asexual-society - Tumblr blog

[asexual-society]

im guessing its an aroace experience to fantasize about relationships all the time and ship things all the time and be obsessed with romance as a concept but the idea of someone flirting with and seeking you out and actually dating someone and kissing someone seems immensely weird and unnatural to you.

and also if you have had fictional "crushes" that were actually just you liking the character and the character design and confusing that with the fandom expectation of having a character you simp after.

[asexual-society]

when is comes to asexuality and aromanticism you have to be okay with contradiction. one ace person will say asexuality is about not experiencing attraction, another will say it’s about not caring to act on attraction, another will say it’s not experiencing arousal. one aromantic will consider themself queer, one won’t. two people with seemingly identical experiences will use two different labels. aro people will be in romantic relationships, ace people will have sex. you get it.

[asexual-society]

It…kind of is, when it comes to the community (edited 4/17/14 at 6pm; 4/29/14 at 1am).

For now, I’m using the term PoC (people of color) as a shorthand, understanding that it refers to people in white-majority cultures and can’t describe white-minority cultures, for ease of writing, but also because I will largely discuss diaspora.

First, let’s discuss the issue of terminology and identity. “Asexual” is a difficult term for PoC to use. We are made hypersexual (e.g. stereotypes of Black women as very sexual) and asexual (e.g. Asian men being treated as alien, sexually dysfunctional; the Mammy trope). The term “asexual” is often actually used in these contexts. Even when it isn’t, to attach “asexual” to our identity means navigating a really complex, terrible issue where PoC bodies are regulated and controlled because of racist views of our “asexuality.” Sterilization programs that target minority women are realities in the US and other nations with racial minorities, while the simultaneous “aging up” of Black children and assumed asexuality means they are treated as sexually passive, and so often are targeted in sexual crimes. This sort of “de-sexing” has been a form to control PoC/especially Black women’s agency since slavery.

Siggy writes (1): 

“Stereotypically, Asian women are hypersexualized and Asian men are desexualized.  Each of these come with their own set of issues for asexuals.  Asian asexual women might be disbelieved because they conflict with the stereotype.  Asian asexual men might be assumed to conform to the stereotype completely, even if the stereotype is actually very different from asexuality in real life.  Also, sometimes people say Asian men are stereotypically asexual, which is bad because it’s using the word "asexual” as a pejorative.“

With regards to the challenges Black women face, voltafiish writes (2):

"While asexuality has not had such a long history, the majority of its representation in the media has been overwhelmingly white. Asexuality is seen as a “white thing” too! For asexuality in black people (especially black women) from the outside looking in can be broken down into a few categories:

A) Asexuality functions as a white supremacist stereotype. This means asexual black person is not actually asexual, but simply a desexualized black person (like the mammy, for example) or they are simply suppressing their “true sexuality” in light of other racial stereotypes (like the jezebel). Of course, these are dependent on an inaccurate definition on what asexuality is but contrary to a lot of activism, a lot of people are still fixed on using this definition. Because people do not know what asexuality is, their first assumption is one that equates behaviour and attraction.

B) Asexuality cannot possibly BE a thing because black people MUST be sexual by “nature.” This is due to the myth and stereotyping and labeling of black people as hypersexual. If we operate on the definition on asexuality being about not having sex/being sexual and operate within the realms of white supremacy, black asexual people cannot exist. I remember looking up research concerning blackness and asexuality and came across someone make the very same statement: “Black people cannot be asexual because they are hypersexual.”

C) Asexuality (and any other sexuality for that fact) is not possible for black people because all black people are heterosexual. Cue compulsory heterosexuality.”

As you can see, not only does the concept raise issues for PoC self-identifying, but for those who identify as asexual but must, again, navigate larger issues.

GradientLair writes (3):

"If I tell anyone that I am 34 years old and I’ve been celibate for a little more than 8 years now, they look at my Black skin and female body and the judgment starts. Because I am a Black woman, I am automatically typed as heterosexual but “deviant” (as “normal” heterosexuality is reserved for Whites in a White supremacist society) and “hypersexual” (based on the long history of specifically anti-Black misogyny used to justify the rape, exploitation, lynching and dehumanization of Black women’s bodies and lives). Any sexuality that I ascribe to that is not heterosexual and hypersexual is deemed as me sidestepping the “norm.” However, this White supremacist lie is not the norm or even remotely explains the complexity of sexuality for any people, especially Black people because of our history.”

