proposed ace community trends for 2016: stop making ace spaces unsafe for me and the people I care about. stop being massively homophobic (and transphobic, and racist, etc.) by sexualizing non-ace people. stop pretending that “allosexual” is a useful term, and especially stop pretending that it explains some sort of privilege/oppression dynamic that doesn’t exist. stop ignoring the “hetero” in “heteroromantic” and insisting that heteroromantic aces belong in lgb spaces. stop acting like “protect heteroromantic aces” isn’t basically the same as “protect straight people.” stop grouping in sga non-aces with straight non-aces. stop using ace survivors as rhetorical devices. stop attacking all criticisms of the tumblr ace community and asexual discourse as acephobic. stop making the ace community something I’m ashamed of, alienated from, and feeling the need to distance myself from further every day.

new year new community, okay?

"asexuals appropriated this” rumors

so there seems to be a very widely-held belief on tumblr that if asexuals do something, it’s always deliberate appropriation from some other marginalized group.

friends, tumblrites, countryfolk: please don’t make claims that you can’t back up. I promise you: it’s almost always more complicated than “asexuals appropriated this concept from [other marginalized group].”

like. the term compulsory sexuality being thought of as asexuals’ deliberately appropriating the term compulsory heterosexuality, when actually “compulsory sexuality” was not coined in asexual discourse but in sex-negative feminism, by a radical trans woman who wrote about how compulsory sexuality is a force of patriarchy that harms women of all orientations. though asexual discourse has absolutely distorted its meaning and i think people should definitely talk about that (please do!!!), how the term came to asexual discourse is more complicated than “asexuals deliberately appropriated a term.”

and people thinking that actuallyasexual is a new tag that was deliberately copying actuallyautistic… when actually an autistic person (me) started the actuallyasexual tag, with support at the time from fellow autistic asexual people. in a time when the only actually_ tags that existed were actuallyautistic and actuallyasexual. the tag actuallyasexual may have outlived its usefulness, now that people aren’t constantly posting porn in the asexual and asexuality tags like they were when actuallyasexual was created. i fully support people choosing to abandon the tag for whatever reason, but don’t spread unfounded rumors about it.

and let’s not forget the old one about the word allosexual being deliberately appropriated from the Quebecois word allosexuel(le). when actually the coiners (which include me) were not aware of the Quebecois word, and believe that the potential for confusion with the Quebecois word is one good reason for abandoning it. there are a lot of factually shitty things about the word allosexual, and i’d like to see people talk about those things, rather than continue spreading the rumor that it was deliberately appropriated.

don’t be so quick to believe rumors like the above about asexuals. ask for source links that have timestamps. the above rumors are not necessary for establishing that there are a lot of shitty things (like homophobia and ableism) in asexual discourse that should be challenged.

sincerely,

an autistic bi asexual person who hates shitty asexual discourse and also hates rumors

p.s. i’d also like to see more nuance to any discussion involving the word “lithsexual” and appropriation of the lesbian concept of stone. find the post where a person coined it and their reasoning for it. then link to it and criticize their reasoning, so that you’re not just spreading a rumor.

There’s this thing about being brown and being Asexual that no one really talks about. Despite the fact that many claim to know that people of color are continually fetishized and hypersexualized since we’re young, they don’t seem to grasp the toll it takes on us when you add asexual to that equation. The amount of racially charged acephobic comments I’ve received since I’ve come out are far too many. Being Latina does not mean I want to submit to all your disgusting fantasies, being Latina does not mean that I’m supposed to want sex, nor does it mean that I’m supposed to be good at having sex. People of color are more than you’re horribly disgusting view of us.

Not to mention the fact that no one ever talks about the racism within the Asexual community either.

“I never would’ve thought you were Asexual”, yeah well not all of us are thin white kids with some immature obsession with cake. The exclusion of aces of color in this community is far from disheartening, it’s disgusting. My people should not be pushed to the side so that even more white people can be represented, people of color should be one of the most prominent voices in our fight for visibility and pride. People of color have always had higher chances of harassment and attack, this is no different if they’re Asexual.

