She’s so powerful looking. Here’s the tweet with a looping video of her modeling

Regardless of other factors, do you believe asexual people have the right to be part of this community because of their asexual identity?

Yes: 94.2%, 1838 respondents. No: 5.8%, 113 respondents.

Regardless of other factors, do you believe aromantic people have the right to be part of this community because of their aromantic identity?

Yes: 92.2%, 1771 respondents No: 7.8%, 149 respondents

Meaning of the letter “A” when appearing in LGBT[…]+ acronyms:

I’m just posting this here for my aces and aros who are feeling down on themselves and defeated tonight. Remember that nine out of ten people support you and that the current loudest voices are not those of the majority.

I would like to point out that this moment right here is so cleverly put and genuinely beautiful that it could work for everything people want and need to take from it.

I legitimately cried, because I didn’t only see how a healthy and respectful relationship should work, I also saw a beautiful and respectful way to legitimate and support asexuality, which is something I’ve never seen in a show, especially related to a same sex couple (a lesbian one nonetheless).

As an ace lesbian this means the world to me, because I always have to deal with over-sexualized characters and stories, and though I’m kinda used to it by now, it still bothers me, because I just wish people understood that not everything revolves around sex, and that you can be in a healthy and happy relationship regardless of it involving sex or not, as long as you really love each other.

So, thank you One Day at a Time, you did good.

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

With Valentine’s Day coming up, here’s a reminder: 

It’s okay to be aromantic. 

It’s okay to be romance-repulsed. 

It’s okay to not want a partner. 

It’s okay to be in a platonic relationship. 

It’s okay to be single. 

It’s okay to be asexual. 

It’s okay to be sex-repulsed. 

It’s okay to not want to have sex. 

It’s okay if multiple of the mentioned things apply to you. 

During the days around Valentine’s Day, surrounded by media that screams “Romance!” and/or “Sex!” at you, it can be hard to remember it but please let me remind you: You are okay. You matter. You’re lovely just the way you are. You don’t need anyone or anything to “complete you”. You’re not broken. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Mom

idk can we stop…treating a.ce disc.ourse like it’s some haha funney cringe compilation or whatever the fuck because it fucking destroyed the entire ace and aro communities. there is no solid aspec community on tumblr anymore (which was by far the biggest number of aspec ppl). exclusionists took our community and fucking smashed it to pieces and y'all treat it as this fucking stupid joke when they traumatized, gaslit, and abused an entire group of queer people back into the closet. fuck every single person who doesn’t take that seriously.

My personal experience is just that, but it’s really indicative that I have watched almost every single ace and aro person I know, irl and online, actively recloset themselves as a direct result of the consequences of The Disc Horse™

I watched irl queer groups disintegrate bc a few ppl who got into leadership positions used that to make the space hostile towards ace ppl (among others as well), saw friends go from being loud and proud aces n aros to actively avoiding any mention of it and letting ppl assume their sexuality. I myself, having been IDing as ace for 10 years at least, have in the past couple since this whole “"discourse”“ came into being, actively and intentionally stopped telling anyone at all that I’m ace. To put that in some kind of perspective, I am incredibly out as trans and will actively out myself pretty constantly except to total strangers I will never see again. I feel safer telling ppl I’m trans than ace. Especially in queer spaces. It’s fucked me up so much I didn’t even quite grasp how much but today my therapist asked me for the first time about like romantic relationships and I physically could not say I am aro and ace. Completely incapable, utterly frozen, and I just kinda let her believe what she will. Ironically the fact that I’ve gone from being willing and ready to tell ppl I’m ace as just another facet of myself to entirely unable and unsolicited to tell anyone, is probably a thing one might want to talk w one’s therapist about.

This has really fucked not just the community at large but fucked up individual ace ppl in so many ways. It’s not something “funny” or remotely harmless, it’s absolutely devastated us.

for people in the notes looking for “elder” aces, i just wanna say that i’m 28 years old and am also desperately searching for that representation. i first found out about asexuality through tumblr when i was 21 and started identifying as asexual when i was 21-22 (around 2012). i’ve sought other online ace communities but nothing compared to tumblr. i mean, props to aven for existing as a repository of resources but in terms of just chatting with other aces “in the wild” as it were, tumblr was the perfect place.

