Questioning aspec culture is am I actually aspec at all, or am I just an allocishet who’s forced their way into queer spaces?

I’ve been feeling more of what I like to call Confusing Man Feeling #1 a lot more recently, and I really can’t tell if it’s attraction. I am unhappy with the idea of feeling attraction, tbh.

Idk what’s wrong with me.

<2

it DOES matter and DON'T you DARE take the easy way out you MOTHERFU—

Are you gay?

are you?

.

Flutter - 6/8/2022 (though drawn and uploaded on 7/7/2022)

The hundred and ninety seventh friend. A butterfly. She's madly in love with another butterfly and has been more or less since she came out of her cocoon. She sees him every day and tries to speak to him but she always gets nervous around him. She forgets what she's trying to say and fumbles up her words. She wishes she could spend more time with him and be more confident around him but she just doesn't know how. She doesn't think he could like her as much as she likes him. Her friends try their best to help her and to convince her to ask him out but she can never work up enough confidence. She's too afraid to look stupid in front of him or be rejected. Maybe one day she'll be brave enough to ask him out. Maybe he'll even say yes.

The thing about the big scary cishet aroallos people seem to be so afraid of these days is that I met many of the sort of person they imagine when they talk about this (which usually isn't someone who doesn't experience romantic attraction but rather just a cishet man with 0 care for other human lives) and trust me most of them would NOT identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. With the stereotypes and societal narratives we're taught it's easy to imagine an aroallo cishet man as some guy who doesn't want to commit and just uses women for sex, which is ironic because in the same breath these types of exclusionists usually criticize aces because they believe we all think allos are sex-obsessed or whatever. Like just because that guy is cishet and allo doesn't mean he wants to have sex 24/7. Maybe he just wants to exist as a single person without getting shit for it or being constantly told to settle down and have a relationship. Like I imagine what it would be like to be a cishet aroallo man and honestly what reason would I have to look at a community that constantly shits on me and seems to hate me and that the other cishet men around me probably try to teach me to hate and go "I'm aromantic and I want to be part of this space" if they didn't struggle with alienation from their peers and the societal expectations placed on them? That's honestly such a big thing with exclusionists because I look at the bullshit that aces, aros, trans people, bi people etc. get from both the LGBTQ+ community and the cishets and ask myself "if I really fit in with the allocishet experience, WHY WOULD I CHOOSE THIS INSTEAD?"

I have to agree with you here. Sure, there's definetly cishet alloaro men out there who are just fuckboys who use women for sex, in any group there will be people who fit the negative stereotypes and that's not a reason to point at them and go "see? They ARE like that!" There is a difference between cishet allosexual men who don't see women as people but rather as sex toys and cishet allosexual men who are aromantic. Being sexually attracted to women without wanting anything romantic is not the problem, it's a neutral thing. The problem is when you don't view women as human beings and the men who are like that would usually see the word 'aromantic' and think it's just some woke sjw bullshit or a mental disorder. I think it's really unfair towards aromantic people as a whole because we're constantly telling people that our lack of romantic attraction does not make us bad people. Is it okay to see aromanticism as an indicator of bad morals all of a sudden just cause the person in question is a cishet man? No. Even if the man is actually a bad person. Because if there are exceptions to the rule then where do we draw the line? If the same thing is gonna be directed at aromantic trans lesbians, something I can see happening, will that also be okay because we're so scared of someone with a penis being sexually attracted to women?

why can't straight (not queer) women stop fucking fetishing gay men and acting like the victims when they're called out for it.

"oh it helps us disconnect from what we're reading" there are literally so many other fucking things out there that allow for that

"oh its just fictional so it's fine" oh so if i were to write some kind of media where where allocishet women are treated absolutely fucking terrible it'd be okay because it's just fictional?

