#i…. need a label like queer but for asexuality

[moontropy]

tags rambling

[allthegaynamesaretaken]

Are there labels for sexualities that define the trend in attraction you feel without being in reference to what gender you identify as? For example, heterosexuality is an attraction to the "opposite" gender. However, my gender is very fluid and hard to describe, so I'm having trouble finding the words I want to use to describe my sexuality.

[bisexualseraphim]

Do queer people who gatekeep sexualities and gender identities have nothing better to do like genuinely what is your problem. The whole point of the community is that gender and sexuality are more fuckity wuckity than man or woman, gay or straight and in almost 2024 we STILL have mfs going “nah that’s not a thing :/ you don’t belong in the community” unless they’re causing harm to others I seriously urge you to shut the fuck up. It is the easiest thing in the world to just say “hmm I don’t really understand that. But it’s their life and none of my business” and just move on with your life and let people live theirs. I do not give one iota of a fuck if someone identifies as a wolfgender they/them/bun/bunself AMAB transmasc who is only attracted to butches with curly hair and brown eyes IT DOES NOT AFFECT ME. I’m happy that they’ve found a way to express their identity that feels true to them and then I think about it no further. Like it takes active mental energy and emotion to get pressed over how someone expresses themselves and I don’t understand why you’d put yourself through that stress and then decide to be bitchy and make people feel like shit for being themselves. I’m seriously getting so tired of people in the community acting like it’s a fucking competition or you can only join if you meet X Y and Z criteria as if it’s some college mean girls sorority club. People are actively trying to take our rights away all the time and while this is happening we’re helping them by tearing our teeth into our own. Great

[corvigae]

The problem with having gender thoughts and questions is that it’s followed very closely by its cousin, sexuality thoughts and questions

[screamingatthestarsasiweep]

You know something that kinds of bothers me?? I'm a person with multiple labels and to me, it's just an innate vibe to which ever words I describe myself as that day. like yesterday, I was strongly strongly a gay guy, last week I was very aromantic and gender was, gender (derogatory) and today, gender is gender (neutral) and I'm feeling very aroace today. But that's just the norm for me, my being is very fluid in nature. the frustration is that some people (namely people I know) will act as if I use one label I have to stick with, like it's some set in stone thing. it's really not, for me at least, I'm just queer at the end of the day.

I am trans, I am gay, I am demisexual, I am aromantic, I am genderqueer, I am pansexual, I am asexual, I am simply utterly queer. They are all important aspects of my identity, they all are a part of my being and I don't understand why it's such a hard concept to understand.

[magical-girl-04]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

Bestie gender itself is a performance, don't know why you're asking specifically about gay men tho when it's quiiiite clear I'm a lesbo lol. But there are clearly people who preform masculinely and feminally and of course those who don't preform either or switch it up. And of course it's not all based on gender presentation but also sexual preference, I would not like to have sex with anyone with a dick regardless of gender for example. So like yeah everything is performative and built on culture and society because that's just how humans work. There are many factors that influence the people we're attracted to and labels are just there to be labels. A gay man can say he likes men but that doesn't mean he likes all men yknow, labels just make shit easier to get across.

Anyway this was a random ass ask but kinda fun to think about for someone who is currently doing a queer theology course lol.

[ghost-yearning]

Being demiromantic and ace is so funny to me.

Like i genuinely dont know if im in love (romantic) or if im in love (platonic) ykwim?

Like yes i wanna hold their hand and maybe give them a littol peck on the cheek but also the concept of being in a romantic relationship with anyone feels so foreign to me and it feels

Wrong

I want to cuddle them (or be cuddled since i am the shortest mf ever) and idk do like an arcade date

But calling it a “date” would imply romance and i just. Idk can’t?

I want what I’ve seen some people have, a nice companionship where they seem to be in their own little world

But I don’t. I don’t want to be with them at the same time.

And yet i feel like i need to have that sort of romantic feeling to do the things i want to, because “more than friends but not dating” isn’t something that makes sense to people unless its like friends with benefits

And i dont want that either.

[lesbiancocksucker]

just saw someone claim using identity lists is better than just using the word queer for EVERYONE because it's personally triggering for them

[skys-archive]

I think in honor of pride month and also in general forever we should stop trying fit queer people into the identities we think they should call themselves.

And I know no one is going to see this because no one ever does but I'm going to talk about it anyway because this is important.

Bisexual doesn't mean you don't date trans people, it doesn't mean you like men and women, it doesn't mean you can't have a preference. Someone can identify as polysexual or bisexual or omnisexual and have no preference and you don't get to say that that means they're pansexual. Because no, if they don't identify as pansexual then they're not pansexual.

