aro-dynamic

[aro-dynamic]

hey, i would say that telling “some people on the left” what they “seem to want” when they’re in the middle expressing very real despair, and frustrations with a failing political party, isn’t the best way to get your guy to win or change their minds?

just a wild thought that maybe this is a time for listening and compassion

Did you see that tweet from @PamKeithFL saying "he [Biden] has a LOT of rapes to do to catch up to Trump[?]" I’m having a real hard time with this one. I mean, I know the Biden people look at politics as a game of moving policy by degrees and the people are collateral damage, but this one stung. I was already having a hard time with Biden, but this is a hard pass for me. Not voting for a rapist seems like a reasonable position.

Well, I probably wasn’t going to vote for anyone besides Sanders, to begin with (well, Warren before things went hard south– that all seems inevitable now, I’m still pretty salty about her, but I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t inevitable, maybe that’s too much to say), so all this isn’t some new dealbreaker for me, but it’s…

But if we’re already seeing refrigerator trucks outside of hospitals to collect the dead and shit… The level of death we’re possibly about to see is not really something I think Americans are prepared for.  And other countries have handled this badly too, but enough has gone wrong that an awful lot can and has to get chalked up to that guy, and it’ll be a lot to swallow to see that guy get reelected (which was already true for me before with the rest of the last four years but jesus, especially after this shit).

But the people “against” him are just so vile– the idea that you’re just going to fix things for coronavirus but leave the rest of the health care system alone is insane-making, and they’re screaming at poor Briahna Joy Gray instead just screaming abject nonsense for pointing out that none of what they’re saying makes any sense, and they’re just vile vile vile.  If you go and look at Pam Keith’s other tweets, it’s all these liberals screaming that “200,000 dead is more than 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails” … Who does that mean anything to???  On the one hand we’re about to see a massive number of Americans (disproportionately minorities, disproportionately poor, same as ever) just whoosh right off our mortal plane, but on the other hand, the real victim in these assholes’s heads is still fucking Hillary Clinton… Fuck them.

Trump has to go but … A party where Neera Tanden has even a shred of legitimacy??  A party that has descended to this level of idiocy getting anywhere near power?  The party’s just lost its mind to me, it stands for nothing and it’s getting rewarded for it, it’s running the election this badly AFTER what happened in ‘16 (which is jaw-dropping) and I don’t know … What happens if they lose their minds and then still win in November?  What does that look like 5, 10 years from now?  There’s no party unity bullshit happening– I don’t really think they have a real plan to even try, except shouting at people or having the Pod Save America jackasses trot out every so often to mutter “we’re on the same team, guys– shape up” or some horseshit like that.  I do not want to see them attain power, full stop– that’s scary to me too, in a bunch of different ways.  But then … the alternative is just going to be… this grinning racist clown cackling in front of a mountain of corpses???  I mean, fuuuuuck.  Fuck.  They’ll always have some right wing scare person– remember when Mitt Romney was this enormous threat to America?– that they use to scare people into putting up with bullshit, but the current scare person will literally just be drenched in American blood like fucking Carrie.   

The good news is I’m in California and my vote means nothing at the Presidential level.  I’m not a Swing State voter.  Or I can embrace just being a decadent person who doesn’t care what happens to this country/world because I don’t have kids. My retirement’s fucked now but I’ve watched enough Dave Ramsey show that I know how to walk with Christ financially, Christ is my financial planner, so I got that going for me.  But… what do I want to see happen here?  I don’t want Trump to win and I don’t want Biden to win (much much less but still).  And I think that’s mathematically impossible, so I’m just not sure what I’m even rooting for at the moment.  It just all feels like a farce.  Everything everywhere feels hopeless and scary. So the rape thing’s just … It’s just lagniappe.   It’s just a cherry on top of a shit sundae.  And on purpose.  This feels like the true point of Biden, the way it was the point of just murdering Epstein in front of us and just being like “it was suicide.”  To just make us all feel crazy and hopeless and powerless, and put people back in their place and feeling apathetic.  It feels fucking intentional.  

