#amatonormativity

You’re asexual? But… “but sex is what makes us human!” [this is a copy/pasta from a deleted blog. originally captured in Mar 2018] in 1916 a French officer in his twenties writes his doctoral dissertation under heavy mortar fire. he sends it by mail, a page at a time, to his wife. a week before he’s to step up to the podium and defend his work rather than hiscountry he is killed in action. even as the bullets rip through him he still wishes he could have become a professor in French literature and the university awards him a posthumous Ph.D. sex is a woman breaks down in tears on the phone because a week is not enough time to get over a breakup. her sister drives an hour across town, comes up the front steps with a gallon of ice cream and some beer and together they eat moose tracks and marathon every single Godzilla movie ever made. sex is she’s late for work but her car isn’t starting and even through her coat and hat she’s cold. she knows she can’t be late again because she’s missed one time too many already because her father’s nurse was sick with the flu and someone needed to help him bathe. the clock ticks past fifteen after and she hits the wheel like it’s a heavy bag as though that will help steps on the gas like the car will go and wonders how she will pay rent and how she will feed her father. sex is it takes three people to hold the predator down because even with the cover over his head a bleeding eye and shattered wing he is trying to hurt them. none of them have seen this bird before in their lives but they bandage his wing and head and give him a painkiller and put him in a warm place to sleep and heal because it is right. at first he is paralyzed and cannot fly but soon he is taking steps and then fluttering, and then soaring, and six months later he is whole and healed and hunting. once he is gone they never see him again which means they’ve done their jobs right. sex is in 1969 a girl watches grey-and-white footage on her parents’ tiny television and can’t quite believe that what she is seeing is not a movie set but another planet. the men on the screen look a little like aliens with bulbous heads and no faces and fat marshmallow arms but they are still men. her mother puffs on a cigarette behind her and declares that this is progress even if it was just a small step. the girl grows up to be not an astronaut but a secretary and her boss calls her ‘sweetheart’. but sex is a boy is taught that real men don’t cry so he doesn’t. when his best friend dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he locks himself in the shower every day and sobs under scalding water until it runs cold so nobody will see him grieving so nobody will see that tears are just love that has no place left to go. he learns to dull love rather than suppress its expression and soon the owner of the liquor store knows him by name. three DUIs, two evictions, and twelve steps later, he is feeding people at a homeless shelter, and telling them it’s all right to cry. Sex is the broken man tells the comedian that he didn’t mean to step in front of the car but the rain made it hard to see. he seems okay but his leg does not. the comedian clutches a grubby receipt with the driver’s plate number scrawled on the back in pink pen, stands out in the rain so the broken man can have his umbrella, and gives him the comedy routine that ruined his career so the man doesn’t think about the pain in his leg. once he’s out of the hospital, the fixed man sends him a thank-you card with kittens on it. what makes us human yawning is contagious, and there is a species of bird whose young we call “pufflings”. melodic collections of sound, spaced by silence, can move us to tears. the tallest building in the world is two-thousand seven-hundred and seventeen feet tall. in less than eighty years we went from our first powered flight to touching the moon, and in one-hundred from the first phone call to instantaneous connection between thinking machines of our own creation. we make pies out of tree organs and let cow’s milk ferment until it hardens and then we put them together, because apple pie with cheddar cheese is delicious. what makes us human is the earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are two-hundred thousand years old . we have had pet dogs for sixteen-thousand of those years, longer than corn or the wheel. the steps we take are part of one of the most energy-efficient gaits the animal kingdom has ever seen. we invented the concepts of love and hate and justice, and mercy and we invented the language to convey them. we sharpened rocks, then metal, to convince other people who don’t hold the same idea of those things as we do because we think it’s right. we are two hundred millennia of love and disappointment and sorrow and innovation and mercy and kindness and dreams and failure and recovery. but sex is what makes us human. Source: mumblytron

