Sounds Fake But Okay

Ep 203: Ace Week feat. Basil Langevin

October 24, 2021 Sounds Fake But Okay
Sounds Fake But Okay
Ep 203: Ace Week feat. Basil Langevin
Show Notes Transcript

Hey what's up hello! Happy Ace Week 2021! To celebrate this week, we're joined by Executive Director of Asexual Outreach and Ace Week organizer Basil. We chat about the history of Ace Week, how to celebrate the week, and how to include marginalized aces in our community and conversations.

Content Warnings: Ableism, eugenics

Episode Transcript: www.soundsfakepod.com/transcripts/ace-week-feat-basil-langevin     

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(00:00)

KAYLA: Sarah.

SARAH: Yes. 

KAYLA: It is a well known fact on this podcast and in the world that aspec people cannot owe anyone money.

SARAH: I’m so glad to hear you finally admit that openly and honestly in this space.

KAYLA: I know it’s taken me a really long time to catch on. Um, was really hesitant at first. However, something that gets really dicey when you’re asexual and you cannot legally owe money, is when you have to pay a lot of money for things like college.

SARAH: Yeah that’ll really do ya.

KAYLA: Yeah, because they won’t really let you in, without paying the money you owe. But legally it's like…

SARAH: Yeah, but can you owe money?

KAYLA: You can be like this podcast told me I can’t and that’s a reputable source. So like what are you supposed to do about it, you know?

SARAH: Right. Yeah I’m wondering, I’m on the edge of my seat.

KAYLA: Well I’m so glad that you’re really excited to hear this because I have a- I have solved it. I have a solution.

SARAH: M’kay. Okay, okay.

KAYLA: For this ace week and for this month we are giving away a $500 college scholarship in partnership with Niche, so basically we’ve solved some of your problems with your owing money situation.

SARAH: We’ve essentially solved $500 worth of problems.

KAYLA: Which is a fun time and a big deal.

SARAH: Hell Yeah.

KAYLA: We’re doing a $500 college scholarship for ace week, but it runs until November 30th and it's for high school and college students who need money and don’t wanna owe money.

SARAH: What do the kids need to do?!

KAYLA: All— Listen here — all you need to do is go to niche.college/aceweek and you just fill out a little form and then you’ve applied you don’t even have to do an essay.

SARAH: Wow! We love not having to do essays!

KAYLA: I know! So: niche.college/aceweek and it's really quick and then you can just go throughout the rest of your ace week and the rest of your month no problem and you can maybe win some money.

SARAH: Yeah we love winning some money! Niche.college/aceweek!

(transition music cut from the intro song)

SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)

KAYLA: … and a demisexual girl (that’s me, Kayla)

BASIL: And a confused bean! (That’s me, Basil)

SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.

KAYLA: On today’s episode: Ace week

ALL 3: Sounds fake, but okay.

(Intro song)

SARAH: Welcome back to the Pod! 

KAYLA: Mmmmmmmmmmm’ari-m’ariachi band.

SARAH: You’ve done that so many times.

KAYLA: I know I’m very sorry. It happens every time.

SARAH: Boo. Boo. Every time we have a guest on we’re just so embarrassed by that segment.

KAYLA: It’s so so upsetting.

SARAH: Moving on….

KAYLA: Never should have started it, should end it. Will I? Probably not.

SARAH: Ookay. Let’s just dive in this week. Kayla, do we have any housekeeping before we go in?

KAYLA: All things going well, you should’ve heard an ad at the beginning of this episode-

SARAH: Yes.

KAYLA: For something exciting. So that is the housekeeping.

SARAH: This house has been kept. Alright, Kayla, what are we talking about this week? Have I already asked you that?

KAYLA: No you didn’t-

(laughing)

KAYLA: This week- for the first time - we are talking about ace week ‘cause if you are listening to it the day it comes out it is the first day of ace week-

SARAH: Whoop!

KAYLA: -this Sunday the 24th??? I think that’s Sunday- Yes!

SARAH: Mhm.

KAYLA: So we have Basil with us who is an organizer for ace week and is just gonna be talking with us about the week...of aces!

SARAH: Welcome!

KAYLA: Yes, welcome Basil!

BASIL: Happy to be here!

KAYLA: Studio clap.

SARAH: Yes, all clap.

KAYLA: Little golf clap.

SARAH: So Basil, do you want to start by introducing yourself for the kids at home who may not know who you are and where you come from?

BASIL: I would love to! Hi kids at home! Um-

KAYLA: (laughs)

BASIL: -thanks for tuning in. My name is Basil Langevin. I’m calling in from unceded W̱sáneć and Hul’qumi’num territories, also known as Victoria BC in Canada. I am at this point a long time activist in the ace advocacy movement. I first got my start in 2013, which is like only 8 years ago, but in our community that’s like ages.

(5:00)

KAYLA: That’s a loong time.

SARAH: That’s a lifetime.

BASIL: It is a lifetime. My formal title is the executive director of a non-profit called Asexual Outreach. We are an international organization that works to support local community organizing and works to build up a more large scale more connected movement, so hopefully we can all change some lives together and make the world a bit of a better place. In 2019 our organization was trusted with running ace week so now I do that as well! I use they/them pronouns and I don’t know what else to tell you. But I’m here!

KAYLA: Yay! I think you might be our first Canadian guest. I’m trying to think.

SARAH: Really?

KAYLA: I think so. I can’t think of anyone else.

BASIL: Interesting. Usually, Canadians are overrepresented in American media so… Happy for it to be the other way for once.

(laughing)

SARAH: We’re both from Michigan originally so like I, grew up-

KAYLA: We’re right there. We’re so close.

SARAH: -closer to Canada than to any other US state so you know, I feel like I understand you guys. (laughs)

KAYLA: (laughs)

BASIL: I mean, I don’t know that I understand Canadians myself, but we’ll try, we’ll do our best. (laughs)

SARAH: I feel like I can pretend to understand, you know what I mean (laughs).

BASIL: Mhm, mhm, mhm.

SARAH: Kayla I’m gonna let you take the reins on this one.

KAYLA: Okay. Here I go! So obviously it’s Ace Week. Ace Week happens every year in October from what? The 24th to the 30th, is that correct?
BASIL: That is correct.

KAYLA: Okay. Trivia.

BASIL: Clarification: It is the last full week of October. So this year it's the 24th to the 30th.

KAYLA: Yes, it’s during spooky times! So I just wanted to start off in case anyone doesn’t know, about what Ace Week is in general. Just a quick overview of What is it? And What are we supposed to be doing this week?

