a wolf and his mum

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occasionally subtle
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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

#extradirty
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noise dept.
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I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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@a-queer-lokean
a wolf and his mum
God Jul from the Laufeyjarsons and one very nervous mall Santa.
Norse Deity ~Vibes~
UPG, but since I was just asked to describe this, here you go:
Hel: Balanced. The calmness that comes from knowing that to die well is to live fully. To appreciate the spring blossoms as they fall. The smoke after the fire burns out. The quiet smell of the rose that blooms through concrete. The comfort of a hand that never leaves.
Freyja: Vibrant. Into whatever it is she is doing; if it’s war, she’s all in. If it’s fucking, she’s all in. If it’s crying, she’s all in. She does it all with her whole heart and body. She feels warm like an amber summer day and smells like jasmine, especially when it blooms at night.
Freyr: Petrichor. That peaceful, contented feeling of walking through lightly dampened woods, smelling the minerals and the ferns on the air, the light starting to stream through the leaves illuminating the raindrops, hearing a stream. Smells like patchouli and rain ozone.
Njǫrðr: Beach dad. The feeling of the breeze in your hair, on your skin, taking away the heat of the summer day. Ocean spray and salt. Sand between your toes. Laughter that is louder than seagull chatter. The feeling of a boat coming home safe on the horizon.
Gullveig: Slow like honey. Smells like honey. The buzzing sound of bees. An amused laugh, like watching ants make an anthill. Discernment around when to gild and not gild the lily. Mysterious, resilient. A feeling like being honored. Shining the way sunlight hits henbane.
Fenrir: Angry teenager meets kicked puppy. The rage against the machine. The feeling of the ravenous hunger of wanting something you deserve that you will never get. The fight that gives you because of it. The secret desire to give soft belly. Teeth, blood oranges, and hot tar.
Jǫrmungandr: Ancient. Something that just feels so incredibly old, but a also a little sad and lonely. The feeling of having watched so much happen that nothing matters. Surrendering to the water flow of life, finding contentment in the small ripples. Choosing to care anyway.
Skaði: Cold. The first bite of a true winter wind, where you breathe in and it hurts your lungs until you get used to it. The feeling of precision, of absolute focus. The cold beauty of long icicles. The danger of snow when you can’t tell how safe it will be to walk on or cross.
Óðr: Wanderlust. Restlessness, not being able to sit still, but with an excitement, a zest, a joie de vivre. Delight in the curiosity of the sky. The feeling of watercolors on thick paper. The way mailing a postcard makes you feel. The feeling of missing something but not enough to change.
Loki: Weird. The feeling of fireworks at a carnival while strange music plays and the earth moves beneath you. Spencer’s Gifts meets ’00s Hot Topic. Shifting, the way you can’t quite hold water. Adapting, always finding a way forward, the missing piece of a puzzle. The sound of a fly.
Óðinn: Sly. There’s a density to him, a feeling of shadow and form. A raven’s glassy, dark eye staring at you a little too long, too knowing. A desperate cleverness. A knife in a back pocket. A hidden smile. The ambition of an underdog with nothing left to lose. Black coffee.
Sigyn: Soft. The feeling of sitting in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea, a warm blanket nearby, bubbles on the air. Feeling like you’ll always be heard and understood. A compassion running so deep that it turns to activism. The swaying whisper of a willow tree that bends but never breaks.
Angrboða: Steel. A tough core wrapped in the moist heat of a swamp. The feeling of roots digging deep into the dark earth and never letting go. The way hematite shines black but bleeds when you cut it. A sense of vertigo. Smells like dirt, cloves, nutmeg, and dragonsblood.
Frigg: Regal. Queen mother. But really, the feeling of knowing more than she lets on. Forgives but never forgets. The way keeping a secret makes you feel—wise and a little superior. A skein of geese. A good hug, but not too tight. The smell of alkaline water, wool, and vanilla.
Þórr: Power. Frat boy meets army brat, if the outcome had a good heart. Big chested laughter, the smell and taste of beer, the faint hint of sweat. A slap on the back. The sound of thunder rolling in, slow and then all at once. The sound of goats bleating, an anvil ringing, an acorn growing.
Sif: Cosy. Fresh baked bread and a kind word and a lilt of a song on the air. Pastries ready in the morning, whenever you wake up, and feeling like the day will be good to you. The smell of dough rising. The smell of cinnamon and sugar together. The comfort of a kitchen in autumn.
Njǫrun: Respite. The feeling of not seeing the whole picture, but knowing you’re somehow safe. Laissez-faire. A rust sunset on the lakeside, cattails waving in the breeze, making small reed music. The feeling of that moment right before sleep. The touch of a dream.