I recommend if you are unfamiliar with some of the issues she discusses, to click through and then explore her embedded hyperlinks. Meanwhile, queerlibido/Alok Vaid-Menon discusses issues of intersection with respect to the South Asian male identity (4):

“As a queer South Asian I don’t feel comfortable ascribing the identity of ‘asexual’ to my body. Part of the ways in which brown men have been oppressed in the Western world is by de-emasculating them and de-sexualizing them (check out David Eng’s book Racial Castration). What then would it mean for me to identify as an ‘asexual?’ What would this agency look like in a climate of white supremacy? Can I ever authentically express ‘my’ (a)sexuality or am I always rehearsing colonial logics? The dilemma of this brown queer body is its inability to see itself through its own eyes. The mirror becomes a site it which we view what white people have always told us about ourselves. Regardless or not of the status of my libido, I’m not sure I will ever feel comfortable identifying as asexual because it seems like I am betraying my people.  I am invested in South Asians and all other Asian Americans being able to reclaim, re-affirm, and be recognized for their sexual selves. I am invested in brown boys and brown gurlz being able to get what they desire. I am invested in the radical potential of brown (queer) love in a society where so many of us grow up hating our bodies and bending our knees for white men. I want to be part of this struggle. Sometimes I get angry at myself for not being able to eliminate the distance, not being able to join in solidarity. To fuck and be fucked, to publically claim and own my sexuality. I understand that there is something (as Celine Shimizu reminds us in her book Straightjacket Sexualities) radical about Asian American masculinities being displaced from patriarchal masculinities rooted in hyper-sexuality and hyper-masculinity and the reclamation of ‘effeminate’ and ‘asexual’ representations of our bodies as a political refusal of the very logics which have rendered those bodies numb.

…

So when I read this piece about how folks involved with the asexuality community feel as if they are post-race I’m pretty well, flabbergasted. Asexuality has always been a carefully crafted strategy to subjugate Asian masculinities. Asexuality has everything to do with race. Which goes to say that what if the very act of articulating a public asexual identity is rooted in white privilege? Essential understandings of being ‘born’ ‘asexual’ and loving my ‘asexual’ self will never make sense to me. In a world that continually erases Asian (male assigned) sexualities I was coerced into asexuality. It is something I have and will continue to struggle with. My asexuality is a site of racial trauma. I want that sadness, that loss, that anxiety to be a part of asexuality politics. I don’t want to be proud or affirmed – I want to have a serious conversation about how all of our desires are mediated by racism and how violent that is. My pleasures – or lack thereof – are not transcendental and celebratory, they are contradictory, confused, and hurt.”

They cite an interview on AsexualAgenda (5), excerpted here:

"Often, white asexuals and those who do not identify themselves use these threads to make statements that, 1) AVEN is a safe, diverse environment, 2) AVEN is a race neutral place and asexuals are color-blind, or 3) race is anarchronistic, un-important or itself “racist.” All three of these tendencies work to minimize the significance of race, to obscure “white” as a race by claiming neutrality, and to dismiss user interests or lived/digital experiences.”

So now we arrive at issues within the community and how it treats PoC and the diversity of the ability for aces to identify as such. A good place to start is the “crux” of the community - AVEN - where we can see, in often popular threads, blatant racism.

A thread discussing World Pride 2013 and whether PoC aces should have a separate space:

[Poll: Poll about the idea of a dedicated POC-only space (79 member(s) have cast votes)

Would you like to see a dedicated POC space at the conference?

