I’ve been on this website a pretty long time - since 2012 - and in the non-straight side of it for that whole time, so I’d like to talk about a bit of recent history, both of the site and from my point of view.
When I started, I didn’t yet identify as asexual or aromantic spectrum. I hadn’t really heard of them before. But in the first few years I was on Tumblr, there were so many ace and aro people, proud, talking about their experiences, sharing jokes and puns, inventing terms for their experiences (squish, zucchini, WTFromantic, etcetera, etcetera). It was wonderful. I learned that I wasn’t alone and what I was feeling wasn’t freakishly unique. I started identifying as ace and arospec. I started an ace/aro humor blog, which got very popular.
Then exclusionists suddenly started appearing. They attacked everyone with a wiff of non-alloness and attacked anyone who defended them. They threw around accusations of homophobia, pedophilia, racism, anything they could think of. There was massive discourse. Everyone was in turmoil.
Ace/aro people stopped talking about their experiences because they knew they would be jumped on. We stopped using our words because we knew they would be used against us. We shut down our blogs to desperately try to escape the hate, anonymous and personal. I shut down my humor blog which had given so many people innocent laughter. People took their identities out of their descriptions - including me - because we knew they would be quoted and used as weapons in debate.
Then, the exclusionists died down.
I want to make this very clear. You don’t see less exclusionist debate now because the exclusionists died off. You see it because the ace and aro people did - or at least pretended to. We stopped being proud, and laughing, and using our words. They’re not attacking us anymore because we’re in hiding. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone happily talking about their squish or their zucchini. (And I bet you’re thinking, right now, how silly those words are, aren’t you? That’s what they’ve done. They’ve taken our playfulness and used it to belittle and demean us.)
Exclusionists have moved on to the “queer is a slur” battle because they already won this one. They already beat ace and aro people into submission and now they’re moving on to queer people.
I’ve seen the rise and fall of ace and aro people on Tumblr. This is not our rise. It is our fall.
But we don’t have to accept that. Be proud again. Start laughing again. Start your blogs back up. I’ll start mine. Remember that you can use words like squish, and zucchini, and quoiromantic, and they don’t need to make you cringe. If it’s been so long since we were open that you don’t know those words, find one of the blogs that remains and learn about your community. Stand again with the other marginalized people who defended us during the main force of the battle, the trans people, the bi people, the queer people. To those people, please, help us. We’re scared. But pride is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And we deserve to find it again.
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