Incase you missed it (highlights from the International Asexuality Day livestreams)

April 6th was International Asexuality Day and the ace orgs from around the world got together and did a 24hr livestream called Aces never EVER sleep. Unfortunately I did have to sleep through some of it. I was able to catch the beginning of the stream and the beginning of the Spotlight on Australia and I missed the Spotlight on Vietnam, Spotlight on India, Books with Ace Representation panel, Arts and Crafts, Spotlight on Netherlands, Anti-LGBT Laws: Georgia, Spotlight on Chile, Spotlight on Pakistan, Spotlight on Poland, the School and Education panel so I need to go back and watch ALL of that. I tuned back in for the Spotlight on Nepal who powered through their technical issues. I want to give a special shout-out to Dr. Manita Newa Khadgi and I sincerely how we see and hear more from them in the future.

Incase you missed it, I HIGHLY recommend going back to watch the Spotlight on Bangladesh with Dipa Mahbuba Yasmin, the founder of Bangledesh Asexual Association and see her amazing protest artwork. I have no words for how beautiful and powerful her artwork comes across, you really need to see it for yourself and hear the stories behind the different pieces.

Next up was Yasmin Benoit talking about her partnership with Stonewall on the Ace Report. Yasmin talked about how when you don’t see yourself represented it means you have to step up and be that representation (for better or worse as seen in her twitter replies). She talked about the tremendous effort, negotiations, and collaborations it took to get the Stonewall Ace Report off the ground- again emphasizing that if the research isn’t there it probably means you need to be the one to make it happen. I’ve seen a lot of acephobes try to rip into the Stonewall Ace Report and the report put out by AACAU trying to delegitimize them by saying it’s “not scientific enough” or the research was “done by people who don’t know what they’re doing”. There is no objectivity when it comes to aphobia. The people who perpetuate aphobia are not doing so because it’s “scientific” or because they’re “experts”, they do it out of ignorance and most of the time it’s willful ignorance so shout out to Yasmin for taking that on. Hopefully we see many more opensource research about aces and aros come out in the future. These reports are meant to start conversations, not be a period at the end of a sentence.

Next up came Chiacchierata ace [IN ITALIANO], I don’t speak Italian, but I was dog sitting at the time of the stream and he didn’t seem to mind the panel in the background (I assume it was a delightful break from the regular tv shows his owner plays from him when she’s out). The folks behind IAD have a mission to bring more diverse language groups into the global conversation and are always looking for volunteer translators.

Speaking of translations, the Italian Aces were kind enough to switch back to English for the next panel dedicated to Writing about asexuality. I confess I became distracted by Kay’s cat, however, Francesca mentioned that there is a growing body of ace literature not just in English. It’s probably very easy to get caught up in our own little communities, but but we do have this amazing communication technologies available to us, we have international cooperation efforts like the IAD livestreams, and thus there are opportunities to expand our understanding of asexuality beyond the English-speaking side of the globe.

The next panel was Autistic Aces…Assemble. There were some technical issues, as can be expected with streaming technology, so the panel is split between two recordings and picks up again here. I’ll often see acephobes on social media try to dismiss asexuality or aromanticism as “just autism” and sort of the jerk reaction from aces is to deny the claim in a way that perpetuates ablism or continues the stigmatism of mental illness. There are aces who have autism and there are aces with mental illness and it’s not fair to them to ask them to keep their asexuality and/or romanticism separate where their identity intersects. As the panelists mentioned, they did their best to pack as much representation into the panel as possible, but they represent just a sliver of what is a very big, very nuanced conversation.

We are so close to the end, thank you for reading this far into my recap. I missed a lot of the stream at the beginning that I’ll be catching up on in the coming weeks. It’s a lot which is why if you see something you want to check out first I’ve included the links with the appropriate time code. There have also been talks of hosting more streams throughout the year to feature more of the global community.

Very quickly, there was a Spanish language panel. Once again, I don’t speak Spanish, but I had it on the background for the dog I was pet sitting. After the Spanish language panel there was a panel dedicated to Aro-erasure and ace activism. This panel made my little aro heart both very happy and very sad. One of the comments that was highlighted said, “​​I’m often suspicious of fully aspec spaces as an aro person, because of the exclusion I’ve had historically. Any thoughts on how to make the spaces inclusive for folks who’ve been hurt this way?” Something that was pointed was that different countries have different histories regarding activism. The US model can’t be a blueprint because of it’s fairly unique history and it’s current status as an economic and military superpower.

And with that note, it was time to turn the stream over to the US & Canada team.

