hi sorry for this extremely long rant but i just have to finally be able to talk to someone because i am so?? tired??? of not being allowed to say literally fucking anything????? like there literally are so incredibly few words a-specs have permission to use on this website or else we have to face The Discourse Police and i’m so goddamn tired of it?
i can’t say that i’m ace, no matter the context, because ew that’s tmi nobody wants to know about my sex life, i need to learn my place and realize that my orientation is too filthy for decent people to discuss in public. i can’t say that i’m aro either because everyone knows all aros on earth are just misogynistic frat boys and why would i want to associate with that toxic community anyway? actually ace and aro are both useless labels, and also they’re homophobic and inherently bigoted and no good person would use them even if they felt ace or aro because the community is evil, so really it’s best never to use either word at all. if someone asks what my orientation is i’m supposed to just. fucking scream i guess.
i can’t say that i was raped for being ace (and can’t even THINK the words “corrective rape”), even though my rapist literally told me that was the reason and that he could fix me, because i guess i’m just too fucking stupid to understand the circumstances around my own abuse and need random internet strangers to explain my own experiences to me and what the REAL reason was, because my rape is just a talking point in the tumblr #ace discourse.
i can’t talk about my rape or other abuse at all actually, because if i do i’m either lying/exaggerating or i’m guilt tripping and being manipulative and trying to bully my way into the community by preying on people’s emotions. but if i DON’T talk about my abuse then it never happened and can never possibly happen to any a-spec ever because other people said so and, hello, where’s the proof that aces are ever abused?
i can’t talk about how my mother asked why i couldn’t have just been gay instead of aroace (“i can tell people my kid is gay, how am i supposed to explain that you just don’t love anyone? that’s soulless, they’re going to think i did something terrible to you to make you that way”), because that’s a disgusting lie and an anomaly and mentioning it or acknowledging that it was a real thing that actually happened to me is violently homophobic and gross, and it’s not like anyone ever asked me to talk about it or prove that it happened (except when they do) and i’m probably lying anyway.
i can’t say the word allo or people who don’t know what that word means will come crawling out of the woodwork to tell me how it is Bad and Homophobic and Wrong based on the incorrect definition they decided on, so i have to other myself by saying non-ace instead. BUT, sometimes someone will come along and remind me that i’m not supposed to say that either because wow, don’t i know that saying someone isn’t asexual is implying that they’re very sexual and their orientation is inherently sexual and i must think all those Dirty Allos™ are just thinking about sex all the time, why am i so goddamn homophobic?
i can’t use words created for me as an aro person like squish or qpr, even though i need them, because lol don’t i know those words are useless and stupid and just jokes because people who don’t need them decided they are? better not even think about saying them unless i want my post derailed into a joke fest by discoursers trying to play “how many csa survivors can i trigger and upset in one post”.
i can’t talk about how i knew that i was different and weird from as young as nine or ten, because gross don’t i know that only literal pedophiles believe someone can know they’re ace before they’re eighteen? i can’t even THINK about how little fifth grade me used to cry alone in my room wondering what was wrong with me and if i really was a freak or a baby like the other kids said i was because i’d never had a crush, or else i’m a fucking pedophile and also probably homophobic somehow.
i can’t make positivity posts, can’t tell members of my community that they’re great and valid and not broken because gross why am i enabling a horrible community like the ace one, and lol cishets don’t even need positivity? also no matter what the post is about and no matter how much i don’t mention being lgbt+ at all, it will still inevitably get derailed to “k but aces aren’t lgbt” so if it’s not a good mental health night i probably shouldn’t make a positivity post at all, because lol aces don’t deserve simple positivity or validation without Discourse attached.
i can’t talk about aphobia because it doesn’t exist, and i still haven’t learned my lesson re: internet strangers knowing my experiences better than i do i guess, but most importantly i can’t talk about aphobia happening in real life because i’m just lying or making shit up to guilt trip people, and if i happen to get caught saying that irl lgbt+ spaces are more inclusive than tumblr then somehow i’ve just admitted that aphobia doesn’t actually exist in any context and no one actually hates aces or aros, wow discourse is done, everyone can go home.
i can’t talk about the split attraction model at all unless i’m calling out how terrible and awful it is, because someone once had internalized homophobia and that is the fault of not only the model itself but also of every person who uses the model or finds it helpful, and Good Aces don’t condone the sam (even though without it i literally can’t exist in discourse land because ace and aro are both only modifiers, not orientations, so i guess i don’t have an orientation and am just a void with two modifiers both modifying nothing, but i can’t talk about that either unless i want to get called cishet and yelled at for tokenizing aro people, why does The Ace Community hate aros so much?).
i can’t say “gatekeeping”, can’t use the actuallyasexual tag, can’t say “space ace”, can’t use certain *literal memes* because every word an ace ever says is somehow stealing from someone or somehow homophobic or is just generally Bad in some vague way nobody ever fucking explains.
and i am just. tired. really, really goddamn fucking tired. it feels like that’s the only word that can describe how i feel about everything at this point, so i guess i should say it as much as i can now before someone comes along to take the word ‘tired’ away from my a-spec ass too.