Being Asexual is not exclusively for white people, and everyone needs to open their eyes to that fact. We’re here, and it’s about time we get the representation we deserve.

I don’t know why people believe that ‘straight’ means heteroromantic heterosexual and somehow heteroromantic asexuals and heterosexual aromantics aren’t straight when they aren’t doing anything substantively different. Like at all. There is no discernable difference between these three groups, especially not any discernable difference that their families, employers, landlords, peers, religious/community leaders or strangers on the street would ever know or “parse” (i.e. know on sight through your actions that you are heterosexual aromantic) you as. This isn’t “invisibility” - this is safety. To them you’re straight and you’ve never done anything to suggest otherwise. That is a privilege lgbtq (including lgbt aces/aros) do not have.

Heteropatriarchy often does not know that you’re fucking or that you don’t stargaze at the beach or some shit and is ultimately irrelevant to whether or not you’re straight. Being hetero has to do with social institutions that materially support man/woman relationships and exclusively having those relationships. A heterosexual aromantic man does not structurally have a different relationship to women or heterosexuality than a heteroromantic heterosexual man does. They are functionally the same. They both benefit from misogyny and the exploitation of women and women’s reproductive labor regardless if they have emotional relationships or have sex with them or not. Heteropatriarchy also does not know that individual LGBTQ people are having sex or have romantic relationships when deciding to inflict violence on them. That’s irrelevant and does save them from violence. The same thing is not true about ace/aro heteros who literally everyone will see as hetero because no one knows or cares about your sexual/romantic lives. That’s why I think heterosexual/heteroromantic distinctions are meaningless. They don’t actually exist materially or structurally at all. This isn’t erasure, this is the kind of relationships you have being supported structurally and is a privilege.

Ace/Aro discourse that attempts to insert straight men into communities built around organizing around trauma and violence people that experience homophobia/heterosexism and transphobia face is 100% garbage. I do not want anyone who has never been called Queer as a pejorative and never can or never will to ever call themselves that. That word is not for you and never has been. It is a slur in the majority of the United States and elsewhere. It has a real connotation of violence; violence that all straight people, ace or not, benefit from in all cases, universally, for all of recent history and the present, in all circumstances. Pushing straight men into “Queer” communities is violence and I really wish ace/aro discourse would stop accommodating really homophobic narratives that seek to eliminate any kind of boundaries that LGBTQ people might have in the name of vulgar identity politics.

Women of Color and Lesbians are also attacked and even murdered for having any kind of sexuality and we really need to stop pretending that women who have sex or are perceived to be hypersexual possess some kind of privilege over men who do not have sex because it’s not true and only serves antifeminist, homophobic and white supremacist narratives around Women’s sexuality and is misogynist as hell. A lot of Ace/Aro discourse and rhetoric just serves the interests of heteros and men who do not respect women’s boundaries at all and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

message to straight aces: people already ARE punished for having sex, namely gay people and women so maybe don’t suggest that everyone who has sex is gross and diseased and deserves to die because believe me that is not a radical idea, it is one that has been extremely popular both in the past and today as a tactic to allow marginalized populations to die out quietly

If you’re aro bc of trauma that’s ok. If you’re aro bc of mental illness that’s ok. If you’re aro bc you’re exhausted that’s ok. If you’re aro for now but find out later you’re not that’s ok. If you’re aro but have been romantic before that’s ok. If you’re aro and don’t tell ppl that’s ok. There’s no wrong way to be aro and you’re valid by just being, I promise, it’s ok.

bangs head on the table the A in LGBTQIA+ does not stand for agender it NEVER stood for agender trying to say it stands for agender just creates more problems then it solves stooooop

things u are doing when u say the A Is For Agender Too!!

like i absolutely recognize that not all agender ppl wanna label themselves as trans but the solution to that is absolutely not saying the A is for agender too (because see all the above) a better solution would be to just add an “N” to acronym for Nonbinary or smth 

but “the A is for agender too!!” is always bad stop it. pls stop it. dont spread it and correct other ppl when they say it pls

this is a good point! this blog will stay a resource blog for all three A identities, though! —Nao