Tag: ace

lionheartedtabbycat:

Because I need to hear it myself sometimes:

If you are asexual because of trauma, you are not a fake. Your past orientation was real and valid. Your current orientation is real and valid.

If you stopped being asexual because of trauma, you are not a fake. Your past orientation was real and valid. Your current orientation is real and valid.

People change, and that includes their orientations. You are surviving and redefining yourself and I am so proud of you for that.

Please take care of yourself.

theasexualityblog:

Anyone else besides me wear their ace ring somewhere other than the right hand middle finger?

I wear mine on my left hand ring finger (like a wedding ring) and I’m wondering if anyone else breaks that norm.

I wear mine on my left hand middle finger as my right middle finger broke badly when I was young and has a very large middle knuckle that I can’t get rings over!
I hope to get a black and white ring so I can show my ace and aro pride together!

akirajumps-six-6:

Shout out to all the asexuals who don’t talk about how people look because they’re afraid someone will discredit them as asexuals.

Shout out to all the asexuals who try and help their friends with their love lives but really have no idea what to do.

Shout out to all the asexuals who try very hard in every relationship they are in but still feel like they’re botching it somehow.

Shout out to all the asexuals who are told by someone close to them that they are broken.

Shout out to all the asexuals who don’t know if they’re demi or gray or what because they’ve never actually fallen in love.

Shout out to all the asexuals who aren’t sure if the feelings they have towards a person are the ‘right’ ones.

Shout out to all the asexuals who are still coming to terms with their asexuality.

Shout out to all the asexuals who try and join LGBTQA+ communities only to discover they are the only asexual.

Shout out to all the asexuals who are constantly afraid that their actions or words will come off as flirting when they’re just trying to be nice.

Shout out to all the asexuals who want to be in a relationship but don’t know if they can satisfy their partner with only feelings.

Shout out to all the asexuals who feel disgusted by sex but try not to bring it up every time their friends start talking about it.

Shout out to all the asexuals who feel constantly demeaned as if they were children because they don’t want to experience sex.

Shout out to all the asexuals who can’t find a good book with a character not interested in love – just fighting dragons.

Shout out to all the asexuals who feel constantly assaulted by the idea that ‘asexuals don’t like sex’ because that’s not the right definition.

Shout out to all the asexuals who have to deal with super intrusive questions once they come out.

Shout out to all the asexuals who have yet to come out for fear of erasure and other such cruelties.

Shout out to all the asexuals, because you are an amazing, diverse group of fantastic human beings.

consultinwiththerain:

okay, inspired by a conversation I’ve had to have way too many times, may I remind you all of this

  • Classifying yourself as ace is not bad
  • Being ace is not a sign of being broken
  • Yes, you can still like romance without being sexually attracted to someone
  • There are various forms of asexuality, including demisexual and cupiosexual
  • Ace is not the same as straight
  • Being ace is not under “special snowflake uwu” stuff, it’s legit
  • Being ace and aro isn’t weird 
  • Aromanticism does exist and it’s not something that makes you broken
  • “you’ll find someone eventually” is not good ally advice
  • A in LGBTQA+ is never, ever for “allies”

Thanks and goodbye

Being an Aromantic Asexual is Weird

shades-of-grayro:

Being an aromantic asexual is weird. We defy not one, not two, but three societal norms; heteronormativity, compulsory sexuality, and amatonormativity. It gets even weirder when you’re indifferent (even favourable!) when it comes to sex and romance because you think your experience is universal, that everyone feels the way you do. It’s not feeling wrong and broken and out of place. It’s feeling normal, and then realizing that you aren’t.

Thinking (read: assuming) that you’re straight for most of your life and then finding out you’re not is weird. Mostly because once you realize you’re not straight, it dawns on you that you feel the same way about boys that you do about girls and non-binary people. And then you wonder if you’re pansexual because they’re attracted to all genders, and you have to be attracted to someone, right? And then that thought is immediately dismissed because you don’t feel attraction, at all. But it doesn’t stop you from contemplating every other sexuality and romantic orientation, because you’ve been taught that everyone wants sex and romance.

And then you remember: you like sex and romance in fiction. You like seeing your friends in happy, healthy, consenting relationships, and you’d always assumed that one day, you’d be in one too. But you’ve never pursued one. You never had more than a fleeting interest in boys, and lingering but still platonic affection for your female and non-binary friends. Those “crushes” that you had in elementary school? Maybe not crushes after all, because God knows you haven’t had one in nearly eight years. The most powerful feelings you’ve had for another person have been squishes so intense that you had to look back and question if it was actually romantic attraction (spoiler: it wasn’t).

And then there’s that epiphanic moment when things start to fall into place. Why you were always so vehement that soulmates could be platonic too. Why the idea of loving someone more than your best friend is incomprehensible (because romantic love is always shown as being more. Hello amatonormativity). Why when you ship fictional pairings, there are people you want to get together romantically, people you want to be friends so bad, and the ships that you like the most are the ones that could go either way. Why you desire emotional closeness and intimacy with the people in your life, but that had always been conflated with sex and romance so you wondered if what you wanted was more than friendship. Why you want to take the expression “more than friends”and burn it to the ground because there is no vocabulary for friendship that exceeds “best friend” without crossing over into romantic and/or sexual territory.

You realize that your ideal relationship isn’t necessarily romantic. It’s best friends who cohabitate and snuggle and hold hands and go on adventures to the library together. Kissing and sex? Well, that’s more of an afterthought. A “yeah, that’ll probably happen somewhere in there.” An assumption, because you’ve been taught that primary, monogamous relationships are always romantic and sexual. You reflect and see that there are very few things that you see and inherently romantic, and that there is a lot of cross-over between things you consider platonic, sensual, and romantic. A grey area that you can’t define.

Being an aromantic asexual is weird, because while I’ve always said that you don’t need romance and sex to be happy, I now realize that it applies to me too.

______________________

Note from mod fitz: This has to be one of the most moving descriptions of this I have ever read. This exactly describes how I felt coming to the realization that I was not straight, and I think had I read this when I first began questioning it would have made things go a lot smoother for me. Thanks so much for submitting!