This Is Beautiful: Pride Finally!

 This past weekend was Pride in Durham (past two weekends really) and it was great to finally make a Pride celebration! For a series of reasons I wasn't able to make it to the Prides in Michigan (weather and scheduling and health, etc) and I figured that I would have just missed it all this year. Not so! Durham celebrates their Pride in October since it's warm until then and that's when they first marched for equal rights. So we get a later Pride! And it coincided so nicely with my partner coming to visit me for the first time in my new place. It was so nice to go together and finally get a Pride!

"Love Expanded: How Asexuals and Aromantics are Redefining Love, Life, and Family" by Wren Burke

 Here's yet another book on asexuality and aromanticism that I got my hands on! This was a lovely surprise as these tend to come out in October when Ace Week is. I found this on Twitter also, so I was able to get it right as it came out (important for reasons that will come later). Overall, I don't think I necessarily learned new things, but it struck me that this book is an excellent model of how to blend the ace 101 information along with what to do and what changes to make with this information. 

The book has ten chapters covering everything from what love means to a-spec individuals to gender to family structure and ending with legislation. The author covers plenty of material that I'm already familiar with such as Ace by Angela Chen or Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Sherronda Brown but also pulls from anecdotes, a survey of 1,900 aces they designed for the book, and interviews with ace researchers. I was really pleased to see that aromanticism was an integral part of the book, with Single at Heart by Bella DePaulo getting its turn in the spotlight. And in general, the book is very inclusive and just feels very queer. It isn't breaking up identities to only focus on one but discusses elements of queerness and what that can look like in other cultures.

Helpfully, the book does not assume that you know much about asexuality and aromanticism, but it does not pander to folks that are new to the community. I find that if authors are writing more 101-type things that there are constant caveats about what they mean. This has its nuances, but I also felt that Burke just had a great handle on the material and was writing about what they were interested in. I also just feel that if you're picking up the book, you know what asexuality is and are likely asexual. But maybe I'm wrong (hoping that I'm a little wrong anyways). 

The ending though talks about what we need to do to make things better. And it starts with changing legislation and writing to MPs. Burke is British, I was honestly surprised how much US law was in the book, so I wasn't shocked by that. I do wonder though how quickly this book will go out of date as a result. Seriously, the most recent reference to the Ace Community Survey that I could find was 2019, it's been going on annually since then. How quickly will those legislative references go out of date? Or even more tragically, how many won't?

All in all, I thought this was a great addition to the canon of works on asexuality and aromanticism. I think it definitely has its niche as an intro text or something for someone who knows about asexuality but wants to start digging in deeper. I hope that it's a model for more works situating asexuality less as its own thing and more as fundamentally queer. And I dearly hope that there's more positive changes in legislation coming for us.

“The Lantern and the Night Moths” by Yilin Wang

I bought this book ages ago when it was published, but then had a friend borrow it and she only just got it back to me (graduate students, oh well). It was a really interesting read, I don’t know much about Chinese poetry or translation as it’s one of those arts that is frequently overlooked. Or put another way, you only notice it when it goes wrong. In addition to a small collection of poems from each of the poets, there are short essays that talk about the process that Wang went through with each of the different works. Each poem additionally is printing in both Chinese and in English for comparison.

The book spans quite a few ages, it starts with Qiu Jin’s poetry. She was a poet and early feminist who was known for breaking gender norms. She’s also how I first heard about this work, I knew that Wang’s work was stolen by the British Museum and I was part of the group that helped her fight that. Wang’s experiences are touched on with her essay on this section, it’s interesting hearing about that again from her perspective.

Most interesting to me was hearing about how there are so many different processes for translating depending on the style of the poet. She talks a lot about preserving allusions and meanings that English audiences wouldn’t pick up on, and keeping elements of ambiguity as well. I’ve heard Wang talk about how translating can be like writing poetry as well, and now looking at the poems she’s referring to really makes that clear, and more real, in my mind. It’s not something that is a one-to-one, there’s so much work happening below the surface here!

