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@aphobic-isabelle
I’m gonna be honest, my motivation to run this blog is dead
I used to be proud of being ace, I used to embrace the part of me that is ace, but now I just have extreme self doubt. I hate the part of myself that’s ace, I feel like I don’t get to express that part of myself, lest I become a joke and make everyone else look bad
I’m sorry, I doubt this blog will be used for a while, if ever again. I’ll keep the account up, just…
I’m sorry for failing all of you…
The Aphobia Masterpost
I started writing this as a comment on another post, but it got too long so fuck it, this is going to be its own post, and it’s going to be a collection of basically everything I can get my hands on about asexual oppression, history, and the shit aphobes say. Yeah, this is going to be long, heavy with links to a lot more reading, but I’ve had it up to here with the “discourse”.
Everyone who wants to is free to reblog this post and use it as a reference when arguing with aphobes. (fyi, I created the blog @asexuality-and-aphobia in the middle of this project to be a reliable source for my links.)
“Aces don’t face oppression”
Intergroup bias toward “Group X”: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination against asexuals (Link to complete study)
Prejudice against the asexual community
Battling Asexual Discrimination, Sexual Violence And ‘Corrective’ Rape
Somewhere on the A-Spectrum: Agender, aromantic and asexual people face misconceptions, aggression
Asexuality and Rape
Asexual Men and Rape
Men, masculinity, asexuality, and rape
Religion and Asexuality Overview
Religious intolerance of asexuality: x, x, x, x, x, x
Asexuality and race/racism: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x
Do you want to?
Asexual oppression and all that
Asexuality and Victim Blaming
Why We Need Mental Healthcare Without Asexual Erasure
AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct shows that “Asexual/Questioning/Not Listed” report a higher rate of sexual assault/harassment/violence than heterosexuals, regardless of gender
Asexuality was listed in the DSM as HSDD (Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) until 2013, making it officially a mental illness that would be treated with therapy and medication. It is still in the DSM, except that you can ‘opt out’ if you self-identify as asexual, which is great except that asexuality is still so unknown that there undoubtedly many people who are asexual but don’t know that it’s “a thing”. This means that who knows how many asexuals have been sent to therapy and told they’re sick, then been “treated” for their orientation to try and force them to experience sexuality “correctly”.
In short, our orientation has been and continues to be pathologized, and asexuals have been put through corrective therapy: x, x, x, x, x
Acephobia Exists
Why Aro/Ace awareness is important to me
This is an example of acephobia.
Sure, it could’ve happened to anyone. But it happened to an asexual BECAUSE OF THEIR ASEXUALITY.
no one gets to tell me that my objectification is magically ‘less potent’ because it’s due to my asexuality.
“I WANT to make the community unsafe for you”
It’s All A Fucking Joke, Right
Posts of people describing the hardship they’ve faced for their asexuality: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x
The blog @acephobia-is-real has so many submissions and examples of hatred, harassment, hostility, and abuse, of aces who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted in an attempt to ‘fix’ them, and made suicidal due to aphobia and/or their own perceived brokenness, that it would be pointless for me to try and link any. Just go and start reading. Try their suicide tag.
There may be dissatisfyingly little research done on asexuality, but there has been enough done to prove that they do face discrimination, no matter how hard some may find that to believe. But guess what? You, an allosexual person, do not get to say shit like “aces don’t get kicked out” or “aces don’t _____” any more than I as a white person get to say that things I don’t experience must not happen to black people either. Just because you haven’t experienced it personally or witnessed it with your own eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You haven’t walked in an ace’s shoes, you don’t know what they deal with. Period.
Not even other aces can tell asexuals that their experiences aren’t real or aren’t valid. Different people can deal with different amounts of oppression, that doesn’t mean the lack of oppression is the default “truth”.
Nobody is trying to say that asexuals have it “as bad” or worse than gay or trans people, but we don’t HAVE to “have it worse” to be included and for our experiences to have merit without being compared to anyone else’s. Let me say that again: our experiences have merit without being compared to anyone else’s.