The children of Loki
Loki's children
if i were a zookeeper my intrusive thoughts would be wild
brain: slap that penguin. right across his little blubbery tummy. it’ll jiggle.
me: no??? that’s mean???
brain: polar bear, then
me: no
brain: the lions just got fed raw meat
me: yes?
brain: steal it and eat it in front of them
me: …
rowan i want you to know that this is the best possible reply i could have received
I work with animals and this is true for me. No, I cannot eat sea stars out the touch tank no matter HOW good you think the cronch will be, brain.
sometimes you wonder what was going through the head of the first human to eat something really weird and then you see this post and stop wondering
@harinezumiko
This 100% was me at the zoo. Don’t touch Melon, he’s mean. Okay, but I have to touch Bob to make him get his stupid emu head out of my shirt, so what if I also touch Melon until he likes it? Sephiroth is angery because he has one wing and sometimes attacks people? I want to pet him also. Also he won’t get off the rock I have to clean anyway, surely a little pets on the good side will be fine. Martha and Stewart are assholes that tag-team while the pond is filling? I bet I could CUDDLE THEM. The female deer will excitedly nuzzle you in the stomach for feeding them. This is fine, because they don’t have antlers. The male deer is locked up while we’re putting out food because he will gouge you to death with his little nubby asymmetrical horns, because he thinks the females are doing it. The entire monkey enclosure will eat your fingers for a single fruit loop. They also have the smallest arms and can reach through holes they’ve made in the tarp on the gate to their enclosure. Do not hold hands with the monkeys. (2nd gen old man monkey will also pee on the keepers that don’t give him fruit loops. He is a jerk.) The rehabilitated bear that still sits like she’s on a couch because she did that when she was living in a crack house? Yes, she looks chill. Yes, she looks The Softest. No, do not pet her back through the fence. No, do not go into the corridor and try to offer treats for pets. Big Mac does not know he will break your ribs, but YOU know he will break your ribs. Do not enter Big Mac’s enclosure no matter how much he chuffs and displays his belly and rubs on the cage and looks sad. Yes, he genuinely wants pets. Yes, Pinkie is deliberately getting pets where he can see it as a sign of dominance even though she’s a housecat and he could eat her in approximately one bite. The turtle is mean. Period. He is an old man and he does not like you. He does not like the parrot getting fries and he does not like that he is in a kiddie pool to warm up because his enclosure lost power, and he does not like you behind him preparing food for the owls and raptors. Petting him will not help this. He will rock back and forth and mean mug you forever because he is a grumpy old man. All of the rabbits need more handling on principle. They don’t know you and they are very distressed that you’re taking their poop away. They can learn, a little, kind of. The guinea pig is insane and will not learn. Do not pet the guinea pig.
this post is gathering some highly blessed zoo stories i love it! thank you
as biologist, can confirm
brain: that frog is very small me: well spotted, brain brain: put smol frog in mouth me: no!
brain: that lynx…looks so fluffy… me: it does brain: we should pet it. me: it’s awake and angry so no.
brain: baaaaby bunny. me: yup. brain: baby bunny goes in pocket me: nooo it doesn’t.
reblogging for my zookeeper friends
That turtle has a lot of good reasons to be mean, though…..Like I’d be pissed, too😂
“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).
“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.
Blood is what now?
It’s imitation seawater what part is confusing
#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums?
Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.
Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.
Thank you that’s…very disturbing
It’s not my fault you’re human.
Ok but “It’s not my fault you’re human.” Is the best comeback ever.
You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.
#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing
Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”
“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”
“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”
At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)
You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.
And that’s what a human is!
Well, there’s another few steps, of course.
Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.
A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,
and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“
“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)
“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life - using some of my own material, of course-”
“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”
And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“
“Like an egg.”
“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”
“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family - forget about support from your PHYLUM - all you get is criticism.”
“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”
“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”
You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.
“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.
“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.
“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”
Everyone waits.
“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”
Everyone looks uncomfortable.
“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”
You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.
The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”
And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”
That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.
This is so wholesome
Update: he finally got the cat to the vet to see if she had a microchip
I was already on board with his sweet wholesome open-to-love-and-nurturing heart but I was fully unprepared for getting to that last tweet and seeing how off the hook HOT dude is
https://twitter.com/pariszarcilla?lang=en heres his twitter is here there is also additonal cat photos of his children.
CAT DAD IS BACK
aww, the kids grow up so fast. ;-;
HHHHHHHH I LOVE CAT DAD!
This is, by far, the single most adorable fucking thing I have ever seen.
update:
I love that he kept …. All of them.