BASIL: Yeah so Ace Week was founded as asexual awareness week in 2010. It was originally a campaign to raise awareness of asexuality because back in 2010 there wasn’t a lot going on in the mainstream around asexuality. It has morphed and evolved over time. We recently changed the name to Ace Week in an understanding that we kinda need a little bit more than just awareness. A lot of people know about asexuality, but that doesn’t mean that they treat us well. So now it’s known as Ace Week and as we said it is the last full week of October every year and it is one of the most important, prominent events that happens in the ace community every year. If there’s one thing that you’ll hear about in our community it’s often ace week. I like to describe it as a way for our community to come together, and celebrate our achievements, to push for change, and to make a difference. And so it really is a time to celebrate everything that has come before us and everything that we are collectively working on and a way to think about how we can continue driving and propelling this movement forward.

KAYLA: Yeah! I really like the idea of looking back at what we’ve done, especially as the community gets older and older. I think it’ll be cool to look back on our own history as we gain more elders in the community and people who’ve been in the game longer. Because right now it’s like if you're in it for 10 years that’s a long time, but eventually it’ll be much longer than that so it’ll be cool when we can do that one day. (pause) So you mentioned it started in 2010. Can you give us a little, I guess if we can look back 10 years,  a little history, I know you mentioned it’s changed. So kind of how it started, how it was founded, and I guess how we got here.

BASIL: Absolutely! As you mentioned it was started in 2010, now 11 years ago. The first ace week was primarily an internet social media campaign. It was founded by a fabulous activist by the name of Sarah Beth Brooks. In 2010 it was originally hosted in September, the only time in our history when it was not October. And so the real goal of Ace Week at the time was to encourage larger and more prominent LGBT organizations to include asexuality in their programs in their services, to train their staff, because at the time there were still LGBT organizations that didn’t want us in pride, and didn’t think we should be in their spaces and taking up their space. Still a little bit like that, but we’ve come so far. 2011 was the first year that Ace Week was organized in October, originally those dates were chosen so that students on campus could organize their events. Of course, this was a week that was started in the United States where the semester starts in August or September, so this doesn’t necessarily apply to the rest of the world, unfortunately.

(10:00)

SARAH: America-centric as we always are! (laughs)

BASIL: Yes. But in 2011 Sarah Beth Brooks assembled a team of about 20 folks who came together to organize and coordinate the first really coordinated and mainstream Ace Week. In 2011 there were a lot of great things that came out. This was when there were the first actual in-person events for Ace Week, and similarly in 2009 was the first year when people from the community started to meet up globally. So all happening around the same time, so not that old, and not that far back. Also in 2011 they kicked off the first ace survey which would eventually morph into the asexual community survey we know today. And yeah it was quite successful! In 2012 — this is actually the other week Ace Week was not in October because Ace Week didn’t have dates in 2012! They tried this experiment where they say “Okay everyone because October is so America-centric in its school term, everyone organize your own Ace Week whenever it makes sense for you” And thennn it flopped.

KAYLA: (laughs)

BASIL: (laughs) Predictably. Only time since 2020.

KAYLA: It’s a nice thought though.

BASIL: Oh it's a great thought. And so after that it's pretty much been the last week in October moving forward. One year it dipped into November 1st and we cut it off, that’s not happening anymore.

SARAH: (laughs) No November for the aces!

BASIL: Indeed. What ended up happening in the early 2010s is the organizing committee due to a lack of time and resources, which is fairly common in our community, the organizing committee was less able to be a leader in planning Ace Week so over the mid-2010s it really morphed into a community-driven event. Where folks on Tumblr would start fandom challenges and folks on different social media platforms would create their own ace week, build something of it themselves, and we’ve tried to maintain that feeling up until that day that this is a community event, it’s driven by the community. As the leaders of Ace Week, my organization, we’re not setting the direction and telling people what to do, we’re giving people a platform to build off of. In 2019 Ace Week was officially handed over to us in the desire of wanting an organization with a bit more resources and a bit more sustainability to take it over. And that was 2 years ago and we’re coming up on our 11th anniversary this year and growing and building and evolving and doing amazing things ever since.

SARAH: Ace Week is a preteen! I mean…

BASIL: Yes! Yeah.

KAYLA: Getting moody.

SARAH: Yeah. Pretty soon it's gonna have it’s bar slash bat slash gender-neutral mitzvah.

BASIL: Mhm.

KAYLA: That’s just assuming it’s Jewish.

SARAH: Are you assuming that it’s not Jewish, Kayla???

BASIL: (laughs)

KAYLA: I think it’s quite an assumption for you to make. Ace Week should be able to choose for itself, that’s all.

SARAH: Okay.

BASIL: I would say Ace Week subscribes to no official religion formally, but we are certainly welcoming of all world religions.

KAYLA: Seems like the best answer.

SARAH: Now you’re making Basil give a- give a serious statement-!

(laughing)

KAYLA: Sorry I didn’t mean it!

BASIL: Professional statement from the…

KAYLA: PR statement. I do like that it was a conscious choice to make it community-driven, because I’ve never thought of it being a conscious thing. For the whole time I’ve been interacting with the community it’s always kind of been that way. We’re all gonna celebrate ace week together and everyone’s kind of doing their individual thing, and might you know obviously get together or, many people doing things together to celebrate, but I never thought of that being something conscious, and I’m very glad that it is. To have one organization controlling the whole thing wouldn’t be as impactful as people having more autonomy to celebrate.

BASIL: For sure. And I don’t think that at the beginning it was a conscious decision, people just ran out of spoons and like it just wasn’t the ability to organize things which happens— and fortunately the community really took things on from there. It was really interesting seeing in mid-2019 shortly after Ace Week was handed over to us, there were posts on Tumblr saying “do we need to take over Ace Week? I don’t know that anything is happening with it”

(15:00)

KAYLA & SARAH: (laugh)

BASIL: It was like oh no! Just wait, just wait, it's coming!

KAYLA: No I swear we have it!

BASIL: But certainly we did have many discussions in our board and our team, about what does ace week look like and how do we respect the tradition of it being lead by the community. So for us we don’t host a lot of events or workshops or anything like that. What we do is promote other people’s work. And if you go to the ace week website you’ll see the list of events and resources everything there.

SARAH: I think that’s really representative as well of just the community and the type of community we wanna foster of being like “Okay this is like,- this is in your hands and we just wanna boost whatever cool stuff you’re doing” and I think, you know, it falls into the “We’re not trying to prescribe how you celebrate ace week in the same way we’re not trying to prescribe how you experience attraction or live your life” it’s all very much like “do what you want, we’ll support you” and I feel like that’s so ace of us.

BASIL: Yeah for sure. There is a little bit of a role we play in setting the stage for Ace week each year like our yearly theme. Last year celebrating the 10th anniversary was History of Ace Week or just History in general because it was also the 20th anniversary of AVEN and the 10th anniversary of the ace flag. For some reason that- marker came up a lot.

SARAH: Also all uneven years too.

BASIL: Yes, very strange.

