a masterpost in blog form

i know, I just recreated my blog and now I’m talking about Things. 

look, no one is arguing that asexuality is a real thing.  in fact, I used to call myself ace too.  I had an ace flag background, I had an ace ring – all of it. 

and you know what? nothing about my attraction has changed since then. even though I dropped the asexual label, I’d still be a firm member of the community if I decided to call myself ace. 

but I don’t. and i never will again. and here’s why: 

y’all are homophobes.

yes, you’ve heard it before! but now it’s coming from an asexual who felt so alienated and embarrassed by your actions that she will never come near your community anymore. 

you take tragedies, murders, and violent acts against sga people and turn them into some kind of oppression contest against you. you make everything about yourself, constantly.  you talk about sex more than any quote-unquote “allosexual” I’ve ever met.

you make posts about how an std-plague would be so cool because only aces would survive.  you take valid criticisms of your garbage behavior and cry “aphobes!” and put your fingers in your ears.

newsflash: you’re not oppressed because you don’t want sex.  yes, sexual situations may make you more uncomfortable than others, and finding a compatible partner might be rough, but those aren’t systematic.  

when I told my mom I was ace, she said “you haven’t met the right person.” rude, yes, but pretty normal for a mom response.

when I told my mom I liked girls, she sent me to conversion therapy and told me if it didn’t stop, I had to leave.

"you take violent murders etc as an oppression contest"? uh no. People's reactions the moment they heard aces being included in the community was "oh my god ACES AREN'T OPPRESSED FOR THEIR SEXUALITY," and the battle cry of the ace discourse for YEARS was "you're not going to get kicked out, raped, attacked on the street, or murdered for being ace!"

This didn't come from aces. It was thrust upon us as the bar we'd have to clear to "prove" we were queer. And no matter how many aces shared their experiences of conversion therapy or corrective rape, there were always exclusionists ready to jump in and tell them they were lying.

Meanwhile, OP's experience is not universal. Fortunately, other people were doing actual research on all this.

2. So wouldn’t aphobia and arophobia be enough?

3. “ Im not against aspecs, im only against us”

Ok well

You asked!

Mental illness and suicidality

2016 study of 68,814 total people: After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, gay men were 2.82 times more likely to report severe psychological distress than straight men. Bi men were 4.70 times more likely to have severe psychological distress than straight men.

Lesbians were 1.34 times more likely to report moderate psychological distress than straight women, plus, 1.58 times more likely to report multiple chronic health conditions.

Bi women: 3.69 times more likely to have severe psychological distress, and 2.07 times more likely to have multiple chronic health conditions.

Li, Pollitt, and Russell (2016) evaluated depression among young adults with minority sexual orientations [in data from a study of almost 10,000]. They "examined the disparities between sexual minorities and heterosexuals during young adulthood, in concurrent depression near the beginning of young adulthood, and prospective depression 6 years later, paying attention to the diversity within sexual minority subgroups and the role of gender nonconformity.

"After accounting for demographics, sampling weight, and sampling design, self-identified 'mostly heterosexual' and bisexual young adults, but not lesbians and gay men, reported significantly higher concurrent depression compared to heterosexuals; moreover, only mostly heterosexual young adults were more depressed than heterosexuals 6 years later."

(A lot of studies now are looking at people who, basically, are attracted to multiple genders, but are scared to think of themselves as bi. So basically, they're looking at whether bi people who are only comfortable saying they're "mostly heterosexual" have stats that are more like straight people's, or more like bi people's, or what. And it often turns out that their stuff looks like bi people's. In this case, of course, it was even worse.)

They crunched the data on overwhelming anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-harm.

Even among students who were already self-injuring, bi students had the highest rate of overwhelming anxiety. 91.42% of straight students who were self-injuring also reported that they'd had overwhelming anxiety at some point in the past 12 months. 94.78% of lesbian/gay students. And 96.50% of bisexuals.

For students who had NEVER self-harmed, even 55.17% of straight undergrad and graduate students had had overwhelming anxiety at some point in the past year. 66.51% of lesbian/gay students. 76.52% of bisexuals.

