Tbh I’m kinda sad that due to sheer amount of aphobia on this hellsite, most posts about asexuality/aromaticism are either discourse or just very “basic” positivity posts. We’re constantly forced to defend ourselves and assure each other. And even when we try to talk about something unrelated to the big ol’ discourse, some aphobic assholes still find a way to spew shit. Something as simple as “I relate to this character and I think they’re kinda ace/aro coded” turns into “Um, actually headcanoning this character as ace is super problematic because I think POC/autistic people/teenagers can’t be ace nor aro and headcanoning them as such is infantilizing/sexualizing/desexualizing, even if you’re actually a member of said demographic” or whatever.
So I don’t mean to discredit people defending aces/aros from aphobia or trying to bring positivity into community. Like, don’t get me wrong, I love seeing shitty aphobic “hot takes” debunked with actual facts and even something as simple as “Aces/aros are great and they deserve love and support” can honestly be validating.
I just wish there were more posts discussing things like amatonormativity and compulsory sexuality, navigating relationships (romantic or platonic) as an aro, ace or both, personal experiences (realizing your orientation, coming out, meeting other ace/aro people) - whether they are good or bad, ace/aro headcanons, actual represetation and lack thereof, song/show/book recommendations for sex/romance repulsed people and anyone who doesn’t enjoy media heavily involving these topics or is just tired of them…
Not to say that these topics aren’t already talked about. I just wish I saw them talked about more (I do plan on discussing most of these myself and already have done so for some of them, but writing is not the same as reading someone elses post).
P.S. Aphobes don’t fucking interact with this post. This is an intra community commentary, made by an aroace person for other aces and/or aros (obviously allo people who aren’t aphobes are OK to interact/offer their insight, but try not to derail).
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to say I definitely approve of this message. There is something important to say about always defending ourselves and wading hip deep in discourse, and that is if we only ever defend ourselves without stating our own claims, we let those trying to silence us define our identity. Remember that the commonly accepted definition of asexuality by those of us who are asexual is, “A person who does not experience sexual attraction”. Arguments against identifying as asexual constantly push that definition to places where it doesn’t belong, and fighting their rhetoric makes us play on their courts by their rules instead of establishing who we are and how we relate on our own terms.
I’ve made a few posts about things like our experiences, our erasure, and other random relatable statements, but it’s always worth sharing more. For most of my life, I felt relatively alone in my relationship with my sexuality, but finding a language to express myself, finding people with similar experiences, and seeing what the community has to offer has definitely brightened my life. We should define ourselves by our experiences that bind us together, not by what other people want to assert is problematic about our very existence.
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here with another history lesson again. I do understand that if your exposure to a word or expression is secondhand, you may not understand the original context in which the word was conceived, and that’s understandable. That said, the history of the word is part of the ongoing struggles the Asexual community has had with a lot of things, and stating something like this both ignores that original context and puts a wedge between two groups that tend to have similar experiences stemming from their relationship to sexual attraction.
This post is a pretty solid base of knowledge related to the history of the word “allosexual”. A very brief version of this is that Aces needed a word to use to describe people who were not under the umbrella of asexuality (this perspective is important because both demi- and grey- were aligned with asexuality). After some deliberation, allosexual was the word that won out and was coined by a person that goes by Metapianycist. If you want further information on the origins of and drive behind the utilization of allosexual as a term, feel free to check out Metapianycist’s posts on the subject. There’s a lot that went on around the term, but the essence of it that you’ll see reading through that is the original intent was to create a common language to describe those that are not asexual. It’s a delineation in language that gives us the power to more accurately speak about other groups of people.
For a more personal note, I’m sure if you ask most people, how they experience attraction has a pretty substantial effect on their perception of themselves and idea of how they should present, or in more common terms, peoples’ sexual orientation can have an impact on their identity. If you look at the degree of attraction on a large scale without regards to gender or anything else, just that one scale of how often you’re attracted to others, when you move into grey- or demi- space, their common experiences suddenly get a lot closer to the experiences of other types of asexuals. I imagine that has a lot to do with the general expectation in society for people to feel a specific type of love; when you don’t feel that way, it suddenly challenges a lot of ideals society has and puts you in a space where others will question if you as though you’re broken or flawed. There’s a lot that goes into these thoughts, but I’m not here to write a dissertation; hopefully the history brief on allosexual proves insightful.
God I’m so fucking Tired of seeing ace Hot Takes by the tumblr “woke” community !!!!!
Shut the fuck up! I don’t give a fuck if you don’t think ace/aro people belong in the community ! It’s not your business! Before any of you try to get me with the “oh you’re just a pathetic ace” argument - I am not ace OR aro !! I just have human respect! Its pride month can you all leave them the fuck ALONE THANK YOU
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to say, thank you.
Also to say you’re a brave soul for responding to the person that’s responded to the post about 10 times. I’m not sure what their damage is, but they clearly have a chip on their shoulder and have determined that they’re here to hate my people. I’d suggest only interacting with them as far as you deem necessary as trying to field arguments to change their mind will likely end as a fruitless endeavor. I do appreciate that you took the time to respond though.
If you’ve got an Ace up your sleeve and you somehow end up being the makeshift Relationship Help Squad for your crew of friends, please raise your hand.
