ace rants

Advice and affirmations

Hey y'all!! I may have done a chapter kind of like this before, but I feel like recently I haven't posted things are that helpful to asexuality, and I really want this book to help people so I'm gonna try and do that !!

First off, some terms and questions and stuff:

Squish: The aroace version of a crush. You still have a serotonin or endorphin or whatever rush when you see them, but you don't want to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with them. Allosexual, alloromantic, and allosexual alloromantic people an experience these too I'm pretty sure

QPR and QPP: The most common I've seen these used are as QPR = quasi-platonic relationship and QPP = quasi-platonic partner. What do those mean? A QPR is sort of like a close friendship except beyond that. The way I think of it is like you know how in Sims, there is a friendship bar and a romance bar? Instead of filling up the relationship bar, you expand the friendship bar beyond 100% full. It has all the trust and communication and everything of a romantic relationship, but there is no romance part. A QPP is the person or people you're in a QPR with. Some people say the QP actually stands for queer platonic. Either work, but I like quasi-platonic better. Some people also use QPP to mean quasi-platonic partnership.

Plush: to be honest, I'm not exactly sure about this one. I've heard it's just when you really want to be friends with someone, but not in a squish way. If anyone knows and can answer better in the comments, I would appreciate.

The black ring: Some aces wear a black ring around their middle finger on the right hand to show other aces that they're ace. Aros can also do this with a white or silver ring on the middle finger of their left hand. Also if the ring is arrow shaped, that works too.

Allo: a prefix for romantic or sexual attraction (allosexual, alloromantic) which just means you feel sexual/romantic attraction a normal amount.

Why is ____ fill in the blank an ace thing?

Aces are hard to come by and really we don't have much in the way of a community, so people kind of cling to any sort of culture or icon stuff we can find. Which is why some of the reasons for stuff seem really weird (I also might not know the whole story for some things so please correct me)

Cake: there's a thing that's like "why have sex when you can eat cake" and now it's a thing.

Space: I think it either comes from "Sex makes us human? Guess I'm an alien" or "you can't spell space without ace" or most likely both.

Plants: "You're asexual? You must be a plant!"

Garlic bread: This isn't that common but I think it's just because garlic bread tastes really good

Dragons: Charlie Weasley may or may not be ace 

Now advice I have:

-I don't know if this was specific to me, but I sort of felt like "how can I be the one who's ace?" because asexuality is so rare. I also had a stupid idea that if I knew a few aces, I must be faking it because not that many aces exist. So first off, there are million of asexuals in the world. Which mean there are millions of people who must be asexual. You contribute to that number. Secondly, there is no set number. Everyone's valid. If this didn't help at all, just ignore it because I'm not sure I really explained what I'm thinking

-When is too young? People start feeling *things* around twelve I'm pretty sure. Give it one to two years after that and I think that's a good time to start identifying as ace. The other reason for this is that you need a bit of time to understand how other people act. Maybe you're thinking that you're supposed sexual attraction like an adult when you're just twelve. You're very much not. So I'd say probably 13 and a half to 14 is good. If you started identifying before then, you're still valid. But I'd wait to come out until then at least because it's a little bit of a hassle to come out and then be like oops I was wrong.

Also when you're younger, you're more likely to try and conform to things and want to prove yourself. Trying to prove you're the "most asexual ace" is 1) impossible because it's just not a thing you can be and 1) it isn't a good use of being a middle schooler. Be open to stuff; you can always find your labels later, but now, listen to yourself and see what you want.

-What if I'm actually not ace? What's definition of asexuality? Say it with me. Not experiencing sexual attraction. If right now, you don't experience sexual attraction, you are asexual. Even if in the future, you find out you're allo, at the moment you are experiencing asexual experiences, and you deserve the support and love and advice and everything this community has to offer.

-But I have/haven't done _____. The only requirement is you don't experience sexual attraction. You Are Still Valid. 

-Also! There is a difference between having sexual attraction and wanting to do sexual things! AKA action vs attraction. One is attraction to sex, the other is attraction to sex with a specific person. 

-How involved should I be in the community? As involved as you want. It's fine to not know any of the terms and not associate yourself with the community! it's fine to know all the terms and constantly interact with the community! What is not fine is shaming people for having a different amount of involvedness than you, shaming the community, and only talking about the being ace. The last one isn't harmful, but it's annoying to other people :)

Please ask me anything else you're wondering, and I know I'm bad at replying but I'll really try to answer everything. Also, if you have a question please comment on a line, because I don't see most of the questions commented at the bottom!! 

If you want to add advice or anything, please do that too!!

Also, for my public speaking class, we have a project to make a youtube tutorial of us doing something. I want to find something kind of mundane that I can make funny but still have it be good because my teacher has a sense of humor. Currently I'm thinking of doing how to social distance or something, and if you guys have any ideas, please comment them :)

Also if you want to ask me anything, I'll try to respond on here when I see it, but that could be up to a week. If it's more urgent, I'll reply a lot faster if you dm me ( @mr.clean23_ on instagram). Literally tell me anything. If you're proud of an essay you wrote, I'd love to read it. If you want to rant about someone, I'd love to listen. If you feel like your mental health is doing badly and you want help, I'd love to give it. You're not being a burden at all.

Have a good day luvs :)