This bullshit came in the mail today. I can spot heterosexism, amatonormativity and ableism right there on the cover; there’s also some implicit sexism in the cover story, and people of color are underrepresented in this magazine every month. And I haven’t even read the thing yet - maybe the story inside is less terrible than the cover suggests, but I highly doubt that.

(Don’t ask me, I’m not the one in my house who subscribed to this.)

It’s gotten to the point that I just never read this stuff anymore, even though I like psychology, because the magazines tend to repeat the same twenty stories over and over again, and so much of their content is sensationalized, misleading or not scientifically rigorous enough.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where my ability to form friendships with 3.5 billion people wasn’t constantly undermined by sexism and compulsory sexuality…Where I didn’t have to be on guard against people mistaking my friendliness for flirtation, and then hurling slurs at me when I didn’t want to have sex with them…Where people took my aromanticism/asexuality seriously instead of taking it as a personal slight or as a challenge to tear down. And I wonder what it would be like to see magazine covers that acknowledged that people like me exist.

It must be so relaxing.