The voidpunk flag is pretty set in stone now, but I really still cannot identify with it.
For as long as the stripes stand for a small handful of marginalized groups, the flag will always exclude major parts of me because they aren’t represented by the stripes.
Purple represents asexual people and non-binary people. Green represents aromantic people and neurodivergent people.
But where are physically disabled people? Where are the marginalized ethnic and racial groups? What of every other group that has ever been dehumanized?
The flag’s meanings were short-sighted and exclusive, and I think that as long as we’re using this flag, we need to re-define the stripes to stop standing for a handful of groups and to stand for broader and more inclusive concepts instead. Because as it stands, this flag prioritizes certain groups and cuts entire parts of my voidpunk experience out.
Make the flag more inclusive and stop symbolically prioritizing certain groups over others please.
i think there is something about people who were abused/neglected as kids that makes us embrace things that others consider monstrous. i dont think its a coincidence most of us like “creepy” animals like rats and crows. i dont think its a coincidence that we are the first to jump to the defense of “worthless” plants like dandelions. its why we get so attached to old toys and broken things. when you spend your whole life believing you’re not wanted, it turns you into a defender of the other unwanted things in the world. and you’re not just protecting them - you’re protecting the part of yourself that still believes you deserve to exist. just like they do. just like we all do.
PSA: If you see a link to a Reddit-based voidpunk server, don’t join it. It’s racist as shit lol. I’ve been in there for a few months and tried to get people to knock that shit the fuck off but the mods care way more about coddling white people than actually, you know, doing anything to support some of the people voidpunk was made for lmao. It’s an absolute dumpster fire and I do not recommend it to anyone, especially not POC or ethnic minorities because holy hell being in there will inflict psychic damage
The reason theres no precise equation for the perimeter of an ellipse is because the practical, real-world manner in which to produce an ellipse is to cut a cylinder at an angle. This would require third-dimensional rotational geometry, or mathematics that cannot be produced only on a two-dimensional plane. Meaning the originally problem is missing key information. (which can be expressed by numbers on a two dimensional plane, but only after the unique ellipse is produced and measured.)
Sometimes you will be provided a mathematically and fundamentally incomplete data set. You will either have to say that the problem is impossible or guess; depending on the circumstances and moralistic understanding of the problem.
P.S.
Imagine being a 2D creature finding an elliptical object. You can only interact with 2D object, and this thing is immeasurable. Alternatively, how deep is your personal gravitational well?
The reason theres no precise equation for the perimeter of an ellipse is because the practical, real-world manner in which to produce an ellipse is to cut a cylinder at an angle. This would require third-dimensional rotational geometry, or mathematics that cannot be produced only on a two-dimensional plane. Meaning the originally problem is missing key information. (which can be expressed by numbers on a two dimensional plane, but only after the unique ellipse is produced and measured.)
Sometimes you will be provided a mathematically and fundamentally incomplete data set. You will either have to say that the problem is impossible or guess; depending on the circumstances and moralistic understanding of the problem.
P.S.
Imagine being a 2D creature finding an elliptical object. You can only interact with 2D object, and this thing is immeasurable. Alternatively, how deep is your personal gravitational well?
There is a 100% accurate equation for the perimeter of an ellipse, but it requires calculus.
Sorry, I’m an Ancient Greek; I don’t know or care about that kinda nonsense. /s
Actually this is very interesting, and I made a lighthearted joke about it. Another example of limited input affecting a system, though. I have little to no experience with calculus :(
Not to be a Marvel nerd, but at work we have a new system called Vision powered by IDI technologies, that is designed to count and sort tubes. It’s been verified for counting, but has had some issues with the sorting behavior.
Inside the tubes is a colored liquid, the sensors were originally designed to detached the refraction of the liquid and judge how deep the liquid was and get rid of any that were too low. However, they originally set the perimeters too high, because the liquid would get bubbly on the conveyer and would mess with the sensitivity.
—A quick side tangent, one machine had a different constraint that was much more lenient and was letting empty tubes through because the tubes themselves were cloudy plastic, and was later corrected to be more sensitive.
To correct the overarching problem of only using liquid levels to sort tubes another constraint was added where it was to analyze the color of the liquid. Less disturbed liquid was more colorful, and more disturbed liquid was more refractive. However, empty tubes would have no color or refraction.
So we see three ways to handle sorting. We see the first as being too picky and wasteful. We see the outlier here as lackadaisical, apathetic, or uncaring. We see the last as the most accurate and useful.
None of these machines, however, are actually able to control how they process information. They needed outside support from programmers to grow and improve. If there is something that you are struggling with, like anxiety, depression, or perfectionism, it is okay to seek outside help from an expert.