KAYLA: It’s kind of crazy.

BASIL: This year the theme is Beyond Awareness and of course people are free to explore how they’d like. We’re really focusing on, working toward advocacy efforts that make meaningful change in people's lives. So a lot of that is around what policy needs to be advocated for, how do we need to work within political systems to ensure that people can get like equal benefits even if they’re single and not married, or how can we work to make sure people aren’t discriminated against in housing. So there’s a lot of things that haven’t been focused on at all in the movement that we want to bring attention to. But the other really big part of it for me is, usually when we just focus on awareness as a community we end up reproducing the same structures of power that show up throughout our society. So when you look at ace awareness programs you’re usually going to see white folks leading it. Or non-disabled people leading it. Or people who are disabled but aren’t openly so, because there’s a lot of criticism that comes up when you’re openly disabled.

SARAH: Mhm.

BASIL: Unfortunately so. Speaking as an openly disabled person myself. So we are trying to focus on a more intersectional analysis as to how can we work to challenge dominant systems of racism, sexism, ableism and what have you.

SARAH: Mm and I think that’s excellent. (laughs)

KAYLA: Yes. And like you said, it hasn’t been a huge focus of the community, those hard core changes of policy and stuff because obviously those are very hard things to achieve that take a lot of work by a lot of people and I think our community is so young at least in terms of like how much we are organizing together, in terms of like coalition building and stuff like that. And I do think- I’m glad that’s this years theme because I feel like the community is just starting to get old enough- we have enough footing, we have just enough traction, and probably not enough resources you know because people like to not pay attention to us, but yeah, you know, it’s a good time to start actually making those moves. And I know people like Marshall, and the Gentle Giant Ace, got Ace Week recognized in Pennsylvania two weeks in a row, and there was a big push, I know, for people bringing those petitions to states-

BASIL: Proclamations.

KAYLA: -proclamations yes, such a fancy word, and yeah just stuff like that is such a good place to start.

BASIL: For sure. I mean yeah we’ve seen in the last couple of years a number of states have proclaimed Ace Week. And it’s a super easy process. You just fill out a form that says this is what Ace Week is and here is our sample wording and the governor will just approve it. They won’t even - the governor themselves don’t read it, they just put their name on it.

KAYLA: Yeah.

BASIL: The resource issue is so key. I’m thinking of the equality act-

KAYLA: Mhm.

BASIL: There’s been a big push to include asexuality amongst other things, panromanticim, aromanticism - sorry pansexuality - because currently the equality act, the equality act in America — this is US federal legislation — it defines sexual orientation as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual uhhh I think that’s it. It doesn’t talk about sexual orientation as the kind of vague who you’re sexually attracted to, it talks about it as “here’s our set of approved identities that you can’t legally discriminate against”.

(20:00)

S & KAYLA: (chuckle)

BASIL: And of course the people pushing this through and advocating for this, all of the LGBT organizations who are doing this work have paid staff in Washington who go and talk to their lawmakers and we don’t have that as a community we rely so much more on grassroots efforts. And certainly we’re able to do amazing things through that but it definitely is a challenge that hopefully as we continue to grow as a movement hopefully we can address some of those things with the greater resources that come with that growth.

SARAH: Yeah and I think, and you know, it all goes hand in hand with this year's theme being like pushing that sort of growth, but also you know ace week moving on from being an awareness thing to more of a celebratory thing. It all- it all goes hand in hand with the growth of the community. I think it’s a well-organized little baby machine.

BASIL: I think it's important to recognize we’re talking about really big aspirational things but there's also really small scale things that people can do. So one of the big issues that come up especially when people don’t have long-term partners, is a lack of care, a lack of a support system, a lack of financial resources. Just because if you live by yourself and you don’t have- or society is structured such that you’re meant to have a single person who looks after you and who you look after. 

SARAH: It’s built for and around couples. Yeah.

BASIL: Exactly. But that’s not to say that local communities can’t build up those support networks and those sorts of mutual aid types of arrangements themselves, and that’s gonna be more accessible and more accomplishable project than reorienting the entire name-your-country-here’s legal system.

SARAH: (laughs) yeah.

BASIL: There’s certainly work that can be done and certainly when we’re looking at these intersections of disability, race, or other marginalized or erased identities within our community. I’ve seen so many amazing coalitions of people with shared identities and experiences coming together advocating and sharing their voices. And I think it’s up to folks like us but also the other large organizations in our movement to really prioritize boosting those voices specifically because the prominent and privileged voices are already going to rise to the surface.

SARAH: Mm.

BASIL: It’s so important that we’re really focusing on sharing resources of folks who traditionally haven’t been in the spotlight. And that doesn’t necessarily need to come from Ace Week. If you have a Twitter you can retweet people.

SARAH: Mm.

KAYLA: Yeah, I’ve really appreciated seeing more, I think, either I’m paying attention to it more or it is happening more, either way good I guess, but I hope it’s happening more either way, good— but I’ve seen more talks specifically about aces of color and disabled aces within- I feel like within the past months I’ve been noticing it a lot more. I’ve seen people pushing for a disable ace day, which is really cool. And I do think, because obvi- we’re sitting here. Me and Sarah are two white cisgender aspec people which if you look at the big people you see on Twitter I think that describes most of us. So, yeah, I think Ace Week is an especially good time to do something as small to retweet people who are more marginalized or more erased, or making a more conscious effort to pay attention to it. Like “okay I’m just gonna spend an hour of ace week researching this topic, seeing what people have written about it, or said about it. Finding people to follow” because for me the more I started thinking about it, the more I started noticing things. And I think that’s the easiest way to start. Obviously there’s a lot more work to be done after that but.

SARAH: Yeah and that’s a really easy challenge to like our white listeners who may be aspec or who may not be aspec, or to our listeners who do have a lot of the privilege where people will listen to you. It’s like hey, take the time to read up on what Black aces are doing, what Indigenous aces are doing, what Indigenous, Black, and disabled aces are doing, you know? And I think that’s a really easy thing for us to do this week. Like hey, let's take some time to think about this and read what these people are saying and listen to their voices.

(25:00)

SARAH: I can sometimes feel overwhelmed, that it’s Ace Week, it’s our week! What am I gonna do! And it doesn’t always have to be a big thing. It’s not always I’m rolling up to the White House to talk to Biden. You know?

BASIL: (laughs) Right.

SARAH: Like it can just be about educating yourself and you know retweeting some stuff and making more people aware of whatever it is that more marginalized people find important in the community.