I really like to support ace writers, and this was a great book to finally get to. It isn’t entirely poetry, if that isn’t your thing, but it is really interesting to hear about the process of translating poetry.

Turning 30

 I turned 30 years old yesterday! And I also got married on the same day! (I didn't plan it that way, it's just how schedules worked out.) Which leaves me in this interesting position here, as I have now been running this silly little blog for well over a decade, enough that I went back and reread the post I wrote as a 20 year old. Funnily enough, it isn't as cringey as I thought it would be. There is some good stuff in here, things that I still forget most of the time haha. 

On my thirtieth I don't want to do another little listicle just because those are so lame and such simplifications. And I'm just in a more pensive mood. 30 years feels like such a milestone and also I am still in a PhD program, it's wrapping up, but I'm essentially still in school and training for an adult job that I hopefully eventually get. I don't feel that I have read and absorbed everything I want to learn about and advocate for, and I hope that I keep feeling that way. But I certainly don't think I have wisdom to impart.

The past year particularly I feel like I have had to contend with the limitations of my body more than ever. I'm less physically able to do a lot of things I could in the past, and I've been trying to train more to make up for it, but it feels like I'm hyper aware of how I look and my body type. And I super don't love that. Since my 20th birthday I've also had a cancer diagnosis and had to go through that treatment, and there's been a worldwide pandemic. I didn't react to the pandemic particularly well and I still kinda hate myself for that. I haven't always been a great anti-racist advocate and I also hate myself over that. But we keep moving forward and trying to do better.

I am really hopeful for the coming decade though. I will finally get my doctorate and I will hopefully move somewhere that has more stuff in the area for me. I so want to get into ballet more and keep dancing. I want to keep creating. I made so much great art in my 20s and I don't want to peak here; but it is so hard to create as an adult. Especially out of school and trying to find community groups. It's so hard and I'm not looking forward to that but I know that I can't stop choreographing and acting and making! I don't want to give that up and I'm determined to seek out spaces I can do these things.

Oh and I'm married now. I'm finally in a healthy, stable relationship that feels good. And feels like we are on the same page when it comes to asexuality and aromanticism and what we want. It just feels like a comfy friendship where we will plan together and create a life together, and that is the ideal. Getting married itself was more symbolic than anything else, nothing is actually going to change, but hey it is nice we did that.

So yeah, thirties here we come. Here's to leaving my twenties behind.

This Is Beautiful: Pride

 Happy Pride! June is a month for celebrating queerness in all of its glory.

I've had a weird relationship to pride month the past few years, not for any like identity based reason, but because I've been doing Shakespeare in the Arb that kinda just becomes my Pride month. With performances every weekend in June, it's hard for it not to. And I really miss being able to go to Pride, or even better when I was in Pride parades all of the time a few years ago. (Hence me forgetting that last week was the first week of Pride even.)

But Pride is still a special time and a special month. I hope that you're all celebrating in your own way and in your own time out there!

“Baker Thief” by Claudie Arseneault

I picked up this book as part of a book club I was in. We wanted to read something with aromantic representation for Aro Week, and this came up as a book with aromantic and asexual characters in a fantasy setting.

The book opens with a police woman, Adele, being robbed by Claire, a purple-haired thief. Claire has taken Adele’s exocore, a sort of generator or power source. As a new officer, Adele makes it her personal goal to get onto this case as soon as she learns that this is a repeat crime. Meanwhile, Claude is the baker at a local pastry chain who is befriending Adele. His twin is in town, and he is anxious to show her a stack of exocores that he recently stole under his female name, Claire. (Claude/Claire is gender-fluid so I’m going to try and use whatever name is appropriate for him/her, but I’ll swap back and forth.) His twin senses that these are people, that those with powers (witches) are inside the exocores. Witches have been persecuted in this society for ages, Claude keeps his powers secret, but this is a new level of hate. Claire and her twin start investigating together, but when Claire’s twin disappears, Claude is distraught.

