Hey yo Washington people, can I still drive to Seattle this weekend or is that bridge collapse gonna fuck shit up?
Bellingham or Vancouver BC: You’re screwed. Portland or Spokane: You’re fine.
If you’re coming from the North, you can still get through on other roads, but I can’t imagine it’d be pleasant.
Here’s the Skagit River Bridge on Street View, in case you want more context of the scene:
It looks like the collapsed section is roughly between that expansion joint and that green van. You can see how the overhead beam arches down on the right side. It’s believed that’s what the truck hit.
“Telethong” is not a word.
That separate pamphlets thing is probably a good call — you’re right, we do get info dumpy. My concern would be that potential distributors might not want to take on like four new pamphlets. I might also include a tiny blurb in the ace pamphlet introducing the words and directing people to more information, something like “If this still doesn’t fit, there’s more: To learn about demisexuality and gray-asexuality, check out asexualityarchive.com. To learn about aromanticism, check out aromantic.org.”
Those posters look pretty similar to what I had in mind! If you make them, could I use them?
P.S. While we’re on the subject, I’d love to direct people to the Asexuality Archive in the pamphlet — I think it’s one of the more accessible and well-designed sources of 101-type information, and I’ve had success using it to introduce the idea to family members. Is that okay?
If you want to direct people to my site in the pamphlet, go right ahead! That’s what it’s there for. And if I ever get around to making the posters, you can use them, too.
It would be better to have multiple pamphlets and have people not take them, than to have them wanting more information on a subject you didn’t put together a pamphlet for. They can always say “No, I don’t want all of them”, but even if they just take one of them, it’s still a victory. Besides, all of the flyers will find a use on the Internet, that’s pretty much guaranteed.
All right so here is a thing.
I want to start going to LGBTQ-education organizations in Toronto, especially ones that target young people, and asking them to contribute to ace visibility. I would like to offer them pamphlets and/or flyers to start out with.
However, I have looked around a bit and none of the pamphlets that usually get passed around (e.g. the AVEN one and the AAW one) seem to *quite* meet my needs. I have a particular idea of what I want, and the truth is I’d sort of like to make one myself. But I have a couple of concerns. For one thing, I cannot make things. I do not graphic design. Kid Pix was about as far as I ever got. For another, a pamphlet made by some girl nobody’s ever heard of is not going to look as impressive or official as one made by an actual organization.
If I do make a pamphlet or flyer, these are the things I would like it to include that I have not seen:
1. Explicit mention of aromanticism and the fact that it is separate from asexuality.
2. Explicit confirmation that yes, some asexual people enjoy sex and that does not make them less asexual.
3. Explicit mention of demisexuality and gray-asexuality, with a reference to a more thorough resource on those things.
4. This is more of a design choice thing, but I have this idea about a pamphlet with a cover that echoes thoughts that are common for young aces who haven’t heard of asexuality — things like “I’m just not that into anyone” or “I have crushes but it seems like something’s missing” or “Why is everyone talking about sex?” No one seems to have done this, and I think it might be a good way for a pamphlet sitting on a table or a bulletin board to catch the attention of a young unidentified ace, which is really what I’m interested in, more even than educating other people.
Does anyone have advice on how to make this happen? Does anyone want to help me do the design? Does anyone have thoughts on what else should be included?
If there were a pamphlet out there that did what I wanted, I would ask permission and use it, so if anyone knows of one, let me know. But so far every one I’ve seen has been missing something that I think is important.
I’ve been thinking of making some awareness posters very much like #4, where it’ll act like a beacon for people who are asexual but don’t know that they’re not alone. Too often it seems like awareness materials seem to go after a non-asexual audience, but there’s a whole sea of lost and confused aces out there to reach out to.
My idea was just to grab their attention and direct them to an introduction post on my website with more information.
Here’s a very very very rough mockup of the sort of poster I was thinking:
The questions or remarks up at the top would be the sort of thoughts a questioning ace might have. I was thinking of doing a series of posters with different thoughts at the top, but otherwise identical.
I just need to find some time to work on them… I’ve been totally neglecting anything ace-related for months now…
As far as #1-3 go, it might be better if those were all separate pamphlets. One thing I’ve noticed is that ace awareness materials tend to be kitchen sink info-blasts. Why not have an aromantic themed one and a demi themed one and a male themed one and a _________ themed one? We don’t always have to cover every aspect of asexuality and surrounding areas every time we talk about it. There is value in specificity in some cases.
kerokeromatsu said: what if a guy was asking tho
I said in the post that the guys’ section of that site was here. I’m female bodied so I haven’t looked much at that section, but I know it contains user-submitted tips as well, so it seemed like a decent equivalency. If any of our…
The guy’s section of that site has barely anything useful on it. Those “tips” are unnecessarily complicated and will probably just confuse a first-timer. (And frankly, none of them seem all that useful to a veteran, either…) The main problem with most sites that talk about penis-based masturbation is that they assume that the penis owner’s already got it figured out and are ready to move on to Level 57 Advanced Techniques. (The second biggest problem is that most of these “Advanced Techniques” are terrible.)
The site http://www.jackinworld.com/ (NSFW, obviously) has a better collection of tips. They’ve got a page about the basics, although it leaves out rather important information about the need for lubrication of some kind (for many people) and the fact that it takes persistence and practice and there probably won’t be an orgasm the first time.
I was having a bit of a crisis.
and this this reminded me why I’m okay with it.
Because I get to be 10 years old forever
Never really been afraid of living alone- but this is awesome anyway.
Hmm…
Know what’s in my closet? My clothes. Know who gets the blankets at night? Me. Know what’s on TV? Whatever I want to watch. Know who uses all the hot water in the shower in the morning? I do. Know who gets to use the car tomorrow? No one, because it’s Sunday and I don’t feel like going anywhere.
I live alone in a four bedroom house. Know what’s in one of the bedrooms in this house? It’s not a guest bedroom that has to be maintained for the in-laws. It’s not a playroom for a rabble of rugrats. It’s full of video games. Nothing but video games. I have video games from systems you’ve never heard of. Do you know why? Because it’s my house and I want a room full of video games.
Sounds good to me (but I’d prefer books).
That sounds like a perfect place to live. Add a shelf full of great movies to that video game room. :D
The shelves of great movies are downstairs…
I am an asexual. I made the discovery in April 2011, after years of thinking that I just wasn't any good at being straight. I'm a cismale with a currently undetermined romantic orientation that lives somewhere close to aromantic, but with just enough heteroromantic touches sprinkled into it to keep things confusing.
Oh, and I'm a nerd. That could be important later.
Little by little, I'm trying to build a guide to asexuality. Hopefully these posts will be informative and entertaining to ace and non-ace alike. If not, at least it'll keep my typing fingers nimble... Either way, I don't claim to speak for all asexuals.
I also run AsexualityArchive.com and wrote Asexuality: A Brief Introduction.