“We just want to protect our safe spaces”
Aphobes have:
Repeatedly misgendered and mislabeled people
Informed rape victims that their assaults didn’t happen the way they happened (which is a form of gaslighting)
Made light of their own rape apology
Compared asexuals to pedophiles
Compared asexuals to Nazis
Harassed people who wanted to be left alone
Made jokes about asexuals committing suicide
Told suicidal asexuals to “stop whining”
Admitted to recycling biphobia
Created a ‘yourfaveisaphobic’ blog
Admitted to hating the ace/aro community
Asserted that asexuality should not be taught in schools (because it “sexualizes minors” or because gay/bi/pan minors will ‘mistakenly’ identify as asexual)
Told asexuals to die: x, x, x, x, x (tbh this is only a tiny sample and I don’t have the heart to go digging for more)
Are all aphobes this vile? Maybe not, but this is still the disgusting, hateful attitude festering in the gatekeeping community, and it stinks like shit. The examples I have provided above are only a fraction of the harassment and abuse that is perpetrated on a regular basis.
“Het aces/aroaces are straight”
Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces don’t identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and it’s not your place to label them against their will. There is no world in which aroaces, people who experience no attraction to anyone, are straight.
“Straight” isn’t a sexual orientation, it’s a position of power.
A-Spec Identities are Not Secondary.
Invisibility is Not a Privilege.
“passing privilege” is not a real thing.
Straight-passing privilege: a myth
Bad arguments against allowing a-spec to identify as queer
Having your identity erased is not a privilege.
asexuality, like bisexuality, is deliberately misunderstood by out groups in order to exclude us.
ace/aro people don’t “only” experience attraction to the ‘opposite gender’ or any other. that’s the point. we also experience a lack of attraction, either romantically or sexually, and that lack of attraction is part of our identity.
Straight is not default.
How many straight people do you know that want to kill themselves because of their orientation?
The closet is not a privilege
“We accept SGA (same-gender attracted) and trans aces”
Firstly, SGA (same-gender attraction) is a term that was used and is still used in Mormon conversion therapy, so as one can understand, a lot of people are very uncomfortable being labeled with this description. Secondly, it enforces a gender binary of “same” and “opposite” gender that leaves a large number of nonbinary people out in the cold. Is a genderfluid person only “same-gender attracted” if they’re attracted to other genderfluid people who are genderfluid in exactly the same way? How about agender, intergender, demigirl/boy people? And before the argument “well they’re included as trans” is made, there are plenty of nonbinary people who do not identify as trans. I’m one of them.
The standard of “SGA and trans” as requirement for entry to the LGBTQ community is used nowhere outside of aphobic tumblr, and it seems crafted specifically for the purpose of excluding aces, aros, NBs, intersex people, and others not deemed “gay enough”.
(SGA did NOT come from ‘SGL’, same-gender loving. That is a term created by black queer people and not to be appropriated by white people.)
Discussion of the history of the word ‘queer’ and why it’s better than ‘SGA’: x, x, x, x, x
There are also many “SGA and trans” aces who are against the gatekeeping and feel that they are hated by these aphobes.
You’re not protecting me by being an ace/aro exclusionist.
What we hear when you say “I only support SGA Asexuals/Aromantics”
my favourite thing is when aphobes try to tell me that their aphobia doesn’t apply to me / affect me because “[i’m] queer for other reasons”
okay, you wanna know why I’m for including all aces in the LGBT+ community?
Why your acephobia and arophobia is really just bullshit
it really annoys me when I see Discoursers say they support LGBT+ aces, just not cishet ones.
when you say “i accept sga and trans aces and aros but not cishet aces/aros because they’re straight”
Suffering! Suffering?
when people ‘accept’ sga/mga/non-cis aces and aros, but not others, what it actually means is they accept the part of you that isn’t directly tied to your asexuality/aromanticism
if ur gonna fuckin claim those four letters cover them & the whole damn community, they sure as fuck can cover aces as well
“Ace discourse” is really a Tumblr-only thing
I’m a lesbian ace and I’ve never felt more worthless and disgusting than this ace discourse
The reason even trans and bi/gay/pan/etc asexuals get defensive when you talk about cishet aces/aros not being part of the LGBT+ community is because you’re erasing a part of our identity??
If you talk shit about aces/aros with the disclaimer “cishet” it still affects all aces. Saying “notably cishet aces should all go die” still makes all ace/aro people feel like they are being called out.
Your “discourse” is harmful to all asexuals. And PS, your rhetoric is literally indistinguishable from TWERF rhetoric.
“The LGBT community has always been about fighting homophobia and transphobia/we came together to fight homophobia and transphobia”
“Homophobia and Transphobia”: What does the LGBT+ community fight for?
The modern American movement was first known as the “gay community” when cis gay men refused to even accept lesbians, then the “gay and lesbian community”. (Good reading on the subject.)
