dldr-idgaf-about-haters

[dldr-idgaf-about-haters]

No, that doesn't make you an inclusionist. Inclusion means that you accept ace and aro as stand-alone identities into the LGBT community, no matter their other orientation (if they use the SAM) or their gender.

inclusionist is a term for lgbtq community members who include ace/aro ppl and nonbinary ppl in the community.

i think if they’re other parts of lgbt too (like for ex. im trans and homoromantic/gay and ace) then yeah. otherwise idk. and ofc nonbinary ppl should be included! so idk if the ace part makes me inclusionist since theres an exception

[dldr-idgaf-about-haters]

Get tf out of the positivity tag, it isn't for you shitty exclus.

Aces aren’t lgbt

[dldr-idgaf-about-haters]

this post became invalid as soon as OP thought it was a good idea to use a font that looks like comic sans. Comic Sans makes EVERYTHING look like a joke. I'm a media designer, I should know.

alternatively titled: i did the critical thinking so you don’t have to

[dldr-idgaf-about-haters]

I study design (okay, media design, but the principles still apply) and one of the posters we had hanging right next to our room, the one thing we saw every day was:

DESIGN HAS TO FUNCTION, ART DOES NOT.

That's the big thing about design. FUNCTIONALITY. Art can be a red blob on a wallpaper. Design serves a purpose, it has function, it needs to be practical.

i never realized how much i hate modern art until i took a class in modern art

it’s so pretentious. like half of the pieces we���ve looked at have been purportedly commenting on elitism in art and income disparities when the piece itself sold for thousands of dollars to be put in a museum for rich people to look at. you’re supposed to look at barren canvases with vague splotches of color and meditate on the nature of life, navelgazing for an hour. bitch I can do that in my own home for free. most of the time the pieces themselves don’t require any skill, it’s just an asshole with some bright idea that ~~~no one has ever thought of before~~~ (which is bullshit, originality is a myth) and the gall to pretend that they’re saying something meaningful. A bunch of postmodernists specialize in literal plagiarism but with a different title. wow so edgy. really thought provoking. you sure are making a statement that’s relevant and people care about.

the most egregious example is this bullshit:

this is an overhead view of a plaza wherein some famous guy was commissioned to design a public art piece for. The brick and nonfunctional fountain was already there. The sculpture? a literal wall of iron bisecting the courtyard. this guy was paid over 100k to design this. 

Now, this is located in a city, smack dab in the middle of a bunch of office buildings. Workers who had to spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week doing menial desk jobs had to look at this ugly piece of shit. You want to have a nice picnic during lunch break with your work buddies? tough shit. You get tilted arc instead fucko. You can’t see from one end of the courtyard to another because some dick thought rebar sheet metal was more important. It also impeded movement between the buildings so that you have to go around this fucking obstacle instead of just fucking walking from one side to the other. 

So yeah, these workers got pissed, because you’re making an ugly place even uglier for obscene amounts of money without thinking about the ppl who actually have to look at it every day (who had no say in the design). There have been countless studies done on stress and related health problems in office workers and having to look at ugly as sin shit like this piece of work actually contributes to stress and decreases mental and physical health (as opposed to pretty scenery or plants etc). 

When the designer was told what people thought of his masterpiece, he threw an absolute shitfit. “art doesn’t have to be pretty”, he said. “art isn’t for the public”. 

while it is absolutely true that art doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing to be meaningful or relevant, putting this fucking monstrosity in a place where people are forced to look at it day in day out, in addition to the ugly buildings and streets and shit that comprises the rest of their lives is just kind of a dick move. Yes, people are painfully aware that life and art and all that shit isn’t always pretty. they’re the ones who have to live with that fact, not some pompous asshole who thinks he’s god’s gift to man because he put some metal wall in a plaza. 

And yeah, not all art is for the public. Art can be self-expression or just for your own enjoyment. But if you are being commissioned by the state, paid hundereds of thousands of tax dollars to make a PUBLIC art piece, yeah, it’s for the public! saying that other people have no say in what that public art piece looks like, implying that if other people don’t like your art that they just Don’t Understand True Art TM, is this hugely egotistical self-masturbatory elitism that puts the artist above the working people (when like the whole point of art is supposed to be disrupting this kind of bullshit thinking). 

But that’s not even the best part. This fucking douchebag, upon being told that people don’t want this metal wall in their courtyard and that they want him to move it, freaks the FUCK out about how he “designed it just for this space and taking it out of its context would destroy it”. Which like, yeah context is important when understanding the meaning of a piece. but literally the only meaning of this piece was “i got paid obscene amounts of money and im gonna use it to make the ugliest thing i can think of literally just because”. If you move it out of the context of the plaza it wouldn’t be impeding foot traffic or being an eyesore to the workers who are forced to spend their days there, which is destroying the purpose of the work. So in the end this guy opts to have the piece destroyed rather than moved because he can’t stand to have his ~~~high art~~~ removed from its PurposeTM which is to be unpleasant. i dont give a single goddamn fuck about ‘advancing sculpture’ or whatever the fuck, if it’s causing people stress on top of their already stressful lives just because you thought it would be great to create this atrocity in a place where no one can escape from, you’re not ‘advancing’ anything, you’re just being a dick.

