As an asexual, I’ve already talked about how frustrating it is to see how everything’s sexualized, but I wanted to talk about other specific stuff and I’m sure other aces will agree with me.
It’s honestly so annoying that 2 people of either gender can’t be close together without other people thinking that they’re totally married or in a relationship and shit. This happened to me personally already, some absolute sickos paired me and my sister after seeing us for the first time just because we were sitting together. I’ve also had many friends of opposite gender and same thing happened to my brother also, we couldn’t even hug our friends without getting the looks
My mother(who is straight and also finds this annoying) talked to us about this and said that this became even worse during recent years and that especially before people used to be a lot more closer with each other in friendly relationships, kisses and hugs were normal friendly gestures. Also for example, she slept(key word: slept) in the same bed with her friends of both genders during high school on sleepovers and she isn’t bi, same thing with me as an ace.
Eastern Europe is another special case for close relationships and gestures in terms of hugging, kissing etc (cough Fraternal kiss cough) and some older people especially are so used to it and is completely normal for them.
Allos are generally so annoying about this, they’ll watch a movie and see 2 completely random characters and then talk on and on about what would be if these 2 got in a relationship, even if the characters just stood in the same room next to each other or the media is not related to romance at all.
I mean, they sexualized fucking vampires over time, as someone from Balkans, this irks me on so many levels because these things were disgusting non-rotting corpses which spread plague, transformed into shit like bats, insects, rodents etc and drained people. Like no sir, if they were real, they wouldn’t be interested in any kind of relationship with you, they’ll see you as bloodbag and drain you dry if you didn’t already die of plague they brought beforehand.
Same thing goes for many other things which allos sexualized or see in sexual way, be it friendly gestures, closeness with family and friends or just generally normally being together or spending time with someone. Real life isn’t a drama TV show where everyone’s cheating everybody and sleeping around with anyone they know or meet.
I’m not ace, but I mostly agree.
I haven’t seen in a while the kind of people that ships characters or people just because they dared breath in the same room, but I remember how that shit is annoying and even disgusting sometimes.
Most ships that I see online are usually something that makes sense or that are funny just because, like Venom and Robo-Ky (Guilty Gear) or V1 and Gabriel (Ultrakill) or Blueprint and Brainstorm (Balatro). And that I think is just genuinely fun. Although that’s probably because of the places I hang out online.
Now for the sexualization of everything, holy shit how I hate that. Like, I’m not gonna pretend I’m not a horny fuck sometimes that enjoy this shit on media, but it is annoying to see everything sexualized all the time, it makes you forget that media doesn’t need to be like that and that it is mostly that way both because it sells and because of machism. Two of the best anime I have ever seen that are currently living rent-free in my head are Dungeon Meshi and Frieren and they mostly lack any kind of sexualization. It’s genuinely just good ass fantasy stories with a lot of great woman characters that feels no need to sexualize or belittle them.
Same thing goes for many other things which allos sexualized or see in sexual way, be it friendly gestures, closeness with family and friends or just generally normally being together or spending time with someone. Real life isn’t a drama TV show where everyone’s cheating everybody and sleeping around with anyone they know or meet.
Oh yeah fuck that. This type of thing have had a lasting impression on how I interact with people because I grew around people that couldn’t fathom you interacting without second intentions, be those whatever it could be.
I can only imagine how this is all 100 fold more annoying to aro/ace people.
Hypersexuality can be destructive for the self and online spaces see high rates of hypersexuality that are seen as sex-positivity instead. This leaks out into the real world eventually.
I think it’s direly important to understand where sexuality ends and the real world begins. lots of functional adults cannot do this and it leads to things like bioessessentialist thinking (women just want to get RAILED by HARD STRONG ALPHA MEN
WHO ARE BLACK) or obsessive shipping (x and y would be so good together! imagine how they would have sex?!). It makes conversations uncomfortable and makes whatever space they are inhabiting inherently adult-only.There is so much to this world other than sex. There’s so much to just human relations other than sex. Really, sex takes up such a small part of our lives but disproportionately motivates much of it for most people. It’s a sad state of affairs and I can definitely see where you’re coming from, OP.
Can I give you the number of one of my coworkers so you can talk to him? Sounds like you could make a difference lmao.
This dude, when asked what he wants in life, just answers: wat nice thing and hopefully have much sex. Like, man what an empty existence. And every other day he just has to talk about how he had sex with his gf or how his dick was really hard that day or whatever. Like, dude, get a fucking grip man.
I think allos (myself included) ship other people so we can live vicariously through them. I don’t have time or energy for a romantic relationship RN, but watching others get together is kinda fun.
This practice is kinda harmless for fictional characters (and romantic subplots are usually the norm in said shows), but can definitely make IRL aces uncomfortable. Sorry about that, we should probably stick to fictional characters only.
I think vampires (specifically the hot mysterious dude kind of vampire) are popular mostly because they fulfill a certain niche of romantic fantasy. This niche used to be filled by the plethora of romance novels, which are mostly consumed by women. Today, romance novels have been supplanted by many more types of content, including stuff about vampires. Also, you can’t really blame normal, horny people for thinking about banging anything. R34 is a thing for a reason.
yesterday’s romance novels are today’s ao3 fanfics
Pretty much, yes. Having read both, the horny energy is exactly the same.
Also, you can’t really blame normal, horny people for thinking about banging anything
Wanna bet?
