misty hemlock

you’re getting it on with someone. you enthusiastically consent to having sex with them. afterward, you feel a little weird about it. maybe even distressed. maybe they did something you didn’t enjoy and in the moment you just didn’t say anything. maybe you just realized after the fact that you were not in a good headspace for sex and now your mental health is declining. that doesn’t inherently mean the person you had sex with violated your consent. sometimes it just means you need to take a break from sex or work on communicating your needs or boundaries better during sex.

and with transition, i feel like this is something that gets consistently overlooked but like. there will never be zero detransitioners. there will always be people who decide that actually transition wasn’t right for them. they could have had the best most thorough doctors in the world who did everything by the book and got full informed consent at every step. and some people are still going to decide they don’t like the changes and wish they hadn’t transitioned. that doesn’t mean that the doctors violated their consent, and that doesn’t mean that transition shouldn’t be available to anyone. it just means that we need to have more resources available for folks who detransition.

sharing it because it is

very beautiful

Asexuality 101: They're the token ace in The Sex Show and they say "I've never had sex before and I don't think I want to, am I... broken?" And then they learn about asexuality. Their entire character arc revolves around not having sex in The Sex Show. Completely unrelatable if you're anything other than sex-repulsed and alloromantic.

Asexual Book: it feels like reading a wikipedia article and will stop resonating once you're over the accepting-yourself-stage and start discovering yourself beyond the standard asexual experience.

Token Ace: they're the asexual character in the current big queer cartoon and she has significantly less screentime than the other characters. Confirmed asexual on social media.

Cartoon Animal: the creator didn't wanna think about them having sex because that's a cartoon animal. You'd be surprised how much porn people draw of this character.

The Dark And Mysterious Nerd: don't get your hopes up, he's also a tumblr sexyman and nothing in the source material indicates his asexuality.

Todd Chavez.

Twink Of The Month: he currently has swarms of people going "asexuals can still have sex" but they're not really interested in exploring sexual relationships from an asexual perspective, they just don't want him to be asexual. The other half of the debate is working tirelessly to alienate sex-favorable people from the asexual community.

Ace Coded: they're the most asexual character of all time but it's not stated in the source material or confirmed by the author so you have to write a thesis in hopes that someone might consider that they could be asexual. You might get called homophobic if you do.

Alien Robot: their lack of interest in sex is directly tied to them not being human. The fanbase has a massive collective boner for them though.

Murderer: Yeah... Collective boner also applies here.

Actually Good Representation: she's from a piece of media that has a fandom smaller than the population of a small village and does not suit your taste whatsoever

The two types of people to “jokingly” identify as a label:

1. Asshole trying to be edgy. If youre mad they double down, if you go ok ill call you that, they freak out and distance themselves from the label

2. Someone trying to figure themselves out

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)

they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)

they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)

they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)

they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)

they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)

they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)

they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)

the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)

being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)

random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)

you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.