I’ve reblogged the earlier part of this thread before, and the new stuff makes it even better.
This is the Tumblr equivalent of a warm hug on a cold day.
You’re welcome.
I remember this thread, but I never saw the grown-up pics ❤
@every-n-anything
All hail Catdad
I saw Catdad for the first time today, and my day instantly became exponentially better.
I’M CRYING!?
CATDAD HAS REVIVED MY WILL TO LIVE
I live for cat dad-
Cat dad has saved us all
CAT DAD!!
I had not seen the updates. I am so happy that the Cat Gods smiled upon this person and their new family :)
He’s got more recent pictures (and is also an INCREDIBLE artist), but this is the fam circa May 2020 :>
It’s been over a year? Where is cat dad? Where is he?
Fear not, CatDad is still happily with us:
Cat Dad 2022 pic.
Long live catdad
This makes me so happy 😊😊😊
Otterly marbleous
(via)
Lokabrenna? Lokabrenna.
Detail:
by Dominik Mayer
no myth reading of loki that tries to demonize or make him unsympathetic works because for starters i dont care if loki killed 1 guy that everyone loved or snitched on people having affairs or caused ragnarok because the other gods kept messing with his kids and that's already way more unfair like what did Fenrir do to you!! he is literally just growing!!! :/
exactly!!
People in Scandinavian countries still name kids Loki whereas you don’t see a lot of Lucifers on the kindergarten roster.
POINT!
Someone finally said it huh
loki, god of being hot and interesting
#being so protective over your kids that you start the end of the world to avenge them is also hot
yeah!!
loki, god of zero fucks given/hey y'all watch this
you gonna bac up your claim that cisgender straight people who lack sexual attraction have always been queer? or is speaking out your ass all you can do
Sure! Let’s go! I’m always up to stretch both my lgbt history muscles. Sorry if it took awhile but I am passionate about this stuff and wanted to do some good writing and find some really great sources for you! 😊
In 1869 a humanitarian and journalist named Karl-Maria Kertbeny published pamphlets to oppose the sodomy law in Prussia. In these pamphlet he is widely regarded as beginning the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” in the academic mainstream; though, it is likely these were lgbt terms used long before that time. In this same pamphlet advocating explicitly for gay rights, Kertbeny refers to those who engage only in masturbation and not in sex with others as seperate from straight people, coining an entirely different term: “monosexual.” Now, this term is outdated and widely used the m-spec sub community to refer to straight, gay, and lesbian folks lacking multi-gender attraction, but he states very explicitly in all his work that this term is meant to refer to people we would now understand to be asexual.
A little later, in the 1890’s we have sexologist, founder of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and an openly gay man himself, Magnus Hirschfeld. He published his work “Sappho and Sokrates”: a pamphlet he wrote with the task of explaining the lgbt community to straight people. He makes multiple references to and defences of what he called “anesthesia sexuals.” Again, an outdated term, but as you can see, both gay advocates and straight allies referenced us as being part of the community like it was nothing.
Meanwhile, we have the lovely Emma Trosse, an academic peer to Hirschfeld. She discussed gay rights—especially the rights of lesbians and non-binary people—very openly and wrote multiple papers on the subject. But at her heart, Trosse was a researcher, and so her most famous work, naturally, was an indepth study of what she referred to as “counter-sexualities” as stand in for what we now know as the broader lgbt community. In this work she coins the phrase Asensuality, stating “the author has the courage to admit to this category” officially coming out in her own study! Damn lady! We love her. The Schwules Museum (literally the Gay Museum), a famous German LGBTQ+ museum dedicated to collections focusing on the history of lgbt research, features her work prominently. She also holds the distinction of having been banned as a “degenerate” author in Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and Russia for that very work. On top of that, she was the first woman on record to have a treatise in defense of lgbt people and our community published in 1895, even before her colleague Hirschfeld had his first works published.
As you can see 19th century Germany was a hub of lgbt theory, research, and activism still studied by lgbt historians today. It is widely credited as being a period of time that brought our history into print and the mainstream. And ace people, as I noted before, have been involved both in mention and in activism from the beginning according to both prominent allies, gay folks, and ace folks who were scholars during this period.
But, now lets move over with a bigger hop to the sexual revolution in America; which mirrored the German one in many ways! This is the period of time a lot of people, especially americans, think of as the start of our mainstream history—which as you can see a very americancentric idea, but I digress. Even here we have asexuals represented among the community by diverse members of the community.
You’ve probably heard of the Asexual Manifesto, written by Lisa Orlando and published by the New York Radical Feminists. A very important document to ace-spec people, it defines us as a sexuality seperate and distinct from straight; but you aren’t interested in what we have to say about ourselves and our experiences so lets move on to other lgbt people validating us.
