#ace discourse

the waves of hatred directed largely towards one or another subgroup of queer people are started on purpose by, essentially, 4chan raiders.

It used to be a thing back in the day, someone who was on both tumblr and 4chan would warn that 4channers were planning a "raid," where a bunch of them would make blogs to harass random people, especially queer people.

I think they (or kiwifarms, or whatever else) still do that, but they are more sophisticated bout it now.

They'll send anonymous messages to people's askboxes that say things like "as a member of [abc identity], I think that you and everyone from [def identity] are terrible no good very bad people!"

They'll make a blog or two pretending to be someone from a marginalised group, and post things that are similar to what other people say, and then drop in more and more extreme things, mostly targeted against other marginalised identities.

And those things get picked up by real people, who then start uncritically interacting with things like that.

The way the discourse played out on tumblr was incredibly distressing to me. It wasn't so much the question of whether it was "queer" or a part of the lgbt+ or whatever that got to me, it was like. The mean-spirited way this made everyone and their mother feel like it was fair game to make fun of everything ace. All these cool little subcultural things I had come across, that had newly made me feel for the first time that maybe this was something I got to claim, a community I could be a part of - the flag, the ring, the stupid cake jokes, whatever - it was turned into a laughing stock by people that I was following and whose opinion I considered worthwhile.

And for a while it made it so much harder for me to even dare to explore other parts of my identity, bc I felt like I was an evil cringe ace trying to weasel my way into the queer community by pretending to be nonbinary or bi or something else, too. And once I did claim those labels, I didn't dare speak out for people who hadn't, people who were just ace or aro or both, who didn't have a "legitimate claim" to the wider community based on this discourse.

Even in my personal life with my queer loved ones, I did not dare to claim that I think there ought to be space in the queer community for ace, aro and aroace people too.. Because I felt like an imposter myself, I felt that everyone else was better informed, and I shouldn't speak.

But like honestly. If we're doing this shit again. I'm not gonna be so quiet this time.

You can even bring back the second point into concepts like ace discourse - I wasn't around for I but I've heard extensively of the sending gore into people's inbox and the 'ace hitler moodboard uwu' memes. Both of which I'd argue fall very snugly into the aforementioned 'get owned loser' mentality - it's considered cool and alternate and edgy to not be freaked out by gore ('cannibalism as a form of love*'-type posting, anyone?) and so anyone who finds it distressing must be normie snowflakes. Likewise, jokes about hitler are a staple of the edgy 4channer type, and follow a similar mentality - *I'm* not disgusted by this thing that everyone else is by, therefore I must be soooo cool and radical!'

The online left is, I'd argue, insecure about its own perceived softness in the eyes of conservatives, and often has a history of being the 'lame kids' - denied attention and mass appeal by the general public. In order to shore up that leak, people must put on an air of coolness the definition of which often has roots itself in 4chan type edginess. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of the posting about 'trans men are all little nazis' nowdays gets so much traction - because the people posting it have tapped into a style of writing and humour that they know is successful amongst the left and thus garners those sweet sweet likes and reblogs.

I hope the creator is okay too

The fact that people have taken this as an opportunity to be so fucking nasty and bigoted shines light on how pervasive racism still is in our communities

There's this idea among queer ace exclusionists that because ace people don't face the exact same oppression in the exact same way, they aren't queer enough, but being queer is a politicak identity. Aces are queer not because of the vibes, but because our political goals align with those of the broader queer community. Marriage equality, banning conversion therapy, freedom to make our own sexual choices, those are things that both ace people and other queer people need. We are stronger together!