THE RADIO IS BROKEN: PART 2

It’s still toxic and dark, but they talk more. And I still can’t believe I managed to draw a comic this complicated…!

…and sad? :v

Seriously, I’m so, SO proud of how it looks!

PS. I refuse to decide what exactly happened between parts 1 and 2. I’m leaving it to your interpretation.

every time someone says “love is love! there’s self-love—or you can love your pets and hobbies!!” i think aros, apls, afams, analterous, aqueerplatonics, aemotionals, etc., should be allowed to send a swarm of wasps at them

I wish not having friends wasn’t seen as such a loser, weirdo, and lame thing. I wish having a lack of emotion and empathy wasn’t seen as creepy or cruel. I wish being aplatonic and not having platonic attraction or being aromantic and not having romantic attraction wasn’t seen as some undesirable thing.

I’m not a robot. I’m not boring and uninteresting. I just experience the world around us much differently to you. I’ve seen things you couldn’t even dream of. I’ve experienced things you wouldn’t wish on anybody.

I'm once again highly considering attending a pride parade in my city or elsewhere or just any pride event because I really, really want to meet people like me irl too... but I'm afraid that I won't be welcome there. It's not even the bigots, it's that my past experiences made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in my own community.

I don't match what people think a bi woman should be like. Not to mention the biphobia that already exists. Nobody ever takes it seriously when I reveal my identity to them and acts like I'm some straight actor just faking it or something.

I also don't match what people think queer women in general should be like due to being demiro/aro. Not to mention I haven't been able to figure out which label fits either... yeah, official coming out moment or something, woohoo, whatever. I know I'm arospec, never having understood certain things people do and feel (if you know, you know), but in my personal case there's also a layer of past abuse so... I can't judge it.

...it's likely that this will be yet another year where I just... avoid.

ace aro people stop derailing and being annoying challenge. we should bring aphobia back

man shut the fuck up ur lame as hell

told someone i was aroace today and their immediate response was "how terrible!"

like, i've read from others that things like this happen, but ngl, actually experiencing it myself was a little surprising.

I wasn't really all that offended tho. I've only known this person for a few days.

But still. my first response was "how is it terrible?"

I'm not exactly "missing out" on anything. How could I miss out on something that sounds like a nightmare to me?

every aromantic person who has to witness someone say “there is no non-romantic explanation for these characters” should be financially compensated

EDIT: if i see another one of you fuckers arguing “but sometimes they ARE just super romantic” i’m tired of being nice. i’m just gonna let you know that 1. amanormativity has rotted your fucking brain and 2. it’s people like you that are the reason why aros are suffering. other aros you are not absolved of this. just fucking listen to us for once and stop denying our experiences and pleas.

aphobia is so funny to me. like. you’re mad just bc i refuse to have some bitches and just wanna do my thing?

Honestly as much as I love Tumblr now, I’ll never forgive this site for the “ace discourse” era that nobody has ever fucking apologized for. Irreparable damage was done to aro/ace people and our communities and now that shit is being recycled on TikTok. And then aphobes have the gall to say “well it’s not like you guys have ever faced any hardship in your lives” as if they still don’t bully and discriminate against aro/ace people to this day.

Go rot.

It’s crazy how many people just don’t understand why a lot of aro and or ace people don’t like that Alaster gets shipped. It’s not that hard to understand we don’t have a lot to let ourselves lose. I mean can you name 10 asexual characters? 5? Can you name two aro characters. There’s the guy from Archie who they made have a sex scene in a movie version. There’s a few books. I think a background character in Heartstopper? Do you see the theme here??? You’re all queer people, do you not get it? How it feels to have nothing? Is it so wrong to be upset that there’s finally an outwardly aroace person in popular media and instead of people embracing that they’re fighting on the internet about why it’s ok to ignore it? And I will never in my fucking life have anything against the people who are aro and or ace and portray him in THEIR experiences, even if it is a romance or sex favorable experience, but it is obvious that way too many of you guys are allo and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t even like him as a character that much, he isn’t even made by an aroace artist. The show isn’t even that fucking good, I just want to keep someone like me for once in my life. If there were a million other aroace characters I wouldn’t care, but it just hurts seeing erasure coming from my own community. It just sucks, man, I don’t know. It just sucks

(ID: two memes using the "it's 2024 i'm done arguing / if you hate X i'm straight up murdering you" meme format. the first says "aromantics" and has a picture of the aro pride flag, and the second says "asexuals" and has a picture of the ace pride flag. end ID)

“friendships are not lesser forms of relationships than romantic ones!” yeah!

