I just read this super sad post about this girl who’s asexual and married and everyone is basically telling her that she doesn’t deserve her husband/she’s just a prude/she should just do it anyway.
So I want to tell you all right now that if people tell you this, or if they tell you you’ll never have a relationship, it is BULLSHIT.
My husband is asexual and I’m not. He’s sex repulsed, we don’t have sex, we never have.
And it doesn’t matter to me. You know what does? He does. His mental health and wellbeing matter to me. Because he is my best friend and he’s one of the smartest, kindest, funniest people I’ve ever met. And he’s had people tel him that he’s broken and it makes me SO ANGRY because they are WRONG.
Being different doesnt mean you’re broken.
If you don’t like sex/don’t want it/etc. Do not let anyone tell you that you’re inferior because you’re not.
Do not let anyone convice you that you’ll never have a relationship because they’re wrong(if you want one).
You are not broken, and it will be okay.
This made me feel really good. Remember this, for all my ace spectrum friends out there
I hope you don’t mind me reblogging your tags but these are my feelings EXACTLY
I’m always a little nervous that I’m not “good enough” for a “real relationship” because sex isn’t on the table. So yeah, these stories are reassuring
The amount of pressure from society to have sex is incredible. We’re told it’s linked to relationship health and if you’re not willing to do every damn thing you’re labeled a prude. It’s incredibly disheartening, especially considering how one’s libido can change over the years even if you’re not ace. Nice to see a supportive piece from a partner.
OK, kids, buckle up it’s story time.
When I got married, I hadn’t had sex yet. Waiting until marriage was important to me, so that’s what I did. My wedding night was the first time I had sex.
It sucked.
I figured, ok, this is new for both of us, it’s probably going to take some practice.
A year later? It still sucked We tried a lot of different stuff. A lot of different stuff.
It sucked so bad, we even bought a copy of “Sex for Dummies”.
(it didn’t help)
I started working late so I didn’t go to bed at the same time as my husband. Every time he would travel for work, I’d be grateful that I didn’t have to go through the awkwardness of avoiding his advances when I went to bed.
He didn’t think it was healthy for a newlywed couple to have sex less than once a week. So we scheduled it. Repeat, scheduled intimacy. I thought I was putting on a brave face and doing what I needed to do to maintain a good relationship.
Because I had no idea that asexuality was a thing.
I talked to my husband, told him I didn’t like sex. He didn’t understand. I lost track of how many times I said: “It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you. I don’t want to have sex with anyone.”
So it was established, Amber doesn’t like sex.
But we still did it. Because I wanted my husband to be happy. Sometimes halfway through, I’d start crying.
And he’d always be supportive, and apologize.
After he finished.
So when I found out about asexuality, and told him how I felt, he suggested I go to a doctor. Because obviously there was something wrong with me.
So I went to a doctor.
(surprise, surprise, I’m perfectly healthy)
Then I told my mom. When she suggested meds to improve my sex drive, I broke down in tears. I told her there was nothing wrong with me. And my mom has been 100% supportive of my orientation ever since. When people ask if I’m a lesbian, she teaches them about asexuality.
But anyway back to my journey of self-discovery
So I tell my husband, I’m asexual, I don’t want to have sex. You are not asexual, you do want to have sex. One of us is going to be miserable in this relationship, and I’m tired of it being me. I love you too much to make you miserable for the rest of your life, but I love myself too much to be miserable for the rest of my life. We might have to face the fact that we’re not right for each other.
So his immediate response is “no, I can change, I’ll do anything, divorce is not an option, etc”
But I can’t exactly ask him to stop wanting to have sex. Because that’s not how allosexual people work. And he can’t seduce me into wanting to have sex, because that’s not how asexual people work.
Anyway. He cries, I cry, we decide on marriage counseling to help our comunication.
Because we’d been married for almost 6 years by this point, and had been together for 3 years before that, and we still can’t really talk about what we want (or don’t want) in regards to sex.
So we go to counselling for 6 weeks. The first 3 sessions individually, and the last 3 together. During the together sessions, the therapist would prompt us with a question, and we’d talk to each other, being completely honest about things.
During (what turned out to be) our last session, I’d finally had enough. I’d had enough of being embarrassed about what anyone else would think. Enough of the gender roles I was being forced into. Enough of paying someone to watch me talk to my husband. Enough of pretending to salvage a relationship that I had been increasingly avoiding over the past 2 years, and I said:
“Josh, I love you. We have communication problems, but we’ve been together almost ten years and I’m willing to work through those if you think we can make it work. But I am never having sex with you again.”
(At this point, the therapist who’d been trying to get us to communicate put down her notebook and said, ok I think we’re done.)
Then and only then, did he agree to file for divorce.
