Hey, Just A Heads Up To Everyone Who Follows My Blog: If You See Anybody With An Orange And Black Square

I'll only accept it if you submit your video doing a British accent

Wdym I don't have the right profile

Happy International Asexuality Day!!

💚💜♠️ sending so much love to any tumblr folk who are on the asexual &/or aromantic spectrums like me. ♠️💜💚

♠️What is Asexuality?♠️

An Asexual is a person who rarely or never experiences sexual attraction. They are not drawn to people sexually and do not feel compelled to act on attraction to others in a sexual way. Asexuality does not preclude you from experiencing other types of attraction (including romantic attraction) to people of the same or different gender to yourself, or define whether you want to be in a committed relationship.

💜Why is awareness important? 💜

An absence of attraction is much harder to define than a presence; and lack of awareness means many people have no idea that there are words to describe their experiences or others who feel the same. While the term has been in common use since the 1960s, many people are well over the age of 25 when they first hear the word - especially if they experience romantic attraction to the opposite gender and haven’t had much exposure to the broader LGBTIQAP+ community. When you’re told all of your life that romantic feelings about someone are inextricably linked to sexual attraction it can be confusing when your experiences don’t seem to match. It can also be hard to tell what is hyperbole and what are thoughts that allosexual (the opposite of asexual) people have the intention of doing?

There is are strong social and cultural messages which use the development of sexual thoughts, sexual relationships and having children as markers of age and maturity. It can be difficult to express a lack of sexual desire without being invalidated or challenged by the people around you or your own built in expectation that sex is fundamental to being human. Are you medically or psychologically unwell? Are you repressed? Broken? Prudish? A late bloomer? Will this “all make sense” when I meet “the right person”?

While most identities on the LGBTIQAP+ spectrum are becoming better protected from medicalisation and psychiatric diagnosis - Asexuality has a long way to go.

It is still very common for people who are questioning or on the Asexuality spectrum to be offered medical testing and treatment aimed at curing their Asexuality. Most GPs still routinely recommend blood tests to check hormone levels, assessment for depression or other mental illnesses, recommend counselling or prescribe medication to boost libido.

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♠️Celibacy Vs Asexuality♠️

Celibacy is like being on a diet. You still want to have sex and have sexual thoughts about others but are choosing not to act on them at that time. Whether it’s based on your beliefs or availability of a suitable partner varies but that desire is still present even if intentionally suppressed.

Asexuality is like not experiencing hunger because you’re already eaten enough. You don’t have sexual thoughts about others or feel compelled to act on them.

💜Attraction Vs Libido💜

Libido is typically the amount that you think about sex and how much you want to engage in sexual activities either partnered or solo. Libido is on a spectrum for people of all sexual orientations. They normally range from high to low. Libido can fluctuate and change over the lifespan and it can be influenced by hormone levels as well as some medications.

Attraction is usually whether your libido is directed at a particular person or type of person. Attraction can also be seen as the extent to which you want to act on sexual thoughts about a particular person.

Asexual people can and do experience a range of libidos from high to low. However they do not experience attraction, therefore are less likely to feel compelled to act on it and rarely associate it with a specific person.

♠️Attitudes towards Sex♠️

Asexuality is a wide spectrum, individual wants and needs vary but all are valid and normal.

In broad terms: Some asexuals are sex positive, they may not experience hunger but still get pleasure out of sharing a meal with someone. Some asexuals are ambivalent towards sex, it’s something they can take or leave. Some asexuals are completely or partially repelled by the idea of personally participating in sexual activity with a partner.

Resources:

Asexuality Visability & Education Network (AVEN) www.Asexuality.org

‘Finding Asexuality in the Archives’ by Michael Waters (Article on the history of Asexuality)

‘Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex’ by Angela Chen (Nonfiction book) http://www.angelachen.org/ace.html

The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality by Julie Sondra Decker (Nonfiction Book)

A-Ok Podcast (30-60 min interviews with people on the Asexual &/or Aromantic Spectrums) https://www.aokpod.com

There are a lot of fictional books for adults and teens with asexual characters & if anyone is interested I can provide links 😊

help if you can, money or even just rebbloging!

(I hope you'll be okay, sending you strength, prayers and love)

Urgent Donation Post

Have you ever used this lesbian flag? Want to support the person who designed it? Or just want to spread some holiday cheer to a struggling person? Please keep reading and reblog.