[aro-dynamic]

-don't forget: "this group who does terrible things aren't REAL christians(/feminists)." nope! the problem is actually that they are! and glossing over the identity you share doesn't stop their cruelties

baffling how much of this site is just conservative protestantism with a gay hat

[aro-dynamic]

i think this is a really old post (your names talk has been really interesting to read!!!) but like. i used to really love the name mildred and my first connotation wasn’t dread or mildew, but mild. idk, it sounds soft to me-- enough so that i used it as a name for a character when i was very young. and it comes with millie, which is super cute imo, as far as diminutive nicknames go. 

i also liked millicent, but jk rowling went and ruined that one forever for me :/

People have very different tastes in naming aesthetics and I fully respect that, but there are certain names whose popularity I just straight-up do not understand.

Like, I strongly dislike the name Paul, but whatever – there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, plus it’s Biblical, so I understand why people like it. But how the actual blue fuck was *Mildred* a Top 10 name for, like, four decades? It makes sense, statistically speaking, that the odd person here or there would like it, but I genuinely do not understand how hundreds of thousands of parents over ~40 years were like “yeah, I want everyone to think of dread and mildew when they look at my daughter”

[aro-dynamic]

"Unusual black names have a rich history; unusual white names are just made up!"

It's funny, because a generation ago, it was *black* names that were mocked with the allegation that they were "just made up". Don't get me wrong -- it's a good thing that people are now more aware of their origins and cultural context. But I think it's unfortunate that we seem to have capitulated to respectability politics. If black names *were* "just made up", they would still be perfectly acceptable names. You shouldn't have to appeal to culture or history to have your harmless personal choices respected.

(SJ in general, I think, is really bad at respecting weirdness when it's not "cultural" in some way. Honoring a collective identity is fine and good, but honoring an individual one is seen as suspicious and probably oppressive. Which really gives the impression that it's the *culture* that deserves respect, not the people who compose it.)

[aro-dynamic]

@buildingrelationshipsinanarchy I wanted to keep this reply but op has some pretty nasty transmisogynistic views I'm trying not to platform

I feel like it depends, relationship by relationship. Some people literally feel most comfortable with a mutual don't ask don't tell policy. I wouldn't want that; I don't really care one way or another who a partner has casual sex with, but I do care about knowing when they're dating other people.

I think that's not entitlement, but basic communication which is important in any relationship? Especially if you're with someone who's open to polyamory but hasn't been in a polyam relationship before, since monogamous social norms are a beast to work through.

I wouldn't want to date someone who didn't put in the time to communicate about their relationships, but that doesn't mean everyone has to follow my lead? People can be happy in all kinds of arrangements.

Just bringing in my thoughts, since you asked for people's opinions.

[aro-dynamic]

neil gaiman is an anti-anti

For those of you wondering if this is a joke: it is not

[aro-dynamic]

There is no correlation between trans men and butch lesbians, stop comparing the two.

[aro-dynamic]

Where are these hoards and hoards of totally cis totally het aces that y’all are so worried about? I’ve me literally hundreds upon hundreds of aces, both in person and online and out of all of those I think I remember meeting maybe 10 total totally cis totally het aces and out of those 10 I can only say that one [1] was homophobic. 

So i’m not saying you’re creating a scapegoat to divide the community thus making it harder for us to unite as one in order to fight for our rights, but you’re definitely not not doing that. 

[aro-dynamic]

The real reason Bernie Sanders supporters have it in for Beto O’Rourke isn’t because of “jealousy”, or some sort of bad intent, it’s because O’Rourke is a conservative capitalist. His voting record says it all.

[aro-dynamic]

Also good to keep THIS SHIT in mind:

[aro-dynamic]

Also, I hate that one of the top posts on protest tag is “I’m asexual, uwu, all allosexuals are going mad about porn purge, I don’t care because I don’t want to fuck anyone, look I’m so cool”.

So I wanted to make a statement.

I’m asexual and I think that the porn policy is fucking awful. It higly misogynistic, because of the entire female nipple thing. It’s making already vulnerable community of sex workers even more vulnerable. It fucked with furry tags, with top surgery and LGBT+ tags. It scared a lot of good artists. And it’s not even everything.

And it done fucking nothing good.

[aro-dynamic]

I don't think it would make me miserable to be with just one person who loves me. I'm with one person right now, after all: profoundly in love with a person who understands me (hard to find for anyone, but especially neurodivergent people) and is my confidant and inspiration and life partner. But the relationship structure polyamory brings is, I think, in many ways necessary to our well being.