Meanwhile, Adele has not been making much headway in the case. She’s assisting a more senior officer and frustrated that she cannot lead it. A separate journalist puts the pieces together that Claire is stealing exocores, so she also turns her attention to the source of them. Adele also starts up a budding romance with Claude the baker, Claude is aromantic but they have a good time together. Things get kicked up a notch when Adele follows a lead to a manufacturing plant for the exocores and finds many abused witches trapped there. Claire followed and helped her get everyone out, as well as plenty of exocores. They set up base in Adele’s sister’s house for the time being.

Claire then follows a lead right to the manufacturers and gets captured, learning in the process that there’s a witch who betrayed the community and has been kidnapping witches to make into exocores and that the lead officer on the case is behind the whole thing. Adele comes to rescue her, they start kissing, and then Claire reveals her identity as also Claude. Adele is captured, but Claire makes it away. After Adele’s co-workers save her, they all come up with a plan to stop the opening ceremony of a brightly lit bridge that’ll be directly powered by Claude’s twin. They pull it off, everyone ends up ok, and the book ends with Adele and Claude figuring out what a relationship between then could look like.

So the best aspect of the book is the world-building. The characters speak a kind of modified French, with a lot of French words and some messed with a little. The neighborhoods are also very fleshed out and developed, you get a sense of where the characters are throughout the city. Because of what the book gets into, the politics and the political climate are also very present and accounted for as well. It feels very grounded in place as a result.

To get this out of the way though, I do think that the choice of having a cop as the main character is a little odd. For a book that aims to highlight queer experiences and has a pretty diverse cast, it feels out of place. This was published in 2018, so a little before ACAB really took off in the US, but recent enough that I’m thrown off by the inclusion of it. Related, so the characters are pretty diverse, but that doesn’t seem to go too deep when it comes to race. There are characters who are mentioned to have darker skin, but that is all that their race really impacts. There is no discussion of what Black culture looks like in this world, or is there is any racism. So, I don’t know, I’m hesitant to give the book that level of diversity.

There is diversity in terms of queer representation. Claude is aromantic, and Adele is demisexual. Many characters are referenced as wearing binders (including Claude), and Claude’s twin even talks about questioning her romantic identity towards the end. Plus there are instances of neo-pronouns (some that I didn’t even realize were pronouns at first) which highlights the gender diversity as well. And all of these are very natural, there isn’t any real homophobia or transphobia present. There is some explaining in practical terms what the orientations mean, but it doesn’t feel like the book is trying to teach us something.

The relationship between Claire and Adele is a good example. They have a conversation about what a relationship could look like between an aromantic individual and a demisexual (not aromantic) individual. And it is really cool to see that conversation played out! What I don’t love about it so much is that it seems like the relationship is based on adrenaline from them saving each other and things like that. I don’t know if I actually believe that the characters have any chemistry between them. And then also, this is a book that is supposed to highlight aromantic experiences. Why do the protagonists end up in a relationship? It seems to contradict the main point where aro experiences are all about celebrating not wanting a romantic relationship.

Overall it’s a pretty good book, I likely would read a sequel. I would say though that there’s a few too many ideas in it and it could benefit from some focus as well as cleaning up the relationship that for some reason the characters are in. And rethinking the cop thing. Ugh. But we will see if anything else ever comes from this series, right now it’s the only one she’s written.

"Single At Heart" by Bella DePaulo, PhD

 This was a great book to read, not the least because the asexual/aromantic group that I run at my university was able to get Dr. DePaulo to speak as part of Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week back in February! She is such a cheerful, friendly person, and was a very charismatic and engaging speaker. I grabbed the book as part of preparing for her talk, and it is truly such an entertaining read.