Kinsey—himself an m-spec or multisexual person—recognized us in his research, which he picked up from at the point our lovely Hirschfeld left off, basically. This was later expanded on by Michael D Storm, author of Theories of Sexual Orientation. He reimagined the Kinsey Scale as a two dimensional map, which became the beginnings of the modern Kinsey Scale used in the lgbt community today. He posited it was better able to distinguish asexuals from m-spec people as it defined them less based on sexual preferences, or lack their of, based in gender (which would put both sexualities squarely in the centre of the 1D scale), and more on their self described experiences of attraction. So that’s right, you read correctly; the latest rendition of the Kinsey Scale was created in response to a piece that was published after Kinsey’s original studies specifically to better include asexuals who were already featured in the study and scale.
Then we move to the “The Sexually Oppressed.” Published in 1977, it was a book that did exactly what it set out to do: describe people who were oppressed by heteronormative society and their struggles. It was published by social worker, Harvey L. Gochros and featured the work of Myra T. Johnson in a piece describing the way in which mainstream culture affected asexual women specifically, and how straight feminists often shamed and gatekept them from liberating movements, while straight men continued to be an omnipresent threat via corrective assault and forced institutionalization. It was actually a text book in my college, very good read—goes into the ableism present in sexual oppression as well. I highly recommend it.
Also, just as a bonus, I’ve included an extra link below to “On the Racialization of Asexuality” by Ianna Hawkins Owen. She goes into depths about how the allosexual vs asexual discourse we see starting in America in the 70's—which has turned into the modern global “ace discourse” of today—started with nationalist discussions that have their roots in white supremacy, the white construction of binary womanhood, and chattel slavery. An offering from my university days.
Anyways, I hope you and any other lovely readers who come across this enjoy and educate yourselves a bit. Knowledge is power!
P.S. I could not find “The Sexually Oppressed” available online for some reason (but mind you, I am very bad at computers) so I linked a website that should show you the nearest library in your area that carries it. It’s a very popular social work read.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/03/asexuality-history-internet-identity-queer-archive.html
http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/Asexual-Manifesto-Lisa-Orlando.pdf
https://books.google.ca/books?id=XbgTAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.ca/books?id=IH2GCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.worldcat.org/title/sexually-oppressed/oclc/925168401&referer=brief_results
Decided to answer a very stinky ask for pride month! Some more asexual and aromantic history below, with some sources for both a quick read and a less quick read.
Also, be warned, my nerves are frayed, and I was certainly less polite this time. Sorry for that, guys 😔
I really do try to keep my cool, but the sass slips when it becomes obvious someone isn’t actually interested with the factual answer to their question, y’know?
https://anam-writes.tumblr.com/post/653574281024897024/its-crazy-how-none-of-the-sources-you-linked
it’s crazy how none of the sources you linked actually say cishet aces were considered lgbt, just that having no attraction to other genders
What a saga. But honestly, guys, I’m just here for some nice pride month time! Ace history, scrumptious, and super intersectionally relevant.
https://anam-writes.tumblr.com/post/653579554112274432/thr-golden-orchid-society-was-for-all-women-who
thr golden orchid society was for all women who didn’t wanna get married and wasn’t an lgbt group. what’s next you’re gonna claim aces are l
Hey, @rittz! Hope you don’t mind me responding to you here so I can keep everything nice and orderly on my end.
There’s an issue I have with this argument, you see. And it’s one I see a whole bunch.
“Linking the asexual community’s history to century old lgbt+ movements does not have bearing on contemporary discussion,” (if I may paraphrase) is a common view.
And while you and others are sort of correct, you are sort of not. It wouldn’t necessarily be relevant on its own; but contextually, it is.
If it was a matter of my saying “17th—20th century China had a prominent Lesbian-Asexual woman’s alliance in the Golden Orchid” then your point would make sense. Asexuals were prominent figures in one queer community, one time, in one culture? That would be nothing.
But it’s consistent. Throughout history, everywhere you find queer people you find asexuals among them.
Greek Antiquity, the cult of Dionysus being one of the more sexually liberated political-religious groups. They were associated strongly with sexual fluidity: sapphic love, achillean love, bisexuality, and asexuality as well. So much so, that among the many Masks of Dionysus in Ancient Greek culture and literature, there were aspects of him defined solely by either his bisexuality or his asexuality. Thus, chapter 4 of this handy book about archeological knowledge on all things Dionysus, the Cult of Dionysus, and the Theatre Dionysia, being called “The Asexuality of Dionysus.”
