“Kissing, Hand Holding, Bed Sharing, etc!” – the May 2017 Carnival of Aces – Call for Submissions

The “Carnival of Aces” is a blogging carnival where each month people are invited to write on a specific topic that is related to asexuality/the ace spectrum in some way. Aromanticism is often grouped in as a thing to talk about as well, or even just “instead”, if desired. 😉

(Also, vloggers are invited to speak on the topic in videos, artists/poets invited to be inspired by the topic, etc — whatever format you wish to participate with, please, use that format.)

Check out the masterpost of all of the other amazing topics previous carnivals have been on: https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/a-carnival-of-aces-masterpost/

April 2017’s was on “Aromanticism, Asexuality and Parenthood” and received 5 submissions (see all the way at the bottom of that post for some of them) – it was hosted by Ettina over at Abnormaldiversity.

For this current month, May, this is the fourth time that I am hosting the carnival. I hosted in 2014 and 2015, and it’s been a while but I’m excited to host yet again. I decided to make the topic Kissing, Hand Holding, Bed Sharing, etc!.

The topic is meant to be broad. You are not limited to one of those 3 things just mentioned.

A bunch of ideas on what people might write about:

• A narrative of your personal experience(s) with something like kissing, hand-holding, sharing a bed for any reason, or other things that came to mind when I listed those things
• A delineation of where specific actions fit, categorically, in your mind/experience/gut feeling. Is marriage inherently romantic? Is hugging something that fits in different categories depending on other factors? Does making-out kissing feel sexual to you?
• A personal outline of specific positive desires and/or what you wish to avoid in your future that you feel are affected by your romantic and/or sexual orientation
• Does your perception of certain activities influence your label/add to your reasons for identifying as grey-aro or grey-ace, or why you chose just “asexual” and not grey kind of a thing? How? Or contrarily, does the way you feel about something like “going on dates” or even “having sex”, an action or experience, influence how or why you identify?
• Is there something that you love/appreciate, or hate/are frustrated by, in terms of how a specific action or set of actions are discussed in ace spaces?
• What do you think of how these types of behaviors are used in works of fiction? “There Is Only One Bed” is a common trope on TV shows, for instance, or as Sara K. mentioned & linked to in her review here, a couple of us were discussing in a comment thread in March how sometimes writers seem to “consider the dividing line between ‘romantic’ and ‘aromantic’ to be enjoying kissing and hand-holding.” – How do you, the blogger in this Carnival, feel about that?
• How does touch-aversion, sex-repulsion, or other aspects of your experience intersect with any of these types of scenarios?
• Talk to me about consent in contexts it’s usually not talked about in!
• Tell me how you define that nebulous word “cuddling”. When you say you do or don’t like cuddling, what action(s) are you referring to?
• Are there certain actions that onlookers insist “Seem” or “must be” sexual, or romantic, but to you feel entirely non-sexual or non-romantic?
• Anything else that this topic inspires in you! I want to know what you have to say!

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or concerns.

To submit your entry, either leave a comment below or send an email to me at pemk7@aol.com . The deadline is the end of the day Wednesday, May 31st!  If you would like to post anonymously, I can copy and paste text from an email into a Guest post on this blog of mine, just let me know that this is your wish. You can also contact me via my tumblr, which is luvtheheaven.tumblr.com – links don’t send in “Asks” though. I do receive submissions and messages but in my opinion, email is easier, and comments here are easiest.

Thanks!

• aromanticsm
• Asexuality
• carnival of aces