The next panel was Anti-racism in the Ace community. A lot of great resources were mentioned in the panel including Native Land Digital, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, Ace in Grace and the Ace Flag Revision survey, information about Aspects Committed to Anti-racism (ACAR) including their Gaza Action Document. Ashabi talked about her experience as a Black woman in the ace community and how that experience is subject to intersectionality. The conversation then moved to ace (and queer) representation in media as being primarily white including how that affects biases in generative AI. Panelists shared their recommendations for works by people of color including Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (2021) by Angela Chen, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture (2022) by  Sherronda J. Brown, and Ending the Pursuit: Asexuality, Aromanticism and Agender Identity (2024) by Michael Paramo. Michael Paramo is also the editor of the AZEjournal, a literary publication dedicated to highlighting diversity withing aspec spaces, and one of the panelists, Justin, has two articles in the AZEjournal if someone wants a more digestible read to start off with. Although not ace specific, Justin recommended Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner as a necessary read. Panelist Yilin recommended Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin, a fantasy novel that features a demisexual character. Yilin also recommended “A Hundred Different Ways of Being in Love”: Emma, Queer Austen, and Asexuality Studies co-authored by Lillian Lu featured in Vol 36 of Eighteenth-century Fiction journal.

Yilin is also a writer and translator herself which is a nice segue into the next panel Translating Chinese poetry and literature as an aro-ace. Yilin’s own book, The Lantern and the Night Moths, came out this past week. I had already ordered my copy, but after watching Justin and Yilin talk about her work and the book I am now even more excited and I can’t wait for my copy to arrive. It was a fantastic discussion I recommend checking it out.

The last panel of the night was Split Attraction and the complexities of being an Orientated ace with Justin and Jenna. It wasn’t really any new information for me, I’ve written posts about split and divergent attraction in the past, but it aways makes me happy to see people having having a nuanced discussion about the weird, wonderful, and the queer bits of asexuality and aromanticism. I discovered tumblr when I was 25 and I was there when a bunch of young people were like, “let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”. I was all for it then and I love it now. People are weird and people are complicated and I want the ace community to be a place where that truth is acknowledged and celebrated.

Overall I think the IAD teams did a fantastic job. A 24hr stream is a massive beast of a project and from what I saw it was executed masterfully with minimal technology issues, nothing beyond what you would expect from such an ambitious project. The stream provided an opportunity for aces orgs to see their counterparts across the globe in action. I was also very excited to be able to put some faces to the twitter handles. I’ve included a lot of links in this post, please take the time to check them out and support the global aspec community.

It’s Been Nine Years Since I Discovered I was Asexual

For some brief context, in 2012 I bought a book titled “How to Make Money Blogging: How I Replaced My Day-Job and How You Can Start a Blog Today” and it’s one of the many ebooks that’s just collecting whatever the digital equivalent of dust is in my digital library. The only thing I remember from the book is the tip that if you run out of ideas you can always revisit old posts and I am finally at the point where I’m comfortable looking back at my earliest posts from a charitable and reflective position. I started a blog about a year after figuring out I was asexual because I also had to figure out that I was also aromantic and agender. I keep promising myself that I’ll write more for my blog and I don’t think that’s going to happen (maybe I’ll make my New Year’s Resolution 4 meaty/meaningful posts in the next year as a SMART goal). I also don’t want to wait for the tenth year to do a serious reflection.

DECEMBER 17, 2015: “I Should Have Known I was Asexual/Aromantic Sooner”, feels a lot like a “Hello World” post. The title is a little misleading; I should have said “I Wish I Had Known I was Asexual/Aromantic Sooner”. I also really hope that my writing skills have improved significantly. There are a couple references that were mentioned and not linked so significant context is missing. However, I think I remember the inspiration for the blog post from an emotional standpoint and that’s the more interesting story that I should have told at that time. I was on my way to class (I had some education award left over so I spent it on a couple community college classes) and a song came on the radio. I don’t remember the title and don’t remember enough of the lyrics to look it up, but the message of the song was the singer was telling the listener to basically leave their man if they didn’t love them passionately enough and having just recently figured out I was aromantic at the time I found the experience of listening to the song very unnerving and hurtful.

DECEMBER 17, 2015: “Coming Out” is basically the story of coming out to my parents. It didn’t go as well as I had hoped and I still haven’t come out to a lot of other people since then. My brother and (now) sister-in-law have asked since then and when they did I didn’t say I was asexual and instead I more or less dodged the question by saying “dating is not my thing/priority right now”. A significant difference between when I wrote the post and now is I do have elevator speeches ready that aren’t asexuality and aromanticism 101. My brother is also very anti-label so discussing sexuality and orientation with him is a workout. The main sticking point that people are probably more interested in is that I am a life-long-single person. The “dying alone” stereotype is something that I’ll occasionally see aces and aros sort of overcorrect on which can be alienating because while singleness is very much an agentic choice for me, most people would rather not be single and will intentionally or not stigmatize being single as inherently bad instead of accepting it as just another stage in the relationship process. Bella DePaulo has several articles and books on the subject, but in all honesty I’ve only ever saw one lecture where she says that how happy you are when you’re single is the best indicator of how happy you’ll be in a relationship once the “honeymoon phase” is over. I found that point exceptionally validating. So, while I LOVE all the weird nuances of asexuality and aromantism and I love talking shop with other aces and aros I don’t plan on coming out to anyone anytime soon.