but then this fucking shit happened. around 2015 is when it really kicked into high gear. “discoursers” or exclusionists or aphobes or however you want to refer to them consider asexuality to be a joke and that everyone who identifies as ace is a cringey cishet college-aged white girl who loves dr who. recycled biphobia, homophobia, and even terf rhetoric made its way into the mainstream tumblr conscious by reframing the arguments to target ace people (you’re only X because you’re ugly/can’t get laid; you aren’t part of the community if your partner is of a different gender; maybe something happened to you to make you this way; have you had your hormones checked?; by accepting this identity you are allowing the oppressor to infiltrate our spaces; etc.). you know, in case you think this is just about “snick snack” memes.

this has alienated ace people of color, who already struggle with desexualization/hypersexualization, disabled aces, ace survivors, trans aces, mentally ill aces, neurodiverse/AUTISTIC ACES (you guys get REAL fuckin nervous when i highlight that the majority of your jeering about aces’ perceived awkwardness, missed social cues, infantilization/dehumanization, or “unfuckability”/“cringey-ness” are repackaged ableism, especially considering that a good percentage of the ace community is also autistic), and both young AND older aces. 

younger people are being discouraged from exploring the possibility of being asexual by exclusionists for reasons that vary from internalized homophobia to asexuality being a side effect of SSRIs. they are being told that they are “actually” something other than what they say they are, or that they are broken, or that they’re too young to know, or that our ace identity is simultaneously something that must be excruciatingly examined to determine its “cause” yet so irrelevant that it’s unworthy of discussion or representation—”nobody cares that you don’t want to have sex”. i WISH i had known about asexuality as a teenager, as a kid. I wish i had saved myself from so much grief, abuse, pain, and corrective rape by not subjecting myself to experiences that i hoped would “fix” me. 

and older people like me, who in the grand scheme of things is uhhh really not that much older than the majority of tumblr, are ridiculed for having a presence on tumblr in general, let alone as an asexual person. aces over 30? 40? 50? unicorns. conjured rhetoric. people straight-up don’t believe they exist. people ten years my junior attempt to deny and erase the lived history of aces by saying asexuality was “invented” only ten years ago. i have been terrified of attempting to enter Q* spaces irl because i have heard from even my IRL gay friends that aces do not belong, that “it’s not important enough to form an identity around”, that we are not oppressed enough or we just desperately want to be oppressed. 

i have only heard in passing of people much older than i am who are ace. i have absolutely zero examples to turn to of people like me continuing to live a long life or any evidence that i am worth loving unless i become a parent, which i don’t want to do. when you’re a teenager there’s more discussion about sexual boundaries, but what about dating in my 30s? what adult is going to be satisfied knowing i can never validate their sexual attraction, unless they were ace like me (less than 1% of the population)? am i forced to be alone forever? you can imagine how bleak my future feels. 

it pisses me off that i’m seen as a curmudgeon who “just doesn’t get the young people’s humor” when i have to beg people that i consider friends, for the eight billionth time, to stop making/reblogging jokes about how “cringey” aces are or are tongue-in-cheek declaring themselves to be aphobes, and then those people try to assuage me with respectability politics about how it’s about “THOSE” aces on tumblr and not, yknow, me, who is “one of the good ones”. and since the jokes themselves are so juvenile, it further compounds on the poor social graces and stoicism assumed of asexual people if I’m getting upset over ace war criminal moodboards or whatever the fuck. EVERY time i post about asexual ANYTHING on tumblr, to this day, i lose followers. without fail. people dont bat a lash when i spam 20 untagged posts in a row about a fandom they dont care about but i post two positive words about asexuality and theyre gone.

the environment promoted on tumblr condemns asexuality as a social deficit, as an attack on other Q* identities, as a subject of derision and embarrassment, as an identity lacking in “woke” capital, and makes every effort to expunge us from communities we have already belonged to in favor of making our own while also actively seeking out and dismantling those communities. if tumblr really is in its last days, i sincerely hope that these awful practices will die with it. 

this picture was taken in 1973, asexuality has been part of the lgbt+ community longer than you’ve been alive.

The first mentions of asexuality as an orientation are from a leaflet published in 1896 and the X on the Kinsey Scale for non-sexual was added in 1948. It was not invented by white teenage old girls on Tumblr.

ASEXUALITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY TEENAGE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

For more information on sexual history read this http://wiki.asexuality.org/Asexual_history

Before aromanticism was used as a term there was non-limerant. Limerance described romantic attraction and so a non-linemerant person didn’t experience romantic attraction. It has a lot of similarities to aromanticism and it’s first documented appearance was in a book called ‘love and limerance’ published in 1979.

Aromanticism was also not invented by white girls on tumblr.

