Now, some of the earliest periodicals and newsletters, which shaped the perceptions of relevant issues for the LGBTQ community while providing news and information on meetings, demonstrations, events, entertainment and even LGBTQ-friendly businesses — have been digitized, preserved and made available in The Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity, the largest digital archive on LGBTQ history and culture. Developed and launched by Gale, a leading provider of resources for libraries and part of Cengage Learning,Part One: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 is now available, with two additional parts planned for the future.
While one highlight of the archive is the unparalleled collection of newsletters, newspapers, and periodicals by, for, and about gays and lesbians — including some from places as distant as Latvia and Zimbabwe — The Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity goes well beyond these periodicals. It brings together in digital form approximately 1.5 million pages of rare and unique content — including personal correspondence and interviews with numerous LGBTQ individuals, organizational papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets and other types of primary sources. The Archive covers social, political, health and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world, including the gay rights movement and the HIV/AIDS crisis.
start headcanoning masculine dudes as trans u cowards. if you’re cis and every single transmasc hc you have is some ultra twink ass mfer just know im side eyeing you ultra heavy rn
those gruff strong dudes with the facial hair and shit? the ones that seem to be a dudes dude, a bros bro? they’re trans now ive just decided and there’s nothing you can do about it
Sometimes it can be really hard to live as yourself. And I do not mean coming out and telling people you are you, and earning problems for the truth.
Even when your life and family is great, sometimes it can be so confusing. You start wondering, questioning yourself. You might simply sit there and suddenly realise..this is real, this is you. Something you did not think possible such a short time ago.
It might feel different from what you imagined. Instead of happy and relived you might worry, cry..or be angry. And you might think your decision, that you, yourself might be wrong.
But…change is scary, change is strange. New things and even new thoughts, allowing them to be, that is scary.
It is a new world, wide and undiscovered. You are allowed to feel whatever you feel. It might be scary and just because you do not feel as happy and free as you imagined, that does not mean it is wrong or bad.
there is an exact copy of this masterlist under the “resources” tab on my blog!
finding out your romantic orientation can be a struggle. it’s laborious, intense, and often unrewarding. there’s a dearth of information available to aro and aro spec people, and that’s a shame.
i’ve compiled a list of the links and resources that helped me the most: from the blogs that helped explain what aromanticism was to the positivity blogs that helped me not feel so alone. hopefully this helps someone out, because no one deserves to feel like they’re groping in the dark when it comes to something as vital as your identity.
(if there’s something that helped you out, message me, and i’ll add it to the list!)
definitions: what is aromanticism? (and all the other words associated with it)
AVEN Wiki — fairly basic. kind of clinical, really only for people with zero understanding of aromanticism. good as a tool to help explain to cishets.
About Asexuality and the Ace/Aro Spectrum — goes into the types of attraction that different people can experience. explains the difference between sexual and romantic orientation a little better.
That’s So Aromantic — a psychology today article that is a bit like the last source, but with more attached resources and extra definitions for words like queerplatonic and amatonormativity.
Turtle Analogy — a cute sketchy comic that explains aspec orientations in the easiest possible way.
AACE Club Resources — some definitions about aro spec identities and more resources.
5 Myths About Aromanticism — a buzzfeed article. pretty self-explanatory, but something i had to come to grips with was all the stereotypes about aro people—that we’re cold, unloving, etc. this definitely helped with that.
Meet the Aromantics — stories from actual aros on their experiences with being aro, and what that meant for them. this helped a lot in validating my own feelings and experiences.
Amatonormativity — a definition, written by the person who coined the word. also includes its own resources that you may find helpful.
am i aromantic?
if you’re here, you’re probably already questioning your romantic orientation, or maybe you’re just trying to learn more about the subject. either way, this list, compiled by anagori, is things they’ve seen in themself and other people. they also have a really good linkspam.
so you’ve realized you’re aromantic. now what?
chances are you’re probably gonna want to read up some more on the subject, whether on aromanticism in general, or queerplatonic relationships, or alterous attraction. here’s a few things to help you do that.
Commitment in Relationships for Celibate Asexuals and Aromantics — this article just resonated with me in a way that i can’t fully explain. in it, the author (of whose pronouns i am unsure of) discusses levels of commitment, and how to attain them in an increasingly amatonormative world.
Experiences of Loving — an analysis on the different types of love and how powerful non-romantic love can be.
related blogs to send asks to/follow any inactive blogs on this list are here purely for the archives.
(my follow page is also public. i follow mostly aro positivity blogs, with a few blogs that post both aro and ace content, and one or two blogs that post generalized LGBT stuff.)
Most of these are taken from the Wikipedia entry for “Timeline of Asexual History” With a few extra facts taken from AVEN’s wikia page, and other news sources.
