the death of the asexual community
ok, the title’s a bit dramatic, but you gotta do what you gotta do to make people stop scrolling.
i’m going to talk about the way asexuality has been watered down and redefined by non-asexuals online, especially on tumblr, and why that happened.
up until 2015 or 2016 tumblr was very accepting of ace people and considered us queer. a lot of people who were ID’ing as ace were pretty young, just like everyone else on tumblr. then at some point aphobia became trendy, and asexuals were harassed and belittled and made the laughing stock of tumblr queer circles. we had to defend our sexuality to the death, and while some quietly went back into the closet, most of us went “no, fuck you, i’m gonna be asexual as fuck!” and incorporated our sexuality into everything out of spite, much like other queer people do.
inevitably, some of those loud-and-proud aces realized as they got older that maybe they weren’t asexual. which is normal– everyone knows sometimes you have to try on different labels to find one that fits. the problem was that they had formed their entire online presence around being ace, and if they were to come out and say “actually, i’m a lesbian” aphobes would have a field day using them as “proof” that asexuals are just confused, too young, have internalized homophobia, etc.
so they kept the asexual label, but shed its meaning. “sex-favorable ace” began popping up in people’s bios, and posts about asexuals who experience sexual attraction began making the rounds. i don’t blame these people for not wanting to admit they were wrong and giving aphobes ammo. but the problem with twisting a label to make it fit yourself is that it no longer fits the people it was supposed to.
asexuality used to mean “people who don’t experience sexual attraction and don’t like sex”, but now it apparently means “people who don’t experience sexual attraction and people who do experience sexual attraction and people who don’t like sex and people who do like sex”.
this made ace people such as myself very uncomfortable. many of us have no problem with allos talking about sex in their own circles but now they were doing it in ours too, whereas before it was plain unacceptable to bombard the ace tag with posts about sex and sexual attraction.
and if you think allos who ID as ace aren’t hurting anyone, think again! last year i was thrilled to meet an ace guy my age (asexual men are hard to find). we had a few movie dates and i thought things were going well until he made a move on me. i freaked out and he got confused, saying “but most ace people enjoy sex to some degree, i know i do”. now, he’s a good guy, so he didn’t pressure me into sex, but can you imagine how that might’ve turned out?
not to mention all the effort we put into convincing people that we aren’t broken for not liking sex, down the drain. our goal was to have therapists and doctors believe us when we say we’re asexual and thus don’t have a sex drive, but now, it’s “even asexuals have a sex drive, there must be something wrong with you!”
again, i don’t blame the people who realized they weren’t ace. i blame the aphobic bigots who made the queer community so unwelcoming and hostile to ace people that they had no choice but to dig their heels in, even when they realized they weren’t actually asexual.
