why āallosexual privilegeā isnt real and why everyone (ace or not) is punished for their sexual (or nonsexual) expression because of the fact that sexual expression is used to justify violence for other existing power structures and because sexual expression itself is not an arbiter of privilege
I think the thing so many aces miss in the conversation about the way society views sex is that yes, youāre 100% right in the fact that we live in a highly sexual society! You cant watch a TV show these days without being blindsided with sex scenes that you (or anyone else) never asked for.
But that doesnt mean that everyone who isnt asexual benefits from these things either. The assumption that there is some sort of privilege with being non-ace because of the amount of sexual content we are exposed to all the time is just a misinterpretation of reality.
Because really the only people whose sex is socially acceptable is straight white cis men. Just because we all see sex everywhere doesnt mean that all people are materially or socially rewarded for having sex. Whether or not the type/frequency someone has sex is entirely based upon other factors, almost always reliant upon other existing oppressions like racism, sexism, transphobia, etc.
Being averse to the sex we are shown frequently in advertisements, movies, and other forms of media is not a product of being ace. Itās a product of being something other than a cishet, white, able-bodied, upper-middle class man. Having sex, wanting sex, seeking out sex, and having sexual feelings are not things people in general are rewarded for. They are things oppressors are rewarded for as an expression of dominance and freedom over the oppressed.
Ask yourself this: when I think about who experiences societal benefits for having/wanting/seeking out sex, am I thinking about the general population or only a specific subset of people? Does every individual reap some sort of benefit from being non-asexual, or is it actually entirely dependent on other factors?
Are black men rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or are they demonized as predators that need to be stopped to protect white womens virtue and often punished for sexual behavior they didnt even engage in?
Are trans women rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or are they similarly seen as predators out to ātrickā cis men into sleeping with them, or even reduced entirely down to a sexual fantasy (āautogynephiliaā) instead of understood as actual human beings who might just have human desires?
Are gay men rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or are they at best mocked and emasculated for being āeffeminateā and at worst sent to conversion therapy or killed to curb their sexual desires?
Are disabled people rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or do disabled people actually experience some of the highest rates of forced sterilization, alongside immigrants and native peoples, to take away their reproductive rights and take away their sexual agency, or turned into a fetish for an able-bodied person to get off on?
Are bi women rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or are they actually dehumanized, subject to the highest rates of IPV in the LGBT community because of their perceived hypersexual nature, and literally seen as sex toys incapable of having boundaries by straight couples looking for a ~freaky~ night?
What about all LGBT people in conversion therapy, is them wanting to fuck other people of the same gender helping them or is the entire program designed to traumatize them out of that desire?
Are black women rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or are they too highly sexualized and dehumanized, viewed as hypersexual and mannish, painted as āwelfare queensā trying to ātrapā a man into 18 years child support?
What about all women in general? Are women rewarded for having/wanting/seeking out sex, or are they literally told from the age of twelve that having sex is like being a piece of gum that has been chewed, or a flower that has been crushed, or a piece of tape stuck to skin that will lose its adhesive, or that sexually active women are sluts and that they are āaskingā for abuse, or that their unwanted pregnancies are āpunishmentā for sexual promiscuity and they deserve to be saddled with a child they cannot afford, do not want, are unable to care for, etc in an attempt to stop them from behaving in that behavior?
Who actually experiences any sort of benefit for being a sexual person? Is it anyone who experiences sexual attraction, or only people with other specific privileges who are allowed to express their sexual desires without punishment? And if having sexual feelings/desires/attractions actually doesnāt automatically grant somebody more privileges in society, if it is something dependent on other factors and something that is actually used to punish marginalized people, then how can anyone claim that having those sexual feelings is a privilege? Does that even make sense? Does it even make sense to divide society into two classes of people and claim that the one that experiences no actual benefit by virtue of their sexual attraction alone has privilege over the other? Does that seem like a useful line to draw in terms of privilege considering whether or not someone is punished or rewarded for their sexual behavior has nothing to do with the act of engaging in that behavior and everything to do with who it is engaging in that behavior?
Wouldnt it follow that the sex we are all exposed to is not a result of sexual attraction being a unuversslly rewarded experience or behavior, but actually a symptom of already existing oppressive structures that allow those who are not punished for their sexual attractions, the cishet abelbodied wealthy white men, to be in charge of the media? Wouldnt it follow that we see all that sex not because society as a whole is enjoying and benefitting from it, but because the sex is put there specifically by the people who enjoy and benefit from it because they are otherwise privileged?
And none of that is to say somebody cannot be punished for not experiencing sexual attractions in a similar manner to how somebody can be punished for their sexual attractions. Any expression of sexuality (or lackthereof) that goes against the desires of the oppressor will be punished. That includes women who dont want to have sex with their boyfriends, men whose lack of sexual desires makes them a target with their peers because of their inability to fulfill their dominsnt role as a man, trans women who refuse to be seen as sex objects for straight men to use and abuse, lesbians who do not want to sleep with men, bi women who do not want to be in threesomes with random couples, etc.
Any expression of sexuality can be used as an excuse to justify violence, but it isnt the expression of sexuality that incites that violence; it is who is engaging in that expression of sexuality is allowed or not allowed to based on existing privileges. Sex, and lackthereof, has always been a weapon for justifying and enacting violence against oppressed peoples, not the driving cause behind being oppressed or privileged.