Links on Grey and Spectrum and “Not Ace/Aro But”

(Inspired by this poster conversation, with my response here. Cross-posted from tumblr here.)

Paradife-lost on why separating into spectrum ‘by definition’, is gatekeeping amatonormativity

Demigray on shunting people into the spectrum instead of letting them ID as asexual

Metapianycist on racism, cultural definitions, agency of self-definition, consent and identity, and links to people of color writing about asexuality and definitions

Me pinging back on reasons someone might id as asexual (or aromantic) rather than grey/spectrum or for reasons other than “lack of attraction”

Metapianycist pinging back on how “experiencing attraction” should not mean no you’re grey/spectrum only

• meta’s actuallyasexual tag, asexuality tag, etc
  

Beranyth on never calling someone “functionally” or “technically” x orientation (which should include gray, rather than aro or ace)

theAceTheist on answering “am i asexual? and ways of defining identities and including people

• theAceTheist’s wordpress, and gray-asexual tag / gray-asexuality tag, and aromantic tag, all of which I heartily recommend (of course)

theAceTheist on oversimplifigraytion (oversimplifying instead of broadening)

theAceTheist’s post about how some people who id as grey may be “actual” asexuals, grappling with internalized amatonormativity/etc, pushed away from the word

theAceTheist’s response to greyness 301 and talking about attraction as confusing and reasons to identify/describe oneself as asexual-not-grey and:

“When you try to talk about what greyness is, all of it, and try to summarize and define it and encapsulate the whole of it, but you don’t talk about uncertainty, or about faintness, or about shrugging and confused gestures, or about question marks and approximations and nearest-points-of-reference, then you have not covered what grey-asexuality means to many people who identify with it.”

(And to throw in theAceTheist’s amusing “what do we need a word like semi-arid for?” for those objecting to greyness in general)

• My #aro and #grey bloggin tags

Me on wordpress about why ‘rare’ alone is harmful

Me affirming your right to ID as asexual even if you “experience sexual attraction” (since when are we sure what that means, or know it for certain always)

Queenie’s linkspam on greyness

My personal grey linkspam, including talk about how greyness can be about uncertainty of attraction (WTF/quoi much) ((I coined quoi and it isn’t about “distinguishing types” of attraction, it’s about “is this attraction? is this? what? how does it feel?”))

And for clarity’s sake I ID as grey. I’ll claim grey-a, and grey-asexual too, and quoisexual. and I’m not too comfy with aromantic / grey-aromantic / alloromantic, I feel like it’s subsumed by my sexuality stuff and not separate, so i don’t really pick a word. *quoi hand*

(*quoi hand* is a very…like the “iunno” sound. But a gesture. A hand wave of “euhhhhhh iunno,,,”)