So here’s the thing. Society is very invested in policing and scrutinizing the sexualities and sex lives of oppressed groups.
People you meet also tend to care about the sex lives of aces and aros a biiit to much for comfort from my experience, though in personal encounters I had I did indeed chalk quite a bit of that up to misogyny, because well I’m a woman and usually it was guys who pulled the shit that made me feel the most uneasy (by which I mean the most threatened lol).
But watching the anti-ace/aro crowd on here really DOES make me see that shit in another light. Like. The sheer extent of it. Coming from supposedly progressive people. Who suddenly sound like your standard not so friendly neighborhood conservative or that creepy guy you hope just forgot the fact that someone once mentioned to him you are ace
“so what you mean is you don’t fuck”
“um why the hell would you discuss your sex life (aka the absence of one or even the concept of a lack of attraction) with ANYONE. Aside from a romantic partner because in that case you absolutely have to I guess or we’d accuse you of being manipulative”
“No one cares you don’t wanna fuck”
“wait other people know you’re ace?? So did you just walk up to them randomly on the street and start talking to them about sex? did you scream it from the rooftops? OBVIOUSLY you must have. gross. freak”
“well saying aces don’t fuck is accurate because if you did you would no longer be ace, because I know your sexuality better than you do and I REALLY want to keep talking about you not fucking”
“if you would have or ever had sex without sexual attraction being involved from your side, no matter what you say or what the reason, there is something wrong with you. at best you falsely believe you can exert sexual agency, at worst you’re manipulative+abusive”
“aces who date non-aces are harming them (because see above)”
“if you had more sex maybe you’d not be so dramatic”
“if you sleep with people or even are just sexually attracted to them without also being romantically attracted to them, you are using them and probably a misogynistic monster”
“asexuality is desexualizing which is a statement that makes sense if and only if you believe aces lack sexual agency”
“asexuality is inherently nsfw”
“so much as stating the fact that you are ace is tmi and equivalent to airing details of your sex life for all to hear (but also, at least if you’re aro just stating your romantic orientation is not enough because that’s just a modifier, so in that case we are entitled to what we deem information about your sex life)”
It’s. So much wild+blatantly horrifying stuff that in a ton of cases harms many marginalized groups aside from aces and aros, but suddenly becomes okay and important to them to spew, because they hate us so much and are that invested in policing our sexualities.
And this is leaving aside the constant pathologization, the tendency to spread harmful bullshit lies about us and our communities and never correct them, the outright threats of violence people have made and so much other horrible shit...
It’s all. Very telling?
And I knew this was going on and that there’s a lot of deliberate dehumanization involved but...
Damn why are we even debating this. You want to tell me society at large is kinder to aces and aros than “progressive” people who claim to care deeply about social justice?
Not buying it