#and i mean i assume they arent hugely valuable bc theyre also giving out like. candy. from yhe sme prize pool

[dashiellqvverty]

how about “stanning” your local library

edit: OP is trans and loves their trans sisters, transmisogynists can stay the fuck away from this post

#okay and in fact encouraged to rb #im in a big loving libraries mood bc my library is literally giving out advance reader copies as summer reading prizes #and i assumed it was like a surplus they had of books that had already been released but nah i got a book thats coming out in september!! #its about being gay in the 80s im psyched as hell to read it #and like that shit is FREE all i did was check out some comics so i got a little scratch ticket that was like ‘cool go pick out a book’ #and i mean i assume they arent hugely valuable bc theyre also giving out like. candy. from yhe sme prize pool #but its just rly cool bc this is something i would never have heard about or gotten ahold of otherwise #r.txt #500 #1k #5k #10k #20k #50k

[outoforderaro]

a long post about amatonormativity mainly

happy aromantic spectrum awareness week, heres a thing i wrote on twitter and i was right it’s very long sorry.

amatonormativity: the normative social force that holds romantic relationships as intrisically better, more valuable, closer, and more necessary than other types of relationships, and that everyone seeks a romantic relationship as a central feature in their life.

this slots together with other things, like that romantic relationships (and only romantic ones) should also be sexual ones, or that they should be monogamous. amatonormativity was created by and for aros, but it hurts other people as well that arent doing romance "right"

so that's the definition, and there's two sides of this, like other normativities: there's the side that assumes it's true for everyone, and pressures everyone to be under it, and the side that punishes and ostracizes people for not holding to it.

the 1st is almost always described alongside amatonormativity, as examples of what is meant. language like "just friends" or "more than friends", that "single" is implied to mean "looking", that everyone wants to get married and to a romantic partner, that "love" means romo love

the 2nd gets talked about by aros, but not as often ime in connection to amatonormativity? but it's the sort of stuff it enables when people break it. and it's from taking an inverse of that assumption: all people do A, A is wonderful. people that dont do A must be wrong!

im realizing just now that it's a similar idea as to when you find out someone doesnt like your favorite food or movie ("what do you mean you hate pasta?! whats wrong with you?"), and ive used the "this is something everyone else is super into but you, but to 11" analogy before

it's that in earnest though. something must be wrong with me because i dont feel romantic attraction, i must be "broken". or heartless bc i must not be able to feel anything for anyone, which leads to a lot of ableist "armchair diagnosing" (to put it graciously/least triggering)

that false premise that amatonorm. is true for all people leads to a lot of "well, then they must not be people", or people in a "correct", "normal" way, which leads to loads of about how inhuman people like me are, that above ableism, etc. bc "[romo] love is what makes us human"

for both sides of this, im bringing up language as the easiest thing to point to. the problem is not what phrases you use. idc if you stop saying "more than friends" if youre still making that prioritization. same with this second side of things. the words are symptoms of beliefs

i think the first gets connected more to amatonormativity bc the term is only every explained by exasperated aros trying to get alloromantic people to listen to us, which is hard enough when you're only slightly implying that some phrases are less than cool.

now, the point i had muddled into this all in the first draft was connecting my romance repulsion to the isolation a romantic thing causes me, and how it falls into this split of amatonormativity

a lot of it is from feeling like im on the outside of a giant conversation. imagine everyone's talking about a show you dont watch but theyre huge fans, and turn it to 11, way more people, way more persistent. it'd be hard to feel connected to those people, right?

youd never have a real context for anything, and nothing to give or gain from those conversations. it's very isolating and hard not to feel excluded if that's all anyone's ever talking about, and assumes you are also deeply invested in this

then imagine if people were earnestly being like "you havent seen/read/etc this? whats wrong with you? we're gonna go watch this right now!" and actually did, regardless of what you wanted. actually thought something was wrong with you or that you should be forced to try it

so, my feelings of isolation. some, i feel, might be unavoidable. romance is The Popular thing lmao, so there'll be things im not into, but its important not to assume that feelings are universal, or people dont exist/are wrong/etc if they dont feel that way

there've been a lot of shows ive been into, that have implied that people like me dont exist, that no one could possibly be like me, or that being like me would be terrible or inhuman or "dead", even while handling well other queer  and feelings of not belonging. so step 1) dont

#aromantic #aromantic awareness week #asaw #asaw 2019 #aromantic spectrum awareness week #rj talks