also like idk i wanted to touch on this scouts characterization is all over the place and has been like rewritten multiple times (tf2 lore is the same and scouts being all over the place is like becase of that) and also people can do whatever they want so this isnt like a dump on that that being said i really like the idea of like scout like being good at one night stands with girls and getting laid and shit doing well sexually but then just sucking at making friends and keeping them because he hypes himself up so much it makes him come off as desperate for connection and recognition especially outside the field like theres the obvious “is anyone even paying attention to me” lines but also just in general right? anyway i just think it would be interesting? to see this anywhere in like fan works? cause normally what i see is scout fumbling sexually adn a lot of it is just to make virgin jokes (boooo) but i think a lot of it also comes down to people so heavily conflaiting different types of interactions with each other and not having much of a speration between sexual romantic and platonic because when you look he performs differently in each of the scenarios (yeah this is taking all of the current canon stuff at face value when its writting is a mess you ahve to have some um suspension of disbelief for this) sexually he does ok he gets laid gets girls whatever its cause hes hot and cocky and that works for people, platonically hes a fucking wreck the cockiness fades and he fumbles around and gives peopel who arent interested way to many chances to the point its almost like begging, romantically yeah this is basically just begging. anyway i think its fun character wise like the guy whose good at everything but still gets (emotionally) looked over does this make sense like i think thats fun thats why for me the jokes about him not being able to pull like miss the mark (conflaiting sex with romance and platonic stuff plus virgin jokes bleh) but like actually characterization of him like this then that comes down to like other peoepls headcanons its not for me but thats not like harmful or anything ykwim i just have beef with the using virgin as a insult and people being amatonormatiave (not in fics, thats a different ballgame) i feel like people have him not get laid or be physically bad at things for a joke or etc to kind of take him down a notch cause ppl want like the obnoxious asshole guy to fail to kind of stick it to him anyway going back to the characterization of him being good and having confidence but still like getting looked over (the line/joke? about no one showing up to his birthday party, him practically begging for miss p) hes like constantly lowering his standards just for a shot at attention here (you could even argue this was him taking flaws becuase hes the obnoxious bragging guy/valve trying to make him more sad to make him more likable(they defang the mercs to make them more sad and helpless and likable instead of going all out villian with them annoying) anyway im like i stopped to cook and now i think i lost my point and i cant go back n reread all that would take to much energy i think it was somethign about liking the idea of scout like still getting laid and being the fastest or just generally good at stuff and obnoxious about it and still having those emotional issues because cause like you dont need to be bad at stuff to have issues with abandonment etc and i feel like its just what interests me more idk why i feel the need to justify that yeah its just what i like and what id do yeah i think itd be interesting to explore cause it also gives him this sense of like “oh i feel less then for no reason because im literally doing good im the best but i still feel shit and people still treat me like shit its coming form nowhere im the best but…” ykwim i think thats intersting nad also relatable plus i never seen it before edit: ALSO thats really fun with a chracter who has stuff go over their head anyway like it would take so mch for him to even pick up on that and no one would help him cause they dont like him and he wouldnt accept help anyway cause he gets angry so fast hed take it as a insult or soemthing if someone initiated first and asked to help him or dropped advice on him he would have to and want to figure it out on his own and only would take advice in like a shallow since becasue he wants peopel to care but doesnt want to feel small so he wouldnt actually be listening (or would have a really hard time listenign and internilizing it bc of it)

Speaking as an asexual, who does a lot of contemplating about societal and psychological aspects of sex, I cannot BELIEVE I have been on this earth this long and this has never directly occurred to me. The allosexual experience we seem to see everywhere, especially as idealized in media, is ‘moment of passion’ or being so libidinous (that’s such a fun word lol) that you ache for a person … and a good number of first times happen this way. It’s sometimes framed romantically, even, (which I also do not grasp.) But sometimes not. Sometimes it’s just purely physical. But various artificial human cultures came in and said … no … you shouldn’t act when you will most likely maximally enjoy yourself, you should set a date and do it on that particular date after gathering and coordinating a bunch of people to formally recognize your intent to do so. That’s ……… sort of horrifying actually???? Like rendering down the most basic of warm fuzzy mammal desires, and shoving it into a box. Now. I’m sure that most people, past and present, do have a perfectly good first time on their wedding night. People can move to have sex intentionally. Obviously. And it needs to be said that that ‘ravenous’ type does tend to favor typical cis men over typical cis women, too, because foreplay is important y’all. But, even then, a good number of those women are perfectly fine too, for a variety of reasons. But just. Dwelling on it all for a second. Maybe I’m just misapprehending the strong link between romanticism and sexuality. Maybe it does actually operate in a way that “if we maximize romantic chemistry by throwing a huge celebration that focuses on each other, it all fuses together to increase enjoyment.” Sure. Would have to hear from some allos on that. Possibly to get an even better comparison, people who had been married more than once? Does it always work? Does it depend on the person? Understand, historically, this notion, wouldn’t have to had even necessarily overturn the ‘don’t have sex outside of wedlock’ that was probably intended to make society more stable, for the multiple cultures that adopted it. One of them using the term ‘honeymoon.’ Rather … Is ‘the wedding night’ cliche even worthy of its title. Wouldn’t it have made far more SENSE if the convention was to gather everyone, do the ceremony, and the first time happen at some SPONTANEOUS point in the weeks afterwards, when chemistry organically arose to its peak?