—————–
I say all that to say this:
Don’t you dare fucking tell me that asexual representation doesn’t matter. I would have six years of my life back if I had known.
And if you’re in a relationship, talk to each other oh my God. About everything. What dream you had last night. That song from scout camp that randomly gets stuck in your head. The reason you don’t like sweet potato. That embarrassing thing you did in third grade that still makes you mad when you think about it. If you and your partner can share these tiny, intimate details, talking about sex is no big deal. And it takes practice, so practice.
————–
On a happy note, now, 3 years after the divorce, I am in a happy, stable relationship with another ace. And if you happen to ask my mom how I’m doing, she’ll tell you “I’ve never seen my baby girl happier.”
It gets better. But it’s up to you to make it that way.
@theonetheonlyjordanelizabeth please read this ❤️ I may be sex repulsed but I know that I love you and thats what matters ✨
I know this is already really long and really informative, but I also wanted to add a partner’s perspective. I too, have an ace fiancee. I knew about it before our relationship. I didn’t know it was a thing until I met her, and that was huge to me because I learned something new and also came to understand an old friend a little better.
I, on the other hand, am not ace. I am at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I am pansexual, and she has a hard time I think coming to terms with the fact that I don’t want to make her have sex.
Like, ‘Really?’ you might ask me. Like really is my only reply. I have loved her for a long time now, and being we met over Tumblr and we knew one another before the relationship, sex isn’t a big deal in our relationship. and I can think of at least ten of my friends who would feel the same way right now.
ASEXUALITY IS A REAL THING, LOVING, SWEET ACE RELATIONSHIPS ARE REAL! Just because your partner wants sex doesn’t make you broken. Just because you don’t want sex doesn’t mean you should have to force yourself to do so.
Just be honest with one another, love one another. If a relationship can’t survive a healthy, honest conversation, then it wasn’t a very strong relationship to begin with.
TL;DR People who can’t see past sex as a ‘core’ in a relationship with someone ace/sex repulsed is an asshole.
I”m not going to talk much about our various levels of sex drive, but there are long periods of time in our relationship where for a whole variety of reasons, my husband and I don’t have sex. Sometimes I actually cannot: I have a lot of joint/connective tissue/collagen issues, and there are whole years where I cannot deal with the physical pain of intercourse with another human being, I don’t care how careful they’re being.
I was on Mirena after one of my children was born and there was a fundamental psychological shift to the point where the idea of sex was just gross to me. For a year. Until I had it removed.
Anyone who reads my E-rated fanfic knows that I can write about sex and I will say that I’m usually writing about it and remembering feelings I’ve had, and MOST of what I write has some basis in experience on some level, so my baseline (if I have one) is not ace, not aro, but there are huge chunks of my life where yeah, no, sex isn’t happening and I don’t want it and I’m really not that into the fripperies of relationships (except when I need them like breathing).
But he said something to me a while back, and that was, “I didn’t marry you for sex. I married you because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”
He thought he was marrying a redheaded woman. And ten years into our marriage I started grappling with issues of gender identity and that started him questioning, “Okay, I love this person, I think of myself as straight, they’re no longer thinking of themself as female, what does that mean for me.”
He told me the other day that he’d dreamed there was a genie who would let him make my body into whatever he wanted, and that he’d said, “I want them to have the body they want to have.”
And the genie said, “You know they’d pick becoming a man.” (this isn’t true, actually, but I’m amused at his subconscious)
And he said, “I want them to have the body they want to have.”
His “feminine ideal” involves more muscle than I will literally ever have (this is another story entirely) but my “masculine ideal” is probably six inches taller than he is, so we have literally always been looking past “type” in our relationship.
We’ve been married almost 14 years. We actually did say, “In sickness and in health” and there’s been precious little of the later. I don’t know if we’ll be married forever but I don’t see us divorcing any time soon… He’s my best friend. We’re each capable of dealing with our own sexual arousal without help, and sometimes we choose to be intimate and a lot of time we don’t.
When we do? If something starts to hurt me, or one of us isn’t feeling it… we STOP. He doesn’t want to hurt me. It’s supposed to be fun, not a chore. And sex isn’t the POINT of marriage. Maybe it used to be. It’s not anymore, because women aren’t property and marriage isn’t dependent on gender anymore, or physical health, or any of the things that were criteria in the past. It’s about two adults who love each other and want to act as a legal and social unit when it’s useful to do so. It’s usually about two people who want to live together for a long time.
It’s a legal and social shorthand for saying, “This is my person and I’m theirs. If shit happens, they get to make some hard choices on my behalf. We do things together, and if something happens to one of us, the other has dibs unless I specifically said otherwise.”
Marriage is NOT saying, “Oh, look, now I have a fuck toy.”
God the thing in
poedamerontrashcaneron’s story of:
“But we still did it. Because I wanted my husband to be happy.
