#stuff as well really and nb stuff
I’ve seen a number of posts lately criticising language which originated in the asexual or aromantic community - compulsory sexuality, romantic, platonic and aesthetic attractions, new orientation labels etc.
I have my own opinions on various parts of this language, but that isn’t what this post is about. This post is about people from outside these communities engaging with the language they create - and, all too often, mocking it.
What people so often fail to understand is that language in the asexual community is created to fulfil a cultural need within that community. When we talk about compulsory sexuality rather than compulsory heterosexuality, it is a shorthand for the exclusion asexual people feel in sex-positive movements which are inclusive of LGB people but often fail to account for sex-repulsion. When we talk about an aesthetic orientation, it is a way of trying to make sense of feelings for which we have no cultural touchstone, which the existing framework of attraction utterly fails to account for - a way of saying that it is possible to feel for someone without wanting to have sex with or date them.
But taken outside of this context - glimpsed in a text post that’s part of a discussion you haven’t followed, skimmed from the description on a blog you have already decided to hate - yeah, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s easy to see the creation of a new model as an attempt to discredit the old, rather than an attempt to create a range of alternatives. It’s easy to see a new identity as attention-grabbing because you have to Google its meaning, rather than understanding that self-description isn’t always aimed at you. But that doesn’t mean that you’ve understood the intent and the context of what you’ve seen.
And oh goodness, there is discussion in the ace and aro communities that gets it wrong, and thoroughly deserves criticism. But when that criticism comes from outside the community, it’s all too easy to cross the line between “this way of conceptualising things is troubling” to “how dare you try and conceptualise things differently!”
Because too often that’s what I see when those outside the community try to engage with it: outrage that those who are not served by existing language have tried to create their own, rather than accepting that their emotions cannot be spoken, and therefore don’t really exist.
And when you’re getting mad at ace and aro people for daring to exist, that’s the point where you and I are going to have a problem.