DECEMBER 19, 2015: “You’re so Weird” was basically me saying “I’m not actually weird” and I must now debunk that claim because since I turned 30 I basically went straight into my “retired grandma energy” era because I like tea, fiber arts, I just acquired a small collection of books on English witchcraft from a historical perspective that I read in between my small collection of Chinese novels that I read between the various on-going series I’m reading, and none of my college degrees have gotten me out of working retail yet. I also take tai chi classes and collect practice weapons. I’m also reading up on constructed alphabets because I watched a YouTube video on the Shavian alphabet and my dyslexia said “fuck that noise” so I’m going to try and construct my own alphabet for journaling and notetaking. The future descendants that have to deal with my personal effects when I die are going to be so confused. I can’t promise I’ll be historically relevant enough by that point, but maybe some of my stuff will have some archival value.

DECEMBER 30, 2015: “The Third Option” talks about being agender and there’s not a whole lot of growth in this area because I still struggle to find the language to describe my gender experience. Fortunately Canton Winer has coined a term for me and that is “gender detached” which I consider more accurate than my previous “none of the above”. I have not made many nonparasocial connections to the trans and nonbinary communities and I think that my gender detachment is informing that. The concept of gender itself feels very pervasive and burdensome so it makes sense that I wouldn’t be drawn to communities were gender experience is the focus. However, gender detachment might be surprisingly prevalent in the ace and aro communities so that’s probably why I’m more comfortable with my orientations being the anchoring point for community membership.

JANUARY 12, 2016: “Not Perfect”. I actually really like this post. Kudos to past me. The writing has significantly improved compare to my first couple of posts. I don’t remember if this was when I discovered the fine art of proof reading. A couple of changes between then and me now: 1) I no longer consider myself Buddhist, but I also don’t label myself as “Pegan” because the belief system I’m currently studying is, I think, best described as traditional folk practice rather than a “religion” or “spirituality”. 2) Thanks to some deprogramming I realize that my original point of people needing more things than they can give is most likely incorrect and very capitalistic. I’m not going to do a deep dive on that in this moment. I love that I put in writing “I’ve accepted that I will never be perfect. I’ve accepted that while I think other people-” I don’t specify who, but it was probably work or school related -“expect me to be perfect or even normal, I’m not going to be. And I’ve accepted that’s not my fault”. I do think it’s important to be charitable to one’s self. Backtracking to the folk practice thing, I don’t have a shrine or altar dedicated to a deity or anything, instead I have two thought bubbles hanging above my sleep space that say, “Seeing Clearly, Living Ethically, Daily Practice” and “What comes after helping yourself?” This intentional display is the best representation of what I’m aspiring to or trying to manifest or what have you.

I’m going to end the post there because while I’m really glad that I took the time to do some reflection, my craft project list has also become way beyond reasonable so I want to get as much done about that as possible before my class starts again. I’m going to be doing a craft speed run and get as much of my stash used up and made into actual cozy things. I’m in the middle of several quilt tops, several quilt sandwiches, a shawl, two hoody-scarfs, a quilted jacket, a wall hanging, and an embroidery sampler. Writing up a thoughtful blog post takes me at least an hour and I would really rather spend that time making cozy things, sipping on tea, and listening to video essays and podcasts. I would for sure make more blog posts if I could type and sew at the same time.

I never really had a targeted audience in mind when I started my blog. It’s just that I stumbled upon a blog post one day nine years ago and it made a difference for me on a personal level. My Fae/faer rant post is still my most viewed post, but I don’t actually know what people are getting out of it. It was really just a chance for me to do a resource dump and complain about my least favorite fantasy genre trope.

The Split Attraction Model has a PR Problem

[UPDATE: 5/19/20: Coyote was kind enough to make a brief history summary of the term “split attraction model” and I highly recommend taking a look at the post series specifically this post and this post. My post will remain in its original form (with the exception of grammar corrections and update notes) but my opinions will likely change as I encounter new and updated information.]
See: Apology Statement

Something I didn’t know until recently is the split attraction model (or SAM) has a bit of a PR problem. If you type “split attraction model” into the search bar on Twitter, here’s what comes up. Yikes.

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Aromantic Awareness Week: The “You’ll Be Alone Forever” Myth

SInce I’ve turned 30 years old I’ve started to out right chuckle at the “you’ll be alone forever” myth (and yes it is a myth) directed at asexuals and aromantics. I know aces can kind of brush it off because sex and romance are two very different relationship sauces, but aros have to put more effort into pointing out some of the fallacies behind the “alone forever” mentality.

First of all, half of all marriages end in divorce. That number is a little skewed because that includes all marriages, meaning repeat offenders who get married and then divorced and then get married again. The statistics for first time marriages are a little better and those who wait and get married later in life report being happier in their marriages than folks for got married in their late teens and early 20s. You can look up the most studies on your own time, but when I looked all this up back before realizing it didn’t matter because I’m aromantic, that’s the gist I got out of the available articles at the time.