Sometimes halfway through, I’d start crying.
And he’d always be supportive, and apologize.
After he finished.”
Because man there were times where I definitely tried far past what my body ever wanted to please the dude I was with and it was terrible and I make it a point to NEVER do that shit to myself again.
I am sorry to anyone that’s been through this stuff. I hope life is good for all of you.
Remember, this is NOT a campaign that will be made effective through harassment. This information has been compiled so we can plead our cases to these electors. We NEED them to understand what a Trump presidency can and will mean for our country.
WE NOW HAVE ELECTOR INFORMATION FOR ALL 16, NON-BINDING STATES. PLEASE SHARE THE LIST WITH EVERYONE WHO’S INTERESTED IN THE ELECTOR MOVEMENT.
PLEASE CONTACT ME IF:
Any of the posted information is inaccurate, or if it is for someone who isn’t an elector.
You find information for electors that we have not found.
If you have no idea where to start, general template emails/letters can be found HERE and HERE. Politeness is essential, but do not let that undermine the urgency of the situation.
Here are a few points that you can address upon contacting an elector:
A personal account of the situation and how it will impact you.
Accounts of other people who are living in fear of what the future may bring.
Statistics are always eye-catching; ie. hate crimes are expected to skyrocket following the election.
We do not want racism and oppression to represent America.
Even if you are or are not a republican, you can write as if you are one. Show concern expressed by many leading GOP members that Trump’s ideals do NOT represent the party platform.
Many of them are parents, question what this would mean for their future to see a country so plagued by hatred.
Name the republicans who publicly did not support Trump.
Hillary won the popular vote. She is predicted to have won by more than 1.7 MILLION. How can we honor democracy if our system does not respect the opinion of the majority? The voice of the people has NOT been heard.
If necessary, emphasize that Hillary Clinton would be unable to accomplish much with a republican-led Senate and House.
Remind them that they can abstain, too. Being anti-Hillary doesn’t necessarily guarantee being pro-Trump.
A few of them did not support Trump in the primary. Use this info.
Remind the electors that they are only MORALLY bound to vote within their party. There is nothing legally binding that causes them to vote a certain way. If morals were a genuine concern, voting to promote oppression would be more unforgivable than crossing party lines.
If you are from the same state as the elector, try to put into perspective what his presidency would mean for you and marginalized groups in your community.
Quotes by Trump you can use:
“He was a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said at the 2015 Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa. “I like people who weren’t captured,” the current Republican front-runner told political consultant Frank Luntz, who hosted the event. In reference to Republican John McCain, a POW.
A series of tweets complaining when he thought President Obama lost the popular vote but still won the election:
PENNSYLVANIA IS ONE OF THE STATES THAT MAY JOIN THE NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE INTERSTATE COMPACT. This is an agreement that elevates the importance of the popular vote. This compact has not yet been been passed into law. However, emphasizing this pact to the 20 Pennsylvania electors is still important.
THISis a petition you can sign in support of the electoral college voting in favor of the popular majority. It needs 3,000,000 signatures. It is a step toward spreading the word, but we can’t sign the petition and just stop there.
How to spread the word if you do not wish to directly contact electors
MAKE FLYERS, SHARE POSTS. If you are not creatively gifted (like myself), HERE is a link to page with the following flyers. If you have any other flyer design, feel free to submit them, and I will add them to the post.
Other ways to support the cause
#NotMyPresident T-Shirts If interested, order closes on November 23rd. Prices are $20, and orders will be shipped directly to your address. All proceeds go directly to Planned Parenthood. Buy one. Convince your friends and family to buy one. Wear them to protests. If anyone can gift a shirt, let me know. Link HERE.
I know that $20 is a lot for people to afford. Therefore, if I can find a website that will also donate proceeds directly to a charity/cause I will try to make #NotMyPresident WRISTBANDS and HATS, too. Let me know if you are interested.
Organize protests, or spread the word of ones you know are taking place.
I will be making another document, constantly updated, that will list the #NotMyPresident protests taking place. If you know of any, send me the TIME, the DATE, and the LOCATION. If you go to college, use it as a platform to spread the word. Democratic voting is highest in the most populated areas and among educated voters.
If you have connections to people on social media with a lot of followers, try to spread the message to them, too. Repost on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and any other website you can think of.
YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IF YOU’RE NOT FROM AMERICA. Please don’t feel like this movement is limited to Americans. A Trump presidency will affect other countries, too. Spread the word, support the movement, donate to those who are in need, if you can.
UNPRECEDENTED DOES NOT MEAN IMPOSSIBLE. THE MOVEMENT HAS SPREAD SO FAR ALREADY. WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
If anyone is lost/confused, the original post can be found here.
