Queerplatonic Ambiguity is a Feature, Not a Bug

In all of the talk on QPRs over the years, I’ve run across some occasional disagreement about whether or not “queerplatonic” as a term has room for ambiguity — with both implicit and explicit attempts to define it as a narrow and rigid concept, while treating those definitions as the way it’s always been. Simply put, that’s wrong, and here’s why.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Smoke Plume by William Warby, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

A Condensed Timeline of Early Anti-Ace Blogging (Infographic)

Based on A Timeline of Anti-Ace Blogging, made in Canva, crossposted to Pillowfort, and reposted to Tumblr. Much thanks to everyone who helped with feedback and revisions.

This image is free to repost and distribute. If you do so, I would prefer if you would include the transcript and a link back to this post, where possible. Transcript under the cut.

Why I (Still) Wear an Ace Ring: A Retrospective

About nine years ago, I wrote and published a blogpost with title “Why I Wear an Ace Ring.” At the time, I don’t think I could have ever anticipated the reception that post would get, and is still getting, almost a decade later.

Crossposted to Pillowfort.

Reading Elementary as a Nonromantic Love Story

CBS Elementary centers on a close friendship between a man and a woman that accomplishes something unique: it stays that way. More than that, it tells the story of the evolution of their relationship from initial animosity to collaboration to exceptional intimacy, to the point of treating each other as the most important person in their lives, all while keeping sex and romance out of it. In light of that relationship and the characterization of the main leads, this analysis presents aro reading of Elementary in order to highlight what it can look like to tell a nonromantic love story.

Crossposted to Pillowfort.

Gray-Ace & Gray-Aro Survey: Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in or helped to spread the Gray-Ace & Gray-Aro Survey. This survey was released on July 28, 2022 and ran through September 15th, with the link shared on WordPress, Pillowfort, Tumblr, Twitter, AVEN, Arocalypse, Dreamwidth, Reddit, and various Discord servers.

The survey collected 1,404 responses in total.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Shadows & Fog by Adam Baker, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Top 6 Mistakes in the Academic Field of Asexuality Studies

Through my participation in Ace Journal Club, I’ve gotten to read my fair share of publications in asexuality studies, a field which has grown tremendously over the past decade. I haven’t read everything, but I’ve seen enough to say this: the field needs to be alerted to certain mistakes. In this post I’ve compiled a list of basic problems I consider important to flag and look out for, covering some old recurring mistakes as well as cases where there’s still time to nip them in the bud. So whether or not you’re a researcher yourself, here’s how to spot these issues going forward.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Magnified by Jake Bouma, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Under the (Micro)scope

If labels are tools, then what can be done with the label of “microlabel” itself? Not enough to justify it, I’d say — but allow me to explain.

In this post, we’re putting “microlabel” (the term) itself under the microscope, starting with certain “definitions,” then summarizing what background I could unearth about the term’s emergence, followed by some notes on its use in surveys and my own reflections on what this term has been used to do.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Written for the Carnival of Aces and the Gender Exploration Carnival. Preview image: Science Microscope by Daniel Foster, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Gray-Ace & Gray-Aro Survey

This survey is about gray-asexuality and grayromanticism. Anyone is invited to take it, regardless of identity. The purpose of this survey is to investigate perspectives on these identities and how they are understood.

Click here to take the survey. It will remain open until September 15th.

Questions about the survey can be asked in the comments below (no account required) or via this contact form.

If you can, please spread this survey and help collect more responses. So far, it has been shared to Pillowfort, Tumblr, Twitter, AVEN, Arocalypse, Dreamwidth, and Reddit.

_{Preview image: Shadows & Fog by Adam Baker, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.}

Edit: the results have now been published.

Comparing Additive & Subtractive Constructions of Attraction

This is a metadiscursive post — a post talking about ways that people talk about “attraction” as a construct, either expanding it or shrinking it in various ways. Below the cut, I examine additive approaches in ace discourse and subtractive approaches in lesbian discourse, each used as different means toward a similar end.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Scissors by James Bowe, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Problems in the Promotion of Romantic Orientation

While romantic orientation isn’t inherently bad, there have been some recurring problems with how people promote the idea, as demonstrated in the article picked this month for Ace Journal Club. So in the hopes of showing people how to spot these issues, this post pulls some quotes from that article and explains their implications, illustrating the tensions between introducing/endorsing romantic orientation as a conceptual tool (favored by those who use it) vs. leaving space for those of us who find it personally unhelpful.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Stoplight Silhouette, NYC by Bruce Thomson, licensed under CC BY 2.0.