The thing most people don’t like to think about is “forever” is a long ass time. I’ve noticed most young people don’t realize that there’s life after 30, so the fact that there’s life after 65 must blow their feaking minds. If you think about it, if you retire at 65 but live to be 85+, that’s 20 freaking years of living without income. I hope you nabbed a good retirement package because that’s 20+ years of additional medical expenses that you have to account for also because you won’t be a spring chicken. Then at the very end, there’s Assisted Living you need to account for because you and your hypothetical spouse won’t be able to take care of eachother anymore. Then at the very, very end there’s hospice care because nobody actually lives forever. So the whole “alone forever” thing is heteronormative BS at its finest.

There is never going to be one single relationship that’s going to carry you every step of the way through life. Sure, we love it when lovely dovey couples are like, “oh, my wife/husband is my rock. I couldn’t do it without them.” But we live in reality and reality is messy and doesn’t like to be tied up in a pretty bow. That’s like the winner of American Idol saying “See? Dreams really do come true if you believe in yourself!” like you didn’t watch the first five episodes where millions of people got turned down. All those people did follow their dreams and they did believe in themselves and it still didn’t work out because of luck, fate, or whatever. The same thing happens with romance. We are so focused on the “success” stories that we overlook that for most people, even straight people, it doesn’t work out and it’s really mean spirited to everyone to keep pushing the myth that you’ll be forever alone and that is a bad thing.

So, for everyone else who’s realized they aren’t the star of their own romantic comedy here’s what you do:

1) Start saving up for retirement. I’m not kidding. You do not want to be homeless or cleaning toilets in your 70s. Throw some spare change in a pickle jar, stuff some dollar bills under your mattress, do whatever you need to do to put some money aside and then start looking at retirement savings plans because inflation is a thing and you want your savings to keep up. That way you can save up for a nice retirement home with cute nurses, good food, and lots of new friends with cool life stories. Don’t rush to old age, but don’t dred it either.

2) Get a new hobby. Pick something you like that takes YEARS to master and then find some local clubs or meetups based on that hobby. Rinse, lather repeat. You can have multiple hobbies and that gives you more opportunity to make tons of new friends who share a common interest with you.

3) Realize that who you are now is not who you’ll be forever. If you’re the kind of person who is constantly trying to improve as a person and stiving to be a decent human being you’ll continue to grow and change for the better. I don’t even like who I was ten years ago, I am not the same person I was ten years ago. I want my circle of friends to reflect who I am now, not the person I was 10 years ago. Because of that I’m actually super grateful that I’m aromantic because I don’t have to worry about a significant being resentful that I’ve changed or that my priorities have changed nor do I have to worry about maintaining a relationship with someone who more than likely has also changed as a person. It honestly gives me a headache just thinking about it.

Those are the kinds of things people don’t like to think about when they say, “You’ll be alone forever”. They’re not actually thinking about what “forever” really means. So what if you don’t have somebody to buy you flowers, give you a massage, forget your anniversary, and all that long term relationship crap.

Instead of investing in a relationship, I’ve invested in making myself the kind of person I’m happy to live with long term. I’m not lonely. I have my job that is both really challenging and rewardingin its own way. I have my hobbies. I have my cat. I’m happy and I don’t need another person coming in and messing that up for me just so I’m not “alone”.

Carnival of Aros: Religion? What Religion?

Phew~ I feel like I’m barely squeaking by with this post just before the deadline. Hi again everyone, this is my submission for the Carnival of Aros for May 2019 hosted this month by aroacepagans on the topic of “The Intersection of Religion and Aromanticism”. Unfortunately this is a rather complicated topic for me so I’m first going to have to dump a bunch of backstory exposition on you followed by a long historical tangent. History isn’t pretty folks.

Religion is complicated in my family as we don’t really put labels to what we are exactly or even agree on what we believe. My parents tried to do the Christian thing when I was younger, but it didn’t work out because the greatest sin in my family is ignorance. Both of my parents are the first in their families to go to college and especially in the age of internet with most “common” knowledge just a Google search away, they don’t tolerate ignorance nor denial of facts. The example my dad gives between “facts” and “truths” is it’s true that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. It probably did so this morning even if most of us (myself included) didn’t witness it. The fact, however, is that the sun doesn’t “rise” or “set” at all, it’s the Earth rotating on its axis. So, long story short, my parents stopped going to church because the pastors kept getting the facts wrong. There was one particular pastor who was “talking” about Islam (yup, they were Muslim bashing back in the early 90s too) and he said that Muslims believed that the “Earth rode on the backs of four elephants”. I can just picture a double face palm from my parents at that slip up of common sense. After that incident my parents were like “Screw this. We’re not exposing our children to this bullshit.” and we never went to Church as a family again. Several years later when me and my siblings were old enough to understand the basics my parents spent the entire summer break teaching us about all the religions from Amish to Zoroastrianism and basically said, “There, pick one.”

