#faetality.aroace

        𝔟𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥 𝔤𝔬𝔡𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔰                🏮                𝔟𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔡 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔠𝔢

  🫆 PRINCE. Chinese Xiá 🫆

ྐ✚⠀⠀  HIGH FEMME ALTAR ⠀ ⛓️

ྐ✚⠀⠀  Asian LGBTQ+ Community ⛓️

ྐ✚⠀ ⠀ T/CW.⠀🪢⠀Tags.⠀🪢⠀Essays. ⛓️

ྐ✚ SFW Asks & Anons Open. Go on. Be Wise.⛓️

Fair Warning : Get your rabies shot before you contact me. Do not republish or share my personal media. Blog contains mild NSFW, sex & kink positivity & uncensored heavy political rants INCL. media criticism, academic racism, race- & gender-based C/SA, massacres & state violence. Centering Asian and Austronesian sapphics. NO FLIRTING.

Always learning. Please DM me if something I share goes against the safe space I wish to curate for marginalised persons. Anons are not preferred for such matters as they do not allow for a neutral and open conversation.

Yellow-Brown, Chinese-Austronesian, Migrant-Indigenous

#faetality.intro — all introductory posts as tagged.

Your consumption, your responsibility. ⛓️

🥩𓏶། ྀིྀ⠀ ⠀@theleatherandgoldbar — ButchFemmeStudStemme. 🩸

🀄️𓏶། ྀིྀ⠀ ⠀@this-is-sinophobia-orientalism — Asian Activism. 🩸

🏮𓏶། ྀིྀ⠀⠀ @this-is-sinosexism — Asian Activism. 🩸

🦷𓏶། ྀིྀ⠀ ⠀@uzmacchiato — banner png credits. 🩸

We met through a niche interest, some have travelled together ever since through some rough sagas while others have sort of dropped from it. The allo-platos especially, have their own subgroup branching off, which have more regular meets, personal engagements they do that I don’t even understand. Sometimes I’m invited, but it makes me a little nervous to stay too long in case they assume I’m interested in the same cultivated relations too.

Sometimes they talk about how close people are, they instruct me on who “is close vs distant” from me, and observe relational politics, but how they do the math is genuinely beyond me. I know who likes/dislikes me based on how they behave around me, but “close/distant” is something else entirely. I go to them for their advice on that side of socialisation. They’ve been so overwhelmingly understanding towards my difference in engagements, without judging me, nor treating me less than/estranged/inhuman/failure of company, and I cannot be more thankful.

The whole group mutually share this energy of high spirits around each other, sending each other the occasional memes that remind us of each other, and brief check-ins every couple of months. But we never say the “fr***d word”.

I don’t believe we even introduce each other that way (ie “this is my friend XYZ”), not unless I was joking around with them. It feels too… enforced, like there’s some kind of expectation that comes with that label and we are all wary of it.

We tend to default to pragmatic relations. (Ie “this is XYZ. We met doing ABC/they are the <insert formal position of some shared organisation>). Though I cannot discern if this is a common/uncommon/neutral behaviour, since it varies even where I’ve lived in Australia and Asia. It strikes me that those who are deviant from the whole “friend” thing, and feel at ease with it (not coping nor feeling disoriented), is more common than people realise.

You get some people say “this is my mate/friend” (personal context), and others who wouldn’t claim it on a personal level even if they interact outside of specific pragmatic contexts.

One of the newer folks to the group is allo-platonic, and remarked once that the group never have a conversation nor atmosphere nor cohesion that flows. It feels like a battlefield of individual energies and no connectivity that lasts beyond the temporary fun atmosphere. Which I’m to blame I think 😂

In the last couple of months, I’ve checked in a little more frequently than usual, and one of the aplato folks commented (neutrally !), that in all the years they’ve known me, I’ve always been very “coworker” level of intimacy, never “warm” in the way I have been recently. Very valid assessment and shared across the board with other groups of folks I’ve also known for a time.