BASIL: Yeah, for sure. And the challenge is that if you’re not already a part of that community or you’re not exposed to it, it can be really difficult to do that learning work. So I’m just gonna take a second to share some folks you should follow if you’re listening to us. The first thing I’ll note is this week for Ace Week we’re doing a little experiment where members of our community do Twitter takeovers every day of the week so we can start to platform some folks who are talking about some different things in the community. So if you just follow us on Twitter you’re gonna see a lot of these folks and be able to look into their work. Speaking specifically about Black aces if you look at, obviously, Yasmin Benoit, a fabulous activist in her own right. The Gentle Giant Ace, Marshall Blount. The AsexualGoddess is fabulous as well. Sherronda J Brown has a ton of fantastic writing about blackness and asexuality. If we’re looking at disability there is a growing collective of disabled aces who are really making waves which is fabulous. Three that I know of off the top of my head are Lee Amodell, Charlie Clement and Jasper their Twitter handle is queercanthear. Again folks that are gonna be taking over Ace Week’s Twitter so you’ll get to see some of these folks. And more and more we’ll be working to find folks and support folks who are doing that work. And important to say, this isn’t just me sitting here in a privileged position- in a position of privilege, trying to like be a white savior and lift folks up. It’s to say that a lot of these folks are on our team. When we’re doing this work, it's so important to recognize we’re not doing it for other people, we’re doing it for ourselves because we share these identities. Some of the folks that I’ve mentioned are on our board, on our team which is fantastic. And there is more work to do, I definitely recognize.

SARAH: And they’re a part of our community, at the end of the day. They’re a part of our little community so let's make it better for all of us, not just- not just yourself. I don’t know who I’m @ing right now-

KAYLA: Who are you yelling at?

SARAH: but I’m @ing, I’m yelling at someone.

(laughing)

KAYLA: Yeah, but by no means are Sarah and I saying either that like we have figured it out! And we are fully educated and now it's time for you to educate yourself!

SARAH: (laughs) No.

KAYLA: Sarah and I are definitely learning and unlearning a lot of things. Especially me coming from like the world's smallest most conservative town in history.

SARAH: I don’t know if it’s the world’s smallest and most conservative town in history!

BASIL: Probably not that would be a high bar to set-

KAYLA: Feels like it… That would be impressive to be honest.

BASIL: I think there is also value in—  sorry I’m just going to keep talking because you’re pausing and I’m gonna jump in— 

KAYLA: Please do! I wish you would.

BASIL: The ace community itself replicates the dominant structures in society and works to reinforce them. I’ll try to say that in a more accessible language: the ace community came together in the early 2000s on internet forums. But take a second and think; who actually had access to stable internet and a computer in the early 2000s? Mostly upper-middle-class white Americans.

SARAH: Mhm.

BASIL: So from our very roots, that’s who had access to our community. And by building that community they built a community that was primarily white and they didn’t have critical discourse around race and racism and so for folks who are coming to that community and seeing “oh look at all those white people'' it’s it’s a self-reinforcing cycle which the whole community is going to need to work really hard to break out of. If we talk about sexuality as a concept, sexual orientations are only about two hundred years old and they are an idea that was imposed upon indigenous peoples the world over, so asexuality in taking up the frame of sexual orientation is going directly against many indigenous communities and peoples in Turtle Island who conceptualize sexuality in very very different ways traditionally. Similar scenes are going to be playing out in India, and Africa and around the world.

(30:00)

BASIL: Sexuality is a western, colonialist and imperialist construct. It’s something that the British and Americans brought around the world, and forced upon the world. It wasn’t a gift, it was a “you are not respecting our ways of being, you need to do this or otherwise we will kill you” and of course they were killing them anyway.

SARAH: Yeah.

BASIL: And it’s so important to think critically about where do these constructs come from and what are we reinforcing when we think about this? And I am just rambling, and I’m just going to take one more second to bring in disability as well-

SARAH: Go for it.

BASIL: Because before asexuality was a sexual orientation, asexuality was a stereotype used to portray disabled people as less than human. And that goes back decades, it goes back to nazi Germany where they literally euthanized disabled people because they felt they couldn’t contribute to society. Of course, eugenics programs, which sought to sterilize disabled people, were in most western countries. In America there’s thousands of people who have been sexually sterilized, Canada as well, the UK, Japan, the list goes on and on and on. But the idea was “we don’t want certain people in our society to have children and make more of themselves, so we’re gonna prevent them from doing that”. So asexuality was both a violent force of “let’s remove this certain population from our society” but it was also a stereotype that was portrayed upon disabled people again to discourage them from having children. I mean if we think about in the United States, if you’re on disability benefits you can’t get married. And if you can’t get married, having children is a lot more difficult. And so, these same structures play into our very modern ongoing context. And so, so many folks in the disabled community have traditionally tried to fight back against like “why are you perceiving us all and portraying us all as non sexual? Why aren’t our disabled kids allowed in sex ed classrooms?” Because that’s typically what happens in most of our schools. And so there’s been sort of this on-going context of disabled communities and disabled people pushing back against the desexualization they face. Meanwhile at the same time, when asexuality pops up in the 2000s the first question many of us are asked is “oh are you asexual because there’s something wrong with your brain? Are you asexual because you’re autistic? Are you asexual because you’re disabled?” So naturally people who are working through an anti-ableist lens responded to that by saying “no asexuality has nothing to do with disability” but now there’s a movement coming along and saying “well hey, we’re here, we’re both disabled and asexual, you can’t just elliminate and erase this major section of our community” I’m autistic and for me my asexuality and my autism aren’t cleanly seperable. I don’t know if there’s influence there, maybe there is. But if we look at ace community surveys at least 1 in 6 aces is autistic, so we’re a huge part of the community and we need to be welcomed and embraced. But for so long, we’ve been shunned and set aside. And that for me is what Beyond Awareness is. It’s bringing in those folks who have been traditionally left out of the movement and put front and center because those people have the best ideas. They know how to fix these structures because they’re the most marginalized by them. Sorry that was my little…

KAYLA: No that is- that was like-!

SARAH: I love your little soapbox! (laughs)

BASIL: Thank you.

KAYLA: That was the best soapbox I’ve ever heard. But I think you’re right, these people who - these people have been fighting these structures their whole lives not necessarily because they want to but because they’re already marginalized, so obviously these people are going to have the best ideas on how to fight it because they’ve been historically fighting it for so much longer than, you know someone like me or Sarah, who, until we realized we had a marginali- we had to realize we had a marginalized identity later in life.

BASIL: Yeah, when you think about it when people ask those questions like “Oh have you gotten your hormones checked” “are you whatever” or “oh is there something wrong with your amygdala” as was the case in that episode of House. What they’re asking you is “are you disabled and if you’re disabled we have an excuse not to care about your identity because we view disabled people as lesser” so the response to that as a community shouldn’t be “no we’re not disabled!” That’s the wrong response. It should be “disabled people are human and deserve equal rights and representation” and if we can work towards a society where disabled people are just as valued as non-disabled people, that’s also going to be a society where people don’t look at asexuality and see brokenness.

