thingsthatmakeyouacey:

pershanti:

Hi guys! I’m making a collection of mini stories and reflections on sexuality and sexual preference! Submit them anonymously in my ask! Example ideas below:

• Your own coming out story
• Stories of bullying or hate
• Stories about being happy with yours or someone else’s sexuality
• Abundance or lack of support within the gay community
• Stories regarding your orientation, or sexuality in general
• Questioning stories
• Transsexual/transgender stories
• Stories about being asexual
• Challenges you have overcome
• Challenges you are still dealing with
• Things that you don’t understand about sexuality
• Questions
• Anything else relating to sexuality!

I’ll post the entire paper when it is finished :) (BTW it’s for my Human Sexual Orientation class)

Please help out!

A Letter to my Asexual Community

outlawroad:

Dear Asexuals, Demisexuals, and Gray-A’s of every stripe,

I just wanted to take the time, in light of the last several months where we’ve experienced incredible amounts of hatred and bullying and general hostility, to encourage you and to ask that you remain firmly present in the community we’ve formed online. I feel it’s extremely important for all of us that we stay involved and connected to each other. I know many of you are worn down by the array of hurtful and hateful things that have been said to us and about us and it’s tempting to withdraw completely from all the places online which are supposed to belong to us. You’re justified in wanting a break.

However, I urge you to stay. I urge you stay because ultimately, we need each other. We need to be a community. And we don’t have any way to do that in physical, every day life right now; the internet is our one way of communicating with each other, about our identities and experiences. For all the flaws of the online asexual community, I believe every single one of us has benefited in some way from interacting with each other and working out what it means to be asexual or demi-sexual or gray-asexual or aromantic, etc. We are fledgling community, all things considered. We are in the early period of forming a cohesive community and a dialogue about who we are, and we can’t give up on it just because we’re experiencing prejudice and hatred.

I would love it if we had a real safe space, just for us, whether online or in physical space—and God willing, that’ll happen one day. But even though our online spaces are, for the most part, not safe and cannot be made safe, it’s worth it in the long run to brave these spaces we do have rather than to stop connecting, stop communicating, etc.

One thing I want to warn against vehemently: never, ever begin to internalize anti-asexual attitudes. I don’t care what any hater or bigot has to say, and I don’t care about the ways in which we’re flawed. Do not take their hatred and turn it on yourself. Asexuality (in any incarnation) is not slut-shaming or homophobic or anti-sexual or pathological or misogynistic or a medical issue or any other negative thing. It’s an orientation. It’s an orientation, with or without the 99% majority’s unanimous stamp of approval, and we know this because we live it. Understand they have no authority over us—unless we give it to them.

Never be ashamed of who you are. Never question your own value. Never invalidate your own identity or experience.

If you start hating yourself, they win. If you surrender and cut yourself off from your community, they win. If you silence yourself, they win.

And they have no right to win. They have no right to demean and dismiss and erase and police and shame and bully us the way they have. They’re the ones in the wrong here, not us. You don’t reward people for that kind of behavior. 

Everyone wants to be accepted and liked by the world at large, but if your method of winning their acceptance is to betray yourself or your community of origin, that acceptance is meaningless. They must accept us on our terms, as we are, and if they refuse to do that, then don’t waste any more of your life trying to jump through all their hoops in a vain attempt at proving to them your own worthiness. Have self-respect.

When it comes to Tumblr, we’re not the ones who should be getting out of OUR tag; they are! They should’ve never been there in the first place.

Our own well-being and strength and pride and self-knowledge as a community is what matters here. That’s all that has ever mattered. Instead of spending all our time arguing with sexual people about the way we talk in our spaces and identify and what have you, we should go back to engaging in real community dialogue about whatever’s on our minds, relevant to asexuality and all sub-identities therein. That’s the kind of communication and interaction that builds us up, as individuals and a community. That’s what I’m here for, anyway. 

Anyway. I don’t want to get too long-winded, but I hope you all choose to stay and keep thinking and keep writing and keep talking to each other. We deserve to have a strong, positive community experience and we’re the only ones who can make that happen.

We’re a group full of very bright, thoughtful, kind, articulate individuals who have a wealth of valuable thoughts and experiences to share with each other. I miss that sharing, and I want us to get it back.

Let this online community experience continue to be the precursor of physical space community. More and more people are realizing their asexual identity every day and they need our guidance and welcome, as veterans in the community. Being the first generation of out asexuals and starting from scratch and doing all the dirty work of figuring out what everything means is tough—but we have to keep going. We’re it. And 10 or 20 years from now, hopefully we will have made enough progress that we’re stronger and more visible and have physical safe spaces. That’s the reward; first we have to do the work.

I love you and I’m proud of being one of you.

You should be proud too.

— M.

(via outlawroad-deactivated20130412)

http://the-plaid-velociraptor.tumblr.com/post/19996812445

This collab channel is looking for some vloggers to talk about life experiences.

(x)

reblog if you want an ‘A’ on ‘LGBT’

akinindrasutomo:

because asexual exists

Opinions?