I Told My Boyfriend I Was Demisexual So I Had To Expalin To Him That Demisexual Is The Kind Of People

Asexual Awareness Week: Day 2

[ IMAGE: A 9x9 aesthetic layout; the images are as follows, top to bottom, left to right: A Moon on a dark blue background, A hand dropping stars, A silhouette against the sky with drawings of planets and stars, A purple nebula, A drawn silhouette filled with space with “You only know a part of me. I am a universe of secrets.” above it, A purple Moon as it moves across the sky above a city, A star looking into a telescope that bends in a circle with the words “Discover Yourself” in the middle, A crescent moon on purple clouds, Black and white picture of two hands (palms up) covered in glitter that looks like stars.]

Want to Talk About Ace Community? - Undergraduate Research Study

Hello! My name is Laura, and I’m studying asexual identity and online community for my bachelor’s essay. Tumblr played a huge role in developing my asexual identity, so I am curious about others’ experiences. I am looking for participants who are 18 years or older and identify anywhere on the ace spectrum to interview about the role online community has or has not played in asexual identity development and expression.

I am a student at the College of Charleston undertaking a research study for my bachelor’s essay on asexual identity and online community. The purpose of the study is to promote a more nuanced understanding of asexual identity by exploring the significance of online community in the lives of asexual individuals.

This study will combine qualitative research and journalism, resulting in a final paper that will be accessible to readers outside of academia. I hope that this approach will help raise awareness and increase understanding of asexuality.

I will conduct one-on-one interviews with participants, which will last at least 30 minutes and cover topics related to asexual identity and social network activity.

For more information, please contact me @flyingtothesea or cergoll@g.cofc.edu. 

This research study has been approved by College of Charleston Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Research Participants. Approval code: GLFL-10-11-2016

carletoncolton - GPOY 4: Ten Years' Difference

another important thing about solidarity within queer communities is that so many of us will identify with different labels (especially when we are young/still figuring out that we aren’t straight & cis to begin with) before figuring out how we identify longterm. E.g. gay people who start out identifying as bi, trans men who initially identify as butch lesbians, asexuals who at first identify as bisexual (because hey, that’s technically being equally attracted to multiple genders), and so on. In fact, most queer people, at one time or another, identified as cishet. So we of all people should be aware that figuring out our identities takes time, and is a winding path. 

And this is why solidarity in our communities is so important. And why gatekeeping is so dangerous. Because not only is each part of our community a longterm home, sanctuary, and support system for people of a certain identity, we also provide a path and an unofficial Welcoming Committee to new members of the wider LGBTQA+ community (especially young queer people, for whom a supportive welcoming is so important). And in turn, many of the people who find their way to us will be coming from a different part of the rainbow path. This is also why bigotry is so so damaging when it comes from within our communities, and why we each of us have a responsibility to examine our prejudices and acknowledge that being queer doesn’t automatically give us a pass–we are just as capable of bigotry as anyone on the outside, and in a unique position to do harm from within. Fight transphobia, fight aphobia, fight biphobia, fight racism and ableism and discrimination wherever you see it in our communities. And more than that, celebrate ALL the colors on our flags, and all of the diverse communities they represent. Solidarity makes us so much more powerful, as a community and as individuals. So I’d like to start by saying:

Welcome, everyone. It’s good to have you here.

This morning I passed 5000 followers so here’s a little THANK YOU!!! There will be 3 winners:

First & Second Prize is a small custom-decorated moleskine notebook for sketching and/or writing, along with all the stickers shown above.

Third Prize is all the stickers above only.

You can reblog as many times you want. Like count as well! You should be following me, since this is a thank you to my followers =) Winners will be chosen with a random number generator.

Giveaway closes on midnight December 25th EST Time!!

THANK YOU!

(p.s. I might throw in a few more stickers, I’m trying to decide which ones would work hehe.)

Dear LGBT community members who don’t think asexuality should be allowed “in”:

I’m biologically female, and I’m not attracted to men. Society told me I was supposed to be, but it never happened, and I spent years of my life feeling broken and wrong. The other option presented to me when I was young was being attracted to women. I watched girls closely, trying to figure it out, but that wasn’t working for me, either. Wanting to be sexually close to another person just baffled me. I swore everyone else was making those feelings up. But they weren’t, and I got older, I realized that and it sunk in that I was just one big weirdo. I was in college when I learned the word for it, and had a breakdown of panic and relief. I can’t begin to put into words how it felt to discover I wasn’t broken–that I was a part of a group of people who felt in their hearts and souls the way I did.

