Richard Brook

The moderators on the meme have now basically condoned hate speech on the meme. Publicly (nothing particularly nasty on this thread, but what it links to is disgusting). If transphobic hate like that is going to be allowed on the meme, then I am 100% done with it. I don't care if it is 'just on the rant post.' The people on the rant post are people on the main meme as well, and if they really believe that these ideas are OK, then I want nothing to do with them.

At least I have my smaller fandoms.

I saw this, and the ensuing thread on LiveJournal, and wanted to say something there, but since it was already frozen, and most of the idiocy seems to be here on Tumblr anyway, I'm going to say this here.

Allow me first to preface this tirade with a small amount of information about myself. I am in a long-term, very committed relationship with a very loving and understanding man. I identify as asexual of the homoromantic variety. What this means is that I find it easier to form romantic bonds with other men, even if I'm not sexually attracted to them. My partner and I do engage in sexual activity, because he's very much a sexual person, and to deny him of something he considers a physical need would just be cruel. I have no tolerance for someone who will involve themselves with a sexual person and expect that person to give up their sexuality because you don't want to occasionally put your hands down the front of their pants. If you can't handle that, then you are not very well-suited for that person and the relationship will not work. But it also goes both ways. If you don't want to have sex, you should be able to tell your partner so and not worry about potentially being forced into it. But that's another rant for another day.

My point is that this secret that I've found has idiocy on all sides, and I intend to break it down line by line.

If they wanted to say they're asexual while fapping to slash and lusting after Doctor Who, whatever.

I have to say, this is not asexuality. This is repression. Asexuality is not the lack of a libido or sexual drive. It's the lack of sexual attraction. Fapping to slash, sure. But lusting after David Tennant or Matt Smith or anyone is by definition attraction. I call this attention-seeking rubbish, frankly, and the reason people don't take asexuality as an orientation seriously. And with this sort of behaviour going around, I can't blame them.

Then I came across those tumblr asexuals who think there's such a thing as sexual privilege and want to be considered queer and believe that rape is more traumatising to asexuals than sexuals.

I'm sorry, but WHAT? What? Seriously. WHAT? Sexual privilege? What is this? No, honey. Straight privilege, yes. Definitely. But to say that a gay or trans or whatever person has privilege over you is fucking ignorant and self-centred. Where the hell do you get off to say that? Go look up the statistics of hate crimes committed against gays, and compare that to those of hate crimes committed against aces, and tell me what you find. Here's a hint: a staggering imbalance in numbers with you coming out with all the privilege in the world.

And this idea that rape is more traumatising because of your orientation? Shut the fuck up. Rape is rape and it is always traumatising. I fucking dare you to say to someone whose rape was so violent that it left them paralysed, or to someone whose rape got them pregnant.

The idea of demisexuality, which is an identity based entirely on slutshaming.

First off, if someone wants to apply a label to themselves, why should it matter to anyone else? Even if they apply it just to alleviate some of their own confusion, it's not hurting anyone. They're just calling themselves a thing. So what? Unless they've publicly stated that they're than sexuals, where's the harm? Which, yes. A sickening amount of people on this end of the spectrum do say shit like this. And yes, slut shaming does happen, which is just uncalled for in any instance. You can't claim that this group of people have privilege over you if you're going to claim to be better than them in the same breath. Everything about this sentence fragment is just stupid and ignorant.

Asexuals that 'come out' to their parents and are surprised at how easy it is.

Why do you need to come out to your parents anyway? Most parents would probably be thrilled to know that their kid isn't going to be out having sex and getting pregnant and contracting STIs and all that nastiness. Talk to someone who was beaten and disowned by their parents after finding the courage to come out as gay or as trans or anything else. Again, this is just attention-seeking rubbish. You're looking for asspats and confirmation that you're above those filthy, filthy sexuals. Fuck off.

Now, whenever I see people talking about being asexual, I privately assume that they're just homophobic self-absorbed slutshamers who are hoping they can claim they're being oppressed for online social justice cookies.

I have to admit, I get this feeling a lot whenever I see people talk about being asexual. I shouldn't, but look at all of the damage the asexual community is doing to itself through slut shaming and the trivialisation of rape and hate crimes. Is it any wonder people don't take a person seriously when they say they're asexual? Seriously, man.

Unless they're actually completely uninterested in sex and don't talk about how much more mature they are for not having sexual interest and don't suggest that gay sexuals have privilege over straight or aromantic sexuals. Which describes about 5% of asexuals in fandom or out.