My working theory is that the lack of attraction or the difficulty of thinking of relationships from the perspective of somebody that’s attracted to somebody else ends up causing Aces to give a different type of advice that’s geared towards making stronger interpersonal relationships rather than trying to act on or cater to that attraction, which can lead to more commitment in a relationship.
there is so much strawmaning of what excluding cishets actually entails so i thought i would lay it out nicely
lgbt community - focuses on lesbophobia / homophobia / biphobia / transphobia / and still technically transphobia but kind of separate issues nonbinary people face ie - being murdered / beaten / publicly harassed / raped, unemployment, homelessness, lack of medical resources and knowledge and the growing movement to deny us healthcare (esp trans ppl), transition resources, marriage equality, adoption, conversion therapy, bathrooms, support groups, defeating legislation and helping older lgbt people feel and be confident and empowered after giving us an amazing legacy
ace / aro community : focuses on issues facing ace / aro people ie - rape culture, the way gender roles impact how / when people are ‘supposed to have sex’, massive issues surrounding consent, supporting ace / aro people in finding themselves and setting appropriate boundaries w people in their lives
lgbt + ace/aro communities as allies - supporting each other on all of these issues, potentially trying to combine education resources bc a lot of people who are ‘looking for themselves’ could be lgbt or ace/aro or both !
the reason the distinction is important is because lgbt issues are pretty much fundamentally separate from ace/aro issues. we wanna fuck / date safely and withot repercussion, ace/aro people want to be able to not fuck / not date without repercussion. trans people just want to fucking live and love and not be shat on at every turn
both same gender attracted people and trans people deviate heavily from gender roles and what gender is supposed to mean in a romantic context, and that is why we are often mistaken from each other and also are impacted by similar legislation - which is why we came together not because ‘we’re different’ or we subvert ‘social norms’ (every marginalised group does this???) and importantly, being ace/aro isn’t about gender in the same way and thus they aren’t impacted by any laws that hurt/kill lgbt people
inclusionism should be about actions, about actively making these spaces and resources and organisations accessible and safe for people who are additionally marginalised by misogyny, ableism, racism, classism, ageism, ect. absolutely no other group that is marginalised is asking to be added (or forcibly adding themselves) to the acronym, all they ask is we make our movement accessible to them and allow them space to connect with their (marginalised group) lgbt siblings without the presence of their oppressors
why shouldn’t we ally ourselves with ace/aro people instead? why should they be apart of our community when no other groups asks for the same treatment, even though you could definitely argue every oppressed group goes against the ‘typical cishetornormative narrative’
there are frankly much healthier, functional, and impactful ways to make the lgbt community ‘inclusive’ than tacking another letter on the name
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace leader here with another history lesson it seems, though before that let’s punch some holes in these statements for a start I get to the actual history I guess. For starters, this post treats the LGBT community as a single monolithic entity that has defined goals and objectives; this is very much not the case. Social movements are a complicated beast and in this case you have a tremendous amount of moving parts, both historically and currently, with large organizations striving for very specific goals under the umbrella of “LGBT Organization” and with individuals working at local venues to help support the oppressed. There’s no singular objective; there may be people or organizations fighting against the specific things cited, but it’s not a consensus of the entire community. In addition, there are people that represent the LGBT community as individuals or organizations that recognize and work against the things listed that ace and aro folks fight against, like The Trevor Project.
While that should aptly disassemble most of these statements, I’m here to share a little knowledge, so if you care to investigate past this “Read More”, we can take a look at some of the history of the community and how that refutes some of the assertions made here...
Let’s start with the Gay Liberation movement that ran from about 1969 to 1974, shall we? If we take a look, it cites the use of the word “gay” as “a new unapologetic defiance-as an antonym for straight (’respectable sexual behavior’)”. Now, while this may have been the case, the Gay Community was not always an inclusive bunch of people. Susan Stryker’s book on Transgender History covers the fact that trans people were initially excluded from the forming community in the 70′s and 80′s despite being active in protests and demonstrations, so this cohesive community that’s always had a unifying purpose has literally never existed. If you want to run back to good ol’ Stonewall, a large number of organizations came out of the riots but were almost routinely dissolved because they couldn’t agree on what to fight, how to fight it, or even who they wanted to represent, with lesbians and gay guys arguing to an impasse.
Furthermore, the note that the umbrella was gay first is important; LGBT replaced “gay” as a term for the community because gay did not accurately represent what the community stood for. This can be found on the history of LGBT as a term. Also if you look under the variants section, you can see that the acronym has been adopted differently based on a number of things like desire to make the acronym more inclusive or regional factors such as culture. The important note here is that the original post notes that the acronym shouldn’t have to change, and that’s right. But the reason it doesn’t have to change is because the title does not matter; having a unifying banner to raise, a symbol people recognize when they see or hear it, is far more important than having a descriptive name.
