Next Step: Cake

Aro Ace blogger and local ace community activist. I have mostly moved away from using tumblr these days due to the terrible interface and how it inhibits good communication and community building, so I may be very slow to respond here; if you want to reach out or see something you think I might be interested in, feel free to try drop me a line via email at [email protected]. I can mostly be found on wordpress and pillowfort these days - my primary blog is at nextstepcake.wordpress.com.

[nextstepcake]

Ace Communities on Tumblr?

So apparently tumblr is adding community features now! I am super curious to see how this goes.

Is anyone working on starting any ace activism, ace history, or ace research communities yet?

[nextstepcake]

Update: My tentative community for asexual organizers has been approved!

https://www.tumblr.com/communities/asexual-community-organizing

The goal of this community is to connect anyone who is interested in asexual community organizing, whether it's running a local meetup group, an online book club, a discord channel, subreddit, or tumblr community - or for anyone looking to learn how to do any of the above.

I'm still figuring out how this new feature is supposed to work, so if this link doesn't work for you, message me for a direct invite!

[tbalderdash-art-blog]

[a-walking-fandom-reference]

so i’m an avid nail polish purchaser because i love to do nail art and so i was in the store today looking at my go-to nail polish sally hansen insta dri and they just released their pride collection and i was intrigued of course especially because they looked a lot more interesting then last years and GUESS WHAT!!! they catered to me (and fellow aspecs!!) they have not one but TWO aspec nail polishes called “AroAce Forest” and “We Stay Platonic” IM SO HAPPY OMG

[nextstepcake]

Ace Communities on Tumblr?

So apparently tumblr is adding community features now! I am super curious to see how this goes.

Is anyone working on starting any ace activism, ace history, or ace research communities yet?

[daybringersol-deactivated202605]

begging people to remember that queer-platonic relationships are not one specific type of relationship, it’s any relationship between people who choose to queer expectations around what platonic means. queer-platonic relationships don’t need long-term commitment, queer-platonic relationships don’t need to be prioritized over other types of relationships, queer-platonic relationships don’t need to be “pure” (aka sexless, we know what yall mean by that /neg), queer-platonic relationships don’t need to be anything in particular, that’s the fucking point.

that’s why, i’m gonna be honest with you, i’m very confused at what queer-platonic attraction as a concept could possibly be cuz every queer-platonic relationship is going to be different, including in types of attractions involved (or lack thereof). the only way i could make sense of it is like as a type of attraction that makes you want to diverge from social normal around platonic attraction, but that is just not the definition it has at the moment.

that’s also why i’m confused with any posts that talks about queer-platonic relationships as if they’re like.. one thing. one universal experience for anyone who has them. they are not.

i could fuck nasty with a friend for two weeks, never do it again and it’d be a queer-platonic relationship. i could (hypothetically, i actually could never) spend the rest of my life raising a child with a friend, completely sexlessly and romancelessly, and it’d also be a queer-platonic relationship. hell, i could choose to schedule completely silent cuddling sessions with people i barely know once a month like it’s a business meeting and it could still be a queer-platonic relationships.

anyways, please read up on relationship anarchy if you haven’t already 🙏

[e-cryptid-deactivated20180601]

It’s okay to not want to have sex ever. It’s okay to never even try it.

[thefisherqueen]

I was 23 before it even occurred to me that not starting with sex ever was an option. The feeling of relief was so great I actually cried. 

You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can have a fine live without ever having sex, I promise you. 

[impostoradult]

Also, it’s okay to never date anyone ever. It’s okay to never even try it if you don’t want to. 

I wrote a master’s thesis on intentionally single people, and the number of them that said in various ways, “I didn’t know not dating people was even an option at first” was absolutely tragic. They honestly thought they had no choice and it never occurred to them that opting out was even a possibility available to them.  

People honestly believe these are life experience you are required to have AND THEY ARE NOT.

You can just not have sex. You can just not date people. You can completely by-pass one or both of those things. Neither of those things are required to be healthy, happy, normal, mature, fulfilled, or any of the other bullshit notions that get attached to these things. 

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

Do you or anyone else here have any pictures of asexuality included at pride? 🖤🩶🤍💜

I don't have any saved, but I've seen a bunch around. You can google Asexuality Pride Events (or similar) and find a lot (check the source, but a lot should be from official ace awareness/outreach websites). Otherwise if you check the ace tags during June you should also see a lot, assuming the tag spam isn't too bad.

