asexualadvice

[asexualadvice]

Better late than never, right? We are excited to share with you the full list of panels for our 24h International Asexuality Day Livestream, which starts in… 7 hours! You can access each of the segments of the stream through the QR codes on the second image, or simply by heading over to our YouTube channel when the panels begin https://www.youtube.com/@InternationalAsexualityDay We hope you'll join our amazing panelists from all around the world! On this ocassion, given that IAD falls within Autism Awareness Week, we are not only highlighting the work of ace activists in different countries but we'll be also discovering a bit about the experiences of autistic aces in different parts of the world. There will be asexual artists, activists, educators, writers… and so much more. Check it out!

All images contain Alt text for accessibility, although we will not have live captions for the event, unfortunately. We will work on getting subtitles for each stream segment after the IAD is over 💜

[asexualadvice]

Aussie Ace Week

The Australian Asexuals team will be hosting a series of events to celebrate Ace Week, including various panels, open discussions, trivia, and a games night.

Sign up on Eventbrite.

[Image description: Aussie Ace Week banner - logo in the shape of Australia, in black, purple, and grey, with “Aussie ACE Week” text in white over it, and next to it, “Sun 24 Oct - Sat 30 Oct ″ in purple, “2021″ in black, and a grey line]

[asexualadvice]

#English

April 6 - International Asexuality Day 💜🌎

[nl, fr, de, it, pt, es versions below]

Hello!

We’re excited to announce International Asexuality Day (IAD), a coordinated worldwide campaign for ace advocacy, celebration, education and solidarity, which will take place annually on April 6th. International Asexuality Day celebrates the full asexual spectrum: asexual, greysexual, demisexual, and all other ace identities, and it’s designed to promote the work of ace advocates, especially in non-anglophone and/or non-Western countries, though everyone is welcome to take part!

Primarily, the focus will be on local events, led by organisations in the relevant areas. See https://internationalasexualityday.org/en/local/ for a list of the organisations involved in the planning, along with contact information and how to get involved or receive further local information.

Participating organisations We intend International Asexuality Day to be primarily about local advocacy, led by the participating organisation/s in each country, but with an international community of organisers to coordinate with.

🗞 For more information and to subscribe to our newsletter see www.internationalasexualityday.org ✨ Check out https://linktr.ee/IADofficial to follow us on social media!

[asexualadvice]

Acespec Lived Experiences Survey 2021

Australian Asexuals and ACT Aces have combined their powers to bring you a brand new survey: The Acespec Lived Experiences Survey 2021.

This survey is about the primarily negative experiences of ace and ace-adjacent people - discrimination, oppression and violence. The questions cover Microaggressions, Religious Discrimination, Relationship Abuse/Violence, Sexual and Physical Violence (including threats) and finally Healthcare and the issues ace people have dealing with medical professionals. 

It's a long one, but your answers are saved after each page, so you can always come back to it later. Remember, these are some heavy subjects, so take care of you and take note of the listed services that can help if you're distressed.  We couldn't cover every kind of experience - but fear not - we have some smaller surveys in the works too. 

Please share this survey far and wide, we want all asexuals over the world to have a chance to complete this.

Do the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/acespec2021a

[Image description: Acespec Lived Experiences banner - from left to right: sideways ace flag, ACT Aces Logo (a spade symbol in ace flag colours with a drawing of the Telstra Tower on it, and “ACT ACES” below), the words “Acespec Lived Experiences Survey 2021, and the Australian Asexuals logo (”ACE” in purple, grey, and black, diagonally from top left to bottom right, and “Australian Asexuals” in smaller horizontal text in the top right corner), and “email: australianasexuals (at) gmail (dot) com” in the bottom right corner]

[asexualadvice]

The Annex Needs Your Help!

You may have seen posts recently about the Asexual Activities Annex, a new companion website to this blog.

It needs your help!

The site needs more content and more perspectives on things, and that’s something that I simply cannot do by myself.  So if you’re 18+, are you interested in writing sex ed style posts for asexual people, or writing about your personal experiences with the sexual side of asexuality?  Or can you help out the site in other ways?

There are a couple of specific areas where you can help:

Write informational sex ed articles for an asexual audience.  These can range from 101 topics, to health-related information, to detailed how-to guides.  There’s a big list of possible topics here (PW: activities2020), but feel free to come up with your own.

Write about your personal experiences exploring sexuality as an asexual.  This is a very broad topic because you have a broad range of experiences.  This is about what you’ve done or how you feel and is meant to be a personal story from your perspective and not an encyclopedia entry.

Write reviews of sex toys.  Most toy reviews are terrible, especially for an ace audience.  Let’s do something about that.

Offer feedback and suggestions and ideas.  What gets written won’t be perfect, but it will stay broken or incomplete if you don’t say anything.

Help me with the people because I don’t know how to people.