It’s weird obsession, especially when media has nothing to do with it, but extremely weird and creepy when done on real people, same thing for random people from historical photos. Yeah just stick to ficitonal.
It irks me on so many levels because these things aren’t really the peak of sexual or romantic appeal, they aren’t even human in the first place, they were quite literally walking non-rotting corpses who saw humans in the same way predator sees it’s prey, they also brought plague wherever they went. I get liking romance novels, but liking monsters in that kind of way is just, wtf… Like, if they existed, they would either barge into your house by night or chase you down the field to drain your entire blood system, many times while transofmred into either a bat, wolf, hyena, fox, insects, rat or owl.
I’m not sure how it developed to the airbrushed-looking Hollywood kind of vampire, but I suspect that kind of vampire portrayal has something to do with the whole “eternal love” theme in romance. Especially people at the height of romantic affection, may feel like they want to be with the person forever. So then you combine that with an immortal vampire who can turn others into vampires by biting them and you have a formula for eternal love. But as many stories that involve “cheating death” go, there has to be a catch, a tradeoff, some sort of consequence of trying to cheat death. So with vampires, it can be that they’re demons and the tradeoff is you lose your humanity; what you thought would be eternal love turns out to be a farce.
Vampires are the ultimate bad-boy romantic aesthetic. How skilled at romance must a woman to wrap an immortal being around her finger? In that sense it’s kinda empowering.
Right now, werewolf romance novels are rather popular on reddit romance novel communities. This is the exact same kind of dude as a vampire except you also get animalistic boinking.
Honestly I don’t know either, I think that it started with Interview with the Vampire with Tom Cruise, then it just got worse with movies after that and of course Twilight. Turning others into vampires didn’t involve any kind of love originally(even towards other vampires let alone humans), they were just spreading the disease and making more vampires, which also acted like predators towards humans and mostly didn’t remember their past life so idk why would anyone want that. I can see the immortal thing but there are like, much better ways to become immortal in mythology than becoming undead bat-like predator. Also, they aren’t demons, they’re just undead humans who raised from the grave.
That might be a major place the romanticizing of it started. I know there’s also been The Vampire Diaries (never watched it, but I believe that’s got romanticizing going on, of sorts). The demon thing, I’m not sure who started it, but some stories portray them as demons, such as in the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in that one, they have a demon form and a prettified form, so they can appear conventionally attractive to lure people in but are grotesque underneath).
Yeah I’ve heard of it, it definitely made it worse. I’ve also heard of Buffy but know nothing about it, they probably just used the terms since the word demon is sometimes used on fictional things that aren’t actual demons, just the name, like Demon Bear from X-Men. Demons are fallen angels from religion, vamps are undead humans. It’s honestly ridiculous that only 21th century vampire media I’ve consumed are Shiki and RE Village.
Sorry I’m uninformed, what’s allos?
Allosaurus
For real, allosexual are people of who aren’t asexual, they can be any other orientation.
Maybe Cishet behavior is more responsible for what’s bothering you? (Cisgender Heterosexual).
Nah every allo does this, it doesn’t matter if straight, gay or bisexual
No
Gotcha, thanks
I think it’s a type of dinosaur? Short for allosaurus.
I have no idea either. Anyway, enjoy getting downvoted for not being completely up-to-date with Western idpol I guess.
I’m fairly up to date with these terms and it even threw me for a loop, we’re all learning.
I read it first as “I hate anglos” and nodded along.
shipping culture can die and I would be happy
Can you explain this stuff to me, my third-world ass can’t be bothered to go looking on western internet to find out whatever this is
A verb used to describe the action of wishing for two people to enter a relationship (whether romantic or occasionally platonic) in books, movies, tv shows or real life. Shipping can often happen involuntarily, and it is the majority of what happens on the website, Tumblr. There are some very popular ships, some unpopular, as well as often lots of controversy between ships from the same fandom.
Astaghfirullah. Why? I literally can’t fathom why this is a thing. Are cross-gender friendships uncommon in the west??
I wouldn’t say uncommon in general but the closest friendships are usually between people of the same gender. In my experience, there’s a point of “closeness” in a cross-gender friendship where society and your peers will expect you to move on from being friends and become a couple. Especially for asexuals this can be quite overwhelming and lead to a distancing from the other person.
I’ve also recently learned wtf the term even means, I legit thought that it has something to do with ships.
I don’t know how common they are there, but they definitely have a tendency to pair 2 people of any gender together, regardless of their actual relationship to one another. One of the worst cases I saw is that they take stuff like historical photos of 2 random people, pair them randomly and declare that they were a couple. Of course many times it turns out that the people in photo are friends, cousins or literal close family members.
Extremely weird obsession.
As a weird little way of coping with how dumb it is, I will always insist that it does have something to do with shipping, like as in transportation of goods, when it comes up IRL.
So if you’re shipping two characters, you’ll need a box big enough to contain them both, and you’ll need a destination to ship them to. It’s silly but it’s more entertaining than despair.
Lmao, like when Dracula shipped himself to London in a box.
Exactly!
Idk we need ships, there have been some really cool ones through history.
For real, it’s one of the worst things ever conceived.
I relate a lot to that. Especially the societal expectation of having to be into a woman in order to be close with her has often pushed me towards become closer with men even though I know so many cool women I’d want to be closer friends with.
