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Asexual Awareness Week 2019
Oct. 25th, 2019 10:36 amIt's annual asexual awareness week. I've written a lot in previous years about the awareness weeks, about my asexual identity, and I write and continue to write fiction exploring and/or including asexuality.
You can find all those posts under the theme: asexuality spectrum tag, the non sexual intimacy and the sexuality tag
This post is going to talk about asexuality and fiction, along with some deeply personal stories, and a fair bit of talk about the anti/fandom policing currently doing the rounds. Because these things are interlinked, where
1) what you ship, read or write/draw now determines if you're a good person or a filthy p*do/n*zi and harassing people over fiction has become activism
2) exclusionism in the queer community leads to attacking people over their own sexual orientation/labels and makes for tight-knit circles where you have to conform to their beliefs, with a similar insulating effect in fandom anti-shipping circles
3) Your sexual orientation, sex, and gender, are often considered to be indicators of what you are allowed to like in fiction (you can't be a lesbian and ship a m/f ship, you can't write m/m ships unless you're a gay man, women reading m/m fic are "gross Fujoshis", etc)
There's also been a huge rise in ageism and it's mostly misogynistic (fandom mom used as an insult, calling people hags, telling women they should be doing their taxes and looking after their children instead of being in fandom spaces) but that's a slightly separate, if related issue from the sexual orientation one.
This year, despite the discourse/drama/wank over Neil Gaiman refusing to call Aziraphale and Crowley "gay men in a sexual relationship" and daring to acknowledge nonbinary people and asexuality exist, there's been a lovely amount of Good Omens fic and art that is non sexual in nature, some romantic, some queerplatonic. People have been good at tagging their work so it's easy to find/exclude things you don't want to read.
I've been writing h/c fic, I even wrote fluff (very rare for me), and I explored the idea of non-binary Crowley which was something new for me. I've been enjoying looking at exploring intimacy with care and respect for boundaries, and showing deep devotion that isn't rooted in sex.
However there's also been a lot of ace hate and exclusion on Tumblr and Twitter as a whole leading me to block many accounts. I wrote a bit about exclusionism in the queer community for one of this month's writingwednesday posts. I have to say, aside from one upsetting exchange with a family member and one online straight female who was proud of saying "zucchini*! Because asexuals are emotional vegetables!", most of the ace hate and marginalisation I have seen and experienced has come from other queer people.
*zucchini is a term sometimes used within queer platonic relationships, especially for an aroace person to describe their partner "They're my zucchini."
( Read more... )
I honestly expected things to get better over the years. And while in some respects they have, the pushback against asexuality and bisexuality has been unexpected and unwelcome, along with the return of "gay ships are bad because I say so" and the rise of "the shipper of anything I don't like is evil and probably a pedophile".
You can find all those posts under the theme: asexuality spectrum tag, the non sexual intimacy and the sexuality tag
This post is going to talk about asexuality and fiction, along with some deeply personal stories, and a fair bit of talk about the anti/fandom policing currently doing the rounds. Because these things are interlinked, where
1) what you ship, read or write/draw now determines if you're a good person or a filthy p*do/n*zi and harassing people over fiction has become activism
2) exclusionism in the queer community leads to attacking people over their own sexual orientation/labels and makes for tight-knit circles where you have to conform to their beliefs, with a similar insulating effect in fandom anti-shipping circles
3) Your sexual orientation, sex, and gender, are often considered to be indicators of what you are allowed to like in fiction (you can't be a lesbian and ship a m/f ship, you can't write m/m ships unless you're a gay man, women reading m/m fic are "gross Fujoshis", etc)
There's also been a huge rise in ageism and it's mostly misogynistic (fandom mom used as an insult, calling people hags, telling women they should be doing their taxes and looking after their children instead of being in fandom spaces) but that's a slightly separate, if related issue from the sexual orientation one.
This year, despite the discourse/drama/wank over Neil Gaiman refusing to call Aziraphale and Crowley "gay men in a sexual relationship" and daring to acknowledge nonbinary people and asexuality exist, there's been a lovely amount of Good Omens fic and art that is non sexual in nature, some romantic, some queerplatonic. People have been good at tagging their work so it's easy to find/exclude things you don't want to read.
I've been writing h/c fic, I even wrote fluff (very rare for me), and I explored the idea of non-binary Crowley which was something new for me. I've been enjoying looking at exploring intimacy with care and respect for boundaries, and showing deep devotion that isn't rooted in sex.
However there's also been a lot of ace hate and exclusion on Tumblr and Twitter as a whole leading me to block many accounts. I wrote a bit about exclusionism in the queer community for one of this month's writingwednesday posts. I have to say, aside from one upsetting exchange with a family member and one online straight female who was proud of saying "zucchini*! Because asexuals are emotional vegetables!", most of the ace hate and marginalisation I have seen and experienced has come from other queer people.
*zucchini is a term sometimes used within queer platonic relationships, especially for an aroace person to describe their partner "They're my zucchini."
( Read more... )
I honestly expected things to get better over the years. And while in some respects they have, the pushback against asexuality and bisexuality has been unexpected and unwelcome, along with the return of "gay ships are bad because I say so" and the rise of "the shipper of anything I don't like is evil and probably a pedophile".