AROMANTICISM WAS NOT INVENTED BY WHITE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

Tumblr might be the first place you saw these terms and where they are most used but the orientations were not invented here maybe the words were first used by a lot of people on here but the orientations not.

(Image transcription: The sign behind them reads: “YEA - IT’S A HEAVY TRIP. BUT! This is a chance to CHOOSE YOUR OWN LABEL instead of having someone else do it for you: straight, asexual, lesbian, bisexual, anti-label, dyke separatist, ?, lesbian feminist, [something partially obscured but i think it might say anti-sexual], or whatever”)

Do you love Pride?

Do you love your sexuality and want to show off without being too loud about it?

Do you love Armor Inspired Jewelry???

Then boy howdy do I have the shop for you. 

Tattooed and Chained on Etsy has dozens of pieces of chain mail and scale mail jewelry for pride, and I need you to go support the hell out of them. 

Ace, Pan, Bi, Genderfluid, Trans, Non-Binary, Genderqueer, and plenty of rainbows if you want the broader umbrella. And multiple options across all of them. And a few solo pieces in other sexualities! AND they can do custom pieces! I am delighted and am probably going to need so many of them. 

So go! Look! Shop!

Treat yo’self! It’s Pride!

(thank you have a nice day)

@vaspider look how pretty!!!

Yah!

I feel so so sorry for any lesbian who wants even a single piece of pride gear because it’s so impossible to find even the smallest thing.

Blah blah blah deactivate your lesbophobia. This shop has over 100 products and not a single one of them could put together a a couple spare red, pink, and white/silver links despite falling all over itself to cater to cishet and pretentious bi pride.

Hi there! I know it can be disconcerting to find a store that sells cool pride merch and doesn’t sell anything for your orientation or gender, so I made this blog! I try to reblog a lot of lesbian pride merch because I know it’s hard to find, so if you’re looking for some, you can look at my #lesbian tag, or #wlw or #sapphic for less specific wlw merch!

A lot of shops, myself included, have written a lot about how there’s a lot of yelling about availability of lesbian pride products but a) the lesbian pride flag involves seven different shades of red and pink that are very close together but all distinct and b) all this yelling really doesn’t translate into sales. There are a number of reasons why that ‘not translating into sales’ thing is the case, and none of them are that (in my case especially) lesbian pride merch wasn’t made available.

I am still in the red (pardon the pun) on embroidery thread colors necessary for lesbian pride merch, and that’s after I streamlined the colors down to 5 from 7 (because frankly jamming 7 colors that close together into a 2″ patch looks terrible) and every single patch on my store is available in literally every flag ever, including an ‘Other’ option if you don’t see your flag in the dropdown. 

We made hundreds of different t-shirt designs available last year, including in the lesbian flag, and every single one of the lesbian pride designs timed out while selling in other flags. Heck, I’ve sold more ‘The Moon Is My Girlfriend’ shirts in bi pride than in lesbian pride.  So we made the decision to go to it being a ‘custom request’ flag, like a lot of the other flags that don’t get purchased a lot. Why? IDK, probably because this flag being the ‘lesbian flag’ and not the ‘lipstick lesbian’ flag is not really well-known off of Tumblr, and most of the people who I know are lesbians and have bought from us buy the rainbow flag? Because the people who loudly declaim that they want it are screaming a lot but not buying anything? I don’t know. 

What I do know is that independent creators are not unlimited fonts of money to buy supplies and create listings for things that don’t sell. We aren’t here to throw money down a hole for the express purpose of not getting yelled at on social media. Personally, I have a trans lesbian daughter to feed, a mortgage to pay, clothes to put on my trans queer disabled back, and so on. 

When people have requested lesbian pride items, they’ve been made available, and I can’t think of a single small artist who, if you approached them and said ‘I’d like to buy a thing, is it possible to buy a thing?’ wouldn’t say ‘let me see if I can get the appropriate colors in my materials’ and make that thing available if it’s at all possible. Because we are here to make money, and we like to make people happy. You don’t become a small artist because you like telling people no or making them feel bad or excluded. At least, none of the people I know in the LGBT+ merch community have. We want you to buy our stuff. 

But the truth is, this isn’t about whether or not the lesbian flag can be purchased: it’s about screaming at independent creators, and it’s about the fact that ace merch was offered, and that bi pride merch was offered in this post. The person doing the ‘the only reason is lesbophobia’ nonsense makes that pretty clear by calling the ace merch ‘cishet’ merch and the bi pride merch ‘pretentious.’

