Full offense but if you were an aspec exclusionist at any point, for any amount of time, I fucking hate you. I hate you deeply and personally and I sincerely believe you are a raging piece of shit. I do not care if it was 5 years ago. I do not care if it was only for a few months. I do not care if you were a teenager. Most of us were teenagers too, when you pack of merciless hyenas spent years suicide baiting and doxxing and stalking and threatening to rape us. When you called us pedophiles and delusional straight invaders and insectoid freaks of nature. When you systematically destroyed our fragile online communities for fucking sport and called it activism.
You should have fucking known better and I refuse to believe you didn’t know better. I refuse to believe that you genuinely thought we were “stealing resources” or “sexualizing other queer people” or “harming kids”. All of that is obviously NONSENSE and you are FUCKING LYING if you say you thought it was true. You were just a cruel, hateful little bigot who’d found an acceptable target and lashed out cuz it made you feel good.
I don’t care if you’re “on our side” now and that you’ve “grown up” and that you feel “so bad” about what you did. I’m actually THRILLED you feel ashamed. I’m THRILLED you feel like crap when you remember the horrible and unforgivable things you did to a vulnerable and harmless community. I hope that guilt sits in your gut like a rock. I hope you carry it to every Pride and feel it get heavier every time you see an ace or aro flag.
There is no excuse for having been an exclusionist. None. If you are any degree or iteration of queer, you should have fucking known better. But you didn’t. You chose hate and you chose cruelty and you chose exclusion. That guilt? That shame? Guess what buttercup, it’s called consequences. Live with them.
(cws for racism/anti-blackness, misogyny, acephobia)
Following asexuality activist Yasmin Benoit on twitter has been one blunt example after another of the aggression and hostility that aces of color have to face, and how often every imaginable bigotry will get piled behind a more “acceptable” acephobic face to attack and tear them down.
In the name of questioning her identity as asexual, the author of the review she shared is practically playing anti-blackness bingo. We’re constantly hearing “teenagers can’t say they’re asexual! they’re too young! that inherently sexualizes other teenagers!” And then here, they say that because a black 14 year old went to Pride, she obviously was “interested in sexual activity” as a way to frame (and undermine) a later “swap” to asexuality.
It’s no surprise, but it’s wild these people can call themselves feminists when they see “beautiful black woman” and start sexualizing and objectifying her like the most stereotypical perverted men. “This 14 year old went to pride, so she’s interested in sex!!” sounds stolen straight from predatory rape culture, not to mention homophobia. “She’s dressing too revealing, this makes her interested in sex” is ALSO straight from predatory rape culture. The description of what she was wearing sounds straight from some misogynistic novel that we’d drag to hell and back for describing women by the state of their breasts. And yet it all becomes fair game to try to set up some kind of contradiction between a black woman’s stated identity and her existence.
oh look the “ace discourse” tag is still a thing and the same shitty people from way back are among those spewing anti-ace/aro crap in it
incredible can you imagine. exhausted just glancing at it let alone have the same conversations from x years ago for the 5000th time. but guess when you really hate a minority orientation that provides some energy
Saying this again: the anti-ace/aro crowd is VERY invested in convincing people asexuality and aromanticism aren’t orientations but instead behaviors. The fact that they “forget” aro aces exist while spewing their “those are just modifiers” bullshit is also no accident
If you acknowledge asexuality and aromanticism for the orientations they are, you can’t deny they are are minority orientations and it’ll also be hard to say the least to find a halfway reasonable argument for why they wouldn’t be marginalizedorientations
It also then makes perfect sense that, for example, someone from an LGBT+ group focusing on visibility+education upon learning I was ace came up to me and was like, “hey we’re lacking an ace perspective can I give you a flyer”
HOWEVER if you pretend asexuality is just “not fucking” then this encounter becomes extremely wild because suddenly what happened was someone going, “hey we’re lacking the perspective of someone who doesn’t have a sex life in our LGBT+ group” which is… indeed bizarre
So they do their best to pretend asexuality and aromanticism aren’t orientations (which means aro aces can’t exist or need to just be waved off as having two modifiers instead of an orientation which makes perfect sense obviously).
