The Trinity

I watched irl queer groups disintegrate bc a few ppl who got into leadership positions used that to make the space hostile towards ace ppl (among others as well), saw friends go from being loud and proud aces n aros to actively avoiding any mention of it and letting ppl assume their sexuality. I myself, having been IDing as ace for 10 years at least, have in the past couple since this whole “"discourse”“ came into being, actively and intentionally stopped telling anyone at all that I’m ace. To put that in some kind of perspective, I am incredibly out as trans and will actively out myself pretty constantly except to total strangers I will never see again. I feel safer telling ppl I’m trans than ace. Especially in queer spaces. It’s fucked me up so much I didn’t even quite grasp how much but today my therapist asked me for the first time about like romantic relationships and I physically could not say I am aro and ace. Completely incapable, utterly frozen, and I just kinda let her believe what she will. Ironically the fact that I’ve gone from being willing and ready to tell ppl I’m ace as just another facet of myself to entirely unable and unsolicited to tell anyone, is probably a thing one might want to talk w one’s therapist about.

but then this fucking shit happened. around 2015 is when it really kicked into high gear. “discoursers” or exclusionists or aphobes or however you want to refer to them consider asexuality to be a joke and that everyone who identifies as ace is a cringey cishet college-aged white girl who loves dr who. recycled biphobia, homophobia, and even terf rhetoric made its way into the mainstream tumblr conscious by reframing the arguments to target ace people (you’re only X because you’re ugly/can’t get laid; you aren’t part of the community if your partner is of a different gender; maybe something happened to you to make you this way; have you had your hormones checked?; by accepting this identity you are allowing the oppressor to infiltrate our spaces; etc.). you know, in case you think this is just about “snick snack” memes.

this has alienated ace people of color, who already struggle with desexualization/hypersexualization, disabled aces, ace survivors, trans aces, mentally ill aces, neurodiverse/AUTISTIC ACES (you guys get REAL fuckin nervous when i highlight that the majority of your jeering about aces’ perceived awkwardness, missed social cues, infantilization/dehumanization, or “unfuckability”/“cringey-ness” are repackaged ableism, especially considering that a good percentage of the ace community is also autistic), and both young AND older aces. 

younger people are being discouraged from exploring the possibility of being asexual by exclusionists for reasons that vary from internalized homophobia to asexuality being a side effect of SSRIs. they are being told that they are “actually” something other than what they say they are, or that they are broken, or that they’re too young to know, or that our ace identity is simultaneously something that must be excruciatingly examined to determine its “cause” yet so irrelevant that it’s unworthy of discussion or representation—”nobody cares that you don’t want to have sex”. i WISH i had known about asexuality as a teenager, as a kid. I wish i had saved myself from so much grief, abuse, pain, and corrective rape by not subjecting myself to experiences that i hoped would “fix” me. 

and older people like me, who in the grand scheme of things is uhhh really not that much older than the majority of tumblr, are ridiculed for having a presence on tumblr in general, let alone as an asexual person. aces over 30? 40? 50? unicorns. conjured rhetoric. people straight-up don’t believe they exist. people ten years my junior attempt to deny and erase the lived history of aces by saying asexuality was “invented” only ten years ago. i have been terrified of attempting to enter Q* spaces irl because i have heard from even my IRL gay friends that aces do not belong, that “it’s not important enough to form an identity around”, that we are not oppressed enough or we just desperately want to be oppressed. 

i have only heard in passing of people much older than i am who are ace. i have absolutely zero examples to turn to of people like me continuing to live a long life or any evidence that i am worth loving unless i become a parent, which i don’t want to do. when you’re a teenager there’s more discussion about sexual boundaries, but what about dating in my 30s? what adult is going to be satisfied knowing i can never validate their sexual attraction, unless they were ace like me (less than 1% of the population)? am i forced to be alone forever? you can imagine how bleak my future feels. 

it pisses me off that i’m seen as a curmudgeon who “just doesn’t get the young people’s humor” when i have to beg people that i consider friends, for the eight billionth time, to stop making/reblogging jokes about how “cringey” aces are or are tongue-in-cheek declaring themselves to be aphobes, and then those people try to assuage me with respectability politics about how it’s about “THOSE” aces on tumblr and not, yknow, me, who is “one of the good ones”. and since the jokes themselves are so juvenile, it further compounds on the poor social graces and stoicism assumed of asexual people if I’m getting upset over ace war criminal moodboards or whatever the fuck. EVERY time i post about asexual ANYTHING on tumblr, to this day, i lose followers. without fail. people dont bat a lash when i spam 20 untagged posts in a row about a fandom they dont care about but i post two positive words about asexuality and theyre gone.

ASEXUALITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY TEENAGE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

For more information on sexual history read this http://wiki.asexuality.org/Asexual_history

Before aromanticism was used as a term there was non-limerant. Limerance described romantic attraction and so a non-linemerant person didn’t experience romantic attraction. It has a lot of similarities to aromanticism and it’s first documented appearance was in a book called ‘love and limerance’ published in 1979.

Aromanticism was also not invented by white girls on tumblr.

AROMANTICISM WAS NOT INVENTED BY WHITE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

And it’s weird because you expect straight people to say the shit they do but I initially never expected gay people to do the same thing that’s done to them to other people, and even less to feel justified about it.

And now the exact thing (oppression, erasure, forced closeting) gay people herald as what separates them from straight people and use to declare themselves the highest, most important voice within lgbt+ has become a fad and privilege they use against others in the group. Because people already being excluded and mistreated by the general population are easy prey.

Some of these same gay folks also go after pan and bi people and anyone who isn’t strictly gay or lesbian (though I’ve seen stabs at lesbians too). Like I’ve heard someone say pansexuality is transphobic??? Maybe it’s just the ol’ male ignorance and entitlement, with boys and men trying to determine how everyone around them, especially female lgbt+, are allowed to be or whether they’re allowed at all. They treat lgbt+ like a high school clique that they designated themselves the determining voice of. When they’re just the male majority.

Which makes gay people who behave that way not much different from straight people at all, except that they’re oppressed and straight people aren’t. But otherwise they’re both sexual, both only sexual with a single gender, and both exclusionary and hostile towards those whose sexualities/identities different from theirs. Not all of them obviously, but neither are all straight people.

Well fuck that shit, I’m not letting another brand of asshole men telling me I should or shouldn’t be something, belong or don’t belong somewhere, or don’t have the right to something. You’d think being oppressed would make people less ignorant. Instead oppression is being used as a shield or deflector to hide behind whenever they do horrible shit to other people. There’s plenty of people here who are just the other side of the same shitty coin as straight people.

Also, I LOVED how Adrien and Marinette’s intelligence shined in this episode. The little,,, pink polka-dotted Ladybug vision. And the Adrien vision!!! I’m actually super excited Adrien got a part like that!!! (At the same time I can’t BELIEVE he actually did that omfg)

due to mental illness and lack of finances (i can’t pay for a bus or car to take me to and from work daily), i cannot take commissions or get a job.

i’ve added a way to donate to my blog because i can’t just bounce month to month not eating and going hungry as a result of not being able to fill the fridge.

i’m ending up each much with less and less food because of higher bill costs and shit happening that needs money covered for so i end up with an empty fridge by the 1st or 2nd week of the month with no way to buy more food because my bank account is empty.

i’m not really a-okay with giving out my address to let people ship food to me via amazon, so if you’re donating for amazon food please send me a minimum of 10-15 dollars to cover shipping costs.

if you want to donate: my paypal email is [email protected]

or you can click the handy donation button (let me know if it’s broken) on my tumblr.

To any POC, immigrants or non-american tourists traveling around the east coast via bus line, there seems to be an ICE checkpoint in Rochester New York.

I recieved an anxious message from a dear friend of mine who is travelling back home, about an experience they just had at the Rochester Station:

a lot of the time, when i say something like “cringe culture is dead”, at least one person will respond with “but some things are just cringy… i cant stop being embarrassed by x even if i tried.” and, actually? thats ok! thats fine!! second-hand embarrassment is natural in humans. god knows even the most virulent anti-cringe culture advocates have fandoms that they cant stop themselves from internally cringing at, and that’s not a weakness on their part as an advocate. i do of course, and honestly, most of the time, those things i cringe at are things that im interested in too!

the whole point of being against cringe culture isnt that youre so Pure Of Heart that you dont experience secondhand embarrassment (and its ok to admit that you do), its that you ignore that initial reaction and push it aside in the interest of, yknow, not making fun of someone. you dont have to get rid of those feelings entirely, though if you cringe at your own interests, it might be an act of self care to work on accepting that. no one likes everything, thats how it is. the point is that no matter how “cringy” you think something is (and its always subjective too), it brings someone joy, and to stomp on that joy because of your own personal gut reaction is such a shitty thing to do. not to mention that cringe culture is wholly abelist because it targets autistic and other neurodivergent people more than anyone else.

so bottom line is, seeing something -> having a gut reaction that it’s embarrassing is fine, thats normal, but then going to -> making fun of the person who likes that thing, either to their face or behind their back is absolutely where you draw the line. even if the person in question can’t hear you, by making fun of someone, you normalize that behavior, other people internalize it, and you propogade that culture.