#anyway all the aro discourse floating about made me think of this issue again
Text
This is probably because I grew up watching 24/7 animal planet, but what finally made the allo/aplatonic thing click for me were the nature's of big cats.
Lions are powerful, regal creatures who are uniquely adapted to pack life. They need these connections to live a healthy life; A lonely lion is a miserable creature indeed.
Jaguars are solitary, beautiful creatures who live happily solitary. They prowl their lush world with self-sufficient majesty. A jaguar is not lonely without a pack. In fact, forcing jaguars to share space with others they do not enjoy is just as damaging as forcing a lion to live alone.
A lion may choose to head out on it's own for the most part, but in the end must return to the pack to thrive. A jaguar can choose to trust and enjoy the company of others, but they never feel the need to form a pack.
Is a jaguar selfish for this? A psychopath, a narcissist or any other such horrid assumptions? Is it a less moral creature than a lion, who seeks others like it to thrive?
Is a lion pathetic, or needy, or selfish for wanting community? For requiring contact with others like they require water? For their inherent need to string complicated webs of relationships that may seem silly or dramatic to others?
Of course not. These are ridiculous questions to even ask.
They are simply lions and jaguars.
In fact, is a jaguar that chooses to spend time with you not as magical as a lion's love? For a creature that needs no bond to thrive to still enjoy your presence enough to share it a time? Is a lion who can prowl the night alone not impressive in its strength and resilience? Is it not awe-inspiring in its ability to conquer a life it was never wired for and reign still?
Are they not both beautiful and awe-inspiring in their own ways, without being wrong?
Alloplatonics. Aplatonics. Are we not both special and beautiful in both our bonds and self-confident happiness equal, in each our ways? Is there not unique beauty in lifelong bonded packs and magical encounters that need no perpetuity to carry life forward?
Are we not but lions and jaguars? Neither wrong, neither selfish, but just different and beautiful creatures in each our ways?
That's how I've come to see it, anyway.
#lgbt#aspec#lgbtqa+#asexual#aromantic#aroace#loveless#aplatonic#alloplatonic#animals#I woke up at like 3 in themmorning to write this so I apologise for weird wording#I'm not awake enough to go hunting for the videos but if you want to see more about the equal majesty and difference in cats bonding#I suggest looking up Kevin Richardson's work with lions and panthers#I love animals. I hope I didn’t come off as degrading to anyone by using them as comparison#I can assure you the association only carries the deepest respect from me.#anyway all the aro discourse floating about made me think of this issue again#and how explaining allo/a-platonic needs has been a difficult task in the past#you're all valid no matter your labels or shapes or spots or manes#remember that when an orientation you don't understand comes to the lgbtable your job isn't to test them#it's to make room
562 notes
·
View notes
Text
Member Applications!
After thinking, experimenting and much hair-pulling (not figuratively or metaphorically) I have come to the obvious conclusion that this blog is too much for one disabled person to handle. Part of being multiply disabled is the two-for-one package of knowing first hand why accessibility is important and having decreased ability to practice it, so I need to bring on a team who can help me do this and bring you all a better blog, since my chronic pain is getting in the way of allowing me to do all this and anything else.
I’m after two or three people who can help me with taking the many wonderful stim toy posts floating around Tumblr and can add the resource information that means other people have to do the least amount of scrolling, clicking or researching: image descriptions, direct links to the product in question, prices, alternate sellers, archival tags (I’ll post on how I do this), any seller or product advisory notes. I’d like at least two people to share the workload - so that this becomes something done a few hours a week, not an every day job. I try to run on a queue with a buffer of a few weeks, so there is no requirement to be on Tumblr every day to do this.
This should allow me more spoons for messages, HTML coding the tags pages, asks and my own reviews and tutorials.
Because I am not particularly good at shared projects and because this sort of thing is so far outside my comfort level it’s laughable, please understand that I won’t be granting admin status until I’m more comfortable with this as a shared blog. At this stage, I’d be posting private lists of posts to be formatted and queued and leaving you to post those to the queue, or asking you to save anything cool you find to draft which I can then add to the list.
If this interests you, please check below the read more cut for more information on the kind of people I’m looking for and how to apply:
The Non-Negotiable Mod Attributes List
Adulthood. (Tumblr users over the age of eighteen.) This is because I don’t show my follower list and do allow NSFW blogs to follow me if they don’t practice certain kinds of kink and refrain from interaction. (My belief is that knowledge should be accessible for everyone.) I cannot allow a minor to have access to the activity page.
A willingness to be exposed to NSFW blog titles and avatars on the activity page. I only ask that people who engage in kinks that mirror non-consent and cg/l-type blogs (basically: things that trigger me) don’t follow, which means that active kink and gore blogs who abide by my no-interaction rule do follow me. Again, I don’t want to restrict knowledge.
(While I have a list of people I’d prefer not to follow me, I only actively block, in addition to the above who ignore my right to consent, spammers, individuals I know to be unsafe for the community for various reasons and a few notorious discoursers. I will always listen to you on the matter of blocking someone who is unsafe for you, but I want it to be plain that the activity page is not a safe space.)
Neurodiversity. This place is for ND people and about ND people, and I’d like it to remain run by ND people. You absolutely do not have to be autistic.
