autospec erasure and autophobia/anti-autospec is not talked about enough.
so i'm going to.
tws for the following rant :: Sexual and romantic attraction // autospec erasure & hate // ED mention // negative self-image // the words autophile and selfcest
I've been attracted to myself since I was very young. When I was little, I'd stare at myself in a mirror for as long as possible because I loved my face, my hair, everything about it. I was fascinated with my own body- I'd stare at myself in dressing room mirrors at any chance.
As I got older and started to date, I never understood why I was the only one who could fluster myself, why I preferred my own face over the ones of those around me. I found others attractive, and I wanted to date them, and I did- but they were never as good as I found myself.
People would call me narcissistic. Self-centred. Tell me to lower my ego. Say that calling myself hot and sexy was inappropriate and that I was oversexualizing myself. I never understood why. It was always consensual between me, myself, and I. I hid my self-attraction and became extremely self-conscious. I worried that I was a bad person for finding myself attractive, so I would force myself to criticize myself any time I found myself looking at the mirror and thinking I was attractive. It caused a lot of body issues for me and lead to me having an ED.
When I talked about how I would date my clone and found myself very attractive, I was called an autophile and people made selfcest jokes. It felt like something was wrong with me. The suffixes -phile and -cest aren't good.
Then I found the label "autosexual". It seemed to fit with what I felt. But most comments about it were all "this is just narcissism" or "you can only use this label if you're aroace".
I told my friends I was autosexual and half of them said "how is that any different from autophilia?"
When I boast about looking nice or cute, I'm self-centred and egocentric and a jerk. When people boast about their partners doing anything, they're a great partner and an adorable couple.
My relationship with myself is seen as flimsy, narcissistic, and a joke. It's seen as just the same as normal self-love. People question it when I feel unhappy with my body.
I love myself. I love my body. I love my voice. I love my hair. I love my face. But this isn't just positivity. I am smitten, head over heels in love with myself.
When I kiss myself, people call it weird.
When I give myself gifts, people say I'm just making things up and that I'm just buying things.
When I compliment myself, people call it narcissism or "normal positivity".
It's none of these things.
I need people to understand- being auto is not "being positive" or "being narcissistic".
Narcissism is a term that should only be used for people with NPD/Narcissistic Personality Disorder and using it to describe selfishness or egocentrism is ableist and rude.
Auto people can be self-conscious and have a poor self image and that doesn't make them any less auto and it doesn't make them a bad self-partner/friend if they are dating/friends with themself.
Rant over, I suppose. Please reblog to share around and share this message and feel free to reblog with any points you think I missed or questions you may have.
Might do a rant about autospec erasure in media later on or I might not.
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