Aces And Aros Are Valid

1. Have them have friends! The lonely asexual story is getting really old.

2. Introverted asexuals are cool, but why not have extroverted asexuals?

3. Asexual and Aromantic are not the same thing. Try giving your character a sexless romance.

4. Or have them have sex, that’s cool too! Remember. Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction, and does not mean the character is opposed to sex.

5. Asexuality varies. If you want your character to be a victim of sexual assault that’s fine, but don’t make this true about every asexual character. Some people don’t want sex and it has nothing to do with past sexual experiences.

6. No more sociopathic asexuals, okay?

7. Don’t paint your asexual character to be the essence of innocence. You can have your asexual swear. They can be rude, like to dance dirty, have crude humour, literally! Anything! Any! Other! Character! Can! Be!

8. Your ace character can be sex repulsed, but do not have that be the defining characteristic of your character. Give them personality.

9. Do not write an ace character just to have your protagonist *suffer* because they love them, but won’t satisfy them sexually. That’s gross.

I watched irl queer groups disintegrate bc a few ppl who got into leadership positions used that to make the space hostile towards ace ppl (among others as well), saw friends go from being loud and proud aces n aros to actively avoiding any mention of it and letting ppl assume their sexuality. I myself, having been IDing as ace for 10 years at least, have in the past couple since this whole “"discourse”“ came into being, actively and intentionally stopped telling anyone at all that I’m ace. To put that in some kind of perspective, I am incredibly out as trans and will actively out myself pretty constantly except to total strangers I will never see again. I feel safer telling ppl I’m trans than ace. Especially in queer spaces. It’s fucked me up so much I didn’t even quite grasp how much but today my therapist asked me for the first time about like romantic relationships and I physically could not say I am aro and ace. Completely incapable, utterly frozen, and I just kinda let her believe what she will. Ironically the fact that I’ve gone from being willing and ready to tell ppl I’m ace as just another facet of myself to entirely unable and unsolicited to tell anyone, is probably a thing one might want to talk w one’s therapist about.

but then this fucking shit happened. around 2015 is when it really kicked into high gear. “discoursers” or exclusionists or aphobes or however you want to refer to them consider asexuality to be a joke and that everyone who identifies as ace is a cringey cishet college-aged white girl who loves dr who. recycled biphobia, homophobia, and even terf rhetoric made its way into the mainstream tumblr conscious by reframing the arguments to target ace people (you’re only X because you’re ugly/can’t get laid; you aren’t part of the community if your partner is of a different gender; maybe something happened to you to make you this way; have you had your hormones checked?; by accepting this identity you are allowing the oppressor to infiltrate our spaces; etc.). you know, in case you think this is just about “snick snack” memes.

this has alienated ace people of color, who already struggle with desexualization/hypersexualization, disabled aces, ace survivors, trans aces, mentally ill aces, neurodiverse/AUTISTIC ACES (you guys get REAL fuckin nervous when i highlight that the majority of your jeering about aces’ perceived awkwardness, missed social cues, infantilization/dehumanization, or “unfuckability”/“cringey-ness” are repackaged ableism, especially considering that a good percentage of the ace community is also autistic), and both young AND older aces. 

younger people are being discouraged from exploring the possibility of being asexual by exclusionists for reasons that vary from internalized homophobia to asexuality being a side effect of SSRIs. they are being told that they are “actually” something other than what they say they are, or that they are broken, or that they’re too young to know, or that our ace identity is simultaneously something that must be excruciatingly examined to determine its “cause” yet so irrelevant that it’s unworthy of discussion or representation—”nobody cares that you don’t want to have sex”. i WISH i had known about asexuality as a teenager, as a kid. I wish i had saved myself from so much grief, abuse, pain, and corrective rape by not subjecting myself to experiences that i hoped would “fix” me. 

and older people like me, who in the grand scheme of things is uhhh really not that much older than the majority of tumblr, are ridiculed for having a presence on tumblr in general, let alone as an asexual person. aces over 30? 40? 50? unicorns. conjured rhetoric. people straight-up don’t believe they exist. people ten years my junior attempt to deny and erase the lived history of aces by saying asexuality was “invented” only ten years ago. i have been terrified of attempting to enter Q* spaces irl because i have heard from even my IRL gay friends that aces do not belong, that “it’s not important enough to form an identity around”, that we are not oppressed enough or we just desperately want to be oppressed. 

i have only heard in passing of people much older than i am who are ace. i have absolutely zero examples to turn to of people like me continuing to live a long life or any evidence that i am worth loving unless i become a parent, which i don’t want to do. when you’re a teenager there’s more discussion about sexual boundaries, but what about dating in my 30s? what adult is going to be satisfied knowing i can never validate their sexual attraction, unless they were ace like me (less than 1% of the population)? am i forced to be alone forever? you can imagine how bleak my future feels. 

it pisses me off that i’m seen as a curmudgeon who “just doesn’t get the young people’s humor” when i have to beg people that i consider friends, for the eight billionth time, to stop making/reblogging jokes about how “cringey” aces are or are tongue-in-cheek declaring themselves to be aphobes, and then those people try to assuage me with respectability politics about how it’s about “THOSE” aces on tumblr and not, yknow, me, who is “one of the good ones”. and since the jokes themselves are so juvenile, it further compounds on the poor social graces and stoicism assumed of asexual people if I’m getting upset over ace war criminal moodboards or whatever the fuck. EVERY time i post about asexual ANYTHING on tumblr, to this day, i lose followers. without fail. people dont bat a lash when i spam 20 untagged posts in a row about a fandom they dont care about but i post two positive words about asexuality and theyre gone.

ASEXUALITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY TEENAGE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

For more information on sexual history read this http://wiki.asexuality.org/Asexual_history

Before aromanticism was used as a term there was non-limerant. Limerance described romantic attraction and so a non-linemerant person didn’t experience romantic attraction. It has a lot of similarities to aromanticism and it’s first documented appearance was in a book called ‘love and limerance’ published in 1979.

Aromanticism was also not invented by white girls on tumblr.

AROMANTICISM WAS NOT INVENTED BY WHITE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

I did know I needed this. But I never thought it would get me to tears. I never knew I needed it for me, to show to myself, to tell me it’s fine to be me.

This is why representation is important. This is why visibility is important.

Sometimes I see exclusionists shooting their mouths off about how the way you can tell aces aren’t oppressed is that our main need is for representation, that our positivity posts are about being valid.

And I’m just like… you have maybe temporarily forgotten what it is like to not see yourself reflected anywhere?? You maybe have been lucky enough to find people like you in history and in media before you came out?? Perhaps you are blissfully unaware that if you don’t have that kind of representation, the only messages you get are that you are a shitty gross broken person that doesn’t have any worth????? Possibly you do not know the effect of hearing that from both the straight and the “LGBT” communities at once??

I don’t know if anybody has studied this (I’m gonna find out!) but I would bet a lot of money that that stuff has a huge impact on health, and that it’s a big part of the reason that m-spec and a-spec people (including aros) have such incredibly high rates of things like suicidality.

One of them specifically came to Tumblr to be a resource for younger aces (the one in her late 40s) and left in horrified disgust over the level of direct, awful harassment she received.

We especially can’t escape when it’s purposefully flooded into our positivity tags. 

So: I am asexual. I hate it when people are actively working to shove us back into the closet and fracture our community when we have been acknowledged as existing since ancient times, and when we have had a term to name ourselves since the 1900s. 

This is our history, we have always been here, we will always be here. 

And by “cisgender heteroromantic heterosexual” I mean ALL THREE of those things.

Are you a trans (binary or nonbinary) person who is attracted sexually and romantically to the opposite gender? You belong in the LGBTA+ community.

Are you a cis person who is heteroromantic asexual? You belong.

Are you a cis person who is heterosexual aromantic? You belong.

Are you a cis bisexual who is currently dating a cis member of the opposite gender? You belong.

Are you an intersex individual who otherwise is heteroromantic heterosexual? You belong.

Alrighty - I’ve gotten a lot of questions from aces who’re hella confused about sensuality, and I’ve decided to point out something that I debated for a long time against sharing:

With all the ‘gal pal’, ‘bromance’, and ‘white people’ jokes we see, we risk missing on some important details involving sensuality and platonic intimacy. There’s an entire side to the ‘intimacy’ discussion that most of you aren’t aware of, and being unaware isn’t an ok thing; y’all don’t know about the diversity of intimacy because of neo-colonialism, whitewashing, and gentrification. 

Water births being a ‘white hippie’ thing. Two men kissing ‘obviously’ being a case of heternormative washing. And so on. Behind a few of these bromance/gal pal/yt people joke hide not only whiteness, but a rhetoric that erases asexuality/aromanticism. And it’s time to address that. 

Why? Because American views on intimacy erases non-American people of color, and also forces compulsory sexuality upon people in the ace spectrum. Being an ace of color, my patience is tried.

Listen; America is notoriously neurotic when it comes to intimacy. And only periodically throughout the centuries. In so many other places, kissing on the mouth is what friends and family do. My cousins and I were breastfed until past kindergarten, by our mothers, aunts, babysitters, and friends of family. I’ve seen, touched, and hugs many naked friends throughout my life, all ages across. What western culture sexualizes, not everyone agrees with.

Sexual attraction is described as the compulsion to commit sexual acts with a specific object of desire. Romantic attraction much the same, except not explicit. Sensual attraction similar guidelines, and so on. So what happens when one person’s ‘sexual attraction’ is another’s ‘I just want a goddamn cuddle, is that so damn important?’

When we see vintage footage of old-timey Americans who kiss, cuddle, and embrace each other’s bare skin, there is no doubt that many of them are same/multiple-gender-attracted. But a lot of you say so with absolutely no comprehension of the diversity of physical intimacy, and how different it is around the globe.

In so many other countries and cultures, you regularly cuddle, kiss, and touch your friends. When someone pulls out a camera and says, ‘smile!’ you drape your arms lovingly around your mate, and kiss them on the neck. And that photo is uploaded to facebook and all that jazz. 

