Early 20's, studying mech eng, physics, maths, French at uni. Always migraining and kinda depressed. Love piano and singing. Newfound love for languages: Speaks English well, Polish pretty well, French okishly, and just starting to learn Italian. Recently discovered bi aro ace. Feel free to start talking to me and asking me stuff! (I'm serious! It would make my day!)
hey abled people if you have friends with chronic pain you need to be making a concious effort to accommodate them. you need to be taking breaks so that they can take a break. do you know how humiliating it can be to make the whole group stop becsuse you had to ask for a break from walking? take the pressure off of them
History, Part 3/3 - And here we are, friends 🐸🐸🥰!!! We’ve made it, yet again. I’m so glad I’m finally getting to share this part of the comic with you, it was what I wanted to say at the beginning of all of this 💚💚💚.
To answer my own question from a few weeks ago - what does it mean to be aro?
I think realizing you’re aro is an eye opening experience. It forces you to question amatonormative values that are saturated in society, makes you see what life can be without romance. There’s no precedent, because we exist in the gaps between the pages where everyone lives *happily ever after* (implied, obviously, in romantic love 🙄). It’s hard to tell what life will have in store for us, when our tales aren’t the ones that get told.
Yet I’ve always liked to think that those gaps was where the ✨real magic ✨ happens. It’s like a blank canvas. Nothing is defined, so it gets to become whatever you want it to be.
So being aro, to me, means opportunity, and freedom. The ability to choose what I want and don’t want in this life with as much honesty and sincerity as possible. On a grander scheme of things too, I think we, as a community, are going to get to decide how we want to define the meaning of our identities, too. It makes me excited. It makes me hopeful. Above all else, I’m looking forward to how much we have ahead of us 💚
–
A huge thank you to everyone who volunteered to be drawn in this post (slides 2 and 6)!!! 🐸🐸🐸 it was nice to draw real people that aren’t, well, me for once😭😅 for real though, y’all are the best and this was a lot of fun! I hope I can do this again sometime!!! 💚💚 I’ve tagged everyone in the post, but here’s a list of their accounts as well 😄
Slide 1: Celia speaks to the viewer with a small smile, “But … despite all of this, I think these are exciting times to be an aro”
Slide 2: “We are the first generation of explicitly aromantic people!”
Drawn around Celia are a number of other arospec people who have asked to be drawn. From left to right, top to bottom: A black girl with curly long hair, a blond non-binary person holding up a peace sign, a girl with long teal-dyed hair and a septum piercing wearing an aro flag, another person with short purple dyed hair with another aro flag, Celia herself, and a south asian girl with a short bob cut.
Slide 3: “It will be our actions -” A man waving an aromantic flag grins.
Slide 4: “- our thoughts -”
Celia talking to two other arospec people. They discuss the nuances of what is considered flirting and how weird it is.
Slides 5:
“- our words -”
Celia stands in a side view, and from her spill forward objects like papers from a book, a petition, which spills into a drawing of her sketching out comics and another random person filling out an aromantic survey.
“- our feelings and fears and journeys of self-discovery -”
The drawing leads to a group of aro people who are standing as though at a parade. A non-binary blond person holds a big aro flag, while a guy with short brown hair stands next to them throwing a casual peace sign. Finally, a taller southeast asian girl stands next to them both, holding a sign that says “aro pride”.
“ - our activism”
Slide 6: [Text slide] “- that will build the foundations of our community.”
Slide 7: “Future aros will look back to us.”
An older chinese woman talks to a group of youth dressed in futuristic looking clothing. They are looking at a book together. She comments that the events feel just like yesterday as one of the kids asks her about the events described in the book.
Slide 8: “And … I think, at least, that it’s a blessing.”
The scene returns to the riverside where Celia was standing at the beginning of the comic. It shows Celia from the front, up close, and she’s smiling wistfully as the wind blows in her hair.
Slide 9: A zoomed out shot of the same scene from the very beginning of the comic.