For students who had never self-harmed, 5.1% of straight students had had suicidal ideation in the past 12 months. 11.52% of gay/lesbian students. 14.08% of bisexuals.

For students who had self-harmed, but not within the past year: 16.13% of heteros had felt suicidal, 22.08% of gay/lesbian, 24.51% of bi.

For students who HAD self-harmed within the past year, 54.85% of heteros had also felt suicidal that year, 65.46% g/l, 65.99% bi.

(Doing the math, it looks like that's 11.07% of total bi students,

...And that's where I ran out of time, back in 2019 apparently, and forgot to come back to it.

Now I'm looking at it all and thinking, "that's a RIDICULOUS amount of work already. Even without knowing the person will inevitably go, 'lmao i'm not reading all that.' That's SO MUCH research. And I set it aside so I could do MORE?

If you're genuinely interested, there's a wealth of information on Google Scholar. I recommend starting with a search for bisexuals or asexuals and "minority stress," the academic term for the effects of oppression. But you can start anywhere you like.

I like your art and other some of your other Ace Attorney content, and there are some valid criticisms you have made about certain parts of the ace/aro community, but you've also engaged in some aphobic takes in the past and only ever seem to bring up ace/aro people in reference to the worst parts of the community or to bring up past issues, so it makes me a bit weary to interact with it.

Again, every community has issues, I understand some of your criticisms, but when someone only ever posts criticisms and doesn't make a clear stance on whether or not they support ace/aro people being in the queer community, it does come off exclusionistic.

People downplay how bad the aphobia on this site was (and still is sometimes) but I remember how bad the harassment got and moderate exclusionists or "ace discourse neutral" people were/are a big part of enabling that 'cause they saw it and said nothing at best and at worst they would laugh along with it. So, that clarity does matters.

i don't know how much clearer i can be on this subject than i've already been. i do not care who calls themselves part of the lgbt community. this is not something i view as an important avenue of discussion because i do not believe the lgbt community as it exists today has any meaningful enough coherence or central goals/ideology that would make drawing hardlines about what groups of people can or can not belong to it important. anyone who is in favor of meaningful liberation from sex and gender based oppression is my ally, and anyone who isnt isnt. simple as that. i have no problem with ace people who want to call themselves part of the lgbt community.

what i do have a problem with is the way that there is a lot of rhetoric baked into the framework of sexuality that the ace community uses that i do not agree with. i have gone on record and said several times that by almost every definition of asexuality i have seen i am somewhere on the ace spectrum, but i choose not to identify with that labeling because i don't find it helpful and don't want my feelings about sex to be a part of my public identity

and the fact that i can say this, over and over and over again, and still get asks like this on a semiregular basis is a massive part of what has me so disenchanted with the framework the ace community uses because it is so so so so fucking focused on terminology that nobody has any idea what to make of a person person who says 'i have the exact same material experience as you, but i don't want to use your words for it'. the fact that i can say that and have it twisted around and be made out like i'm out here actively campaigning hate against people is ridiculous. I'm discussing my opinion on subjects that i am well within my right to discuss, as they pertain DIRECTLY to my lived experiences? but because i don't like the same labeling system everyone else does, i'm allowed to get actively campaigned against? i know for a fact there's been someone going around telling people to stop interacting with me because of my violent aphobia or whatever. it's not pleasant and it's not fair. I don't have a problem with anyone identifying as asexual. I don't have a problem with ace people showing up to pride events, or calling themselves lgbt, none of that matters to me, i don't care about identity politics like that at all.

what i really resent is the idea that all criticism of the ace community is aphobia. i have opinions on pretty much all aspects of gender and sexual identity, because i've spent a lot of my life immersed in those discussions. the reason you keep seeing me post about asexuality is because people keep fucking asking me about it! if people asked me my opinion on sexual identity and gender identity i guarantee i'd have some things to say that are very much against the grain of general consensus. but to paint someone out to be some kind of bigot for that is insanely naive, shortsighted, and unhelpful to any sort of actual political coalition building and lives in the deeply online world where someone's politics are either correct or not.

