Don’t Make Me Choose

Now that I’ve talked about what happened at the event, I want to work through a few things I would have liked to have said in the TAAAP Pride Chat that was supposed to make space for “people who object to there being a binary.”

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Matteo Magro, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.]

A Quoiromantic Perspective on Compulsory Romantic Orientation

Romantic orientation: some people identify with one, some people don’t — but the problem comes in when everyone is expected to have one. This post spells out my (quoiromantic) perspective on compulsory romantic orientation by sketching out a few different ways this expectation can manifest in certain contexts. Note this post is largely just rehashing things already familiar to my regular readers; for everyone else, the goal of this post is to serve as an introductory primer on the topic.

[Preview image by Nccmrm97, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.]

The Irony of “the SAM” as a Failed Critique of Essentialism

In light of how “the split attraction model” (the term) emerged, this post delves into how its associated critique overlooked preexisting efforts, neglecting to fully disentangle itself from prescriptivism, and at this point, the term is getting used to perpetuate the selfsame problem it was originally devised to combat.

[Reposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Peter Thoeny, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.]

The Uphill Climb it Would Take to Repair the Welcome Mat

I don’t know that I should be writing this here, but it’s like I was telling the Elizabeth the other day: I want so badly for the ace community to be in a state worth returning to.

On Identification as an Act

In this post, I’m contrasting a more conventional outlook on identity (identity as trait) against another way of thinking about it (identification as an act). The first one is mostly fine to fall back on as a useful simplification, but there are also times when it can lend itself to problems, which is why I think it’s sometimes worthwhile to shift into another mindset. Note this post was written with orientation/sexuality/gender identity in mind, and whether it’s more broadly applicable is a question I leave to your judgement.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Reinhard Link.]

The Call (to Abandon Card Suit Sorting) is Coming from Inside the House

This month we’ve got yet another case of somebody over on Tumblr trying to revive card suit sorting, plus even more people claiming it was only abandoned because of the anti-ace brigade. I’ve put this post together just to explain that, in actuality, this narrative is false. The call to get rid of that junk isn’t some hostile outsider perspective. The call is coming from inside the house.

In this post, you will find what I mean by “card suit sorting,” how it’s not quite fair to fellow aces, and how this connects back to larger problems of absolutist thinking within the ace community.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Poker Photos.]

An Open Letter to TAAAP: You Do Not ‘Use the SAM’

Hello, it’s me again.

We’ve been talking for several weeks now, but for the other folks just tuning in, give me a moment to establish a bit of context here.

Last month you announced the theme for your December chat event in your discord server. I have written before about where that particular phrase comes from and what’s happened because of it, so when I saw the announcement, I knew it was time to speak up. Fortunately, you facilitated a private conversation by providing me with your contact email, and that’s how this conversation began. During that conversation you worked very effectively to persuade me that a private conversation with you was a dead end. For that reason I’ve decided to write this open letter, inviting more people to contribute their perspective on the subject and join me addressing you, too.

Links on Grayness

A compilation of links on the gray areas of the ace & aro spectrums. Contributions welcome.

Note: some of these links have been copied over from Queenie’s 2014 teeny tiny linkspam on greyness, which is also worth checking out, but since it’s been a few years I decided to put together a new one in order to highlight some more recent posts, as well.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Steve Johnson.]

Spec Work: Tracing the Emergence of “Spec” as a Suffix

A post on the “spec” suffix, as used in “arospec” and “acespec” (*shudder*), and its (un)surprising connection to certain ways of thinking about grayness. Because there’s nothing like fixating on lexical minutiae to help me avoid thinking about bigger problems.

The title here, for the record, is a joke based on the term spec work (as in speculative wages), which makes it something of a pun, since this post is also speculative. The evidence is fragmented, and piecing together a timeline involves some amount of guesswork. Corrections and contributions welcome. Still, Zhyrs asked to see what I’ve dug up, so here we go.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Fredrik H.]

Ace, Just Ace: A Personal Response to Unwanted “Inclusion” in the LGBTQ/Cishet Binary

I am ace. Just ace. Neither cishet nor L, G, B, T, or Q. And apparently quite a number of people are dedicated to unspeaking that possibility out of coherence.

A companion post to Ace, Just Ace: A Personal Response to the Combined Spectrum Model.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Petri Damstén, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.]