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
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
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
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”
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.
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”
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”
