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you gonna bac up your claim that cisgender straight people who lack sexual attraction have always been queer? or is speaking out your ass all you can do
mana4anam-deactivated20221204:
Sure! Let’s go! I’m always up to stretch both my lgbt history muscles. Sorry if it took awhile but I am passionate about this stuff and wanted to do some good writing and find some really great sources for you! 😊
In 1869 a humanitarian and journalist named Karl-Maria Kertbeny published pamphlets to oppose the sodomy law in Prussia. In these pamphlet he is widely regarded as beginning the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” in the academic mainstream; though, it is likely these were lgbt terms used long before that time. In this same pamphlet advocating explicitly for gay rights, Kertbeny refers to those who engage only in masturbation and not in sex with others as seperate from straight people, coining an entirely different term: “monosexual.” Now, this term is outdated and widely used the m-spec sub community to refer to straight, gay, and lesbian folks lacking multi-gender attraction, but he states very explicitly in all his work that this term is meant to refer to people we would now understand to be asexual.
A little later, in the 1890’s we have sexologist, founder of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and an openly gay man himself, Magnus Hirschfeld. He published his work “Sappho and Sokrates”: a pamphlet he wrote with the task of explaining the lgbt community to straight people. He makes multiple references to and defences of what he called “anesthesia sexuals.” Again, an outdated term, but as you can see, both gay advocates and straight allies referenced us as being part of the community like it was nothing.
Meanwhile, we have the lovely Emma Trosse, an academic peer to Hirschfeld. She discussed gay rights—especially the rights of lesbians and non-binary people—very openly and wrote multiple papers on the subject. But at her heart, Trosse was a researcher, and so her most famous work, naturally, was an indepth study of what she referred to as “counter-sexualities” as stand in for what we now know as the broader lgbt community. In this work she coins the phrase Asensuality, stating “the author has the courage to admit to this category” officially coming out in her own study! Damn lady! We love her. The Schwules Museum (literally the Gay Museum), a famous German LGBTQ+ museum dedicated to collections focusing on the history of lgbt research, features her work prominently. She also holds the distinction of having been banned as a “degenerate” author in Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and Russia for that very work. On top of that, she was the first woman on record to have a treatise in defense of lgbt people and our community published in 1895, even before her colleague Hirschfeld had his first works published.
As you can see 19th century Germany was a hub of lgbt theory, research, and activism still studied by lgbt historians today. It is widely credited as being a period of time that brought our history into print and the mainstream. And ace people, as I noted before, have been involved both in mention and in activism from the beginning according to both prominent allies, gay folks, and ace folks who were scholars during this period.
But, now lets move over with a bigger hop to the sexual revolution in America; which mirrored the German one in many ways! This is the period of time a lot of people, especially americans, think of as the start of our mainstream history—which as you can see a very americancentric idea, but I digress. Even here we have asexuals represented among the community by diverse members of the community.
You’ve probably heard of the Asexual Manifesto, written by Lisa Orlando and published by the New York Radical Feminists. A very important document to ace-spec people, it defines us as a sexuality seperate and distinct from straight; but you aren’t interested in what we have to say about ourselves and our experiences so lets move on to other lgbt people validating us.
Kinsey—himself an m-spec or multisexual person—recognized us in his research, which he picked up from at the point our lovely Hirschfeld left off, basically. This was later expanded on by Michael D Storm, author of Theories of Sexual Orientation. He reimagined the Kinsey Scale as a two dimensional map, which became the beginnings of the modern Kinsey Scale used in the lgbt community today. He posited it was better able to distinguish asexuals from m-spec people as it defined them less based on sexual preferences, or lack their of, based in gender (which would put both sexualities squarely in the centre of the 1D scale), and more on their self described experiences of attraction. So that’s right, you read correctly; the latest rendition of the Kinsey Scale was created in response to a piece that was published after Kinsey’s original studies specifically to better include asexuals who were already featured in the study and scale.
Then we move to the “The Sexually Oppressed.” Published in 1977, it was a book that did exactly what it set out to do: describe people who were oppressed by heteronormative society and their struggles. It was published by social worker, Harvey L. Gochros and featured the work of Myra T. Johnson in a piece describing the way in which mainstream culture affected asexual women specifically, and how straight feminists often shamed and gatekept them from liberating movements, while straight men continued to be an omnipresent threat via corrective assault and forced institutionalization. It was actually a text book in my college, very good read—goes into the ableism present in sexual oppression as well. I highly recommend it.
Also, just as a bonus, I’ve included an extra link below to “On the Racialization of Asexuality” by Ianna Hawkins Owen. She goes into depths about how the allosexual vs asexual discourse we see starting in America in the 70's—which has turned into the modern global “ace discourse” of today—started with nationalist discussions that have their roots in white supremacy, the white construction of binary womanhood, and chattel slavery. An offering from my university days.
Anyways, I hope you and any other lovely readers who come across this enjoy and educate yourselves a bit. Knowledge is power!
