i think the inherent flaw of online LGBT discourse is the focus on language where individual words are more important than what they mean. it's considered more important that words simply exist than for those words to functionally convey a singular concept-- how a word is used isn't as important as what the word is.
• because of this, you get people fighting for oxymoronic concepts like "bi lesbian" or "sex-positive asexual". words have to mean things. the word "lesbian" means "a woman who dates women", and if you start using it to mean "a woman who dates women but could also date men", there is no longer a word that means "a woman who dates women". "asexual" means you don't experience sexual attraction, and if you start using it to mean "could experience sexual attraction", the word "asexual" also becomes meaningless. the people who describe themselves as women who only date women or people who don't want sex NEED those words to describe themselves, without the fear that someone else will misinterpret those words and expect something from those people that they can't give.
• because of this, you get an extreme fixation on who's allowed to say what slurs. back in the day, i think the general concept of slur reclamation was "if you've been called this, you can call yourself this". as in, anyone using those words understood how they had been weaponized against them in the first place. but now there's this weird line-drawing of "only this group can say ___", completely disregarding any individual personal experience with those words. worst even are people who aren't LGBT freely using homophobic slurs, by association of considering themselves queer, even if they have never been called those slurs in their life.
• because of this, you get bisexual erasure in the form of m-spec identities. pan/poly/omni-sexual are described differently even though they all functionally mean the same thing, are defined differently by whoever is saying them, and are considered under the "bi umbrella" (or worse, considered separate from bisexuality). bisexuality gets redefined in order to justify the existence of these other labels, in a way that negatively impacts the bisexual community. microlabels are defended purely on the basis of "let people call themselves what they want", without questioning the purpose and impact of fracturing and hyper-specifying the minuscule differences in attraction. whether or not a label is "valid" is considered more important than the existence of a wholistic bisexual community.
These labels get so obscure that literally everyone fits under one or more. Is that the point?
According to this I’m demiromantic, demisexual, and gray-asexual. Which means that as an aspec person I’m allowed to say that a lot of these labels are just allosexual preferences and are really unnecessary.
i just wanted to collect some thoughts, particularly on the concept of “sexual attraction”. i feel that especially among the teens on this site, there is a lot of confusion about what exactly “sexual attraction” means and what a “normal” amount is.
every single person on earth is subjected to outside influence; in the form of media, personal interactions, and general culture. there are LOTS of different messages about sexual attraction, some contradictory. women are either sluts or virgins, men are always horny… and it gets more complicated when intersected with other things, like the over-sexualization of women of color and the desexualization of older women, or the hypersexualization of black and latino men and the desexualization of asian men. certain subcultures or media make sex out to be something that everyone should be having all the time; certain traditional religious or conservative cultures make sex out to be something only certain people should be having at certain times. there are many physical influences on libido/sex drive (like medication side effects or hormone levels), and many emotional influences (like trauma or mental illness). there are also LOTS of ways someone can be sexually attracted to someone that isn't based on their physical appearance-- sense of humor, smelling good, and personal style are all components of what makes someone "hot".
i say all this to put some context around the concept of “normal” sexual attraction. in romcoms and fanfiction, two people may fall in love and have sex on the first date, or get married after barely knowing each other. this is common, but i wouldn’t say it’s normal. this is something that rarely happens in real life, because it’s unrealistic pacing used for storytelling purposes. yes there are some people who have sexual thoughts about people they don’t know, yes there are people who enjoy casual sex and one-night stands (i am one of these people! what i would call “hypersexual”) but i wouldn’t consider it normal. the popularization of apps like tinder and grindr have normalized “hookup culture”, but it’s also still treated as an issue “corrupting” the relationships of this generation.
this is all to say... the idea of needing a strong emotional connection to feel sexually attracted to someone... is normal. not needing an emotional connection to feel sexual attraction, is also normal. there are infinite variables when it comes to attraction. this is why i take issue with the phrase "asexual spectrum", because asexual and allosexual are binaries. sure, there's a spectrum of sexual attraction, but i disagree with the idea that anyone who has any sort of nuance in regards to sex is some variation of asexual. asexual means a lack of sexual attraction. "grey-sexual" or "grayace" as a term fundamentally could be applied to anyone on earth. otherwise, where is the point in the spectrum where "allo" starts?
which leads me to "sex-favorable aces". if you have a partner, especially one you have an emotional or romantic connection with, and you are having consensual, non-coerced sex of any kind and enjoying it: you are not asexual. and that's fine! but you experience sexual attraction, and therefore, you are not asexual. if you do not want to have sex with your partner, don't, period. sex workers will have sex with people they aren't sexually attracted to, but that is labor being exchanged for currency, not a voluntary recreational activity. but if you DO want to have sex with your partner-- even if you think your partner isn't hot, even if you say it's "only exercise" and not intimate, even if it's only ever hands/mouths and no penetration, even if you only want it every six months-- that's sexual attraction.
