gay as hell

without getting into any #discourse bc im really tired right now, no one’s saying ace people arent real or are invalid or whatever. this has been dumb discourse for years, its not sudden. its mostly bc gay people are tired of cisgender, heteroromantic asexual people (who are straight) coming into gay and trans spaces. their lack of sexual attraction doesn’t make them not straight, and doesn’t make them not our oppressors, and doesn’t make us feel any more safe around them than around any other cis straight person. any time someone who is lgb makes a post pertaining to same-gender attraction, asexual people hijack it. lgb asexual people have expressed discomfort with cishet aces in lgb spaces and talking for them. lgb asexual people experience homophobia just as much as non asexual lgb people. 

tl;dr: lgbt people (ace or not) feel unsafe with cishet people (ace or not) in spaces designed for lgbt people. it isnt so much about asexuality so much as it is about cis straight people (yes, including cis straight aces)

If a rapist is raping you because you are not attracted to them or are saying no to them, that’s not corrective rape. That’s just… rape. And the “just” there is very misleading because rape in and of itself is fucking awful.

But you don’t seem to understand what corrective rape actually is.

Corrective rape is not JUST someone being raped to be “corrected.” It is not one person meeting another person and being offended that the person they want is not exactly what they desire. Corrective rape was made to describe an epidemic in South African where gay and trans people, primarily lesbians, are targeted on the streets and by their families. It’s not an accidental meeting.

It is families inviting rapists into their house to “fix” their daughters because they’re tomboys and they’re afraid they’ll grow up to be lesbians. It’s two women holding hands walking down the street or being visibly gay and being raped so they don’t feel safe doing that anymore.

The term “Correcitve rape” was coined after the MURDER of Eudy Simelane where a woman was abducted, gang raped, and then stabbed dozens of times because she was one of the only women to live openly as a lesbian in her community. Four people got together to plan this out and make sure she suffered.

Corrective rape is where LGBT people, primarily LESBIANS (not only lesbians though and tbh that rhetoric has only popped up recently), are SOUGHT OUT and TARGETED.

Cis straight aces, cis straight aros, and cis aroace people are not targeted, taken by their homes, hunted down by hate groups, or forcibly married to fix their asexuality or aromanticism.

There is no communal or societal effort to “fix” either thing. People, especially women, being raped for not wanting sex or for not being attracted to their rapists, is a product of misogyny, toxic masculinity, and rape culture. There is no separate force between a non-ace woman being raped for saying no and a ace woman being raped for saying no.

Lesbians are being raped so they’re not longer attracted to women. Trans people are raped so they conform to their genders. That’s clearly lesbophobia and transphobia, respectively.

Aphobia as a motivator cannot be clearly separated from misogyny, toxic masculinity, and rape culture (and we should all realize these terms are redundant but it’s worth parsing them out).

Women are raped for being too prudish, too promiscuous, dressed the wrong way, for being too flirty, for being too womanly. These are all things to “fix” them. To correct them. That’s not corrective rape.

Corrective rape has a very specific context. And that context is within a larger system of homophobia, transphobia, and lesbophobia.

The rape of ace women is not meaningfully different from the rape of non-ace women. The rape of ace men is not meaningfully different from the rape of non-ace men. The motivations are… the same. Women are raped for not serving men. Men are raped for not being masculine enough and craving sex.

The rape of lesbians and bi women is meaningfully different from the rape of straight women. The rape of trans folk is meaningfully different from the rape of cis folk. Lesbians and bi women are being raped to punish them for their same gender attraction. Trans folk are raped to punish them for “choosing” the wrong gender and to be put in their place.

Corrective rape is about visible identity being hated and people wanting to destroy it, to literally erase every person under that label from existence. Visibly gay folk and non-passing trans folk are the targets of corrective rape. “Visible” asexuality is not a thing. Aces are not targeted on the streets. There are no hate groups plotting your demise.

I really recommend you read up on corrective rape within the context of South African lesbians. It’s literally entire community’s getting together to abuse, torture, and even murder gay folk (especially gay women) and then corrupt police forces going, “Nothing is happening here, it’s all okay.”

Also, that masterpost has been readily debunked about a million times. Group x has been debunked. The Campus survey on rape rates groups asexual with questioning people and pansexuals KNOWING bisexuals and other mga people face the highest rates of sexual assault and is also bad because… many asexuals are in fact gay/bisexual, which would then factor into their sexual assault. Those are the only two “fact based” links in that entire masterpost that literally only has dozens of links so as to tire people out because they know no one will read them all. The pathologization stuff? Based on a lie even David Jay won’t back up.

Aces may face some discrimination–as I’m sure virgins do and lots of other people who have “non-normal” relationships to sex and relationships like polyamorous people, kinksters, furries. But they are not oppressed.