So now the space has been converted to a rather plesant little oasis with plants and lots of benches. 

anyways thats my dissertation on how much i hate contemporary art and find it to lack relevance or meaning to the people it supposedly represents or defends. it takes itself too seriously and imposes arbitrary and hypocritical statements on the nature of art at the expense of any real substance. in the world we live in, pretty things for the sake of being pretty, having stories that are entertaining and engaging and relatable, having fun and feeling good in a world that devalues those things, etc. are far more impactful and radical than anything sitting in a museum created by some millionaire who jacks off to their “fine art”. thanks for coming to my ted talk have a good night

[dldr-idgaf-about-haters]

Ever since I knew what a marriage entailed, I was scared of it. Teenage me (~15-16) was terrified of the prospect that one day, in order to get the romantic relationship I wanted to have, I would have to have sex on my wedding night. Of course that was far in the future, I didn't think I would marry before I was at least 22. But the fear was there.

Would my partner accept it if I told them that I wasn't in the mood on the first night we were 'allowed' to share our bodies? What would he think if after 2 weeks, I still wasn't in the mood? What if I never would be? My mother had taught me bodily autonomy and consent right along with the meaning of sexual intimacy. I was very lucky in that regard.

(Also, on the topic of sexualising children... I started to discover my libido when I was 12. From that point forward I could have experienced sexual attraction to any gender. I didn't. That's how I could have known I was ace, had I had the resources.)

Back on track. With my mother's values in mind, I struggled for a long time, trying to bring together the expectations I felt lay on my shoulders, put there by the society around me, and the knowledge that I wasn't obligated to let anyone do something with my body that I didn't want.

I was scared I would never find a partner who would understand me. After all, the act of sex is what makes a marriage, at least according to the Bible, or at least how it is commonly interpreted by Christianity. And I couldn't see myself wanting that 'consummation' of my marriage. Although I could see myself consenting to certain forms of sexual intimacy, I was and am still repulsed by the thought of the 'classic' idea of what sex between a cis man and a cis woman 'should be'.

It wasn't the ace community that was the first step to me feeling more comfortable for what I was feeling, even if I didn't have a word for it back then. It was a young preacher in my church. He spent an entire week at my high school and told us about his love story. And while everyone else was surprised to hear that he and his wife hadn't had sex on their wedding night, but instead 2 weeks later, because outside circumstances or them simply not being in the mood had kept them from it, I was so incredibly relieved. I thought, if it was okay for them, maybe it's gonna be okay for me.

But I still didn't think I would be able to get out of it completely. And that's where the ace community comes in. I started identifying as bisexual when I was 19. After all, I felt the same towards men and women. They were beautiful, pleasant to look at and since I had never felt sexual attraction, I thought that's what it meant. But after a few months, I stumbled upon ASEXUALITY. And I read and read as much as I could about it, AVEN forums, articles etc. I consider myself lucky that I didn't take it to tumblr.

But there was still something holding me back. And that was my libido. How could I be asexual, when I considered myself kinky and masturbation was a part of my life? It took me months to accept that my libido, sexual activity and sexual attraction weren't the same thing. For most other people, those are congruent. If they feel attracted to someone and have a healthy libido, they engage in sexual activities. Simple as that.

But the fact that for me, despite getting turned on, my libido had no direction, was difficult to grasp at first. I've become comfortable now with my own boundaries when it comes to sexual intimacy, I'm content with not feeling sexually attracted to anyone. It's an important distinction to make for myself, that although I'm not attracted to anyone, I can still consent to sexual activities. I'm my own person. This is my body. No one can take that away from me. It feels liberating to know that I call the shots when it comes to intimacy. Not the institution I grew up in that made me feel pressured to have sex on my wedding night. My sex life isn't a compromise. It's not, and will never be, me simply tolerating sexual intimacy because of pressure from society or my partner. If I consent, it's not a compromise. It's a deliberate decision that I FULLY stand behind.

I'm forever grateful to the amazing @fuckyeahasexual discord server for being with me in my journey of self discovery, for always talking to me, and helping me figure out that it was okay. That there were people out there who understood and felt the same. By having a word for how I feel, and a community that supports me, I was able to prevent going down a path I've heard many other ace people go down.

---

I'm scared exclusionists will take offense in my pride. So this post won't go up on my main blog.

It must be so painful being a closeted ace on tumblr nowadays. We fought hard to make asexual resources more widespread, because young aces deserve answers. The alternative is daunting. And I lived it.

When I was a teenager, I destroyed my body by forcing myself into sexual situations because I didn’t know about asexuality. Well, I knew about it, but of course I wasn’t asexual. No one in their right mind would be.

I was young, Asian, depressed, and a closet ace. All my access to basic human decency relied on sex. I didn’t know how to address sexual intimacy, or romantic relationships. I didn’t have any asexual vocabulary or knowledge of what it meant to be ace.

I’ll never be able to regain a whole chunk of my life. That’s all been tainted by years of neglect and abuse.

So I’m part of a movement that’s trying to prevent such a thing from happening again. And this bullshit pushback that I’m seeing? This claim that our attempts to save ace youth is somehow a detriment to people who aren’t ace? That our readiness to offer options is to blame for the actions of our mutual oppressors?

My closeted, confused young self was on the road to death. That’s inarguable. That’s what happens when aces have no options.

Even now, I struggle with asexual explicitry and how to embrace sex as a queer survivor. I NEED asexual visibility. And I need others like me to find a community with.

This shitty trend of trying to erase asexual growth is flat out violence.

[dldr-idgaf-about-haters]

2018 is the year we stop shaming other people for their uncommon headcanons

2018 is the year where everyone has the right to like what they like

And Mortal Alec ain't hurting anybody so stop shaming people for liking it.

Thank you very much.

Someone who actually likes Mortal!Alec

it’s 2018 if you don’t support malec being immortal husbands then what are you doing sweetie