“After the elation of change following group action in the Stonewall riots in New York, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, some gays and lesbians became less accepting of bisexual or transgender people. Critics said that transgender people were acting out stereotypes and bisexuals were simply gay men or lesbian women who were afraid to come out and be honest about their identity. Each community has struggled to develop its own identity including whether, and how, to align with other gender and sexuality-based communities, at times excluding other subgroups; these conflicts continue to this day.” (source)
“From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. Not until the 1990s within the movement did gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people gain equal respect.” (ibid)
These are scans of a gay magazine from 1999 showing that 48% of those surveyed did not believe that trans people should be a part of the gay community.
The community’s boundaries have always been in flux
Insisting that LG people have always been accepting of bi and trans people is incredibly revisionist and does a great deal of injustice to those who have been excluded.
Despite the fact that bisexual and transgender people have always been around, and have done great things for the community, they have faced a great deal of lateral oppression from the LG part of the group that did not want to see them get an equal share of attention, support, or legitimacy. This post is not about proving LG transphobia and biphobia, but it’s so rampant that I don’t feel like I need to provide sources whatsoever. Nevertheless, here’s a collection of biphobia, and the blog @terf-callout documents some of the violent transphobia on this site, particularly in the lesbian community. This post is an example.
“The A stands for Ally so that closeted people can be the community without being outed”
No one is saying that we don’t care about closeted people, but a) even if you’re a closeted L, G, B, or T, you are still a L, G, B, or T. Allies do not need to be part of the acronym to be intrinsically welcomed. As someone said, this is like saying the ‘B’ in BLT stands for ‘bread’. We can pretty much safely assume that a sandwich is going to include bread, we don’t have to go of our way to give it a letter. Either you are outing every “ally” as a closeted queer person, or you are giving 100% cis straight people an LGBTQ member card, the very thing you are arguing against by trying to exclude asexuals.
Furthermore, this puts forth the argument “I’m willing to let cishet straight people into the community for the sake of a few closeted people” while at the same time stating “I’m not willing to let the A stand for asexuals because I don’t think letting cis heteroromantic asexuals into the community is worth giving all asexuals representation and support”. Which says that you consider asexuals less valuable and more of a threat than cis straight people.
Bonus: The History of LGBT(QQIAAP+)
“Aces have never been a part of the LGBTQ/queer community”
Asexuals recorded as “Group X” in the 1948 Kinsey Reports
What is asexual history? The 19th and 20th century
From The Westminster Review, a political magazine, in 1907; an essay by Helen Fraser called Women’s Suffrage, on how if women got the vote, butch and ace women were gonna dominate the whole thing and screw it up for all the Real Ladies.
The Spinster Movement, and how they were treated as queer
From “Feminism,” by Correa Moylan Walsh, 1917
the “aces/aros were part of the bi community until they very recently chose to split off, so stop telling them that they have never been queer or that they don’t belong in ‘the LGBT community’” masterpost
asexuality existed before David Jay and AVEN
“Where were you when…?” A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part One)
“Where were you when…?” A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part Two)
“Stop tokenizing bi and trans people/stop comparing bi/trans and ace experiences”
We’re not the ones doing it. They are comparing them, themselves.
Bisexual person discussing the similarities of anti-bi and anti-ace arguments
Pansexual person discussing the similarities in treatment (Follow up post)
Bisexual person recalling ace inclusion and discussing the similarities
Bisexual person discussing “SGA discourse”
Panromantic genderfluid person discussing lateral aggression
This Blog Explicitly Welcomes All Ace/Aro Folks As Part Of LGBTQIA
Bisexual trans person discussing the nature of asexuality
Trans lesbian discusses the identical nature of TWERF and aphobe rethoric
Pansexual person tells you to Cut It Out
Bisexual person discussing how the unifying common point of the community is deviation from the cisheteronormative norm
Bisexual genderqueer person says that the bi community and the a-spec community have a deep history together and have always been allies
Bisexual trans person discusses how we can relate to each other
Trans lesbian TAKES. YOU. DOWN.
Bisexual person arguing that all asexuals are queer
“I have proof of an asexual being homophobic/transphobic/racist/a terrible person”
Of course there are asexuals who are terrible people. There are legions of gays and lesbians who are racist and transphobic. Does that make them not gay/lesbian? Does their bigotry invalidate their sexual orientation, or remove the L and G from the acronym? No, I don’t think so. Some asexuals being bad people doesn’t justify you trying to invalidate all of us.