That’s a lot of information, and I didn’t really say much of anything, so congratulations on the extra knowledge you’ve gained but can’t use I guess. Just kidding, the initial post asserts a lot of things, like specific things the LGBT community is supposedly fighting for versus what Aces/Aros are fighting for, that Asexuals want to tag an extra letter onto the acronym of truth, and that the issues faced by the LGBT community are fundamentally different from what Aces/Aros face. All of these arguments miss the mark in various ways. While I’ve refuted the goals of the communities already, I would like to explicitly refute the note about the issues the communities face. The problems the LGBT community and Aces face are deeply rooted in heteronormativity, or more specifically, the roles associated with assigned gender when viewing the world through a heteronormative lens. The problem with this view is that it assigns a lot of extra baggage to the idea of “male” and “female” including, but not limited to, a host of sexual behaviors. The moment you don’t subscribe to those behaviors, you suddenly don’t quite fit that very specific and narrow male/female dichotomy, and people will let you know when you’re subverting those roles whether it’s with good intentions or ill. That’s the common factor between all of these things. You may argue that it’s too broad a thread since it can hurt beyond a person’s sexuality or gender identity, and that’s true, but the world is rarely perfect or clean and I sincerely doubt you’ll find a perfect thread that only ties groups together based on sexuality because so much of this stuff informs or impacts other parts of each person.
Now on the point of adding an extra letter to the acronym, I’m not sure who wants to do that, but it’s not me. I imagine some Aces in some places would like to see better representation, and that’s historically been done like when the acronym was solidified into LGBT from GLBT to consciously put lesbians in front of gays so they were more visible! It has been done, it could be done, but at the end of the day, the unity matters more than the name we all unify under.
The rhetoric proposed by the original post is a revisionist history, as Aces have been in and helping the community. The original post is recycling arguments that have been used against other oppressed groups in the past, it makes a mockery of community by reducing it to fighting hate and quantifying it based on violence committed against the community instead of citing the forward progress the community has and continues to strive towards, it treats Aces as having petty desires when, more often than not, we’re just trying to be recognized by a community many of us have helped cultivate and grow. And above all, the initial claim is that there would be some laying out of “what excluding cishets actually means”, except there wasn’t a defined note of any of this; just a list of grievances against Aces if I had to determine anything from the statements made. I mean, we can talk about how the common definition of “cishet” generally implies being both cisgender and heterosexual, which immediately excludes people under the umbrella of asexuality, so the fact this term was used with ace/aro people specifically makes the tone of the post feel like “I don’t want these people in my community” before even getting started. If that’s your opinion, it’s okay to have that opinion, but spouting stuff to make your opinion feel legitimate while disregarding historical context (or everything really) is disingenuous at best and, more often than not, damaging to everybody involved.
Anyways, there was some history, some breakdowns of the arguments, and hopefully some new knowledge. Really what’s important to understand here is that the community is large and has a rich history beyond the 1980′s when the acronym was more or less solidified. It’s all important, and we should do our best to respect it. This has been The One and Only Ace Leader.
I don't think you're wrong in what you're doing. Infact, I think it's commendable that you seem to take big portions of time of your day to write things. I'll be real though... facing discourse on Tumblr helps very little. Now I'm not saying that you should stop! Certainly not. But you have to consider the factor that your general response to 'derail' commentary on a social media platform simply do not work. All you do is confuse more readers. You'll also slowly become the people you go against.
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to answer a question I guess. To break this whole statement down, let’s look at the core points:
-Facing discourse on Tumblr helps very little
-General response to ‘derail’ commentary on a social media platform simply do not work; only confuse more readers
-Slowly become the people you fight
-Closes asking me to evaluate if my approach is healthy or beneficial to myself and those reading my material
Now, you may ask yourself why I broke all this out of the ask and it’s because I want to highlight the core message of these statements. While there were affirmative statements, they did not pose constructive arguments which is why I have excluded them. While the intent of the ask may have been sincere, the overall message is simply “stop” since the only statements on my actual methods were all various degrees of negative, so let’s learn a few things about The One and Only, shall we?
Let’s start from the very bottom of things: is this healthy or beneficial for myself and those that read my blogging material? We’ll start off with my health and benefits I guess. For the health part of it, engaging in discourse for me is a way that I spend my free time learning and exercising my writing. It’s a form of release for me while also forcing me to strengthen my own knowledge. I’d say that outweighs whatever stress I may feel while researching for some of my answers. To answer the beneficial part of the question, that’s a resounding yes because I spend my time learning the history of a community I would like to support and I get to apply the knowledge I’ve compiled over the course of my life. Knowledge is a powerful thing; utilizing it keeps my mind sharp.
Is it healthy or beneficial for others? Well that’s up to the individual. If your aim is to attack Aces and you to seek out my content and engage strictly with the intent to win some internet points or whatever, you’re actually playing directly into my trap; by wasting your time engaging with me, I have proverbially won this match. That’s not a healthy thing to do, but it is not my choice to take those kinds of actions. If you are interested in exploring the history of the community and engage in my content in earnest, there is much to learn and I look forward to learning from you. This seems very much to me like a mutually beneficial and healthy form of relationship; we may not agree, but by learning to interact with respect, we shall hopefully grow to become better people with a much richer pool of knowledge between us. As for the rest that passively read my material, as long as you’re willfully learning and enjoying the flourish of my rhetoric, I’d imagine it’s beneficial and healthy in that case.