Transmasc doesn't mean you use he/him pronouns. It doesn't mean you identify as a man. Transfem doesn't mean you use she/her pronouns. It doesn't mean you identify as a woman. You can be nonbinary or genderqueer or agender or any gender that isn't binary and not use they/them pronouns. You can use any of those labels and still identify as a man or a woman. You can use different pronouns than is typically used for your birth sex and not consider yourself transgender. People can be gender non conforming and not he trans. People can be trans and not gender non conforming.

A trans man can be fem. A trans woman can be masc. Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny. Intersex people don't owe you androgyny. Intersex people are people, they deserve way more attention than a way to one up transphobes. Intersex people face discrimination and body altering surgeries without their consent and then are only ever talked about to say "some cis women have penises" or "some people have an extra x chromosome" and then we never talk about the struggle they face as part of the queer community.

Asexuality and aromanticism is a spectrum. Some aces like sex, some aces are repulsed, some aces only experience sexual attraction to one person or once in their life, some aces need a deep emotional bond, some aces their attraction changes. Some aros change identities. Some aros are repulsed by romance unless it's a fictional character. Some aros have romantic feelings until they get to know someone. Some aros crave a romantic relationship but never have romantic feelings. You don't get to say someone isn't asexual or aromantic enough.

Asexuality and aromanticism is having a unique relationship with romance or sexual feelings and impulses. Someone who is transgender has a unique experience with gender. You don't get to decide that they don't have a unique experience. But guess what? You don't get to decide if they do either. Someone can have a unique experience and still not identify as asexual aromantic or transgender. You can cross dress and still fully feel like a man. You can use he/him pronouns as a cis women. You can have trauma around sex and not identify as asexual. You can never have a romantic relationship and not identify as aromantic.

You can have "contradicting" labels. I don't know as many of these because I don't personally identify as any but please fell welcome to add in reblogs. There are trans men lesbians and gay women. There are sex loving asexuals. I know there are others I just genuinely am not educated enough.

YOU DONT GET TO CHOOSE SOMEONES LABELS

ANYONE CAN EITHER IDENTIFY OR NOT IDENTIFY AS QUEER

Please feel welcome to add anything in reblogs. I'm sure there's things I've missed. I haven't talked about neopronouns I haven't talked enough about "contradicting" labels. I haven't talked about queer platonic relationships or kink or polyamory or enough about intersex people or pronouns vs gender. There's so much important things but at the end of the day it's just so important to not choose other people's labels.

[aptericia]

Not proud to be here.

--

Ok, here goes draft like 5 of this fucking post. I spent 4 hours tossing and turning in bed last night thinking about this, and then this morning I found a tumblr post that really helped me understand what I was trying to say.

The post talks about how aromantic "advocates" claim that "aros don't take up resources, so there's no reason not to include them!" And if that's actually what people believe, I think I can finally articulate why it is that I feel so alienated in queer spaces.

It's because aspecs in general aren't "welcomed" by much of the queer community. We're tolerated. We perhaps get the luxury of not being contradicted on our own identities, or not being specifically kicked out of LGBTQ-only spaces, but that's the whole point: what we get out of the queer "community" is people NOT doing things, not actually doing things FOR us. And that, frankly, is not enough. We deserve conversations about us. We deserve to have others consider our feelings, even when making lighthearted jokes. We deserve varied, respectful representation in media. We deserve the active deconstruction of amatonormativity in society. We deserve to have space made for us, rather than at most being told we should "go take up more space!" ourselves.

Of course, the reality is that my being aspec is a personal matter that does not inherently affect anyone else. But the same can be said for literally any queer identity. Your being gay doesn't say anything about me, so of course I shouldn't hurt you for it, but why should I help you either? Because your happiness and comfort are important. The same goes for aspecs.

And most of the time, I don't even need anyone to make space for or expend resources on me; I can live fine in everyday, non-queer-specific places without mentioning my identity at all. But it's the queer community that claims it will make that space for me, doesn't, and then acts defensive and morally pure if I call out the hypocrisy because "we're queer too, you can't erase our identities to advocate for yours!!!!"

Again, this post isn't about specifics. I have queer friends who are incredibly thoughtful and supportive about my identity, just as I have non-queer friends who are. I find more solidarity in aspec-only communities, as well as trans/genderqueer ones, although there are still many exceptions. This post is also not about amatonormative ideology, which is extremely common from queer and non-queer people alike. This post is about the reason I've felt so betrayed by the queer community.

