I'd like aspec phrases to stop being used against us. Most, if not all, of them have been turned on their head either by our own community or by allos to mean something completely different and generally harmful to us in some way.
"Aros can still date and aces can still have sex" - Objectively true, a lot of us do and that's perfectly okay. It doesn't make them less aspec. But so many people have taken that phrase and begun using it to pressure averse, repulsed, and non-partnering aspecs into doing those things. Not to mention fandom's habit of using it to erase canonical averse aspec characters.
"Aros write the best romance and aces write the best smut" - I do wish this one was phrased better, as it's been taken to mean that all aspecs write romance and/or smut and they're all very good at it. This is not true. I will say that the best romance and smut were written by aspecs because it's fucking funny and I pissed off a group of allos by saying that before.
"Aromanticism and Asexuality are spectrums" - Also objectively true, but similar to the first point, this has gone from a phrase meant to validate our community to a phrase used primarily to ignore or dismiss the averse and repulsed side.
"Aromantics and Asexuals are not the same" - They are not, and this is a very important distinction to make! People conflating the two is ignorant and obnoxious as it dismisses alloaces, aroallos, and non-SAM aspecs. I have, however, seen people become volatile towards aroaces as a result of this.
"Aromantics experience a lack of romantic attraction and Asexuals experience a lack of sexual attraction" - Absolutely true, and the entire definition of our communities, but I'm tired of people seemingly thinking "lack of" means "absolutely no" and invalidating gray aspecs. This is the other end of the "aspec is a spectrum" sword.
"Aspecs are still capable of love" - This one initially started out because people had been assuming a lack of romantic or sexual desire meant we could not ever form friendships or family dynamics, which is not true at all. However, it became a phrase commonly used to attempt to justify our existence to allos, and it is more often than not used in a way that invalidates and alienates aplatonic, afamilial, and annattractional aspecs.
This isn't to say that the initial intent behind these phrases are bad, and at the end of the day, anything we say can and will be used against us in some way. I'm personally very fond of "Aspecs can do whatever the fuck they want forever".
Really the best solution would be for everyone as a whole to stop trying to assume aspecs are all one or the other. They hear "not all aspecs are repulsed" and take that to mean we're all favorable. They hear "not all aspecs are favorable" and take that to mean we're all repulsed.
Admittedly, quite a bit of this erasure and whatnot does come from within our own community, and that's frustrating.
That being said, it is hilarious to use any of these phrase the wag they're actually meant to be used. That character had a crush on someone? Bam. Arospike. I'm not even joking, it pisses off allos so much. Ask me how I know.
