Itâs All A Fucking Joke, Right
In the few months Iâve been modding at fuckyeahasexual and touring ace Tumblr, thereâs been a very. Steady. Stream of info that detail horrifically abusive situations and overall poor mental unhealth. Two a week in the inbox if Iâm lucky, usually around seven-ten.
And thereâs been so many, I can officially categorize all 500+ of these kinds of asks and submissions into an extensive bulletlist of Why Asexual Exclusionary Radicalism Is Incredibly Toxic And Shitty;
Coming Out To Family, Friends, And Employers
âMy parents keep telling me that Iâm something else, and itâs making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.â
âMy family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner thatâs clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.â
âMy parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.â
âMy family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can âchangeâ me.â
âMy friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and donât take my objections seriously.â
âMy family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone Iâm currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.â
First Few Days Of Dating
âMy date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.â (SO many of these.)
âMy date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.â (A lot of these, too)
âMy date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.â
âI didnât come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.â
Long-Term Relationships
âMy partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and Iâm now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasnât before.â
âMy partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like Iâm hurting them. Itâs made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.â
âMy partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and Iâm wondering when I have the right to be worried and when Iâd be overreacting. Iâm aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that Iâm being selfish and childish - which are things Iâve been told all throughout my asexual experience.â
Self-Care And Self Development
âI donât trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I donât feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.â
âThe lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.â
âI think itâs too late/too early to tell if Iâm asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. Iâm effectively stuck.â
âI see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. Thereâs no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.â
âI think this was sexual abuse, but Iâm wondering if Iâm just being selfish and childish.â
âI think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but Iâm wondering if Iâm just being selfish and childish.â
âI want to believe that Iâm deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me Iâm being selfish and childish.â
âNo one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.â
Shut the fuck up about your petty beef with tumblr bloggers and youtubers and Archie comics or whatever. I literally do not care, I canât care. I see these messages every goddamn day - this post was written and drafted a month ago, and I very easily compiled most of this bulletpoint list from scratch, just by eyeing what I see in the askbox and what comes across my dash.Â
âAce discourseâ anger is empty and so meaningless. This is what I see by being part of this one 17k follow asexual ask blog for maybe half a year. I am so Done with all the faux rage posts and all the false positivity about how itâs ok to NOT be ace and all the acephobia that falls perfectly in line with the gaslighting typical of acephobia-101 while also having the audacity to claim it not so.
This is whatâs real and I want to bleed it into your goddamn eyes.
Reblogging this again, for obvious reasons
Ace ppl are not INSTITUTIONALLY OR SYSTEMATICALLY OPPRESSED BECAUSE OF THE DEGREE THAT YOU FEEL SEXUAL ATTRACTION. If ur trans ur lgbtq. If ur aro but ur gay, bi, pan ur lgbtq. If ur ace but homo, biromantic etc ur lgbt. Being ace doesnt make u lgbt by default. Does the interpersonal lack of understanding suck and should change? Yeah. But society doesnt want u dead so cishet aces stay tf out our business.
Someone read this, all this stuff about struggles of people coming out as ace, people abusing them and telling them that their identity isnât real or is a problem to be fixed, making people feel worthless and feeling that theyâre in the wrong about their own goddamn identity, and said ânah they ainât oppressedâą enough to be in a community of people who face the same issuesâ
U mad huh?
AnywayâŠ.aces canât be systematically opressed. None of those things are examples of systematic oppression
Also nice how they called it âasexual exclusionary radicalismâ as if it wasnât a cheap tactic to compare ace exclusionist to twerfs
@lavabendingthot @lunarsolareclipse @homoelitism
Hey, instead of being a giant piles of garbage, try reading up:
âAces donât face oppressionâ
Intergroup bias toward âGroup Xâ: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination against asexuals
Prejudice against the asexual community
Battling Asexual Discrimination, Sexual Violence And âCorrectiveâ Rape
Somewhere on the A-Spectrum: Agender, aromantic and asexual people face misconceptions, aggression
Asexuality and Rape
Asexual Men and Rape
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
Do you want to?
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 âAsexual/Questioning/Not Listedâ 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 âopt outâ 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 donât know that itâs âa thingâ. This means that who knows how many asexuals have been sent to therapy and told theyâre sick, then been âtreatedâ for their orientation to try and force them to experience sexuality âcorrectlyâ.
In short, our orientation has been and continues to be pathologized, and asexuals have been put through corrective therapy: x,x, x, x, x
Acephobia Exists
Why Aro/Ace awareness is important to me
This is an example of acephobia.