--

On a personal note, I remember being so excited when I started identifying as aromantic (and later asexual). Fitting myself into labels has been a lifelong struggle for me; to this day I still can't confidently say if I'm White or PoC, neurotypical or neurodivergent, abled or disabled, cisgender or not cisgender. I continue to struggle making friends because I don't fall into social cliques. To discover that I officially, certainly, was LGBTQ+ lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. And now I'm just so sad to find that despite that, I'm still stuck in the middle. I didn't get rewarded with a community. I still feel alienated from both queer and non-queer people. I know it was silly to get my hopes up when there's such vast diversity in both groups, but it really was a disappointment. Going to my first Pride parade last year was really the moment where I realized this.

[leverage-ot3]

okay I absolutely get and adore harry being oblivious about ot3 developments, but consider:

after breanna makes it explicitly clear she’s queer in the card game job, harry starts Researching™

he’s trying to be good, be better. he likes this girl and wants to be there to support her and be her friend, someone she can trust. it doesn’t help that she’s around the same age as his daughter, who barely wants to associate with him anymore

he learns breanna is queer and dives into researching. watching TED talks in his spare time. reading ebooks on his phone in between playing roles in a con (bringing a physical book is less convenient and he doesn’t want to wave around the fact that he’s researching like he’s trying to be performative about it). he reads about legislation and book bans and wonders about how they could work their magic through a con to fix those things. he reads about asexuality and recognizes the flag colors from the sticker on breanna’s laptop, which he files away for later

he learns a lot! he has been peripherally aware of queer stuff- it’s kind of hard not to be in the 2020s, but now he is much more informed on a lot of issues. he has memorized at least 50 different labels and terms and has an index of resources in his head (and on his phone) if anyone might need them. he wants to understand the people he loves and cares about, whether it’s breanna or one of his daughter’s friends, or anyone in his life that is queer and he doesn’t know it yet. he wants to be ready and prepared to support them!

he learns about sapphicness and bisexuality and intersex rights and the gender spectrum. he learns about karyotypes and stonewall and other queer history. he learns about kink (blushing, but still reads because it’s important!) and relationship diversity… which leads him to discover the term polyamory

he tries not to actively apply the terms he has learned on the people in his life because he knows it’s wrong to assume things about other people. BUT. harry spends a few days reflecting on parker, hardison and eliot’s interactions and wonders. he thinks about the long hugs and lack of personal space and near telepathic communication not just between parker and hardison, but parker and eliot AND hardison and eliot. how parker knows how to make eliot take care of himself, how he knows when she forgets to eat because she’s so hyperfixated on planning a con. how parker jumps on his back for fun and no matter what, he always catches her. hardison’s absence is felt when he’s gone, deeply by the both of them.

it could just be a deep friendship, he knows. they have been working and living together for over a decade, of course they would be close!!! maybe they could even be queerplatonic! (another new word he learned!)

but. still. he quietly observes, watches closely, and thinks.

[ilovedthestars]

A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.

This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.

But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?

I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.

There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.

I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.

We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.

[chucktaylorupset]

goddddd it’s fine!! its fine!!! its okay if if 12 year old girls decide they’re asexual and look back and realize that actually it was just puberty and the gross sexualization of women that alienated them from their feelings of attraction and actually now she feels she was always allo. That’s allowed! That’s okay! Its not the end of the world if some of the people coming home to the label of asexuality are actually arriving at a way station onto what will be a better place for them. Cause you know if what she wanted was to feel she had the language to give herself permission to not be obligated to engage in sexual acts, to not exist as a sexual foodstuff for the consumption and digestion of others, If she needed the world asexual to shield her like that that’s okay!!! Cause whats important is she found a way to not do the things she wasn’t ready to do. What you wanna say no? No, you are obligated to figure out your attraction to others and the torture of its existence in a complicated fucked up world with language that doesn’t always sink home. Who is she hurting. Oh yeah it’s on a twelve year old to never be wrong about who they think they’re becoming, it’s up to a twelve year old to find a permanent state of self, it’s on a twelve year old to figure out the uncomfortableness of becoming a sexual being on their fucking own. Cause yknow if she’s wrong then people are going to use that as evidence that asexuality is a phase as if people looking for an excuse to dismiss other people’s identities would just not exist if we all perfectly performed our fucking labels like they’re the audience that decides if our fucking rock opera gets to hit broadway. Like there’s a fucking quota on how many times a person can be wrong about a label. I’m bisexual!! And if I’d just allowed myself to think that it’d be okay if I was wrong about being bisexual, or that it was okay if it wasn’t permanent, then I would’ve taken the first step to realizing I was actually a long term bisexual all the sooner.  There isn’t a fucking deadline for figuring out the perfect label for yourself, there isn’t a fucking surety purity test at the door. God, and all these trans kids and people agonizing about if they’re really trans or if they’re just faking it, as if that’s important when transitioning makes them happier! But no, we gotta make a philosophical argument from the ground up for what it means to be queer every fucking time so you don’t get it wrong cause god forbid, can you imagine

[aurlworthfightingfor]

At work I don’t know how but it came up where I mentioned my brother is trans and how I’m.. I pause a moment and say “in the lgbtq myself” cuz I forgot the word queer lmao.