yeah i mean i don't disagree with you, there are definitely ways in which it's less stressful to live in society as a partnered person. for one, I don't have to worry so much about how i come off to other people and them thinking i have a crush on them bc they know I'm happily partnered. i get to live in a nicer house and buy more hobby stuff. that's true. however ifl the biggest impact has been just. the romance part of it. sleeping next to someone makes me sleep better, i feel safer, i feel like i can relax more and let my partner take care of the more stressful stuff when I'm overwhelmed, i get a dozen hugs a day, double that in kisses and other signs of affection, i get cuddles at night, i get creative support with my projects and someone to bounce ideas off of at all times of day and night, I always have a shoulder to cry on and never feel alone or unloved, the list goes on and on. My anxiety and depression symptoms all but vanished since I've been with my partner (of about 2 years so I'm not exactly an expert in marriage but we have been living together the entire time like a married couple), my faith in men and humanity was restored, all those good things. And that's not to mention that sex is so much better in a committed relationship than a one night stand. So like, yeah you could maybe get all these benefits from a REALLY close friend that you live with (aside from the sex) but imo it's just not the same. Even friends I've had that I was really close to and we cuddled and slept in the same bed and all that didn't make me feel as safe and loved and low-stress. I was a disfunctional mess before I had a partner and now I can actually handle the day without crying. idk, it seems to me that nothing can really replace good ol fashioned romantic love, but of course there's exceptions when it comes to ace and aro people. At the end of the day everyone decided what is fullfiling to them personally but I can vouch that love is not at all overrated and I can completely see why married people live longer if it's a happy marriage. And I know not all marriages are a bed of roses but unless its straight up abusive you still get at least some of the benefits I mentioned.

i’m very happy for you and your romantic partner. Genuinely i am. There are plenty of benefits to that but the issue i’m talking about is that that is not achievable for everyone and to expect that it is while funneling everyone towards it is a detriment to society and sweeps a vast number of individuals under the rug to be ignored. It doesn’t matter how great your relationship is or isn’t. When we discuss the benefits of marriage, it is always to evangelize marriage. Always. And any discussion on those who are not married gets funneled into this well you should probably try to get married then framework. You mention Aro and Ace people but you do not want to engage with the discussion that society is not structured around letting them exist peacefully. I don’t think we need to find a replacement for Romantic Love but we do need to find ways to alleviate the burden that is unduly placed on single people in the day to day. And truthfully the first way to start doing that is the stop preaching to every single person how absolutely amazing your marriage is and how no other relationship can ever compare.

2-2 and 4-3 for the ask game? :)

the ask game in question hopefully any of this makes sense I just woke up a little bit ago and then queued the post sdghsdjg 2-2. Do you love or hate New Relationship Energy? How do you cope with it? maybe an obvious answer but it’s Really Fun when it happens to me and It Varies when it happens to other people =w=;; like it’s cute when partners get crushes n stuff and I love love seeing them so excited abt it <333 i also tend to get insecure sometimes so if we aren’t like On Top Of the attention split it can be a struggle… (which like goes for me too tbh I have to make a conscious effort to not fall headfirst into it and lose track of everything when it happens to me). as for coping with it just like. the classic Have Good Communication Tm. but more specifically communicate when og partners need attention or if the one with the new partner has been gone a lot (usually without realizing) so that the balance can be adjusted. and try to have specific hangout times with og partners to avoid that skew as much as possible in the first place. 4-3. What’s your least favorite amatonormative belief or expectation? one thing about me is I straight up don’t understand or care about 90% of the amatanormative expectations so like. all of them. screw the relationship escalator. kiss and have sex with your friends. etc. but the one that comes to mind rn is the way monog people can be so comfy being jealous and possessive over their partner? and they just think that’s fine??? like idk how based in reality that is but the whole concept of going like ‘oh im too jealous if my boyfriend even looked at another girl I’d be really mad/consider that cheating lol’ and stuff in that vein. and thinking that’s just fine and normal and an ok amount of power to have over someone else. like. how are you not completely miserable if you’re seeing that much competition in everything. being jealous is not fun??? have you considered: working on it??? amount of jealousy =/= strength of love. talk to your partner and do better. it will be so much nicer for everyone involved.