22degreehalo

One of the things that I hate most about aspec discourse on tumblr is the way it’s turned me against my own community.

( ahhhh yes I still plan to respond to things and continue snowflake challenge when I can!! I've had... a tiring week. )

So right now my head is all kind of Confused and I keep feeling like I should Do Something but I don't know what that thing is and everything either feels like Too Much or Not Enough... but one thing I can do is rec this really interesting and accurate IMO post by adventures-in-asexuality on burnout.

Key part:

This kind of surviving, though, leads almost inevitably to burnout. Constantly pushing through more and more obstacles with no time to rest or recover from the previous ones isn’t sustainable or healthy, but it’s also what we need to do to stay alive, let alone make any sort of progress on top of that. Some people have approached the topic of burnout as related to inter- or intracommunity hostility, and while that’s absolutely an important topic to discuss and try to remedy, I think we also have to consider the inevitable burnout of living in a world that is not made for us. Any quests that try to eradicate burnout without addressing that are bound to be incomplete at best.

I don't have anything in me to add anything right now (which is, ah, probably appropriate?) but it's good and resonates a lot so I'd recommend reading!!

So I was browsing Etsy and came across Riotcakes, a store which had some really iconable queer and feminist buttons, so I decided to go ahead and make those icons!

I don't mind about being credited myself, but please do credit the original artist!

Sample:


( Icons through the cut! )

I know it makes zero sense but I honestly can't stand the whole 'girls are all perfect wonderful godesses who deserve better!!' version of feminism. It honestly only makes me feel really shitty and worse about myself.

like. One of my Biggest Issues is that I'm constantly trying so, so hard, and still screwing up so much, but people often don't realise, and expect me to be able to do normal person things that I just cannot do! I'm 90% sure I have ADHD because my memory is awful, my emotional reactions to things are often very different to what other people's are, and even a simple conversation with another person takes so much mental energy it's really tiring and unless it's about a topic I'm really interested in I'll probably still end up zoning out and having to guess what you're saying based on key words at least part of the time. (And that isn't even including the mental energy that goes into making eye contact, not fidgeting, etc.)

When I was a teenager, I did not consider myself a feminist for two main reason. One, feminism seemed to always be about how 'women are so great!! women can do everything!!' and I very much could not and the idea of having that idea even associated with me was very stressful and tiring. I wanted nobody to pay attention to me, and I certainly wanted nobody to count on me for important things. Two, feminists always seemed to be opposed to sexy women in media and I actually kind of liked looking at them?

which is the second thing. I have a girlfriend. I like smut involving women sometimes (though less lately for many, many reasons). I like gathering together women I like and calling them my wives and I take guilty pleasure in cheesy Japanese dating sim games, most of which involve dating girls. When I hear stuff about how women are so great and women don't deserve them, I think I don't deserve them, either. That I'm being annoying and inappropriate and need to consider myself lesser in comparison.

But, then there's the fact that I'm ace, and maybe aro, and probably at least aro-spectrum. So then I also feel guilty for not liking women more, and failing to appreciate the sheer beauty and wonder of these amazing women. It feels like I'm being shitty and misogynistic somehow. Like the only reason I wouldn't fall in love with every woman is because I don't think they're good enough or something.

(Also, I'm bad because I don't want to become ~intimate~ and give women ~female pleasure~ but also I'm a gross fetishist because the sexy women stuff I tend to like apparents overlaps with the stuff straight men tend to like and is thus Bad.)

The thing is, at the end of the day, I feel the same way about men as I do women when it comes to sex and romance. Both are equally dateable but also not dateable, sexy but not sexy. My preferences vary day-to-day but stay very consistent overall. But lately I keep feeling like that's somehow not Woke(tm) enough.

Like, I never particularly related to lesbian circles. Apart from the continual problem with biphobia (and now the EXTREME problem with aphobia), a lot of it seemed to be about valorising loving women instead of and far, far more than men. Which is fair - that is the real experience of lesbians, obviously. Bisexual circles always felt way more fitting for me, just... all about how great people in general were. But lately I can't go two steps in a bisexual place without people reposting one of those tweets like 'being bi means loving every girl and like three boys lol' or 'I like girls because they're goddesses and boys because I have low standards' or whatever, and just, it's so exhausting. Like, there's this weird pressure to... dislike being bi, because it means liking men?? And if I feel weird about that as a girl, I can only imagine how shitty it is for bi men. And I know that's not the intended reading, but it genuinely sucks to dislike your orientation? A lot?

And just overall I don't understand or like this weird thing of tying orientation to like, feminism? Being attracted to women - even romantically - doesn't necessarily mean you respect them, or vice versa. And like, 'woman-hater' has been a negative stereotype surrounding gay, ace, and aro men for decades. And it makes me feel really bad, even though that makes no sense since I'm a woman too but just -

ughhh it really does make no sense because if I spend any time at all around just cis straight men I do get annoyed by the sexism and want to defend women, but somehow when I spend any time at all around women I feel like every criticism they make about men is also about me. Even when it blatantly does not apply at all. Which I kind of tend to do in general but it's applied really strongly here lately.

I dunno man. I just want to feel like I'm okay as I am, you know? Without people having to make up ridiculous standards I couldn't possibly fulfil. Reading femslash or yuri doesn't even feel positive anymore recently because I can't stop thinking 'Do I do that? Do I feel that way? Will I ever?' and just feeling so uncomfortable because it's meant to be so wonderful and great but I'm not like that and I can't do that and then I'm reminded of how much incredible, disgusting aphobia I've been faced with in wlw spaces and I get completely taken out of the story into my own bad skin and can't stop obsessing about whether I'm invading and making people feel unsafe just by reading this :( which I knooooow 99% of people would tell me is ridiculous and unwarranted but some would and those are pretty inclined to be extremely hostile and I just.

I'm just tired of feeling like I'm always one step behind just to do the bare minimum and fit in. And no amount of 'women are so great, feel confident!!' can do anything about that. I thought I had a place where it wasn't so strong, where I actually kind of felt accepted and normal, but nowadays it feels like everyone's speaking a different language and I just don't... understand it.