Followers, does anyone have any pride photos they want to share? Feel free to use the submission feature too if you want to share it on the main blog.

All the best, Anon!

[nextstepcake]

How about video?

[papier-ciseaux]

Happy ASAW 2024, here's something about community !

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

we need civil partnerships for siblings and I’m not joking

the desire to file taxes jointly =/= the desire to screw each other

a pair of identical twins who live in the same house should be allowed to share social security benefits and they shouldn’t have to pay inheritance taxes

i think it’s reasonable to want to extend your health insurance to your own flesh-and-blood that lives in your home. I mean, hypothetically, I could just marry a random person I met last week and get all of those sweet, sweet legal and financial benefits, but as of now, in the US, the law makes it impossible for a pair of siblings to contribute to each other’s IRAs, and I think that’s a travesty

just my wacky, controversial opinion

[nextstepcake]

It's not quite the same thing as the benefits are still more limited, but things like the Alberta Interdependent Partners Act look like promising models to at least make baby steps in this direction:

Adult interdependent relationship in Alberta - Wikipedia

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

we need civil partnerships for siblings and I’m not joking

the desire to file taxes jointly =/= the desire to screw each other

a pair of identical twins who live in the same house should be allowed to share social security benefits and they shouldn’t have to pay inheritance taxes

i think it’s reasonable to want to extend your health insurance to your own flesh-and-blood that lives in your home. I mean, hypothetically, I could just marry a random person I met last week and get all of those sweet, sweet legal and financial benefits, but as of now, in the US, the law makes it impossible for a pair of siblings to contribute to each other’s IRAs, and I think that’s a travesty

just my wacky, controversial opinion

[guccifloralsuits]

Happy May 13th to gays eating garlic bread in the park

[paper-mario-wiki]

hey! you shouldnt make jokes calling cis people eggs, especially when they are real living breathing human beings with intelligent thought and critical thinking. if you do, you're weird and i think you should consider the effect your words more often, because as someone who was a very public facing cis person who had a lot of Egg jokes made about me before transitioning, it still makes me fucking sick to think about. it fucked me up so bad that i refused to transition until i quit my job and wasnt under the eyes of people making bets on my psychology. how dare you fucking speak down to me regarding my own identity. how dare you fucking claim to know me better than i know myself.

it is not the privilege of trans people to have their stated gender identity believed, nor is it a sin of cis people to acknowledge their option to transition and still remain cis. make egg jokes about fictional characters, fine. but accusing a stranger of not being the gender they claim to be is not something you get to reclaim when you're trans.

[yaoiboypussy]

How long until passing discourse spirals into “non-passing trans people have cis privilege bc people interpret them as their birth gender”

[supposedlyahuman-deactivated202]

I already see this (or something like it) all the time with nonbinary people, especially if they're "non-transitioning" (sidenote: I really hate the phrase "non-transitioning" ; in my experience people often use it to imply that medical transition is more significant than social transition). Feminine nonbinary people assumed to be AFAB and masculine nonbinary people assumed to be AMAB are often seen as "gender-conforming" and "basically cis." I've even seen people claim that they shouldn't be considered part of the trans community because they "don't transition in any meaningful way" and they therefore "live life exactly like a cis person." I hate it so much.

[vbartilucci]

"people often use it to imply that medical transition is more significant than social transition"

I suspect "significant" is being used here in a way I'm not parsing properly.

Because I see a medical - specifically a surgical - procedure as always more "significant" than a non-surgical option. Getting surgery to repair a knee is more significant than wearing a knee brace.

I think you mean that there are some people that only surgical transition "counts", and yes, I agree, that's a bad mindset. Socially transitioning is perfectly valid, and should be just as supported as someone getting a full set of surgeries, or getting HRT.

Now that's something I had to learn, as in when I first learned about trans people (we're talking the 70s, y'unnerstan), I thought that the surgeries were the desired goal for all. It wasn't for some time that I learned that there were people who decided to keep some or all of their original equipment, and still live and present and their gender of choice. And once I learned that was a thing, I didn't dispute it, I just said "Oh, ok, fine, I didn't know about that".

