Stronger Than You

happy ace week to everyone but this post is specifically for:

you're fucking VALID and i support you!! i know it sucks to be confused and to not know how to describe your experience. it's going to work out, i promise. and in the meantime, try not to get TOO hung up on labels. they're meant to help us understand ourselves, not to define us. you're amazing 💜

i’m not aromantic but i believe in their beliefs

for me being bi has contributed a huge amount to noticing all the ways in which romance and friendship run together and i think in general people would benefit from recognizing that romance and friendship are socially constructed categories used to describe a vast, nebulous, and often overlapping range of feelings

My way of parsing it:

Every Relationship is actually a specific, unique thing. We invented Shorthands, such as Friend or Husband, to help describe recurring motifs in Relationships. But. The labels are simplifications. They will always fail to adequately contain the entirety of the Relationship.

Quick reminder that you don't need a solid sexuality! You can just be in love! Or not be in love! Or have a gender! Labels are a choice, not a requirement. All you need to do is be someone you like being! If labels help with that, great! But they are not required. You don't owe it to anyone, so don't feel pressured to choose labels if they aren't your thing!

🖤💜 Happy international asexuality day! 🖤💜🐀

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity 🖤💜

hey as a local aroace, i want to specify something.

were no strangers to love. you know the rules and so do i (do i). a full commitments what im thinking of. you wouldnt get this from any other guy. i just wanna tell you how im feeling. gotta make you understand. never gonna give you up. never gonna let you down. never gonna run around and desert you. never gonna make you cry. never gonna say goodbye. never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

This is wonderful.

For people who can’t see the image for some reason:

It’s a “Dear Abby” column, published in 1995. The letter writer, “Not Looking for a Girlfriend in New Jersey,” identifies as a 53 year old male virgin with no interest in either women or men, despite coworkers having assumptions that his lack of a family means he must be gay.

This man expresses no concern about his situation (other than the presumed exhaustion at being continually misidentified), and suggests he was writing simply so other people could see that “a man who had no interest in sex” exists.

Abby blows it out of the ballpark with her response:

Here we have the bastion of middle American, the “nice White lady with all the answers”, normalizing this man’s experience and literally telling him to ignore the haters. Pre Millennium. She even calmly supplies this man with the language to identify himself, since he seems not to have encountered it before; that must have been so empowering for him, to have a word for his experience and identity, and to hear that others shared it.

Everyone, you are valid, and your identity is accountable to no one except yourself.

it’s pride month and as an asexual person, i really wanted to make a post that is important to me.

i am already starting to see a lot of asexuality-based pride posts that are keeping up the notion that all asexual people are completely sex repulsed and NEVER engage with any sort of sexual thing ever, which is an extremely outdated concept that isn’t as inclusive as it seems.

there are just as many sex-positive and sex-neutral asexuals who use the label as sex-repulsed ones. by consistently putting out asexual pride merchandise like “cake! not sex!” and “eeerm. i’d rather read about dragons than porn!” it’s alienating a lot asexual people who feel weird using the term because they do enjoy things like sex or porn.

there are asexual sex workers, asexual smut fanfic writers, asexuals who engage in sexual conversations with others, asexuals who do hookups, asexuals who run kink blogs, asexuals who do everything an allosexual person does with a much lowered sense of attraction to people if any at all. those people also deserve to feel good.

asexuality is simply a lack or lowered amount of sexual attraction to others. that doesn’t mean that lack of attraction immediately turns into repulse at the concept every single time. this lack of budge with the label being inherently connected to pure sex repulsion is why so many people are worried to actually use the label.

sex-positive, sex-neutral, sex-repulsed, even asexuals who feel like their opinions change over time depending on their mood, they’re all as equally valid as an outdated slogan for a sexuality.

a slightly belated happy pride to every aromantic, every asexual, and every person in between. we are such an incredibly important part of the lgbtq+ community and i hope you all have a wonderful pride month!

So while most rainbow capitalism is sticking rainbows on things and pretending to be an ally, Budweiser’s UK branch is giving credit to trans activists, and explaining pride flag colors.

Budweiser is an inclusionist 💞💞💞

What a weird and true thing to say! And I almost sounds like a joke but honestly I feel this tweet captures 90% of my feelings

And to actually credit Monica Helms and get the white stripe right? Like, if we are going to have companies at pride this is what I’d like to see. Professional looking marketing, credit to activists, research about the groups its marketing, and spreading further awareness.

Sending this to my dad to see his reaction

Lesbian!

OP left out the third tweet talking about asexuality haha

Bi asexual 😍😍😍😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Lesbian asexual????

GUYS I LITERALLY HAVE A POSTER OF HER ON MY WALL BECAUSE SHE WAS SUCH A HUGE PART OF MY GAY AWAKENING I FEEL SO VALIDATED RIGHT NOW

WE FEEL VALIDATED IN THIS HISTORY TONIGHT

Just wanted to share this for my ace lesbian followers! Marilyn Monroe was most probably one of us asexuals, even if she didn't know about/use the terms we use to describe ourselves today. Reading these excerpts is almost the textbook experiences of aces before we find out community.

-FemaleWarrior™

A lil compilation of ace pride artwork I’ve made over the past year! 💜

It’s okay to not want to have sex ever. It’s okay to never even try it.

I was 23 before it even occurred to me that not starting with sex ever was an option. The feeling of relief was so great I actually cried. 

You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can have a fine live without ever having sex, I promise you. 

Also, it’s okay to never date anyone ever. It’s okay to never even try it if you don’t want to. 

I wrote a master’s thesis on intentionally single people, and the number of them that said in various ways, “I didn’t know not dating people was even an option at first” was absolutely tragic. They honestly thought they had no choice and it never occurred to them that opting out was even a possibility available to them.  

People honestly believe these are life experience you are required to have AND THEY ARE NOT.

You can just not have sex. You can just not date people. You can completely by-pass one or both of those things. Neither of those things are required to be healthy, happy, normal, mature, fulfilled, or any of the other bullshit notions that get attached to these things. 

I understand having boundaries in online spaces and stuff but also like especially within the lgbt community yall have got to stop thinking about identity as a fixed concept. People can and do discover new things about themselves all the time, including but not limited to, things about their gender and sexuality!!!! If this is a problem for you that's literally your problem to deal with not anyone else's!!! Struggling with identity is a lonely and isolating experience and yall just get online every day and just make that worse for people in your own community!!!!

The bisexual to aroace pipeline is pretty much having the right idea and coming to the wrong conclusion. Yeah buddy you're not straight and you're also not gay. No not like that though, the other way around

“I feel the same way about everyone”

Yeah you do. Because you don’t.

Aroace to bisexual pipeline here. Same but also opposite

asexual in a bisexual way

bisexual in an asexual way

i love you straight aromantics. i love you straight asexuals. i love you straight aroaces. i love you straight aroallos. i love you straight aspecs. i love you straight aspecs who are questioning if they’re aspec or not. i love you ‘straight passing’ aspecs. you are loved and you are included and i see your pain and your struggles. you will always always always be a part of our community.