Aces are co-opting everyone's experiences and turning them into a frankenstein of stupid to suit their ridiculous oppression agenda. I'm sick of having biphobia co-opted ("aphobia is just like biphobia uwu"), lesbophobia (corrective rape and compulsory heterosexuality), transmisogyny (REG and AERF, and a bunch of other things), and something that I don't see being talked about much and it's the fact that they're co-opting "a-spec" from the austistic community. Inclusionists are fucking demons.
It’s because aces have no culture or oppression to call their own, so why not steal everything from the people they marginalize in a pathetic attempt to fit in?
But for real--it’s because they refuse to understand context. Aphobia and biphobia are similar in that people are “accused” of being straight but in actual context--bisexual people, who experience biphobia and homophobia, are being accused of having straight privilege meanwhile cishet aces and cis aroaces, who BENEFIT from biphobia and homophobia, are being accused of having straight privilege. Straight privilege, at its core, is benefiting fro homophobia. So, y’unno, perspective.
On its face, corrective rape is just being raped to “correct” your sexuality. In actuality, it is being raped to be punished for same gender attraction or being trans. Removed from context, ANYTHING could be called corrective rape because a lot of rape is done out a grasp for power to lord that over someone for being “wrong” or “weaker.” A woman who is raped for being a prude is being raped for her sexuality, as is a woman raped for being promiscuous or even SEEMING promiscuous. Context matters here. Corrective rape is a hate crime. “Normal” rape is fucking horrific enough, you don’t have to claim a homophobic/transphobic hate crime to be a valid survivor.
Likewise, compulsory heterosexuality could apply to ANYONE and EVERYONE removed from context. Everyone is hurt by the push to enter sexual heterosexual relationships because of the gender roles, rape culture, etc involved in the process. But comp het is SPECIFICALLY about how women who do not want ot be with men and WANT to be with women are hurt by this.
TERF is a term to explain how cis women turned on viable feminism to exclude certain women. It is about the oppression of trans women by people who should be their allies. AERF and REG are about LGBT people excluding their oppressors, which is, y’unno,technically every single LGBT person who thinks cishets belong. IN context, REG and AERF are just transmisogynistic garbage.
I can’t really speak about a-spec. As far as I know, I’m not autistic. But the refusal to listen to the fact that some people grew up with a-spec meaning autism spectrum (because, like, regional language exists? Just because you didn’t grow up hearing it, doesn’t mean other people haven’t.) is a refusal to understand context again. YOUR understanding of the word doesn’t trump other people’s experience and context with it.
And this refusal of context goes on and on and on--conversion therapy, gaydar/ace trace, wlw/mlm/ala, oppression vs discrimination, understanding why the LGBT community was called “Gy and Lesbian” before and how that STILL included bisexual and trans folk, etc--and it’s super fucking harmful. Because in defanging and decontextualizing these terms, they are taking away the power of these words, the conciseness. Which is taking away power from the people who need it.
LGBT people have specific words to describe our experiences because we have specific experiences. Our specificity helps us find solutions for our trauma and find community around them. Making them more broad, more inclusion, and less specific doesn’t help us. It only helps cis straight people who want to pretend to understand when they can’t ever understand.
Similar is not the same. And claiming to understand our experiences while stealing our language is not the same as empathy.
Ace and aro people need to understand this. Even LGBT aces and aros, should they let our oppressors steal and decontextualize our language, our experiences, our trauma.