~ Sleep will not come easily. Your dreams will be of glimmering fur, of snapping jaws, of flashes of claws and teeth. You’ll know it’s time when they begin to bleed into your waking life.
~ You may notice that your shoulders or back are starting to ache frequently. Do not be alarmed. Your wings are coming in.
~ Start leaving your window unlocked. And don’t be afraid of intruders - they won’t last long if they decide to climb through your window.
~ You’re going to begin waking up coveredin grass and mud. Start getting used to it. Oh, and don’t be alarmed by the occasional drop or two of blood.
~ Sleep will not come easily. Your dreams will be of glimmering fur, of snapping jaws, of flashes of claws and teeth. You’ll know it’s time when they begin to bleed into your waking life.
~ You may notice that your shoulders or back are starting to ache frequently. Do not be alarmed. Your wings are coming in.
~ Start leaving your window unlocked. And don’t be afraid of intruders - they won’t last long if they decide to climb through your window.
~ You’re going to begin waking up coveredin grass and mud. Start getting used to it. Oh, and don’t be alarmed by the occasional drop or two of blood.
But what does it mean when my hips hurt?
Do I get extra legs???
Possibly, or perhaps your tendril hubs have begun to grow.
Semi-regular reminder that if you have trauma regarding the word “it” and you see someone who uses it/its pronouns, the appropriate response is to not engage, not tell it it can’t use those pronouns or explain why they’re dehumanizing unprompted. Yes you’re being transphobic.
Either use people’s correct pronouns or don’t talk to or refer to that person at all. It’s not hard. Your trauma is your own business. People calling themselves it is nothing like someone calling you it and we need to stop acting like it’s okay to justify misgendering people.
Hey everyone, it’s me, The Girl Who Created Voidpunk™, and I have some really important things I need to say that I’ve… Honestly been thinking about for a long time now. This may touch on some nerves, but I ask that if you participate in voidpunk in any way, you please, please put your feelings aside for a moment and read this. Especially if you’re aro.
Voidpunk, as I’m sure most of you are aware, came about as an expression of my aromantic experience (although it’s open to anyone who faces dehumanization for one reason or another, regardless of orientation). What some of you may not know is that voidpunk very much arose not only from my experiences as an aromantic, but as anallosexualaromantic. I felt very broken, alone, and inhuman for… Pretty much all of my teenage years, really, because I didn’t know that there could be people like me. That what I was was ok. I knew that aromanticism was a thing, but because I only ever heard it talked about as being a type of asexuality, I believed that I couldn’t be aro, and was simply messed up in the head.
As you can see, this notion- that aromanticism is just a type of asexuality, that asexuality is the default for aros- Is really, really harmful to allosexual aros and non-SAM aros. And that’s something we’ve been trying to call attention to recently, but there’s been… Some backlash, to say the least. While it’s understandable to be upset if someone makes blatantly aphobic comments, it seems that it’s no longer possible for allo aros to talk at all about the ways the ace community hurts us without being told that we’re being unfair to aroaces, or worse, that we owethe ace community for our existence due to the shared history between the two communities. A lot of us feel, frankly, silenced. I myself recently left Arocalypse (on Discord, at least) for this very reason, and I feel like I can no longer even trust many of my aroace friends, because they don’t seem to care about how I feel.
Voidpunk is open to anyone who relates to it, by all means, but my personal voidpunk- and the original creation of voidpunk- Is inseparably tied to my allosexual aromanticism. And allthough Voidpunk is fun, its origin is not. Voidpunk was created as a way of coping with the extreme feelings of inhumanization and isolation that I’ve suffered from since childhood, and… Like it or not, voidpunk came due to suffering that was in part caused by the asexual community, even if it wasn’t intentional, nor the conscious responsibility of any particular individuals. That’s why it hurts so much to see other voidpunks turn their back on us.
If you participate in voidpunk, you have a responsibility to respectfully listen to the concerns of allosexual aros, to not invalidate or silence us, and to do your part to help right the wrongs that are done to us. It’s not fair that you should get to hurt me, and then turn around and use my coping mechanism as your new cutesy aesthetic.
for voidpunks who don’t feel love, feel a disconnect from love, reject the concept of love, or doubt they feel love; a loveless identity that is affected, either entirely or partially, by one’s voidpunk identity. co-coined with @that-voidpunk-zombie, and flag by me!
id: a flag with colors in this order, top to bottom: dark grey, soft grey, light grey, muted purple, soft purple, off-white, soft green, muted green, light grey, soft grey, dark grey. the off-white stripe is significantly smaller than the rest, and the purple and green stripes are 1/3rd smaller than the gray ones. end id.