“I’m grateful that I get to be here, with all of you, making history.”]
History, Part 1/3 - So this came out a bit more melancholy than I really intended 😅 I promise things will cheer up once we hit part 3, there’s just a bit of setup I wanted to give first. And the truth is, anyway, that being part of the aromantic community is a confusing experience, because we just don’t have that point of reference of older aros or really any explicit history to look back on. I tried to capture the way it makes you feel a little lost beyond words here, but I’m not sure if I succeeded 😭
Also, just a note about #asaw2021 or aromantic awareness week - as some of you may know, I’m teaming up with @aromantic-nerd to make a series of informative text posts on the ways amatonormativity can be found in media. It’ll be posted over on her account so please do go check her out to make sure you don’t miss it! We put a lot of heart and work into compiling the posts and we hope you’ll like it/find it helpful 💚💚💚 I’ll also be doing my best to make a recommendation for an aro creator every day of ASAW on my stories so be sure to look out for that also haha 🐸✨
I’m really curious to know how all of you feel about being such a “new” identity. Obviously, we’ve existed before official words came along to designate our identities, but somehow I feel that the lack of proper historical acknowledgement outside of just being the “weird old person who never got married” … makes it hard to see where you fit into the bigger picture, I guess. Do y’all feel the same way?
[Image Description:
Slide 1: “I’ve been thinking about what it means to be Aro”
Celia is shown, standing at the edge of a river on the rocky shoreline. Large fluffy clouds fill the sky, and her hair blows in the wind.
Slide 2: “Historically, we don’t have much.”
A couple of photographs are drawn, each labelled with a significant aromantic history event. The first says “Use of the word aromantic” on a photograph of the AVEN forums in two thousand and five. The second is a sketch of Dorothy Tennov, the women who coined the term “non-limerent” (one of the first references to aromanticism. The third is a drawing of the Aurea website, and the label reads “twenty nineteen - AUREA founded!”
Slide 3: Celia speaks to the viewer now.
“To be fair, once you broaden the scope to historical alternatives to romance there is more (AUREA has some good posts) - but even so, the concept of being explicitly aromantic is fairly new.”
Slide 4: “Our culture, our stories, and our voices are still forming” A drawing of a blank book next to some other decor. In the corner is a photo of Yasmin Benoit in a picture frame.
Slide 5: “The words I want to use to describe what I’m feeling either don’t exist -”
Celia in her dorm from when she was on her exchange. She is talking to her roommate, who asks: “-I’m not sure if I follow. Like what do you feel, if it’s not a crush?”
“I don’t know how to describe it … some people I feel strongly about but like, in my gut I KNOW it isn’t romantic?”
Slide 6:
“- or are unheard of to the vast majority of the population.”
Celia shown drawing to blank person. She says: “So like, I had a bit of a squish on this person I was frenemies with when I was 13,” and the person says, “What’s a squish?”
Slide 7: Celia stands on a frozen lake, where she has skated around. She has her hands in her pockets as she stares pensively up at the reader.
“It feels like the rest of the world doesn’t understand how we can exist -”
Slide 8: “- so it’s easy to feel that same doubt for ourselves too.”
A blank person wearing the aro flag stares down at their hands in confusion.]
hey real quick? shoutout to disabled people who dont want to be role models or idols to the world. shoutout to disabled people who dont want to put themselves out there to be examples and be a voice for other disabled people, who just want to be left the fuck alone. its hard being told how strong/brave you are for living when you just want to be treated like a person, i know. please know that you are not obligated to be an example or a voice. you dont have to be a role model. you dont have to put yourself out there no matter how much abled people tell you that you’re such a strong and influential person, youre allowed to just be. i love you, i wish us all a peaceful and happy life
happy disabled pride month, yet again i wish us all a peaceful july
MEMORIZE THE PACKAGING SO YOU MAKE SURE YOU NEVER BUY THIS CREAM FOR YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU LOVE.
