♠ Call me Alex ♠ Grey-aromantic Ace♠ Genderqueer They/Them ♠ 24 Year Old Canadian ♠ Asks are always open ♠ Let me know if I reblog from someone gross ♠ unapologetic inclusionist ♠
[image description: image of an Aardvark with grey, yellow and white in the background. Text says “Parents say they just want you to be happy and get married” at the top and “Oxymoron” at the bottom.]
Here’s an old aro meme from 2011, which was before the rise of the “Ace Discourse” around 2015 (which may have started out as backlash in response to The Trevor Project deciding to include asexual people around that time). This meme format uses an aardvark to represent aromantic people. At the time, axolotls were often used in similar memes to represent asexuals, so the aromantic aardvark was chosen as the aromantic equivalent of the asexual axolotl. Aardvarks were considered to be somewhat of a mascot for the aromantic community for some time, though they have become less popular as a symbol in recent years.
why be radically exclusionary abt queerness when you could be radically inclusionary instead. let's inflate the numbers. let's become the majority. the sky's the limit
"we can't let just ANYONE call themselves queer!!" what are you talking about. I'm steepling my fingers and gleefully cackling every time we Get Another One and you should be too. lock in.
Fuck yeah, let's make this little raft we're surviving on big as hell. If I bring my bit of driftwood and you bring yours and we let as many people join in as want to, we might end up with a functional boat.
Back when I was active on AVEN (I have no idea what it's like now), we had two definitions of asexual -- an external definition and an internal definition. The external definition, the one that's on the wiki and the press material and that everyone uses when talking about asexuality, was of course "an asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction". The internal definition, the one we kept in mind when talking to each other, was "an asexual is someone who calls themself asexual".
The reason for this was very simple and very practical. In the very early AVEN and immediately pre-AVEN days, back before my time when the disparate ace communities were first finding each other and creating a public online network, there was a fair lot of exclusionist discourse. There are a lot of ways to be asexual, and the early community of course fell prey to the usual infighting about whether someone with a libido counts as asexual, whether someone who chooses to have sex can be asexual (usual tiring Purity Brigade Bullshit), whether someone without a libido counts as asexual (after all, if you have no sex drive, are you sure it's a matter of sexual orientation?), whether ace people count as lgbtq, all the usual nonsense. This worked out the way it pretty much always does -- the inclusionists "win", because exclusionists always break off into smaller and smaller communities so the largest group is, of course, the one where all different kinds of people stick together and welcome each other. And that was AVEN.
And when you're trying to have a strong community and somebody shows up at the gates saying, "hi, I think I'm asexual", it's a fucking horrible idea to start doubting their credentials. They saw the public definition and started calling themselves asexual; they're here, and now they're under the internal definition. An asexual is somebody who calls themself asexual. Sometimes, these people would be frustrated allosexuals, or people choosing to swear off sex, who might not fit the external definition of the term. We made sure that everyone knew the external definition, and there were always conversations about asexuality and how it affected our lives, if they asked us directly what we thought then we'd say "only you can know for sure" and then give our thoughts on the matter for as long as they asked for them, and other than that it wasn't anyone else's fucking business or anyone's place to judge. If people weren't nasty and didn't create problems, they could stay and call themselves whatever they wanted.
Many of these people who didn't fit the strict definition eventually left after receiving support and discovering more about themselves. Some stopped IDing as ace but became allies to the community. Some people who came in with the most "I'm a heterosexual girl who is angry at my boyfriend" intro posts you've ever seen in your life discovered that they were in fact ace and that the messages that society had taught them about sex and romance were simply not for them -- these are people who, in a gatekept community, would have been incorrectly ousted immediately.
And then there were people -- a LOT of people -- who found themselves in grey areas. People who said "okay, this community makes sense to me and is useful to me and I have so much in common with a lot of you, but not EXACTLY like you. However, what I experience may not be the strict default definition but it's an awful lot like these other members on the forum." And they formed sub-communities. The grey aces. The demisexuals. The aromantics and greyromantics. Through these dialogues, between subgroups who in a more exclusionary community would be arguing about who the "real" asexuals are and splintering off into their own communities away from all those stupid cishet fakers, we developed language to describe our similarities and differences. The sexual/romantic/aesthetic attraction model came out of these dialogues and it became so massively important to our understanding of asexuality that basically everyone in the ace/aro community describes themselves by it, as do a large number of people outside the community. The community made massive leaps ahead in just a decade or two by, well, being a community. By being a place where anybody who called the place home, and didn't bully other people in the home, was right. By being somewhere where anybody who saw "asexual: someone who doesn't experience sexual attraction" and thought "that sounds like a term with some use for me" was allowed to use it.