“the idea that there’s a relationship hierarchy is bs!!” precisely!!

“you don’t need romance to be a good or ‘full’ person!!!” yes, yes, yes!!!

“because instead you can have friendship!!!! because aros still love, they just love their friends!! it’s not like we’re heartless monsters!! <333”

…sigh.

Gonna yell "TEXTILES ARE WHAT MAKES US HUMAN!" at anyone spouting acephobic nonsense about how sex/romantic relationships make us human.

Recently been seeing a lot of people (likely terfs) trying to start Hot New Asexual Discourse such as “you can’t call yourself asexual and *insert some other orientation label*” and “minors can’t identify as asexual because they’re children and they shouldn’t experience attraction yet anyway” and even “you guys just think you’re asexual because you’re autistic and socially awkward, just get off tumblr and go talk to people” and I would like to remind everyone that although this is extremely annoying I desperately need you all to just report and block them. Don’t debate them don’t give them attention and don’t give their bullshit “discourse” any kind of audience. Let them seethe about us existing in their little terf-sphere and ignore them.

there are lots of people who i regret telling about my asexuality.

lately i will just be existing when someone says something vaguely sexual, and they’ll look over at me like “oops!! sorry i know you’re ace! hehe”

or i will say i like a romantic movie or something and they’ll be like “um ☝️ Youre Asexual Though?”

i also got outed through a stupid meme about hating sex that my friend shared about me. it’s just fucking humiliating.

i rarely even talk about my asexuality but way too many people love bringing it up all. the. time. like forget i even said anything, fuck you

Not proud to be here.

--

Ok, here goes draft like 5 of this fucking post. I spent 4 hours tossing and turning in bed last night thinking about this, and then this morning I found a tumblr post that really helped me understand what I was trying to say.

The post talks about how aromantic "advocates" claim that "aros don't take up resources, so there's no reason not to include them!" And if that's actually what people believe, I think I can finally articulate why it is that I feel so alienated in queer spaces.

It's because aspecs in general aren't "welcomed" by much of the queer community. We're tolerated. We perhaps get the luxury of not being contradicted on our own identities, or not being specifically kicked out of LGBTQ-only spaces, but that's the whole point: what we get out of the queer "community" is people NOT doing things, not actually doing things FOR us. And that, frankly, is not enough. We deserve conversations about us. We deserve to have others consider our feelings, even when making lighthearted jokes. We deserve varied, respectful representation in media. We deserve the active deconstruction of amatonormativity in society. We deserve to have space made for us, rather than at most being told we should "go take up more space!" ourselves.

Of course, the reality is that my being aspec is a personal matter that does not inherently affect anyone else. But the same can be said for literally any queer identity. Your being gay doesn't say anything about me, so of course I shouldn't hurt you for it, but why should I help you either? Because your happiness and comfort are important. The same goes for aspecs.

And most of the time, I don't even need anyone to make space for or expend resources on me; I can live fine in everyday, non-queer-specific places without mentioning my identity at all. But it's the queer community that claims it will make that space for me, doesn't, and then acts defensive and morally pure if I call out the hypocrisy because "we're queer too, you can't erase our identities to advocate for yours!!!!"

Again, this post isn't about specifics. I have queer friends who are incredibly thoughtful and supportive about my identity, just as I have non-queer friends who are. I find more solidarity in aspec-only communities, as well as trans/genderqueer ones, although there are still many exceptions. This post is also not about amatonormative ideology, which is extremely common from queer and non-queer people alike. This post is about the reason I've felt so betrayed by the queer community.

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On a personal note, I remember being so excited when I started identifying as aromantic (and later asexual). Fitting myself into labels has been a lifelong struggle for me; to this day I still can't confidently say if I'm White or PoC, neurotypical or neurodivergent, abled or disabled, cisgender or not cisgender. I continue to struggle making friends because I don't fall into social cliques. To discover that I officially, certainly, was LGBTQ+ lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. And now I'm just so sad to find that despite that, I'm still stuck in the middle. I didn't get rewarded with a community. I still feel alienated from both queer and non-queer people. I know it was silly to get my hopes up when there's such vast diversity in both groups, but it really was a disappointment. Going to my first Pride parade last year was really the moment where I realized this.