#i'm allosexual

[popesalmon]

“anti-a-spec discoursers couldn’t be gaslighting, because gaslighting is a serious abusive thing that has real consequences for people’s mental health” 

yeah there’s one little possibility you’re neglecting in your logic there

[popesalmon]

i’m reading actual a-spec community stuff right now and i haven’t read the phrase “filthy allos” once and people are talking very respectfully about how their words might affect people with any variety of perspective on or experience with sex, i just thought i’d mention since that’s not the story i hear around this here discourse here about the “ace community” 

[popesalmon]

searching for a-spec terminology to learn more about it usually gives results with a-spec people defending why they’re even allowed to have terminology at all, it makes me sad :(

[popesalmon]

A-SPEC PEOPLE ARE AWESOME! THIS DISCOURSE DOESN’T MATTER!! YOU ARE ACCEPTED AND LOVED!!!

My strategy of loudly saying something positive about a-spec people in each discourse response seems to have been pretty effective so far! All I’ve gotten today is some one-liner non sequitur insults like “you’re Donald Trump,” and “you make me sick!” It’s matching well unfortunately with my theory that having a-spec positivity be one of the results of provoking a response (rather than only attention to them that contributes to a negative atmosphere for a-spec people) is felt as a cost that makes it a loss to speak with me. 

I encourage everyone in the discourse to join me in putting a-spec positivity in all of their posts in this discourse to increase how safe this space is for a-spec people. If this discourse mostly provokes positivity towards a-spec people rather than negativity and fear then my sad sad theory is that they’ll stop doing this so much because a-spec positivity works against what really seems to be their goal of making a-spec people feel bad. 

A-SPEC PEOPLE ARE AWESOME!!! DEAR A-SPEC PERSON: YOU ARE AWESOME!!! LGBT ACCEPTS YOU! THESE DISCOURSERS ARE WRONG AND CONFUSED AND MEAN! REALLY YOU’RE ACCEPTED AND LOVED! WE LOVE YOU!!!

[popesalmon]

Having all the straight cis people join a big tent community where people are respectful to one another about sexual and gender identification is for many of us our goal, rather than some nightmare infiltration. You keep saying, what if all the straight cis people came and invaded the LGBT space, imagine the horror, and I’m not succeeding in imagining how that’s so horrific. That seems like it would be awesome. If all of the straight cis people decided for any reason to intentionally put themselves in situations where there’s systemic controls on their homophobia and transphobia, where they’re required to respect everyone’s sexual and gender identities and allowed to openly explore their own feelings, that would seem to me like massive total victory. You say how people just think it’s cool to hang out with LGBT people and support them.... like you think that’s a bad thing!?!

[popesalmon]

“cishet” heteroromantic asexual: *marches in Pride parade*

heteroromantic asexual: *sees homophobic Christian boss on the side of the road*

ace (under breath): ..oh shit..

homophobic boss: oh hey there employee!

homophobic boss: i’m just here protesting because i believe homosexual behavior is a choice and therefore a sin before Gaaahd! what’s up with you?

ace: um hi boss, what a surprise, uh, well, this isn’t what it looks like.....

homophobic boss: why, what does it look like, whaddayamean? i see you walking next to that ace pride flag there, and i as a stereotyped homophobic Christian boss know all about that, but since that doesn’t necessarily indicate attraction to a similar gender, that seems perfectly ordinary and straight to me! oh and hey, is that a heteroromantic pride flag pin you’re wearing? even though that’s really obscure i totally recognize it! that also seems perfectly straight to me! i accord you straight privilege! so anyway, straight employee, why are you marching with these fucking queers?? 

[popesalmon]

Sincerely explaining to aphobe discoursers that I think they’re actually hurting people has so far just caused them to pull out the cards they habitually play when they see the other person as playing a “you’re actually hurting someone” card, which is just utterly fucking chilling tbh.

[mungojelly]

aphobia in the term “gold digger”

Aphobia, the fearful rejection of aromantic (”aro”) and asexual (”ace”) people, is pervasive in our society. Confusingly, one of its aspects is the utter erasure of aro and/or ace identities (or ”a-spec” identities) as visible or even conceivable possibilities. How then does society succeed in teaching aphobia? How can it teach children to hate a-spec people while simultaneously avoiding all direct mention of their existence? For just one small example of how, let’s examine the semantics of the misogynist term of abuse “gold digger.” 

A “gold digger” is, as most speakers of modern English learn when they’re quite young, a woman who has money as her primary criterion in selecting a husband and (the meaning of the term implies) therefore is necessarily evil. It’s not that a woman may not under any circumstances marry a man who’s more wealthy than her, no, it’s explicitly that she must have a specific motive for doing so. She may marry him without counting as a “gold digger” if and only if she feels for him both romantic love and sexual attraction. 

Since a-spec people aren’t granted the privilege of visibility, the semantics of “gold digger” don’t really consider as a serious possibility that the “gold digger” doesn’t feel attraction to anyone. The assumption instead is that they do feel attracted to someone other than their husband for more noble reasons such as thinking they have a hot body because they’re young (I feel strange typing that, because wtf, yet that’s clearly there in the meaning), but they’ve immorally decided to elevate the criterion of money instead of being good-- the only possible way they could count as good instead of evil would be to follow the authentic sanctifying emotions of romantic and sexual attraction. 

This is just one of many pieces of inherited knowledge in our society which contain the implicit instruction to investigate people’s romantic and sexual attractions and punish them for “insincerity” whenever they’re found to be guiding their life in any other way. This is how aphobia is taught and perpetuated even as it goes unspoken.