Linkspam: June 7th, 2019

On Fridays, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

Danyi wrote about asexual characters and fandom.

Coyote asked what the aro community wants to do with quoiros.

Budweiser announced that they’re holding a three day asexual event, and AVEN gave further details.  Several people have weighed in, giving reasons to be wary of it.

Karleen wrote about asexual and nonsexual characters in anime and manga.

TAAAP interviewed Bauer about the history of aces at NGLTF’s Creating Change conference.

Ace Community Activity

TAAAP is participating in a number of pride events throughout June.

Aro blogging

The Carnival of Aros has posted the roundup posts from the last two months.  The themes were “Coming Out and/or Being Out as Aromantic Spectrum” and “The Intersection of Religion and Aromanticism“.  The next call for submissions has appeared, and the theme is “Imagine”.

Alex talks about how there seems to be more focus on creating new labels instead of asking why those labels are needed.

Reject alcohol sponsorship

Recently, Budweiser UK announced its “Fly the Flag” campaign, which aims to support LGBT+ diversity by highlighting nine specific groups. For each group, they’re offering money to an associated charity, and are releasing a limited edition cup with a flag design. Based on Twitter engagement, the group that got the most attention is asexuality.

Budweiser also seems to have made further arrangements with asexual activists. They are hosting a three-day asexual event at London Pride, called “Ace of Clubs”. AVEN has described it as an open bar with additional activities. It was spearheaded by UK activist Yasmin Benoit.

There has been quite a flurry in response. Mainstream news articles have nearly uniformly expressed incredulity at asexuality and grey-asexuality–if they discuss it at all. They’re much more interested in discussing the problems with brand support for LGBT groups. In the ace community, some have responded positively, others have not.  There are also many responses focused on combating negativity, especially in the Twitter thread.

I take the following viewpoint: sponsorship from alcohol companies is a special kind of bad. AVEN should refuse Budweiser’s donation, and while I’m guessing Ace of Clubs is a done deal, asexuality activists should avoid making such deals in the future.

Carnival of Aces: Asexuality & Gender at Play

The Carnival of Aces for May has been posted by  Demiandproud.  The theme was “Asexuality and Gender at Play”.  Please take a look!

The next Carnival of Aces is being hosted by Lib.  The theme for June is “Then, Now, & Tomorrow”.  Get your submissions in before the end of the month!

The Carnival of Aces is hosted by volunteers each month.  If you would like to volunteer, please see the masterpost for instructions.

When unimportant relationships are important

Recently, I wrote about my experience not forming close friendships. That’s not strictly speaking true–sometimes I do form some close friendships, but I tend to be uncommitted to them, and I often value friend networks over individual friendships.

Now I’d like to talk about how this causes friction with certain narratives in the ace community.

In particular, there is a narrative about friends who disappear the moment they form a romantic relationship, because they put a lot more priority on their romantic relationships.  I will use as an example, an excellent essay by swankivy, “Dealing with other people’s relationships“.

Linkspam: May 17th, 2019

On Fridays, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

Sennkestra has an Addyi update, and also informs us of Bremelanotide, another drug to treat HSDD, which has recently been submitted to the FDA.

Coyote made a timeline about HSDD and Addyi/Flibanserin, outlined some arguments used to defend the drug, and possible actions.

Ozy compared sexual attraction to Tide pods.

Aro vlogging

Connie had some aromantic dating advice.

Question of the Month: May 14th, 2019.

How explicit do you think ace representation needs to be? 

One of the most popular examples of claimed to be ace characters I can think of is Sherlock from the BBC version. Apparently actor Benedict Cumberbatch affirmed Sherlock as asexual, but as far as I know this is never stated in the show. Is it enough for someone who has some authorship over a character to say they are ace on the sidelines? Like J.K. Rowling saying Dumbledore was gay but not writing this into the original Harry Potter series? Or do you think representation should be more explicit? What about characters that fans claim are ace? Apparently some people think a close reading of Batman’s history reveals he is asexual.

I don’t make close friends

What is a friend? In ace communities, most of the time when we’re talking about friendships, it’s in order to differentiate it from other kinds of relationships, such as romantic or queerplatonic relationships. Of course, this puts a strong emphasis on the kinds of friendships that are most difficult to differentiate from queerplatonic/romantic/etc. It puts an emphasis on very close friendships.

I don’t form those kinds of friendships.

Wellll… there’s a big question mark at the end of that statement. It depends on what counts. There are many individuals that I’ve spent an extensive amount of time hanging out with, that I would consider close. But eventually, it slows down or we stop seeing each other–a change that suits me just fine, and does not cause me concern. Not to say that my time with my friends isn’t valuable, it’s just, there are other friends to be had.