A-spec positive

Black sexuality on the other hand, both of ace and non-ace Black people has always been demonised and shunned. Queer tumblr will boldly declare this is an anti puritanism zone, but continue to create moral panics about rap and hip hop for having the same 'freakiness' they claim to accept. Being a freak comes with terms and conditions. It's an exclusive club. Being a "sexual degenerate", "pervert" and a freak are aesthetics white sex favourable people can take part in for pleasure meanwhile Black people of any sexuality have been killed, targeted and sexualised for these exact same tropes, regardless of how much sex we do or don't take part in. Whilst being assumed to be innocent and sexually infantilised is an inconvenience and an annoyance, it is a form of white privilege Black people don't have access to and a form of privilege white sex favourable people are oblivious to. We can't be uwu soft hand holding beans. We cannot take part in horniness, sexiness and kink and be redeemed by whiteness directly afterwards. Whilst being uwu and fluffy is an inconvience for them, it is a luxury for us.

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH BLACK ASEXUALS!

Shoutout to Black British aces, Black American aces, African aces, West Indian aces and all Black aces across the diaspora.

We may be small in number but we're out here! We've always been the backbone of the ace community through it's activism. No matter what the larger community throws at us, we belong here. Not as guests or visitors or basic shoutout posts every blue moon, but as ourselves.

Shoutout to us. Black aces who stan Yasmin Benoit, Black aces who yell rap lyrics they can't relate to, Black aces who are the only Black ace they know, Black aces with that copy of Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, Black aces with their own Black ace OCs, Black aces who love Selah Summers, Black aces digging for their representation, Black aces tired of that one family member asking when they will have kids, I see you all and I honour you. Let's go Black aces let's go!

i'm not interested in playing the identity politics "who is oppressed the most/more deserving of attention?" because (a) it's irrelevant and (b) i'm a white american so i REALLY don't have a horse in that particular race. what i AM interested in is the apparent bias that many people have against aspec identities and the fact that the overwhelming majority of people seem to view aspec identities as "lesser" queer identities.

i'm not talking about, like, current legislative battles or things like that (see previous paragraph). i'm talking about the frankly patronizing way that aspecs get treated when we try to talk about literally anything that affects us. you call someone out for an aphobic comment and you get accused of "making it about you" or you get told something that boils down to "well i'm a REAL gay so i can say what i want and your feelings don't matter." even in a less insidious sense, other queer people have often spoken to me like i don't Get It because i'm not REALLY queer. it's like being told to go sit at the little kids' table while the adults are talking. it's frankly insulting to try to talk about something and have your inbox flooded with a dozen people all telling you that YOUR problems are less important and no one cares and we have to deal with "real" queer people's problems first and then we can deal with you and your silly complaints.

Excluding asexuals from queerness under the belief that we do not experience discrimination and trauma 'enough’ only serves to reproduce the same harms as cisheteropatriarchy. Being subjected to and harmed by compulsory sexuality, rape culture, and acephobia is traumatic, and the denial of this works to obscure the very ways in which asexuals have been harmed by people within queer communities. Allosexual queer folks have absolutely been spectators to asexual queering; they have even been participants in moments where we have been queered because of our relationship to sex, attraction, and desire. Acephobic exclusionists must hold two opposing ideas at once in order to maintain their dissonant belief system that if asexuals are not discriminated against in the same ways and to the same degree that they are, then that discrimination either cannot count or must not exist at all. They hold this belief even as they themselves actively participate in that discrimination, and even as they acknowledge that the discrimination faced by other queer folks can and does differ across gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, and more.

So I ask: What exactly is the connective tissue between the experiences of those who call ourselves queer? What is the distinct criteria that supposedly disqualifies asexuals from being able to claim queerness or even exist in 'LGBTQIA+’ spaces, despite the presence of the A in the acronym? Is it discrimination, invalidation, and violence based on their sexual or gender/sex variant identities? Is it failing to perform heterosexual or cisnormative social scripts and being ostracized for it? Is it institutional mandates and unwritten rules that don’t take their sexuality or gender/sex into consideration, or are specifically designed to other people like them? Is it having their very existence and the validity of that existence up for constant debate? Is it feeling invisibilized in mainstream media and cultural artifacts because the relationships or gender/sexes depicted therein rarely, if ever, reflect their own experience with these things? Is it feeling largely isolated and distinctly barred from being able to relate in social settings where the conversations operate on the assumption that everyone involved has a universal experience with sexuality or gender/sex, and that experience is typically a cisheteronormative one?”

trans men face unique challenges due to being trans men

this does not mean that they are more or less oppressed than trans women

trans men and trans women should stick together to fight against transphobes, not fight about who has it worse. we both have it equally bad.