So for some people, they may just need to learn that too. And yes, there's absolutely going to be some people who are going to insist it doesn't count. And they're wrong.

[supposedlyahuman-deactivated202]

Yeah, I agree that significant wasn't really the right word. I guess I more meant meaningful (still don't know if that's the right word but it's a bit better). My medical transition (HRT, bottom surgery, etc.) might be more significant than someone who doesn't medically transition in any way, but it's not any more meaningful or worthy of respect.

[nextstepcake]

Actually, I would still push pack against the idea that medical transition is inherently more significant than social transition!

As someone mostly "cis-passing*" and "non-transitioning*" who is kinda going in the opposite direction by pursuing some aspects of medical transition (top surgery, using hormonal birth controls for complete period cessation), but not social transition (no name change, don't care about pronouns, don't talk about gender identity much and let people assume whatever) I have found the medical aspects of gender way less daunting and also find that they require way fewer significant changes to my daily life.

The thing about medical interventions is that they really don't take up much of my life in terms of time. Top surgery was like 3-4 medical consults, a couple hours in surgery, and then 3-4 weeks of recovery followed by maybe 6 months of minor skincare. And now it's done forever with no extra work required! And for hormonal period cessation, I can just change out a nuvaring once a month and then I forget about it for another 27 days.

Social gendering, though? Never stops. The social complexities of gender rear up again every time someone says your name, every time you get introduced to a new person, every time you decide what pronouns to share on a zoom call or a name tag, every time you present ID to pick up a package.

I got approved for surgery and got all the insurance and hospital paperwork done in like 3 weeks. But my friends who needed IDs and birth certificates and drivers licenses and passports and employer databases and school databases and doctors databases and other social paperwork changed to reflect their actual names and genders have often had to fight for years, even in a progressive state like California. Many never succeed in getting everything to reflect their actual gender since it's so pervasively and sometimes invasively documented everywhere in very user unfriendly ways.

Very few people will ever see my scars or my medical paperwork closely enough to know exactly where I stand medically. But hundreds will see my name and pronouns and ID every year to judge how I stand socially. And that seems incredibly more significant to me personally.

-

*For context, I still waffle back and forth between considering myself just a somewhat gender nonconforming actually cis person, or as a deliberately cis-passing agender person (kinda just depends on the day and whether I'm in a "we need more agender rep" or "we need more cis people getting top surgery rep" mood). So I still use some of these labels for myself and don't speak for most nonbinary people. But I do think I can add some insight from this edge case perspective.

[queer-is-future-deactivated2025]

so when straight people ask me why I say I’m “queer” or “gay” instead of sharing my actual identity as a panromantic demisexual non-binary sapphic queer I just tell them “ok look, when you’re talking to someone who isn’t local and they ask you where you’re from and you either say the name of the largest city nearby or ‘town name, suburb of large nearby city’ so they can get some geographical context of where you’re located right, bc they’re probably not going to know the name of the little town you actually live in.”

but if you’re talking to a local you can say the name of your actual town bc they have a greater chance of knowing where/what that is.

ok well when I’m talking to a straight person I start with queer bc chances are they aren’t as familiar with the context of all the little towns in that big queer city and need gps (gay positioning system) to find me.

if I’m talking to another queer person and I say I live in a suburb of gay city in a town called panromantic on the demisexual side of the tracks which is in the county of queer and I live off the intersection of non-binary and sapphic, they’d probably be able to find me with little to no problems, make sense?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Also because my exact address in Queertown is usually nobody's business.

[infizero-draws]

epic aro sculpture i did for class

the heart is made out of plastic bags wrapped with tape, so it's squishy ^_^ and the knife is qtips hot glued together. the knife is also removable!

[redbeardace]

Legit ace flag sighting in CSI: Vegas just now.

It didn't factor into the plot at all. So, where did it come from? Ace actor using their own phone? Ace in the props department?

[chongoblog]

Someone boring: The difference between bi and pan is a nuanced topic that can really mean different things to different people. But in the end, the importance of who someone loves/is attracted to is the business of themself and the person they end up loving, so if the shoe feels like it fits, then we should embrace the declaration of our own identity, because they aren’t made for the purpose of exclusion, but rather self-expression.

Someone epic: The difference between bi and pan is which colors of the flag you like more.