I *am* a POC and I would like to see a dedicated POC-only space. (13 votes [16.46%]) I *am* a POC and I would like there *not* to be a dedicated POC-only space. (10 votes [12.66%]) I *am* a POC and I have no opinion. (4 votes [5.06%]) I *am not* a POC and I would like to see a dedicated POC-only space. (25 votes [31.65%]) I *am not* a POC and I like there *not* to be a dedicated POC-only space. (15 votes [18.99%]) I *am not* a POC and I have no opinion. (9 votes [11.39%]) Other. (3 votes [3.80%])]

AVEN forum search for keyword “racism” (6):

[Were the Nazi’s Bad People

Alternative history: What if the Confederate States won t…

Neo-nazi unhappy with the state of the BNP forms British…]

The AVEN thread “AVEN has traumatized me” (TW for sexual assault/rape/victim blaming) also brings up how often AVEN members come across racism in the forums and are unable to report it (7). The AVEN thread “Asexual People of Color” has many a post on the grievances aces of color face with their identities and on AVEN (8).

As we can see, there is an issue with racism, talking over PoC, and treating racism as a nonexistent issue, or else race itself as a nonfactor in asexuality and sexuality in general. But these issues are not limited to AVEN, which many identify as a generally problematic space and have thus abandoned for spaces like Tumblr. Here, and in similar spaces, the racism has been more subtle, and it is where I see the sweeping issue of racism in our representation, dialogues, and activism.

The faces of the asexual movement - and by “asexual movement,” I use a term and definition as employed by David Jay and his followers - have been exceedingly white. A simple example:

How popular was this image? Has it changed at all? Siggy writes again, two years ago (10):

“And yet, the publicly visible asexuals are disproportionately white.  An asexual who was Asian asked me the other day if there were any non-white asexuals I knew of, and was clearly disappointed when I could only think of a few.  This is both indicative of, and a contributor to greater asexual invisibility within API and other non-white groups.

And here I am, contributing to the problem even further.  I decided it was less worthwhile to present asexuality to an API audience than to a “general” (but probably predominantly White) audience.  I was further tipping the already imbalanced scales.  If all asexual activists did the same, it would become a major problem a decade down the road.”

Because, really, let’s look at who goes on talk shows, interviews with newspapers and magazines, and gets photographed. Who do we see associated with articles on asexuality, like HuffPost’s series?:

Some must wonder now if it’s that whiteness and white culture allows for greater visibility when it comes to queer identities. But is this true? What about the history of queer Black artists (musicians, visual artists, dancers, writers) and their precedence of very public activism? Because I say that the lack of brown and black faces in the public, representing us, cannot be completely chalked up to cultural differences. When I look at canonically asexual characters (or…attempted asexual characters), I see white faces - in fiction, where writers look at our community and try to create fictional characters, or else ace writers create these fictional characters. Sirens, House, Huge, Ignition Zero, Girls with Slingshots, Quicksilver all have canonically (or attempted) asexual characters that are white, and even articles/essays that seek to analyze the media where we find these characters will not bring up the race question a single time (11). These data can only reflect the community and the visible, un-erased members of the community - because not all of these authors are outsiders.

I also want to talk about how aces of color are cordoned off when it comes to dialogue. This is an especially subtle aspect of the community that I have noticed for a few years - where writers who discuss the intersection of race and asexuality are largely written off by the community as irrelevant to net community politics. For example, GradientLair’s posts almost never make the rounds of the tags or forums, except for black aces, as if white aces and non-Black aces of color have nothing to learn from an asexual Black woman’s important perspective on sexual politics.

There are two effects I observe from this habit. First, aces of color feel pushed out because their voices are not heard, or else they face racism as evidenced above in AVEN. Second, what is established is whiteness as the norm - PoC voices are, even if not actively, made an “other,” or a “niche,” and if these posts do make the rounds, they are not discussed, but tagged lazily with “intersectionality” or “boost” to be passed along for followers of color. PoC are made to feel like we are a separate cause and the nuances of our identities have no effect on the asexual community, where “asexual community” is thus equated with “white asexual voices.”

An example of this harm is the recent backlash against sex positivity rhetoric among the ace community. There is no harm in such dialogue, but what I find especially interesting is how aces, including prominent asexual activists who often represent the community publicly, have taken credit for spear-heading the critique of the sex-positive movement. As I’ve cited above, Black women in the West have traditionally been targeted sexually because of their race and as an effect of slavery - Womanism, therefore, has traditionally involved critical analysis of compulsory heterosexuality for decades. I recently began to compile a list of sources by mostly Womanists because of this strange trend among white aces (12). This type of irresponsibility and co-opting is exceptionally harmful to Black women and Black aces, who already face massive erasure, and furthermore it is distressing that leaders in the community propagate these attitudes in a largely white community.