There are, of course, nuances to everything I just mentioned, but at a broad pass, it’s probably not overwhelmingly harmful, especially considering I try to talk about my experiences and shared experiences among Aces to help out others that may be feeling alone. That said, let’s move onto the other points.
I don’t particularly like statements that are made without supporting evidence, but I do also understand the limited space you get in an ask, so I’ll respond to the individual points with the assumption they were made in good faith:
-Facing discourse on Tumblr helps very little
This point strictly depends on what you’re trying to define as my objective. My objective is to derail conversations and rhetoric that attacks Aces specifically on Tumblr. With that in mind, this statement has no merit, as discourse on Tumblr is generally rife with rhetoric and conversations designed to attack Aces. If you’re under the assumption that my objective is actual activism, then I most certainly agree that hanging out on the playground doesn’t do anything to rid the school of bullies, so to speak. That said, I’m not quite ready for that kind of a step yet; I have much to learn and a long ways to go to get my own personal life to a comfortable spot.
-General response to ‘derail’ commentary on a social media platform simply do not work; only confuse more readers
In all fairness, confusing specific readers is almost literally my point. Now, this assertion that derailing commentary on a social media platform does not work doesn’t really seem too well founded in reality. The problem is that social media is a powerful tool, and it’s extremely difficult to objectively measure the impact actions made on it can have. Certainly there will be some readers that walk away confused and unsure of what to think, but there are also readers out there that will find my commentary logical and identify with my statements, logical but disagree with my statements, illogical but agree with my sentiments, illogical but hate my sentiments, and many other senses I imagine. Also, derailing commentary is a way that a lot of politicians avert attention away from themselves when they take less than savory actions, and social media is a powerful tool for executing just that. It can and has been effective to certain ends, and I’m sure studying the history, actions, and dispositions toward the current President of the United States can prove that.
-Slowly become the people you fight
The only way to properly contextualize this statement is if you want to make assumptions about the targets of my posts, and the thing is that I don’t target any specific type of people. The key thing you’re missing is that I’m arguing against statements; people can hold whatever opinions they have, but when they write them down and share them on this platform, I can respond to that. My sincere hope is that the people that end up on the receiving end of my commentary are people that may not have diverse experiences and a nuanced understanding of Asexuality or the history of the LGBT+ community, and that by reading my commentary, they’ll come to learn something and improve themselves. It’s the difference between dismissing your own ignorance and embracing it and accepting that you can and should learn more; as long as I embrace that fact, I cannot become the people that I fight.
Part of the strength in my posts comes from the fact that if somebody has entertained reading them, I have accomplished an objective. There’s information for those that want to learn more, flowery writing for those that enjoy flavor in their history lessons, there’s facts, there’s citations, there’s resources that others may not have known about before. On the opposite end of that, if somebody is looking only to attack Aces, them engaging with my content keeps their attention away from those of us who would rather not get sucked up into some malice fueled fight that nobody actually ever wins, and that’s okay by me.
Growing up, I could see myself in a relationship with anybody because my vision of relationships were always just like friends that hung out and lived life together, and it would be a decade before anybody would stop me and inform me that wasn’t typically what people thought of when it came to romance.
Since LGBT people have a problem considering us asexuals, aromantics and aspecs and so on, in the LGBT community, why not create our own community or just be an independent community
Because we shouldn’t have to.
We were here decades ago, fighting right alongside everyone else. We helped build this community from the ground up and we shouldn’t let a few close-minded bigots bully us out in the last decade or so.
And not all of the LGBT+ community is against us. There are a massive number who are in support of us, but they are commonly drowned out by the aphobes. We should help lift each other up so that our voices can be heard.
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader is here to make an addendum!
There’s a blog created for this survey somebody’s created about Intersex inclusion in the LGBT community called Intersex Survey, and they do poll for things like Aro/Ace Exclusionism among responses. I filled out an entry for the survey a week or few ago and took a screenshot of the exclusion questions at the time with just under 5,000 responses:
These results are somewhat consistent with last year’s results that indicated about 70% of people who took the survey were for general ace inclusion. While this is still a drop in the bucket of total LGBT representation and an extremely specific demographic of person, it does give you some insight into the general disposition of the community.
“there are no reliable sources saying ace people get raped for being ace” alright why don’t you just go ahead and call rape victims liars then if their own stories aren’t evidence enough for you
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here, and I am actually annoyed that I am responding to this type of post, but it needs to happen sooner or later I guess. I will note I am tagging this to your post instead of the original because I don’t feel like OP deserves any attention with this kind of statement. We’ll start with some definitions and complications to the unilateral nature of the statement this person is making. For those of you who are bold and want to learn more about the complications of crime reporting and identifying sexual violence towards people who identify as asexual, feel free to keep reading but I can’t promise it’ll be easy to digest.
Let’s start with the more statistically likely instance of an asexual person facing sexual violence instead of trying to qualify terms. Keep in mind that asexual people can give consent to sex just like anybody else; a lack of attraction does not inherently mean repulsion or anything else. As such, it is possible for somebody who identifies as asexual to give full consent to whatever form of sex. That said, consent is a very personal and specific thing; when people consent to a sexual act, that does not inherently mean they are okay with all sexual acts. This is an important note to establish. Based on general experiences from other Aces I have spoken with and their general experiences with sex, I will bet you money that the type of sexual violence Aces will face on average has to do with sexual coercion.