"it's not even weird and its not hurting anyone!" many queer men have came out and said it makes them uncomfortable and they find it creepy! they are not comfortable with it at all

please do fucking better and don't fetish queer people. gay, lesbian, trans, bi or whatever it genuinely makes people uncomfortable so don't

trying to draw lines of who's queer and who's not is unhelpful and a waste of time and i find it's an impossible task to categorize something as uncategorizable as attraction and identity. i've started thinking of it as more of a sociopolitical label as well as an identity label, and in my opinion that's a lot more useful than sitting around trying to decide if a guy who's only ever been attracted to women and ryan reynolds counts as queer or not. because i feel like if, for instance, a straight cis man who does drag and regularly engages in trans activism and sits down with his state senator to discuss making trans sanctuary laws or whatever. wants to identify as queer. i don't really care? i don't think that affects anyone negatively. i think if someone's involved in queer activism and the queer community and they want to use the word queer for themselves i think that's fine and i think it's not any of my business.

also there's this tendency, especially online, for people to go "well what if an allocishet person uses the word queer for themself even though they arent!" and that doesn't feel like a helpful thing to worry about because like.. what if? who is really getting hurt if a gender nonconforming cishet person identifies as queer? or a woman with two husbands? i saw a post along the lines of "we've got straight girls calling themselves fagdykes this is why inclusionism is bad" and i mean. first of all i genuinely just do not believe that. i don't think there are cishet women calling themselves fagdykes. i don't think people who wouldn't be considered queer by cishet society are often proudly declaring themselves part of the queer community in general. people don't paint targets on their backs for fun. i think it's much more likely that the person they were mad at was nonbinary or bi or otherwise queer. but even if they were, like. if for some reason a completely cis completely straight woman wanted to reclaim slurs for herself, she probably has a reason for that. and it's not really our business anyway.

and i think if someone actually is "only identifying as queer to infiltrate queer spaces and cause discord and hurt people," i think that's a them problem, not a "person who uses labels i don't fully get" problem. and i don't think that happens often except for possibly in discord servers, and i think that's generally called "lying" and "being an asshole."

whenever i see stuff trying to draw a line on who's queer and who's not, whether this person can say fag or not, whether it's okay for this person to use they/them pronouns or not, whatever. "are polyamorous people queer?" "can a cis guy use they/them pronouns?" i think of ace/aro exclusionism and bi exclusionism and nonbinary exclusionism. because the arguments sound the same. something about not being "oppressed enough," about "stealing resources" (what resources?), about "well these ones are okay but those ones aren't," about fakers, about people reclaiming slurs they can't use, about how they're "making us look bad," how they're "not queer enough," whatever. and i think it's petty and useless and pretty stupid when we're in the face of a rise in violent transphobia to focus on that instead of actual problems.

i had a friend in high school who talked about how she doesn't understand sexuality and gender and gender roles because she's autistic. she was a lot like me in that we'd both pick at strict definitions of things like "queer" or "trans" and find exceptions to common strict definitions until they fell apart entirely. and she identified with just her name, not trans, not nonbinary, not cis either. not bi or pan or ace or aro or anything else, and not straight. just herself. and she was fully accepting of me and other queer people in our life and was involved in queer activism and was actively deradicalizing her mom from radfem ideology. i don't know if she identified as queer then or if she does now, but if she did/does, i don't see why she shouldn't. i don't think it'd be my place to tell her not to.

i don't know. i just think if someone wants to consider themself queer it's not my business why. because they probably have a good reason. and i think trying to define something like queerness is an impossible task, and i think there's better things to do. it's not hurting anyone for someone you or i see as allocishet to identify as queer for whatever reason. sometimes you don't have to understand the intricacies of someone's identity and life story and why they use certain words for themselves.

yeah, okay, i'm going to be a bitch. was this post inspired by fandom bullshit that i don't know if i'm going to main tag? sure, but i also stand by it.

so queer christians exist. that's just a fact. queer people of any religion exist. because, even when one of those identities makes us feel pushed out of the other's community, religion is not exclusive to allocishet people.

