What is Asexuality?
Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction. That’s it.
Okay so aces can’t have sex or anything to do with sex?
Nope, that’s not what I said.
Sexual behavior does not determine sexual orientation or lack thereof.
Asexuals can:
– Have a sex drive (libido)
– Masturbate
– Watch porn
– Have dirty minds– Bake cookies
– Have sex
– Have children
– Get married
– Play sports
– Fall in love…Or they can have zero interest in any of these things, and none of this has anything to do with their status of being asexual.
Wait, if they can have sex then how are they asexual?!
Asexuals can have sex for lots of reasons. Some want to be close to their partner, or want to have kids, some don’t know they are asexual and have sex just because they think that’s what everyone is supposed to do, some get pressured into sex, some have a libido and have sex purely as a way to get off, but still don’t feel any sexual attraction. Some never have sex, never masturbate, and never understand the point of it.
Every asexual experience is different. Aces can range from sex-repulsed, to completely indifferent, to very sex positive! What all aces have in common is that they don’t feel sexual attraction, or very rarely ever feel sexual attraction.
How do you know if you’ve felt sexual attraction or not?
For some, there is never any doubt they are asexual. For others, sexual attraction can get confused with platonic, aesthetic, romantic, or even sensual attraction. Ultimately, it comes down to the individual to decide whether the asexual label suits them or not.
(Note: Platonic attraction is basically wanting to be friends with someone, Aesthetic attraction is finding someone beautiful (not necessarily ‘standard’ beauty, whatever is beautiful to you), Romantic is wanting to date someone and that can mean different things to different people, Sensual is wanting to have non-sexual contact with someone like kissing, touching, cuddling, and Sexual attraction is wanting to have sexual contact with someone.)
I don’t understand any of this!
It is absolutely okay to not understand asexuality! Trust me, asexuals don’t understand non-aces either. Just remember that even if it’s hard for you to understand, that doesn’t mean it isn’t real! (I don’t understand calculus, but it’s still real!)
How can I be a good ally?
– Educate yourself, read more about it, ask an ace if it’s okay to ask them questions! Odds are, you probably already know a bunch of people who are asexual even if you think you don’t.
– If you have asexual friends, ask them what they are comfortable with in regards to even talking and joking about sex, and then do your best to respect that. Some have dirtier minds than anybody, some are indifferent either way, but others might not be comfortable around any kind of sex talk. Just ask!
– Don’t make acephobic comments. Stuff like, “but everybody wants sex, it’s just natural”, “are you even human?”, “have you seen a doctor/therapist?”, “you’ll change your mind when you meet the right person”, “you’re too young to know”, “you just want attention”, “you must think you’re better than everyone else”, “you can’t be asexual because (I think I know your life better than you)”, “you’re just a prude/frigid/naive”, “you’re never going to have a happy relationship”, “if you don’t have sex with your partner, you don’t really love them”, “how do you know if you’ve never tried it?”, “asexual? so you think you’re a plant/sponge?”, “asexuality isn’t real”, “acephobia isn’t real”… etc and so on, are dehumanizing and just plain ignorant, even if you think you mean well. If you wouldn’t want someone saying that to you, don’t say it to us!
– Don’t erase us. Don’t invalidate us. It’s that simple. Even if you can’t understand asexuality, it’s 100% okay to say, “I don’t understand your experience, but I still support you.”
We aren’t weird, we aren’t trying to be special. Asexuality has always existed, it isn’t new, but lately we’re finally able to say, “Hey, by the way, we exist” and have pride in ourselves. All you need to do is say, “Okay, cool.” Respect it, and carry on. That’s it.
Thank you!
Tag: THIS IS SO IMPORTANT
“Are you really going to vote for Clinton just because she isn’t Trump?”
Yes? I would literally elect Chef Boyardee because he isn’t Trump.
Why you should Vote for Hillary if you are a Bernie supporter
College costs:
Bernie: Free. Hillary: Significantly cheaper than currently, free for those who need it. Trump: Defrauded poor and working class people for 10s of thousands of dollars of tuition.
Minimum wage:
Bernie: 15 Hillary: 12-15 Trump: Imported undocumented workers and underpaid them to work on his projects. Currently makes his clothing line in China for tiny wages.