The reason I have arrived at this conclusion is because of the statement above that combined with the ideal relationship founded in compulsory heterosexuality. If an asexual person consents to sexual acts and their partner doesn’t quite understand that consent does not automatically apply to all sexual acts or their partner does not care, that partner may take a willing sexual act and use it as leverage to push their partner into sexual acts they are not okay with or are otherwise outright repulsed by. In the general view of heteronormativity, you automatically forfeit your rights to reject consent of your partner in a relationship. This view likely comes from older Christian beliefs centered around the idea that you lose autonomy over your own body in marriage. The last sentence second paragraph in the section is the specific point I am citing. Keep in mind while these ideologies are dated, they are still preached to this day in some circles and perpetuate very evidently harmful views of the individual if you don’t submit or otherwise subscribe completely to the underlying ideologies. SO, if that view of relationships is relatively common and asexual people typically have different boundaries shaped by various experiences or feelings than your typical heteronormative individual, what you end up with is a recipe for people to unintentionally run over others’ sexual boundaries. Without a strong common language or understanding with which to speak about these problems and a framework for understanding these situations so they can be properly reconciled, the initial problem is compounded further, making it difficult for survivors who feel like they’re being abused to speak to their partner about it and preventing them from understanding the situation for what it is so they can find an absolution of the complex feelings around it. Keep in mind this scenario is for incidental overstepping those boundaries and not instances where it is deliberate and repeated for reasons I will discuss a bit later.
No, in those cases, we are talking about people who understand the framework I spoke about and use the absence of a clear understanding to abuse their partners. Nobody is immune to this, though I would argue asexuals are likely at a higher risk of being taken advantage of by this type of person because they likely do not have a clear understanding of their sexuality and heteronormative mindsets will inform them they are just being frigid, or haven’t met the right person, or just need to try things out. These abusers will take that little bit of consent and push it further and further until they get what they want, will and autonomy of the other person be damned. This is a deliberate instance of sexual coercion.
If you ask why I’m making a huge point about coercion and dubious consent, let’s take a trip to the Wiki entry for rape. Rape is defined as a type of sexual assault carried out against a person without that person’s consent. You will find that coercion is one of the methods listed for carrying out those sexual acts. By this logic and with that understanding, you can say that Ace people do get raped because they are Ace. Ace people may not be targeted specifically because they are Ace (or maybe they are and we just lack statistics on it, but I’ll get to this point), but the complex situation that can arise due to a lack of understanding of the sexuality may leave Aces more vulnerable to this more specific type of rape.
Also, I categorically refuse this conclusion related to why Aces may get raped. More often than not, violent crimes are perpetrated based on the relationship of the attacker to the victim, and this is especially true when it comes to sexual crimes. The brief note of potential motives for rape in the Wiki entry for it, the Wikipedia page dedicated to causes of sexual violence (read it and prepare to be horrified), and the Wikipedia entry for abusive power and control all may help better understand the motivators of general sexual violence and be applied to aces in this scenario. If power is a common underlying motivation of rape, and asexuals may not feel confident in their identity or understanding of their identity because of heteronormative mentalities, there’s suddenly a power dynamic where one may otherwise have not existed. The partner that wants sex may say something like, “Why don’t we see how you feel about [sexual act]?” It sounds helpful on the surface, but can easily become a vector for manipulation if their goal is for them to get pleasure from sex rather than to really help their partner better understand their boundaries and how comfortable they may be.
Now, about “reliable sources reporting Aces are never raped for being Ace”, let me go over a few things about crime reporting. Reporting crimes is a complicated matter because of a myriad of different issues. When it comes to sexual violence, there’s a plethora of reasons why rape may not be reported. If we assume all assertions about potential instances of Aces being raped are true in a statistically significant number of cases, on average somewhere around probably 65% of cases likely would not be reported. As for the data collection? I’ll direct you to the Uniform Crime Reporting’s site on hate crimes. If you scroll on down, you’ll notice that under Sexual Orientation, it lists crimes against a bisexual, gay (male), heterosexual, lesbian, or LGBT person. Asexuality is not recognized by the report. It’s kinda difficult to take data on a type of crime perpetrated against a certain class of person when you’re not actively looking for data about that class, isn’t it? If we look at the definition of a hate crime on that page, it includes biases against sexual orientation, and asexuality is a sexual orientation, but not one that’s recognized for this data set. The Uniform Crime Reporting site’s objective is to generate reliable data for use in a lot of fields, so it’s probably a well researched and documented compilation of criminal data, yet it doesn’t recognize asexuality or crimes motivated by it. It’s hard to imagine other data collection groups trying to create a model where they can accurately predict how many of these crimes were actually motivated against asexuality, since the source data would be incomplete.