An asexual is somebody who does not experience sexual attraction.
An asexual is somebody who calls themselves asexual.
These definitions are not in conflict -- they are both, in concert, fundamentally necessary for a safe and vibrant community where we can protect, support, and learn about each other and ourselves.
And that is absolutely not exclusive to asexual communities.
I know we make jokes about the proverbial asexual pervert who has written hundreds of thousands of words of smut on ao3, but also shoutout to the aces who aren’t perverts. to the aces who skip the sex scenes and wince at sex jokes and awkwardly leave the conversation when your friends start talking about sex. your boundaries aren’t childish and fuck anyone who says otherwise.
The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.
It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!
Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
This is a scene from a story that I’ve had in my head for quite a long time and that I may draw some day. It would be a flashback that focuses mainly on Athena’s first crush (on Prometheus) and her asexuality (naturally, she and Aphrodite are not exactly friends, but here Athena still manages to open up).
(I’m still not sure about my own orientation, but this would still be one of the more personal things I’ve drawn. When it comes to sex and romantic love, I’ve often felt like I’m “broken”.)
“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”
— The Asexual Manifesto, Lisa Orlando and Barbara Getz, 1972
It’s 50 years this month since the first version of the Asexual Manifesto was written. Aces have been writing about our experiences under this name for at least half a century. We are not an internet fad.
I wasn’t on here during Ace Discourse (thank goodness) but sometimes I’ll read older posts from that time and a few things stick out to me:
The fact that this website is perpetually searching for a queer demographic that they can oppress and say is actually privileged. Trans without dysphoria, aro, polyam, bi, pan, xenogenders, mogai, enben, intersex, afab transfems, etc. I think right now the main target is trans men and transmascs more generally, but it’s the same old cycle and often the same exact people.
The fact that so many of the aphobes’ “arguments” were literally recycled homophobia: “You’re too young to know.” “Asexuality is nsfw.” “Asexuality is just a phase.” “You just say you’re ace because you think it’s quirky.”
The fact that even after the “discourse” stopped, the perpetrators looked back at it as “that cringy phase I had as a teenager” rather than “that time I bullied hundreds of random queer people for their identities and forced them back into the closet.” There were no apologies.
That literally no aspec person who has been on the Internet since before that time was left untouched, and that the entirety of online aspec culture has been forever altered from this hate wave.
That it was a gateway into radfem circles.
That some people tried to pit aspecs against mspecs because they thought we were opposites but instead mspecs turned out for aspecs a lot harder than many monosexuals ever did.
We are the Pride Knights, and this is our battle cry
No enemy can shake us, as hard as they can try
There’s a fire in our eyes that no hatred can kill
A passion in our hearts that’s as strong as our will
To our fellow queers who fight their battles on their own
We promise to fight with you, you are never alone
To our fellow queers who have fallen with the pain
We thank you for your courage, your fight is not in vain
We are defenders of the right to be proud of who you are
To love who you love and to accept every scar
We are your knights, protectors of our pride
Together we stand, together we ride
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The 12th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 30th August 2025.
It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!
Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
If you can't wait for survey numbers, you can click here for a public spreadsheet of non-secret info with graphs as it comes in, updated manually a few times per day.
The 12th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 30th August 2025.
It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!
Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
If you can't wait for survey numbers, you can click here for a public spreadsheet of non-secret info with graphs as it comes in, updated manually a few times per day.
I made a list of all a-spec rep all over the media
Ok, that's an exaggeration.
Its me, im back (i never left)
So a loooong while back, i was wondering "wow man, media is just oozing with romance, ain't it" and that made me think of all the media that isn’t oozing with romance. And i decided that someone should make a list of all the aspec rep in a handy resource for the aros and the aces. Since the orientation gets ignored soo often.
And now that i finally got the time, i made the list!
The (in-progress) List Of Aromantic and Asexual Representation in Media. Introduction I suppose this doesn’t really need an introduction b
Its an in progress, non exhaustive list. Comments are on for suggestions/additions/corrections. The kind reddit community has already been suggesting soo many things i didnt know had rep. Feel free to use the resource AND please pass it on to whoever might need it.
