#abliesm cw
I’m going to say something not a lot of people will like to hear but fuck it. discrimination towards ace and aro ppl - and those adjacent - is 99% of the time just blatant ableism disguised as “discourse”.
neurodivergent - and specifically autistic - ppl tend to make up a large portion of the aspec community since we tend to experience attraction differently than nt ppl, and I’m just saying that the perception of aspec people in the eyes of people who disagree w our existence being that we’re “childish and immature whiny people who are deeply obsessed with childish things and are too infantile to be taken seriously” being not far off at all from a very ableist stereotype of autistic people? yeah no way in hell that’s not a coincidence. when aphobia and arophobia were at their peak, discriminatory allo people LOVED to be like “ace/aro people are so cringe lmao!!!,!, all they do is obsess (insert ‘childish’ media here) but they still want to be TREATED WITH RESPECT?? how dumb lol unlike us REAL lgbts who care about the REAL world and don’t live in some FANTASY LAND they give US a bad name and need to be removed from our community!” and like…. You’re not gonna take a step back and read back what you’re saying? not at all? you’re not gonna do that huh. you do realize you’re falling eerily in line with a verryyyy specific type of ideology that’s also used against nd people here right?
and the thing that blows the most is that a majority of people engaging in “ace/aro discourse” at its peak WERE neurodivergent - but the thing is back then neurodivergence wasn’t NEARLY as recognized or treated with respect as it is in the current time, back when openly admitting you were autistic and being proud of it was unheard of. so instead, neurodivergent allo people with shitty mentalities chose to go after nd aspec/arospec people because the internet had reduced autism to such a drastic punchline that a lot of autistic people internalized that ableism, and so whenever they saw people being open about their neurodivergency they saw it as “cringe” and would make up any reason they could to justify harassment against them. and since a lot of aspec communities are made up of autistic people that those w internalized ableism saw as “infantile” or “threats to their reputation” - its unfortunately no wonder why so many allo nd lgbt people became so obsessed with attacking them for years on end.
and I know this because I (an ace lesbian) used to be in a lot of friend groups who WERE composed of these allo nd lgbt people who would just say the most vile shit about ace and aro people to make themselves feel more “valid” as “true members of the lgbt community” but these were also literally the only out lgbt friends I had. i kept my ace status closeted from them for years and never engaged in any conversations centering around “ace discourse” because I was afraid of the things that they’d do to me - I had seen them turn on their former friends who confessed they were aro or ace overnight because they were “embarrassing to be around”and i didn’t want to lose the only people in my life who’d “cared” about me. I eventually came to my senses and left them and found friends who knew all the gatekeeping was total meaningless bullshit and thank god I did because it damn near saved my life.
people who say that ace, aro, or any group of people who don’t have a “typical” means of attraction “don’t experience oppression at all” are fucking lying. they’re trying to remove any means of accountability from themselves because people who say that ARE the reason why we face the shit we do. THEY’RE the ones perpetuating it. they’re the reason why harassment against us isn’t as taken seriously because they’ve spread the belief that we are making shit up when we continue to call out the harm they’vedone.
so this pride month please just. fucking take a step back and really think about how many exclus talking points just so happen to coincide with ableist talking points. because I guarantee you there’s a lot of them, and in a climate where neurodivergency is actually able to be discussed and handled with respect now, it’s shocking that more people haven’t caught onto this yet.
