Demisexual Pride

I'm greyplatonic. I've been greyromantic, too. And I realized that being a grey aspec is lonely

I don't fit in with allos, so I go to aspec spaces, but I don't fit in with aspecs either. When the aro community in general talked about not having crushes, I felt left out as a greyro who had crushes. When the apl community in general talks about not loving their friends, I feel left out as a greyro who, very rarely, loves some of their friends.

So, I'm making this post for all aspecs who feel too aspec for the allos, and too allo for the aspecs. For aspecs who love too much for aspec communities, but not enough for allos.

For all aspecs who feel attraction. For aspecs whose attraction is abundant but weak, rare but very strong, and everything in between.

For all acespecs who have sex and arospecs who date and all other aspecs who engage in activities without attraction.

For all aspecs who worry that their attraction and existence inherently support oppressive social structures.

For all aspecs who have never seen someone else like them. For aspecs who feel invisible.

For aspecs who feel like they don't belong.

I'm making this post for all shades of grey aspecs, no matter how light or dark, to let them know that we belong.

for the girlies that don't know wtf is goin on

Empezamos el jueves con el aviso de la octava sesión de nuestro club de lectura! 💜🖤💚 Esta vez nos quisimos atrever con un texto más largo que los anteriores, un clásico que muches hemos leído: El Principito, de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Es por eso que avisamos con un par de días extra en comparación a lo habitual, esperamos que sea suficiente para organizarse y (re)leerlo! Anoten la fecha, lean y conéctense este sábado 23 a las 18 hrs. de Chile continental 👀. Les esperamos!

Libro disponible en BibliotecaDigital 

Se abre la invitación a cualquier persona hispanohablante que sea parte de los espectros asexual/arromántico o que quiera sumarse con respeto.

A new flag for the aspec community

Just an idea I had for an aspec flag. 

I haven’t really seen a flag that has been widely adopted for the greater aspec community as a whole, and I thought to throw my own hat into the ring because why not. 

More about the flag in the break below

Continua a leggere

[ID: A pride flag with five horizontal stripes of: Green, yellow, cream, medium blue, and purple. There is a small four pointed star in the center. End ID.]

I wanted to create a new aspec flag, mainly because the aspec flags we have only included aro and ace people, and completely forget not only aplatonic and agender people, but also other less known types of lack of attraction.

I wanted to made a flag inclusive to all aspec people that dont just stop on the ace and aro part of the community. Our community is diverse and beautiful, and I find unfair that there only flags that erase these amazing labels! (This is by no means hating on the people who made these flags!)

Here the stripes' and symbol's meanings:

Green Stripe - The green strip represents aromantic and agender people!

Yellow Stripe - Similar to the aroace flag, the yellow stripe represents love and relationships outside of amatonormativity ideas from our society. It also represents how our community fight against amatonormativity and radicalize the word "love". (Eg, but not limited to: Loveless, lovepunk and lovequeer aspecs). The yellow stripe also represents tertiary attraction.

White Stripe - The white stripe represents the diversity of the aspec community.

Blue Stripe - Like the aplatonic flag, the blue color is the opposite of yellow, that generally represents friendships and platonic attraction. This stripe represents anyone who is aplatonic.

Purple Stripe - This stripe represents asexual people, but also the aspec community as a whole.

Compass Rose Symbol - This symbol was inspired from the @the-moon-is-aroace 's aspec flag! Only changing the color for aesthetic reasons! I'm quoting their definition:

Well thats the post. At least in the beginning, if you use this flag, please credit me.

Have a nice day/night :D

hate how “platonic” is a term that people laugh at

like it’s typically used in a setting to contrast romance vs what’s “lesser” or “just” something else

like if i say i love someone very much platonically, most would take it as a denial of romantic attraction as opposed to. yknow. me just expressing the way i love somebody that has Zero association with romance.

idk man, i don’t need people to laugh at me when i say i love how i connect with someone platonically because apparently we only say that when we’re secretly romantically attracted to them and just totally denying it.

i want to say “aww this is so platonic, i love it!” the same way people say “aww this is so romantic, i love it!” but y’all know i’ll be laughed at lmao

can they just. actually recognize platonic love and platonic attraction please. it’s not a step down or a step up from anything and it is certainly not solely an absence of romantic (or sexual) feelings.

platonic is beautiful. platonic is lovely. and i will celebrate it however i please.