There is an anonymous submission form that’s set up to take personal experiences and toy reviews, so you can get right to writing those.  If you want to write a more informational article, send me the topic and a brief outline of what you plan to talk about, and I can set you up for that.

[asexualadvice]

Writing a book on asexual, aromantic, and agender identity and trying to get it funded. If you help the project fund, aside from receiving a copy of the book, your name will also appear in the book. 📚 https://t.co/igDW1xAZih

[asexualadvice]

Seeking feedback on a new ace & aro educational resource!

Our team has put together a new introductory brochure on aromanticism and asexuality, and we’d love to get your feedback before we send it off to the printers! Any thoughts or suggestions? (The current design is geared toward professional printing, but we will also be releasing a home-printer friendly version in February.) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ulVrCjgtoBtH7tpQvxk_ETvZEwJ79UwT

[asexualadvice]

Announcement: Ace Art Show!

Hi everyone!

I come to you today with a huge exciting announcement. Next year, April 26th - 27th, I’m co-curating an art show for asexual identifying artists. Next April, there is going to be an international asexual conference in Canada entitled, “Unthinking Sex, Imagining Asexuality: Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” As part of the conference, there’s going to be an art show in a gallery featuring the work of asexual-identifying artists. This would be an amazing thing to put on your resume. We’re also going to have a table to display books and zines written by asexual writers.

I am super excited to have been offered this opportunity and I hope that some of  you will consider submitting work. I have interviewed so many talented artists and I’d love to show off your work to the world.

My co-curator, Heather, and I have written up the following call for artists. I’m looking forward to hearing from many of you.

CALL FOR ARTISTS

The inaugural international conference “Unthinking Sex, Imagining Asexuality: Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” will be held April 26-27, 2019 at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre Campus in Vancouver, located on unceded Coast Salish Territory, the traditional territories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. We are excited to announce an Asexual Art Show to be held in tandem at a local gallery in Vancouver, and we want your work!

Submissions will be received up to 12:00pm (Pacific Standard Time) on: Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Eligibility:

To apply to this Call for Artists you must be someone who self-identifies as asexual and/or aromantic (including gray-asexual, demisexual, or on the ace spectrum).

You must be someone who creates art, broadly understood (including, but not limited to: painting, digitized art, visual poetry, mixed media, photography, drawing, printmaking, etc.).

Authors and zine-makers are also welcome to submit work (there will be a table to display written works by ace-identifying creators).

Details:

This exhibition does not charge exhibiting artists to display their works.

Unfortunately, due to the size and nature of our gallery space, we are unable to accept any sculptures or installation art. Please only submit 2D, and/or ready wall-mounted 3D works.

Application:

Attach to email no more than 5 images of your work (.jpg format- 300 dpi, no more than a total of 5MB).

Should you be submitting more than one work for consideration, please provide only 2-3 images of each work.

Proposed artwork must include title, material(s), dimensions, and date.

Please include a short bio (75 words max).

Please also include an artist statement that provides an introduction to your practice and artworks submitted (250 words max).

Selected artists are responsible for delivery, or shipment (as well as return shipping), of their works. Low-income artists, or artists that need financial assistance to participate, may be eligible for financial support.

Artwork must be ready to display (printed, ready-mounted, or framed).

All submissions must be in pdf format and emailed to aceartshow[at]gmail[dot]com by January 1, 2019 at noon. Artists will be notified no later than February 15, 2019 if their submission has been accepted for the art show.

Contact:

Should you have any questions regarding the conference or your application, please direct them to Lauren Jankowski and Heather Prost at aceartshow[at]gmail[dot]com

I will periodically reblog this to remind artists who follow this site as well as for anyone who may miss it the first time around.

Thanks, everyone!

[asexualadvice]

HELLO BEAUTIFUL ACES AND AROS, I’M ASKING FOR A FAVOUR THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE MONEY

Hi everyone! My name is Brittany, I’m a proud Australian biromantic grey asexual, and I need help.

I’m in my final semester of studying journalism, and for my final assignment, I’m researching asexual and aromantic erasure.

Now I’m looking to interview some other people (preferably people in Australia simply cuz of logistics) who identify with the asexuality and/or aromantic spectra. The assignment specifies that I CAN’T use anonymous sources, so you have to be OK with me using your name.

If you’d be kind enough to help me out with this, or you have any further questions, feel free to send me an ask or DM me. If you cannot, a reblog goes a long way. Thank you all :)

Could I please get a signal boost @fyeahsnowbert @silent-massacre @acesovertwenty @fuckyeahasexual @a-fandom-trashdump @whyarentlemonscalledyellows @theasexualityblog @argolane @slytherinvalues @snowbertlover @melthewriterchickactuallywriting

Thank you guys

[asexualadvice]

[asexualadvice]

Bill Nye just casually validated asexuality and I spent ten minutes crying in my kitchen.

[asexualadvice]

We really appreciate being listed here! 