People pretended it was a debate about whether we belonged in the queer community.

But in fact, it was a constant, rolling, decade-long attempt to make it no safer for us in the queer community than in the mainstream straight world.

When people ask if you think aces and aros are LGBT, they're not asking whether you criticize the ace community as an outsider. They're asking whether, when people hate on aces, your response is "no, these are my people," or whether your response is to think of the problems you have with the rhetoric and frameworks you've seen, and maybe even join in.

"No, these are my people" can come from aces or bisexuals or duck-billed platypuses. It doesn't matter what you are, or what you call it. All anybody wants to know is whether you stand by them, or whether you stand somewhere over there.

Every community has members who stand just outside of it, smoking and talking trash. I have 1000000% had my fill of that, but it's still true, and it probably does something good for those folks.

I can guarantee you, from reading this post and nothing more, that nobody is actually concerned with whether you're ace enough to Have Opinions On This. They just want to know how far away from them you plan to be standing if shit goes down, you know?

As someone who was constantly attacked on this site for years, who watched dozens of other ace and ace-supportive blogs get attacked, suicide-baited, doxxed, and called pedophiles.... personally, I still find my hair stands on end when people speak about the ace community as if they're outside, judging its worth.

Nonny. Nonny. Nonny.

Consider how many contributors, publishers, editors go through the literal lgbt+ history textbooks I sourced. Consider how many teachers teach this in their history classes in universities and colleges globally. Consider how many of my sources are also third hand articles.

When a physics professor gives a lecture do you raise your hand and say, “all those words and you basically only said one guy said e=mc(2) once”?

This is not 8 people, these are a number of specific examples among MANY MORE of asexuals being included in queer history, or queer historians and activists keeping and recording that knowledge, and of a global community teaching that knowledge for over a century which is the whole reason we have that awareness today.

You can’t mock the essay process without mocking all of our history. If I write the history of lesbians in the lgbt+ community today, I would go about it in the exact same way. It’s simply how the written word, history, and sourcing works.

You are interacting in bad faith, I realize. But what’s most annoying is that you’re doing it so poorly as to call into question whether there is any value in sharing and learning lgbt+ history at all! If there’s even a point in recording and learning at all!

Sign the petition at:

5 Mexican ace people are suing Mexico’s health system for cataloguing asexuality as a psychiatric illness and for having forced them into conversion therapy which had the objective of turning ace people into allosexual (meaning non-asexual) people.

Translation:

Tweet by the organization Colectivo PTF Yucatán (Collective for the protection of all families in Yucatán): “📢 From the Colectivo Para la Protección de Todas las Familias en Yucatán, we will accompany 5 asexual people from the state [of Yucatán] in their recurso de amparo [a writ to protect the constitutional rights of a person] against the Mexican Secretary of Health and other authorities for cataloguing asexuality as a psychiatric illness. #NothingToCure 🖤💟💜 [hearts in the colours of the asexuality flag]

Translation:

ASEXUAL PEOPLE SUE THE [MEXICAN] HEALTH SYSTEM FOR THE CONVERSION THERAPY

Five asexual people from Yucatán have presented a writ of amparo against the federal Secretary of Health and other authorities of the National Health System for cataloguing asexuality as a psychiatric illness. They demand the protocols and internal practises be modified, as well as allowing healthcare, specially the psychiatric services, to access the right to healthcare without discrimination.

Asexuality is an orientation characterised for not feeling sexual attraction towards anyone or the lack of interest in sexual relations. It’s calculated that at least 1% of the population is asexual. This will be the first time that a writ of amparo is presented to defend the rights of asexual people in Mexico.

From the Collective for the Protection of All Families in Yucatán we accompany this law suit in which the plaintiff resorted to the Federal Justice after the federal authorities confirmed to them that asexuality is understood as a psychiatric problem under the National Healthcare System’s framework.

According to the Secretary of Health staff, if a person states that they don’t have sexual attraction towards anyone, first of all studies are done on this person to identify if [their asexuality] has a physiological origin. Once this option is ruled out, they [asexual people] are channelled to the psychiatry staff for therapy. This practise is in fact a conversion therapy, given that it seeks to cure people whose orientation is asexual. The healthcare authorities do not contemplate in their protocols the distinction between asexuality and physiological alterations.

