The Void

21, she/her, ace (& probably bi?).

[justalurkr]

Queer Chameleon and Friends

Written and illustrated by Amee Wilson

This book is a delightful collection of queer comics from flag definition to things queer people hate to clichés a little too close for comfort.

Main message: you are who you say you are.

[tony-stanks]

PLEASE DO NOT THINK FOR EVEN A SECOND THAT YOUR VOICE WILL NOT HAVE AN IMPACT THIS IS LITERALLY THE BARE MINIMUM

I'm sorry for putting this in the BLM and stop Asian hate tag but in the last few days posts tagged with "Palestine" have not been showing up.

[legsdemandias]

You need to realize that no amount of bullying asexuals or tucutes or polyams or whatever will make straight people respect you. The cishetero patriarchy doesn’t like you. They won’t like you if you bully and hurt and ostracize the ~weirdos~ in your community. They won’t respect you more. Oh yes, they might might might laugh with you for a little. It might be a great little bit of bootlicking fun when you two are laughing together at someone else. 

But in the end they will always kick you in the face and laugh at you again. 

[legsdemandias]

And there’s no justifying hurting polyams or tucutes or aces or whatever outside of “i want to be homophobic, but in a popular way” because what’s even the point? You don’t get medication from doing it. You don’t get representation in media. You don’t get rights. You don’t get respect. All you get is to take your vindictive hatred out on people just like you who want and need the exact same rights as you. There’s actually no benefit to it besides gaslighting, bullying, and straight up bootlickin.

Stop kidding yourself, you’re scared and angry and tired of being stepped on by someone bigger than you, so you started stepping on someone smaller than you. 

[owiez]

Nobody bullies polyam asexuals to appease the cis hets ♥️

[legsdemandias]

So why DO you bully people hm? Please explain to me, I’m giving you my platform to give a voice to you and all the people like you who firmly believe that you bully people for valid reasons. Enlighten us your unique reasons.

[pommegranatte]

When given the chance to actually explain themselves, these sorts of people resort to shit like this. They don’t care about the community as a whole. They care about arbitrary little sections of “””acceptable””” gays. Who’s in those little sections? Only they know because they make up the rules on who’s in or out. This really is a case of hurt people turning to their own community to attack others. All to look like one of they “good” gays to the outside. Which is fucked up.

[themadcapmathematician]

People like this dont realize that “because its funny UwU” is the more or less the same thing. You’re doing it bc systematic oppression has made polyams and aspecs and vulernable trans people easy targets and made the abuse of us funny, and putting us down bc you think we’re lower than you is buying into and upholding these systems

At the end of the day, that’s what bullying is, hurting people you can get away with hurting because everyone else is doing it, because the culture of your enviroment makes that not just possible, but easy and rewarding

[lazylittledragon]

what a great day to remember that enby/ace/pan/poly/etc people will always always always be safe on my blog and i love and support you all

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: reply by BisexualTop that says “it’s funny [[heart emoji]]” End ID]

[aslumia-deactivated20220706]

I like pizza… pizza is hot

[chaos-the-void]

No, but seriously. Why can't I eat my pizza right out of the oven without burning my mouth? It's so unfair

[feminism135]

[dopeasexualmemes]

search your feelings, you know it to be none of your business

[hues-of-purple]

Drew this asexual jacket!

(Please don’t remove this caption or repost this! Reblogs are very much appreciated though!!)

[hues-of-purple]

I drew/made some ace lockscreens :)

(Please don’t remove this caption or repost this! Reblogs are very much appreciated though!!!)

[onceandfuturehimbo]

Sex doesn’t make us whole.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY!

[shutyourmoustache]

White supremacy and colonization really forced that male/female binary onto so many communities, lands, and cultures, huh?

[zombiecare-rot-art]

‪I’m calling this tv head Ace TV! Also this might have subconsciously been vent art 👉👈...

Follow me on Twitter/Instagram @ Zombiecare_rot

[peacerisendove]

Jughead Jones and the Asexual and Aromatic Experience

(Jughead 2015 series)

[arielta]

*after creating me* God to Angel: hey Angel, did you give them a sexuality, like I asked? Angel: ...you told me to give them... asexuality God: ...A. SEXUALITY... Angel: ...ASEXUALITY...