In sum:

the community ignores or dismisses race as a factor in sexuality

blatant racism occurs in the community

aces of color do not get any visibility in the media

the issues aces of color face at the intersection of many identities are deemed irrelevant to the “broader” community, and so the community is equated with whiteness, and co-opting of QWoC dialogue occurs on a large scale

I want to wrap this response up here, because I think this information is sufficient enough to convince those willing to learn that racism is very much rampant in the asexual community, and that aces of color find it difficult to find a space in it as it exists currently. This post is not for those who refuse to teach themselves. You are the problem, not just those who merely don’t know what’s happening around them because of their privilege. I urge those of you in this latter group to recognize your privilege, end this Othering of PoC, challenge the presumed “normality” of the whiteness in our spaces, and magnify the voices of people of color around you. It is not tokenizing to stop erasing, and it’s not an attack on you to notice, let alone speak up.

Remember: being an ally is not about posting a political alignment on Facebook or any social equivalent. It means knowing that you will not be attacked for speaking up about a certain issue (ergo, you have privilege), and employing that power to protect and defend those of us who are vulnerable. Because we are vulnerable. I have personally received hate/abuse for even mentioning race in this space and offline spaces, and have been building up the courage for four years to discuss these issues on such a public blog, so please understand that I am not exaggerating. 

70% of anti-LGBTQ murder victims are PoC (13). 87% of hate murder victims in 2011 were QPoC (14). TPoC statistics reveal even more - and make sure to go through this whole study (15):

This isn’t fun and games, or petty complaints on a website. This is survival. 

Sources:

http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2011/05/forecasting-issues-of-race.html

http://ace-muslim.tumblr.com/post/66431409049/im-supposed-to-be-working-on-an-art-history-paper-rn

This is a great essay on being Black and asexual that I personally learned a lot from: http://thingsthatmakeyouacey.tumblr.com/post/66431633676/im-supposed-to-be-working-on-an-art-history-paper-rn

http://www.gradientlair.com/post/61224262021/heterosexuality-compulsory-uniform-black-women

http://queerlibido.tumblr.com/post/74181237292/whats-r-ace-got-to-do-with-it-white-privilege ; http://www.thestate.ae/whats-race-got-to-do-with-it-white-privilege-asexuality/

http://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/interview-with-ianna-hawkins-owen/

http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&andor_type=&sid=01af01fc2a34562772e26f8092174d5c&search_app_filters[forums][sortKey]=date&search_app_filters[forums][sortKey]=date&search_term=racism&search_app=forums&st=0

http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/95406-aven-has-traumatized-me/

http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/78085-asexual-people-of-color/

http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2012/04/dilemma-on-asexuality-and-race.html

http://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/confirmed-asexual-characters-in-fiction/

My masterpost of sex-critical writings by WoC/Black women, many of which discuss the issue of being simultaneously made hypersexual and “asexual”: http://thingsthatmakeyouacey.tumblr.com/post/82269213656/if-you-dont-believe-me

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/07/70_percent_of_anti-lgbt_murder_victims_are_people_of_color.html

http://www.queerty.com/study-lgbt-murder-rate-at-all-time-high-but-hate-violence-on-wane-20120531/

http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/reports/ntds_full.pdf

[asexual-society]

PSA: the guardian is not working on a hit piece on diy hrt, and claims they are are misinformation

on the 18th, this post appeared on 4chan's /lgbt/ (slurs in thread: link). a screenshot was posted to reddit, then to tumblr. you've probably seen it:

today, the 23rd, another screenshot popped up on various discord servers, then was reposted variously to twitter. it shows a supposed email from guardian journalist and notorious TERF Susanna Rustin, claiming as the original 4chan post does.

it's now been shared around, and it's with good intentions. the message is useful: don't share your personal information or medical data with journalists, especially ones that happen to be TERFs.

but the post does this through misinformation and fearmongering. i'm still waiting on my response by email from Rustin, but she's reiterated twice (once, twice) that she did not write the email and is not working on such a story. on the 19th, i talked to other guardian newsroom journalists, who said they also did not know of a story's existence.

the moral of the story: this is misinformation, and it's dangerous. it spreads a fine message here, but it does it through spreading anxiety and terror.

you can follow along with this post on my parallel thread on twitter. also calling on @wakewithgiggli to delete their original post!