Okay but seriously folks – as often as I joke about this movie stirs my loins and as weirdly popular as this text post got a while back, I wanna rap with you all about why the George of the Jungle remake is a pretty important piece of cinema.
It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!
First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest – Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.
Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t – no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…
…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!
*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*
Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him – his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.
Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”
And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)
One thing to add: in the scene mentioned above where the ladies are watching him in the billowy shirt running with the horses, it pans back to about 50 feet away to two guys in suits at this party looking at the women and one of the guys says, “Man, what is it with women and horses?” So not only does this movie highlight the female gaze, but it blatantly points out that western male sensibilities don’t have a clue what actually appeals to women.
ALSO
he’s non threatening
as mentioned above, he looks built for dexterity rather than power, but he’s still a 6+ foot tall extremely muscular man, and not once are you worried for Ursula when he’s with her
ALSO
let’s take a look at his rival – Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.
But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe – which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.
Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time – you were just so terrified you don’t remember.” Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!
Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):
Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:
He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.
When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation – George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula – he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!
AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing – Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice – he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…
Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.
Okay. There’s a social interaction concept that I’ve tried to convey multiple times in multiple conversations, so I’m going to just go ahead and make a graph.
I’m calling this concept “Affordance Widths”.
Let’s say there’s some behavior {B} that people can do more of, or less of. And everyone agrees that if you don’t do enough of the behavior, bad thing {X} happens; but if you do too much of the behavior, bad thing {Y} happens.
Now, let’s say we have five different people: Adam, Bob, Charles, David, and Edgar. Each of them can do more or less {B}. And once they do too little, {X} happens. But once they do too much, {Y} happens. But where {X} and {Y} starts happening is a little fuzzy, and is different for each of them. Let’s say we can magically graph it, and we get something like this:
Now, let’s look at these five men’s experiences.
Adam doesn’t understand what the big deal about {B} is. He feels like this is a behavior that people can generally choose how much they do, and yeah if they don’t do the *bare minimum* shit goes all dumb, and if they do a *ridiculous* amount then shit goes dumb a different way, but otherwise do what you want, you know?
Bob understands that {B} can be an important behavior, and that there’s a minimum acceptable level of {B} that you need to do to not suffer {X}, and a maximum amount you can get away with before you suffer {Y}. And Bob feels like {X} is probably more important a deal than {Y} is. But generally, he and Adam are going to agree quite a bit about what’s an appropriate amount of {B}ing for people to do. (Bob’s heuristic about how much {B} to do is the thin cyan line.)
Charles isn’t so lucky, by comparison. He’s got a *very* narrow band between {X} and {Y}, and he has to constantly monitor his behavior to not fall into either of them. He probably has to deal with {X} and {Y} happening a lot. If he’s lucky, he does less {B} than average; if he’s not so lucky, then he tries to copy Bob’s strategy and winds up getting smacked with {Y} way more often than Bob does.
Poor David’s in a situation called a “double bind”. There is NO POSSIBLE AMOUNT of {B} he can do to prevent both {X} and {Y} from happening; he simply has to choose his poison. If he tries Bob’s strategy, he’ll get hit hard with {X} *AND* {Y}, simultaneously, and probably be pretty pissed about it. On the other hand, if he runs into Charles, and Charles has his shit figured out, then Charles might tell him to tack into a spot where David only has to deal with {X}. Bob and Adam are going to be utterly useless to David, and are going to give advice that keeps him right in the ugly overlap zone.
Then there’s Edgar. Edgar’s fucked. There is *NO AMOUNT* of behavior that Edgar can dial into, where he isn’t getting hit HARD by {X} *and* {Y}. There’s places way out on the extreme – places where most people are getting slammed hard by {X} or slammed hard by {Y} – where Edgar notices a slight decrease in the contra failure mode. So Edgar probably spends most of his time on the edges, either doing all-B or no-B, and people probably tell him to stop being so black-and-white about B and find a good middle spot like everyone else. Edgar probably wants to punch those people, starting with Adam.
In any real situation, the affordance width is probably determined by things independent of X, Y, and B. Telling Bob to do a little more {B} than Adam, and Charles to do a little less {B} than Adam or Bob, is great advice. But David and Edgar need different advice – they need advice one meta-level up, about how to widen their affordance width between {X} and {Y} so that *some* amount of {B} will be allowed at all.
In most of the situations where this is most salient to me, {B} is a social behavior, and {X} and {Y} are punishments that people mete out to people who do not conform to correct {B}-ness. A lot of the affordance width that Adam and Bob have would probably be identified as ‘halo effects’.
For example, let’s say {B} is assertiveness in a job interview. Let’s say {X} represents coming across as socially weak, while {Y} represents coming across as arrogant. Adam probably has a lot going for him – height, age, socioeconomic background, etc. – that make him just plain *likeable*, so he can be way more assertive than Charles and seem like a go-getter, *or* seem way less assertive than Charles and seem like a good team player. Whereas David was probably born the wrong skin color and god-knows-what-else, and Edgar probably has some kind of Autism-spectrum disorder that makes *any* amount of assertiveness seem dangerous, and *any* amount of non-assertiveness seem pathetic.
