Momentai

So… I made a shortened version of this post in a reblog to an ask I originally sent to someone else. And I said there that I would try drag the energy together to make a separate post about it, and several days later… here I am.

Important note before I start: I am not going to use this post to generalise about every Palestinian aid campaign, because I do not have all of the knowledge of every person in the world. I’m not going to go into which countries gofundme operates in or the availability of WiFi or any of that shit. I don’t want to argue about any of that stuff, it would distract from my main point. However, I do believe that Gazavetters is untrustworthy, and based on that I cannot recommend donating to their vetted campaigns. I cannot recommend donating to any personal campaigns, in fact, I truly believe your money is better served going to charities. Maybe some of these people are legit! But neither you nor I have any way of knowing which are legit and which are, as someone noted in a reblog to my original post, using AI to mock up their injury pictures, or using ChatGPT to write genocide fanfiction.

I would rather not be making this post. It’s genuinely hard for me to write it, not just because I’m disabled and generally fucked up and also chose to start writing this post at midnight for reasons known only to my awful brain, but because oh man, did I really want to believe that I was wrong! I would love it if the premier source of vetted Palestinian aid campaigns was really trustworthy and we could know for sure that every unit of currency donated was going to help a stricken family in their time of need!

Unfortunately, then I caught them cosplaying as one of their own campaigns. And I did wait for a while to see if anyone else called this out, or in case… I don’t know, it turned out that this was common knowledge and completely okay? But I think I might legitimately have been one of the only people to have seen this, because of when it happened and how fast it was taken down, and it is killing me that people still believe that Gazavetters is a transparent and trustworthy source.

Also yeah, I know, this is on a burner account. I have friends who follow me on tumblr and would straight up eviscerate me for thinking critically about this at all, never mind calling it out, and I don’t want to be called a genocide denier and kicked out of my irl social groups. Sue me, I’m a coward like that.

Sorry for how long this is gonna be, by the way. And I know you’re unlikely to click this unless you already agree with me, but consider giving it a shot anyway? You don’t have to believe me or do what I say, but take all of this into consideration when you’re making your own decisions.

Eating the rich would seem nice. Also remember what happened when the French did that. Chaos, innocent people like Thomas Paine and Lafayette caught in the crossfire -- and several of his family members got executed --and the monarchy restored.

We have to be smart about our anger. Most predators that bite humans tend to spit us out; we taste terrible. So no, no eating the rich.

“You shouldn’t make ugly bald jokes because what if a transman on T sees it!”

“You shouldn’t make virgin jokes because what if someone who’s asexual sees it!”

How about you just don’t make them because they’re mean. How about people can be balding or a virgin for a number of reasons and also don’t deserve to be routinely made fun of. How about saying that the reason you shouldn’t make x joke because it spares x specific identity’s feelings also let’s them know that you actually have no problem saying or thinking bald people are ugly or virgins are stupid or etc but you’re just not saying it in front of them. How about you understand this kind of body shaming and bullying especially in a very public setting online are always going to have way more unintended damage to people who did nothing wrong than damage to the person you’re upset with.

„I disagree with you“ is not an attack.

„I dislike this take because“ is not mocking.

„Here’s an anonymized screenshot of a take I don’t like for context“ is not harassment.

Having five people respectfully disagree with you in comments is not dogpiling.

When aroace characters are written as allo in fandom—fandom, where people project onto characters, and the majority of people are allo—it's not amatonormative. It's an indication that the majority of fans are allo, and are projecting as allo.

That's a fact. It's not a moral problem that needs correcting. By claiming it's a problem, you're inherently claiming that being allo is bad, or people are aroace but have been convinced otherwise because of "the system", and you know them better than they do. Yes, some people identify as allo before they identify as ace. That is their call to make, not yours.

But, you say, people still have a duty to depict characters like canon depicts them. Their own identity doesn't matter. If they don't depict a canon character with their canon identity, it's erasure.

No.

Fanfiction is not a representation exercise. Canon does not vanish into the nethersphere because someone writes blorbo as allo. What people do in fandom is all additive.

And here's the really hard pill to swallow: being aroace, and projecting onto blorbos as aroace, does not make that projection more socially virtuous, or acceptable, than someone who is allo and projects onto blorbos as allo.

The vast majority of the time, you cannot tell if a fan is shipping aroace blorbo because they feel pressured into shipping everything due to amatonormativity. Chances are, they simply find blorbo sexy and want them in sexy scenarios because that's just what they're into, outside of any amatonormative mindset and influence.

Someone's orientation (and how they express it in fiction) becoming bycatch of amatonormativity does not mean their orientation or how they express it in fiction is wrong. It's not an act of invalidation toward aroaces.

Amatonormativity is the belief that everyone must be in a romantic relationship to be happy, and that it's superior to platonic relationships. Someone shipping blorbo does not mean they're saying everyone must be in a romantic relationship because it's superior.

Someone's personal preference about whether they want blorbo to fuck is not a statement or disclosure of agenda.

When you make your blorbos gay, it doesn't mean you think everyone should be gay because being gay is superior. When people walk down the street with a romantic partner, it doesn't mean they think everyone should be in a romantic relationship because it's superior. When someone has sex, or thinks about aroace blorbo when they're getting off, it doesn't mean they're flipping the bird to aroace people. Their opinion on whether certain relationships are more or less "valid" is an entirely different conversation.

Shipping does not innately include sex or romance. Implying aro ace people can't be shipped, general, no matter what, is arophobic and acephobic.

On that note, even aroace people ship characters. Aroace people can have libidos. They can be horny. They may not feel sexual attraction to people, or engage in partnered sex in many circumstances, but sexual acts can still be gratifying. Ace people often regard the characters in sexual writing as an audience surrogate for themselves and their own gratification. Aroace people are entitled to write porn of aroace characters they find aesthetically attractive.

It's bad when people claim a character isn't canonically aroace when it was confirmed in canon. It's bad when people say aroace people don't exist or aren't LGBT+. Stereotypes are a problem, and so is corrective assault. But right now in fandom, I'm seeing a lot more complaints of, "Why can't they just be friends?!" and "Why can't ace people have this?!". It's nonsensical.

Your "Why can't they just be friends"? is their "Why can't they just kiss?". One desire is not intrinsically better than the other. It's annoying and disappointing to not see as much aroace content as one had hoped. But berating fans for it, when the explanation for the vast majority of them is likely not bigotry, but rather simple projection, is not okay. It's mean, and controlling, and it makes for horrible company. You're going into a pie convention and getting mad that there's only a couple booths for cake.

And if you keep seeing allo content when you're looking for aroace content, that's not a sign that fans should be making less of one and more of the other. It's a sign that the search function is flawed and not properly curating your results. On tumblr, the main tag for fandoms (tumblr.com/tagged/fandomname) is a mess, and so is the search (tumblr.com/search/fandomname), so follow people who do the curating for you. Or, go on AO3 and use the search function with filters. Put the wheel in your hands again; don't throw it out the window only to rant that everything is allo and it's everyone else's fault. Having trouble curating your search is not an issue unique to aroace fans, and neither are the solutions.

People don't have a duty to create fanworks for others. They do it for themselves, and those selves are usually going to be allo. The sooner people come to grips with this, the better. Yes, there are going to be fanworks that are motivated by amatonormativity. Do be frustrated about that. Don't allow that frustration to indiscriminately target anyone who ships aroace blorbo.

Having a minority orientation does not make you immune to being irrational or wrong, or imposing unfair moral judgments on others. Unless you see someone going on about how amatonormativity is good, stop yourself and don't let hamster wheel brain spin out.