SARAH: Yeah. We wanna live in a situation— in a world where someone says “are you disabled?” you can be like “yeah, and? What’s your point?” you know. And I think, I’m so glad that our community as an aspec community is taking steps to you know try and- try and change itself, so we don’t uphold the harmful structures and I’m glad that there are groups, such as yours, who are trying to make it a little more official, that we’re fighting against these- I guess, status quo as it were.

KAYLA: Yeah and I think what really struck me is what you said in the beginning of, because our community is so online, that immediately takes so many people out of the community, because the way that I’ve thought of it, and probably the way that a lot of people have thought of it is “oh it’s online! That means it's accessible to so many more people because you could be anywhere in the world, like you don't have to find other ace people in person, since it’s so hard to find other ace people in person” but I’ve never stopped to think about well for a lot of people that makes it less accessible because they can’t get to the internet, especially like in 2000 when AVEN was first started.

SARAH: And there’s a lot of different reasons for that too, whether it’s like you live in an impoverished area that you don’t have access to broadband, or you live in a country that has banned these social media outlets, like there’s a lot of ways that people can be disconnected from that online community or not connected at all to begin with and that is something to think about that I guess that I hadn’t before.

KAYLA: We’re learning so much.

SARAH: (quietly, wondrously) we’re learning!

KAYLA: I know you mentioned before, kind of, obviously educating yourself, retweeting people as an easy way to celebrate Ace Week. But I was wondering if you had any other I guess like tips, or Dos and Don’ts of celebrating ace week-

SARAH: Hot Tips!

KAYLA: Hot tips! Because in the past we’ve had people say to us like “I’m not out so I can’t do anything for Ace Week” or like “I’m just like a high schooler what am I supposed to do I have no money, or I don’t have time” I don’t know, for me I want to encourage people that it’s not about that all the time, it’s about doing what you’re able to do so I was wondering if you had any hot tips for what people can do.

SARAH: (laughs)

BASIL: (laughing) Sure I don’t know how hot these tips are, but I’ll give you some. I think the- there’s definitely this ongoing narrative in the queer community more broadly is that the best way to be an activist is to come out. If you think back to the days of the 80s and 70s the time of Harvey Milk, they would literary pressure their members to phone up their parents and say “Mom, Dad, I’m gay” as a way to get those people to support marriage equality which can be an incredibly… traumatic and violent method. But that theme still carries on till today, we have coming out day, it’s widely celebrated. So the first thing I want to say is: you do not have to be out to matter, you do not need to be out to be an activist. Being asexual means living in a world that wasn’t built for you. So just finding ways to be yourself and embrace your identity, that in and of itself is a form of activism. I know this is harder said than done, especially when things like imposter syndrome comes up and we constantly question things like “I am I actually asexual?” who could ever know. 

SARAH: (laughs) not I.

BASIL: There is no DNA or blood test for that, fortunately. So embracing your identity in whatever way is meaningful to you. Whether that’s making some artwork- maybe a painting a subtle ace flag that nobody in your family is gonna recognize, but you put it on your wall, and like “oh I’m so excited about this, look at my wall, I’m like out in a sneaky way”. Um maybe that means connecting with your community whether that's connecting with folks on Tumblr, joining a discord server, maybe it's going to the Ace Week website aceweek.org where there’s a list of every event that’s happening online in the community. And you can find “oh okay it's Monday, it’s 3pm, what’s going on?” and join in! There’s so many ways you can connect with the community and I think that connection is so important. Even more important than saying “I’m asexual” because when you put out those public statements on Facebook or on Twitter, often the response is going to be a lot of like education work that you’ll have to be doing, you might come across some misconceptions and stereotypes, and that can be valuable for sure, but just being with the community and being with other people and sharing your experience and supporting each other, in my mind, that’s the more valuable approach. Which is not to say that certain approaches have more value than others, perhaps.

(40:00)

KAYLA: No, but I think like that’s so true, especially because it is so hard to find other ace people in your life, I feel like. For me, me knowing Sarah in real life, I know— well several —  I know several ace people in real life that I met just by chance who happened to be ace and I feel like that’s incredibly rare. We have so many people who tell us “I’ve never gotten to talk to another ace person ever” and so I do think, even just doing that of reaching out to people in— online or in person, whatever you can do, building those connections and being able to talk about that stuff is really meaningful to a lot of people, especially I feel, like people who are questioning and coming into their identities, yeah.

SARAH: I also think, I think I said this last year, but I will say it again, and I will continue to say it: your celebration of ace week can just be a little bit of self-care, like whatever that means to you. You don’t have to be out, you don’t have to do anything, you know, really extreme. Celebrating ace week can be just about celebrating yourself and doing something nice for yourself and maybe doing something nice for other queer folks around you. It doesn’t have to be a big event. So you know what if your celebration of ace week is “I’m gonna take a nap today” then you know what? Go for it!
BASIL: Yeah I could use one of those…

(laughing)

BASIL: As a seasoned ace activist, I will say the thing that keeps me going the thing that keeps me successful in this work is not my confidence, it’s not my knowledge, it’s not my ambition, my drive, it’s the people that support me. It’s the time I set aside for myself to like make sure that I’m doing okay, that I’m keeping up with my basic self care. It doesn’t always work so well for me but I try!

(laughing)

BASIL: But you know it is that self care, it is that connection with community, it is those relationships that sustain us. If you’re just going out in the world trying to be an activist, and putting 110% into your activism, but not taking care of yourself at all, not focusing any effort into making sure you’re personally sustaining yourself, what will often happen is you’ll have this flash bang of “wow I’ve done so many amazing things” and then six months later or like two years later, or like seven years later, you’re like “oh geez I can’t do this anymore” so really those relationships and those connections are so so important. I’m one of the- hearing your story about knowing a few ace people in person, I’m one of the few ace people who has met hundreds of us in person, I know that’s an immense privilege and joy that I get to-

KAYLA: Brag.

BASIL: - have -

(laughing)

BASIL: -in this work, but it's really those community connections that sustain us even if it’s just one person. 

SARAH: Yeah you're welcome Kayla for being in your life. (laughs)

BASIL: Yeah Kayla!

KAYLA: I have others! Man. Sorry! 

SARAH: (laughs)

KAYLA: I do really take that to heart though because every ace week it's a stressful thing of like “oh god, we have to do something good for this week because everyone else is gonna be doing something!” which is not good pressure to be putting on ourselves from a health standard.

BASIL: No, it’s true.

KAYLA: But it makes me understand why anyone would feel that pressure of like, to be a good ace person, or to be a good activist, I have to do something big, or I have to be out, or I have to do something monumental. And obviously if you have the resources to help with something big like policy change or any of these things that we’re talking about, that’s awesome, but it starts with small stuff.

BASIL: I have a gift for our audience, I’m gonna give this to you right now.

