It's really simple. If you're born with a vagina and you naturally have elevated testosterone levels, you're a man. If you have a vagina and you take testosterone, you're a woman. But also if you have a vagina, you'll never be a man. But also if you have higher testosterone then you were never a woman. Woman never yes man a vagina testosterone no was an elevated. Vagina man.
i think ppl would be a lot happier and better-adjusted on here if they realized that being online on a website is like being in any other casual public space full of people. if u walk into walmart u dont immediately think to yourself âi have to be friends with everyone in this walmart and if not everyone likes me iâm a failureâ and u really shouldnât feel that way online either. likewise if thereâs a guy in the walmart parking lot shouting obscenities u probably wouldnât answer him and thatâs literally an exact equivalent to some of the weird stuff that people on here seem to feel theyâre obligated to respond to.
when whitman said âi contradict myself. i am large⌠i contain multitudesâ and wilde said âwhat are you? to define is to limitâ and sumney said âi insist upon my right to be multipleâ
and when mahmoud darwish said âI am besieged by contradictionâ and when lewis carroll said âI knew who I was this morning, but Iâve changed a few times since thenâ
I feel like a lot of "How do I know I'm aromantic?" resources focus on never having been in a relationship (god I wish that were me), so here are some signs that you might be aromantic if you are in a relationship and considering it:
⢠Feels like a performance, or you are copying things you have seen in other relationships
⢠When people comment on or ask about your relationship, it makes you uncomfortable
⢠After having sex, the more intimate touches/cuddles do not feel as good
⢠Wanting more independence or time alone
⢠Thinking if your partner cheated on you, you wouldn't care
⢠Being scared that you might cheat despite having no desire to be with anyone else
⢠Words like "partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc" all feel wrong, and you don't like them being applied to you
⢠Not having a strong feeling of missing your partner like you're "supposed" to
⢠Questioning your sexuality/preferences despite being confident in who/what you're attracted to
⢠Feeling like you're lying if you appreciate gifts or affection from them, even if you really do appreciate it
⢠Saying "I love you" feels fine, but it holds the same weight when you say it to anyone else
⢠Not wanting to tell anyone about your feelings because you're afraid you will be misunderstood
Anyway, that's all I got. I hope it helps someone out there. I'm still struggling too, but I think we will all be okay! <3
âwe live in an uncaring universeâ yeah dude and I live in an uncaring house. and I shit in an uncaring toilet. but do you touch an uncaring lover? do you comfort an uncaring child? do you guide to sleep each night a cold and uncaring self?
legit the best advice i can give you: feed your friends
any time someone is in any kind of crisis or upheaval, offer to feed them. tell them they don't have to choose what it is if they can't make decisions, just ask about allergies and preferences and tell them you're just gonna make food happen at their house.
friend having a baby? delivery gift certificate to order food to the hospital after the kid shows up.
someone's relative passes away? offer to make them dinner.
buddy gets laid off? ask if you can order them lunch.
pal stuck in a depressive episode? offer to drive them to fucking mcdonalds, if that's what they want.
people in crisis are tired and sad and angry and the last thing most of them are doing is thinking about feeding themselves. so if you have the ability or time or money, providing that is always, always a good move.
legit i do this all the time, and it is 100% always appreciated. i have taught all my friends that when something happens, we feed each other. it makes people feel extremely cared for, and I cannot recommend it enough.
almost in part because, well, it's kind of fundamental to his character that he was literally shipped into space. like he is very much shippable. stratt saw to that.
but also because done right, i am absolutely in favour of shipping him with rocky. and adrian. but that is IT. i do not fuck with shipping him with any human, from his canon or not. and emphasis on done right. (this feels like a good point to say: this is not me trying to assert that my takes are canon, or that anyone else's takes are wrong or bad. everything i say is about how/if it resonates with me)
(cut bc i have been frustrated by enough long posts lately to want to be considerate about it)
i'm still working on synthesising my thoughts into coherency, but i think it comes down to fundamentally what i find compelling about project hail mary (and to be clear there is a lot i love about project hail mary that isn't explicitly to do with the relationship grace and rocky develop, but that's not what this post is about) and how various takes work with or against the cultural romantic norms i'm used to seeing, and how all of that ties into my own messy aroace-spectrums-adjacent identity.
some things i believe in my heart to be true:
romance is a culturally constructed category, with no clear or consistent parameters (even between human cultures) (even between humans within the same cultures!)
sexuality is (to varying degrees, depending on the person) fluid and biological and contextual and malleable
applying rigid definitions or predetermined parameters of either of these is often faulty and inconsistent, even in human-human allo-allo relationships. every relationship is its own unique thing. how it gets described can vary wildly depending on the people inside of it, and the biases and experiences of whoever is describing it
ryland grace is aroace to me. which functionally means, he does not have a "normal" relationship to attraction or relationships. he has at least one ex (so do i), but he never seems bothered by his lack of a partner. he loves his life. he is loved. he is never the one to assert that his lack of a partner makes him more disposable.
the version of grace/rocky i find compelling, is the one where their relationship is explicitly both a departure from and a merging of human and eridian relationship structures. i don't picture grace ever going "finally, i have found romance, turns out im not aromantic my type is just aliens". what i find compelling is that without the barriers of human cultural expectations (or at least the ones grace and i have been subjected to), he is finally able to access a level of intimacy and closeness that has always been locked behind the wall of allonormativity. their relationship can't be built on cultural assumptions; their cultures are literally alien to each other. they don't have to be anything other than what they are; they meet each other where they are at. they use the scaffolding of their cultures to help describe what their relationship already is. also my headcanon is that rocky (and eridians in general) would be utterly perplexed by the human habit of deprioritising friendships to hold the monogamous nuclear family above all else.
idk if i'm really hitting the points i want to here. tldr grace and rocky are everything to me and i love them despite the ache in my chest that maybe the love and devotion i crave is locked behind being shot to space against my will, which will never happen because i would want to go and they would not let me on account of i am a fragile fool without the necessary skills <3
the new fantasy genre, popehunk, encompasses all books in which historical figures responsible for real atrocities are presented as sexy and potentially suffering from a cute lil' anxiety disorder