exhibit a: i am a bisexual christian. when i realised i was bisexual and actually remembered it, i didn't stop being a christian. but, by that same metric, my going to church and praying and reading my Bible didn't stop me from liking girls.

exhibit b: i'm a bit more of a progressive christian than other people i know in real life, but i also know more conservative christians who. are queer. and aren't much older than me. they have different outlooks on how they practise it (for example, my main concern with dating someone of the same gender is not being super out, while theirs is more theological).

my christianity is a core part of my identity. personally, it is the primary part of my identity. however, the secondary aspects, like my gender, my sexuality, my upbringing etc all inform my faith, how i interpret the Bible. in that same way, my faith informs those things, like how i see my sexuality and what it means to me.

christianity is not a monolith. a character, yes, even a hyper-religious christian character, can discover they are queer. furthermore, a deconstruction arc for them doesn't have to end in them abandoning their faith, but reshaping their faith from what they have been brought up with in context. if they know a lot of queer people, it's also possible they recognise their behaviour as queer more quickly than they would in a different environment, even if they're trying to repress themselves.

Something's been turning over in my head over the last few days about Good Omens and queer representation. I keep seeing calls for it to be more explicit, that it's not good enough, that Neil of all people is fearful of making it absolutely queer.

None of this is true. The fact that it's been embraced by marginalized people who state "this is like me" should be all that's needed for others who it does not represent to back down and respect that. It's not their lane to declare what is representation for someone else.

And Neil, of all people, gives no fucks for what others think in regards to adding queer characters to media and has been doing so for a very long time.

What got to me though was what does explicit look like. A first time coming out story? That's not what Good Omens is. These are adults, let them simply exist in a queer way. Talking to each other about it? Why? Aziraphale and Crowley don't need to explain anything to each other. They both know the other loves them in every way fathomable to the pair, and what else matters? They literally stopped Armageddon and risked everything just to be together. Human gender perceptions that change every few hundred years? Crowley will take all the genders and do as he wants with them, knowing that it's so very temporary.

And that led me to being queer to those outside your inner circle, and it was an oh moment for me. Do you... do you think that they should be loudly out? There's nothing wrong with being loudly out of course. The people who have the privilege to be out do so much good in the world simply by existing and many of them do far more than that.

As someone who is out in every way that matters to me though: It's completely exhausting.

Even getting people to gender me correctly is an uphill battle that sometimes I choose to fight and sometimes I realize "I am going to see this person one time in my life, and I am tired." I have absolutely corrected CEOs that earn more than I will ever earn in my life because they have the ability to elicit change if pushed. It's important and I choose that battle. I don't ask the clerk at the store to gender me correctly. I just thank them and go about my day.

I did a fic on this topic for the first Our Side Zine, but coming out is a process that never ends and takes an ongoing mental toll.

And it was so delightful to see characters on screen who were allowed to simply be. Not to need to defend who they are or who they love beyond the obvious Heaven/Hell struggles. It's a shining moment of rest. And the reminder that you, too, can just exist. You don't need to constantly label yourself or explain yourself. And it's okay if you haven't found a label (or never do).

It is one reason why this representation is so important. One explanation as to why so many of us are upset when we see people dismissing it. I don't think it's any accident that many of the people I see defending Good Omens as sufficient queer rep are older LGBTQIA+ people who have dealt with the exhaustion of existing for so long. Who have learned when to fight their battles and to delight in those who know us for who we are.

It is nothing new, but it does break my heart to see us now needing to fight within our own community yet again to assert that we are enough.

I hope that the people stating Good Omens should be more explicit have their hearts in the right place. I also need them to know that they're doing real harm to actual queer people. That I've spent the last month consoling those who are hurt and needing to be consoled in return at times.

I need the people who think that Good Omens is not enough to really consider if this is the battle they want to fight, knowing that they're littering the battlefield with injured LGBTQIA+ people. You're not insulting the allocishets. They don't care, they've never cared. None of us should concern ourselves with them, because ultimately their opinion doesn't matter. There's enough in the world about them, this is ours.

