ace space for asexuals, demisexuals, gray-asexuals

Open Thread

2013-04-25T12:57:17Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

Today's open thread is about spices. Do you have favorites to cook with or eat? Do you prefer mild food? Must the spice flow?

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Open Thread

2013-04-11T13:52:32Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

Today's open thread is about growing things. Do you garden? Do you have houseplants? Do you wish you did? Do you have dreams of genetically engineering an enormous carnivorous plant to keep intruders away?

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Open Thread

2013-03-15T01:49:29Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

Today's open thread is about things to do with your feet. Do you like to walk? Run? Paint your toenails? Soak in hot water? Do karate? Go barefoot in the grass?

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Open Thread

2013-02-14T03:19:10Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

Today's open thread is about musical instruments. Do you play any? Do you wish you played any? Did you know that the biggest woodwind instrument in the world is seven feet tall?

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Open Thread

2013-01-09T23:30:06Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

This thread is about sea creatures! Do you have favorites? Do you have dis-favorites? Do you love them all? Do you hate them all? Do you think zooplankton is the cutest thing on n limblike things? Discuss!

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Open Thread

2012-12-08T23:57:40Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

This thread is about books. Read anything good lately?

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Asexual media in accessible formats

2012-11-26T13:57:04Z

Posted by: teafeather

This morning I decided to look for Anthony Bogaert's "Understanding Asexuality" in a format I can read and was disappointed to find that it's not scheduled to be produced in braille or audio by NLS and no one has submitted it to Bookshare.org. As it's an academic-leaning text it might eventually end up at Learning Ally but I can't afford $120 for membership there (plus however much they're charging for a DRM key these days) for just one book. I could buy the ebook but I try to avoid DRM'd ebooks as much as possible, and they don't work with a lot of screen readers or braille displays.

None of the rental options for the documentary "(A)sexual" indicate whether or not they have captions available, and I've not seen anything about DVD availability.

People who can't access standard print or spoken language deserve access to these materials too.

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Open Thread

2012-11-24T19:54:13Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

Yep-- I'm actually talking about the weather.

Or rather, I'm hoping you'll talk about the weather. How is it where you are? Are you enjoying it? If you could use your magic weather control device and change it, what would you change it to?

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Open Thread

2012-11-08T21:21:19Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

In my infinite togetherness, I inadvertently posted my original question, which was about the weather, to my own journal.

Therefore, here's a new question! This open thread is about celebrations. Specifically, which holiday or celebratory customs would you like to add, and which would you like to make go away forever?

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It has been a very long time...

2012-10-25T01:09:52Z

Posted by: veerserif

Hi. I joined up here about a year ago, very very soon after discovering my asexuality. Since then... it's been a really wild kind of year. From asexuality, and various social-justice oriented ace blogs, I jumped to Gender & Sexual Minority activism, then to feminism, then to anti-racism, to learning about ableism and trans* issues.

And now I guess I'm coming back? Regardless, I feel that I really should thank all the people here. I might not have been here for a veeeery long time, but it was communities like this and the stories shared in groups like this that really pushed me to learning more.

So. Er. What have I missed?

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Open Thread

2012-10-22T11:09:35Z

Posted by: greenchestnuts

With the permission of the mods, I'm going to attempt semi-weekly open threads for some time, to see if we can get some discussion going back in this lovely group.

Today's open thread is about Halloween. Do you like it? Do you dislike it? What do you like or dislike about it? Do you live somewhere where it's not celebrated?

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Specifying romantic orientation on FetLife

2012-08-05T01:12:13Z

Posted by: metapianycist

Someone in the Asexual & Kinky FetLife group recently suggested in the website improvement area that the site add a drop-down for romantic orientation. FetLife has options for sexual orientation which have included "Asexual" for a long time.

If anyone here is a member of FetLife and wants to vote in favor of the suggestion to add romantic orientation options to the site, the link is here: https://fetlife.com/improvements/1920

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Open Thread

2012-04-21T18:44:07Z

Posted by: theletterfour

Okay, so I've been really bad about remembering to check (and post) open threads. Since it's been a couple weeks since the last one, let's have one!

This thread will be a free for all.

What's on your mind right now?

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Open Thread

2011-12-23T01:49:33Z

Posted by: theletterfour

Today's open thread topic is nostalgia.