"Tranz Portraits" by Del LaGrace Volcano, from the book Sublime Mutations

As we were saying, you can't fight aphobia without fighting terfs.

Her first response to JK + The Tweet under the cut

seeing stuff like this is so upsetting because these terms were well known and widespread in the ace community but because of exclusionists many people stopped using terms like this because they felt uncomfortable and unsafe.

i loved these terms when i was in highschool, i loved the feeling of community, but i lost that because i didn’t feel comfortable openly and proudly calling myself asexual.

Going through all those blogs and seeing validation, learning more things about my newfound orientation was so incredibly as a questioning and unsure 15 year old. It’s devastating to me that this community has fallen quiet so much. So I started my tags, hoping to spread some more positivity and maybe inform people. This community is full of incredible people and the fact that so little of them remain, it heartbreaking.

Happy pride month lads! 🧡💛🤍💙

So I wanted to put this together not because anyone needs to see all of this stuff, or read every word here, but because I think compiling these kinds of posts is useful when we’re talking about transmasc issues in the community.

There is, frankly, way too much for anyone to go through and dissect here. It’s exhausting, and it stressed me out just trying to find the posts to make this. I’m not going to go through everything here and point out why it’s all wrong. I don’t have that kind of time.

What I’m saying is that there is a problem.

Not that the problem is worse than anyone else’s, not that it’s the only problem, not that nobody else has problems on par with or even worse than this.

But there is a problem.

Transmascs are made to feel unwelcome- intentionally or not. There is dwindling space, there is less and less room for our voices. Less support for our perspectives. Less compassion for our experiences.

There is a hostility growing, an assumption that trans men are inherently violent people- are the oppressor. That we must be stopped, that we must be kept out of the community, that our oppression doesn’t matter or worse, doesn’t exist.

I lay this out for you because I want it to be clear why I and others are trying to build space for a healthier community for transmasculine folks; spaces that support and validate them, that are compassionate, trusting, and understanding (without allowing room for misogyny or transmisogyny). I want it to be very clear why I make the posts that I do, why I think it’s so important to change the broader understanding of transmasculine struggles and transphobic oppression. 

I’m exhausted after compiling this. A lot of these posts are recent; this year, or within the last few. Some of them are older. Some of them are from my own inbox, or comments off my posts- and I left many of the posts I found out, too, prioritizing the ones that make sense without the surrounding context and the ones that contain their entire message, stated, and easy to understand. These posts are from other trans men, trans women, nonbinary people- from within our own community.

hey folks tumblr has once again blocked me from reblogging or posting anything, I’m so sorry. I’m again on my alt account that I luckily have linked to this one but please for the love of fuck get @staff s attention and get them fixing this problem.

this has gone on too long and it’s affecting people other then me! Please share share share and reblog and reblog and reblog, @ all you mutuals in the replies just do it!!! Likes don’t do shit for getting something fixed

I used to wear the black ace ring and the white aro ring every day (I stopped cause they stopped fitting my fingers and I haven’t gotten around to getting new ones). When I was a freshman, a friend of mine came up and asked if they were the ace and aro rings. I said yes and he said cool, and told me that he’s ace too. A few months later, we were chatting and he mentioned that he wanted to wear an ace ring to the school dance, but wasn’t sure where to get one. I told him where I got mine, but then I offered my own. He took it and when he tried to give it back, I told him to keep it. It made him so incredibly happy, and he wears it every day in the years since. At the end of last school year, he gave me a different ace ring to say thank you. We laugh about ace culture all the time, everything from joking about garlic bread to having in depth discussions about dragons. He was my first in real life ace friend, and the comfort that came from that friendship is something that I hope every ace person will get to experience.