Community Memory and the Search for Unassailable Abuse

Would you be okay with allowing everything you and your community have ever done to be forgotten, like it never even happened? I wouldn’t.

I don’t want ace community advocacy to be nothing but a sandcastle. That’s what it comes down to. I don’t think our conversations, debates, insights, projects, and accomplishments should be so ephemeral that only five or ten years down the line, you hear someone saying “how come nobody’s done this?” about something you’ve already done.

This post is about that kind of breakdown in community memory, but it’s also about why it matters. In this post I’m attempting to patch a memory gap about conversations that have already been had before — important conversations about objectifying rhetoric, poisonous community dynamics, and the search for unassailability. Ignoring those conversations runs the risk contributing to activist burnout, stifling our stories, and creating a treacherous environment for survivors of violence and abuse.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Candle Lights by Esteban Chiner, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

So You Want To Run An Identity Survey

Surveys are a popular type of project both for formal advocacy groups and casual identity bloggers alike. While professional researchers might have gotten some dedicated training on the subject, there are also a lot of other people who try their hand at it, too, and they might not have encountered much (if any) guidance on how to go about it. That’s why I’ve put together this post: to offer you some tips and point out common mistakes in designing an identity survey.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview Image: Pencil and Paper by Thomas Eagle, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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.