Linkspam: May 10th, 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

Ozy talked about graysexuality as the birth of a new orientation.

Michael Paramo discussed asexuality on Usenet in the early 1990s.

Coyote argued that using “non-SAM” to refer specifically to the romantic/sexual orientation dyad is amatonormative.

Addyi, the drug to treat HSDD, has a new ad campaign.  Sennkestra explains why we’re mad.

The Carnival of Aces, themed on “The Five Love Languages” was posted.  The next call for submissions is here.

Carnival of Aros

aroacepagans is hosting the May Carnival of Aros, themed on “The Intersection of Religion and Aromanticism“.

Carnival of Aces: The Five Love Languages

The Carnival of Aces for April has been posted by luvtheheaven.  The theme was “The Five Love Languages“.  Please take a look!

The next Carnival of Aces is being hosted by Demiandproud.  The theme for May is “Performance and Play”.  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.

Terrible graphs of orientation

It used to be one of distinctive features of ace communities, that we really liked drawing graphs. Oh so many graphs, more than I can include. The graphs were painful, and we liked the pain. It’s fallen out of fashion lately though, possibly for the best.

This article is one part historical retrospective, one part laughing at terrible graphs, and one part trying to “improve” the graphs with more math. There are a lot of graphs, so we better get started.

Triangles, Squares, and Hypercubes

Linkspam: April 19th, 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

Coyote argues that visibility is a trap.  Coyote also provided some diagrams to help think about it.

Asexuality Archive looked into laws protecting sexual/romantic orientation in the US.

“No romo”: An overanalysis

“No romo” is an aromantic meme, a play on an older expression, “no homo”. “No romo” is often used as a jokey hashtag, or an art motif, and usually there’s not enough context to give it further meaning. It’s mostly just a snappy way to say “no romance”.

I’ve also heard people complain about the meme. To alloromantic aces, as well as aro-spec people who aren’t aromantic, sometimes it can seem like something more sinister, an expression of aromantic elitism.

I’m here to sweep away all that, and say you’re all missing the elephant in the room. The “no romo” meme is just a speck of dust in a much larger meme pool.

From Google trends

Question of the Month: April 16th, 2019.

How do you feel about participating in studies on asexuality? 

Some other related questions you can answer: do you participate whenever you see a study? Are you concerned about who the author is? Do you feel differently about studies made by academics versus informal studies done by members of the ace community? What would you change about the studies on asexuality you participated in? Or what would make you want to participate?

Umbrella erosion

In Coyote’s timeline of “quoiromantic”, there’s a certain conflict that persisted for many years. Cor, who coined “quoiromantic”, has repeatedly asserted a broad meaning, as in “What even is romantic orientation?” Nonetheless, there has been a persistent misconception that it has a narrower meaning, as in “can’t tell the difference between platonic and romantic attraction”.

This is a historical pattern that repeats again and again. A term is intended as a broad umbrella to describe a large number of experiences, but the term acquires more narrow connotations. You can find examples in Coyote’s timelines of “queerplatonic” and related concepts. It happens to “gray-asexual”. It happens to “queer”. It even happens to sandwiches.

Note: Coyote has discussed the same historical pattern, with extensive links to examples.  But my article was already written before Coyote’s was published, and I left it unchanged to show how we’re independently coming to similar conclusions.

I’ll discuss “quoiromantic”, “queer”, and sandwiches–but not in that order–and then at the bottom I’ll try to establish some rules for how to deal with it.