Sometimes the aplatos joke with each other that we care for each other, but on a serious level, we wouldn’t really talk about it or say it like that and are averse to that label. Platonic relations has a whole school of thought and expectations around “good v bad friend”, and even from an intracultural lens (ie Asian), there are expectations I literally know but do not wish to participate in.

And the aplatos are all totally cool with a level of trust and purpose without labels nor expectations. Even where the connection gets staticky, we don’t worry about it, and yet we are typically first to have each others’ backs.

Meaning it shouldn’t become an expectation or a standard that butches-in-general will self-sacrifice for a femme, or that femmes-in-general will require assistance or want assistance in certain areas. Romanticising sacrifice is fine, when these checkpoints are considered—so as to prevent a repeat of benevolent sexism, taking advantage or objectifying of all parties.

I think this could be a slippery slope into social contracts and creating norms that many butches and femmes have voiced their displeasure with. It could also lead to martyrdom, saviour complexes, emotional pressuring, mistreatment and even abusive dynamics where a partner is trapped in standards that are communally pressured but ones they either can’t do or don’t agree to do.

Instead it should always go back to the individual and their specific preferences and consent, than to treat femmes and butches as a monolith upheld to a set expectation.

Butches should not be doing chivalrous things “because they’re a butch and should be doing it”. But because it is their choice. Butches in general shouldn’t be expected to constantly sacrifice, even if that is the individual preferences between some couples. They should not be expected to override their own emotional, romantic or sexual labour to the service of another. They should not be bound into a social contract that voids their autonomy.

At the same time femmes should not be the recipient of chivalry or acts of service if they haven’t consented to it. As wonderful as the intentions might be, without a femme’s consent, these acts can come off with emotional residue and strings attached, or void a femme’s autonomy in the interest of fulfilling one’s own ego. Nor should femmes constantly be expected to empathise and provide emotional, romantic or sexual labour.

Within partnerships, I’ve personally found that reducing expectations and treating every bid of love as a pleasant surprise within that moment, helps to relieve the pressure of expectations and owing dues—which can breed resentment.

Parts 1-4:

Platonormativity: Community & Friends

Emotional Labour & Leadership

Affection

Social Contracts & Emotional Slavery

Platonormativity: Community & Friends

Be careful when falsely equating:

having friends

caring for others

friendship feelings

Being in community

Being a better person in society.

To do so would be amatonormative, specifically platonormative.

None of these are inherently good things. A person can be in befriend and be in community with the scum of the earth. They can care for people who weaponise it against others.

One can be in community without having “communal feelings”, just as one can be in a friendship without having “friendship feelings”.

They could be motivated by other things, or measure the relationships they have (or don’t) by other things, without this automatically translating to malice and exploitation.

Being without these or seeing oneself outside of it, doesn’t make someone a worse person.

Emotional Labour & Leadership

Doing emotional labour is a choice. Not doing said labour does not state anything about your worth or value as a person.

Some formal roles such as a leader or elder, is typically held responsible for a level of labour for the wellbeing of others, which does sometimes (not always) involve emotional labour. This is given they occupy a level of power, influence or status which determines they use it to the service of those in need.

But emotional labour ≠ affection.

Affection suggests bias and subjectivity, when a leader should be objective and impartial. Capable of detaching when the emotional labour is no longer useful.

If a leader helps, it shouldn’t be because they favour the person or have affection towards them. But because the person—like any other—is in need of it.

It could even be an enemy or someone they dislike, but their amount of baseline labour should remain standardised, equitable and unbiased. Otherwise this is favouritism which creates power imbalances and popularity contests dependent on the leader’s good/bad feelings towards specific people.

Affection

Also just because a person feels affectionate differently and/or executes acts of affection differently, doesn’t mean they aren’t affectionate.

Or that that affection feeling and its actions has to be:

Unconditional.

Consistent.

Of a set, calculable amount. Aka Transactional.

Labelled.

Received and given in the same way all the time.

Has to be “equally reciprocated”.

Is understood and interpreted the same by all parties.

The way one may communicate affection can be different from others. Sometimes a person communicates it in a way that another might not fully appreciate or need/ed.

