okay, i cannot believe i’m doing this, but basically every single hot take i see on it from either side is very annoying at best and outright bigoted at worst, so i’m going to actually make a tagged post about fandom ace discourse.feel free to go past this post if you don’t want to see that.
anyway, can you all please stop arguing over whether or not it’s okay to headcanon autistic coded characters as ace based on whether or not they can still have sex?
as an autistic person who’s also aroace, and does not have or want sex, every single one of you i have seen talk about it in the fandom tag has thrown people like me directly under the bus. obviously there are the exclusionists who are invariably extremely terrible, but i am also very tired of people who are parading themselves about as ace allies or whatever declaring, “it’s fine, it’s not infantilizing to headcanon him as ace, he still can have sex!” that is not allyship. that is respectability politics. trying to make us more palatable to exclusionists by erasing some of us will not work, they already decided to be bigots and attempting to appease them won’t make them stop. you are not helping.
it’s true that some ace people have and like and want sex sometimes. and you can headcanon a character as being an ace person who likes and wants and has sex. but, not all of us do like or have or want sex. i don’t! it is, news flash, possible to be like, a real adult and still not have sex!!! you can even be autistic at the same time! like me! you don’t even have to be ace to be a real adult who has no sex! it’s not infantilizing to headcanon an autistic character as asexual (or aromantic, though i hardly ever see that even talked about) because no sexual or romantic orientation is infantilizing, and neither is any amount of sex or lack thereof that a person may be having (which is separate from their orientation). that is it. we exist.
and quite frankly, as a living example of the Hot Topic being discussed, i do not really want to hear hot takes from other autistic people who aren’t a-spec and don’t know anything about a-spec identities. i do not really want to hear hot takes from allistic people either, honestly, especially not when they’re going to simplify the topic as much as humanly possible. really, i don’t want to see any more hot takes at all, i think ideally you all would just stop arguing about it and let people headcanon characters as a-spec and/or autistic as they please. you don’t have to headcanon them that way if you don’t want to.
also if you want to talk about infantilization of autistic coded characters in the fandom, instead of pointlessly bullying a-spec people some of whom are autistic for daring to hc characters as like them, maybe discuss instead the actual issue of how people are constantly portraying mob and serizawa both as completely incapable of taking action on their own or making their own decisions even though mob’s decisions and actions he makes and does himself drive so much of the plot and (manga spoilers coming up, and the post is over except for the spoilers so you can just quit reading if you want) serizawa’s big arc later on is that he begins to have more faith in his ability to live independently and make his own choices and do things on his own
