Carnival of Aces May 2023 Roundup: Changing Labels

A rainbow of post-it notes. Image source.

Here are the posts for the May 2023 Carnival of Aces. (The call for submissions is here.) The topic was "Changing Labels." We have these 3 posts:

From sildarmillion: On Not Using Labels "I bet if I had told them I was asexual, they would have a knee-jerk reaction that asexuality is not a real thing. But when I tell them I don’t experience physical needs, they are intrigued, but they don’t think I’m making it up. Some of them even have had expressions on their face that seemed to say 'You finally make sense.'"

From Blue Ice-Tea: I'm Asexual Like Han is a Skywalker "Where exactly the line between 'Skywalker' and 'non-Skywalker' is is fuzzy."

From me (Perfect Number): Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality "Without vaginismus, I wouldn't have figured out I'm asexual. But if I hadn't figured it out, that would have been bad, because I really am asexual."

A common theme among these posts was the reasons to use or not use the label "asexual"- in what situations is it useful, what is the exact definition (and how much does that matter), etc. The reason I picked this theme for the carnival is I'm super-interested in the reasons that people choose what labels they want to use. It's more than just "do I fit this definition or not"- maybe there are multiple labels that have a definition that fits, or maybe there's some reason you want to use the label, not necessarily related to the official definition.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who participated in this month's carnival! And happy Pride Month!