SARAH: Oh boy! 

BASIL: If you feel pressured to be a good activist — this is for you two as well-

SARAH: I’m ready.

KAYLA: I’m so ready!

BASIL: If you feel pressured to be a good activist in ace week, if you feel like the movement needs more work, if you feel like things are not gonna happen if you don’t put in all of that effort, here is my offer: You take care of yourself, give me the stress, give me the pressure. 

(laughing)

BASIL: I do have to put in 110%!

SARAH: True!

BASIL: I do have to face all of this enormous pressure. I can assure you in November, my schedule is clean. I am in recovery mode. 

SARAH: (laughs)

BASIL: Therefore give your stress and pressure to me. I will take it, I will embrace it, I will suffer through it and that is my gift to you. Take some time to care for yourself. Don’t feel like you need to personally make all of the change in the world.

SARAH: And then do not try and contact Basil the entire month of November. They are sleeping!

BASIL: Yeah (laughs).

KAYLA: Let Basil hibernate in November!

(45:00)

SARAH: (laughs)

BASIL: Yes, yes.

KAYLA: That is very sweet though and I’m sure you managing and putting together ace week, know this better, how da- how dare we think I’m stressed, you’re obviously doing a lot more organizing for ace week than us. 

BASIL: Yeah, my poor partner last night, I was just like not speaking, like I’m sorry, we’ve been learning sign language when I’m just like no it's too much my voice is not going to work. My poor partner looks after me, very kind. I mean, they’re also stressed…(trails off). But yes.

SARAH: It’s a group effort.

BASIL: It’s a group effort.

SARAH: Kayla is there anything else you want to hit on in detail before we start, I don’t know what this is.

KAYLA: What is this? Sarah did some waves with her hands for people who can’t see because it’s an audio medium.

SARAH: - Can’t see it. (laughs)

KAYLA: I don’t know? Wrapping up? I don’t have any other questions I just really appreciate, I feel like you said so many profound things that I really need to think about and I’m making notes of it. Sarah and I are writing a book right now, and it’s like that’s a good point I should reread some of this stuff we wrote to make sure that it is like Okay and matching with a lot of the stuff you’re saying because I think what you’re saying is very important so I’m glad you came on.

BASIL: And I just want to say that the things that I’m saying are largely not original. I’ve had the privilege to learn and continue to learn from so many people in our community and beyond. Learning about anti-racism, learning about ableism. I try to learn every day and I think it's super important. I mean don’t pressure yourself to learn every day, that can be a lot of work! But just working to deconstruct the things we’ve been taught in our childhood that are just so problematic and working- and realizing that we don’t know everything. I continue to try and be humble because I know I have so much to learn. I’m sure that everyone who is listening to this episode could tell me something and I could learn from it. That’s just an encouragement that there are people who are creating these resources, creating this knowledge that can — you too can learn from and absorb. And so that work is super important, especially if you’re writing a book my god! That’s pressure good luck.

(laughing)

SARAH: Thanks for reminding me that we’re writing a book, Kayla…

KAYLA: Sorry… sorry!!

SARAH: Oh no, so much book writing to do… (laughs). But yeah! I think that that's a nice place to leave it. I mean, Basil, is there anything else you want to add before we head out that you feel like you haven’t been able to say?

BASIL: Wow..

SARAH: The answer can be no.

BASIL: The answer can be no, fabulous… No I mean my last thing is just enjoy ace week, everyone!

SARAH: True.

BASIL: I think this is gonna be the best ace week so far and I’m really excited about it. And enjoy! Have fun with it!

SARAH: Hell- Hell yeah! Kayla, what's our poll for this week? Should it just be what are you doing for ace week?

KAYLA: Yeah! I think that’s a good one. And a reminder that if your answer is nothing, then that’s also a very good answer.

SARAH: I mean n- I mean your answer can’t be nothing because if you’re surviving you’r doing something. So personally for ace week I’m gonna eat a cookie. I’ll probably do some other things too, but I’ll also eat a cookie (laughs). Self care guys. (pause) Kayla, what is your beef and your juice this week?

KAYLA: Umm, my… beef isssss capitalism.

SARAH: Mmmm.

BASIL: Oh wow. Oh wow.

SARAH: (laughs)

KAYLA: I know this is big, I just feel like we would all benefit from never having to work...ever.

SARAH: Mhm. Or doing a lot to disrupt the way that we view work as a society. Cause we would have to work-

KAYLA: I just think it’s interesting-

SARAH: -because we would go hungry.

KAYLA: Yes. I just think its funny that we’re in the apocalypse and I’m still working a 9 to 5. That's all that’s my beef. Just keeping things existential today. Yeah, sorry everyone.

BASIL: Okay!

KAYLA: My juice is my sister’s bachelorette party was last weekend so I got to go home and hang out with her which I don’t get to do very often. Which is also a weird experience because I haven’t been around that many like straight people in a long time.

BASIL: That sounds dreadful honestly.

(50:00)

(laughing)

KAYLA: It was just interesting because two episodes we talked about the weird social pressure of people talking about sex and relationships all the time. And I hadn’t experienced that pressure in a long time and then I was with a bunch of allo straight people who are all getting married and having kids, so it was a very bizarre… it was just very dissonant. But in general it was very good time and I got to see my sister which was fun. So that is my juice.

SARAH: Hell yeah. My beef is illness. 

KAYLA: Yeah Sarah’s been ill.

SARAH: I’ve been sick. My well, my beef was gonna be that I have to go back into the office, but now I can’t because I’m ill.

KAYLA: Cause you’re ill… Sarah’s literally been ill, what 2 weeks now? 

SARAH: I hate it. I hate it so bad.

KAYLA: You were ill before we went to New York.

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: And now you’re still ill.

SARAH: Yeah. What is it? Not Covid. That’s the only thing we know for sure.

BASIL: (laughs) That’s helpful, that's good.

SARAH: My juice issssssssss….

KAYLA: Come on now, you can do it.

SARAH: (laughs) My Shooky stamp that my roommate got me for my birthday.

KAYLA: Mmm.

SARAH: And sometimes when I feel sad I just stamp it. For example I got this mail from Joe Biden. Uhh…

BASIL: Oh!

SARAH: Informing me that he was giving me money, and I was like wow!

KAYLA: Why am I not going money what the fuck.

BASIL: Congratulations.

SARAH: And so I stamped my little Shooky on it. 

KAYLA: What money are you getting from Joe and why am I not getting it?

SARAH: I don’t know! I was like why am I getting mail from the IRS? What is this? And then I opened it and it was-

KAYLA: Is this a scam? I feel like you’re being scammed.

SARAH: (reading from the letter) “A key part of the American Rescue Plan is direct payment of $1400 per person for most American households”

KAYLA: Are we getting another stimmy?