There’s plenty of other values for {B}, {X} and {Y} that I could have picked; filling them in is left as an exercise for the reader.
Does this make sense to people?
Everybody want to do me a personal solid? Yeah? Good.
Add on some example behaviors that fit this. They don’t have to be gendered or something like that. They can be very specific, they can be broad. Just things people can do an amount of and that bad things happen if they do too much or too little of them.
I’ll start with eating. You can eat too much food (short term sickness, long term obesity) or too little (starvation).
This applies nicely to gendered vs. cross-gendered behaviours with punishments of negative stereotyping on either end.
Adam, as an attractive heterosexual man can appear as butch or as femme as he wants within pretty large limits and people are just going to compliment him on it.
Bob, a less-than attractive heterosexual man can act more masculine without too much fear of reprisal but can’t generally slip into more effeminate behaviours without negative comments about his presumed sexuality.
Charles, as a gay man, needs to ensure that he confirms to gendered expectations as much as possible to avoid derisive stereotyping for effeminate behaviours.
David, as a trans man, is pretty much screwed if he acts the least bit feminine, but can occasionally avoid accusations of transitioning poorly if he loads up on balls out machismo.
Emily, being a trans woman, gets screwed over in that she can’t act effeminate without being accused of re-enforcing sexism and can’t act masculine without getting accused of not-being-trans-enough and pretty much gets assaulted with both negative outcomes simultaneously anyway.
Emily feels sick when she sees Adam dance around in lingerie she fears even buying, David considers punching Bob in the face for always being on his case about going to the gym too much.
Thanks for the addition! This is a really insightful take on this. I’m glad to see people contributing as I think the original post was missing at least one good example. It’s also enlightening to see just how well this can apply to such a wide array of social behaviors and expectations.
HOT SHIT THIS IS A GREAT MODEL FOR A THING THAT I HADN’T THOUGHT MUCH ABOUT BUT IS REAL AND IMPORTANT.
Also… The OP made a graph. Bless you, OP. 😍
I’ve thought about exercise like this for a long time. X is when you aren’t really doing anything, like, heart rate isn’t up, muscles aren’t trying that hard – it’s not bad, but it’s not actually helpful in any way. Y is when you do too much, end up aching and exhausted in a bad way, maybe feel like barfing or just lying down and not moving for a week. Or worse. The goal zone is where it feels good – the pleasant burn, the breath lost but catchable, the actual building of muscle and slimming of fat and etc. Endorphins.
Most people are in the Adam or Beth group. I, with a muscle tissue disorder and one partially collapsed lung, am a Charlie. I’m a fan of powerwalking and yoga. And I know people who are Denise or Elton, with chronic pain and no or very minimal win conditions.
Exercise was the first thing I thought of when reading this, too. Also, there’s Fritz and Gus.
Fritz’s graph changes from day to day, too fast for them to make plans that will help them stay between X and Y, plus other people are going to keep saying “why can’t you do that today? you managed it fine yesterday.”
And Gus’s measuring, graph-making, and/or graph-reading apparatus is broken, so they can’t monitor what’s happening with their body (or with their social reception, if this is about gender presentation not exercise) and have to rely on other people for input on how much of the thing they should be doing. Which is a problem if the person advising them is Adam, and Gus’s graph (if they had one) is more like Charles’.
I initially thought of… sedentary-ness, I guess. Moving around.
Even with something social, the limits aren’t necessarily externally enforced – like, if you don’t interact with people enough, you’re lonely, but if you interact too much, you burn out.
The Autism mention sort of punched the guts out of me, because it’s so painfully true.
There are so many behaviours where I am Edgar and it doesn’t matter what I do I’m fucked either way.
That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.
My mom has an iPhone 6 Plus and hasn’t even had it for a year when one day it suddenly died and would not charge. So she took it to an authorized Apple repair place and they charged her $50 for a diagnostic only to tell her that she would have to buy a brand new phone.
So she decided to go to the AT&T store to talk to our usual guy that upgrades our phones and handles any problems for us. She tells him what’s wrong and he takes her phone to the back only to come out two minutes later, puts her phone on charge and it comes back to life.
She asks him what was wrong with it that he managed to somehow fix when the people at the “authorized apple repair place” couldn’t. And you know what he told her?
“There was just a bit of fuzz in the charging port.”
I FUCKING KNEW IT. Listen, I have a MacBook from college. The charger has died twice, and I had to get a new one. This happened for two years in a row around the same time each year. I’m fucking convinced that their hardware is rigged to “expire” in order to force people to keep buying their shit.