So I've been unemployed for a while now- trust me, I am doing everything in my power to get a job -and am living off unemployment payments. Unfortunately, after rent and paying my phone plan and half of my health insurance, I'm out of money. Thanks, government that thinks people deserve to live under the poverty line for the crime of being unemployed.

Tw suicide mention below

I also suffer mental health issues... I have severe PTSD and deal with psychotic symptoms. I pay for health insurance because it allows me to be hospitalised, and I also pay for meds and psych appointments.

To be honest, I should be in hospital right now. I have episodes, and in my most recent one I tried to kill myself. The public system didn't admit me because by the time I was at the hospital I had calmed down, and because my friends had prevented me from doing any harm to myself. They just let me go home.

So my only choice is private hospital. The gap after insurance is $500. I don't even have enough money to buy groceries, and my family won't help because they basically disowned me for being gay.

I need this hospitalisation, desperately. It has helped me before when I am at my worst. It stabilises me and helps me regain my mental strength. My life is hard sometimes. Sometimes I just break. I wouldn't e-beg if this wasn't vital.

Basically, I need financial help. To save the $500, but also to eat this week. I have a ko-fi account, which is currently the only place I can accept donations:

Donate here

Disclaimer: donations through ko-fi are sent to my friend's old paypal account. My own account got limited and I am having trouble getting them to unrestrict it. I get notified of all ko-fi donations so my friend can't sneak any of the money, not that she would anyway. If you wanna talk to her, send me an ask off anon for her tumblr url.

now that george floyd’s murderer is behind bars, let’s help support the people who helped with the guilty verdict as well as george’s family. the fight is hardly over.

darnella’s fund - darnella was the young woman who filmed george’s last moments.

gianna’s fund - george’s daughter who has now been left without a father.

I unironically love that the Ides of March is some kind of unofficial tumblr holiday where we bully a dead emperor.

People protect a woman who is burning her scarf

Casting for pjo has officially started, it’s time to bully disney into making Percy a poc. Use any media platform you have, let’s do this

For anyone who could use a pick-me-up from a little ghost friend! ❤

Chibird store | Positive pin club | Webtoon

Calling this out doesn’t mean you don’t love LeBron James.

you all need to think about how you interact with trans men online, like really think

recently one of my posts about being a trans man and casually interacting with another trans man got about 90,000 notes and the tags and comments are full of ‘too pure for this earth’, ‘i’m a dirty sinner i don’t deserve to read this post’, ‘adorable cute sweet precious boys’ despite the fact that it’s mentioned that i am in college and not a child in the post and you all need to think about how some trans men do not want to be referred to that way and being okay with being referred to that way is pretty much exclusively a young teenager tumblr thing that makes a lot of guys uncomfortable. i’m just a man. none of this is necessary and it’s very performative, but…

along with this infantilizing, with this obsession with the proposed purity of another man and myself just for existing, there’s also dehumanization that comes with it, for example:

somewhere along the post, someone decided it would be a good idea to add, ‘all i can imagine is two eldritch horrors trying to get their voices as horrifying and fucked up as possible’ (not exact quote but that’s the gist of it)…

and someone decided that it would be a good idea to take my experience, wildly change the context and make a FANFIC, on MY OWN POST, of two eldritch MONSTERS upset because their voices didn’t sound ‘as horrific’ as the ‘monsters’ around them, and bonding over it together. nowhere in this fanfiction was being trans mentioned.

this is, quite possibly, the most horrifying thing someone has added to one of my posts and going beyond dehumanizing my experiences as a trans man enjoying my voice getting deeper, but also writing a fanfiction onto the post that changed the context of ‘two trans men finding validation between one another and our voices’ into ‘two monsters are sad they’re not scary enough and bond over trying to be scary together’. i shouldn’t have to explain how horrible that is for me to read, and how horrible it is to see that added on my own post & circulated through hundreds with no criticism.

quite frankly, it’s devastating to see how people talk about and interact with trans men. we are either children who must be protected and are weak and vulnerable and ‘too pure’, or we are fuel for your fanfics that completely strip us of our humanity. i consent to neither and if you think that any of these things are okay to do to a complete stranger, all you’re doing is patting yourself on the back for your performative ally points while making trans men uncomfortable with sharing their experiences and talking about their lives and trying to be happy with themselves. stop it.