Linkspam: January 8th, 2021

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!

Aro Blogging

The Carnival of Aros is calling for submissions on the theme “Stories“.  The round-up for last month (“Happily Ever After“) was published.

Leon Friedman wrote about love stories for AUREA.

Calls for Participants/Support

The Community Showcase “A-Spec & Media” Webinar (January 16) will feature creators from the A-Spec Community including creators whose work is in-person, digital, professional, self published, or live performance art. To apply, please complete the form by January 6.

Journal Club: Asexuality and Sexual Disinterest

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“What Does Asexuality Teach Us About Sexual Disinterest? Recommendations for Health Professionals Based on a Qualitative Study With Asexually Identified People” by Kristina Gupta (2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623x.2015.1113593 (requires journal access)

The journal club meets once a month on Discord, using text or voice as club members prefer.  We discuss a variety of academic works in ace studies, ranging from gender studies to psychology.  Don’t worry about journal access, we can provide access.  If you’re interested, please e-mail me at asexualagenda@gmail.com for an invite.

Our discussion notes are below the fold.

Linkspam: December 25th, 2020

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

Constance theorized about asexual listening.

Coyote has an open letter to TAAAP: “You do not ‘Use the SAM’“.  TAAAP replied.  [Siggy’s note: I had temporarily removed the link to TAAAP, pending confirmation of its authenticity.  It is confirmed.]

Coyote explains how classifying people by card suit is bad and why we stopped.

Ace Admiral has an extensive reference guide on Shortland Street’s asexuality arc.

Community Activity

TAAAP is holding the December Pride Chats this weekend on models of orientation and attraction.

Linkspam: December 18th, 2020

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

Ace Admiral wrote about one of the earliest examples of an ace character, and how it surpassed many examples since then.

Aro Blogging

AUREA has a letter looking back at the last 18 months, and notes on future updates.

Calls for Participants/Support

An online survey “How comfortable are you with your health care provider?” is looking for participants of age 18 or older.

The essentiality of ace readings

This article was crossposted from my other blog, A Trivial Knot, under the title “Two theses on queer readings“.

As part of my usual youtube browsing, I was checking out a games criticism channel, Transparency, and I watched a video titled “Queering Animal Crossing | A Helpful Guide to Queer Readings” (29 minutes). I don’t think it says anything truly unusual, it’s just an entertaining and accessible introduction to the topic.

Videos like this are useful for me to reflect on my own views, and crystallize disagreements. So here I present two theses about queer readings. First, I assert that queer readings are not always political, but also form an ordinary part of how queer people consume media. Second, I argue that asexual readings are an essential concept that should be introduced as part of basic education about queer readings.

Linkspam: December 11th, 2020

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 talks about the visibility paradigm of activism, drawing on the idea of the Eye from The Magnus Archives.

luvtheheaven shares her long journey as an ace activist.

News & Outreach

The Leftscape podcast interviewed Samantha Poole, who was recently credited as the coiner of hetero-, bi-, and homoromantic.

Ace of Hearts is a short documentary about New Zealand’s ace community and the challenges they face. Content Note: includes an aro microaggression that love is an essential part of being a human being.

Aro Blogging

Aro Writing Awards are accepting nominations of free online works that involve words and are relevant to the aro community until January 1st, 2021. The award categories are currently being voted on. Here is a list of places to find aro writing.

The November Carnival of Aros roundup is up, with the theme of “Commitment“.  The December carnival is seeking submissions on the theme of “Happily Ever After”

Calls for Participants/Support

Answer questions for We, The World’s “How to be an Ally” series. The survey asks about your aspec identities, attitudes, and definitions.

The Trevor Project has a 30-45 minute survey for LGBTQ youth (ages 13 to 24). “The goal of this project is to hear your thoughts about a variety of experiences related to being LGBTQ as well as to better understand the mental health of LGBTQ youth.”

TAAAP is looking for short video submissions for a compilation for the Creating Change conference.  See more details here.

Linkspam: December 4th, 2020

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 had some ideas for writing gray-A characters, a linkspam on grayness, and a brief critical history of the “spec” suffix.

Ace Admiral can’t recommend the manga First love, catharsis.

Constance Bougie wrote about Grindr expression.

News & Outreach

Mashable has an article about Unicode’s rejection of the bi and ace flag emojis.

Aro blogging

AUREA talks about non-English translations.

Carnival of Aces: Invisible Activism

Welcome to the link roundup for the November 2020 Carnival of Aces! This month’s theme was “Invisible Activism“. I provided a few prompts but participants are welcome to interpret the theme however they like.

The December Carnival of Aces is already under way, hosted by Char, with the theme of “Allies”. Please see the call for submissions!

Journal Club: Ace of (BDSM) Clubs

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“Ace of (BDSM) clubs: Building asexual relationships through BDSM practice”, by L. J. Sloan in Sexualities (2015). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1363460714550907 (No public access)

The journal club meets once a month on Discord, using text or voice as club members prefer.  We discuss a variety of academic works in ace studies, ranging from gender studies to psychology.  Don’t worry about journal access, we can provide access.  If you’re interested, please e-mail me at asexualagenda@gmail.com for an invite.

Our discussion notes are below the fold.

Behind the scenes of the Ace Community Survey

This article was written for the Carnival of Aces, whose theme this month is “Invisible Activism“.

My blogging notwithstanding, I often feel that my biggest contribution to ace activism has nothing to do with this blog, but is instead related to the Ace Community Survey. I have been involved with the Survey Team since it was founded in 2014, and I am currently one of its leaders. I started with a data analyst and programming role, but I shifted towards a management role, managing 10-40 volunteers, organizing tasks, and making high-level decisions.

The Survey Team has also had a big impact on my life. I changed my career from physics to data science in part because I knew that what I enjoyed was working with data, rather than physics in particular. And it turns out that my work on the Survey Team looks good on a resume.

I’ve talked a lot about Survey Team before, but the degree to which I have talked about it is not in proportion to the amount of time I put into it. Most people simply don’t need to know how it works. But in this day and age, our image of ace activism tend to be dominated by its most visible forms: fictional representation and social media activity. The Ace Community Survey follows a different paradigm. So allow me to pull back the curtain a little bit to show a different kind of activism.