This is normally where I put my flourish and mock people here to attack Aces, but I’m not going to do that this time. I hope you read this and take a minute to fully understand what I have stated. I hope you use the UCR site and resources available about sexually motivated crimes to improve your understanding of how these things are harmful and how the general invisibility of asexuality can cause harm by creating situations with a power dynamic that may not otherwise exist. I hope you take this information and use it; maybe with asexuality being more visible, people will take note and integrate recognition of it into crime reporting.
the fact that people paint exclusionists as like…… terfy biphobic bigots is so extremely Yikes. like. real talk, i’m a demi (sexual and romantic…. been wondering if i’m more completely asexual lately but it might just be low libido from my meds messing w me ugh idk) lesbian who once identified as bisexual until i realized nope, don’t like men after all (tried to force a relationship with a guy, didn’t work out). i have mega genderweird feelings so i am prrrrobably not cis, but i don’t have the mental energy to figure out what exactly i am, so i just don’t deal with that at all. i am the furthest thing from a terf or a biphobe lmfao. but yeah, i think that asexuality doesn’t automatically make you queer – i’m queer bc i’m attracted to women, i’m not queer bc of my lack of attraction except in very specific cases.
anyways here’s your reminder that:
trans men are men and trans women are women
if you think someone doesn’t belong in the bathroom you’re in bc they might be trans (yeah, i said “might” – masculine cis women and feminine cis men exist, you can’t tell if someone’s trans or not just by looking at them), shut the fuck up, they know better than you do what bathroom they belong in, and what’s between their legs is their own business, don’t be a fucking creep
bisexual people are still bisexual even if they’re in a relationship with someone of the “opposite” gender. they’re not faking it if they get in a relationship with such a person, and they’re allowed to go to pride with that person, so don’t police “straight couples” you see at pride
asexual people are not queer by virtue of their asexuality, and they’re especially not gay by virtue of their asexuality – if you’re a cishet ace or an aroace and you call yourself gay, please re-evaluate yourself, because Holy Shit that’s ten different kinds of fucked up
i say by virtue of their asexuality, bc of course there are gay aces and gay demi people – like me – and by that logic, there are also straight aces. aka cis aces who are solely attracted to the “opposite” cis gender. asexual people who are heteroromantic or aromantic people who are heterosexual. straight aces/aros.
yes, the A is part of LGBTQIA. that’s bc the ace community has aligned itself with the lgbtq community. it does not mean they’re part of the lgbtq community. it historically was never part of the lgbtq community. lgbt was the original acronym lmao. but the ace community is really it’s own separate community that has glommed onto the lgbtq community. and for the most part, that’s fine, bc there’s overlap!!!! there are gay and trans aces!!! but then there are cis aces who experience straight attraction, or who experience no attraction at all, and it’s just like. literally what are you getting out of a community that’s banding together over shared genderweirdness and attraction to the same gender/nonbinary genders/etc?
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here with a history lesson I guess. Quite honestly, you are free to your opinions whatever they may be, HOWEVER, I cannot approve of the erasure or ignoring of history to state a claim. To this end, I will address only the last three points.
Starting with asexual people identifying themselves as gay, I do want to point out a note of definition here. I imagine you are referring to gay strictly as homosexuality or homoromantic, and that’s okay. The complication comes when you add in the fact that gay has historically been used as an antonym to “straight”. Gay has had its definition altered throughout the years due to a myriad of factors and associations, so it’s entirely possible that ace people using “gay” to refer to themselves are utilizing it in a historical context rather than a strictly modern one. Now, in all fairness, it’s perfectly fine to dislike people using the word in this context; I’m not here to tell you what you can or cannot like, but perhaps taking a pause before stating something unilateral like “that’s ten different kinds of fucked up” may save you some verbal lashes.
Now, this thing about “straight aces”. I will start off by pointing out this argument relies explicitly on utilization of the Split Attraction Model, and while it can be useful for discussing our identities, there are also problems with it. Your argument immediately runs into problems if somebody does not subscribe to the SAM because asexuality becomes its own categorization that does not fall under “straight”, but beyond that is the complication of how you define “straight”. A quick look over to the Urban Dictionary definitions listed for “straight” shows a myriad of definitions throughout the years, though the current top one specifically denotes romantic and sexual attraction to the opposite sex or gender is necessary, two rely on the definition of heterosexual, and one simply states “not gay”. If you are defining straight as “not gay”, then your statement is accurate, but that’s likely not the more common definition ascribed to “straight” and the historical use of the term “gay” can also complicate making an effective argument. If you want to rely on straight being “heterosexual”, then the Wiki entry does denote that heterosexuality can be romantic or (inclusive) sexual attractions, however it does also denote that heterosexuality also refers to a person’s sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions. If a person lacks those centrally required attractions, they likely have a different sense of identity, so that defeats this notion of a “straight ace” leveraging that definition. Just on a side note, if you believe heteronormativity exists as a social construct, then asexuals as a collective fall outside of the range of behaviors typically seen as “straight” because you are not seeking out the idealistic goals set by society. While that is a narrow and specific interpretation of “heterosexual”, I’d argue that it’s likely the most commonly held perception of heterosexuality.