In modern day America, holding hands is literally second base. Our desire for physical intimacy has been heavily sexualized. And for some people, that’s a huge deficit to their wellbeing and themselves.

I remember when I was about 4 I had a nightmare and my brother invited me to sleep in his bunk with him. When mom came to wake us up for school, she screamed at us about how inappropriate that was, and I remember that was the very last time I was ever cuddly with my brother. That incident caused my sense of intimacy to be warped dramatically. I was always allowed to be cuddly with mom or other little girls who were my friends, but I wasn’t allowed to be the same way with boys who were my friends. To this day intimacy on any level with a woman feels more natural than the same with a man. 

Also, the bath image above from My Neighbor Totoro intensely infuriated my mom. She kept going on about how no grown man should be bathing with daughters and about how creepy it was. She then went on to say that it’s disgusting for any adults to bathe with their children after a certain point. But I don’t understand that logic at all.

Americans are taught that bodies are shameful and that sharing our bodies in any ways other than what’s deemed as acceptable by our culture is the most shameful, sinful thing you can do. This kind of platonic or parental intimacy is so shamed that we’re /forced/ to have an unhealthy relationship with it by the time we leave home. And when intimacy of any kind is demonized like it is, we end up with situations where parts of the human body are sexualized because they are taboo. Even now, women are being constantly shamed for breastfeeding their children, teenage girls are forced to cover up shoulders and collar bones for fear of being distractions to boys…

^^^THIS^^^

folks in North America and a larger extent ‘White British Colonized’ places- have ‘flattened’ human interaction into touching=sex, nude=sex, affection=sex and to finish it all off Sex=BAD.  This strange hyper-sexualization and parallel rejection of sex has created an entire culture of touch and affection starved people. With all the psychosis and trauma that goes with isolation and rejection. 

Acespec and arospec people are not “special snowflakes”.

We are not “straights who want to be El Gee Bee Tee”.

We are not celibates, or “pathetic virgins”.

We are not “whites begging to be oppressed”.

We are a group of people with a sexual identity with lives outside of this hellsite. And when you paint us as anything else, it is harmful, and it is hate. It is aphobia.

When you say these things, you are telling aces/aros of color that you don’t recognize their identity, that asexuality/aromantisism is something made up by and only used by white people for attention. You’re insinuating that there’s something pathetic about being a virgin (spoiler alert: there isn’t). You’re telling every asexual and aromantic that has a marginalized identity that they do not know what it’s like to be oppressed. Those of us with marginalized identities because of race, religion, disability, romantic/sexual orientation or gender identity (to name a few examples) have absolutely no desire to be further oppressed. We are not begging for it. We have enough as it is.

Maybe when aces/aros reach out saying that they have faced harassment for being asexual or aromantic, it’s because they know what it feels like because they’ve faced it before. Listen to what we have to say. The vast majority of us are not liars. Painting all of us with the same color because of a few bad outliers is prejudice.

Maybe, just maybe, we are who we say we are. Stop pretending that your aphobia isn’t hate just because it’s directed towards those “whites who want to be oppressed”.

My acespec and arospec pals stay strong, stay loud, and stay proud. Your experiences aren’t fake. You aren’t wrong for existing or asking for representation and visability.

Happy 20NoneTeen!!!

and I was taken off my antidepressants because they may be lowering the libido I never had in the first place (plus various other reasons, but still immediately, cold turkey, which should NEVER happen unless they’re switching you to something else)

Nonbinary/agender people are allowed to be uncomfortable with androgyny, whether it’s because it doesn’t come naturally to them or because it implies “male and female” qualities

Androgyny is not inherently a part of being nonbinary/agender

On multiple occasions I’ve had to explain what asexuality is. And sometimes it’s fine, it goes well and we’re all good. But most times it’s doesn’t go well.

People will “jokingly” ask me if I reproduce by myself. Like yeah, real creative, totally haven’t heard that one before. No, I don’t. I actually don’t want kids so post up mf.

I just wanted to let people know what not to do when someone comes out as asexual:

Don’t ask if the reproduce by themselves, that’s dumb and purposely ignorant.

Don’t tell them it’s just a phase. It might be, but you don’t know that.

DONT MAKE THEM FEEL BAD ABOUT IT!!! My ex made me feel bad about being ace bc they wanted sex and I didn’t so I said that I was gray-ace instead. No!!!

Don’t point out that they have done sexual things before, that doesn’t matter.

Don’t say there’s no such thing as asexuality.

If they realize that they aren’t ace, don’t make them feel bad for changing what they said. That’s rude.

DO!!! NOT!!! OUT!! THEM!!!! IF!! THEY!!!! ARENT!!! READY!!!!!!!!! Don’t be like Martin from Love, Simon.

DONT SAY THEY ARENT LGBT+!!!!

(Oct 21st - Oct 27th)

Smash that motherfucking reblog button if you support Asexuals and consider them a valued part of the LGBTQ+ community!