If you don't stand with all of the LGBTQIA+, you stand with none. People seem to forget about all of that within fandom.
If you NEED someone’s sexuality stated in that specific term we only now use (and largely in the west), you don't stand with us (looking at you, acephobes).
If you NEED specific characters to have sex, you don't stand with us--referring to how objectively aspec characters are mostly just sexual in their tags and fanart.
Can they have sex? Obvi-fucking-ly. But when there's contextual evidence that they're aspec, what the actual fuck, why are they constantly fucking!?
Ace people deserve as much representation as anyone else in fandom spaces, sex is not the be-all, end-all of adulthood or relationships and it's immature to see it as such. Nonsexual intimacy is real and just as legitimate; even more valid when an arguably canonically ace character is present.
And porn--yes porn, because smut is just porn with words--being so, SO prevalent in fandom is also an issue: there are MANY minors in fandom and no, "we're not all responsible for taking care of the kids," but we sure as fuck have a role in it. When there's 90% smut, laden with tags like non-con, dead dove, incest, sex-pollen/heat/sex curse (noncon means to sex) etc, that--and get this--NORMALIZES that shit. If you think it doesn't, that's like saying we haven't all been conditioned to feel that skinny-ness is normal and fat-ness is abnormal by the media; that heteronormativity and heterosexuality hasn't been normalised to us based off what we consumed whilst younger.
Can ace characters and other characters still fuck? Where the hell did I say that's not allowed whatsoever. Where, in the fuck, did I declare smut unacceptable. Nowhere. That's where.
This is what I'm saying: ace characters deserve to be ace in fandom, ace people by extension deserve that representation and not that feeling of alienation because they identified with a character but find nothing but smut.
What I'm saying is not everything has to be about sex! Have your horny and write your horny, but it's ludicrous for SO MUCH of fandom to be revolving around sex, especially when you can hardly find any non-sexual story about a certain character/ship!
What’s more, it’s fucking acephobic for there to be nothing but objective allosexuality!
And save the "do it yourself," I fucking am and maybe I'd like to just be able to read some good non-sex-revolving stories for once.
This is for all the aces and baby aces: you're not wrong for not feeling the very, very many sex tags, nor are you wrong for interpreting the character(s) as ace. And neither are you not-ace for enjoying the sexy tags or stories. Don’t let anyone force you out of a place you enjoy, especially if it’s an escape for you like so many find with fandom.
PS: “if you don’t like how it works, then don’t be in fandom.” Really just puts the nails in your acephobic coffin. Why the hell should we (and minors) be excluded from spaces that’re supposed to be inclusionary just because y’all can’t fucking control yourselves.