The idea of the book is that being single is not something to look down upon, but something to celebrate! There is a subset of the population that actually prefer being single and are happiest this way, these people are called "single at heart" in this work. But throughout, there is evidence that single people are more stable, have huge support networks, and are really flourishing!

I think what was most interesting to me is that the single at heart community is made up of people who are all different sexual and romantic orientations. You can be aromantic and single at heart, but you don't have to be! Similar to asexuality, there are more asexuals and aromantics in the single at heart community than the wider population, but they are far from even the majority! That is just so fascinating to me, and it demonstrates that dismantling amatonormativity and emphasizing all of these things that the aromantic community has been talking about as well for years really benefit so many people.

I also have to wonder if being single at heart isn't just a special kind of like stability or enlightenment or something. Here are these people who are so satisfied with themselves and love solitude and quiet. There is also evidence that the single at heart are less neurotic, more stable. It definitely seems like something to almost aspire to. Personally I relate a lot to the single at heart community, but I'm not completely single at heart. I am in a relationship, and we do live together, and I'm pretty happy that way. I do value my alone time, but I also like sharing the stupid little things I do all day with him. I certainly think I'd be fine being single, but I'm also happy as I am. That being said, it makes me think if I could be single at heart, or if I would get frustrated trying to exist in a world built around couples. And is it something that I could become? Or is it more innate? I'm not sure, and the research isn't really there yet either haha.

This is a great read, for anyone, not just the single at heart. Discrimination against single individuals is rampant in our society, and most people don't even realize that this is an issue because they are so okay with it. Step one to dismantling this is going to be to educate ourselves and everyone around us about singlism, and then working to make the world a better place for everyone to live as they would like.

This Is Beautiful: Happy Aro Week!

 It's the week after Valentine's Day, so happy Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week! I'm so glad that there's a week to celebrate this identity and that it's another week of me doing event planning with the queer center on campus. Hug an aro!

Pride Month 2022

 Happy Pride, but just to everyone who doesn't feel fully part of the queer community!

Whether that's because you're single, uninterested in romance, uninterested in sex, not a fan of alcohol, closeted, a person of color, not from the US/UK, disabled, "not queer enough," unsure of where you fit in, or anything else. This month is for you! There is a community here to support and accept you!

I hope you're able to do something fun and empowering this month, which might involve attending a formal celebration or not! And if you don't have a supportive community already, then I'm your community now.

"Loveless" by Alice Oseman

 Recently for a book club I finally got around to reading Loveless by Alice Oseman. The book has gotten a lot of attention lately, what with it winning the Bookseller's 2021 YA Book Award, and being a great portrayal of asexuality and aromanticism. I really liked the book! I mean I have a lot of thoughts but it's so nice to see a portrayal of this story and it just highlights the need for more of them.

The story follows Georgia, a high schooler about to graduate and head to college with her two best friends. She's never been in a romantic relationship, or even kissed anyone. It's not something that she's been worried about, but she's starting to get concerned that she's behind everyone else and "not normal." When she gets to college she meets her roommate Rooney, a sex positive Shakespeare-obsessed mystery who slowly turns into a friend.

Georgia decides to try and date her friend Jason, figuring if she can love anyone then it's him. It ends with her realizing through her friend, Sunil, that there's such a thing as not being interested in sex and romance and it's called being "aromantic asexual" or aroace for short. Jason is devastated. Meanwhile Rooney has fallen for Pip, Georgia's lesbian best friend, and Pip likes her back but it's complicated since Rooney hasn't realized that she's queer yet. Rooney then tries to help Georgia out by kissing her and Pip sees. She's also devastated. 

Final part of the book mostly centers on Georgia getting her friends back together again. And coming to terms with her identity. She isn't necessarily "proud" yet, but she knows that she'll have the love of her friends for the rest of her life. 