[ID: The Scooby Doo ghost meme. In the first panel, Fred looks at a ghost, labelled “the reason why “romantic love saves the day” is seen as a mature plot point but "friendship saves the day" is seen as childish”, and says “Okay gang, let’s see who the ghost really is.“ In the second panel, Fred pulls off the mask and looks at a man labelled “amatonormativity”. End ID]

reading heartstopper: my favourite characters are aled and tori *finds out they’re canonically demisexual and asexual*

watching heartstopper: my favourite characters are tori again and isaac *isaac is confirmed aroace*

Wishing a happy pride month to all aspec folks 💜💚

to preface THIS POST IS FOR AROMANTIC PEOPLE, AROSPEC AND OTHER A-SPEC PEOPLE ONLY. THIS WAS NOT WRITTEN FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF ALLOROMANTIC PEOPLE

im about to say something and potentially it will make some people unhappy and i am aware of this but it's my opinion and i'm going to say it anyway.

It's ok not to want to be aromantic.

Yes, I know this is probably not a great thing to say given the stigma we face and trying to do positivity and all that but i think it's important to recognise it.

The world is incredibly amatonormative. Romance is prioritised over almost everything else. And to be aromantic is to accept that you're not going to be able to experience this thing, this highly - well - romanticised thing, this thing that's so completely ingrained in culture (well, mainstream western culture at least. I'm not overly well-educated on other cultures so i won't make any sweeping statements about them) the way that you're 'supposed' or expected to, and I think it's okay not to want that. It's okay to hope that you aren't aromantic. It's okay to be upset when you find out that you are. You can mourn the theoretical relationships you'll never have and the inclusion that society will never give you because as a whole the population simply cannot seem to grasp the concept of not wanting or experiencing romantic love.

I see a lot of posts spreading aro positivity and talking about all the cool stuff that comes with it and i do of course think that they are important because being aromantic is incredibly cool and valid but i don't really see the other side of finding out you're aro talked about.

So if there is anyone out there who has recently discovered that they're aro and are upset about what they've lost, or are wondering if they're aro and are worried about what it means for them, i see you. You are not 'broken' or 'lesser', and you don't need to fit in with the rest of society. But it's okay to feel how you're feeling. It's okay to want to be alloromantic. You're not a 'bad' aro for wanting that and anyone who makes you feel like that is a twit. you can throw a bowl of limp spaghetti at them.

to reiterate THIS POST IS FOR AROMANTIC PEOPLE, AROSPEC AND OTHER A-SPEC PEOPLE ONLY. ALLOROMANTICS PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT

Hey Awesome Asexuals, I found a great resource for y'all.

I’ve seen a lot of posts by other asexual people about how they grew up thinking there was something horribly wrong with them, that they had some weird condition that no one else had ever experienced, and then one day they found out about asexuality and breathed a huge sigh of relief. And that’s definitely a story worth telling, but I want to make a post about the opposite experience–that is, assuming you’re “normal” and then having your world knocked off its orbit by the revelation that you’re lowkey probably on the ace spectrum. 

See, I love the idea of romance. It was always my favorite part of every book and movie when I was a kid. I daydreamed constantly, and I liked looking at boys, but the desire ended there. When I got older, I thought I wanted sex, because it seemed like the natural extension of the things I liked to daydream about, but I spent very little time actually having sexual thoughts or desires. I “wanted” sex in a vague, distant, hyper-idealized kind of way, and I always just sort of assumed that everyone else felt the same way I did. And for a long time, that idea went unchallenged. When I was in high school, sex was still sort of a taboo, whisper-and-giggle subject for most of my peers, and since no one ever told me exactly what sexual desire was supposed to feel like, I assumed we were feeling the same thing.