if you are under the age of 20, especially if you have limited experience with dating, your sexuality is not done developing. just because you haven't felt strong sexual attraction to another person yet, doesn't mean you never will. i know that sounds suspiciously like "you just haven't met the right person yet", but i'm serious-- your body literally isn't through with puberty yet. nobody who is a minor should cling tightly to asexuality as an identity, or automatically assume that their peers are allosexual. gay crushes in childhood are not sexual, so don't compare-- children do not need to label themselves as either wanting or not wanting sex.
basically, i'm tired of seeing "sexual attraction" being described as some vague, abstract feeling that's hard to relate to. wanting to be physically close to someone, finding someone hot, having a positive reaction to the thought of maybe having sex with someone... that's it! it doesn't have to be immediate, or strong, or frequent! you don't need to do mental gymnastics to explain how you experience sexual attraction but it's in an asexual pure way somehow. just like there doesn't need to be "queerplatonic partnerships", because that's just friendship, and it's either romantic or it's not, but it's not a specific unique kind of relationship that only aroaces can experience. hyper-analyzing ever single possible human interaction and trying to compare it to a standard "normal" will only ever confuse you.
i just really get the sense from posts on aroaceconfessions and the like that there are sooooo many people who identify as “aromantic” despite actively being in or wanting romantic relationships, simply because they see their relationships/feelings as “not like the traditional expectations”. same with demisexuals or sex-favorable aces whose lives are indistinguishable from allosexuals.
because like, that isn’t what makes someone ace or aro. being “nontraditional” can mean so many different things, and allocishet couples can be nontraditional in many ways. most people do not fully relate to the kinds of romantic or sexual feelings that are portrayed in media/fiction, but that doesn’t make them “on the spectrum”. not wanting to get married, having more than one partner, living separately, not focusing so much on sex, etc etc etc are all very normal and common experiences. and these things are VERY DIFFERENT from not wanting sexual or romantic partnership at all. i truly feel like this is the result of the ace community pushing the idea that the LGBT community is “for people who don’t fit the amatonormitive ideal of an allocishet” instead of a community of people with specific identities who have shared experiences
the “cishet aces experience discrimination” crowd always tell on themselves when they give examples of their discrimination. and they don’t even realize because they literally don’t have the perspective. “do you know what it’s like growing up feeling broken and different?” yes, i do. “do you know what it’s like to have to explain yourself when you come out and still not have people understand?” yes, i do. “do you know what it’s like to have people tell you you’re confused and will change your mind later?” yes, i do.
do you know what it’s like to have a parent threaten to kick you out/financially cut you off? do you know what it’s like cutting contact with an entire side of your family, parent included, because they refuse to accept you? do you know what it’s like to be violently pushed and beaten, while being called slurs, by people you know? do you know what it’s like to be rejected by job interviews that required you to disclose if you are trans? do you know what it’s like to travel internationally, literally fearing for your life in places where it’s basically legal to commit homo/trans-phobic hate crimes?
no, you don’t! and i know you don’t! i know you don’t because it didn’t even cross your mind to list those as examples, because they aren’t things that happen to cishet aces! instead of hyperfocusing on the minor things cishet aces do experience, consider the myriad of things they do not experience. that is not erasure, that is not invalidation, that’s “check your privilege 101”. and if you can’t handle not being considered the same amount of oppressed, then get out. the community is not for you.
At risk of sounding like a hater and an asshole this looks like AI and if its somehow not, the editor who reworked images and sharpened them up made it look like AI
This is the actual image (from a 6 year old reddit post so def not AI). Either someone asked AI to recreate it or AI, being the plagiarism machine it is, was asked for a pic of dogs finding humans in the snow and just ripped off the first image it could find. Another reminder that AI doesn't actually create anything. Also real cute dogs.
i think when we used to point out that a story didn't need a sex scene what we meant was "this story reduces its women to mere sex objects and gives them no interiority so the sex scenes are gratuitous and geared towards the male gaze" it wasn't the sex that bothered us per se it was the objectification of female characters while givig them little to no consequence to the overall story but nowadays people mean "sex is icky and gross and has no merit to ever be portrayed in our arts which should be good and pure and never ever make ME feel discomfort" and it's like. i bet a bowl of unfrosted flakes looks real good to you rn
Man I think ppl need to understand that shit is a spectrum. Yes even with allosexuals. “Oh it’s so easy for allos they know the difference between an intense friendship and a crush” uhhhh before I had really known I was bisexual I had a best friend and we were mutually obsessed with each other to an unhealthy degree and made out on several occasions and I still didn’t understand that I was basically in love with her.
