links.mimuki.net

As predicted, the quiet legal backtracking with Bunnings has set a precident.

Practice Consent, Boundaries, and Connection in a Platonic Environment

Particularly the book recommendations on compulsory sexuality seem interesting.

In short:

• Sexual arousal refers to the set of automatic physiological reactions, with no defined direction or cause, and with variable frequency and intensity.
• Sexual desire is the intentionality or impulse to engage in sexual activity, either with oneself or with another person. [...] Desire appears after arousal.
• And finally, sexual attraction is the focus or direction of desire: the concreteness of desire toward a specific person who sparks interest or with whom one wants to engage in sexual activity.

Sexual attachment, on the other hand, can be defined as the development or strengthening of a bond between two people after sexual activity, caused, among other things, by hormonal interaction and the neurological and psychological adjustments this entails. Sexual attachment will strengthen if the experience is repeated between the same people and, to some extent, will create emotional dependency.

That is to say an asexual person could develop sexual attachment toward their partner—if they have sex recurrently, of course—despite having no attraction, no sexual desire or even no sexual arousal.

In my particular case, as I have already mentioned, I do experience sexual arousal occasionally; but once out of the relationship, I realized that my sexual desire and my "sexual attraction", upon returning to their natural state, so to speak, became practically nonexistent or diffuse.

Do I think labels are useful for me right now? No. Do I feel called the hell out anyway? Absolutely.

Food for thought, and if nothing else corroborates with the "I haven't (yet) experienced romantic attraction" theory.

The relevance of this model lies in a particularly suggestive idea: romance may not be an autonomous form of intimacy, but rather a cultural narrative built from several combined intimacies.

From this perspective, what we call “romance” ceases to be a fixed essence and becomes instead a particular relational configuration among many others.

[...]

In [queerplatonic] relationships, what matters is not necessarily romance or sexuality, but the structural quality of the bond itself: mutual care, deep intimacy, emotional continuity, shared meaning-making, and sustained presence in one another’s lives.

Rather than rejecting romance outright, queerplatonic relationships seem to question the assumption that every profound bond must necessarily be organized around the classical romantic model.

Recommendation from a friend

Some of the causes of olfaction problems are allergies, nasal polyps, viral infections and head trauma. [...] Lifelong hyposmia could be caused by or comorbid with Kallmann syndrome or autism.

See also: Dysosmia and Anosmia, which list an assortment of causes including fibromyalgia, Bell's palsy, depression, etc. Bodies are a mess, it seems.

For two years, he says he completely lost his sense of smell.

Dr Gillogley says it is common for people with DID to have an overwhelming fear of going outside.

“They’re frightened that they’ll switch to a more vulnerable self who might be younger and might not be oriented to time and place, and often it’s not something that can be controlled,” he says.

“It can be tricky to go around in the community and function in everyday life when whoever heads out the door may not be the person exploring in the community.”

Ancient DNA has overturned two centuries of assumptions about a Bronze Age burial near Stonehenge, revealing that a renowned goldworker, long believed to be a man, was a woman who may have held spiritual authority.

The party game of "$ACTION whenever the ABC newswriter misunderstands naming taboos and sorry business" is alive and well. I mean, it's a good gesture to put the disclaimer, but so soon after Kumanjayi Little Baby I would've assumed they'd remember that's a substitution name, the whole point of which being that you can say it.

Anyway, I lost track of this case a while back. It's gone about as well as I expected.

tldr: no one I want it to unless I jump hoops

Neurodivergent and gender-diverse led Counselling and Peer Mental Health support service. We operate via telehealth, Australia wide. We are proudly lived and living experience focused, meaning all of our practitioners have their own personal experiences navigating mental health challenges.

The careful framing of "we only had one false positive in the first week" and [since June, across the entire trial] "we had 33 alerts and 18 arrests" is gross and overtly misleading. For all we know it's got an almost 50% false positive rate. Whee.