But then, when I got to college, all the social barriers against sex were gone. I was surrounded by horny 18-year-olds who had been dropped in the middle of a huge campus where no one cared what they did, where they could do whatever they wanted, and they wanted to fuck. For the first time, I was surrounded by people who were being very straightforward about their sexual desires. I learned that for them, sexual desire was a direct, immediate, physical thing, rather than a vague idea that they thought about sometimes but never felt the need to act on. That was when I first began to suspect that I wasn’t feeling the same things everyone else was feeling. And then, as I started to interrogate that idea further, I realized that I’d never really wanted sex that badly at all–I just thought that sex was necessary to obtain the things I did want (namely, closeness, validation, and acceptance from men).

Realizing that I was on the ace spectrum was not a happy revelation. As dramatic as it sounds, I kind of felt like my life was a lie. I spent my whole life thinking I was “normal,” only to found out I was actually part of a group that comprises about 1% of the global population. My feelings, which I had assumed were universal, were actually borderline incomprehensible to a decent chunk of people--to the point where I have to write a novel-length tumblr post to adequately explain my point of view. It felt like having a rug pulled out from under me. 

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. Finding out that I’m a-spec was a fairly recent development, and I’m still kind of deciding how I feel about it. But if anyone else reads this and relates to it, I hope it made you feel a little better.

Much love, and happy (belated) ace day. 

Mae-Yi ‘May’ Park from Run On episode 6 & 15 (2020)

Amm from Friend Zone 2 Dangerous Area episode 14 (2020)

Kodama Sakuko from Koisenu Futari/Two People Who Can’t Fall in Love episode 1 (2022) cap by @kyanitedragon​

Fujisaki Nozomi from Cherry Magic episode 4 & 12 (2020)

Can we stop acting like demisexual/demiromantics will automatically be attracted to someone once they develop an emotion bond (their specific version of a bond)?? I just don't like when people are like "when demi people find their person". No. We don't have "our person". This isn't a soulmates au. Our attraction isn't definite. We don't just automatically get attracted to our best best friends. Stop acting like being demisexual or demiromantic means you are looking for "that one person that we can connect to out in the world". Stop please

Aspecs who experience attraction should be talking about their attraction. Attraction is a conversation we absolutely need to have! It’s vital we share our experiences with each other.

Not only will it help questioning aspecs figure out where exactly they fit, or if they’re even aspec to begin with, it will help eliminate some of the imposter syndrome we’re all prone to. The reason why we have these constant doubts, is because we never see anyone else talking about their attraction. And it would be so helpful for everyone if we did. People who aren’t sure if they feel attraction, can see what attraction generally feels like. And compare from there. Maybe it’ll help the questioning aspec figure out what exactly they’re feeling. And those who are strictly aro and/or ace will feel more confident in their identity.

And the aspecs who do feel attraction? Who feel like, maybe they’re not really aspec because they seem to be the only one in the community who feels attraction? It’ll help them feel a lot better about the fact they do experience that attraction. We feel like we don’t belong sometimes, because we see everyone else talk about the attraction they don’t feel. And obviously, conversations about not experiencing attraction are gonna come up constantly in our spaces. Our orientation(s) revolve around that. But it gets discouraging for some of us who do experience attraction.

People are probably worried to talk about the times they experience attraction, because they never see other people talk about the times they experience attraction. And because they never see other people talk about the times they experience attraction, they’re nervous speaking out. It’s kinda like when doing presentations in school. Everyone in class is pointing fingers at each other, wanting literally anyone but themselves to do their speech first. We have that going on here. Someone needs to make the first move. And hopefully if we get enough people to start, more will follow as it becomes normalized.

And it will get rid of some of the self doubt. It will get rid of some of the questioning. We can compare our experiences with attraction. It’s valuable we get as many attraction-feeling aspecs as we can to talk about their experiences. The information we can provide each other is important. We need to share it!

I want to hear from the sex/romance-repulsed who feel still attraction. The sex/romance-favorable who feel it. The indifferent. The ambivalent. From all aspec orientations. Everyone single aspec out there has something valuable to say. It’s time everyone speaks up!