One of the things that this book does really well is with giving an explanation of asexuality and aromanticism that doesn't feel like a lecture. It gets woven in with the characters journeys and understanding of the concepts, taking the reader with them. She also shows the breadth of the community by having characters that aren't white and discussing that intersectionality, as well as characters that are asexual and not aromantic or aromantic and not asexual.

I really liked the book for a more personal reason, which is that it reminded me a lot of my own journey. Not because I'm also asexual but because the book takes place in the UK, the first place I joined a queer org. The discussion of drinking and clubbing culture, Fresher's Week, the structure of the college, even the formal event really brought me back. I realize that this is super specific to just me, but it speaks to how realistically the characters and the setting are portrayed. 

The book doesn't get into queer platonic relationships at all, or how aromantic individuals can still date and form partnerships. I think in some sense this is beyond the scope of the book, a lot of it is simply about how you don't need to follow the trajectory that everyone else does, and it's alright to mourn this, but you have to do what makes you happy. It does feel in some ways that something has been left out though. But I'm not sure, it works on its own without that just fine.

My only issue is at the end of the book Rooney says that she's going to be Georgia's best friend for life and that they can still be each other's special person even if they aren't in a romantic relationship. Which is cute, but I have to be honest, that's something that I think everyone has said to a friend in college and then stopped talking to them. Plus Rooney just got into a romantic relationship which is a good sign for people about to leave their friends behind. Not to mention that the book ended right after that so we didn't see them navigating these relationships or anything like that. It's cute, I get it, but I think it detracted from the intensely realistic depictions in the rest of the novel.

Read Loveless! It's so important to support aroace stories and aroace creators! There's so many good things about this book.

This Is Beautiful: Aro Week

 I know I already wrote about this but also shush. This did make my week so there. 

I forget a lot of the time just how much I love doing queer advocacy work and event planning and education and all that good stuff. But it's so energizing and wonderful to do this kind of work for this community! For Aro Week I organized three different events, one of them I was giving a presentation on existing aromantic research and it was so cool! I was so worried that no one would show up and talk to me about the research and things like that, but it went amazingly well and I'm so happy with how it turned out.

Here's to keeping this momentum going! We have to keep building this community up and growing and spreading awareness!!

This Is Beautiful: Aro Conference

  I only found out about it the day before, but this past weekend was the first ever Aromantic Conference! It was over zoom and in a time zone on the opposite side of the world from me so I couldn't make that much of it, but it was cool to check out the panels that I could make it to.

I didn't recognize the org hosting it, I think it was called spAce malmo and most of the information was up on their Instagram account. Which didn't make for the largest gathering, I think there were 40 people on the zoom call with me. But that's ok, for a first try not bad!

It's honestly just so cool to see this community learning and growing, strangely I think the pandemic accelerated this process because many more people figured out that they're aromantic that way. I'm excited to see how this changes in the coming years!

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week 2022

 Happy Aro Week! This is a week dedicated to celebrating the aromantic community and aromantic identities. You can learn more about aromanticism over at AUREA, an organization dedicated to promoting and supporting aros. 

An aromantic person is someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction. There really isn't a good way to define romantic attraction, and honestly you shouldn't be asking an aromantic individual to describe something they do not experience haha. But know that aromantics can still participate in romantic relationships, and may experience sexual attraction as well. Many aromantics don't want to be in romantic relationships and some prefer queer platonic relationships, or QPRs. These are platonic relationships where the members make a strong, lifelong commitment to each other.

To celebrate Aro Week, I want to encourage everyone to stop belittling platonic relationships. This can come in many forms, from describing people as "just friends" to insisting that unhappy individuals get a romantic partner to cheer themselves up. This can be toxic, not just to aromantic people but to everyone. Friendship is a wonderful thing and it deserves to be cherishes as such. 