People who aren’t REGs/TERFs/exclusionists. This is for my comfort, as a pan aro-ace agender/trans person. It breaks my heart that I must mention this on a stim toy information blog, but discourse’s roots reach everywhere, and I really don’t want to have to develop a relationship with someone knowing we have such wildly differing beliefs on something that hurts me.
(If you blog on a platform of hate for another group, even if said group isn’t mentioned above, I kindly ask that you don’t apply.)
A no-gatekeeping attitude as to which ND people can stim or which ND people should be prioritised in stimming. I’m deeply uncomfortable with conversations on who can’t use the word “stim” or arguments that autistics should be centred in stim spaces. I hope this space is more about unity among stimmers than divisiveness, and I’d like to keep on working to make this so.
Awareness of accessibility. I want this space to serve as many stimmers as possible, and that includes otherwise-disabled stimmers who have difficulty accessing or interacting with information. I absolutely do not know myself all I should about this: I’m just asking for an ability to keep learning.
Reasonable English expression. I would prefer capital letters to begin a sentence, basic punctuation and some sense of when to paragraph. This is also for accessibility: I struggle to read text without capital letters beginning sentences, can’t read all-bolded text and can’t parse long block paragraphs.
(Perfect adherence to English style conventions is often ableist, racist and classist, but some adherence in communication makes it easier for people to derive information without struggle.)
A willingness to check the tags pages for already-used tags before tagging, hunt down direct links and check listings for shipping information, further item details or purchasing information. I spend a lot of time doing this. I’m trying to make the informative posts on this blog contain the basic information people need with a minimum of clicking or searching in the most accessible possible way.
An interest in stim toys. You don’t have to know much about them, because I didn’t before starting this blog, but please have an interest in stim toys and stimming!
Optional Mod Attributes
I’d like to have a North American mod and a European or UK mod at least, if possible, as this broadens our knowledge base.
Queue Wrangler Duties
The addition of image descriptions, links, product details, additional source information and archival tags to posts on my list before adding them to the queue.
Observation of any accessibility/advisory issues about a listing or tutorial - no alt text (I check images using Firebug on Firefox, but that requires the ability to read basic HTML), no captions/descriptions, sound of video, holes that merit a trypophobia tag, etc. I don’t do this perfectly myself and don’t expect perfection from you, but the attempt is awesome.
(If you can’t do or observe certain things because disability, that isn’t a problem.)
The saving of posts to the draft folder – if you happen across something that can be informative with a little work, save it to the draft folder. If you find a great video, a post somewhere not Tumblr, a tutorial, a new store? Anything you think is new, approaches something old in a new way or just too awesome not to share? Save it to the draft folder. I truly want you to help out in finding cool things!
(I ask you to draft it because that way if someone else spotted it, we don’t double-up. My job is to keep track of what’s been posted already, and I can easily delete anything added twice.)
If you happen across a giveaway, sale or other time-sensitive post and have checked the blog to make sure someone else hasn’t tackled it already, please add a description and anything else informative and tag and post it immediately. The sooner these go up, the better, so I’d be very glad for you to post these as you see them.
Patience with me. You’re dealing with a perfectionistic, possessive writer and blogger who fell into this strange thing of having a community blog and is woefully unprepared for it. I’m learning all this on the fly and I’m probably going to make more mistakes than you ever will.
Please note that I do prefer some post formatting ability (for example, in-text hyperlinks, not pasted URLs). This might be extremely nitpicky, but I’m an editor and text designer myself. Neat text makes my soul happy.
Additional
Please write and queue your own reviews, informative posts and tutorials! If you want my watermark so it looks official, it’s yours. If you’d rather post to your own blog and reblog it here, that’s also awesome. I’d very much like to have your thoughts about stim toys made accessible to our followers, so please join in on talking about toys.
I’d also like a bio and any links pertinent to you that we can add to a team page on the sidebar.
If you have a store, an art blog, a book, a website, anything SFW that we can promote to thank you for your work, we’ll post it. I’m sure our lovely followers won’t mind a few non-toy Promotional Sunday posts in return for your efforts here.
Interested?
Send me a submission (it will not be posted) from your main/primary blog answering the following questions:
User name:
Include that of your secondary blog, too, if you think I’ll better know you that way. If you want to be known a certain way, mention this, too.
(Please do this. I know your primary blog user name is already attached to the submission. Write it out for me again anyway.)
Age:
This can be general: mid 20s, 50+. Just indicate to me in some way that you’re not a minor.
Nationality/region:
Tell me where you’re living. You absolutely do not have to give away identifying information.
About:
Tell me about yourself in a paragraph or two - anything you think I need to know or should know. Pronouns, neurodiversity, why you like stim toys, why you think you’ve got patience enough to deal with me, what you had for breakfast, what makes you happy, your special interests/hyperfixations, what you do at school or work, why you want to help out a stim toy blog. Anything. This lets me get to know you a little better!
Show me your work:
Link me to a post containing an image description (anything; it doesn’t have to be a stim toy) written by you so I can see how you do it.
Content restrictions:
Do you have any content you cannot, should not or would not interact with? GIFs, loud videos, moving anything, items with holes, images including hands... Listing these things means that I don’t hand you a list of videos when you can’t hear them or a list of GIF posts when GIFs give you seizures. Inform me so I can better help you, please.
Anything else:
If there’s anything else about you that you think I should know, tell me.
Applications will be open until midnight April 26 AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) or GMT+10.
Thank you, my followers, for all you’ve done to help me out. I truly appreciate it.
4 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
