it’s always humbling (for me) to be told by someone that something i made / did / said matters to them, but for whatever reason it feels especially… significant? when i’m told it out of the blue offline. i mean, the last thing i expected to happen going into work today was for a coworker, who happened to be in town for an in-house training event, to approach me about having seen me in a BuzzFeed video about asexuality…
Asexual Awareness Week is a week set aside in October to not only show your pride as an asexual person, but to help raise awareness of asexuality and asexual people. sadly, some of the people who are most in need of increased awareness and resources are those who go unnoticed even within the asexual community itself. it’s no secret that the Asexual Community, particularly in English-speaking countries, has a Whiteness Problem. or at least, i hope that it isn’t. there is more often than not a distinct lack of racial / ethnic diversity in asexual communities and spaces, which is why it ought to surprise no one that there is also a lack of resources and even awareness among fellow aces about the unique and diverse struggles and needs of aces of color. with the bulk of asexual awareness, resources and discourse revolving around white faces and common narratives that…
my-minds-matters: queerascat: anonymous said: I just had a eureka moment when looking at your recent reblog of a post on how “love wins/love is love” can be kind of alienating… As an aro ace, the whole “love” angle is definitely implicitly exclusionary. The core of my being aro ace is that I DON’T love anyone That Way, and community rhetoric consistently fails to reflect that. Not to mention that I find the “twoo wuv” thing eye-roll-inducing at times. Your thoughts? ( re: this post ) i agree that in addition to ignoring, excluding and / or alienating trans and non-binary people, as pointed out in the OP, such rhetoric also ignores, excludes and alienates those for whom “love” (be it in the traditional, romantic sense or at all) is not a thing– or at least, is not The Thing that defines their connection to the LGBTQIA community. such rhetoric posits love…
oodlenoodleroodle: queerascat: for the longest time it struck me as odd, the way that the LGBT community at large upholds “visibility” as some kind of goal or ideal to be fought for. it wasn’t until recent years that i actually stopped and thought about it enough to realize why reference to and usage of “visibility” in this way bothers me so much. as someone who has always been and will always be hypervisible because of their race, it baffles me when people advocate for visibility as if visibility is what we all want; as if visibility is even a means to getting what we all want. this upholding of visibility as something important for all of us to fight for seems grossly negligent of the fact that some of us are already more visible than others and that that very visibility is part of what has gotten some of us bullied,…
for the longest time it struck me as odd, the way that the LGBT community at large upholds “visibility” as some kind of goal or ideal to be fought for. it wasn’t until recent years that i actually stopped and thought about it enough to realize why reference to and usage of “visibility” in this way bothers me so much. as someone who has always been and will always be hypervisible because of their race, it baffles me when people advocate for visibility as if visibility is what we all want; as if visibility is even a means to getting what we all want. this upholding of visibility as something important for all of us to fight for seems grossly negligent of the fact that some of us are already more visible than others and that that very visibility is part of what has gotten some of us bullied, turned away…
anonymous said: i was wondering, do people in japan know about asexuality or intersex , graysexuals , aromantics…? they know about lgbt but what about these? is there any kind of awareness to it? ( i discovered that im ace flux and still questioning whether demisexual or graysexual, but also that im biromantic seemingly and was wondering if it would be a problem there? are people accepting or aware of them or just lgbt?) it’s hard to make a broad generalization about an entire country of people, but generally speaking, i’d say that awareness of intersex people, the ace spectrum and the aro spectrum– and indeed, LGBT everything– is behind where it is in, say, the US. at the same time, Japan is a very diverse place. within the same country, even among the same demographic of people, awareness can vary greatly. everything i’m saying and about to say is…
nextstepcake: queerascat: nextstepcake: queerascat: anonymous said: Hey Vesper! I have a question. I’ve noticed that within the nonbinary and larger trans and queer and so forth communities, some nonbinary genders seem to get more recognition than others. Some- especially maverique as I’ve noticed- are hardly known of by many other nonbinary and/or trans people, while others such are gaining recognition in trans, nb, and other circles much more quickly in comparison. Why do you think some nb genders are becoming more well known than other nb genders? hi anon, this is a really tough question. not just because of how subjective it is (i mean, what even counts as ‘recognition’, let alone what counts as ‘more’ or ‘more quickly’), but also because there are an infinite number of factors involved in why any non-binary gender gets any amount of recognition at all. imho, some non-binary genders are more commonly recognized…
anonymous said: Hey Vesper! I have a question. I’ve noticed that within the nonbinary and larger trans and queer and so forth communities, some nonbinary genders seem to get more recognition than others. Some- especially maverique as I’ve noticed- are hardly known of by many other nonbinary and/or trans people, while others such are gaining recognition in trans, nb, and other circles much more quickly in comparison. Why do you think some nb genders are becoming more well known than other nb genders? hi anon, this is a really tough question. not just because of how subjective it is (i mean, what even counts as ‘recognition’, let alone what counts as ‘more’ or ‘more quickly’), but also because there are an infinite number of factors involved in why any non-binary gender gets any amount of recognition at all. imho, some non-binary genders are more commonly recognized at least in part…
→ also see: 「私はレズビアン。」”I’m a Lesbian” mirroring BuzzFeed Yellow’s “I’m ____, But I’m Not” series in English, BuzzFeed Japan has just released two videos in time for Tokyo Rainbow Week debunking various homophobic stereotypes and misconceptions about gay men and lesbians in Japan. for those who can understand Japanese, one thing that’s especially noteworthy about these videos are the differences and similarities between the homophobia mentioned in these videos and homophobia in the US and other western countries. personally, i love what BuzzFeed Japan did with these videos, more so than BuzzFeed Yellow’s. unlike in America, for example, i feel like for Japan, a country severely lacking in any and all LGBTQIA awareness, videos like these hold a lot more weight and mean all the more to the people they help. in America, it’s easier to take videos like BuzzFeed Yellow’s for granted. in Japan, i cannot even begin to convey the…
my journey to self-awareness and self-acceptance regarding the state of my own mental health has been a long one. 15-some-odd years i’ve been struggling with persistent depression and social anxiety and my journey is far from over. in this video i talk about how i went for over a decade without even knowing what “mental health” even was and how i’ve struggled going from that to where i am today, having finally accepted my mental health for what it is. i also briefly mention how the intersectionality of race, sexuality and gender factored into my struggle with mental wellbeing. for those who’d prefer to read most of what was said here, check out this Tumblr post: http://tmblr.co/Z04EMt1y9JmEq the video ended up being fairly long, but oh well. i’m glad i wrote most of it out and posted it to Tumblr first then sat on it for weeks. made talking about…