And my coworker says “it’s ok, you don’t need to have a label for yourself.”

And I was like… “no, I’m definitely alphabet. I have a label, it’s just a mile fucking long.”

“Biromantic Asexual and Gender-fluid.” Is just such a fuckin mouthful. Usually I just say Ace because that’s my most important one of the three. Lmao

[picturebird]

Shipping Alastor Hot Tip:

If you want to ship Alastor from Hazbin Hotel with another character, here’s how you can do that while respecting his asexuality. Don’t worry it’s easy!

Figure out under what circumstances he can feel sexual attraction.

Is it only someone he’s closely bonded to? (Demisexuality)

Is it only when he knows they are attracted to him? (Reciprosexuality)

Is it only when he doesn’t have a close bond with someone and it goes away when they get close? (Fraysexuality)

You don’t have to use micro labels (labels can be problematic at times) but looking into the ace umbrella is definitely important. If you’re writing a fic, all you need is one sentence addressing this and then you can move on to the spicy stuff if you want to. It’ll make whatever relationship you’re writing even more special!

Here’s a link:

There’s been a lot of stress in the fandom over shipping Alastor and I think it’s mostly a misunderstanding (sadly not entirely at times).

People should be able to ship who they want, but ace people (who don’t have a lot of media rep) shouldn’t be erased. It can be hard when you love a character who’s like you and all the content you see about them is taking away that one thing you have in common. At times, that dismissal can feel like hate. But it is completely understandable if you find joy/pleasure in specific ships and want to express those feelings. I’m sure aegosexuals and fictosexuals (also ace) can relate to that too. Finding that balance is something the queer community as a whole is still working on.

Just be kind, be respectful and remember a character being ace doesn’t take away anything it only adds to them.

It’s not a restriction. It’s an opportunity :)

Have fun!

PS please reblog so more of the fandom gets this

[genderqueerdykes]

happy international asexuality day!

April 6th marks International Asexuality Day, a day meant for recognizing, validating, educating and embracing the asexual umbrella of identities, including, but definitely not limited to asexual, aroace, demisexual, greyasexual, aceflux, pomosexual, quoisexual, and other aspectrum identifying people.

i began identifying as asexual as well as aromantic in the early 2010s before silently dropping the label as tensions around whether or not asexual people were "truly" queer/lgbt rose. i felt ashamed of that part of me and stopped talking about it, but as time has passed, the asexual community has started to rebuild, and the entire queer community owes it to the asexual community to help us rebuild and establish ourselves.

we have been the butt of many jokes for years and its time to get rid of the stigma this identity has once and for all and accept that in a society that demands sexuality from each and every person, asexuality is undoubtedly queer. to stand in the face of a society that barrages you with sexuality and sexual imagery, innuendo and conversation almost 24/7 and say that it is not for you, or that you do not approach sexuality in the same way as it has been forced upon you is extremely queer.

cishet or not, every asexual spectrum person falls neatly into the queer community. throwing us under the bus isn't acceptable. we struggle in cisheteronormative society just as much as other queers and it's time to acknowledge and embrace that. it was safer and easier for me to talk about being a gay man than it was for me to talk about being asexual. it was easier for me to talk about being transgender than it was for me to talk about how i don't like having sex with people and don't experience sexual attraction very often and when i do, i have no plans to follow through with it unless it is to meet the other person's needs in a logical fashion.

i have been guilted and forced into sexual relationships that i did not enjoy multiple times over the years. i do not enjoy having sex with people. it's not for me. i've done it many, many times and the conclusion i come to every time is that i don't enjoy it and i come out the other side feeling worse than if i just hadn't done it at all.

i don't really experience the drive to do it in the first place, so why should i force myself to? even if i occasionally find people attractive, if i don't want to follow through on it, i shouldn't have to. nobody should have to engage with sex at all if they don't want to. sex is morally neutral, but it can be very bad for some people to interact with, and this is okay.

whether you're sex repulsed, neutral, favorable, or something else, happy international asexuality day to you! be proud to be yourself, there's no shame in being asexual or asexual spectrum. let's get rid of the stigma around aspec identities once and for all