I especially want to encourage my queer friends to stop making jokes about queer people in romantic relationships being mistaken for close friends, "just gals being pals," things of that nature. Essentially you're telling a joke where the punch line is "wow, a platonic relationship could never look like that, anyone thinking that this relationship is platonic must be an idiot." First of all, only the people within the relationship get to decide whether it is romantic or platonic. There's nothing inherently romantic about things like getting gifts, holding hands, hugging, kissing, et cetera. If you don't know how these people describe their relationship, just don't make a judgement on it. It's a lot less messy that way. 

Not to mention that plenty of people want these strong platonic relationships and making jokes about them implicitly makes fun of this. If you're saying "wow look at these gal pals" it is likely that someone is thinking that they want a relationship like that, but unironically. It alienates aromantic individuals who are more likely to want a platonic relationship.

I don't want to diminish the fact that many homophobes mistake queer romantic relationships for friendship all the time, and I think that these are often funny comments. But I also think that there's a place for people to want all kinds of different relationships in queer spaces, and these comments aren't working towards that. Many aromantics don't feel welcome and supported within queer spaces, for a multitiude of reasons other than just this one. We need to work on making sure that we're open to aros, and make sure that they know that. By being more aware of aromantic individuals in queer spaces and being more welcoming of platonic relationships, hopefully we can make our communities more inclusive. 

Aro Week Planning

February 21-26th this year is Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week! I'm super excited for it, it's always fun to have these advocacy weeks in my schedule. It's more challenging with Aro Week since it's less well known, but that doesn't make it less important. If anything it means that this work is more important than ever.

This year putting together some events were a bit of a struggle. Originally we wanted to do a student panel, similar to what we did for Ace Week in the fall. But no students were interested. So then we tried to do a panel on aromantic research, and no one was free. Well one person was free but she wanted a LOT of money so that wasn't doable. (Seriously everyone I asked said that panels didn't come with monetary compensation most of the time so I don't know what was going on here.) It has ended up being a presentation on aromantic research that I put together myself and I think it'll be a lot of fun anyways!

Which is an important aspect of activism: flexibility!!!

Our other event is a workshop on aromantic identities as well as healthy relationships! We had to work really closely with the organizer here since they aren't aromantic themselves but it's really cool to see this shaping up! I think it'll have a lot of good information in it and it definitely isn't stuff that gets talked about very often. How do you communicate what you want in any kind of relationship? What about having sex when you aren't romantically attracted to your partner? That sort of thing.

I'm really excited! I think this'll be exciting. It definitely is the biggest Aro Week that I've been a part of.

The Phrase "Love is Love" Is Harmful to the LGBTQIA+ Community

 Every once in a while I go off on a rant about this phrase and the problems it presents. I don't think I've ever written it down though, so here's a post about why using the phrase "love is love" actually negatively impacts most of the queer community and needs to be retired yesterday.

"Love is love" implies that the only reason people are queer is WHO they love, full stop. Which isn't the case anymore, there's the aromantic community (who do not feel romantic attraction), trans community (who do not identify with their gender assigned at birth), and the intersex community (whose biological sex does not fall neatly into male/female). All of which are queer and none of these identities are based on strictly WHO they love. You could easily have a straight trans individual, who is still a cherished part of the queer community.

To take a closer look at these identities, let's start with the aromantic community. It's true that some individuals within the aro community do identify with "love is love" because they love their friends or because they date, but there are plenty of aros who describe themselves as being loveless and say that they don't love at all. Just because a subset identify with this phrase, doesn't mean you can use it to apply to the community as a whole. Like everything else, it is a spectrum. You can personally identify with a phrase without tacking it onto everyone. It feels really gross to me that part of the aromantic community is alienating another part over this. 

Not to mention that emphasizing that aromantic individuals can love misses the point entirely. The existence of the aromantic community indicates that love is not an essential part of human existence and that space needs to be made for those who want to stay single and on their own. Turning that around to make it about "hey we aren't that different from you" reflects what the queer community did to the trans community (more on that later) and it's a brutal way to get acceptance.