Asexual History
1869: Karl-Maria Kertbeny uses the word “Monosexuals” to refer to people who only masturbate. While not really a distinction in modern asexual discourse, it is similar to other categories coined such as “autoerotic” and “asexual” people described by Myra Jonson in the 1970s, among others.
1896: A German sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, wrote the pamphlet “Sappo und Sokrates,” which mentions people without any sexual desire.
1948:The Kinsey scale included a “group x” for those who did not feel sexual attraction, which was roughly 1% of those surveyed.
1974: Singer and composer David Bowie discusses asexuality in the Rolling Stone in the article “David Bowie in conversation on sexuality with William S. Burroughs by Craig Copetas in the Rolling Stone February 28, 1974”
1977:Myra Jonson wrote one of the first academic papers about asexuality as part of The Sexually Oppressed. Johnson mainly focused on the problems still facing asexual women as they were ignored, or seemingly left behind by the sexual revolution going on.
1979:In a study published in Advances in the Study of Affect, vol. 5, Michael D. Storms of the University of Kansas outlined his own reimagining of the Kinsey scale, using only fantasizing and eroticism, and placing hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale; this allows for a distinction between bisexuality (exhibiting both hetero- and homo-eroticism in degrees comparable to hetero- or homosexuals, respectively) and asexuality (exhibiting a level of homo-eroticism comparable to a heterosexual and a level of hetero-eroticism comparable to a homosexual, namely, little to none). This type of scale accounted for asexuality for the first time. Storms conjectured that many researchers following Kinsey’s model could be mis-categorizing asexual subjects as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.
1980: Writer and Artist Edward Gorey, Comes out as asexual in an interview. When asked ‘…the press makes a point of the fact that you have never married. What are your sexual preferences?’, Gorey responds “Well, I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly.” and goes on to talk about how his lack of attraction affects his work.
1983: The first study that gave empirical data about asexuals was published in by Paula Nurius, concerning the relationship between sexual orientation and mental health.
1993:Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians by Esther D. Rothblum and Kathleen A. Brehony was released on November 17, 1993.
1994:A survey of 18,876 British residents found that 1% of the respondents “never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all”.
1997:First online Asexual Community appears in the comment section for an article titled “My Life As An Amoeba”
2000: A Yahoo group for asexuals, Haven for the Human Amoeba, was founded.
2001: David Jay founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which became the most prolific and well-known of the various asexual communities that started to form since the advent of the World Wide Web and social media.
2004: The New Scientist dedicates an issue to asexuality.
2004: Discovery dedicates an episode of “The Sex Files” to asexuality.
2005: L’amour sans le faire by Geraldin Levi Rich Jones (Joosten van Vilsteren) is released. The first book on asexuality. Geraldin was at the head of the asexual movement, launching “The Official Asexual Society” in 2000 and performing asexual comedy shows. She also was a prominent face in the early ‘00’s asexual media boom.
2005: A common symbol for the asexual community is a black ring worn on the middle finger of the right hand. The material and exact design of the ring are not important as long as it is primarily black. This symbol started on AVEN in 2005.
2007: Award winning Novelist, Keri Hulme, comes out as asexual in an interview, saying “It is part of who I am: the major impact is that I am not– and never have been– interested in sex. It was more a slow realisation that I was different from most people. By my mid-teens, I’d realised that what was of great moment and interest to other young people – their sexuality and relationships – didn’t intrigue me in the slightest.”
2009: AVEN members participated in the first asexual entry into an American pride parade when they walked in the San Francisco Pride Parade.
2010: A flag was announced as the asexual pride flag. The asexual pride flag consists of four horizontal stripes: black, grey, white, and purple from top to bottom.
2010: The New York State Division of Human Rights updated its discrimination complaint form to include asexuals in the protected sexual orientation category.
2010: Asexual Awareness Week was founded by Sara Beth Brooks in 2010. It occurs in the later half of October, and was created to both celebrate asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and grey-asexual pride and promote awareness.
2010: Fashion Consultant, Tim Gunn, says in an interview that he has identified as asexual since the 80s, saying “Do I feel like less of a person for it? No… I’m a perfectly happy and fulfilled individual.”
2010: Comedian Janeane Garofalo comes out as asexual while live on stage in Seattle.
2011: The Documentary “(A)sexual” is released.
2012: The first International Asexual Conference was held at the 2012 World Pride in London.
2013: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition changed the diagnosis of Hypoactive sexual desire disorder conditions to include an exception for people who self identify as asexual.
2013: American Comedian, Paula Poundstone, Comes out as Asexual in an interview
2014:The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, by Julie Sondra Decker, was published; it was the first mainstream published book on the subject of asexuality.
2015: George Norman became Britain’s first openly asexual parliamentary election candidate.
2017: ‘Asexual’ is updated in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to include the sexual orientation.
2018: ‘Ace’ and ‘Aromantic’ are added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and ‘Asexual’ is updated to include the sexual orientation.
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