Un tweet del Colectivo PTF Yucatán 🏳️‍🌈🇲🇽[bandera transgénero], @ColectivoPTFYuc.

📣 Desde el Colectivo por la Protección de Todas las Familias en Yucatán, acompañamos a 5 personas asexuales del estado en la demanda de amparo en contra de la @SSalud_mx y otras autoridades por catalogar la asexualidad como una enfermedad psiquiátrica. #NadaQueCurar 🖤♡💜

Un artículo.

Personas Asexuales Demandan Al Sistema De Salud Por Terapias De Conversión

Cinco personas asexuales de Yucatán presentaron una demanda de amparo en contra de la Secretaria de Salud federal y otras autoridades del Sistema Nacional de Salud por catalogar la asexualidad como una enfermedad psiquiátrica. Exigen se modifiquen los protocolos y servicios psiquiátricos, para ejercer su derecho a acceder a la salud sin discriminación.

La asexualidad es una orientación caracterizada por no sentir attracción sexual hacia ninguna persona o un desinterés por las relaciones sexuales. Se calcula que al menos 1% de la población es asexual. Esta sería la primera vez que se presenta un amparo para defender los derechos de las personas asexuales en México.

Desde el Colectivo por la Protección de Todas las Familias en Yucatán (Colectivo PTFY) acompañamos este litigio en el cual las personas demandantes acudieron a la Justicia Federal luego de que las autoridades federales les confirmaran que la asexualidad era entendida como un problema psiquiátrico en el marco del Sistema Nacional de Salud.

Según el personal de la Secretaría de Salud, si una persona afirma no tener atracción sexual hacia nadie, primero se le realizan estudios para identificar si tiene algún origen fisiológico. Descarto esto, son canalizados al personal de psiquiatría para terapia. Esta práctica es una terapia de conversión de hecho, debido a que busca curar a las personas con orientación asexual. Las autoridades de salud no contemplan en sus protocolos la posibilidad de distinguir entre la asexualidad y alteraciones fisiológicas.

La demanda fue admitida el viernes pasado por el Juzgado Tercero de Distrito en Yucatán, quien resolverá el asunto.

–

Listen. It is 2022. Absolutely any version of "SOME of this marginalized group is just fakers/wannabes" is a disgusting and horrifying take.

The ace discourse started more than a decade ago. I do not want to hear any of this shit. I don't care if you preface THE EXACT SAME STATEMENTS we've heard from bigots over and over and over with some acknowledgement that there ARE, SOMETIMES, real aces, who do, RARELY, SOMEWHERE, actually get oppressed.

Basically, Thomas Sanders (who, btw, is gay) used to be basically the celebrated Unproblematic Fav Uwu of Tumblr and Vine. Everyone loved him, everyone praised him for being inclusive and positive, making fun and unique vines that were appropriate and enjoyable for any age group.

Then one day he got an aphobic ask (I honestly don’t remember what this was even in response to, I think it was some really innocent one-off “I hope asexuals have a good day” type of post or something like that, idek), to which he wrote a long and sincere response that basically summed up to “Hey, that’s not a nice attitude to have, please take a moment to think about how other people must feel and why it’s so important to you to shut them down”

Within literal hours (and this is something I witnessed myself, I was online when it all went down), a smear campaign against him had started. Suddenly even people who had previously been huge fans of him were shit-talking him left and right, declaring him cringey, and grasping at straws to make “callout posts” for him. One popular argument I remember hearing was- And I shit you not, I am not making this up- He was a “pedophile” because he made videos for a family demographic and has a young-looking face, but was 29 or whatever and therefore “pretending to be a kid” or whatever the fuck. He even, gasp, made vines about high school, despite not being a high schooler himself! (Dan Green voice) That’s called “acting”, children!

His popularity never really recovered, and these days he’s mostly considered “cringey” by a large portion of the internet due to the main demographic most of his fans fall into, because you know it’s hip and cool to shame young girls and queer kids for the things that bring them joy.