I'm also unconvinced that anyone saying "love is love" is actually thinking of the aro community which isn't enough for me. I personally identify as aromantic, and I even date and am in a romantic relationship. Seeing this phrase around Pride Month doesn't make me feel included. I don't think anyone is using to explicitly include the aromantic community. It's more the case where some aromantics have reclaimed and adopted it. Which is fine, but it indicates that this phrase isn't being used for the whole community. Which is more reason to not use it for that.

Trans individuals are queer because of their gender identity. They could identify as trans and heterosexual. This is directly excluded by "love is love." In fact, post-Stonewall, this phrase has directly been used to exclude the trans community. A big part of marriage equality was making the case that queer people are exactly the same as straight people, they just love different people. Since the trans community doesn't fit into that, they have been thrown under the bus. Recently efforts have been rectifying this, but there is a lot of history there.

Intersex individuals are queer because of their biological sex and they are also excluded by this phrase. The intersex community has time and time again been marginalized within queer spaces. It's often forgotten about, or tacked on as a last-minute addition. But again, intersex people are queer and belong in queer spaces.

This phrase can be wielded in a very bi/pan-phobic way as well, in that people are quick to revoke "love is love" the second a bi/pan person is in a relationship with the opposite gender. And bi/pan people don't stop being queer once they're in a "straight passing" relationship"! So here these identities may not be queer based on who they love! What a concept.

With all that in mind, the only communities that directly vibe with "love is love" are the gay and lesbian communities. And if that sounds like TERF nonsense, that's because it can be! Again, "love is love" has been used to directly exclude the trans community, and separate them from modern queer rights movements by insisting that queer people are the same as straight people, we just love someone else. This is an attempt to water down queer existence to make it more palatable by alienating part of the community.

The bottom line is that people are queer because of WHO THEY ARE and not WHO THEY LOVE. Any attempt to say otherwise is likely gatekeeping queerness, and we need to be mindful of this to be supportive of everyone in the LGBTQIA+ acronym. To that end, I suggest that we abandon this phrase, and instead pick up something more inclusive. There's plenty of options, "we're here, we're queer, get used to it" or "LGBTQIA+ pride" or anything else. Doing this will allow many people to feel more comfortable within the queer community, and create more acceptance for us. So drop this phrase, get a new inclusive one instead.

Ace Week Wrap-Up

 This is a follow up to my previous post, but there was a lot of great things that happened this week and I just wanted to acknowledge them and celebrate them.

The Allusionist episode
First of all, a wonderful episode of The Allusionist, a podcast about language, released an episode about asexuality and aromanticism. You can find it here! I've been nagging her about doing a podcast about this for ages so I'm super happy to see it! It really was such a surprise for me and I was absolutely thrilled to see it drop and also to listen to it.

Disabled Aces Day
This year marked the first ever Disabled Aces Day! It was founded by Courtney Lane, a wonderful ace activist, and it aims to highlight the specific struggles of disabled aces. You can read more about it here, but the general idea is that disabled aces are often overlooked since all disabled individuals are assumed to be non-sexual. This results of erasure, of bot ace and allo disabled individuals. And in particular it can be hard for disabled aces to feel confident in their asexuality since it feels as though they're confirming a stereotype. So it's great that there's now a day for this community! Support and love disabled aces.

Racism in the community
Unfortunately there's also been a ton of racism online. Yasmin Benoit launched an asexuality-themed lingerie campaign and so many people have decided that this is too much or incomprehensible or whatever it is. I really wish that someday we could get to a point where this doesn't happen. Yasmin is a wonderful, incredible activist and she shouldn't be constantly harassed like this. Who cares what she's wearing? The whole point is that aces can wear and look however they want, that doesn't make them less asexual. Just another reminder of how far we have to go.

Happy Halloween!
And finally, happy Halloween! Aces get Halloween now, it's official. I hope that your week has been wonderful and tons of fun.

