Ace Rambling

Can’t explain how asexuals can enjoy porn? Lesbians admit to enjoying gay male porn. Can’t explain what an unobtainable crush is? Lesbians admit to having crushes on fictional men. Etc. Etc.

Y’all probably didn’t realise how validating it was to hear my experiences shared by allos but whether you intended to or not you make me more confident being my whole self so I just wanted to wish you all the same.

Happy pride month.

So everyone’s talking about misgendering trans people they don’t respect. And yes we all know why we’re talking about it but deflecting and derailing with “Wah, I’m not respecting [you know who]!” every time this comes up isn’t fucking acceptable, because this isn’t even about them and you know it.

Just to keep anyone from bringing them up, I’m going to use a completely unrelated example. Youtuber Lily Orchard is a cartoon reviewer that gained a reputation for her controversial opinions. In one video made by another cartoon reviewer about her they said they would be “nice” by “using her preferred pronouns”.

When you consider correctly gendering a trans person the nice thing to do, and when you hinge it on your respect for them, you’re telling everyone that you see it as a privilege as opposed to correctly gendering a cis person which we all see as a given.

Let me unpack that for you: you’re saying that - in a world where trans people are oppressed - that not oppressing them… is a privilege.

To put in into perspective, imagine if I claimed that me not saying the N-word was me being nice? Would you not think that I sounded like someone who wants to say the N-word? Someone who still thinks the N-word but just refrains from saying it? Someone who thinks that the N-word is perfectly acceptable, but I’m even nicer to not say it? Would you not think that I was a racist and pompous asshole?

The mission statement of the app is to "fight cancel culture" and "promote free speech". But I wonder if the trumpies would still love it if that speech happened to be pro-LGBT+?

Allos: "Stop talking over us, we have more important problems"

The year is 2052 you walk into the toiletries isle of your local supermarket and find that the menstrual pad shelf is split in two:

The array of brightly coloured pads you know on one side and on the other, rows of black packaging with bold metallic silver letters spelling out each brand name always followed by "MEN" in all caps.

The best representation is actually when they don’t have a reason to be gay!

Things become normalized when they can be added to a story without any plot relevance.

For example, if an author were to write “he took his briefcase and headed to work” that’s normal, the author doesn't have to give a reason for that because we assume the reason is it is normal to take a briefcase to work. But if an author wrote “he took his gun and headed to work” Well that’s not normal! We better find out his reason for doing that! We’re all assuming that that is a set-up for some epic pay-off now!

Excluding people for “straight passing” is inherently aphobic/biphobic/etc here’s why

So you lot love to tell me that you’re not doing anything wrong because all you’re doing is pointing out the fact that technically we don’t need to be supported by the community because we have the option of being safe and “accepted” (but not really) if we just stay in the closet and pretend to be straight.

But when you say we shouldn’t have the option of being out but still accepted and supported by the LGBT+ community then you’re saying you think we all should have to stay in the closet or else live with the biphobia/aphobia/etc

I realise that that only happened as a mistake but I still think more games should do it.

The split attraction model is not harmful. It is helpful.

The “harm” the above is referring to is not the result of the SAM but actually a result of allos who do not understand the SAM using it entirely incorrectly. This surge of hate for the SAM is a bit like saying disinfectant is harmful because kids have swallowed it; it would have some merit, if disinfectant was for drinking. But it’s not, it’s for disinfecting, and it being used wrong doesn’t change that, and doesn’t make it any less important and helpful. The SAM is not for allos to split two allo labels, its for aros/aces to accurately label themselves, and it being used wrong does not make it any less important or helpful.

People’s failure to acknowledge this and their decision to demonise the SAM – even correct uses of it – actually harms the aro/ace community by stigmatising their ability to accurately label themselves and their insistence that the SAM is nothing more than a social construct that we can just forget about is invalidating to aros and aces. And if they got their way and the SAM was done for, some day young aros and aces could just grow up wondering what was wrong with them, thinking they were broken, not understanding why they can only feel one kind of attraction.

But I’m pretty sure most of the folks tweeting this knew all of that already. Because to me it’s fairly obvious that the SAM isn’t a harm to the community and it’s extremely obvious that aros and aces need it. I’m pretty sure that this is another round of aphobia, because if we think about it, what would happen if we all decided that the SAM was evil? Aspecs would suffer for it, as I’ve already said but also they wouldn’t be able to be aro/ace and L, G or B anymore and to an aphobe who wants to exclude aspecs from the LGBT+ community, that probably sounds like a pretty sweet deal, being able to exclude aros/aces regardless of whether they’re gay or not.

Trans women are women

Not all lesbians are TERFs