[asexual-society]

My sexual, romantic, and gender identities could all be honestly summarised as "absolutely not, but maybe, in this very extremely specific way that barely makes sense to anyone"

[asexual-society]

Rest in peace to the touch starved arospec and/or aspecs. You deserve more hugs.

[asexual-society]

"being queer is about love" hmm actually being queer is about defying societal norms about gender and sexuality and does not depend on feeling love at all

[asexual-society]

happy lesbian visibility week

[asexual-society]

i hate to be that guy, but the idea that gender, sex, and sexuality are ontologically pure concepts that can be rigidly defined if we simply police our language enough (our english language, because of course) is—i cannot stress this enough—a total waste of time. you may as well spend your afternoons teaching a brick how to swim

[asexual-society]

It's always "I may be aromantic but I still love my friends!" and never "I'm aromantic, but that does not mean I have to 'make up' for the love I 'lost' or am 'missing out on' by loving friends or family."

[asexual-society]

this year my challenge for everyone is to unlearn the association between love and morality. love is not something that is inherently morally good, and the absence of love is not something that is inherently bad. sex without love isn't morally bankrupt, it's just an action. people without love aren't less kind or less good, they're just people. when we can get past this false (and often unnoticed) dichotomy of good love/evil lovelessness then i think we are going to be able to take leaps and bounds in sex positivity, aro advocacy, certain discussions of mental health...

[asexual-society]

It feels impossible sometimes to talk about your experiences as an asexual person without getting lumped in with purity culture because it’s somehow simultaneously true that society hates sex and puts sex everywhere so both people who want to express their sexuality and people who don’t want to participate in it end up having knee-jerk reactions to each other because we’ve all built up defense mechanisms ready to trigger at a moments notice so you try to talk about how sex and romance is everywhere and inescapable and you don’t wanna be involved with it and then people blame you for the kink at pride discourse when you weren’t even thinking about that

[asexual-society]

Reminder that jkr basically funds a large portion of the terf movement in the UK and promoting harry potter and actively giving her money is helping fund that movement and is actively encouraging her and her followers because they see this as support

[asexual-society]

Happy International Asexuality Day!

[asexual-society]

A Better Explination for Queer Platonic Relationships

This post is gonna be very 101, so if you’re already pretty familiar with aro terms and don’t want to sit through all the definitions and explanations I have another post here that’s basically a very condensed version of this one.  

Anyways, I think the reason that a lot of non-aromantic people don’t understand queerplatonic relationships is that qpps as a concept are not just a type of relationship, but also a response to amatonormativity.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, amatonormativity is the societal view of romantic monogamous relationships as both the most important relationships you can have and as the end goal for happiness. While this norm disproportionately affects aromantic and non-monogamous people, it also has some very negative effects on people outside of these groups. If you’ve ever experienced peer or familial pressure to get a romantic partner when you didn’t want one, lost touch with a friend because they got a partner and stopped putting as much time into maintaining your friendship, or been told by a romantic partner that you needed to stop interacting with a close friend because they felt threatened by your friendship then you’ve experienced the negative effects of amatonormativity. This is not an aromantic specific issue, however, in this post, I will be discussing it within the context of aromantic terms and experiences.

For many aromantic people, there is a fundamental fear that all of their close friends will pair off into romantic relationships and they will be left alone. This fear comes from amatonormativity. If there was no expectation that people would prioritize romantic relationships over friendships then there would be no real need for people who don’t want/can’t have romantic relationships for whatever reason to fear being left alone and isolated from the support of other people.

I think this fear is one of the main reasons queerplatonic relationships exist in the first place. Sure, there are different types of platonic relationships with varying degrees of intimacy and commitment that aro people could participate in, but I think that if you look at how queerplatonic relationships are talked about you’ll find that aromantic people lean towards qpps because they are more then just another type of platonic relationship.