Or was it never about the nonbinary, ace, and aro communities at all? Was it about seeing what you wanted in media and being upset that some of us got this piece of representation?

What I understand least of all in this is coming into someone else's house and declaring it not sufficient to fit your needs. Not everything is about you. That's okay. It doesn't need to be. Maybe look within yourself to find a piece of happiness for the absolute joy that some others within the queer community have found rather than trying to tear it from them.

“No Kids.” Inspired by real events.

Note: Perfectly okay for people to want to be parents, to have fears about pregnancy, and for queer people to want kids. This comic is about when allocishet people project their feelings onto queer people who don’t want kids, or when people who really want to be parents generally assume everyone else is on the same timeline as them.

Flags in the comic: straight, aroace, ace, vincian (gay man), trans, non-binary

(Do not repost without permission. Reblogging is always okay)

i really do not get all the hatred sonamy fans get in the sonic fandom.

"but they're so toxic!!"

so are all other ship fandoms. i've had experience with toxic shippers of other ships. but you won’t see me generalizing the ship's fandom over them. every ship has its fair share of toxic fans. so why is it that only sonamy fans get all the heat for being toxic? i'm not denying that there are bad eggs in our fandom but i don't think its fair yo act like we're a special breed of toxic. i've seen fans of other ships with r*pe on amy yet people don't use them to generalize the whole ship's fandom.

"they think their ship is canon!!"

in the 2000s-2010s, maybe we did have a lot of fans who thoight that way. but nowadays whenever sonamy fans claim its canon, its always done in a joking way. its what fans lf literally every other ship do. i've seen people jokingly say "x ship is canon" because character a looked at character b funny. but no one ever attacks them for it. so why is it that only we get attacked when a lot of the time we aren't even serious?? we KNOW our ship will never actually be canon. we KNOW sega has no intention of changing their dynamic as of now. we're just having fun with the moments we're given. especially in recent media. why do y'all froth at the mouth over that. don't like it? just ignore and block.

and to be honest? as sonamy is now, it can be considered semi canon. like, give me a platonic explanation of the "amy, i should've made up my mind sooner" line in frontiers. IF sega decides to make them a couple, their dynamic still won't change. it'll still be very subtle except they're actually a couple now and you won't even notice it. and even then no one's stopping you from liking other ships. and if they are, well the block button exists for a reason.

"but the fanfics-"

i have my beef with old sonamy fanfics. but i have a feeling the people who made them were young kids and teenagers. i'll bet a lot of them have grown up now and have better things to do in life. now i hardly see any sonamy fanfic that villainizes sally or makes sonic an asshole for the sake of angst. the more extreme shippers from the 2000s-early 2010s should not be used to judge shippers today.

imagine if i used the sonadow shippers i encountered in 2014 deviantart, who were mostly allocishet girls who shipped them because they fetishized gay men, made both of them extremely ooc (anyone remember the terms seme and uke?), and of course hated amy for getting in the way of their ship, to judge the sonadow shippers of today who are now mostly mellow and enjoy their ship in peace, it wouldn't be fair now would it?

"the age gap is problematic!!"

most of the ages in sonic make no sense! there's a line in sonic forces where infinite claims sonic has defeated eggman for decades, and sonic's only supposed to be 15. granted using sonic forces may not be the best example but it shows how little sega cares about the ages. and now they've even been renoved from sonic channel. AND even ian flynn himself has said not to worry about pairings like sonamy and knuxouge because there's nothing wrong with them.

and i KNOW people are gonna take this to mean "so shipping things like s0nt@ils is okay now??" no, because tails is still coded as a little kid. sonic and most of the cast are coded as teenagers.

there's people who ship tails and fiona, and that's an actual toxic ship with an actual problematic age gap. but they don't get half the heat that sonamy shippers get.