1. “people on the ace spectrum are queer because queer just means anyone who deviates from the norms of attraction/relationships”

which is intentionally reductionist and ahistorical, and resorts to straight people’s “peculiar/unnatural” definition of queer that is used to ostracise and demonise us. you’re denying the reality - that it’s a slur used on the basis of homophobia and transphobia - because it doesn’t suit your desperation to use trendy words.

or 2. “asexuals have been called queer before”

i think lesbians in particular often have a difficult time even recognizing that what they’re experiencing is attraction?

i rarely look at a woman and think to myself “dang i want to fuck her.” it’s always more just a strong feeling, like a sense of being really drawn to her or being interested by her or enjoying her a lot, that just feels different than finding someone intriguing or cool in a platonic way. 

i’ve known i liked women since i was thirteen years old and i still have a hard time recognizing when i feel attracted to a woman! on more than one occasion i have misinterpreted those feelings as intense dislike or outright HATRED. sometimes i’ll walk by a woman and think to myself “i wonder why i found her so interesting to look at,” before remembering that i’m a big fucking lesbian 

a lot of people have a hard time differentiating between romantic and sexual love, and that’s for a very specific reason. these concepts of love as we know them are societal constructs. now i don’t mean this in a “love is fake, kindness is bullshit” kind of way, i mean that our entire system of life partner-based love is constructed around the concept of marriage, which originated for two purposes. one was to ensure that there was a patriarchal bloodline (therefore sex was necessary), and the second was to enforce patriarchy with women as secondary citizens (and that’s not even to mention the homophobic, transphobic, and racism elements of marriage as an institution). our traditional concepts of both rom-sexual relationships are based on the institution and constructs of marriage, from the courting system, which was very still and formal and is now modern day dating, to marriage and the idea that sex came after marriage, and that sex was required of a married couple (in order to carry on the bloodline and therefore the family). because the concepts of romance and sex are so closely intertwined within this system, not only is it hard to define modern day romance (because we are moving further and further away from the courting > marriage > sex > kids model) but it also makes it difficult for people to differentiate between the two. not only does the SAM, when used on those who don’t want it, sexualizes where it’s not supposed to, it also complicates things that for a lot of non-sex repulsed or sex-neutral people, are just naturally conjoined concepts.

and if our concepts of romantic and sexual love are rooted in social constructs, isn’t platonic as well? the answer is yes. you can see very clearly even by looking back on fairly recent history (namely the 1800s and early 1900s if i’m remembering correctly) that platonic relationships were once a lot closer to what some might consider romantic, with a lot more intimate language and physical contact. it was this closeness that allowed especially lesbians of the time to pursue relationships without quite as much backlash (and this is also a likely reason as to why such close relationships fell out of style). platonic relationships involving physical and emotional closeness were not uncommon then and do not remain uncommon now.

if the “types” of love as we know them are concepts, then why would it be so difficult to accept queerplatonic relationships? here’s why - redefining love for the modern world doesn’t need to involve another restricting definition that is already covered by other types of love. most queerplatonic relationships are either:

close friends that think that their closeness is somehow special. it is not. nowadays thanks to our digital world with things like facebook skewing our idea of what “friends” are, and our social groups growing ever larger and more shallow, people are forgetting that close platonic friends are a real thing that can happen - you can live with your friends, go on dates with them, cuddle, and spend ridiculous amounts of time with them, and they can be your best friend. there’s no need to redefine this - they’re your best friend. this phrase already in our vernacular dictates the exact same concept - “closest platonic person(s) in my life” that you’re trying to achieve.

or, people use the phrase because to them, romance indicates adherence to the aforementioned system above that is incredibly constricting and hetero-patriarchal in nature. it’s no wonder that women - especially wlw - like to go for the qpr label instead. it can be for many reasons - they don’t want to date, maybe, because it’s expensive, boring, and unnecessary. or perhaps it’s because romantic figures in their life (increasingly cishet and almost always forced, rushed, or unattainable when looking at media) do not indicate what they want out of a relationship, which is mainly emotional closeness and trust. what people fail to realize is that in modern relationships, this is what we’re going for. calling something that is romantic “queerplatonic” simply because traditional methods of romance don’t suit you isn’t the answer - the answer is to move away from the traditional romantic structures. one doesn’t need to date to be in a romantic relationship, and kids don’t have to be the end goal.

(2/2) corrective rape and conversion therapy as examples of asexual oppression. I thought those were valid points but I don’t know how to explain that experiencing these types of oppression/issues doesn’t make them LGBT? If you want I could send you the post or tag you in it if that would make it easier. Thanks! 

Women are expected to procreate not only as a way to keep them in their patriarchal role but also just due to society putting such a large focus of importance on having kids and families in general. Even boys are expected to find someone to have kids with. That doesn’t constitute oppression in itself, just a problematic idea that our culture has. 

However, it’s certainly not aphobic. As most aces on here will tell you anyway aces can still have sex and kids. If it were oppression it would have to affect all aces in some way or another and would result in serious legal discrimination. That’s an aspect of oppression that people forget about.

Typically when oppression is discussed in social justice circles It has to do with widespread societal bigotry against a group accompanied by some kind of legal or governmental aspect. Disenfranchising and segregating people of color, denying LGBT people the right to marriage or proper Healthcare for AIDS or transition, legislating the ability to discriminate against minorities. You can’t legislate attraction. You can’t legally force someone to have sex because of their asexuality. That has never happened and it won’t ever happened. Sure some people will expect you to feel sexual attraction but aces have never ever been legally targeted

Ace Conversion therapy concepts are fear tactics. HSD is separate from asexuality and is ace tumblr’s ONLY major talking point for oppression and its disgusting how they take a very real issue and try and make it sound fake and like it harms them. I don’t want to get into corrective rape because I don’t like having discussions that might sound like they discredit rape victims. However It’s not oppression and it has much more of its root in misogyny and toxic masculinity rather than aphobia. If it were an ace issue only it wouldn’t be able to happen exactly to same to non ace women. None of those issues directly target ace people.