(((I Will Outlive)))

A brief overview of the asexual flag and an unpacking of the controversies surrounding it. See under the cut for a text transcription of the images as well as additional commentary and links to sources. 

You can engage with this post or discuss this in the notes, but I have some ground rules you must follow. Anyone not following these will be blocked, because I have zero interest in debating this stuff. To engage, you must:

I feel like those four will likely wield out a lot of the bad actors and exclusionists. If you see someone violating the rules of engagement, do not argue with them. Just @ me so I can block them. 

Keep reading under the cut for the transcript, commentary, and links.

Keep reading

once again i randomly came across another one of Chii’s 4-koma comic strips about asexuality on Twitter and my reaction to seeing it has me feeling guilty and torn. ;(

for those who don’t speak Japanese, the comic introduces the term “ace” (slang for “asexual”) to Japanese readers and then explains how it’s connected to aces in playing cards. it also introduces readers to the concept / association that’s been floating around English-speaking ace communities of each suite being associated with specific orientations / identities. in the comic, it’s explained as:

before i start ranting going on and on about ‘nothing’, i want to point out that i’m happy that “ace” is being introduced here in Japanese. no conflicting feelings there. i do think it’s highly unlikely that it will ever catch on among Japanese aces for various reasons, a major one being that Aセクシャル / asexual in Japanese is often pronounced “ah-sexual” rather than “ey-sexual”, making any association with “ace” rather abstract and unintuitive. on top of that, Japanese aces already use Aセク / aseku (”ah-seku” / “ey-seku”) as slang for “asexual” anyway. but still, as i said, i’m glad it’s being introduced here if for no other reason than it maybe helping people to know wtf i’m talking about if i do happen to say 「エース」 (”ace”) in Japanese lol…

my guilt and conflicted feelings are in regards to the whole playing card association thing, which i’ve long since had equally conflicted feelings about when used in English-speaking spaces.

on one hand, i’m all for supporting those who embrace these associations and feel like they’re fun and / or useful for themselves. that is the case here for Aseku-kun, the character in orange in the comic, and i know that it is also the case for a lot of people. more power to those who like the whole card association thing. however, since i’ve always felt like the card association thing was / is problematic and meh to begin with, i can’t help but wince at the thought of these associations being imported into Japan…

…especially considering how Japan in general, including the Japanese セクマイ / LGBT community, has this tendency to uncritically and irreversibly import things from English-speaking countries (namely America) and then those imported things continue to exist and thrive in Japan long after English-speaking countries have evolved and moved passed such things for reasons.* if this card association thing were to gain ground in Japan, it’d forever be a thing even if English-speaking ace communities eventually abandoned it because of its limitations, problems, etc.

meh.

i know my feelings about the whole card association thing is an Unpopular Opinion, which is why i’ve mostly kept it to myself and am even playing it down now, but gah… i just… don’t want these associations to spread further, least of all to Japan, which makes me feel really selfish and ugh…

トランプのマークを活用するのが好きや役に立てる人は別にいいけどさぁ、いやぁ、そのマークを日本に紹介しないで！っていうすっごくイヤな気持ちになってしまって仕方がない…

*i’m slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that this is totally related to why Aセクシャル / asexual has come to mean aromantic asexual in Japanese, but i still lack any actual hard evidence for this conclusion, so… i’ll save that rant for another day.

Being asexual doesn’t make you a child or child-like. If you are an adult you deserve to be treated like an adult.

Being asexual doesn’t mean you have to hate sex. Being aromantic doesn’t mean you have to hate romance. You’re allowed to feel however you like about either, whether it’s hate, love, neutrality or anything else.

I think one of the most important things we can do, as we move beyond the initial surge of “ace dis/course”, is begin documenting our community history and circulating that information.

We are a community that’s been damaged, and we will need time and work to heal. A lot of folks came into the community during years of intense strife, fear, and growing shame.

Now, the community is beginning to pick itself back up again. We’re poking our heads out of the closet, and looking around to see if the dust has settled.

In the wake of all that’s happened, it’s more important than ever to talk about where we’ve come from as we decide where to go.

We come from a deep sense of community, from supporting and uplifting one another, and from a place of establishing traditions and finding meaning and connection in our experiences. Let’s talk about that, revive what we can, and move forward from a place of hope for our future and love for our past.

We already are! Just off the top of my head, here’s some places to start, if you are interested in educating yourself on asexual history (but there’s also so, so much more than just this): If you’re interested in asexual history, I would recommend checking out the Carnival of Aces on Asexual History as one place to start.

If you want to read a great academic review of early ace community history, you can check out chapter four of this masters thesis. 

Nat Titman (who was very influential in early ace community building and helped write a lot of early AVEN materials) has a transcript of their 2012 London worldpride talk that is also very informative.

See also several videos from other ace conferences: on ace and aro zines as history and community building from the 2019 NYC conference, and History of ace communities part 1, part 2, and part 3 from the 2014 Toronto Conference.

Hexaquark also made a visual timeline of early ace community history.

For more on asexuality in news media, the AVEN wiki has some cool places to start with pre-2000 and 2000s media collections.

The asexual bibliography, which collects research on asexuality, also includes some older works. For a history of ace history, this article is kinda neat,m and you may be interested in some of the bloggers highlighted. Also, if you are interested in starting up something more organized, or just want more people to geek out with, try checking out the asexual history interest group mailing list - while it’s mostly inactive at the moment, there are still new people joining every month, and I bet you’d find a lot of people interested in further projects if you shoot out a few messages.