1. He has tags for not quite safe for work selfies on his blog (#nsfw and #tsbutt) (not nudes or even lewds, just pictures including his clothed butt.)

2. He accepts nsfw fanart from fans, but ONLY if the artist is 18+

3. There was ONE time where an underage artist submitted a nsfw art piece and Thomas posted it, because said artist removed their age from their bio, so Thomas had no idea it was made by a minor. He deleted the post as soon as this information came to light.

But exclusionists took all of this, mashed it with their “oh but he’s so childish, he acts like a kid even though he’s nearly 30, he must be hiding something!” And ran so far with it that Thomas Sanders severely suffered for it. Even his fans got shit for liking him. A lot abandoned him out of fear that a similar campaign would start against them.

Give me a reason why ace an aro people aren’t LGBTQ+

And if you believe that then you’re just being childish

Like this fool.

you can call me bee, im a minor who uses she/her and he/him, and I only recently found out about all this discourse bullshit so I uh made this blog I guess. Dunno, I’m new to tumblr.

Anyways here’s some of my opinions on LGBT+ discourse stuff

Truscums/transmeds r dumb

“Mspec lesbians” are also dumb

Pansexuality is an inherently biphobic and harmful label that only exists due to people having internalized biphobia and wanting to feel more inclusive. It is built entirely off of misconceptions and not wanting to be associated with stereotypes of bisexuals.

Ace/aro people, while valid, aren’t inherently LGBT+. If ur cis, ace and romantically attracted only to the opposite gender, you’re a cishet. Cishets arent lgbt+. Radical inclusivity is more harmful than helpful.

Demisexuality isn’t a thing. Almost everyone is by definition demisexual. Needing to form a connection before wanting to fuck or having any romantic feelings is an entirely normal thing that almost everyone experiences.

Pronouns =/= gender

You know how, if you see someone you think is hot, you might tell your friend, "omg that person who sits between us in English can Get It," but obviously you don't mean, "I would be comfortable having all the sex with them immediately, if they're into it we're gonna find the janitor's closet"? Nobody means that? You just mean you're sexually attracted to them?

THAT is what demis don't experience.

Someone who's demi is kinda (metaphorically) screwed, in my understanding, because they could date someone for like a year, or many years, before they even find out if they're sexually attracted to their partner.

They mean they need to form a deep, emotionally intimate, personal connection before it's even possible for them to experience that attraction, which might not happen anyway.

They don't mean that they feel attraction, but want to get to know someone first.

Also, pansexuality exists because of trans people. Pansexuality became an alternative label in the 90s, because a lot of trans/nb people liked it. It's still almost entirely trans people who use it, statistically.

There are a lot more labels than that, and most people use more than one. In my experience, the majority of pan people also identify as bi.

And frankly, it's true that some people aren't comfortable calling themselves bi, and use omni or poly or queer or "I don't like labels", etc, instead. Not feeling "bi enough" is practically the universal bi experience.

Idk: there have been people using "bi lesbian," "bi-dyke," and "byke" since at least the late 70s and early 80s. Usually because they don't have access to bi community, history, or culture, their entire lives have been spent in the lesbian community, and they're facing incredible pushback against even saying they're bi.

Lesbian culture has always been perfectly happy to claim any woman kissing/dating/wanting to date another woman as a lesbian. And happy to include them in history and groups and events and activism. Regardless of who they've dated in the past, and who they're attracted to. Just as long as they don't start dating a dude, or (even worse), insisting on being called bi.

(Lesbian Twitter is the exception - and even that is really only since the bi lesbian discourse started last year.)

The only concrete arguments I've seen anyone made against "bi lesbian" are

1. "You're changing what our word means" (not true. After 40 years of this, the reaction to anyone saying "I'm a bi lesbian" is still "a what?? How can you be a bi lesbian??")

2. "Cis straight men will hear this and sexually harass/assault lesbians, bc they think lesbians can be attracted to men!"

A dude who doesn't respect boundaries, doesn't respect boundaries. This argument is basically, "we know how they treat bi women, and we don't want them associating us with bi women and treating us the same way!"