This post is about vaginas. My vagina in particular. I get yeast infections pretty regularly, and until recently I was able to afford to see a doctor who could prescribe me fluconazole.
Fluconazole, a drug also known by the brand name Diflucan, is a small pink pill. You take two pills a few days apart from each other to restore balance and harmony to your bountiful folds. I’ve never ever had a bad side effect from taking this pill.
Cut to November 2016. I’m a recent college grad without reliable health care coverage in the process of finding a job. And I’m dealing with a yeast infection. Before I moved out of state, my previous doctor told me about Miconazole. She said it was as effective as the pill and hallelujah, it’s over the counter! I decided to purchase the cream pictured above. This treatment only lasted 3 days, a convenient time frame for my schedule.
The application process was a little messy, and some of the cream came in contact with my vulva and labia. Within 5 minutes every piece of skin that had come in contact with the cream, excluding my hands, was on fire. I wanted to scream it was so painful. I began frantically searching for what I should do online.
I found a whole forum of people on drugs.com who had experienced something similar. These comments saved me, and these were just on the first page. There were 33 pages total, the earliest dated July 2009.
I was writhing in pain at 2AM when I found this forum (which I found by searching “my vagina burn itch hurts after miconazole” on Google). As soon as I read these comments I threw the devil cream directly into the trash and jumped in the shower. I didn’t feel any actual relief until I reached in and scraped the cream out of me. I paid $17 plus tax on this bullshit, but I could have just as easily ripped up my money or paid someone to not hurt me.
The moral of the story is that vaginal health care is is completely fucked up because we don’t have access to an over the counter cure for yeast infections that is safe for our bodies and also YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY THIS CREAM EVER.
Reblog to save a vagina.
Okay so I used to get yeast infections every month after my period ‘cause my pH levels were fucked up or something (idk that’s what my doctor said) and I actually used to take this stuff and it was fine. Then a couple years down the road I had a yeast infection for the first time in ages and I used this again and it burned so bad I had to sit in the bath and like physically dig it out of my vagina
AND THEN I LEARNED THAT IT’S BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE A YEAST INFECTION. I had a bacterial infection, which is honestly pretty much identical to a yeast infection depending on the severity. The only difference is that IF YOU HAVE A BACTERIAL INFECTION AND TRY TO USE YEAST INFECTION MEDICATION IT WILL HURT
But it’s not actually the medication’s fault. The medication DOES do what it’s supposed to do, provided you’re actually suffering from a yeast infection. Chances are though that you and every one who commented on this did, in fact, have bacterial infections instead.
FORTUNATELY they also make over the counter tests so you can know if you need to call your doctor or just grab some yeast medicine off the shelf. Next time if you aren’t sure, pee on a stick and save yourself a world of fucking pain
AMEN.
It’s unfortunate that I’m 27 and never knew that last bit of information. The world of vaginal health is so obscure and inaccessible.
Reblogging because I too once found out the hard way that I had a bacterial & not yeast infection. 😑
I, too, once set my vagina aflame with miconazole. I didn’t know it was because of a bacterial infection. Reblogging to save a vag.
Reblogging to save a vag.
It’s almost like the shame and stigma thar surrounds vaginas is a danger to the health and well being of people who have vaginas.
remember that you’re white before you’re anything else and this impacts every single way you interact with the world compared to poc
whiteness is a shield for you as a person and its part of your privilege, ignorance on said privilege is complacency and support to white supremacy. a poc saying you have privilege is not an insult but a fact and a lot of you seriously have to think critically for once and question as to why you feel insulted
Early 20's, studying mech eng, physics, maths, French at uni. Always migraining and kinda depressed. Love piano and singing. Newfound love for languages: Speaks English well, Polish pretty well, French okishly, and just starting to learn Italian. Recently discovered bi aro ace. Feel free to start talking to me and asking me stuff! (I'm serious! It would make my day!)
