At a nightclub, a man offers a pretty blond woman a drink. She has obviously shown interest in him, but turns the drink down. He is confused – was she not interested? She then approaches him, frankly tells him that she’s not thirsty… and invites him to have sex in her house.
Growing up, I did not even know bisexuality existed, let alone know anyone who was bisexual. Consequently, I often felt that I had to make a choice: did I fancy boys, or did I fancy girls?
Here is the transcript of my talk for the virtual seminar series “What (is) Medieval”, designed to provoke thoughts on the Middle Ages and all its associated definitions and connotations, run by Emma Wells & Claire Kennan.
Let it Go! Let it Go! 😉 – people with autism are notorious for their inability to let go – and I am no exception to this. That is why I wrote the following blog post for The Art of Autism: Letting Go is Difficult But Allows Us To Grow. A Dutch version was already published at Ik Overtref Me. Hope it helps! <3
Dating is difficult, complicated, messy, and awkward for everyone, I assume. But autism adds an extra layer of turmoil to that already unstable cocktail. Especially if you’re bisexual—and those last two identities often go hand in hand. Still, relatively little has been published about these intersections. In this essay I would thus like to share something of my experiences, somewhere in the triangle of dating, bisexuality, and autism.
In “Fan Studies Methodologies“, the 2020 special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, I described how, as an autistic gamer, I engage with games in a different way, showcasing how (dis)abled gaming, neurotypicality, fannishness, and sociopolitical responses are never independent from one another. All the examples I named in that “autiethnography” were from my adult life, but looking back, these differences in engagement were already very noticeable when I was a kid. Therefore, in the following essay, I would like to recreate my small piece of the history of the mid ‘90s Dutch video gaming culture, which was a sort of “produser community” avant la lettre.
A personal exploration into the Toxic Ableism of Inspiration Porn, originally written for feminist magazine Lover.