Wait, people are just now learning that Apple has some of the shadiest business practices?
You know this isn’t really just apple, company’s do this all the time, everything is rigged to expire and all they want is your money.
Ohhh no no no, this IS JUST Apple.
All companies want you to buy their new products. None have gone to the lengths that Apple Inc. has gone to make end user repairs as impossible as is legally viable. I have been repairing electronics and computer systems privately, commercially and active duty in the US military for about 30 years.
Apple puts extra effort into special hardware requiring proprietary tools that are only legally produced by their licensed manufacturer and can only be purchased through licensed repair shops if at all.
Companies like iFixit can only exist as profit making companies because they are able to make workaround tools and kits that are still profitable but less of a blatant ripoff than Apple.
Apple has been doing this forever. The way Apple treats consumers is abysmal, and people still eat their products up.
Apple has gone so far downhill over the past decade and people still drop $2000 on their piece of shit laptops when they could get a more powerful machine from Dell or something for half the price. Oh, but god forbid because “I DONT LIKE WINDOWS THEY ALWAYS GET VIRUSES 😛 ITS NOT LIKE IM A STUPID USER OR ANYTHING!”
Not to mention their utter refusal to use standard cables. EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET uses micro USB to charge their electronics. But Apple has to make some new bullshit charger every three years so they can force you to buy more. Seriously, look at the price of lightning cables vs. micro USB someday. Apple products are designer. You are solely paying for the branding and slick design. As long as you know that, we’re cool.
lmao look at how they decided to throw away the standard 3.5mm earphone jack that’s only been open technology for the last 100 ears to chuck their shitty Thunderbolt bs into it
This is seriously such a huge part of why I detest Apple and refuse to spend a dime on them, even in the rare case when they really do have generally superior products (read: monitors. that’s it.)
Remember how they tried to play big brother and insist Flash is “dead”? And thus gave you no option to use it on any of their devices? Sorry fuckers but it’s still going strong even with the introduction of HTML5; and even if it was dead, what would you do to all the older content on the internet that still relies on it?
Apple tries to tell you what’s best for you, and then gives you no other choice but to follow their decision. Even when it’s a shitty decision and vastly limits your experience as a user, and makes life more difficult. Because they’re intuitive, innovative, they’re paving the future. (But let’s not forget that they rarely use “new” ideas, they just repackage generic-brand technology other companies make and spend a shitton more money promoting it. Sorry kiddos, touch screens and smart phones aren’t their invention)
Steve Jobs wasn’t a pioneer, he was just a particularly lucky and successful shady businessman.
Apple is, and always has been a company built on “perceived value” to float their inexcusable, downright filthy prices. You aren’t getting a superior product, you’re getting a baby-proofed product wrapped in 3 metric shit tons of plastic wrap that hinders your ability to use your product, and even fucking fix it when something happens. This is all to force you to keep buying more and more of their purposely fragile and limited products. Want to listen to music? Well you gotta buy a special Apple Brand converter for your phone now! But it’s cool because they’re HIP!!! All your friends will know how rich you are. Or, how rich you were before you bought that overpriced soon to be paperweight the next time you tap it too hard against anything.
As someone who knows several people in the tech support + repair business (brother has been for like 10 years now), I promise you: Apple does not “just work”. In fact, their products are by far the hardest to fix for both hardware and software, and have a much higher chance of being scrapped entirely because Apple wants to make sure you hire their overpriced namebrand repair service in a last ditch effort, then still have to buy the product all over again.
You want to use Apple products? Whatever floats your boat, it’s not hurting me in the slightest. I just hope you know you’re paying twice the price for something that’s made with half the quality, and a quarter of the accessibility.
Anon, you know not what you have just done…. I’m gonna put this in smaller text to it’s less of a wall.
Why I love SoreyMikleo: A (hopefully) Coherent Essay by Nao (Also I know I ranted about this before, but I am too lazy to find that post, so my apologies if I end up being redundant.)
Also, please note: I will be addressing facts about the game and the anime, so read at your own spoilery risk. Because I wrote as it came to me, not necessarily in storyline order.
So, to start off, it is obvious to say I really, really love SorMik. Just look at my blog (and blog preview, but I digress.)
I love that their relationship is never played up as “romantic” in the sense that we are used to in most media. They don’t constantly hold hands or kiss, their speech isn’t filled with “I love yous” or “baby I need you” sort of stuff. Not to say that they don’t touch each other and it isn’t intimate (the ‘secret’ handshake, the shoulder touches, the waist touches, etc, etc.) The love is just… there. You can see it in the way they’re drawn to look at each other, the way they glance at each other and just… understand.