“’Allosexual’ is a bad word because ____”
I actually have an ‘allosexual’ tag just for posts about why ‘allosexual’ is a perfectly fine word: x, x, x, x, x. x
“The split-attraction model is homophobic”
What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as “disjunctive uranodioning”. (source) (credit to this post)
“The term ‘corrective rape’ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbians”
No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.
“We’ll Show You You’re a Woman” describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, “Negative public attitudes towards homosexuality go hand in hand with a broader pattern of discrimination, violence, hatred, and extreme prejudice against people known or assumed to be lesbian, gay, and transgender, or those who violate gender and sexual norms in appearance or conduct (such as women playing soccer, dressing in a masculine manner, and refusing to date men).” It goes on to say, “Much of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on “corrective rape,” a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality.”
The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, “A study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that “the percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the study”.”
It is not only lesbians, but also bisexual women, transgender men, gay men, and gender non-conforming people in South Africa who experience corrective rape. This is not in any way meant to minimize the horror of the epidemic or shift attention away from lesbians, but other victims, including asexuals, deserve attention as well. Do not silence or speak over victims of rape by policing their language.
“Aces are valid, they’re just not queer/LGBTQ”
You cannot in one breath say “Asexuals are valid” and in the next deny their experiences. Spend five minutes in the community and you will see testimony after testimony from aces describing their abuse, their sexual assault(s), the countless times people have called them confused, broken, wrong, mentally ill, inhuman, sinful, and how these experiences have left them feeling hopeless, alone, alienated, subhuman, depressed, and suicidal. Almost every asexual out there will tell you a story of how their orientation has caused them pain and struggle, and you can’t call them valid while at the same time calling these experiences invalid and nonexistent.
Bonus: This is a list of all the mainstream LGBTQ groups that include asexuals.
“Form your own community!”
a) We do have our own community, because every letter in the acronym has its own community and yet is still part of the acronym, b) you fucking shits won’t stop sending us hate and bombarding us with shit meant to trigger and harass us.
“Aces take resources from other LGBTQ who need them”
I’ve seen some pretty wild claims about this one, insisting that asexuals “steal” things such as scholarships, beds at homeless shelters, food and space at pride events, suicide hotlines, and so on, yet I have never seen any actual proof that any “stealing” has ever taken place. For one thing, I thought “you’ll never get kicked out or fired for being ace”, “no one is suicidal because they’re asexual”, so why would you think aces need these resources? Either we don’t need them or we don’t use them, you can’t have it both ways.
For another, how heartless do you have to be to tell asexuals that they can’t use suicide hotlines? Do you realize that you’re saying that asexuals should be denied life-saving services? That, in essence, asexuals are suicidal due to their orientation, but you think they’re not “queer enough” so they deserve to die? Because that is the logical progression of refusing someone suicide prevention, and that’s the message aces receive when you tell them they are “stealing” suicide prevention.
LGBTQ resources offer them to asexuals, and benefit from us using them.
Lastly, do you not realize we are also PROVIDING resources? We are bringing bodies and minds to the community, we are here to be voices, to volunteer, to bring encouragement, information, and support. We earn our keep. You just have to admit that you don’t WANT us here.
“Nobody wants to hear about your nonexistent sex life”
Happy Asexual Awareness week to all my Aces and Aspecs. Here’s a friendly reminder that:
The “A” in LGBTQIA does not stand for ally but asexual and aromantic as well as agender
Asexuality is on a spectrum so depending where someone falls or how they identify, they may or may not experience intimate attraction
Asexuals are not broken
Asexuals aren’t “cishets trying to evade LGBTQ+ spaces”
Asexual and aromanticism shouldn’t be used synonymously. They have similar principals but different meanings. Both primarily deal with experiencing little to no attraction
Not all asexuals are virgins and that doesn’t make them any less asexual because of it
Asexuality is real and valid
Just because aphobia infrequently escalates to violence doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent
Corrective assault isn’t limited to just bi and gay men/lesbians
A few pro tips while I’m at it:
Using virginity as an insult to asexuals is like using heterosexuality to insult a straight person, you sound stupid
If at one point you believed to be asexual but later discovered you weren’t that’s okay, but using that experience to invalidate others isn’t
Spitefully sending nsfw to people who identify as ace, especially MINORS (and yes this has happened before) is disgusting. Seek help.