The people who actually want to purchase lesbian pride merch are reaching out to artists and saying ‘hey can you make this available so I can buy it?’ They’re not just randomly bitching on Tumblr. I really, really wish that this kind of behavior – especially when it includes such nakedly bigoted language against other members of the LGBTQIPA community – would simply no longer be given the time of day. 

Because this isn’t about the merch, and it isn’t about making lesbian pride stuff available for the people behaving like this: it’s about being abusive toward other members of the community. That much is VERY clear from the post above, and the other posts like it.

Ask, or don’t, but frankly that kind of behavior needs to be ignored from now on. I didn’t tolerate that kind of naked tantrum from my kid when she was a toddler, and I wouldn’t let someone stand in my storefront and talk like that about other customers. You go into any storefront and you behave like that, you’ll find your ass outside faster than someone can say ‘SECURITY,’ and I don’t know why people think they can treat independent artists any differently.

(I do know, and it’s because we actually give a shit and are close enough to be swung at, but it’s a rhetorical statement and anyway we’re not required to stand still so we can be swung at.)

Anyway: stop treating independent artists this way. Independent artists and the blogs that support us: please, please, stop tolerating this behavior. We’ve explained, we’ve talked, we’ve discoursed. The people who want to actually buy something know how to contact us and treat us like we’re human beings whose time, effort, and art is deserving of respect. The people who don’t? We don’t need to see ourselves called ‘lesbophobes’ over and over by people who are just here to scream, not to support artists.

how do you know youre asexual if you havent had sex???

how do you know you arent sexually attracted to toothpaste if youve never slathered your genitalia with it and shoved the tube up your anus????

how do you know?????

You have some shockingly good points. Just a second

Update: I am not sexually attracted to toothpaste

Friendly reminder that this blog doesn't tolerate transphobia, biphobia or aphobia

Bringing this back.

for all of u who dont understand or want to understand what an asexual person is

Raising asexual awareness every reblog

I’m so glad I found this, I’ve had many questions about asexuality and this answered them. Time to inform some ignorant assholes.

Oh.

i know a certain group of people who really needs this…… :3c

For every gay person who used to identify as bi because of internal homophobia, there’s a bi person who used to identify as gay due to internal biphobia.

For every gay person who used to identify as ace because of internal homophobia, there’s an ace gay person who used to not identify as ace due to internal aphobia.

It’s not that difficult a concept, so if we could stop accusing ace/bi folk of “endangering gay kids” for existing, that’d be nice.

“For every gay person who used to identify as ace because of internal homophobia…”

Anyone want to chime in with more context? This is a thing that happens? Cause I stopped my sex life about five years ago and I don’t know how to get it back and I’m pretty sure I’m bi but uuuhhhhhh nothing makes any sense

short version, radical feminists have convinced a lot of ppl that asexuals don't really exist, that anyone who thinks they're ace is just a deeply closeted gay person or whatever. that this is them doing the thing to aces they are complaining abt is besides the point bc their real goal is normalizing transphobia. tldr you do you, whatever that looks like, unless it looks like telling ppl they don't exist.

ive recently found out that in the 80s lesbians who were more interested in cuddles and kisses rather than sex were called bambi lesbians

it’s such a cute thing omg let’s bring this term back

the love ace lesbians found for this post warms my heart mind body and soul and spirit

Lesbians who are asexual are beautiful and deserve all the love they want

Lesbians who are aromantic are beautiful and deserve all the love they want

Here is a step-by-step process on how to report redkatherinee’s transphobic art. Please reblog and let people know. Also, only report it once per person. 

jesus

Exclusionists: “No one here’s saying aces/aros aren’t valid. No one!!!“

Exclusionists: “asexuality’s not a sexuality ”

Exclusionists: say if we tell family about being ace, it’s no wonder if they send us to therapy (while making our orientations about details regarding “our sex lives” as so often)

Exclusionists: “Aces dating non-aces are inherently abusive, date other aces or die alone”

Exclusinists: “ace tumblr = sexuality fandom!! full of super privileged melodramatic ppl bored by their privilege in every area ever“

Exclusionists: put a ton of negativity/hate, death threats/wishes (x, x), rape threats/wishes and also nsfw shit (while claiming our identities are inherently nsfw anyway) in ace/aro positivity tags. And just generally make posts along those lines a lot

Exclusionists: “let’s make up an insult towards aces lol it means ‘a prude who cant keep their trap shut abt it’ “

Exclusionists: “lol turbo virgins”

Exclusionists: “aromantic means ‘a boring person nobody will ever love’”