P.S. I could not find “The Sexually Oppressed” available online for some reason (but mind you, I am very bad at computers) so I linked a website that should show you the nearest library in your area that carries it. It’s a very popular social work read.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/03/asexuality-history-internet-identity-queer-archive.html
http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/Asexual-Manifesto-Lisa-Orlando.pdf
https://books.google.ca/books?id=XbgTAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.ca/books?id=IH2GCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.worldcat.org/title/sexually-oppressed/oclc/925168401&referer=brief_results
Anonymous left a question.
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apparently i have so much Gay Love for girls that it broke clean through the other side and became self love.
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shout out to me in 5 years…hope shes doing something cool i’m rooting for her
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oh no his cute little happy bounces!!!
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San Francisco Chronicle, California, November 23, 1918
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When we’re new to adulthood, it doesn’t immediately occur to all of us that you’re almost always allowed to leave a situation, because growing up we’re forced to stay in situations until someone dismisses us and/or takes us home, or if we do leave on our own accord there’s someone waiting at home to say “we don’t quit in this family!” Boring party? You can leave. You don’t like the lecture? You can walk out. New doctor not working out? You can end the appointment, you don’t need to wait for them to dismiss you. Bad date? You can just go home. Leaving a situation prematurely might have consequences, but unless you’re under arrest or serving prison time, it’s pretty much always allowed.
–commenter Allison @ askamanager
ALT
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listen I’m just dreading the day when they’re gonna screw us over and close this site for lack of use. you already see people talking like “oh I miss Tumblr” all the time like we’re not still RIGHT FREAKING HERE enjoying our fandom shenanigans in real time…like half the memes on Twitter and Insta are just reposted from here??? uh?? what is that saying???
like I KNOW that Tumblr usage has plummeted and half the blogs that follow me are probably dormant by now. I know that. but if other social media outlets aren’t gonna learn a thing or two about hiding follower counts or allowing tag-based organization or ACTUALLY SHOWING POSTS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER FOR ONCE, then I don’t want them touching this one
seriously what on EARTH are you talking about
Speaking of lack of use… Guys, please reblog stuff. That is how this website works - unlike something like instagram, which has all sorts of metrics that influence how a post disseminates based on likes, the only way for someone to see a post here on tumblr, other than from the tags, is if someone else reblogs it. Not just in an “it helps the artist” way (although that too), but in a, “this participation is how we keep this website alive” way. Likes make the poster feel good (do them too, if you want!), but the great thing about Tumblr is that is it not (is less?) beholden to those algorithmic metrics that ru(i)n all the other sites, and the only way we have that is because we reblog posts, so tumblr doesn’t have to do it.
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Heres how to turn it off btw:
1. Open your devices Alexa app
2. Go to settings
3. Select “Account Settings”
4. Select “Amazon Sidewalk”
5. Turn it off
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Campaign concept: start right after the final battle, describe the basics of the scene, ask the players to flesh it out (what do they look like, what kind of magic items do they have, etc).
Then jump back to level 1 and reveal that it was a prophecy, and the campaign is figuring out how the correct sequence of events to bring about said prophecy—how are they going to track down those items? If one of them dies along the way, how do they resurrect them? Or, what if one of the party isn’t present in the vision, but someone else is?
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But someone has done my idea before…
Have they? Have they done it from your perspective? Have they done it with your cultural and social history? The only time your story is going to suffer is if you rely solely on cliches and recycling direct material from fiction you like.
By nature of your very existence, yes: by existing, what you produce will be different to what someone else would produce. Everything you experience goes into what you write. After all, you write what you know. And what you know best, is you.
Your perspective is valuable. Your perspective is worthwhile, and only you can bring it to the world through your story.
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adhdcognizant-deactivated202110:
(Source: me)
🤡
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I think part of the issue is people assuming that everyone MUST want to move upwards. Like… it’s the next logical step for a person to want to move up the chain: from worker to manager, to district manager, eventually owner.
But I always think of growth like plants.
Aspens grow tall to reach the sun, for sure. But dandelions grow deep, understanding themselves fully so that if some misguided fool tries to uproot them they’d have to try damn hard. And then there’s thyme and other creeping plants, which spread themselves out so much that if you chop a part of it off it roots wherever it can find dirt to root in.
It’s okay not to have lofty dreams. You know what kind of plant you are better than anyone else.
This reminds me of a business problem called The Peter Principle that’s been written about for years but few businesses have been willing to make changes because of it
The concept is that a worker is really good at their job, so good that they clearly deserve better compensation for all they bring to the company, but business is structured so that the only way to get more money is to be promoted to a higher position. A new position comes with new job requirements, but not everyone is going to be right for those. Example: an amazing computer programmer might be useless at managing staff, but if you promote that programmer to head of the department they’ll be required to manage staff. It seems like the best thing for everyone, the company included, would be to put that employee back in their original job and let them keep the higher salary since they clearly do the job well enough to deserve it. However companies want those lower level jobs to be seen as undesirable so workers will feel upper staff deserve their higher wages. Because of this, putting the employee back in the job they’re right for is considered a demotion, so instead companies let the employee keep the upper level job they’re bad at forever or until they have just cause to fire them. Clearly the company was better off with them in the job they were good at, but the illusion of hierarchy to justify higher waged employees is more important
Just because capitalism says everyone should climb the corporate ladder doesn’t mean it’s actually the right thing for everyone