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Carnival calling~

2011-10-05T12:27:06Z

Posted by: kaz

Just to let you know the Carnival of Aces is happening at my place this month! The topic is gender and the deadline is Halloween. :)

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A Gray Asexual Space (gray-asexuality.tumblr.com) in need of additional moderators!

2011-10-04T21:39:57Z

Posted by: metapianycist

This is the call for applications that I posted on Tumblr (link):

I'm looking for two other people to be moderators with me. To apply, write a few sentences in the submit box about why you think you would do a good job as a moderator for A Gray Asexual Space, and include your email address. Willingness to be accessible in terms of trigger warnings (as described here, here, here and here) and image descriptions (as described here and here) on the blog and your own blog is a must.

I am looking for at least two additional moderators, and so far I have received only one applicant. Please consider applying.

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Open Thread Thursday!

2011-09-29T15:40:52Z

Posted by: theletterfour

Today's open thread topic is music. What kind of music do you most like to listen to? Do you have any experience playing a musical instrument? If your life had a soundtrack, what would the song for your current situation be? Is there a song or artist that can make you happy, no matter what mood you were otherwise in? Are there any songs that mean a lot to you for other reasons?

Also, please note that today's open thread is public.

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Membership Update

2011-09-27T16:00:20Z

Posted by: aceeccentric

Quick community business post.

Recently the mods were told that there are people who aren't joining the community because of the invitation-style membership qualifications (having to answer the questions about username and the accessibility policy). After consulting each other, the mods decided to open up membership.

1) The first sign of trolling or something like that, we'll go back to moderated membership.

2) The mods are going to be keeping an eye on new activity to make sure people are staying consistent with the rules of the safe space and accessibility policies. So far people have been good about this, but since new members don't have to answer questions about the accessibility policy we'll be paying extra attention.

3) If you're currently on Tumblr and don't mind letting people know membership rules have changed, signal boosting would be appreciated. I'm on a mental-health-assisting Tumblr hiatus and just can't go back for at least a few more days. Thank you.

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also

2011-09-24T20:20:07Z

Posted by: sciatrix

So I was writing something, and I absentmindedly wrote down "in the asexual community..." and went on with my sentence.

And then I looked back at it and I thought about that phrase, and whether it really quite fit. The thing is, I don't think you can actually say anything about "the asexual community" any more. There's too many different asexual communities with too many distinct cultures to be able to make that generalization. This is awesome.

This has hit me pretty hard, guys. Because when I first started identifying as ace, you could legitimately say that--there was AVEN and there was basically nowhere else to discuss asexuality. Oh, there were maybe a few tiny, isolated pockets of discussion where individual asexuals found each other in other spaces to talk, but nothing big enough to have its own culture that wasn't essentially identical to AVEN culture.

But now we have lots of different communities! And the cultures are changing, and this is just so cool.

I'm going to go off and be happy about this for the rest of the day now. I love the fact that we're decentralizing and spreading out so very widely. And just... eeeeee~<3

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Visibility/Education ideas?

2011-09-24T17:51:18Z

Posted by: sciatrix

Last night, the other ace at my campus LGBTQA group and I were sitting around and chatting, and we discussed the idea of approaching the officers of the group and offering to do a talk on asexuality sometime during Asexual Awareness Week. Trouble is, neither of us have ever been involved in an offline discussion like that.

Thoughts on how to set this up? Suggestions on what to be prepared for? If we do do this, we'll probably be addressing a medium-to-small group of mostly LGBT-identified people, some of whom I think have some very basic exposure to asexuality but almost none of whom have ever heard of it. Has anyone done something like this before?

Also, have spent most of my day working on the 101 resource kaz and SlightlyMetaphysical and I keep starting up, because we need one. Agh.

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Carnival of Aces - October

2011-09-21T17:52:05Z

Posted by: norah_liath

If you don't already know about the Carnival of Aces, you can go here for some general information: http://writingfromfactorx.wordpress.com/a-carnival-of-aces-masterpost/.

I'm hosting the Carnival for October. If you'd like to participate, or just for more information specific to this month, please go here: http://norah-liath.dreamwidth.org/9290.html.

The topic for October is family.

If you could help signal boost the carnival in a variety of (appropriate) places, I would really appreciate it. It's not something I'm very good at: I'm not a member in many places (I still regularly come across places that I don't even know about, that are apparently very popular, too), and I often don't know what is appropriate for posting (and when), and get a lot of anxiety about it.

(Is it maybe an idea to have some kind of tag for blog carnivals or just general signal-boosting?)

