self-proclaimed allies look to you for guidance on how they can be a better ally while consciously or not expecting their hand to be held or their fragile feelings to be spared along the way; simultaneously oblivious every time they trample all over your feelings, perpetrating the very thing they claim to be against because they’re so focused on the elephant in the room that they pay no mind to their own everyday microaggressions.
actually acknowledging the fact that they do not exist as two mutually exclusive groups of people, ie. aromantic asexuals vs (allo)romantic asexuals.
this post marks the last time i’ll be responding to asks about / reblogs of the post i made about the fight for Jughead’s correct portrayal on the CW’s Riverdale. after 3 days of responding to nearly 15 asks / posts on the topic and the anxiety that that has caused me on top of everything else going on in my life, i’m calling it quits on that post. while i still stand by the admittedly unclear point that i was attempting to make, i do apologize to those who were hurt by my unclear wording. i’m also done with talking about asexual representation in general or fandom-related anything anymore. while i appreciate the kind words of encouragement i received, it’s not worth the cost to my mental health to talk about even my own representation anymore. this post serves as both a future point of reference on the mess that…
EDIT 1/20/2017: if after reading this post you get pissed off, have questions or other things you’d like to say to me, please read this. while at work, i was scrolling through my Twitter timeline and noticed a bunch of tweets by people who are upset about recent news about how the popular Archie character Jughead, who is canonically asexual, will be portrayed on CW’s “Riverdale”. that is, that Jughead “will have romances with women and, of course, burgers”. people are responding to this by tweeting things like “keep Jughead #asexual” at the show’s Twitter account and saying how they’re not going to watch the show because of #asexual #erasure. curious, i checked out the article that i initially thought was at the root of these tweets and was astounded by what i actually found in the article. i quickly added my frustrated 2 cents about how aces were responding to…
just got the Japan edition of National Geographic’s special issue “Gender Revolution”. bearing in mind that i haven’t actually sat down and read through it yet, here are a few snaps along with my initial impression. prior to getting my hands on this magazine (and in fact, before it had even been released), i already had a general idea of what to expect based on snippets of featured articles that i’d come across online. plus, you know, the fact that it’s NatGeo. as such, i feel like there was never any chance of me being pleasantly surprised in any way, even though i’d set my expectations low to begin with. well, i’m glad i did, because i’m nitpicky as all hell. but we all already knew that. at a glance, there are some great things going on in this magazine, such as the increase in awareness of trans, intersex and non-binary…
a while ago i wrote a random post titled “story time: when “African” is more important than “American””. well, it’s time to follow that up with another even more random post. back when i lived in Brisbane, Australia i used to use public transportation (photoed) a lot to get around before eventually getting up the courage to drive on the “wrong” side of the road. i met people from all over while living in Australia, but in so far as i can remember, i only ever met one African-American person during the 3 years that i lived there. bad luck on my part, perhaps. maybe. not exactly. but i tell myself that it is to ignore the other factors at play because the truth is that no matter what country i’m in, it’s a novelty to meet another African-American abroad and i’m well aware of the various reasons for that.…
so i’m at Starbucks using Starbuck’s free wifi while i work on stuff, as usual, when i randomly go on Tumblr and see the name of a familiar website, Black Lesbian Love Lab, being recommended to me. i didn’t know they were on Tumblr, so i clicked on the recommendation to check it out and was brought to the above page telling me that i’m unable to access @blacklesbianlovelab because of stipulations in the wifi service’s terms of use? wtf? i’m immediately reminded of the fiasco not that long ago when Tumblr marked the entire #lesbian tag NSFW, which i thought they’d fixed but? at the very least this seems like a remnant of that? although the wifi service itself is also involved, i can still access the BLLL website without issue and the content of the Tumblr blog by no means warrants it being treated like a porn blog. again,…
January 1st, 2017: an attempt at being more “active” about my own well-being à la microblogging finally gets off the ground. i’ve been thinking about making something like this for myself for a while, but have always dragged my feet about it. BLAQUEER will be devoted to any and everything that i find helpful for myself personally re: navigating queerness, mental health and self-care as a black person. at the moment, i envision that as including, but not being limited to: photos, artwork, etc of queer black people existing: because goddamnit, be it on Tumblr or out in the world at large, i never see that without actively search for it. i want a place where i can see people like me existing without having to hunt for it each time. i also want to curate what i see because i’m tired of wading through hypersexualization / hypermasculinzation when i do hunt…
with only one day left in 2016, it’s time for the annual end-of-the-year stuff zzz… having had memory issues for forever, i’ve been journaling / archiving / etc stuff online since, well… 2002 when i created my livejournal account, i guess. New Year’s specific stuff started in 2007 with a questionnaire-type meme that i have done every year since to recap the outgoing year, followed years later by a year-end “photo dump” to summarize a year’s worth of photos in one place. this post is a more recent tradition courtesy of Instagram, but i don’t want to post this on IG, so here we are! again. while i feel like 2016 hasn’t been a overly bad year for me personally, i also feel like the past two months have been such that they overshadow whatever else i am able to recall of 2016… sigh. it’s nice to have photographic proof that…
it’s incredibly ironic (and by “ironic” i mean “funny as hell”) that the very same people who call non-binary people “special snowflakes” with the implication that we are attention seekers are the very same people who go out of their way to actively seek out people like me to send these random cries for attention to. sometimes i literally get essay-length messages that amount to nothing more than “LOOK AT ME! LISTEN TO ME! STROKE MY EGO BY ACKNOWLEDGING ME!” and like… it never ceases to amaze me how oblivious these people are to the irony of their actions.