Exclusionist: “hope you’ve all gotten checked out by a doctor”

Exclusionits: “asexual shouldn’t even be a way people identify themselves“

Exclusionists: say aro aces don’t have an orientation

Exclusionists: turn around and say the orientation of aro aces are determined by their behavior and who they have sex with

Exclusionists: invalidate the identities of many ace ppl based on bullshit like them having a supposedly “incorrect” attitude towards sex for an ace. Here’s this sort of invalidation with some heavy added sexualization (ppl on this site who hate us frequently sexualize aces+aros in really creepy ways)

Exclusionists: “don’t talk about being ace/aro with anyone except maybe potential partners but really no one needs to know, it’s Bad to talk about your identities and it’s inherently sex-shaming and why do u think you’re pure“

Exclusionists: “demons!! Plague!! hating aces and aros is fun“

Exclusionists: “no one here is saying you’re not valid stop lying/fearmongering/being incredibly ignorant!! shut up!“

People: “If you think about it, lesbians are punished by heteronormativity for their unavailability to men”

Same people, somehow: Insist that there’s no way that asexual people are oppressed “just because they refuse to have sex with anyone”

• You don’t have to be nice to sexists

• You don’t have to be nice to racists

• You don’t have to be nice to homophobes

• You don’t have to be nice to transphobes

• You don’t have to be nice to aphobes

• You don’t have to be nice to ableists

You don’t have to be nice to people who don’t want you to have basic human rights and integrity.

You are LGBT if..

You are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. That’s it. Aces aren’t LGBT.

I mean for one your forgetting a bit of that. Like the Q+.

Mod Bethany

The full acronym is LGBT.

I love me some ahistorical bullshit

The “full” acronym at one point was “GL”, after lesbians fought against male homosexuality being the “face” of the movement (i.e., the Alliance for Gay Artists (AGA), founded in 1982, was renamed the Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Artists shortly thereafter; and the Gay Activists Alliance never included “Lesbian” in their title).

The “full” acronym at another point was “LGB”, only after bisexual activists campaigned fiercely to be included, and is often still not even included in acronyms

The “full” acronym at yet another point was “LGBT”, only after trans activists campaigned fiercely to be included

Queer was added to the acronym after it was reclaimed and re-politicized by ACT UP off-shoot Queer Nation in the early 1990s. LGBTQ has been a thing since the 90s.

ONE Archives, which is the largest repository of LGBTQIA+ materials in the world and was founded by some of the principle members of the early (1950s-60s) homophile movement, which led to the gay rights movement post-Stonewall, uses the full acronym LGBTQ on their website and also freely uses the word “Queer” interchangeably.

As of 2014, NOW (National Organization for Women) agreed to switch to use of the full LGBTQIA acronym, and it likely isn’t the only large social rights organization to have done so

Many LGBTQ+ magazines use LGBTQ, including One (which has existed in some form since the 1950s) and The Advocate, use LGBTQ or LGBTQIA as the full acronym and regularly use “queer” as a phrase (and, in fact, some articles have welcomed asexual people and their narratives as part of the queer experience).

The acronym is constantly evolving. It’s not static. To claim otherwise is blatant ignorance. The modern-day LGBTQ+ community is a result of decades of political activism, social inclusion, and community outreach. It’s not a rigid structure that operates by a strict set of rules about who can and cannot join.

The full acronym is LGBT. Cishets don’t belong in the community. Aces aren’t inherently lgbt. We don’t want our oppressors in our community.

“we don’t want our oppressors in our community” 

as if trans people don’t already have to deal with their oppressors (cis people) being in their community

as if LGBTQIA+ people of color don’t have to deal with LGBTQIA+ white people in the community

as if LBTQIA+ women don’t have to deal with GBTQIA+ men in the community

as if disabled LGBTQIA+ people don’t have to deal with able-bodied LGBTQIA+ people in the community

the LGBTQIA+ community is huge and consists of people with multiply-overlapping identities and privileges. we all (unless you’re a cis, able-bodied, wealthy, white gay man) have to deal with a member of our oppressing class in the LGBTQIA+ community

ETA: “Straightness” is a position of power. Ace people, even if they are in heterosexual relationships, do not necessarily perform “straightness” in ways that are acceptable to the Straight class. 

Reblogging because osirisjones is completely hitting the nail on the head.

Look though, this is what discourse is: having decades of community history literally laid out and them COMPLETELY IGNORING IT to repeat the same brainwashed, faulty drivel over and over