Now, let’s take a history lesson. Right at the top of the Wiki entry for LGBT, you can see that the original term was LGB which replaced gay. It’s there to check out with a citation if you want further reading. Now, one complication of the LGBT+ acronym is that the community is not a single entity united by one modus operandi, objective, or leader, thus changes to the acronym are more likely fairly localized rather than an ideal the community has agreed to. Also, here is a post that’s more or less to the tune of “asexuals have always been in the fight, just invisible”, much like bisexuals were at first. The post includes a lot more than that, so I highly recommend checking it out in its entirety if you want more history than I have to offer. One of the things that should weigh fairly heavily is the personal account of asexuality being in the LGBT community, though under the bisexual identity. There’s literature and people lived these times; I’d highly encourage talking to them before making statements like the last one as fact. Asexuality has been around, but it’s only fairly recently become more prevalent, more visible.
Now, quite honestly my hope is that you’ll read over that information; you don’t need to do it all at once as we all learn at our own paces. But read it over, look up information on your own time, and refine your opinion. There is no definitive “right” answer, but creating an answer without acknowledging and understanding historical context is quite literally resetting the argument. The people in the 1960′s through the 1990′s already had these fights about including Bisexuality and Trans issues. Those before us have already stated opinions like compulsory heteronormativity is really the enemy of a more sexually permissive society, and that the associated narrow interpretation of heterosexuality within that construct is an enemy to asexuality. There’s a lot of history, a lot of rich history, to review and understand. We want to carry the fight forward on the understandings that were established before us; ignoring all of that will lead to this revisiting of issues that were previously settled or otherwise understood and waste everyone’s time.
I’ve been experiencing a lot of erasure when it comes to my identity as an asexual that I really wanted to talk about. When I come out to someone I will most likely get responses I get are, “are you sure it isn’t a phase?” and “you’ll grow out of it"and sure some of you are going to say that these responses are well meaning but I don’t experience them as such. They don’t know my sexuality better than me and even though it’s well meaning it can be very tiring to hear the same thing over and over. The responses that manage to really get to me are the "you have a disorder” and “that’s a disorder”. It sucks to muster up the courage to come out to someone only for them to react like that, it feels like a punch to the gut. This treatment could also be for aromantic people since we’re on the same skektrum (the ace spectrum).
I wanted to know if other ace/aro people experience this stuff and how do you deal with it?
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to share my experience I guess. I will state up front that the erasure of our identity is real; the amount of people I’ve met that are skeptical of our sexuality or outright disbelieve it’s a possibility was astonishing to me personally growing up. I’ve had a significant other ask if I actually loved them in a relationship after I let them know my sexuality, and they made assertions that sex completely changes people (this was not a change I experienced). I’ve also heard the general “you’ll grow out of it” rhetoric before from people that I should be able to trust with my identity.
The problem is there’s no clean way to deal with the issue. The biggest problem is a general lack of knowledge and information. The best we can do when confronted by comments and mentalities that erase our existence is remind people that life is a journey; sometimes our sexualities may change and that’s okay, but the absence of the same attraction others may feel is also normal. We can point them to sites like AVEN or The Trevor Project to reinforce our message, thoughts, and feelings.
“Man” and “woman” as categories have historically been defined in large part with relationship to heterosexuality, and the “sexuality” aspect of heterosexuality is not unimportant. The definition of the binary categories of gender through a heterosexual framework has contributed to the complicated relationships that gay and bi people often have to gender. Not being heterosexual means that it’s harder to fully identify with genders that are defined in reference to heterosexuality, and that’s true for people who are asexual as well.
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to confirm this line of thought. When trying to follow the threads of identity, you inevitably end up with sexuality being tied back to the traditional ideals of “man” and “woman”. While some of the perceptions tied to the identities may have been rooted in observed average behavior, we have over time removed that ambiguity, changing things like “men are taller on average” to “men are taller”.
This removal of ambiguity has refined the traditional identities down to very narrow interpretations of the broad range of behaviors, appearances, and everything else people generally have. If you fall outside of that strict view of what a “man” or “woman” is, it makes people anxious because you’re suddenly defying their expectations. It can lead to reinforcing behaviors to try and maintain the status quo. Whether the intentions are good or bad, the end result is the same perpetuation of the status quo.
I feel that is one driving factor of why people may have complicated relationships with gender. The idea of a “man” or “woman” includes specific sexual behaviors and attitudes within that narrow band of acceptable behavior, and asexuality is a departure from that. This results in the concerned parent or friend saying, “well you just haven’t met the one yet” or the soon-to-be-ex that’s angry because you “led them on” or whatever. The expected behaviors associated with the traditional binary genders leaves no room for asexuality; it would be nice if people came to realize that.
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader just to send out a reminder that I am here to dissuade commentary meant to belittle or dismiss those with an Ace up their sleeves. SO, to those of you who have read my content in the hopes of finding some angle to attack, I thank you. To those of you who have stopped and taken time out of your day to comment on my stuff when you aim only to otherwise discourage my fellow Aces, I appreciate you guys affirming that I should continue with my interruptions. The longer I have your attention, the more you feed my underlying goals, so thank you for your time.
For the rest of you with an ace up your sleeve, take regular breaks and stay frosty!~
Dear THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader, what do you think about oriented aroaces and claiming the fitting third label (for example bi aroace, wlw aroace etc.)? I have seen some oriented aroaces do this, and I love how much faith they have in it and how brave they are for using it, because I personally feel like I'm not allowed to use it. I feel like, when I can even see to whom I might have that kind of tertiary attraction, I still couldn't call myself with that third label. I just don't know if I can
Hey! THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to offer some insight, though my response will be wordy as usual. Keep in mind that my opinion comes from two places: the human experience with attraction is an extremely complex thing composed of both natural inclinations and social experiences that are nigh impossible to easily classify and there is no “correct” way to classify human experiences because all terms and expressions we use were, at some point, new and have become common language due to usage over time and a contextual understanding of those phrases.