SARAH: I don’t know…

KAYLA: I think you’re being scammed.

SARAH: “I’m pleased to inform you that a direct-” No it says a direct — it doesn’t matter this is not relevant to the podcast.

(Laughing)

KAYLA: This is the segment of the show where Sarah reads us her federal mail!

(laughing)

BASIL: My goodness.

SARAH: Anyway!

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: Basil what is your beef and your juice this week?

BASIL: Wow, holy… You folks said this is not usually heavy, I don’t know what to do with my life. I was gonna make a pun and say my beef was feed locks because cows are lovely and we treat them like shit. So like… come on?

KAYLA: That is such a good-! Cows are like part of the theme of our show, I don’t know if you know that.

BASIL: I did not know that!

KAYLA: So people are going to be very pleased with this answer.

BASIL: But um, so my- my other beef is going to be, and I wish I had an easier less academicy word for it, but fatalism and the belief that we can’t change thing, because I look at our world and I look at how people talk about climate change and racism and homophobia and sexism, and just think its too big and think that we can’t do anything and if you think its too big and you think that we can’t do anything, congratulations your prophecy will come true!

(laughing)

BASIL: Right? but if we think about our world, capitalism has only been here for 500 years. The vast majority of human history was living under a non capitalist system. Climate change has really only been an issue and impacting us in the last 100 years, and we have the power to change things. There is a world that existed before we are today. Where things were better. If you look back to 300 years ago most cities did not have police forces. Or if they did they were tiny. They had 5 people.

SARAH: The police is a new concept, guys.

BASIL: yeah.

SARAH: If you didn’t know that y’all look it up! 

(laughing)

SARAH: The police are brand new, what are we doing?

BASIL: This world that we live in was created by people, and people have the power to uncreate it. And to create something better and create something new. And so my beef is fatalism because when you’re looking at, no matter what issue it is, it's so easy to despair to feel like there’s nothing you can do. But I implore you, please think about what you can do. Because we have the power to change the world and the only way the world is going to change is if we do it, collectively. You alone don’t have to solve capitalism.

SARAH: (laughs) You alone MUST solve capitalism.

BASIL: My juice (laughs) Congratulations. If Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk are listening they might have the resources to make that happen.

SARAH: That’s true.

BASIL: If you are listening it is your job alone to solve capitalism, I command you.

KAYLA: Imagine if they were listening. This would be such a bizarre thing for them to listen to.

BASIL: Honestly, fuck you guys leave.

(laughing)

BASIL: Get out of here, what are you doing?

SARAH: Give you all of your money because I don’t trust you to deal with all of your money yourselves because you spend it on weird things and then leave (laughs).

BASIL: My juice for this week is mango? I think it’s a pretty good juice.

KAYLA: Mmm!

BASIL: But I have this thing where any soda, any juice is inherently too sweet for me. Thanks autism! It’s fine. (laughs) It means it goes longer because I put a third water and I ration it up. It’s awesome.

KAYLA: I mean cheaper that way!

BASIL: It is cheaper! It’s fabulous.

SARAH: That just makes me think about how I always water down my lemonade, what does that mean about me…

KAYLA: Sarah it means that we all know you have some stuff going on that is undiagnosed.

(laughing).

BASIL: I’m not in a position formally diagnose you based on your preferred sweetness of lemonade (laughs)

SARAH: Basil first of all, we need you to tell us what religion ace week is (laughs) and second of all-

(laughing)

KAYLA: Diagnose Sarah!

BASIL: Oh geez. Wow. I cannot tell you what religion ace week is.

KAYLA: No pressure.

SARAH: Rip.

BASIL: If it was a religion it would be a non organized one.

SARAH: Fair.

BASIL: My actual juice this week besides mango — I don’t have any mango juice in my fridge this week — my actual juice this week is ace week! I mean ace week is fabulous. I love ace week. Part of me hates me because it's the most stressful month of my life — well October (laughs) — but I’m so excited-

SARAH: This week is the most stressful month of my life!

BASIL: Yes, yes it’s true… I’m so excited to see what people come up with. I’m looking at the Indian Aces are hosting their- the world’s first asexuality asian conference, and they have a fabulous schedule. Indian Aces are, doing amazing work. Aussie Ace Week I’m thrilled about. I’m thrilled, especially because they let us fill out our events calendar with so many events, it looks like so many things are happening — cause they are! Every ace week there’s new media that comes out, new newspaper articles, new projects, this is the week that everyone announces everything, so I’m so excited to see what people have been working on and just celebrating people’s passions and accomplishments because I think we deserve to be celebrated.

SARAH: Hell yeah!

KAYLA: Definitely excited, I know us and the g- our other internet friends, this is like the one time of year that publications want to talk to us-

BASIL: Mhm.

KAYLA: So I’m very excited to see all that stuff come out, and I’m hoping that the headlines are not shitty and that people write them good. So we don’t have to yell at anyone.

BASIL: Mm. It’ll be a mixed bag.

SARAH: No Garbage Headlines 2021! (laughs)

KAYLA: Yes.

BASIL: I got an interview request from some like right-wing podcast… no thank you.

SARAH: Hhh, oh boy.

BASIL: Not here for it.

KAYLA: Yikes!

SARAH: Oh boy.

KAYLA: Whatcha gonna do, I guess?

BASIL: Anyway if you’re listening, I decided not to respond.

KAYLA: (laughs)

SARAH: I think that is a lovely place to leave it though. Thank you so much for joining us, Basil. Sorry if we were putting you on the spot about the religion of ace week (laughs).

KAYLA: Sorry that one’s on me, that one's on me.

SARAH: But it was so wonderful to have you on and hear your perspectives and I hope everyone gets involved with ace week in whatever way is best for you, dear listener. Hell yeah. Um, cool! Alright, Basil where can the people of the internet find you slash your organization slash just in general what is— what do you wanna promote? Anything?

BASIL: I mean if you’re listening-

SARAH: The concept of touching grass?

BASIL: Grass is a great thing to touch. Oh my god.

SARAH: It is (laughs)

BASIL: As a child the years that I spent just playing picking grass...ugh!

SARAH: What a delight.

KAYLA: It’s good stuff.

BASIL: Really. Really. And people say autism can’t be joyful. I mean come on. Pick some grass. It’s great.

SARAH: Pick grass!

BASIL: Um so, my wow, what was the-? I know the question. If you’re listening to this you’ve heard of ace week, so I’m thrilled for you.

KAYLA: (laughing)

BASIL: So I would encourage you to visit our website aceweek.org pretty simple. You can probably also search Ace Week on google or in your favorite internet search browser and you’ll get it come up. At the top of the ace week website there is a little place where you can put in your email and when you do that we’re gonna send you every day of ace week events that are happening that day, we’ll tell you some cool things we see in the media and what have you. And that’ll just plug right into your email inbox. If you don’t check your email inbox, I’m with you, holy - that stuff gets cluttered. You can look at our events calendar which is fantastic. 

