Hii hope you have a wonderful day today!
-I wanted to ask something to make sure im not being mean but- is it possible for an Ace person to be Aphobic?
Im in a fandom where there used to be a Ace character- he said he was- thing is, the show never said he was SexRepulsed- but fans took his lack of interest as such. believed he was in fact SexRepulsed.
-that character is gone- now, there is yet another character (think, a reboot of the old one) believed to be Ace but this time, he seems to be ok with touch an even seems very friendly ~ with only one character.
my ask is, if some people view this second version, as still Ace. but sex favorable, is that aphobic?
is maybe having another view on this chracter that is questioning himself, a bad thing?
because this is said a lot, that ppl is being aphobic for "refusing to accept he is sex repulsed" or "using the fact he is questioning himself to ship him" (mind you-most shipart is literally hand holding and being buddies)
hope Im making sense- im so lost and I trust your blog to help me (because im also scared to be harrased for asking this inside that fandom)
Hey! (We got your other ask, I got half way through answering it and then forgot, so I will get to that soon I promise) Good to hear from you again :) I ended up going a little off topic here, but I hope I managed to fully answer this (if not, just send another one). Also get ready for some parentheses.
In answer to the first part of your question, yes ace people can be aphobic (many ace people can be arophobic, but also acephobic, both to people who share their own identity and others who have a different identity under the ace umbrella).
This is a pretty interesting question actually, because there is acephobia at play in the situation you're describing, but not necessarily in the way those people mean. It is NOT acephobic to have a sex favourable ace character, that's fine, because there are sex favourable aces out there and they're just as much a part of our community as those who are indifferent, averse, repulsed, or some sort of mixture. Sex favourable aces have just a much right to see themselves represented as sex averse aces, but unfortunately, there is so little asexual representation that it can feel like if one flavour of ace people are represented, that that representation has been taken away from aces of other flavours.
It's totally understandable to feel that way, but that doesn't mean those feelings are actually justified? And people get pretty negative reactions for complaining about any lack of rep, which can lead to bad feelings all round and just creates even more of a divide between us. We have to understand that our individual experiences not being represented is NOT the fault of other ace people. It's not fair to want one group to miss out on representation, just so another can get theirs. Additionally, it can be important for people who are questioning or struggling with their identity to work through that in their art, and explorations of things like touch aversion and touch starvation can be very nuanced because one person can experience both to very high degrees, and they each can even compound the other. And, a sex favourable asexual person will not feel the same way about sex as an allosexual person, and that is an equally nuanced and interesting (and fun) thing to be able to explore.
I don't know what media this ask is about, so I can't comment on specifics, but I can admit, I've been frustrated by this sort of thing in the past; it can be really hard to shake an instinct to push back when you feel like you're being treated unfairly, but sometimes we do have to step back and understand that everyone in our community feels the same way, we just want to see ourselves and to feel seen by others. As a person who is both aro and ace, and doesn't want to have sex or be in a romantic relationship, I don't feel represented by characters who are alloace in the way an alloace person does, or sex/romance favourable aroace characters in the way sex favourable aroace people do, but they probably feel that same way when they see aro characters or sex averse characters. It does really suck when people outside of the community ignore and erase the identities of aspec characters because they don't feel our experiences are interesting or valuable enough to represent and explore, but that isn't what's happening on an intracommunity level (as in, within the ace community).
The recent discourse about shipping aroace characters has sort of been getting me down, because it's a complex topic and rather than being a black-or-white, two sides thing, there are people with good and bad takes (mostly bad, let's be real) coming from so many different directions, there is so much nuance it would take me much more than one little answer to cover (and let me tell you, if I were to try, it would not be on this blog!). I might have said this before, but I tend to avoid fandoms of media with canon aroace characters for the most part for this exact reason, and within the community we are SO far ahead of where the rest of the world (and even the rest of the queer community) sees aspec people, I genuinely believe (call it cynical if you like) that this will continue to be a problem for several more years. And like, you can just block people and move on with your life, your fandom experience will be so much more enjoyable if you block people who say shit you think sucks, aphobic or not. Everyone should do this.
I think this is probably long enough now, and I've definitely missed something important, but I hope it helped.