The shorthand answer on how I feel about adding a third label is, “If it makes you feel comfortable and better state yourself, feel free.” Some people take comfort in being more specific about their identity; it may feel like they better understand themselves or help them find others that experience much more similar experiences, and that’s okay by me. I sit on the opposite end of that where I’d much rather be as ambiguous about my attraction as possible. I enjoy hearing all experiences and seeing where mine overlap, and I’m rather lazy and have known my senses of attraction to move around some days, so I like using the more general term that always fits my situation and can explain how I feel on that particular day if prompted.
So yeah, my challenge to you is a bit of introspection; while thinking on whether you’d feel comfortable adding the extra label, try to consider why you find it comfortable and why you feel like you aren’t allowed to use it. There is no real right answer, so weighing which of those two forces is stronger within your own mind is probably the best way to go.
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to build on the reply from red-productions. If you think of other sexualities as describing what kind of attraction you experience, asexuality utilizes the prefix a- to mean without. Substituting both aspects, you have “without attraction” as the general definition of “asexuality”. While it does not perfectly describe all the identities that have come to fall under the umbrella of asexuality, it’s a good way to come to understand what the term is about.
If you would like a few resources to get a better idea of what Asexuality is and what asexuality tends to encompass, you can check out sites like AVEN or the resources available from The Trevor Project. If you have other questions, I can provide answers to the best of my ability.
friendo, please keep doing what you're doing. its A+ in my books
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here to say, thank you for your kind message! While my first and foremost goal is to break up the monotony and vitriol of Ace “discourse”, I figured it was an excellent opportunity to both learn more about this history of the community myself and share that knowledge with those who don’t mind a lengthy read. Hopefully you find my commentary enjoyable but also walk away feeling like your life has been enriched in even some small ways.
Where you have an ace up your sleeve or not, we’re all stuck together on this hunk of rock flying at unfathomable speeds around a giant ball of fire and plasma, so we may as well enjoy this crazy ride!
An inclusionist irl told me “the lgbt community was never about oppression like the first pride parade was a riot”…. like yes…. it was a riot…. get this…. over the oppression we face
THE ONE AND ONLY Ace Leader here with another history lesson I guess. Look, I’m not particularly well versed in the history of the community being entirely honest, but I do have enough sense to try reading up on a subject before making any assertions about anything or stating claims without a base. But that’s neither here nor there. I’ll try to keep this brief as I imagine you are rather busy telling Aces why they’re not allowed in this glorious community you’re protecting.
I’m going to assume you’re referencing The Stonewall Riots as the foundation you’re assuming the LGBT community was established on. Let’s take a quick look at some dates, specifically years since nailing down days in something like this is nigh impossible at times. The Stonewall Riots were in 1969 while the LGBT acronym wasn’t in use until about 1988. That seems like a tremendous amount of time for the community that eventually cropped up to change and align their goals and objectives. Or not; the community isn’t one giant cohesive organization under any kind of centralized body, and as such, has evolved and changed over time.
Even if you want to argue from the specific point that Gay Pride parades were organized and scheduled around the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, this does not mean that the parades were riots or intended to be violent. On the contrary actually, the first pride marches were likely filled with anxiety and uncertainty, as they were reported to have been rather quiet. Parades are usually a celebration, so I would suspect that the people organizing these as a form of protest intended for them to celebrate their freedom to express their love and use that as a means to fight the oppressive forces in society.
Back to the Stonewall Riots though, there were both activist groups that existed before and came from those riots as well as other riots and instances of open rebellion. While the Stonewall Riots were the event most fondly remembered by history and were most certainly a catalyst that led to the greater recognition of other forms of love, this was not where things started. No, if you want to say with absolute certainty where things started, you’ll have to go read some books and study; unfortunately that is not time I have right this moment, so I can only provide surface level information that I’m not even sure is accurate, but with my general knowledge of how history tends to work, this seems like an accurate assessment to me. If reading for 30 minutes can give me the power to debunk your silly statement, imagine what kind of power you could have studying the literature on the history that went into the formation of the LGBT community.
I do highly encourage reading up on history. School went through leaps and bounds to make me hate history, and failed to teach me why it’s important. That’s something I had to realize on my own; history is important because often times the mistakes we’re making today have already been made by other people at an earlier time. We can avoid those mistakes, but we’ve gotta embrace our ignorance and make a conscious effort to learn and understand. The LGBT community does not have some distinct specific origin or a unified modus operandi. It’s a group of people who want to make a change in the world that gathered together under a unifying banner. The borders have changed before now, they can change again and those blindly fighting against that change instead of looking at an evolving situation, those not seeking to understand the facets of societal structures that contribute to these complex mindsets and situations, those that refuse to acknowledge why the group has changed and use that knowledge to determine if new changes are in order are actively ignoring history and holding the community back from what it really could be.