Gatekeeping isn’t a personality trait
Oppression isn’t a competition so quit acting as such
Did you ever have that moment when you found out there was a word for you? Maybe you grew up in a place where no one really talked about the gay sprectrum, or all you ever heard were slurs. Do you remember the time before you knew about the community? Before you could reach out and find others just like you? It's a comfort, like a nice, safe, warm hug to know that even if you're physically alone there are thousands of people out there on the planet who know exactly what you're feeling.
Now, did someone ever look at you, look at the people like you and call them wrong? Tell you that what you were feeling wasn't natural, that you were broken, that the right man or woman would be able to fix you? Did they try to make you feel like you weren't valid? Or that you were just seeking attention, or maybe that you were just doing this because you couldn't get any? But at least you had a safety net, you had a community you could easily reach out to for comfort.
Now imagine if that community was what had turned on you. If you had gone to the people proclaiming acceptance and safety, and they had told you you didn't belong, that you weren't welcome, and that light at the end of the tunnel, that glorious haven of safety that you were reaching for turned out to be an asshole with a flashlight ready to club you with it at first sight.
When you tell Asexuals that we're not part of the community. When you say we aren't valid because we don't match whatever requirement you've set to allow us into your community, that's what you're doing, and I can't tell you how much that hurts. We thought we could trust you, we thought you could be our friends, our family, and then you turned around, and did to us what do many homophobes have done before.
The next time you want to tell Asexuals we aren't part of the community, that there's something wrong with us, try and remember how it felt when society did the same to you.
It’s just neat to me that Psychology Today wrote this article about Asexuality since I myself am a AroAce Psych Major~
stop drawing human blathers as a twink we all know he looks like this
“but why do we need to teach or mention asexuality in health class”
well my guy, maybe so asexual teens dont think something’s wrong w them ???
and also, because a scary high amount of asexual teens force themselves into awful sexual situations and abusive relationships because they think there is something wrong with them and maybe we could make it so they didn’t do that
Reblogging this because it’s so damn important.
It’s just as important for non-asexuals to understand that lack of sexual attraction is real and valid.
YOU CAN DIVE
judy from ACNH~
have a Redd giving you fake art on your tl
(He’s transparent!)
ive finished doing everything i want on my island so i spend my time making stupid videos like this
My animal crossing fan theory is that Redd never sells you genuine art. He sells you very good fakes and absolutely horrific fakes and profits immensely from them. That's why every town gets a copy of Starry Night, its not because it's a video game, it's because Redd's got this tomfoolery to a science:
He sells you the very bad obvious fakes and the great fakes, because your ass showing up at the museum with garbage paintings brings Blathers' expectations down so low, the moment he gets a piece where the mona lisa doesn't have a clown nose he goes "Oh thank fuck a real painting" and hangs it up without a second thought
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think this is the case and also explains how you rebuy them each game/how there are multiples in the game
I Am Not Voldemort: An Essay on Love and Amatonormativity
Content Advisory: Discussions of and references to love, amatonormativity, ableism, neurodiversity, autism, familial abuse and partner abuse.
This June, I saw an increasing number of positivity and support posts for the aromantic and a-spec communities discussing the amatonormativity of “everyone falls in love”. I agree: the idea that romantic love is something everyone experiences, and is therefore a marker of human worth, needs deconstruction.
Unfortunately, a majority of these posts are replacing the shackles of amatonormativity with restrictive lines like “everyone loves, just not always romantically”, referencing the importance of loving friends, QPPs, family members and pets. Sometimes it moves away from people to encompass love for hobbies, experiences, occupations and ourselves. The what and how tends to vary from post to post, but the idea that we do and must love someone or something, and this love redeems us as human and renders us undeserving of hatred, is being pushed to the point where I don’t feel safe or welcome in my own aromantic community. Even in the posts meant to be challenging the more obvious amatonormativity, it is presumed that aros must, in some way, love.
I’ve spent weeks watching my a-spec and aro communities throw neurodiverse and survivor aros under the bus in order to do what the aromantic community oft accuses alloromantic aces of doing: using their ability to love as a defence of their humanity. Because I love, they say, I also don’t deserve to be a target of hatred, aggression and abuse.
But what if I don’t love?
What if love itself has been the mechanism of the hatred and violence I have endured?
Why am I, an aro, neurodiverse survivor of abuse and bullying, still acceptable collateral damage?
