Y'know, whenever people want to talk about why aspec people âcountâ as an oppressed identity, they tend to go for the big stuff like corrective rape and conversion therapy. And like, we should absolutely talk about that stuff. Obviously those things are terrible and important and we need to raise awareness and deal with them.
But I feel like people often gloss over how⌠quietly traumatising it is to grow up being told that there is only one way to be happyâ and that everybody who doesnât conform to that norm is secretly miserable and just doesnât know itâ and then to gradually realise that, for reasons that you cannot help, that is never going to happen for you.
Youâre not going to find a prince/princess and ride off into the sunset. Or if you do, then itâs not going to look exactly the way it does in fairytales. Youâre not going to get a 'normalâ relationship, because you are not 'normalâ, and everybody and everything around you keeps telling you that thatâs bad.
You see films where characters are presented as being financially stable, genuinely passionate about their work and surrounded by friends and family, but then spend the rest of the plot realising that the real thing they needed was a (romantic and sexual) partner, to make them 'completeâ.
You absorb the idea that any relationships you have with allo people will ultimately be unfulfilling on their side, and that this will be your fault (even if you discussed things with your partner beforehand and they decided that they were a-okay with having those sorts of boundaries in a relationship) unless you deliberately force yourself into situations that you arenât comfortable with, so as to make uo for your 'defectsâ.
You grow up feeling lowkey gaslighted because all the adults in your life (even in LGBT+ spaces. In fact especially in LGBT+ spaces) are insisting that itâs totally normal to not be attracted to anybody at your age, and then you go to school and everybody keeps pressuring you to name somebody youâre attracted to because they canât imagine not being attracted to anybody at your age.
And then you get older and realise that one day youâre going to be expected to leave home, and that one day all your friends are going to be expected to put aside other relationships and 'settle downâ with a primary partner and you donât know what youâre going to do after that because you straight up donât have a roadmap for what a 'happy endingâ looks like for someone like you.
(And the LGBT+ community is little help, because so many people in there are more than happy to tell you that youâre not oppressed at all. That youâre like this because you donât want to have sex, and/or you donât want to have any relationships, that your orientation is some sort of choice you madeâ like not eating bananasâ rather than an intrinsic part of you that a lot of us have at some point tried to wish away.)
Even if youâre grey or demi, and do experience those feelings, you still have to deal with the fact that youâre not experiencing them the 'normalâ way and that thatâs going to effect your relationships and your ability to find one in the first place.
If youâre aiming for lifelong singlehood (which is valid af) or looking for a qpp, then youâre going to have to spend the rest of your life either letting people make wrong assumptions about your situation (at best that your relationship is of a different nature than it actually is, at worst that the life youâve chosen is really just a consolation prize because you 'failedâ at finding a romantic/sexual partner) or pulling out a powerpoint and several webpages every time you want to explain it.
This what being aspec looks like for most people, and it is constantly minimised as being unimportant and not worth fighting againstâ even in aspec spacesâ because weâve all on some level absorbed the idea that oppression is only worth fighting against if itâs big, and dramatic, and immediately obvious. That all the little incidents of suffering that we experience on a daily basis are not enough to be worth bothering about.
I mean, who gives a shit if you feel broken, inherently toxic as a partner, and like youâre going to be denied happiness because of your orientation? Shouldnât we all just shut up and thank our lucky stars we donât have to deal with all the stuff some of the other letters in the acronym have to put up with (leaving aside the fact that there are many aspec people who identify with more than one letter)?
So you know what? If youâre aspec and you relate to anything Iâve said above (or can think of other things relating your your aspec-ness that I havenât mentioned) then this is me telling you now that itâs enough. Even if we got rid of all the big stuff (which weâre unlikely to do any time soon becauseâ Shock! Horror!â the big stuff is actually connected to all the small stuff) we would still be unable to consider our fight 'overâ because what you are experiencing is not 'basically okayâ and something we should just be expected to 'put up withâ.
No matter what anybody tells you, we have the right to demand more from life than this.