It absolutely filled me with warm feelings when we find out Mikleo learned so much just for Sorey. He researched humans and tried to know everything Sorey would need to know if he ever left Elysia. It was never a question of “Sorey is going to leave” it was just “Sorey is going to leave and I am going to make sure he is safe and prepared when he does.” I don’t think Zenrus or anyone else even questioned that Mikleo would go with him, honestly. And even though it was obvious Mikleo did fear being replaced by humans on some level, he still never stopped.
And just how happy Sorey was when Mikleo said he was going with him. In the game, in the movie, and in the anime. With each creation of that scene he just seems to look happier. (And oh my god, Mikleo’s blushhhh.)
(More under the Read More because whoa, this is getting long, oops.)
THIS is what makes a good, quality couple. Show, don’t tell.
It’s always been the most effective, powerful form of storytelling; when the viewer comes to their own conclusions, it’s more meaningful. It impacts you far more than information you’re spoon-fed. Don’t tell us that these two characters love each other, show us how they love, why they love.
(This is why friendships (usually same-sex bc males and females can’t just be friends amirite) are often the more popular ship than canon romance couples. They don’t rely on flimsy “well they’re in love, that’s that” romance tropes)
And just. Getting back to Sorey/Mikleo. ToZ is a master at riding that thing line between “showing” and “telling” – the intimacy alone is so casually heartfelt, just like OP said.
It’s not a “big deal”, it’s just natural to them.
They love each other so much (platonic or romantic, it doesn’t matter)
These dorky ass history otaku
are always together, this is never a question
THEY LITERALLY JUST START TICKLING EACH OTHER????
Sorey has, numerous times, pointed out that Mikleo is very pretty. And it kills me because he’s just like, so proud?? like YES BUT HAVE U NOTICED MY BFF? “no homo” necessary
the obligatory Dainty Hand Touch™ – but no seriously, no boundaries between them. they don’t bat an eye turning intimacy up to 11
“it’s fujoshi babbling” say the homophobes. “bruh…” reply the Straight Men who actually played the game
“BRUH” the Straight Men say again, louder this time so the gamergates in the back can hear them
We usually see “elephants”—or “wolves” or “killer whales” or “chimps” or
“ravens” and so on—as interchangeable representatives of their kind.
But the instant we focus on individuals, we see an elephant named Echo
with exceptional leadership qualities; we see wolf 755 struggling to
survive the death of his mate and exile from his family; we see a lost
and lonely killer whale named Luna who is humorous and stunningly
gentle. We see individuality. It’s a fact of life. And it runs deep.
Very deep.
Individuality
is the frontier of understanding non-human animals. But for decades, the
idea was forbidden territory. Scientists who stepped out of bounds
faced withering scorn from colleagues. Jane Goodall experienced just
that. After her first studies of chimpanzees, she enrolled as a doctoral
student at Cambridge. There, as she later recalled in National
Geographic, “It was a bit shocking to be told I’d done everything wrong.
Everything. I shouldn’t have given them names. I couldn’t talk about
their personalities, their minds or their feelings.” The orthodoxy was:
those qualities are unique to humans.
But these
decades later we are realizing that Goodall was right; humans are not
unique in having personalities, minds and feelings. And if she’d given
the chimpanzees numbers instead of names?—their individual personalities
would still have shined.
“If ever there
was a perfect wolf,” says Yellowstone biologist Rick McIntyre, “It was
Twenty-one. He was like a fictional character. But real.” McIntyre has watched free-living wolves for
more hours than anyone, ever.
Even from a
distance Twenty-one’s big-shouldered profile was recognizable. Utterly
fearless in defense of his family, Twenty-one had the size, strength,
and agility to win against overwhelming odds. “On two occasions, I saw
Twenty-one take on six attacking wolves—and rout them all,” Rick says.
“Watching him felt like seeing something that looked supernatural. Like
watching a Bruce Lee movie. I’d be thinking, ‘A wolf can’t do what I am
watching this wolf do.’” Watching Twenty-one, Rick elaborates, “was like
watching Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan—a one-of-a-kind talent outside
of ‘normal.’”
Twenty-one was a
superwolf. Uniquely, he never lost a fight and he never killed any
defeated opponent. And yet Twenty-one was “remarkably gentle” with the
members of his pack. Immediately after making a kill he would often walk
away and nap, allowing family members who’d had nothing to do with the
hunt eat their fill.
One
of Twenty-one’s favorite things was to wrestle little pups. “And what
he really loved to do,” Rick adds, “was pretend to lose. He just got a
huge kick out of it.” Here was this great big male wolf. And he’d let
some little wolf jump on him and bite his fur. “He’d just fall on his
back with his paws in the air,” Rick half-mimes. “And the
triumphant-looking little one would be standing over him with his tail
wagging.