I'm autistic, aro and ace spec. So is my partner. They really like kissing and aren't always into expressing romantic feelings verbally. Terms of endearment and confessions of love make me melt, but I'm often touch averse. We have a wonderful dynasty, but our needs aren't constantly in sync, because people are people.

We've both been poly before we were poly. I maintain that I'm a bit in love with all of my best friends and maintain intimate connection with all of them. My partner has said the same. I just read about emotional cheating, and don't understand it in the slightest. Do people really get upset if you have a Big Conversation with a friend before a romantic partner? I know there are people who count I love yous. I can't imagine not being able to share those with everyone, or talk with my partner about how hot a mutual friend is and then take them out to dinner when they come to town. I like that we're dating, but allowed to live separate lives without jealousy. That they can excitedly come to me about a date they had, and I can flirt with a coworker, and if it goes farther we communicate openly and honestly.

I really like that neither of us have had to end friendships because we've had crushes on those people. I like that despite my romantic connection being long distance, I have places to put all the love there is in me. I like that if I met someone else who made me feel a spark, I wouldn't have to forgo that, embroiling myself in what-ifs. Not everyone needs to be Like this, but it works really well for me.

Multiple people is not a need/desire that must be filled, but freedom, openness and bountiful love most certainly are.

I have a few questions for people in polyamorous relationships…

Is being with one person not enough? Why do you need to be with multiple people? Is it a need or a desire?

I’m not trying to start a fight or anything, just genuinely curious. I cannot wrap my head around wanting to be with more than one person. I’m sure it’s just not for me but I’d like to understand.

Like would it make y'all absolutely miserable to just be with one person?

[aro-dynamic]

As an autistic kid who did acting/singing, I am 100% convinced that putting an autistic kid in an acting class is gonna be 1000x more helpful than any “social skills” class.

Like, not that we should ever *have* to pass as NT, but it is, at its core, acting. So learning to act is what helped me, and put me in a social environment, and there are interesting lessons there about empathy (like, figuring out what other people should be feeling absent of social cues because the other person is a character who may be vastly different to you) and wearing masks while still being authentic and stuff…

Again, the fundamentals of social skills training that is really just “passing as NT training”* aren’t great - we shouldn’t have to mask, but we do live in a society that makes it easier, so where you end up on the wanting to or not wanting to scale is individual and ever changing and I def don’t think that learning to mask should be codified into how we approach educating autistic kids - but if autistic people are struggling and want help…

Well, acting classes seem the better way to go, not least because the stated goal is not “make you normal” but “learn this skill”.

*Social skills like “Here’s how to set a boundary” are things we should teach kids, but that is rarely what is meant by “social skills training”. Also, it should be taught to all kids, not just autistic kids.

[aro-dynamic]

Hey so this just occurred to me, but does anyone else think that a lot of young people on this site are REGs (or radfems, in which I am also including antis), because inclusionist ideas are much more abstract and harder to understand?

Don’t get me wrong, some people are just shitty, but like, especially for people who aren’t heavily involved in the discourse, I think this might be true.

I mean, REG ideology is much harder to sustain in the long run, because you need to constantly keep adjusting it when new proof that you are wrong comes up (and that happens constantly), and eventually you end up arguing that things are so and so, “just because”; which is partially why I never stuck with any of it (also, I am not a naturally bigoted person), but I mean in the initial stages I think it sounds perfectly reasonable, especially if you can’t fully grasp abstract thinking.

To be an inclusionist (and intersectional feminist, in which I am also including anti antis) you need at least baseline knowledge of intersectional theory, liberal feminist theory and queer theory, where as to be a REG you don’t really need to understand much more than simple cause - effect.

Eg. “Straight people hate gay people, there are laws against gay people getting married, gay people get harassed if they appear to be too gay, therefore gay people are oppressed under homophia.”

Where as the idea that homophia is just a symptom of a much larger infrastructure set in place to privilege certain groups (I don’t even want to say the majority because according to some studies bisexuals may outnumber the straights; and we all know white people aren’t the majority and the 1% definitely are not), and it’s only a reflection of that structure, which acts in a multitude of ways to oppress different groups, in different but also similar ways, rather than the true cause of the problem; is obviously a much more complex and difficult to understand idea.