Qpps come in all shapes and sizes. They can be monogamous or polyamorous, involve lots of physical intimacy or very little, include lots of romantically coded things like dates, marriage, and living together, or be closer to the traditional view of friendship. The spectrum of what counts as a qpp is in fact so big that the term becomes almost impossible to define. The one unifying thread that I can see among all these different types of qpps is that they’re platonic relationships that still involve a high level of commitment. 

Essentially the only agreed upon factor here is that the relationship is platonic, but a commitment has been made somewhere along the lines to not abandon one another for a romantic partner, everything beyond that is pretty up in the air. This isn’t the definition you’re likely to get from those “what is a qpp” posts, but spend 5 minutes scrolling threw some popular aro blogs and it becomes incredibly apparent. I’ve seen people joke that “queerplatonic partners are like friends that don’t abandon me for their boyfriends” or that “all my friends got dates so I had to find a qpp”. These statements, while kind of morbidly funny on some level, do point to a larger trend. While most relationship categories are defined by level of intimacy, qpps are more of a commitment to break amatonormative social norms with someone you’re close to.

And if we’re going to agree that that’s what a queerplatonic relationship is, and for the purposes of this post we are, then it suddenly becomes very clear that the aromantic community is doing ourselves a huge disservice when we try to define qpps without talking about amatonormativity, or in some cases, even mentioning the aromantic community at all.  

There is a reason that queerplatonic originated in the aromantic community. There is a reason that qpp is an aro term. Non-aro people simply don’t have the same experience with relationships that aro people do, so they don’t have the context necessary to understand why we would need qpps in the first place. 

I think this is where a lot of the “aren’t qpp’s just friendships?” questions come from. Sure, there are people out there who just want to make fun of every aro/ace term and identity, and that is part of why the ‘don’t you mean friends’ response has become so popular, but in this case I really think a lot of it’s due to the fact that we’ve explained qpps so poorly. Someone who isn’t aro, and who hasn’t felt the devastating effects of your friends drifting away into romantic relationships while you can’t have one/ don’t want one, isn’t going to understand why aro people would need a whole new type of close, emotional, platonic relationship when just plain old friendship has worked fine for them. Without the context of amatonormativity and the experience of being aro, qpp’s becomes almost nonsensical, and when we leave those things out of our definitions of qpps people aren’t going to understand what we’re talking about. 

We need to do a better job of explaining queerplatonic relationships because otherwise, people are going to continue misunderstanding what they are. 

[asexual-society]

[asexual-society]

Relationship Anarchy sorta explained

You asked, so I shall do my best to explain. Let's keep in mind that I quite literally learned about the existence of relationship anarchy a day ago so take all of this with a massive grain of salt lol but here we go:

Western society has lots of rules of how each relationship is supposed to look/operate.

Friends aren't supposed to raise kids together, merge finances, etc. That's only for married couples.

People who are romantically intertwined are supposed to kiss, have sex, etc. and eventually end up married.

The ideal romantic partner is someone who can fulfill most if not all of your emotional, physical, and sexual needs, and anything less is a sign of incompatibility.

There's also the relationship hierarchy that society upholds—or the "relationship escalator."

At the bottom is friends, then romantic partners, then spouse.

The more intimate you become with a friend, the more likely people are to assume you want to be romantic with them—i.e they assume you're moving up the escalator.

The more intimate you become with a romantic partner, the more likely you are to get questions about when you're going to "take the next step" and get married.

Lots of rules, lots of expectations. And relationship anarchy (RA) basically says "no 💙"

RA basically refers to a deliberate rejection of these social norms. No rules and no inherent hierarchy.

Instead, partners decide amongst themselves what they want their relationships to look like.

Here's a nifty graph to help visualize this:

You can be friends who rely on each other as primary sources of emotional and sexual fulfillment. Life partners, but you don't have sex or romance at all.

You can be sexually, romantically, emotionally fulfilled by one person but still just be two people loving and experiencing each other with no need for labels or the expectation of any "escalator" progression towards marriage or anything else.

Essentially, you build relationships buffet style, and each relationship is as significant in your life as you want it to be and they all serve whatever role you want them to serve. These relationships can be monogamous or polyamorous or anything in between.

Totally up to you.