Then came the process of coming out. My friends were a mixed bag, but friends you can pick and choose from if they aren’t supportive.The vast majority of my friends were cool about it, even if they didn’t quite understand. There were assholes, and one suggested “showing me” I was wrong (creepy creepy creepy), but mostly my friends were neutral to positive.

After some select friends, I came out to my family.

My parents told me I was wrong.

It was like being run over by a truck. To this day, I can’t talk about my asexuality around those I love most. It caused one of the only serious arguments I’ve ever had with my parents (I love them and they’re wonderful about 99.9% of the things in my life, but this is one place they weren’t). I was told I just had to find the “right person”, and I would change. That I was too young to understand my feelings (I was in my 20s) towards boys. That I shouldn’t put labels on myself that would make men not want to date me. Because god forbid men not find me attractive! Because clearly, from my conversation with them, what I wanted most of all was to find a man who wanted to get in my pants! Yeah!

Yeah.

It’s not really their fault. We live in a world where happiness is defined as falling in love, getting married, etc. Not wanting another person in your life as your “other half” is an alien concept. Media is flooded with messages of heterosexual normalcy, and now in very small pockets (hopefully growing, because it should! <3), a homosexual option for partnered normalcy. It’s shoved in our faces CONSTANTLY. Our society and government have even set things up to benefit couples financially. Which is fun now that I’m in my 30s and trying to save up for a future family, all by myself. And thankfully, even though they still avoid the word, over a decade later my parents do seem on board with the fact that I’m not pursuing relationships and are supportive of my life choices to save for a family by myself.

Listen. I am by no means saying that I am oppressed as a person the way people attracted to same-gendered people are. I’m not saying I’m oppressed the way the trans community is. I’m not saying any of that. But I AM dealing with a world where who I am is just not “okay”. Where who I am is wrong, where who I am needs to be fixed. Or, in many cases (most cases), where who I am DOES NOT EXIST. I don’t belong in the heterosexual world. I’m an outsider to it. But I’m also an outsider to any world that involves sex and attraction. And as a youth, I had NO WORD to use to describe who I was!

So when asexuals advocate for asexual inclusion in the LGBT community, it’s not because we want to weirdly steal thunder from anyone in your community, or because we want false pity for oppression we haven’t faced the way you have. It’s because we don’t want others to have to grow up the way we did.

We don’t want the world to continue not knowing about our existence. We want asexuality recognized publicly–both so asexuals can learn about themselves in an honest way, and so non-aces see us as legitimate humans. The LGBT world seemed like the natural place for us to go to to ask for inclusion. The place where others might understand what it’s like to grow up in a heterosexual world, as someone who is not. It’s who I first turned to when I discovered the word for myself, only to find immediate pain, rejection, and even mockery. I was horrified.

But I didn’t give up. I couldn’t give up. In 2005, I was in college and gave a talk at my university’s LGBT club. They had never heard of asexuality before, despite being part of a huge liberal university. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life. I had to introduce the concept, and represent the entire community. And then answer a barrage of questions. Personal, personal questions, about my body, my life experiences, everything. And at the end, there was a long period silence. Until one brave person said:

“Wow. You have gone through the same things as us. You said you had some pamphlets about it? Can we put them in our office? People need to know about this. I can’t imagine growing up not knowing about homosexuality. As scary as it was for me, at least I had a word for it.”

I broke down crying and gave them all the pamphlets I had ordered. Many of them started crying, too. We became a blubbering mess in that meeting room. In that moment, I thought I had found a community who understood after all.

Did I? I suppose that’s up to you. But please, take some of this into consideration before you say that asexuals shouldn’t have a letter in your acronym, or should make their “own, separate” community. We’re unknown and invisible in so many ways, but nevertheless hurting in ways I think many of you can sympathize with and understand. It’s not that we’re attracted to the “wrong” sex or gender. It’s that we’re not attracted to the “right” one. And holy crap, the world just isn’t super friendly or understanding to people like that. Like us.

Thank you.

asexual ravenclaw moodboard ☁

I saw this magazine in a grocery store and I immediately started freaking out. I have no idea what the article is about, because I was leaving checkout and had to rush out of there, but just knowing that asexuals are spotlighted in one that’s carried in stores makes me very happy.

The ‘Asexy’ music video is now out! Well done to Queer Sounds for bringing this song to life, their team of editing monkeys for the great video and to everyone who participated!

How to Understand Asexual People

Asexuality in the world of biological reproduction means that a single organism can produce offspring identical to the parent. But in terms of human sexuality, it simply means a person feels no sexual attraction. The important thing to...

This is the best single article I’ve ever read on asexuality. Brief, down to earth, and still comprehensive and accurate, and it doesn’t leave you with a million unanswered questions. If you ever need a basic go-to article to give your friends, this one is good!