Foreign wars: Bernie: Probably not. Hillary: As prudent. Trump: NUCLEAR FUCKING PROLIFERATION!!! NOW!!!
Immigration: Hillary and Bernie: Path to citizenship. Trump: THROW THEM OUT! BUILD A WALL!
Taxes: Bernie: Deep tax increases on the wealthy (and middle class). Hillary: Some tax increases on the wealthy. Trump: Cut’em. Cut’em all!
Racism: Bernie: Solving income inequality will solve racism. Hillary: we need a good plan to increase opportunities to minorities beyond solving income inequality. Trump: Yeah, dun care.
Sexism: Bernie: Solving income inequality will solve sexism. Hillary: Full support of all equal rights issues. Trump: Ladies, all your vag are belong to me (no fatties).
Gun control: Bernie: Mayyyyyybbbie, if you convince me hard enough. Hillary: Yep. Trump: Shoot’em if you gott’em.
Please do not listen to 25 years of GOP propaganda. Hillary has worked on progressive causes for 40 years.
She was the 11th most liberal senator while in the Senate.Due to Republican hatred, she is the most investigated person in the country and nothing has ever come of it. She is not a criminal, she could not be a criminal, they would have found something they could have trumped up charges on in 25 years of endless, ongoing investigations. She’s been abused by the GOP and burned by the press over and over and is still pursuing her goal. She is smart and ambitious and experienced and tenacious and knowledgeable and practical and none of those are bad things for a President. Jill Stein may be a nice woman, but she has no governmental experience and practically no platform. Gary Johnson is a Republican who cares less about social issues. Hillary and Bernie have more politically in common than any other candidates. Please, if you care about the issues that Bernie cares about, think about voting Hillary.
hey team!! cruz went down like the titanic, trump’s got the gop nom locked up, so this seems like a Good Time to remind you:
regardless of your particular feelings about sanders or clinton or sanders/clinton (…ew) or socialism or the zodiac killer, on november 8 2016 you gotta
VOTE DOWN THE TICKET
what does this mean?
it means that the presidential vote is not the most important vote you’ll be doing this november!
cos a WHOLE LOTTA PEOPLE go into the poll booth, mark “dem” or “gop” in the presidential box, and take off. which means that YOUR VOTE FOR
- senator
- house of representatives member
- governor
- state senator or house of representatives member
- mayor
- local judge
- city council member
- school board member
- local referendum
- (a.k.a., every vote DOWN THE TICKET)
COUNTS MORE
even if you HATE EVERYONE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, there is a high chance that there will be someone you don’t hate on the ticket, and you can vote for the lesser of two evils in A FEW RACES and your actual positive favorite in A FEW OTHER RACES
and if you vote DOWN THE TICKET enough then there may be a DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY or even DEMOCRATIC SUPERMAJORITY at the federal level, or a DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY or SUPERMAJORITY in your state government, or a SOCIALIST MAYOR, or LEGALIZATION OF AN IMPORTANT THING, or CRIMINALIZATION OF AN IMPORTANT THING
and things will be a hell of a lot more fun than they were from 2000-2016 (with a brief break for the 2008-2010 democratic majority)!!!!
VOTE DOWN THE TICKET TEAM
This is a jar full of major characters
Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.
We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls.
Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left.
This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left.
And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left.
And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right.
Until these are the bowls.
Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other.
This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl.
This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference.
This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.
The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss.
This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world.
I mean, imagine your party guests arrive
Oh my god they are adorable!
And they see their bowls
But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.
I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?
But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat.
And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant.
And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.
*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*
A message of reassurance for those getting into Star Wars for the first time right now:
If you end up liking the prequels as much as the original trilogy, there’s nothing wrong with you. If you love the prequels more than the originals, that’s perfectly okay. You can prefer Ewan’s Obi-Wan to Alec’s. You can like or love Anakin Skywalker over Luke. Loving Anakin and Padme is not wrong. It’s okay to be a fan of Jar Jar Binks. You are not lesser if you love the prequels.
I just wanted to put this out there because the Star Wars fandom is full of nasty gatekeepers who would try to make you feel like an idiot for daring to love anything more than the original trilogy. So if you’re getting into it now and enjoy Episodes I-III more the Episodes IV-VI, I want you to know that doesn’t make you any less of a Star Wars fan.