People who do this are basically admitting they have no decent arguments but it’s a good way to distract from that fact, because it’s infurtiating to those it affects+if you’re clueless it sounds not that out there until you actually think about it
Also in that scenario they paint, all I would do in this group during my volunteer work would be talking about “not fucking” and I guess not dating, and people in workshops etc. we do would ask me what it’s like to not have sex/not date
But they actually all know what it’s like to “not fuck” or not date. My behavior is literally not what I’m there to talk about (except as a side note)
And everyone gets this pretty much right away and they not rarely will ask among 500 other questions if I’ve ever dated or ever had sex
So it’s interesting it’s so “difficult” for the anti-ace/aro crowd to grasp this concept
Saying this again: the anti-ace/aro crowd is VERY invested in convincing people asexuality and aromanticism aren’t orientations but instead behaviors. The fact that they “forget” aro aces exist while spewing their “those are just modifiers” bullshit is also no accident
If you acknowledge asexuality and aromanticism for the orientations they are, you can’t deny they are are minority orientations and it’ll also be hard to say the least to find a halfway reasonable argument for why they wouldn’t be marginalizedorientations
It also then makes perfect sense that, for example, someone from an LGBT+ group focusing on visibility+education upon learning I was ace came up to me and was like, “hey we’re lacking an ace perspective can I give you a flyer”
HOWEVER if you pretend asexuality is just “not fucking” then this encounter becomes extremely wild because suddenly what happened was someone going, “hey we’re lacking the perspective of someone who doesn’t have a sex life in our LGBT+ group” which is… indeed bizarre
So they do their best to pretend asexuality and aromanticism aren’t orientations (which means aro aces can’t exist or need to just be waved off as having two modifiers instead of an orientation which makes perfect sense obviously).
People who do this are basically admitting they have no decent arguments but it’s a good way to distract from that fact, because it’s infurtiating to those it affects+if you’re clueless it sounds not that out there until you actually think about it
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 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 kinderto aces and aros than “progressive” people who claim to care deeply about social justice?
I’m ace, nonbinary, and demiromantic. With LGBT+ I’m included in the plus. And I’m happy to be included! Indeed, folks pointedly using LGBT without the plus makes my hackles raise.
But. I am sick of being in the fucking plus sign like an afterthought.
And no, adding more to the alphabet soup doesn’t help that feeling. There’s a limit to what human brains can cram in. I don’t think it’s reasonable to make folks say an increasingly long acronym every time they mention the community. I appreciate the effort, but you’re always going to either leave someone out or cram them into the miscellaneous field the plus sign represents.
With Queer I’m just there, alongside my queer siblings. The details may be different, but I’m just as queer as a cis allo gay man or a trans allo straight woman or a genderfuck individual.
We already tried to meet folks who don’t like queer as a word halfway with MOGAI. Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignment, and Intersex. It’s inclusive without using the Dreaded Q-Word. Surely, if the objection was to “queer” as a Terribly Traumatizing Word (just like, oh, every other word used for us: “gay” was the slur of choice where I was growing up), MOGAI would be the perfect solution, yes?
And yet, that was thrown back into our faces and turned into an insult. So, at that point, I said fuck it and fuck you. I’m queer,and if its inclusivity makes you mad, good.
People hate Q*eer because it’s still used as the slur of choice in most of the world that the isn’t terminally online.
Also friendly reminder that Demisexual (and demiromantic by extension) were literally made up by some asshole online as an excuse for why he didn’t want his hypersexual OC to have sex with a few specific people. It’s literally the definition of using a made-up identity to feel special which the Transphobes and Homophobes in power use as justification for harming the LGBT community.
Being LGBT doesn’t make you special, and the entire goal of the community should be reinforcing that statement. We don’t want to be seen as different and special. We just want the opportunity to live our lives
I say in the post that I’m suspicious of folks who pointedly use LGBT without the plus. Congratulations on adding another validating data point to that.
So, you wanna go? Let’s fucking go.
1.) Until I see similar pearl clutching over gay, which as I said in the post was the slur of choice where I was growing up, you can cry me a river. I don’t know how I can emphasise enough that EVERY. FUCKING. TERM. WE. HAVE. has been and probably continues to be used as a slur by someone, but weirdly, none of them have the same pushback queer does. There are words that make me uncomfortable that I won’t use for myself, but if someone for example calls himself a proud faggot and wishes to be called that, I will salute that proud faggot.
2.) a.) [citation needed] - This reeks of the same kind of lying aphobic bullshit as “a-spec is stolen from autistics” or “allosexual is a bad word because uuuuuuhhhh reasons”.
b.) Don’t care even if the cite checks out. What, you think a word having some kind of Deep Dark Secret Origin is gonna stop a proud queer?
c.) How fucking dare you tell me my identity is made up, shithead? As if I don’t know myself enough to make that call? As if you’re the arbiter of what strangers on the Internet can call themselves? I almost wish I had that kind of arrogant confidence.
3.) Respectability politics will not save you. You cannot be one of The Good Ones forever. Homophobes want to shove the most milquetoast 2.5-children-and-a-white-picket-fence gay and lesbian couples back into the closet and take their kids away for corrupting them to boot. Transphobes will use the trans panic defense to murder even the Best Passer. Throwing anyone who doesn’t vibe with L, G, B, and/or T specifically under the bus isn’t going to suddenly make you okay in the minds of the folks who want to destroy us.