Honestly, I don't care what people call themselves. Letting people choose what to call themselves, as well as what pronouns to use, seems to me like just basic boundaries.

But the fact that the main argument against "bi lesbian" ended up being, "real lesbians will get assaulted, and it will be their fault!"... in a world where cis bi women actually have even higher sexual assault rates than trans people? And there are maybe two resources for bi survivors globally, and no funding for them?

you can call me bee, im a minor who uses she/her and he/him, and I only recently found out about all this discourse bullshit so I uh made this blog I guess. Dunno, I’m new to tumblr.

Anyways here’s some of my opinions on LGBT+ discourse stuff

Truscums/transmeds r dumb

“Mspec lesbians” are also dumb

Pansexuality is an inherently biphobic and harmful label that only exists due to people having internalized biphobia and wanting to feel more inclusive. It is built entirely off of misconceptions and not wanting to be associated with stereotypes of bisexuals.

Ace/aro people, while valid, aren’t inherently LGBT+. If ur cis, ace and romantically attracted only to the opposite gender, you’re a cishet. Cishets arent lgbt+. Radical inclusivity is more harmful than helpful.

Demisexuality isn’t a thing. Almost everyone is by definition demisexual. Needing to form a connection before wanting to fuck or having any romantic feelings is an entirely normal thing that almost everyone experiences.

Pronouns =/= gender

You know how, if you see someone you think is hot, you might tell your friend, "omg that person who sits between us in English can Get It," but obviously you don't mean, "I would be comfortable having all the sex with them immediately, if they're into it we're gonna find the janitor's closet"? Nobody means that? You just mean you're sexually attracted to them?

THAT is what demis don't experience.

Someone who's demi is kinda (metaphorically) screwed, in my understanding, because they could date someone for like a year, or many years, before they even find out if they're sexually attracted to their partner.

They mean they need to form a deep, emotionally intimate, personal connection before it's even possible for them to experience that attraction, which might not happen anyway.

They don't mean that they feel attraction, but want to get to know someone first.

Also, pansexuality exists because of trans people. Pansexuality became an alternative label in the 90s, because a lot of trans/nb people liked it. It's still almost entirely trans people who use it, statistically.

There are a lot more labels than that, and most people use more than one. In my experience, the majority of pan people also identify as bi.

And frankly, it's true that some people aren't comfortable calling themselves bi, and use omni or poly or queer or "I don't like labels", etc, instead. Not feeling "bi enough" is practically the universal bi experience.

1. Asexuals shouldn't be a part of the lgb community because they aren't oppressed.

What I think matters is that our experiences still differ from the norm, heterosexuality, even if it's less than other identities. It's present in little things to big things - from seeing sex in media and being repulsed at the thought of doing it ourselves to corrective r*pe. If there's some range of oppression you need to face to be a part of the community, then feel free to cut us out I guess. What's important is that asexuals and those who are questioning are able to find resources and outlets, even if there's less exposure after being shunned by the community. In other words, asexuals should be able to have their own community and spaces. The problem is, we can't. At least on tumblr, I've seen numerous ace themed blogs or posts get invaded by exclusionists when anything relevant to the discourse wasn't mentioned at all. Please just let us be, even if you can't accept us.

2. Heteromantic asexuals especially!

Again, everything mentioned above. Straight passing privilege is only received by not being able to talk about our identity.

3. Gray asexuals don't exist because asexuality isn't a spectrum; you're asexual and you don't experience sexual attraction or you aren't.

If they’re cis and they only feel attraction to the opposite gender they’re a cishet. They can face struggles due to being ace/aro but that doesn’t make them LGBT+. All this is genuinely confusing and I haven’t seen a single inclus with an argument other than “b-but the LGBT+ community is supposed to be inclusive!!!”

The community is for everyone that the mainstream treats as queer. Everyone that the mainstream abuses for threatening its precious binary.

Otherwise it would still just be the gay rights movement.