Sure, it couldâve happened to anyone. But it happened to an asexual BECAUSE OF THEIR ASEXUALITY.
no one gets to tell me that my objectification is magically âless potentâ because itâs due to my asexuality.
âI WANT to make the community unsafe for youâ
Itâs All A Fucking Joke, Right
Posts of people describing the hardship theyâve 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 âfixâ 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 âaces donât get kicked outâ or âaces donât _____â any more than I as a white person get to say that things I donât experience must not happen to black people either. Just because you havenât experienced it personally or witnessed it with your own eyes doesnât mean it doesnât happen. You havenât walked in an aceâs shoes, you donât know what they deal with. Period.
Not even other aces can tell asexuals that their experiences arenât real or arenât valid. Different people can deal with different amounts of oppression, that doesnât mean the lack of oppression is the default âtruthâ.
Nobody is trying to say that asexuals have it âas badâ or worse than gay or trans people, but we donât HAVE to âhave it worseâ to beincluded and for our experiences to have merit without being compared to anyone elseâs. Let me say that again: our experiences have merit without being compared to anyone elseâs.
âWe just want to protect our safe spacesâ
Aphobes have:
Repeatedly misgendered and mislabeled people
Informed rape victims that their assaults didnât 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 âstop whiningâ
Admitted to recycling biphobia
Created a âyourfaveisaphobicâ blog
Admitted to hating the ace/aro community
Asserted that asexuality should not be taught in schools (because it âsexualizes minorsâ or because gay/bi/pan minors will âmistakenlyâ identify as asexual)
Told asexuals to die: x, x, x, x, x (tbh this is only a tiny sample and I donât 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.
âHet aces/aroaces are straightâ
Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces donât identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and itâs 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.
âStraightâ isnât a sexual orientation, itâs a position of power.
A-Spec Identities are Not Secondary.
Invisibility is Not a Privilege.
âpassing privilegeâ 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 donât âonlyâ experience attraction to the âopposite genderâ or any other. thatâs the point. we also experience a lack of attraction, either romantically or sexually, and that lack of attraction is part of our identity.
Straight is not default.
How many straight people do you know that want to kill themselves because of their orientation?
The closet is not a privilege
âWe accept SGA (same-gender attracted) and trans acesâ
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 âsameâ and âoppositeâ gender that leaves a large number of nonbinary people out in the cold. Is a genderfluid person only âsame-gender attractedâ if theyâre attracted to other genderfluid people who are genderfluid in exactly the same way? How about agender, intergender, demigirl/boy people? And before the argument âwell theyâre included as transâ is made, there are plenty of nonbinary people who do not identify as trans. Iâm one of them.
The standard of âSGA and transâ 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 âgay enoughâ.
(SGA did NOT come from âSGLâ, 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 âqueerâ and why itâs better than âSGAâ: x, x, x, x, x
There are also many âSGA and transâ aces who are against the gatekeeping and feel that they are hated by these aphobes.
Youâre not protecting me by being an ace/aro exclusionist.
What we hear when you say âI only support SGA Asexuals/Aromanticsâ
my favourite thing is when aphobes try to tell me that their aphobia doesnât apply to me / affect me because â[iâm] queer for other reasonsâ
okay, you wanna know why Iâm 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 âi accept sga and trans aces and aros but not cishet aces/aros because theyâre straightâ
Suffering! Suffering?
when people âacceptâ sga/mga/non-cis aces and aros, but not others, what it actually means is they accept the part of you that isnât 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
âAce discourseâ is really a Tumblr-only thing
Iâm a lesbian ace and Iâve 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 youâre erasing a part of our identity??
If you talk shit about aces/aros with the disclaimer âcishetâ it still affects all aces. Saying ânotably cishet aces should all go dieâ still makes all ace/aro people feel like they are being called out.
Your âdiscourseâ is harmful to all asexuals. And PS, your rhetoric is literally indistinguishable from TWERF rhetoric.
âThe LGBT community has always been about fighting homophobia and transphobia/we came together to fight homophobia and transphobiaâ
âHomophobia and Transphobiaâ: What does the LGBT+ community fight for?
The modern American movement was first known as the âgay communityâ when cis gay men refused to even accept lesbians, then the âgay and lesbian communityâ. (Good reading on the subject.)
âAfter 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.â (source)
âFrom 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.â (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 communityâs 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 itâs so rampant that I donât feel like I need to provide sources whatsoever. Nevertheless, hereâs a collection of biphobia, and the blog@terf-calloutdocuments some of the violent transphobia on this site, particularly in the lesbian community. This post is an example.