(1:00:00)

BASIL: There are so many great things happening. Wednesday is disabled ace awareness day which is thrilling, for the first year, being hosted and coordinated by Courtney Lane. I’m helping out where I can, but like, hoh so much work. But I’m really excited about that. And check out the Ace Week Twitter as well, because again, we’re gonna be having a whole bunch of different community members doing takeovers and talking about the issues that are important to them! I don’t know what they’re gonna be talking about, but I’m really excited to read it. As far as where you can find me personally… you can’t very easily, I don’t have much of an internet presence. So, which is fine! I don’t need to be a celebrity, I don’t want to be a celebrity…

SARAH: I mean if you just want to exist as a spirit in the ether and you want to tell the people “there is nowhere you can find me~” that is also an acceptable answer (laughs).

BASIL: If you want to get in touch with me, you can either go to the Ace Week contact form, or go to the contact form on our organization’s website at asexualoutreach.org and that will go to my email inbox because I do answer most of our emails. So if you wanna get in touch, go through one of my projects — not my projects, it’s a collective thing.

SARAH: Our.

BASIL: I alone do not run Ace Week. Holy, it’s a whole team, but…

SARAH: (laughs)

KAYLA: That would be impressive.

SARAH: That’d be... I would say you need more than November off if that were the case (laughs).

BASIL: Well I mean like… 75% maybe 80%, but not all of it.

SARAH: Basil is doing the lord’s work slash the non-denominational…

BASIL: No there is no lord’s work that I’m doing, but I’m certainly doing work.

SARAH: (laughs) You’re doing work.

BASIL: I’m definitely a credit to my team because I put in a ton of hours, but I rely on the expertise and the experience, the passion, dedication, of a whole team of volunteers, our whole board, and just like community members that help out where they can.

SARAH: I agree-

BASIL: This is not the Basil show.

SARAH: Well, I agree, but also I think you’re doing great Basil.

BASIL: Thank you, I try my best.

SARAH: 10 points to Basil for existing. We also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. 

KAYLA: You missed-

SARAH: What?

KAYLA: You’re supposed to say, “you can find us on social thing” and then you say-

SARAH: (sighs) Okay.

KAYLA: - We also…

SARAH: (laughs)

BASIL: You can find them on the social thing at patreon.com/soundsfakepod and…

SARAH: Hey guys you can find us on the social thing @soundsfakepod, tell us about your beef, your juice, your plans for ace week, your love for Basil and all they do for Ace Week, once again that’s @soundsfakepod. We also have a social- what? No. (laughs) We also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. Kickin’ it to Sarah from the future, she’ll read you those patrons.

SARAH: Hey. It’s Sarah from the future. With special guest: Kayla from the future!

KAYLA: Special guest, also me from the future.

SARAH: That’s so true. So true bestie (laughs). Our $5 patrons who are promoting something this week- nope! They don’t promote anything. Our $5 patrons who are getting a shout out this week are: Elliana Currie, Green_sarah, Frank Cardenas, JR and George Ankers. (singing) Thank youuu~. What I’m promoting for you is your wonderfulness. Our $10 patrons who are promoting something this week are: My Aunt Jeannie who’d like to promote Christopher’s Haven, Cass who’d like to promote the best of luck on the journey of self identification, and Doug Rice who’d like to promote Church Too by Emily Joy. Our other $10 patrons are: Arcnes, Benjamin Ybarra, Anonymous, H. Valdís, Barefoot Backpacker, The Steve, Ari K., Mattie, Derek and Carissa, Khadir, Potater, Changeling MX, DAVID JAY, The Stubby Tech, Simona Sajmon, Rosie Costello who recently won pet of the week again at my sister’s place of employment!

KAYLA: Incredible job Rosie.

SARAH: (laughs) Hector Murillo, Jay, and David Nurse. Also uh, we were on Barefoot Backpackers podcast and in between the time between recording yesterday and now, it has come out.

KAYLA: True. Go check it out.

SARAH: (laughs) Our $15 patrons are: Nathaniel White, NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who’d like to promote Free Mom Hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere,Martin Chiesel who’d like to promote his podcast, Everyone’s Special and No One Is, Leila who’d like to promote “Love is love”...(inhale)(then quietly) shh don’t smack me while we’re doing the patrons... (laughs) Leila who’d like to promote “Love is love” also applying to aro people, Shrubbery who’d like to promote the Planet Earth, Sherronda J Brown who’d like to promote Sherronda J Brown being the best — no that’s me promoting that, but you know— , Maggie Capalbo who’d like to promote their dogs Minnie, Leia, and Loki, Andrew Hillum who’d like to promote The Invisible Spectrum Podcast, Click4Caroline who’d like to promote...I still, my doc still says “I’m cry” I really need to write Dear Luke, Love, Me, so that I don’t-

(1:05:00)

KAYLA: Yeah.

SARAH: Live. (keyboard sounds) Live I am writing Dear Luke, Love, Me. And Dragonfly, who’d like to promote Sarah writing Dear Luke, Love, Me in the doc. Our $20 patrons are: Sarah T who’d like to promote long walks outside and HomHomofSpades who’d like to promote getting enough vitamin D! Yeah that’s it. Anything to say for yourself?

KAYLA: Goodbye!

SARAH: Kicking it back to the past.

SARAH: Oh look it’s back, it’s Sarah from the past again, thank you for listening-

BASIL: That was thrilling!

(laughing)

SARAH: It’s really, it’s a fun time. Thank you again so much Basil for joining us, and for everything you do with Asexual Outreach and Ace Week. I hope you have a successful, restful, very few alarms like five fire alarms, what- what are peop-? You know…

BASIL: What is the five fire alarms?

SARAH: I don’t-! I’m not sure.

KAYLA: Like 5 fires to put out?

SARAH: I guess? There’s like different-

BASIL: Okay (laughs).

SARAH: - you know what, we’re moving on. Okay cool.

BASIL: Okay cool.

SARAH: I hope you have a good week Basil (laughs).

BASIL: Thank you, very kind.

SARAH: Um, uhh wow where am, what am I doing, who am I what’s going on? Thanks for listening.

(something occurs, like someones mic gets knocked over or something)

BASIL: WHOA!

SARAH: (laughs) Oh my god!

KAYLA: Are you still plugged in?

SARAH: I am still plugged in.

BASIL: There’s a light on so..

SARAH: Sorry for the chaos in the past literal 30 seconds of this podcast.

(laughing)

SARAH: Thanks-

BASIL: Just clip it out and copy from last week.

SARAH: Oh yeah, sometimes you just gotta. Um Thanks for listening, tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.

KAYLA: And until then, take good care of your cows.

(1:06:46)