[aro-dynamic]

hey! i was scrolling through the notes here and i think it's been a while, but you seemed to be asking in good faith so i wanted to add another two cents. the post is about people who don't care about their friends and are just pretending to be friends to preach to them, but you brought up a different situation and a good point imo! i wrote a very long post because that's just what i do, but i can summarize if needed. :)

you're right that if you're (general you) an evangelical christian and you make genuine non-christian friends and you want to bring the gospel to them so that they're saved, that can be an act of love. it must feel like a terrible burden to worry that most of the world might be damned; as an ex-evangelical christian, i imagine my immediate family's secular life fills my aunt with great sadness. i don't have belief in as fixed an afterlife as the christian heaven, but i'm an irish polytheist and my partner is a hellenist raised catholic, so i guess it'd be a bummer not to see them in tír na n-óg. it means accepting death of a loved one as final, and gods know humans have trouble with that.

but back on track, the thing about friendship is that healthy friendships aren't just built on acts of altruistic love or a drive towards the "greater good" of saving someone. those kinds of friendships are the kind that burn out really fast.

respect of boundaries and personal independence/autonomy are just as profound expressions of love, and the thing is, even you believe with every fiber of your being that you're saving someone for eternity, if you push your religion on a friend, you're not respecting them as a person. they might already be pretty confident in their religious beliefs or lack thereof. heck, they might even feel that you're the wrong one! many religions, despite not proseletyzing as much as evangelical protestants, are just as earnest in their beliefs.

and it can touch upon old wounds, too! you don't want to do that to a friend. for many folks, there's been centuries of historical precedent to be wary of folks trying to convert you, whether it ends in pogroms or forced boarding schools. and on the flip side, i personally have a lot of serious trauma surrounding my childhood church as a queer person. if someone kept pushing that with me, even if they believed it was the good and kind thing to do, i don't think i could be friends anymore, for my own mental health.

(i'd say in this day and age, when evangelical churches show up in voting blocs that sway elections and strip people of their rights, that there's a very current justification for this worry, unfair as it may seem.)

a big part of friendship is built on another kind of faith, too- the faith that a person we love will do what's best for themself. you can encourage someone to seek therapy or end a relationship or quit their soul sucking job, but you can't do it for them. and likewise, i don't think you can change someone's religion for them without sacrificing this idea that they're their own person. that doesn't mean you can't say that praying helps you deal with stress if they ask! or even that you can't go to church with them if they want to come. though i'd make sure the week's sermon isn't gonna be on how awful nonbelievers are, cause a conversion through fear and manipulation isn't the best conversion, or the best friend move.

i once got accused during my bible study program that i didn't love my jewish best friend enough because i didn't want to evangelize to her, knowing her religion was just as important to her as mine. my instructor (one of my heroes) told me it'd be on my conscience if she went to hell. so this question feels really personal to me. i guess i want to challenge folks to treat friendships as multidimensional. knowing when to back off should be just as much an act of love as many envision sharing the gospel to be.

tl;dr disrespecting boundaries is a jerk move to a friend, christian or not. don't be a jerk. let people be their own people and love them as they are. that's the least selfish friendship you can have.

something that rly creeps me out…..occasionally ill see videos or articles for christians or christian missionaries that say something like “what you need to do is make friends with non christians and really get them to trust you and THEN you start preaching to them and bringing them to jesus” and that is….man how much would it hurt to know that the only reason someone’s hanging out with you is to convert you to a religion you were never interested in. maybe this is a real friend, someone you really really feel like you connect to, and all of a sudden you cant hang out with them without being scared they’ll bring out the jesus stuff.

[aro-dynamic]

not everyone nblw/nblnb is a lesbian, but it doesn’t mean those who are aren’t valid!

nblw that aren’t lesbians? excellent, amazing

nb lesbians? fantastic, inspiring

people who insist on telling someone what they MUST be? smelly, probably licks doorknobs for fun

[aro-dynamic]

On maybe not being a lesbian anymore maybe possibly ???