“The ability to
pretend,” Rick adds, “shows that you understand how your actions are
perceived by others. I’m sure the pups knew what was going on, but it
was a way for them to learn how it feels to conquer something much
bigger than you. And that kind of confidence is what wolves need every
day of their hunting lives.”
In Twenty-one’s
life, there was a particular male, a sort of roving Casanova, a
continual annoyance. He was strikingly good-looking, had a big
personality, and was always doing something interesting. “The best
single word is ‘charisma,’” says Rick. “Female wolves were happy to mate
with him. People absolutely loved him. Women would take one look at
him—they didn’t want you to say anything bad about him. His
irresponsibility and infidelity; it didn’t matter.”
One day,
Twenty-one discovered this Casanova among his daughters. Twenty-one ran
in, caught him, biting and pinning him to the ground. Other pack members
piled in, beating Casanova up. “Casanova was also big,” Rick says, “but
he was a bad fighter.” Now he was totally overwhelmed; the pack was
finally killing him.
“Suddenly
Twenty-one steps back. Everything stops. The pack members are looking at
Twenty-one as if saying, ‘Why has Dad stopped?’” The Casanova wolf
jumped up and—as always—ran away.
After
Twenty-one’s death, Casanova briefly became the Druid pack’s alpha male.
But, Rick recalled: “He doesn’t know what to do, just not a leader
personality.” And although it’s very rare, his year-younger brother
deposed him. “His brother had a much more natural alpha personality.”
Casanova didn’t mind; it meant he was free to wander and meet other
females. Eventually Casanova and several young Druid males met some
females and they all formed the Blacktail pack. “With them,” Rick
remembers, “he finally became the model of a responsible alpha male and a
great father.”
The personality of a wolf ‘matriarch’ also helps shape the
whole pack. Wolf Seven was the dominant female in her pack. But you
could watch Seven for days and say, ‘I think she’s in charge,’ because
she led subtly, by example. Wolf Forty, totally different; she led with
an iron fist. Exceptionally aggressive, Forty had done something unheard
of: actually deposed her own mother.
For three
years, Forty ruled the Druid pack tyrannically. A pack member who stared
a moment too long would find herself slammed to the ground, Forty’s
bared canines poised above her neck. Yellowstone research director Doug
Smith recalls, “Throughout her life she was fiercely committed to always
having the upper hand, far more so than any other wolf we’ve observed.”
Forty heaped her worst abuse on her same-age sister. Because this sister
lived under Forty’s brutal oppression, she earned the name Cinderella.
One year
Cinderella split from the main pack and dug a den to give birth. Shortly
after she finished the den, her sister arrived and delivered one of her
infamous beatings. Cinderella just took it, as always. No one ever saw
any pups at that den.
The next year,
Cinderella, Forty, and a low-ranking sister all gave birth in dens dug
several miles apart. New wolf mothers nurse and guard constantly; they
rely on pack members for food. That year, few pack members visited the
bad-tempered alpha. Cinderella, though, found herself well assisted at
her den by several sisters.
Six weeks after
giving birth, Cinderella and several attending pack members headed out,
away from her den—and stumbled into the queen herself. Forty
immediately attacked Cinderella with was, even for her, exceptional
ferocity. She then turned her fury onto another of her sisters who’d
been accompanying Cinderella, giving her a beating too. Then as dusk
settled in, Forty headed toward Cinderella’s den. Only the wolves saw
what happened next, but Doug Smith and Rick McIntyre pieced together
what went down.
Unlike the
previous year, this time Cinderella wasn’t about to remain passive or
let her sister reach her den and her six-week-old pups. Near the den a
fight erupted. There were at least four wolves, and Forty had earned no
allies among them.
At dawn, Forty
was down by the road covered in blood, and her wounds included a neck
bite so bad that her spine was visible. Her long-suffering sisters had,
in effect, cut her throat. She died. It was the only time researchers
have ever known a pack to kill its own alpha. Forty was an
extraordinarily abusive individual. The sisters’ decision, outside the
box of wolf norms, was: mutiny. Remarkable.
But Cinderella
was just getting started. She adopted her dead sister’s entire brood.
And she also welcomed her low-ranking sister and her pups. And so that
was the summer that the Druid Peak pack raised an unheard-of twenty-one
wolf pups together in a single den.
Out from under Forty’s brutal reign, Cinderella developed into the
pack’s finest hunter. She later went on to become the benevolent
matriarch of the Geode Creek pack. Goes to show: a wolf, as many a
human, may have talents and abilities that wither or flower depending on
which way their luck breaks.
“Cinderella was
the finest kind of alpha female,” Rick McIntyre says. “Cooperative,
returning favors by sharing with the other adult females, inviting her
sister to bring her pups together with her own while also raising her
vanquished sister’s pups—. She set a policy of acceptance and cohesion.”
She was, Rick says, “perfect for helping everyone get along really
well.”
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