"sonamy is a ship for the cishets"

really now? i guess my lgbt cars has expired guys. maybe that's a good thing because i was born and raised in a country where its illegal to be lgbt and my parents are kinda religious. and even the country where i'm originally from is pretty homophobic despite gay marriage being decriminalized. who knew all it took to solve those problems was to ship sonamy?? thanks guys.

do you see how stupid that logic is? a fucking ship doesn't determine your sexuality. i don't want to kiss women any less because i ship sonamy.

shadow is NEUROTYPICAL and ALLOCISHET and HATES coffee beans. and I (sonicattos) HATE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i pay NO mind to HIM!!!!! hes an ugly naturally born vessel who’s too HAPPY all the time!!! AND he talks too much. seriously that’s all he FUCKING does. i hope his writing gets WORSE. i hope he‘a a VILLIAN.

okay whatever april fools this is all ur getting outta me

Okay for people saying Byler becoming canon would ruin the show and stuff.

Romance is not the main focus of the show. The main focus is horror and alternate dimension shit.

But before anyone's like "Why do y'all want Byler to become canon so badly?"

Representation. It actually being canon would mean so many things.

• Gay main characters. (I love Robin, but she only showed up last season.) It would be nice if they could use the word gay or bisexual or pansexual or anything, because a lot of things seem scared of actually using those terms, but using them helps to normalize lgbtq+ people and their identities.

• Casual rep. Show people the show doesn't need to be all about lgbtq+ or sexuality to have multiple not allocishet people.

• Gay people in the 80s. We have always existed, and even if it was difficult to live in certain times, we did in fact live.

There are so many more reasons but I don't have the brain power right now. Maybe I'll make a part two, but add other reasons if y'all want.

I'm probably hopefully missing something here but with all the talk about Where Are Your Boys Tonight? I just wanna remind people that we have to normalize allocishet people, including men (whoa ik), kissing each other and messing around and it not being the straight-to-bi pipeline. The jokes are funny and I'm confident that some of them have internalized biphobia and really are queer (statistically speaking), but acting like you know they're all ~secretly bisexual~ is not helpful, okay? As much as we know about them, we do not know them. I'm not saying we shouldn't joke or talk about it, I just think we need to stay conscientious of the fluidity of attraction, as well as the fact that behavior does not equal identity. It sounds weird to say but sexuality and gender are not things you can diagnose for people, as much as it might feel like we can.

I just don't want it getting out of hand or anything. I keep seeing this kind of stuff in bandom and. yeahh. (see: gerard's pronouns)

Okay but Reaux's post made me remember a rant I need to have but I'm not gonna take room in a post for Black people.

But "My work isn't going to be political just because of who I am."

Even the most well meaninged allocishet abled white people that think that they're doing the world a favor by "not being political". We're going to put aside systemic issues for a moment and just look at what "being political" apparently means.

I'm not allowed to talk about my experience as "woman in STEM" (I'm nonbinary but that's a title society has given me because that's how I'm treated as an AFAB). Because allocishet abled white people (both men and women) will walk out of the room because I'm "talking politics".

An allocishet white man wants to talk about how another allocishet white man was being a smart-ass and didn't know what he's talking about? He's allowed to complain.

I want to talk about how a crusty ass allocishet white man talked over me, never took my work seriously, and repeatedly disrespected me? Oh I'm being too political.

The difference? That dude treated me like shit because I'm a woman in STEM.

The way that we're not given room to talk about our life experiences because our existence is in of itself "too political" is a form of discrimination.

I'm not allowed to talk about how I was unemployed for a year because I was unemployed for a year due to discrimination as a woman in STEM. Ergo my very hardship that sucked majorly. I scream and I cried and I was in a bout of depression for months and I felt I wasn't even worthy of existence. But allocishet white people don't want to hear about that because "it's too political" simply due the fact that the cause of all of that was discrimination.

(And yes. Abled allocishet white people will fly admit to abled allocishet white people that they walk out of the room if the conversation is "too political".)

-fae