Oh, internet statistics. Can you back up that five per-cent? Can you cite your sources? I'd like to see where you got that number? Yeah, there are a lot of bandwagoners, but that can be said for anything. The convert does tend to be more vocal than the long-time believer. What you're hearing on the internet is just the rumblings of the very loud, and hopefully very few people who have just discovered asexuality and social justice. I actually didn't start to hear this sort of nonsense until I joined Tumblr and started poking around AVEN. As with any group of people, I've no doubt that most people who label themselves asexual or demisexual or whatever are perfectly sane, level-headed people.

PS: I find it hilarious when they go on about how X character must be asexual. I'm looking at you Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes fandoms.

To be fair, this happens for homosexuality as well. How many people insist that X and Y must be banging one another, because look at the UST.


The asexual community is only hurting itself right now. I used to be fairly vocal about it, but quieted down when the mere mention of my identity garnered accusations of ignorance and slut shaming. This is probably why you don't hear the sane side of the community, actually. It's just easier to keep quiet and avoid being associated with these wankers, when it comes down to it.

Did you know that if you've ever kissed another guy, slapped his arse, or hugged/cuddled him, in any context, you are lying to yourself about your heterosexuality?

Trufax.


And women are totally allowed to make out and cuddle and still be called hetero. As are, apparently, men with a beta-male personality.

Yes, it is cold here, in Portland. Do you know how I know that it's cold? In Portland?

Because, believe it or not, this is a rather subjective matter. So, while 56° with 90% is warm for you, dear mother, please bear in mind that since 2006, I have been living in the middle of the damn Mojave desert, where there is never that much humidity EVER, which does not leave so much damn cold, moist air hanging about to just bore into my poor, arthritic bones.

So, yes. While the raw data on the internet has been saying that lately, Vegas has been consistently about 20° colder, it's also had no more than 30% humidity. Believe it or not, this makes the air seem warmer than what you have here in this god forsaken rain forest. I am not used to this much humidity, and I do not like it.

So, no. I will not be going outside to have a bonfire, in the dark, with wet all over everything. I will be staying indoors, next to the heater, and watching Sherlock on your massively huge hi-def television set.

At this moment, I have 185 gigabytes worth of assorted data to back-up. I have 30 DVDs remaining, which have been failing at a rate of about 1/3, so I realistically have probably closer to 20 DVDs. I really hate having to pick and choose what I want to save. And even without such a huge fail rate, I'd still need about ten more than I have.

As of this typing, I have been working at backing stuff up for about 13 hours. Maintaining the rate I've been going today, I can probably finish sometime around probably 2:00-3:00 tomorrow afternoon. And then I get to completely to a full system reformat, which hopefully does not just catastrophically fail.

I want my email back. I want my sound back. I want to get out of fucking safe mode and away from 800x600 resolution. I want this thing to stop shitting all over itself every time I ask it to do anything beyond opening Firefox (which is, apparently, even occasionally too much to ask).

I need to go to bed.

If yesterday sucked, today is shaping up to be the worst.

First, the Xbox red-ringed AGAIN. It's also out of warranty now, so that's $120 to get it fixed. GRAH.

While that was being a dick, the computer froze up on me, so I restarted. Now I can't boot back into Windows. Every time I try, I get a fucking BSOD. I managed once to get into Windows, only to get a pop-up telling me that an unauthorised change has been made to the OS, and that I'm no longer allowed to use it.

Uhm, what?

Luckily, I have Ubuntu. I don't really like it, but it works until I can reinstall everything. I might just say fuck it and upgrade to 7, since I've got discs for that somewhere around here. I don't much like 7 either, but it's better than Ubuntu.

I'm very annoyed. I can't get to anything I NEED, because Ubuntu doesn't like Microsoft files.



Not happy.



ETA: This will likely affect RP, since I haven't got the proper email addresses set up on this system. I think this affects specifically Ford Prefect, Gus Dickinson, Travis Martin, and Penn.

So, I was supposed to go see an advisor at 8am today. So, I get down there, and they wanted me to reschedule to 1pm.

Er... what?

How about we reschedule for a different day, since there's no way I'm going to be able to hang around in the heat until 1pm? Hell, it's only 10:30, and it's already 102° out. The other option was to come home, bum around for an hour and a half, and go back out there.


Nooo I'm tired, and my back hurts, and if I have to get up again, I'll be on crutches and I don't like that. D:


I did pick up a book on the recommendation of jomadge on my way home, though. She got the book on high recommendation from Penn Jillette, so it's got to be worth acknowledging the book shop I have been avoiding for months.

I'm going to go... pass out or something, maybe. Or just look at the internet for a bit longer. I haven't decided.