To make things even more complicated my dad is ethnically Jewish and his younger brother is a gun-toting Republican Jew from Iowa, but my dad was raised Lutheran because half of the family converted to Lutheranism after WWII (and that is a looooong story that I’m not going to get into here). My dad is constantly arguing with his brother and his cousin, a Lutheran minister, on Facebook about climate change. My dad’s cousin made the mistake of saying, “There are hundreds of scientists who say climate change is a hoax!” to which my dad replied, “Oh, yeah? Name ten.” and that’s why they haven’t been on speaking terms since last Christmas. My mom was raised Irish Catholic, went to a Catholic high school and that’s why she’s definitely not a Catholic. No one in my immediate family belongs to an organized religion so the short answer would be that we’re “non-religious”…

…depending on your definition of “religion”.

The word “religion” is a very western and a relatively new idea. The word religion comes from the Latin religio meaning “reverence to the gods” (compared to superstition which comes from the Latin superstitio, meaning “soothsaying, prophecy, or fear of the supernatural”). Citizens of ancient Greece and Rome were required by law to have reverence for the local patron gods or goddesses and blasphemy was a serious crime punishable by death (yikes!). Modern scholars have a difficult time trying to pin down a definition for religion that isn’t too constraining nor too loose.

Obviously you have the big three western religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (and, yes, a lot scholars to consider Islam a western religion because of the HUGE impact it has had on western history and culture), but is Hinduism one religion or several different religions arbitrarily grouped together by western scholars? What about Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism; are they religions or philosophies? Where do you draw the line between philosophy and religion? How does it affect a person’s socio-political standing if they’re philosophical and/or spiritual but not religious in a very religion biased society? Are New Age religions legitimate practitioners or is it cultural appropriation? Mom and dad said, “pick one”, but holy jeepers it’s much more complicated than that.  This is not an easy topic for me to tackle and that’s even BEFORE I throw in the aromantic aspect.

It’s a sad fact of life that a lot of major religions are not LGBTQIA+ friendly and those that are might not take converts and even then converting to a religion is a major decision that you cannot take lightly. Okay, then instead of converting to an existing religion how about just creating your own? It’s a nice idea, but then you have to consider how it’s going to be organized, how you’re going to deal with the legal matters, how you’re going to handle internal disputes, and how you’re going to get the general public to take you seriously. Politics and religion have been bed fellows for a long, long time. It’s only thanks to a quirk of fate and a Roman emperor that there’s a bunch of Christians even running around quoting the Bible right now because all y’all were like two inches from being Manichaens.

Cue long historical context tangent: Manichaenism is a weird blend of Eastern and Western religions; It’s something like a lot of Zoroastrianism with a little bit Buddhism and Taoism sprinkled in. At its peak Manichaenism was the most wide spread religion of its day with churches spreading as far East as China and as far West as Britain. I was learning about Manichaenism for a class and how it heavily influenced some later Christian big names like Augustine of Hippo and it’s where we get the idea that Good and Evil are locked in this eternal struggle and you don’t even think about it because that’s such an established literary trope you still see it today in pretty much every single epic movie pushed out of Hollywood. Can you even imagine being there back in the day when that idea was something new? Some dude was like, “Yo, bro, what if, like, there’s this great power that’s just, like, all Good with a capital G, ya know? But, like, the reason people do bad shit is because on the flip side there’s this Evil force that is the reason for hate and ignorance and people are made of the bad stuff, but everybody has a spark of good in them, you know? And the way to live right is you gotta feed that spark of good inside until it becomes a flame, a flame of knowledge, and you gotta keep feeding the flame so it never goes out because if you let the flame inside of you go out then the darkness wins. You feel me?” Yup, I’m definitely sure that’s exactly how that conversation went down. 

Anywho, as I was learning about Manichaeism for class I kept thinking, “This sounds really cool. Why have I never heard about this before? Where do I sign up?” Well, turns out you can’t sign up because the entire religion is extinct, as in gone the way of the dodo, it is a looong time gone. A long time ago there was a Roman emperor named Theodosius I who was apparently kind of a big deal and he issued a decree of death for all Manichaen monks (hooo boy, that definitely escalated quickly) and declared Christianity to be the only legitimate religion for the Roman Empire. Waaaaay to be a buzz kill, Theodosius. All the Manichaen texts were destroyed, all of its religious leaders were killed in the name of Rome and Rome’s Christianity, and everything we know about it today comes from teeny tiny surviving fragments that just barely manged to survive in extremely isolated regions in China. That’s why nobody’s ever heard of Mani and his kickass religion even though it pretty much popularized everybody’s favorite epic fantasy trope.

So, now I have a  philosophical dilemma. History paints a dark and gritty story about how, like the empires that honored and celebrated them, great religions rise and fall and change with the politics that can both lionize them or vilify them. Theodosius didn’t put Manichaens to death because God said so, he did it for his own political gain. The US founding fathers didn’t say separate Church and State to protect the people, it was to protect the Church from political corruption. (Yeah, I know, joke’s on us.) So, just like my parents, I’ve got a problem. I have all these religious types telling me that they know this “great truth” and that they’re my “only shot at getting in to heaven” and “fuck those other guys because they don’t tell it like we tell it” and all I hear is these folks basically telling me over and over that tomorrow the sun is going to rise in the East and set in the West like it’s some great cosmic mystery…

But, like, dude, that’s just how the world turns. I don’t know how to reconcile being religious if it means ignoring the facts. I have tried for a loooong time, but I just can’t find a religion that calls to me, that that lets me believe in a higher power, be part of a bigger community, find a higher purpose, and be my aromantic, gender-queer, wisdom-loving self. Maybe, there was a religion like that once a long, long time ago, but then it got wiped out by political pressures bigger and meaner than it was. *shugs* History says it’s possible.