[snowberry-pie]

are you a “wants to be carried bridal style by a knight in shining armor” or a “wants to be a knight in shining armor and carry somebody bridal style” kinda bitch

[bakaagou]

I just wanna be a knight in shining armor kicking somebody's ass and looking cool with explosions in the background

[pan-positivity]

[Video description: a man holding a small chocolate box is wearing a orange plaid shirt, he is mostly bald but has a beard and small amount of hair on his head. The man also has tattoos on his arms.

Man: you know, momma always said having kids was like a box of chocolates

You never know what your gonna get

(the man opens the box and pulls out a small note with the word pansexual written on it)

Man: thats a good one!

(pulls out note with bisexual written on it)

Man: i like that one too!

(pulls out another note with asexual on it)

Man: thats a good one!

(pulls out card with gender fluid on it)

Man: yes!

(pulls out card with non binary on it)

Man: oh, yes!

(pulls out card with trans gender on it)

Man: definitely!!

(pulls out card with straight on it)

Man: thats a good one

(pulls out card with gay on it)

Man: i like that one!

(pulls out card with lesbian on it)

Man: and i like this one too!

There isn't anything in this box that i dont like!

The video ends and is credited to princess dad @/ourdadnow on tik tok

End description]

[rootkit]

Good lord I’m not saying “you personally have to be violently harmed by cishets to be queer” I’m saying that the term is exclusively reserved for the communities who’ve historically experienced oppression centered around that slur and experienced the violence that it embodies (ie LGBT people)

You’re spouting some nonsense interpretation where you could say “some lesbians are queer but not all” when what I’m literally saying is “lesbians can call themselves queer because the lesbian community has been a target of this slur and experienced horrific violence as part of it”. Ace/aro people who lack same-gender attraction have no place trying to reclaim it because it was never aimed at their community.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Except that historically, people have absolutely been targeted as queer for asexual behavior.

Everybody feel free to grab a beverage and get comfortable, because I spent a lot of time on Google today. (Asexuals, listen up, because we actually have some situations where you are represented in history here.)

Historically, people got labelled queer, and/or queer-bashed, for two major things.

The first was deviating from strict gender norms.

The second was not having hetero sex.

There are tons of examples of white people literature from the 1800s and early 1900s that use terms like “confirmed bachelor” and “spinster aunt” to imply that somebody was queer.

(I was going to say something like European/American/Canadian literature, but let’s call a spade a spade.)

Sure, nowadays we look back at that and go, “everybody knew those people were gay, it was just code for gay, nobody thought anybody was asexual, that wasn’t a thing back then.” 

Of course, that still means that people who we would now call asexual would have been getting queer-bashed because people thought they were gay. So all those asexual people, already, have earned their queer stripes under the rubric above – that they are part of a community that got violently oppressed for being perceived as queer. 

It’s also worth pointing out that as far back as the 1890s, the LGBT movement – which did already exist, and was particularly active in Germany and New York – was already beginning to categorize and write about asexuality as part of its umbrella.

But is that all that was happening? Were straight people actually cool with people who they thought just weren’t having any sex at all?

Let’s see! (This is code for “hell no.”)

My favorite example that I came across was the Spinster Movement.

The Spinster Movement was really long-lived, from around the 1880s through the 1930s. It was a group of women who either felt no sexual attraction, or felt some sexual attraction but didn’t want to have sex. (I will be the first to say that I’m sure that there were also members who nowadays would identify as lesbian, bi, and trans. But it wasn’t the focus.)

The movement particularly focused on opposing sex work, sex trafficking, and child sexual abuse. It was deeply tied up in the suffrage movement, which fought for the vote specifically so that women could oppose these things in the political arena. (There’s a lot more about this in a book called The Spinster and Her Enemies, by Sheila Jeffreys.)

It spanned a wide range of countries. Norwegian researcher Tone Hellund talks about how first the group was considered queer because they were breaking gender norms. And then:

“[in Norway], in the 1920s and 1930s, female sexuality was suddenly discovered and all women were supposed to have and enjoy their sexuality. At this point, frigidity and asexuality also became a topic, a very problematic topic.