Ace Week 2021

 This upcoming week is Ace Week (or Asexual Awareness Week). I try to celebrate it every year, it's really a highlight of the fall for me. This year I was able to celebrate by organizing events for my school's asexual community! Which is very exciting, we're going to have a community discussion, a student panel, a workshop on sex ed, and a social event. This is the first year that we've had a student panel, and I'm so excited for when that happens!

Having said all that, the ace community has a long way to go in terms of inclusion and diversity. More and more aces of color are speaking up about how the community is racist, and I've seen more disabled aces speaking up about how the community is ablest. We need to make radical strides towards making these intersectional identities more welcome.

But I also want to discuss the inclusivity of aces in queer spaces. So many people are still aphobic, possibly without realizing it. In particular, I want to highlight assumptions that get made when you tell someone "I'm asexual." Knowing that someone is asexual doesn't actually tell you anything about their relationship with sex. Same thing goes for aromanticism, knowing that someone is aromantic doesn't tell you anything about their relationship to romance. 

So it follows that not dating someone just because they're asexual or aromantic is inherently aphobic. Maybe sex is important to you and you want to have a lot of it. Great, there's plenty of asexuals who love to have sex. But you don't know that from knowing someone's identity, you have to have a conversation about it. Same as if you're dating anyone else. There's so much diversity within the asexual community, we need that diversity to be respected. Not being inclusive of all aces means that you aren't inclusive of aces at all.

So here's to another year of being asexual! And here's to hopefully seeing some improvements in diversity and inclusion over the coming year!

This Is Beautiful: Heart's Choice games

Alright I've picked up a new interest. I've started playing some Heart's Choice games in my spare time. These are games that are entirely text-based, no graphics or music or anything. It's a bit like a choose your own adventure book to be honest. They are part of the larger Choice Of games, but these are all intended to be like a romance novel.

Now this seems really out of character for me, but I have an explanation. I found these games because I heard that for a lot of them you can play as asexual and/or aromantic. A number let you play as any gender that you want as well. So initially I was coming at this as a chance to check out some representation in media.

But also, we're in a quarantine right now and I live alone. I started the first one, "Never Date Werewolves," and kinda really liked the romance aspects of it. Having a choice in the storyline made it seem just a little more real than reading a fanfiction or something, and knowing I had a choice in who my character was and what they want made it personal.

So surprisingly, these have actually been helping with my loneliness a lot. You can play them through once for free (with 2 hour breaks between chapters which is kinda annoying) or can buy it for a couple of dollars. I would definitely give it a shot, if you hate it it's free and it's maybe 15 minutes of your time per chapter. Have fun!

This Is Beautiful: Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week

This is late, but the week after Valentine's Day was Aro Spectrum Awareness Week! I'd only started identifying as aro-spectrum this summer, so it technically was my first one of being out and about with it. And too be honest it was really lovely, I can't stand Valentine's Day so the contrast really made it all the better.

In case you don't know, aromantic refers to people who do not experience romantic attraction. Aros may still want to date and have partners, and are still capable of forming really important friendships and bonds with other people. Personally, I am gray-romantic, so I am somewhere in between being aromantic and being not. This can mean different things to different people, but for me it's primarily this feeling that I don't experience romantic attraction the way most people do. I rarely get crushes, often have a hard time figuring out that I have one, and then have a really hard time getting over them because these feelings are so rare for me. So there's a brief introduction to the aromantic community, go educate yourself and learn more. :)

The main way I celebrated the week was with a hang out session! Me and a bunch of other a-spec people organized a low-key snacks and games hang out which was a ton of fun! The aro community is so small that it's rare we all get together, if we planned more frequent things then no one would show up haha. But it's so nice when we're all there, because we all just get it. You don't have to explain yourself to these people and we can all relax and be ourselves and joke about our orientations.

Hope you all had a nice Aro Awareness Week! Or a nice week of Feb. 17th if not.