#ace separatism

And its not a trick question or an insult or anything! I'm honestly seriously confused. Why is it important that you call yourself ace? What are you communicating by telling others you're ace?

When i say im ace, I'm communicating the fact that I have no desire for a relationship. I do not experience attraction to anyone.

Homophobes want you to be aro/ace if you’re same gender attracted. They want you to be celibate and call off dating, and even more, they want you to not even want those things.

But if you’re a cishet? You can’t be friends with someone of the “opposite” gender without it being “weird.” You can’t sleep in the same bed, you can’t cuddle, women can’t blame their male friends for falling for them and expecting it to be reciprocated because “what did you expect?”

An aromantic gay cis person could have Christian family members tell them that their gayness is okay because it’s only behind closed doors and they won’t be trying to get married or hold hands with anyone to cause them public shame. An asexual gay cis person in that same family could be told that their gayness is okay because it’s not like the other deviant, over-sexual disgusting and diseased ‘homosexuals.’

In those situations, their aro/aceness is used as a weapon of homophobia. Yes, it is a problem. But it is a problem of homophobia, not aphobia.

That same person could be an aromantic cishet, and suddenly it’s a problem that they don’t want to date and only want to have sex partners or close friends. (This argument doesn’t stand with asexuality because these kinds of Christians literally hold not having sex as the ideal)

In that situation, there is a problem. But the problem is aphobia, not homophobia. There is also misogyny involved, which is deeply intertwined with aphobia in the way that transphobia and homophobia are deeply intertwined.

This isn’t just in fundamental Christian households either, you see it in the media too. SGA characters are killed off or break up or SOMETHING to keep them from being with characters of the same gender. But cishet characters are always forced into relationships with each other no matter how little chemistry they have. There’s always these unnecessary sex scenes and sexualization of women regardless if it’s relevant to the story or not.

And I am not saying this to diminish the importance of talking about aphobia. It is important to talk about, no matter who it affects. Aphobia is HEAVILY caused by and involved in misogyny, and it definitely is something that needs to be discussed like any other feminist issue.

But this is a point about it that I haven’t seen brought up before.

If you’re exclusionist but you support ace/aro people creating their own spaces and believe that the ace/aro community deserves to exist and have resources because aphobia is an issue (not oppression, but interpersonal issues that do affect people’s lives) and you do NOT think being ace/aro is cringey/stupid/lame

and/or youre ace/aro and also an exclusionist

Then like/reblog if you want to?

Why is there a need for an ace/aro community at all? Well, it should be to support adults who struggle due to our society’s demands of being in sexual and romantic relationships. It truly does not matter if someone wants sex/romance, if they choose not to have it then they’re still going to have problems because of these demands.

Someone who wants to have sex but chooses not to for any reason, including trauma issues or religious practices or mental health reasons or whatever, they’re still going to have the same issues of “what do I tell people who ask me out” and “how do I explain this to my friends who ask me about my sex life” and “am I lacking something critical in my life because of this” and “should I be embarrassed about this / am I childish for being like this”

These are things ace people and celibate people who aren’t ace deal with.

This is why I always say “ace/aro people and those who would benefit from ace/aro resources.” Because it’s not just about those who don’t have sexual/romantic attraction. It’s also about the people who struggle with their attraction, people who don’t know what their attraction is, and people who don’t want to act on their attraction.

Hey uh as an ace person? Shut the absolute fuck up with this acting like sexual attraction is some disease/demonic/inhuman thing.

There are people who are actually oppressed for their sexual attraction. People who are actually killed and told that they are diseased because they have sexual attraction to the same gender.

Like I get the appeal of acting like everyone but you is weird if you’re in the minority about a thing, but you are actually a vile person if you say shit like this. You don’t give a fuck about homophobia. And if you’re gay or bi then you have a ton of internalized homophobia that you’re parroting and it is actively hurting people.

We need a space to express our frustrations with our society’s obsession with sex and romance

But doing that in a space where people come together to embrace their sexual and romantic desires that are hated because it’s to people of the same gender or because their attraction is considered disgusting bc they are trans — that just isnt going to work out

One group of people needs to hear “it’s okay to not be in a relationship or have sex” and hearing “it’s okay to love and desire sex” instead is not going to be helpful

And the other group of people needs to hear “your desire for love and sex is beautiful” and hearing “it’s okay to not have that desire” instead is not going to be helpful — and very well might be hurtful because these people hear that same thing from those who will do anything (perhaps even torture them!) to get them to stop having those desires

Exactly. People are so obsessed with aces/aros being LGBT that it actively hurts the efforts to create an actually beneficial ace/aro community. Ace/aro is not about identity or about validation or anything like that, it doesn’t matter if you identify as ace or aro, all that matters is whether you struggle with society’s demands of being in romantic/sexual relationships.