We have to stop demonising that as bad and reserve moralising for actual cases of abuse and neglect. One cannot expect perfect translations of love languages, nor that it is even love in the first place. This doesn’t diminish the valuable impacts it has.

Social Contracts & Emotional Slavery

My theory is that when Person A evokes a feeling of affection, safety etc in Person B, B forms this implicit contract that bounds A to always trigger and operate on those emotions with them.

And this is what people seem to assume is an agreement to friendship.

If A at any point violates this implicit agreement by evoking a different emotion in B, this is typically seen as a betrayal.

Straightness is not about cisheterosexuality. It is about normativity benefitted under a dominant structure.

Eurocolonial cisheteropatriarchy ties critical race, class, queer and gender theory.

Queer straightness, not straighten queerness.

Queerness is not quantifiable.

Cisheterosexual people can be queer, be affected by queerphobia and have queer autonomy too. Cisheterosexual persons can experience non-normativity and suffer for it.

Comphet affects everyone. Everyone can be confused.

Cisheterosexual people can have queer sexual or romantic relations and still identify as Cisheterosexual if they feel most comfortable to. Same goes for queer people who behave “contradictory to their identity”. That’s none of your damn business.

Do not fall prey to identity policing, separatism or exclusionist mentality.

Passing privilege is a myth.

Better treatment does not equate to better humanisation.

Feeling validated does not equate to gender euphoria.

What makes you feel good about yourself, might not always be healthy, nor humane to yourself and others.

Do not bash people you’re unattracted to.

Do not bash people your desired person is attracted to.

Do not bash your desired person for not reciprocating attraction to you.

Attraction and libido can come and go, or never return. The same actions and events may not always stimulate the same feelings, if at all.

Safe Love, romantic AND sexual activity is consensual and free from coercion. People can withdraw their consent at any time, without penalty or fear.

People aren’t just characters to play a role in your fantasies, whether romantic or sexual. Being romanticised is not more/less objectifying than being sexualised, the issue is consent and humanising treatment.

You get to regulate non-actions (what you don’t do in relationships or romance), any way you’d like. All actions being done to someone else must be consensual.

Before communicating, showing or performing acts of love and care to someone else, make sure they are consenting to it.

You do not have to accept, appreciate or reciprocate the “Love” you receive, nor in the specific way it was given.

Love does not equate to respect and vice versa.

Your autonomy and how you want to handle it, or gift others control over it. Who, where, when and how—is your preference and your decision.

Communication is key, but nobody is entitled to your self-disclosure unless it harms their bodily integrity [ie diseases].

Reciprocity and transactionality does not have to be the basis of a healthy relationship.

You do not need to experience, give or receive love, affection, intimacy, friendship, romance or sex, to be a whole person or a good person.

It is fine to expect to be safe and supported around your loved ones and community.

It is not fine to expect this unconditionally and to punish others for fair or reasonable conditions [ie not supporting your bigotry or abuse].

Do not expect reciprocation of feelings or actions from other individuals who haven’t explicitly agreed or contracted to a specific dynamic.

Do not cast generalised expectations and genderdiverse norms onto any gender group. Your individual preferences and how you navigate your own gender doesn’t have to depend nor inform an entire collective and its rules.

Do not compete for resources of validation and security under bigots and fascists.

Liberation at the expense of a marginalised group or another, is not liberation. Liberation that overlooks those left behind is not true queer representation.

Intersectionality should always be considered, but don’t weaponise this any way you like. Ensure every time it is brought up, it does not ridicule the value of intersectional awareness.

Marginalised groups aren’t monoliths and you are not the sole representation of an entire group of people, their unique individual advantages and struggles.

Even marginalised people can be unsafe, sell out and dehumanise their own.

Marginalised people do not “deserve their suffering”.

Stop gatekeeping and forming your identities by monopolising struggles and peddling exclusivity when it can be experienced by many. No such thing as “X is a Q-persons-specific issue”. Instead say “X is experienced by many Qs”.

Transness is not a measure of how well you pass or the steps you’ve taken to transition.

You do not have to fit a binary mold to be performing gender well enough.

You do not have to socially or medically transition “all the way” or even at all, to be seen as committed to your own journey.