“Oh allos know immediately that they are attracted to someone and they want to fuck them wouldn’t that be nice” where are you getting your information from? sometimes you see a person running down the street or a very cool barista with a nice smile and you’re like wow hot. And then other times you’re friends with someone and don’t really feel that instant pull but as you get to know them something happens and you become attracted.
It’s all a spectrum and even more so if you’re queer. and I think ppl can and should make an effort to understand that from all sides of the ace/allo spectrum. because sometimes the whole “oh allo ppl only think in terms of fucking/not fucking, how odd” is 1) devoid of any complexity and 2) has an overtone of disgust that especially with queer relationships can seem uncomfortably close to how rightwing bigots talk about queer relationships.
All that to say can I get some fuckin nuance in the chat pls.
everything i know about hazmat hotel is against my will but it's extremely funny to me that they made that tumblr sexyman demon asexual, the fanbase predictably writes horny fics about him anyway, and now the people who spent years dying en masse on the hill of "aces can love sex you bigot!!" are realizing they shot themselves in the foot and made it impossible to argue that it's asexual erasure to write an asexual character having sex. delightful
like. it did use to mean something to be “part of the [lgbt] community.” like there was a baseline of shared experience/struggle/oppression. and an actual need for a community and support network and for advocacy for one another.
& somewhere along the way people who have never felt an ounce of that struggle decided “hey i’m #notlikeothergirls. i’m special and unique, and there’s no way that my nuanced feelings about my otherwise perfectly comfortable gender/my experience of sexuality that doesn’t fall 100% in line with what i saw on the disney channel/etc are just representative of normal and expected variation in the cisgender heterosexual human experience. i get to be gay too. actually i’m gayer than gay people. can i use slurs now?”
and when you adopt all the radically inclusive shit of “well not wanting to fuck is lgbt so it follows that wanting to fuck *sometimes* is lgbt, and basically just wanting and doing anything remotely different from what [i imagine] the average cishet person wants and does is lgbt” the community becomes very different but also becomes actively hostile to the people it was originally for. & these people are fine with that because theyre so tumblr brainrotted that they think gay men are heteronormative because one of them tops or whatever.
it was never about a history or a community of supporting each other through actual oppression and targeting from wider society. it was never about “x fought alongside y so we’re basically one of you” like people tried to stretch it to. the reply i drowned was on a post about motherfucking objectum shit ffs i don’t think the toasterfuckers threw the first brick at stonewall.
people want a cutesy social club. they like the aesthetic of “pride was a riot” and “queer as in fuck you” but will happily run actual gay people out of gay queer circles and say “[dangerous political situation for gay/trans people] is a distraction guys!” “gay people have plenty of representation, frankly too much, wheres all the representation of two men not fucking for once 🤮” etc etc in favor of turning our community into a slumber party with friendship bracelets and pronoun circles where they can be up their own asses about how quirky revolutionary they are. their activism is lukewarm dunks on jk rowling on twitter and harassing actual gay or trans people who dare to remind anyone that we actually still have real problems.
and we’ve graduated from “not fucking is lgbt” to “fucking sometimes and without much gusto is lgbt” to “aro jakey with a foot fetish is lgbt.” which is the most charitable interpretation of that btw because when you people say “paraphiles,” lets be real, 90% you are just looking for a cute euphemistic way to say pedophilia/rape fetishes/incest fetishes/etc.
i’m gonna need everyone who says “no one offline cares about your anti-pan bullshit” to shut up. because only people online would define bisexuality as “attracted to two or more genders but not all, with a preference, with gender playing more of a role in attraction”. if you ask anyone on the street what bisexual means, they’d probably say “attracted to men and women”, and that “pan means attracted to everybody”. we should be wanting everyone to understand that bisexuality is inclusive, not wanting everyone to think pansexuality is valid. you have to think about how the existence of pansexuality has affected the way bisexuality is viewed both by the LGBT community and broader society. and, i dunno about you, but i think trying to cement the idea that bisexuality doesn’t mean “attraction to all genders” is a bad idea.
“you can want to fuck someone without being sexually attracted to them” sexual attraction = wanting to fuck them, so this is a crazy sentiment on the face of it, but the explanations these people give dig them so much deeper
“oh i don’t actually want to have sex with them i’m just using them as a sex object” THATS NOT BETTER
“it’s like masturbating, just with a person” THAT’S! NOT BETTER!
“it’s like if a gay man had sex with a woman! which is also fine!” DO YOU HEAR YOURSELVES
i do really enjoy people in my notes/asks/etc insisting that i’m strawmanning & nobody ever says any of this and then proceeding to say “and also [almost word for word what my hypothetical asexual said]!!!” girl did you hit your head in the middle of writing that
no but you must have hit your head when your mom dropped you as a baby. too bad her murder attempt failed. at least we know she clearly never loved you or raised you right lol