And I’m going to end the post there because that last bit is an existential crisis that can wait for another day. Hopefully this didn’t come off too much like religious-bashing because that was definitely not my intention and I just wanted to throw out some burning questions that I’ve run into trying to figure out what place religion has in my life and a lot of these are questions that I still don’t have answers for: Is it okay for me to believe and pray to a random deity that isn’t part of my culture and upbringing or is doing that disrespectful to the people who codified the deity and made it a pillar of their religious identity? Is it okay to mix and match religions like cocktails or is that just my white privilege/colonialism talking? How much of religion belongs to the private individual and how much belongs to the cultural group? Why is all this so complicated?!!! 

aaaaaand on top of all that I’m still 100% aromantic and I need to reconcile how that’s going to fit into a religious identity because right now there’s like zero intersection because I haven’t exactly “picked one” yet.

Thanks mom and dad. -__-

Carnival of Aros March 2019: It’s Great to be Aro!

This is my submission for the Carnival of Aros for March 2019 hosted this month by Aromanticism on the topic of “It’s Great to be Aro!” For more information about the Carnival of Aros or to volunteer to become a future host please check out https://carnivalofaros.wordpress.com/

I probably can’t stress this enough, but I actually love, love being aromantic. The first time I took myself to a movie was after my dad and brother went seen The Martian (2015) without me even after I had told them repeatedly that I wanted to see it too. I decided to go by myself to the movie theater two blocks down from where I worked. I was still in my work uniform and it felt awkward saying “one ticket” at the counter, but I got through it and had the brilliant insight to buy a cup of coffee instead of popcorn and soda. With a warm cup of coffee in my hand and an entire row to myself I had the best movie experience of my life. Now if I want to see a movie I’ll pick a day in the middle of the week when it’s not busy and buy a cup of coffee instead of movie snacks.

I won’t deny that humans are social creatures by nature, but some of my best moments when I feel the most like myself are when I’m alone doing my own thing. When I’m hanging out with other people the need to fit-in and avoid social faux-pas kind of sucks the fun out of it. It’s much easier to dance like no one is watching when you know for a fact that nobody is actually watching. I feel like I’m constantly flirting the line between being my best self and a crazy loner and some days are easier keep that healthy balance than others. I definitely felt some minor angst when I first realized I was aromantic years ago and realized that wouldn’t get that classic Hollywood ending promised in almost every movie ever, but I did eventually learn to accepted it as my normal and I’ve been focusing on celebrating my singularity rather than worrying about my nonexistent relationships.

It’s kind of like…well, for example, a lot, and I mean a LOT, of folks at my work play Magic the Gathering. One of my coworkers even offered to give me $50 to build a starter deck, but Magic is seriously not my thing. Sure, I feel left out when they talk about planning game days and I see a bunch of them leave together with chips and soda under each arm. It’s frustrating to hear all the talk about trading cards or meeting up to open new packs and I can’t join in, but Magic just isn’t my thing. It’s an expensive hobby that I have zero interest in. You can pitch it to me anyway you like, but I don’t do trading card games. I will play Liverpool rummy any day of the week. Hearts? I’m down. Spades? Sure thing. BS, Slap Jack, Black Jack? You bet ‘cha. Hell, I’ll even play Crazy 8’s in a pinch, but Magic the gathering is just. not. my. thing. and I’m not going to force myself to play a game that I know I don’t like just so I can fit in. My view on romance is like that almost verbatim. Most folks love to gush about mushy stuff and I’m like, “….uhhhh what about all these other awesome stuff that isn’t, ya know, romantic?”

I don’t get crushes on people. I get “let’s-quit-this-dead-end-job-and-run-away-to-become-space-pirates”es on people which is sooo much cooler in my opinion. I haven’t quite figured out how to explain to people that I don’t want to “date” them so much as just slay a few dragons at the ol’ 9-5 together before they go home to the wife and I go home to my cat. I want to belong to something magical, epic, heroic, that doesn’t have the executive meddlers saying “Hmmm, this needs an unnecessary love triangle and more romantic tension to boost ratings.” As an aromantic I have all these wonderful, unique and different feelings that nobody talks about that I think are worth exploring and celebrating in media and in everyday conversations.