And if you end up loving The Force Awakens more than any of the six that came before it, that doesn’t make you any less of a Star Wars fan either!
(This is basically just a rehashing of this wonderful post, but I feel like it’s important to reiterate this point).
People get so ANGRY when I say The Force Awakens is my favorite. But here’s the thing, I always vaguely liked the original trilogy but I only saw myself in Leia. And I don’t know. I didn’t particularly feel like a Leia. I liked it but it was always very clear that I wasn’t the intended audience. The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars that feels like MINE. I see myself reflected in multiple characters. Rey is my favorite. This is the first Star Wars that I want to make costumes for and read fan fic about and draw little hearts around characters faces. This one feels like mine!
So I tell people it’s my favorite. And when they get angry I just say it again louder. Because this one is mine and I don’t care if you don’t like it. The Force Awakens is my favorite Star Wars movie of all time. ITS MY FAVORITE.
If someone isn’t available during your most crucial time, then their presence any other time is useless.
This isn’t realistic for adults. I’m sorry it’s just not.
Don’t fall into believing that, “if they’re a true friend they’ll drop everything and run to be by your side!” crap.
As a responsible adult there will be times that your friends are hurting and you won’t be able to go to them.
There are times that you will have to go to work, or take your sick kid to the doctor, or do many other things that will prevent you from being there for your friend.
When your friend calls you and they’re falling apart and it’s ten minutes until you have to leave for work, you’re not a bad friend for saying, “Look, I love you. I’m sorry this is happening, but I have to go. I’ll call you back tonight when the kids are asleep.” Or “I’m so sorry this is happening. I love you and I want to be here for you but I’ve got to get to work. I’ll call and check on you during my lunch.”
Adult life is hectic and busy with important things all the time and unfortunately it’s also full of shitty things happening to people we love.
Do your best to be there for the people you love and ask for support when you need it but be understanding when being a responsible adult comes before helping you.
The idea that people need to be there any time you need them is really damaging and unhealthy, too. You can’t place value on a person or a relationship based solely on whether or not they’re available, no questions asked, whenever you need them.
In addition to the above: sometimes, someone simply does not have the energy to help. Maybe they’re coming out of a rough patch themself, maybe they have been busy all day,maybe a chronic illness is flaring up. There are a myriad of reasons someone may not be able to be there.
Obviously, if someone is taking you for granted, and never seems to care how you’re doing, that’s an issue. But to write someone off because their life and your life didn’t line up quite right at a given point in time, or maybe even on more than one occasion, is not a healthy way to handle things.
Honey Nut Cheerios loses bee mascot on cereal boxes temporarily
The world’s bee population is in crisis and Honey Nut Cheerios is coming to the rescue, minus its perky mascot.
The brand’s latest promotion, Bring Back The Bees, characterized as a cause marketing campaign, purports to inform Canadians about the global instability of bees, due to diseases, pesticides, flowerless landscapes and monolithic crop planting, and encourage them to plant 35 million bee-enticing wildflowers this spring.
Cereal lovers will find the brand’s longtime ambassador awol for the next six weeks.
“We took Buzz off the front of the box to bring awareness to fact the bees are disappearing and on the back we have a lot of information to help consumers understand why bees are important and what they can do and then driving them to the website so they can get their free seeds,” said Amanda Hsueh, Associate Marketing Director at General Mills Canada.
Recipients are encouraged to plant the wildflower seeds “anywhere where flowers would help beautify the space and make it a bee-friendly area,” she said.
“They provide not just honey, like in our Honey Nut Cheerios, but a third of our food supply actually depends on their pollination, such as, almonds, apples and even coffee.
“So they’re very important, but the bees are in trouble. We felt like we wanted to do something to help and we wanted to find a way to make sure all Canadians could do something to help.”
Thats all well and good but if they actually care about bees they would stop using honey in their product instead of just making a ~green~ marketing campaign
Producing honey does not hurt bees. Bee keepers ensure that bees live long, healthy lives. They always leave bees enough honey to live and maintain their colony. Without bee keepers the world would have much less bees and therefore much less healthy food (that vegans depend on).