Only twenty years ago, people were arguing that the movement shouldn't include trans people, because there are hetero trans people. They made the exact same arguments that ace exclusionists make now: they face different issues. They're not oppressed for same-sex attraction. It makes no sense to include them. They should make their own communities. Obviously they're welcome if they belong for other reasons, but we don't want the hetero ones here.

That's why the trans and intersex communities have worked together for decades. Because even though you could argue that intersex people "aren't lgbt," both groups are denied informed consent, face tons of medical abuse, and are harassed and assaulted for not fitting into the gender binary. Trans people struggle to access the same treatments that are forced on intersex people. It's the same fight, just from two different angles.

Bi people have faced decades and decades of exclusion because the gay rights movement was eager to consider bisexuals "too straight" and 'basically cishets."

From TERFs taking over Northampton Pride in 1990 specifically to kick bisexuals out of the event entirely, to the London Lesbian and Gay Centre banning all bisexual groups for five years, or for that matter, the incredibly long and difficult battle to get any of the "LGBT" Marches on Washington to allocate space for even one bisexual speaker.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but bi people are continually treated as "effectively straight, except the few who are mistaken for gay, who are already covered under gay and lesbian activism."

The community isn't some unified slab of LGBT people who have always fought together, and these weird outsiders who want in for some reason.

This is intracommunity bullshit, anon, in an overwhelmingly leftist community, on an overwhelmingly leftist site.

"Cishet aces" have never been exclusionists' target. After so many years of trashing all aces and non-ace inclusionists, even to the point where exclusionists spent most of 2017 running a smear campaign to make them look like "pedophiles," you can no longer hide behind that. (People who missed that era can get the dirt at @agreatdebunkingeffort.)

And years of research have already disproven the idea that anyone treats aces as "fine unless they're also gay or trans.".

Yes, they are a separate community and we are allies. We should be very close allies. there is a lot of overlap between who is LGBT, ace, or both but they are still two separate communities. Resources to help and learn the history are wildly different from each other. Ace folks aren't really going to use the information about sex and its history of empowerment in their own community. it's just... Apples and oranges. They really are two communities that happen to overlap sometimes, but they aren't the same community because of it.

There's a lot of differences that separate the communities. Mostly sex and romance. These two things are absolutely key in the LGBT community. The whole point is to be able to love someone regardless of the gender you're attracted to, and the gender identity you know is you. The ace community is more about the lack of attraction to sex and romance. Again, they can overlap, you can be trans and ace, bi and ace, gay and ace, lesbian and ace, etc. but when you're Aroace you arent LGBT. You lack the romance component I mentioned above.

Communities have requirements. If they didn't, they wouldn't be communities. I'm black, I don't want non-black people coming in and taking over spaces (Its too late, they already have, and its been happening for hundreds of years but that's beside the point), I'm not ace, I'm not going to be in ace spaces because I really don't belong there. But I will absolutely support them. If you're purely ace (het, cis yadda yadda...), then you don't really belong in the LGBT community. The struggles aces face, I'm sorry to say, are not nearly as bad as they say. There really is no violence, no oppression, no outward public hate from any authorities or governing group, nothing really checks off those marks. There are absolutely things ace people go through but oppression isn't the right word. (trust me I know oppression...) You can be in any part of the world, people won't bar you from entering a store or getting a job because you're ace. But you should still support them and your friends and your family.

As a trans person, I also have to point out that arguments like "they're not really the same thing, they should have their own community, we don't have the same issues," are the arguments against including trans people in the movement.

The Advocate was asking people to vote on trans inclusion as recently as 1999, and the gay/lesbian was EXTREMELY divided.

(The bi community has tremendous overlap with trans people, and the two have always collaborated. Doesn't matter when it comes to the mainstream movement, which has always really been about gay rights.)

if I had a dollar for every exclu I've seen claiming that sex ed means teaching kids to have sex or teaching kids to masturbate, i could fix the community poverty rates single-handedly

honestly. sex ed teacher: "our curriculum for kindergartens briefly mentions masturbation without naming it"

exclus: "EWW NASTY, ACES ARE LETTING THIS PERSON TALK TO MINORS ABOUT MASTURBATION, UNSUPERVISED!!"