We are still not open to questions, but are in the process of revamping our resources. Our glossary was the first to be completed. Stay tuned for further improvements! 

Top Recommended Ace Advice Blogs

Have questions? Check out these blogs:

@grace-and-ace

@wildasexuals

@acesovertwenty

@asexualadvice (possibly on hiatus)

@fuckyeahasexual

These are the blogs that answer questions that I’m familiar enough with to promote/recommend to followers. 

[asexualadvice]

Glossary

Thanks for your continued patience, everyone... life is busy and progress is slow. However! The updated glossary has just been uploaded. If you notice any glitches, typos, errors, or have constructive suggestions for improvement (wording, additional definitions, etc), we would like to know. The ask box has been opened for this purpose - only this purpose. Anonymous asks are off. Any asks not to do with the glossary or other improvements on the blog will be deleted without reading. The mods are not able to give advice at this time.

-Kiowa

[asexualadvice]

The Plan

We’ve taken the time to consider the survey results and come up with an idea for what we’re doing to do going forward. Here’s a rough idea of The Plan:

Overhaul FAQs, resources, list of tags, glossary, etc

Come up with some kind of Standard Operating Procedures for the blog (since what we have right now is all in our heads)

Clean out the inbox by deleting asks older than 4 months, extremely time sensitive or highly situational asks, fanmail of any kind, and multipart asks that are missing parts.

Clean up our drafts and other outstanding projects

Open mod applications and bring on a few new mods

Reopen asks

As you can see, reopening asks is the last thing in the plan. We want everything to be as well put together as possible before we start getting asks again. 

We do not have a time frame for when any of this will be accomplished. The active mods have commitments beyond tumblr that limit their time and energy to work on this, so it will take us a little while to get things sorted out. We appreciate your patience and support.

[asexualadvice]

Update

The queue has unfortunately run out. We have closed the surveys and are processing the data and reading all the responses. Whenever we come to some kind of conclusion, we’ll let you know. 

In the meantime, thanks for bearing with us. The ask box is remaining closed until we craft a way forward. Any and all fanmail sent to the blog for any reason will be deleted - not just because you shouldn’t be able to send it to us since fanmail is dead, but because the inbox is closed, fanmail remains the absolute worst way to contact us, and we just aren’t dealing with these shenanigans anymore. 

[asexualadvice]

Have you seen the discourse on here about how the term "allosexual" is oppressive/offensive/etc? It's really frustrating bc it just differentiates between people who are on the ace spectrum and people who aren't? It kind of sounds like the type of rhetoric cis people use as to why cisgender is offensive and it makes me angry.

I have seen it and boy do I disagree!! And you’re exactly right! It’s the exact same rhetoric that cis people have been using at why cisgender is offensive! (For the most part. I’ll get to that in a second.)

All allosexual means is just “not asexual” therefore anyone of any sexuality that isn’t on the ace spectrum is allosexual. That’s it! It’s not offensive. It’s not a slur. And it cannot be oppressive because asexuals are the oppressed minority. (Wow look at this academic article about it.)

As for the other arguments I’ve seen.... People say it’s not a good term because it groups straight people and LGB+ people (who aren’t ace spec) together. And they say that’s a problem because they’re not the same. And yes. They aren’t. But when talking about allo spec vs. ace spec issues.... they are. All allosexuals can be oppressive to asexual spectrum people. That does not mean that those allosexual people cannot also be oppressed for their sexuality. But it does not mean that they are immune to oppressing people of other sexualities as well. (ex. gay and lesbian people oppress multisexual people all the time.) Intersectionality is a thing. Oppression is not an all or nothing thing. Just because you are oppressed in some ways does not mean you are immune to oppressing people in the same or other ways.

I am a white, gay, ace spec, nuerodivergant, able bodied, middle class, college educated, agnostic, trans man. See those three bolded elements? Those give me a lot of privilege. (other things too, but not just from looking at me.) I can be really oppressive to others if I don’t watch myself. While there’s still a ton of things I can be oppressed for. On the surface... none of those things are seen. If I’m just walking on the street I am a well dressed white male, I’m probably really safe. Now if I was in a setting where any number of those things I could be oppressed for came to light, that’s a different story. But I still have privilege.

It’s the same way for allosexual people. Just because they are oppressed in one way does not mean you are privileged in another. Intersectionality is a thing.

-Kieren

[asexualadvice]

Pls tag #oct6 thx. I came out to my mom today as ace and idk how to feel bc I could tell she was trying not to hurt my feelings but she invalidated me and doesn't understand, so I'm still kind of disappointed. Idk whether to try to educate her or not

I think it might be worth a shot, Anon. If you could tell she was trying not to hurt your feelings, it’s possible she was trying to understand and be supportive, but it due to lack of education on it she said some invalidating things. If you don’t want to handle the education you could point her to online resources or books instead!

-Kieren