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Masks_of_Dionysus/O_QkAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=isbn:0801480620
So, an ancient group of gender and sexual fluidity and diversity prominently features asexuality. Okay. Let us go on.
That comes far before the Golden Orchid Society, which we already discussed.
If you scroll all the way up, you see I give a timeline in my first post about the prominence of asexuals and asexuality in the queer community during the LGBT+ golden age in 19th century Germany. But to summarize:
The most famous gay scholar of the time—openly gay man, Magnus Hirschfeld—publishes “Sappho and Sokrates” as a defining document for straight people to educate themselves on queer folks with. Who does he include ion there? Trans folks, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and—you guessed it!—asexuals! His contemporary colleague, Emma Trosse, wrote most frequently in defense of who she saw as being the most underrepresented in her community: non-binary folks and lesbians. And guess what? She was asexual. She wrote a paper on “counter-sexualities” at the time and came out in her own paper. Her work in the modern day is featured in the Schwules Museum, literally translated to the Gay Museum. So, clearly this asexual woman, married to a man was considered to be part of the community in her time AND our time, including by her more famed gay colleague, and the Gay Museum in Berlin.
(You can find all those links up at the top post)
Then I got up to America’s own lgbt+ renaissance. The Asexual Manifesto, the Kinsey Scale work, and subsequent rework, and testimony from members of the bisexual community all place us firmly in the lgbt+ community from the year 1940—1990.
(You can find links to Kinsey’s work, the context for it, the Asexual Manifesto, and more up at the top again!)
And here are references to the fact that, at the time of the original pride movement, we were considered a subsection of bisexuality, because we were mistakenly being defined by our lack of gender preference and sexual fluidity instead of our lack of attraction in general, with some choice quotes.
“Many bisexual respondents described bisexuality as a potential or as an essential quality that many people possess, but that only some people express through actual feelings of attraction or sexual behavior.
“According to this definition, people can be – and are – bisexual without ever experiencing an attraction to one sex or the other and without ever having sexual relations with one sex or the other.
“In contrast to lesbian respondents, most of whom define a bisexual as a person who feels attracted to or has sexual relations with both sexes, very few bisexual women define bisexuals as people who necessarily have these actual emotional and physical experiences.”
https://books.google.ca/books?id=RhWntJf7EpIC&pg=PA207&dq=%22many+bisexual+respondents+described+bisexuality+as%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22many%20bisexual%20respondents%20described%20bisexuality%20as%22&f=false
And an extra goody from an article by the Gay Liberator, 1971 “Trans Lib includes transvestites, transsexuals, and hermaphrodites of any sexual manifestation and of all sexes—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual.”
https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BDHIIHBB19710101.1.10&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN—————1
Then we have today, where you really just have to look around to see asexuals. We’re here, hi! Go to pride and you’ll see us. Join an club and you’ll see us. Hang out in a sapphic server and you’ll see us. Talk to me right here! (Hello! I’m right here, being on the ace spectrum.)
So you see the issue I’m having correct?
“It doesn’t matter that asexuals were prominent members of a sexually fluid movement in ancient Greece, we’re talking about today!”
“It doesn’t matter that asexuals were prominent members of a queer feminist group from 16th - 20th century China, we’re talking about today.”
“It doesn’t matter that asexuals were apart of the 19th century queer golden age in Germany that first brought our movement in mainstream print, we’re talking about today!”
“It doesn’t matter that asexuals were part of the movement for pride and queer liberation from the 1940′s to the 90′s, and that asexuals alive today are old enough to remember being part of that movement. We are talking about literally right NOW kinda today!”
“It doesn’t matter that asexuals were a subsection of the bisexual community that only recently split off!”
And then, finally, the ask from that original nonny up there: “can you back up that cis straight people lacking sexual attraction have always been queer?”
Essentially, well sure, aces are here now, but it’s not like they ALWAYS been here!
When we point to ourselves as part of the community today, we are asked when we got here. When we point to how far back we’ve been here, we are asked, “how is that relevant to today?”
Because we were asked how long we’ve been here.
So if I’m answering in a LOOOOOOONG way, I hope you’ll forgive me. Because it’s clear that you need a line drawn between where we were, and where we are. I’m not sure if that’s because you were not present to the beginning of this conversation, or if it was because you were unaware of the history.
Asexuals have been in lgbt history for as long as there has been lgbt history. And we are present in the community today. The question is not, whether we are here, have been here, or not. The question is, are you going to accept that, or not?
Thank you for reading. I know it was a long reply to a short comment. But I hope it was useful.
This is so beautiful and took a lot of patience!!! ✊