Aromanticism is the most dominant of my identity labels. Most of the time I don’t even think about being asexual or agender, but hoo boy, my aromanticism is cranked up to 100 all day everyday. That might have something to do with how pervasive romance is in western culture, but that doesn’t change that my aromanticness has the most impact on my way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. I’ve literally never dated. I’ve never pursued any possible romantic ties and I’m uncomfortable when people try to ask me out. I’m also get very defensive when people even joke about me dating. One of my coworkers was poking fun at me because someone had asked me out and they were like, “I’m going tell him you changed your mind. You would look so cute together.” and I got super defensive and reminded him that it takes something like six weeks for knee caps to heal. The reason I was so defensive is because I felt like my identity was being targeted. It’s like telling a gay guy, “Oh, you should totally go out with this girl, you’d make a cute couple.” and that’s super not okay and very hurtful, but for some inexplicable reason it’s soooo hard for people to understand that.

Jerk-ass coworkers aside, I really do love being aro because I wouldn’t be myself if I wasn’t. I’ve worked really hard to become comfortable with who I am and what it means to be “me”. I think Liverpool rummy is more fun than Magic the Gathering. My ideal “date” is when I take myself to coffee and a movie. I think there are other feelings and relationships besides romantic relationships that are worth celebrating and talking about. I treasure the journey of growth and self discovery it took to get me to this point in my life where I can appreciate and celebrate being a single person. So, I didn’t get to slay any dragons with anybody today and people still don’t understand that a life without romance is just as fulfilling and rewarding, if not even more so, as one where romance is the central focus, but that’s not going to stop me from celebrating being aro.

Thinking About Being Aro and Ace while being “older”

This was actually supposed to be my CoA post for last month, but I didn’t manage to finish it on time or do any additional writing because I sorta went into a funk and haven’t done anything productive since Valentine’s Day. Coincidence? probably not. And I missed out on Aro Awarenes week too. Anywho, I’m still going to post what I wrote since it’s still very relevant to my blog.

Because of where I live my participation in the Aro and Ace communities is primarily online and the majority of my participation is now dedicated to the WordPress blogs. Previously I did participate in chat groups for both aros and aces, but I ran into a slight problem; my age. The majority of the chat groups I could find were dominated by younger folks who were still in the “I’m still figuring out what I am”, “My parents don’t understand”, “My friends don’t understand” phase of settling into their orientation and that’s not what I needed emotionally from my “community”. There also wasn’t much I could contribute to a younger audience either because the truth is…age matters.

Being an adult doesn’t solve all your problems, but it certainly gives you more options on how you deal with problems and there’s a sense of liberation that comes with that. If I’m having a bad day I can be like “Screw it, I’m treating myself and going to Panera!” or use up my emergency giftcard stash and treat myself. I spent two hours browsing in a used bookstore yesterday just because I could. As long as the rent’s on time, I show up to work on time, and text my mom back- I can pretty much do what I want without worrying about being judged for it. How am I supposed to explain to a teenager, who actually does need to worry about what their friends and family think about them for survival reasons, that it really does get better, but it takes a little while to get there?

My parents still don’t understand that I’m aro-ace, but I’m 30 years old so I care far, far less about my parents’ approval and I’m much more concerned about making the rent each month. It’s tax-return season baby! I need to pay off some bills! Instead of the chocolate milk and cookies I ate as a kid, today I ate coffee-milk and cookies on my break like the functioning adult that I am and I had zero regrets, so I would say mastering adulthood is mostly about figuring out priorities.

Speaking of the priorities, I’ve lost touch with literally all of my high school friends because my core values are different now compared to what they were when I was 18, 21, heck even 25. I feel like I’ve gone through more transformations in the last five years than I did all through high school. When I was 25 I literally thought, “Oh, great. This is it. This is who I am.” and I was wrong. I still had room to learn and grow. Figuring out I was asexual and aromantic was just a step in that process, not the process itself. I struggled with connecting with folks in the chat groups because I needed insight into that next step after accepting that being aromantic and asexual was my normal. I feel like following the WordPress community gave me the “support” I needed because the bloggers here were like me, a little older, a little more settled and figuring out the next steps in growing up that nobody wants to talk about because there’s the misconception that there’s no life after 30.

The feeling of isolation I felt in the chats unfortunate does carry over into the real world because for some reason being single is considered weird. When meeting somebody new at work or in a social setting one of the very first questions I get asked is about my “other half”, am I seeing anyone, talking to anyone, crushing one anyone, and so on because apparently being single is like being “between jobs at the moment”. One time my supervisor said in frustration that you can’t get anywhere in life unless you’re married. If that’s true, it definitely shouldn’t be and that’s something worth advocating because that type social standard is preventing me from being able to just “hang out” with people without being weird about it because apparently “hang out” has romantic connotations now, ugh.

Would coming out as aromantic-asexual help? The short answer is “no” because people still ask me out despite knowing I’m asexual because they either don’t know what that entails exactly or they have this other asexual friend who “uses dating apps all the time”. I dread giving asexuality 101 with every fiber of my being, but I absolutely will not give aromanticism 101 because for some inexplicable reason, ain’t nobody can wrap their head around the fact that I. don’t. date. Romance is not my thing.