You can disagree on the consumption of honey, but please come up with a better excuse than its harmful for bees, because its not.
ugh omg honey shaming is one of my biggest pet peeves
USING HONEY DOES NOT HURT BEES
Using honey ensures that bees are being (well)-kept and encouraged to propagate. You have to be very careful with your bees if you want them to give you quality products.
Using honey puts more money into the honey industry, allowing beekeepers to keep more bees as well as do more to help, protect, and save bees.
Conversely, if you stop using honey, not only is honey going to go to waste (bees produce more honey than they need), but people who currently keep bees are going to either turn to a different product (whether because want to make money or because they just can’t afford to keep the bees they love). Their bees are going to end up neglected and/or exterminated, and there will be fewer people contributing to the desperate conservation efforts.
I get that you want to be nature-friendly but please educate yourself on what that actually means before jumping into every argument you see.
Beekeepers who can’t make enough money selling honey have to send their beehives out to pollinate crops.
Travelling for pollination, incidentally, is much harder on bees than harvesting from one location year-round.
So if vegans want to avoid bee cruelty, they should stop eating all crops pollinated by bees. Here’s a convenient list:
Kiwis, watermelons, squash, zucchini, cashews, cucumbers, apples, mangos, avocados, plums, almonds, peaches, pears, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.
Only buy those crops from farmers who hand-pollinate their crops, like some farms in China now have to do. Keep in mind that thin upper boughs of fruit trees are flimsy, so they send children up to pollinate the top branches. Child labour in agriculture is another complicated subject, and one that I don’t think vegans even think twice about.
“Cruelty-free” is completely impossible, and people with a poor understanding of animal welfare tend to worsen it. Research how bees actually live and how beekeeping works and realize that there is zero harm done to bees by responsibly harvesting their honey.
(Note: I am a vegan who has kept bees and now eats locally-produced honey.)
Quick addition: honeybees are one of the species of bees not as at risk as others and that’s because of beekeepers. Cheerios is using a honeybee to draw attention to the issue, but their business is not affected by a shortage of honeybees, it’s affected by the endangerment of other pollinators and the risk that poses to cereal crops in the future.
Bees are not endangered because we eat honey. Bees are endangered because we spray crops with pesticides and we pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which warms our climate and drives them out of their habitats. Bees are endangered because we focus on monoculture and we raze entire ecosystems for development projects. There are a million other reasons that bees are at risk that have nothing to do with eating honey.
Honey Nut Cheerios loses bee mascot on cereal boxes temporarily
Easter is coming up! And it’s a terrible time for pet store bunnies!
Rabbits are marketed as “easy”, short-lived, starter pets, especially during the Easter holidays, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! A healthy, well cared for bunny can live just as long as the average cat or dog- 10-12 years!
What’s more, they have more complex needs than a cat or a dog. Rabbits are prey animals and do not behave or show affection in the same way as predators like cats and dogs; they don’t deal well with being outside-only animals; they can get sad if they’re on their own and don’t receive enough attention; and if they’re bought as a male and female couple, they can start reproducing from as early as 5-6 months of age, and they can carry multiple litters at the same time!
They have a specialised diet (NOT carrots!), need a specialised living area (unless you want all your things to get chewed up!), and they need specialised vets! Caring for them costs as much as caring for a dog!
They’re a big responsibility!
BUNNY SAFETY SIGNAL BOOST BECAUSE BUNNIES ARE IMPORTANT
Young voters are failing Bernie Sanders, just as they’ve failed so many before
Unfortunately the numbers don’t lie, youth voter turn out is down since 2008. Young voters support Bernie Sanders in overwhelming numbers, 86-14 in New Hampshire. That is massive, even better than Obama. Still, we NEED TO VOTE. We NEED to stay ACTIVE and involved! This political revolution is to make OUR country a better place, we need to quit letting 65 year old voters decide the future of our country. PLEASE REGISTER TO VOTE IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE SO ALREADY! BERNIE SANDERS 2016!
REGISTER RIGHT HERE, DO IT TODAY, RIGHT NOW, DO NOT WAIT!
I just registered, it took 5 minutes. All you need is a driver’s license or ID. I don’t like politics on my dash, but I’m reblogging this because no matter who you support, you should register to vote, and this post has a link that makes it very easy to get started.
Young voters are failing Bernie Sanders, just as they’ve failed so many before
eirenical17 