Monosexual privilege is real. Biphobia is real. Transandrophobia is real. Exorsexism is real. Multispec discrimination is real. Lateral violence is real.

Bisexuals, men- and masc-aligned lesbians, women- and fem-aligned gays, mspec lesbians/gays, GNC, transfems and transmascs are not traitors with proximity to cisheteropatriarchy.

Amatonormativity, Aromantic, Aplatonic

On Acts of Service, Transactionality & Overextension

Race & Amatonormativity

Basic decency as currency

How people treat potential partners VS competitive rivals

Trans + Amisia

ButchFemme Expectations & Amatonormativity

Butchfemme Self-Sacrifice

Amatonormative Performativity: Butch Saviour & Fawning Femme

Stone & AroAce Respect

My experience being Asexual, Aromantic & Aplatonic | Part 2 Q&A

[Repost] Queerum -- AroAce Resources

[Repost] Ace-Lesbian-Culture-Is -- Asexual Lesbian Masterpost

And you don’t want to trigger or cause someone else to have expectations of reciprocity, sex or sex talk at any level of consistency [because you wouldn’t be able to fulfil that !! And they might feel neglected/hurt if you’re inconsistent], so everytime you get turned on it really is just “stuff it in the bag and move on and don’t mention it or be weird about it with others and take care of it alone”.

“When a femme’s femininity and sexuality is for a butch, that is actually radical because they’re not a man.”

Asides from all the transandrophobia and exorsexism and amatonormativity rampant in that kind of thought which does end up marginalising those who do not fit the binary—

Such thought may have been relevant in the 40s when society received a wake-up call that women were determined to have sexuality, pleasure, economical power and class mobility that does not depend upon men, nor even involve men. Recall that this was progressive back when it was not yet feasible for women to be divorced from dyadic dependency [nuclear family structure]. Which is why the ButchFem Dyad was a strategic parallel of the nuclear family model.

So for the love of bush, if you aren’t living in anything similar to that era (understandable otherwise), then do not take on that 2nd wave radfem-political-lesbian ideology in 2025, especially to impose onto others.

Many of us have come a long ways since, some of us have learned that dependency on another via the currency of sex and relationships is not our end goal. Many of us have learned strategies of independence and self-empowerment that doesn’t revolve around the commodification of our sex or emotional labour for a set ‘clientele’ [not re: OFOS, but bad eggs who do expect this].

It’s fine if you want to do OFOS yourself. But it does breed Amatonormativity to take a personally idealised relationship standard and impose it as a norm.

For example: “MY ideal Femmeness/Butchness” becomes “this is the standard of Femmeness/Butchness and yours is weird/not as worthy”, “this is what all Femmes/Butches should do as the expected norm”.

It becomes elitism, putting down or overlooking other relationship forms which are not more/less harmful, just different. It characterises people in different kinds of relationships, their bond and experiences, as lesser. And when this becomes a widespread view that fails to observe how it affects and villainises multicultural differences and marginalised identities, this where the Amatonormativity worsens intersectional marginalisation.

Not to mention the pressure for people to only ever be valuable if they use [insert core part of their identity] for others. This begins to encroach on commodifying gender roles. This is where gender roles, like anything else, can become harmful and objectifying impositions.

On dispelling the myth that queer relationships are “safe” just because they’re not cisheterosexual: Gender roles are not inherently harmful in themselves, just as cisheterosexuality isn’t inherently harmful in itself. It is when gender-based (and race-based) norms are turned into social currency and capital, commodified and aestheticised, imposed, subject to social ostracism and even sometimes policed, that it becomes harmful. The person beneath it is forgotten and not valuable just for being. This doesn’t just impact the individual, but when it is a commonplace perception, it harms whole gender groups with BIPOC often suffering even more for it due to the intersections of race and gender.

There is much more to a butch’s or femme’s independence and sexual integrity than just the dyadic forms of relationships. “Giving another access to my sexuality is power” repeats the “giving away your virginity is a form of power” rhetoric; which does have some degree of choice—but only when it is still in service of someone else.