@aroacepagans (Sorry Im just tagging you because it’s your post that started me thinking about this idea.)
Re: on the dehumanization I face as an Aromantic and nonbinary person vs. the dehumanization I face as a PoC (and I would love to hear from other PoC on this too.)
These are going to be bullet points because I’m still trying to articulate the concept to myself.
Dehumanization as an aro person
Dehumanization I’ve faced as an aromantic person has, pretty specifically, revolves around the idea that I have ‘missing something’
Aromantic dehumanization = programmed wrong
Aromantic dehumanization = something that people believe ‘can be fixed’ with the right kind of ‘training’.
Aromantic dehumanization makes me feel robotic because that’s the language people use for it.
Aromantic dehumanization = ‘your human inside of there we just have to work hard to make you human’
Dehumanization as a mestizx person
Tends to be more animalistic in nature.
Tends to be more compared to ‘filth’ and specifically ‘filthy animals’
Unlike being aromantic it’s not considered something that can be ‘fixed’ and, most importantly, it’s not something that people in power want to fix.
People in power gain strength from the dehumanization of me as a PoC.
My dehumanization as a PoC is seen, specifically, not as a way of controlling me, but as telling other people in places of power (aka: white people) that it’s okay to treat me like trash because I’m ‘not really human’
This is something that people in power don’t want to fix.
My dehumanization as a PoC feeds into my aromantic dehumanization just as my aromantic dehumanization feeds into my dehumanization as a PoC in that: as a PoC I am not allowed my own right to label my sexuality. That power is stripped from me and, instead, given to those who see me as sub-human. My sexuality isn’t Want I label it. My sexuality is whatever the person dehumanizing me decides it is at that point in time based on convenience to themselves.
Because of this just the actof labeling myself as aromantic is a humanizing thing because, as a PoC It’s something that was not originally granted to me.
PoC dehumanization = ‘you will never be human, no matter what you do, you will never be human and we will find every reason to continue to not see you as human’
On the topic then of voidpunk: I can see how it would be very freeing if the people that are dehumanizing you are doing so in a ‘your not human but we can fix that’ kind of way. The ability to scream “if being ‘human’ means I have to be fixed then fuck you I am not human!!!!”
While, on the other hand, the concept isn’t freeing when what’s being told to you is ‘you are not human and never will be so we can treat you like trash’.
Other PoC please feel free to add and expand because, obviously, these are only my experiences and my POV.
“I am not a robot” asserts the aroace pride post, the same kind of one that says aces can still have romance and aros can still have friends and conveniently ignores the complexities and intricacies of those things, and their absence is some corners of our community.
“I am not a robot” because I can still…
Sing? Dance? Pretend? Grow? Change?
None of those things are beyond the reach of a robot. At least not far enough out of reach that you couldn’t be tricked, at least for a while.
“I am not a robot” because if I were you wouldn’t have to care about my struggles. Because if I were I’d stop mattering. Because ‘robot’ and 'human’ are somehow mutually exclusive.
Then ten minutes later we’re talking about AI and would you let a truly intelligent robot vote and would it be possible for a robot to feel pain or joy or sadness. Yes you say, of course, if the robot met your criteria for being a human intelligence, of course it would have rights, of course you would care if it suffers.
Which criteria do I need to meet, to not be a robot in your eyes?
What if I was? What if I turned around tomorrow, opened up a hatch and showed you the wires. Showed you the hydraulic fluid spilling over the floor, and the cables and the tubes and the motors.
What if I opened you up and showed you those things that already live in you.
What if I spent countless hours building ever more complex simulations of a human body, getting every detail of every bone and muscle and every tube and wire.
“I am not a robot” is not for my sake, it is for yours, so you don’t yet have to grapple with the idea that something that doesn’t meet your definition of a human can still matter as much as one.
Did you know, 'not’ is a boolean operator. It reverses whatever you feed into it.
not(“I am a robot”)
not(this.isRobot);
Maybe if I could talk to a person as easily as a machine I wouldn’t need to justify this is much.
if(“I can talk to people”)
“I am not a robot”
if(this.canCommunicateWithPeople){
this.isRobot = false;
}
What if I’m not interested in your ideas of what makes someone a human? Certainly by a lot of standards I don’t pass the test.
if(“I give a shit what you think”)
“I must be a robot”
else
“Does it matter?”
if(this.caresAboutYourOpinion"){
this.isRobot = true;
} else {
this.isRobot = null;
System.out.println(“further querying of this value will result in an exception being thrown”);
}
try {
if(this.isRobot) {
this.isHuman = false;
} else {
this.isHuman = true;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
this.isHuman = null;
System.out.println(“Stop asking that question like it means something”);