Keep reading: WordPress | Patreon
For those who prefer a shorter summary of my point, with fewer explanations of my history and more bitterness:
Miss me with this idea that I need to love anyone or anything in order to be deserving of being accepted by alloromantics as an aromantic. I am beyond tired of the aro community’s hypocrisy in its continued insistence on rebranding amatonormative concepts and considering it positivity or support.
Every time I see people talk about this, they reframe the argument as though it’s somehow worth keeping. Not all aros love QPRs? Well, we love our friends! Not all aros love their friends or even have friends? Well, we love our pets! Not all aros love their pets or even have pets? Well, we love our hobbies! Not all aros love their hobbies or even have hobbies? Well, we love ourselves … and down, down, down the rabbit hole we go where people insist that love in some way is what makes us human.
This completely disregards those of us who have been hurt by love, don’t love or don’t wish “love” applied to us.
It is not revolutionary to say “aros love their friends and family, so we can still love!” in response to antagonism. It is not revolutionary to say “aros love their pets, so we can still love!” in response to antagonism. It is not revolutionary to say “aros love their hobbies, so we can still love!” in response to antagonism.
Each time, in order to be acceptably human to a community that’s supposed to know what it feels like to be dehumanised on account of a lack of love, I am required to use a word I am not sure I wish to apply to myself.
Each time, when I resist your limitations on my humanity, I am reminded of the ableism this community refuses to acknowledge. I am reminded that this community is happier to reframe and promote amatonormative rhetoric than it is to include, protect and defend neurodiverse and survivor aromantics who don’t feel or can’t perform whatever it is Western society deems “love”.
Can we, this Pride Month, please keep in mind that love should be no requirement for aromantic pride, dignity and worth?
Some aros love and seek to celebrate their love at this time as a means of affirming their aromantic spectrum identity, and that’s okay.
But we must ensure that we are not presenting even non-romantic love–friendship, love of queerplatonic partners, love of family, love of anything–as a required or presumed alternative for alloromanticism and alloromantic attraction. We must ensure that we are not presenting non-romantic love as a thing always synonymous with aromantic identity.
Lovelessness, too, is a thing in which aros can take pride this June.
Remember to include, respect, nurture, shelter and celebrate our loveless aros during Pride.
I find it really frustrating sometimes that you can speculate about a long-dead person’s sexuality like, “Maybe they were gay” or “Maybe they were bi” and people will be like “Huh yeah I guess they could’ve been” but the second you say “Maybe they were ace” they’re like
hoW D A R EYOU
HE JUST!!!! HAD HIGH STANDARDS!!!!!!
This New Yorker article calls T.S. Eliot’s sex life “a sad and desolate place.” The author declares, “Eliot was…almost certainly a frustrated virgin” when he married his first wife (who he proceeded to sleep a room away from, by the way). The same article explains that Eliot was “in love with” his next partner…and never had sex with her. He was also never sexual with his THIRD partner. The article concludes that T.S. Elliot was SURELY not sex-averse (GOOD HEAVENS NO!) but rather wrote sex as bad because “For Eliot, bad sex was the symptom of a failure of civilization, and it is a fallacy to conclude that, because sex in his poems is disgusting, Eliot was disgusted by sex.”
That’s genuinely how people talk about T.S. Eliot. We all make fun of articles that say things like, “This female author divorced her husband and lived with her CLOSE FEMALE FRIEND for the rest of her life.” But for some reason when I say, “As a sex-repulsed asexual person I relate to a lot of T.S. Eliot’s poetry because so many of his works are caught between an almost hopeless desire for affection and a terrified disgust for sex,“ that’s considered UNINTELLECTUAL. Obviously I’m grossly misinterpreting the TRUE BRILLIANCE of T.S. Eliot’s poetry. When I look up T.S. Eliot’s love life and say, “Maybe T.S. Eliot was like me,” that’s shoved away with “NO! HE COULDN’T POSSIBLY BE LIKE YOU! HE WAS JUST P I C K Y!!!”
Just…would people PLEASE stop rushing to dead people’s “defense” just because I “accused” them of DARING to POSSIBLY be asexual????
Currently thinking about all the aro and ace/aroace people who existed in past history and how they just existed, not knowing, not understanding, and now we have words for who we are and I wish I could just tell them that there are a lot of us and what we call ourselves and thank them for living their truth, and for the ones who felt that they couldn't, that it was okay and that they weren't at fault, and that we love and appreciate them and have not forgotten their existence and that they were important and whole as they were.
Happy pride month!
You can find this design on my redbubble
Let’s talk about the fabulous aromantics out there
