as a rule, once a shitpost reaches more than ~50k notes, you can expect some degree of negative pushback. this is true literally no matter how innocuous the post or how carefully the views within are expressed. someone, somewhere, will find it in themselves to get upset about what you wrote and boy will they let you know.
part of existing on this site and maintaining any degree of sanity is recognizing this, and developing an instinct for when the criticism is valid & It Is Time To Change and Grow™, versus when the criticism is complete bullshit that you shouldn’t begin to engage with.
this post has reached the negative pushback phase in honestly record time, which i think maybe says something about the way that ace issues are treated in this particular moment in history. engaging with trolls is obviously just a waste of typing, but for the benefit of anyone out there truly willing to change and grow:
1. i am aware that love at first sight is just a storytelling device, but it’s a heightened expression of a thing that does observably happen in real life. people develop romantic and/or sexual interest in each other pretty quickly all the time.
2. i’m almost 32, and i have reached the realization of being ace after over a decade of hating myself for not having sexual interest in people at the “normal” speed and in the “normal” way. i didn’t randomly watch the first half of Frozen and decide, “oh, this must be the norm and i don’t match up to it, boo hoo.”
my feelings have come about from my lived experiences of consistently feeling like i’m doing something wrong every time someone expresses interest in sleeping with me on the first or second or third (or fourth or fifth or sixth) date and my only reaction is panic. oh shit, do i tell them no and risk a fight, or do i go along with it and try to pretend i’m okay with it.
3. i am not pretending to be ace for the attention. besides other ace people, the attention you get for being ace is pretty much uniformally bad. even people in my life who i love and trust the most have said hurtful things, because our culture has a really really hard time with the concept.
(our culture that does things like glorify instant romantic/sexual attraction, hmm)
i’m public about being ace because for over a decade, i didn’t have any words for how i experienced attraction and desire that were even neutral. the world told me i was weird and i believed it. it really sucked. i don’t want anyone else to have to go through that.
4. this post doesn’t “prove that demisexuality doesn’t exist.” for one thing, you can’t prove a negative.
5. i think that for anyone leaping up and going, “aha! proof that people who claim to be demisexual are just making it up because they got the wrong idea from cinema!” you should take a good hard look at why it is so very important to you to “disprove” an identity you don’t have, which doesn’t harm you in any way.
i am telling you i exist. you are telling me i don’t. one of us is right, dude.
6. yes, i still stand by “don’t kiss a republican.” it’s 2019. they voted for the people who put immigrant kids in cages. no kisses.
gummygunk
kianamaiart
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
stormborns