Representation is important and every community deserves to have it 🏳️🌈
Theres so much japanese media here its crazy though
They’re not the same thing. Sex positive, neutral, and negative describes someone’s opinion on the morality of sex in general and its place in society. Sex favorable, indifferent, averse, and repulsed have to do with your own interactions with sex.
Favorable, indifferent, averse, and repulsed is mostly used for asexual-spectrum people, and a lot of aromantic-spectrum people use the same scale to describe their feelings towards romance. But allosexual (non-asexual) people might also find it helpful. Like, there are people who feel attraction towards other people but are sex averse and don’t want to have sex with anyone they’re attracted to. (There are also people fitting the same description who do identify as aspec, and that’s valid, too.)
Here’s the chart that’s commonly used used to explain the two scales. I’m going to add an image description afterwards, but I’m not really familiar with doing them so it may not be great.
[Image description: A picture divided vertically into two halves. The left half is white with black text and the right half is black with white text. Each half has several terms written in bold with a smaller description under each one. The text is in a handwriting-style font.
On the left side, it says, “Sex-positive: To have a positive attitude towards sex in general. Not necessarily for yourself, but any safe sex between consenting people. Sex-neutral: to have no opinion on sex in general, neither positive nor negative. Sex-negative: to have a negative attitude towards sex in general. To think sex is bad/wrong, even safe and between consenting people.”
On the right side, it says, “Sex-favorable: to have a positive attitude towards sex for yourself. To desire sex. Sex-indifferent: To have no opinion on sex for yourself, neither positive not negative. Sex-averse: to have a negative attitude toward sex for yourself. To not desire sex. Sex-repulsed: To be repulsed by the thought of sex.”
End description.]
People get these two scales mixed up constantly, and/or leave out words. Y’all, I know it’s hard. I have to go through both of them in my head before I mention either one to make sure I’m saying the right thing. But we can do better. Please! Like, one of my friends was angry at me when I came out as asexual to her because she thought I was attacking her sexuality. And yeah, I’m sex averse, but that has no bearing on what I think of her. It’s actually a common myth that the concept of asexuality is inherently sex negative, and we don’t need to encourage that by conflating sex negativity with being sex averse or repulsed.
Actually, most people fit somewhere on both scales. So I made a chart of my own that shows how they fit together. Personally, I’m in the top right corner, sex averse and (doing my best to be) sex positive.
[Image description: A three-by-three chart, similar to an alignment chart. The left column is labeled “sex favorable”, the middle column is labeled “sex indifferent”, and the right column is labeled “sex averse/repulsed”. The top row is labeled “sex positive”, the middle row is labeled “sex neutral”, and the bottom row is labeled “sex negative”.
The box in the top left of the chart reads, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people having consensual sex, and I personally like to have sex.” The box in the top middle reads, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people having consensual sex, and I personally don’t mind having sex.” The box in the top right reads, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people having consensual sex, but I personally don’t want to have sex.”
The middle-left box reads, “I think it’s sometimes all right for people to have sex, and I personally like to have sex.” The center box reads, “I think it’s sometimes all right for people to have sex, and I personally don’t mind having sex.” The middle-right box says, “I think it’s sometimes all right for people to have sex, but I personally don’t want to have sex.”
The box in the bottom left says, “I think sex is immoral, but I personally like to have sex.” The bottom middle box says, “I think sex is immoral, but I personally don’t mind having sex.” The bottom right box says, “I think sex is immoral, and I personally don’t want to have sex.”
End description.]
So yeah, you can be sex positive and sex repulsed, or sex neutral and sex averse, or whatever! I’d say that a lot of American politicians are both sex negative and sex favorable. If you need more information, I added my own descriptions of the seven terms below the cut.
(I really wish I hadn’t made this so long, LOL. It took me way too long. Please reblog so it’s worth it?)
Hey, umm, just wondering, I was pretty sure I'm ace but saw something about how aces can still "have libido" and masterbate (don't know if I spelt that right) but I don't have/do either (and extremely sex repulsed) and so, starting to get imposter syndrome and thinking that maybe I'm just using the wrong term and maybe it's just some sort of "medical" thing.
Anyway, just wondering, is it possible for aces to not have libido or masterbate whatsoever?
Of course it's possible. Many asexuals don't have an interest in masterbation or are sex repulsed. They are no more or less asexual than those who are sex favourable. There is no one way to be asexual, if it's the label you want to use it's what you are.