“You could say that the spinsters became queer because they didn’t have sex or didn’t take part in sexual activities, and also because they started to be perceived as potentially homosexual.

“Thus, the romantic spinster friendships of the earlier phase that were not seen as problematic in a sexual way became highly problematic in the 1920s and 1930s. Suddenly, all female relationships were seen as suspicious, they were seen in a new sexual light.“

Notice the “and also” – they were queer for not having sex, AND they were queer for starting to be perceived as possibly lesbians. 

In fact, “spinsters” were routinely slammed this way. In Britain, for example, the teachers’ union was attacked over and over with the double spectre of asexuality and lesbianism.

One example from Women’s History:  “…The fear of spinsters and lesbians affected women teachers in Britain between the wars. A 1935 report in a newspaper of an educational conference expressed the threat in extreme terms: ‘The women who have the responsibility of teaching these girls are many of them themselves embittered, sexless or homosexual hoydens who try to mould the girls into their own pattern.’” It was very explicit.

And the whole thing is a common accusation that queer people still face today. That what we are is bad because it is going to destroy children and society. 

People at the time felt very strongly about how unnatural it was for people not to have sex. Women, in particular, were often divided into “natural” and “unnatural” – i.e. queer – spinsters.  Natural ones were widows; unnatural ones were those we have seen here.

In her book “Family Ties in Victorian England,” Claudia Nelson quotes writer Eliza Linton’s description of “unnatural and alien” spinsters: “Painted and wrinkled, padded and bedizened, with her coarse thoughts, bold words, and leering eyes, [the wrong kind of spinster] has in herself all the disgust which lies around a Bacchante and a Hecate in one…. Such an old maid as this stands as a warning to men and women alike of what and whom to avoid.”

We can see some of the hatred of the Spinsters in the way suffragists were treated when arrested for picketing the White House. They were tortured, beaten, hung by their hands all night, fed rotten food, and subjected to attempted psychiatric abuse.

Earlier, during the Victorian era, there was a popular but unsuccessful movement, for decades, pushing to evict spinsters over 30 from Britain, and send them to Canada, Australia, or the United States instead. They were perceived, at best, as “surplus females”, in part because there were many more women than men in the population there at that time.

There was some overlap between the different kinds of queer. Straight people, as a group, had even less understanding and interest then than they do now of what the different flavors of queer might be.

Shannon Jackson’s essay, “Toward a Queer Social Welfare Studies,” gives a good example of how describes how critics of Jane Addams’ Hull-House “called the settlement ‘unnatural,’ worrying that its women were ‘spinsters’ or that its men were ‘mollycoddles’.” In that case, I would guess that they meant “women who have sex with women”.

It’s a good example of how much they conflated the different kinds of queer – that some straight people could use the term to slam people for being asexual, and others could use it to slam people for the opposite. And it’s also a good example of how little they cared which of us they were attacking. The important thing, to them, was that we weren’t having solely hetero sex and living our lives centered around being hetero. Everything else was just details.

(Also FWIW, I want to note that I meant no disrespect to any of the previous commenters or the OP in cutting the previous posts from queerdemons lesbiandoe @punkrcgers and sushi-moss. Tumblr wouldn’t let me post my long-ass reply without trimming; it mysteriously “lost” the whole thing like it always does when I reply at length to a long thread, and I had to rewrite it.)

[oodlenoodleroodle]

Also, this is a lot about women, but an unmarried man over a certain age was also considered “a threat to society” (and as mentioned above the term “confirmed bachelor” is still code for gay)

[infiniteglitterfall]

Right? I didn’t know ANYTHING about the Spinster Movement before I read about it yesterday, I didn’t even know that it existed. So I suspect that there are a shit-ton more examples like this. It could fill a really interesting book.

[im-significant]

also, u know, so-called corrective rape is a thing that is done to people for not being cishet, including ace people. so like. “ace ppl never experience the kind of abuse “real” queer ppl do” just doesnt work. ok?

[gay-irl]

gay😔irl

[dynamax--grookey]

[cassie-darlin]

this is why newly out queer folks are so loud about their sexuality/gender. when you arent allowed to express it for years and are suddenly allowed to you feel a need to do it the most for a while. the more you suppressed it the louder you are for longer.