4.) Fucking speak for yourself. That’s the core difference between queer and LGBT-pointedly-no-plus. Queer folks admit that we are strange and different.Itis an anomaly, in the most basic sense of ‘doesn’t match the majority of the data’.
The queer folks say, and so what? The queer folks say, yes, we are weird. And the queer folks say, but that does not make us lesser.
The queer folks say: we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.
Who the fuck ever said we don’t want to be seen as different? We fucking ARE different, that’s the entire fucking point. Labels give us the chance to finally not feel like an outcast freak, we’re *queer* and we have a place to be with other queer people where our simple existence isn’t seen as a negative.
The goal of the fucking queer, LGBTQ+, gay, lesbian, trans, whatever you want to call it movement (personally I like queer) is to emphasize that WE’RE DIFFERENT AND WE’RE PEOPLE, TREAT US LIKE IT. Being the same as everyone else doesn’t do shit, it just lets that “everyone” continue to pretend they’re somehow better. So until being different isn’t seen as a reason to remove rights and harass, insult, and murder people, the point of the QUEER movement is to be loudly, blatantly, belligerently different and demand equality while doing it.
No idea where the “Demisexual was made up by some dude wanting to protect his hypersexual OC” or whatever story came from. “Demisexual” was first coined by someone who used to moderate the AVEN (Asexual Visibility & Education Network) forums back in the 2000s. He went by (and still goes by) sonofzeal online, and demisexual was a term he came up with to describe his own experiences with his sexuality. He wrote about it on his website here, and you can find more info with original sourcing back to the AVEN forums here.
He’s also a really good friend of mine. I hang out with him and his wife (who’s been my best friend since high school) every week. I remember how stressful modding AVEN used to be for him back in the day — I can recall times when his future-wife and I would visit his apartment and he’d be visibly frazzled and need to ask us to wait a few minutes while he sorted out some drama. He could passionately go on for hours about the difference between romantic and sexual (and aesthetic and sensual) attraction, about how asexuality (and aromanticism) is a spectrum. He cared a lot about the Asexual community (and the greater LGBTQ+ community) and still does, even though he’s not actively modding anymore.
“Gay” was the slur of choice where (and when) I was growing up — not for the “terminally online”, but for the people you say every day at school and work and the grocery store. But even putting aside the fact that all of our labels are slurs, I just look at it this way:
Given the choice between the company of “LG(BT-if-we’re-feeling-generous)” exclusionists who parrot whatever propaganda they hear fourth-hand from other baby-gays who can’t be bothered to learn their own history, and bully others as harshly as they worry they’ll be bullied; or the company of an open and accepting queer community that makes everyone feel welcome, supported, and protected, and takes delight in helping people understand themselves and each other better … I personally, as a bisexual/pansexual, demisexual person, will proudly stand with and among the queers every time. That’s what Pride is all about.
Thank you for providing this community history, and for citing your sources to do so.
Hey folks, just a heads-up that we’ve had to block a former follower, who is now accusing us of being aphobic and lying that we’re “claiming all aces/aros are homophobic.” If you’re concerned about that, under the cut I’ve included (anonymized) screenshots and a transcript of their public callout and the private conversation that prompted it, so you can judge for yourself.
Manslator will never intentionally post any aphobic content (i.e., that attacks ace/aro people for being ace/aro). If something slips by us, we’ll publicly address it and commit to doing better, just as we’ve addressed posts in the past that were inadvertently ableist, transphobic, fatphobic, etc.
This blog strives to be a safe and welcoming place for allwomen and femmes regardless of what other marginalization they do or don’t experience. We appreciate legit callouts, but we will not tolerate homophobia (or anything else) wrapped up in the disguise of self-serving discourse.
The posts have been anonymized, as they are notan invitation to attack the person in question, merely a clarification of the situation for any concerned ace/aro followers. If you know the OP, you may certainly feel free to call them on their bullshit, but please do not seek this person out to attack them. (I personally verified that searching for their post would not turn it up.)
I’ve wasted too much time on this mess already, and this is more than enough information for anyone to form an opinion without needing additional clarification. We won’t be responding to further questions on this particular incident, and anybody else who feels like trotting their homophobia out for us will be summarily blocked.
Edit: Because this is now getting circulated outside our usual circle, I want to make sure people see that this is the post the OP replied to, which sets the stage for this entire interaction and includes the exact links that they didn’t see as demonstrating homophobia.
Even after I broke the longest image into two pieces, Tumblr is still making some of these screenshots a bit fuzzy, so here are links to good-resolution images and a transcript in case anyone has trouble reading the embedded versions that follow:
Which was in response to this conversation (where, I will note, “there was a conspicuous absence of the T” because for some reason cishet aces never try to claim they’re trans):