Another thing that was very isolating in the ace and aro group chats was all the talk about relationships and dating. This happened in both the ace and aro chats. One particularly memorable example was a lithromantic was talking about their girlfriend and I remember thinking, “I’m in an aro chat. Why are we talking about girlfriends and wanting relationships?” One of the hardest things I’ve had to overcome emotionally is facing the reality that there isn’t “someone” and there very likely will never be “someone out there for me”. It doesn’t matter how many cutesy QPP stories I read, the truth is that I struggle with forming and maintaining relationships. All the optimism in the world isn’t going to fix that, but cracking down and dealing with that reality has been hugely beneficial.

So, what would it actually mean for me to be a life-long single person? Actually, once I put it into words it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. It’s not a case that I’ll be “forever alone” or “unloved”. It’s a case of what does it mean to be single? Well, for starters, I’m not the only one. There’s actually a lot of people in the world who are single. Are they happy? Well, that depends.

I watched a video presentation by a researcher who was looking at levels of happiness at the different stages of relationships. Long story short, there definitely was a “honeymoon period” where happiness levels spiked in a relationship, but then the reported happiness leveled out to what they were while the individuals were single. The only major change was for people who later broke up; their happiness levels dropped after the honeymoon period to below their reported levels from when the persons were single. Once the honeymoon period wore off they were actually worse off than when they were single, yikes! So, being in a relationship doesn’t actually make you any happier on average than being single does and there are obvious pros and cons to both, but most of it’s worth remembering that a relationship is not a magic fix-it-all.

Knowing that being in a relationship wouldn’t actually make me happier helps, because in all honesty if being in a relationship was important to me I would have found a way by now. I’ve literally never dated so it obviously was never a priority or I would have found some way, any way to make dates happen. If I can justify dunking cookies in coffee-milk in public and still loudly claim to be an adult to my supervisor’s face during such activity, I’m fully capable asking somebody out to an awkward party of two in public, but that second one isn’t going to happen. I’m pretty convinced that attempting any sort of non-platonic relationship would just be a miserable experience for me and be disappointing to my potential partner.

That last bit only sounds depressing because relationships are considered the gold standard of normal. Dunking sugar cookies in coffee-flavored milk might not be “normal”, but it’s seriously the best thing to ever happen to me. So, if both the aro and ace communities could not only celebrate relationships in all their many forms, but shine a little light on how great and normal it is to not be in a relationship too, that would be pretty awesome too. There’s a long healthy single life for this aro-ace after 30 and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Soooo, can we make Single’s Awareness Day an actual thing where we celebrate how healthy and normal it is to be single instead of just a thing people say on Valentine’s day when they don’t have a date? Please? Pretty please? It could be on Feb 15th that way we can chow down on all the left over chocolates.

I Read the Texas GOP Political Platform (and I am Terrified)

Fun Fact! The individual parts of the GOP political platform are called “planks”. Haha! Cute, right? And, yup, that is all the fun we’re going to be having this evening. Because oh, my fucking God, I’m probably going to need to breath into a paper bag just to get through this. Fuck, um, read at your own discretion. And, no, I’m not just being dramatic.

Carnival of Aces May 2018: “Filling In the Blanks”

This is my Carnival of Aces submission for May 2018 hosted this month by Prismatic Entanglements under the topic of “Nuance and Complexity“. For more in formation about the CoA, to see past topics, or to volunteer to be a future host see the master post on The Asexual Agenda

“figuring out you’re asexual is like trying to find a nonexistent needle in a very large haystack except people keep trying to convince you that you’re just not looking hard enough or you’ll find the right needle eventually but the needle just isn’t there and yet everyone else’s is and then you wonder whether or not you actually have a needle and then you spot something that might be a needle but nope it’s just another hay strand and everything is confusing and now the haystack is on fire”
Source: simplydaisys

One thing I don’t like about identifying as asexual (and aromantic and agender) is I feel like my identity is defined by blank space. Other identities can say things like, “I like girls and I’m mostly a girl, so I’m lesbian” or “I’m pan, I like who I like regardless of gender.” My explanations feel like a fill-in-the-blank question on a test you didn’t study for. I am who I am based on attractions that aren’t there and more often than not that’s met with skepticism or lack of comprehension.

Rats (Again).

The drama with the guy at my work is continuing to unfold.  I texted him back clarifying that what I meant by “formal” response was I wanted to give a polite answer in person and outside my department. The only time I see him (outside of the total three times I’ve hung out at his place for game nights with other coworkers) is at work. While I’m working. For me it’s strictly a manners thing. I didn’t want to say “No, because I’m not straight like you obviously think I am” over a text message.

So, in response he texts me saying “okay, will tomorrow work?” and uh, no, because “tomorrow” was Easter Sunday and I had family stuff to do. Common sense?

Also, because of this whole thing I’m no longer comfortable being alone with him. It’s not that I think he’ll do anything, I’m just no longer comfortable because I feel cornered. I realized that I can’t “be polite” about it anymore because that’s leading to some very serious miscommunication.