Hey, I was wondering if you had any advice for someone who came out as gay over a decade ago and has been worried she might be bi for a while. Like, how do I even go about trying anything with a guy without feeding the “converting the lesbian” fantasy? Or if I am bi then, like, I feel like I’m feeding the “being gay is a phase” BS. I don’t know. I’ve followed your stuff since before I came out and I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this with my friends because it’s embarrassing. Idk.

It’s so terrifying, right? Like, “lesbian” is such a commitment and then to be something different later feels like divorcing an entire community. It was a somewhat devastating loss for me that still stings years later, but it’s my truth, and it feels better to live in my truth. This is kinda why I hate the “born this way” rhetoric. If the only way you can justify the fight for your rights is to claim everyone like you is solid and unwavering in their sexuality, it completely falls apart when people turn out to be more complicated than that. People are so complicated! People can and absolutely do change. And it isn’t always a case of you discovering something that was always there. Sometimes these things develop, and I think that terrifies a lot of people to think about. Like, I was just minding my own business one day and suddenly, boys were on the table. What is this feeling, so sudden and new?

So anyway, here are my tips.

1: Super sexy secret experimentation. Nobody has to know what you’re getting up to! Much in the way so many of us LGBTQ people experiment with the same* gender in secret before we can come out, you can totally experiment with the opposite* gender in secret before coming out about that. It’s a vulnerable time, and you are allowed to do it without a peanut gallery. It doesn’t mean you’re doing something shameful. It’s just allowing you to feel your feelings without contamination from others’ judgment. (*I’m so sorry to use words like “same” and “opposite” for gender, which does imply a binary that doesn’t actually exist.)

2: If you can, find bi/pan/queer guys to experiment with! One, as fellow queers, they’re usually less fetishy about queer girls and they’re not gonna think they’re converting a lesbian. They also know how scary it can be to go from “I just like girls” to “Oh jeez now that I think about it I also like guys holy shit wtf? How do I even talk to boys???” Bi/pan/queer identities don’t exist as a mixture of gay and straight. They’re their own thing, and it’s nice to have someone who understands more of the specifics. I’m at the point where I mostly just want to see bi/pan/queer people, no straight boys or lesbian women, because I’m most compatible with queer people of any gender.

3: Give yourself permission to feel embarrassed! You get used to it and it ends up not being the end of the world. I know, easier said than done. I promise it gets easier over time. You start to convert “I don’t know what I’m doing and surely everyone is laughing at my naivety” into “Wow, I am learning so much new stuff about myself and that’s cool and exciting.”

4: A warning I wish I had gotten: OMG you’re gonna be exposed to so many gender roles that you got to ignore before and it’s wild. It’s a constant battle between bucking all these expectations and intimidating or even offending men with your wild gay ideas such as “I can hold the door open myself” and “let’s go dutch.” Verses conceding to expectations and ending up with a bunch of insecurities about your body and personality. “Am I too loud? Too boyish? Too forward?” It stinks, but being aware that it’s happening keeps it from being too terrible.

5: A lot of lesbians might be irrationally mad at you. They will say you’re playing into stereotypes, they’ll say you’re tainted, a hasbien, a secretly straight double agent. But they are being irrational. Your sexuality is a completely distinct thing from their sexuality. Your sexuality cannot and will not affect theirs. If any guys who see your journey decide that that justifies sexually harassing some lesbians, the problem is with the guys that are sexually harassing women, not because you ended up not being a lesbian. Whatever your truth is, you’re allowed to find it. You are not hurting anyone. I can’t say that enough. You are NOT hurting anyone. let me also say that there are so many GOOD lesbians out there who WON’T be shitty to you about this, and they will be happy to see you live your truth. I know so many wonderful lesbians. I’d say most WLW are in solidarity. It’s just that the shitty ones are often very loud.

You might go through all of this and decide you’re actually still a lesbian. And then you can lez it up with more resolve. Or you might be bi and let me tell you, it’s a very welcoming community. There are also identities that are a blend. When I was young, terms like “bi-dyke” and “lesbian identified bisexual” were ubiquitous. You might be homoflexible. And keep in mind too that sexual identity and romantic identity aren’t always the same.

Whoever you end up, I’m rooting for you so hard!! I’m so proud of you for giving yourself permission to think about these things and reach out. That’s a huge first step. You’re already doing great.