

And like, there's a lot more that aspec people do which people hate. Raising awareness about amatonormativity? People feel attacked, they hate it. Asexual people having sex? Or not having sex? People hate it! Aromantic people being in (seemingly) romantic relationships? People fucking hate it! Aromantic people having sex? Ohh people hate that!!

Like sorry but there is simply no ~pure~ ~sexless~ ~comfortable~ aromanticism within me, just like there is no ~pure~ ~romantic~ homosexuality within me. My aromanticism is influenced by my allosexuality just as much as my sexuality is influenced by my aromanticism. There is no dividing line. My aromanticism is about sex and allosexuality and my allosexuality is about aromanticism. I don’t have one set of "aromantic experiences" and one set of "allosexual experiences" that I can nicely and neatly separate to only talk about one of them at a time as to not make anyone "uncomfortable".

Even more fascinating (/still neg) when they’ll understand it in one direction – that aromanticism will have some influence on one’s experience of allosexuality – but not the other way around. That seems to be unthinkable, that one’s aromanticism can be influenced by the experience of sexual attraction.

enough. stop with the shock value. there is no need to insert THE CREATURE; the benign concept of such a world is horrifying enough. not even in urgency, but just in banal, everyday interaction. imagine you meet someone and their timer says two years. not tomorrow, not urgently soon, but two years. enough to do quite a lot. they could fall in love in that time - could they get engaged? have a baby? you might otherwise get to know them, befriend them, but perhaps you opt not to, make a conscious choice not to invest in your own grief. what balancing act would every individual person have to participate in - I have ten years, is that long enough to be a good mother to children? is that long enough to secure a caretaker for my own mother? my wife will die a few months before me. my newborn’s timer reads nineteen years.

1 2 3, who’s the brightest star you see?

✨ it’s me! ✨

design by @ricedeity/flavor foley

in my words:

for now it's just minor archival data and some older data, but YOU can make a change to that.

we have three bits up already. the below article will be updated constantly. contact info at the bottom of the article. we promise anonymity and general source protection.

include aspecs in your pride. include aces and aros and those that are aspec in other ways; include those that are somewhere on the spectrum; include aros that aren't ace; include aroaces; include aces that aren't aro; include aspecs in relationships; include aspecs that never want relationships; include cishet aspecs; include aspec identities you don't hear about often; include our flags and include our voices