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Signal boost of asexy survey

2011-09-14T01:44:55Z

Posted by: shiyiya

Asexual Awareness Week (October 23-29) has created a census for asexual, demisexual and grey-a identified people.
To be scientifically representative, the census needs at least 500 responses. If this happens the results can go towards future academic research into asexuality, and give us a better understanding of the asexual population.
Please only take the survey if you are on the asexual-spectrum!
TAKE THE CENSUS HERE: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AAW2011AsexualCommunityCensus
Please complete the survey and spread the message!

(via Sciatrix's tumblr)

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Open Thread

2011-09-08T18:03:06Z

Posted by: aceeccentric

Today's topic is geekery. What's guaranteed to get you geeking out? What's the geekiest thing you've own/done?

Note: today's open thread is public.

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I like existing

2011-09-06T18:35:43Z

Posted by: nami_roland

So as I may have mentioned here before I'm in a human sexuality class this semester. And, three weeks in, it is by far my favorite class. The subject itself is fascinating -- I'm not as much of a sex/sexuality nerd as some people I know but it's still way cool to study -- and my professor is just incredibly fantastic. Seriously, I have all the love for this professor.

Anyway, we're still kind of looking at the study of sociology (since this is a 1000 level class and so it's assumed that the people taking it aren't sociology majors, which, at least in my case, is a perfectly valid assumption) and at why it's a useful lens to look at to study sexuality. Beginner stuff, mostly, but still interesting and she can still find ways to work in all the swear words and graphic descriptions she can just like she warned us she would and I'm still enjoying myself immensely. Today we were looking at the idea of "sex" and what it means to "have sex" and what counts and what doesn't count and how people keep count. (As an aside, I never realized what a big deal it was to tell someone your count and how much thought apparently goes into what number you give. Clearly you learn something new everyday.) About halfway through class we'd broadened our definition to roughly, "An expression of erotic desire ending with a sense of completion." (My notes for this class are shit, which will probably be a problem when it comes time to study for the exam but oh well. It's hard to focus on taking notes when your professor is bouncing around the classroom talking about being a party favor and generally proving herself to be awesome.)

So we had that definition, and then she looked around and was like, "But that definition still leaves some people out, doesn't it? Who do you think it leaves out?" And no one had anything to say, because people still don't talk much in class because her enthusiasm is intimidating and it's still only the third week and, anyway, no one -- myself included, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit -- seemed to be able to come up with an answer to her question. After a minute of letting us think about it she went on and said, "What about people who don't experience desire? What about people whose sex lives involve not having or not desiring sex? They count too, after all." And it was beautiful and I was kind of surprised by how much that inclusion meant to me. Because she was talking about us. About asexual people. And if she never said the word, well, she doesn't usually say gay or straight either, she tends to talk about partners and attraction patterns rather than the common labels, which is fine. Because it was very clear, at least to me, that she meant us.*

And then later in the class we were talking briefly about privilege because we'd wandered back into sociology and what it meant to study and do sociology and privilege comes into that in a pretty big way. So she asked all the people who ID as heterosexual how many of them had had to come out as straight and oh, one or two people tentatively raised their hands. And she nodded and was like, "yeah. And the system is set up in a way that most of you never have to sit there and agonize about the person you like and what that means and what it says about you as a person." Then she paused and then added, "Or sit there and agonize about how you don't like anyone and what that means and what that says about you as a person." Again, talking about us. And again it made me just ridiculously happy.

I don't think I realized before now just how good it would feel to be mentioned like that. In a lot of ways it was better than having a whole unit specifically devoted to us, though obviously that would be fantastic. But just being mentioned casually like that takes asexuality out of the domain of 'that's so weird' and into the real of the so-called 'normal.' It's just one more thing, one more variation, something just as legitimate as anything else. I'm pretty damn sure that this is the first time I've ever heard asexuality talked about like that, especially by someone who isn't ace. It wasn't a discussion of asexuality, we didn't dwell on it, it just was. And it was fantastic.

*For the record I am out to her, as of the end of last week, and I need to write up that conversation because it's one of the big reasons I love her as much as I do. I have never had as good a coming out conversation in my life.

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Open Thread

2011-09-01T13:54:40Z

Posted by: theletterfour

This is the Thursday open thread.

Today's topic is inspired by the show I'm working on right now, and that is humour. What makes you laugh?

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