âThe A stands for Ally so that closeted people can be the community without being outedâ
No one is saying that we donât care about closeted people, but a) even if youâre 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 âBâ in BLT stands for âbreadâ. We can pretty much safely assume that a sandwich is going to include bread, we donât have to go of our way to give it a letter. Either you are outing every âallyâ 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 âIâm willing to let cishet straight people into the community for the sake of a few closeted peopleâ while at the same time stating âIâm not willing to let the A stand for asexuals because I donât think letting cis heteroromantic asexuals into the community is worth giving all asexuals representation and supportâ. Which says that you consider asexuals less valuable and more of a threat than cis straight people.
Bonus: The History of LGBT(QQIAAP+)
âAces have never been a part of the LGBTQ/queer communityâ
Asexuals recorded as âGroup Xâ 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 Womenâs 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 âFeminism,â by Correa Moylan Walsh, 1917
the âaces/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 donât belong in âthe LGBT communityââ masterpost
asexuality existed before David Jay and AVEN
âWhere were you whenâŠ?â A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part One)
âWhere were you whenâŠ?â A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part Two)
âStop tokenizing bi and trans people/stop comparing bi/trans and ace experiencesâ
Weâre 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 âSGA discourseâ
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
âI have proof of an asexual being homophobic/transphobic/racist/a terrible personâ
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 donât think so. Some asexuals being bad people doesnât justify you trying to invalidate all of us.
ââAllosexualâ is a bad word because ____â
I actually have an âallosexualâ tag just for posts about why âallosexualâ is a perfectly fine word: x, x, x, x, x. x
âThe split-attraction model is homophobicâ
What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as âdisjunctive uranodioningâ. (source) (credit to this post)
âThe term âcorrective rapeâ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbiansâ
No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.
âWeâll Show You Youâre a Womanâ describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, âNegative 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).â It goes on to say, âMuch of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on âcorrective rape,â a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to âconvertâ them to heterosexuality.â
The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, âA study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that âthe percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the studyâ.â
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.
âAces are valid, theyâre just not queer/LGBTQâ
You cannot in one breath say âAsexuals are validâ 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 canât 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.
âForm your own community!â
a) We do have our own community, because every letter in the acronym has its own communityand yet is still part of the acronym, b) you fucking shits wonât stop sending us hate and bombarding us with shit meant to trigger and harass us.
âAces take resources from other LGBTQ who need themâ
Iâve seen some pretty wild claims about this one, insisting that asexuals âstealâ 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 âstealingâ has ever taken place. For one thing, I thought âyouâll never get kicked out or fired for being aceâ, âno one is suicidal because theyâre asexualâ, so why would you think aces need these resources? Either we donât need them or we donât use them, you canât have it both ways.
For another, how heartless do you have to be to tell asexuals that they canât use suicide hotlines? Do you realize that youâre saying that asexuals should be denied life-saving services? That, in essence, asexuals are suicidal due to their orientation, but you think theyâre not âqueer enoughâ so they deserve to die? Because that is the logical progression of refusing someone suicide prevention, and thatâs the message aces receive when you tell them they are âstealingâ suicide prevention.
LGBTQ resources offer them to asexuals, andbenefit from us using them.
Lastly, do you not realize we are alsoPROVIDING 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 donât WANT us here.
Corrective rape against asexuals is a real thing
Asexuals do face discrimination in the workplace
We had to lobby for our sexuality not to be diagnosed as a mental illness
Asexual people are often afraid to come out to their friends and families, and for good reason
People will literally think of someone as being less human if they are asexual
These issues have the potential to affect ALL asexuals
Nasty shit aphobes do
(Thanks to @livebloggingmydescentintomadness for these)
My own contribution:
Living in a world where the media is overflowing with sexual imagery and where society constantly puts value on sexual intercourse, virginity, and related topics - who can forget the phrase âsex sellsâ? - men and women who do not experience sexual attraction (the definition of asexuality) and who are sex-repulsed or masturbation-repulsed (as many asexuals, myself included, are) feel alienated and âbrokenâ. We also face erasure in terms of representation, being either grossly underrepresented or represented as cold, harsh, and âsynonymous with celibateâ people. Letâs not forget erasure from LGBT spaces - I have many times been told that asexuals do not belong in the acronym or in âour spacesâ, even though asexuals have the capacity to be homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic, etc, as well as transgender or nonbinary. And, if we donât belong in LGBT spaces, and we clearly arenât heterosexual, what do we belong? Nowhere, it seems. Of course, the argument also drifts to âasexuals donât experience oppressionâ, which is false.
Examples of asexual oppression:
http://autumndiesirae.tumblr.com/post/118710018295/aces-dont-face-discrimination
Asexuals are the highest targets for corrective rape:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/asexual-discrimination_n_3380551.html
Go fuck yourselves. <3